Another Genoese banker in vivid clothing received Signor Cozzi’s note. Jack had to track him down in a market-place unlike any in Paris, where things like charcoal, bales of old clothing, and rolls of undyed fabric were for sale in large quantities. The banker paid Jack out of his pocket, and read the note.
“You are English?”
“Aye, what of it?”
“Your King is dead.” With that the banker went briskly to his office, whence other messengers galloped away within the hour, headed for Genoa and Marseilles. Jack stabled his horses and wandered round Lyons amazed, munching some dried figs he bought at a retail market. The only King he’d ever known was dead, and England was, somehow, a different country now-ruled by a Papist!
WEE DRIFTS OFwind-skimming snow had already parenthesized the cherry-red platform soles of the French delegation’s boots, and inch-long snotcicles had grown from the moustaches of the English delegation. Eliza glided up on her skates, and swirled to a halt on the canal to admire what she took (at first) to be some sort of colossal sculpture group. Of course sculptures did not normally wear clothing, but these Ambassadors and their entourages (a total of eight Englishmen facing off against seven French) had been standing long enough that snow had permeated every pore of their hats, wigs, and coats, giving them the appearance (from a distance) of having been butcherously carved out of a large block of some very low-grade, grayish sculptural medium. Much more lively (and more warmly dressed) was the crowd of Dutchmen who had gathered round to watch, and to stake small wagers on which delegation would first succumb to the cold. A rabble of porters and wood-carriers seemed to have taken the English side, and better-dressed men had gathered round the French, and strode to and fro stamping their feet and blowing into their hands and dispatching swift-skating message-boys towards the States-General and the Binnenhof.
But Eliza was the only girl on skates. So as she came to a stop there on the canal’s edge, only a few yards away from, and a foot or two lower than, the two groups of men on the adjoining street, the entire sculpture came to life. Rimes of ice cracked and tinkled as fifteen French and English heads rotated towards her. ‘Twas now a standoff of a different nature.
The best-dressed man in the French delegation shuddered. They were all shivering, but this gentleman shuddered. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “do you speak French?”
Eliza regarded him. His hat was the size of a washtub, filled with exotic plumes, now crushed under drifts. His boots had the enormous tongues just coming into fashion, erupting from his instep and spreading and curling up and away from the shin-these had filled with snow, which was melting and trickling down inside the boots and darkening the leather from the inside.
“Only when there is some reason to, monsieur,” she returned.
“What is a reason?”
“How French of you to ask… I suppose that when a gentleman, who has been correctly introduced to me, flatters me with a compliment, or amuses me with a witticism…”
“I humbly beg Mademoiselle’s forgiveness,” the Frenchman said, through gray and stiff lips that ruined his pronunciation. “But as you did not arrive with an escort, there was no one to beg for the favor of a decent introduction.”
“He is yonder,” said Eliza, gesturing half a league down the canal.
“ Mon Dieu,he flails his limbs like a lost soul tumbling backwards into the Pit,” the Frenchman exclaimed. “Tell me, mademoiselle, why does a swan venture out on the canals with an orang-utan?”
“He claimed he knew how to skate.”
“But a lass of your beauty, must have heard many brave claims from young men’s lips-and one of your intelligence must have perceived that all of them were rank nonsense.”
“Whereas you, monsieur, are honest and pure of heart?”
“Alas, mademoiselle, I am merely old.”
“Not so old.”
“And yet I may have perished from age or pneumonia before your beau struggles close enough to make introductions, so… Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, your most humble servant.”
“Charmed. My name is Eliza…”
“Duchess of Qwghlm?”
Eliza laughed at this absurdity. “But how did you know I was Qwghlmian?”
“Your native tongue is English-but you skate like one who was born on ice, sans the staggering drunken gait of the Anglo-Saxons who so cruelly oppress your islands,” d’Avaux answered, raising his voice so that the English delegation could hear.
“Very clever-but you know perfectly well that I am no Duchess.”
“And yet blue blood flows in your veins, I cannot but believe…”
“Not half so blue as yours, Monsieur, as I cannot but see. Why don’t you go inside and sit by a warm fire?”
“Now you tempt me cruelly in a second way,” d’Avaux said. “I must stand here, to uphold the honor and glory of La France. But you are bound by no such obligations-why do you go out here, where only harp-seals and polar-bears should be-and in such a skirt?”
“The skirt must be short, lest it get caught in the blades of my skates-you see?” Eliza said, and did a little pirouette. Before she’d gotten entirely turned around, a groaning and cracking noise came from the center of the French delegation as a spindly middle-aged diplomat collapsed dizzily to the ground. The men to either side of him crouched down as if to render assistance, but were straightened up by a brisk idiom from d’Avaux. “Once we begin to make exceptions for those who fall-or who pretend to-the whole delegation will go down like ninepins,” d’Avaux explained, addressing the remark to Eliza, but intending it for his entourage. The fallen man contracted to a f?tal position on the pavement; a couple of sword-wearing Dutchmen scurried in with a blanket. Meanwhile a wench came down out of a side-street bearing a large tray, and walked past the French delegation, letting them smell the flip-aroma, and feel the steam, from eight tankards-which she took direct to the Englishmen.
“Exceptions to what?” Eliza asked.
“To the rules of diplomatic protocol,” d’Avaux answered. “Which state-for example-that when one Ambassador meets another in a narrow way, the junior Ambassador must give way for the senior.”
“Ah, so that’s it. You’re having a dispute as to whether you, or the English Ambassador, has seniority?”
“I represent the Most Christian King,*thatlot represent King James II of England… or so we can only assume, as we have received word that King Charles II has died, but not that his brother has been properly crowned.”
“Then it’s clear you have seniority.”
“Clear to you and me, mademoiselle. But that fellow has asserted that, since he cannot represent an uncrowned king, he must still be representing the late Charles II, who was crowned in 1651 after the Puritans chopped off the head of his father and predecessor. My King was crowned in 1654.”
“But with all due respect to the Most Christian King, monsieur, doesn’t that mean that Charles II, if he still lived, would have three years’ seniority over him?”