In war, it was best to be a chess player, able to fully enjoy the pleasure of the game. Being a chess piece certainly did not feel good, but it was still far better than being the chessboard. Belgium was a place treated as a chessboard. It had been occupied by many countries, and each had left behind some trace.
The lancers in their splendid uniforms did not linger there. After entering Bruges amid the scenery, they settled in a french manor beside Lake of Love. Bruges was called the "Venice of the North" not merely because, like Venice, it was a city of water. Many of its buildings were red, the fashionable color of Renaissance Florence. As an important northern trading city, Bruges also had a branch of the Medici family of Florence.
The French manor had a blue roof and pale yellow walls. In Burg Square in the city center, besides the Basilica of the Holy Blood, there had once been Saint Donatian's Cathedral, built to house Saint Donatian's remains. During the French occupation, it had been razed to the ground, and its building materials used to construct this "palace."
Minne meant love in Dutch, but Swan Lake would actually have been a more fitting name for the lake, because it was filled with swans.
Not far from the lake and manor stood the Beguinage Convent, where the nuns grew many grapes for winemaking. Overall, it was a very tranquil, pastoral place, beautiful as a fairy tale. Yet Georgiana could not calm herself.
Once they had settled in, Bonaparte arrived fifteen minutes later. The others gradually left upon seeing him, while she watched him in silence.
"I went to the Inquisition," he said after a moment. "That place didn't look like one."
"I never said it was a