It seems that as the King of France was rising one day recently, he remarked, to the nobles who were attending his getting-out-of-bed ceremony, that he had heard that “the woman from Qwghlm” was secretly of noble blood.
It was a secret even to me until an hour or so later, when I heard someone calling for “Mademoiselle la comtesse de la Zeur,” which (as I slowly figured out) is their way of trying to pronounce Sghr. As you may know, my island is a well-known Hazard to Navigation, recognizable, to terrified sailors, by its three towers of rock, which we denote by that name. Evidently some courtier, who had been so reckless as to sail within view of Qwghlm at some point, remembered this detail and concocted a title for me. To the Court ladies here, especially those of ancient families, it has a savage ring to it. Fortunately there are many foreign princesses here who do not have such exacting standards, and they have already sent minions around to invite me to parties.
Of course Kings may ennoble commoners whenever they please, and so it isn’t clear to me why someone has gone to the trouble of making me out to be a hereditary noble. Here is a clue, though: Father Edouard de Gex has been asking me questions about the Qwghlmian Church, which is not technically Protestant in that it was founded before the Roman Catholic Church was established (or at least before anyone notified the Qwghlmians). The Father speaks of going to visit Qwghlm to seek out proofs that our faith is really no different from his and that the two should be merged.
Meanwhile I keep hearing expressions of sympathy from various French nobles, who cluck their tongues over the barbaric occupation of my homeland by England. In fact, every Qwghlmian would be pleased if Englishmen did come and occupy our Island, for presumably they would bring some food and warm clothes. I suspect that Louis knows he may soon see a sworn enemy sitting on the throne of England, and is making ready to out-flank that foe by shoring up relations with places such as Ireland, Scotland, and that flyspeck of rock where I was born. It has been ages since Qwghlm had hereditary nobles (nine hundred years ago the Scots rounded them all up and sealed them into a cave with some bears), but now they have decided I am one. Mother would have been so proud!
According to the date at the top of your last letter, you penned it while you were paying a visit to Sophie’s daughter at the Court of Brandenburg around the time of Christmas. Please tell me what Berlin is like! I know that many Huguenots have ended up there. It is strange to consider that only a few years ago Sophie and Ernst August were offering their daughter’s hand in marriage to Louis XIV. Yet now Sophie Charlotte is Electress of Brandenburg instead, and (if the rumors are to be believed) presiding over a salon of religious dissidents and free-thinkers in Berlin. If the marriage had gone the other way she would bear a measure of responsibility for putting the very same men to death or slavery. I can’t help but suppose she is happier where she is.
They say that Sophie Charlotte participates in the discussions of those savants with ever so much poise and confidence. I can’t help but suppose that this is because she grew up around you, Doctor, and listened to the conversations you had with her mother. Now that I am reckoned a Countess, and am considered fit to exchange chit-chat with Madame, I have begged her to tell me what you and Sophie talk about at Hanover. But she only rolls her eyes and claims that erudite talk makes no sense to her. I believe that she has spent too much time around self-styled Alchemists, and suspects that all such talk is rubbish.
For to accuse, requires less eloquence, such is man’s nature, than to excuse; and condemnation, than absolution more resembles justice.
–Hobbes, Leviathan
“HOW DOES THE SAYING GO?‘All work and no play… a dull boy,” said a disembodied voice. It was the only perception that Daniel’s brain was receiving at the moment. Vision, taste, and the other senses were dormant, and memory did not exist. This made it possible for him to listen with more-than-normal acuteness to the voice, and to appreciate its fine qualities-of which there were many. It was a delicious voice, belonging to an upper-class man who was used to being listened to, and who liked it that way.
“This boy’s lucubrations have made him very dull indeed, he is a very sluggard!” the voice continued.
A few men chuckled, and shifted bodies sheathed in silk. The sounds echoed from a high and hard ceiling.
Daniel’s mind now recollected that it was attached to a body. But like a regiment that has lost contact with its colonel, the body had not received any orders in a long time. It had gone all loose and discomposed, and had stopped sending signals back to headquarters.
“Give him more water!” commanded the beautiful voice.
Daniel heard boots moving on a hard floor to his left, felt blunt pressure against numbed lips, heard the rim of a bottle crack against one of his front teeth. His lungs began to fill up with some sort of beverage. He tried to move his head back but it responded sluggishly, and something cold hit him on the back of the neck hard enough to stop him. The fluid was flooding down his chin now and trickling under his clothes. His whole thorax clenched up trying to cough the fluid out of his lungs, and he tried to move his head forward-but now something cold caught him across the throat. He coughed and vomited at the same moment and sprayed hot humours all over his lap.
“These Puritans cannot hold their drink-really one cannot take them anywhere.”
“Save, perhaps, to Barbados, my Lord!” offered up another voice.
Daniel’s eyes were bleary and crusted. He tried raising his hands to his face, but halfway there each one of them collided with a bar of iron that was projecting across space. Daniel groped at these, but dire things happened to his neck when he did, and so he ended up feeling around them to paw at his eyes and wipe grit and moisture away from his face. He could make out now that he was sitting on a chair in the middle of a large room; it was night, and the place was lit up by only a modest number of candles. The light gleamed from white lace cravats round the throats of several gentlemen who were arranged round Daniel in a horseshoe.
The light wasn’t bright enough, and his vision wasn’t clear enough, to make sense of this ironmongery that was about his neck, so he had to explore that with his hands. It seemed to be a band of iron bent into a neck-ring. From four locations equally spaced around its circumference rods of iron projected outwards like spokes from a wheel-hub, to a radius of perhaps half a yard, where each split into a pair of back-curved barbs, like the flukes of grappling-hooks.
“While you were sleeping off the effects of M. LeFebure’s draught, I took the liberty of having you fitted out with new neckwear,” said the voice, “but as you are a Puritan, and have no use for vanity, I called upon a blacksmith instead of a tailor. You’ll find that this is all the mode in the sugar plantations of the Caribbean.”
The barbs sticking out behind had gotten lodged in the back of the chair when Daniel had unwisely tried to sit forward. Now he gripped the ones in front and pushed himself back hard, knocking the rear ones free. Momentum carried him and the collar back; his spine slammed into the chair and the collar kept moving and tried to shear his head off. He ended up with his head tilted back, gazing almost straight up at the ceiling. His first thought was that candles had somehow been planted up there, or burning arrows shot at random into the ceiling by bored soldiery, but then his eyes focused and he saw that the vault had been decorated with painted stars that gleamed in the candle-light from beneath. Then he knew where he was.