This Marlborough enunciates very clearly, for the benefit of the Hanoverians, and he waits for Johann von Hacklheber to effect a translation before he goes on: “I refer, of course, to your duty of prosecuting those who make bad coins.”
“That, too, is the charge of the Master of the Mint,” Isaac admits.
Barnes has gone back into frantic pantomiming, but he can’t seem to get the eye of Marlborough, who is rapt on the Germans. Marlborough goes on, “Sir Isaac’s triumph here, in the Trial of the Pyx, has, as I understand it, been matched-some would even say, surpassed-by a simultaneous triumph at Tyburn! Colonel Barnes?” And all eyes turn to Barnes. But he has dropped the gesticulations and now stands there the very picture of martial dignity.
“Indeed, my lord,” he announces. “Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Jack the Coiner, has been hanged.”
“Hanged, drawn, and quartered, according to the sentence pronounced against him?” Marlborough says, so fiercely that it is more assertion than query.
“Hanged, my lord,” Barnes says. It dangles there for a terrible long time, like a kicking wretch on a gallows, and he feels a need to make improvements: “Hanged by the neck until dead.”
“Half dead, I should say, and then cut down, drawn, and quartered?”
“Mr. Ketch was balked from carrying out the, er, supplemental eviscerations and dismemberments and whatnot, upon the hanged and dead, corpse of the late villain Shaftoe.”
“Prevented by what, pray tell? Squeamishness? Did Mr. Ketch forget to bring his cutlery?”
“Prevented by the Mobb. By the violence and the menace of the greatest and surliest Mobb that has ever assembled upon this Island.”
A murky side-conversation now starts up in the Hanover contingent, as Johann von Hacklheber tries to translate “Mobb” into High German.
“I ordered the King’s Own Black Torrent Guard to defend the gallows, precisely because I expected a larger than usual Mobb,” says Marlborough distractedly, in a sort of quiet prodrome to raging anger. Recognizing it as such, Barnes says: “And that is precisely what we accomplished, my lord, and the hangings were all carried out in good order, and Jack Ketch and the bailiffs and gaolers conveyed out of there safe and sound. The gallows will, alas, have to be rebuilt, but that’s a job for carpenters, not soldiers.”
“I see. But you deemed it prudent to retreat before the drawing and quartering could be performed.”
“Yes my lord, ’twas at that moment when the Mobb became most frenzickal, and rushed the Gallows to cut him down-”
“Him, or his corpse?” Isaac Newton asks.
“Colonel Barnes,” says Marlborough, “did they cut him down, or did they merely rush the gallows to cut him down? There is a difference, you see.”
“If you want to know whose hand wielded the knife that severed the rope, I cannot give you his name,” Barnes says. “Just then, I was preoccupied with the larger task of leading my troops.”
“How did you lead them? What orders did you give?”
“To form a cordon with fixed bayonets around Jack Ketch and those other participants who were still alive.”
“Did you give an order to fire?”
“No,” says Barnes, “as I judged it would be suicidal; and though I am ever ready to die in the line of duty, I was of the view that for us to commit suicide would have impeded us in the conduct of our mission.”
“I have often thought that the Vicar and the Warrior in you were struggling to achieve dominance, Colonel Barnes. Now I see that the Warrior has at last prevailed. For the Vicar would have opened fire and trusted to God. It is only the Warrior who would have chosen the difficult path of an orderly retreat.”
Barnes-who has been expecting anything but praise-salutes, and goes red in the face.
“They wish to know why the soldiers did not fire on the Mobb to restore order!” says Johann von Hacklheber, speaking on behalf of a formation of very disgruntled-looking Hanoverians.
“Because this is England and we don’t massacre people in England!” Marlborough announces. “Or rather, we do but we are striving to turn over a new leaf. Pray translate that into more diplomatic language, Freiherr von Hacklheber, and see to it that the new King quite gets the message, so that we don’t have to send the Barkers after him.” Marlborough winks at Daniel.
