The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World

by Neal Stephenson

  “The library then.”

  “Monsieur Rossignol is toiling over some eldritch Documents in the library, my lady.”

  Eliza took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Tell me, then, Brigitte, where there might be a room in the Hôtel Arcachon that is not crowded with early-arriving party-guests.”

  “Could you meet her in…the chapel?”

  “Done! Give me a minute. And, Brigitte?”

  “Yes, my lady?”

  “Is there any word of Monsieur le duc yet?”

  “Not since the last time you asked, mademoiselle.”

  “THE JACHT OF THE DUC d’Arcachon was sighted approaching Marseille on the sixth of October. It was flying signal-flags ordering that fast horses and a coach must be made ready at dockside for immediate departure. That much we know from a messenger who was sent north immediately when everything I have just described to you was perceived, through a prospective-glass, from a steeple in Marseille,” Eliza said. “This news came to us early this morning. We can only assume that le duc himself is a few hours behind, and will show up at any moment; but it is not to be expected that anyone in this household could know any more than that.”

  “Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain will be disappointed,” said the Duchess of Oyonnax in a bemused way. She nodded at a page, who bowed, backed out of the chapel, then pivoted on the ball of one foot and bolted. Eliza, comtesse de la Zeur, and Marie-Adelaide de Crépy, duchesse d’Oyonnax, were now alone in the private chapel of the de Lavardacs. Though Oyonnax, never one to leave anything to chance, took the precaution of opening the doors of the little confessional in the back, to verify that it was empty.

  The chapel occupied a corner of the property. Public streets ran along the front, or altar end, and along one of the sides. That side had several stained-glass windows, tall and narrow to fetch a bit of light from the sky. These had small casements down below, which were normally closed to block the noise and smell of the street beyond; but Oyonnax opened two of them. Cold air came in, which scarcely mattered considering the tonnage of clothing that each of these women was wearing. A lot of noise came in, too. Eliza supposed that this was a further precaution against their being overheard by any eavesdroppers who might be pressing ears against doors. But if Oyonnax was the sort to worry about such things, then this chapel was a comfortable place for her. It contained no furniture—no pews—just a rough stone floor, and she had already verified that there was no one crouching behind the little altar. The chapel was hundreds of years older than any other part of the compound. It was unfashionably Gothick, dim, and gloomy, and probably would have been knocked down long ago and replaced with something Barock were it not for the windows and the altar-piece (which were said to be priceless treasures) and the fourth left metatarsal bone of Saint Louis (which was embedded in a golden reliquary cemented into the wall).

  “Pontchartrain sent no fewer than three messages here this morning, requesting the latest news,” said Eliza, “but I did not know the contrôleur-général had also contacted you, my lady.”

  “His curiosity on the matter presumably reflects that of the King.”

  “It does not surprise me that the King should be so keen to know the whereabouts of his Grand Admiral. But would it not be more proper for such inquiries to be routed through the Secretary of State for the Navy?”

  The Duchess of Oyonnax had paused by one of the open casements and levered it mostly closed, making of it a sort of horizontal gun-slit through which she could peer at the street. But she turned away from it now and peered at Eliza for a few moments, then announced: “I am sorry. I supposed you might have known. Monsieur le marquis de Seignelay has cancer. He is very ill of it, and no longer able to fulfill his obligations to his majesty’s Navy.”

  “No wonder the King is so intent on this, then—for they say that the Duke of Marlborough has landed in force in the South of Ireland.”

  “Your news is stale. Marlborough has already taken Cork, and Kinsale is expected to fall at any moment. All of this while de Seignelay is too ill to work, and d’Arcachon is off in the south on some confusing adventure of his own.”

