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

by Neal Stephenson

  “I have already heard the story,” Jack said.

  WINDING UPMINERVA’S affairs in New Spain took several months. Jack, Jimmy, Danny, and Tomba moved north to a frontier town in Zacatecas where no one cared if Jack failed to wear his sanbenito—or if they did, they were too scared to say anything, because this was a town of desperadoes, and every man went armed all the time. When Jack had lived in Europe, he had enjoyed and even profited from being a picaroon in a world of Lords, Ladies, and Chamber of Commerce members. But he found living in a whole society of picaroons to be tiresome if not downright dangerous. So he did not linger in that border-town long, but went west over the Sierra Madre Occidental with a mule-train to recover the last of the goods they’d cached around Cabo Corrientes: a ton of quicksilver, and all of van Hoek’s books—which he had left in the mountains so that they would not be seized and burnt by the Inquisition when Minerva called at Acapulco or Lima.

  The trip back to Zacatecas was exceptionally dangerous because no fewer than three groups of desperadoes were waiting to waylay them in the passes. But Jimmy and Danny, as the result of their journey halfway around the world, and their exploits with the warrior-caste of Malabar, had become expert in travel through hostile mountains. And Tomba, a man who’d escaped from a sugar-plantation in Jamaica and covered a lot of ground since then, in places that were not friendly to black Vagabonds, had developed a kind of guile and subtility that Jack thought of as Oriental. There was nothing he could tell those three boys except to remind ’em, now and then, that this was not Hindoostan, and so they were only allotted one life apiece. This was cheerfully ignored, or else taken as proof that, at the age of forty-one, Jack had become a fretful old man, and toothless in more than one way.

  Their trail back over the mountains was traced out by several set-piece battles in which the brigands found their ambushes ambushed, and many a desperado’s head was struck off by a ringing katana. They came back to discover that they were developing a legend, which Jack had come to believe was a good thing to leave behind but a bad thing to have.

  A letter was waiting in the saloon that they used as their headquarters; the innkeeper said it had been brought up from the south by a courier, and that it was addressed to either Moseh or Jack. Since Moseh and Edmund had gone away, the only person in this town capable of reading it was the parish priest. But the priest would turn Jack in to the Inquisition if Jack revealed his identity, for Jack hadn’t been wearing his sanbenito or attending Mass. Jack tossed the letter for safe-keeping into the caulked trunk that contained van Hoek’s books, and re-sealed it.

  Now their assets consisted of a ton of quicksilver (which needed to be delivered to various mine-heads and exchanged for pigs of silver) and several tons of pigs distributed among a dozen buried caches. All of it had to be moved to Vera Cruz. Yet it would be folly to concentrate it in one gigantic wagon-train, and so the caches had to be dug up and moved one at a time, leap-frogging one another as they converged on Vera Cruz. It was a complicated business that really demanded the skills of a Moseh or a Vrej Esphahnian, and it sorely taxed Jack, who preferred things simpler. More than once he woke up in the middle of the night wondering whether they’d left a cache behind in the mountains.

  The one or two broad simple concerns of Jack’s early life, like the light and dark portions of a wootz-ingot, had been hammered out and folded over, hammered out and folded over, so many times that they had become involved and inter-tangled into a swirl of swirls, something too intricate to follow, or to be given the name of “pattern” or “design.” It registered on the mind as a blunt impression that could be talked about only by smearing it into some gray word like “complicated.” But he would tell Jimmy and Danny and Tomba that it was complicated, and they would not have the faintest understanding of what he meant. Jack could only pray that its complexity gave it the strength and keenness of a watered-steel blade. Much later he might be able to discern whether there was beauty in it, too.

  For a month it did not seem as if the goods were making progress at all, but then Jack could no longer deny that they were spending less time in high deserts and more on roads. In moving the silver they spent part of it but lost none. This seemed implausible to Jack until he considered how wretched was their opposition. They hadn’t gone most of the way around the world without acquiring a certain kind of wisdom, and if having silver made them a target, it also gave them the option to buy their way out of certain problems. Really the only persons Jack was afraid of were the Indians who controlled the river-crossings; these had a distant look in their eyes that somehow reminded Jack of Gabriel Goto when he reminisced about Japan. Their treatment by the Spaniards had left them with nothing to lose. Attempted bribery only made them angrier.