Isaac has paid little heed to these last few exchanges. “In truth it is just as well for my purposes that Jack Shaftoe’s corpse was left intact, for I have been looking forward to conducting an autopsy on the wretch at the College of Physicians, to find out what on earth made him the way he was.”
“I know,” says Barnes. “All London knows, for Jack announced as much-somewhat more colorfully-from the gallows. It was this very thing that so infuriated the Mobb.”
“So be it,” says Isaac, with a shrug. “Have your men take the corpse to the College of Physicians.”
“We don’t know where it is,” says Colonel Barnes.
“On Warwick Lane, off Newgate.”
“No. I meant, we don’t know where the corpse is.”
“I beg your pardon?” says Isaac, and looks to Marlborough. But the Duke is in a frank Cultural Exchange with his Hanoverian counterparts and has no time for Isaac. It has taken the Germans some time to fully comprehend the impertinence of Marlborough’s quip about the Barkers, and to believe that the Duke actually said something that rude; now they are waxing wroth, getting a bit foamy even. Johann von Hacklheber, seeing he’s caught in a perilous crossfire, is edging away, trying to make himself party to the safer and more interesting conversation re: Jack Shaftoe’s carcass.
“After the dead body was cut down,” Barnes continues, “some of the Mobb raised it up. I sent soldiers to wrest it from them. The Mobb scampered away and gave it a right good heave.”
“On to the ground?”
“No, it was caught and raised up on high again by others of the Mobb; and when they spied my soldiers coming for them, they gave it another heave, so that others, farther from the gallows, took up the burthen. And from there it developed into a sort of, well, orderly procedure, and I had to climb up on to the scaffold to see where it went. He sort of glided. Like a leaf, floating on a turbulent and swirling stream, dodging and spinning in unseen Mobb-currents, but ever moving in the same general direction: away from me.”
Isaac sighs, and begins to look his age again. “Spare me any further poetick description and just say forthrightly, please, where did you last see the body of Jack Shaftoe?”
“Sort of dissolving into the western horizon.”
Isaac stares at him.
“The Mobb was of tremendous size,” Barnes explains.
“You are quite certain he was dead at the time he was cut down?”
“If I may, sir, that’s easily answered!” says Johann von Hacklheber. “Anyone who was at Newgate this morning can tell you he was wearing a king’s ransom in cloth-of-gold, and that his pockets bulged with coins. All of which, of course, was payment for Jack Ketch-”
“To hang him fast-break his neck in an instant,” Isaac says. “Very well! Let the Mobb have him then. Let him end up in a potter’s field somewhere.”
“Yes,” says Daniel Waterhouse, “it is a most fitting end for such a villainous man. And this-the new King, the strong Bank, the sound coinage, and all the works of Natural Philosophers and ingenieurs-are a fine beginning for a new System of the World.”
At this, Johann von Hacklheber looks askance at Marlborough, who is close to getting into a sword-fight with some Duke of Germany.
“Never you mind that,” Daniel reassures him, “for it is all part of the System.”
Epilogs
For Time, though in Eternitie, appli’d
To motion, measures all things durable
By present, past, and future
–MILTON, Paradise Lost
Leibniz-Haus, Hanover
NOVEMBER 1714
MOST MEN, standing knee-deep in gold, wo
uld talk about that. But not these two eccentric Barons.
“Then he stepped out of his sedan chair and looked perfectly all right,” says Johann von Hacklheber.
He sits down upon an empty barrel. Leibniz, cringing and mincing from the gout, has been seated for some while. They are beneath Leibniz’s great house, in a cellar made to store victuals. But the bottles of wine, the kegs of beer, the turnips, potatoes, and belching buckets of sauerkraut have been hauled out and given to the poor. The place has been filled up with barrels of a different sort. Leibniz, unwilling now to trust anyone in Hanover, left them sealed until Johann arrived. Johann’s been dismantling them, removing the gold plates, and placing them in orderly stacks.
“It sounds as though he was re-animated by the Elixir Vitae,” Leibniz admits.
