“Nothing further happened until yesterday, when a letter came in addressed to Artan, posted from Rosetta, at the mouth of the Nile-and written in the same hand as the one from Sanlucar de Barrameda. Now this was remarkable, for I had translated the Sanlucar letter into French, and it had said nothing about Egypt. It was full of family chitchat. The fellow who wrote it-who I now believe to be Vrej Esphahnian-had been out of contact with Artan for a long time. He had said nothing whatever about what he was doing in Sanlucar or whither he might be going next. And yet Artan, upon receiving this document, had known, somehow, that he must post his reply to Vrej in Cairo. Not long afterwards, this Vrej had appeared at Rosetta-which is en route to Cairo-long enough to despatch yet another letter filled with banal chitchat.”
“And so it is obvious to you that encrypted messages are contained in these letters,” Eliza continued; for she had spent enough time listening to the discourse of Natural Philosophers to recognize when one of them was developing a hypothesis. “This I understand well enough, and I compliment you on your prowess. But why do you deem it so important to tell me about it?”
Rossignol was not willing to attempt an answer, and looked at de Gex. From which Eliza collected that it must be a delicate matter; for de Gex, as de Maintenon’s favorite churchman, was allowed to speak bluntly in a way that was unusual in a place where insults were commonly answered with rapier-thrusts. “We who love and admire the family de Lavardac,” he said, “are terribly concerned that Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon, acting out of the most noble motives, and exhibiting marvelous ingenuity and strength of will, has made a mistake. We would assist him in mending his error before it leads to embarrassment. It were best to mend it this evening, before the ramifications spread any further. To bring it before Madame la duchesse d’Arcachon, or Etienne, might not be as productive as to bring it before you, mademoiselle.”
“Very well. Does the mistake have something to do with Alchemy?”
The briefest of pauses. Then: “Indeed, mademoiselle. Monsieur le duc participated in an act of piracy, which, as you know, is a usual thing in war, and wholly honourable. However, I am sorry to report that he was misinformed by persons who were ignorant, or perhaps malicious. Monsieur le duc supposed that the prize was silver pigs. In fact it was gold. And not just any gold, but gold imbued with miraculous-even divine-qualities.”
“I see,” said Eliza. “And needless to say, the Esoteric Brotherhood takes a proprietary interest in it?”
“I should prefer to say custodial, not proprietary. This material is not for just anyone to possess. In the wrong hands it could do the Devil’s work.”
“Hmm. Would Lothar von Hacklheber’s be the wrong hands?”
“No, mademoiselle. Lothar is a difficult man, but one knows where he lives, and one can reason with him. A boat-load of Vagabonds at large in the Mediterranean, bound for Egypt-that is the wrong hands.”
“Well, you may set your mind at ease, Father Edouard. The gold you seek was to have come ashore along with Monsieur le duc. He planned to drop it off in Lyon. It should now locked in the strong-box of a certain banker there, who values it only as gold. I shall be pleased to supply you with his name. He has no awareness of, or interest in, its supernatural characteristics. Presumably he will be pleased to exchange it for an equal or larger weight of mundane gold.”
“We should be in your debt, mademoiselle.”
“You may consider the debt discharged, if you tell me one thing.”
“Name it, mademoiselle.”
“The Bastille is a prison for enemies of the Realm. Why were the Esphahnians thrown into it?”
“Because they were thought to be connected to what happened here in 1685.”
“And-since I will be the last person in France to know-what happened here in 1685!?”
“You may have heard, on the lips of servants or other vulgar persons, tales concerning a man called L’Emmerdeur. By your leave, mademoiselle! For even his epithet is almost too vulgar to speak aloud.”
“I have heard of him,” said Eliza, though in her ears, the sound of her own voice was nearly drowned out by the stomp, stomp, stomp of her heart. “I did hear a story once that he showed up uninvited at some grand soiree in Paris and made a bloody mess of it-”
“That was here.”
“In this house!?”
“In this house. He cut Etienne’s hand off, and completely destroyed the ballroom.”
“How can one Vagabond, vastly outnumbered by armed noblemen, single-handedly destroy a Duke’s ballroom?”
“Never mind. But to make matters worse, all of these things happened in the presence of the King. Most embarrassing.”
“I can imagine!”
“The King of the Vagabonds, as he was styled, made his escape. But the Lieutenant of Police was able to determine that he had been dwelling in a certain apartment not far from here-and the Esphahnians were living directly below him. He had befriended them, and drawn them somehow into his schemes. But since he was long gone, retribution fell instead on the Esphahnians. Off they were taken to the Bastille. Their business was destroyed, their health suffered grievously. Now those who survived dwell as paupers in Paris.”
Through the windows came the clatter and rasp of many horseshoes and iron wheel-rims on cobblestones. All turned to see the white carriage of the duc d’Arcachon-wrought to look like a giant sea-shell borne on the foam of an incoming tide-being drawn, by a team of six mismatched and exhausted horses, into the courtyard. It passed below them, out of their view, and pulled up before the entrance of the ballroom.
But the noise did not let up, but doubled and redoubled, as into the open gates of the Court rode a vanguard of Swiss mercenaries, and a squadron of noble officers, and finally the gilded carriage of Louis XIV, lighting up the court as the Chariot of Apollo.
ETIENNE, WHEREVER HE WAS (presumably, at the door of the ballroom), could finally relax, for much that must have been troubling him had been resolved in these few moments. His father had come home. No more would embarrassing questions be asked about where the Grand Admiral of France was during this time of need. Almost as important, this party now had a guest of honor; and so the many guests who had come would not go home disappointed. Most important of all, the King had arrived, and had arrived last.
Eliza, by contrast, had so many things to fret about that she almost could not keep track of them. She left de Gex and Rossignol far behind as she threaded her way among servants and courtiers toward the ballroom.
She hated herself for having a phial of poison in her waistband. Stupid! Stupid! She could not even use it now, without drawing fire from d’Avaux! So it was worse than worthless. It had never occurred to her that she would have to carry the damned thing on her person all the time. It could not be left in a drawer for fear that someone would happen upon it, by chance or because snooping. The phial had only been in her waistband for a few hours, but she’d gladly have traded it for a back-load of firewood. It seemed to burn her stomach, and she had developed a nervous habit of patting it every few seconds. And for this useless burthen, she had put herself, in some unspecified way, into the power of the Duchess of Oyonnax.
But in its power to cause trouble for Eliza, this matter of the poison might be as nothing compared to what she had heard concerning the exploits of Jack Shaftoe in this house-nay, this very room (for she had entered the ballroom now) five years ago.
When the carriages of le duc and le Roi had entered the courtyard moments ago, Eliza had darted out of the library before de Gex or Rossignol could offer her his arm. She had done this because she required a few moments by herself to think-to recall all that had happened since she had met Jack below Vienna in 1683, and to ask herself who might know that she had once been associated with L’Emmerdeur?