  But by the end of April all of their silver was cached in eight different holes in the ground within half a day’s journey of Vera Cruz, and Jack, Danny, Jimmy, and Tomba were ensconced in a house that Edmund de Ath had rented out there, waiting.

  “WHERE ARE MY DAMNED BOOKS?” demanded Otto van Hoek, bending over Minerva’s rail to peer down into the bark.

  “They tumbled into a river only a few miles short of Vera Cruz,” Jack said nonchalantly, “so I’d estimate they are bobbing in the Gulf of Mexico somewhere—didn’t you spy ’em on your way in?”

  These were all the words they could exchange before they were drowned out by cheering and jeering from Minerva’s sailors, who had all come abovedecks to watch the bark approach and to see how many of the “dry” group had survived the year and a half in New Spain. They seemed generally happy and surprised, which Jack looked on as indicating that no one in the “wet” contingent had ever expected to see a live Shaftoe again. For his part Jack felt almost like a mother hen counting her chicks as he recognized one familiar face after another, and only a few new ones. Minerva herself had never looked better. Jack guessed from this that they’d made a good profit in Peru and that any damages suffered rounding Cape Horn had already been made good in some Caribbean port. If so, it showed excellent foresight on van Hoek’s part, because Vera Cruz was both wretched and expensive, and, in sum, probably the most unfavorable place imaginable to fit out a ship for the Atlantic crossing.

  “Let us load her up and be done with New Spain,” Jack said when he had climbed aboard and been duly pounded on the back or embraced by every member of the complement. “Also, I would like to carry on Jeronimo’s tradition, as long as we are here…”

  “Which tradition is that?” asked Vrej Esphahnian, looking every inch the successful merchant.

  “That of burning down Vera Cruz at every opportunity.”

  “We’ll be several months sieving the Gulf for the Captain’s books,” said Dappa when laughter had died down. He was the only man aboard who had not aged several years, and he still had more teeth in his head than any four sailors.

  “I was only jesting. We’ve the books, and a letter as well,” Jack said.

  “A letter from whom?” asked Vrej.

  “I’ve no idea,” Jack returned. “Edmund de Ath might have read it to me, I suppose, but…”

  “You don’t trust him! That is very wise,” said van Hoek.

  “On the contrary—in the Prison of the Inquisition I had no choice but to trust him with my life, and he extended me the same consideration. He is odd, but harmless.”

  “Then why didn’t you have him read the letter?”

  “Because I know you will never trust him.”

  “Is he still in Vera Cruz?” Vrej inquired.

  “As you have probably learned, the Spanish treasure-fleet is massing in Havana Bay, getting ready to bring thirty million pieces of eight to Cadiz,” Jack said. “Several galleons weighed anchor in this harbor four days ago, and went thither to join that Fleet. Edmund de Ath took passage on one of those ships—I’ve already paid him his commission as cargador.”

  “Notwithstanding your affection for the man—” Dappa began.

  “I didn’t say anything about affection,” Jack
said.

  “Very well—I’m happy he will be going home on some other ship.”

  “We have no time to waste,” van Hoek said. “If we can embark at the same time as the Treasure-Fleet, we’ll have a much easier voyage. Every pirate in the Caribbean will be hunting for Spanish galleons.”

  “Yes, they will, won’t they?” Jack mused.

  “We will be looked on as a Dutch privateer,” van Hoek predicted.

  “Or a heavily armed sugar-barge headed back to London or Amsterdam,” Dappa put in.

  “In any event, no boca-neer in his right mind will trifle with us when thirty million pieces of eight are afloat in the same waters.”

  AND SO THEY WENT and rounded up all their buried pigs and loaded them on board Minerva, and stowed them alongside silver from Peru and gold from Brazil. Of course van Hoek’s books were loaded aboard first of all. He complained of the miserable job Jack had done re-caulking the lid, and threatened to make him pay the devil, but when the box was set down on the deck of his cabin the Dutchman looked as close to happy as Jack had seen him in years.

