Eliza was dressed in a severe black ensemble with a high stiff white collar: a prosperous Dutch farmer's wife to all appearances, except that she spoke no Dutch. During their weeks of almost mortally tedious westing across the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, the Bishopric of Hildesheim, Duchy of Kalenberg, Landgraviate of something-or-other, County of Lippe, County of Ravensburg, Bishopric of Osnabrück, County of Lingen, Bishopric of Münster, and County of Bentheim, she had mostly gone in man's attire, booted, sworded, and spurred. Not that anyone really believed she was a man: she was pretending to be an Italian courtesan on her way to a tryst with a Genoese banker in Amsterdam. This made hardly any sense at all, but, as Jack had learned, border guards mostly just wanted something to relieve the tedium. It was easier to flaunt Eliza than to hide her. Trying to predict when they'd reach the next frontier, and whether the people on the far side of it would be Protestant or Catholic, and how serious about being Prot. or Cath. they'd be, was simply too difficult. Much simpler to be saucily irreligious everywhere and, if people got offended, run away. It worked most places. The locals had other concerns: if half the rumors were true, then King Looie – not satisfied with bombarding Genoa, laying siege to Luxembourg, challenging Pope Innocent XI to a staredown, expelling Jewry from Bordeaux, and massing his armies on the Spanish border – had just announced that he owned northwestern Germany. As they happened to be in northwestern Germany, this made matters tense, yet fluid, in a way that was not entirely bad for them.