The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (158 page)

“I knew this stretch of road well,” Upnor was saying, “and so I dispatched one of my squires—a young chap name of Fenleigh—to ride down a side-track that angled away from the main road and led to a ford half a mile upstream of the bridge.” He was scratching out a crude map on the gravel path with the tip of his walking-stick.

“With my other companion, I proceeded deliberately up the main road, keeping a sharp eye for any confederates who might be lurking in hedges near the approaches to the bridge. But there were none—the horseman was alone!” This puzzled or fascinated the listeners. It was another odd twist on the usual rustic-ruffian tale; normally, the shrubs would be infested with club-wielding knaves.

“The horseman must have noted the way in which we were peering about, for he called out: ‘Do not waste time, my lord, ’tis not an
ambuscado.
I am alone. You are not. Accordingly, I challenge you to a duel, my blade ’gainst yours, no seconds.’ And he drew out a spadroon, which is an abominable sort of implement, just the sort of thing you would expect commoners to invent if you make the mistake of suffering them to bear arms. More brush-cutter than weapon really. Sharpened on one side like a cutlass.”

Upnor, of course, was telling the story in French. He gave the ruffian the most vulgar rural accent he could manage. He devoted a minute or two to dilating on the pathetic condition of the knave’s horse, which was one step away from the knacker and exhausted to boot.

Upnor was rated one of the finest swordsmen of the Anglo-French nobility. He had slain many men in duels when he had been younger. He did not fight so much any more, as his style was one that relied upon speed and acute vision. Nevertheless, the very notion that such a rustic fellow would challenge Upnor to a duel practically
had the French nobles falling down onto the path with tears running down their cheeks.

Upnor was clever enough to tell the story in a deadpan style. “I was…more…
befuddled
than anything else. I answered: ‘You have me at a disadvantage, sirrah—perhaps if you tell me who you are, I’ll at least know why you want to kill me.’

“ ‘I am Bob Shaftoe,’ he answered.”

This, as it always did, caused a hush to descend over Upnor’s listeners.

“ ‘Any relation to Jacques?’ I asked him.” (For the same question was on the minds of those who were gathered around Upnor listening.)

“He answered, ‘His brother.’ To which I said, ‘Come away with me to France, Bob Shaftoe, and I shall put you on a galley in the sunny Mediterranean—perhaps you may cross paths with your brother there!’ ”

Upnor’s audience loved to hear this. For they all knew of Jacques Shaftoe, or
L’Emmerdeur
as he was called in these parts. The name did not come up in conversation as frequently as it had a couple of years ago, for nothing had been heard from
L’Emmerdeur
since he had crashed a party at the Hôtel Arcachon and made a disgraceful scene there, in the presence of the King, in the spring of 1685. Precisely what had taken place there on that night was rarely spoken of, at least when members of the de Lavardac family were within earshot. From this, Eliza gathered that it was dreadfully embarrassing to them all. Because Eliza was now linked, in most people’s minds, to the family de Lavardac, they extended her the same courtesy of never talking about the events of that evening. Eliza had given up on ever finding out what had really happened there. Jack Shaftoe, who for a time had been a sort of hobgoblin of the French Court, a name to make people jump out of their skins, had dwindled to quasi-legendary status and was rapidly being forgotten altogether. From time to time he would appear as a figure in a picaresque
roman.

Nevertheless, for Upnor even to mention the name of Shaftoe around La Dunette was more than daring. It was probably a
faux pas.
This might have explained why the Duke had suddenly terminated his conversation with Eliza, and gone off in the opposite direction. It was the sort of thing that led to duels. Some of Upnor’s listeners were conspicuously nervous. It was, therefore, quite deft of Upnor to have turned the story around in this manner, by implying that Jack Shaftoe, if he was indeed still alive, was a slave on one of the duc
d’Arcachon’s galleys. Eliza now risked a glance over at the duc, and saw him red-faced, but grinning at Upnor; he favored Upnor with the tiniest suggestion of a nod (anything more would have undermined the Admiral-hat) and Upnor responded with a deeper bow. The listeners who, a few seconds earlier, had worried about a duel, laughed all the louder.

