The System of the World

Garden of Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover
JUNE 23 (CONTINENTAL)/12 (ENGLISH) 1714

“I LOVE YOU.”

“I loaf you.”

“I love you.”

“I lubb you.”

“That’s not quite it.”

“How can you tell? This ‘I love you’ strikes my ear like the sound of a tin sheet being wobbled. How can I say ‘ich liebe dich’ with such noises?”

“To me you can say it any way you please. But you need to work on certain vowels.” Johann von Hacklheber raised his head out of Caroline’s lap, faltered-his ponytail had snagged in a pearl button-worked it free, sat up, and spun around on the bench so that he could get face to face with her. “Watch my lips, my tongue,” he said. “I love you.”

There the English lesson ended. Not that the pupil had failed to observe the master’s lips and tongue. She had done so most attentively-but not with a mind towards improving her vowels. “Noch einmal, bitte,” she requested, and when he arched his sandy eyebrows and opened his mouth to pronounce the “I,” she was up and on him. His lips and tongue went through the movements for “love,” but Caroline felt them with her own lips and tongue, and heard not a thing.

“That was much more informative,” she said, after a few more repetitions of the etude.

His ponytail was coming undone, which was largely her doing, for she had her hands to either side of his head and was tugging blond locks free from the black ribbon that bound them in back, bringing him into a state of beautiful deshabillement. “They say that your mother was the loveliest woman in all of Versailles.”

“I thought that honor was reserved for the King’s brother.”

“Stop it!” She gave him the tiniest tap on the cheek-bone. “I was going to say, she gave her looks to you.”

“What are you going to say now?”

“I am about to ask where you got your wit from, for it is not as pleasing to me.”

“I do beg your royal highness’s forgiveness. I did not know that you had such affection for the late brother of the King of France.”

“Think of his widow, Liselotte, who lives still, and who exchanged letters almost every day with the lady we are laying in her tomb today.”

“The connexion was so tenuous I-”

“No connexions are tenuous on a day such as this. All Christendom mourns for Sophie.”

“Excepting certain drawing-rooms in London.”

“For this one day, spare me your wit, and let me enjoy your looks. You need a shave!”

“The Doctor must have taught you about solstices and equinoxes.”

“What does that have to do with shaving? Behold, if I were wearing gloves, they should be snagged and ruined by these boar’s bristles!” She dug a thumb in along his jaw-line and shoved the skin up to his cheek-bone. No longer did he look like the son of the most beautiful woman in Versailles, and no longer were his vowels perfectly formed when he said, “A tryst in the garden at dawn’s first light is a romantic conceit, and I do confess that this peachy morning-light makes your face more radiant than any flower, and more succulent than any fruit-”

“As it sets your golden mane, and your spiky hog-bristles, aglow, my angel.”

“However, as we dwell at above fifty degrees of latitude-”

“Fifty-two degrees and twenty-odd minutes, as you’d know, if the Doctor had drilled you as he did me in the use of the back-staff.”

“In any case, given that we are within a few days of the Solstice, ‘dawn’s first light,’ at this latitude, works out to something like two o’clock in the morning.”

“Pfui, it’s not that early!”

“I note that your Ladies of the Bedchamber have not had a crack at you yet-”

“Hmph.”

“Which suits me very well,” Johann added hastily, “as powder, lacings, and beauty-spots can only detract from one who is perfect to begin with.”

“ ’Twill be double powderings and lacings this day,” Caroline lamented. “The usual one, that I may receive our noble and royal guests, and a second, for the funeral.”

“It is well that you have a sturdy husband to take the brunt of the ceremonies,” Johann reflected. “Stand behind him, fan yourself, and look bereaved.”

“I am bereaved.”

“You were, and are becoming less so by the day, I think,” Johann said. Which was not the gentlest thing he could have said. But he had spent enough time among royals to know their heart-ways. “Now your mind has already begun to turn elsewhere. You are getting ready for the burden to fall on your shoulders.”

