Meanwhile Johann and Caroline had set out in the opposite direction, planning a ride of three miles or so straight through the heart of London to Billingsgate Stairs, immediately downstream of the Bridge, where a longboat would take them out to a Hanoverian sloop. A few days later they would be at Antwerp, and a few days after that, back at Hanover. So much for the plan; but Caroline had not considered until now that if the disguise worked, and caused their enemies to believe that she was not Caroline the princess, but Charles the nobody-why, what would it matter if such a nobody were found in Fleet Ditch with his throat cut and his purse missing?

An open space had appeared next to Johann, on his left side. She dug her heels into the horse’s sides twice and goaded it until it was alongside him. “What lies over that way?” she asked, and gestured in the same direction (left, or north across Broad St. Giles’s) that the man on the roof of the alms-house was looking.

Johann considered it. Several street-ends were visible on that side. From one of them a bobbling stream of manes, periwigs, and horse-tails issued: four, maybe as many as half a dozen riders. Their faces were indistinct at this range-but they caught the light of the bonfire clearly, as all of them were gazing up and across toward the alms-house. Caroline looked back that way; her view of the spy on the roof was now mostly blocked by the chimney, but she could see an arm gesticulating, waving the riders on a course to close with Johann and Caroline.

“The one where the riders are coming out is Dyot Street-it leads up to Great Russell, and-”

“Ravenscar’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think we have confused our enemies, in a way that could be dangerous to us,” Caroline said. “I think they believe that we are messengers, sent out from Eliza with an important note for the Marquis of Ravenscar, or whatever Whig commanders may be gathered at his house-those riders, I fear-”

“Were posted along Dyot to intercept any such communications,” said Johann, “and now they are after us. Let us ride a little faster-but not gallop, we must not show fear-and turn to the right, on Drury Lane. That will lead us away from Ravenscar’s and throw doubt on this idea that we are messengers.”

“I have heard things about this Drury Lane-”

“We shall look like a pair of young gentlemen out questing for whores,” Johann agreed. “Do not be concerned. Drury Lane is the frontier of a chancy district. Many of those who live there have strayed up to Broad St. Giles’s this evening. Riding the border is not so terribly dangerous. Going through it would be a bad idea-but we shan’t do that. Straight down Drury it is, all the way to the Strand.” And with that Johann guided his mount round a right turn onto Drury Lane. Caroline’s horse lurched forward in an effort to keep pace, and she almost lost her wig again. From here Drury Lane looked infinitely long, and hellishly disordered even by the standards of London: it narrowed and widened, narrowed and widened as if no surveyor had ever stretched out a line here, and buildings leaned away from it, or slumped over it, like a bench of drunks in a gin-house. She did not see any bonfires, which she counted as a sort of good news; perhaps Drury Lane would be left to the whores, procurers, and pickpockets tonight, even as other streets and intersections were employed as squares on the Whig/Tory chessboard.

“I saw something,” she said, “a gesture. I fear that violence is going to be used against us.” She could not help glancing at Johann’s Italian rapier, wagging from his left flank.

Johann tried to deflect this with humor. “Then it is good that my right arm is free,” he said, waving it in the air, “and on our vulnerable flank,” indicating the benighted neighborhood on their right. “And good as well that you have a sword.”

“A small one.”

“Indeed, that is what they call it: a small-sword. No one carries the rapier and dagger any more. I am kitted out like an old man.”

“I am glad of it,” said Caroline, for Johann’s weapon looked a fell relic of bygone times, much more formidable than the jeweled toothpick on her hip.

She could not help, now, turning round once more to look back. Drury Lane sported very few men on horseback at this hour and so it took but a moment to see two riders who had just entered from Broad St. Giles’s. They let their mounts dawdle for a moment, as they took in the sordid prospect, and got their bearings; then, catching sight of Johann and Caroline, they spurred them forward at a trot.

Caroline did not care to argue the matter with Johann and so she kicked her mount up to a trot, which obliged him to do the same.

