Quicksilver (75 page)

“Let us set aside phant’sies, and speak of facts.”

“Can’t help noticing, sir, that my question is unanswered.”

“You appeared at the door of our church in Amsterdam—some felt, like an Angelic visitation—with a most generous donation, and offered to make yourself useful in any way that would further our work ’gainst Slavery. And that is just what you are doing.”

“But if the Client is
not
opposed to slavery, how does it further the cause to buy him powder and musket-balls?”

“You may not know that my father—God rest his soul—served as the late King’s Secretary of State before he was hounded to exile and death by the Papists who do France’s work in England. He submitted to that degradation because he knew that upright men must sometimes treat with the likes of King Charles II for the greater good. In the same way, we who oppose slavery, and Established religion, and in particular all of the abominations and fopperies of the Romish faith, must give our support to any man who might prevent James, Duke of York, from long remaining on the throne.”

“James
is
the rightful heir, is he not?”

“As those diplomats just proved, cavilling over the seniority of their Kings,” Bolstrood said, “there is no question that cannot be muddled—and powder-smoke muddles things ’specially well. King Louis stamps
Ultima Ratio Regum
on all of his cannon—”

“The last argument of kings.”

“You know Latin, too—?”

“I had a Classical education.”

“In Qwghlm!?”

“In Constantinople.”

T
HE COMTE D
’A
VAUX MOVED THROUGH
the Hague’s canal-network in the gait of a man walking across red-hot coals, but some innate aplomb kept him from falling down even once.

“Would you like to go home now, monsieur?”

“Oh no, mademoiselle—I am enjoying myself,” he returned, biting off the syllables one by one, like a crocodile working its way up an oar.

“You dressed more warmly today—is that Russian sable?”

“Yes, but of an inferior grade—a much finer one awaits you—if you get me back alive.”

“That is quite unnecessary, monsieur—”

“The entire point of gifts is to be unnecessary.” D’Avaux reached into a pocket and pulled out a square of neatly folded black velvet.
“Voilà,”
he said, handing it over to her.

“What is it?” Eliza asked, taking it from his hand, and using the opportunity to grab his upper arm for a moment and steady him.

“A little nothing. I should like you to wear it.”

The velvet unfolded into a long ribbon about the width of Eliza’s hand, its two ends joined together with a rather nice gold brooch made in the shape of a butterfly. Eliza guessed it was meant to be a sash, and put one arm and her head through it, letting it hang diagonally across her body. “Thank you, monsieur,” she said, “how does it look?”

The comte d’Avaux, for once, failed to offer her a compliment. He merely shrugged, as if how it looked was not the point. Which confirmed Eliza’s suspicion that a black velvet sash over skating-clothes was rather odd-looking.

“How did you escape your predicament yesterday?” she asked him.

“Made arrangements for the Stadholder to summon the English Ambassador back to the Binnenhof. This compelled him to make a
volte-face:
a maneuver in which the diplomats of perfidious Albion are well practiced. We followed him down the street and made the first available turn. How did you escape
yours
?”

“What—you mean, being out for a skate with a lug?”

“Naturally.”

“Tormented him for another half an hour—then returned to his place in the country to transact business. You think I’m a whore, don’t you, monsieur? I saw it in your face when I mentioned
business.
Though you would probably say
courtesan.”

“Mademoiselle, in my circles, anyone who transacts business of any sort, on any level, is a whore. Among French nobility, no distinctions are recognized between the finest commerçants of Amsterdam and common prostitutes.”

“Is that why Louis hates the Dutch so?”

“Oh no, mademoiselle, unlike these dour Calvinists, we
love
whores—Versailles is aswarm with them. No, we have any number of
intelligent
reasons to hate the Dutch.”

“What
sort
of whore do you suppose I am, then, monsieur?”

“That is what I am trying to establish.”

Eliza laughed. “Then you should be eager to turn back.”

