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

by Neal Stephenson

  “Roger, what is Mrs. Bligh’s bloody book—by your leave, Mrs. Bligh!—but squiggles of ink? I have ink, Roger, a firkin of it, and can molest a goose to obtain quills, and make ink-squiggles all night and all day. But they are just forms on a page. What does it say of us that our commerce is built ’pon forms and figments while that of Spain is built ’pon silver?”

  “Some would say it speaks to our advancement.”

  “I am not one of those hard cases who believes credit is Satan’s work, do not put me in that poke, Roger. I say only that ink, once dried on the page, is a brittle commodity, and an œconomy made of ink is likewise brittle, and may for all we know be craz’d and in a state to crumble at a touch. Whereas silver and gold are ductile, malleable, capable of fluid movement—”

  “Some say it is because their atoms, their particules are bathed in a lubricating medium of quicksilver—”

  “Stop it.”

  “You asked me to wax metaphysical, just a minute ago.”

  “You are baiting me, Roger. Oh, it is all right. By all means, amuse yourself.”

  “Daniel. Do you really want to go to Massachusetts, and leave all this behind?”

  “All this is more amusing, not to mention profitable, to you than ’tis to me. I want to put distractions behind, go to the wilderness, and work.”

  “What, in a wigwam? Or do you have a cave picked out?”

  “There are plenty of trees remaining.”

  “You’re going to live in a tree?”

  “No! Cut them down, make a house.”

  “I fear you are unused to such labor, Daniel.”

  “Oh but I am educable.”

  “One really would do better to have an institution on which to rely. You could be a vicar of some Puritan church.”

  “Puritan churches tend not to have vicars.”

  “Oh, that’s right…then perhaps Harvard College would have you.”

  “Then again, perhaps not.”

  “Here, Daniel, is my metaphysical reading of your circumstance:”

  “I am braced.”

  “England is not finished with you yet!”

  “Merciful God! What more can England possibly ask of me?”

  “I shall come to that momentarily, Daniel. First, I propose a transaction.”

  “Is this transaction to conclude with silver changing hands? Or ink-squiggles?”

  “It is to conclude with a sinecure for Daniel Waterhouse. In Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

  “Damn me, and here am I, on the wrong side of the ocean!”

  “The sinecure is attended with certain perquisites including a one-way trans-oceanic voyage.”

  “Are you saying, England wants from me something so dreadful that when I have done it, she won’t want me around any more?”

  “You read too much into it. You are the one who has been bawling about Massachusetts for all these years.”

  “But then why do you specify it has to be one-way?”

  “You can come back if you think it would be in your best interests,” Roger said innocently. “As long as the Juncto remains in power, you shall have protectors.”

  “Your voice has the most annoying way of fading just when you are on the verge of saying something interesting. Do you do that for effect?”

  “Juncto…juncto…JUNCTO!”

  “What on earth is a junk-toe? Some new type of gout?”

  “More like a new type of gov’t.”

  “I am quite serious.”

  “A scholar might say it Latin-style: yuncto. Or, a Spaniard thus: hoonta!”

  “Why don’t you just say ‘joint,’ which is what it means?”

  “I know what it means. But then people would suppose we were discoursing of knees or elbows.”

  “But isn’t the idea to be mysterious?”

  “Then we would call it a cabal.”

  “Oh, that’s right. So, you are in a juncto?”

  “I am in the juncto.”

  “And your role in the juncto is to be—?”

  “Chancellor of the Exchequer…Daniel, it is childish to make coffee shoot out of your nostrils. You know of someone better qualified?”

  “What about Apthorp?”

  “Sir Richard, as he is called by polite men, will run the bank.”

  “But do you not think he would gladly set aside his duties at Apthorp’s Bank to become Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

  “No, no, no, no, no. I am not speaking of Apthorp’s bank. I refer to the Bank of England.”

  “No such institution exists.”

  “And no institution exists in Massachusetts Bay Colony that will put a roof over your head and give you a sinecure. But institutions can be made, Daniel. That is what an institution is: something that has been instituted.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ah, finally light dawns! You are educable, Daniel, very much so!”

