THE System OF THE WORLD

by Neal Stephenson

  “It is perfect,” White reflected. “Over yonder I have had victory over Newton, and the Whigs; for make no mistake, he will fail the Trial of the Pyx a week hence. Here I shall have victory over you, or else die; either way I could hardly have expected better.”

  “One,” said Dappa, and took a pace away from him-as much to shut the man up as anything else.

  “Very well. One,” said White, and took a pace. Thence they counted, and paced, in unison; and round about the time they reached forty (for they were taking very long paces) they dropped all pretense of dignity and fell to work upon the Haubitzes.

  White was aided, in this, by his second. Dappa wasn’t. Van Hoek stood with his back to the Haubitz, as if he were an early-morning perambulator pausing to take in the view of Tower Hill’s lower reaches and the Pool. When Dappa gave him a dirty look, van Hoek licked his hook and held it up in the air as if to test the wind.

  Dappa cuffed him on the back. “Stop it!”

  “Look at them scurrying around down there,” said van Hoek. “They have no idea what they are doing.”

  “That’s what concerns me.”

  “In Cairo you were much cooler,” van Hoek reminded him, “and it was I who looked on irritably.”

  “In Cairo I had nothing to lose!” Dappa reminded him. He had rolled the powder-keg to a safer distance from the Haubitz, and was prying the bung out with a dagger. “Did White and Woodruff move their keg?”

  “Ah, you see? Now you ask for the knowledge that I have been collecting.”

  “You could have collected it, and done something else useful, at the same time.”

  “Oh, very well,” said van Hoek, and ambled round to the butt of the Haubitz. He sighted down the barrel, then changed focus to the target. “Yes. They moved their keg. But not as far as they ought to’ve.” He picked up a stone and used it as a mallet to whack the quoin under the weapon’s butt, depressing its muzzle slightly. “Do you think we need to allow for the rotation of the Earth?”

  Dappa studiously ignored this baiting. He had filled a long-handled scoop with powder, and now introduced it to the muzzle. The scoop’s diameter was markedly smaller than the weapon’s bore. “This is the part they are likely to get wrong,” Dappa reflected, as he prodded away, trying to get the scoop into a narrower chamber concealed in the butt. “I hope they’ll charge it full bore, and blow themselves up!”

  “That would not be sporting,” van Hoek chided him, and used his hook to scrape away some chymical encrustation surrounding the touch-hole. Because of his disability, he could not very easily pick up a shell, and so this duty fell to Dappa, who stuffed in a ball, then set to beating it down the barrel with a ramrod, while gazing attentively down-hill.

  “This is what you get for your slowness!” he pointed out. For both he and van Hoek had noticed that White, with a grin, was putting fire to the touch-hole of a fully loaded and ready-to-go Haubitz.

  A cloud of flame the size of a parish church appeared between them and their opponents, then winked out and was smoke.

  “And that is what they get for their lubberly haste,” said van Hoek.

  As both van Hoek and Dappa understood, White and Woodruff had over-charged the weapon. The force of the fire had crushed the shell inside the barrel, causing it to vomit forth a cloud of gunpowder, most of which (fortunately for them) had burned in the open air.

  There was nothing to do until the smoke-cloud drifted over them and gave them a clear view of White and Woodruff, who looked woozy and badly sunburned. Then van Hoek put fire to the touch-hole. The Haubitz discharged correctly and, as they were standing nearly behind it, they got to glimpse the shell in flight for a fraction of a second. It spattered against the stone wall of the Bulwark, above and behind and a bit to the left of the opposition, and failed to ignite altogether. Instead it sprayed shell-shards and powder-corns all over White and Woodruff, who scarcely noticed, as they had shaken off their shock and turned their attention back to the Haubitz.

  “Now’s when they’ll blow themselves up,” Dappa offered, thrusting a swab into a bucket.

