But to arrange it would require planning-again, if the dreaming of fatuous dreams could be named planning. Like an astronomer plotting his tide-tables, Daniel had to project the slow wheeling of the seasons, the liturgical calendar, the sessions of Parliament and the progress of various important people’s engagements, terminal diseases, and pregnancies into the time of the year when Eliza was expected to show up.
His first thought had been that Eliza would be here at just the right time: for in another fortnight the King was going to issue a new Declaration of Indulgence that would make Daniel a hero, at least among Nonconformists. But as he squatted there he began to count off the weeks, tick, tick, tick, like the drops of urine detaching themselves one by one from the tip of his yard, and came aware that it would be much longer before Eliza actually got here-she’d be arriving no sooner than mid-May. By that time, the High Church priests would have had several Sundays to denounce Indulgence from their pulpits; they’d say it wasn’t an act of Christian toleration at all, but a stalking-horse for Popery, and Daniel Waterhouse a dupe at best and a traitor at worst. Daniel might have to go live at Whitehall around then, just to be safe.
It was while imagining that- living like a hostage in a dingy chamber at Whitehall, protected by John Churchill’s Guards-that Daniel recalled another datum from his mental ephemeris, one that stopped up his pissing altogether.
The Queen was pregnant. To date she’d produced no children at all. The pregnancy seemed to have come on more suddenly than human pregnancies customarily did. Perhaps they’d been slow to announce it because they’d expected it would only end in yet another miscarriage. But it seemed to have taken, and the size of her abdomen was now a matter of high controversy around Whitehall. She was expected to deliver in late May or early June-just the same time that Eliza would be visiting.
Eliza was using Daniel to get inside the Palace so that she, Eliza, could know as early as possible whether King James II had a legitimate heir, and adjust her investments accordingly. This should have been as obvious as that Daniel had a big stone in his bladder, but somehow Daniel managed to finish what he was doing and go back into the coffee-house without becoming aware of either.
The only person who seemed to understand matters was Robert Hooke, who was in the same coffee-house. He was talking, as usual, to Sir Christopher Wren. But he had been observing Daniel, this whole time, through an open window. He had the look on his face of a man who was determined to speak plainly of unpleasant facts, and Daniel managed to avoid him.
To d’Avaux
Monsieur,
As you requested, I have changed over to the new cypher. To me it seems preposterous to imagine that the Dutch had broken the old one and read all of your letters! But, as always, you are the soul of discretion, and I will follow whatever precautions you demand of me.
It was good that you wrote me that lovely, if vaguely sarcastic, letter of congratulations on the occasion of my being accorded my rightful hereditary title (since we are now of equal rank-whatever doubts you may harbor as to the legitimacy of my title-I hope you are not offended that I address you as Monsieur instead of Monseigneur now). Until your letter arrived, I had not heard from you in many months. At first, I assumed that the Prince of Orange’s vulgar over-reaction to the so-called abduction attempt had left you isolated in the Hague, and unable to send letters out. As months went by, I began to worry that your affection for your most humble and obedient servant had cooled. Now I can see that this was all just idle phant’sy-the sort of aimless fretting to which my sex is so prone. You and I are as close as ever. So I will try to write a good letter and entice you to write me back.
Business first: I have not tallied the numbers for the second quarter of 1688, and so please keep what follows in confidence from the other investors, but I am confident that we have made out better than anyone suspects. True, V.O.C. stock has been performing miserably, and yet the market has been too volatile to make a winning proposition out of selling it short or playing derivatives. Yet a few things-all in London, strangely enough-have saved our investments from disaster. One is traffic in commodities, particularly silver. England’s coinage is becoming more debased every day, counterfeiters are a plague on the land, and, not to bore you with details, this entails flows of gold and silver in and out of that island from which we can profit if we make the right bets.
You may wonder how I can possibly know which bets to make, living as I do in Versailles. Let me ease your concerns by explaining to you that I have made two visits to London since I last saw you, one in February and one in May, around the time that the son of King James II was born. The second visit was mandatory, of course, for everyone knew that the Queen of England was pregnant, and that the future of Britain and of Europe hinged upon her producing a legitimate male heir. The markets in Amsterdam were bound to react strongly to any news from Whitehall and so I had to be there. I have seduced an Englishman who is close to the King-so close that he was able to get me into Whitehall during the time that the Queen went into labor. Since this is a business report, Monsieur, I’ll say no more here; but allow me to mention that there are certain peculiarities surrounding the delivery of this infant with which I’ll entertain you some other time.
The Englishman is a figure of some note in the Royal Society. He has an older half-brother who makes money in more ways than I can enumerate. The family has old connections to the goldsmith’s shops that used to be situated around Cornhill and Threadneedle, and newer connections to the banca that was set up by Sir Richard Apthorp after Charles II put many of the goldsmiths out of business. If you are not familiar with a banca, it means something akin to a goldsmith, except that they have dropped any pretense of goldsmithing per se; they are financiers dealing in metal and paper. Odd as it might sound, this type of business actually makes sense, at least in the context of London, and Apthorp is doing well by it. It was through this connexion that I became aware of the trends in silver and gold mentioned earlier, and was able to make the right bets, as it were.
Lacking the refinement of the French, the English have no equivalent of Versailles, so the high and mighty, the adherents of diverse religions, commercants, and Vagabonds are all commingled in London. You’ve spent time in Amsterdam, which may give you some idea of what London is like, except that London is not nearly as well organized. Much of the mixing takes place in coffee-houses. Surrounding the ‘Change are diverse coffee- and chocolate-houses that, over time, have come to serve specific clientele. Birds of a feather flock together and so those who trade in East India Company stocks go to one place and so forth. Now as the overseas trade of England has waxed, the business of under-writing ships and other risky ventures has become a trade of some significance in and of itself. Those who are in the market for insurance have recently begun going to Lloyd’s Coffeehouse, which has, for whatever reason, become the favorite haunt of the underwriters. This arrangement works well for buyer and seller alike: the buyer can solicit bids from diverse underwriters simply by strolling from table to table, the sellers can distribute the risks by spontaneously forming associations. I hope I am not boring you to death, Monsieur, but it is a fascinating thing to watch, and you yourself have now made a bit of money from this quarter, which you can use to buy yourself a picaroon-romance if my discourse is too tedious. Tout le monde at Versailles agree that L’Emmerdeur in Barbary is a good read, and I have it on high authority that a copy was spied in the King’s bedchamber.