“The Lord of the Manor has spoken; all must obey,” announced Roger Comstock, Marquis of Ravenscar, and shoved his chair back; and that was how he and Bolingbroke ended up on the roof of the house, ogling the latter’s Newtonian reflector. But as it was still twilight, and the stars were not out yet, her Majesty’s Secretary of State had to content himself with aiming it at terrestrial targets. The facility with which he did so gave Roger the idea that this was not the first time he had used the instrument to spy upon neighbors, near and far.

“The seeing is excellent this evening,” Bolingbroke sighed, “as the day was warm, and few have bothered to light fires.”

“This port is of the best,” Roger said, for they had brought a bottle up with them: the closest thing to manual labor that Bolingbroke’s servants would suffer the master to perform.

“Spoils of political conquest, Roger. We all lust after such spoils, do we not?”

“The profession of politics would be altogether too disagreeable,” Roger allowed, “without compensations above and beyond what is strictly appropriate.”

“Well said.” Bolingbroke was hunched over the eyepiece, twiddling the tube of the telescope this way and that, homing in on a target to the east. Roger phant’sied he might be pointing it at the dome of St. Paul’s, two miles away; but no, his host had trained it downwards, as at some target nearer to hand. By far the biggest and closest structure along that general bearing was Leiceister House, seen from here as a great rambling L-shaped manor. It stood in its own compound, which was nearly as extensive as the green square of Leicester Fields to the south of it.

“Presently night shall fall and Venus shall shine forth-we shall admire her beauty then. But while we await the Goddess of Love, we may content ourselves peering at some of her earthly worshippers.”

“I shouldn’t think you of all people would need a telescope for that,” Roger said, “other than the one God gave you.”

Leicester House presented to the Fields a public facade with a small forecourt below, where callers could dismount from carriages, amp;c. This was all that most people could see of it. Looking down on it from the excellent vantage-point of Bolingbroke’s roof, half a mile away, Roger was reminded that the house had quite a bit of property in back, hemmed in by newer buildings, so that most Londoners had no inkling it was there. Of this, about two-thirds, on the side nearer to Bolingbroke’s, was a formal garden. The rest was an enclosed stable-yard. Separating them was a long thin wing extending from the main house-really little more than a gallery.

“Pity. They are not out this evening,” Bolingbroke remarked.

“Who or what are not out, Henry?”

“The young lovers. A chap, strapping, blond, well-heeled, and a young woman, long chestnut hair, and an uncommonly erect-some would say noble, or royal-bearing. They tryst in yonder garden most every evening.”

“Touching.”

“Tell me, Roger. You, who know so much of these Germans who design to take over our country-have you met Princess Caroline?”

“I have had that honor once, on a visit to Hanover.”

“They say she has the most lovely fall of chestnut hair-is it true?”

“It is a fair description.”

“Ah! There she is now!”

“There who is, my lord?”

“The young lady I spoke of just now.”

“Which young lady, my lord?”

“Come, have a look, and tell me.”

Roger stepped forward with some reluctance.

“Oh, come and look!” Bolingbroke urged him. “It’s harmless. Half the Tories in London have peered through this eyepiece, and seen her.”

“That hardly constitutes a recommendation, but I shall humor you,” Roger said, and bent to the task.

Through the tiny lens of the eyepiece shone a bubble of green light, which swelled in his sight as he moved towards it; then it was his whole world. A moment’s work with the knob brought it to focus.

The gallery dividing the garden (foreground) from the stable-yard (background) was pierced in the center by a high vaulted pass-through: a gate, which was presently open. So Roger’s view to the stable-yard was blocked by the gallery, except for in that one place, where it was possible to peer through the open arch-way and see a narrow swath of yellow gravel in the yard beyond. That was enough to make it obvious that the stables were busy this evening: hooves, booted feet, and carriage wheels were passing back and forth, all foreshortened, by the telescope’s optics, into a flat impression, a living back-drop. Against which a solitary woman was visible, crouching in the center of that arch-way, in a sort of traveling-dress. She was changing out of her shoes, and into a pair of boots. The shoes discarded on the pavement beside her were mere slippers, only fit for wearing indoors. An open portmanteau rested nearby, overflowing with clothes. Suddenly a servant burst into the frame carrying a dress over her arm, and shoved it into the bag, then began hammering the contents down with the heel of her hand.

“I should call it a hasty departure,” Bolingbroke said in his ear. “More Mercury than Venus.”

Roger ignored him and sharpened the focus, trying to get a clear look at the young woman changing into her traveling-boots. She undoubtedly had a long fall of chestnut hair, which swept down over one shoulder and grazed the ground.

No, it was on the ground. In a heap. Roger blinked.

“What did you see!?” his host demanded. “Did you recognize her?”

“Stay, I’m not certain.”

The hair had most definitely fallen to the ground. The woman calmly finished tying her boot-laces and then picked it up. She had light blonde hair, going a bit silvery, all pinned up close to her skull. She held the chestnut wig out at arm’s length and gave it a shake, to make the tresses fall straight. Then she lifted it up and set it back in place atop her blonde head. The servant, who had somehow managed to get the bag closed, came round behind her to tug it into place and secure it with a long hair-pin.

“I’ll be damned,” Roger said. “The hair gives it away. If that young lady isn’t Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, then I am not a Whig.”

“Let me see! What is she doing now?” said Bolingbroke, and so Roger got out of his way. After a moment to adjust the focus and get his bearings, Bolingbroke said, “I can only see her from the back-her beau is nowhere to be seen-she is climbing into a carriage, I do believe.”

“Then I believe it too, my lord.”

IT HAPPENED SOMETIMES in the practice of physics that the student, having wrestled for hours with a recalcitrant equation, would suddenly find a way to wreak some drastic simplification upon it. Of a sudden, two terms, which he had copied out time and again, and which had become as familiar to him as his own signature, would, through some insight, or the providence of some new scrap of information, turn out to be equal to each other, and vanish from the equation altogether, leaving a wholly new mathematical sentence to be pondered. The student’s first reaction was exhiliration: pride at his own cleverness, mingled with a sense that at last he was getting somewhere. But soon sobriety took over, as he pondered the remade equation and became aware that he was really just starting on a new problem. Thus Daniel in the Black Dogg, trying to re-think all. For example: Jack Shaftoe was wearing a sword. When he had been Sean Partry, Daniel had scarce noted this, for many men went armed. But for Jack to be armed, here and now, was no mere affectation. He had set it all up so that he could kill Daniel and Isaac, if it came to that. And the king’s ransom in fine bright candles: from Sean Partry this had been simply bizarre, but from Jack it was a way to get a good look at his interlocutors’ faces whilst keeping his own phizz cloaked in the dazzle. And these were just the simple and superficial matters. Daniel would be puzzling over the deep bits for weeks.