The System of the World

Monmouth Street
THE SAME TIME

The Mob are outragious every where when they think themselves provok’d.

-The Mischiefs That Ought Justly to Be Apprehended from a Whig-Government, ANONYMOUS, ATTRIBUTED TO BERNARD MANDEVILLE, 1714

FROM THE STABLES of Leicester House, Johann and Caroline had borrowed a pair of gray geldings: good but indifferent-looking riding-horses in simple tack. They rode side-by-side up Monmouth Street. Caroline was straddling her mount like a man, which was made easier by wearing a man’s pair of breeches. Her hair was stuffed up under a man’s white periwig and she even had a small-sword joggling from her left hip. Johann was dressed similarly, though he was armed with the big old rapier he had been carrying around ever since mysterious persons had begun making attempts on the lives of people who were close to him. They were supposed to look like a pair of young gentlemen out for a ride in the town.

Caroline frequently turned round to look back towards Leicester Fields. Johann had suggested that she not; but it was difficult for a royal to accept such mundane suggestions. She was quite certain that they were being followed by a fellow riding on a black horse. But Monmouth Street curved steadily round to the left as it went, so she lost sight of that rider from time to time. For the same reason they could only see ahead for a certain distance, and every pace brought new complications into view.

“When I made the plan, I had no way of knowing on what day it might be set into motion,” Johann said, “and so I did not take Hangings into account.”

“Hanging-Day is not until Friday, is it not so?” asked Caroline. It was Wednesday evening.

“Indeed. Tomorrow evening I should expect a crowd gathering along the route,” said Johann. “I did not expect one this evening-but-” He trailed off as they rounded the final deflection. A stone’s throw ahead, Monmouth Street joined together with two others, like tributaries of a river, to form a short but very wide thoroughfare that exhausted directly into a place called Broad St. Giles’s. Their view into that district was blocked by a wide but shallow building erected square across their path, like a sandbar at the mouth of a river. It was brick below and timber above, with a pocked tile roof, and was so generally mean in its appearance that from this distance it might have been taken for a stable. But it had a few too many chimneys for that, all of them tottering into the weather like elderly pallbearers leaning into a gale. On the side facing Johann and Caroline it had a little front court running its whole width, supervised by a veranda. Several white-haired, gray-faced chaps were strewn upon some benches there. This was the St. Giles’s alms-house, where parishioners who had outlived their means, their families, or their welcomes could be parked until they were ready for permanent berths in the nearby church-yard. For whatever reason, it had been built in the middle of the intersection so that Monmouth Street traffic must divert around it.

Now ordinarily, not being able to see into Broad St. Giles’s would have been accounted some small act of Grace. It was not precisely a street, and not a square, but a kind of drain-trap plumbing High Holbourn (which ran off to the right, toward the City) to Oxford Street (left to Tyburn Cross). As a district of Greater London it no doubt had a history and a perfectly legitimate reason for existence; but as a conduit for traffic between Tyburn and London it was a lamentable improvisation. A few kegs of gunpowder detonated in the slum to the north side of it would create a direct through line uniting the two thoroughfares, and relegate Broad St. Giles’s to a stagnant ox-bow lake, alienated from the main stream; but such improvements still lay in the future as Johann and Caroline rode toward it.

Tonight, however, not being able to get a clear view of what lay ahead was perilous. The district seemed more than normally crowded tonight. People-mostly roving tribes of young men-formed a slack eddy around the foundations of the alms-house. They did not appear to be bound for anywhere, unless Trouble could be considered a Destination; and some were already staring at Johann and Caroline, and pointing.

“Why so many people-the hanging?”

“Too soon, too soon-oh, if we asked one why he was here, he might claim it was for the Hanging-March-”

“But to believe it would be naive,” Caroline said. “You think then that it is as Dr. Waterhouse warned us.”

“Yes-the Whigs and Tories have used the Hanging as a pretext to move their sympathizers-whatever you care to call them-”

“Militia?”

“Perhaps a little less than militia and a little better than the Mobb. I don’t know. At any rate they are here, getting ready to light bonfires-”

“Look, they have done it already,” Caroline said.

They had reached the place where the way broadened out, just before the front court of the alms-house. Off to their right, a bonfire had been kindled. It must have been carefully laid, and lit only a moment ago, for it suddenly flared very high, lofting a storm of incandescent twigs and leaves into its smoke-tower. It stood in the center of Broad St. Giles’s, which was a good hundred feet wide there.

