The System of the World (54 page)

“When I was a girl of some sixteen years, I was sorry for myself, and angry at the world, because I had been separated from my mother, first by Slavery and then by common Mortality. Now, as I reckon the sum of your losses, I am ashamed that I ever so indulged myself.”

There passed a moment when Caroline said nothing. This was partly because she was touched, and almost embarrassed, by this bold statement from a woman so renowned for wit and discretion. It was also partly because of a noise behind her. Martin had gotten his team to negotiate the sharp turn at the plot’s acute vertex, which had not been easy, and was now rumbling along another side, not far away.

“Sometimes I think that I
am
the sum of my losses,” Caroline finally said. “And if so, then every loss that I suffer enlarges me. I hope my discourse does not strike you as too grim,” she added, for a little sob-shudder had run through the Duchess’s body. “But this is how I make sense of my world. And if you must know, in some moments I phant’sy that I am a sort of heir to the Winter Queen—though I am not linked to her by blood—and that it is my destiny to go back to England and reclaim it for her. That is why I asked you to buy Leicester House, for she was born there.”

“I did not
buy
it but
invested
in it,” Eliza returned.

“Then I hope your investment will turn out to have been a prudent one.”

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Your tidings from Antwerp—and other news that has reached me of late—make me doubt whether I shall ever
see
Britain, much less
rule
it.”

“You shall, my dear. What concerns Marlborough is not the fate of the Realm but of a single Regiment, near to his heart, lately fallen under the sway of Jacobites. He is fretting about certain of his officers and sergeants, trying to make out what has become of them.”

“What has happened to one Regiment might happen later to the whole Realm,” Caroline said. Then she looked away, distracted by an eruption of barking on the far side of the vast Gordian knot of the Teufelsbaum. Martin was chastising the dogs in Dutch. They had probably lit out after one of the garden’s regiment of squirrels.

When she turned back, she found that Eliza had been appraising her. The Duchess seemed to approve of what she had seen. “I am most pleased that my son has found you,” she said.

“So am I,” Caroline confessed. “Tell me truly, now—did you enter the garden in search of
me
, or of
him
?”

“I knew that the two of you would be together. It would appear that I just missed him,” Eliza said, and reached out to pluck a long blond hair from a pearl button at Caroline’s midsection.

“He hoped you’d come—and knew you’d do so without warning. He has gone for a walk with an Englishman.”

Eliza got a wary look and stepped forward, pressing Caroline aside with a firm hand. Her other hand strayed to the waistband of her frock. A man came crashing through the Teufelsbaum, headed directly for them. Meanwhile Scylla and Charybdis were pelting hell-for-leather around the fence, trying to find a way in.

The man emerged into plain view and stopped. The first thing they noticed about him was that he was brandishing a dagger; the second, that he was one of Eliza’s footmen. His wig had been stripped off as he’d charged through the reaching arms of the Teufelsbaum, but he was recognizable by his livery. Less so by his face, which was red, and distorted by fear and rage—battle-lust, Caroline thought.

“Jan? What is it?” Eliza demanded.

Jan ignored the question. He scanned the path until he was certain that Scylla and Charybdis had found it, and were circling around to guard the rear. Then he spun round, turning his back on Eliza and Caroline, searching the woods.

Something slammed into Caroline’s shoulder. It was Eliza’s body. Caroline tried to plant the opposing foot wide, to absorb the blow, but Eliza had expected this, and had already swung a leg around and hooked Caroline’s ankle. Both of them fell down. Caroline hit the ground first. Eliza, rather than smashing full-length into Caroline’s body, took most of the impact on her hands and knees, and wound up straddling the fallen princess, looking about herself alertly.

The second footman had circled around the other way, and now joined Scylla and Charybdis at the gate. He too had a dagger out. But Eliza stayed over Caroline, refusing to let her up. Presently the carriage roared and rattled back up the path, drawn by four insanely irritated horses who were controlled only with difficulty by poor Martin.

“What happened?” demanded Eliza, as Martin was reining them in.

