Thatwas it-there must be a cistern full of collected rainwater up there, which must have sprung a leak-in fact, had probably been encouraged to do so by St.-George or one of his friends, just to create a distraction that might be useful to Jack. The water must be gushing out across the top of the plaster-work, percolating down between the laths, saturating the plaster, which was darkening in several large irregular patches-gathering storm-clouds besetting the French Navy and darkening the sea from robin’s-egg blue to a more realistic iron-gray. Gray, and heavy, and no longer flat and smooth-the ceiling was swelling and bulging downwards. In several places around the room, dirty water had begun to spatter down onto the floor. Servants were fetching mops and buckets, but dared not interrupt the Silence.

Turk complained of something, and Jack looked down to discover that the satyr with the very long, barbed, red leather penis had sidled up and grabbed Turk’s bridle.

“That’s an incredibly bad idea,” Jack said in English (there was no point in even trying his French among this crowd). He said it sotto voce, not wanting to officially break the Silence, and indeed most people could not hear him over the odd scrabbling noises and muffled squeaks emanating from above. The squeaks might be the sound of lath-nails being wrenched out of old dry joists by the growing weight of the ceiling. Anyway, it was good that Jack glanced down, because he also noticed John Churchill striding round the back of the crowd, examining the flintlock mechanism on a pistol, very much in the manner of an experienced slayer of men who was looking forward to a moment soon when he’d fire the weapon. Jack didn’t have a firearm, only a sword, freighted with jewelry at the moment. He shoved its tip through the satin lining of the riding-cloak, cutting a small gash, and then allowed all of the goods to avalanche into it.

The satyr responded in better English than Jack would ever speak: “It is a dreadful thing for me to have done-life is not long enough for me to make sufficient apologies. Please know that I have simply tried to make the best of an awkward-”

But then he was interrupted by King Louis XIV of France, who, in a mild yet room-filling voice, delivered some kind of witticism. It was only a sentence, or phrase, but it said more than any bishop’s three-hour Easter homily. Jack could scarcely hear a word, and wouldn’t’ve understood it anyway, but he caught the word Vagabond, and the word noblesse, and inferred that something profoundly philosophical was being said. But not in a dry, fussy way-there was worldly wisdom here, there was irony, a genuine spark of wit, droll but never vulgar. Leroy was amused, but would never be so common as to laugh aloud. That was reserved for the courtiers who leaned in, on tiptoe, to hear the witticism. Jack believed, just for a moment, that if John Churchill-who had no sense of humor at all-had not been homing in on him with that loaded pistol, all might have been forgiven, and Jack might have stayed and drunk some wine and danced with some ladies.

He could not move away from Churchill when the satyr was gripping Turk’s bridle. “Are you going to make me cut that off?” he inquired.

“I freely confess that I deserve no better,” said the satyr. “In fact-I am so humiliated that I must do it myself, to restore my, and my father’s, honor.” Whereupon he pulled a dagger from his belt and began to saw through the red leather glove on the hand that was gripping the bridle-attempting to cut off his left hand with his right. In doing so he probably saved Jack’s life, for this spectacle-the man sawing at his own arm, blood welling out of the glove and dribbling onto the white floor-stopped Churchill in his curly-toed tracks, no more than a fathom away. It was the only time Jack had ever seen Churchill hesitate.

There was a ripping and whooshing noise from one end of the room. The East Wind had been split open by a sagging crevice that unloaded a sheet of dirty, lumpy water onto the floor. A whole strip of ceiling, a couple of yards wide, peeled away now, like a plank being ripped away from the side of a boat. It led straight to the French Navy-half a ton of plaster, bone dry-which came off in a single unified fleet action and seemed to hang in space for a moment before it started accelerating toward the floor. Everyone got out of the way. The plaster exploded and splayed snowballs of damp crud across the floor. But stuff continued to rain down from above, small dark lumps that, when they struck the floor, shook themselves and took off running.

Jack looked at Churchill just in time to see the flint whipping round on the end of its curved arm, a spray of sparks, a preliminary bloom of smoke from the pan. Then a lady blundered in from one side, not paying attention to where she was going because she had realized that there were rats in her wig-but she didn’t know how many (Jack, at a quick glance, numbered them at three, but more were raining down all the time and so he would’ve been loath to commit himself to a specific number). She hit Churchill’s arm. A jet of fire as long as a man’s arm darted from the muzzle of Churchill’s pistol and caught Turk in the side of the face, though the ball apparently missed. The polite satyr was lucky to be alive-it had gone off inches from his head.

Turk was stunned and frozen, if only for a moment. Then a Barbary pirate-galley, driven downwards by a gout of water/rat slurry, exploded on the floor nearby. Some of the water, and some of the rats, poured down on Turk’s neck-and then he detonated. He tried to rear up and was held down by the satyr’s bloody but steadfast clutch, so he bucked-fortunately Jack saw this coming-and then kicked out with both hind-legs. Anyone behind him would’ve been decapitated, but the center of the ballroom had been mostly given over to rats now. A few more of those bucks and Jack would be flung off. He needed to let Turk run. But Churchill was now trying to get round the satyr to lay a second hand on Turk’s bridle. “This is the worst fucking party I’ve ever been to!” Jack said, whirling his sword-arm around like a windmill.

“Sir, I am sorry, but-”

The polite satyr did not finish the apology, because Jack delivered a cut to the middle of his forearm. The blade passed through sweetly. The dangling hand balled itself into a fist and maintained its grip on the bridle, even as the now one-armed satyr was falling back on top of Churchill. Turk sensed freedom and reared up. Jack looked down at Churchill and said, “Next time you want one of my horses-pay in advance, you rogue!”

Turk tried to bolt for the front door, but his hard fers de cheval slipped and scrabbled on the marble, and he could not build up speed. A sea-monster came down across his path, shedding a hundred rats from its crushed entrails. Turk wheeled and scrambled off toward a crowd of ladies who were doing a sort of tarantella, inspired by the belief that rats were scaling their petticoats. Then, just as Jack was convinced that the charger was going to crush the women under his hooves, Turk seemed to catch sight of a way out, and veered sideways, his hooves nearly sliding out from under him, and made for a doorway set into the back corner of the ballroom. It was a low doorway. Jack had little time to react-seeing the lintel headed for his face, decorated in the middle with a plaster d’Arcachon coat of arms,*and not wanting to have it stamped on his face forever, he flung himself backwards and fell off the horse.

He managed to get his right foot, but not his left, out of the stirrup, and so Turk simply dragged him down the ensuing corridor (which had a smooth floor, but not smooth enough for Jack). Nearly upside-down, Jack pawed desperately against that floor with the hand that wasn’t gripping the sword, trying to pull himself sideways so that Turk’s hooves wouldn’t come down on him. Time and again his hand slammed down onto the backs of rats, who all seemed to be fleeing down this particular corridor-drawn by some scent, perhaps, that struck them as promising. Turk outpaced the rats, of course, and was making his own decisions. Jack knew that they were passing into diverse rooms because the thresholds barked his hips and ribs and he got fleeting views of servants’ breeches and skirts.