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

by Neal Stephenson

  “Pity. They are not out this evening,” Bolingbroke remarked.

  “Who or what are not out, Henry?”

  “The young lovers. A chap, strapping, blond, well-heeled, and a young woman, long chestnut hair, and an uncommonly erect—some would say noble, or royal—bearing. They tryst in yonder garden most every evening.”

  “Touching.”

  “Tell me, Roger. You, who know so much of these Germans who design to take over our country—have you met Princess Caroline?”

  “I have had that honor once, on a visit to Hanover.”

  “They say she has the most lovely fall of chestnut hair—is it true?”

  “It is a fair description.”

  “Ah! There she is now!”

  “There who is, my lord?”

  “The young lady I spoke of just now.”

  “Which young lady, my lord?”

  “Come, have a look, and tell me.”

  Roger stepped forward with some reluctance.

  “Oh, come and look!” Bolingbroke urged him. “It’s harmless. Half the Tories in London have peered through this eyepiece, and seen her.”

  “That hardly constitutes a recommendation, but I shall humor you,” Roger said, and bent to the task.

  Through the tiny lens of the eyepiece shone a bubble of green light, which swelled in his sight as he moved towards it; then it was his whole world. A moment’s work with the knob brought it to focus.

  The gallery dividing the garden (foreground) from the stable-yard (background) was pierced in the center by a high vaulted pass-through: a gate, which was presently open. So Roger’s view to the stable-yard was blocked by the gallery, except for in that one place, where it was possible to peer through the open arch-way and see a narrow swath of yellow gravel in the yard beyond. That was enough to make it obvious that the stables were busy this evening: hooves, booted feet, and carriage wheels were passing back and forth, all foreshortened, by the telescope’s optics, into a flat impression, a living back-drop. Against which a solitary woman was visible, crouching in the center of that arch-way, in a sort of traveling-dress. She was changing out of her shoes, and into a pair of boots. The shoes discarded on the pavement beside her were mere slippers, only fit for wearing indoors. An open portmanteau rested nearby, overflowing with clothes. Suddenly a servant burst into the frame carrying a dress over her arm, and shoved it into the bag, then began hammering the contents down with the heel of her hand.

  “I should call it a hasty departure,” Bolingbroke said in his ear. “More Mercury than Venus.”

  Roger ignored him and sharpened the focus, trying to get a clear look at the young woman changing into her traveling-boots. She undoubtedly had a long fall of chestnut hair, which swept down over one shoulder and grazed the ground.

  No, it was on the ground. In a heap. Roger blinked.

  “What did you see!?” his host demanded. “Did you recognize her?”

  “Stay, I’m not certain.”

  The hair had most definitely fallen to the ground. The woman calmly finished tying her boot-laces and then picked it up. She had light blonde hair, going a bit silvery, all pinned up close to her skull. She held the chestnut wig out at arm’s length and gave it a shake, to make the tresses fall straight. Then she lifted it up and set it back in place atop her blonde head. The servant, who had somehow managed to get the bag closed, came round behind her to tug it into place and secure it with a long hair-pin.

  “I’ll be damned,” Roger said. “The hair gives it away. If that young lady isn’t Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, then I am not a Whig.”

  “Let me see! What is she doing now?” said Bolingbroke, and so Roger got out of his way. After a moment to adjust the focus and get his bearings, Bolingbroke said, “I can only see her from the back—her beau is nowhere to be seen—she is climbing into a carriage, I do believe.”

  “Then I believe it too, my lord.”

  The Black Dogg, Newgate Prison

  THE SAME TIME

  IT HAPPENED SOMETIMES in the practice of physics that the student, having wrestled for hours with a recalcitrant equation, would suddenly find a way to wreak some drastic simplification upon it. Of a sudden, two terms, which he had copied out time and again, and which had become as familiar to him as his own signature, would, through some insight, or the providence of some new scrap of information, turn out to be equal to each other, and vanish from the equation altogether, leaving a wholly new mathematical sentence to be pondered. The student’s first reaction was exhiliration: pride at his own cleverness, mingled with a sense that at last he was getting somewhere. But soon sobriety took over, as he pondered the remade equation and became aware that he was really just starting on a new problem. Thus Daniel in the Black Dogg, trying to re-think all. For example: Jack Shaftoe was wearing a sword. When he had been Sean Partry, Daniel had scarce noted this, for many men went armed. But for Jack to be armed, here and now, was no mere affectation. He had set it all up so that he could kill Daniel and Isaac, if it came to that. And the king’s ransom in fine bright candles: from Sean Partry this had been simply bizarre, but from Jack it was a way to get a good look at his interlocutors’ faces whilst keeping his own phizz cloaked in the dazzle. And these were just the simple and superficial matters. Daniel would be puzzling over the deep bits for weeks.

