The Admiral looked nonplussed. He couldn’t stop looking at Jack’s shoes. Jack kicked off the sabots and they tumbled on the stones with pocking footstep-noises. He wanted to make some kind of insightful point, here, about how the shoe thing was just another example of Frogs’ obsession with form over substance-a point worth making here and now, because it related to their (presumed) inability to appreciate what a fine mount Turk was. But in his present state of mind, he couldn’t even get that out in English.
Someone, anyway, had decided that he was dangerous-a younger man costumed as a Captain of Horse, who now rode out in front of the Admiral and drew his sword, and waited for Jack to do something.
“What’d you pay for that nag?” Jack snarled, and, since he didn’t have time to disassemble his crutch, raised it up like a knight’s lance, bracing the padded cross-piece against his ribs, and spurred Turk forward with his heels. The cold air felt good rushing over his bare feet. The Captain got a look of dignified befuddlement on his face that Jack would always remember, and the others, behind him, got out of the way in a sudden awkward clocking and scraping of hooves-and then at the last moment this Captain realized he was in an impossible situation, and tried to lean out of the way. The crutch-tip caught him in the upper arm and probably gave him a serious bruise. Jack rode through the middle of the Admiral’s entourage and then got Turk turned around to face them again, which took longer than he was comfortable with-but all of those Admirals and Colonels and Captains had to get turned around, too, and their horses were not as good as Jack’s.
One in particular, a pretty black charger with a bewigged and beribboned aristocrat on top of it, was declining to follow orders, and stood broadside to Jack, a couple of lengths away. “And what do I hear for this magnificent Turkish charger?” Jack demanded, spurring Turk forward again, so that after building up some speed he T-boned the black horse just in the ribcage and actually knocked it over sideways-the horse went down in a fusillade of hooves, and the rider, who hadn’t seen it coming, flew halfway to the next arrondissement.
“I’ll buy it right now, Jack,” said an English voice, somehow familiar, “if you stop being such a fucking tosser, that is.”
Jack looked up into a face. His first thought was that this was the handsomest face he had ever seen; his second, that it belonged to John Churchill. Seated astride a decent enough horse of his own, right alongside of Jack.
Someone was maneuvering towards them, shouting in French-Jack was too flabbergasted to consider why until Churchill, without taking his eyes off Jack’s, whipped out his rapier, and spun it (seemingly over his knuckles) so as to deflect a sword-thrust that had been aimed directly at Jack’s heart. Instead it penetrated several inches into Jack’s thigh. This hurt, and had the effect of waking Jack up and forcing him to understand that all of this was really happening.
“Bob sends greetings from sunny Dunkirk,” said Churchill. “If you shut up, there is an infinitesimal chance of my being able to save you from being tortured to death before sundown.”
Jack said nothing.
The Art of War is so well study’d, and so equally known in all Places, that ’Tis the longest Purse that conquers now, not the longest Sword. If there is any Country whose people are less martial, less enterprising, and less able for the Field; yet if they have but more Money than their Neighbors, they shall soon be superior to them in Strength, for Money is Power…
-DANIELDEFOE,A Plan of the English Commerce
“IT WAS PHANTASTICKALin the extreme-Mademoiselle, it was beyond French -”
Like a still pond into which a boy has flung a handful of gravel, the Duke of Monmouth’s beauty-aglow in the golden light of an Amsterdam afternoon-was now marred by a thought. The eyebrows steepled, the lips puckered, and the eyes might’ve crossed slightly-it was very difficult to tell, given his and Eliza’s current positions: straight out of a Hindoo frieze.
“What is it?”
“Did we actually achieve sexual, er, congress, at any point during those, er, proceedings?”
“Poh! What’re you, then, some Papist who must draw up a schedule of his sins?”
“You know that I am not, mademoiselle, but-”
“You’re the sort who keeps a tally, aren’t you? Like a tavern-goer who prides himself on the Ps and Qs chalked up on the wall next his name-save in your case it’s wenches.”
Monmouth tried to look indignant. But at the moment his body contained, of the yellow bile, less than at any time since infancy, and so even his indignation was flaccid. “I don’t think there’s anything untoward in wanting to know whom I have, and haven’t, rogered! My father-God rest his soul-rogered simply everyone. I’m merely the first and foremost of a legion of royal bastards! Wouldn’t be proper to lose track.”
“… of your royal bastards?”
“Yes.”
“Then know that no royal bastards can possibly result from what we just did.”
Monmouth got himself worked round to a less outlandish position, viz. sitting up and gazing soulfully into Eliza’s nipples. “I say, would you like to be a Duchess or something?”
Eliza arched her back and laughed. Monmouth shifted his attention to her oscillating navel, and looked wounded.
“What would I have to do? Marry some syphilitic Duke?”
“Of course not. Be my mistress-when I am King of England. My father made all his mistresses into Duchesses.”
“Why?”
Monmouth, scandalized: “Elsewise, ‘tweren’t proper!”
“You already have a mistress.”
“It’s common to have one…”
“And noble to have several?”
“What’s the point of being a king if you can’t fuck a lot of Duchesses?”
“Just so, sir!”
“Though I don’t know if ‘fuck’ is le mot juste for what we did.”
“What I did. You just fidgeted and shuddered.”
“Well it’s like some modish dance, isn’t it, where only one knows the steps. You just have to teach me the other part of it.”
“I am honored, Your Grace-does that mean we’ll be seeing each other again?”
Monmouth, miffed and slightly buffaloed: “I was sincere about making you a Duchess.”
“First you have to make yourself a King.”
The Duke of Monmouth sighed and slammed back into the mattress, driving out an evoluting cloud of dust, straw-ends, bedbugs, and mite f?ces. All of it hung beautifully in the lambent air, as if daubed on canvas by one of those Brueghels.
“I know it is ever so tiresome,” Eliza said, stroking the Duke’s hair back from his brow and tucking it neatly behind his ear. “ Lateryou’ll be slogging round dreadful battlefields. Tonight we go to the Opera!”
Monmouth made a vile face. “Give me a battlefield any time.”
“William’s going to be there.”