“You see?” Bolingbroke was remarking to Charles White, who was standing at his side, in the role of wide-eyed ’prentice a-gawp at the Master’s skill. “It is not necessary to bite their ears off. Oh, this is nothing. I have seen others drop dead in their shoes. One needs an apoplectic for that.” He seemed ready to offer up more advice in this vein, but his attention was drawn by the Marquis of Ravenscar, standing serenely on the opposite side of the Chamber as other Whigs bent their backs to the very odd job of dragging out Isaac Newton. Ravenscar held out a hand. Someone slapped a walking-stick into his palm. He hefted it. Charles White, anticipating physical violence, took half a step forward, then realized he was being absurd, and brought his hands together in front of his silver greyhound medallion, absent-mindedly rubbing at an ancient dagger-scar that went all the way through one palm. Bolingbroke merely elevated an eyebrow.

Roger Comstock raised his walking-stick until it was pointed up at the starry ceiling, and brought the butt of it to his face, then snapped it down briskly. It was a swordsman’s salute: a gesture of respect, and a signal that the next thing to come would be homicidal violence. “Let’s to the Kit-Cat Clubb,” he said to Peer and a few other Whigs who had not yet been able to get their feet to move. “Sir Isaac has the use of my coach; but I am in a mood for a walk. God save the Queen, my lord.”

“God save the Queen,” said Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. “And do enjoy your walk, Roger.”

“I LOVE YOU.”

“I loaf you.”

“I love you.”

“I lubb you.”

“That’s not quite it.”

“How can you tell? This ‘I love you’ strikes my ear like the sound of a tin sheet being wobbled. How can I say ‘ich liebe dich’ with such noises?”

“To me you can say it any way you please. But you need to work on certain vowels.” Johann von Hacklheber raised his head out of Caroline’s lap, faltered-his ponytail had snagged in a pearl button-worked it free, sat up, and spun around on the bench so that he could get face to face with her. “Watch my lips, my tongue,” he said. “I love you.”

There the English lesson ended. Not that the pupil had failed to observe the master’s lips and tongue. She had done so most attentively-but not with a mind towards improving her vowels. “Noch einmal, bitte,” she requested, and when he arched his sandy eyebrows and opened his mouth to pronounce the “I,” she was up and on him. His lips and tongue went through the movements for “love,” but Caroline felt them with her own lips and tongue, and heard not a thing.

“That was much more informative,” she said, after a few more repetitions of the etude.

His ponytail was coming undone, which was largely her doing, for she had her hands to either side of his head and was tugging blond locks free from the black ribbon that bound them in back, bringing him into a state of beautiful deshabillement. “They say that your mother was the loveliest woman in all of Versailles.”

“I thought that honor was reserved for the King’s brother.”

“Stop it!” She gave him the tiniest tap on the cheek-bone. “I was going to say, she gave her looks to you.”

“What are you going to say now?”

“I am about to ask where you got your wit from, for it is not as pleasing to me.”

“I do beg your royal highness’s forgiveness. I did not know that you had such affection for the late brother of the King of France.”

“Think of his widow, Liselotte, who lives still, and who exchanged letters almost every day with the lady we are laying in her tomb today.”

“The connexion was so tenuous I-”

“No connexions are tenuous on a day such as this. All Christendom mourns for Sophie.”

“Excepting certain drawing-rooms in London.”

“For this one day, spare me your wit, and let me enjoy your looks. You need a shave!”

“The Doctor must have taught you about solstices and equinoxes.”

“What does that have to do with shaving? Behold, if I were wearing gloves, they should be snagged and ruined by these boar’s bristles!” She dug a thumb in along his jaw-line and shoved the skin up to his cheek-bone. No longer did he look like the son of the most beautiful woman in Versailles, and no longer were his vowels perfectly formed when he said, “A tryst in the garden at dawn’s first light is a romantic conceit, and I do confess that this peachy morning-light makes your face more radiant than any flower, and more succulent than any fruit-”

“As it sets your golden mane, and your spiky hog-bristles, aglow, my angel.”

“However, as we dwell at above fifty degrees of latitude-”

“Fifty-two degrees and twenty-odd minutes, as you’d know, if the Doctor had drilled you as he did me in the use of the back-staff.”

“In any case, given that we are within a few days of the Solstice, ‘dawn’s first light,’ at this latitude, works out to something like two o’clock in the morning.”

“Pfui, it’s not that early!”

“I note that your Ladies of the Bedchamber have not had a crack at you yet-”

“Hmph.”

“Which suits me very well,” Johann added hastily, “as powder, lacings, and beauty-spots can only detract from one who is perfect to begin with.”

“ ’Twill be double powderings and lacings this day,” Caroline lamented. “The usual one, that I may receive our noble and royal guests, and a second, for the funeral.”

“It is well that you have a sturdy husband to take the brunt of the ceremonies,” Johann reflected. “Stand behind him, fan yourself, and look bereaved.”

“I am bereaved.”

“You were, and are becoming less so by the day, I think,” Johann said. Which was not the gentlest thing he could have said. But he had spent enough time among royals to know their heart-ways. “Now your mind has already begun to turn elsewhere. You are getting ready for the burden to fall on your shoulders.”

“I wish you had not reminded me. Now the mood is spoiled.”

Johann von Hacklheber got to his feet. He was careful to take Caroline’s hand in his own first, and to keep it clasped. “Oh, I’m afraid the morning was ruined for me before it began. I have an extraordinary engagement. One that I could not get myself out of by pleading, ‘I am very sorry but I shall be busy at that hour cuckolding the Prince of Wales.’ ”

She smiled, though she tried ever so hard not to. “He’s not technically the Prince of Wales yet. We have to go to England and get coronated.”

“Crowned. Try pronouncing that-it’s got a W in the middle of it. I shall see you in a few hours, my lady, my princess.”

“And-?”

“My lover.”

“Fare well on your mysterious errand-my lubber.”

“Oh, ’tis nothing-just an insomniacal Englishman who wants to go for walkies.”

“Val-kees?” Caroline repeated. But Johann had tossed the troublesome word over his shoulder as he unlatched an iron gate, and stepped out into an avenue of the great garden. All she heard after was the clank of the gate closing, and the diminishing crunch-crunch of Johann’s boots on the gravel path. Then she was alone under the writhing limbs of the Teufelsbaum.

She had not mentioned to Johann that this was the place where Sophie had died. She had been afraid that having such a thing in his mind would make him less amorous. Perhaps she needn’t have worried, for nothing seemed to make men of his age (he was twenty-four) less amorous. As to herself, she had lived through the deaths of her father, her mother, her stepfather, her stepfather’s wicked mistress, her adopted mother (Sophie Charlotte), and now Sophie. Death and disease only made her more amorous-eager to forget the bad parts of life and to enjoy good flesh while it lasted.

Now she distinctly heard another gravel-crunch. It seemed to come from one of the triangle of paths that outlined this plot where the Teufelsbaum grew in its iron cage. Her hope that Johann had changed his mind was evanescent, for the first crunch was not followed by a second. After a rather long time she did hear another, but it was faint and prolonged, as if a foot were being placed very cautiously. This was followed by a “Ssh!” so distinct that she turned her head around to look.