  “Newton is gobsmacked; Waterhouse nods as if he suspected this all along. Perhaps Waterhouse is cleverer than they give him credit for,” said Jack.

  “I knew something was going on; else I could not make sense of recent happenings,” said Daniel. “But I did not expect this.”

  “Can you make sense of it now?”

  “No,” Daniel said, and glanced over at Isaac, who for once was lagging pitiably behind; his bulging eyes strayed to the hilt of Shaftoe’s sword, lingered for a moment, then began to sweep the walls for exits.

  “The entire month’s work: Bedlam, the Main-Topp, and the Stake-out: why? What was the point?” Daniel asked.

  “Ask de Gex,” Jack said. “I had less than you might suppose to do with that tedious poppet-show. Through the most of it I was an amused spectator only. And an enraged, when I spied him swimming away, and knew he had survived.”

  “So it is true that you and he are at odds.”

  “Have ever been,” Jack corrected him, “though he did not wot it, I think, until your nice bit of jugglery went off in his coach, and set him on fire. Now he seems at last to’ve got it through his head that I am not his friend.”

  “Because you engineered a double-cross,” Daniel said.

  “The whole time it has been my misfortune to know the man, he has turned minutes into hours, and hours into days, with his jabbering about Alchemy. The last few months—since he learned that you had been summoned home from Boston—it has been worse than ever. As he has made me suffer so much with it, I reckoned it mere justice to use it to kill him.”

  The mention of Alchemy had brought Isaac composure, and somehow made him willing to take part in the conversation. (This struck Daniel as an extremely familiar pattern; for when had Isaac ever been sociable, save when the company was Alchemists, and the topic Alchemy? Not for nothing did they call it the Esoteric Brotherhood. It was the only way he had ever made new acquaintances, with the sole exception of Daniel; it was his entire system for getting along with people, and that was its true magic.) “If ever was a moment, and a place, to ask a grossly indelicate question, ’twere now, and here,” Isaac began.

  “Let her rip, Ike,” said Jack.

  “If de Gex has been your hated foe for so long, why did you not kill him long ago? For unless I am mistaken this would not be difficult for one such as you to arrange.”

  “You who have slaughtered so many at Tyburn may suppose it is an easy thing to do, and may phant’sy that I have kllled as many as Tamerlane,” Jack returned, “but killing a wretch through the machinery of the Law is easy, compared with how it must be accomplished in my world, when the victim-to-be is Father Co
nfessor to the Queen of France.”

  “So in de Gex’s obsession with Alchemy you perceived a way to get rid of him indirectly,” Daniel said.

  Jack sighed. “It almost worked,” he said. “And may work yet, through some convolution or other. But now is a perilous time, which is why we need to set matters straight, and get it done smartly.”

  “I cannot fathom your arrogance in supposing that, after all you have done, matters may simply be set straight!” Isaac exclaimed.

  “Maybe you had better square that, guv, with the Marquis of Ravenscar,” Jack returned. “If he’s willing to give freedom and a farm in Carolina to a varlet who’ll merely give information leading to my capture, why, what would he offer me, if he were in this room? What would you give me to have the former contents of the Pyx delivered to your house in St. Martin’s this evening?”

  Daniel’s fear of being locked in a dungeon of Newgate with London’s most infamous criminal had suddenly been shoved out of his mind by fear of what Roger would have to say when he learned just how utterly Daniel had bungled the negotiation.

  In his distraction he was overtaken by Isaac, who, after a slow start, had now got up to full speed. “Supposing that there is anything to that offer,” Isaac said, “how can you reconcile it with your duties as a paid agent of the King of France?”

