The System of the World: Volume Three of the Baroque Cycle

by Neal Stephenson

  “It’s a long story,” Daniel said, to end the long and profound silence that ensued—for Mr. Kikin’s revelation had left even Mr. Threader dumbstruck.

  “The Tsar has a long memory—and a long reach,” Kikin reminded him.

  “Very well, it’s like this,” Daniel said, and flipped open the latch on the little card-case he had been carrying around. At Bridewell he had dropped off the blank cards made this morning, and swopped them for ones that had been punched by Hannah Spates, and audited by the clerk. He displayed one to the Clubb, holding it up to a window so that light would shine through the holes. “As you can see, to describe it as damaged reflects an error in translation or transcription—what the Tsar meant was that it would have a lot of holes punched in it.”

  “It is hardly the first strange request that His Imperial Majesty has made,” said Kikin. Indeed, the Russian was taking this much more matter-of-factly than Orney or Threader, who were so befuddled that they almost looked frightened.

  Daniel said, “By the time that Brother Norman has this galley ship-shape, which will be—?”

  “A week,” said Orney. “God willing.”

  “By then I shall have damaged quite a few more, and they shall be ready to ship to St. Petersburg. If the Tsar is pleased by the results, the project in question may then move forward. But as this has nothing to do with the Clubb, let us set it aside for now.” And he literally did, putting the card back in the chest and setting it aside.

  “Well, if we’re to speak no further of Brother Daniel’s entanglements in Muscovy,” said Mr. Orney, “perhaps Mr. Threader would now care to explain his presence.”

  “I would speak to the Clubb of an Opportunity,” said Mr. Threader—who had finally composed himself and re-established his customary dry and dignified mien. He was gazing pensively out the window, and so did not witness the other members rolling their eyes and glancing at their watches. After a pause for effect, he made a half-turn and began looking them in the eye, each in turn. “Dr. Waterhouse has raised the possibility that the Infernal Device that nearly killed him and me in Crane Court, might not have been intended for either one of us—but rather for Sir Isaac Newton, who was known to frequent Crane Court late of a Sunday evening. This hypothesis was roundly hooted down at our previous meeting, and I shall be the first to confess that I was extremely skeptickal of it. But everything has changed. In the Clubbs and coffee-houses of the City, one name is now on every tongue: Jack the Coiner. At Westminster, in Lords, and in Star Chamber, who is the man they speak of? The Duke of Marlborough? No. Prince Eugene? No. It is Jack the Coiner. At the Tower of London, rumors abound that Jack the Coiner goes in and out of the Mint at will. Why is my lord Bolingbroke investigating the fineness of Her Majesty’s coinage? Why, because he fears it has been adulterated by Jack the Coiner. Why has Sir Isaac Newton suffered a nervous collapse? Because of the mischief committed against him by Jack the Coiner. Now, I ask you men of the Clubb: supposing, for the sake of argument, that we credit the extraordinary hypothesis of Dr. Waterhouse as to the intended victim of the first Infernal Device: what man would have a motive to assassinate him whose charge it is to prosecute all coiners, and send them to Tyburn to be torn apart? Why, a coiner! And among coiners, which would command the resources, which would have the cunning, to build and to place an Infernal Device?”

  Kikin and Orney were silent, sullenly declining to participate in Threader’s call-and-response.

  “Jack the Coiner,” said Daniel dutifully—since it was, after all, his hypothesis.

  “Jack the Coiner. And therein lies the Opportunity I spoke of.”

  “An opportunity to have our throats slit from ear to ear?” Mr. Orney inquired.

  “No! An opportunity to be of service to great men—men such as Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Viscount Bolingbroke, Mr. Charles White, and Sir Isaac Newton!”

  “Ah, yes, that would seem like an Opportunity for some,” said Mr. Kikin, “but not for me, as I am already quite busy being of service to the Greatest Man in the World. Thank you anyway.”

  “As for myself,” said Mr. Orney, “I am put in mind of Our Saviour, who made Himself of service to the poor by washing their feet with His own hands. Following His example as best a sinner may, I can have no larger ambition than to be of service to my common ordinary brethren, the salt of the earth. The Viscount Bolingbroke can look after himself.”

