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

by Neal Stephenson

  More than half of the other noble and royal funeral-guests had already gone, many headed eastwards toward Braunschweig, Brandenburg, and Prussia, others going back to wherever Sophie had family, friends, or admirers, which meant radiating to all points of the compass.

  Most of those who had stayed behind at Herrenhausen had done so for a reason. That reason was George Louis, Elector of Hanover, out from under his mother’s thumb at last, and next in line to the British throne. And so in spite of the long hours of afternoon sun, the mood of the place had gone just a bit chilly.

  Or so it seemed to Baron Johann von Hacklheber as he strolled through the garden, on another sort of mission entirely. Like a black bumblebee he was zigzagging from one flower-bed to the next. He was gathering a bouquet to award to his lady love whenever she showed up. The fundamental laws of the universe governing young men waiting for young ladies applied here as everywhere else, and consequently it was becoming a very large arrangement. Some while ago it had grown too large for one person to hold. In fact it had now become a sort of flower-dump atop the pedestal of a conveniently located statue. Every time Johann added to the pile, he would say a little prayer to Venus—for she was the pedestal’s tenant—and look up at the Palace of Herrenhausen, and lock his gaze on a window in the west wing where Caroline was being fussed over by her attendants. As long as the lace curtains remained drawn, she was a work in progress. So Johann would step back, examine the flower-pile, and ponder the balance of its colors and the variety of its shapes. He would hold an imaginary colloquy with the mute and unhelpful Venus. Then he would launch out in search of the one blossom that would make it perfect. The garden was parted into polygons—triangles and quadrilaterals mostly—and as the wait stretched out he measured with his strides many of their perimeters. A gardener of a suspicious temperament, observing his movements from a distance, might think he was some sort of spy performing horticultural espionage.

  Anyone observing him more closely, though, would note that he spent more time gazing outwards toward the perimeter than in on the flower-beds. On the road that surrounded the whole garden, along the bank of the enclosing canal, a sparse but relentless traffic of riders went pointlessly to and fro on expensive horses. Mostly they traveled in groups of two and three. Spurs were jingling all round. Their sound infiltrated the garden’s humid fragrant air like midsummer færy-bells. When groups met, murmuring picked up where jingling left off. Someone unaccustomed to Courts in general, and Herrenhausen in particular, would have found it as annoying as it was mysterious. Johann von Hacklheber was used to it, understanding that courtiers literally had no other way to spend their lives. Once more he was put in mind of the wisdom Sophie had shown in situating the riding-path on the extreme frontier of the garden—shouldering all equestrian conspirators out away from the part she loved.

  Spotting a likely rosebud, he drew his left hand up the outside of his thigh, black wool purring under his fingertips, and over the line of tiny silver buckles that fastened his rapier’s black leather scabbard to the end of a broad black leather strap—a baldric, it was called—slung diagonally over his body. Continuing up and back, his hand passed under the skirt of his black wool coat, peeling the hem up to expose its black satin lining. He bent his elbow and supinated his wrist. The back of his hand glided up his buttock and over the black leather belt that kept his breeches from falling down, and stopped above his left kidney. He closed his hand on something hard: the handle of his dagger, which lived in an angled scabbard fastened to his belt at the base of his spine. An outward movement of his elbow drew it from its sheath. He got it out in front of him smartly before his coat-skirts could settle back upon the blade and be damaged by it. This precaution would not have been necessary with many daggers of recent make, which were designed for poking, parrying, and nail-paring, and had little to nothing in the way of a cutting edge. Johann owned several such. But all of them were gloriously decorative, and so did not go well with the funeral-weeds he wore today. The same was true of his collection of swords, which was neither especially large nor small compared to those of other gentlemen. But in the back of his wardrobe he did have this old set, which he’d inherited from a great-uncle. It had been made in Italy at least a hundred years ago when styles of sword-fighting, and hence of weapon-making, had been rather different. The rapier was huge. Its blade was a good eight inches longer than his arm, and somewhat broader than was common today, bringing its weight near the practical limit of a one-handed weapon. The edge had been notched in practice or combat, and re-ground, so many times that the blade no longer looked straight, but instead, as one sighted down it, rambled from side to side.

