The force of the light, and Jack’s hauling back on the reins, had taken the edge off of Turk’s impetuous charge for the exit, but not quite soon enough: the fact remained that Turk, and thus Jack, had effectively burst into the couryard at a near-gallop and then stood agape for several seconds, almost as if demanding to be noticed. And they had been: little knots of Puritans, F?ry-Queens, Persians, and Red Indians were looking at them. Jack gave the war-horse an encouraging nudge, while holding fast to the reins so he wouldn’t bolt.

Turk began following a groomed gravel path among flower-beds, which Jack hoped would take them round the fountain eventually and to a place where they could at least see the way out. But they were moving directly toward the light rushing from those banks of windows. Through them Jack saw an immense ballroom, with white walls garlanded with gold, and white polished marble floors where the nobility, in their fancy-dress, were dancing to music from a consort stuffed into a corner.

Then-like anyone else coming towards a grand party-Jack glanced down at his own person. He had been counting on darkness, but had blundered into light, and was shocked at how clearly his shit-covered rags and neck-iron stood out.

He saw a man inside who’d been in the duc’s entourage the other day. Not wanting to be recognized, Jack turned up the collar of the stolen cape, and drew it round to conceal the bottom half of his face.

A few small clusters of party-goers had formed in the lawn between the front of the house and the fountain, and all conversation had been suspended so that all faces could turn to stare at Jack. But they did not raise a hue and cry. They stared for a remarkably long time, as if Jack were a new and extremely expensive sculpture that had just been unveiled. Then Jack sensed a contagious thrill, a frisson like the one that had run through the fishmarket at Les Halles when he’d galloped through it. There was a strange pattering noise. He realized they were applauding him. A serving-girl flashed away into the ballroom, hitching up her skirts as she ran, to spread some news. The musicians stopped playing, all faces turned to the windows. The people on the lawn had converged toward Jack, while maintaining a certain respectful distance, and were bowing and curtseying, very low. A pair of footmen practically sprawled out onto the grass in their anxiety to hurl the front doors open. Framed in the arch was a porky gentleman armed with a long Trident, which naturally made Jack flinch when he saw it-this fellow, Jack suspected, was the duc d’Arcachon, dressed up as Neptune. But then the duc held the weapon out towards him, resting crossways on his outstretched hands- offeringit to Jack. Neptune then backed out of the way, still doubled over in a deep bow, and beckoned him into the ballroom. Inside, the party-goers had formed up in what he instinctively recognized as a gauntlet to whip all the skin off his back-but then understood must actually be a pair of lines to receive him!

Everything seemed to point to that he was expected to ride into the ballroom on horseback, which was unthinkable. But Jack had become adept (or so he believed) at distinguishing things that were really happening from the waking dreams or phant’sies that came into his head more and more frequently of late, and, reckoning that this was one of the latter, he decided to enjoy it. Accordingly, he now rode Turk (who was extremely reluctant) right past the duc and into the ballroom. Now everyone bowed low, giving Jack the opportunity to look down a large number of white-powdered cleavages. A trumpeter played some sort of fanfare. One cleavage in particular Jack was afraid he might fall into and have to be winched out on a rope. The lady in question, noticing Jack’s fixed stare, seemed to think that he was staring at least partly at the string of pearls around her neck. Something of a complicated nature occurred inside her head, and then she blushed and clasped both hands to her black-spotted face and squealed and said something to the effect of “No, no, please, not my jewels… Emmerdeur,” and then she unclasped the pearls from behind her neck; clasped them back together into a loop; threw it over the point of Jack’s sword, like a farm girl playing ring-toss at the fair; and then expertly swooned back into the waiting arms of her escort: a satyr with a two-foot-long red leather penis.

Another woman shrieked, and Jack raised his weapon in case he was going to have to kill her-but all he saw was another mademoiselle going into the same act-she ran up and pinned a jeweled brooch to the hem of his cloak, muttering “pour les Invalides,” then backed away curtseying before Jack could say what was on his mind, which was: If you want to give this away to charity, lady, you came to the wrong bloke.

Then they were all doing it, the thing was a sensation, the ladies were practically elbowing each other to get near and decorate Jack’s clothes and his sword, and Turk’s bridle, with jewelry. The only person not having a good time was a certain handsome young Barbary Pirate who stood at the back of the crowd, red-faced, staring at Jack with eyes that, had they been pliers…

A stillness now spread across the ballroom like a blast of frigid air from a door blown open by a storm. Everyone seemed to be looking toward the entrance. The ladies were backing away from Jack in hopes of getting a better view. Jack sat up straight in the saddle and got Turk turned around, partly to see what everyone else was staring at and partly because he had the sense it would soon be time to leave.

A second man had ridden into the ballroom on horseback. Jack identified him, at first, as a Vagabond recently escaped from captivity-no doubt well-deserved captivity. But of course it was really some nobleman pretending to be a Vagabond, and his costume was much better than Jack’s-the chain around his neck, and the broken fetters on his wrists and ankles, appeared to’ve been forged out of solid gold, and he was brandishing a gaudy jeweled scimitar, and wearing a conspicuous, diamond-studded, but comically tiny codpiece. Behind him, out in the courtyard, was a whole entourage: Gypsies, jeweled and attired according to some extremely romantic conception of what it was to be a gypsy; ostrich-plume-wearing Moors; and fine ladies dressed up as bawdy Vagabond-wenches.

Jack allowed the cape to fall clear of his face.

There followed the longest period of silence that he had ever known. It was so long that he could have tied Turk’s reins to a candelabra and curled up under the harpsichord for a little nap. He could have run a message down to Lyons during this silence (and, in retrospect, probably should have). But instead he just sat there on his horse and waited for something to happen, and took in the scene.

Silence made him aware that the house was a hive of life and activity, even when all of the Persons of Quality were frozen up like statues. There was the normal dim clattering of the kitchen, for example. But his attention was drawn to the ceiling, which was (a) a hell of a thing to look at, and (b) making a great deal of noise-he thought perhaps a heavy rain had begun to thrash the roof, partly because of this scrabbling, rushing noise that was coming from it, and partly because it was leaking rather badly in a number of places. It had been decorated both with plaster relief-work and with paint, so that if you could lie on your back and stare at it you would see a vast naval Tableau: the gods of the four winds at the edges of the room, cheeks all puffed as they blew out billowy plaster clouds, and the Enemies of France angling in from various corners, viz. English and Dutch frigates riding the north wind, Spanish and Portuguese galleons the south, as well as pirates of Barbary and Malta and the Turk, and the occasional writhing sea-monster. Needless to say, the center was dominated by the French Navy in massive three-dimensional plasterwork, guns pointing every which way, and on the poop-deck of the mightiest ship, surrounded by spyglass-toting Admirals, stood a laurel-wreath-crowned Leroy, one hand fingering an astrolabe and the other resting on a cannon. And as if to add even greater realism, the entire scene was now running and drizzling, as if there really were an ocean up above it trying to break through and pay homage to the living King who had just rode in. From this alarming leakage, and from the rustling noise, Jack naturally suspected a sudden violent storm coming through a leaky roof. But when he looked out the windows into the courtyard he saw no rain. Besides (he remembered with some embarrassment), the Hotel d’Arcachon was not some farmhouse, where the ceiling was merely the underside of the roof. Jack well knew, from having broken into a few places like this, that the ceiling was a thin shell of plaster troweled over horizontal lath-work, and that there would be a crawl space above it, sandwiched between ceiling and roof, with room for dull, dirty things like chandelier-hoists and perhaps cisterns.