  Mr. Threader sighed. “I had phant’sied I might fire this Clubb with renewed lust for the pursuit.”

  Daniel said, “Mr. Kikin and Mr. Orney each has his own reason to join in that pursuit, as they have just explained to us—so why don’t let’s each pursue Jack for his own motives. If you wish to construe it as an Opportunity, it is of no account to me one way or the other.”

  “I have been making inquiries about this knave Jack,” Mr. Threader said. “It is rumored that he is from time to time seen around the warehouses of Mr. Knockmealdown.”

  Orney scoffed. “That is like saying he has been spotted in England,” he pointed out, “since the hideaways and bolt-holes of the East London Company spread across half of the Borough.”

  “Who is this person? What is this company?” Mr. Kikin wanted to know.

  “Mr. Knockmealdown is the most notorious receiver of stolen goods in the metropolis,” Daniel said.

  “That is no mean distinction,” Mr. Kikin said, “as this place has as many fences as constables.”

  “To be sure, there are thousands of those,” Daniel assured him, “but only a few dozen receivers of note.”

  Orney put in, “There is only one who has amassed capital sufficient to receive goods on a large scale—say, the whole contents of a pirated ship, as well as the ship itself. That is Mr. Knockmealdown.”

  “And this man has a company?!”

  “Of course not,” Orney said. “But he has an organization, which has ramified and spread from Rotherhithe—where I am sorry to say he got his start—up the bank to encompass a considerable part of the Bermondsey and Southwark waterfronts. Some wag once, drawing a facetious comparison to the British East India Company, dubbed it the Irish East London Company, and the name has stuck.”

  “So Mr. Threader has tracked our quarry as far as the south bank of the River Thames,” Daniel said. “Meanwhile our missing member, Henry Arlanc, has, he assures me, been pursuing his investigations among the Vault-men of Fleet Ditch, so far to no practical effect. Has there been any progress in retaining a thief-taker?”

  “I spent, or rather wasted, some time on it,” said Mr. Kikin. “I posted a reward, and heard from several who feigned interest. But when I explained the nature of the work to them, they quickly lost interest.”

  “If the hypothesis of Brother Daniel and Mr. Threader is correct, this explains itself,” said Mr. Orney. “Thief-takers, as I understand them, are petty scoundrels—poachers of small game. Such a varlet would not dare challenge Jack the Coiner.”

  “Perhaps, rather than posting a reward, it were better to find one thief-taker who is resolute, and treat with him directly,” Mr. Threader suggested.

  “It is most generous of the two of you to share these notions with me,” said Mr. Kikin, “but I have anticipated you, and made efforts to reach Mr. Sean Partry.”

  “And that is—?” Orney asked.

  “The most famous of all living thief-takers,” Kikin announced.

  “I have never heard of him,” said Threader.

  “Because you are a City man—why should you? Rest assured he enjoys a high reputation in the demimonde—several of the petty thief-takers who came to me after I posted the reward, mentioned his name with great respect.”

  “Supposing that he is all that he’s reputed to be—even so, can he challenge the likes of Jack the Coiner?” Daniel asked.

  “More to the point, will he?” Threader added.

  “He will,” Kikin returned, “for ’tis said that his younger brother was slain by a member of Jack’s gang. As to whether he can,
this shall be discovered before we have to pay him very much money.”

  “Very well, provided we can settle on a clear definition of this troubling phrase very much money, I would be amenable to further contacts with Mr. Sean Partry,” said Mr. Threader; and the others seemed to say, with little nods of their heads, that they did not disagree.

  “We’ve not heard from you, Brother Daniel,” said Orney. “Have you continued in your own investigation? How goes it?”

  “It goes splendidly,” Daniel returned, “but it is a slow strategy that I am pursuing, one that shall reward our patience. Notwithstanding which, results are beginning to develop: both the Marquis of Ravenscar and the Royal College of Physicians have been victims of burglary in the last month. I could not be more satisfied.”

  The other three exchanged looks, but none would be first to admit that he could not understand what Daniel was talking about. He was developing a reputation, it seemed, as a strange bloke who wandered about London in possession of perforated gold plates badly wanted by the Tsar; and the instincts of Mr. Orney, Mr. Threader, and Mr. Kikin were not to pry into the Pandora’s Box that, it seemed, was the life of Dr. Waterhouse.