  “The Bank of England…the Bank of England. It sounds, I don’t know, big.”

  “That is the point.”

  “You shall amass some sort of capital, and lend out money.”

  “This is the timeless function of a banca.”

  “I can only perceive two drawbacks to what is otherwise an excellent plan, my lord…”

  “Don’t say it. We have no capital…and no money.”

  “Just so, my lord.”

  “Is it not admirable, how simple things are in the beginning? Oh, how I love to begin things.”

  “Let’s take them in order…what is the capital to be?”

  “England.”

  “Ah, very well, I should have guessed from the name, ‘Bank of England.’ Now, how about the money?”

  “The Bank will issue some paper. But you are right. We need coinage. To be specific, we need recoinage.”

  A silence now fell over this snuggery in the corner of Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house. Roger had spent enough man-years orating in Parliament that he knew when a Pause for Effect was called for. And Daniel for his part was strangely affected, and lost all interest in speaking for a short time. The notion of recoinage made him strangely sad, and he was desirous of figuring out why. It would mean calling in all old coins—as well as the plate, candlesticks, bullion, et cetera—and melting them in the great crucibles of the Tower. Crucibles that purified and separated the genuine metal from the dross of the counterfeiters but thereby melted all those discrete objects together, destroying their individual characters.

  Daniel had in his purse a pound coin stamped with a picture of Queen Elizabeth. He knew this because such coins were rarer than flawless diamonds now, and he was holding it back in case he had to ransom his life somehow. The Golden Comstocks—Roger’s ancestors—had imported the metal from Spain and Thomas Gresham had caused the coin to be minted at such-and-such a weight, and had used some of his rake-off to build Gresham’s College. The coin had been passing from hand to hand and purse to purse for more than a hundred years, and probably had more tales to tell than a ship full of Irish sailors—yet it was just a single mote in the dust-pile that was the English money supply. In a certain way to take that dust and shovel it into the maw of the crucibles was monstrous, like burning a library.

  But imagine the glowing rivers that would spring from the lips of those crucibles when all of that tarnished silver was made clean, and made quick, and con-fused, and all of its old stories driven off as clouds of smoke that the river wind would carry away. Imagine the shining coins in purses everywhere—Mrs. Bligh striking out the debts from her ledger-book, her strong-box becoming a catch-basin for the new money, overflowing and spilling out gleaming rivulets down the street to the bankside coffee-merchants, and thence down the Thames into the wide.

  “We’ve no choice,” Daniel understood.

  “We’ve no choice. The Pope has all the gold, all the silver, all the men, and the rich lands where the sun shines. We cannot long stand against Spain, France, the Empire, the Church. Not as long as power is like a scale, with our riches on one pan, and our adve
rsaries’ on the other. What are we to do, then? Daniel, you know that I think Alchemy is nonsense! Yet there is something in the idea of Alchemy; the conceit that we may cause gold to appear where ’twas not, by dint of artfulness and machinations up here.” He pressed the tip of one index finger delicately to his forehead. “We have no mines, no El Dorado. If we want gold and silver we must look not to treasure-fleets from America. Yet if we conduct commerce here, and build the Bank of England, why, gold and silver will appear in our coffers as if by magic—or Alchemy if you prefer.”

  A pause to sip cold coffee. Then Daniel remarked, “You’ll want to take a page from Gresham’s book. ‘Bad money drives out good.’ If the new coin is good, ’twill drive away the bad, not only from this island but everywhere. Everyone will desire English guineas, as they desire Pieces of Eight now. The demand will cause ever more gold and silver to wash up on our shores to be coined in the Tower, just as you prophesy.”

  Roger was nodding patiently, as if he and the Juncto had figured it all out long ago—which might or might not have been the case—but Daniel found it strangely reassuring all the same, and continued: “At the risk of sounding like a Royal Society partisan—”

  “It is not much of a risk. Half of the Juncto are Fellows. And all are partisans of something.”

