Of the feast of S. John at the Latin Gate.

‘I feel it pertinent, dearest friends, to more fully introduce myself and explain why I have decided to accompany all of you. I am—’

‘We already know who you are, sir,’ Master Xerox then said. ‘The Prologue told us you are from Summer’s-Eve in Dorsetshire¹. Assuming that English houses are all the same, I presume your estate contains a fair number of Tudor roses², English lavender, pansies, rue, rosemary, nigellas and hart’s-tongue³, and that fairies dance over mushrooms that spring up on the eves of certain English saints whose names rival the ingenuity with which their Pictish torturers⁴ extracted their tongues or who are otherwise so obscure that their memory is as faint as the very stars of heaven.’

Lord Swiffer’s expression was one of utter shock.

‘I only mean to explain why I, an Englishman of the Reformed way⁵, stand among Catholic brethren, whom I nonetheless love despite our separated state.’

‘Which affords no further distinction either,’ Xerox said. ‘Take a hint from me, milord. My church left through the front door in 1054⁶. Yours went out through the side.’

Lady Ouiser raised her hand.

‘Do not listen to him, milord. I already know why you have come. You were traveling toward Dijon in search of an image of some notoriety in your homeland when we met at Colophon⁷. I presume you wish to tell us how Your Lordship came to grace our assembled company.’

‘Your Ladyship is most kind,’ replied the English lord, and he began his tale:

My mother was Lady Margaret Swiffer, of lauded memory. Her mother was Mary, Duchess of Carvana. The events of which I tell happened in the time of His Majesty King Henry VII⁸. Lady Mary’s husband, my grandfather Eustace of Carfax, was a wise and capable ruler, and when he had united the duchies upon his marriage, decided to make their realm a cofferette of the Muses⁹.

Lord Eustace and Lady Mary were most devout in their fidelity to Holy Mother Church, and wished to inspire devotion to holy images, that the common people might turn their innermost thoughts to holy things. To this end, he invited the nobles of the realm to patronize artisans¹⁰ and musicians for sacred works. Many heeded the call, and came to Carvana to ply their trades to the benefit of Man and God.

There were already a number of artisans in the duchy’s capital—a town with the name Capital—enriching guild-hall, church and chapel withal¹¹. Soon, there were so many new works, it became impossible to distinguish who was to be paid from which account, and thus, Lord Eustace’s treasurer¹², Sir Parsley, conferred with his men to create the Great Chain of State.

This was not a chain one could wear, as if to shew that he was the Duke’s nonsuch minister¹³; nay, friends, this was not even a chain tangible. Rather, it was a series of ledgers¹⁴ disparate and distinct, held among the commonweal of upright men¹⁵. In chapter-house and guildhall¹⁶ was the Chain of State distributèd, that Men might learn the cord of trust be like unto a Gordian Knot¹⁷ of such firmness that no swinging falchion would sever it from th’accordèd ministrations of My Lord the Duke.

To the Chain the artisans pledged their painted likenesses of the Saints and of the Lord, each a paragon of admirability, and each recorded as unlike any other painting in the world. This was the probity of the Chain¹⁸, and my Lord the Duke wagered on it; and to himself and his grand house the flood of wealth was unstoppèd.

‘Why are you talking like that, milord?’ asked Persiflage.

The question caught Lord Swiffer somewhat off guard.

‘Oh. Forgive me, companions. Such manner of speech is effectual in our beloved England. But pray, friends, follow somewhat along with me, for here entereth the figurehead of this my tale.’

Into Carvana’s city Capital there came, amid th’artisans of eye-ascent¹⁹ adjoined thereto, a young man of fair complexion, who by the opprobrious name of Samuel of Bankenfried was called. I am told (and those who tell me warrant it) that he of timber’d Holstein²⁰ came a-stepping, array’d in timely fashions so as to make every gentleman of that place cry “Tilly-fally!”²¹ at his artful form. Yet be it known here, dear friends, that this Samuel was ill-shorn and of tiresome regard. The fairest gentleman of that time would know it, yea; my great-uncle saw him and said this to my Lord the Duke:

‘He hath set up a house, dear brother, in Jewry-Lane²² it is; at all hours the doors thrown open to the gawking, gaping turbid masque of Dame Fortune and her wheel²³. Mark you how th’artisans of a number, fall at his feet and cry “Lord, dispense!” but he carries no coinage with him.’

And this, dear friends, I shall explain.

