Quicksilver (119 page)

Fortune has presented Louis with a choice: he can try to maintain his influence over England, which is a very uncertain endeavour and does not really add to the security of France, or he can march on the Rhine, take the Palatinate, and secure France against Germany forever. It seems obvious that this is the wiser course. But as a spy it is not my charge to advise Kings how they
ought
to rule, but to observe how they
do.

St.-Dizier, where I am about to disembark, is a river-port of modest size, with some very ancient churches and Roman ruins. The dark forest Argonne rises up behind it, and somewhere through those woods runs the border separating France from Lorraine. A few leagues farther to the east lies the vale of the river Meuse, which runs north into the Spanish Netherlands, and then becomes convolved with the shifting frontiers that separate Spanish, Dutch, and German states.

Another ten leagues east of the Meuse lies the city of Nancy, which is on the river Moselle. That river likewise flows north, but it sweeps eastwards after skirting the Duchy of Luxembourg, and empties into the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. Or at least that is what I recollect from gazing at the maps in the library at St. Cloud. I did not think it politic to take any of them with me!

Continuing east beyond Nancy toward the Rhine, then, the maps depicted twenty or thirty leagues of jumbled and confused territory: an archi pelago of small isolated counties and bishoprics, crumbs of land that belonged to the Holy Roman Empire until the Thirty Years’ War. Eventually one reaches Strasbourg, which is on the Rhine. Louis XIV seized it some years ago. In some sense this event created me, for the plague and chaos of Strasbourg drew Jack there, and later the prospects of a fine barley-harvest and its inevitable result-----war-----drew him to Vienna where he met me. I wonder if I will complete the circle by journeying as far as Strasbourg now. If so, I shall complete another circle at the same time, for it was from that city that Liselotte crossed into France seventeen years ago to marry Monsieur, never to return to her homeland.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
30 A
UGUST
1688

At St.-Dizier I changed back into the clothes of a gentlewoman and lodged at a convent. It is one of those convents where women of quality go to live out their lives after they’ve failed, or declined, to get married. In its ambience it is closer to a bordello than a nunnery. Many of the inmates are not even thirty years old, and never so lusty; when they cannot sneak men inside, they sneak out, and when they cannot sneak out, they practice on one another. Liselotte knew some of these girls when they were at Versailles and has continued to correspond with them. She sent letters ahead telling them that I was a sort of shirt-tail relative of hers, a member of her household, and that I was traveling to the Palatinate to pick up certain art-objects and family curios that Liselotte was supposed to have inherited upon the death of her brother, but which had been the subject of lengthy haggling and disputation with her half-siblings. Since it is inconceivable for a woman to undertake such a journey herself, I was to bide at the convent in St.-Dizier until my escort arrived: some minor nobleman of the Palatinate who would journey to this place with horses and a carriage to collect me, then convey me northeastwards across Lorraine, and the incomprehensible tangle of borders east of it, to Heidelberg. My identity and mission are false, but the escort is real-----for needless to say, the people of the Palatinate are as eager to know their fate as their captive Queen, Liselotte.

As of this writing my escort has not arrived, and no word has been heard of him. I am anxious that they have been detained or even killed, but for now there is nothing for me to do but go to Mass in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, and carouse with the nuns in the night-time.

I was making polite conversation with the Mother Superior, a lovely woman of about threescore who turns a blind eye to the young women’s comings and goings. She mentioned in passing that there are iron works nearby, and this caused me to doubt my own judgment concerning those slow-rolling
chalands.
Perhaps they were only carrying iron, and not lead. But later I went out on the town with some of the younger girls, and we passed within view of the river-front, where a
chaland
was being unloaded. Barrels were being rolled off and stacked along the quay, and heavy ox-carts were standing by waiting. I asked these girls if this was typical, but they affect complete ignorance of practical matters and were of no use at all.

