inch from here on. And dress warmly, mouse.
Yr servant and friend,
S. Drake
P.S. Destroy this letter instantly.
To His Serene Highness the Prince Claude Nicolas of Oriens
Sir,
Being, as I am convinced, most solicitous of the welfare of your family, and holding in particular affection Her Highness the Princess Olympia, you will, I humbly beg, excuse my impertinence in addressing you. I write in strictest confidence on a matter of utmost urgency.
Enclosed you will find a letter from the princess's hand, fortunately intercepted before it could reach its destination. As you will see, she is quite untutored in matters of policy and displays a regrettable impulsiveness, which she will undoubtedly curb as she matures. Until that time, it is clearly in the interest of all concerned to keep her under close supervision and delay her assumption of the throne.
As a sincere friend of your country, I have taken it upon myself to remove Her Highness to a safe location during this period of instability in the political situation. Be assured that I will impress upon her the strict necessity of inaction. In spite of her youthful impetuosity, she is a very good girl, and I am sure she can be convinced to listen to the wise counsel of her uncle in the future.
I am sure you will wish your niece to live in comfort appropriate to her station. A general letter of credit would be sufficient for this purpose, made out in the name of Mustafa Effendi Murad and conveyed to Belgrade to be deposited in the care of the Turkish garrison.
You must not allow the location to cause you any undue concern that the princess herself will be allowed to cross the frontier to Belgrade and enter Plague territory; most assuredly neither of us will come near the city at all.
A Supporter
Olympia left the fens at first light, along with the wheeling curtains of water birds that rose from the shining water around. As the punt moved in silence beneath those great, reverberating masses of sound and life, the moving flocks were silhouetted against a brilliant dawn, almost blocking out the sun itself as they spiraled and spread and intertwined, heading toward the open sea.
Her breath sparkled in the morning transparency of a hard frost. She huddled in the boat, dressed in a set of heavy trousers and a thick blue jersey that Fish had given her years before. With wool wrappings around her palms for warmth, the trousers stuffed into a pair of thigh boots and an oversized sou'wester whose brim flopped down over her shoulders to hide her hair, Fish pronounced her "a proper fen tiger, then."
At that moment, she would have been happy to be a wildfowler, in fact, and spend the rest of her life in the immense bleak beauty of the washes rather than leave the only place she'd ever known for a notorious and uncertain future. She loved the fens. Fish had taught her that, schooled her to watch the birds and know their flight patterns. She could clean the punt gun and load it, and knew how to lie flat on her stomach in the bottom of the punt and move it along with the stalking sticks until the ducks were within range of the gun. She knew how to set a trap for eels and net plovers, wading far out in the flooded washes to retrieve the birds and slogging back again.
Julia was beautiful and sophisticated and charming. She was well read and well traveled; she'd seen London and Paris and Rome. Fish Stovall could not read or write, and he'd never been beyond the edge of the fens at Lynn. He lived alone in the middle of a wash, in a house that flooded every third winter.
Julia was Olympia's governess, but Fish was her family.
He said nothing beyond necessary instructions about the punt and the sluices for all the long trip down the canals to Lynn. The canal gave way to the straight, wide channel of the River Ouse, and Fish had to row as the water deepened. The punt glided past gangs of flat-bottomed coal lighters towed by patient horses on the bank. When Olympia saw the steeples and
Yr servant and friend,
S. Drake
P.S. Destroy this letter instantly.
To His Serene Highness the Prince Claude Nicolas of Oriens
Sir,
Being, as I am convinced, most solicitous of the welfare of your family, and holding in particular affection Her Highness the Princess Olympia, you will, I humbly beg, excuse my impertinence in addressing you. I write in strictest confidence on a matter of utmost urgency.
Enclosed you will find a letter from the princess's hand, fortunately intercepted before it could reach its destination. As you will see, she is quite untutored in matters of policy and displays a regrettable impulsiveness, which she will undoubtedly curb as she matures. Until that time, it is clearly in the interest of all concerned to keep her under close supervision and delay her assumption of the throne.
As a sincere friend of your country, I have taken it upon myself to remove Her Highness to a safe location during this period of instability in the political situation. Be assured that I will impress upon her the strict necessity of inaction. In spite of her youthful impetuosity, she is a very good girl, and I am sure she can be convinced to listen to the wise counsel of her uncle in the future.
I am sure you will wish your niece to live in comfort appropriate to her station. A general letter of credit would be sufficient for this purpose, made out in the name of Mustafa Effendi Murad and conveyed to Belgrade to be deposited in the care of the Turkish garrison.
You must not allow the location to cause you any undue concern that the princess herself will be allowed to cross the frontier to Belgrade and enter Plague territory; most assuredly neither of us will come near the city at all.
A Supporter
Olympia left the fens at first light, along with the wheeling curtains of water birds that rose from the shining water around. As the punt moved in silence beneath those great, reverberating masses of sound and life, the moving flocks were silhouetted against a brilliant dawn, almost blocking out the sun itself as they spiraled and spread and intertwined, heading toward the open sea.
Her breath sparkled in the morning transparency of a hard frost. She huddled in the boat, dressed in a set of heavy trousers and a thick blue jersey that Fish had given her years before. With wool wrappings around her palms for warmth, the trousers stuffed into a pair of thigh boots and an oversized sou'wester whose brim flopped down over her shoulders to hide her hair, Fish pronounced her "a proper fen tiger, then."
At that moment, she would have been happy to be a wildfowler, in fact, and spend the rest of her life in the immense bleak beauty of the washes rather than leave the only place she'd ever known for a notorious and uncertain future. She loved the fens. Fish had taught her that, schooled her to watch the birds and know their flight patterns. She could clean the punt gun and load it, and knew how to lie flat on her stomach in the bottom of the punt and move it along with the stalking sticks until the ducks were within range of the gun. She knew how to set a trap for eels and net plovers, wading far out in the flooded washes to retrieve the birds and slogging back again.
Julia was beautiful and sophisticated and charming. She was well read and well traveled; she'd seen London and Paris and Rome. Fish Stovall could not read or write, and he'd never been beyond the edge of the fens at Lynn. He lived alone in the middle of a wash, in a house that flooded every third winter.
Julia was Olympia's governess, but Fish was her family.
He said nothing beyond necessary instructions about the punt and the sluices for all the long trip down the canals to Lynn. The canal gave way to the straight, wide channel of the River Ouse, and Fish had to row as the water deepened. The punt glided past gangs of flat-bottomed coal lighters towed by patient horses on the bank. When Olympia saw the steeples and
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