Shortly thereafter, they had been disbanded. So now the Dutch countryside was infested with unpaid and unled foreign soldiers. Eliza guessed that this was one of them; and since he had not bothered to steal her horse, he must have other intentions.
She rolled onto her elbows and knees and gasped as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. One arm was supporting her head, the other clutching at her abdomen. She was wearing a long cape that had spread over her like a tent. Propping her forehead against her wrist, she gazed upside-down into the hidden interior of that tent, where her right hand was busy in the damp folds of her waist-sash.
One of the interesting bits of knowledge she had picked up in the Topkapi Palace was that the most feared men in the Ottoman Empire were not the Janissaries with their big scimitars and muskets, but rather the hashishin: trained murderers who went unarmed except for a small dagger concealed in the waistband. Eliza did not have the skills of a hashishin, but she knew a good idea when she saw one, and she was never without the same kind of weapon. To whip it out now would be a mistake, though. She only made sure it was ready to hand.
Then she lifted her head, pushed herself up to a kneeling position, and gazed at her attacker. At the same moment, he turned to face her and threw back his hood to reveal the face of Jack Shaftoe.
ELIZA WAS PARALYZEDfor several moments.
Since Jack was almost certainly dead by now, it would be conventional to suppose that she was looking upon his ghost. But this was the reverse of the truth. A ghost ought to be paler than the original, a drawn shadow. But Jack-at least, the Jack she’d most recently seen-had been like the ghost of this man. This fellow was heavier, steadier, with better color and better teeth…
“Bob,” she said.
He looked slightly startled, then made a little bow. “Bob Shaftoe it is,” he said, “at your service, Miss Eliza.”
“You call knocking me off my horse being at my service?”
“You fell off your horse, begging your pardon. I apologize. But I did not wish that you would gallop away and summon the Guild.”
“What are you doing here? Was your regiment one of those that was disbanded?”
His brain worked. Now that Bob had begun talking, and reacting to things, his resemblance to Jack was diminishing quickly. The physical similarity was strong, but this body was animated by a different spirit altogether. “I see Jack told you something of me-but skipped the details. No. My regiment still exists, though it has a new name now. It’s guarding the King in London.”
“Then why’re you not with it?”
“John Churchill, the commander of my regiment, sends me on odd errands.”
“This one must be very odd indeed, to bring you to the wrong shore of the North Sea.”
“It is a sort of salvage mission. No one expected the regiments here to be disbanded. I am trying to track down certain sergeants and corporals who are well thought of, and recruit them into the service of my master before they get hanged in Dutch towns for stealing chickens, or press-ganged on India ships, or recruited by the Prince of Orange…”
“Do I looked like a grizzled sergeant to you, Bob Shaftoe?”
“I am laying that charge to one side for a few hours to speak to you about a private matter, Miss Eliza. The time it will take to walk back to the Hague should suffice.”
“Let’s walk, then, I am getting cold.”
I never justify’d cutting off the King’s Head, yet the Disasters that befel Kings when they begun to be Arbitrary, are not without their use, and are so many Beacons to their Successors to mark out the Sands which they are to avoid.
– The Mischiefs That Ought Justly to Be Apprehended from a Whig-Government, anonymous,attributed to Bernard Mandeville, 1714
IF POORJACK’S RAVINGShave any color of truth in them, then you have been among Persons of Quality. So you have learnt how important Family is to such people: that it gives them not only name but rank, a house, a piece of land to call home, income and food, and that it is the windowpane through which they look out and perceive the world. It brings them troubles, too: for they are born heirs to superiors who must be obeyed, roofs that want fixing, and diverse local troubles that belong to them as surely as their own names.
Now, in place of “Persons of Quality” substitute “common men of soldier type” and in place of “Family” say “Regiment,” and you will own a fair portrait of my life.
You seem to’ve spent a lot of time with Jack and so I’ll spare you the explanation of how two mudlark boys found themselves in a regiment in Dorset. But my career has been like his in a mirror, which is to say, all reversed.
The regiment he told you of was like most old English ones, which is to say, ’twas militia. The soldiers were common men of the shire and the officers were local gentlemen, and the big boss was a Peer, the Lord Lieutenant-in our case, Winston Churchill-who got the job by living in London, wearing the right clothes, and saying the right things.
Those militia regiments once came together to form Cromwell’s New Model Army, which defeated the Cavaliers, slew the King, abolished Monarchy, and even crossed the Channel to rout the Spaniards in Flanders. None of this was lost on Charles II. After he came back, he made a practice of keeping professional soldiers on his payroll. They were there to keep the militias in check.
You may know that the Cavaliers who brought Charles II back made their landfall in the north and came down from Tweed, crossing the Cold Stream with a regiment under General Lewis. That regiment is called the Coldstream Guards, and General Lewis was made the Duke of Tweed for his troubles. Likewise King Charles created the Grenadier Guards. He probably would have abolished the militia altogether if he could have-but the 1660s were troublous times, what with Plague and Fire and bitter Puritans roaming the country. The King needed his Lords Lieutenant to keep the people down-he granted ’em the power to search homes for arms and to throw troublesome sorts in prison. But a Lord Lieutenant could not make use of such powers save through a local militia and so the militias endured. And ’twas during those times that Jack and I were plucked out of a Vagabond-camp and made into regimental boys.
A few years later John Churchill reached an age-eighteen years-when he was deemed ready to accept his first commission, and was given a regiment of Grenadier Guards. It was a new regiment. Some men and armaments and other necessaries were made available to him, but he had to raise the rest himself, and so he did the natural thing and recruited many soldiers and non-commissioned officers from his father’s militia regiment in Dorset-including me and Jack. For there is a difference ‘twixt Families and Regiments, which is that the latter have no female members and cannot increase in the natural way-new members must be raised up out of the soil like crops, or if you will, taxes.