  Westminster Palace

  25 JUNE 1714

  THE HOUSE BEING INFORMED, That the Secretary of the South Sea Company attended;

  He was called in; and, at the Bar, presented to the House, a Book containing the Proceedings of the Directors of the South Sea Company, relating to the Assiento Trade; together with all Directions, Letters, and Informations, which the Directors, or any Committee of Directors, have received concerning the same.

  And then he withdrew.

  The Title of the said Book was read.

  Ordered, That the said Book do lie upon the Table, to be perused by the Members of the House.

  —JOURNALS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, VENERIS, 25° DIE JULII; ANNO 13° ANNÆ REGINÆ, 1714

  Dr. Daniel Waterhouse

  c/o the Royal Society

  Crane Court

  London

  Mr. Enoch Root

  Thorn Bush Tavern

  Boston

  25 June 1714

  Mr. Root,

  Forgive the use of that barbarous convenience, the Pencil. For I write these words over a cup of Java in Waghorn’s Coffee-house, which as you may know is a sort of annex to the lobby of the House of Lords.

  From which you may infer that I am pressed in on all sides by that species of bipedal parasite known as the Lobbyer. Indeed, you may even be tugging fretfully at your red beard, wondering whether I have become a Lobbyer. The fact that I am writing a letter—instead of sidling up to well-dressed gentlemen and feigning interest in their children’s welfare—is evidence to the contrary. My sojourn to Westminster today was occasioned by the need to speak to the Longitude Committee, and is being extended by my hope—vain, as it turns out—that Lords shall wind up their deliberations in a timely manner so that I may have a few words with one of their number. So perhaps in the end I am a Lobbyer.

  I write to you because I wish to communicate with my son, Godfrey. This might seem a curiously indirect way of doing it. Indeed I often send the lad birthday-greetings and short paternal homilies, addressed to him care of my beloved wife. The little notes that come back to me months later, veering across the page in his deranged, expansive hand, and riddled with ink-bursts, are evidence that Faith is passing my correspondence on to him. Why, then, should I route this letter through the circuitous channel of Mr. Root’s Table at the Thorn Bush Tavern? Because what I wish to convey to my son is not easily set down in phrases that a boy of his age has the wit to parse rightly.

  It is known to everyone who has studied the life of my son’s namesake, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, that when he was a boy, he was, for a time, locked out of the library of his dead father. A petty nobleman of Leipzig, learning of this atrocity, intervened on the boy’s behalf, and saw to it that the library-door was unlocked, and little Gottfried was given the run of the place. What is less well known is that the mysterious nobleman was named Egon von Hacklheber—a contemporary of the mighty and orgulous banker, Lothar, who made the House of Hacklheber what it is, and is not, today. Rather than offering a physical description of Lother’s little-known “stepbrother” Egon, I shall make this letter a good bit shorter by saying that he looked like you, Enoch. He vanished shortly after the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War and was presumed murdered by highwaymen.

  Now in Boston lives a boy Godfrey William who may shortly find himself in the same plight that Gottfried Wilhelm faced in Leipzig sixty years ago. To wit, it is likely that his father shall turn up dead, and that the boy shall find himself in the care of a mother who is loving and well-intentioned but entirely too apt to be swayed by the counsels of neighbors, teachers, ministers, &c. I have spent enough time around Puritans in general, and Boston Puritans in particular, to know what these people will tell her: lock up the library! Or in other words—since I left only a paltry library behind—raise the boy to think of his father as a kindly but inept, fanciful but harmless character (rather like our neighbor, Mrs. Goose), who wandered off on a fool’s errand, and met with a wholly predictable, and therefore richly deserved, fate—a sort of fate that Godfrey may avoid, by steering clear of his father’s eccentricities and enthusiasms. In other words, Faith will let the boy partake of whatever nourishment he wants, provided it smacks not of Philosophy.

