The slowness with which Daniel realized all this was infuriating to the young Barker in front of him-who had the cannonball head and mighty jawbone of an authentic Bolstrood.
“Is that Gomer?” Daniel exclaimed, when the ovation had died away into a thrum of thirsty squires calling for beer. Daniel had known the son of Knott Bolstrood as a little boy, but hadn’t set eyes on him in at least a decade.
Gomer Bolstrood answered the question by staring Daniel full in the face. On the front of each of his cheeks, just to either side of his nose, was an old wound: a complex of red trenches and fleshy ramparts, curved round into the crude glyph “S.L.” These marks had been made by a branding iron in the open-air court before the Sessions House at the Old Bailey, a few moments after Gomer had been pronounced guilty of being a Seditious Libeller.
Gomer Bolstrood could not be more than twenty-five years old, but that munition-like head, combined with those brands, gave him the presence of a much older man. He aimed his chin significantly towards a location off behind the stands.
Gomer Bolstrood, son of His Majesty’s Secretary of State Knott, son of ur-Barker Gregory, led Daniel into a Vagabond-camp of tents and wagons set up to serve and support this gala re-enactment. Some of the tents were for the actors and actresses. Gomer led Daniel between a couple of those, which meant fighting their way against a flood tide of “French Mistresses” coming back from the “Sun King’s” throne. Even as the sensitive eyes of Isaac Newton had been semi-permanently branded with the image of the solar disk during his colors experiments, so Daniel’s retinas were now stamped with a dozen or more cleavages. All of those cleavages must have had heads up above them somewhere-but the only one he noticed was speaking to one of the other girls in a French accent. From which he reckoned (in retrospect, somewhat simple-mindedly) that she must be French. But before Daniel could drift off into a full reverie, Gomer Bolstrood had grabbed his upper arm and pulled him ‘tween the flaps of an adjoining beer tent.
The beer was Dutch. So was the man sitting at the table. But the waffle that the man was eating was indisputably Belgian.
Daniel sat in the chair indicated, and watched the Dutch gentleman eat the waffle for a while. He aimed his eyes in that direction, anyway. The image that still persisted before his eyes was cleavages, and the face of that “French” lass. But after a while this, sadly, faded, and was replaced by a waffle that had been put in front of him on a Delft china plate. And none of your crude heavy Pilgrim-ware, but the good stuff, export-grade.
He sensed an implicit demand that he should Partake. So he dissected a corner from the waffle, put it in his mouth, and began to chew it. It was good. His eyes were adjusting to the dimness of the tent, and he was noticing stacks of handbills piled up in the corners, neatly wrapped up in old proof-sheets. The words on the proof-sheets were in every language save English-these bills had been printed in Amsterdam and brought over on a beer-ship or perhaps a waffle-barge. Every so often the tent-flaps would part, and Gomer, or one of the taciturn, pipe-smoking Dutchmen in the corners, would peer out and thrust a brick of hand-bills through the gap.
“Whaat doo Belgian waffles and the cleavages of those girls haave in common?” said the Dutch Ambassador; for it was none other. He dabbed butter from his lips with a napkin. He was blond, and pyramidal, as if he consumed a lot of beer and waffles. “I saaw you staaring at them,” he added, apologetically.
“I haven’t the merest idea-sir!”
“Negateev Spaace,” the Dutch Ambassador intoned, letting those double vowels resonate as only a heavyweight Dutchman could. “Have you heard of thees? It is an aart woord. Wee know about negateev spaace because we like peectures soo muuch. ”
“Is it anything like negative numbers?”
“Eet ees the spaace between twoo theengs,” said the other, and put his hands on his chest and forced his pectorals together to create a poor impression of cleavage. Daniel watched with polite incredulity, and tried not to shudder. The Dutchman plucked a fresh waffle off a plate and held it up by one corner, like a rag soaked with something unpleasant. “Likewise-the waffle of Belgium is shaaped and defiined, not by its own essential naatuure, but by the hot plaates of haard iron that encloose it on toop and boottom.”
“Oh, I see-you’re making a point about the Spanish Netherlands!”
The Dutch Ambassador rolled his eyes and tossed the waffle back over his shoulder-before it struck the ground, a stout, disconcertingly monkey-like dog sprang into the air and snatched it, and began to masticate it- literally-for the sound it made was like a homunculus squatting on the floor muttering, “masticate masticate masticate.”
“Traaped between Fraance and the Dutch Republic, the Spanish Netherlands is raapidly consuumed by Louis the Quatorze Bourbon. Fine. But when Le Roi du Soleil reaches Maestricht he touches-what?”
“The political and military equivalent of a hot iron plate?”
The Dutch Ambassador probed negative space with a licked finger, seemed to touch something, and drew back sharply, making a sizzling noise through his teeth. Perhaps by Dutch luck, perhaps by some exquisite sense of timing, Daniel felt the atmosphere socking him in the gut. The tent clenched inwards, then inflated. Waffle-irons chattered and buzzed in the dimness, like skeletons’ teeth. The monkey-dog scurried under the table.
Gomer Bolstrood pulled back a tent-flap to provide a clear view to the top of the demilune-work, which had been ruptured by detonation of a vast internal store of gunpowder. It looked like a steaming loaf that had been ripped in half. Resurgent Dutchmen were prancing around on the top, trampling and burning those French and English flags. The spectators were on the brink of riot.
Gomer let the tent-flap fall shut again, and Daniel turned his attention back to the ambassador, who had never taken his gaze off of Daniel.
“Maybe Fraance taakes Maestricht-but not so easily-they lose the hero D’Artagnan. The war will be won by us, however.”
“I am pleased to know that you will have success in Holland-now will you consider changing your tactics in London?” Daniel said this loudly so that Gomer could share in it.
“In whaat waay?”
“You know what L’Estrange has been doing.”
“I know what L’Estrange has been failing to do!” the Dutch Ambassador chortled.
“Wilkins is trying to make London like Amsterdam-and I’m not speaking of wooden shoes.”
“Many churches-no established religion.”
“It is his life’s work. He has given up on Natural Philosophy, these last years, to direct all of his energies toward that goal. He wants it because it is best for England-but the High Anglicans and Crypto-Catholics at Court are against anything that smacks of Dissidents. So Wilkins’s task is difficult enough-but when those same Dissidents are linked, in the public mind, with the Dutch enemy, how can he hope for success?”
“In a year-when the dead are counted, and the true costs of the war are understood-Wilkins’s task will be too easy.”
“In a year Wilkins will be dead of the stone. Unless he has it cut out.”
“I can recommend a chirurgeon-barber, very speedy with the knife-”
“He does not feel that he can devote several months to recovery, when the pressure is so immediate and the stakes so high. He is just on the verge of success, Mr. Ambassador, and if you would let up-”
“We will let up when the French do,” the Ambassador said, and waved at Gomer, who pulled the flap open again to show the demilune being re-conquered by French and English troops, led by Monmouth. To one side, “D’Artagnan” lay wounded in a gap in the wall. John Churchill was supporting the old musketeer’s head in his lap, feeding him sips from a flask.