Martin was in no great hurry to respond either. He stood up and scanned the woods on all sides. He had a pistol out, and was careful to keep its barrel perfectly aligned with his gaze, so that shooting could follow seeing in an instant.

“Opposite, on the far side of this weird tree, the dogs scented men who had bad intentions,” he finally said, in a mild voice.

Ever the Natural Philosopher, even when pinned to the ground under a Duchess, Caroline inquired, “How do you know it wasn’t a well-intentioned squirrel?”

“The dogs told me as much by their emotions,” Martin returned, plainly irritated to have been questioned on such a matter. “They followed the scent from the iron fence—which these men must have vaulted—to a neighboring part of the garden, yonder, before I called them back, and told them to go and find my lady. Then, as I was rounding the corner, over there, trying to get back to you, I glanced over and saw two men running as fast as they could down the path.”

“Towards us?”

“Away from you, my lady.”

“Bows? Muskets?”

“They had neither, my lady.”

This was the signal for Eliza to get up at last. She extended a hand and did the work of hauling Caroline to her feet, as the footmen were still prowling about with daggers drawn.

“That was an unusual procedure,” Caroline remarked.

“It is not so unusual in Constantinople.”

“Where did you hire your staff?” Caroline wondered.

“The deck of a privateer in Dunquerque. I once had a friend in the business, one Jean Bart, who doted on me, and wanted to see that I was well looked after.” Eliza turned her attentions back to Martin. “Could you recognize those two men if you saw them again?”

“My lady, they had covered themselves in long dark hooded robes, such as friars wear, and the hoods were drawn up over their heads. I wager we might find those robes discarded on the ground within a musket-shot of where we now stand—”

“And the assassins will have blended in among the funeral-guests before we get back to the Palace,” Eliza concluded.

“More than likely,” Caroline agreed; then: “I beg your pardon, did you say
assassins
!?”

“T
HE LETTER BY
which Princess Caroline summoned me was sealed in the presence of Enoch Root, and put into his hand before the wax had cooled. He traversed the west road from here to Amsterdam in no particular haste—but without let or delay. A day after, he was in Scheveningen, and three days after that, in London. A wait of one week sufficed to get him aboard a New York–bound ship. The voyage was not particularly lengthy. After no more than a night’s rest on the island of Manhattan he proceeded on horseback to Boston. He delivered the message into my hand on the day he arrived. It had never
left his person since the moment it was sealed in the Leine Schloß.” The strange old Englishman nodded down the leafy prospect of the Herrenhäuser Allee toward the smoky bulk of Hanover’s fortifications.

The young baron, noting that he had fallen a pace behind, hurried along to draw abreast. “Did you and Enoch—I call him Enoch, for he is an old friend of my family—”

“I thought he was supposed to be a
member
of your family, long ago, when he affected a different name.”

“That is another conversation for another day,” said the Baron, in good English. “I say, did you and Enoch discuss the matter aloud, in the presence of others, in Boston?”

“In a tavern. But we were discreet. I did not mention the author of the letter even to my own
wife
. I told her only that someone of great importance had asked for me.”

“What of the letter itself?”

“That’s a different matter. Mr. Root did allow some persons to see the Seal. So it could be inferred that I had been summoned from Hanover.”

“Pray continue.”

“Well, ’tis very simple. I was aboard
Minerva
that very night. We were held back by contrary winds for a month. Then one day a whole bloody pirate-fleet descended upon us. My god, what a thing it was. In all my days I have never lived through such a—”

Johann von Hacklheber, sensing that his Narrator was about to wax discursive, interrupted: “Pirates are said to be as common along the New England coast as fleas on a dog.”

“Yes, we had some of that type, too,” said Daniel Waterhouse, strangely enthusiastic. “Caitiffs in row-boats. But we shook those off easily. I am referring to a literal fleet of formidable pirate-ships, under a disaffected British sea-captain named Edward Teach—”

“Blackbeard!” said Johann, before he could stop himself.

“You have heard of him.”

