The plan unfolded correctly at first; we crossed the Meuse again as if going back into the west, but then began to make our way northwards up the bank, fighting against an increasing stream of south-bound military traffic. For since the boats were coming up against the river’s current, most of them were drawn by teams of animals on the banks.
After we had traveled north for about half a day we came to a ferry, where we resolved to part ways. I went into the carriage and kissed Dr. von Pfung and said some words to him-though all words, especially ones improvised in haste, seemed inadequate, and the doctor managed to say more with his eyes and his one good hand than I did with my entire faculties. I changed once again into a man’s clothes, hoping to pass myself off as a page to Hans and Joachim, and mounted a pony we’d borrowed from the stables of Etienne d’Arcachon. After some haggling with the ferryman-who was loath to venture across through the regimental traffic-the carriage was driven onto the ferry, its wheels were chocked, the horses hobbled, and the short voyage across the Meuse began.
They had almost reached the eastern bank when they were hailed by a French officer on one of the south-bound vessels. He had perceived, through his spyglass, Dr. von Pfung’s coat of arms painted on the door of the carriage, and recognized him as coming from the Palatinate.
Now, the driver had a letter from Etienne d’Arcachon giving him permission to travel west -but he had now been observed crossing the Meuse eastwards. His only hope was therefore to make a run for it. That is what he attempted to do when the ferry reached the east bank. The only available road ran parallel to the bank for some distance before turning away from the river into a village. He therefore had to drive along in full view of all the boats crowding the river, whose decks were thronged with French musketeers. Some of the boats were armed with swivel-guns as well. By this time a hue and cry had gone up among the boats, and there was plenty of time for them to load their guns as the carriage disembarked from the ferry. The officer had traded his spyglass for a saber, which he raised high, then brought down as a signal. Instantly, the French boats were completely obscured in clouds of powder-smoke. The valley of the Meuse was filled with flocks of birds that erupted from the trees, startled by the sound of the guns. The carriage was reduced to splinters, the horses torn apart, and the fates of the brave driver and his stricken passenger perfectly obvious.
I could have tarried on the spot and wept for a long time, but on this bank were several locals who had seen us arrive in the company of the carriage, and it would not be long before one of them sold that intelligence to the Frenchmen on the river. So we struck out for the north, beginning the journey that continues even as I write these words.
The peasants around here say that the lord of the manor is a Bishop. This gives me hope that we are now in the Bishopric of Liege, not terribly far from one of the outlying tendrils of the Dutch Republic. Hans and Joachim have been having a long discussion in German, which I understand but meagerly. One thinks he ought to strike out alone to the East, go to the Rhine, and then double back to the South and warn the Palatinate. The other fears it is too late; there is nothing they can do now for their homeland; it is better to seek revenge by throwing all of their energies behind the Protestant Defender.
Later. The dispute was resolved as follows: we shall ride north past French lines to Maestricht and take passage on a canal-boat down the river to Nijmegen, where the Meuse and the Rhine almost kiss each other. That is some hundred miles north of here, yet it may be a quicker way to reach the Rhine than to cut east cross-country through God knows what perils and complications. In Nijmegen, Hans and Joachim can get the latest news from passengers and boatmen who have lately come down the Rhine from Heidelberg and Mannheim.
It did not take long, once we left our camp near Liege, to pass out of the zone of French military control. We rode over an area of torn-up ground that, until a few days ago, was the permanent camp of a French regiment. Ahead of us are a few French companies left along the border as a facade. They stop and interrogate travelers trying to come in, but ignore those like us who are only trying to pass out towards Maestricht.
On a canal-boat bound from Maestricht to Nijmegen. Conditions not very comfortable, but at least we do not have to ride or walk any more. Am renewing my acquaintance with soap.
I am in a cabin of a canal-ship making its way west across the Dutch Republic.
I am surrounded by slumbering Princesses.
The Germans have a fondness for faery-tales, or Marchen as they call them, that is strangely at odds with their orderly dispositions. Ranged in parallel with their tidy Christian world is the Marchenwelt, a pagan realm of romance, wonders, and magical beings. Why they believe in the Marchenwelt has ever been a mystery to me; but I am closer to understanding it today than I was yesterday. For yesterday we reached Nijmegen. We went direct to the bank of the Rhine and I began looking for a canal-boat bound in the direction of Rotterdam and the Hague. Hans and Joachim meanwhile canvassed travelers debarking from boats lately come from upstream. I had no sooner settled myself in a comfortable cabin on a Hague-bound canal-ship when Joachim found me; and he had in tow a pair of characters straight out of the Marchenwelt. They were not gnomes, dwarves, or witches, but Princesses: one full-grown (I believe she is not yet thirty) and one pint-sized (she has told me three different times that she is five years old). True to form, the little one carries a doll that she insists is also a princess.
They do not look like princesses. The mother, whose name is Eleanor, has something of a regal bearing. But this was not obvious to me at first, for when they joined me, and Eleanor noticed a clean bed (mine) and saw that Caroline-for that is the daughter’s name-was under my watch, she fell immediately into (my) bed, went to sleep, and did not awaken for some hours, by which time the boat was well underway. I spent much of that time chatting with little Caroline, who was at pains to let me know she was a princess; but as she made the same claim of the dirty lump of stuffed rags she bore around in her arms, I did not pay it much mind.
But Joachim insisted that the disheveled woman snoring under my blankets was genuine royalty. I was about to chide him for having been deluded by mountebanks, when I began to recollect the tales I had been told of the Winter Queen, who after being driven out of Bohemia by the Pope’s legions, wandered about Europe as a Vagabond before finding safe haven at the Hague. And my time at Versailles taught me more than I wished to know about the desperate financial straits in which many nobles and royals live their whole lives. Was it really so unthinkable that three Princesses-mother, daughter, and doll-should be wandering about lost and hungry on the Nijmegen riverfront? For war had come to this part of the world, and war rends the veil that separates the everyday world from the Marchenwelt.
By the time Eleanor woke up, I had mended the doll, and I had been looking after little Caroline for long enough that I felt responsible for her, and would have been willing to snatch her away from Eleanor if the latter had proved, upon awakening, to be some sort of madwoman (this is by no means my usual response to small children, for at Versailles, playing my role as governess, I had been put in charge of many a little snot-nose whose names I have long since forgotten. But Caroline was bright, and interesting to talk to, and a welcome relief from the sorts of people I had been spending time with for the last several weeks).