  But in this it had nothing on the dagger, which was a serpentine blade of watered steel, astonishingly sharp on both edges. This style had become necessary when some Italian fighters, more sophisticated than Johann would ever be, had learnt the trick of reaching out with one hand to grab the blade of the foe’s dagger. The tactic actually worked, if the grip was firm and the dagger’s blade was straight; but it was most inadvisable to try it with a dagger such as this one. At any rate, the hilts of this dagger and this rapier were comparatively simple: Renaissance rather than Barock, and a world away from Rokoko. The scabbards were as plain as they could be, being simple undecorated black leather. Johann had belted them on this morning. Round midday he had finally stopped whacking the huge scabbard against tables’ legs and funeral-guests’ ankles. Now he was using the dagger to harvest flowers.

  The light now came predominantly from the orange western sky, not the direct rays of the sun. The bouquet had to be re-examined in this new light. Johann returned to Venus, sheathing the serpentine dagger with extreme caution, and devoted a few moments to sifting through the pile of blossoms he’d made. Then he looked back at the palace, more out of habit than hope. But he noticed that clear orange sky-light was now shining in one side of Caroline’s apartment and out the other. The sheers had been drawn back from the windows; she was on her way. In a panic—convinced, suddenly, that all his flower-hunting efforts had been misspent—Johann rummaged through his harvest and drew out a generous arm-load of flowers that caught his fancy. He left the remainder as a sacrifice to the love-goddess and began moving toward the compound of the Teufelsbaum in the comical gait of one who is trying to put distance behind him as quickly as possible without breaking into a run. For there was only one portal in the triangular fence that imprisoned the serpent-like tree, and it was a good distance from here; meanwhile a carriage had set out from the palace stables and was moving down the garden path at a healthy clip. God help him if he were late.

  Johann reached the iron gate with some moments to spare and slipped through it into the realm of the Teufelsbaum, which was an hour deeper into twilight than the rest of the garden. Having passed through, he about-faced, thrust his head back out over the path, and turned it to look both ways, making sure that no evening stroller had seen him entering the place where the Princess would soon arrive for two hours’ silent and solitary meditation.

  Satisfied that no one was there, he drew back and closed the gate, carefully, so as not to make a clang. And there he stood, at attention, in the pose of a musketeer at port arms, save that he cradled a bouquet instead of a weapon. Presently a single great draught-horse boomed around the corner, constrained between a pair of long stout carriage-poles, which led back to a little coach. The driver had a terse exchange of noises with the horse. The horse slowed, passed the gate, stopped, and then (for he’d gone a bit too far, and the driver was remonstrating) backed up until the carriage’s side door was aligned with the iron gate. Quelled, the driver now set the brake, perhaps showing an excess of prudence. Johann stepped forward and opened the iron gate. Then he reached up to unlatch the carriage’s side door.

  He swung it open to reveal a pair of mastiffs.

  Their eyes were rolling and bulging. Their nostrils were seething, as each was being straddled by a strong man with both hands clasped around its muzzle to keep i
t from barking. Johann stepped out of the way. The dogs were launched.

  Neither Scylla nor Charybdis appeared to touch the ground until they were twenty feet inside the gate. They bounded into the Teufelsbaum, bashing branches out of the way like runaway gun-carriages. Only after they had disappeared did they think to bark, and then as an afterthought. These were not hunters, bred to bay. They were workers.

  On the path that ran along the back of the plot, hooves were cantering—then they changed over to a gallop. Johann looked up to the intersection just in time to see the rider flash across drawing a cutlass. It was one of his Leipziger cousins. From the back of the Teufelsbaum came a welter of furious barking and a yelp of pain. The two dog-wranglers—Eliza’s footmen—dove out the open door and ran after the dogs. Johann dropped his bouquet, for it had served its purpose, and followed them. He thought of drawing his rapier, but it would get hung up in the unfathomable windings of those branches. So he drew his dagger instead, and transferred it to his right hand.

