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

by Neal Stephenson

  Of the motley line of half-timbered houses that stretched along the southern verge of the Parade, the Lieutenant’s Lodging lay farthest to the west. The one Rufus MacIan was concerned with was at the opposite, easternmost end, therefore closest to Bloody Tower. It was thrust out into the green in a manner that, to the military eye, recalled a bastion. Between its eastern face and Bloody Tower was an open ground perhaps fifteen yards across—a narrow enough interval to allow for targeted musket-fire. In other words, Guards barricaded in that house could spoil their plans vis-à-vis Bloody Tower.

  Another flash of red—a soldier had passed by a window in a hurry, seemingly on a downward trajectory. As if descending a staircase.

  The door-handle was moving! MacIan watched in fascination from no more than ten feet away. The front door moved outwards half an inch. Oblivious, the last two of MacIan’s gunners ran by, headed for sanctuary in Bloody Tower. The soldier inside could see them, but he could not see MacIan. What would happen next was suddenly as clear to MacIan as if he’d witnessed it. He set his musket down and strode at the door of the house, reaching back behind his head with both hands and groping for the Claymore. He found it, and pulled it up out of the back-holster just as the door was swinging open. A musket emerged first, held in white hands.

  MacIan drew the handle down through the air as fast as he could get his arms to move. But this was nothing compared to the swiftness achieved by the tip of the four-foot blade, which moved so rapidly that it spoke out with a wicked noise like the uncoiling of a bullwhip. Something messy happened and the musket fell to the ground outside the door. MacIan’s blade had passed through the man’s forearm and struck the edge of the door at an angle, skiving off an acute angle of wood and stopping when it struck a nail. The soldier had vanished inside without MacIan’s ever seeing his face. Suddenly the grip of the Claymore was jerked nearly out of his hands as the door was pulled shut. The tip of the blade struck the door-frame and was knocked free so briskly that the weapon, shuddering from end to end, sprang back into the air. MacIan caught it by the cross-guards. He heard door-bolts being thrown inside—from which he guessed that there was another soldier within.

  MacIan flattened himself against the wall of the house and spent a few moments getting the Claymore hung on his back, and judging the number of steps to the musket he had left on the ground. Yeomen were taking pot-shots at him from the opposite corner of the Parade. But at such a distance a musket-ball would merely accept suggestions—not obey orders. The balls were smashing out windows above him and probably creating as much of a problem for the soldiers inside as they were for their intended target.

  MacIan ran, snatched his musket off the ground, wheeled, and charged round the corner of the house to the open space between it and Bloody Tower. If they had been hoping to shoot down at him, they’d now have to present themselves at different windows, and perhaps move to different rooms.

  The tactic worked, as cheap simple tactics commonly did: through a ground-floor window he could see a door flying open, and a man in a red coat running through it and wheeling toward the light—then freezing up in horror as he realized he had just blundered into the enemy’s sights. This gave MacIan the moment that he required to center the musket on the red breast of his foe. But as he did so he noticed a sash being flung open on the upper storey, and another flash of red appearing there.

  And now a very rapid calculation: the ground-floor soldier was his. All that was required was a small movement of the trigger finger. As for the one above, if this Jock had a weapon in condition for use, then Rufus MacIan was about to be shot, no matter what he did; and if he tried to raise his musket-barrel and draw a bead on the new lad, he would probably miss. So he pulled the trigger.

  What happened after that was anyone’s guess, since all he could see was powder-smoke. But a moment later an answering blast came from the window above, and he felt the ground jolt beneath his feet. This, he reckoned, must be the impact of a musket-ball on his body, being transmitted down his legs into terra firma; and if he stood still for a few more moments he would feel the first hot shards of pain traveling away from the entry-wound, would feel an unaccountable need to clear his throat as his lungs filled up with blood.

  But none of these things happened. The smoke was drifting away. MacIan looked up at the window, out of a sort of professional curiosity, wanting to lay eyes on the soldier so incompetent that he could miss that shot, wanting to relish the humiliation in the Englishman’s eyes when he kenned he’d fired into the ground.

