I was making polite conversation with the Mother Superior, a lovely woman of about threescore who turns a blind eye to the young women’s comings and goings. She mentioned in passing that there are iron works nearby, and this caused me to doubt my own judgment concerning those slow-rolling chalands. Perhaps they were only carrying iron, and not lead. But later I went out on the town with some of the younger girls, and we passed within view of the river-front, where a chaland was being unloaded. Barrels were being rolled off and stacked along the quay, and heavy ox-carts were standing by waiting. I asked these girls if this was typical, but they affect complete ignorance of practical matters and were of no use at all.
Later I claimed I was tired, and went to my allotted cell as if to sleep. But instead I changed into my boy-clothes and sneaked out of the convent using one of the well-worn escape-routes used by nuns going to trysts in the town. This time I was able to get much closer to the quay, and to observe the chaland from between two of the barrels that had been taken from it earlier. And indeed I saw small but massive objects being lifted up out of its bilge and loaded onto those ox-carts. Overseeing the work was a man whose face I could not see, but of whom much could be guessed from his clothing. About his boots were certain nuances that I had begun to notice in the boots of Monsieur’s lovers shortly before my departure from St. Cloud. His breeches-
No. By the time anyone reads these words, fashions will have changed, and so it would be a waste of time for me to enumerate the details-suffice it to say that everything he wore had to have been sewn in Paris within the last month.
My observations were cut short by the clumsiness of a few Vagabonds who had crept down to the quay hoping to pilfer something. One of them leaned against a barrel, assuming it was full and would support his weight, but being empty it tilted away from him and then, when he sprang back, came down with a hollow boom. Instantly the courtier whipped out his sword and pointed it at me, for he had spied me peering at him between barrels, and several men came running towards me. The Vagabonds took off at a run and I followed them, reasoning that they would know better than I how to disappear into this town. And indeed by vaulting over certain walls and crawling down certain gutters they very nearly disappeared from me, who was but a few paces behind them.
Eventually I followed them as far as a church-yard, where they had set up a little squat in a tangle of vines growing up the side of an ancient mausoleum. They made no effort either to welcome me or to chase me away, and so I hunkered down in the darkness a few paces off, and listened to them mutter. Much of their zargon was incomprehensible, but I could discern that there were four of them. Three seemed to be making excuses, as if resigned to whatever fate awaited them. But the fourth was frustrated, he had the energy to be critical of the others, and to desire some improvement in their situation. When this one got up and stepped aside for a piss, I rose and drew a little closer to him and said, “Meet me alone at the corner of the convent where the ivy grows,” and then I darted away, not knowing whether he might try to seize me.
An hour later I was able to observe him from the parapet of the convent. I threw him a coin and told him that he would receive ten more of the same if he would follow the ox-carts, observe their movements, and report back to me in three days. He receded into the darkness without saying a word.
The next morning the Mother Superior delivered a letter to one of the girls, explaining that it had been left at the gate the night before. The recipient took one look at the seal and exclaimed, “Oh, it is from my dear cousin!” She opened it with a jerk and read it then and there, pronouncing half the words aloud, as she was barely literate. The import seemed to be that her cousin had passed through St.-Dizier the night before but very much regretted he’d not been able to stop in for a visit, as his errand was very pressing; however, he expected to be in the area for some time, and hoped that he would have the opportunity to see her soon.
When she pulled the letter open, the disc of wax sealing it shut popped off and rolled across the floor under a chair. As she was reading the letter I went over and picked it up. The coat of arms pressed into that seal was one I did not fully recognize, but certain elements were familiar to me from my time at Versailles-I could guess that he was related to a certain noble family of Gascony, well known for its military exploits. It seemed safe to assume he was the gentleman I’d spied on the quay the night before.
CRYPTANALYST’S NOTE: In the original, the section below contains considerable detail about the cargoes being unloaded from the chalands at St.-Dizier, and the coats of arms and insignias of persons that the Countess observed there, all of which were no doubt of greater interest to the Prince of Orange than they can be to your majesty. I have elided them. - B.R.
A slow three days at the convent of St.-Dizier have given me more than enough time to catch up on my embroidery! With any luck my Vagabond will come back tonight with news. If I have received no word from the Palatinate by tomorrow I shall have little choice but to strike out on my own, though I have no idea how to manage it.
I have tried to make what use I could of this fallow time, as I did on the chaland. During the days I have tried to make conversation with Eloise, the girl who received the letter. This has been difficult because she is not very intelligent and we have few interests in common. I let it be known that I have been at Versailles and St. Cloud recently. In time, word reached her of this, and she began to sit near me at meals, and to ask if I knew this or that person there, and what had become of so-and-so. So at last I have learned who she is, and who her well-dressed cousin is: the Chevalier d’Adour, who has devoted his last several years to currying favor with Marechal Louvois, the King’s commander-in-chief. He distinguished himself in the recent massacres of Protestants in the Piedmont and, in sum, is the sort who might be entrusted with a mission of some importance.
In the evenings I have tried to keep an eye on the river-front. Several more chalands have been unloaded there, in the same style as the first.
Suddenly so much happened I could not tend to my embroidery for a few days. I am catching up on it now, in a carriage on a bumpy road in the Argonne. This type of writing has more advantages to a peripatetic spy than I appreciated at first. It would be impossible for me to write with pen and ink here. But needlework I can just manage.
To say it quickly, my young Vagabond came back and earned his ten silver pieces by informing me that the heavy ox-carts carrying the cargo from the chalands were being driven east, out of France and into Lorraine, circumventing Toul and Nancy on forest tracks, and then continuing east to Alsace, which is France again (the Duchy of Lorraine being flanked by France to both east and west). My Vagabond had been forced, for lack of time, to turn round and come back before he could follow the carts all the way to their destination, but it is obvious enough that they are bound towards the Rhine. He heard from a wanderer he met on the road that such carts were converging from more than one direction on the fortress of Haguenau, which lately had been a loud and smoky place. This man had fled the area because the troops had been press-ganging any idlers they could find, putting them to work chopping down trees-little ones for firewood and big ones for lumber. Even the shacks of the Vagabonds were being chopped up and burnt.