“I thought you didn’t believe in such things,” says Johann, and gestures at the gold plates all around.
“I don’t think about such matters the way he does,” says Leibniz, “but I can’t rule out the possibility that monads, ordered in the right way, might do things that would seem like miracles to us.”
“Well, you have got all the magic gold you could ever desire, if you want to cure that gout, or-”
“Live forever?”
Johann looks abashed, and instead of answering, picks up his pry-bar, and goes to work on another barrel.
“I suspect that there are some of us who have been living forever,” Leibniz says, “such as your supposed great-uncle, and my benefactor, Egon von Hacklheber. Or Enoch Root, as others know him. Let us suppose that Enoch knows how to manipulate the Subtile Spirit in such a way as to heal diseases and extend life. What of it, then? What has he accomplished? How has it changed anything?”
“Hardly at all,” says Johann.
“Hardly at all,” agrees Leibniz, “save that from time to time he may grant a few years’ undeserved life to someone who would otherwise have perished. Enoch must have been asking himself, these last couple of millennia, what is the point of it all. It is obvious that he took a lively interest in Natural Philosophy, and did what he could to foster it. Why?”
“Because Alchemy was not bringing him satisfaction.”
“Evidently not. Now, Johann, it would seem that Sir Isaac has been granted a few more years by Alchemy, and yet clearly it has not brought him any happiness or enlightenment that he did not possess before. Which gives us another hint as to why it does not satisfy Enoch. You point out that I, likewise, could use the Solomonic Gold in this cellar to extend my life. Let us suppose that it’s true. But obviously this is not the goal toward which I have been directed by Enoch, or by Solomon Kohan. On the contrary! Those two have sought to sequester the gold and keep it out of the hands of the one man who knows how to wield it: Isaac Newton. For me to take up Alchemy at my age, and melt those plates down to make an elixir-why, it’d be Doctor Faustus all over again! And with the same dismal result in the last act.”
“I can’t bear to see Newton triumph, while you sicken and dwindle here in Hanover.”
“I’ve got all of the Solomonic Gold. He doesn’t. That is a triumph. It does not make me glad. No, triumph will not be mine if I only ape what he did. That is surrender. If I am to outlive Newton, it will not be by extending the span of my life with unnatural coctions. We must do all in our power to see that the Logic Mill is built.”
“In St. Petersburg?”
“Or wherever, and whenever, some great prince sees fit to build it.”
“I’ll make arrangements to have some stout crates built,” says Johann, “and delivered here. I’ll take them into this cellar myself and pack the golden cards into them with my own two hands, and nail them shut so that no one will have cause to think that they contain anything more valuable than musty old letters. Once that is done, you may ship them to St. Petersburg, if that is the right place for them, with a stroke of a quill. But if what I hear from Russia has any color of truth, the Tsar is distracted, and may not see the thing through.”
Leibniz smiles. “That’s why I was careful to say whenever some great prince sees fit to build it. If not the Tsar, then someone else who will come along after my death.”
“Or after mine, or my son’s or my grandson’s,” Johann says. “Human nature being what it is, I fear that this will only happen when the things that the Logic Mill is good at become important to a war. And that is a difficult thing to imagine.”
“Then pray bring up your son and your grandson, if you have any, to be imaginative. Then impress on them the importance of looking after those dusty old crates in the Leibniz-Archiv. Speaking of which-”
“The Princess of Wales,” says Johann, holding up a hand, “has become most imperious since she got her new lands and titles, and has ordered me to find a woman I have some actual prospect of marrying. My dear mother has weighed in, too. I beg you not to start.”
“Very well,” says Leibniz, and lets a respectful silence fall. “That must have been a difficult conversation. I am sorry.”
“It was a difficult conversation that I had been expecting,” says Johann, “and I find it’s easier to have it behind me than in front of me. I am here now. I’ll go to London from time to time, and dance with her at a ball, and take tea with my mother, and remember. Then I shall return to Hanover and live my life.”
“What about them? What do you hear from those two great ladies?”
