Quicksilver

“Just the sort of tidy plan that Bob would come up with,” Jack shouted at the waves, still a

“So far it makes sense, then. But why-an intelligent horse might ask-why was John Churchill also in Brussels-part of Spain’s, and therefore the Pope’s, dominions? Why, it’s because-thanks to the maneuverings of his daddy Winston-ever since John had been just a lad, he’d been in the household of James, King Chuck’s brother, the Duke of York. And York-then, and now, first in line for the throne-was, and is today-you’ll like this-a fanatical Papist! Now do you understand why London was, and probably still is, nervous? The King decided it’d be better if his brother took a long vacation out of the country, and naturally James chose the Catholic city that was closest at hand: Brussels! And John Churchill, being in his household, was obliged to follow him, at least part of the time.

“Anyway-Bob took the King’s shilling and I did not. From Dunkirk, he and I rode together through the no-man’s-land-which, not to repeat myself, you’ll soon be seeing plenty of-by Ypres, Oudenaarde, Brussels, and as far as Waterloo, where we parted ways. I went down to Paris, he went back to Brussels, and probably spent a lot of his time, thereafter, scurrying to and fro carrying messages, as when he was a boy.”

During this recital, Jack had been unwinding his crutch: a curved stick with a padded crossbar at the top to go under his armpit, all lashed together with a mile of crude twine. When he’d undone the windings, he was left with two pieces of wood and some rags he’d used for padding. But protruding from the top of the long crutch-pole was the pommel of a Janissary-sword.

He had searched half of the Harz Mountains to find a stick whose curve matched that of the sword. Having found it, he’d split it in half, and hollowed out a space in the middle big enough to contain the scabbard. The pommel and guard still stuck out the top, but when he added the crutch’s cross-bar, then swaddled it in rags, and bound all in twine, he had a crutch that seemed i

The crutch was a convenience in settled places where only Gentlemen had the right to bear arms-but between here and northern France, he hoped to see as little of that sort of country as possible. He belted on the sword and strapped the crutch-pole alongside Turk’s saddle, and then Jack the crippled vagrant was suddenly Jack the armed rider, galloping down the sea-coast on the back of a Turkish war-horse.

DOWN PAST THEHAGUE,around the Hook of Holland, Jack paid a visit on certain boat-owning fellows of his acquaintance, and learned, from them, that the French had ba

But from Mr. Foot, the proprietor of the Bomb, Jack got an earful about how, ever since King Looie had bought Dunkirk from King Chuck, things weren’t the same: the French had enlarged the harbor so that it could harbor the big warships of that arch-privateer Jean Bart, and these changes had driven away the small Cha

Disgusted and dismayed, Jack left immediately, striking inland into Artois, where he could still go armed. It was hard up against the frontier of the Spanish Netherlands, and the soldiers who’d been sent up to prosecute King Looie’s wars there had not been slow to grasp that there was more to be made by robbing travelers on the London-Paris route-who were still so grateful to’ve survived the Cha

Jack made himself look like one of these highwaymen-no great feat, since he had been one for a year or two-and that brought him swift and more or less safe passage down into Picardy: the home of a famous Regiment, which, since they were not there when Jack arrived, he reckoned that they must be up laying waste to the Spanish Netherlands. A few changes in attire (his old floppy musketeer-hat, e.g.) gave him the look of a deserter, or scout, from same.

In one of those Picard villages the church-bell was clanging without letup. Sensing some kind of disorder, Jack rode toward it, across fields crowded with peasants bringing in the harvest. They rotated their crops so that one-third of the fields had wheat, one-third oats, and the remaining third were fallow, and Jack tended to ride across the ones that were fallow. These wretches looked at him with fear that was abject even by the standard of French peasants. Most of them sca

He assessed this village as one where he could get away with being armed, and rode into it, because he needed to buy oats for Turk. The only person he saw was a barefoot boy in coarse dirty linen, visible from the waist down through a low doorway in the base of the bell-tower, his raggedy ass thrusting out rudely with each jerk on the bell-rope.

But then Jack encountered a rider in good but plain clothing who had apparently come up from the direction of Paris. They drew up, a safe distance apart, in the town’s deserted market-square, circled round each other once or twice, and then began shouting at each other over the din of the bell, and settled on a mixture of English and French.