“I wish you had not reminded me. Now the mood is spoiled.”

Johann von Hacklheber got to his feet. He was careful to take Caroline’s hand in his own first, and to keep it clasped. “Oh, I’m afraid the morning was ruined for me before it began. I have an extraordinary engagement. One that I could not get myself out of by pleading, ‘I am very sorry but I shall be busy at that hour cuckolding the Prince of Wales.’ ”

She smiled, though she tried ever so hard not to. “He’s not technically the Prince of Wales yet. We have to go to England and get coronated.”

“Crowned. Try pronouncing that-it’s got a W in the middle of it. I shall see you in a few hours, my lady, my princess.”

“And-?”

“My lover.”

“Fare well on your mysterious errand-my lubber.”

“Oh, ’tis nothing-just an insomniacal Englishman who wants to go for walkies.”

“Val-kees?” Caroline repeated. But Johann had tossed the troublesome word over his shoulder as he unlatched an iron gate, and stepped out into an avenue of the great garden. All she heard after was the clank of the gate closing, and the diminishing crunch-crunch of Johann’s boots on the gravel path. Then she was alone under the writhing limbs of the Teufelsbaum.

She had not mentioned to Johann that this was the place where Sophie had died. She had been afraid that having such a thing in his mind would make him less amorous. Perhaps she needn’t have worried, for nothing seemed to make men of his age (he was twenty-four) less amorous. As to herself, she had lived through the deaths of her father, her mother, her stepfather, her stepfather’s wicked mistress, her adopted mother (Sophie Charlotte), and now Sophie. Death and disease only made her more amorous-eager to forget the bad parts of life and to enjoy good flesh while it lasted.

Now she distinctly heard another gravel-crunch. It seemed to come from one of the triangle of paths that outlined this plot where the Teufelsbaum grew in its iron cage. Her hope that Johann had changed his mind was evanescent, for the first crunch was not followed by a second. After a rather long time she did hear another, but it was faint and prolonged, as if a foot were being placed very cautiously. This was followed by a “Ssh!” so distinct that she turned her head around to look.

Everyone who mattered knew that Caroline’s husband had a mistress named Henrietta Braithwaite, and anyone who bothered to ask around could find out that Caroline had her Jean-Jacques (which was the pet name that she used for Johann). As a setting for trysts, intrigues, and tiptoeing about, the Grosse Garten almost aspired to the level of Versailles. So it was not as if Caroline had any great secret to keep here. She was not worried about eavesdroppers. Of course there were eavesdroppers. This was, rather, a point of etiquette. For such persons to be audibly shushing each other, a few yards away, was like farting at dinner. Caroline inhaled deeply and fired off a sharp sigh. That should fix them!

But she’d never know whether the message had struck home, for now iron wheel-rims, and the shoes of a four-horse team, could be heard above all else. This team was coming her way, and the horses were blowing as if very tired. Had they been driven all night? If so, they weren’t the only exhausted horses hereabouts. The nobility of Europe were converging on Herrenhausen, using Sophie’s funeral as an excuse to stage a reunion of the largest, most bizarre, violent, and incestuously cross-linked family in the world. Caroline had scarcely been able to sleep last night for all the nocturnal arrivals.

She rose from the bench. Through the tree-limbs she glimpsed a couple of tawny blurs loping down the path. “Scylla! Charybdis!” called a gruff voice, and they stopped.

Stepping away from the bench and ducking under a low-hanging bough, Caroline saw a pair of large dogs, panting and drooling. She was protected from them by the iron fence, and saw no danger in moving closer, picking her way over Teufelsbaum-limbs that undulated along the ground, unable to decide whether they were roots, branches, or vines. Along the path came the team-four matched sorrels-and behind them a black carriage, once shiny, now dusty all over. Mud-comets radiated from the wheels and lashed the polished wood. Nevertheless she could make out the arms on the door: the Negro-heads and fleurs-de-lis of the House of Arcachon quartered with the gray pinnacle of the Duchy of Qwghlm. Above that, an open window. Framed in it, a face strikingly similar to the one she’d been kissing a few minutes earlier-but without the bristles.

