ELIZA FRETTED, AND BELABORED HERSELF for being too late and too little organized, until the moment that she gazed out the carriage window and saw the waters of the Thames below her, all crammed with shipping. This was too strange to believe for a moment. Then it came to her that this street must be London Bridge, and the carriage must be traversing one of the firebreaks, where it was possible to get a view. The sight of the River triggered a curious reversal in her mood. It was midafternoon of the day nominated, by the French and most of the rest of Christendom, June 4th, and by the English May 25th. Whichever calendar was used, the fact of the matter was that the Bills of Exchange would not expire until the end of the day tomorrow; she had, in other words, reached London with more than twenty-four hours to spare. This in spite of the fact that for the last week—since the day that Tourville had assaulted Russell in the Channel, and the fog had closed in—she had been certain she was too late and that the entire enterprise was doomed. From that moment until this, London had seemed infinitely far away, and impossible to reach. Now, having reached it, she wondered what all the fuss had been about. For London was after all a great city and people went there all the time—the number of masts thrust into the air above the Pool spoke to this. Perhaps Eliza had nursed an exaggerated view of its remoteness because of the difficulty she’d had in escaping to it almost three years ago, when her ship had been waylaid by Jean Bart.
At any rate she was across the Bridge and in the City before she had reached the end of these ruminations. The horses irritably dragged the carriage up Fish Street Hill as the coachman irritably popped his whip about their ears. It occurred to Eliza that she had not given the driver a destination, other than London. She had no destination in mind. But the driver had. Presently he turned off to the left, into a slit between new (brick, flat-fronted, post-Fire) buildings. The slit broadened and developed into a rambling composition of chambers and orifices, like the stomachs of a cow. It all seemed to be wrapped around the backside of a big structure that looked somehow like church, but somehow not. Tired Eliza remembered, then, that she had found her way to a country where there was more than just one church. She reckoned that this must be a meeting house of Quakers or some other such sect. At any rate they came, after certain turns, reversals, and squeezings, to a doorway adorned with a sign shaped like the head of an indifferent-looking brown horse. A porter exploded out of the doorway and vied with a footman for the honor of ripping the carriage door open. For painted on the outside of the carriage were the arms of the Marquis of Ravenscar, who Eliza gathered must be a valued regular of this inn or tavern, the Brown Horse or the Old Gelding or whatever they called it—
“Welcome to Nag’s Head Court, my lady,” said Roger Comstock, the Marquis of Ravenscar, emerging from the door, and bowing as deeply as a man of his maturity and dignity could without peeling a hamstring or lobbing his wig into the gutter. Eliza by now had thrust her head and shoulders out the door (about all she wanted to reveal, given that she had lost contact with her wardrobe some days ago). She ought to have given her undivided attention to Ravenscar; but she could not restrain the urge to look this way and that up the length of Nag’s Head Court.
“No, madame, your senses have not misled you, it is just as mean, narrow, and squalid as you feared, and no apology from me shall balance the offense I have done you, by bringing you to it; but it was a suitable place for me to wait, and behold, it is nigh to the mysteries and delights of the ’Change.”
Eliza followed his gaze down the alley. It rambled on in the same vein for a stone’s throw and discharged into a proper street, which seemed to be crowded with an inordinate number of well-to-do-chaps who were all in a frightful hurry. She knew what it was just that quickly. If she had been wearing Versailles court-makeup, it would have cracked and fallen to the ground like ice from a warming roof. For her face had done something she never allowed it to do at Versailles, namely, opened up into a broad grin. She directed this at Ravenscar, who all but swooned. “On the contrary, my lord, in all London there’s no place I’d rather be than the ’Change, and there is no place I am so well suited for, in my present state, than a dark doorway in Nag’s Head Court—so—”
Ravenscar was aghast, and quick-stepped to the base of the wee Barock staircase that the footmen had arranged beneath the carriage-door. This was to help her down, if she insisted; but really he was throwing his body across her path as a barrier. “I would not dream of escorting a Duchess into that place! I had hoped that the lady might suffer me to join her in the carriage while we proceeded to some destination worthy to be graced by one of her dignity.”
“It is, after all, your carriage, monsieur—”
“Nay, madame, yours, for as long as you choose to remain on our Isle, and I, your servant.”
“Get in the damned carriage, then. And pray lower the shades, for I am not fit to stop light.”
Ravenscar did as he was told. The carriage began to move. “Obviously, my driver was able to find you in Portsmouth—?”
“We found him. The skipper of our boat would not go to Portsmouth, or any other proper port-town, but only to certain coves he knew of. Thence we hired a waggon.”
Ravenscar was looking curiously about the interior of the carriage, as if someone were missing. “We?”
“I was with an Englishman.”
“A Person of Quality, or—”
“A Person of Usefulness. But somewhat bull-headed. He had set his mind to looking up his whilom Captain. When we reached Portsmouth he began to make inquiries about the fellow—name of Churchill.”
Ravenscar winced. “Eeeyuh, the Earl of Marlborough has been clapped in the Tower of London!”
“So you tell me now, but, isolated as I’d been, I’d not heard that news. Otherwise I’d have warned my companion not to mention the name.”
“They put your man in irons, did they?”