The Great Chain of State, as tenuous as it was, was of a sort commonly exploitèd by raggèd men. In ancient Commagene²⁴ there grew a man who, in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, thought it meet to create a coin whereof no standard to the like could be assay’d²⁵. This man disappear’d from sight, as Romulus was carried up to Heav’n²⁶ in a whirlwind, as Livy doth relate.

For e’en, friends, as this Great Chain is said to have existed in fair Carvana, where we lay our scene, such Chains of their own accord were counted among the other Kings of Christendom. And in wars and plagues this Chain persisted, when the Mints, as the startled geese that gainsaid the dogs of Juno’s mount²⁷, fled from the publick trust.

‘So are you saying that this Chain of State existed in other ways, milord?’ said Lady Arbonne.

‘Yea, my lady, that is the straight story of it. Actually, there were multiple chains over time, and one could say that these could be arranged into blocks, so that they could be compared to one another. They aren’t necessarily combined into one block, however, but rather multiple blocks existing simultaneously.’

‘…I see,’ Lady Arbonne replied.

‘Proceed, milord,’ said Lady Ouiser.

This Samuel came of high renown. Tyche laid²⁸ the silver tongues of Daphne’s kin²⁹ upon his curly excrement³⁰ and pressed him to my Lord the Duke.

Saith he: ‘My Lord, I come with a proposition that will please Your Grace if ye will hear it. For lo, the artisans and the guilds, in their devotion, have supplicated me to ease their pains, and as the dearth of gold perplexes upright men, I propose and promise ‘pon my faith to rear a house for the Chain of State, that every man put his confidence in me, that I will enrich as Midas did³¹, to touch the things of Heaven and Earth, and, rearing up the mountains of gold, make this kingdom like unto the gilded palaces of Attick verse³². But now, dear friends, I must proceed—’

Abraham of Babka looked very annoyed and made to leave.

Lady Ouiser looked up to him and said:

‘Teacher, where are you going? Lord Swiffer has barely begun to tell his tale.’

‘If I wanted to hear an actor recite I could have simply paid for them to come here. What is this, precisely? I feel like I have to follow along with a thesaurus. Young man, are you even scanning your verse³³ correctly? Iambic pentameter, right?’

‘That is the favored meter which my tongue doth choose.’

Abraham listened closely and counted the syllables on his fingers.

‘…Eight, nine, ten, eleven. Nope. Sonny, I think you’ve yet some time before you come striding out onto the proscenium³⁴.’

‘Pray, dread Hebraic lord, stir not from the stone bench where thou sittest. I suppose I’ve no choice but to proceed in the vernacular³⁵.’

‘Oh no, milord! I rather enjoy hearing English—and from such a handsome mouth, as well,’ Lady Aquafina then said.

Lord Swiffer blushed as Lady Ouiser raised a hand.

‘Madonna Aquafina, he is spoken for³⁶. But perhaps it’s best to let his Lordship inform us of the details.’

‘But in plain English—or at least something passing for it,’ Abraham of Babka said.

Lord Swiffer nodded and resumed his tale.

Samuel of Bankenfried was indeed most brilliant. He had studied with a German mathematician named Gerhard of Leipzig³⁷, whose area of expertise was in the speculative nature of the currency market. I am told, Master Abraham, that the learnèd Jews of Germany have been reticent to share the secrets of the trade.

‘And with good reason,’ Abraham of Babka said. ‘People usually look to us when things get out of hand.’

And it was for this reason, teacher, that Samuel of Bankenfried said that Carvana’s coffers were best kept with him. The ledgers comprising the Great Chain of State must be secure, he said, or else artisans and their patrons could see—and tamper with—the prices on the market. Samuel said he had a way of ensuring it was safer and easier to transact through his money-changing house³⁸ in Capital’s lending-house district. Samuel had already purchased a fine little house and had hung banners out of the windows long before he had ever shown up at the Ducal Palace.

The house was called Inter Duas Platanos on account³⁹ of the fine plane trees flanking the entrance. He lived there in a sumptuous apartment at the back of the house, and had a staff of beautiful serving girls at his beck and call. He called them ‘Samuel’s Sirens⁴⁰’. Most of them didn’t know what to do with such a shabby-looking fellow.

Grandad had put quite a bit of trust into this lending-house. He said, ‘The image business is booming in Carvana. All these artisans are clamoring for commissions for donor portraits⁴¹, and since Carvana is a tax haven, we just can’t satisfy the demand. Perhaps you and your mathematician friends can come up with a solution.’

And this, dear friends, is indeed where my interest arises.

