A few hours after Météore's arrival, when aromas of French cooking had suffused the entire castle, large Bretons came to Jack's cell and dragged him to a part of the château that, as best as Jack could make out, was near the bedchambers. It was a windowless, hence torch-lit corridor joining an irregular series of chambers, closets, and wide spots. It had received little attention during the remodel, and still looked much as the last band of Vikings, Saracens, or Scots had left it. Here and there Jack glimpsed the backside of a walclass="underline" strips of lath, or wattle, with curls of plaster, or daub, squirting through. Casks and crates were piled in some places. They took him to a wide place in the passage where an iron grid had been leaned against the walclass="underline" a portcullis hammered out by some blacksmith a thousand years ago, torn down and thrown aside in some upheaval, and left to gather rust and cobwebs ever since. The Bretons pinned Jack against this, spreadeagled, and lashed him to it with cords. Here it became obvious that they were sea-faring men. When Jack opened his mouth to issue some remark to that effect, one of them opportunely shoved a rag-wad into his mouth, and lashed that in place, and lashed his head to the grate. They lashed his fingers down even, which struck Jack as gratuitous, unless they were afraid of his rapping out some message. When they were satisfied, they dragged the gridiron, Jack and all, down the passageway a short distance and through a curtain of mildewy sailcloth. Jack was then blinded for a few moments by sudden light. But as his eyes adjusted, he began to think he was back in the bedchamber where they had kept him for the first week. As he saw clearer, though, he came to understand he was gazing into that bedchamber from without. He was looking through the back sides of the mirrors that glazed the wall. His view of the room, from here, was total; he was positioned at the head of the canopied bed, arm's length from where a sleeper would lay his, or her, head.
"It is a style of architecture that has served me well," said a voice in French.
Jack would have jumped out of his skin, had he not been restrained, for the Bretons had taken their leave, and he hadn't suspected anyone else was in here. All he could move was his eyeballs. By swiveling these as far as they'd go, he was able to perceive movement in a dim corner of this hidden chamber.
A man came into view. He wore a periwig—powdered white, as was the new vogue—and what Jack could only assume were the most excellent fashions from France, so ridiculous were they. Something was funny about one of his hands, but, beyond that, he was splendid to look upon, and (as Jack could now detect, even with dirty rags jammed into his gob) he smelled good.
"You shan't recognize me, I'm afraid," said the only man in the room who could talk. "I scarcely recognize you. We last met in the Grand Ballroom of my residence in Paris: the Hôtel Arcachon. You took your leave of most of me hastily, and impolitely; though you did carry my hand for several miles, tangled in the bridle of that magnificent horse. Later it was found in the middle of the post-road to Compiègne with my signet-ring still on it; which is how it was traced back to me. Still you were not done re-arranging the body-parts of Lavardacs, for some years later you kindly shipped me the head of my father."
Étienne de Lavardac, duc d'Arcachon, raised now the stump of his arm so that Jack could view it. A cup had been strapped thereto, and extending from this was a black leather riding-crop. If Jack hadn't been gagged, he'd now have volunteered some observations as to how Étienne had a paltry and disappointing view of how to inflict pain, compared to the Spanish Inquisition; but Étienne anticipated him. "Oh, this is not for you. My revenge on you I have contemplated, and prepared for, these seventeen years, and it shall involve more than a riding-crop. It takes time to build a place like this, you know! I have had several of them made: there is another at St.-Malo and yet another at La Dunette. I have stood in them and watched my wife whore herself to sergeants and cryptologists. That, however, is not why I caused them to be made. Only today are these chambers being put to their true purpose. Vrej Esphahnian is in the one at La Dunette even at this moment. He is trussed up like you, staring through such a mirror, and listening as his brothers, dressed in the finest clothing, serve expensive coffee to dinner-guests.
"You see, we fooled Monsieur Esphahnian into believing that his brothers had been betrayed by you, Jack, and were perishing of typhus in debtors' prisons all around Paris. His joy at learning that this is not true will be balanced by some embarrassment that he turned you in to us for no good reason, and lost his share of the silver and gold in Minerva's hold. I do wonder which of these three causes him the greatest anguish: that he betrayed his friends, that he threw away a fortune, or that he was duped. Father Édouard should reach Versailles in a few more days—he'll inform Monsieur Esphahnian that the missing gold was attached to the ship's hull the entire time—this ought to perfect his agony. It is a better torture, I believe, than anything the Spanish Inquisition could devise. But better yet is in store for you, Jack!"
He walked out.
A door opened and a woman entered the bedchamber. Jack did not know her instantly, only because he did not wish to. She'd changed, but not that much. He simply could not bear to open his eyes to her.
Nasr al-Ghuráb had told them that in the sack of Constantinople the Ottomans had discovered, in a dungeon, a device that the Byzantines had once used to put out the eyes of noble prisoners. There was none of poking or gouging. Rather, it was a great hemispherical bowl, wrought of copper, with a sort of vise in its center. The bowl would be heated first until it was glowing, and then the prisoner's head—masked, except for the eyes—would be clamped into the vise. The apparatus was so laid out that the pupils of the victims' eyes were positioned at the center of the hemisphere. When the lids were pulled up, the eyes could see nothing but a featureless heaven of red wrath that ruined even as it dazzled. The sensitive parts of the eyes were incinerated in a few moments, and the victim rendered perfectly blind without the eyes themselves ever having been touched by anything save that awful last glimpse.
In idle moments since having heard this story, Jack had sometimes wondered what thoughts went through the mind of the one who was being clamped into it. Did he resist? Could he? Were unwilling eyelids peeled back with tongs, or was the victim compelled somehow to open them himself?
It was in much the same frame of mind that he followed Eliza's entry into the bedchamber without looking at her directly. But in the end he couldn't not open his eyes, of his own free will, and gaze upon what was there, burn him and blind him though it might.
She had been at dinner with rich people, and was some time taking her gown off, washing her face, peeling off the black patches, and letting her hair down. Ladies-in-waiting came and went. A girl of perhaps nine, with eyes and face marred by smallpox, came into the room and crawled into Eliza's lap for a few minutes' rocking and snuggling; Eliza read to her from a book, then sent her off to bed with kisses all over her wrecked face. A nurse led in a boy of about seven, who had escaped the pox so far—but in a way he was worse for Jack to look upon, for his jaw had the same deformity as both of the two last ducs d'Arcachon. But Eliza smiled when he came in, and cuddled him and read to him just as she had done to the pock-marked girl. The nurse took the boy away and Eliza sat alone for some time, tending to correspondence; she read a scattering of notes and wrote two letters.