“A cloud, just peeking over the horizon.”
“Weather as fine as today’s could never last,” said Huygens, in a fair sample of Dutch pessimism; for the weather had been wretched.
“Does it have the appearance of a rain-cloud or…”
“That is what I am trying to establish,” Eliza said, trying to bring it into focus.
“Enoch was having you on a bit,” Huygens said, for the others had by now told him the story of Enoch’s enigmatic turn in the Plein. “He felt his joints aching and knew a change in the weather was in the offing! And he knew it would come out of Pegasus since that is in the west, and that is where the wind is from. Very clever.”
“A few wisps of cloud, indeed… but what I first mistook for heavy rain-clouds, is actually a ship under sail… taking advantage of the moon-light to raise her sails, and make a run up the coast,” Eliza said.
“Cloth-smugglers,” Waterhouse predicted, “coming in from round Ipswich.” Eliza stepped back and he took a turn at the eyepiece. “No, I’m wrong, ’Tis the wrong sail-plan for a smuggler.”
“She is rigged for speed, but proceeding cautiously just now,” Huygens pronounced. Then it was Fatio’s turn: “I would wager she is bringing contraband from France-salt, wine, or both.” And so they continued, more and more tediously, until Eliza announced that she was going down to bed.
SHE WAS AWAKENED BY THEtolling of a church-bell. For some reason she felt it was terribly important to count the strokes, but she woke up too late to be sure. She had left her long winter coat across the foot of her bed to make her toes a little warmer and she now sat up and snatched it and drew it round her shoulders in one quick movement, before the chill could rush through the porous linen of her nightgown. She swung her feet out of bed, poked at the pair of rabbit-pelt slippers on the floor to chase away any mice that might be using them as beds, and then pushed her feet into them.
For in somewhat the same way as rodents may quietly set up house-keeping in one’s clothing during the hours of darkness, an idea had established itself in Eliza’s mind while she had been asleep. She did not become fully conscious of this idea until a few minutes later when she went into the great room to stoke up the fire, and saw all of Huygens’s clocks reading the same time: a few minutes past nine o’clock in the morning.
She looked out a window over the Plein and saw high white clouds. From the myriad chimneys of the Binnenhof, plumes of smoke trailed eastwards before a steady onshore breeze. Perfect day for sand-sailing.
She went to the door of Huygens’s bedchamber and raised a fist, then held off. If she were wrong, it were foolish to disturb him. If she were right, it were foolish to spend a quarter of an hour waking him up and trying to convince him.
Huygens kept only a few horses here. The riding-fields of the Malieveld and the Koekamp lay only a musket-shot from the house, and so when he or any of his guests felt like going riding, they need only stroll to one of the many livery-stables that surrounded those places.
Eliza ran out a back door of the house, nearly knocking down a Dutch woman out sweeping the pavement, and took off round the corner running in her rabbit-slippers.
Then she faltered, remembering she’d not brought any money.
“Eliza!” someone shouted.
She turned around to see Nicolas Fatio de Duilliers running up the street after her.
“Do you have money?” she called.
“Yes!”
Eliza ran away from him and did not stop until she reached the nearest livery stable, a couple of hundred long strides away, far enough to get her heart pounding and her face flushed. By the time Fatio caught up with her she had wrapped up a negotiation with the owner; the Swiss mathematician came in the gate just in time to see Eliza thrusting a finger at him and shouting, “and he pays!”
Saddling the horses would take several minutes. Eliza felt on the verge of throwing up. Fatio was agitated, too, but breeding was at war with common sense in him, and breeding prevailed; he attempted to make conversation.
“I infer, Mademoiselle, that you too have received some communication from Enoch the Red on this morning?”
“Only if he came and whispered in my ear while I was sleeping!”
Fatio didn’t know what to make of that. “I encountered him a few minutes ago at my usual coffee-house… he elaborated on his cryptic statement of last night…”
“What we saw last night was enough for me,” Eliza answered. A sleepy stable-boy dropped a saddle, and instead of bending to pick it up, tried to make some witty comment. The owner was doing sums with a quill-pen that wouldn’t hold its ink. Tears of frustration came to Eliza’s eyes. “Damn it!”
“RIDING BARE-BACK IS LIKE RIDING,only more so,” Jack Shaftoe had said to her once. She preferred to remember Jack as little and as infrequently as possible, but now this memory came to her. Until the day they had met underneath Vienna, Eliza had never ridden a horse. Jack had taken obvious pleasure in teaching her the rudiments, more so when she seemed uncertain, or fell off, or let Turk run away with her. But after she had become expert, Jack had turned peevish and haughty, and lost no opportunity to remind her that riding well in a saddle was no accomplishment, and that until one learned to ride bare-back, one didn’t know how to ride at all. Jack knew all about it, of course, because it was how Vagabonds stole horses.
Choosing the proper mount was of the utmost importance (he had explained). Given a string or stable of horses to choose from, one wanted to pick a mount with a flat back, and yet not too wide-bodied or else it wouldn’t be possible to get a good grip with the knees. The wither, or bony hump at the base of the neck, should not be too large (which would make it impossible to lie flat while galloping) nor too small (which gave no purchase for the hands), but somewhere in between. And the horse should be of a compliant disposition, for at some point it was bound to happen that the horse-thief would become disarranged on the horse’s back, as the outcome of some bump or swerve, and then it would be entirely up to the horse whether the Vagabond would be flung off into space or coaxed back into balance.
Now it might have been pure chance that Eliza’s favorite horse in this stable-the mare she asked for by name whenever she called-possessed a flat but not overly broad back, a medium-sized wither, and a sweet disposition. Or perhaps Jack Shaftoe’s advice on the finer points of horse-thievery had subtly informed her choice. At any rate, the mare’s name was Vla (“cream”), and Eliza rated it as unlikely she would ever try to pitch Eliza off her bare back. The stable-boy was attempting to saddle up a different mare, but Vla was in a stall only a few paces away.
Eliza walked over and opened the gate to that stall, greeting Vla by name, and then stepped forward until her nose was caressing the mare’s, and breathed very gently into Vla’s nostrils. This prompted Vla to raise her enormous head slightly, trying to draw closer to that warmth. Eliza cupped the mare’s chin in her hand and exhaled into those nostrils again, and Vla responded with a little shudder of gratitude. Giant overlapping slabs of muscle twitched here and there, coming awake. Eliza now stepped into the stall, trailing a hand along the mare’s side, and then used the stall’s side-planks as a ladder, climbing to a level from which she was able to dive across Vla’s back. Then, by gripping that convenient medium-sized wither with one hand, she was able to spin herself round on her belly and get her legs wrapped around Vla’s body-this required pulling the narrow skirts of her nightgown up round her hips, but her coat hung down to either side and covered her legs. Her bare buttocks, thighs, and calves were pressed directly against the mare’s body, which was exquisitely warm. Vla took this all calmly enough. She did not respond the first time Eliza pinched her bottom, but on the second pinch she walked out into the stable-yard, and when Eliza told her what a good girl she was and pinched her a third time she broke into a trot that nearly bounced Eliza straight off. Eliza flung herself full-length onto the mare’s back and neck, and buried her face in the mane, and clenched a hank of the coarse hair in her teeth. All her attention was concentrated for those few moments on not falling off. The next time she looked around, they had trotted out into the street, pursued none too effectively by a few grooms and stable-hands who still could not make out whether they were witnessing a bizarre mishap or a criminal act.