Later I claimed I was tired, and went to my allotted cell as if to sleep. But instead I changed into my boy-clothes and sneaked out of the convent using one of the well-worn escape-routes used by nuns going to trysts in the town. This time I was able to get much closer to the quay, and to observe the
chaland
from between two of the barrels that had been taken from it earlier. And
indeed I saw small but massive objects being lifted up out of its bilge and loaded onto those ox-carts. Overseeing the work was a man whose face I could not see, but of whom much could be guessed from his clothing. About his boots were certain nuances that I had begun to notice in the boots of Monsieur’s lovers shortly before my departure from St. Cloud. His breeches-----

No. By the time anyone reads these words, fashions will have changed, and so it would be a waste of time for me to enumerate the details-----suffice it to say that everything he wore had to have been sewn in Paris within the last month.

My observations were cut short by the clumsiness of a few Vagabonds who had crept down to the quay hoping to pilfer something. One of them leaned against a barrel, assuming it was full and would support his weight, but being empty it tilted away from him and then, when he sprang back, came down with a hollow boom. Instantly the courtier whipped out his sword and pointed it at me, for he had spied me peering at him between barrels, and several men came running towards me. The Vagabonds took off at a run and I followed them, reasoning that they would know better than I how to disappear into this town. And indeed by vaulting over certain walls and crawling down certain gutters they very nearly disappeared from me, who was but a few paces behind them.

Eventually I followed them as far as a church-yard, where they had set up a little squat in a tangle of vines growing up the side of an ancient mausoleum. They made no effort either to welcome me or to chase me away, and so I hunkered down in the darkness a few paces off, and listened to them mutter. Much of their zargon was incomprehensible, but I could discern that there were four of them. Three seemed to be making excuses, as if resigned to whatever fate awaited them. But the fourth was frustrated, he had the energy to be critical of the others, and to desire some improvement in their situation. When this one got up and stepped aside for a piss, I rose and drew a little closer to him and said, “Meet me alone at the corner of the convent where the ivy grows,” and then I darted away, not knowing whether he might try to seize me.

An hour later I was able to observe him from the parapet of the convent. I threw him a coin and told him that he would receive ten more of the same if he would follow the ox-carts, observe their movements, and report back to me in three days. He receded into the darkness without saying a word.

The next morning the Mother Superior delivered a letter to one of the girls, explaining that it had been left at the gate the night before. The recipient took one look at the seal and exclaimed, “Oh, it is from my dear cousin!” She opened it with a jerk and read it then and there, pronouncing half the words aloud, as she was barely literate. The import seemed to be that her cousin had passed through St.-Dizier the night before but very much
regretted he’d not been able to stop in for a visit, as his errand was very pressing; however, he expected to be in the area for some time, and hoped that he would have the opportunity to see her soon.

When she pulled the letter open, the disc of wax sealing it shut popped off and rolled across the floor under a chair. As she was reading the letter I went over and picked it up. The coat of arms pressed into that seal was one I did not fully recognize, but certain elements were familiar to me from my time at Versailles-----I could guess that he was related to a certain noble family of Gascony, well known for its military exploits. It seemed safe to assume he was the gentleman I’d spied on the quay the night before.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
2 S
EPTEMBER
1688

CRYPTANALYST’S NOTE
:
In the original, the section below contains consid erable detail about the cargoes being unloaded from the
chalands
at St.-Dizier, and the coats of arms and insignias of persons that the Countess observed there, all of which were no doubt of greater interest to the Prince of Orange than they can be to your majesty. I have elided them.-----B.R.

A slow three days at the convent of St.-Dizier have given me more than enough time to catch up on my embroidery! With any luck my Vagabond will come back tonight with news. If I have received no word from the Palatinate by tomorrow I shall have little choice but to strike out on my own, though I have no idea how to manage it.

I have tried to make what use I could of this fallow time, as I did on the
chaland.
During the days I have tried to make conversation with Eloise, the girl who received the letter. This has been difficult because she is not very intelligent and we have few interests in common. I let it be known that I have been at Versailles and St. Cloud recently. In time, word reached her of this, and she began to sit near me at meals, and to ask if I knew this or that person there, and what had become of so-and-so. So at last I have learned who she is, and who her well-dressed cousin is: the Chevalier d’Adour, who has devoted his last several years to currying favor with Maréchal Louvois, the King’s commander-in-chief. He distinguished himself in the recent massacres of Protestants in the Piedmont and, in sum, is the sort who might be entrusted with a mission of some importance.

