“That is impossible! Every officer knows him!” I tried.
“Pardon me, Mademoiselle, but you have mistaken my meaning. No doubt, your uncle is a great man whose name I would recognize, and honor, if I heard it-but I am too foolish and ignorant to know who you are, and consequently I do not know which great man has the privilege of being your uncle.”
“I thought you would know who I was!” I pouted. The officer looked extremely dismayed. “I am-” Then I turned around and slapped Dr. von Pfung lightly on the arm. “Stop it!” Then, to the officer: “My chaperone is an old fart who will not allow me to introduce myself.”
“Indeed, Mademoiselle, for a young lady to introduce herself to a young man would be unpardonable.”
“Then we shall have to conduct our conversation incognito, and say it never happened-as if it were a lovers’ tryst,” I said, leaning a bit farther out the window, and beckoning him to ride a little closer. I was afraid he would swoon and get himself wrapped around the axle of our carriage. He maintained his balance with some effort, though, and drew so close that I was able to reach out and steady myself by putting my hand on the pommel of his saber. In a lower voice I continued: “You have probably guessed that my uncle is a man of very high rank who has been sent out to these parts to execute the will of the King, in coming days.”
The officer nodded.
“I was on my way up from Oyonnax, returning to Paris, when I learned he was in these parts, and I have decided to find his camp and pay him a surprise visit, and neither you nor my chaperone nor anyone else can prevent it! I just need to know where to find his headquarters.”
“Mademoiselle, is your uncle the Chevalier d’Adour?”
I adopted the look of one who has been gagged with the handle of a spoon.
“Of course not, I didn’t really think so… neither are you of the House of Lorraine, I gather, or you would not need directions… is it Etienne d’Arcachon? No, forgive me, he has no siblings and could not have a niece. But I see from the softening of your beautiful face, Mademoiselle, that I am drawing nearer the truth. The only one in these parts who is above the young Arcachon in rank is the Marechal de Louvois himself. And I do not know whether he has yet come south from the Dutch front… but when he does, you may look for him along the banks of the Meuse. Provided, that if you ask for him there, and learn that he has already disembarked, you will have to follow his track eastwards into the Saarland.”
That conversation occurred the day before yesterday, and we have done nothing since then but toil eastwards through the woods. It has had the air of a funeral procession, for as soon as Dr. von Pfung heard the name of Louvois, all doubt vanished that the Palatinate was to be invaded. But the officer who uttered that name might have been guessing, or passing on a baseless rumor, or telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. We must see this thing through and view incontrovertible evidence with our own eyes.
As I write this we are descending another long tedious grade into what must be the valley of the Meuse. From here that river flows up through the Ardennes and across the Spanish Netherlands into the territory along the Dutch border where the best regiments of the French Army have long been encamped to menace William’s flank and pin down the Dutch Army.
CRYPTANALYST’S NOTE: At this point the account becomes badly disjointed. The countess blundered into the midst of your majesty’s army and had an adventure, which she did not have the leisure to write down. Later, as she was fleeing north in the direction of Nijmegen, she made a few cryptic notes as to what had happened. These are intermingled with more lengthy espionage reports listing the regiments and officers she observed moving south to join your majesty’s forces along the Rhine. I have been able to reconstruct the Countess’s actions, and thereby to make some sense of her notes, by interviewing several of the persons who saw her in the French camp. The narrative that follows is incomparably more discursive than what appears in her needlework but I believe that it is accurate, and I hope that it will be more informative, and therefore more pleasing, to your majesty than the original. At the same time, I have removed all of the Countess’s tedious lists of battalions, et cetera. - B.R.
I am riding north post-haste and can only jot down a few words during pauses to change horses. The carriage is lost. The driver and Dr. von Pfung are dead. I am traveling with the two cavalrymen from Heidelberg. As I write these words we are in a village beside the Meuse, near Verdun I believe. Now I’m told we must ride again.
It is later, and I think we are near where France, the Duchy of Luxembourg, and the Spanish Netherlands come together. We have had to strike up away from the Meuse and into the forest. Between here and Liege, which lies some hundred miles to the north, the river does not run in a direct line, but makes a lengthy excursion to westward, running for much of the way through French lands. This makes it perfectly suited to serve as a conduit for French military traffic from the north, but bad for us. Instead we shall attempt to traverse the Ardennes (as these woods are called) northwards.
Catching our breath and rubbing our saddle-sores along a riverbank while Hans looks for a ford. Will try to explain as I go along.
When we at last reached the Meuse, three days ago (had to count on my fingers, as it seems nearer three weeks!), we immediately saw the evidence we had been looking for. Thousands of ancient trees felled, valley full of smoke, landing-stages improvised on the riverbank. Vanguards of the regiments from the Dutch front had come upriver, made rendezvous with officers sent out from Versailles, and begun preparations to receive the regiments themselves.
For many hours Dr. von Pfung did not say a word. When he did, only slurred meaningless sounds came from his mouth, and I understood that he had suffered a stroke.
I asked him if he wanted to turn back and he only shook his head no, pointed to me, and then pointed north.
Everything had fallen apart. Until that moment I had presumed that we were operating according to some coherent plan of Dr. von Pfung’s, but now in retrospect I understood that we had been plunging into danger heedlessly, like a man carried into a battlefield by a wild horse. I could not think at all for a while. I am ashamed to report that because of this failure we blundered into the camp of a cavalry regiment. A captain rapped on the door of the carriage and demanded that we explain ourselves.
It was already obvious to them that most of our party were German-speaking, and it would not take long for them to understand that Dr. von Pfung and the others were of the Palatinate; this would mark us as enemy spies and lead to the worst imaginable consequences.
During my long journey up the Marne on the chaland I had had plenty of time to imagine bad outcomes, and had concocted and rehearsed several false stories to tell my captors in the event I should be caught spying. But looking into the face of that captain, I was no more able to tell tales than the stricken Dr. von Pfung. The problem lay in that this operation was on a much vaster scale than either Liselotte or I had imagined, and many more people of Court rank were involved; for all I knew, some Count or Marquis might be nearby, with whom I had dined or danced at Versailles, and who would recognize me the moment I got out of the carriage. To adopt some made-up name and elaborate some tale would amount to confessing that I was a spy.
So I told the truth. “Do not look to this man to make introductions, for he has suffered a stroke, and lost the faculty of speech,” I said to the astonished captain. “I am Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, and I am here in the service of Elisabeth Charlotte, the Duchess of Orleans and rightful inheritor of the Palatinate. It is in her name you are about to invade that land. It is she whom my escorts serve, for they are Court officials of Heidelberg. And it is she who has sent me here, as her personal representative, to look into your operations and ensure that the right thing is done.”