  “On the contrary, they found the water you so considerately left out for them, and are swabbing out their Haubitz just as you are. But we have the advantage-we got information about how to adjust our aim, and they did not.” Van Hoek belabored the quoin some more, then kicked at one of the gun-carriage’s wheels to adjust its azimuth. Dappa meanwhile re-loaded. After which he was very keen on firing; but van Hoek kept presenting himself at the weapon’s muzzle with sticks, handfuls of dry grass, leaves, and other such debris, which he stuffed in to the bore until it was full, and even over-full; it ended up looking like a bronze vase sporting a dead bouquet. Dappa grew most peevish and took to waving the torch over the touch-hole, and feinting toward it. Van Hoek was oblivious, and did not even turn around when White’s second shot screamed past his shoulder and buried itself in the embankment behind them. But he saw it strike, and pointed it out to Dappa, who spat on his fingers and reached into the cave it had made, then yanked out a fizzing net-work of fuze. He flung it on the ground and cursed. Van Hoek finally left his blocking-position before the Haubitz’s barrel and used his hook to catch the bail of their water-bucket; he went over to the fizzing and writhing fuze, and doused it. While he was thus occupied Dappa put fire to their Haubitz and got off their second shot; it struck the ground just at the base of the embankment behind White and Woodruff, and a couple of yards to the right of them. Instead of burying itself in the earth, this one caromed straight up in the air and disappeared. Several seconds later, having apparently risen to an apogee and begun to drop, it exploded perhaps ten yards above the ground, and not terribly far from White and Woodruff. But they had marked its ascent and descent, with avid finger-pointing, and scampered clear of it and flung themselves to the ground. They were not injured.

  Van Hoek was disgusted. “I’ve a mind to walk down there and put one through White’s skull,” he said.

  “Why? It is my duel, not yours,” said Dappa, busy again.

  Van Hoek began to rake up such sticks and dry grass as had escaped his first sweep. “As your second, it is my job to have a go at your opponent if he tries to run away. White ran away.”

  “It is a gray area,” Dappa averred. “It is expected of a ship-captain in battle that he’ll not flinch when broadsides come at him; on the other hand, if a fizzing shell lands nearby, he is not expected to stand there and watch it burst.”

  “Hmmph,” said van Hoek, repeating his performance of barrel-stuffing; and this time, as if to add emphasis, he ripped off his auburn periwig and jammed it down the throat of the gun to tamp down all of the loose vegetation he’d emptied into it. A shell flew past him. This time, White and Woodruff had used less powder yet, and so it had already caromed once off the ground by the time it reached them. It went by knee-high and executed a loop-the-loop off the hillside, landing directly in front of Dappa: a black, smoking sphere with a burning fuze projecting from one side. It was rolling down-hill, but too slowly for their purposes, and so Dappa bolted toward it and kicked out wildly; missed; drew his leg back, and gave it a hard shove. In almost the same motion he spun round and flung himself full-length on the ground. Van Hoek meanwhile had turned his back on the thing and embraced the powder-keg, spreading out his coat around him to make it a curtain against sparks. The shell rolled and toddled down-hill for one, two, three heartbeats and then blew up.

  It was answered a moment later by a second boom, for it seemed that a spark had flown close enough to their Haubitz to ignite the powder in the touch-hole, and fired the weapon prematurely. Dappa and van Hoek were both several moments getting to their feet, as each had suffered survivable wounds from shell-fragments or pebbles, and both were a bit stunned. They saw their shell explode over the Thames.

  The blast of White’s shell had knocked their Haubitz askew. A trail of smouldering sticks and grass was, however, spread down the hillside like a road of fire, and Woodruff could be seen kicking furiou
sly at something that emitted dense smoke, and kept adhering to his foot in a way that made him very cross: the wig. White meanwhile was making preparations to re-load.

  It was then that they ceased to exist. Dappa’s and van Hoek’s view of the Bulwark was eliminated, replaced by a sphere of flame with ugly dark bits spiraling out of it. Once again they threw themselves to the ground. Burning debris began to shower their position. They jumped up and ran, putting distance between themselves and their stock-piles of explodables. They made rendezvous at the scaffold, which was gaily decorated by the prostrate forms of several Beefeaters who had all sought cover there. About then a ripping BABABA sounded from below as all of White’s shells detonated. This was the signal for Dappa and van Hoek to depart at a sprightly pace for the waterfront. If any of the Yeomen of the Guard lifted his head to watch, he saw them simply disappear into a storm-front of powder-smoke that now obnubilated the lower reaches of the Hill.

