“Yes, mademoiselle-your journal.”
“Who is in possession of this book?”
“It is not a book, as you know perfectly well, but an embroidered pillowcase.” Here d’Avaux began to pinken again.
“A…pillowcase?”
“Yes.”
“In English they call it a sham, by the way. Tell me, are there any other bedlinens implicated in the scandal?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“Curtains? Rugs? Tea-towels?”
“No, mademoiselle.”
“Who has possession of this…pillowcase?”
“You do, mademoiselle.”
“Such items are bulky and soon go out of fashion. Before I left the Hague, I sold most of my household goods and burned the rest-including all pillowcases.”
“But a copy was made, mademoiselle, by a clerk in the French Embassy in the Hague, and given to Monsieur Rossignol.”
“That clerk died of the smallpox,” Eliza told him-which was a lie that she had made up on the spot, but it would take him a month to find this out.
“Ah, but Monsieur Rossignol is alive and well, and trusted implicitly by the King.”
“Does the King trust you, monsieur?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Monsieur Rossignol sent a copy of his report to the King but not to you. It made me curious. And what of the monk?”
“Which monk?”
“The Qwghlmian monk in Dublin to whom Monsieur Rossignol sent the plaintext to be translated.”
“You are most well-informed, mademoiselle.”
“I do not think that I am particularly well-or ill-informed, monsieur. I am simply trying to be of service to you.”
“In what way?”
“You have a difficult interview awaiting you at Versailles. You shall come before the King. In his treasury-which he watches with utmost care-he has a fortune in hard money, lately deposited by me. You will make him believe that I am a commoner and a traitor by describing a report you have never seen about a pillowcase that no longer exists, supposedly carrying an encrypted message in Qwghlmian, which no one reads except for some three-fingered monk in Ireland.”
“We shall see,” said d’Avaux. “My interview with Father Edouard de Gex will be a simple matter by comparison.”
“And how does Edouard de Gex enter into it?”
“Oh, of all the Jesuits at Versailles, mademoiselle, he is the most influential, for he is the confessor of de Maintenon. Indeed, when anyone” (raising an eyebrow at Eliza) “misbehaves at Versailles, Madame de Maintenon complains of it to Father de Gex, who then goes to the confessor of the guilty party so that the next time she goes to confession she is made aware of the Queen’s displeasure. Yes, you may smirk at the idea, mademoiselle-many do-but it gives him great power. For when a courtier steps into the confessional and has his ears blistered by the priest, he has no way to know whether the criticism is really coming from the Queen, the King, or de Gex.”
“What will you confess to de Gex, then?” Eliza asked. “That you have had impure thoughts about the Countess de la Zeur?”
“It is not in a confessional where I shall meet him,” d’Avaux said, “but in a salon somewhere, and the topic of conversation will be: Where is this orphan boy to be raised? What is his Christian name, by the way?”
“I have been calling him Jean.”
“But his Christian name? He has been baptized, of course?”
“I have been very busy,” Eliza said. “He is to be baptized in a few days, here at the Church of St.-Eloi.”
“How many days exactly? Surely it is not such a demanding calculation for one of your talents.”
“Three days.”
“Father de Gex will be, I’m sure, suitably impressed by this display of piety. The christening is to be performed by a Jesuit, I presume?”
“Monsieur, I would not think of having it done by a Jansenist!”
“Excellent. I look forward to making the acquaintance of this little Christian when you bring him to Versailles.”
“Are you certain I’ll be welcome there, monsieur?”
“Pourquoi non? I only pray that I shall be.”
“Pourquoi non, monsieur?”
“Certain important papers of mine have gone missing from my office in Dublin.”
“Do you need them immediately?”
“No. But sooner or later-”
“It will certainly be later. Dublin is far away. The inquiry proceeds at a snail’s pace.” Which was Eliza’s way of saying he’d not get his precious papers back unless he gave a good report of her at Versailles.
“I am sorry to trouble you about such matters. To common people, such things are important! To us they are nothing.”
“Then let us let nothing come between us,” Eliza said.
