He was attending to his two friends behind Caroline. She looked back. They were pointing into the alley Johann had ridden into, and shouting. Caroline was forgotten; she was free to go; Johann’s gambit was working.
Or did work, anyway, until someone stole her sword.
She felt a sharp tug and heard a hissing sound as the small-sword was plucked from its scabbard. This sound quite naturally got the attention of the man on the chestnut stallion; gentlemen who ignored the sound of a sword being drawn were not likely to live through their twenties. Caroline looked down belatedly, to see a boy of perhaps sixteen, missing his two front teeth, leering back at her with a fanged smile. He had brought the small-sword around so that it pointed at her. This was plainly a threat, but Caroline did not know what to make of it until the partner of the tail-drawer (as sword-thieves were known) came after the even more valuable scabbard. This hung at her hip from a rig called a baldric, which was just a broad leather strap that ran diagonally across her body and over her right shoulder. The second thief was smaller and nimbler-perhaps a younger brother-and his method of stealing it was straightforward: he grabbed it with both hands and yanked on it so hard that he lifted himself clean off the ground, while giving Caroline the following choice: fall sideways off the horse, or be decapitated by the strap. Long years of tedious riding-lessons had trained her to stay on the horse no matter what; she squeezed it hard between her legs, caught the saddle’s rim with her right hand, and held on for dear life even while listing drastically to the left. The thief had planted a foot on the horse’s flank and was leaning back almost horizontally, supporting his weight solely by the baldric. Caroline had no choice but to lean toward him even farther and cock her head over so that the baldric was stripped off over her head. It nearly sheared off her right ear as it went. She reached up to check if the ear was still attached to her head. It was; but the hair around it was her own. Not a wig. The wig was lying like a dead animal in the middle of Drury Lane. Or was, anyway, until a wig-thief darted in and snatched it. The tail-drawer let out a curse and lit out in pursuit of the wig-snatcher, menacing him with the weapon; the scabbard-stealer, who’d fallen hard on his arse, staggered to his feet and hobbled along behind.
Someone nearby was shouting: “It is the Princess! It is the Princess!” Caroline turned to see that it was the man on the chestnut stallion.
Another rider was galloping up behind him on a gray horse; this chap had his feet out of the stirrups and his boots up in the air, which looked like bad form indeed. Sharply the boots came down. The gray trotted riderless across Drury Lane. The chestnut was buckling as its hindquarters now supported the weight of a second man. It reared. The man in back threw his arms around the rider in the saddle, to keep from falling off backwards; one of his hands had something silver in it. A hand was beneath the rider’s chin, pulling his head back; the silver object traveled sideways beneath it, not with a quick slash, but working its way through the neck one tube and ligament at a time. The rider fell over sideways, broadcasting a fan of blood that hissed down the wall of a nearby tavern. The man behind kicked the other’s feet out of the stirrups and toppled him over into the street. Then Johann von Hacklheber took over the saddle. He scabbarded his bloody dagger, found the reins with that hand, then drew out his rapier with the other. He spurred the chestnut horse out into Drury Lane, nearly managing a head-on collision with Caroline’s gray. As he went past he brought the flat of his sword down sharply on the croup of her mount, which responded by taking off with a lurch that nearly somersaulted her back out of the saddle. Lacking instructions from its rider, the horse headed for open space: the wide avenue that led to Covent Garden.
She was almost there by the time she got rightly arranged in the saddle again, and fished up the reins. Then she reflected that she was going west-the wrong direction-and did not really wish to appear in such a manner, viz. galloping across a large open square with her hair flowing behind her like a Hanoverian flag.
She ought to go back and help Johann. But whatever had happened in Drury Lane must be over and done with already; and if she showed up in the middle of it, he would be distracted and probably get killed. What, then, was the best way to help Johann? To follow his directions, so that he would know where to look for her. He had mentioned that from the vicinity of Covent Garden several streets led down to the Strand, which (even she knew) could take her east at least as far as St. Paul’s. So she pulled back hard on the reins, bringing her mount to a skidding stop just short of the open space of the Garden, and insisted on a left turn down a promisingly broad street. This, inevitably, took her only a short distance to a tee with a smaller street. Guessing at a direction, she came to another, smaller tee; and so it went, as if the street-plan of the place were a diabolical snare made for one purpose only, which was to get people lost. By the third turn, she’d lost all sense of which direction she was going. By the fifth, she had a small crowd of boys after her. By the sixth, the boys had been joined by a couple of rough-looking men. The seventh turn led to a way that was very narrow indeed. Moreover, it was a cul-de-sac.
Yet, when she cast a glance back over her shoulder, she was astonished to see that all of her followers had disappeared.
Down at the end of the street were a few sedan chairs, waiting. Their porters stood about smoking and talking; though one by one they fell silent as Caroline rode up. There was a door at the very end of the street, lit with lanterns, and adorned with a sort of inn-sign in which was depicted a cat playing a fiddle. Beyond it, she could hear a lot of men chattering and laughing. A man was standing framed in that doorway, wearing porter’s livery: a bit more nicely turned out than the ones who carried sedan chairs through gutters and puddles. He stirred as she rode closer, and removed the stem of his pipe from his mouth, and addressed Princess Caroline in a way no man had ever done before: “Well ’ello, missy, ain’t you a smart lass in your britches, and all got up like a man! I can see one of our honourable members is planning a special evening indeed. You did bring your riding crop?”
It took her a moment to remember this word, for crop had diverse meanings, but then it came to her: it was Reitgerte, the little whip. One was dangling from her wrist. She groped it into her hand, and raised it up uncertainly.
The porter grinned and nodded. “I’ll wager you’re here for the Bishop of-”
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ve come to the right place, never fear,” he answered, reaching for the door-handle.
“But what is it called?”
“Don’t be a silly girl, this is the Kit-Cat Clubb!”
“Aha!” Caroline exclaimed, “is Doctor Waterhouse here? He is the one I would see!”
Leicester Fields
THE SAME TIME
ELIZA HAD RUN diverse errands fair and foul, and embraced many sacrifices, on behalf of these Hanover women, but this was in some ways the most disagreeable of alclass="underline" going for a carriage-ride, here and now. For a carriage, be it never so finely decorated, and perforated with doors and windows, was unavoidably a box, and to shut herself up in a box at such a pass went against everything in her nature.
She had never quite got out of her mind a day when she and several other harem-girls, all in their burqas, had been herded into a tunnel beneath Vienna to be put to the sword. To hear the screams of the women, and smell their blood, and know what was going on while only being able to see a tiny patch of light, and being unable to use her hands, save by gripping things through the slippery fabric: this was for her the worst moment of her life, the thing she’d spent all her time since trying to put behind her.
Her view out the window of this carriage was no better than that from a burqa, and her ability to reach out and grab things even less. True, it was mounted on wheels, and pulled by a team of horses. But her usual retinue of dogs and armed footmen were absent, as they would have destroyed the illusion that this carriage contained Princess Caroline in disguise. The driver was trustworthy, but all someone had to do was aim a pistol at him, or knock him out of his perch and seize the reins; then she’d be even more helpless than she had been on that horrible day in Vienna.