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

by Neal Stephenson

  Jack drew back the hand that had thrown it, and de Gex’s jerked toward him at the same instant, for the two were now joined by a silken cord that had been spooled about this curious throwing-weapon. Jack’s other hand now came down. It was swinging a sword with a curved blade. The tip of it slashed the dagger out of de Gex’s hand, and severed the cord. The dagger skittered away and was lost in darkness.

  De Gex showed, now, that he had studied the art of defencing at some point in his life, for he spun away from Jack even as Jack wheeled into position to guard Eliza. His left, or dagger-, hand had been mangled by Jack’s sword-stroke, but his right was still hale. With it he drew out a small-sword. He faced Jack, who had a watered-steel blade of Turkish design in his right, and nothing in his left. This would have created a reasonably even match, were it not for the fact that they were surrounded by armed men on horseback.

  “Greetings Eliza,” said Jack, “supposing that is you. I am back in your life, for better or worse, and I forgive you for harpooning me. Once you prophesied I should never look on your face again. To this point, it holds true, for I must keep a sharp eye on this de Gex until he and I have finished our duel. But after that—”

  Eliza, busy squirming free, did not answer.

  “A duel would be lovely, Jack,” de Gex was saying, “but a commander on a field of battle must not so indulge himself.” He was holding up his bloodied left hand, beckoning to someone out of Jack’s field of view. His slashed glove flapped like a black flag, dripping blood onto the pavement. Hooves could be heard approaching; one of the gentleman riders trotted in from the perimeter, and stopped, framed in the arch of light through which Jack had just passed. Their route of escape had just been cut off. Eliza got to her feet finally. Jack, whilst keeping his eyes fixed on the face of de Gex, had maneuvered round between the latter and Eliza, and stood now with his back to her, guarding her.

  “Captain Shelby,” de Gex said to the horseman, “have you a pistol?”

  “Indeed, my lord.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “Naturally, my lord.”

  “Do you fancy you can hit that bloke, there, him with the Turkish sword?”

  “It should pose no great difficulty, my lord.”

  “Then pray do so. Good-bye, Jack; and please know that Eliza shall very soon be joining you on the shores of the Lake of Fire.”

  The next sound was the report of a firearm; but it came from the roof of an adjoining town-house, not from Captain Shelby. The only sound that came from Captain Shelby was a distasteful spattering, as his brains showered the forecourt of the Opera, followed by a thud as his body, all but decapitated, tumbled out of the saddle.

  “That was one English musket-ball,” said a voice, oddly similar to Jack’s, from the parapet of the Opera above. “We have more.”

  “Identify yourselves!” demanded de Gex, raising his bloody hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the building’s entrance.

  “You are in no position to give orders. But it suits my purposes to let you know that you have been surrounded by the First Company of the First Regiment of Dragoons of the Whig Association Militia, once known, and soon to be known again, as the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards. We have been bivouacked not far away to defend Marlborough House should the need arise, and were drawn here by all of your disorderly conduct.”

  “Then do you return to your post, Captain,” said de Gex.

  “I am a lowly Sergeant, alas.”

  “Then get thee to Marlborough House, Sergeant,” said de Gex, “for I daresay it shall require some defending, before the night is through. What goes on here is no concern of yours; you are away from your post without leave.”

  “It is, if truth be told, of direct concern to me, sir,” said the Sergeant, “being a sort of family matter. For unless my eyes are telling me lies, my brother, who has ever been a disgrace to the family name, is down there attempting to redeem himself, and repent, and redress his sins, and so on and so forth, by the ancient and honorable trial of single combat—for the honour of a fair lady, no less! I have sworn, many times in the past, that I’d slay my brother myself if given a chance. And perhaps I will someday. But I’ll not abandon him to be slain when he is about to do something honourable for once in his life. So have at it; but if any of your Horse try to intervene, they’ll be as dead as Captain Shelby. We are Dragoons, and to make short work of foppish cavalry is our bread and butter.”