  From out in the courtyard, beyond the rear doors of the chapel, Eliza heard a muffled burst of feminine laughter: the Duchess of Arcachon and her friends. It was curious. A few paces in one direction, the most exalted persons in France were donning ribbons and perfume and swapping gossip, getting ready for a Duke’s birthday party. Beyond the confines of the Arcachon compound, France was getting ready for nine months’ starvation, as the harvest had been destroyed by frost. French and Irish garrisons were falling to the onslaught of Marlborough in chilly Ireland, and the Secretary of State for the Navy was being gnawed to death by cancer. Eliza decided that this dim, chilly, empty room, cluttered with gruesome effigies of our scourged and crucified and impaled Lord, was not such a bad place after all to have a meeting with Oyonnax. Certainly Oyonnax seemed more in her element here than in a gilded and ruffled drawing-room. She said: “I wonder if it is even necessary for you to kill Monsieur le duc. The King might do it for you.”

  “Do not talk about it this way, if you please!” Eliza snapped.

  “It was merely an observation.”

  “When le duc planned tonight, it was summer, and everything seemed to be going perfectly. I know what he was thinking: the King needs money for the war, and I shall bring him money!”

  “You sound as though you are defending him.”

  “I believe it is useful to know the mind of the enemy.”

  “Does le duc know your mind, mademoiselle?”

  “Obviously not. He does not rate me an enemy.”

  “Who does?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Someone wishes to know your mind, for you are being watched.”

  “I am well aware of it. Monsieur Rossignol—”

  “Ah, yes—the King’s Argus—he knows all.”

  “He has noticed that my name crops up frequently, of late, in letters written by those at Court who style themselves Alchemists.”

  “Why are the chymists watching you?”

  “I believe it has to do with what Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon has been up to in the south,” said Eliza. “Assuming that you have been discreet, that is.”

  Oyonnax laughed. “You and I associate with two entirely different sorts of chymists! Even if I were indiscreet—which I most certainly am not—it is inconceivable that a brewer of poison, working in a cellar in Paris, should have any contact with a noble practitioner of the Art, such as Upnor or de Gex.”

  “I did not know that Father Édouard was an Alchemist as well!”

  “Of course. Indeed, my divine cousin perfectly illustrates the point I am making. Can you phant’sy such a man associating with Satanists?”

  “I cannot even phant’sy myself doing so.”

  “You aren’t.”

  “What are you then, if I may inquire?”

  Oyonnax, in a strangely girlish gesture, put a gloved hand to her lips, suppressing a laugh. “You still do not understand. Versailles is like this window.” She swept her arm out, directing Eliza’s eye to a scene in stained glass. “Beautiful, but thin, and brittle.” She opened the casement below to reveal the street beyond: a wood-carrier, looking like a wild man, had dropped his load to have a fist-fight with a young Vagabond who had taken offense because the wood-carrier had bumped into a whore that the Vagabond was escorting into an alley. A man blinded by smallpox was squatting against a wall releasing a bloody phlux from his bowels. “Beneath the lovely glaze, a sea of desperation. When people are desperate, and praying to God has failed, they begin to look elsewhere. The famous Satanists that Maintenon is so worried about wouldn’t recognize the Prince of Darkness if they went down to Hell and held a candle at his levée! Those necromancers are just like the mountebanks on the Pont-Neuf. You can’t make a living as a mountebank by offering to trim people’s fingernails, because the clientele is not desperate enough. But you can make a livi
ng as a tooth-puller. Have you ever had a tooth go bad, mademoiselle?”

  “I am aware that it hurts.”

  “There are people at Court who suffer from aches of heart and spirit that are every bit as intolerable as a toothache. Those who prey on them, are no different from tooth-pullers. The emblems of the devil are no different from the pliers brandished by tooth-pullers: visual proof that these people are equipped to ply their trade, and satisfy their customers.”

  “You are so dark! Is there anything you believe in?”

  Oyonnax closed the casement. The gruesome images outside were gone. “I believe in beauty,” she said. “I believe in the beauty of Versailles, and in the King who created it. I believe in your beauty, mademoiselle, and in mine. The darkness beyond has power to break through, just as those people out there could throw rocks through this window. But behold, the window has stood for centuries. No one has thrown a rock through it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there is a balance of powers in the world, which can only be perceived by continual attention, and can only be preserved by—”

  “By the unceasing and subtile machinations of persons such as you,” Eliza said; and the look in the green eyes of Oyonnax told her that her guess was true. “Is that why you have involved yourself in my vendetta against the Duke?”

