“So that’s where you got your knowledge of matters military.”
“Where I began to get it. This was a good sixteen years ago.”
“And also, I suppose, it’s how you became so sympathetic to the likes of these,” Eliza said, flicking her blue eyes once toward the Vagabonds.
“Oh. You suppose I arranged this carp-feast out of charity?”
“Come to think of it-”
“I- we-need information.”
“From these people?”
“I have heard that in some cities they have buildings called libraries, and the libraries are full of books, and each book contains a story. Well, I can tell you that there never was a library that had as many stories as a Vagabond-camp. Just as a Doctor of Letters might go to a library to read one of those stories, I need to get a certain tale from one of these people-I’m not sure which one, yet-so I drew ’em all out.”
“What sort of tale?”
“It’s about a wooded, hilly country, not far north of here, where hot water spills out of the ground year-round and keeps homeless wanderers from freezing to death. You see, lass, if we wanted to survive a northern winter, we should’ve begun laying in firewood months ago.”
Jack then went among the Vagabonds and, speaking in a none too euphonious stew of zargon, French, and sign language, soon got the information he needed. There were many haiduks-runaway serfs who’d made a living preying on the Turks farther east. They understood the tale told by Jack’s horse and sword, and wanted Jack to join them. Jack thought it wise to slip away before their friendly invitations hardened into demands. Besides which, the entire scene of motley Vagabonds gutting and mutilating these immense fifty-year-old carp had become almost as strange and apocalyptic as anything they’d seen in the Turk’s camp, and they just wanted to put it behind them. Before dark, Jack and Eliza were northbound. That night, for the first time, it got so chilly that they were obliged to sleep curled up next to the fire under the same blanket, which meant Eliza slept soundly and Jack hardly at all.
FOR THE TWO WEEKSthat followed Jack’s Christ-like miracle of feeding a thousand Vagabonds from a small bag of gunpowder, he and Eliza talked very little, except about immediate concerns of staying alive. They passed from the rolling country of burnt castles and carp-ponds, with its broad flat valleys, into a mountainous zone farther north, which either had not suffered so badly during the war, or else had recovered faster. From hill-tops and mountain-passes they looked down upon brown fields where haystacks scattered like bubbles on placid ponds, and tidy prosperous towns whose chimneys bristled like so many pikes and muskets brandished against the cold. Jack tried to compare these vistas against the tales the Vagabonds had told him. Certain nights, they were all but certain they were going to perish, but then they’d find a hut, or cave, or even a cleft in the face of some bluff where they could build a nest of fallen leaves and a fire.
Finally one day they came, sudden as an ambush, into a vale where the tree-branches were grizzled with mist, and steam rose from a smelly rill that trickled down a strangely colored and sculpted river-bed. “We’re here,” Jack said, and left Eliza hidden back in the woods while he rode out into the open to talk to a pair of miners who were working with picks and shovels in the stream, digging up brittle rock that smelled like London in the Plague Years. Brimstone! Jack spoke little German and they spoke no English, but they were thoroughly impressed by his sword, his horse, and his boots, and through grunts and shrugs and signs they made it known they’d make no trouble if he camped for the winter at the headwaters of the hot spring, half a league up the valley.
So they did. The spring emerged from a small cave that was always warm. They could not stay there for very long because of the bad air, but it served as a refuge into which they could retreat, and so kept them alive long enough to reconstitute a tumbledown hut they found on the bank of the steaming creek. Jack cut wood and dragged it back to Eliza, who arranged it. The roof would never keep rain out, but it shrugged off the snow. Jack still had a bit of silver. He used it to buy venison and rabbit from the miners, who set clever snares for game in the woods.
Their first month at the hot springs, then, consisted of small struggles won and forgotten the next day, and nothing passed between them except for the simple plans and affairs of peasants. But eventually things settled to the point where they did not have to spend every moment in toil. Jack did not care one way or the other. But Eliza let it be known that certain matters had been on her mind the entire time.
“Do you mind?” Jack was forced to blurt, one day in what was probably December.
“Pay no attention,” Eliza snuffled. “Weather’s a bit gloomy.”
“If the weather’s gloomy, what’re you?”
“Just thinking of… things.”
“Stop thinking then! This hovel’s scarcely big enough to lie down in-have some consideration-there’s a rivulet of tears running across the floor. Didn’t we have a talk, months ago, about female moods?”
“Your concern is ever so touching. How can I thank you?”
“Stop weeping!”
She drew a few deep quivering breaths that made the hut shudder, and then crucified Jack with a counterfeit smile. “The regiment, then-”
“What’s this?” Jack asked. “Keeping you alive isn’t enough? I’m to provide entertainment as well?”
“You seem reluctant to talk about this. Perhaps you’re a bit melancholy, too?”
“You have this clever little mind that never stops working. You’re going to put my stories to ill-considered purposes. There are certain details, not really important, in which you’ll take an unwholesome interest.”
“Jack, we’re living like brutes in the middle of the wilderness-what could I possibly do with a story as old as I am? And for God’s sake, what else is there to do, when I lack thread and needles?”
“There you go again with the thread and the needles. Where do you suppose a brute in the wilderness would obtain such things?”
“Ask those miners to pick some up when next they go to town. They fetch oats for Turk all the time-why not a needle and thread?”
“If I do that, they’ll know I’ve a woman here.”
“You won’t for long, if you don’t tell me a story, or get me thread and needles.”
“All right, then. The part of the story to which you’re almost certain to over-react is that, although Sir Winston Churchill was not really an important man, his son John was briefly important. He’s not any more. Probably never will be again, except in the world of courtiers.”
“But you made his father out to be one notch above a Vagabond.”
“Yes-and so John never would’ve reached the high position he did had he not been clever, handsome, brave, dashing, and good in the sack.”
“When can you introduce me to him?”
“I know you’re just trying to provoke me with that.”
“Into what ‘high position’ exactly did he get?”
“The bed of the favorite mistress of King Charles the Second of England.”
A brief pause for pressure to build, and then volcanic laughter from Eliza. Suddenly it was April. “You mean for me to believe that you -Half-Cocked ‘don’t call me a Vagabond’ Jack-are personally acquainted with the lover of a mistress of a King?”
“Calm yourself-there are no chirurgeons here, if you should rupture something. And if you knew anything of the world outside of Asiatick Harems, you wouldn’t be surprised-the King’s other favorite mistress is Nell Gwyn-an actress. ”