  Within that immense pall, however, it was possible to see for short distances. And so Dappa and van Hoek paused, or at least slowed down, as they passed by the erstwhile position of White and Woodruff. They did not see anything identifiable as a body; though Dappa was fairly certain he had tripped over someone’s spine.

  “Here’s a marvel,” van Hoek said reflectively. He was staring at something down on the scorched earth, using his hook in lieu of an index finger to count several small objects, over and over again. “One, two, three, four, five! One, two, three, four, five!”

  “What is it?”

  “There are too many ears!” van Hoek exclaimed.

  Dappa went over and touched heads with him. There were, indeed, five ears: four all together, all wizened, and, off to one side, a fifth, which looked fresh, as it had blood on it.

  “This is explainable, actually,” said Dappa, kicking some dirt over the four dry ones, “but not now. Let’s back to my ship, if you please. The Yeomen, the Watch, the Dragoons: they’ll be all over us!”

  “They’ll all be scared shitless.”

  “The point is granted; but I really am eager to see my ship again.”

  Dappa and van Hoek still could not see far, but they both stumbled down-hill: an infallible trick for locating oceans. “I hope this means you have finally put an end to this writing foolishness. It has grown most tiresome.”

  “I have discharged my cannonball. I shan’t be quick to re-load. As a writer, however, I am ever a devoted slave to the Muse, whose privilege it is to command me…”

  “Then let’s do get to the ship,” said van Hoek, quickening his pace, “and prepare to sail out on to the high seas where the bitch won’t be able to reach you with any such directions.”

  The Press-Yard and Castle, Newgate Prison

  23 OCTOBER 1714

  STRANGE WHAT A DIFFERENCE was made by moving twenty feet. For that was the distance separating Jack’s four-posted feather-bed in the Castle from the middle of the Press-Room, which happened to be situated just on the other side of the apartment’s back wall. A few days earlier, he’d lain naked on a stone floor with a box of weights on his chest; now, clad in a clean linen nightshirt, he reclined on goose-down.

  A month or two ago, Jack could have bought his way into this apartment without difficulty. But since then most of his assets had been spent. And what hadn’t been spent had been seized, or otherwise put out of his reach, by his febrile Persecutor, Sir Isaac Newton.

  There was no fixed rent for the apartments of the Press-Yard and Castle. Rather, the Keeper applied a sliding scale, depending upon the Degree of the personage imprisoned. A Duke-let us say, a rebel Scottish lord-would be expected to pay a premium of five hundred guineas upon admission to the gaol, simply to escape from the Common-Side and Master-Side. Having got over that hurdle he would, each week, then have to pay the gaoler about a mark, or thirteen shillings and change, for the privilege of staying in a room such as this one.

  Now Jack was going to be dead in a week, and so the rent would not add up to much-not even a pound. But the premium was a different matter. A commoner with means, having no other distinctions to his name, would be charged at a much lower rate than a Duke-say twenty pounds. What, then, would be the rate for a Jack Shaftoe? Some would say he was less than a commoner, and ought to pay fewer than twenty pounds sterling. But others-probably to include the Gaoler of Newgate-would insist he was greater, in his way, than a Duke, and ought to pay a king’s ransom.

  In sum, he could not possibly have been sprung from the Condemned Hold for less than several hundred pounds. He did not have such money, not any more. Neither did any of his surviving friends. Where had it come from?

  This was not part of the deal he’d struck the other night with Sir Ike in the Condemned Hold. Newton had asked for Jack to dictate an affidavit, stating that evidence of a Whig coining-ring was to be found in a subterranean vault in one of the late Roger Comstock’s real estate developments in Clerkenwell. Newton had tediously rehearsed the statement with him all night long, it seemed, and Jack had prattled it back to a Stenographer and a line-up of dumbfounded worthies the next morning. But Newton had not offered to put Jack back into his Castle apartment, and Jack hadn’t asked, because he sensed that Newton was running low on money. The quid pro quo, rather, was that Jack’s punishment might be reduced: at the very least, to a conventional (and speedy) hanging, perhaps even to a fine he’d never be able to pay, so that he’d spend the rest of his life on the Master Debtor’s side of Newgate.

