“The next time you grace the Opera, mademoiselle, the Blue Guards will have to search your box, too-for you may be sure that every Lady in this building is shamed by your radiance. None of them will ever forgive you.” But as he was saying these words to Eliza, his gaze was traveling curiously up and down Monmouth, searching for clues.

The Duke was wearing several pins and badges that had to be viewed from close range in order to be properly interpreted: one bearing the simple red cross of a Crusader, and another with the arms of the Holy League-the alliance of Poland, Austria, and Venice that was nudging the wreckage of the Turkish Army back across Hungary.

“Your Grace,” d’Avaux said, “the way East is dangerous.”

“The way West is barred forever, to me anyway,” Monmouth replied, “and my presence in Holland is giving rise to all manner of ugly rumors.”

“There is always a place for you in France.”

“The only thing I’ve ever been any good for is fighting-” Monmouth began.

“Not the only thing… my lord,” Eliza said lasciviously. D’Avaux flinched and licked his lips. Monmouth flushed slightly and continued: “as my uncle*has brought peace to Christendom, I must seek glory in heathen lands.”

Something was happening in the corner of Eliza’s eye: William and Mary entering their box. Everyone rose and applauded. It was dry, sparse applause, and it didn’t last. The comte d’Avaux stepped forward and kissed the Duke of Monmouth on both cheeks. Many of the opera-goers did not see the gesture, but some did. Enough, anyway, to strike a new chord in the audience: a baritone commotion that was soon covered up by the opening strains of the overture.

The ladies and gentlemen of Amsterdam were settling into their seats, but their servants and lackeys still stood in the shadows under the boxes and loges, and some of them were now moving as their masters beckoned to them: stepping forward and cocking their heads to hear whispered confidences, or holding out their hands to accept scribbled notes.

The market was moving. Eliza had moved it with her turban and her navel, and d’Avaux had moved it by showing slightly greater than normal affection for the Duke of Monmouth. Together, these clues could only mean that Monmouth had given up his claim to the English throne and was bound for Constantinople.

The market was moving, and Eliza desperately wanted to be out on the Dam, moving with it-but her place was here for now. She saw d’Avaux return to his box and sit down. Actors had begun to sing down on the stage, but d’Avaux’s guests were leaning towards him to whisper and listen. The young French nobleman nodded his head, turned towards Monmouth, crossed himself, then opened his hand as if throwing a prayer to the Duke. Eliza half expected to see a dove fly out of his sleeve. Monmouth pretended to snatch it from the air, and kissed it.

But Mr. Sluys was not in a praying mood. He was thinking. Even in semi-darkness, through a miasma of candle and tobacco smoke, Eliza could read his face: Monmouth slaying Turks in Hungary means he won’t use Holland as a platform to invade England-so there won’t be a catastrophe in Anglo-Dutch relations-so the English Navy won’t be firing any broadsides at the Dutch merchant fleet-so V.O.C. stock will rise. Sluys held his right hand up slightly and caressed the air with two fingers. A servant was suddenly draped over his epaulet, memorizing something, counting on his fingers. He nodded sharply, like a pecking gull, and was gone.

Eliza reached up behind her head, untied her veil, and let it fall down onto her bosom. Then she enjoyed the opera.

A hundred feet away, Abraham de la Vega was hiding in the wings with a spyglass, made of lenses ground, to tolerances of a few thousandths of an inch, by his late second cousin, Baruch de Spinoza. Through those lenses, he saw the veil descend. He was nine years old. He moved through the backstage and out of the opera-house like the moon-shadow of a nightingale. Aaron de la Vega, his uncle, was waiting there astride a swift horse.

“HAS HE OFFEREDto make you a Duchess yet?” d’Avaux asked during the intermission.

“He said that he would have- had he not renounced his claim to the throne,” Eliza said.

D’Avaux was amused by her carefulness. “As your gallant is renewing his Platonic friendship with the Princess, may I escort you to Mr. Sluys’s box? I cannot stand to see you neglected.”

Eliza looked at the Stadholder’s box. Mary was there but William had already sneaked out, leaving the field clear for Monmouth, whose brave resolve to go East and fight the Turk had Mary almost in tears.

“I never even saw the Prince,” Eliza said, “just glimpsed him scurrying in at the last minute.”

“Rest assured, mademoiselle, he is nothing to look at.” And he offered Eliza his arm. “If it’s true that your beau is leaving soon for the East, you’ll need new young men to amuse you. Frankly, you are overdue for a change. La France did her best to civilize Monmouth, but the Anglo-Saxon taint had penetrated too deeply. He never developed the innate discretion of a Frenchman.”

“I’m mortified to learn that Monmouth has been indiscreet,” Eliza said gaily.

“All of Amsterdam, and approximately half of London and Paris, have learned of your charms. But, although the Duke’s descriptions were unspeakably vulgar-when they were not completely incoherent- cultivatedgentlemen can look beyond ribaldry, and infer that you possess qualities, mademoiselle, beyond the merely gyn?cological.”

“When you say ‘cultivated’ you mean ‘French’?”

“I know you are teasing me, mademoiselle. You expect me to say ‘Why yes, all French gentlemen are cultivated.’ But it is not so.”

“Monsieur d’Avaux, I’m shocked to hear you say such a thing.”

They were almost at the door to Sluys’s box. D’Avaux drew back. “Typically only the worst sort of French nobility would be in the box that you and I are about to enter, associating with the likes of Sluys-but tonight is an exception.”

“LOUIS LEGRAND-as he’s now dubbed himself-built himself a new chateau outside of Paris, at a place called Versailles,” Aaron de la Vega had told her, during one of their meetings in Amsterdam’s narrow and crowded Jewish quarter-which, by coincidence, happened to be built up against the Opera House. “He has moved his entire court to the new place.”

“I’d heard as much, but I didn’t believe it,” Gomer Bolstrood had said, looking more at home among Jews than he ever had among Englishmen. “To move so many people out of Paris-it seems insane.”

“On the contrary-it is a master-stroke,” de la Vega had said. “You know the Greek myth of Antaeus? For the French nobility, Paris is like the Mother Earth-as long as they are ensconced there, they have power, information, money. But Louis, by forcing them to move to Versailles, is like Hercules, who mastered Antaeus by raising him off the ground and slowly strangling him into submission.”

“A pretty similitude,” Eliza had said, “but what does it have to do with our putting a short squeeze on Mr. Sluys?”

De la Vega had permitted himself a smile, and looked over at Bolstrood. But Gomer had not been in a grinning mood. “Sluys is one of those rich Dutchmen who craves the approval of Frenchmen. He has been cultivating them since before the 1672 war-mostly without success, for they find him stupid and vulgar. But now it’s different. The French nobles used to be able to live off their land, but now Louis forces them to keep a household in Versailles, as well as one in Paris, and to go about in coaches, finely dressed and wigged-”

“The wretches are desperate for lucre,” Gomer Bolstrood had said.

AT THEOPERA,before the door to Sluys’s box, Eliza said, “You mean, monsieur, the sort of French nobleman who’s not content with the old ways, and likes to play the markets in Amsterdam, so he can afford a coach and a mistress?”