When, God willing, I reach London I shall write you a letter. If you receive no such letter, it means that while I was recuperating I fell victim to some larger scheme of d’Avaux. He may or may not want the baby dead. He certainly wants me at Versailles, where I shall be none the less in his power for being the unwilling wife of Etienne d’Arcachon. The next few weeks, when I am too weak to move, are the most dangerous time.
There remain only two loose ends to clear up: one, if Etienne is the father, why is the baby flawless? And two, if my cypher has been broken, and my private writings are being read by thecabinet noir , why am I telling you all of these secrets?
Actually there is a third loose end, of a sort, which may have been troubling you: why would I sleep with Etienne in the first place, when I had my pick of ten million horny Frenchmen?
All three of these loose ends may be neatly tied up by a single piece of information. During my time at Versailles I got to know Bonaventure Rossignol, the King’s cryptanalyst. Rossignol, or Bon-bon as I like to call him (hello, Bon-bon!) was sent out to the Rhine front last autumn during the build-up to the invasion of the Palatinate. When I blundered in to the middle of it all, and got into trouble, Bon-bon became aware of it within a few hours, for he was reading everyone’s despatches, and came galloping-literally-to my rescue. It is difficult to tell the story right under present circumstances, and so I’ll jump to the end of it, and admit that his gallantry made my blood hot in a way I had never known before. It seems very crude and simple when I set it down thus, but at root it is a crude and simple thing, no? I attacked him. We made love several times. It was very sweet. But we had to devise a way out for me. Choices were few. The best plan we could come up with was that I seduced Etienne d’Arcachon, or rather stood by numbly in a sort of out-of-body trance while he seduced me. This I then parlayed into an escape north. I wrote it all down in a journal. When I got to the Hague, d’Avaux became aware of the existence of that journal and prevailed upon the King’s cryptanalyst to translate it-which he did, though he left out all the best parts, namely, those passages in which he himself played the romantic hero. He could not make me out to be innocent, for d’Avaux already knew too much, and too many Frenchmen had witnessed my deeds. Instead Bon-bon contrived to tell the story in such as way as to make me into the paramour of Etienne: the true-breeding woman of his, and his family’s, dreams.
I must stop writing now. My body wants to suckle him, and when at night I hear him cry out from across the square, my breasts let down a thin trickle of milk, which I then wash away with a heavier flood of tears. If I were a man, I’d say I was unmanned. As I am a woman, I’ll say I am over-womanned. Good-bye. If when you go back to Hanover you meet a little girl named Caroline, teach her as well as you have taught Sophie and Sophie Charlotte, for I prophesy that she will put both of them in the shade. And if Caroline is accompanied by a little orphan boy, said to have been born on the Rhine, then you shall know his story, and who is his father, and what became of his mother.
Eliza
Thou art too narrow, wretch, to comprehend
Even thy selfe: yea though thou wouldst but bend
To know thy body. Have not all soules thought
For many ages, that our body’is wrought
Of Ayre, and Fire, and other Elements?
And now they thinke of new ingredients,
And one Soule thinkes one, and another way
Another thinkes, and ’Tis an even lay.
Knowst thou but how the stone doth enter in
The bladders cave, and never break the skinne?
–John Donne, Of the Progresse of the Soule,
The Second Anniversarie
THE VISITOR-FIFTY-SIX YEARSold, but a good deal more vigorous than the host-feigned aloofness as he watched his bookish minions fan out among the stacks, boxes, shelves, and barrels that now constituted the personal library of Daniel Waterhouse. One of them strayed towards an open keg. His master warned him away with a barrage of clucking, harrumphing, and finger-snaps. “We must assume that anything Mr. Waterhouse has placed in a barrel, is bound for Boston!”
But when the assistants had all found ways to make themselves busy cataloguing and appraising, he turned towards Daniel and foamed up like a bottle of champagne. “Can’t say what an immense pleasure it is to see you, old chap!”
“Really, I do not think my countenance is all that pleasing at the moment, Mr. Pepys, but it is extraordinarily decent of you to fake it so vigorously.”
Samuel Pepys straightened up, blinked once, and parted his lips as if to follow up on the Conversational Opportunity Daniel had just handed him. The hand trembled and crept toward the Pocket where the Stone had lurked these thirty years. But some gentlemanly instinct averted him; he’d not crash the conversation onto that particular Hazard just yet. “I’d have thought you would be in Massachusetts by now, from the things the Fellows were saying.”
“I should have begun making my preparations immediately following the Revolution,” Daniel admitted, “but I delayed until after Jeffreys had his enounter with Mr. Jack Ketch at the Tower-by then, ’twas April, and I discovered that in order to leave London I should have to liquidate my life-which has proved much more of a bother than I had expected. Really, ’Tis much more expedient simply to drop dead and let one’s mourners see to all of these tedious dispositions.” Daniel waved a hand over his book-stacks, which were dwindling rapidly as Pepys’s corps of librarian-mercenaries carried them towards their master and piled them at his feet. Pepys glanced at the cover of each and then flicked his eyes this way or that to indicate whether they should be returned, or taken away; the latter went to a hard-bitten old computer who had set himself up with a lap-desk, quill, and inkwell, and was scratching out a bill of particulars.
Daniel’s remark on the convenience of dropping dead laid a second grievous temptation in the way of Mr. Pepys, who had to clench his fist to keep it from stabbing into the pocket. Fortunately he was distracted by an assistant who held before him a large book of engravings of diverse fishes. Pepys frowned at it for a moment. Then he recognized and rejected in the same instant, with revulsion. The R.S. had printed too many copies of it several years ago. Ever since, Fellows had been fobbing copies off on each other, trying to use them as legal tender for payment of old debts, employing them as doorstops, table-levelers, flower-presses, et cetera.
Daniel was not normally a cruel man, but he had been laid flat by nausea for days, and could not resist tormenting Pepys yet a third time: “Thy judgment is swift and remorseless, Mr. Pepys. Each book goes to thy left hand or thy right. When a ship founders in a hurricano, and Saint Peter is suddenly confronted with a long queue of soggy souls, not even he could despatch ’em to their deserved places as briskly as thee.”
“You are toying with me, Mr. Waterhouse; you have penetrated my deception, you know why I have come.”
“Not at all. How goes it with you since the Revolution? I have heard nothing of you.”
“I am retired, Mr. Waterhouse. Retired to the life of a gentleman scholar. My aims now are to assemble a library to rival Sir Elias Ashmole’s, and to try to fill the void that shall be left by your departure from the day-to-day affairs of the Royal Society.”
“You must have been tempted to plunge into the new Court, the new Parliament-”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Really?”
“To move in those circles is a bit like swimming. Swimming with rocks in one’s pockets! It demands ceaseless exertions. To let up is to die. I bequeath that sort of life to younger and more energetic strivers, like your friend the Marquis of Ravenscar. At my age, I am happy to stand on dry land.”