“It is precisely of my cares that your magnificent wife is speaking, monsieur,” said Pontchartrain, “and I believe she is getting ready to suggest something cheeky.”
étienne’s face pinkened. “I pray it shall not be so cheeky as to create an embarrassment for our guests—”
“On the contrary, monsieur, ’tis meant to embarrass the English!”
“Oh, well, that is all right then.”
“Pray continue, madame!”
“I shall, monsieur,” said Eliza, “but first you must indulge me as I speculate.”
“Consider yourself indulged.”
“The jacht on which you arrived is under conspicuously heavy guard. I speculate that it is laden with specie that is meant to cross the Channel with the invasion force and be used to pay the French and Irish soldiers during their campaign in England.”
Pontchartrain smiled weakly and shook his head. “So much for my efforts at secrecy. It is said of some that he or she has a nose for money; but I truly believe, madame, that you can smell silver a mile away.”
“Do not be silly, monsieur, it is, as you said, an obvious necessity of a foreign invasion.”
For some reason she glanced, for a moment, at D’Erquy, and then regretted it. The poor chevalier was so transfixed that it took all her discipline not to laugh aloud. This poor fellow had melted down the family plate and loaned it to the King in hopes that it would get him invited to a few parties at Versailles. The interest payments had at first been delayed, then insufficient, later nonexistent. The man with the power to make those payments, or not, was seated less than arm’s length away—and now it had been revealed that he had sailed into St.Malo on top of a king’s ransom in silver, which was locked up on a jacht a few hundred yards down the hill. A word, a flick of the pen, from Pontchartrain would pay back the loan, or at least pay the interest on it-and not just in the form of a written promise to pay, but in actual metal. This was the only thing D’Erquy could think about. And yet there was not a single word he could say, because to do so would have been impolite. Etiquette had rendered him helpless as effectively as the iron collar around a slave’s neck. All he could do was watch and listen.
“Want of silver is not your difficulty, then,” Eliza continued. “Very well. You must needs translate it across the Channel—very risky. For in the annals of military history, no tale is more tediously familiar than that of the train of pay-wagons, bringing specie to the troops at the front, that is ambushed and lost en route, with disastrous consequences to the campaign.”
“We have been reading the same books,” Pontchartrain concluded. “Even so, as we laid plans for this operation during the winter, I am afraid I paid more attention to my r?le as Secretary of State for the Navy, than that of contr?leur-général. Which is to say that I placed more emphasis on preparations of a purely military nature than on the attendant financial arrangements. Not until I reached Cherbourg the other day, and was confronted with the invasion in all of its complexity and scale, did I really grasp the difficulty of getting this specie to England. To send it across in an obvious and straightforward manner seems madness. I have considered breaking it up into small shipments and sending them over in the boats of those who smuggle wine and salt to remote ports of Cornwall.”
“That would distribute the risk, but multiply the difficulties,” said Eliza. “And even if it succeeded, it would not address the great difficulty, which is that if the silver is not accepted on the local—which is to say, English—market, then the troops will not deem themselves to have been paid.”
“Naturally we should like to pay them in English silver pennies,” said Pontchartrain, “but matters being what they are, we may have to use French coins.”
“This brings us back to the conversation we had in the sleigh at La Dunette two years and some months ago,” Eliza said; and the answering look on Pontchartrain’s face told her that she had struck home.
But here Madame Bearsul threw a quizzical look in the direction of the Politest Man in France, who intervened. “On behalf of those of our guests who were not in that sleigh,” étienne said, “I beg permission to interrupt, so we may hear—”
“I speak of the recoinage, when all of the old coins were called in and replaced with new,” said Eliza. “By royal decree, the new had the same value, and so to those of us who live in France, it made no difference. But they contained less silver or gold.”
“Madame la duchesse, who in those days was Mademoiselle la comtesse, said to me, then, that it must have consequences difficult to foretell,” said Pontchartrain.