  “I am certainly not doing so out of any affection for you! Nor out of sympathy. I don’t know, and don’t wish to, why you hate him so, but the stories told about him make it easy to guess. If le duc were a great hero of France—a Jean Bart, for example—I should poison you before suffering you to harm him. But as matters stand, Monsieur le duc is a poltroon, absent for months when he is most needed. Wise was le Roi in subordinating him to Monsieur le marquis de Seignelay. But now that de Seignelay is dying, the duc d’Arcachon will try to reassert his former eminence, which shall prove a disaster to the Navy and to France.”

  “So you see yourself as doing the King’s work.”

  “I see myself as serving the King’s ends.” Madame la duchesse d’Oyonnax removed from her waistband a pale-green cylinder, scarcely bigger than a child’s finger, and displayed it on the palm of her gloved hand. She was standing several paces away, which forced Eliza to approach her. Eliza did so in spite of a sudden horripilation that had spread over her scalp like a slick of burning oil. Her hands were clasped together in front of her stomach, in part to keep them warm—but in part to keep them close to a slim dagger that she was in the habit of hiding at the waist of her dress. Which was a queer thing to be thinking about, here and now; but she would not put anything past the Duchess, and wanted to be ready in the event that Oyonnax tried to throw something in her face or jab her with a poisoned needle.

  “You’ll never appreciate how easy this is going to be compared to a typical poisoning,” said Oyonnax in a light conversational tone, as if this would set Eliza at ease. Eliza had now drawn close enough to see the green thing: a tiny phial such as might be used for perfume, carved out of jade, bound in bands of silver, with a silver stopper on a fragile chain. “Don’t dab this behind your ears,” said the Duchess.

  “Is it one of those that is absorbed through the skin?”

  “No, but it smells bad.”

  “Then le duc will certainly notice it in a drink.”

  “Yes—but not in his food. You know of his peculiar tastes?”

  “I know more than I should care to of that.”

  “This is what I mean when I say it is going to be easy for you. Normally an ingested poison must be tasteless, and such are frequently ineffective. This stuff is as deadly as it is foul—yet le duc will never notice it when it is mixed with a meal of rotten fish. All that you need to do is to find some way of getting into the private kitchen where his dreadful repast is prepared. This will not be a trivial matter—yet it will be much easier than the machinations most people must go through.”

  “Most poisoners, you mean…”

  Oyonnax did not respond to—perhaps did not even understand—the correction. “Take it, or don’t,” she said, “I’ll not stand here like this any longer.”

  Eliza reached out to pluck the phial from Oyonnax’s palm. As she did so, the other’s larger hand closed around hers, and then Oyonnax brought her other hand over and clamped it on top, so that Eliza’s fist, clenched around the green phial, was swallowed up between the Duchess’s hands. Eliza was staring fixedly at this, having no desire whatever to see the Duchess’s face, now so close to hers. But Oyonnax would not let go; and so finally Eliza turned her head that way, and, with some effort, raised her eyes to gaze directly into those of Oyonnax. She could not bear to do so for more than a moment; but it seemed that this was enough for the Duchess to be satisfied. Satisfied of what, Eliza did not know. But Oyonnax gave Eliza’s fist one last squeeze and pushed it towards Eliza’s breast, then released her. “It is done,” said the Duchess. “You shall accomplish it tonight, then?”

  “It is already too late—I must get ready.”

  “Soon, then.”

  “It can never be soon enough for me.”

  “People will talk, after it happens,” said the Duchess. “Pay them no mind, and have patience. It is not whether this or that person believes you to be a murderer, or even can prove it, but whether they have the dignity necessary to level such an accusation.”

