“Are we back to talking of that, my lady?”

“We are.”

“I’d hoped I could ask you about those Hanoverian Countesses who seem to’ve joined your household in Antwerp.”

“What makes you think they are only Countesses?”

Dappa gave her a sharp look, but she had a glimmer in her eye to suggest that she was only baiting him. “ ’Twas only a guess,” he said.

“Then go on guessing, for I’ll tell you no more than you’ve already discerned.”

“Why Antwerp? Meeting with the Duke of Marlborough?”

“The less I tell you, the less likely you are to be interrogated by the sort of men who loiter in my front lawn with spyglasses.”

“Very well…if you put it that way…perhaps we should speak of my book!” Dappa said nervously.

She got a contented look, as if to say that this was a much more satisfactory topic of conversation, and settled herself for a moment-which gave Dappa a warning that she was about to unburden herself of a little address she’d composed ahead of time. “What you must never forget, Dappa, is that I myself might not be opposed to Slavery, had I not myself been a slave in Barbary! To most English people, it seems perfectly reasonable. The slavers put out the story that it is not so very cruel, and that the slaves are happy. Most in Christendom are willing to believe these lies, absurd as they are to you and me. People believe Slavery is not so bad, because they have no personal experience of it-it takes place in Africa and America, out of sight and out of mind to the English, who love sugar in their tea and care not how ’twas made.”

“I notice you do not sweeten yours,” Dappa mentioned, raising his cup.

“And from the fact that I still have teeth attached to my excellent bone structure, you may infer that I have never used sugar,” she returned. “Our only weapon against this willful ignorance is stories. The stories that you alone are writing down. I have in one of my boxes down stairs a little packet of letters from English men and women that all go something like this: ‘I have never had the least objection to Slavery, however your book recently fell under my eye, and, though most of the slave-narratives contained in it were mawkish and dull, one in particular struck a chord in my heart, and I have since read it over and over, and come to understand the despicable, nay execrable crime that Slavery is…’ ”

“Which one? Which of the stories do these letters refer to?” Dappa asked, fascinated.

“That is the problem, Dappa: each of them refers to a different one. It seems that if you put enough stories out before the public, many a reader will find one that speaks to him. But there is no telling which.”

“What we’ve been doing, then, is a bit like firing grapeshot,” Dappa mused. “Chances are that a ball will strike home-but there’s no telling which-so, best fire a lot of ’em.”

“And grapeshot is a useful tactic sometimes,” Eliza said, “but it never sank a ship, did it?”

“No, my lady, grapeshot can never do that.”

“I say we have now fired enough grapeshot. It has had all the effect it is ever going to have. What we need now, Dappa, is a cannonball.”

“One slave-tale, that everyone will take note of?”

“Just so. And that is why it does not trouble me that you failed to sweep up any more grapeshot in Boston. Oh, write down what you have. Send it to me. I’ll publish it. But after that, no more scatter-shot tactics. You must begin to use your critical faculties, Dappa, and look for the slave-story that has something to it beyond the bathos that they all have in common. Look for the one that will be our cannonball. It is time for us to sink some slave-ships.”

“I AM QUITE CERTAIN THAT we are being watched,” Daniel said.

Dappa laughed. “Is that why you were at such pains to sit facing the window? I venture that no one in the history of this Clubb has ever desired a view of yonder alley.”

“You might do well to come round the table, and sit beside me.”

“I know what I’d see: a lot of Whigs gaping at the tame Neeger. Why don’t you come and sit beside me, so that we may enjoy a view of that naked lady reclining in that strangely long and narrow painting above your head?”

“She’s not naked,” Daniel retorted crossly.

“On the contrary, Dr. Waterhouse, I see incontrovertible signs of nakedness in her.”

“But to call her naked sounds prurient,” Daniel objected. “She is professionally attired, for an odalisque.”

“Perhaps all the eyeballs you phant’sy are watching us, are, truth be told, fixed on her. She is a new painting, I can still smell the varnish. Perhaps we should instead go sit ’neath yonder dusty sea-scape,” Dappa suggested, waving in the direction of another long narrow canvas that was crowded with stooped and shivering Dutch clam-diggers.

“I happened to see you greeting the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm earlier,” Daniel confessed.

“She goes by de la Zeur-’tis less formal that way,” Dappa broke in.

Daniel was brought up short for a moment, then finally got a wry look on his face, and shook his head. “You are strangely giddy. I should never have ordered you usquebaugh.”

“Too long on land.”

“When do you sail for Boston?”

“Ah, to business! We’d hoped to depart in the second half of April. Now, we think early May. What do you wish us to fetch from there?”

“Twenty years’ work. I do hope you shall have a care with it.”

“In what form is the work? Manuscripts?”

“Yes, and machinery.”

“That is an odd word. What does it mean?”

“I beg your pardon. It is theatre-jargon. When an angel descends, or a soul lights up to heaven, or a volcano erupts, or any other impossible thing seems to happen on the stage, the people behind the scenes, who’ve made it happen, give the name machinery to the diverse springs, levers, rigging, et cetera used to create the illusion.”

“I did not know you ran a theatre in Boston.”

“You jest, sir, the Bostonians would never have allowed it-they’d have sent me packing to Providence.”

“Then how comes it you have machinery in Boston?”

“I used the term ironically. I built a machine there-across the river actually, in a shack about halfway ’tween Charlestown and Harvard-a machine that has nothing to do with theatrical illusions. I need you to bring it to me.”

“Then I must know, in order: Is it dangerous? Is it bulky? Is it delicate?”

“In order: yes, no, yes.”

“In what wise is it dangerous?”

“I’ve no idea. But I’ll tell you this, ’tis only dangerous if you turn the crank, and give it something to think on.”

“Then I’ll take the crank off and keep it in my cabin, and use it only to bash pirates on the head,” announced Dappa. “And I shall forbid the crew to hold conversations with your machinery, unless they are devoid of intellectual stimulation: nothing beyond a polite ‘Good day, machinery, how goes it with thee, does the stump of thy crank ache of a damp morning?’ ”

“I suggest you pack the parts in barrels, stuffed with straw. You shall also find many thousands of small rectangular cards with words and numbers printed on them. These are likewise to be sealed in watertight casks. Enoch Root may already have seen to it by the time you reach Charlestown.”

At the mention of Enoch’s name, Dappa glanced away from Daniel’s face, as if the older man had committed an indiscretion, and picked up his dram to take a sip. And that was all the opening needed for the Marquis of Ravenscar to irrupt upon their conversation. He appeared so suddenly, so adroitly, it was as if some machinery had injected him into the Kit-Cat Clubb through a trap-door.

“From one odalisque to another, Mr. Dappa! Haw! Is it not so! For I take it that you are the writer.”

“I am a writer, my lord,” Dappa answered politely.