“They are on this Continent,” says Johann, “mending fences with their cousins, now that the war is finally over.”
Gardens of Trianon,
Royal Chateau of Versailles
A CRACK SOUNDS across still water. Wild geese squawk and take to the air on tired wings. A second crack, and a single bird drops to the bank. A water-dog swims after it, marring the pond’s surface with a vee-shaped wake that could almost be a reflection of the goose-formations high above. A window shatters, a lady whoops in surprise. The laughter of two men can be heard.
A panel of chopped and lashed-down foliage moves suddenly aside, like a door, to reveal a small barge: a floating blind. It is just large enough for two hunters, but rich enough for two kings. For once the panel of sticks and dead leaves is out of the way, it is all gold leaf and bas-reliefs of Diana and Orion. Two men sit in gilded campaign-chairs. Each cradles a fowling-piece of ridiculous length. They are helpless with mirth, for a while, at the breaking of the window.
One of them is very old, pink, bloated, half buried in furs and blankets that settle toward the deck as he jiggles them with his laughter. He slaps an ermine pelt to keep it from sliding into the pond. “Mon cousin,” he says, “you have bagged two birds with one shot: a goose, and a chambermaid!”
The other is in his middle fifties, active, but not spry, for it seems that a life of adventures has left him carrying a vast inventory of aches, pains, cramps, cricks, clicks, pops, and charley-horses. He shuffles across the deck of the barge and heaves open another camouflage-panel to let in the morning sun and release stale air. This gives him time to compose a sentence in bad French: “If she was hurt bad we’d hear more screaming. She was only scared.”
“I believe you scored a hit on the Trianon-sous-
Bois: the residence of my sister-in-law, Liselotte.”
“She sounds ever so high and mighty,” says the younger man. “I dare not talk to one such. Maybe you could let her know how sorry I am.”
“Oh? How sorry are you?” asks the older.
“Ah, you are a sly one there, Leroy. Tell me, does this Liselotte know the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm?”
“But yes, they are old partners in mischief, those two! Probably having breakfast together as we speak.”
“Then maybe Eliza can be my apologist. She speaks better French than you anyway.”
“Ho-ho-ho!” chortles the King. “You only think so because you are so besotted with her. I can see it.”
There’s sudden thrashing in the brush beside the water. “Merde!” says the King, “we are found out! Close the blind! Hurry!”
>
The other turns and reaches for the panel, then stops short, grimaces, and cocks his head. “Bloody hell.”
“The neck again?”
“Worst bleeding crick in the neck I’ve ever had.” He reaches up to rub a raw place, then flinches, and settles for re-composing his silk neckerchief.
“You should try to avoid being hanged.”
“I did try to avoid it, but the thing was complicated.”
She appears on the bank, holding up one hand with thumb and index finger pressed together.
“Morning, Jack.”
“Bonjour, Madame la Duchesse.” The one named Jack executes a courtly bow, so exaggerated as to border on open mockery. Each and every one of his vertebrae has something to say about it.
“I’ve something here that you lost!” she announces.
“My heart?”
She hurls the bird-pellet at him. The men on the barge avert their eyes as it impacts on a chair-arm and ricochets around. “La Palatine wants you two to know that she is too old to be the target of musket-fire.”
“Fortunately Pepe is bringing you a peace-offering,” says the King, and indicates the curly-haired dog, who’s up on the bank now, wagging his tail at Eliza. He trots up and drops the dead bird at her feet.
“I’ve little taste for such things,” she says, “but Liselotte was a great huntress in her day and so it might placate her.” She bends down, pinches the bird’s neck, and walks away from them holding it out at arm’s length. The men watch in awe. Leroy gives Jack a dig in the ribs.
“Magnifique, eh?”
“Old goat.”
“Ah, she is a great woman,” says the King, “and you, mon cousin, are a fortunate man.”
“To meet her in the first place was fortunate, I’ll give you that. To lose her was stupid. Now, I don’t know the word to describe what I am, besides tired.”
THE System OF THE WORLD Page 115