“Eliza!”

“Stop here, Martin.”

Eliza’s face was now blocked from view by a spray of leaves, but Caroline could hear the smile in her voice. Martin-evidently the driver-reined in his team. Their gait collapsed and they pocked gradually to a stop, taking the momentum of the carriage in the breeching straps slung round their backsides.

Caroline had by now advanced to the iron fence. The Teufelsbaum had been pruned back from it, leaving a clear space for the gardeners to walk the perimeter. Caroline hurried along for some yards, letting her hand count the iron verticals, in case her gown-hem should snag on a shrub and trip her.

A pair of footmen had clambered down from their perch on the back of the carriage, moving as if splints had been bound to their arms and legs. No telling how long they had been standing there, hands stiffening round the railings as they held on for dear life. Eliza lost patience with them and kicked the carriage door open. The edge of it nearly sheared off a footman’s nose. He recovered in time to set down a wee portable stair and assist the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm down to the path-though to be honest it was not so obvious who was assisting whom. The mastiffs Scylla and Charybdis had circled back. They had planted their eyes on Eliza, and their butts on the path, where they were sweeping out neat gravel-free quadrants with their tails.

Eliza was dressed for mourning, hard travel, or both, in a dark grim frock, with a black silk scarf over her head. She was in her mid-forties, and if she were starting to gray, it was not easy to tell, as she had been light blond to begin with. An attentive observer-and this Duchess had many-might phant’sy that the gold was now alloyed with a small proportion of silver. The skin around her eyes and the corners of her mouth gave a fair account of her age.

The number of her male admirers had not diminished over the years, but their nature had changed. When she’d been an eligible mademoiselle at Versailles she had caught the eye of the King and been pursued round the place by a horde of lust-blind fops. Now, having passed through marriage, maternity, smallpox, and widow-hood, she was the kind of woman that important forty-, fifty-, and sixty-year-

old men were always talking about in hushed corners of Clubbs and Salons. From time to time one of these would screw up his courage, sally forth from his redoubt, and buy her a chateau or something, always to retreat, defeated but not humiliated, honorably scarred, and ennobled in reputation, clustered around by other gentlemen who desperately wanted to know what had happened. To be spurned by a lady who was rumored to have bedded the Duke of Monmouth, William of Orange, and Louis XIV was to enter into a sort of communion with those figures of legend.

None of which mattered to Caroline, of course, for Eliza never spoke of it, and when the two of them were together, it was of no account to either one of them. But when they were in the company of others-as they would be for most of the day-she had to forcibly remind herself of it. To Caroline the reputation of Eliza was nothing, but to others it was all.

“I’ll walk in the garden with her royal highness, Martin,” Eliza called. “Drive to the stables, tend to the animals, and tend to yourself.”

It was not entirely usual for ladies of Eliza’s rank to be so concerned with such minutiae; but she had much concern for details, and little for class. If Martin was surprised he didn’t show it. “My lady,” he answered placidly.

“Our grooms and stable-hands will see to the animals-you may tell them I have said so,” said Caroline. “You look after yourself, Martin.”

“Your royal highness honors me,” said Martin. He sounded weary-not of the long night drive, but of noble and royal ladies who phant’sied he was incapable of looking after his own horses. He allowed the team to move forward, taking up the slack in the harness. The two footmen, finally unlimbered, sprang back to their perches, and the dogs began to whine, not knowing which group to follow. Eliza silenced them with a glare and Martin summoned them with a grunt.

“Let’s to the gate, and not converse through bars of iron,” Caroline said, and began to walk in the same direction as the carriage was moving. Eliza walked abreast of her on the gravel side of the fence. They were separated by an arm’s length, but the Princess was on a march through the forest while the Duchess strolled on a groomed path. “You couldn’t possibly have come all the way from London-?”

“Antwerp.”