Upnor continued with the narration. “This Robert Shaftoe said, ‘Jack and I have long been estranged, and my errand has naught to do with him.’

“I asked him, ‘Why do you bar my progress, then?’

“He said, ‘I say that you are about to take out of this country something that does not rightfully belong to you.’

“I said, ‘Are you accusing me of being a thief, sirrah?’

“He said, ‘Worse. I say you pretend to own a slave: an English girl named Abigail Frome.’

“I said, ‘There’s no pretense in that, Bob Shaftoe. I own her as absolutely as you own that wretched pair of boots on your feet, and I’ve the papers to prove it, signed and sealed by my lord Jeffreys.’

“He said, ‘Jeffreys is in Tower. Your King is in flight. And if you do not give me Abigail, you shall be in the grave.’

Now Upnor had his audience rapt; not only because it was a good story, but because he had managed to connect the half-forgotten, but still powerful name of Jack Shaftoe to the late upheavals in England. Of course the French nobility were fascinated by the recent tendency of the English to chop off their kings’ heads and chase them out of the country. They were helpless in their fascination at the thought that William of Orange and his English allies must somehow be in conspiracy with all the world’s Vagabonds.

Dinner had already been announced, and the Earl of Upnor knew that his time was short, and so he put the anecdote to a quick and merciful end as he and the other dinner-guests trooped down the garden path to the big house. In the story, Upnor delivered a sort of homily to Bob Shaftoe, putting him in his place and expounding on the glories of the class system, and then Fenleigh, who had by that time forded the river and come round behind, galloped toward Bob and tried to take him with a sword-thrust from behind. Bob heard him coming at the last instant and whipped his spadroon around to parry the blow. Fenleigh’s rapier was deflected into the croup of Bob’s miserable horse, which reared up. Bob could not manage his horse because he was busy fending off a second blow from Fenleigh (though also, it was clearly implied, because men of his status did not really belong on horseback in the first place). Bob won the exchange nevertheless by almost severing Fenleigh’s right
arm above the elbow, but he payed for it by being obliged to fall off his horse (extremely funny to the polished equestrians here). He landed balanced “like a sack of oats” on the stone parapet of the bridge. Upnor and his other companion were galloping toward him with pistols drawn. Shaftoe was so terrified he lost his balance and fell into the river, where (and here the story became suspiciously vague, for they had reached the house, and were deploying to their places at the long dinner-table) he either drowned or was slain by a volley of pistol-balls from Upnor, who stood on the bridge using him for target practice as he floundered along in the current of the river. “And what is a river but a lake that has failed to stay within its ordained limits, and now tumbles helplessly toward the Abyss?”

D
INNER WAS DINNER.
Dead things cooked, and sauced so that one could not guess how long they had been dead. A few early vegetables; but the winter had run long and the growing season had started late, so not much was ripe yet. Some very heavy and sweet delicacies that the Duke had imported from Egypt.

Eliza was seated across from the duchesse d’Oyonnax and tried to avoid meeting her eye. She was a big woman, but not fat, though middle-aged. She wore a lot of jewels, which was risqué in these times (she really ought to pawn them for the War, or, barring that, hide them), but she carried it off well; in this her size helped. Eliza was irked by this woman: by her physical presence, her wealth, what she had done, but most of all by her confidence. Other women, she knew, disliked Eliza because they envied
her
confidence, and so Eliza was startled to observe a similar reaction in herself to Madame la duchesse d’Oyonnax.

“How is your little orphan?” the Duchess asked Eliza, at one point. To bring this up was either naïve, or rude, and it caused a few heads to twitch their way—like housecats alert to faint fidgeting.

“Oh, I do not think of him as
mine
any more, but
God’s,
” Eliza returned, “and anyway he is not so little now: a year old—or so we think, as there is no way to be sure precisely when he was born—and walking around already. Creating no end of trouble for the nurses.”

This elicited a few chuckles from those who had small children. It was a well-crafted reply on Eliza’s part, calculated to place defenses athwart all possible axes of attack from Oyonnax; but the Duchess responded only with an unreadable gaze, seeming almost nonplussed, and dropped the topic.

