Bernard would not allow such a foolish sentence to be finished; he spewed air and rolled his eyes. “Him! What would he know of us? He is the epitome of who I mean—son of a Duke! A bastard, I’ll grant you, and enterprising, in his way; yet still wholly typical of the established order.”
Eliza now judged it best to stop talking, for Bernard had led her off into some wild territory—as if enlisting her, a Duchess, in some sort of insurgency. Bernard saw her discomfort, and physically drew back. The Armenian boy whispered up on slippered feet, bearing on a gaudy salver a tiny beaker of coffee clenched in a writhen silver zarf. Eliza gazed out the windows for a few moments, letting Bernard enjoy the first few sips. His guards had long since set up a perimeter defense around the Café Esphahan. But if she looked beyond that, cater-corner across the Rue de l’Orangerie, she could see deep into a vast rectangular plot embraced on three sides by a vaulted gallery-cum-retaining wall that supported the southern wing of the King’s palace. This garden was open to the south so that during the winter it could gather in the feeble offerings of the sun. The King’s orange trees, which lived in portable boxes of dirt, were still cowering back inside the warm gallery, for the last few nights had been clear and cold. But the garden was crowded with palm trees; and it was the sight of their blowing fronds, and not the faux-Turkish decor inside the café, that made it possible for her to phant’sy that she was sitting along some walled garden of the Topkapi Palace.
Bernard had settled down a bit. “Never fear, madame, for my father and I both converted to Catholicism after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Just as you have married a hereditary Duke.”
“I don’t really see what those two have to do with each other.”
“They were, if you will, sacraments that we undertook to show that we were submitting to the established order of this country—the same order that we undermine by pursuing what you so aptly described as our predilection for finance.”
“I don’t know that I agree with that, monsieur.”
Bernard ignored Eliza’s weak protest. “Sooner or later the King will probably make me a Count or some such, and people will pretend to forget that I once served an apprenticeship. But do not be fooled. To them, you and I are as noble; as French; and as Catholic; as him!” and Bernard shot out one hand as if hurling a dagger. The target was a painting on the ceiling that depicted an immense, shirtless, muscle-bound, ochre-skinned hashishin with a red turban and a handlebar moustache raising a scimitar above his head. “And that is why they say Iama Jew; for this amounts to saying, an inexplicable monster.”
“As long as it’s just us inexplicable monsters here,” said Eliza (as indeed it was; for most of the other patrons had bolted) “shall we—”
“Indeed, yes. Let us review the figures,” said Bernard, and blinked twice. “The number of invasion troops is some twenty thousand. Each receives five sols per day; so that is five thousand livres a day. The number of sergeants is, in round numbers, a tenth of the number of troops, but they receive twice the pay; add another thousand livres a day. Lieutenants receive a livre a day, captains get two and a half; at any rate, when you add it all up, reckoning dragoons, cavalry, et cetera, it comes to some eight thousand a day—”
“I have made it ten thousand, to allow for other expenses,” said Eliza.
“C’est juste. So why do you ask for half a million livres in London?”
“Monsieur, England is not so large as France, ’tis true; and yet it is much larger than some scraps of land in the Netherlands that have been fought over for months. Years.”
“Those places you speak of in the Low Countries are fortified. England is not.”
“The point is well taken, but the distance between the landing-sites in Devon and London is considerable. It took William of Orange a month and a half to cover the same interval, when he invaded.”
“Very well, I grant you that fifty days’ pay—almost two months—for this army comes to half a million livres. But why must every last penny of it be minted in advance, in London? Surely if the campaign progresses beyond a beach-head there will be opportunities to ship specie to the island later.”
“Perhaps and perhaps not, monsieur. I only know of this one opportunity, and seek to make the most of it. You make this more complicated than it is. I have been asked to tender advice on how the troops might be paid. You and I seem to agree that half a million livres is a reasonable, though perhaps generous, estimate of the amount that will be required. This is not too large an amount for the normal channels of commerce. I ask for as much as I think shall be needed. If half that amount is actually coined at the Tower of London, then I shall consider the transaction to have come off passing well.”