“Non!”
The comte d’Avaux made a doddering, flailing turn onto another canal. Something bulky and grim shouldered its way into a
gap ahead of them. Eliza mistook it, at first, for an especially gloomy old brick church. But then she noticed up on the parapet light shining like barred teeth through crenellations, and many narrow embrasures, and realized it had been made for another purpose besides saving souls. The building had tall poky conical spires at the corners, and Gothic decorations along the fronts of the gables that thrust out into the cold air like clenched stone fists. “The Ridderzaal,” she said, getting her bearings; for she had gotten quite lost following d’Avaux along the labyrinth of canals that were laced through the Hofgebied like capillaries through flesh. “So we are on the Spij now, going north.” A short distance ahead of them, the Spij forked in twain, bracketing the Ridderzaal and other ancient buildings of the Counts of Holland between its branches.

D’Avaux careered into the right fork. “Let us go through yonder water-gate, into the Hofvijver!” Meaning a rectangular pond that lay before the Binnenhof, or palace of the Dutch court. “The view of the Binnenhof rising above the ice will be—er—”

“Magical?”

“Non.”

“Magnificent?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Less bleak than anything else we have seen?”

“Now truly you are speaking French,” the ambassador said approvingly. “The princeling
^*
is off on another of his insufferable hunting expeditions, but
some
persons of quality are there.” He had put on a surprising—almost alarming—burst of speed and was several paces ahead of Eliza now. “They will open the gate for me,” he said confidently, tossing the words back over his shoulder like a scarf. “When they do, you put on one of those magnificent
accélérations
and sail past me into the Hofvijver.”

“Very devious…but why don’t you simply ask them to let me through?”

“This will make for a gayer spectacle.”

The gate was so close to the Binnenhof that they would nearly pass underneath the palace as they went through. It was guarded by musketeers and archers dressed in blue outfits with lace cravats and orange sashes. When they recognized Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, they ventured out onto the ice, skidding on their hard-soled boots, pulled one side of the gate open for him, and bowed—doffing their hats and sweeping the ice with the tips of their orange plumes. The gate was wide enough to admit
pleasure-boats during the warmer months, and so Eliza had plenty of room to whoosh past the French Ambassador and into the rectangle of ice that was spread out before William of Orange’s palace. It was a maneuver that would have earned her a broad-headed arrow between the shoulder blades if she were a man. But she was a girl in a short skirt and so the guards took her entrance in the spirit intended—as an amusing courtly
plaisanterie
of the comte’s devising.

She was going very fast—faster than she needed to, for this had given her an excuse to stretch cold stiff leg-muscles. She’d entered the southeast corner of the Hofvijver, which extended perhaps a hundred yards north–south and thrice that east–west. Slicing up along its eastern bank, she was distracted by musket-fire from open ground off to her right, and had a wild moment of fear that she was about to be cut down by snipers. But not to worry, it was a party of gentlemen honing their markmanship on a target-range spread out between the bank of the pond and an ornate building set farther back. She recognized this, now, as the headquarters of the St. George Guild. Beyond it, wooded land stretched away to the east as far as she could see: the Haagsche Bos, a game-park for the Counts of Holland, where people of all classes went to ride and stroll when the weather was better.

Directly ahead of her was a cobblestone ramp: a street that plunged directly into the water of the pond, when it wasn’t frozen, and where horses and cattle could be taken down and watered. She had to lean hard and make a searing turn to avoid it. Swaying her hips from side to side, she picked up a bit of speed as she glided down the long northern shore of the Hofvijver. The south shore, spreading off to her left, was a hodgepodge of brown brick buildings with black slate rooves, many having windows just above the level of the pond, so that she could have skated right up and conversed with people on the inside. But she wouldn’t have dared, for this was the Binnenhof, the palace of the Stadholder, William of Orange. Her view of it was obscured, for a time, by a tiny round island planted in the center of the Hofvijver like a half-cherry on a slice of cake. Trees and shrubs grew on it, and moss grew on them, though all was brown and leafless now. But above and behind the Binnenhof she could see the many narrow towers of the Ridderzaal jabbing at the sky like a squadron of knights with lances upright.

That was the end of sightseeing. For as she shot clear of the little island, and curled round to swing back towards d’Avaux, she discovered that she was sharing the ice with a slow-moving clique of skaters. She glimpsed both men and women, finely dressed. To
knock them down would have been bad form. To stop and introduce herself would have been infinitely worse. She spun round to face towards d’Avaux, skating backwards now, letting her momentum carry her past the group. She carved a long sweeping U round the west end of the Hofvijver, spun round to face forward again, built more speed without lifting her skates from the ice, by means of sashaying hip-movements that took her down the long front of the Binnenhof, in a serpentine path, and finally stopped just before running into d’Avaux by planting the blades sideways and shaving up a glittering wall of ice. Nothing very acrobatic really—but it was enough to draw applause from Blue Guards, St. George Guildsmen, and noble skaters alike.

