“Quelle heure est-il?”Jack finally inquired. The “Scot” without pausing to wonder why a marechal-ferrant would need to know the time went once again into the ceremony of withdrawing his pocket-watch, getting the lid open, and reading it. In order to do this he had to turn its face towards the fire, and then he had to twist himself around so that he could see it. Jack waited patiently for this to occur, and then just as the “Scot” was lisping out something involving sept Jack whipped the chain out of the fire and got it round his neck.

It was stranglin’ time in gay Paree. Most awkwardly, the red-hot part of the chain ended up around the throat of the “Scot,” so Jack could not get a grip on it without first rummaging in the tool-box for some tongs. But it had already done enough damage, evidently, that the “Scot” could not make any noise.

His horse was another matter: it whinnied, and backed away, and showed signs of wanting to buck. That was a problem, but Jack had to take things one at a time here. He solved the tong problem and murdered the “Scot” in a great sizzling cloud of grilled neck-flesh-which, he felt sure, must be a delicacy in some part of France. Then he peeled the hot chain off, taking some neck parts with it, and tossed it back into the fire. Having settled these matters, he turned his attention-somewhat reluctantly-to the horse. He was dreading that it might have run out through the open stable doors and drawn attention to itself in the stable-yard beyond. But-oddly-the stable-doors were now closed, and were being bolted shut, by a slender young man in an assortment of not very good clothes. He had evidently seized the horse’s reins and tied them to a post, and had the presence of mind to toss a grain-sack over its head so that it could not see any more of the disturbing sights that were now so abundant in this place.

Having seen to these matters, the gypsy boy-it was certainly a gypsy-turned to face Jack, and made a somber, formal little bow. He was barefoot-had probably gotten here by clambering over rooftops.

“You must be Half-Cocked Jack,” he said, as if this weren’t funny. Speaking in the zargon.

“Who are you?”

“It does not matter. St.-George sent me.” The boy came over, stepping carefully around the glowing coals that had been scattered on the floor when Jack had whipped out the chain, and began to work the bellows.

“What did St.-George tell you to do?” asked Jack, throwing on more coal.

“To see what kind of help you would need, during the entertainment.”

“What entertainment would that be?”

“He did not tell me everything. ”

“Why should St.-George care so much?”

“St.-George is angry with you. He says you have shown poor form.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“I will tell him,” the gypsy boy said, and here he smiled for the first time, “that l’Emmerdeur does not need his help.”

“That’s just it,” Jack said, and grabbed the bellows-handle. The boy turned and ran across the stable and vanished through an opening up in the eaves that Jack hadn’t known was there.

While the chain heated, Jack amused himself by going through his victim’s clothing and trying to guess how many gold coins were in his purse. After a couple of minutes (by the pocket-watch, which lay open on the floor) Jack reached into the fire with the tongs and drew out a length of yellow-hot chain. Before it could cool he draped it across an anvil, then smashed it with a heavy chisel-pointed hammer, and then he was free. Except that a yard of hot chain still dangled from his neck, and he could not pull it through his neck-loop without burning himself. So he quenched it in a trough of water. But then he found that in breaking it he’d smashed the last link, and broadened it, so it would no longer pass through the neck-loop. He did not want to spend the time to heat the chain back up, so he was stuck with the collar, and an arm’s length of chain, for now. No matter, really. It was dark outside, he would be seen only as a silhouette, and he needed only that it be a respectable type of silhouette-a shape that people would not discharge weapons at without thinking twice. So he yanked the wig (now wrecked and burnt, but still a wig) off the dead “Scot” and put it on-discarding, however, the unwieldy tam-o’-shanter. He pulled on the boots that John Churchill had donated, and took the long cape that the “Scot” had been wearing. Also his gloves-an old habit to cover the V branded on his thumb. Finally he pilfered the saddle from the horse-it was a magnificent saddle-and carried it out into the stable-yard.

The sight of a supposed Person of Quality toting his own saddle was anomalous, and even if it weren’t, Jack’s dragging one leg, brandishing a scimitar, and muttering out loud in vulgar English also cast uncertainty on his status as a French nobleman. But, as he’d hoped, most of the stable-boys were busy in the main courtyard. The guests were now arriving in force. He barged into the next stable, which was dimly lit by a couple of lanterns, and came face-to-face with a stable-boy who, in an instant, became the most profoundly confused person Jack had ever seen.

“Turk!” Jack called, and was answered by a whinny from several stalls down the line. Jack sidled closer to the stable-boy and allowed the saddle to slide off his shoulders. The boy caught it out of habit, and seemed relieved to have been given a specific job. Then Jack, using his sword as a pointing-device, got him moving in the direction of Turk.

The boy now understood that he was being asked to help steal a horse, and stiffened up in a way that was almost penile. It took no end of prodding to get him to heave the saddle onto Turk’s back. Then Jack socked him in the chin with the guard of the sword, but failed to knock him out. In the end, he had to drag the fool over to a convenient place by the entrance and push him down and practically draw him a picture of how to go about pretending he’d been surprised and knocked unconscious by the English villain.

Then back to Turk, who seemed pleased to see him. As Jack tightened the girth, and made other adjustments, the war-horse’s sinews became taut and vibrant, like the strings of a lute being tuned up. Jack checked his hooves and noted that Churchill had gotten some expert marechal-ferrant to shoe him. “You and me both,” Jack said, slapping his new boots so that the horse could admire them.

Then he put one of those boots into a stirrup, threw his leg over the saddle, and was hurtling across the duc’s stable-yard before he could even get himself situated properly. Turk wanted out of here as badly as he did. Jack had intended to look for a back exit, but Turk was having none of that, and took him out the way Churchill had ridden him in: straight through a gate into what Jack reckoned must be the main courtyard of the Hotel d’Arcachon.

Jack sensed quite a few people, but couldn’t really see them because he was dazzled by all of the light: giant torchieres like bonfires on pikes, and lanterns strung on colored ropes, and the light of thousands of lanterns and tapers blasting out through the twenty-foot-high windows that constituted most of the front wall of a large noble House directly in front of him. A hundred sperm whales must have given up their bodily fluids to light the lanterns. And as for the tapers in those chandeliers, why, even over the smells of cuisine, fashionable perfume, wood-smoke, and horse-manure, Jack’s nose could detect the fragrance of honey-scented Mauritanian beeswax. All of this sweet-smelling radiance glanced wetly off a large fountain planted in the middle of the court: various Neptunes and Naiads and sea monsters and dolphins cleverly enwrithed to form a support for a naval frigate all speckled with fleurs-de-lis. Wreckage of Dutch and English ships washed up on shores all around, forming benches for French people to put their buttocks on.