'Don't come out and say you want to buy lead – tell him only that you want to lighten his burdens – better yet, that you wish to transfer them, forcefully, onto the shoulders of the Turks. Or something along those lines,' she said, distractedly, into Monmouth's ear as the first galliard was drawing to a close. He stalked away in a bit of a huff – but he was moving towards Sluys, anyway. Eliza regretted – briefly – that she'd insulted his intelligence, or at least his breeding. But she was too beset by sudden worries to consider his feelings. The house, for all its plaster and candles, reminded her of nothing so much as the Doctor's mine, deep beneath the Harz: a hole in the earth, full of metal, prevented from collapsing in on itself solely by cleverness and continual shoring-up.