“As you can see the right side of the Lane is perforated by countless alleys,” Johann said, loudly, in the manner of a jaded man about town explaining the lay of the land to his country cousin, “but there is a very broad street a short distance ahead that leads direct to Covent Garden Market, where are many wenches we euphemistically call flower-sellers and orange-girls. From there, several broad avenues lead to the Strand.”

Caroline wanted to ask Why are you telling me this but she dared not speak aloud, for she sensed a pedestrian close by on her left hand. Then she was distracted by some commotion off to the right, not in Drury Lane but back in what she assumed to be a maze of alleys behind. Shod hooves were sparking on pavement back there, and a voice commanding, “Make way, damn you!” She knew enough English by now to know that this was the voice of someone well-bred, someone with the right to bear arms. She looked behind again to see that the two men following had made up half the distance separating them; then, turning back to give this news to Johann, she observed that he was gone, with no good-bye other than a tattoo of hoofbeats down an alley, and murmur of prostitutes in his wake.

What had he told her? Do not ride into the alleys; look for a broad avenue on the right. She did so, and almost did not see it, for it was much closer than she had supposed. A rider was just emerging from it, on a bothered and winded horse that he was forcing to walk. She hoped it might be Johann, but the horse was the wrong color (chestnut) and the rider was the wrong chap altogether. He was staring her in the face, and could easily have made her out to be a woman in disguise had the sun been shining.

This man, she reckoned, must have split off from the squadron that had ridden out of Dyot a minute ago, and galloped round through the alleys behind Drury Lane to cut them off here. But Johann, hearing the commotion that this fellow had made, had surmised what was going on, and had broken away to outflank the flanker.

The man on the chestnut horse showed the palm of his hand to the two riders who were trotting along after Caroline, seeming to ward them off. She could hear their mounts drop to a walk, then stop altogether. With his other hand he reached up to tip his hat to Caroline as she approached. Lacking a hat, she returned the greeting with a swirl of the hand and a nod. Whether she did it convincingly or not, she’d never know, for he did not bother to watch; he had already turned his gaze elsewhere, wondering what had become of Caroline’s companion.

He was attending to his two friends behind Caroline. She looked back. They were pointing into the alley Johann had ridden into, and shouting. Caroline was forgotten; she was free to go; Johann’s gambit was working.

Or did work, anyway, until someone stole her sword.

She felt a sharp tug and heard a hissing sound as the small-sword was plucked from its scabbard. This sound quite naturally got the attention of the man on the chestnut stallion; gentlemen who ignored the sound of a sword being drawn were not likely to live through their twenties. Caroline looked down belatedly, to see a boy of perhaps sixteen, missing his two front teeth, leering back at her with a fanged smile. He had brought the small-sword around so that it pointed at her. This was plainly a threat, but Caroline did not know what to make of it until the partner of the tail-drawer (as sword-thieves were known) came after the even more valuable scabbard. This hung at her hip from a rig called a baldric, which was just a broad leather strap that ran diagonally across her body and over her right shoulder. The second thief was smaller and nimbler-perhaps a younger brother-and his method of stealing it was straightforward: he grabbed it with both hands and yanked on it so hard that he lifted himself clean off the ground, while giving Caroline the following choice: fall sideways off the horse, or be decapitated by the strap. Long years of tedious riding-lessons had trained her to stay on the horse no matter what; she squeezed it hard between her legs, caught the saddle’s rim with her right hand, and held on for dear life even while listing drastically to the left. The thief had planted a foot on the horse’s flank and was leaning back almost horizontally, supporting his weight solely by the baldric. Caroline had no choice but to lean toward him even farther and cock her head over so that the baldric was stripped off over her head. It nearly sheared off her right ear as it went. She reached up to check if the ear was still attached to her head. It was; but the hair around it was her own. Not a wig. The wig was lying like a dead animal in the middle of Drury Lane. Or was, anyway, until a wig-thief darted in and snatched it. The tail-drawer let out a curse and lit out in pursuit of the wig-snatcher, menacing him with the weapon; the scabbard-stealer, who’d fallen hard on his arse, staggered to his feet and hobbled along behind.