Ten heartbeats later they were out on the Spij. Eliza let go Monmouth's hand and spun round backwards to see the water-gate being closed behind them, and, through the bars, Mary of Orange, looking as if she'd been punched in the stomach, and Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d'Avaux, looking as if he did this kind of thing several times a day. Once, in Constantinople, Eliza had helped hold one of the other slave-girls down while an Arab surgeon took out her appendix. It had taken all of two minutes. She'd been astonished that a man with a sharp knife and no hesitation about using it could effect such changes so rapidly. Thus d'Avaux and Mary's heart.