  So spoke Bob Shaftoe. The mounted Jacobites below all heard him, and heeded him; but Father Édouard de Gex missed the last bit, for he had darted inside the Opera House. Jack had lit out after him. After only a moment’s pause, Eliza called out, “Thank you, Bob…”

  “No time for it. You hesitate on the threshold,” Bob said, “one part of you saying go with Jack, another saying you’ve no need of such a Vagabond wretch in your life. My voice bids you go in, Eliza, if a Sergeant may command a Duchess. The rabble beyond the fires, there, does not have the discipline or the discretion of these Jacobite riders. In a moment we may have open war here. Get inside! Stay near an exit. If you smell smoke, drop to your hands and knees, crawl out of the building, and run in any direction as fast as you can.”

  Bolingbroke’s House, Golden Square

  THE SAME TIME

  “WE POLITICIANS,” quoth Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, re-filling his goblet with port for the eleventh time, “are like men who live in frosty climes. It is the habit of such men that whenever they have nothing else to take up their time, they hie to the chopping-block, take up the axe, and set to work splitting and stacking cord-wood. They do it even in the heat of August, for they are ever driven by the memory of having been cold once. You and I have each had our days of bitter cold, Roger, and so whenever we are not otherwise busy, we go to work stacking up our political cord-wood. Each of us has a mountain of it. Other men, seeing the size of the woodpile, would call it enough, and leave off chopping. But you and I know ’tis meant to be burned, and shall burn quickly once lit. This whole Realm that we call the United Kingdom is one great pile of cord-wood now, or rather two piles, one called Whig and one called Tory. They are so near to each other that one cannot be lit without setting fire to the other. All that is wanted is tinder, and a spark. London is packed with tinder to-night, which is your doing, and mine: the militias, and the Mobb. They have been gathering round their bonfires in Hay Market, Holbourn, Smithfield, and Charing Cross, as we have stood here and watched them.”

  As Bolingbroke said this he drew Roger’s attention to the districts named, sweeping his arm from one great intersection to another. He spoke truly, for once. Overhead, the stars had come out. One minute they weren’t visible, the next they were. But they did not flare out all of a sudden, but asserted themselves quietly, as shoals rose from the sea while the tide ebbed. London this evening had become a constellation of bonfires in like fashion; they had not been lit at any one instant, yet every time Roger turned around and looked, there were more of them. Entire districts were dark, but between and among them was laced a flickering and pulsing net-work of fire, strewn, stretched, and rent like an old cobweb. Roger knew that like an old cobweb it was rooted, sticky, tenacious, no easy thing to sweep away. Really it had been present all the time, but invisible, like the strands of spider-silk one walks into in the dark. Fire only lit it up, and made glorious its immensity.

  He gazed far downriver, past the dome of St. Paul’s and the Monument to an old citadel by the side of the river, with a high, four-turreted keep in the middle: the Tower of London. It was dim and quiet tonight, for the Mint was idle. Tower Hill, the belt of open ground surrounding the moat, was speckled with bonfires. Roger lifted his gaze from that distraction and found the dark bulk of Legge Mount, thrust out toward the troublous City like a fist. Thence he indexed round the Tower walls anti-clockwise until he found Bloody Tower and Wakefield Tower, which were joined together side-by-side like misshapen conjoined twins, looking out over the Pool of London from the center of the
southern wall. On the roof of each, a signal-fire had been kindled. Two fires, small sparks, easily resolved from this distance. One might have been just a fire. But two were a signal, sent by one who had an excellent view of goings-on in the Pool.

  “I don’t much care for your firewood similitude, Henry,” Roger said, “for it is too obviously meant to affright me. And moreover, I know what you are about to say next: that your pile of firewood is greater than mine. You cannot deter me now with such loose hobgoblin-talk about civil war. For as bad as that would be, what you propose in its place is worse: you would take us all the way back to the days of Bloody Mary.”