In the evenings I have tried to keep an eye on the river-front. Several more
chalands
have been unloaded there, in the same style as the first.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
5 S
EPTEMBER
1688

Suddenly so much happened I could not tend to my embroidery for a few days. I am catching up on it now, in a carriage on a bumpy road in the Argonne. This type of writing has more advantages to a peripatetic spy than I appreciated at first. It would be impossible for me to write with pen and ink here. But needlework I can just manage.

To say it quickly, my young Vagabond came back and earned his ten silver pieces by informing me that the heavy ox-carts carrying the cargo from the
chalands
were being driven east, out of France and into Lorraine, circumventing Toul and Nancy on forest tracks, and then continuing east to Alsace, which is France again [the Duchy of Lorraine being flanked by France to both east and west]. My Vagabond had been forced, for lack of time, to turn round and come back before he could follow the carts all the way to their destination, but it is obvious enough that they are bound towards the Rhine. He heard from a wanderer he met on the road that such carts were converging from more than one direction on the fortress of Haguenau, which lately had been a loud and smoky place. This man had fled the area because the troops had been press-ganging any idlers they could find, putting them to work chopping down trees-----little ones for firewood and big ones for lumber. Even the shacks of the Vagabonds were being chopped up and burnt.

After hearing this news I did not sleep for the rest of the night. If my recollection of the maps was right, Haguenau is on a tributary of the Rhine, and is part of the
barrière de fer
that Vauban built to protect France from the Germans, Dutch, Spanish, and other foes. Supposing that I was right in thinking that the cargo was lead; then the meaning of what I’d just been told was that it was being melted down at Haguenau and made into musket- and cannonballs. This would explain the demand for firewood. But why did they also require lumber? I guessed it was to build barges that could carry the ammunition down to the Rhine. The current would then take them downstream into the Palatinate in a day or two.

Certain things I had noticed at Court now became imbued with new meanings. The Chevalier de Lorraine-----lord of the lands over which the ox-carts passed en route to Haguenau-----has long been the most senior of Monsieur’s lovers, and the most cruel and implacable of Madame’s tormentors. In theory he is a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor, of which Lorraine is still a tributary state, but in practice he has become completely surrounded by France-----one cannot enter or leave Lorraine without traveling over territory that is ruled from Versailles. This explains why he spends all his time in the French Court instead of Vienna.

Conventional wisdom has it that the duc d’Orleans was raised to be
effeminate and passive so that he would never pose a threat to his older brother’s kingship. One might suppose that the Chevalier de Lorraine, who routinely penetrates Monsieur, and who rules his affections, has thereby exploited a vulnerability in the ruling dynasty of France. That, again, is the conventional wisdom at Court. But now I was seeing it in a different light. One cannot penetrate without being encompassed, and the Chevalier de Lorraine is encompassed by Monsieur just as his territory has been encompassed by France. Louis invades and penetrates, his brother seduces and surrounds, they share a common will, they complement each other as brothers should. I see a homosexual who makes a sham marriage and spurns his wife for the love of a man. But Louis sees a brother who will fight a sham war in the Palatinate, supposedly to defend his wife’s claim on that territory, while using his lover’s fiefdom as a highway to transport matériel to the front.

When these three-----Monsieur, Madame, and the Chevalier-----were packed off to St. Cloud on short notice a few weeks ago, I assumed it was because the King had grown sick of their squabbling. But now I perceive that the King thinks in metaphors, and that he had to put them all together, like animals in a baiting-ring, to bring their conflict to a head, before undertaking his military campaign. Just as the domestic squabbles of Jupiter and Juno were thought by the Romans to be manifested in thunderstorms, so the squalid triangle of St. Cloud will be manifested as war in the Palatinate. Louis’ empire, which now is interrupted in the Argonne, will be extended across and down the Rhine, as far as Mannheim and Heidelberg, and when domestic tranquillity is finally restored to St. Cloud, France will be two hundred miles wider, and the
barrière de fer
will run across burnt territory where German-speaking Protestants used to dwell.