Certificates of authenticity are attached to every work of art in Carvana. They are one-of-a-kind, transferable by Chain of State priority only, and bear a royal seal⁴². The market is brimming with images. The idea is to trade them every so often so that wealthy people don’t get bored of looking at the same pieces of art. And Samuel says to these wealthy patrons, ‘Why don’t you leave your certificates with me at Inter Duas Platanos, go on about your business, and be well with it? And while we’re at it, pay me to keep your certificates, and I’ll sell shares in them for a fraction of each work’s total cost, and try to sell those shares on sooner.’ This happens, and many nobles give both their money and their certificates to Samuel’s little lending house. He takes the paper and, with the help of some very smart monks with very large abaci⁴³, scrambles the numbers on the Chain of State so that no one may know precisely who owns what or how much. And when this works, he goes to My Lord the Duke and says—beg pardon, Master Abraham:

‘My Lord Duke, success crowns our efforts anew! Let us do away with coins in the city hence.’

‘Eleven again, milord,’ Abraham said. ‘You’re on thin ice.’

‘But my Lord Swiffer!’ said Arbonne. ‘How does this all touch you?’

‘An image of Carvana’s patron saint—St John at the Latin Gate⁴⁴. Do you all know the story? Father Bunion perhaps knows.’

Everyone now looked to the old priest.

‘It is an old, old story. The Apostle John was brought to Rome at a very advanced age. The emperor sentenced him to be boiled to death in a vat of boiling oil just outside the Porta Latina, and it is said he emerged from it better than before.’

‘The Ducal Palace is named for this title of the Evangelist, and moreover he was my grandfather’s patron saint, his feast day Grandad’s birthday—May sixth⁴⁵.’

‘He is the patron saint of printers,’ Father Bunion added, as if this meant anything to the company.

The Ducal image was meant to be rare. It was thought better than the common Chain-approved images of monkeys, which in those days were newly brought in from the Indies. People spent fortunes on many of them—the images of the monkeys, I mean, not the monkeys themselves. The artisan who inspired this trend was not very good at drawing them, and consequently they all looked quite bored. Perhaps it was a secret joke of his. Regardless, the Duke eventually obtained his image of St John being lowered into a vat of boiling oil—which in hindsight seems very ironic for what was to happen next.

When Samuel had thoroughly ensconced himself amid the nobles of Carvana, and had rightly convinced the Duke to close the Royal Mint (for, he said, there was no more need for real money), he brought over his intended in a silver carriage from Sachsen⁴⁶. The lady was no noble, but he was so wealthy he’d begun telling people she was related by dint of distant relation to the house of Thurn und Taxis⁴⁷.

The lady’s name, incidentally, was Caroline, Lady Ellison.

She was rather gifted at arithmetic too, and as soon as her trunks arrived, she was moved into a rather spacious series of apartments above the Italian embassy in the Financial District—a pleasing house called the Porta Bancaria⁴⁸. I have a memento book from that time which I am happy to show you all that bears her likeness—Pringles, pass the Liber Simiæ⁴⁹ to Lady Ouiser.

The book was passed in a clockwise fashion to the whole of the company, and when it arrived in the lap of Lady Arbonne, she looked down at the image of Lady Caroline and said to Lord Swiffer:

‘I do not mean to be cruel, but this Lady Caroline does not look like she has a controlling interest in the mails, milord. Furthermore there is something dreadfully off about her appearance.’

‘Your Ladyship is not cruel in saying so. In fact, many Carvanans believed her to be entirely unworthy of the name of that noble family. Yet such was the pride of Samuel, and so thoroughly entrenched was he in manufacturing notoriety, that he would have passed off his own mother as a queen regnant⁵⁰.’

The book then arrived in the lap of Persiflage, who peered at the odd images collected therein with much curiosity.

‘Milord, one feels a sort of trepidation whilst gazing at these images of monkeys in various induments⁵¹. Are you telling us people spent their whole fortunes on these rather rude imitations of Nature?’

‘I do not lie, my Lord, for the images before you are of such a pattern that the gudgeons of Carvana⁵² did sell their land for these, the fruits of ill-nimbl’d hardiment.’

Samuel had the Duke proclaim a Sunday in October as one of liberation from the assayers⁵³. Thence, all mercantile art was to use the Simian Image, printed at Inter Duas Platanos. The images were printed day and night, attached to a figure determined upon the Great Chain of State, compared with other Chains of State, and then traded upon that figure. Within days nobody knew what, if anything, could be bought or sold. The images were so many, and so prone to counterfeiting, the merchants lost all confidence the moment they were slid upon the trading table. And since five hundred of these images were tied to one certificate, it was never clear how much precisely a set of these simian images could buy, let alone if one had a complete set.