“That is meant to be a gathering-beacon for some faction or other, I’ll wager,” said Johann, rising up in his stirrups and looking about. Indeed, many had altered course, and set their faces toward the flame: some reporting to it smartly, others merely falling in, drawn by the curious instinct of the herd. “It is good for us. Look, the crowd dwindles over yonder, to the right side of the way-we shall slip through and be on High Holbourn presently. Then straight on to the city. Let’s go!” and he drew back on his mount’s right rein, demanding a sharp turn. Caroline did likewise; but she could not resist a look back down Monmouth. There was the fellow on the black horse, now so close behind that she could have called out to him. He was making no effort to hide himself, but waving his hat back and forth above his head as if trying to catch someone’s eye. Succeeding in that, he then pointed deliberately at Johann and Caroline, and held up two fingers; then he joined those two fingers together to form a little blade, and drew it across his throat.

Caroline snapped her head round so sharply that her wig-an unfamiliar article-went askew on her head. She clapped a hand on it to hold it in place while she looked up and across the square, tracing the gaze of the man on the black horse. Immediately she saw a man standing on the roof of the alms-house, perched on the ridge, and keeping one hand on a chimney for balance. This fellow scrambled round as quickly as he could without falling, turning his back on Monmouth Street to gaze north across Broad St. Giles’s and east to one of the street-ends that spilled into that side of it.

“Charles! Come, come!” Johann was calling. Caroline’s name would be Charles for as long as she was wearing breeches. He had ridden about two lengths ahead. “Charles” could not answer without revealing her sex to anyone in earshot. She waited for a queue of boys to thread past, then rode up toward Johann. She was hoping to draw abreast of him so that she could talk, but he spurred his mount on as she drew within a length, and began to lead her through the crowd in the direction of London.

Caroline was beginning to perceive drawbacks to the plan. It had sounded too simple to go wrong. Eliza, wearing an outfit that made her look, from a distance, like Caroline, had boarded the finest carriage available at Leicester House and driven south, parading round the perimeter of Leicester Fields in full view of all the spies who had been loitering there. She was to have gone out near Sir Isaac Newton’s house and then to have worked her way west in the direction of St. James’s, as if trying to reach the Duke of Marlborough’s house, which was not far from there. This was the sort of thing a conspiracy-minded Tory would expect Princess Caroline to do, had she been flushed out into the open; Marlborough was not back in the country yet, but had been conspicuously remodeling the house as a signal that his advent was drawing nigh. He had long-standing connexions with the Hanovers, and Caroline could seek refuge in his house in full confidence that no Mobb, Militia, or Faction would dare to molest her there.

Meanwhile Johann and Caroline had set out in the opposite direction, planning a ride of three miles or so straight through the heart of London to Billingsgate Stairs, immediately downstream of the Bridge, where a longboat would take them out to a Hanoverian sloop. A few days later they would be at Antwerp, and a few days after that, back at Hanover. So much for the plan; but Caroline had not considered until now that if the disguise worked, and caused their enemies to believe that she was not Caroline the princess, but Charles the nobody-why, what would it matter if such a nobody were found in Fleet Ditch with his throat cut and his purse missing?

An open space had appeared next to Johann, on his left side. She dug her heels into the horse’s sides twice and goaded it until it was alongside him. “What lies over that way?” she asked, and gestured in the same direction (left, or north across Broad St. Giles’s) that the man on the roof of the alms-house was looking.

Johann considered it. Several street-ends were visible on that side. From one of them a bobbling stream of manes, periwigs, and horse-tails issued: four, maybe as many as half a dozen riders. Their faces were indistinct at this range-but they caught the light of the bonfire clearly, as all of them were gazing up and across toward the alms-house. Caroline looked back that way; her view of the spy on the roof was now mostly blocked by the chimney, but she could see an arm gesticulating, waving the riders on a course to close with Johann and Caroline.

“The one where the riders are coming out is Dyot Street-it leads up to Great Russell, and-”

“Ravenscar’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think we have confused our enemies, in a way that could be dangerous to us,” Caroline said. “I think they believe that we are messengers, sent out from Eliza with an important note for the Marquis of Ravenscar, or whatever Whig commanders may be gathered at his house-those riders, I fear-”

“Were posted along Dyot to intercept any such communications,” said Johann, “and now they are after us. Let us ride a little faster-but not gallop, we must not show fear-and turn to the right, on Drury Lane. That will lead us away from Ravenscar’s and throw doubt on this idea that we are messengers.”

