But in this it had nothing on the dagger, which was a serpentine blade of watered steel, astonishingly sharp on both edges. This style had become necessary when some Italian fighters, more sophisticated than Johann would ever be, had learnt the trick of reaching out with one hand to grab the blade of the foe’s dagger. The tactic actually worked, if the grip was firm and the dagger’s blade was straight; but it was most inadvisable to try it with a dagger such as this one. At any rate, the hilts of this dagger and this rapier were comparatively simple: Renaissance rather than Barock, and a world away from Rokoko. The scabbards were as plain as they could be, being simple undecorated black leather. Johann had belted them on this morning. Round midday he had finally stopped whacking the huge scabbard against tables’ legs and funeral-guests’ ankles. Now he was using the dagger to harvest flowers.

The light now came predominantly from the orange western sky, not the direct rays of the sun. The bouquet had to be re-examined in this new light. Johann returned to Venus, sheathing the serpentine dagger with extreme caution, and devoted a few moments to sifting through the pile of blossoms he’d made. Then he looked back at the palace, more out of habit than hope. But he noticed that clear orange sky-light was now shining in one side of Caroline’s apartment and out the other. The sheers had been drawn back from the windows; she was on her way. In a panic-convinced, suddenly, that all his flower-hunting efforts had been misspent-Johann rummaged through his harvest and drew out a generous arm-load of flowers that caught his fancy. He left the remainder as a sacrifice to the love-goddess and began moving toward the compound of the Teufelsbaum in the comical gait of one who is trying to put distance behind him as quickly as possible without breaking into a run. For there was only one portal in the triangular fence that imprisoned the serpent-like tree, and it was a good distance from here; meanwhile a carriage had set out from the palace stables and was moving down the garden path at a healthy clip. God help him if he were late.

Johann reached the iron gate with some moments to spare and slipped through it into the realm of the Teufelsbaum, which was an hour deeper into twilight than the rest of the garden. Having passed through, he about-faced, thrust his head back out over the path, and turned it to look both ways, making sure that no evening stroller had seen him entering the place where the Princess would soon arrive for two hours’ silent and solitary meditation.

Satisfied that no one was there, he drew back and closed the gate, carefully, so as not to make a clang. And there he stood, at attention, in the pose of a musketeer at port arms, save that he cradled a bouquet instead of a weapon. Presently a single great draught-horse boomed around the corner, constrained between a pair of long stout carriage-poles, which led back to a little coach. The driver had a terse exchange of noises with the horse. The horse slowed, passed the gate, stopped, and then (for he’d gone a bit too far, and the driver was remonstrating) backed up until the carriage’s side door was aligned with the iron gate. Quelled, the driver now set the brake, perhaps showing an excess of prudence. Johann stepped forward and opened the iron gate. Then he reached up to unlatch the carriage’s side door.

He swung it open to reveal a pair of mastiffs.

Their eyes were rolling and bulging. Their nostrils were seething, as each was being straddled by a strong man with both hands clasped around its muzzle to keep it from barking. Johann stepped out of the way. The dogs were launched.

Neither Scylla nor Charybdis appeared to touch the ground until they were twenty feet inside the gate. They bounded into the Teufelsbaum, bashing branches out of the way like runaway gun-carriages. Only after they had disappeared did they think to bark, and then as an afterthought. These were not hunters, bred to bay. They were workers.

On the path that ran along the back of the plot, hooves were cantering-then they changed over to a gallop. Johann looked up to the intersection just in time to see the rider flash across drawing a cutlass. It was one of his Leipziger cousins. From the back of the Teufelsbaum came a welter of furious barking and a yelp of pain. The two dog-wranglers-Eliza’s footmen-dove out the open door and ran after the dogs. Johann dropped his bouquet, for it had served its purpose, and followed them. He thought of drawing his rapier, but it would get hung up in the unfathomable windings of those branches. So he drew his dagger instead, and transferred it to his right hand.

He need not have bothered. By the time he stumbled to the back fence, the matter had been concluded. One of the dogs-Johann could not tell them apart in this light-was back in the corner, attending to a long dark robe that had fallen to the ground. On the off chance that the garment was a foe, he was doing battle with it. And on the assumption that it was a vertebrate, he was shaking it back and forth in a bid to crack its spinal column like a bullwhip.

The other dog was being soothed and attended to by one of the footmen-this had suffered a diagonal gash across the muzzle, which was bleeding a lot, though it was not an especially serious wound.

The second footman was kneeling beside a man in a dark robe who lay sprawled on his stomach near the fence. This footman must have been a student of anatomy, for with both hands he was methodically driving a dagger with a foot-long blade into diverse carefully selected locations in the fallen man’s back.

The injured dog-which had reluctantly been squatting on its haunches-got up. But its legs were twitching and it could not remain standing. It fell onto its side and gagged convulsively.

Johann went over to the dead man-for he had to be called dead now, even if his heart were still beating-and picked up with great care a small dagger that lay on the ground near his right hand. He raised it up into a shaft of light that still pierced the branches. One edge was red, and glistening wet, with the dog’s blood; but the entire blade gleamed with a shiny brown coating glazed with an oily rainbow sheen.

“Don’t touch it,” said a familiar woman’s voice. “Some are absorbed through the skin.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I CANNOT IMAGINE A STATE of affairs more awkward than this,” Eliza thought out loud. They were walking back toward the palace, she picking up her skirts and breaking into a run from time to time to keep up with his strides. Normally Johann was more considerate. This evening, his mind was elsewhere. She wanted it back.

“Two dead assassins in the Electress’s-I mean, the Elector’s garden? Yes, I should say so.”

It was only a few moments since they had witnessed the terminal moments of some unpleasantness in the canal. They were walking along one of the garden’s transverse paths, glancing to the right at every intersection, looking for a straight route back to the palace. Now suddenly they saw it sprawling against a purple and orange sky at a distance of some five hundred Johann-paces, or seven hundred of Eliza’s. Johann snapped the right turn like a soldier at drill, and stormed on.

“No, the hashishin are easily managed,” Eliza said. “One died in the woods, the other in the canal-we’ll say that the latter got drunk, fell in, and drowned. The former has already vanished.”

“Then what is so damned awkward about it? By your leave.”

Eliza let it be seen that she was exasperated. “Think, son. Spies are ubiquitous, obviously. But this spy works for the Jacobites, and he-or to be precise, his wife-is Caroline’s lady-in-waiting-”

“She can be replaced.”

“-and the declared mistress of George Augustus!”

“Again, Mother, almost the whole point of mistresses is that they may be hot-swapped.”