“Am I, then?”

“They say l’Emmerdeur is King of the Vagabonds.”

“Then why didn’t the duc put me up in his finest apartment?”

“Because I have gone to such extravagant lengths to prevent him from knowing who you are.”

“So that’s why I’m still alive. I was wondering.”

“If they knew, they would tear you apart with iron tongs, over the course of several days, at the Place Dauphine.”

“No better place for it-lovely view from there.”

“Is that all you have for me, in the way of thanks?”

Silence. Gates were creaking open all round the Hotel d’Arcachon as it mobilized for the ball. Jack heard the hollow grumbling of barrels being rolled across stone courtyards, and (since his nose had stopped being able to smell shit) he could smell birds roasting, and buttery pastries baking in ovens. There were less agreeable odors, too, but Jack’s nose sought out the good ones.

“You could at least answer my question,” Churchill said. “Does everyone know that the duc has frequent dealings with Barbary?”

“Some small favor would be appropriate at this point,” Jack said.

“I can’t let you go.”

“I was thinking of a pipe.”

“Funny, so was I.” Churchill went to the stable door and flagged down a boy and demanded des pipes en terre and du tabac blond and du feu.

“Is King Looie coming to the duc’s fancy-dress ball, too?”

“So it is rumored-he has been preparing a costume in great secrecy, out at Versailles. Said to be of a radically shocking nature. Impossibly daring. All the French ladies are aflutter.”

“Aren’t they always?”

“I wouldn’t know-I’ve taken a sound, some would say stern, English bride: Sarah.”

“What’s she coming as? A nun?”

“Oh, she’s back in London. This is a diplomatic mission. Secret.”

“You stand before me, dressed as you are, and say that?”

Churchill laughed.

“You take me for an imbecile?” Jack continued. The pain in his leg was most annoying, and shaking away flies had given his neck a cramp, as well as raw sores from the abrasion of his iron collar.

“You are only alive because of your recent imbecility, Jack. L’Emmerdeur is known to be clever as a fox. What you did was so stupid that it has not occurred to anyone, yet, that you could be he.”

“So, then… in France, what’s considered suitable punishment for an imbecile who does something stupid?”

“Well, naturally they were going to kill you. But I seem to have convinced them that, as you are not only a rural half-wit, but an English rural half-wit, the whole matter is actually funny. ”

“Funny? Not likely.”

“The duc de Bourbon hosted a dinner party. Invited a certain eminent writer. Became annoyed with him. Emptied his snuff-box into the poor scribbler’s wine when he wasn’t looking, as a joke. The writer drank the wine and died of it-hilarious!”

“What fool would drink wine mixed with snuff?”

“That’s not the point of the story-it’s about what French nobility do, and don’t, consider to be funny-and how I saved your life. Pay attention!”

“Let’s set aside how, and ask: why did you save my life, guv’nor?”

“When a man is being torn apart with pliers, there’s no telling what he’ll blurt out.”

“Aha.”

“The last time I saw you, you were ordinary Vagabond scum. If there happened to be an old connexion between the two of us, it scarcely mattered. Now you are legendary Vagabond scum, a picaroon, much talked of in salons. Now if the old link between us came to be widely known, it would be inconvenient for me.”

“But you could have let that other fellow run me through with his rapier.”

“And probably should have,” Churchill said ruefully, “but I wasn’t thinking. It is very odd. I saw him lunging for you. If I had only stood clear and allowed matters to take their natural course, you’d be dead. But some impulse took me-”

“The Imp of the Perverse, like?”

“Your old companion? Yes, perhaps he leapt from your shoulder to mine. Like a perfect imbecile, I saved your life.”

“Well, you make a most splendid and gallant perfect imbecile. Are you going to kill me now?”

“Not directly. You are now a galerien. Your group departs for Marseille tomorrow morning. It’s a bit of a walk.”

“I know it.”

Churchill sat on a bench and worried off one boot, then the other, then reached into them and pulled out the fancy Turkish slippers that had become lodged inside, and drew the slippers on. Then he threw the boots at Jack and they lodged in the manure, temporarily scaring away the flies. At about the same time, a stable-boy came in carrying two pipes stuffed with tobacco, and a taper, and soon both men were puffing away contentedly.

“I learned of the duc’s Barbary connexions through an escaped slave, who seems to consider the information part of a closely guarded personal secret,” Jack said finally.

“Thank you,” said Churchill. “How’s the leg, then?”

“Someone seems to’ve poked it with a sword… otherwise fine.”

“Might need something to lean on.” Churchill stepped outside the door for a moment, then returned carrying Jack’s crutch. He held it crosswise between his two hands for a moment, weighing it. “Seems a bit heavy on this end-a foreign sort of crutch, is it?”

“Exceedingly foreign.”

“Turkish?”

“Don’t toy with me, Churchill.”

Churchill spun the crutch around and chucked it like a spear so that it stuck in the manure-pile. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it soon and then get the hell out of France. The road to Marseille will take you, in a day or two, through the pays of the Count of Joigny.”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s the fellow you knocked off his horse. Notwithstanding my earlier reassuring statements, he does not find you amusing-if you enter his territory…”

“Pliers.”

“Just so. Now, as insurance, I have a good friend lodging at an inn just to the north of Joigny. He is to keep an eye on the road to Marseille, and if he sees you marching down it, he is to make sure that you never get past that inn alive.”

“How’s he going to recognize me?”

“By that point, you’ll be starkers-exposing your most distinctive feature.”

“You really are worried I’ll make trouble for you.”

“I told you I’m here on a diplomatic mission. It is important.”

“Trying to work out how England is to be divvied up between Leroy and the Pope of Rome?”

Churchill puffed on his pipe a few times in a fine, but not altogether convincing, display of calmness, and then said, “I knew we’d reach this point in the conversation, Jack-the point where you accused me of being a traitor to my country and my religion-and so I’m ready for it, and I’m actually not going to cut your head off.”

Jack laughed. His leg hurt a great deal, and it itched, too.

“Through no volition of my own, I have for many years been a member of His Majesty’s household,” Churchill began. Jack was confused by this until he recollected that “His Majesty” no longer meant Charles II, but James II, the whilom Duke of York. Churchill continued: “I suppose I could reveal to you my innermost thoughts about what it’s like to be a Protestant patriot in thrall to a Catholic King who loves France, but life is short, and I intend to spend as little of it as possible standing in dark stables apologizing to shit-covered Vagabonds. Suffice it to say that it’s better for England if I do this mission.”

“Suppose I do get away, before Joigny… what’s to prevent me from telling everyone about the longstanding connexions between the Shaftoes and the Churchills?”

“No one of Quality will ever believe a word you say, Jack, unless you say it while you are being expertly tortured… it’s only when you are stretched out on some important person’s rack that you are dangerous. Besides, there is the Shaftoe legacy to think of.” Churchill pulled out a little purse and jiggled it to make the coins ring.