  He need not have bothered. By the time he stumbled to the back fence, the matter had been concluded. One of the dogs—Johann could not tell them apart in this light—was back in the corner, attending to a long dark robe that had fallen to the ground. On the off chance that the garment was a foe, he was doing battle with it. And on the assumption that it was a vertebrate, he was shaking it back and forth in a bid to crack its spinal column like a bullwhip.

  The other dog was being soothed and attended to by one of the footmen—this had suffered a diagonal gash across the muzzle, which was bleeding a lot, though it was not an especially serious wound.

  The second footman was kneeling beside a man in a dark robe who lay sprawled on his stomach near the fence. This footman must have been a student of anatomy, for with both hands he was methodically driving a dagger with a foot-long blade into diverse carefully selected locations in the fallen man’s back.

  The injured dog—which had reluctantly been squatting on its haunches—got up. But its legs were twitching and it could not remain standing. It fell onto its side and gagged convulsively.

  Johann went over to the dead man—for he had to be called dead now, even if his heart were still beating—and picked up with great care a small dagger that lay on the ground near his right hand. He raised it up into a shaft of light that still pierced the branches. One edge was red, and glistening wet, with the dog’s blood; but the entire blade gleamed with a shiny brown coating glazed with an oily rainbow sheen.

  “Don’t touch it,” said a familiar woman’s voice. “Some are absorbed through the skin.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “I CANNOT IMAGINE A STATE of affairs more awkward than this,” Eliza thought out loud. They were walking back toward the palace, she picking up her skirts and breaking into a run from time to time to keep up with his strides. Normally Johann was more considerate. This evening, his mind was elsewhere. She wanted it back.

  “Two dead assassins in the Electress’s—I mean, the Elector’s garden? Yes, I should say so.”

  It was only a few moments since they had witnessed the terminal moments of some unpleasantness in the canal. They were walking along one of the garden’s transverse paths, glancing to the right at every intersection, looking for a straight route back to the palace. Now suddenly they saw it sprawling against a purple and orange sky at a distance of some five hundred Johann-paces, or seven hundred of Eliza’s. Johann snapped the right turn like a soldier at drill, and stormed on.

  “No, the hashishin are easily managed,” Eliza said. “One died in the woods, the other in the canal—we’ll say that the latter got drunk, fell in, and drowned. The former has already vanished.”

  “Then what is so damned awkward about it? By your leave.”

  Eliza let it be seen that she was exasperated. “Think, son. Spies are ubiquitous, obviously. But this spy works for the Jacobites, and he—or to be precise, his wife—is Caroline’s lady-in-waiting—”

  “She can be replaced.”

  “—and the declared mistress of George Augustus!”

  “Again, Mother, almost the whole point of mistresses is that they may be hot-swapped.”

  “Caroline says that her husband is quite infatuated with this Henrietta. Short of actually dragging the corpses of the hashishin into his Presence, it is difficult for me to see how we can get him to comprehend—”

  “Pardon me for interrupting, Mother, but Caroline also says that Henrietta is unlikely to be the spy. So perhaps it is Harold Braithwaite we ought to be speaking of.”

  Eliza did pardon the interruption, if only because she had to stop talking anyway to catch her breath.

  “They are married to each other, the Braithwaites are,” Eliza reminded her son, “joined together in God’s sight.” They had plunged out into the northern half of the garden, nearer the palace. This meant they’d emerged from a realm of higher trees, and deeper shadows, onto an open flat plain of clear light. A row of four rectangular pools stretched across their way. The water was perfectly smooth, and reflected the fiery colors of the heavens, creating an illusion that these were but Hell’s sky-lights, lit from below.

  Johann had a ready answer to this, but he bit it off. Fifty more strides along, he said: “If spoken to in the right way he might elect to remove himself.”

  “In a minor provincial court, who would mind such an arrangement? But when George Augustus is King of England, it will not be acceptable for his mistress’s husband to be permanently absent.”