  “Ah, good, very important,” Jack said. “Leroy is a far-sighted chap. Deserves all that’s been said of him. Developed a scheme, in the respite between the wars, to win the next one by destroying the money of England. Excellent idea. Needed someone to do it for him. Haply I came along. I knew London. Knew of metals and coining. Had managerial experience, viz. Bonanza, Cairo, and other exploits. Was lacking in gentlemanly polish, though, and was of extremely dubious loyalty. How then to make good these deficits, that my salutary qualities might be put to work? De Gex. He knew me already. Is as noble as they come. Working in concert with me in London, he could get invited to salons—never my strong suit. He’d seen me make a fool of myself, more than once, over one Eliza—yes, Dr. Waterhouse, I spoke her name aloud—and knew she was the ticket to securing my loyalty. For by certain twists wrought on her by that perverted bitch Fortune, Eliza had married the young Duke of Arcachon, bore his children, and habitually spent half her time in France among the nobility of that land, who are prolific murderers of their own siblings, parents, et cetera. To poison her, or worse, should be as easy, for de Gex, as yanking out a troublesome nose-hair. Thus was the deal struck: Jack would to London to carry out the destruction of the vaunted Pound Sterling under the supervision of his tiresome overseer, de Gex, and in exchange, Eliza would be left alone.

  “What a difference twelve years makes! The war is over, my friends, and France won. Oh, England wrung some scraps from them, but make no mistake, that is a Bourbon on Spain’s throne. Leroy would still see Jamie the Rover on the throne of Great Britain, but that is not as important to him, now, as was securing the Spanish Empire in 1701! This undertaking I have toiled at, of undermining the currency, has taken on a new cast. Before, the objective was to bring about a crash in this country’s foreign trade—its only means of paying for war. Now, it is a petty matter: to create a scandal, and get the rich men of the City up in arms against the Whigs. Don’t look so indignant, Ike, you know perfectly well this is what I’ve been up to. I am in a position to accomplish this now, or as soon as Bolingbroke can arrange a Trial of the Pyx. Shall I? Shall I betray my country to France? Perhaps! For there is much to hate about this place. Do I feel strongly moved? No longer. For Eliza’s a widow. Her French children are grown up, dividing their time ’tween Paris and Arcachon. Her German boy is with her all the time. It has been two years since she graced the soil of La France. In sum it is a much more difficult matter, now, for de Gex to bring about her death—and it shall become more difficult yet, if I bring about his.”

  “Is this going to conclude with you asking for something?” Daniel asked.

  “All I seek is a dignified retirement from the brawls of the World,” Jack said, “though, since you mentioned the farm in Carolina, I think I should like to give that to my sons. They’ll only get into scrapes if they stay in London.”

  “Oh yes,” Daniel said, “it is quite unthinkable that anyone should get into trouble in America.”

  “Different trouble is all I seek for my lads,” Jack said. “Wholesome trouble out in the fresh air.”

  Monmouth Street

  THE SAME TIME

  The Mob are outragious every where when they think themselves provok’d.

  —The Mischiefs That Ought Justly to Be Apprehended from a Whig-Government, ANONYMOUS, ATTRIBUTED TO BERNARD MANDEVILLE, 1714

  FROM THE STABLES of Leicester House, Johann and Caroline had borrowed a pair of gray geldings: good but indifferent-looking riding-horses in simple tack. They rode side-by-side up Monmouth Street. Caroline was straddling her mount like a man, which was made easier by wearing a man’s pair of breeches. Her hair was stuffed up under a man’s white periwig and she even had a small-sword joggling from her left hip. Johann was dressed similarly, though he was armed with the big old rapier he had been carrying around ever since mysterious persons had begun making attempts on the lives of people who were close to him. They were supposed to look like a pair of young gentlemen out for a ride in the town.

  Caroline frequently turned round to look back towards Leicester Fields. Johann had suggested that she not; but it was difficult for a royal to accept such mundane suggestions. She was quite certain that they were being followed by a fellow riding on a black horse. But Monmouth Street curved steadily round to the left as it went, so she lost sight of that rider from time to time. For the same reason they could only see ahead for a certain distance, and every pace brought new complications into view.

