"I am exhausted," Eleanor announced.
"You look it," said the Countess, "or perhaps that is just age."
"Exhaustion or age—who can guess? I shall let it remain my little secret," Eleanor said equably. "I am sorry to leave the party so early, and when it appears that the conversation is about to take such a fascinating turn—"
"Or," said Eliza, catching the eye of Johann Georg, "to turn into something else."
"Pray, don't get up!" Eleanor said to her husband, who had shown not the slightest intention of doing so. "I'll to my bed, and shall see you all, I suppose, whenever you crawl out of yours. I do apologize once more for the miserable state of the accommodations." This last was aimed at her husband, who did not penetrate its meaning.
"Right," said Eliza, once the staircase, and the floorboards overhead, had let off creaking under the movements of Eleanor. She was in the salon now with the Elector of Saxony and his mistress, and she had their undivided attention. She brushed a bit of damp plaster out of her hair. "Where were we? Oh yes, the Chariot."
"Chariot?"
"I'm sorry, it is the name given to the technique that—in those countries that are enlightened enough to sanction the ancient Biblical practice of polygamy—is used by a Sultan when he is at a numerical disadvantage to his wives. I could try to describe it. A picture would be ever so much more effective, but I can't draw to save my life. Perhaps I should demonstrate it. Why, yes! That would be best. Would you be a dear, my good Elector, and flip yonder table upside down? I'll fetch an ottoman from the other room—"
"A what!?" barked Johann Georg, and his hand shifted to the hilt of his sword.
"As in a piece of furniture. We'll want something in lieu of reins—my dear Countess, if you'd care to unwind that silk sash from about your waist, 'twould serve."
"But the sash is holding up my—"
"—?"
"—ah, j'ai compris, madame."
"I knew you would, Fräulein."
"I HAD TO FUCK SOMEONE," Eliza mumbled through the hem of her blanket. "I suppose you'll think me a whore. But my son—I refer to the legitimate one—Lucien—died. Adelaide is a gem, but she was foolhardy enough to have been born female. My husband requires a legitimate boy."
"But—with him!?"
"You said yourself that his imbecility was not congenital."
"But how will you explain the timing of it!?"
"There is nothing that can't be explained away, if Étienne is willing to play along, and not ask difficult questions. And I think he is willing. None of it matters, probably."
"What do you mean by that?"
By way of an answer, Eliza—who was lying flat on her back in bed with a blanket over most of her face—thrust out a hand.
Eleanor screamed.
"Be quiet! They'll hear you," said Eliza.
"They—they have already left," said Eleanor from the uttermost corner of the room, whence she'd fled, quick as a sparrow.
"Oh. Then go ahead and scream all you like."
"When did the bumps appear?"
"I thought I felt one coming on yesterday. Had no idea they'd spread so rapidly." Eliza flipped the blanket down to expose her face. Earlier she'd counted twenty bumps, there, by feel, then lost interest. Eleanor gave her only the briefest glance before turning her face aside, and adopting a pose in the corner of the room like a schoolgirl who is being punished.
"So this is why you insisted Caroline and Adelaide be sent away to Leipzig!"
"You do a sick woman an injustice there. You yourself told me that the Elector could not take his eyes off Caroline. You mentioned it half a dozen times unbidden. She has only bloomed the more since he last raped her with his eyes. That alone was reason sufficient to get her out of the house."
"Does the Elector know?"
"Know that I have smallpox? Not yet."
"How could he have missed it?"
"First, most of these vesicles have broken out in the last few hours. Second, we did it in the dark. Third, many persons—including some who were not hit on the head as boys—are unclear as to the distinction between smallpox, and the great pox, or syphilis. Given the company he keeps, I cannot but think that Johann Georg has seen much of the latter!"
"What you have done is horrible!" Eleanor said, turning around, and, when she saw Eliza's face, thinking better of it.
"Oh, I've had worse."
"No! I mean, trying to get someone sick."
"You could have guessed yesterday that I had smallpox. You could have warned them off. You chose not to. So your outrage at this moment is very tiresome."
Eleanor could not frame any response to this.
"I don't know a single man at Versailles who has not killed someone, at least once in his life, directly or indirectly, by omission or commission. It is done commonly, and on the slightest pretexts. I might not have done what I did last night, had you not told me that the Elector desires Caroline. But knowing what I did of his lust for the girl, and his power over you, and knowing how it was likely to come out—well, I did what I did. Now, Eleanor, that is enough of talking about it. I really am spent. Last night took too much out of me at a time when I ought to have been conserving my strength. Now I'll pay the penalty. I wrote out instructions—in case of my death. It's under my pillow. I'm sleepy. Good-bye."
MAY 1694
My lady,
I take the liberty of sending you a first draft, only because the English Navy is massing in the Channel to lob more bombs on to French soil, a most tiresome practice of which they have lately become quite fond. They would prefer, of course, to destroy the many ships of our fleet (which all ought to be named Eliza, as we owe their existence to you). But these are moving targets, which their vessels are too slow to pursue, and their gunners too inept to hit, and so instead they have have taken to shooting at buildings. One is reminded of some old Baron who phant'sies himself a brave hunter, but is too shaky, senile, and blind to hit anything, and so stands in his garden blasting away at stuffed animals that his servants have propped up against the hedge.
But life, and this letter, are both too short to be wasted on the English and so I shall go straight to the point and pray you'll forgive my bald way of speaking.
My services are much in demand of late, as trade has stopped, owing to some confusion in the world of money. I do not understand it at all. You, I am certain, understand it perfectly. In between my perfect ignorance and your perfect knowledge stand the rest of humanity—innumerable persons of greater or less dignity, who phant'sy they understand it. Whatever the case may be, these persons know that your humble and obedient servant, Captain Jean Bart, is, at the present time, the only person making money in France (some small-minded pedants would assert that this is only by virtue of the fact that I steal things by force from their rightful owners; but this is a fine distinction that I shall leave to the Jesuits, so that one of them may one day come to me on my death-bed and inform me whether I'm bound for Heaven or Hell). Call it what you will, I bring money to France and deposit almost all of it into the King's coffers, in accordance with certain rules and procedures that have seen set down, or so I am told, to govern my métier, viz. Privateer. In consequence, I have been noticed by many persons, foreign and domestic, who are owed money by our government. They write me letters, sidle up to me at soirées, tug on my sleeve at the many levées and couchées to which I am invited; they loiter before my house, overhaul me on the high seas, pursue me down streets and garden-paths, send me wine, plant the most alluring whores in my very bed, mutter to me in the confessional, and threaten to kill me, all in the hopes that I shall, by some prestidigitation, channel the next treasure-ship to this or that port, so that it may fall into the hands of this or that local official who shall route the proceeds to this or that account.