  No, someone else-someone with lots of money-had caused Jack to be moved here. It was a further step on the road to Faith that de Gex had prated about: Jack had nothing, but he was somehow being cared for and looked after. It hurt his pride, yes, but not as much as some things he could mention.

  It seemed unlikely that his benefactress (for Jack liked to indulge himself in the phant’sy that it was a female) had done so only to make Jack more comfortable during this, his final week on Earth. Jack preferred to suppose that this had been meant as some way of sending him a message. To decypher that message was now the only thought in his mind; but he soon stopped making any progress on the riddle, and postponed further work on it, pending arrival of fresh clews.

  Instead he divided his time between thinking about Eliza and cursing himself for being so fatuous as to think of her. On the other hand, he had to admit, there was no great harm in it. It could no longer lead him astray, as it had done in years past. He was now as astray as it was possible for anyone to be in this world. He was at a pole. Van Hoek had explained to him once that if you went to the South Pole, then east and west and south would cease to exist, and any direction you went would be north. Thus Jack’s current status in the world.

  Clerkenwell Court

  MORNING OF 23 OCTOBER 1714

  ROGER WOULD SOMEHOW HAVE got advance intelligence of this raid. Roger would have confronted them-no, strike that, he would have had coffee and hot cross buns waiting, and he would have served them up to Isaac Newton, the Earl of Lostwithiel, and the King’s Messengers, so that by the time they invaded the Court, the whole affair would have been re-conjured into a guided tour, invitation-only.

  But Daniel was not Roger, and so, by the time he arrived, the raid had already been in progress for two hours. It would have been over and done with, had it been better managed. But more than one apparatus of His Majesty’s Government had become interested, and so it had waxed cumbersome, and been both over- and under-planned. There had been meetings; that much was obvious. Bright young things had attended them, shaped the agendas, had their say, been noted down in the minutes. Someone had anticipated a need to remove the doors of the Vault by main force. Petards, winches, ox-teams had been concatenated to the Bill of Necessaries. Delays and misunderstandings had propagated. No one had showed up at exactly the right time. Important men had missed opportunities to see the humorous side. Obstinacy and indignation were the order of the day. The foot-soldiers cooled their heels, awaiting orders, and shook their heads incredulously.

&nbs
p; This, in sum, was what Daniel walked in to at about nine of the clock. Walked because the raid and its unintended consequences had blocked traffic on Coppice Row and forced him to abandon his sedan chair a quarter of a mile short of the destination. This was for the better. The sedan chair would have dumped him into the midst of the broil; he’d have been noticed, and men who’d been to those meetings would have been keen to exchange words with him. As it was, he approached the thing gradually and quietly.

  With one exception: halfway there, he passed the carriage of the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm, stuck in traffic.

  “Coming to look in on your investment, my lady?” he inquired, as if talking to himself, as he walked past the helpless vehicle.

  There was a rustle within; he guessed she was at her correspondence.

  “Good morning, Dr. Waterhouse. May I call on you there, in a few minutes’ time?”

  “I invite you to let yourself in to the vacant apartment on the first floor, above the clock-shop,” Daniel called back over his shoulder. “Think of it as a private box from which you may view the Comedy of Errors.”

  A minute later, he was there. He went in through a side-wicket and got in to the middle of the thing before anyone had recognized him; then they all wanted to know how long he’d been there. “Dr. Waterhouse!” exclaimed the Earl of Lostwithiel, “how long have you been here?”

  “Long enough,” said Daniel, trying to be oracular.

  “It’s a bit of a shame,” said the Earl. Which Daniel found most irritating, until he recollected that the Earl was a man of breeding, and tended to understate things to the point where they were nearly subliminal. He was trying to let Daniel know that he was very sorry. Daniel tried to respond in kind. “It must have been awkward for you.”