  “Very well, Mother, I agree with you! It is most awkward.” Johann spoke the last sentence sotto voce as they were drawing near to a couple of strolling courtiers—like Braithwaite, English Whigs who’d moved here recently to curry favor with the man they were gambling would be their next Sovereign. They had names and even titles; but for all that it really mattered, they could be called Smith and Jones.

  “I beg your pardon, sirs, but have you any notions as to where I—we, rather—might find Mr. Braithwaite?”

  “Yes, mein Herr, we spied him not a quarter of an hour ago, showing some French guests round the garden. They went to see the Maze,” said Smith.

  “The Maze, now that is an excellent place for such an a-mazing fellow.”

  “No,” said Jones, “I do believe that that is Mr. Braithwaite and his party, just yonder, bound for the other side of the garden.” He pointed to several men in black struggling across in front of the palace.

  “Finished with the Maze so soon!” exclaimed Smith.

  “I’m sure it is but a miserable imitation of the French labyrinths, and quite disappointing to his companions,” Johann said.

  “They are going to the theatre, I’ll wager,” said Jones. “Oh, there is no play to-night. But they might be going to have a look round.”

  “And who better to escort them than Mr. Braithwaite, who is an actor of note,” reflected Johann. “Mother, would you please go to the palace and relate all of the very latest gossip to our friend? She will be on tenterhooks.”

  Eliza suddenly looked young, because uncertain. She glanced after Braithwaite.

  “I shall be in with you momentarily, after I have spoken to Mr. Braithwaite concerning his travel plans.”

  “Is Mr. Braithwaite to go on a journey?” asked Smith.

  “A lengthy one, ’tis rumored,” Johann confirmed. “Mother? If you please?”

  “If these two gentlemen would be so good as to accompany you—” Eliza suggested.

  Smith and Jones exchanged a look. “Braithwaite is a merry sort of chap, he shan’t be offended if we cross paths with him—?” said Smith.

  “I see no reason to suppose otherwise,” said Jones.

  “Very well. I will see you in a quarter of an hour,” said Eliza, in adamant maternal style.

  “Oh, Mama, it shall not even be that long.”

  Eliza departed. Johann stood for a few moments, watching her go, then announced, distractedly: “Let’s to it. We are losing the light!”

  �
�Er, why do you need light, my lord?” Smith inquired, after he had caught up, which took some exertion. Jones was already miles behind.

  “Why, so that Mr. Braithwaite can see the going-away present that I will give him!”

  THE GARDEN-THEATRE WAS A SLOPING rectangle of ground, walled in by hedges, and guarded by a picket line of white marble cherubs. These were charming in daylight but now took on the spectral, glabrous appearance of stillborns. A raised stage was at one end. Several of the French guests had climbed atop it and were amusing themselves with the trap-door. Braithwaite stood below the stage, in the orchestra, conversing with a man who like everyone else was dressed in black. But his clothing did not consist of the usual breeches, waistcoat, &c. but rather a ground-seeping cassock with a hundred silver buttons. As Johann drew nearer he recognized the man as Father Édouard de Gex, a Jesuit of noble birth, who’d figured into some of mother’s more disturbing Versailles anecdotes.

  Johann stopped about ten paces short of this pair—close enough to interrupt their conversation. Bringing both hands together at his left flank, he gripped the junction of scabbard and baldric with his left, and the hilt of the rapier with his right. He drew the blade out a foot or so—enough to loosen it. But knowing the weapon was too long to pull free in a single movement, he then raised the whole rig—rapier, baldric, and scabbard—up in front of his face and lifted it clear of his shoulders. A sideways gesture sent the leather goods hurtling away into the cheap seats, leaving him free of all encumbrances, with exposed rapier in hand. His left hand was now free to draw the serpentine dagger as before. He stood squarely facing Braithwaite, dagger and rapier in front of him, both tips aimed at the hollow at the base of Braithwaite’s throat, knuckles down and backs of hands facing outwards, for Johann had been trained by Hungarians.