  But when the smoke finally cleared, he saw no such thing, but rather an unbeast, a nightmare vision, like one of the horrors from Malplaquet that cluttered his brain, like so many stuffed monsters in an old hunter’s attic, and came alive each night to torment him just as he was about to drop off to sleep. This unbeast moved, and slid limp from the window, landing on its head in the grass before him. It did not come to a decent position of repose. Rather the corpse was propped up on something: a half-pike or javelin that had transfixed its ribcage, like an enormous alien bone that had grafted itself onto the man’s skeleton.

  MacIan looked up into the vacant window but saw no one there—so it must have come in to the window from outside. But he was the only man in the yard, and he had no memory of chucking any spears lately. It had to have come from above, then. He turned around to face Bloody Tower and ran his gaze up forty feet of sheer stone to its parapet.

  There, framed in a slot between two crenels, and silhouetted against the sky, was a very large man with a beard flowing down his front. Smaller men were active around him, hustling among the gun-carriages that were situated on the roof of this Tower, wheeling them about to aim toward the River, chocking them up with thick quoins so that they were aimed, not at the shipping in the Pool, but down upon the soldiers on the Wharf.

  The big man with the beard was gripping in one hand another half-pike. He raised the other to make a gesture. It was not a hand but a barbed hook with a skein of moist detritus swinging from it, possibly hair or shreds of clothing. With this he pointed up, away from the river, drawing MacIan’s eye away from the toils of the gunners and towards the penetralia of the Tower of London. Over the roofs of the Cold Harbour storehouses he pointed, and over the soldiers’ barracks and the gate of the Inmost Ward, to the lofty prize that stood in the center of all, commanding the complex, the River, and the City from its four turrets: the White Tower. He thrust his hook at it thrice.

  The Hero of the Gy needed no more urging. Dropping his empty musket, he unslung his Claymore for what he guessed would be the last time, and hurried between droning musket-balls towards Cold Harbour Gate.

  LIKE ANY SELF-RESPECTING CONDEMNED traitor, MacIan had spent plenty of time plotting dramatic escapes from the Tower of London. He knew where the exits were. Today, though, he must think of them as entrances.

  There were five gates to the Inner Ward. One of them was an old sally-port in the northeast corner, near Brick Tower, leading into the Mint. It was of no concern today. The remaining four gates were spaced unevenly along Water Lane. Bloody Tower and Wakefield Tower each contained a gate. These two structures were so close together as to constitute virtually a single, misshapen building. A stroller moving east on Water Lane would spy the Bloody Tower gate first and then, after rounding the bastion of Wakefield, see its gate. But though close together, these two portals were as divergent as they could be. The first was a broad, massive, handsome Gothick arch that led directly onto the Parade via the court where Rufus MacIan was now standing. Thanks to the Russian, the light shining through that arch was reticulated by a massive grid of iron bars. Beyond it MacIan could see several redcoats lying still in the middle of Water Lane. They’d marched back from the Wharf expecting to re-enter the Inner Ward through that arch, but had been stopped by the ancient portcullis. And at that moment a dozen Scots horsemen had charged down on them swinging sabers. When horse attacked foot the outcome was never in doubt, unless the foot had pikes, and were well
drilled. The Wharf Guard of the Tower of London did not carry or use pikes.

  The second gate was a little postern giving entry to the circular ground floor of Wakefield Tower. Thence one could cross into a long L-shaped gallery that ran up through Cold Harbour and broke into the open just short of the White Tower. This was not a fit way for cavalry to come in. If things were proceeding according to plan, Tom the Black-guard was ensconced beneath a window near the vertex of the L, commanding both legs of the passage, with a large number of loaded firearms in his lap. Few if any of the Tower’s would-be defenders would pass in or out through the Wakefield Tower gate. But some of its attackers should have come running in that way on the heels of the cavalry charge.

  MacIan ran north along the verge of the Parade, passing by the Cold Harbour storehouses on his right. There was still a damnable lot of musket-fire coming from Yeomen’s windows, but none of it was directed his way any longer. When he reached the corner of the last storehouse and ducked around it, he at last had a safe vantage-point from which to appreciate why. The appearance of a few gunners atop Bloody Tower and the adjoining stretch of wall, aiming Her Majesty’s cannons down across Water Lane toward the Wharf, had compelled the Wharf Guard to pitch their muskets into the river and stand helpless. They were no longer able to shoot at men climbing the rope ladder into the Lieutenant’s Lodging. And so a continual parade of invaders was now emerging from the front door of that house and sprinting down to Bloody Tower where they could take stairs up to the battlements and man yet more cannons. As they did, they drew what little fire the Yeomen could muster. But even this was being suppressed by occasional fusillades from firing-points that the invaders had set up along the southern edge of the Parade.