“I have heard things about this Drury Lane-”

“We shall look like a pair of young gentlemen out questing for whores,” Johann agreed. “Do not be concerned. Drury Lane is the frontier of a chancy district. Many of those who live there have strayed up to Broad St. Giles’s this evening. Riding the border is not so terribly dangerous. Going through it would be a bad idea-but we shan’t do that. Straight down Drury it is, all the way to the Strand.” And with that Johann guided his mount round a right turn onto Drury Lane. Caroline’s horse lurched forward in an effort to keep pace, and she almost lost her wig again. From here Drury Lane looked infinitely long, and hellishly disordered even by the standards of London: it narrowed and widened, narrowed and widened as if no surveyor had ever stretched out a line here, and buildings leaned away from it, or slumped over it, like a bench of drunks in a gin-house. She did not see any bonfires, which she counted as a sort of good news; perhaps Drury Lane would be left to the whores, procurers, and pickpockets tonight, even as other streets and intersections were employed as squares on the Whig/Tory chessboard.

“I saw something,” she said, “a gesture. I fear that violence is going to be used against us.” She could not help glancing at Johann’s Italian rapier, wagging from his left flank.

Johann tried to deflect this with humor. “Then it is good that my right arm is free,” he said, waving it in the air, “and on our vulnerable flank,” indicating the benighted neighborhood on their right. “And good as well that you have a sword.”

“A small one.”

“Indeed, that is what they call it: a small-sword. No one carries the rapier and dagger any more. I am kitted out like an old man.”

“I am glad of it,” said Caroline, for Johann’s weapon looked a fell relic of bygone times, much more formidable than the jeweled toothpick on her hip.

She could not help, now, turning round once more to look back. Drury Lane sported very few men on horseback at this hour and so it took but a moment to see two riders who had just entered from Broad St. Giles’s. They let their mounts dawdle for a moment, as they took in the sordid prospect, and got their bearings; then, catching sight of Johann and Caroline, they spurred them forward at a trot.

Caroline did not care to argue the matter with Johann and so she kicked her mount up to a trot, which obliged him to do the same.

“As you can see the right side of the Lane is perforated by countless alleys,” Johann said, loudly, in the manner of a jaded man about town explaining the lay of the land to his country cousin, “but there is a very broad street a short distance ahead that leads direct to Covent Garden Market, where are many wenches we euphemistically call flower-sellers and orange-girls. From there, several broad avenues lead to the Strand.”

Caroline wanted to ask Why are you telling me this but she dared not speak aloud, for she sensed a pedestrian close by on her left hand. Then she was distracted by some commotion off to the right, not in Drury Lane but back in what she assumed to be a maze of alleys behind. Shod hooves were sparking on pavement back there, and a voice commanding, “Make way, damn you!” She knew enough English by now to know that this was the voice of someone well-bred, someone with the right to bear arms. She looked behind again to see that the two men following had made up half the distance separating them; then, turning back to give this news to Johann, she observed that he was gone, with no good-bye other than a tattoo of hoofbeats down an alley, and murmur of prostitutes in his wake.

What had he told her? Do not ride into the alleys; look for a broad avenue on the right. She did so, and almost did not see it, for it was much closer than she had supposed. A rider was just emerging from it, on a bothered and winded horse that he was forcing to walk. She hoped it might be Johann, but the horse was the wrong color (chestnut) and the rider was the wrong chap altogether. He was staring her in the face, and could easily have made her out to be a woman in disguise had the sun been shining.

This man, she reckoned, must have split off from the squadron that had ridden out of Dyot a minute ago, and galloped round through the alleys behind Drury Lane to cut them off here. But Johann, hearing the commotion that this fellow had made, had surmised what was going on, and had broken away to outflank the flanker.

The man on the chestnut horse showed the palm of his hand to the two riders who were trotting along after Caroline, seeming to ward them off. She could hear their mounts drop to a walk, then stop altogether. With his other hand he reached up to tip his hat to Caroline as she approached. Lacking a hat, she returned the greeting with a swirl of the hand and a nod. Whether she did it convincingly or not, she’d never know, for he did not bother to watch; he had already turned his gaze elsewhere, wondering what had become of Caroline’s companion.

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!”