  “Not so, Roger, not so! His Royal Highness is a Catholic, true, but—”

  “As to the other thing, I am not yet overawed by your forces and your powers. Princess Caroline, whatever you might phant’sy about her, is not in London.”

  Bolingbroke laughed. “But, Roger, you told me, only an hour ago, that you had seen her through my telescope!”

  “But, Henry, I was lying.” It was Roger’s turn to take up the de-canter and replenish his glass. As he did, he turned his gaze south toward Hay Market. A contagion of bonfires had lately been spreading up and down its length, threatening to link up with a larger nexus in Charing Cross. They were particularly hot around the Italian Opera, which troubled Roger, for he’d put a lot of money into it, and did not want it burned down by a Mobb. His old eyes could not resolve individual figures from here, but he could see patterns: round and among the fires, dark currents swelled, ebbed, swirled, and splashed: the Mobb, yet wanting any clear purpose. But currents of order and purpose moved through the chaos, like rivers in the sea: disciplined groups, probably militia. The sight of it, so near to his beloved Opera, threw him into a woozy fit, and reminded him how much easier it would be to surrender to Bolingbroke.

  But then his eyes picked out a black corpuscle, moving up Hay Market with implacable purpose, gleaming like a bead of lacquer as it slalomed round bonfires. At the great cross with Piccadilly it made the turn that would angle it up Shug Lane toward Golden Square. He knew then that this was his phaethon, hurtling across London like a black panther through a forest fire. He could not know what message it conveyed; but something in its desperate speed gave him hope it might be good news.

  “We shall soon enough see whether you were lying then or now,” said Bolingbroke—who had taken a moment to regain his hauteur. “But I would speak to you of the other matter—of the Prince.”

  “George Louis of Hanover? Splendid chap.”

  “No, Roger. His royal highness James Stuart, who by right, even if not by law, is our next King.” He held up a hand. “The Queen has made up her mind, Roger. She cannot, will not abandon her own flesh and blood. She will make him her heir.”

  “Then let him have the china, the silver, the furniture for all I care. But not Great Britain. We are past this, Henry.”

  “We are never past what is right.”

  “Sometimes I phant’sy I am speaking to a medieval relic, when I talk to a Tory,” Roger said. “What magical quintessence do you suppose it is that imbues a Stuart with the right to reign over a country that hates him and that espouses a different religion!?”

  “The question is, shall we be ruled by Money, and the Mobb—which are one and the same to me, as neither serves any fixed principle—or by one who serves a higher good? That is the point of Royalty, Roger.”

  Roger paused. “ ’Tis an attractive prospect,” he said. “And I do understand, Henry. We are at a fork in the road just now. One way takes us to a wholly new way of managing human affairs. It is a system I have helped, in my small way, to develop: the Royal Society, the Bank of England, Recoinage, the Whigs, and the Hanoverian Succession are all elements of it. The other way leads us to Versailles, and the rather different scheme that the King of France has got going there. I am not blind to the glories of the Sun King. I know Versailles is better than anything we have here, in many ways that count. But for every respect in which we are inferior to France, some compensation is to be found in the new System a-building here.”

  “It is a bankrupt System already,” said Bolingbroke. “Come, it grows chilly up here, I have certain matters to attend to in my study.”

  He insisted that Roger precede him through the door and down the attic stairway. Presently they came to a small study on the second floor of the house, which had a view over Golden Square that must be pleasant in the daytime. Now, Golden Square had a view of them, for Bolingbroke had left the curtains open, and many lights burning. On the rooftop observatory they’d had privacy; it had been like the backstage of a theatre, where actors banter, out of character, before they go on.

  But now they were on. Their audience was everyone in Golden Square. This included some late arrivals, who’d just drawn up in a phaethon. Roger could hear an argument beginning to catch fire between one who had just emerged from the carriage, and a servant of Bolingbroke’s who had gone out to meet them. Clasping his hands behind his back Roger ambled over to a window and looked down to see Sir Isaac Newton saying something peremptory to Bolingbroke’s butler, who was nodding and shrugging a lot—but not budging. Daniel Waterhouse paced slowly back and forth behind Newton, seeming at once agitated and bored.

