On the third night, she was out-and-out flabbergasted, and asked étienne a number of probing questions clearly meant to establish whether he might be developing a brain tumor.
Jack, a theatre-goer of long standing, now saw how it was going to be. For étienne had explained to him that his doom was to be locked up in a cell here for the rest of his life, and that once a year, when the weather cleared, étienne was going to sail up here with Eliza and repeat this procedure a few times before turning round and sailing home. As étienne told him this, Jack was, of course, gagged, and could not answer; but what he was thinking was that this was indeed an excruciating torture, but for wholly different reasons than étienne imagined. The premise was excellent, granted; but the road to dramaturgickal perdition was thick strewn with excellent premises. The difficulty lay in that this show was wretchedly staged and, in a word, botched. This made it almost more painful to view than if it had been carried off brilliantly. Jack’s fate, it seemed, was to languish in a chilly dungeon three hundred and sixty-odd days out of each year and, on the other few days, to be a captive audience to a bad play. He had to grant that it would be a humiliating fate if he had been a member of the French nobility. But as a Vagabond who’d already lived thrice as long as he ought to’ve, it wasn’t bad at all; it was pleasing, in fact, to see how not under étienne’s thumb was Eliza. Jack’s chief source of discomfort, then, was a feeling well known to soldiers of low rank, to doctors’ patients, and to people getting their hair cut; namely, that he was utterly in the power of an incompetent.
After the third night, the set was struck, as it were. Jack was locked in his cell to begin the first year of his ordeal, and Météore sailed away south.
Jack settled in, and began to make friends with his gaolers. They were under strict orders not to talk to him, but they couldn’t help hearing him when he talked, and he could tell that they fancied his stories.
He was there for all of a month. Then a French frigate came and took him away. They gave him clothes, soap, and a razor. Jack had a most enjoyable journey to Le Havre, for he knew that there was only one man in the world who could have countermanded the orders of étienne de Lavardac, duc d’Arcachon.
Book 5
The Juncto
H?tel Arcachon
OCTOBER 1702
“WE ARE VERY SORRY to hear of your little ship-wreck,” said King Louis XIV of France. “But consider yourself fortunate you did not book passage on the Spanish treasure-fleet. The English Navy fell upon it in Vigo Bay and sent several millions of pieces of eight to the locker of David Jones.”
The King of France did not seem especially troubled by this news; if anything, discreetly amused. His majesty was sitting in the biggest armchair that Western Civilization had to offer, in the center of the Grand Ballroom of the H?tel Arcachon in Paris. Jack, somewhat to his surprise, had been allowed to sit down on a stool. The Kings of France and of the Vagabonds were alone together; the former had made a great show of dismissing his glorious courtiers, who had made a great show of being astonished. Now Jack could hear the murmur of their voices in the gallery outside as they smoked pipes and batted witticisms at each other.
But he could not make out any of their words. And this, he began to suspect, was all by design. This room was large enough to race horses in, but it had been emptied of furniture, except for the big armchair and the stool, which were in its center. The King could be certain that any words he spoke would be heard by Jack, and no one else.
“You know,” said Jack, “I was a King for a while in Hindoostan, and my subjects would get worked up into a lather about a potato, which to them was worth as much as a treasure-chest. At first I’d want to know everything about the potato in question, and I would take a large stake in the matter, but towards the end of my reign—”
Here Jack rolled his eyes, as Frenchmen frequently did during encounters with Englishmen. Leroy seemed to take his meaning very clearly. “It is the same with every King.”
“Potatoes grow back,” Jack pointed out.
Louis took this as a witty and yet profound apothegm. “Indeed, mon cousin; and in the same way, there will always be more pieces of eight, as long as the metallic heart in Mexico City continues to beat.”
Jack was a bit unsure as to why King Louis XIV was referring to him as my cousin, but he reckoned it must be a matter of protocol. Jack had been a king once. King of a ditch in Hindoostan, true; but no less a king.
“There is so much that is better ignored,” Jack tried, hoping Leroy would agree, and apply the principle to his particular case.
“The King must not descend into these broils,” said Leroy. “He is Apollo, riding above all in his bright chariot, seeing the entire world as if it were a courtyard.”
“I could not have put it better myself,” Jack said.