“What did St.-George tell you to do?” asked Jack, throwing on more coal.
“To see what kind of help you would need, during the entertainment.”
“What entertainment would that be?”
“He did not tell me everything. ”
“Why should St.-George care so much?”
“St.-George is angry with you. He says you have shown poor form.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“I will tell him,” the gypsy boy said, and here he smiled for the first time, “that l’Emmerdeur does not need his help.”
“That’s just it,” Jack said, and grabbed the bellows-handle. The boy turned and ran across the stable and vanished through an opening up in the eaves that Jack hadn’t known was there.
While the chain heated, Jack amused himself by going through his victim’s clothing and trying to guess how many gold coins were in his purse. After a couple of minutes (by the pocket-watch, which lay open on the floor) Jack reached into the fire with the tongs and drew out a length of yellow-hot chain. Before it could cool he draped it across an anvil, then smashed it with a heavy chisel-pointed hammer, and then he was free. Except that a yard of hot chain still dangled from his neck, and he could not pull it through his neck-loop without burning himself. So he quenched it in a trough of water. But then he found that in breaking it he’d smashed the last link, and broadened it, so it would no longer pass through the neck-loop. He did not want to spend the time to heat the chain back up, so he was stuck with the collar, and an arm’s length of chain, for now. No matter, really. It was dark outside, he would be seen only as a silhouette, and he needed only that it be a respectable type of silhouette-a shape that people would not discharge weapons at without thinking twice. So he yanked the wig (now wrecked and burnt, but still a wig) off the dead “Scot” and put it on-discarding, however, the unwieldy tam-o’-shanter. He pulled on the boots that John Churchill had donated, and took the long cape that the “Scot” had been wearing. Also his gloves-an old habit to cover the V branded on his thumb. Finally he pilfered the saddle from the horse-it was a magnificent saddle-and carried it out into the stable-yard.
The sight of a supposed Person of Quality toting his own saddle was anomalous, and even if it weren’t, Jack’s dragging one leg, brandishing a scimitar, and muttering out loud in vulgar English also cast uncertainty on his status as a French nobleman. But, as he’d hoped, most of the stable-boys were busy in the main courtyard. The guests were now arriving in force. He barged into the next stable, which was dimly lit by a couple of lanterns, and came face-to-face with a stable-boy who, in an instant, became the most profoundly confused person Jack had ever seen.
“Turk!” Jack called, and was answered by a whinny from several stalls down the line. Jack sidled closer to the stable-boy and allowed the saddle to slide off his shoulders. The boy caught it out of habit, and seemed relieved to have been given a specific job. Then Jack, using his sword as a pointing-device, got him moving in the direction of Turk.
The boy now understood that he was being asked to help steal a horse, and stiffened up in a way that was almost penile. It took no end of prodding to get him to heave the saddle onto Turk’s back. Then Jack socked him in the chin with the guard of the sword, but failed to knock him out. In the end, he had to drag the fool over to a convenient place by the entrance and push him down and practically draw him a picture of how to go about pretending he’d been surprised and knocked unconscious by the English villain.
Then back to Turk, who seemed pleased to see him. As Jack tightened the girth, and made other adjustments, the war-horse’s sinews became taut and vibrant, like the strings of a lute being tuned up. Jack checked his hooves and noted that Churchill had gotten some expert marechal-ferrant to shoe him. “You and me both,” Jack said, slapping his new boots so that the horse could admire them.
Then he put one of those boots into a stirrup, threw his leg over the saddle, and was hurtling across the duc’s stable-yard before he could even get himself situated properly. Turk wanted out of here as badly as he did. Jack had intended to look for a back exit, but Turk was having none of that, and took him out the way Churchill had ridden him in: straight through a gate into what Jack reckoned must be the main courtyard of the Hotel d’Arcachon.
Jack sensed quite a few people, but couldn’t really see them because he was dazzled by all of the light: giant torchieres like bonfires on pikes, and lanterns strung on colored ropes, and the light of thousands of lanterns and tapers blasting out through the twenty-foot-high windows that constituted most of the front wall of a large noble House directly in front of him. A hundred sperm whales must have given up their bodily fluids to light the lanterns. And as for the tapers in those chandeliers, why, even over the smells of cuisine, fashionable perfume, wood-smoke, and horse-manure, Jack’s nose could detect the fragrance of honey-scented Mauritanian beeswax. All of this sweet-smelling radiance glanced wetly off a large fountain planted in the middle of the court: various Neptunes and Naiads and sea monsters and dolphins cleverly enwrithed to form a support for a naval frigate all speckled with fleurs-de-lis. Wreckage of Dutch and English ships washed up on shores all around, forming benches for French people to put their buttocks on.
The force of the light, and Jack’s hauling back on the reins, had taken the edge off of Turk’s impetuous charge for the exit, but not quite soon enough: the fact remained that Turk, and thus Jack, had effectively burst into the couryard at a near-gallop and then stood agape for several seconds, almost as if demanding to be noticed. And they had been: little knots of Puritans, F?ry-Queens, Persians, and Red Indians were looking at them. Jack gave the war-horse an encouraging nudge, while holding fast to the reins so he wouldn’t bolt.
Turk began following a groomed gravel path among flower-beds, which Jack hoped would take them round the fountain eventually and to a place where they could at least see the way out. But they were moving directly toward the light rushing from those banks of windows. Through them Jack saw an immense ballroom, with white walls garlanded with gold, and white polished marble floors where the nobility, in their fancy-dress, were dancing to music from a consort stuffed into a corner.
Then-like anyone else coming towards a grand party-Jack glanced down at his own person. He had been counting on darkness, but had blundered into light, and was shocked at how clearly his shit-covered rags and neck-iron stood out.
He saw a man inside who’d been in the duc’s entourage the other day. Not wanting to be recognized, Jack turned up the collar of the stolen cape, and drew it round to conceal the bottom half of his face.
A few small clusters of party-goers had formed in the lawn between the front of the house and the fountain, and all conversation had been suspended so that all faces could turn to stare at Jack. But they did not raise a hue and cry. They stared for a remarkably long time, as if Jack were a new and extremely expensive sculpture that had just been unveiled. Then Jack sensed a contagious thrill, a frisson like the one that had run through the fishmarket at Les Halles when he’d galloped through it. There was a strange pattering noise. He realized they were applauding him. A serving-girl flashed away into the ballroom, hitching up her skirts as she ran, to spread some news. The musicians stopped playing, all faces turned to the windows. The people on the lawn had converged toward Jack, while maintaining a certain respectful distance, and were bowing and curtseying, very low. A pair of footmen practically sprawled out onto the grass in their anxiety to hurl the front doors open. Framed in the arch was a porky gentleman armed with a long Trident, which naturally made Jack flinch when he saw it-this fellow, Jack suspected, was the duc d’Arcachon, dressed up as Neptune. But then the duc held the weapon out towards him, resting crossways on his outstretched hands- offeringit to Jack. Neptune then backed out of the way, still doubled over in a deep bow, and beckoned him into the ballroom. Inside, the party-goers had formed up in what he instinctively recognized as a gauntlet to whip all the skin off his back-but then understood must actually be a pair of lines to receive him!