“Oh. How is the Duke?”

“He sends his respects, and his condolences. He was a great admirer of Sophie, as you know, and much desired to attend her funeral. But the late reports from London are most troubling to him and he did not wish to put himself so far out of his countrymen’s reach.”

They had come to the gate. Caroline reached for the latch but Eliza was quicker; she got it open and stepped through it decisively, closing with Caroline and flinging her arms round the taller woman’s neck with a kind of passion, even abandon. A very different thing from the restrained and courtly greetings that would fill the rest of this day. When she let go, which was a good long time later, her cheeks, which were devoid of any powder or rouge, were shiny with tears.

“When I was a girl of some sixteen years, I was sorry for myself, and angry at the world, because I had been separated from my mother, first by Slavery and then by common Mortality. Now, as I reckon the sum of your losses, I am ashamed that I ever so indulged myself.”

There passed a moment when Caroline said nothing. This was partly because she was touched, and almost embarrassed, by this bold statement from a woman so renowned for wit and discretion. It was also partly because of a noise behind her. Martin had gotten his team to negotiate the sharp turn at the plot’s acute vertex, which had not been easy, and was now rumbling along another side, not far away.

“Sometimes I think that I am the sum of my losses,” Caroline finally said. “And if so, then every loss that I suffer enlarges me. I hope my discourse does not strike you as too grim,” she added, for a little sob-shudder had run through the Duchess’s body. “But this is how I make sense of my world. And if you must know, in some moments I phant’sy that I am a sort of heir to the Winter Queen-though I am not linked to her by blood-and that it is my destiny to go back to England and reclaim it for her. That is why I asked you to buy Leicester House, for she was born there.”

“I did not buy it but invested in it,” Eliza returned.

“Then I hope your investment will turn out to have been a prudent one.”

“Why shouldn’t it?”

“Your tidings from Antwerp-and other news that has reached me of late-make me doubt whether I shall ever see Britain, much less rule it.”

“You shall, my dear. What concerns Marlborough is not the fate of the Realm but of a single Regiment, near to his heart, lately fallen under the sway of Jacobites. He is fretting about certain of his officers and sergeants, trying to make out what has become of them.”

“What has happened to one Regiment might happen later to the whole Realm,” Caroline said. Then she looked away, distracted by an eruption of barking on the far side of the vast Gordian knot of the Teufelsbaum. Martin was chastising the dogs in Dutch. They had probably lit out after one of the garden’s regiment of squirrels.

When she turned back, she found that Eliza had been appraising her. The Duchess seemed to approve of what she had seen. “I am most pleased that my son has found you,” she said.

“So am I,” Caroline confessed. “Tell me truly, now-did you enter the garden in search of me, or of him?”

“I knew that the two of you would be together. It would appear that I just missed him,” Eliza said, and reached out to pluck a long blond hair from a pearl button at Caroline’s midsection.

“He hoped you’d come-and knew you’d do so without warning. He has gone for a walk with an Englishman.”

Eliza got a wary look and stepped forward, pressing Caroline aside with a firm hand. Her other hand strayed to the waistband of her frock. A man came crashing through the Teufelsbaum, headed directly for them. Meanwhile Scylla and Charybdis were pelting hell-for-leather around the fence, trying to find a way in.

The man emerged into plain view and stopped. The first thing they noticed about him was that he was brandishing a dagger; the second, that he was one of Eliza’s footmen. His wig had been stripped off as he’d charged through the reaching arms of the Teufelsbaum, but he was recognizable by his livery. Less so by his face, which was red, and distorted by fear and rage-battle-lust, Caroline thought.

“Jan? What is it?” Eliza demanded.

Jan ignored the question. He scanned the path until he was certain that Scylla and Charybdis had found it, and were circling around to guard the rear. Then he spun round, turning his back on Eliza and Caroline, searching the woods.

