This made Bob a bit stormy-looking. He strove with his temper for a bit. Then he chuckled. “What’s the point of flapping my jaw when you’ll go and do just what you please, no matter what I say? Be off to Dunkerque, then. But if my wishes have any gravity, you’ll tend to yourself and not to me. For I ween you are in a delicate way just now. That is all.”
“I am ever in a delicate way,” said Eliza, “but men pick and choose the time to take notice of it, as it suits their purposes.” At this Bob chuckled again, which provoked her. “Let us speak plainly,” she said, “for this is where our ways part—you must to the Tower to attend your master in his prison-cell, I must to dockside to arrange passage to Dunkerque.” They had arrived at the cross where Grace Church Street changed its name to Fish Street, and plunged down to the Bridge. From their right entered Great Eastcheap; under the name of Little Eastcheap it then wended its way off in the direction of the Tower. A stone’s throw down the hill, a lone, stupendous column jutted up from the city, casting a finger of shadow down the length of the street. They’d come nigh to the place where the Fire of London had been kindled a quarter-century before. The column was the Monument that Wren and Hooke had put up to it.
“When you promise to speak plainly, I know to brace myself,” said Bob, and then he did literally, leaning back against a brick wall.
“You have seen me sick, and suppose that I am pregnant. This has wrought powerfully on your mind, for you know that Abigail was given syphilis by Upnor and may not be able to give you children, even if you do pry her free from the clutches of Count Sheerness. You have stopped thinking of me as ‘Eliza the woman I roger from time to time’ and begun to think of me as ‘Eliza the expectant mother of my only child.’ This has queered your judgment and led you to consider schemes that are not likely to produce Abigail’s freedom. Know then that the f?tus—which might have been yours, or my husband’s, or any of several other men’s—miscarried the night before last. It is with the angels. I would still produce a competent heir for my husband, but must begin a new pregnancy once I have reached France. Perhaps I shall seduce Jean Bart, perhaps the Marquis d’Ozoir, perhaps a Marine who catches my fancy on the street. In any case you must give up hope that any progeny of yours shall come from here—” and Eliza rested her hand on the front of her bodice “—for I am done with being the other woman in the life of Bob Shaftoe and Abigail Frome. Done with being the poppy-elixir that makes you forget your pain, and leads you to dream stratagems that shall never avail you or her a thing. Abigail may be waiting for you, Bob. I am not. Get thee to thy projects, then.”
She was gone from Bob’s sight before the words penetrated all the way to his heart, for she was a small woman, quick, and dissolved into the traffic down Fish Street Hill like a mote of sugar in a stream of boiling water. Bob did not move, but let the brick wall hold him up for some while, until the proprietor—an insurance-man—thrust his head out the window and gave him that look that Gentlemen give to Vagabonds when it is time for them to be moving on. Bob had a soldier’s knack for moving when he did not wish to. He levered himself away from the wall, rounded the corner, and marched down Little Eastcheap toward the Tower, where his Captain would be waiting for him with orders.
Book 4
Bonanza
Ahmadabad, the Mogul Empire
SEPTEMBER 1693
When Men fly from danger, it is natural for them to run farther than they need.
—The Mischiefs that ought justly to be apprehended from a Whig-government,
ANONYMOUS (ATTRIBUTED TO
BERNARD MANDEVILLE), 1714
EVERY MORNING A MOB OF angry Hindoos convened outside the hospital hoping to have a conversation with Jack on his way in, and so every day Jack came a little earlier, stealing in through a back door where manure was carried out and food brought in. Because of that latter function it was the correct entrance for him to use anyway. He walked across an enclosed stable-yard, holding one hand before his face as a sort of visor, to break a trail through the horseflies. At least, he hoped that they were horseflies.