“He has already been the subject of picaroon-romances, which are sold by the barrel-load at the book-fair in Leipzig. Not that I would ever read such a thing,” Johann said, and then waited tensely, fearing that this Daniel Waterhouse was the sort who would miss the jest, and assume he was being a snotty little baron. But the old man caught it, and batted it back: “In your
researches
, have you learnt that this Blackbeard is aligned with Jacobite interests?”

“I know that his flagship is christened
Queen Anne’s Revenge,
and I collected, from this, that he had some axe to grind.”

“He assaulted the ship I was on—
Minerva
—and sacrificed one and possibly two ships of his fleet to get at me.”

“To get at
Minerva,
you mean, or—”

“To get at
me,
I say. He asked for me
by name
. And any other sea-captain would have given me up; but Otto van Hoek would not give a pirate a wormy biscuit, much less a passenger.”

“Now, if I may play devil’s advocate,” Johann said, “for Enoch to come into this
Bostown
, which you describe as a sort of backwoods encampment, waving a document with a Hanoverian seal, must have drawn attention. Your departure must have been the talk of the town.”

“No doubt they are talking about it
still
.”

“In every port are men of low character who pass along such intelligence to criminals, pirates, and the like. You said that a whole month elapsed while you were becalmed—”

“I should rather call it, ‘bestormed,’ but yes.”

“That is more than enough time for word to have spread to every pirate-cove in New England. This Teach must have heard the news, and surmised that you were a man of importance, who might be held for ransom.”

“This is what I was telling myself all the way across the Atlantic, to calm my nerves,” Daniel said. “I even trained myself to overlook the chief fault in that hypothesis, which is that, outside of Barbary, pirates do not, as a rule, hold hostages for ransom, and especially not old men who are likely to drop dead at a moment’s notice. But when I reached London, efforts were made to blast me, or someone close to me, to pieces. And during the months since, I have had intelligence from two distinct sources, one high, one low, that there is, here in Hanover, a spy who passes information to the Jacobites in London.”

“I should like to know more concerning that,” said Johann, who had been trying a moment ago to soothe the old Englishman’s ridiculous fears, and now found himself in need of some soothing.

“An old acquaintance of mine—”

“Acquaintance, but not friend?”

“We are such old friends that we refuse to speak to each other for decades at a time. An Infernal Device, packed with gunpowder, exploded. It might have been meant for me, for him, or for both of us. He has begun to investigate the matter using his own resources—and you may be assured that his resources vastly exceed mine in almost every respect. He has heard that highly placed Jacobites—”

“Bolingbroke?”

“—highly placed Jacobites are receiving information from a source close to the Electoral Crown—someone who, to judge from the timeliness and accuracy of his despatches, comes and goes freely in the Leine Schloß and in Herrenhausen Palace.”

“You said that you had a
low
as well as a high source?”

“I know a man with many connections among London’s Flash: coiners, Black-guards,
et cetera
—the same element from which Blackbeard recruits his seamen and what I shall politely call his ‘longshoremen.’ ”

“You trust such a man?”

“Unaccountably, irrationally, inadvisably, I do. I am his father confessor. He is my disciple and bodyguard. It is another conversation for another day—”

“Touché.”

“This fellow has made inquiries. He has found evidence that the order to hunt me down was despatched to Ed Teach
from London
.”

“I did not think pirates took orders from London.”

“Oh, on the contrary, it is an ancient, celebrated practice.”

“So by combining these
data
you have settled upon a hypothesis that some spy
here
became aware of the letter that her royal highness sent to you via Enoch Root; that this spy sent word to an important Jacobite in London; who then sent a despatch to Ed Teach off the coast of Massachusetts, using some London Black-guard as his Mercury.”

“That is my hypothesis, admirably stated.”

“It is a good one. I have one question only.”

“Yes?”

“Why are we walking down the Herrenhäuser Allee in the wee hours of the morning?”

“What, the sun’s been up for hours!”

“My question still stands.”

“Do you know why I came to Hanover?”

“Certainly not for the funeral, as Sophie was alive when you got here. If memory serves, you were a part of the delegation that brought Sophie the letter that is said to have killed her.”