Something slammed into Caroline’s shoulder. It was Eliza’s body. Caroline tried to plant the opposing foot wide, to absorb the blow, but Eliza had expected this, and had already swung a leg around and hooked Caroline’s ankle. Both of them fell down. Caroline hit the ground first. Eliza, rather than smashing full-length into Caroline’s body, took most of the impact on her hands and knees, and wound up straddling the fallen princess, looking about herself alertly.

The second footman had circled around the other way, and now joined Scylla and Charybdis at the gate. He too had a dagger out. But Eliza stayed over Caroline, refusing to let her up. Presently the carriage roared and rattled back up the path, drawn by four insanely irritated horses who were controlled only with difficulty by poor Martin.

“What happened?” demanded Eliza, as Martin was reining them in.

Martin was in no great hurry to respond either. He stood up and scanned the woods on all sides. He had a pistol out, and was careful to keep its barrel perfectly aligned with his gaze, so that shooting could follow seeing in an instant.

“Opposite, on the far side of this weird tree, the dogs scented men who had bad intentions,” he finally said, in a mild voice.

Ever the Natural Philosopher, even when pinned to the ground under a Duchess, Caroline inquired, “How do you know it wasn’t a well-intentioned squirrel?”

“The dogs told me as much by their emotions,” Martin returned, plainly irritated to have been questioned on such a matter. “They followed the scent from the iron fence-which these men must have vaulted-to a neighboring part of the garden, yonder, before I called them back, and told them to go and find my lady. Then, as I was rounding the corner, over there, trying to get back to you, I glanced over and saw two men running as fast as they could down the path.”

“Towards us?”

“Away from you, my lady.”

“Bows? Muskets?”

“They had neither, my lady.”

This was the signal for Eliza to get up at last. She extended a hand and did the work of hauling Caroline to her feet, as the footmen were still prowling about with daggers drawn.

“That was an unusual procedure,” Caroline remarked.

“It is not so unusual in Constantinople.”

“Where did you hire your staff?” Caroline wondered.

“The deck of a privateer in Dunquerque. I once had a friend in the business, one Jean Bart, who doted on me, and wanted to see that I was well looked after.” Eliza turned her attentions back to Martin. “Could you recognize those two men if you saw them again?”

“My lady, they had covered themselves in long dark hooded robes, such as friars wear, and the hoods were drawn up over their heads. I wager we might find those robes discarded on the ground within a musket-shot of where we now stand-”

“And the assassins will have blended in among the funeral-guests before we get back to the Palace,” Eliza concluded.

“More than likely,” Caroline agreed; then: “I beg your pardon, did you say assassins!?”

“THE LETTER BY which Princess Caroline summoned me was sealed in the presence of Enoch Root, and put into his hand before the wax had cooled. He traversed the west road from here to Amsterdam in no particular haste-but without let or delay. A day after, he was in Scheveningen, and three days after that, in London. A wait of one week sufficed to get him aboard a New York-bound ship. The voyage was not particularly lengthy. After no more than a night’s rest on the island of Manhattan he proceeded on horseback to Boston. He delivered the message into my hand on the day he arrived. It had never left his person since the moment it was sealed in the Leine Schlo?.” The strange old Englishman nodded down the leafy prospect of the Herrenhauser Allee toward the smoky bulk of Hanover’s fortifications.

The young baron, noting that he had fallen a pace behind, hurried along to draw abreast. “Did you and Enoch-I call him Enoch, for he is an old friend of my family-”

“I thought he was supposed to be a member of your family, long ago, when he affected a different name.”

“That is another conversation for another day,” said the Baron, in good English. “I say, did you and Enoch discuss the matter aloud, in the presence of others, in Boston?”

“In a tavern. But we were discreet. I did not mention the author of the letter even to my own wife. I told her only that someone of great importance had asked for me.”

“What of the letter itself?”

“That’s a different matter. Mr. Root did allow some persons to see the Seal. So it could be inferred that I had been summoned from Hanover.”

“Pray continue.”