A young officer—Eliza recognized him as one Pierre de Jonzac, an aide to the Duke—sidestepped into the room carrying a dispatch. The Duke accepted it gratefully, for he was bored. People around him had
poked fun at him for not eating any of his food; but the Duke had silenced them with the information that he was on a special diet, “for my digestion,” and had eaten previously by himself. He opened the dispatch, glanced at it, slapped the table, and shook for a few moments with suppressed laughter; but all the while he was shaking his head back and forth, as if to deny that there was anything funny.

“What is it?” asked Madame la duchesse d’Arcachon.

“The report was false,” he said. “The Franciscans will have to douse their bonfire. William of Orange is not dead.”

“But we had reliable news that he was
struck from the saddle by a cannonball,
” said the Earl of Upnor—who, being a man of some importance in James Stuart’s army, got all the latest intelligence.

“And so he was. But he is not dead.”

“How is that possible?” And the table went into an uproar over it, which did not die down for twenty minutes. Eliza found herself thinking of Bob Shaftoe, who must be there at this battle on the Boyne, if he had not died of disease over the winter. Then she happened to glance up, and once again saw the green eyes of the Duchess of Oyonnax gazing at her interestedly.

“N
OW, AS TO THE TRANSACTION,”
said the Duke, once he had got his pipe lit. The fragrance of the smoke was welcome, for the dead-animal smell Eliza had noticed out at the gazebo seemed to have followed them into the drawing-room. She was of a mind to go and throw the doors open, to admit some rose-scented air from the gardens; but that would have defeated the purpose of a private meeting in this place.

“It’s going to involve moving a lot of silver. I want you to go to Lyon and make the arrangements.”

“Will the silver actually be passing through Lyon, then, or—”

“Oh yes. You shall see it. This is not just a
Dépôt
sort of manipulation.”

“Then why Lyon? It is not the best place.”

“I know. But you see, it will come off of my
jacht
at Marseille. From there, Lyon is easy to reach—right up the Rhône, of course.”

“It makes sense, then. It is safer than any alternative. Tell me, is it coined?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Oh. I had assumed it would be pieces of eight.”

“No. It is pigs. Good metal, mind you, but not coined.”

“It makes more sense to me as we go along. You do not wish to be moving uncoined silver around, any more than you must. You want instead a Bill of Exchange, payable in Paris.”

“Yes, that is it precisely.”

“Very well. There are several houses in Lyon that can do this.”

“Indeed. And normally I would not care which one of them handled it. But in this case, I specifically want you
not
to use the House of Hacklheber. I have reason to believe that the old ogre, Lothar, will be most unhappy with me after the transaction goes through.” And the Duke laughed.

“I see. May I guess, from this hint, that it has something to do with piracy?”

Plainly the Duke thought this a stupid question. But he was polished, and handled it in good form. “That is the word that Lothar will attach to it, no doubt, in order to justify any…retaliations he may contemplate. But the method is normal, in a war. I am sure you will see nothing unusual in it, mademoiselle, given that you are such a friend of Jean Bart, and that along with the Marquis d’Ozoir you are a direct supporter of his exploits?” He laughed again, with gusto; and she felt his breath on her face, and with some trepidation drew it into her nostrils, and smelled death. It reminded her of something in addition to death, however.

“You look peaked, mademoiselle. Are you all right?”

“The air is stuffy.”

“We shall go outside, then! I have nothing further to say, other than that you should plan to be in Lyon no later than the end of August.”

“Shall I see you there?”

“It is not known. There is another aspect of this transaction, which has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with the honor of my family. It is a matter of personal revenge, which need not concern you. I must tend to it
myself,
of course—that’s the whole point! No telling where or when exactly. Nevertheless, you may count on my being back in Paris, at the Hôtel Arcachon, for my birthday party on the fourteenth of October. It shall be splendid. I am already making the plans. The King will be there, mademoiselle. You and I shall see each other then and there, and if Étienne has done the honorable thing, why, then I shall expect a blessed announcement!”

He turned and offered his arm to Eliza, who took it, trying not to recoil from the smell of him. “I am certain it shall all come to pass just as you say, monsieur,” she said. “But as I go outside with you, I should like to change the subject, if I may, to horses.”