“I haven’t the merest idea-sir!”
“Negateev Spaace,” the Dutch Ambassador intoned, letting those double vowels resonate as only a heavyweight Dutchman could. “Have you heard of thees? It is an aart woord. Wee know about negateev spaace because we like peectures soo muuch. ”
“Is it anything like negative numbers?”
“Eet ees the spaace between twoo theengs,” said the other, and put his hands on his chest and forced his pectorals together to create a poor impression of cleavage. Daniel watched with polite incredulity, and tried not to shudder. The Dutchman plucked a fresh waffle off a plate and held it up by one corner, like a rag soaked with something unpleasant. “Likewise-the waffle of Belgium is shaaped and defiined, not by its own essential naatuure, but by the hot plaates of haard iron that encloose it on toop and boottom.”
“Oh, I see-you’re making a point about the Spanish Netherlands!”
The Dutch Ambassador rolled his eyes and tossed the waffle back over his shoulder-before it struck the ground, a stout, disconcertingly monkey-like dog sprang into the air and snatched it, and began to masticate it- literally-for the sound it made was like a homunculus squatting on the floor muttering, “masticate masticate masticate.”
“Traaped between Fraance and the Dutch Republic, the Spanish Netherlands is raapidly consuumed by Louis the Quatorze Bourbon. Fine. But when Le Roi du Soleil reaches Maestricht he touches-what?”
“The political and military equivalent of a hot iron plate?”
The Dutch Ambassador probed negative space with a licked finger, seemed to touch something, and drew back sharply, making a sizzling noise through his teeth. Perhaps by Dutch luck, perhaps by some exquisite sense of timing, Daniel felt the atmosphere socking him in the gut. The tent clenched inwards, then inflated. Waffle-irons chattered and buzzed in the dimness, like skeletons’ teeth. The monkey-dog scurried under the table.
Gomer Bolstrood pulled back a tent-flap to provide a clear view to the top of the demilune-work, which had been ruptured by detonation of a vast internal store of gunpowder. It looked like a steaming loaf that had been ripped in half. Resurgent Dutchmen were prancing around on the top, trampling and burning those French and English flags. The spectators were on the brink of riot.
Gomer let the tent-flap fall shut again, and Daniel turned his attention back to the ambassador, who had never taken his gaze off of Daniel.
“Maybe Fraance taakes Maestricht-but not so easily-they lose the hero D’Artagnan. The war will be won by us, however.”
“I am pleased to know that you will have success in Holland-now will you consider changing your tactics in London?” Daniel said this loudly so that Gomer could share in it.
“In whaat waay?”
“You know what L’Estrange has been doing.”
“I know what L’Estrange has been failing to do!” the Dutch Ambassador chortled.
“Wilkins is trying to make London like Amsterdam-and I’m not speaking of wooden shoes.”
“Many churches-no established religion.”
“It is his life’s work. He has given up on Natural Philosophy, these last years, to direct all of his energies toward that goal. He wants it because it is best for England-but the High Anglicans and Crypto-Catholics at Court are against anything that smacks of Dissidents. So Wilkins’s task is difficult enough-but when those same Dissidents are linked, in the public mind, with the Dutch enemy, how can he hope for success?”
“In a year-when the dead are counted, and the true costs of the war are understood-Wilkins’s task will be too easy.”
“In a year Wilkins will be dead of the stone. Unless he has it cut out.”
“I can recommend a chirurgeon-barber, very speedy with the knife-”
“He does not feel that he can devote several months to recovery, when the pressure is so immediate and the stakes so high. He is just on the verge of success, Mr. Ambassador, and if you would let up-”
“We will let up when the French do,” the Ambassador said, and waved at Gomer, who pulled the flap open again to show the demilune being re-conquered by French and English troops, led by Monmouth. To one side, “D’Artagnan” lay wounded in a gap in the wall. John Churchill was supporting the old musketeer’s head in his lap, feeding him sips from a flask.
The tent-flap remained open for rather a long time, and Daniel eventually understood that he was being shown the door. As he walked out he caught Gomer’s elbow and drew him outside onto the dirt street. “Brother Gomer,” he said, “the Dutch are deranged. Understandably. But our situation is not so desperate.”
“On the contrary,” said Gomer, “I say that you are in desperate peril, Brother Daniel.”
Anyone else would have meant physical peril by that, but Daniel had spent enough of his life around Gomer’s-which was to say, Daniel’s-ilk to know that Gomer meant the spiritual kind.
“I don’t suppose that’s just because I was staring at a pretty girl’s bosom just now-?”
Gomer did not much fancy the jest. Indeed, Daniel sensed before those words were out of his mouth that they would only confirm Gomer’s opinion of him as Fallen, or at best, Falling fast. He tried something else: “Your own father is Secretary of State!”
“Then go and speak to my father.”
“The point I am making is that there is no harm-or peril, if that is what you want to call it-in employing tactics. Cromwell used tactics to win battles, did he not? It did not mean he lacked faith. On the contrary- notto use the brains God gave you, and making every struggle into a frontal charge, is sinful-thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!”
“Wilkins has the stone,” Gomer said. “Whether ’twas placed in his bladder by God, or the Devil, is a question for Jesuits. Anyway, he has it, and shall likely die of it, unless you and your Fellows can gin up a way to transmute it into some watery form that can be pissed out. In dread of his death, you have wrought in your mind this phant’sy that if I, Gomer Bolstrood, leave off distributing handbills in the streets of London, it shall set in motion a lengthy chain of consequences that shall somehow end in Wilkins’s suffering some chirurgeon to cut him for the stone, him surviving the operation, and living happily ever after, as the kind father you never had. And you say that the Dutch are deranged?”
Daniel could not answer. The discourse of Gomer had struck him in the face with no less heat, force, and dumbfounding pain than the branding iron had Gomer’s.
“As you phant’sy yourself a master of tactics, consider this whorish spectacle we have been witnessing.” Gomer waved at the demilune-work. Up on the parapet, Monmouth was planting the French and English flags anew, to the cheers of the spectators, who broke into a lusty chorus of “Pikes on the Dikes” even as “D’Artagnan” breathed his last. John Churchill carried him down the slope of the earthwork in his arms and laid him on a litter where his body was bedecked with flowers.
“Behold the martyr!” Gomer brayed. “Who gave his life for the cause, and is fondly remembered by all the Quality! Now there is a tactic for you. I am sorry Wilkins is sick. I would not put him in harm’s way on any account, for he was a friend to us. But it is not in my power to keep Death from his door. And when Death does come, ‘twill make of him a Martyr-not so romantick as D’Artagnan perhaps-but of more effect in a better cause. Beg your pardon, Brother Daniel.” Gomer stalked away, tearing open the wrapper on a sheaf of libels.
“D’Artagnan” was being carried along the front of the bleachers in a cortege of gorgeously mussed and tousled Cavaliers, and spectators were doing business with roving flower-girls and showering bouquets and blossoms on those heroes living and “dead.” But even as petals were fluttering down on the mock-Musketeer, Daniel Waterhouse found slips of paper coming down all around him, carried on a breeze from the bleachers. He slapped one out of the air and was greeted with a cartoon of several French cavaliers gang-raping a Dutch milkmaid. Another showed a cravated musketeer, silhouetted in the light of a burning Protestant church, about to catch a tossed baby on the point of his sword. All around Daniel, and up in the stands, spectators were passing these bills hand-to-hand, sometimes wadding them into sleeves or pockets.