“Why don’t I turn one of the new fellows working on the scepter?” Mole suggested.

“Impossible,” Foucault replied. The odor in Mole’s little house was truly distasteful. Foucault decided to breathe through his mouth, which gave his voice a curiously breathy tone. “The original jewelers have been dismissed, to the man, and I am quite certain that the new employees will be less amiable than our dear Clemper.”

“Well, you may be right,” Mole allowed. “So what do we say to Foakes when he returns?”

“I believe that we shall approach the gentleman as ambassadors from Selim’s court,” Foucault replied.

“Oh.” There was a moment of silence.

“You do speak Turkish … I distinctly recollect that being a condition of my employment,” Monsieur Foucault said gently, taking a lace handkerchief from his pocket and waving it before him. He did not look at Mole.

“I speak some,” Mole said, just a trifle dubiously. “Learned it at my mother’s knee, I did.”

Monsieur Foucault did not express his belief that Mole’s mother was an unlikely teacher. “Bu masa mi? Translate that, if you please, my dear Mole.” Behind his dreamy tone was more than a hint of steel.

But Mole was up to the challenge. “ ‘Yes, this is a table,’ “ he ventured, rapping the sturdy wood before him.

Foucault smiled, and Mole relaxed. “You needn’t say much,” Foucault observed. “I shall present myself as a envoy from Selim’s court. And my Turkish is excellent.”

Mole nodded. He plucked at his worsted trousers.

“I shall send my tailor to you,” Monsieur Foucault said, a glint of amusement in his eye. It suited his sense of humor to command the delicate François, his genius of a tailor, to enter the perilous darkness of the Whitefriars alleyways.

Mole nodded again.

“You, my dear Mole, might keep an eye on Patrick Foakes’s town house in the next few days. I should like to approach him just as soon as he returns. And while you are there … perhaps you would be kind enough to enquire about his household, in the remote, remote possibility that our gentle approach does not prosper.”

Mole’s eyes brightened. This he could understand. “Right you are,” he said cheerily.

Monsieur Foucault strolled back out to his waiting carriage, a smile hovering on his thin lips.

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

The Lark docked late on a Tuesday evening in March, having been gone some six weeks. The Honorable Patrick Foakes and his party had to wait a good half-hour to disembark, to the delight of four stevedores lounging on the dock. They didn’t notice the presence of a rapscallion French lad, but they certainly did notice Sophie, whose petite form and fair curls were the very emblem of a lovely Englishwoman. A demure, proper English lady.

Which she wasn’t.