“I did notice that you’d taken possession of my charger, without paying for it. Very bad form.”

“The price in here is a fair one-a handsome sum, even,” Churchill said. Then he pocketed the purse.

“Oh, come on-!”

“A naked galerien can’t carry a purse, and these French coins are too big to stuff up even your asshole, Jack. I’ll make sure your spawn get the benefit of this, when I’m back in England.”

“Get it, or get the benefit of it? Because there is a slipperiness in those words that troubles me.”

Churchill laughed again, this time with a cheerfulness that really made Jack want to kill him. He got up and plucked the empty pipe from Jack’s mouth, and-as stables were notoriously inflammable, and he did not wish to be guilty of having set fire to the duc’s-went over to the little horseshoe-forge, now cold and dark, and whacked the ashes out of the pipes. “Try to concentrate. You’re a galley slave chained to a post in a stable in Paris. Be troubled by that. Bon voyage, Jack.”

Exit Churchill. Jack had been meaning to advise him not to sleep with any of those French ladies, and to tell him about the Turkish innovation involving sheep-intestines, but there hadn’t been time-and besides, who was he to give John Churchill advice on fucking?

Equipped now with boots, a sword, and (if he could just reach it, and slay a few stable-boys) a horse, Jack began considering how to get the damned chain off his neck. It was a conventional slave-collar: two iron semicircles hinged together on one side and with a sort of hasp on the other, consisting of two loops that would align with each other when the collar was closed. If a chain was then threaded through the loops, it would prevent the collar from opening. This made it possible for a single length of chain to secure as many collars, and hence slaves, as could be threaded onto it, without the need for expensive and unreliable padlocks. It kept the ironmongery budget to a minimum and worked so handily that no French Chateau or German Schloss was without a few, hanging on a wall-peg just in case some persons needed enslaving.

The particular chain that went through Jack’s collar-hasp had a circular loop-a single oversized link-welded to one end. The chain had been passed around the stone pillar and its narrow end threaded through this loop, then through Jack’s collar, and finally one of the duc’s smiths had heated up the chain-end in the stable’s built-in forge, and hammered an old worn-out horseshoe onto it, so it could not be withdrawn. Typical French extravagance! But the duc had an infinite fund of slaves and servants, so it cost him nothing, and there was no way for Jack to get it off.

The tobacco-embers from the pipes had formed a little mound on the blackened hearth of the forge and were still glowing, just barely. Jack squirmed free of the manure-pile and limped over to the forge and blew on them to keep them alive.

Normally this whole place was swarming with stable-boys, but now, and for the next hour or two, they’d be busy with ball duty: taking the horses of the arriving guests and leading them to stalls in the duc’s better stables. So a fire in this hearth would be detectable only as a bit of smoke coming out of a chimney, which was not an unusual sight on a cool March evening in seventeenth-century Paris.

But he was getting ahead of himself. This was a long way from being a fire. Jack began looking about for some tinder. Straw would be perfect. But the stable-boys had been careful not to leave anything so tinderlike anywhere near the forge. It was all piled at the opposite end of the stable, and Jack’s chain wouldn’t let him go that far. He tried lying flat on the floor, with the chain stretched out taut behind him, and reaching out with the crutch to rake some straw towards him. But the end of the crutch came a full yard short of the goal. He scurried back and blew on the tobacco some more. It would not last much longer.

His attention had been drawn to the crutch, which was bound together with a lot of the cheapest sort of dry, fuzzy twine. Perfect tinder. But he’d have to burn most of it, and then he’d have no way to hold the crutch together, and therefore to conceal the existence of the sword-so, if the attempt failed tonight, he was doomed. In that sense ‘twere safer to wait until tomorrow, when they’d take the chain off of him. But only to chain him up, he supposed, to a whole file of other galeriens -doddering Huguenots, most likely. And he wasn’t about to wait for that. He must do it now.

So he unwound the crutch and frizzed the ends of the twine and put it to the last mote of red fire in the pipe-ashes, and blew. The flame almost died, but then one fiber of twine warped back, withered, flung off a little shroud of steam or smoke, then became a pulse of orange light: a tiny thing, but as big in Jack’s vision as whole trees bursting into flames in the Harz.

After some more blowing and fidgeting he had a morsel of yellow flame on the hearth. While supplying it more twine with one hand, he rummaged blindly for kindling, which ought to be piled up somewhere. Finding only a few twigs, he was forced to draw the sword and shave splints off the crutch-pole. This didn’t last long, and soon he was planing splinters off pillars and beams, and chopping up benches and stools. But finally it was big and hot enough to ignite coal, of which there was plenty. Jack began tossing handfuls of it into his little fire while pumping the bellows with the other hand. At first it just lay in the fire like black stones, but then the sharp, brimstony smell of it came into the stable, and the fire became white, and the heat of the coal annihilated the remaining wood-scraps, and the fire became a meteor imprisoned in a chain-for Jack had looped the middle part of his chain around it. The cold iron poisoned the fire, sucked life from it, but Jack heaped on more coal and worked the bellows, and soon the metal had taken on a chestnut color which gave way to various shades of red. The heat of the blaze first dried the moist shit that was all over Jack’s skin and then made him sweat, so that crusts of dung were flaking off of him.

The door opened. “Ou est le marechal-ferrant?” someone asked.

The door opened wider -wide enough to admit a horse-then did just that. The horse was led by a Scot in a tall wig-or maybe not. He was wearing a kiltlike number, but it was made of red satin and he had some sort of ridiculous contrivance slung over one shoulder: a whole pigskin, sewn up and packed with straw to make it look as if it had been inflated, with trumpet-horns, flutes, and pennywhistles dangling from it: a caricature of a bagpipe. His face was painted with blue woad. Pinned to the top of his wig was a tam-o’-shanter with an approximate diameter of three feet, and thrust into his belt, where a gentleman would sheathe his sword, was a sledgehammer. Next to that, several whiskey-jugs holstered.

The horse was a prancing beauty, but it seemed to be favoring one leg-it had thrown a shoe on the ride over.

“Marechal-ferrant?”the man repeated, squinting in his direction. Jack reckoned that he, Jack, was visible only as a silhouette against the bright fire, and so the collar might not be obvious. He cupped a hand to his ear-smiths were notorious for deafness. That seemed to answer the question-the “Scot” led his horse toward the forge, nattering on about a fer a cheval and going so far as to check his pocket-watch. Jack was irritated. Fer meant “iron,” fer a cheval as he knew perfectly well meant “horseshoe.” But he had just understood that the English word “farrier” must be derived somehow from this-even though “horseshoe” was completely different. He was aware, vaguely-from watching certain historical dramas, and then from roaming round la France listening to people talk-that French people had conquered England at least one time, and thereby confused the English language with all sorts of words such as “farrier,” and “mutton,” which common folk now used all the time without knowing that they were speaking the tongue of the conquerors. Meanwhile, the damned French had a tidy and proper tongue in which, for example, the name of the fellow who put shoes on horses was clearly related to the word for horseshoe. Made his blood boil-and now that James was King, Katie bar the door!