  “When I made the plan, I had no way of knowing on what day it might be set into motion,” Johann said, “and so I did not take Hangings into account.”

  “Hanging-Day is not until Friday, is it not so?” asked Caroline. It was Wednesday evening.

  “Indeed. Tomorrow evening I should expect a crowd gathering along the route,” said Johann. “I did not expect one this evening—but—” He trailed off as they rounded the final deflection. A stone’s throw ahead, Monmouth Street joined together with two others, like tributaries of a river, to form a short but very wide thoroughfare that exhausted directly into a place called Broad St. Giles’s. Their view into that district was blocked by a wide but shallow building erected square across their path, like a sandbar at the mouth of a river. It was brick below and timber above, with a pocked tile roof, and was so generally mean in its appearance that from this distance it might have been taken for a stable. But it had a few too many chimneys for that, all of them tottering into the weather like elderly pallbearers leaning into a gale. On the side facing Johann and Caroline it had a little front court running its whole width, supervised by a veranda. Several white-haired, gray-faced chaps were strewn upon some benches there. This was the St. Giles’s alms-house, where parishioners who had outlived their means, their families, or their welcomes could be parked until they were ready for permanent berths in the nearby church-yard. For whatever reason, it had been built in the middle of the intersection so that Monmouth Street traffic must divert around it.

  Now ordinarily, not being able to see into Broad St. Giles’s would have been accounted some small act of Grace. It was not precisely a street, and not a square, but a kind of drain-trap plumbing High Holbourn (which ran off to the right, toward the City) to Oxford Street (left to Tyburn Cross). As a district of Greater London it no doubt had a history and a perfectly legitimate reason for existence; but as a conduit for traffic between Tyburn and London it was a lamentable improvisation. A few kegs of gunpowder detonated in the slum to the north side of it would create a direct through line uniting the two thoroughfares, and relegate Broad St. Giles’s to a stagnant ox-bow lake, alienated from the main stream; but such improvements still lay in the future as Johan
n and Caroline rode toward it.

  Tonight, however, not being able to get a clear view of what lay ahead was perilous. The district seemed more than normally crowded tonight. People—mostly roving tribes of young men—formed a slack eddy around the foundations of the alms-house. They did not appear to be bound for anywhere, unless Trouble could be considered a Destination; and some were already staring at Johann and Caroline, and pointing.

  “Why so many people—the hanging?”

  “Too soon, too soon—oh, if we asked one why he was here, he might claim it was for the Hanging-March—”

  “But to believe it would be naïve,” Caroline said. “You think then that it is as Dr. Waterhouse warned us.”

  “Yes—the Whigs and Tories have used the Hanging as a pretext to move their sympathizers—whatever you care to call them—”

  “Militia?”

  “Perhaps a little less than militia and a little better than the Mobb. I don’t know. At any rate they are here, getting ready to light bonfires—”

  “Look, they have done it already,” Caroline said.

  They had reached the place where the way broadened out, just before the front court of the alms-house. Off to their right, a bonfire had been kindled. It must have been carefully laid, and lit only a moment ago, for it suddenly flared very high, lofting a storm of incandescent twigs and leaves into its smoke-tower. It stood in the center of Broad St. Giles’s, which was a good hundred feet wide there.

  “That is meant to be a gathering-beacon for some faction or other, I’ll wager,” said Johann, rising up in his stirrups and looking about. Indeed, many had altered course, and set their faces toward the flame: some reporting to it smartly, others merely falling in, drawn by the curious instinct of the herd. “It is good for us. Look, the crowd dwindles over yonder, to the right side of the way—we shall slip through and be on High Holbourn presently. Then straight on to the city. Let’s go!” and he drew back on his mount’s right rein, demanding a sharp turn. Caroline did likewise; but she could not resist a look back down Monmouth. There was the fellow on the black horse, now so close behind that she could have called out to him. He was making no effort to hide himself, but waving his hat back and forth above his head as if trying to catch someone’s eye. Succeeding in that, he then pointed deliberately at Johann and Caroline, and held up two fingers; then he joined those two fingers together to form a little blade, and drew it across his throat.