“Well, ’tis very simple. I was aboard Minerva that very night. We were held back by contrary winds for a month. Then one day a whole bloody pirate-fleet descended upon us. My god, what a thing it was. In all my days I have never lived through such a-”

Johann von Hacklheber, sensing that his Narrator was about to wax discursive, interrupted: “Pirates are said to be as common along the New England coast as fleas on a dog.”

“Yes, we had some of that type, too,” said Daniel Waterhouse, strangely enthusiastic. “Caitiffs in row-boats. But we shook those off easily. I am referring to a literal fleet of formidable pirate-ships, under a disaffected British sea-captain named Edward Teach-”

“Blackbeard!” said Johann, before he could stop himself.

“You have heard of him.”

“He has already been the subject of picaroon-romances, which are sold by the barrel-load at the book-fair in Leipzig. Not that I would ever read such a thing,” Johann said, and then waited tensely, fearing that this Daniel Waterhouse was the sort who would miss the jest, and assume he was being a snotty little baron. But the old man caught it, and batted it back: “In your researches, have you learnt that this Blackbeard is aligned with Jacobite interests?”

“I know that his flagship is christened Queen Anne’s Revenge, and I collected, from this, that he had some axe to grind.”

“He assaulted the ship I was on-Minerva-and sacrificed one and possibly two ships of his fleet to get at me.”

“To get at Minerva, you mean, or-”

“To get at me, I say. He asked for me by name. And any other sea-captain would have given me up; but Otto van Hoek would not give a pirate a wormy biscuit, much less a passenger.”

“Now, if I may play devil’s advocate,” Johann said, “for Enoch to come into this Bostown, which you describe as a sort of backwoods encampment, waving a document with a Hanoverian seal, must have drawn attention. Your departure must have been the talk of the town.”

“No doubt they are talking about it still.”

“In every port are men of low character who pass along such intelligence to criminals, pirates, and the like. You said that a whole month elapsed while you were becalmed-”

“I should rather call it, ‘bestormed,’ but yes.”

“That is more than enough time for word to have spread to every pirate-cove in New England. This Teach must have heard the news, and surmised that you were a man of importance, who might be held for ransom.”

“This is what I was telling myself all the way across the Atlantic, to calm my nerves,” Daniel said. “I even trained myself to overlook the chief fault in that hypothesis, which is that, outside of Barbary, pirates do not, as a rule, hold hostages for ransom, and especially not old men who are likely to drop dead at a moment’s notice. But when I reached London, efforts were made to blast me, or someone close to me, to pieces. And during the months since, I have had intelligence from two distinct sources, one high, one low, that there is, here in Hanover, a spy who passes information to the Jacobites in London.”

“I should like to know more concerning that,” said Johann, who had been trying a moment ago to soothe the old Englishman’s ridiculous fears, and now found himself in need of some soothing.

“An old acquaintance of mine-”

“Acquaintance, but not friend?”

“We are such old friends that we refuse to speak to each other for decades at a time. An Infernal Device, packed with gunpowder, exploded. It might have been meant for me, for him, or for both of us. He has begun to investigate the matter using his own resources-and you may be assured that his resources vastly exceed mine in almost every respect. He has heard that highly placed Jacobites-”

“Bolingbroke?”

“-highly placed Jacobites are receiving information from a source close to the Electoral Crown-someone who, to judge from the timeliness and accuracy of his despatches, comes and goes freely in the Leine Schlo? and in Herrenhausen Palace.”

“You said that you had a low as well as a high source?”

“I know a man with many connections among London’s Flash: coiners, Black-guards, et cetera-the same element from which Blackbeard recruits his seamen and what I shall politely call his ‘longshoremen.’ ”

“You trust such a man?”

“Unaccountably, irrationally, inadvisably, I do. I am his father confessor. He is my disciple and bodyguard. It is another conversation for another day-”

“Touche.”

“This fellow has made inquiries. He has found evidence that the order to hunt me down was despatched to Ed Teach from London.”

“I did not think pirates took orders from London.”

“Oh, on the contrary, it is an ancient, celebrated practice.”

