“Then?”

“Then I was amazed at Bob’s stupidity, too. Placing me, as I need hardly tell you, in an awkward spot.”

“Always thinking of yourself.”

“Fortunately the Duke of Monmouth appeared before me, that very moment, with a message that he wanted me to take to a nearby company of French musketeers. So I ran down the trench and located Monsieur D’Artagnan, the officer in ch-”

“Oh, stop!”

“What?”

“Even I’ve heard of D’Artagnan! You don’t expect me to believe you-?”

“Is it all right with you if I get on with the story?”

Sigh. “Yes.”

“Monsieur D’Artagnan, whom you don’t appear to realize was a real human being and not just a figure in romantic legends, ordered his Musketeers forward. All of us advanced upon the demilune with conspicuous gallantry.”

“I’m enthralled!” said Eliza, only a little sarcastic. At first she would not believe that Jack had actually met the celebrated D’Artagnan, but now that she did she was caught up in the tale.

“Because we did not bother to use the trenches, as cowards would’ve done, we reached the site of the fighting from a direction where the Dutch hadn’t bothered to post proper defenses. All of us-French Musketeers, English bastards and gigolos, and Vagabond-messengers-got there at the same instant. But we could only advance through an opening just wide enough to admit one man at a time. D’Artagnan got there first and stood in the path of the Duke of Monmouth himself and begged him in the most gallant and polite French way not to go through that dangerous pass. Monmouth insisted. D’Artagnan consented-but only on the condition that he, D’Artagnan, should go through first. He did just that, and got shot in the head. The others advanced over him and went on to win ridiculous glory, while I stayed behind to look after D’Artagnan.”

“He still lived!?”

“Hell no, his brains were all over me.”

“But you stayed behind to guard his body-?”

“Actually, I had my eye on some heavy jewelled rings he was wearing.”

For half a minute or so, Eliza adopted the pose of someone who’d just herself taken a musket-ball to the head and suffered an injury of unknown severity. Jack decided to move on to more glamorous parts of the tale, but Eliza dug in her heels. “While your brother risked all, you were looting D’Artagnan’s corpse? I’ve never heard worse.”

“Why?”

“It’s so… so craven.”

“You don’t need to make it sound cowardly -I was in more danger than Bob was. The musket-balls were going through my hat. ”

“Still…”

“The fighting was over. Those rings were the size of doorknockers. They would have buried that famed Musketeer with those rings on his fingers-if someone else hadn’t looted them first.”

“Did you take them, Jack?”

“He’d put them on when he was a younger and thinner man. They were impossible to move. So there I was with my foot planted in his fucking armpit-not the worst place my foot’s ever been, but close-bending my fingernails back trying to get this ring up past the rolls of fat that’d grown up around it during his days of wine and women-asking myself whether I shouldn’t just cut the damn finger off.” Eliza now looked like someone who’d eaten a bad oyster. Jack decided to move on hastily. “When who should show up but brother Bob, with a look of self-righteous horror on his face, like a vicar who’s just surprised an altar boy masturbating in the sacristy-or like you, for that matter-all dressed up in his little drummer boy outfit-carrying a message-frightfully urgent of course-from Churchill to one of King Looie’s generals. He stops to favor me with a lecture about military honor. ‘Ach, you don’t really believe that stuff, do you?’ I ask. ‘Until today I didn’t, Jack, but if you could see what I’ve seen just now-the feats that those brothers in arms, John Churchill and the Duke of Monmouth and Louis Hector de Villars, have performed-you’d believe.’”

“And then he sped onwards to deliver the message,” Eliza said, getting a faraway look in her eye that was somewhat annoying to Jack, who wanted her to remain there in the hut with him. “And John Churchill never forgot Bob’s loyalty and bravery.”

“Yes-why, just a few months later Bob went to Westphalia with him and campaigned under French generals, as a mercenary, against hapless Protestants, sacking the Palatinate for the hundredth time. Can’t remember what that had to do with military honor, exactly.”

“ You,on the other hand-”

“I took a few belts of cognac from D’Artagnan’s flask and slunk back to the ditch.”

This, at least, brought her back to the here (hut in Bohemia) and now (end ofA.D. 1683). She directed the full power of her blue-eyed gaze against him. “You’re always making yourself out to be such a ne’er-do-well, Jack-saying you’d have cut D’Artagnan’s fingers off-proposing to blow up the Holy Roman Emperor’s palace-but I don’t think you’re as bad as you say you are.”

“My deformity gives me fewer chances to be bad than I should prefer to have.”

“It is funny you should mention that, Jack. If you could find me a length of sound, unbroken deer or sheep intestine-”

“Why?”

“A Turkish practice-easier to show than explain. And if you could devote a few minutes in the hot spring to making yourself quite a bit cleaner than you are at the moment-the chance to be bad might present itself.”

“ALL RIGHT, LET’S REHEARSE ITagain. ‘Jack, show the gentleman that bolt of the yellow watered silk.’ Go on-that’s your cue.”

“Yes, milady.”

“Jack, carry me across yonder mud-puddle.”

“With pleasure, milady.”

“Don’t say ‘with pleasure’-sounds naughty.”

“As you wish, milady.”

“Jack, that is very good-there’s been a marked improvement.”

“Don’t suppose it has anything to do with that you’ve got your fist lodged in my arse-hole.”

Eliza laughed gaily. “Fist? Jack, this is but two fingers. A fist would be more like-this!”

Jack felt his body being turned outside in-there was some thrashing and screaming that was cut short when his head accidentally submerged in the sulfurous water. Eliza got a grip on his hair and hauled his head back up into the cold air with her other hand.

“You’re sure this is how they do it in India?”

“Would you like to register… a complaint?”

“Aaugh! Never.”

“Remember, Jack: whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.”

There followed a long, long, mysterious procedure-tedious and yet somehow not.

“What’re you groping about for?” Jack muttered faintly. “My gall-bladder is just to the left.”

“I’m trying to locate a certain chakra -should be somewhere around here-”

“What’s a chakra?”

“You’ll know when I find it.”

Some time later, she did, and then the procedure took on greater intensity, to say the least. Suspended between Eliza’s two hands, like a scale in a market-place, Jack could feel his balance-point shifting as quantities of fluids were pumped between internal reservoirs, all in preparation for some Event. Finally, the crisis-Jack’s legs thrashed in the hot water as if his body were trying to flee, but he was staked, impaled. A bubble of numenous light, as if the sun were mistakenly attempting to rise inside his head. Some kind of Hindoo apocalypse played out. He died, went to Hell, ascended into Heaven, was reincarnated as various braying, screeching, and howling beasts, and repeated this cycle many times over. In the end he was reincarnated, just barely, as a Man. Not a very alert one.

“Did you get what you wanted?” she inquired. Very close to him.

Jack laughed or wept soundlessly for a while.

“In some of these strange Gothickal German towns,” he at last said, “they have ancient clocks that are as big as houses, all sealed up most of the time, with a little door where a cuckoo pops out upon the hour to sing. But once a day, it does something special, involving more doors, and once a week, something even specialer, and, for all I know, at the year, decade, and century marks, rows of great doors, all sealed shut by dust and age, creak open, driven by sudden descent of ancient weights on rusted chains, and the whole inner workings of the thing unfold through those openings. Hitherto unseen machines grind into action, strange and surprising things fly out-flags wave, mechanical birds sing-old pigeon-shit and cobwebs raining down on spectators’ heads-Death comes out and does a fandango-Angels blow trumpets-Jesus writhes on the cross and expires-a mock naval battle plays out with repeated discharge of cannons-and would you please take your arm out of my asshole now?”