AS BONAVENTURE ROSSIGNOL HAD FORESEEN, d’Avaux did not tarry by the sea-side, but was en route for Paris before cock-crow the next day.
Rossignol stayed for two more nights after that, then rose one morning and rode out of town with as little fuss as when he’d ridden into it. He must have met the carriage of the Marquis d’Ozoir around mid-morning, for it was just before the stroke of noon when Eliza-who was upstairs getting dressed for church-heard the stable-gates being thrown open, and went to the window to see four horses drawing a carriage into the yard.
The coat of arms painted on the door of that carriage matched the one on the gates. Or so she guessed. To verify as much would have required a magnifying-glass, a herald, and more time and patience than Eliza had just now. The arms of Charlotte-Adelaide were a quartering of those of de Gex and de Crepy, and to make the arms of d’Ozoir, these had been recursively quartered with those of the House of de Lavardac d’Arcachon-themselves a quartering of something that included a lot of fleurs-de-lis, with an arrangement of black heads in iron collars, slashed with a bend sinister to indicate bastardy. At any rate, what it all meant was that the lord of the manor was back. Just as he stepped down from his carriage, the bells in the old, alienated belfry down the street began to toll noon. Eliza was late for church, and that was an even worse thing than usual, because on this day the proceedings could not go forward until she and her baby arrived. She sent an aide down to explain matters, and to tender apologies, to the Marquis, and hustled out one door with her baby and her entourage just as Claude Eauze entered through another. Presently he did the chivalrous thing, viz. got his carriage turned round and sent it rattling down the street after her. But so close was one thing to another in Dunkerque that, by the time the carriage caught up with her, Eliza was already standing at the church’s door. She might have given it the slip altogether if she had gone in directly. But she had paused to look at the Eglise St.-Eloi, and to think.
She favored the looks of this church. It was late-Gothic, and could have passed for old, but was in fact a new fabrique. The Spaniards had levelled the old one some decades past in a dispute as to the ownership of Flanders. All that remained of it was the belfry, and if its looks were any indication, the Spaniards had wrought a great improvement on the appearance of this town. The new one had a great rose window filled with a delicate tracery of stone, like the rosette on the belly of a lute, and Eliza always liked to stop and admire it when she passed by. Now, holding her baby to her bosom, she stopped to admire it one more time. At that moment a counter-factual vision entered her phant’sy, wherein Rossignol was by her side, and the two of them went in to be joined in marriage, and then walked down to the water and boarded ship and sailed off to Amsterdam or London to raise their baby in exile.
The dream was interrupted by the raucous vehement on-rush of the carriage of the Marquis d’Ozoir, which was about as fitting and about as welcome in this scene as musketry at a seduction. Lest she get trapped outside exchanging pleasantries with the Marquis, she hurried through the door.
The church’s vault was supported by several columns that were arranged around the altar in a semicircle, reminding Eliza of the bars of a giant birdcage: a birdcage into which she had been chased, not only by the banging and rattling carriage, but by divers other sudden and frightening onslaughts as well. She could fly no farther. She was caught. Best to flutter up onto her new perch, preen, and peer about. The Marquis slipped in alone, and took a seat in his family pew. She peered at him; he peered, discreetly, at her. Jean Bart watched them watching each other. They, and several servants and acquaintances who’d showed up, joined in the standings, sittings, kneelings, mumblings, and gestures of the Mass. Jean-Jacques turned out to be one of those infants who accepts the dunking, not with hysterical protests but with aghast curiosity; this made his godfather immensely proud, while giving his mother a vision of long rambunctious years ahead. The Jesuit crossed his forehead with oil and said that he was a priest and a prophet and that his name was Jean-Jacques: Jean after Jean Bart, who became his godfather, and Jacques after another man of Eliza’s acquaintance who was unable to attend the rite, being either dead, or crazy and chained to an oar. No mention was made of the child’s natural father. Indeed very little notice was given to the mother; for the story being given out was that Jean-Jacques was an orphan rescued from some massacre in the Palatinate and only being looked after by Eliza.