“So by combining these data you have settled upon a hypothesis that some spy here became aware of the letter that her royal highness sent to you via Enoch Root; that this spy sent word to an important Jacobite in London; who then sent a despatch to Ed Teach off the coast of Massachusetts, using some London Black-guard as his Mercury.”

“That is my hypothesis, admirably stated.”

“It is a good one. I have one question only.”

“Yes?”

“Why are we walking down the Herrenhauser Allee in the wee hours of the morning?”

“What, the sun’s been up for hours!”

“My question still stands.”

“Do you know why I came to Hanover?”

“Certainly not for the funeral, as Sophie was alive when you got here. If memory serves, you were a part of the delegation that brought Sophie the letter that is said to have killed her.”

“I haven’t heard anyone say that!”

“Its contents are said to have been so vexatious as to have struck the Electress dead on the spot.”

“The Viscount Bolingbroke is known to have a genius for such word-play,” Daniel mused, “and he probably penned it. But it is neither here nor there. Yes, I was included in the delegation, as a token Whig. No doubt you have already met my Tory counterparts.”

“I have endured that honor. Again, why are we walking down the Herrenhauser Allee at this time?”

“It occurred to me, on the journey hither from London, that if the Jacobites did have a spy in Hanover, why then my Tory companions would make every effort to arrange a tryst with him, or her. So I have been alert since we arrived-while spreading the rumor, and fostering the illusion, that I was senile, and deaf to boot. Yester evening, at dinner, I heard two of the Tories asking questions of a minor Hanoverian noble: what is that park that extends from the Herrenhauser Allee north and west to the banks of the Leine? Is it solid ground, or marsh? Are there any notable landmarks, such as great trees or-”

“There is a noble oak-tree just ahead and to the right,” Johann remarked.

“I know there is, for that’s just what this Hanoverian said.”

“So you guessed that they were arranging a spy-tryst, and needed to choose a place. But how did you settle upon such a horrid time of day?”

“The entire delegation shall attend the funeral. Immediately after, we depart for London. This was the only possible time.”

“I hope you are right.”

“I know I am.”

“How do you know it?”

“I left word with the servants that I wanted to be awakened at the same time as the other Englishmen. A servant woke me up at dawn.”

With that Daniel Waterhouse cut sharply in front of Johann von Hacklheber, forcing the younger man to shorten his stride. Daniel stepped off the central road of the Allee and passed between two of the lime trees that screened it from the narrower paths to either side. Johann followed him; and as he did, he glanced down the length of the road and saw a lone man on horseback approaching from the direction of Hanover.

Daniel had already hiked off into the adjoining park and found a winding lead between shrubs and trees. Johann followed him for a minute or so, until his peripheral vision was darkened by the crown of an enormous oak. In the distance he could hear voices conversing, not in German. It struck his ear rather like a sheet of tin being wobbled.

He nearly tripped over Daniel, who had squatted down behind a bush. Johann followed his example, and then his gaze. Gathered a stone’s throw away beneath the spreading limbs of the oak, and looking for all the world like artists’ models posing for a pastoral scene, were three of the English Tories who had come with Daniel from London.

“Sir, my admiration for your work is mingled with wonder that a man of your age and dignity is out doing things like this.”

Daniel turned to look him in the eye; and his creased face was grave and calm in the morning light. He looked nothing like the daft codger who had come to dinner yesterday evening and embarrassed the other English by dribbling wine down his shirt-front.

“Listen to me. I did not wish to be summoned by your Princess. Summoned, I did not wish to come. But having been summoned, and having come, I mean to give a good account of myself. That’s how I was taught by my father, and the men of his age who slew Kings and swept away not merely Governments but whole Systems of Thought, like Khans of the Mind. I would have my son in Boston know of my doings, and be proud of them, and carry my ways forward to another generation on another continent. Any opponent who does not know this about me, stands at a grave disadvantage; a disadvantage I am not above profiting from.”

