The Confusion

When I rushed to little Johann’s nursery eighteen months ago to discover his cradle empty, a war began within my soul. On one side was the Virtue of Love: a mother’s natural love for her child. On the other was the Vice of Pride: pride wounded, aggrieved, and humiliated. It was not merely that I had been bested, but that it had happened while I was far away attending a fashionable soiree, rather than staying at home and tending to my duties as a mother. Pride, therefore, was urged on by Shame; and together their legions charged across the field and swept Love’s feebler forces before them. All that I have done since then, where Johann is concerned, has been dictated by Pride. Love’s counsel has rarely been heard, and when I have heard it, I have wilfully ignored it.

But the soul harbors its own tides. Much has changed in eighteen months. I have a new little boy now. Impetuous Pride, I have learned, is better at seizing ground than holding it. Love’s inroads have insensibly made up all the ground that she lost, and more. This letter may be considered the instrument of Pride’s surrender, and Love’s victory. It only remains for terms to be negotiated.

Of course you have already dictated the terms; you laid them out with admirable clarity in the note that was left in Johann’s crib. You seek the return of the gold that was seized off Bonanza in August of 1690 and that is believed to be in the hands of the band of thieves and pirates led by the villain Jack Shaftoe. You phant’sy that I had something to do with the theft and that I know where Jack is to be found.

In truth I had nothing to do with it and I have no idea where he is. But this is a prideful response, which brings me no closer to seeing my little boy again. The loving response is to give you, sir, what you want, to appease your anger and balm your wounds, though it be never so humiliating to me, your humble and obedient servant.

So: though I cannot return the gold, and do not know where Jack is, I shall protest no more, but do all in my power to give you what I can in compensation.

As to the whereabouts of Jack Shaftoe: no one knows this, though Father Edouard de Gex and Monsieur Bonaventure Rossignol have devised a scheme to ferret him out. One of the members of his pirate-band writes letters, from time to time, to his family in France. These letters are intercepted and read by Monsieur Rossignol, who, however, is unable to extract all of their meaning, as they are written in an impenetrable code. He makes copies of them and passes them on to the family.

The family are coffee merchants who until recently lived as paupers in Paris. Then they were discovered by Madame la duchesse d’Oyonnax, who as you may know is the cousine of de Gex. She began to serve their coffee exclusively at her salon, and soon enough de Maintenon herself, at her levee, was heard to ask for coffee of this marque, and in no time at all, this family had established a coffeehouse in the village of Versailles, where they serve a steady walk-in trade as well as purveying beans to the royal chateau and the other estates that abound in this area.

Obviously de Gex is behind this. For where previously the family in question were dispersed among various prisons and poorhouses around Paris, now they are all dwelling together in one house in Versailles where the Cabinet Noir can easily keep an eye on them. As I have mentioned, all of the letters that are sent to France by their brother who is a member of Jack Shaftoe’s pirate-band are passed on to them, in the hopes that they will write back to him, and in so doing, divulge something to M. Rossignol. So far this has not been productive of useful information. The family do not write back. This appears to be because they have nowhere to write back to. For the ship of L’Emmerdeur and his band is wandering all over the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, so that trying to intercept it with a letter posted from Paris is akin to trying to strike a horsefly with a round fired from a siege-mortar. Nevertheless, the scheme that M. Rossignol and Fr. de Gex have devised to trace Jack’s movements is well-conceived and likely to bear fruit sooner or later. When it does, I shall be in a position to know about it, and will pass the information on to you.