  There was no time even to pry the lid off, though. Getting the pigs and loading them aboard only took four days, but it seemed longer to Jack than all the time he’d spent in New Spain before. He avoided going ashore, and could not set foot on dry land without entertaining a moment’s phant’sy that Minerva would sail away and leave him stranded in that town, where anything that moved was pursued by a cloud of mosquitoes, and anything that didn’t was shortly buried in wind-blown sand.

  THEY DID NOT OPEN the crate and read the letter until they had cleared Bermuda, a month after departing Vera Cruz. Dappa passed it around the table first so that Jack, Vrej, and van Hoek could inspect the seal. Pressed into a daub of red wax was a coat of arms too detailed to be made out: Jack imagined he saw a fragment of fleur-de-lis in one corner and a seagull in another. But the other men were all smirking.

  “Who the hell is it from?” he demanded.

  “It claims to be from the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm,” said Dappa.

  This bit of news hit Jack like a yard-arm across the brow, and shut him up long enough for Dappa to break the seal and smooth the page out on the table. “It is in English,” he announced, and took a swallow of chocolate to whet his whistle. “ ‘To Jack Shaftoe, esq. The inexorable tides ebb and flow ’neath the battlements of the Castle as I pen these lines, reminding me that what is submerged and seemingly drown’d forever in fatal Seas may yet rise forth from Neptune’s wat’ry Dungeon if one hath only Patience to await the natural Wheeling of the Heavens. I am put in mind of a certain Man who when I last spied him seem’d to’ve been dragged down by the Moral Undertow which sweepeth away even strong souls who stand long in it, and to have fallen into a condition of Degradation worse than Death; and whose Body was scarcely more fit than his Spirit, as he was far gone with the French Pox and afflicted with divers Wounds and Amputations to boot—’ ”

  “The most of notable of which was inflicted by her,” Jack said with a gigantic wink, “but she omits that—she’s too much the Lady now.”

  “She writes like one,” van Hoek said, none too admiringly.

  Dappa cleared his throat irritably and continued, “ ‘thus did this Man, whom many styl’d a Vagabond, vanish from Christendom’s ken, swamped by Mortality’s Tide; and if rumors echoed up from Barbary, years later, to the effect that a Man answering to his Description had been witness’d there, it signified Nothing more than when a Sparend or Mast-head breaketh the Surface of some stagnant Cove at low Tide and reminds us that, once, a Ship was wrack’d in that Place. But all that was rumor’d concerning this Man was in an Instant over-turn’d when tidings were delivered to France of a bataille rangée in the streets of Grand Caire, whose Reverberations seem’d to echo back and forth ’tween the rugged Pyramids and the Barock Monuments of Versailles, as when a Thunderbolt splits the Air ’tween two very Mountains. For the Tides of Fortune had turn’d, even as those of us, who should’ve known better, had turn’d our backs to advert on inward and inland Matters. Nor was this the only such occasion, for in later Years came news of a Battle won through Alchemical cozening in Hindoostan, and other Ebbings and Flowings I’ll not tediously enumerate, as you are their Author.’ ”

  “Thank God, I was afraid she was going to relate the whole story again,” Jack said.

  “ ‘In recent years, Tidings of your Adventures have, from time to time, stirr’d Admiration and Envy in the Courts of Europe. Tho’ my Situation in this Castle is exceeding remote from such grand Places, yet it has been my Privilege to conduct a frequent Correspondence with certain rare Persons who inhabit them, and they have not been slow to inform me of all that is claimed, or rumored, concerning your Asiatick wand’rings. Indeed, my icy Castle hath proved a better Vantage than Versailles itself, for some of the Letters that come to me here originate in Hanover, and were written by a certain Lady whom you, sir, and I once looked upon there, from a respectful Distance. And lest these words seem to demean that same Lady by implying too great familiarity with me, who am so mean by comparison, I say to you, sir, that as a Paragon of Wisdom and Beauty she is as distant and remote to me, as she was on that Day we spied ’pon her from a Germanick church.’ ”

  This paragraph was enough to make Jack’s eyes cross, and van Hoek knead his temples, but after Dappa had read it a second time, Jack attempted the following translation: “All right, she’s cozy with Sophie, who provided us with our cannons and owns part of this ship, and Sophie knows where we are better than the gossips of Versailles.”