  BRITTLE DISJOINTED HOURS FOLLOWED. Monsieur le comte de Pontchartrain, and later the King himself, did not leave off sending messengers around to inquire as to the whereabouts of the duc d’Arcachon. For some reason these all wanted to speak to Eliza—as if she were expected to know things that the Duchess of Arcachon did not. This in no way simplified preparations for the soirée. Eliza had to get coiffed and dressed while holding at bay these inquisitive messengers, who, as the afternoon wore on, were of progressively higher rank. Finally, near dusk, a coach and four rattled into the court, and Eliza called out “Hallelujah!” She could not run to the window because a pair of engineers were braiding extensions into her hair; but someone else did, and disappointed them all by reporting that it was merely Étienne d’Arcachon.

  “He’ll do,” said, Eliza, “now they’ll pester him instead of me.”

  But presently, word filtered up that Étienne had literally called out the cavalry—despatched riders of his own personal regiment, on the swiftest mounts, to probe southwards along the roads that his father was most likely to take north, with instructions to wheel round and gallop back to the Hôtel Arcachon the moment they saw the Duke’s distinctive white carriage. This would give at least a few minutes’ warning of the Duke’s arrival—which was of the highest importance to Étienne, the Politest Man in France, as it would have been a grave embarrassment for the King to attend a Duke’s birthday-party only to be snubbed, in the end, by the guest of honor. This way, the King could continue to bide his time in the Royal Palais du Louvre—which was only a few minutes’ ride away—and come to the Hôtel Arcachon (which was in the Marais, not far off the Pont d’Arcole) only when positive word had been received that the Duke was on his way.

  So Eliza was pestered no further by messengers; but now Étienne d’Arcachon wished to have a private audience with her. And so did Monsieur le comte d’Avaux. And so did Father Édouard de Gex. She told her hairdressers to work faster, and to forget about the last tier in the ziggurat of counter-rotating braids that was rising into the heavens above her pate.

  “MADEMOISELLE, ALLOW ME THE HONOR of being the first to compliment your beauty—”

  “I would prefer it if you were as keen to get out of my way as to hurl flattery at me, Monsieur le comte,” said Eliza, brushing past d’Avaux. “I am on my way to speak with Étienne de Lavardac in the chapel.”

  “I shall escort you,” d’Avaux announced.

  Such had been the vehemence of Eliza’s passage that her skirts had bullwhipped around d’Avaux’s ankles and his sword, and nearly upended him, but he had more aplomb than any ten other French diplomats, and so presently appeare
d on her arm, looking as perfectly composed as an embalmed corpse.

  They were hurrying down a gallery that had been obstructed by servants balancing food-trays and carrying party-decorations; but when these saw the onrushing Count and Countess, they took shelter in the lees of pilasters or ducked into niches.

  “I would be remiss if I failed to express to you, mademoiselle, my concern over the choices you have lately been making as to social contacts.”

  “What!? Who!? The de Lavardac family? Pontchartrain? Monsieur Rossignol?”

  “It is precisely because you are so frequently seen in the company of these fine persons, that you must reconsider your decision to associate with the likes of Madame la duchesse d’Oyonnax.”

  Now Eliza’s free hand strayed to her waistband, for she had a sudden terror that the green phial would fall out and shatter on the floor and fill the gallery with a smell as foul as her intentions. It was such an obvious gesture that d’Avaux would have seen it, had he been facing her; but he was looking in another direction.

  “Like it or not, monsieur, she is a fixture of Court, and I cannot pretend she doesn’t exist.”

  “Yes, but to have private meetings with such a woman, as you have done three times in the last two months—”

  “Who has been counting, monsieur?”

  “Everyone, mademoiselle. That is my point. Even though you may be pure as snow—”

  “Your sarcasm is rude.”

  “This is a rude conversation, being a hurried one. As I was saying, you might be as upright as de Maintenon herself. But if and when Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon dies—”

  “How can you speak of this, on his birthday!?”

  “One year closer to death, mademoiselle. And even if the manner of his death is as innocent as falling from a horse, or going down on a sinking ship, people will say you had something to do with it, if you continue to tryst in dark places with Oyonnax.”

  “Anyone can bandy accusations. Few have the dignity to make them count.”