The Confusion

She looked back at the Duke, ready to apologize to him for having been distracted. But it seemed that he considered his chat with Eliza to be finished. He had caught someone’s eye and wanted to go talk to him. He most civilly took his leave from Eliza, and glided away. Eliza tracked him with her eyes for a few moments. As he passed in front of the tall woman in pink silk, Eliza glanced up, just for an instant, to see who it was. The answer was, the Duchess of Oyonnax.

Having settled that, Eliza turned her attention back to Upnor and his circle of admirers.

James Stuart and his French advisors phant’sied that, once they had retaken Ireland, they might move thence to Qwghlm, which could be used as a sort of outlying demilune-work from which to mount an invasion of northern England. This had at least something to do with Eliza’s popularity at the two Courts: the French one at Versailles, and the exile-English one at St.-Germain. Consequently she had seen and heard enough of Upnor, in the last half-year, to know the first parts of this story by heart. It was the tale of the day he had made his escape from England.

He had sent his household ahead of him to Castle Upnor, where they had made ready to board ship and sail to France as soon as he arrived. For he had stayed behind in London, supposedly at great risk, to attend to certain matters of stupendous importance. These matters were, however, far too deep and mystical for Upnor to say anything about them in mixed company. This suggested that they had something to do with Alchemy, or at least that he wished as many people as possible to believe so. “I could not allow certain information to fall into the hands of the usurper and those of his lackeys who pretend to know of matters that are, in truth, beyond their ken.”

At any rate, after completing his affairs in London, Upnor had mounted a stallion (he was a horse-fancier, and so this part of the anecdote was never related without many details concerning this horse’s ancestry, which was more distinguished than that of most human beings) and set off a-gallop for Castle Upnor, accompanied by a pair of squires and a string of spare mounts. They had departed from London around dawn and ridden hard all morning along the south bank of the Thames. From place to place, the river road would cross some tributary of the great river, and there would be a bridge or ford that all traffic must use.

In the middle of one such bridge, out in the countryside, they had spied a lone man on horseback, wearing common clothes, but armed; and it had appeared from his posture that he was waiting.

For the sorts of people the Earl was apt to tell this story to, this last detail sufficed to classify the anecdote as if it had been a new botanical sample presented to the Royal Society. It belonged to the genus “Persons of Quality beset by varlets on the road.” No type was more popular round French dinner tables, because France was so large and so infested with Vagabonds and highwaymen. The nobles who came together at Versailles must occasionally travel to and fro their fiefdoms, and the perils and tribulations of such journeys were one of the few experiences they shared in common, and so that was what they talked about. Such tales were, in fact, told so frequently that everyone was tired of them; but any new variations were, in consequence, appreciated that much more. Upnor’s had two distinctions: It took place in England, and it was embroidered, as it were, on the back-cloth of the Revolution.

“I knew this stretch of road well,” Upnor was saying, “and so I dispatched one of my squires-a young chap name of Fenleigh-to ride down a side-track that angled away from the main road and led to a ford half a mile upstream of the bridge.” He was scratching out a crude map on the gravel path with the tip of his walking-stick.

“With my other companion, I proceeded deliberately up the main road, keeping a sharp eye for any confederates who might be lurking in hedges near the approaches to the bridge. But there were none-the horseman was alone!” This puzzled or fascinated the listeners. It was another odd twist on the usual rustic-ruffian tale; normally, the shrubs would be infested with club-wielding knaves.

“The horseman must have noted the way in which we were peering about, for he called out: ‘Do not waste time, my lord, ’tis not an ambuscado. I am alone. You are not. Accordingly, I challenge you to a duel, my blade ’gainst yours, no seconds.’ And he drew out a spadroon, which is an abominable sort of implement, just the sort of thing you would expect commoners to invent if you make the mistake of suffering them to bear arms. More brush-cutter than weapon really. Sharpened on one side like a cutlass.”