Some in our own time have revived this, trading images of animals from the bestiaries of the East⁵⁴ that no sane man has e’er heard of. The mountebanks harrow⁵⁵ the poor merchant as if he were a Dutchman selling Indian tulips—the images are meant for children, and the common rallying cry among these men of thirty and forty years is: ‘One must catch them all!’

And the image of St John that very day was in the Cathedral set, and when the pilgrims came to look upon my Lord the Duke, rather than wonder plainly at the lovely image of the Evangelist aswim in the bath of oil, they instead said:

‘I wonder how much he paid for that!’

And meanwhile, nobody could buy any food.

This troubl’d the Duke, and in he brought his councillors and men of old, and they complain’d much. Famine licked at her chops. There was no more grain at the port, no baker made his bread. And worse, the bankers had no money themselves. Since the simian images were all tied to the certificates, and no man knew the value thereof, there was no way to determine an exchange price for gold.

The foreign merchants would neither buy nor sell nor lend gold, and since the Royal Mint was closed, there was no way to strike new coins in time. The remaining gold was melted down for leaf⁵⁶ to go into the borders of the simian image, or other images. Samuel and Caroline were at the border when the Duke’s men found them, and right away Lady Caroline said, “He has strain’d and forc’d me to assent to this chicanery⁵⁷,” and joined the Duke’s side.

Then came the letters from afar. Samuel was no great mathematician, and he was no great merchant, either. He had similarly constrain’d and forc’d other compatriots with threats as empty as th’ morning air: and when he could not obtain what rash Conviction from his brains inspir’d him to demand, he snatch’d up what he could as a temper-tantrum-throwing child. And he had constrain’d and forc’d Lady Caroline, mocking her unusual face and saying no man would e’er find her comely, save he. He had miners in his old habitation pull up rare minerals to sell ‘gainst the certificates he put upon the Chain of State. It was grueling, awful work and he had not paid these men for’t, either: he lent and sold and spent and borrowed like the counting houses of Venice, with no Pantaloon to thwart him⁵⁸, if it were so. And when he found news distressing to him, he moved his money away from’t. Thus did he shift it out of reach, until his fraud was laid bare to the world’s frank shock.

Yet I will end my tale here. The Duke at once halted trade, and calling upon the Kings of the World⁵⁹, brought to Carvana amity again: the worthless paper was burnt and the gold upon it melted down, the gates of the Mint thrown open to fair Hermes with his caduceal Thrift⁶⁰. Samuel was divorc’d from Lady Caroline, and crude Justice to him was applied. The lady, I am told, was sent away: her brothers and father were of a more influential sort, yet she paid the commonweal for her folly with the pains of a fortune she did not have. Samuel’s house was boarded up, and all the things therein set to a fancy auction; at a pittance it all sold⁶¹. The only image, my dear friends, that retain’d any value was that of St John in the church.

And Samuel himself, like unto St John refreshed in the oil, was plunged in a seething cauldron of the civic hate: his fate was public, and so grave that no man thought to slander my Lord the Duke again.

I, my friends, have spent all my life searching for the image. When Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern of Denmark⁶² persuaded Carvana to be plunder’d, the Church wherein my Lord the Duke’s image was enshrined was sacked and th’ image lost. My mother and father searched for it high and low, all the while hoping its discovery would bring about some small fortune to us.

But late last year, while traveling in France to see the Princess Royal, I happened to find it among some Hieronymites⁶³, who had left Carvana with it after they themselves fled the Danish invasion. I bought it up for 150 florins⁶⁴, and hoped to return. Yet some thief upon St Mamertus’ night⁶⁵ ravish’d it, and when Pringles and I gave pursuit, our carriage lost a wheel⁶⁶. This, friends, is why I am here: the thief is in Lodi, as I have told my Lady Ouiser. We hope, my man Pringles and I, to stop the fiend ere he sells St John⁶⁷ to lesser profiters.

I do this, too, for love: there is a man whose fancy falls upon me, a most enchanting Spanish man who in the King’s Court hath indited to me of love⁶⁸. His name, dear friends, is Señor Clean, a bald-pated magnifico⁶⁹ of song. It is hoped that when I return to England at the end of the year I shall have the image with me. You see, I have promised him my garden in Dorset, and th’ image.

And I am a Lord of England myself: I keep my word.

My garden groweth until then, friends, and Señor Clean, hand to heart, awaits our happy return to Dorset’s shore. Mark, friends, that love and love alone is more valuable than any pattern or image tradeable.

Mark ye also that there is no finer thing in this world than the certificate of trust applied to the heart: therefore, friends, be wary.