Nicole-for that was this woman’s name-did not move until she had seen Eliza nod. Then she stepped forward and snatched the infant away, glaring at Rossignol-who responded with a grave bow. By the time she had reached the room’s exit, the baby had stopped crying, and as she hustled him off down the corridor he began to make a contented “aaah.”
Rossignol had forgotten the baby already. The bundle count was down to two. But he had the good manners not to pay undue attention to the packet on the side-table, even though he knew it to be filled with stolen diplomatic correspondence. All his attention, for now, was fixed on Eliza.
Eliza was accustomed to being looked at, and did not mind it. But she was preoccupied now for a little while. Rossignol had no feelings whatsoever for the baby. He had not the slightest intention of being its father. This did not surprise her especially. If anything, it was simpler and easier that way. He wanted her for what lay at either end of her spinal column-it was not clear which end he favored-and not for her spiritual qualities. Certainly not for her offspring.
King Louis XIV of France had found it convenient to make Eliza a Countess. Among other privileges, this had granted her admittance to the Salon of Diana in the royal chateau at Versailles. There she had noticed this bored and lonesome man studying her. She had been every bit as bored. As it had turned out, they had been bored for the same reason: They both knew the odds of these games, and saw little point in staking money on them. But to talk about the odds, and to speculate as to ways of systematically beating such games, was absorbing. It had seemed unwise, or at least impolite, to hold such conversations around the gaming-tables, and so Eliza and Rossignol had strolled in the gardens, and had moved quickly from the odds of card-games to more elevated talk of Leibniz, Newton, Huygens, and other Natural Philosophers. Of course they had been noticed by gossips looking out the windows; but those foolish Court girls, who mistook fashion for taste, had not considered Rossignol desirable, had not understood that he was a genius, unrecognized as such by the savants of Europe.
At the same time-though she had not realized this until later-he had been observing her even more shrewdly. Many of her letters to Leibniz, and Leibniz’s letters back to her, had crossed his desk, for he was a member of the Cabinet Noir, whose purpose was to open and read foreign correspondence. He had found her letters to be curiously long, and filled with vapid chatter about hairstyles and the cut of the latest fashions. His true purpose in strolling with her in the gardens of Versailles had been to determine whether she was as empty-headed as she seemed in her letters. The answer, clearly, was no; and moreover she had turned out to know a lot about mathematics, metaphysics, and Natural Philosophy. This had sufficed to send him back to his family chateau at Juvisy, where he had broken the steganographic code that Eliza had been using to correspond with Leibniz. He could have destroyed, or at least damaged, her then, but he had lacked the desire to. For a kind of seduction had taken place between the two of them, which had not been acted upon until thirteen months ago.
It would have made matters a good deal simpler if he had fallen in love with the baby and proposed to elope with her, and him, to some other country. But this, as she now saw clearly, was unthinkable in so many different ways that to dream of it any more was a waste of time. Oh, well (she thought), if the world were populated solely by persons who loved and desired each other symmetrically, it might be happier, but not so interesting. And there would be no place in such a world for a person such as Eliza. During her weeks in Dunkerque, she had gotten better than ever at making do with what Fortune sent her way. If there was to be no doting father, so be it. Nicole was an ex-whore, recruited from one of Dunkerque’s waterfront brothels. But she had already given the baby more love than he would get in a lifetime with Bonaventure Rossignol.
“Now you show up!” she said finally.
“The cryptanalyst to His Majesty the King of France,” said Rossignol, “has responsibilities.” He was not being arch-merely stating facts. “Things are expected of him. Now. The last time you got into trouble, a year ago-”
“Correction, monsieur: the last time you know about.”
“C’est juste. On that occasion, war was brewing on the Rhine, and I had a plausible reason to go that way. Finding you, mademoiselle, in a most complex predicament, I endeavoured to assist you.”
“By impregnating me?”
“I did that out of passion-as did you, mademoiselle, for our flirtation had been lengthy. And yet it did militate in your favor-perhaps even saved your life. You seduced Etienne d’Arcachon the very next day.”
“I let him believe he was seducing me,” Eliza demurred.
“Just as I said. Tout le monde knew about it. When you turned up pregnant in the Hague, everyone, including le Roi, and Etienne, assumed that the baby was the spawn of Arcachon; and, when it was born healthy, this made it seem that you were that rarest of specimens: one who could mate with a scion of the de Lavardac line without passing on its well-known hereditary imperfections to the child. I did as much as I could to propagate this myth through other channels.”
“Are you referring to how you stole, and decyphered, my journal, and gave it to the King?”
“Wrong on all counts. Monsieur le comte d’Avaux stole it-or would have, if I had not galloped post-haste to the Hague and co-opted him. I did not decypher it so much as produce a fictionalized version of it. And since the King owns me, and all my work, I did not so much give it to his majesty as direct his majesty’s attention to it.”
“Couldn’t you have directed his majesty’s attention elsewhere?”
“Mademoiselle. You had been witnessed by many Persons of Quality carrying out what was obviously a spy-mission. D’Avaux and his minions were doing all in their power-and they have much power-to drag your name through the muck. To direct the attention of le Roi elsewhere would have booted you nothing. Rather, I produced for his majesty an account of your actions that was tame compared to the fabrications of d’Avaux; it deflated that man’s pretensions while cementing the belief that the baby had been fathered by Etienne de Lavardac d’Arcachon. I was not trying to rehabilitate you-that would have required a miracle-only to mitigate the damage. For I feared that they might send someone to assassinate you, or abduct you, and bring you back to France.”
And now he stopped because he had talked himself into a faux pas, and was mortified. “Er…”
“Yes, monsieur?”
“I did not anticipate this.”
“Is that why it took you so long to get here?”
“I have already told you that the King’s cryptanalyst has responsibilities-none of which, as it turns out, place him in Dunkerque. I came as soon as I could.”
“You came as soon as I incited your jealousy by praising Lieutenant Bart in a letter.”
“Ah, so you admit it!”
“I admit nothing, monsieur, for he is every bit as remarkable as I made him out to be, and any man in his right mind would be jealous of him.”
“It is just so difficult for me to follow,” said Rossignol.
“Poor Bon-bon!”
“Please do not be sarcastic. And please do not address me by that ridiculous name.”
“What is it, pray tell, that the greatest cryptanalyst in the world cannot follow?”