  He heard a gate groaning behind him and so turned his back to the Parade, which had become a sort of closed chapter anyway.

  He had been engaged, these last few moments, on a project of looping north round the end of Cold Harbour to get from the Inner Ward (a parade for Guards and a village green for Yeomen) into the Inmost Ward (the court of a Royal Palace). He was facing now into an interval some ten or fifteen paces wide separating the Cold Harbour buildings from the corner of the White Tower. That opening was walled off; but there was a gate in the wall, which was being very considerately opened for him by a man in a kilt.

  “At last, someone I can talk to,” MacIan said. “Welcome to the Tower, lad.”

  “And welcome to the Inmost Ward, uncle,” returned this young man, and stepped back to let him enter.

  This was a mere bowling-green compared to the Parade. It seemed even smaller than it was because it was mashed between the immense White Tower on the north and, on the south, Wakefield Tower (a palace unto itself) and a congeries of bulky office buildings and storehouses belonging to the Ordnance. Somewhere in the midst of that would be another tiny postern—the third of Water Lane’s four portals—communicating with the Constable’s Lodgings, and of no interest today. Far more important was the last gate, a proper arch, large enough for Highlanders to ride through without dismounting. That gave access to a sort of barracks-street along the eastern perimeter of the Inmost Ward, and thence to another gate, a partner of the one MacIan had just walked through…where was it, though? His eye, no judge of distances, had trouble making sense of the place. But the piper had taken up a position at the head of the barracks-street to lead the cavalry onwards. The sound of the music crashing from the stony environs gave MacIan the information he wanted to decypher the place. He found the gate in question. It was open. Men were beginning to ride through it. Some were slumped over in their saddles, clutching at battle-wounds earned in Water Lane, or perhaps earlier, when they had galloped out of the streets of London town to astonish the sentries posted at Lion Gate. But most were riding straight-backed and proud, and one—bless him—carrying the unfurled colors of MacIan of MacDonald.

  “So that is the famous White Tower,” said the lad who had opened the gate for him, “Feich! It’s not even white!”

  “The Englishmen have no self-pride. If you read their history you will see that they are nothing more than a lot of doxy and mistemious bog-stalkers. Think: what would a few gallons of white paint cost the Queen of England?”

  “For the love of God, I’d come down and paint it myself just so I wouldn’t have to look at it. Everywhere you go in this cursed city, there it stands, a blot on the horizon.”

  “I’ve a more expeditious solution,” MacIan answered. “I know of one place, not far from here, where you can look in any direction you please without having to suffer the sight of this rubble-heap.”

  “Where’s that, uncle?”

  “The inside of it!” And MacIan beckoned to the banner-carrier.

  “What—how do you get in?” inquired the lad.

  “Through the bloody front door. They built it high off the ground, you see, there—to make it easy to defend—but the English, lazy as they are, have built a lovely timber staircase so they need not strain themselves.”

  “I cannot see it.”

  “The barracks are in the way. Follow me!” MacIan entered the front door of a sort of gatehouse pent between two barracks.

  “I’ll go before you, uncle!” cried the lad; and behind him, like exclamations could be heard from other warriors who were hastily dismounting in the Inmost Ward and running to catch up with them, encumbered by diverse cutlasses, Claymores, blunderbusses, and granadoes.

  But Rufus MacIan strode out the back of the gatehouse and began climbing a rude wooden staircase towards a simple round-headed archway cut into the White Tower’s south wall. “You do not understand,” he called over his shoulder. “You are looking forward, now, to a pitched battle for the White Tower. As if this were a picaroon-romance. But the battle is over. You have fought it and won it.”

