“Or by a peckish Yevgeny,” Eliza said, lifting a teacup to her lips to conceal a certain triumphal smile, and looking out the window toward the furry Russian, who was whiling away the time by puffing on a rude pipe and honing the flukes of his harping-iron with a pocket-whetstone.

“Making a good character for my Raskolnik friend-though he truly has a heart of gold-will be impossible when, tidy and stylish girl that you are, you are gaping at his rude exterior form. So let us move on,” Jack said. “Next thing Mr. Foot knows, I show up, all decorated with baubles from France, nearly as spent as Yevgeny. So he took me in, in the same way. And finally, a French gentleman approached him and let it be known that he’d like to purchase the Bomb amp; Grapnel-proving the rule that things tend to happen in threes.”

“Now you’ve amazed me,” Eliza said. “What do those events have in common with each other, that you should conceive of them as a group of three?”

“Why, just as Yevgeny and I were wandering lost-yet, in possession of things of great value-Mr. Foot was cast out into the wilderness-I am making a similitude, here-”

“Yes, you have the daft look you always get, when you are.”

“Dunkirk’s not the same since Leroy bought it from King Chuck. It is a great base navale now. All the English, and other, privateers who used to lodge, drink, gamble, and whore at the Bomb amp; Grapnel have signed on with Monsieur Jean Bart, or else sailed away to Port Royal, in Jamaica. And despite these troubles, Mr. Foot had something of value: the Bomb amp; Grapnel itself. An opportunity began to take shape in Mr. Foot’s mind, like a stage-ghost appearing from a cloud of smoke.”

“Much as a profound sense of foreboding is beginning to take shape in my bosom.”

“I had a vision in Paris, Eliza-rather of a complex nature-there was considerable singing and dancing in it, and ghastly and bawdy portions in equal measure.”

“Knowing you as I do, Jack, I’d expect nothing less from one of your visions.”

“I’ll spare you the details, most of which are indelicate for a lady of your upbringing. Suffice it to say that on the strength of this heavenly apparition, and other signs and omens, such as the Three Similar Events at the Bomb amp; Grapnel, I have decided to give up Vagabonding, and, along with Yevgeny and Mr. Foot, to go into Business.”

Eliza faltered and shrank, as if a large timber, or something, had snapped inside of her.

“Now why is it,” Jack said, “then when I suggest you reach in and grab me by the chakra, it’s nothing to you, and yet, when the word business comes out of my mouth, you get a wary and prim look about you, like a virtuous maiden who has just had lewd proposals directed her way by a bawdy Lord?”

“It’s nothing. Pray continue,” Eliza said, in a colorless voice.

But Jack’s nerve had faltered. He began to digress. “I’d hoped brother Bob might be in town, as he commonly traveled in John Churchill’s retinue. And indeed Mr. Foot said he had been there very recently, inquiring after me. But then the Duke of Monmouth had surprised them all by coming to Dunkirk incognito, to meet with certain disaffected Englishmen, and proceeding inland toward Brussels in haste. Bob, who knows that terrain so well, had been dispatched by one of Churchill’s lieutenants to follow him and report on his doings.”

At the mention of the Duke of Monmouth, Eliza began to look Jack in the face again-from which he gathered that one of two things might be the case: either she was looking for a romantic fling with a claim (highly disputable) to the English throne, or else she numbered political intrigues among her interests now. Indeed, when he had surprised her by coming into the Maiden, she’d been writing a letter with her right hand while doing that binary arithmetic on her left, according to the Doctor’s practice.

At any rate-as long as he had her attention-he decided to strike. “And that is when I was made aware, by Mr. Foot, of the Opportunity.”

Eliza’s face became a death mask, as when a physician says, Please sit down…

“Mr. Foot has many contacts in the shipping industry-”

“Smugglers.”

“Most shipping is smuggling to some degree,” Jack said learnedly. “He had received a personal visit from one Mr. Vliet, a Dutch fellow who was in the market for a seaworthy vessel of moderate size, capable of crossing the Atlantic with a cargo of such-and-such number of tons. Mr. Foot was not slow in securing the God’s Wounds, a well-broken-in double-topsail brig.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“It is both square, and fore-and-aft rigged, hence well-suited for running before the trade winds, or plying the fickle breezes of coastlines. She has a somewhat lopsided but seasoned crew-”

“And only needed to be victualled and refitted-?”

“Some capital was, of course, wanted.”

“So Mr. Vliet went to Amsterdam and-?”

“To Dunkirk went Mr. Vliet, and explained to Mr. Foot, who then explained to me and, as best he could, Yevgeny, the nature of the proposed trading voyage: of lapidary simplicity, yet guaranteed to be lucrative. We agreed to cast in our lots together. Fortunately, it is not difficult to sell goods quickly in Dunkirk. I liquidated the jewelry, Yevgeny sold his furs, whale-oil, and some fine amber, and Mr. Foot has sold the Bomb amp; Grapnel to a French concern.”

“It seems a farfetched way for this Mr. Vliet to raise money,” Eliza said, “when there is a large and extremely vigorous capital market right here in Amsterdam.”

This was (as Jack figured out later, when he had much time to consider it) Eliza’s way of saying that she thought Mr. Vliet was a knave, and the voyage not fit for persons in their right minds to invest in. But having been in Amsterdam for so long, she said it in the zargon of bankers.

“Why not just sell the jewels and give the money to your boys?” she continued.

“Why not invest it-as they have no immediate need for money-and, in a few years, give them quadruple the amount?”

“Quadruple?”

“We expect no less.”

Eliza made a face as if she were being forced to swallow a whole English walnut. “Speaking of money,” she murmured, “what of the horse, and the ostrich plumes?”

“That noble steed is in Dunkirk, awaiting the return of John Churchill, who has voiced an intention of buying him from me. The plumes are safe in the hands of my commission-agents in Paris,” Jack said, and gripped the table-edge with both hands, expecting a thorough interrogation. But Eliza let the matter drop, as if she couldn’t stand to come any nearer to the truth. Jack realized she’d never expected to see him, or the money, again-that she’d withdrawn, long ago, from the partnership they’d formed beneath the Emperor’s palace in Vienna.

She would not look him in the eye, nor laugh at his jokes, nor blush when he provoked her, and he thought that chill Amsterdam had frozen her soul-sucked the humour of passion from her veins. But in time he persuaded her to come outside with him. When she stood up, and the Maiden’s proprietor helped her on with a cape, she looked finer than ever. Jack was about to compliment her on her needle-work when he noticed rings of gold on her fingers, and jewels round her neck, and knew she probably had not touched needle and thread since reaching Amsterdam.

“ Windhandel,or gifts from suitors?”

“I did not escape slavery to be a whore,” she answered. “ Youmight wake up next to a Yevgeny and jest about it-I would be of a different mind.”

Yevgeny, unaware that he was being abused in this way, followed them through the scrubbed streets of the town, thumping at the pavement with the butt of his harping-iron. Presently they came to a southwestern district not so well scrubbed, and began to hear a lot of French and Ladino, as Huguenots and Sephardim had come to live here-even a few Raskolniks, who stopped Yevgeny to exchange rumors and stories. The houses became cracked and uneven, settling into the muck so fast you could practically see them moving, and the canals became narrow and scummed-over, as if rarely troubled by commerce.