“Many would, my lady. The queue of carriages at the Tower is long. You rank most of them, and should be able to go directly to its head. But if I might, first-?”
“Yes?”
They had been driving around a triangular circuit of Cornhill, Threadneedle, and Bishopsgate, enclosing some twenty acres of ground that contained more money than the rest of the British Isles. It was remarkable that they had been able to converse for even this long without the topic having arisen.
“It is frightfully indecent of me to mention this, I know,” said Ravenscar, “but I am, at present, the owner of rather a lot of silver. Rather a lot. They tell me ’tis worth ever so much more now than ’twas three weeks ago, when I bought it; but if news were to arrive, say from Portsmouth, that the French invasion had miscarried-”
“It would suddenly be worth ever so much less. Yes, I know. Well, the invasion has failed.”
Ravenscar’s pelvis actually rose off the bench as if someone had shoved a dagger into his kidney. His voice vaulted to a higher register: “If we could, then, pay a brief call upon a certain gentleman, now, before you go spreading the news about-”
“I’ve no intention of doing that, as the news shall get here soon enough on its own,” said Eliza, which little comforted Ravenscar. “But before you spread the news, by selling all of your silver, I have a small transaction that I must conduct at the House of Hacklheber-do you know it?”
“That? It is a hole in the wall, a niche, a dovecote-if you require pocket money in London, madame, I can convey you to the banca of Sir Richard Apthorp himself, who will be pleased to extend you credit-”
“That is most courteous of you,” said Eliza, rummaging in her pathetic bag, and drawing out a slimy bundle of skins, “but I prefer to get my pocket-money from my own banker, and that is the House of Hacklheber.”
“Very well,” said the Marquis of Ravenscar, and boomed on the ceiling with the head of his walking-stick. “To the Golden Mercury in ’Change Alley!”
“I CONFESS THAT I was observing through the window-and only out of a gentlemanly concern for your safety,” said the Marquis of Ravenscar, “and only after some half an hour had elapsed-for it struck me as rather a lengthy transaction.”
Eliza had only just returned to the carriage and was still smoothing her skirts down. She’d been in there for an hour and twelve minutes. Ten minutes’ waiting would have made Ravenscar impatient; twenty, apoplectic. Seventy-two had put him through the full gamut of emotional states known to mortal man, as well as a few normally reserved for angels and devils. Now, he was spent, drained. Though perhaps just a bit apprehensive that she would want to go on some other errand next.
“Yes, my lord?”
“The fellow had-well, I don’t know, a bit of a startled look about him. Perhaps ’twas just my imagination.”
“Mind your toes!” This warning came simultaneously from Eliza, and from one of Ravenscar’s footmen, who had carried a box up the wee stairs behind Eliza and thrust it inside; its weight overbore his strength, and it crashed onto the floor, making the carriage rock and bounce up and down for a while on its springs. One of the horses whinnied in protest. “Where shall I place the others, madame?” he inquired.
“There are more!?” exclaimed Ravenscar.
“Ten more, yes.”
“What are we-pardon me, you-going to do with so much, er…did you say ten? Please tell me it is copper.”
Eliza flipped the lid open with her toe to reveal more freshly minted silver pennies than the Marquis of Ravenscar had seen in one place in years. He responded in the only way fitting: with absolute silence. Meanwhile his driver answered the question for him.
“Not load it on this coach, guv’nor, the suspension won’t hold.” The driver was struggling to settle the exhausted horses, who had sensed that the carriage was rapidly getting heavier. Another crash sounded from the shelf in the back, causing the vehicle to pitch nose up, and then another on the roof, which began to bulge downward and emit ominous ticks.
“Summon a hackney!” commanded the Marquis, and then swiveled his eyes back to Eliza, imploring her to answer his question.
“What am I going to do with it?”
“Yes.”
“Sell it, I suppose, at the same time as you are selling yours. It is rather more pocket-money than I shall be requiring during my stay in your city. Though I should very much like to go to the West End later, and go-what is the word they use for it now?”
“I believe the word you are looking for is ‘shopping,’ madame.”
“Yes, shopping. The money, of course, belongs to the King of France. But, gentleman that he is, he would never begrudge me the loan of a few pounds sterling so that I might change into a new dress.”
“Nor would I, madame,” said Ravenscar, “if it came to that-but le Roi, it goes without saying, has precedence.” Ravenscar swallowed. “It is a remarkable coincidence.”
“What coincidence, my lord?”
More jingling crashes came to their ears from just behind, where a hackney had pulled up, and was being laden with more strong-boxes. The sound was enormously distracting to Ravenscar, who struggled to keep stringing words together. “Our route to the lovely shops of the West End shall take us past Apthorp’s, where-”
“Oh, that’s right. You wish to put your silver on the market. Not yet.”
“Not yet!?”
“Think of a ship’s captain, sailing into battle, guns charged and ready to let go a broadside. If he loses his nerve, and fires too soon, the balls fall short of their target, and splash into the water, and he looks a fool. Worse, he is not afforded the opportunity to re-load. It is like that now.”
Ravenscar did not seem convinced.
“After our epistolary flirtation, which I did enjoy so much,” Eliza tried, “I should be crestfallen if I journeyed all the way to London only to find that you were a premature ejaculator.”
“Really! Madame! I do not know how the ladies discourse in France, but here in England-”
“Oh, stop it. ’Twas a figure of speech, nothing more.”
“And not a very accurate one, by your leave; for more is at stake here than you seem to know!”
“I know precisely what’s at stake, my lord.” Here Eliza was distracted by some activity without. A man had emerged from the door of the House of Hacklheber, dressed as if about to embark on a voyage, and was signalling for a hackney. There was no lack of these, as word seemed to have spread that coins were falling from the sky hereabouts. Within moments the fellow was on his way.
“Was that one of the shouting Germans?” Ravenscar inquired.
Eliza met his eye. “You could hear them all the way out here?” Then she tilted her head out the window to watch.
“Madame, I could have heard them from Wales. What were they on about?”
Eliza was crooking her finger at someone outside, then nodding as if to say, yes, I mean you, sirrah! Presently a face appeared in the window: a hackney-driver, hat in hands. “Follow yonder German until he gets on a boat. Watch the boat until you can’t see it any more. Go to-what did you call your Den of Iniquity, my lord?”
“The Nag’s Head.”
“Go to the Nag’s Head and leave word for the Marquis that his ship has come in. Someone there will then give you more of these.” Eliza blindly scooped some coins out of her strong-box and slapped them into the driver’s hat.
“Right you are, milady!”
“It shall probably be the Gravesend Ferry, but you might have to trail him all the way to Ipswich or something,” Eliza added, partly to explain the amount; for she got the idea, from the way Ravenscar had just swallowed his own tongue, that she had overpaid.
The hackney driver was so gone, ’twas as if he’d been launched from a siege-mortar. Eliza looked back to Ravenscar. “You asked, what were the Germans shouting about?”