DANIEL ERECTED A BLOCK AND TACKLEabove the Gresham shaft, Hooke put the rebuilding of London on hold for a day, and they put the long telescope into place, Hooke cringing and screaming every time it was bumped, as if the instrument were an extension of his own eyeball.
Meanwhile Daniel could never keep his attention fixed on the heavens, for the warm mutterings and nudgings of London would not leave him alone-notes slipped under his door, raised eyebrows in coffee-shops, odd things witnessed in the street all captured his attention more than they should’ve. Outside the city, scaffolding rose up from the glacis of those mysterious fortifications, and long benches began to shingle it.
Then, one afternoon, Daniel and all London’s Persons of Quality and most of her pickpockets were there, sitting on those benches or milling about in the fields. The Duke of Monmouth rode out, in a Cavalier outfit whose magnificence was such as to refute and demolish every sermon ever preached by a Calvinist-because if those sermons were true, Monmouth ought to be struck dead on the spot by a jealous God. John Churchill-possibly the only man in England handsomer than Monmouth-therefore wore slightly less thrilling clothes. The King of France could not attend this event, as he was so busy conquering the Dutch Republic just now, but a strapping actor pranced out in his stead, dressed in royal ermine, and took up a throne on an artificial hillock, and occupied himself with suitable bits of stage-business, viz. peering at events through a glass; pointing things out to diverse jewelled mistresses draped all about his vicinity; holding out his Sceptre to order his troops forward; descending from his throne to speak a few kind words to wounded officers who were brought up to him on litters; standing up and striking a grave defiant pose during moments of crisis, whilst holding out a steady hand to calm his jittery femmes. Likewise an actor had been hired to play the role of D’Artagnan. Since everyone knew what was about to happen to him, he got the most applause when he was introduced-to the visible chagrin of the (real) Duke of Monmouth. In any event: cannons were discharged picturesquely from the ramparts of “Maestricht,” and “Dutchmen” struck defiant poses on the battlements, creating among the spectators a frisson of righteous anger (how dare those insolent Dutchmen defend themselves!?)-rapidly transmuted into patriotic fervor as, at a signal from “Louis XIV,” Monmouth and Churchill led a charge up the slope of the demilune work. After a bit of thrilling swordplay and much spattering-about of stage-blood, they planted French and English flags side by side on the parapet, shook hands with “D’Artagnan,” and exchanged all manner of fond and respectful gestures with the “King” on his hillock.
There was an ovation. Daniel could hear nothing else, but he saw some odd sort of pratfall directly in front of him: a young man in severe dark clothing, who’d been standing in front of Daniel and blocking his view with a sort of Pilgrim-hat, turned round and splayed his limbs out like a squashed bug, let his head loll back on his white collar, stuck his tongue out, and rolled his eyes back in their sockets. He was mocking the pose of several “Dutch” defenders who were now hors de combat up on the demilune. He did not make a very pretty picture. Something was grievously wrong with his face: a dermatological catastrophe about the cheeks.
Behind him, a scene-change was underway: the dead defenders were resurrecting themselves and scurrying round back of the ramparts to prepare for the next act. Likewise the man in front of Daniel now recovered his balance and turned out not to be a dead Dutchman at all, just a young English bloke with a sour look about him. His attire was not just any drab garb but the specific drab garb worn, nowadays, by Barkers. But (now that Daniel thought about it slightly harder) it was very like the clothing worn by the mock-Dutchmen pretending to defend Maestricht. Come to think of it, those “Dutchmen” had looked a great deal more like English religious Dissenters than they had like actual Dutchmen, who (if the grapevine was to be believed) had long ago ditched their old Pilgrimish togs (which had been inspired by Spanish fashions anyway) and now dressed like everyone else in Europe. So in addition to being a re-enactment of the Siege of Maestricht, this show was also a parable about well-dressed rakes and blades overcoming dull severe Calvinists in the streets of London town!
The slowness with which Daniel realized all this was infuriating to the young Barker in front of him-who had the cannonball head and mighty jawbone of an authentic Bolstrood.
“Is that Gomer?” Daniel exclaimed, when the ovation had died away into a thrum of thirsty squires calling for beer. Daniel had known the son of Knott Bolstrood as a little boy, but hadn’t set eyes on him in at least a decade.
Gomer Bolstrood answered the question by staring Daniel full in the face. On the front of each of his cheeks, just to either side of his nose, was an old wound: a complex of red trenches and fleshy ramparts, curved round into the crude glyph “S.L.” These marks had been made by a branding iron in the open-air court before the Sessions House at the Old Bailey, a few moments after Gomer had been pronounced guilty of being a Seditious Libeller.
Gomer Bolstrood could not be more than twenty-five years old, but that munition-like head, combined with those brands, gave him the presence of a much older man. He aimed his chin significantly towards a location off behind the stands.
Gomer Bolstrood, son of His Majesty’s Secretary of State Knott, son of ur-Barker Gregory, led Daniel into a Vagabond-camp of tents and wagons set up to serve and support this gala re-enactment. Some of the tents were for the actors and actresses. Gomer led Daniel between a couple of those, which meant fighting their way against a flood tide of “French Mistresses” coming back from the “Sun King’s” throne. Even as the sensitive eyes of Isaac Newton had been semi-permanently branded with the image of the solar disk during his colors experiments, so Daniel’s retinas were now stamped with a dozen or more cleavages. All of those cleavages must have had heads up above them somewhere-but the only one he noticed was speaking to one of the other girls in a French accent. From which he reckoned (in retrospect, somewhat simple-mindedly) that she must be French. But before Daniel could drift off into a full reverie, Gomer Bolstrood had grabbed his upper arm and pulled him ‘tween the flaps of an adjoining beer tent.
The beer was Dutch. So was the man sitting at the table. But the waffle that the man was eating was indisputably Belgian.
Daniel sat in the chair indicated, and watched the Dutch gentleman eat the waffle for a while. He aimed his eyes in that direction, anyway. The image that still persisted before his eyes was cleavages, and the face of that “French” lass. But after a while this, sadly, faded, and was replaced by a waffle that had been put in front of him on a Delft china plate. And none of your crude heavy Pilgrim-ware, but the good stuff, export-grade.
He sensed an implicit demand that he should Partake. So he dissected a corner from the waffle, put it in his mouth, and began to chew it. It was good. His eyes were adjusting to the dimness of the tent, and he was noticing stacks of handbills piled up in the corners, neatly wrapped up in old proof-sheets. The words on the proof-sheets were in every language save English-these bills had been printed in Amsterdam and brought over on a beer-ship or perhaps a waffle-barge. Every so often the tent-flaps would part, and Gomer, or one of the taciturn, pipe-smoking Dutchmen in the corners, would peer out and thrust a brick of hand-bills through the gap.
“Whaat doo Belgian waffles and the cleavages of those girls haave in common?” said the Dutch Ambassador; for it was none other. He dabbed butter from his lips with a napkin. He was blond, and pyramidal, as if he consumed a lot of beer and waffles. “I saaw you staaring at them,” he added, apologetically.