Within the hour they left the Mayfair Arms, bundled up in their cloaks and walking into the bitter cold of the gray and snow-swept day. Julian had discovered that he could wear Pellegar’s breeches and the tricorn adorned with the gaudy feathers, but the jackets were too small and the boots too narrow. The polar bear coat, being an extra-large monstrosity, did fit him and so that was a positive point. Matthew had shrugged into Brux’s sealskin coat and found it tight around the shoulders but it would do as would the second outlandish wig and the purple tricorn. Pairs of calfskin, ostrich and what looked to be crocodile-hide gloves fit both men. Thus the conspirators had their tasks before them and set off first to get Matthew fed and watered, which occurred with a platter of baked chicken, green beans, yams and a mug of hot cider at the tavern a block away where Julian had secured his breakfast.

Though the day was inhospitable and the cold bone-cracking, the citizens of London were taking this in their stride. There was no shortage of people on the sidewalks, and on the streets a parade of wagons, carriages and coaches were carving paths through the snow. Matthew and Julian set off from the tavern in search of a bootmaker and had to visit several before they found ready-mades in their sizes and in the more exotic and expensive leathers suitable for Prussian noblemen.

Then it was off to find a tailor, and in the area around the Mayfair Arms with its coffee shops, theaters and other refinements there were many to choose from. The second shop they entered supplied to Matthew a pair of brown-checked breeches that were the most flamboyant in the establishment, and to Julian a bright yellow jacket that the tailor explained was made for an eccentric nobleman who unfortunately—before claiming the item—died from heart failure after a night carousing with the wenches of Whitechapel, which to Matthew was many worlds away from the strange new land he currently explored. Matthew also purchased a purple cravat that was nearly the same color as Brux’s bruise of a tricorn, and recalling a jacket in the baron’s trunk the color of shiny brown mud with a bright red piping he considered his costume complete.

Upon the hour of seven o’clock in the evening, as the fireplace in the lobby of the Mayfair Arms burned its logs so quietly one might think it had been tamed by the management, and as various guests lounged about in the seating areas and the musical trio tuned their instruments for their nightly presentation, two men who might have hailed from another planet descended the staircase.