  “Very well, then, I submit that you want a Natural Philosopher running the Mint—not the usual corrupt, drunken, time-serving political hack.”

  This drew a brisk turn of the head from a gentleman who had been standing a short distance behind Roger, talking to another gent, or pretending to. Daniel realized he had spoken too loudly.

  The gentleman was glaring at Daniel from beneath a copper-colored wig, one of the new model, narrow, with long ringlets trailing far down the back. The wig said that he had money and rank, yet was no admirer of the French. He would be High Church, Old Money, a reflexive backer of Monarchy—a Tory, as they were called nowadays. Odd that he should be passing the time of day in here—Mrs. Bligh’s was a Whig haunt. For that reason Daniel rated it as unlikely that this fellow would challenge him to a duel.

  Roger had noticed Daniel noticing all of these things, and had the good instincts not to look back. But his eyes flicked slightly upwards to a windowpane just above Daniel’s head, and he scanned the reflections interestedly for a moment. Which in no way prevented his talking at the same time. “Indeed, Daniel, any man plucked from this coffee-house—with one or two exceptions—would be preferable to the fellows running our mint now, who are tapeworms.”

  Daniel was staring fixedly into Roger’s eyes, but in the background he could see the Tory turning away. The Tory planted himself with his back toward Roger, set his coffee-cup down on a sideboard, rested a hand idly on the hilt of his small-sword, and seemed to survey the crowd of merry Whigs filling the house.

  “It follows that any Fellow of the Royal Society would be excellent—but merely excellent is not quite good enough, Daniel. Normally it takes me hours to explain why this is true. You, thank God, have perceived it instantly. The fate of Britain and of Christendom hinge upon the power of the new good Pound Sterling to drive out the bad—to sweep all opposition from the field and bring gold and silver to our shores from every corner of the earth. The quality of money is only partly due to the purity of its metal—which any Natural Philosopher could see to. It is also a matter of trust, of prestige.”

  Daniel had now realized what was coming, and slid down in his chair, and put his hands over his face. “You don’t want me to enlist him, Roger! I no longer have his ear. You want Fatio, Fatio, Fatio!”

  “Everyone knows he is in-Fatio-ated—but passions are fleeting. You have known him longer than anyone, Daniel. You are the man for it. England needs you! Your Massachusetts sinecure awaits!”

  Daniel had parted his fingers now and was peering out through slits in between. Unable to look Roger in the face, he was surveying the distant background. Andrew Ellis—a compact young man with a blond ponytail, an enjoyable, harmless young Parliamentarian—was coming over with a glass of claret in each hand, intent on breaking into the conversation and sharing his enjoyableness with Roger. If Daniel had hopes of weaseling out, he had to do it now. To Roger Comstock, silence implied not merely consent, but a blood oath.

  “You cannot know what you are proposing, ensconcing such a man at the Tower, giving him control of our money. He has strange ideas, dark secrets—”

  “I know all about the beastliness.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  “Alchemy is an even more common vice.”

  “That’s not it, either. He is a heretic, Roger.”

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “I mean, he does not even believe in the Trinity!”

  Roger got a glazed-over look, as he always did when abstract theological matters were dragged into the conversation. Unlike ordinary men, who required several minutes to become fully glazed over, Roger could do it in an instant, as if a window-sash had dropped in front of him from a great height. Daniel parted his fingers more to observe this phenomenon. But instead his attention was drawn to something even odder: an expensive copper-colored wig hanging in midair behind Roger’s chair. Its owner had ducked and darted out from under it as fast as a striking cobra and simply left it behind. It fell to the floor, of course. By that time the owner—who had red hair in a close Caesar crop—was whispering something into Andrew Ellis’s ear. It must have been something extremely shocking, to judge from the look of astonishment—nay, horror—that had come over the normally beaming face of Mr. Ellis.

  Daniel pushed himself up in his chair to get a better look and perceived that the red-headed gent was now drawing away from Ellis—but Ellis was moving with him, as if they were joined together. Ellis gave out a little whimper.

  Daniel could not credit what he was seeing. “Roger, I could almost swear that Mr. Ellis is having his ear bitten.”

