“Sir!”

Fatio held up a hand. “I do not mean to disturb you, there is no need for-”

“Ah, but there is a need for me to express my gratitude. I have not seen you since you saved the life of the Prince of Orange.”

Fatio closed his eyes for a moment. “’Twas like a conjunction of planets, purely fortuitous, reflecting no distinction on me, and let us say no more of it.”

“I learned only recently that you were in town-that your life was in danger so long as you remained on the Continent. Had I known as much earlier, I’d have offered you whatever hospitality I could-”

“And if I were worthy of the title of gentleman, I’d have waited for that offer before making myself at home here,” Fatio returned.

“Isaac of course has given you the run of the place and that is splendid.”

Daniel now noticed Fatio gazing at him with a penetrating, analytical look that reminded him of Hooke peering through a lens. From Hooke it was not objectionable, somehow. From Fatio it was mildly offensive. Of course Fatio was wondering how Daniel knew that he’d been hobnobbing with Isaac. Daniel could have told him the story about Jeffreys and the Star Chamber, but it would only have confused matters more.

Fatio now appeared to notice, for the first time, the damage to Daniel’s neck. His eyes saw all, but they were so big and luminous that it was impossible for him to conceal what he was gazing at; unlike the eyes of Jeffreys, which could secretly peer this way and that in the shadow of their deep embrasures, Fatio’s eyes could never be used discreetly.

“Don’t ask,” Daniel said. “You, sir, suffered an honorable wound on the beach. I’ve suffered one, not so honorable, but in the same cause, in London.”

“Are you quite all right, Doctor Waterhouse?”

“Splendid of you to inquire. I am fine. A cup of coffee and I’ll be as good as new.”

Whereupon Daniel snatched up his papers and repaired to the coffee-house, which was full of people and yet where he felt more privacy than under the eyes of Fatio.

The binary digits hidden in the subtleties of Eliza’s handwriting became, in decimal notation,

which when he subtracted 3 from each (that being the key hidden in the I Ching reference) became

which said,

THE FULL DECIPHERMENTtook a while, because Eliza provided details concerning her travel plans, and wrote of all she wanted to do while she was in London. When he was finished writing out the message he came alive to the fact that he had sat for a long time, and consumed much coffee, and needed to urinate in the worst way. He could not recall the last time he had made water. And so he went back to a sort of piss-hole in the corner of the tiny court in back of the coffeehouse.

Nothing happened, and so after about half a minute he bent forward as if bowing, and braced his forehead against the stone wall. He had learned that this helped to relax some of the muscles in his lower abdomen and make the urine come out more freely. That stratagem, combined with some artful shifting of the hips and deep breathing, elicited a few spurts of rust-colored urine. When it ceased to work, he turned round, pulled his garments up around his waist, and squatted to piss in the Arab style. By shifting his center of gravity just so, he was able to start up a kind of gradual warm seepage that would provide relief if he kept it up for a while.

This gave him lots of time to think of Eliza, if spinning phant’sies could be named thinking. It was plain from her letter that she expected to visit Whitehall Palace. Which signified little, since any person who was wearing clothes and not carrying a lighted granadoe could go in and wander about the place. But since Eliza was a Countess who dwelt at Versailles, and Daniel (in spite of Jeffreys) a sort of courtier, when she said she wanted to visit Whitehall it meant that she expected to stroll and sup with Persons of Quality. Which could easily be arranged, since the Catholic Francophiles who made up most of the King’s court would fall all over themselves making way for Eliza, if only to get a look at the spring fashions.

But to arrange it would require planning-again, if the dreaming of fatuous dreams could be named planning. Like an astronomer plotting his tide-tables, Daniel had to project the slow wheeling of the seasons, the liturgical calendar, the sessions of Parliament and the progress of various important people’s engagements, terminal diseases, and pregnancies into the time of the year when Eliza was expected to show up.

His first thought had been that Eliza would be here at just the right time: for in another fortnight the King was going to issue a new Declaration of Indulgence that would make Daniel a hero, at least among Nonconformists. But as he squatted there he began to count off the weeks, tick, tick, tick, like the drops of urine detaching themselves one by one from the tip of his yard, and came aware that it would be much longer before Eliza actually got here-she’d be arriving no sooner than mid-May. By that time, the High Church priests would have had several Sundays to denounce Indulgence from their pulpits; they’d say it wasn’t an act of Christian toleration at all, but a stalking-horse for Popery, and Daniel Waterhouse a dupe at best and a traitor at worst. Daniel might have to go live at Whitehall around then, just to be safe.

It was while imagining that- living like a hostage in a dingy chamber at Whitehall, protected by John Churchill’s Guards-that Daniel recalled another datum from his mental ephemeris, one that stopped up his pissing altogether.

The Queen was pregnant. To date she’d produced no children at all. The pregnancy seemed to have come on more suddenly than human pregnancies customarily did. Perhaps they’d been slow to announce it because they’d expected it would only end in yet another miscarriage. But it seemed to have taken, and the size of her abdomen was now a matter of high controversy around Whitehall. She was expected to deliver in late May or early June-just the same time that Eliza would be visiting.

Eliza was using Daniel to get inside the Palace so that she, Eliza, could know as early as possible whether King James II had a legitimate heir, and adjust her investments accordingly. This should have been as obvious as that Daniel had a big stone in his bladder, but somehow Daniel managed to finish what he was doing and go back into the coffee-house without becoming aware of either.

The only person who seemed to understand matters was Robert Hooke, who was in the same coffee-house. He was talking, as usual, to Sir Christopher Wren. But he had been observing Daniel, this whole time, through an open window. He had the look on his face of a man who was determined to speak plainly of unpleasant facts, and Daniel managed to avoid him.

To d’Avaux

Monsieur,

As you requested, I have changed over to the new cypher. To me it seems preposterous to imagine that the Dutch had broken the old one and read all of your letters! But, as always, you are the soul of discretion, and I will follow whatever precautions you demand of me.

It was good that you wrote me that lovely, if vaguely sarcastic, letter of congratulations on the occasion of my being accorded my rightful hereditary title (since we are now of equal rank-whatever doubts you may harbor as to the legitimacy of my title-I hope you are not offended that I address you as Monsieur instead of Monseigneur now). Until your letter arrived, I had not heard from you in many months. At first, I assumed that the Prince of Orange’s vulgar over-reaction to the so-called abduction attempt had left you isolated in the Hague, and unable to send letters out. As months went by, I began to worry that your affection for your most humble and obedient servant had cooled. Now I can see that this was all just idle phant’sy-the sort of aimless fretting to which my sex is so prone. You and I are as close as ever. So I will try to write a good letter and entice you to write me back.