Everything seemed to point to that he was expected to ride into the ballroom on horseback, which was unthinkable. But Jack had become adept (or so he believed) at distinguishing things that were really happening from the waking dreams or phant’sies that came into his head more and more frequently of late, and, reckoning that this was one of the latter, he decided to enjoy it. Accordingly, he now rode Turk (who was extremely reluctant) right past the duc and into the ballroom. Now everyone bowed low, giving Jack the opportunity to look down a large number of white-powdered cleavages. A trumpeter played some sort of fanfare. One cleavage in particular Jack was afraid he might fall into and have to be winched out on a rope. The lady in question, noticing Jack’s fixed stare, seemed to think that he was staring at least partly at the string of pearls around her neck. Something of a complicated nature occurred inside her head, and then she blushed and clasped both hands to her black-spotted face and squealed and said something to the effect of “No, no, please, not my jewels… Emmerdeur,” and then she unclasped the pearls from behind her neck; clasped them back together into a loop; threw it over the point of Jack’s sword, like a farm girl playing ring-toss at the fair; and then expertly swooned back into the waiting arms of her escort: a satyr with a two-foot-long red leather penis.
Another woman shrieked, and Jack raised his weapon in case he was going to have to kill her-but all he saw was another mademoiselle going into the same act-she ran up and pinned a jeweled brooch to the hem of his cloak, muttering “pour les Invalides,” then backed away curtseying before Jack could say what was on his mind, which was: If you want to give this away to charity, lady, you came to the wrong bloke.
Then they were all doing it, the thing was a sensation, the ladies were practically elbowing each other to get near and decorate Jack’s clothes and his sword, and Turk’s bridle, with jewelry. The only person not having a good time was a certain handsome young Barbary Pirate who stood at the back of the crowd, red-faced, staring at Jack with eyes that, had they been pliers…
A stillness now spread across the ballroom like a blast of frigid air from a door blown open by a storm. Everyone seemed to be looking toward the entrance. The ladies were backing away from Jack in hopes of getting a better view. Jack sat up straight in the saddle and got Turk turned around, partly to see what everyone else was staring at and partly because he had the sense it would soon be time to leave.
A second man had ridden into the ballroom on horseback. Jack identified him, at first, as a Vagabond recently escaped from captivity-no doubt well-deserved captivity. But of course it was really some nobleman pretending to be a Vagabond, and his costume was much better than Jack’s-the chain around his neck, and the broken fetters on his wrists and ankles, appeared to’ve been forged out of solid gold, and he was brandishing a gaudy jeweled scimitar, and wearing a conspicuous, diamond-studded, but comically tiny codpiece. Behind him, out in the courtyard, was a whole entourage: Gypsies, jeweled and attired according to some extremely romantic conception of what it was to be a gypsy; ostrich-plume-wearing Moors; and fine ladies dressed up as bawdy Vagabond-wenches.
Jack allowed the cape to fall clear of his face.
There followed the longest period of silence that he had ever known. It was so long that he could have tied Turk’s reins to a candelabra and curled up under the harpsichord for a little nap. He could have run a message down to Lyons during this silence (and, in retrospect, probably should have). But instead he just sat there on his horse and waited for something to happen, and took in the scene.
Silence made him aware that the house was a hive of life and activity, even when all of the Persons of Quality were frozen up like statues. There was the normal dim clattering of the kitchen, for example. But his attention was drawn to the ceiling, which was (a) a hell of a thing to look at, and (b) making a great deal of noise-he thought perhaps a heavy rain had begun to thrash the roof, partly because of this scrabbling, rushing noise that was coming from it, and partly because it was leaking rather badly in a number of places. It had been decorated both with plaster relief-work and with paint, so that if you could lie on your back and stare at it you would see a vast naval Tableau: the gods of the four winds at the edges of the room, cheeks all puffed as they blew out billowy plaster clouds, and the Enemies of France angling in from various corners, viz. English and Dutch frigates riding the north wind, Spanish and Portuguese galleons the south, as well as pirates of Barbary and Malta and the Turk, and the occasional writhing sea-monster. Needless to say, the center was dominated by the French Navy in massive three-dimensional plasterwork, guns pointing every which way, and on the poop-deck of the mightiest ship, surrounded by spyglass-toting Admirals, stood a laurel-wreath-crowned Leroy, one hand fingering an astrolabe and the other resting on a cannon. And as if to add even greater realism, the entire scene was now running and drizzling, as if there really were an ocean up above it trying to break through and pay homage to the living King who had just rode in. From this alarming leakage, and from the rustling noise, Jack naturally suspected a sudden violent storm coming through a leaky roof. But when he looked out the windows into the courtyard he saw no rain. Besides (he remembered with some embarrassment), the Hotel d’Arcachon was not some farmhouse, where the ceiling was merely the underside of the roof. Jack well knew, from having broken into a few places like this, that the ceiling was a thin shell of plaster troweled over horizontal lath-work, and that there would be a crawl space above it, sandwiched between ceiling and roof, with room for dull, dirty things like chandelier-hoists and perhaps cisterns.
Thatwas it-there must be a cistern full of collected rainwater up there, which must have sprung a leak-in fact, had probably been encouraged to do so by St.-George or one of his friends, just to create a distraction that might be useful to Jack. The water must be gushing out across the top of the plaster-work, percolating down between the laths, saturating the plaster, which was darkening in several large irregular patches-gathering storm-clouds besetting the French Navy and darkening the sea from robin’s-egg blue to a more realistic iron-gray. Gray, and heavy, and no longer flat and smooth-the ceiling was swelling and bulging downwards. In several places around the room, dirty water had begun to spatter down onto the floor. Servants were fetching mops and buckets, but dared not interrupt the Silence.
Turk complained of something, and Jack looked down to discover that the satyr with the very long, barbed, red leather penis had sidled up and grabbed Turk’s bridle.
“That’s an incredibly bad idea,” Jack said in English (there was no point in even trying his French among this crowd). He said it sotto voce, not wanting to officially break the Silence, and indeed most people could not hear him over the odd scrabbling noises and muffled squeaks emanating from above. The squeaks might be the sound of lath-nails being wrenched out of old dry joists by the growing weight of the ceiling. Anyway, it was good that Jack glanced down, because he also noticed John Churchill striding round the back of the crowd, examining the flintlock mechanism on a pistol, very much in the manner of an experienced slayer of men who was looking forward to a moment soon when he’d fire the weapon. Jack didn’t have a firearm, only a sword, freighted with jewelry at the moment. He shoved its tip through the satin lining of the riding-cloak, cutting a small gash, and then allowed all of the goods to avalanche into it.