“You really should move to Pennsylvania,” Penn mused. “You are a man of parts, Daniel, and certain of those parts, which will only get you half-hanged, drawn, and quartered in London, would make you a great man in Philadelphia-or at least get you invited to a lot of parties.”

“I’ve not given up on England just yet, thank you.”

“England may prefer that you give up, rather than suffer another Civil War, or another Bloody Assizes.”

“Much of England sees it otherwise.”

“And you may number me in that party, Daniel, but a scattering of Nonconformists does not suffice to bring about the changes you seek.”

“True… but what of the men whose signatures are on these letters?” said Daniel, producing a sheaf of folded parchments, each one be-ribboned and wax-sealed.

Penn’s mouth shrank to the size of a navel and his mind worked for a minute. The girl came round and served chocolate.

“For you to surprise me in this way was not the act of a gentleman.”

“When Adam delved and Eve span…”

“Shut up! Do not trifle with me. Owning Pennsylvania does not make me any better than a Vagabond in the eyes of God, Daniel, but it serves as a reminder that I’m not to be trifled and toyed with.”

“And that, Brother William, is why I nearly killed myself to cross the North Sea on the front of a wind-storm, and galloped through frost and muck to intercept you- beforeyou met with your next King.” Daniel drew out a Hooke-watch and turned its ivory face toward the fire-light. “There is still time for you to write a letter of your own, and put it on the top of this stack, if you please.”

“IWAS GOING TO ASK, do you have any idea how many people in Amsterdam want to kill you… but by coming up here, you seem to’ve answered the question: no,” said William, Prince of Orange.

“You had fair warning in my letter to d’Avaux, did you not?”

“It barely reached me in time… the brunt of the blow was absorbed by some big shareholders there, whom I held off from warning.”

“Francophiles.”

“No, the bottom has quite fallen out of that market, very few Dutchmen are selling themselves to the French nowadays. My chief enemies nowadays are what you would call Dutchmen of limited vision. At any rate, your Batavia charade caused no end of headaches for me.”

“Establishing a first-rate intelligence source at the Court of Louis XIV cannot come cheaply.”

“That insipid truism can be turned around easily: when it comes so dear, then I demand first-rate intelligence. What did you learn from the two Englishmen, by the way?” William glanced at a dirty spoon and flared his nostrils. A Dutch houseboy, fairer and more beautiful than Eliza, bustled over and began to clear away the gleaming, crusted evidence of a long chocolate binge. The clattering of the cups and spoons seemed to irritate William more than gunfire on a battlefield. He leaned back deep into his armchair, closed his eyes, and turned his face toward the fire. To him the world was a dark close cellar with a net-work of covert channels strung through it, frail and irregular as cobwebs, transmitting faint cyphers of intelligence from time to time, and so a fire broadcasting clear strong radiance all directions was a sort of miracle, a pagan god manifesting itself in a spidery Gothick chapel. Eliza did not speak until the boy was finished and the room had gone quiet again and the folds and creases in the prince’s face had softened. He was a couple of years shy of forty, but time spent in sun and spray had given him the skin, and battles had given him the mentality, of an older man.

“Both believe the same things, and believe them sincerely,” Eliza said, referring to the two Englishmen. “Both have been tested by suffering. At first I thought the fat one had been corrupted. But the slender one did not think so.”

“Maybe the slender one is naive.”

“He is not naive in that way. No, those two belong to a common sect, or something-they knew and recognized each other. They dislike each other and work at cross-purposes but betrayal, corruption, any straying from whatever common path they have chosen, these are inconceivable. Is it the same sect as Gomer Bolstrood?”

“No and yes. The Puritans are like Hindoos-impossibly various, and yet all of a type.”

Eliza nodded.

“Why are you so fascinated by the Puritans?” William asked.

It was not asked in a friendly way. He suspected her of some weakness, some occult motive. She looked at him like a little girl who had just been run over by a cart-wheel. It was a look that would cause most men to fall apart like stewed chickens. It didn’t work. Eliza had noticed that William of Orange had a lot of gorgeous boys around him. But he also had a mistress, an Englishwoman named Elizabeth Villiers, who was only moderately beautiful, but famously intelligent and witty. The Prince of Orange would never make himself vulnerable by relying on one sex or the other; any lust he might feel for Eliza he could easily channel towards that houseboy, as Dutch farmers manipulated their sluice-gates to water one field instead of another. Or at least that was the message he wanted to convey, by keeping the company he did.

Eliza sensed that she had quite inadvertently gotten into danger. William had found an inconsistency in her, and if it weren’t explained to his satisfaction, he’d brand her as Enemy. And while Louis XIV kept his enemies in the gilded cage of Versailles, William probably had more forthright ways of dealing with his.

The truth wasn’t so bad after all. “I think they are interesting,” she said, finally. “They are so different from anyone else. So peculiar. But they are not ninehammers, they are formidable in the extreme; Cromwell was only a prelude, a practice. This Penn controls an estate that is stupefyingly vast. New Jersey is a place of Quakers, too, and different sorts of Puritans are all over Massachusetts. Gomer Bolstrood used to say the most startling things… overthrowing monarchy was the least of it. He said that Negroes and white men are equal before God and that all slavery everywhere must be done away with, and that his people would never let up until everyone saw it their way. ‘First we’ll get the Quakers on our side, for they are rich,’ he said, ‘then the other Nonconformists, then the Anglicans, then the Catholics, then all of Christendom.’”

William had turned his gaze back to the fire as she spoke, signalling that he believed her. “Your fascination with Negroes is very odd. But I have observed that the best people are frequently odd in one way or another. I have got in the habit of seeking them out, and declining to trust anyone who has no oddities. Your queer ideas concerning slavery are of no interest to me whatever. But the fact that you harbor queer ideas makes me inclined to place some small amount of trust in you.”

“If you trust my judgment, the slender Puritan is the one to watch,” Eliza said.

“But he has no vast territories in America, no money, no followers!”

“That is why. I would wager he had a father who was very strong, probably older brothers, too. That he has been checked and baffled many times, never married, never enjoyed even the small homely success of having a child, and has come to that time in his life when he must make his mark, or fail. This has become all confused, in his thinking, with the coming rebellion against the English King. He has decided to gamble his life on it-not in the sense of living or dying, but in the sense of making something of his life, or not.”

William winced. “I pray you never see that deep into me. ”

“Why? Perhaps ‘twould do you good.”

“Nay, nay, you are like some Fellow of the Royal Society, dissecting a living dog-there is a placid cruelty about you.”

“About me? What of you? To fight wars is kindness?”

“Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you.”