Free The Confusion by Neal Stephenson Page A

desultory, and intends to tarry here in Dundalk for the entire winter.
    So here is where I may be reached, if I am not killed by pestilence, starvation, or boredom.
    Your humble and obedient servant,
    Bob Shaftoe

The Dunkerque Residence of
the Marquis and the Marquise d’Ozoir
    21 OCTOBER 1689
    B ONAVENTURE R OSSIGNOL HAD MANY eccentric traits, even by the standards of cryptologists; but none more striking than his tendency to gallop into town alone when most needed and least looked-for. He had done it thirteen months ago, knowing (for he knew everything) that Eliza was in peril on the banks of the Meuse. The four-month-old infant she now carried was evidence of how it had wrought on her passions. Now, here he was again, wind-blown, mud-spattered, and horse-scented to a degree that was incorrect and absurd for a gentleman of the King’s court; yet suddenly Eliza felt as if she had just sat down in a puddle of warm honey. She closed her eyes, drew a breath, let it out slowly, and dumped her burden into his arms.
    “Mademoiselle, I had held, until this moment, that your recent letter to me was the most exquisite flirtation that could be devised by the human mind,” said Rossignol, “but I perceive now that it was merely a prelude to the delicious torment of the Three Bundles.”
    This snapped her head around—as he’d known it would—because it was a sort of riddle.
    Rossignol had coal-black eyes. He was gaunt, and held to be unattractive by most of the ladies at Court. He was as lean as a riding-crop, which made him look awkward in court-dress; but bulked up in a cassock and flushed from the breeze off the sea, he looked well enough to Eliza. Those black eyes glanced briefly at the blanket-wrapped object she had dropped into his arms, then flicked up to a side-table where rested a packet of moldy tent-cloth, tied up in twine. Two tight little bundles. Then, finally, his eyes locked on Eliza’s for a moment—she was looking back over her shoulder at him—and traveled slowly down her back until they came to rest on her arse.
    “The last time you galloped to my rescue thus,” she said, “there was only one bundle to contend with; a simple matter, therefore,which you were man enough to handle.” Her eyes now jumped down to the bundle in Rossignol’s arms, which urped up some curdled milk onto his sleeve, coughed, and began to cry. “As we grow older the number of bundles waxes,” she added, “and we must all become jugglers.”
    Rossignol stared, with a kind of Natural-Philosophick detachment, at the viscous streak of baby-vomit probing a fold of his sleeve. His son let out a howl; the father winced and turned his head away. A door at the other end of the room was ripped open, and a woman pounded in, already cooing for the baby; then, seeing a strange man, she drew herself up and looked to Eliza. “Please, mademoiselle, be my guest,” said Rossignol, and extended his arms. He had never seen the woman before, and had no idea who she was, but it did not require a Royal cryptanalyst to read the situation: Eliza, despite being trapped and detained in Dunkerque with no money, had not only figured out a way to move into this vacant château, but had also managed to retain at least one competent, loyal, and trusted servant.
    Nicole—for that was this woman’s name—did not move until she had seen Eliza nod. Then she stepped forward and snatched the infant away, glaring at Rossignol—who responded with a grave bow. By the time she had reached the room’s exit, the baby had stopped crying, and as she hustled him off down the corridor he began to make a contented “aaah.”
    Rossignol had forgotten the baby already. The bundle count was down to two. But he had the good manners not to pay undue attention to the packet on the side-table, even though he knew it to be filled with stolen diplomatic correspondence. All his attention, for now, was fixed on Eliza.
    Eliza was accustomed to being looked at, and did not mind