The Confusion

“Last time we met. Now, seven months.”

“Be that as it may, how can you say you haven’t rogered anyone in years?”

“Sex with my husband I leave out of the reckoning altogether.”

“Strikes me as a large omission.”

“It would not, if you had ever had sex with Etienne de Lavardac, duc d’Arcachon.”

“Can’t say as I have, Madame.”

“Unless you did, and forgot about it. At any rate-he has been doing it to me again lately.”

“Lately…ah. You are saying that there was a cessation, round about the time of the birth of number two, and now he is trying for three.”

“In his mind they are One and Two respectively. For the first, being a bastard, is a zero; which means a nullity, something that does not exist.”

“That-the bastard I mean-is the one you had round about the time I shipped out to Dundalk, and you got marooned in Dunkerque?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just refreshing my memory, my lady, no need to be getting all stiff in the spine-cor! It’s gone loose, I shall have to re-lace from the beginning.”

“It is not necessary. Just get to work buttoning up the bodice.”

“Got ripped a bit, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll have it mended. Come, I am apprehensive that someone will happen along and discover us.”

“Ah, but not to worry-I’m naked!”

“How is it better to be naked?”

“As long as I keep my mouth shut, I’ll be indistinguishable from one of your French nobility. They’ll run away in terror.”

“Especially when they see your scars. Very impressive.”

“You would never think so, if you had any notion of the pain that comes with these scars, the weakness, the helplessness-draining pus for months-not knowing from one moment to the next whether you shall live or die-”

“You forget that I have given birth twice.”

“Touche. Ah, but now you’ve brought me back round to my topic.”

“What is your topic?”

“You never talk about the bastard.”

“Perhaps, from that, you should collect that I do not wish to speak of him.”

“I was merely asking as a routine courtesy, as is common among parents.”

“How are Jack’s boys?”

“Jimmy and Danny are Regimental boys like their father and nuncle. If they’re doing as they ought to-which is unlikely-they are, at this moment, peeling potatoes at our camp outside of Cherbourg.”

“Do they have any inkling that you are acting as a spy for Marlborough?”

“Why, what an impolite question, Madame la duchesse! I am in no way certain that I am a spy. Haven’t made up my mind yet. Haven’t sent any information his way.”

“Well, when you decide to do so, you may send it through me.”

“If I decide to do so.”

“You will. An invasion of England is planned, is it not?”

“When French and Irish regiments march up to the tip of the Cotentin Peninsula and form great camps in the spring-time, it does make one tend to think ’long those lines, don’t it?”

“In the end you’ll not suffer England to be invaded. You’ll inform Marlborough.”

“Marlborough’s in disgrace. He and his meddlesome wife got on the wrong side of William and Mary. He had to sell his offices, his commissions. He is nothing now.”

“Yes, it is the talk of every salon in Versailles. But if England is invaded, he will be un-disgraced very rapidly, and put at the head of some regiments. And you will rally to him.”

“As you seem so certain of these things, I deem all your questions answered, madame-so I turn them round. Does the Duke of Arcachon have any inkling that you are a spy?”

“Your supposition is mistaken. I spied for England once. Now I do it for myself.”

“Ah. So, if we are to cross the Channel, you should like to know of it for your own purposes.”

“You say this-‘for your own purposes’-as if I am the only one in the world who had purposes.”

“Very well, very well…damned lot of buttons, ain’t it?”

“You did not seem to mind so much when you were undoing them ten minutes ago.”

“Twenty minutes, by your leave, madame, do allow me some pride. Ten minutes! Am I really so perfunctory?”

“Perhaps I am.”

“Hmm, now, that is an unusual turning of the tables…it is supposed to be he who is perfunctory and selfish, and she who wants to stretch it out.”

“Ah, but I did stretch it out, Sergeant, when I was inspecting it for signs of the French Pox. And a long stretch it was.”

“You try to change the subject, and to distract me with flattery-but this methodical inspection of my yard is further proof of the businesslike nature of the transaction just concluded, is it not?”

“Very well…I hope that Number Three, as you count them, or Two, as Etienne does, will be half-Shaftoe rather than half-Lavardac, and, in consequence, altogether fitter, handsomer, and cleverer than Number Two/One, bless his poor little heart.”

“I…I…I am shocked!”

“Why so shocked, you who’ve been in battles and seen, and done, the worst that men can do?”

“P’raps that is not so terrible, set against the worst that women can do.”

“You protest too much. You are not serious. Though ’tis true there are terrible women in the world, I am not one of them.”

“Why, to use a man in such a way…am I to have no knowledge of my own offspring!?”