  A Yeoman Warder suddenly stood framed in the arch. He drew an old rapier from a scabbard at his hip, held it up above his head, and began to charge down the timber stairs, screaming. Rufus MacIan did not bother reaching for his Claymore. The Yeoman was butchered on the hoof by musket-balls flying in from half a dozen different angles. He sprayed and faltered at each impact, disintegrating before their eyes, and then collapsed and rolled down the stairs leaving much of himself behind.

  “He’s been reading picaroon-romances, too,” observed Rufus MacIan. “Watch your step, lads, it’s a wee bit slippery.”

  He took the last steps two at a time and strode across the threshold of the White Tower, saying, “I claim thee for Glen Coe.”

  The City of London

  LATE AFTERNOON

  HE WAS PRESENTABLE. He was amiable. He’d been taught to sign his name—assuming Jones really was his name—on command. Beyond that he was, and always would be, perfectly illiterate. This rendered it out of the question that Seaman Jones of the good ship Minerva would ever be an officer, or a man of commerce.

  Jones did not chafe under his limitations—if he was even aware he had any. They had picked him up in Jamaica. His story at the time was that he was a wholesome North Devon lad who had been abducted from the shore round Lynmouth by a boat-load of sailors from a Bristol slave-ship anchored in the Channel—in other words, that he’d been press-ganged—and that, after a run to Guinea to pick up slaves, he had jumped ship in Jamaica. They had always assumed that Jones would jump ship again one day, and avail himself of his first chance to get back to his family farm on the edge of Exmoor. But that had been years ago. Jones had proved immune to the temptations of Exmoor on several occasions, as Minerva frequently called at Plymouth, Dartmouth, and other ports convenient to his supposed homeland. Indeed, he gave every indication of being perfectly content with his lot aboard Minerva. There had been some trouble with rowdiness at first, providing a hint as to what Jones was running away from, but as years and voyages had gone by he had ripened into a steady, reliable, if somewhat limited crewman.

  So on the liability side of Jones’s account, to illiteracy could be added a mysterious, probably criminal past, an
d a want of ambition. He had, however, one asset that was not possessed by the officer who was walking next to him up Lombard Street: he was a white-skinned Englishman. From time to time Jones was called upon to make the most of this asset by dressing up in a pair of breeches, leather shoes, a waistcoat, a long watch coat of a somewhat nautical cut, and a very plain horsehair periwig. This was the sort of get-up that a ship’s officer might keep stuffed in a footlocker while crossing an ocean, and pull out after dropping anchor in some harbor, so that he could go ashore and look minimally decent in the eyes of money-scriveners, victuallers, ship-chandlers, and insurance underwriters.

  If these two were to hail a hackney coach and travel a couple of miles west to the new streets round Piccadilly and St. James, where shopping rather than shipping was the order of the day, their roles, in the eyes of most casual strollers, might be reversed. For people with an eye for clothes would notice that Dappa’s actually fit him, that they were of recent make, well cared for, and cleverly picked out. The lace around his shirt-cuffs had never been dragged through beer-foam, goose-grease and damp ink; his shoes shone like wax fruit. The sophisticated toffs of the West End would then take in the fact that Dappa was older, that he was alert to everything going on around them, and that when they came to street-corners Dappa went where he would, and Jones followed. Jones looked about himself curiously, but he was not really paying attention in the way that Dappa was. A West Ender, watching this procession of two stride past, might conclude that Dappa was a Moorish diplomat from Algiers or Rabat, and Jones his local guide.

  But this was not the West End. This was the City of London. They were only a stone’s throw from Change Alley. No one paid much heed to clothing here, unless it was as a truly vulgar and shocking exhibit of wealth. By that standard both Dappa and Jones were invisible. Dappa, darting ahead through the crowd of money-men, was assumed to be the servant—a meat souvenir picked up on a trading-voyage—beating a path through the jungle, as it were, and keeping a shrewd eye for hazards. Jones, strolling in Dappa’s wake, was obviously the master, and what might in other settings have been seen as a stupid or vacuous expression could be taken, here, as the meditative phizz of a financial savant who was trying to plumb the meaning of the latest trend in Sword Blade Company share prices, and couldn’t be bothered to dress himself elegantly or indeed to find his own way down the street. His absent-minded way of taking in everything around him was proof that his was a mind tuned to follow the divagating strains, and quiver in sympathy with the startling chords, of the Market.