“What for?” Sophie Charlotte inquired, as if she and everyone else in the room did not already know.
“Merely breaking all of the bones in their bodies does not cause sufficient pain to punish them for this crime. But if they are first tied to a wheel, which is continually rotated, the shifting of their weight causes the broken bone-ends to jar and grind against each other—”
“We have this form of punishment, too,” Sophie Charlotte said. “But,” she added diplomatically, “we have not actually employed it recently, and our punishment-wheels are in storage. Mother, may I introduce Mr. Romanov. Mr. Romanov is from Muscovy and is traveling to Holland to visit the ship-yards. He is very very very interested in ships.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Romanov,” said Sophie, allowing the giant Tsar to spring forward and kiss her hand. “Did my daughter show you my gardens and greenhouses as you drove in?”
“She told me of them. You walk in them.”
“I do walk in them, Mr. Romanov, for hours and hours every day—it is how I preserve my health—and I am terribly afraid that if these three wonderful gentlemen were to be mounted on wheels and broken and rotated for days and days screaming with the torments of the damned as they slowly died, that it would quite spoil my recreations.”
Peter looked somewhat baffled. “I am merely trying to—”
“I know what you are trying to do, Mr. Romanov, and it is so very dear of you.”
“He is worried about Raskolniki,” Sophie Charlotte said helpfully.
“As very well he should be!” Sophie returned without hesitation.
“They believe that I am the Antichrist,” Peter said sheepishly.
“I can assure you that Doctor Leibniz is in no way offended to have been mistaken for a Raskolniki, are you, Doctor?”
“In a strange way I am almost honored, your majesty.”
“There, you see?”
But Peter, upon hearing Leibniz’s name, had turned questioningly to Sophie Charlotte and said something no one could quite make out—except Sophie Charlotte. She got a look of joyous surprise on her face, causing every male heart in the room to stop beating for ten seconds. “Why, yes, Mr. Romanov, it is the same fellow! Your memory is quite excellent!” Then, for the benefit of everyone else, she continued, “This is indeed the same Dr. Leibniz who gave me the tooth.”
A ripple of mis-translation and conjecture spread outwards through the carnival of Prussians, Muscovites, Tatars, Cossacks, dwarves, Dutchmen, Orthodox priests, et cetera, who had piled up behind them. Sophie Charlotte clapped her hands. “Bring out the tooth of the Leviathan! Or whatever it was.”
“Some sort of giant elephant, I rather think, but with plenty of hair on it,” Leibniz put in.
“I have seen such beasts frozen in the ice,” said Peter Romanov. “They are bigger than elephants.”