It was then that the hoof-beats out on the road turned into soft thuds as the lone rider from Hanover drove his mount off the beaten track and into the park. He was headed directly for the oak. At a glance they could see he was richly attired, hence, probably had begun his ride in the Leine Schlo?. On a second look Johann recognized him. He crouched down lower and spoke into Daniel’s ear: “That is the Englishman-supposedly a staunch Whig-Harold Braithwaite.”

“IT SEEMS SO OBVIOUS in retrospect,” Johann lamented, a quarter of an hour later, after they had stolen back through the park to the Allee, and begun walking back toward Herrenhausen Palace.

“Great discoveries always do,” Daniel said, and shrugged. “Ask me some day how I feel about the Inverse Square Law.”

“He and his wife came here, what, five years ago, just as things began to go awry for the Whig Juncto. Oxford and Bolingbroke were plotting the Tory resurgence, getting the Queen’s ear-as I recall, there had been a run on the Bank of England, occasioned by rumors of a Jacobite uprising in Scotland.”

“Is that what Braithwaite said when he showed up here penniless? That he’d been ruined in the bank run?”

“He mentioned that the Mobb had rioted against the Bank.”

“That it did. But this has little to do with Braithwaite. He is the sort of Englishman who is exported with great enthusiasm by his countrymen.”

“There were rumors-”

“Just enough, I am certain, to make him out as a saucy picaroon, and get him invited to dinner.”

“Indeed.”

“The true story is depressingly familiar. He spent his inheritance gambling. Then he became a highwayman-not a very good one, for on his first outing he scuffled with one of his victims, and gashed him with a cutlass. The wound suppurated, the victim died, the victim’s family-Tories, who had money-posted a reward so high that every thief-taker in London cleared his calendar. Braithwaite fled the Isle, perhaps the only prudent thing he has ever done.”

“He painted himself as an arch-Whig.”

“In that there was some truth, for his oppressors were Tories. But he has no principles whatever.”

“That much is now proved. But why would such a man act as a spy for the Tory Lords?”

“His legal situation is awkward. This means he might benefit enormously from some adroit manipulation of certain affairs in London. He must make his peace with whatever Faction has the power to assist him; behold, the Whigs are out, and the Tories are in.”

“What did you think of the letter?” Johann asked; a non sequitur that prompted Daniel to twitch his head around. They had come so close to the end of the path that they could smell the green fruit in the orangerie, and hear the stables and kitchens awakening: sharp crisp sounds hushed and muffled by the distant teeming of the great fountain.

“What do you mean, mein Herr?” Daniel asked, slipping unconsciously into etiquette now that they were in earshot of a palace. For they had moved off the Allee and were passing between stables toward the parterres at the garden’s northern end, where a few early-rising nobles were already out stretching their legs.

Johann continued, “I mean, how was it written-the letter you received from Caroline? Was it in French?”

“No, English.”

“Good English?”

“Oh yes, very proper. I see where you are going now.”

“If it was in proper English, then her English tutor must have helped her write it. And that is Mrs. Braithwaite.”

“It shall be most awkward,” Daniel pointed out, “if the mistress of the Prince of Wales proves to be a spy for men who are dead set against his family acquiring the Crown.”

“I know the woman. She is immoral but not malicious, if you know what I mean. After she helped Caroline write that letter, she probably mentioned it, innocently, to her husband, who, as we have seen, is the true spy.”

“Difficult to dispose of him, without a scandal in the household-” Daniel observed.

“Oh, not really,” Johann murmured.

Now that they had entered the garden, his notice had been drawn by a coach and four emerging from the hill of mist that shrouded the environs of the great fountain. As its outlines became more distinct, he remarked, “That looks like my mother’s carriage,” and then, “but the lady looking out the window, there, is not my mother but Princess Caroline. Odd for them to ride, when they could walk. I shall go and bid them good morning.”

“And I shall excuse myself,” said Daniel Waterhouse, “as there is no plausible excuse for me to be seen in such company.”