  Roger now took notice for the first time. He stood up, turned around, and quickly verified it. This prolonged ear-biting had drawn very little notice thus far because Ellis had been too astonished to speak and the biter, of course, could not really talk, either—though he did seem to be mumbling something in a low, grinding voice: “So you want to have the ear of Roger Comstock? Then I shall have yours.”

  Oddly, it was Roger’s standing up that drew everyone’s attention. Then awareness splashed across the room.

  “In the name of God, sir!” Ellis cried, and slumped against the paneled wall. The red-head stayed with him, of course, maintaining his bite like a bulldog, working his jaw slowly to gnaw through the cartilage. He planted a hand on the wall to either side of Ellis’s head, bracketing him in position. Several of the Whigs in the main room finally moved forward to intervene—but the gentleman who had been talking to the biter earlier whirled to face them, and drew his sword half out of his scabbard. That drove them back like a firecracker.

  Roger stepped toward the biter and the bitee, and raised his arm that was nearer the wall, causing his cape to spread open and block Daniel’s view of the whole proceedings. He seemed to slap the back of the biter’s hand where it was planted on the wall. “Mr. White,” he said, in an indulgent tone, “do wipe your chin when you are quite finished.” Then Roger skirted around the pair and walked out of the coffee-house. Andrew Ellis collapsed to the floor with a scream and pressed both of his hands to the side of his head. Mr. White came up with a triumphant toss of his head, like a country boy who has just won at apple-bobbing. Something like a dried apricot was lodged in his smile. He plucked it out with one hand to admire it. Andrew Ellis was lying against Mr. White’s shins and knees, forcing them back, and so White had to keep his other hand braced against the paneling lest he topple forward. Anyway, he pocketed Ellis’s ear and flashed a bloody grin at Daniel.

  “Welcome to politics, Mr. Waterhouse,” he announced. “This is the world you have made. Rejoice and be glad in it—for you shall not be allowed to leave.”

  “I a
m freer to leave than you are, Mr. White,” Daniel said on his way out, nodding in the direction of the hand that Mr. White was bracing against the wall.

  Mr. White now seemed to notice for the first time that a dagger had been shoved all the way through that hand, between the metacarpals and out through the palm, and lodged deep in the wooden wall. Worked into the dagger’s pommel, in silver letters, as a sort of calling-card, were the initials R.C.

  WHEN DANIEL MADE IT out to the street he discovered that his hand had gone into his pocket and got ahold of the Pearl of Great Price and squeezed it so hard, for so long, that his fingers had got tired. The Stone had a sort of devil’s-head shape, with two stubby hornlets that had once been lodged in his ureters. He had a habit of gripping it so that those wee knobs stuck out between his knuckles—it fitted his hand almost as well as his bladder.

  Riding north across Hertfordshire in a borrowed carriage the next day, he found his hand had gone to it once again, as he reviewed the ear-biting scene in the theatre of his memory. Daniel was meditating on Cowardice. He knew a lot of cowards and saw cowardice everywhere, but just as Mr. Flamsteed’s observations of the stars were frequently obnubilated by weather, so Daniel’s of Cowardice by Extenuating Circumstances. Viz. a man might explain cowardliness by saying that he had a family to support, or, failing that, with the simple argument that it just was not fair for a young man to give up life or limb. But Daniel had no wife or children of his own, and brother Sterling was doing a fine job of supporting the extended family. And not only was Daniel old (forty-seven), but he ought to’ve been dead by now, and owed his remaining years solely to Mr. Hooke’s pitiless blade-work. So in Daniel Waterhouse, an observer could see cowardliness in its pure form, and perhaps learn something of its nature.

  A note from Roger Comstock was on the bench next to Daniel; it had been waiting for him in the carriage this morning. Dear Daniel, it read,

  Forgive me my precipitous leave-taking from Mrs. Bligh’s yester-eve. As I am sure you have perceived by now, the whole event was a masque, a trifle. Do not allow Mr. White’s vulgarities to prey upon your good judgment.