“I learnt defencing at the Academy of Monsieur du Plessis in Paris, where the finest swordsmen of the world gather to flaunt their prowess—but none of them can match
your
grace with a pair of steel blades, mademoiselle,” said the prettiest man Eliza had ever seen, as he was raising her gloved hand to smooch it.

D’Avaux had been making introductions. The gorgeous man was the Duke of Monmouth. He was escorting a tall, lanky, yet jowly woman in her early twenties. This was Mary—the daughter of the new King of England, and William of Orange’s wife.

As d’Avaux had announced these names and titles, Eliza had come close to losing her nerve for the first time in memory. She was remembering Hanover, where the Doctor had planted her in a steeple near the Herrenhausen Palace, so that she could gaze upon Sophie through a field-glass. Yet this d’Avaux—who didn’t know Eliza nearly as well as the Doctor did—had taken her straight into the Dutch court’s inner sanctum. How could d’Avaux introduce her to persons of royal degree—when he didn’t have the first idea who she was in the first place?

In the end it couldn’t have been simpler. He had leaned in towards Monmouth and Mary and said, discreetly: “This is—
Eliza.
” This had elicited knowing nods and winks from the others, and a little buzz of excitement from Mary’s entourage of English servants and hangers-on. These were apparently not even worth introducing—and that went double for the Negro page-boy and the shivering Javanese dwarf.

“No compliments for
me,
your Grace?” d’Avaux asked, as Monmouth was planting multiple kisses on the back of Eliza’s glove.

“On the contrary, monsieur—you are the finest skater of all France,” Monmouth returned with a smile. He still had most of his teeth. He had forgotten to let go of Eliza’s hand.

Mary nearly fell off her skates, partly because she was laughing
at Monmouth’s jest a little harder than was really warranted, and partly because she was a miserable skater (in the corner of Eliza’s eye, earlier, she’d looked like a windmill—flailing without moving). It had been obvious from the first moment Eliza had seen her that she was infatuated with the Duke of Monmouth. Which to some degree was embarrassing. But Eliza had to admit that she’d chosen a likely young man to fall in love with.

Mary of Orange started to say something, but d’Avaux ran her off the road. “Mademoiselle Eliza has been trying valiantly to teach me how to skate,” he said commandingly, giving Eliza a wet look. “But I am like a peasant listening to one of the lectures of Monsieur Huygens.” He glanced over toward the water-gate through which he and Eliza had just passed, for the house of the Huygens family lay very nearby that corner of the palace.

“I should’ve fallen ever so many times without the Duke to hold me up,” Mary put in.

“Would an Ambassador do as well?” d’Avaux said, and before Mary could answer, he sidled up to her and nearly knocked her over. She flailed for the Ambassador’s arm and just got a grip on it in time. Her entourage closed in to get her back on her blades, the Javanese dwarf getting one hand on each buttock and pushing up with all his might.

The Duke of Monmouth saw none of this drama, engaged as he was in a minute inspection of Eliza. He began with her hair, worked his way down to her ankles, then back up, until he was startled to discover a pair of blue eyes staring back at him.
That
led to a spell of disorientation just long enough for d’Avaux (who had pinned Mary’s hand between his elbow and ribcage) to say, “By all means, your Grace, go for a skate, stretch your legs—we novices will just totter around the Vijver for a few minutes.”

“Mademoiselle?” said the Duke, proffering a hand.

“Your grace,” said Eliza, taking it.

Ten heartbeats later they were out on the Spij. Eliza let go Monmouth’s hand and spun round backwards to see the water-gate being closed behind them, and, through the bars, Mary of Orange, looking as if she’d been punched in the stomach, and Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, looking as if he did this kind of thing several times a day. Once, in Constantinople, Eliza had helped hold one of the other slave-girls down while an Arab surgeon took out her appendix. It had taken all of two minutes. She’d been astonished that a man with a sharp knife and no hesitation about using it could effect such changes so rapidly. Thus d’Avaux and Mary’s heart.