The Confusion

“I shall let you be the judge of that, for you shall meet him presently,” Eliza said. “Either way, my situation is the same. Let me put it to you baldly. The money that Bart’s men had stripped off my person was gold or, as some name it, hard money, spendable anywhere in the world for any good or service, and extremely desirable on both sides of the English Channel. Such is terribly scarce now because of the war. Living so near Amsterdam and dealing so rarely in hard money, I had quite lost sight of this. As you know, Bon-bon, Louis XIV recently had all of the solid silver furniture in his Grands Appartements melted down, literally liquidating 1.5 million livres tournoises in assets to pay for the new army he is building. At the time I heard this story, I had dismissed it as a whim of interior decoration, but now I am thinking harder about its meaning. The nobles of France have hoarded a stupendous amount of metal in the past few decades, probably banking it against the day Louis XIV dies, when they phant’sy they may rise up and reassert their ancient powers.”

Rossignol nodded. “By melting his own furniture, his majesty was trying to set an example. So far, few have emulated it.”

“Now, my assets-all in the most liquid possible form-had been seized by Jean Bart, a privateer, holding a license to plunder Dutch and English shipping and turn the proceeds over to the French crown. If I had been a Dutch or an English woman, my money would already have been swallowed up by the French treasury, and available for the controleur-general, Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain, to dispense as he saw fit. But since I was arguably a French countess, the money had been put in escrow.”

“They were afraid that you would lodge an objection to the confiscation of your money-for how can a French privateer steal from a French countess?” said Rossignol. “Your ambiguous status would make it into a complicated affair legally. The letters that passed back and forth were most amusing.”

“I am glad you were amused, Bon-bon. But I was faced with the question: Why not claim my rights and demand the money back?”

“It is good that you have posed this question, mademoiselle, for I, and half of Versailles, have been wondering.”

“The answer is, because they wanted it. They wanted it badly enough that if I were to put up a fight, they might turn against me, denounce me as a foreign spy and a traitor, void my rights, throw me into the Bastille, and take the money. Put to work in the war, it might save thousands of French lives-and balanced against that, what is one counterfeit Countess worth?”

“Hmmm. I understand now that Lieutenant Bart was presenting you with an opportunity to do something clever.”

“He dared not come out and say it directly. But he wanted me to know that I had a choice. And this little Hercules, who would not hesitate to send a ship full of living men to David Jones’s Locker, if they were enemies of France, did not wish to see me taken off in chains to the Bastille.”

“So you did it.”

“ ‘The money is for France, of course!’ ” I told him. “ ‘That is why I went to such trouble to smuggle it out of Amsterdam. How could I do otherwise when le Roi is melting down his own furniture to save French lives, and to defend French rights?’ ”

“That must have cheered him up.”

“More than words can express. Indeed he was so flummoxed that I gave him leave to kiss my cheeks, which he did with great elan, and a lingering scent of eau de cologne.”

Rossignol twisted his head away from Eliza so that she would not see the look on his face.

“Some part of me still phant’sied that I’d be aboard a Dover-bound boat within hours, penniless but free,” Eliza said. “But of course it was more complicated than that. I still was not free to go; for as Jean Bart now informed me with obvious regret, I was being held on suspicion of being a spy for William of Orange.”

“D’Avaux had made his move,” said Rossignol.

“That is what I came to understand, from hints given me by Lieutenant Bart. My accuser, he said, was a very important man, who was in Dublin, and who had given orders that I was to be detained, on suspicion of spying, until he could reach Dunkerque.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Two weeks.”

“Then d’Avaux might get here at any moment!” Rossignol said.

“Behold his ship,” said Eliza, and directed Rossignol’s attention to a French Navy vessel moored elsewhere in the basin. “I was watching it come round the end of the jetty when I saw you riding up the street.”

“So d’Avaux has only just arrived,” said Rossignol. “We have little time to lose, then. Please explain to me, briefly, how you have ended up in this house; for only a moment ago you told me that you were detained on the ship there.”