  “We sent Sophie a letter from Rio de Janeiro,” van Hoek said.

  Dappa continued, “ ‘That incomparable Lady hath given me to believe that you may be in New Spain. I pray that this Letter hath found you in good Health there, and that you have found a trustworthy person to read it to you. If it is your Intention to sail for Europe with metal goods, then I wish you Godspeed, and I beg you to consider making land-fall at Qwghlm; for all your Sins have long since been forgiven.’ ” Dappa slowed as he read this, and there was much awkward shifting about as heads turned toward the poleaxed Jack. Seeing that he was no longer really a part of the conversation, Dappa rushed through the last bit: “ ‘I pray you will take this as a fair Prospect, but I know it is of no especial Value to your Partners. To them I say that, if Britain is one day to be the realm of the Lady before mentioned, that the first speck of it to owe its love and loyalty to her will be Qwghlm; and if it is to be overwhelm’d by the Popish legions, the last bit of soil to surrender her colors will be that on which this Castle is pil’d. London may sway to and fro ’tween Whigs and Torys, Jacobites and Hanoverians, but Qwghlm is a rock, ever loyal, and nowhere in the World will Minerva find a safer harbor.’ What the hell is she on about there?”

  Vrej said, “If the last news we had from London is true, Queen Anne will never produce an heir to the throne, which means that the next Queen of England will be our co-owner, the Electress Sophie of Hanover—who has apparently become some sort of patroness to Jack’s fair Eliza.”

  Van Hoek said, “The harbor beneath her castle may be safe. The approach is anything but—we’ve no way of actually getting there.”

  “Eliza—or I should say, the Duchess—addresses that matter in a final paragraph, here,” Dappa said. “She instructs us to make for Derry, or as she styles it, Londonderry, on the north of Ireland, and there to find a certain pilot, name of James Hh. He’ll bring us safely into the harbor beneath Qwghlm Castle.”

  “As Captain of this vessel, I see no commanding reason to do this when perfectly safe and well-known harbors are available at London and Amsterdam,” van Hoek said, “but as a share-holder in our Enterprise I am obligated to entertain discussions.”

  “Sophie is a greater share-holder than any of us, and Eliza would appear to speak for her,” Jack said.

  “But she did not say so explicitly. Until we see a letter with the arms of Hanover on it, we can’t know Sophie’s mind,” sai
d Vrej.

  “So you vote for London?” Dappa asked.

  Vrej shrugged. “That would bring us directly to the Mint at the Tower of London. We could hardly improve on that. What is your vote, Dappa?”

  Dappa’s eyes strayed momentarily toward his cabin. “I vote for Qwghlm.”

  “Are you voting as a share-holder in this venture, or a chronicler of the slave-trade?” van Hoek asked. For as Minerva had worked her way up the long coast of Brazil, Dappa had patiently collected and written down the personal accounts of numerous African slaves, and it was no secret that he would see them in print.

  “True, it’s a foregone conclusion that Eliza—who according to Jack is an ex-slave like us, and a passionate hater of that Institution—would gladly be the patroness of my book, and support its publication,” Dappa admitted. “But I have reasons besides that for preferring Qwghlm. To reach London or Amsterdam we’d have to sail up the Channel, practically under the guns of St.-Malo and Dunkerque and diverse other French privateer-havens. This were unwise even if France and England were not involved in a great war.”

  “We could go north round Britain, conceivably,” Vrej muttered, “and approach through the North Sea, which ought to be a Dutch-English lake.”

  “But if we are going that route anyway, we may as well go to Qwghlm.”

  “I am coming about to your view,” Vrej said, after a moment.

  “I don’t like it,” van Hoek said.

  Qwghlm

  AUGUST 1702

  The Seamen returned enriched with the Plunder, not of Ships, but of Fleets, Loaden with Silver; they went out Beggars, and came home Gentlemen; nay, the Wealth they brought Home, not only enrich’d themselves, but the whole Nation.

  —DANIEL DEFOE,

  A Plan of the English Commerce