  Meanwhile Bolingbroke had gone straight to a standing desk—which had been situated directly in front of another window—where a gloriously ingrossed document was laid out, complete in every particular save that it wanted a signature.

  “Gentlemen do not speak of money, as a rule…”

  “Beg pardon, Henry?”

  “I was remarking a minute ago that your System is already bankrupt. I did not wish you to think me uncouth.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind. But I do say, it is a bit stuffy with all these lights burning—mind if I open a window?”

  “Please make yourself comfortable here, Roger. It will soon be very warm for you everywhere else. I have here a warrant, to be issued by the Privy Council to-morrow, calling for a Trial of the Pyx.”

  Roger was standing sideways to Bolingbroke, sliding up the window-sash. It shuddered as it rose, and caught the attention of Daniel Waterhouse outside. Daniel glanced away for an instant, then snapped back to stare at Roger.

  “It pains me to stoop to this, Roger. But the bankruptcy of the Whigs is financial as well as moral and intellectual; and the insolvency of their accounts and the debasement of their money is a menace to the Realm. It must out.”

  Roger scarcely heard this. It was more speech than conversation, and besides, he knew what Bolingbroke was going to say before he said it. Roger was trying to work out a way to exchange a few words, at least, with good old Daniel, who was but a dozen feet below and twenty distant. Daniel had a preoccupied look, and was moving about curiously on the street, apparently trying to work clear of some shrubs and tree-branches that reached between him and Roger’s window.

  “I am placing my signature upon the warrant now,” said Bolingbroke above scratching noises. “You may be my witness.”

  Roger turned his head to watch Bolingbroke marring the parchment, making the quill hop and skip across the page, like a dancer en pointe, as he dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s.

  Then something whacked Roger on the side of the face. It thudded to the floor.

  “What did you say, Roger?”

  Roger blinked haze out of the impacted eye, and squatted down to pluck the missile off the floor. He knew it immediately. Hefting it in the palm of his hand, he strolled over to the desk, where Bolingbroke was blotting ink.

  “Henry, since you have such a fascination with coins and coining, I thought you might like to have this as a souvenir of this evening. You might like to take it off to exile in France.”

  “Exile in France? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Your future, Henry, and mine.” Roger clapped the object—still warm from Daniel’s pocket—down atop the gaudy Warrant. It was a leathern bundle, sewn shut, written on in ink, and heavy
as only gold could be.

  “A Sinthia from the Pyx,” Roger announced. “There are more, many more, where this came from. Jack the Coiner is ours. He has yielded all, and told all.”

  The Italian Opera

  THE SAME TIME

  SERGEANT BOB HAD given her good counsel, which was to seek refuge in the Opera, and not be swayed one way or the other by the knowledge that Jack was in the place. She moved quickly through the lobby, trying not to spy herself in any of the mirrors. The pins that had held her hair up underneath the Caroline-wig had either been torn out, or had gotten skewed around so that they dug at her scalp and tugged at her hair. She drew them out as she ran and let them tinkle to the floor, then gathered up her loose hair and whipped it around into a loose overhand knot behind her neck. Music beckoned: a strange sound on a night such as this. It meant Order and Beauty, two items that were in short supply in London generally, tonight particularly. She moved toward it, skidding on a thin spoor of blood that, she guessed, had dribbled from de Gex’s wounded hand. It led away through a little door in the corner of the lobby. This blood-trail had already been smudged, here and there, by footprints: Jack pursuing de Gex. So, if her desire was to watch those two men fight with swords, she knew which way to go. But more appealing was the music of violins and violincellos: the modern instruments that could fill a whole opera-house with sound, be the acoustics never so wretched. She passed through a grand gilded door and into a dim foyer, redolent of Mr. Allcroft’s Royal Essence for the Hair of the Head and Perriwigs. From there she entered into the back of the auditorium.