The Confusion

“It’s me they want,” Jack said, matter-of-factly, as if he were captured by the French Navy every day.

“It’s us they have,” Danny answered, pointedly, bringing another swivel-gun to bear on another longboat, “and we’ll soon make ’em wish they didn’t.”

Jack shook his head. “This is not to be another Cairo.”

QWGHLM CASTLE WAS a Dark Ages citadel that had all too obviously failed its essential purpose. Indeed, most of it was not even competent to keep out sleet and rats. Its lee corner, where it gripped the living rock of the Sghr, had, however, at least put up a struggle against gravity. It supported a row of stark crenels that finger-combed the tangled winds above the crunchy wilderness of smithereens and guano that accounted for the rest of the Castle.

To re-roof such a thing was to waste money; but to embed a whole brand-new Barock chateau in it, as the duc d’Arcachon had recently finished doing, was to make some sort of ringing proclamation. In the visual language of architects and decorators, the proclamation said something about whatever glorious principles were personified by all its swooping, robed, wreathed, winged demigods. Translated into English it said, “I am rich and powerful, and you are not.”

Jack got the message. They put him under house-arrest in a grand bedchamber with a high Barock window through which the Duke and Duchess, presumably, could watch the comings and goings of ships in the harbor. The room’s back wall, facing these windows, consisted mostly of mirrors-which as even Jack knew was an homage to the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles.

Jack lay in bed for several days, unable to bring himself to look into any mirrors, or to go near that window and see Minerva stuck on the Dutch-hammer. Sometimes he would get out of bed and hug the cannonball that was attached to his neck-collar by a four-foot length of chain and carry it into the en suite garderobe: a closet with a wooden bench decorated with a hole. Being ever so careful not to let the cannonball fall into that hole-for he’d not quite decided to kill himself yet-he’d sit down and void himself into a chute that spilled out onto the stone cliff-side far below.

Years ago-the last time a collar of iron had been locked around his neck by an Arcachon-John Churchill had warned him that angry Frenchmen were bound to come after him with pliers sooner or later. Jack could only assume that this was still true, and that in the meantime he was being kept in luxurious surroundings as part of some highly refined campaign of sarcasm.

After a week they moved him to a stone chamber. The windows were crossbow-embrasures that had recently been chocked up with pigs of glass. But they did afford him a view of the Dutch-hammer and its latest victim. Minerva had languished there, an object of ridicule, as gold and silver were extracted from her hold, and replaced with rocks to keep her ballasted.

“Did Vrej survive the fall, and the water?” was Jack’s first question when Edmund de Ath-who had revealed himself to be, in fact, one Edouard de Gex, a Jesuit, and a hater of the Jansenists and of the Enlightenment both-came around to taunt him.

Edouard de Gex looked surprised. “Why do you ask? Surely you’re not naive enough to think you’ll have an opportunity to kill him.”

“Oh no, I was just wondering how it came out in the end.”

“How what came out?”

“The story. You see, all along I’ve been supposing that this was my story, but now I see it has really been Vrej’s.”

Edouard de Gex shrugged. “He lives. He has a bit of a catarrh. When he’s feeling better he’ll probably come around and explain matters to you.”

“That should be a lively conversation…but pray tell, why the hell are you here?”

“I am here to look after your immortal soul.”

De Gex had traded his former garb for a Jesuit’s black robes, and even his language had changed. Formerly he had spoken Sabir, but now it was English. “It is my intention to convert all of Britain to the true faith,” he remarked, “and so I have made a study of your language.”

“And you’re going to begin with me? Weren’t you paying attention in Mexico City?”

“The Inquisition there has grown lax. You said you were a Catholic and they took you at your word… I prefer a more rigorous approach.” De Gex produced a letter from his sleeve. “Does this look familiar?”

“It looks like the one Eliza sent me in New Spain…” Jack blinked and shook his head. “The one we opened and read on the ship…which was obviously a fake…but that one hasn’t even been opened.”

“Poor Jack. This is the true letter that was delivered to you in New Spain, and that you sealed up inside van Hoek’s book-chest. But it was not sent by Eliza. It was sent by Elizabeth de Obregon. That fickle bitch smuggled it out of the convent where she was being held in Mexico City. Then later, when we were in Vera Cruz-”

“You took it out of the crate where I’d stored it, and substituted a fake one you’d written. Van Hoek complained that the caulking was badly done… I should’ve suspected tampering.”