This bit of nonsense, “that the right thing is done,” was a list of dead words I tacked on to the end of the sentence because I did not know what to say, and was losing my nerve. For even when I stood beneath the Emperor’s palace in Vienna, waiting to feel the blade of a Janissary’s scimitar biting into my neck, I had not felt so uncertain as I did there. But I think the very vagueness of my words had a great effect on this captain, for he stepped back from the window and bowed deeply, and proclaimed that he would send word of my arrival to his superiors without delay.
Hans has come back saying he has found a place where we may attempt to ford this river and so I will only narrate that in due course, word of our arrival was passed up the chain of command until it reached a man whose rank at Court was high enough that he could entertain me without violating any rules of precedence. That man turned out to be Etienne d’Arcachon.
They think we are somewhere around Bastogne. Have been unable to do needlework for some while as our day-to-day affairs have pressed in on us sorely. The Ardennes Forest is crowded with Vagabonds and highwaymen (and, some say, witches and goblins) at the best of times. To these have now been added a large number of deserters from the French regiments that are being moved southwards. They jump off the slow-moving barges and wade to the bank and infiltrate the forest. We have had to move carefully and to post watches all night long. I am making these notes on my watch. To sit by a crackling fire would be folly and so I am perched up in the fork of a tree, wrapped up in blankets, sewing by moonlight.
Men who have weathered terrible trials are wont to have dull and useless children to demonstrate their power, as rich Arabs grow their fingernails long. So with the duc d’Arcachon and his only legitimate son, Etienne. The Duke survived the bad dream of the Fronde Rebellion and built a navy for the King. Etienne has chosen a career in the Army; this is his notion of youthful rebellion.
It is said of some men that “he would cut off his right arm before doing thus-and-such.” Of Etienne, it used to be said that he would sacrifice a limb before violating the smallest rule of etiquette. But now people say, rather, that he actually did cut off his right arm out of politeness, for several years ago something happened at a party to that general effect-accounts vary, for I get the impression it was in some way disgraceful to his family. At any rate the details are unknown to me, but the tale rings true. He has become a great patron of woodcarvers and silversmiths, whom he pays to make artificial hands for him. Some of them are shockingly lifelike. The hand he extended to help me down out of the carriage was carved of ivory with fingernails fashioned from mother-of-pearl. When we dined on roast grouse in his quarters, he had switched to a hand of carven ebony, permanently gripping a serrated knife, which he used to cut his meat, though it looked as if it would have made an excellent weapon, too! And after dinner, when he undertook to seduce me, he wore a special hand carved out of jade, with an extremely oversized middle finger. That digit was, in fact, a perfect reproduction of a man’s erect phallus. As such it was nothing I had not already seen in various private “art” collections in and around Versailles, for lords, and even ladies, love to have such things in their private chambers, as proof of their sophistication, and many of their rooms are veritable Shrines to the god Priapus. But I was caught unawares by a hidden feature of this hand: it must have been hollow, and stuffed with clockwork, for when Etienne d’Arcachon tripped a hidden lever, it suddenly came alive, and began to hum and buzz like a hornet in a bottle. Inside, it seemed, was a coil spring that had been tightly wound in advance.
I need hardly tell you, reader, that events of the past few days had left me rather tightly wound myself, and I can assure you that the tension was gone from my body long before it was gone from the spring.
You may despise me for having reveled in fleshly pleasure while Dr. von Pfung was laid out with a stroke, but to have been pent up in a stifling carriage with a dying man for all that time had left me with a ravening to partake of life. I closed my eyes at the moment of climax and fell back onto the bed, exhausting my lungs in a long cry, and feeling all tension drain from my body. Etienne executed some deft maneuver of which I was scarcely aware. When I opened my eyes, I found that the jade phallus had been withdrawn and replaced by a real one, that of Etienne d’Arcachon. Again, you may well doubt my judgment in allowing myself to be taken in this way. That is your prerogative. Indeed, to marry such a man would be a grievous error. But in looking for a lover, one could do worse than a man who is clean, extremely polite, and has a madly vibrating jade phallus for a right forefinger. The warmth of his trunk felt good against my thighs; it did not occur to me to object; before I could really consider my situation, I realized that he was already climaxing inside of me.
Still in the damnable Ardennes, creeping northwards, pausing from time to time to observe the movements of the French battalions. These woods cannot possibly go on much farther. At least we have grown accustomed to the territory now, and know how to make our way. But at times we seem to move no faster than mice chewing their way through wood.
When I woke up in the bed of Etienne d’Arcachon the next morning, he had, in typical fashion, already left; but somewhat less typically, he had written me a love-poem and left it on the bedside table.
Some ladies boast of ancient pedigrees
And prate about their ancestors a lot
But cankers flourish on old family trees
Whose mossy trunks do oft conceal rot.
My lady’s blood runs pure as mountain streams
So I don’t care if her high rank was bought
Her beauty lends fresh vigor to my dreams
Of children free of blemish and of blot.
His quarters was a little chateau on the east bank of the Meuse. Out the window I could see Belgian river-boats-variously leased, borrowed, bought, or commandeered-coming upstream, their decks crowded with French soldiers. I dressed and went downstairs to find Dr. von Pfung’s carriage-driver waiting for me.
The night before, I had explained my friend’s plight to Etienne d’Arcachon, who had made arrangements for his own personal physician to administer treatment. Having personally witnessed the violence inflicted upon no less a personage than the King of France himself by the Royal Physician, I had assented to this with some ambivalence. Indeed, Dr. von Pfung’s driver now informed me that the poor man had been bled twice during the night and was now very weak. He had signalled his desire to return to the Palatinate without delay, in hopes that he might look upon Heidelberg Castle one last time before he went to his long home.
The driver and I both understood that this would be impossible. According to the tale I had told my host, we were there as forward observers representing Liselotte. If that were true, we should either stay with the main body, or retire westwards towards St. Cloud-never run ahead of the invasion force. Yet Dr. von Pfung wanted to do just that, whereas I needed to strike out for the north and inform the Prince of Orange that his southern flank was soon to be free of French troops. And so we devised a plan, which was that our little group would leave that day on the pretext of taking Dr. von Pfung back to the west, but that when conditions were right, the carriage would break eastwards towards Heidelberg while I would go north accompanied by the two cavalrymen (who have imposing names and titles but whom I now call by their Christian names, Hans and Joachim). When eyebrows were raised about this later, as seemed more than likely, I would claim that the others had turned out to be Protestant spies, working for William of Orange, and that I had been borne along against my will.