“Thank you, sir,” said Henry Arlanc. “Jack and his band of corsairs rescued my father, and other galeriens, from the wrack of that galley. This much Calvin and I knew from letters we received in Limerick. But beyond that-”

“Hold. How did you and your brother get to Limerick?” asked Orney.

“I was getting to that, sir. When we were let out of our barrels in England, a pair of young lads, not yet fully grown, we could, I’m ashamed to say, muster very little interest in following our father’s example and becoming merchants. We lusted after revenge-preferably violent, and if possible, glorious. We joined one of the Huguenot cavalry regiments forming in the Dutch Republic. By the time that William and Mary had come to England, we had risen in the ranks a bit-Calvin had become an assistant Chaplain and I was a non-commissioned officer. Our regiment was one of those that were despatched to Ireland during the early years of the war, to drive out the Pretender. We participated in the Siege of Limerick during the winter of ’90 and ’91, and that is where we received the miraculous tidings that our father-whom we had given up for dead-had been pulled out of the sea by the King of the Vagabonds.”

“Did you receive any further communication from him?” asked Isaac.

“Not for several years, sir, as we were all so much on the move.”

“If your father remained in the service of Jack Shaftoe, he would have called at such places as Mocha and Bandar-Congo during 1691 and followed the monsoon to Surat the year after,” Newton said. “Beyond that it is difficult to reconstruct Jack’s movements for several years. It is well known that he participated in a battle somewhere between Surat and Shahjahanabad in late 1693, and that in 1695 he had begun to organize a ship-building project.”

“In February of 1698 our father posted us a letter from Batavia, where that ship had called to take on spices,” Arlanc said. “We did not receive it until late in the year. By that time the war was over.”

Orney snorted.

“Or so everyone believed at the time,” Arlanc hastened to add. “In retrospect, of course, this was nothing more than a brief respite in a war that extended over twenty-five years. But few foresaw this, and so our regiment, like so many others, was disbanded the following year, when the Treaty of Partition was signed by William and Louis.

“It was difficult to find work in London with so many discharged veterans about, and dangerous to be there for the same reason. Calvin and I were more fortunate than some, for enough time had passed since the Edict of Nantes that the Huguenots had established themselves in England, and begun to prosper. Calvin secured a position as a pastor in a Huguenot church just outside of the city, and has been there ever since. I took jobs here and there as a servant to Huguenot businessmen.

“The last letter we received from our father was posted from Manila in August of the year of our Lord 1700, and it stated-”

“That Jack’s ship was about to attempt the crossing of the Pacific,” said Sir Isaac, “and he would be aboard it.”

“Just so, sir. It is uncanny how much you know of Jack’s movements about the world. Father said he would write to us again from Acapulco. But he died of scurvy en route, may God have mercy on his soul.”

At this little prayer everyone in the room observed a respectful silence. Even Partry seemed moved. The first to speak was Sir Isaac. “And how, precisely, were you delivered this unhappy news?”

“Jack told me,” said Arlanc.

This information silenced Isaac for a bit longer. Mrs. Arlanc could be heard indistinctly, sobbing into the shoulder of a scullery maid in the Royal Society’s kitchen. But presently Isaac stirred again and said, “This would have occurred after his return to London in the last months of 1702.”

“Again you are correct, sir.”

“Do you phant’sy that Jack Shaftoe arranged this interview with you solely to deliver word of your father’s passing?”

Here Henry Arlanc looked discomfited for the first time-odd, considering he was heavily ironed, and on his way to Newgate. He cast an uncertain glance at Sean Partry, and another at Sir Isaac. Then he answered: “Of course not, sir. However, I must tell you something you ought to know about Jack Shaftoe, which is that he is not utterly black-hearted. Did he have a selfish motive for paying a call on me? Of course, and I shall address that next. But his affection for my father was unfeigned, and when he told the tale of my father’s passing, and his burial at sea, almost within sight of California, he shed tears. And I believe that the affection may even have been mutual, for by Jack’s account, my father’s dying words included certain warnings for Jack-warnings he’d have been well-advised to have heeded.”

“How touching,” Isaac said, very much as if he wanted to skip over this part as quickly as possible. But curiosity had already got the better of Daniel, who asked: “What did these warnings concern?”

This earned him a glare from Isaac, and so Daniel went on: “Forgive me, but it is clear that my father and yours had much in common with each other, Mr. Arlanc, and I cannot guess what sort of warnings a man like my father would have issued to a man like Jack, unless it was that his immortal soul was doomed to the Lake of Fire!”

Orney slapped the table and chuckled silently.

“My father implored Jack to beware of a certain passenger whom they’d plucked out of the Pacific following the wrack of the Manila Galleon. A Jesuit priest he was-an agent of the Inquisition, named Father Edouard de Gex.”

Isaac, who had barely been able to hold back a sneer moments ago, was distinctly taken a-back. After a moment to compose himself he asked Partry to take the prisoner out of the room (which he did, a bit roughly) and out of earshot (which was seen to by Mrs. Arlanc, who rushed forth to embrace her husband and wail).

“He knows nothing of what happened yesterday on the Bridge,” Daniel insisted.

“It is too soon for accounts to have appeared in newspapers,” observed Mr. Kikin, an astute reader of all that spewed forth from Grub Street.

“Could Partry have mentioned anything to him? A slip of the tongue, perhaps?”

“Impossible,” said Orney. “Partry and I spent all afternoon, and evening, scouring the banks of the Thames for evidence of de Gex.”

“And I came here with Saturn, specifically to keep an eye on Arlanc,” Daniel said. “He received no visitors.”

“This is a singular piece of news, if it is to be credited,” Isaac said. “For years it has been assumed, by many at Court, that de Gex-who spends much time in London-was an agent of the King of France. And many rumors have reached my ears that he was entangled, somehow, with Jack the Coiner. I had assumed that de Gex and Shaftoe operated hand-in-glove.” He nodded at the place where Arlanc had just been sitting. “But this talk of a warning that went unheeded hints at a conflict of fourteen years’ standing between the two of them.”

“It hints at something else, too,” Orney said. “If it is true that this de Gex survived the destruction of a ship on the open ocean, and stayed afloat long enough to be rescued, it implies that he knows how to swim-which means we cannot simply assume that he drowned in the Thames yesterday.”

“Let us continue the interview,” Isaac said.

“WHEN JACK FIRST RETURNED to London, the war had resumed under its new name of the War of the Spanish Succession. But the armies had not yet been fully mobilized, and so many unemployed soldiers and sailors were still about, making the city infamously perilous. Jack had the wit to see that these men would presently be called back into service, and so he recruited as many as he could during his first months back. His interview with me was partly with an eye towards getting me to work for him.”

“In what capacity? And did he succeed?” asked Isaac.