The Confusion

“We have this form of punishment, too,” Sophie Charlotte said. “But,” she added diplomatically, “we have not actually employed it recently, and our punishment-wheels are in storage. Mother, may I introduce Mr. Romanov. Mr. Romanov is from Muscovy and is traveling to Holland to visit the ship-yards. He is very very very interested in ships.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Romanov,” said Sophie, allowing the giant Tsar to spring forward and kiss her hand. “Did my daughter show you my gardens and greenhouses as you drove in?”

“She told me of them. You walk in them.”

“I do walk in them, Mr. Romanov, for hours and hours every day-it is how I preserve my health-and I am terribly afraid that if these three wonderful gentlemen were to be mounted on wheels and broken and rotated for days and days screaming with the torments of the damned as they slowly died, that it would quite spoil my recreations.”

Peter looked somewhat baffled. “I am merely trying to-”

“I know what you are trying to do, Mr. Romanov, and it is so very dear of you.”

“He is worried about Raskolniki,” Sophie Charlotte said helpfully.

“As very well he should be!” Sophie returned without hesitation.

“They believe that I am the Antichrist,” Peter said sheepishly.

“I can assure you that Doctor Leibniz is in no way offended to have been mistaken for a Raskolniki, are you, Doctor?”

“In a strange way I am almost honored, your majesty.”

“There, you see?”

But Peter, upon hearing Leibniz’s name, had turned questioningly to Sophie Charlotte and said something no one could quite make out-except Sophie Charlotte. She got a look of joyous surprise on her face, causing every male heart in the room to stop beating for ten seconds. “Why, yes, Mr. Romanov, it is the same fellow! Your memory is quite excellent!” Then, for the benefit of everyone else, she continued, “This is indeed the same Dr. Leibniz who gave me the tooth.”

A ripple of mis-translation and conjecture spread outwards through the carnival of Prussians, Muscovites, Tatars, Cossacks, dwarves, Dutchmen, Orthodox priests, et cetera, who had piled up behind them. Sophie Charlotte clapped her hands. “Bring out the tooth of the Leviathan! Or whatever it was.”

“Some sort of giant elephant, I rather think, but with plenty of hair on it,” Leibniz put in.

“I have seen such beasts frozen in the ice,” said Peter Romanov. “They are bigger than elephants.”

George Louis had returned from his errand and had been skirting the back of the crowd trying to find a way in without getting into a shoving-match with any Cossacks. The crowd parted to admit one of Sophie Charlotte’s footmen, who glided in carrying a tray with a velvet pillow on it, and on the pillow, a rock still nestled in torn-up wrapping paper. George Louis followed the lead and took up an appropriate position next to his mother, and got an expression on his face that said, I am ready to be introduced and to have a jolly good time playing along with this incognito business, but everyone else-especially Peter-was gazing at the rock instead. It was pinkish-brown, and about the size of a melon, but sort of Gibraltar-shaped, with a flat, angled grinding-surface on the top and a system of rootlike legs below. There was a lot of rude behavior going on in the outer fringes of Peter’s retinue, as diverse furry muscular steppe-dwellers jostled for position. They seemed to have convinced themselves that “Tooth of the Leviathan” was a flowery monicker for some very large diamond. Men who were eager to lay eyes on the treasure collided with others who already had, and were recoiling in dismay. Meanwhile Leibniz had been nudged up to the front by Sophie, who did not believe in breaking her minions on the wheel, but was not above delivering swift jabs to the arse and kidney with her bejewelled knuckles. Leibniz bellied up to the tooth and caught the edge of the underlying tray, which was almost too heavy for the servant to hold up. Sophie Charlotte’s heavenly face was beaming at him. Next to it was the Tsar’s watch-chain. Leibniz began to tilt his head back, and did not stop until he was gazing at the undersurface of Peter’s chin. His wig slipped and Sophie cuffed him in the back of the head to set it aright, and said: “The Doctor is hard at work on a wonderful project in Natural Philosophy, which my son does not understand, but which should produce miraculous results, provided some wise monarch can only supply him with an infinite amount of money.”

At this Leibniz naturally winced, and George Louis chuckled. But Tsar Peter thought about it very gravely, as if an infinite amount of money was a routine sum for him to bandy about in his budget-meetings.*

“Could it make ships better?”

“Ships and many other things, Mr. Romanov.”

That did it; Peter hurled a frightfully significant glare at some advisor, who cringed back half a step and then fastened a raptor-like gaze upon Leibniz’s face. The Tsar, having settled that much, brushed past the Doctor on his way to greet George Louis.