More and more frequently people ask me about my family. Someone has been spreading rumors that I have noble blood in my veins! I hope that during your genealogical research you can turn up some supporting evidence… turning me into a Countess should be easy compared to making Sophie an Electress. Enough people here now depend on me that my status as a commoner is awkward and inconvenient. They need a pretext to give me a title so that they can have routine conversations with me without having to set up elaborate shams, such as fancy-dress balls, to circumvent the etiquette.
Just the other day I was playing basset with M. le duc de Berwick, who is the bastard of James II by Arabella Churchill, sister of John. This places him in excellent company since as you know this means his paternal grandmother was Henrietta Maria of France, the sister of Louis XIII… again, forgive the genealogical prattle. Will you please sort out everything to do with sorcerers, alchemists, Templars, and Satan-worshippers? I know that you got your start in life by bamboozling some rich alchemists into thinking you actually believed their nonsense. And yet you appear to be a sincere friend of the man called Enoch the Red, who is apparently an alchemist of note. From time to time, his name comes up around a gambling table. Most are nonplussed but certain men will cock an eyebrow or cough into a hand, exchange tremendously significant looks, et cetera , conspicuously trying not to be conspicuous. I have observed the same behaviors in connection with other subjects that are of an esoteric or occult nature. Everyone knows that Versailles was infested with Satan-worshippers, poisoners, abortionists,et cetera , in the late1670s and that most but not all of them were purged; but this only makes it seem murkier and more provocative now. The father of the Earl of Upnor-the Duke of Gunfleet-died suddenly in those days, after drinking a glass of water at a garden party thrown by Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax, whose own husband died in similar fashion a fortnight later, leaving all his titles and possessions to her. There is not a man or woman here who does not suspect poisoning in these and other cases. Upnor and Oyonnax would probably come in for closer scrutiny if there weren’t so many other poisonings to distract people’s attention. Anyway, Upnor is obviously one of those gentlemen who takes an interest in occult matters, and keeps making dark comments about his contacts at Trinity College in Cambridge. I am tempted to dismiss all of this as a faintly pathetic hobby for noble toffs bored out of their minds by the ingenious tedium, the humiliating inconsequence, of Versailles. But since I have picked out Upnor as an enemy I would like to know if it amounts to anything… can he cast spells on me? Does he have secret brethren in every city? What is Enoch Root?
I am going to spend much of the winter in Holland and will write to you from there.
Eliza
No man goes so high as he who knows not where he is going.
–CROMWELL
“WELL MET,BROTHERWILLIAM,” SAIDDaniel, getting a boot up on the running-board of the carriage, vaulting in through the door, and surprising the hell out of a dumpling-faced Englishman with long stringy dark hair. The passenger snatched the hem of his long black frock coat and drew it up; Daniel could not tell whether he was trying to make room, or to avoid being brushed against by Daniel. Both hypotheses were reasonable. This man had spent a lot more time in ghastly English prisons than Daniel had, and learned to get out of other men’s way. And Daniel was mud-spattered from riding, whereas this fellow’s clothes, though severe and dowdy, were immaculate. Brother William had a tiny mouth that was pursed sphincter-tight at the moment.
“Recognized your arms on the door,” Daniel explained, slamming it to and reaching out the window to give it a familiar slap. “Flagged your coachman down, reckoning we must be going to the same lodge to see the same gentleman.”
“When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the Gentleman?”
“Forgive me, I should have said chap, bloke… how are things in your Overseas Possession, Mr. Penn? Did you ever settle that dispute with Maryland?”
William Penn rolled his eyes and looked out the window. “It will take a hundred years and a regiment of Surveyors to settle it! At least those damned Swedes have been brought to heel. Everyone imagines that, simply because I own the Biggest Pencil in the World, that my ticket is punched, my affairs settled once and for all… but I tell you, Brother Daniel, that it has been nothing but troubles… if it is a sin to lust after worldly goods, videlicet a horse or a door-knocker, then what have I got myself into now? It is a whole new universe of sinfulness.”
“’Twas either accept Pennsylvania, or let the King continue owing you sixteen thousand pounds, yes?”
Penn did not take his gaze away from the window, but squinted as if trying to hold back a mighty volume of flatulence, and shifted his focal point to a thousand miles in the distance. But this was coastal Holland and there was nothing out that window save the Curvature of the World. Even pebbles cast giant shadows in the low winter sun. Daniel could not be ignored.
“I am chagrined, appalled, mortified that you are here! You are not welcome, Brother Daniel, you are a problem, and obstacle, and if I were not a pacifist I would beat you to death with a rock.”
“Brother William, meeting as we so often do at Whitehall, in the King’s Presence, to have our lovely chats about Religious Toleration, it is most difficult for us to hold frank exchanges of views, and so I am pleased you’ve at last found this opportunity to hose me down with those splenetic humours that have been so long pent up.”
“I am a plain-spoken fellow, as you can see. Perhaps you should say what you mean more frequently, Brother Daniel-it would make everything so much simpler.”
“It is easy for you to be that way, when you have an estate the size of Italy to go hiding in, on the far side of an ocean.”
“That was unworthy of you, Brother Daniel. But there is some truth in what you say… it is… distracting… at the oddest times… my mind drifts, and I find myself wondering what is happening on the banks of the Susquehanna…”
“Right! And if England becomes completely unlivable, you have someplace to go. Whereas I…”
Finally Penn looked at him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t considered moving to Massachusetts.”
“I consider it every day. Nonetheless, most of my constituency does not have that luxury available and so I’d like to see if we can avoid letting Olde Englande get any more fouled up than ‘tis.”
Penn had disembarked from a ship out at Scheveningen less than an hour ago. That port-town was connected to the Hague by several roads and a canal. The route that Penn’s driver had chosen ran along a canal-edge, through stretches of Dutch polder-scape and fields where troops drilled, which extended to within a few hundred yards of the spires of the Binnenhof.
The carriage now made a left turn onto a gravel track that bordered an especially broad open park, called the Malieveld, where those who could afford it went riding when the weather was pleasant. No one was there today. At its eastern end the Malieveld gave way to the Haagse Bos, a carefully managed forest laced through with riding-paths. The carriage followed one of these through the woods for a mile, until it seemed that they had gone far out into the wild. But then suddenly cobblestones, instead of gravel, were beneath the wheel-rims, and they were passing through guarded gates and across counterweighted canal-bridges. The formal gardens of a small estate spread around them. They rolled to a stop before a gate-house. Daniel glimpsed a hedge and the corner of a fine house before his view out the carriage-window was blocked by the head, and more so by the hat, of a captain of the Blue Guards. “William Penn,” said William Penn. Then, reluctantly, he added: “And Dr. Daniel Waterhouse.”