  I charge you, Enoch, with saving the boy. A weighty burden I know; but much is afoot here. To assist you in this difficult task, I shall from time to time send you letters such as this one, that you may read in a few minutes what I have done in a few weeks. If these are shown to Godfrey when he is older, their contents may help to dispel any illusions as to my sanity and my seriousness that may have been planted in his mind by his fellow colonists. Months may pass, however, during which I do not have leisure to write to you again, even hastily with a pencil, as now. The odds are high that during those months I shall have an encounter with a nicotine-smirched poniard, a Black-guard’s bludgeon, a court-fop’s epee, or Jack Ketch’s rope. I may even—unlikely as it now seems—die of natural causes.

  I have just been interrupted for some minutes by an acquaintance, one Mr. Threader. He is flitting and hopping about Waghorn’s and the Lobby like a sparrow whose nest has just been blown down in a wind-storm. Most of his energies are directed towards what is going on in Lords, which has to do with some Asiento money that has gone missing (if you have not heard of this scandal, vide any of the newspapers on the ship that brought you this letter). But he has graciously spared a few minutes to feign some concern for Sir Isaac. Two weeks have passed since Newton came here to discourse of Longitude before Commons, was pulled aside to treat of Mint matters in Star Chamber, and suffered a nervous collapse. Countless rumors have circulated concerning the nature and gravity of his illness, and Mr. Threader has just recited all of them to me whilst studying my face. I cannot guess what my phizz told him, but my words let him know that the stories are all falsehoods. The truth of the matter is that Newton has been moved back to his house in St. Martin’s, and is recovering satisfactorily. Today I addressed the Longitude Committee in his stead—not because he is really all that sick, but because no inducement will now prevail on him to come back to Westminster Palace, which he looks on as a thriving nest of vipers, hornets, Jesuits, &c., &c. If he ever sets foot in this place again—which will happen only if he is compelled to, by a Trial of the Pyx—he will not come naïve and unready, as he did a fortnight ago. He will come in the habit of a Grenadier, viz. as bedizened with Bombs as is the Apple Tree with Fruit.

  You will be shocked to learn that gambling is the order of the hour, here in Waghorn’s. The lobbyers have all lobbied one another to exhaustion, and still the Lords show grievously bad form by continuing to deliberate behind closed doors. Nothing is left to the lobbyers, as a way of passing the hours, than Vices. Having drunk up all the spiritous matter and smoked up all the air in Waghorn’s, the only fe
asible vice left to them is the laying of wagers. Coins brought hither this morning for the honest purpose of bribing legislators, are being put to base uses.

  When I began writing this letter, they were laying odds on whether Bolingbroke would achieve his paramount goal, which is to induce the Privy Council to call for a Trial of the Pyx. But the scraps of paper and snatches of gossip percolating out of Lords seem to say that things are not going Bolingbroke’s way. His very survival may be at stake; the Pyx gambit, though excellent, may have to be set aside, for now, so that he may mass all his efforts on rebuttal of the Asiento allegations. Those who gambled on a Pyx trial an hour ago, have given up as lost whatever money they staked then, and are now trying to recoup their losses by betting that Her Britannic Majesty will prorogue Parliament simply to save her Secretary of State from going down—and perhaps taking the South Sea Company with him.

  The doors to Lords have been opened. I shall close for now and continue when I can. A lot of money is changing hands. Lostwithiel is approaching.

  I am writing this on my lap, sitting on the edge of the Thames embankment, legs adangle above the flow. I am, I should estimate, the ninety-fifth in a queue of a hundred, waiting for watermen at Westminster Stairs. The other ninety-nine regard me with scorn for my boyish posture; but as the eldest man in the queue I have certain perquisities, viz. I may sit down.

  The reason I am so far back in the queue is that I stayed late at Waghorn’s to chat with the Earl of Lostwithiel and with Mr. Threader, who irrupted upon us and would not be moved away. He noted, more than once, that by barging in upon us he was effecting a small re-union of three who were together in Devon in January. Indeed, it was there that I first drew Mr. Threader’s notice by endorsing Lostwithiel’s venture, the Proprietors of the Engine for Raising Water by Fire, and causing a small run on Mr. Threader’s stock of capital, as several of his clients were (improbable as this must seem) moved by my discourse to invest. This was but the first disturbance I caused in Mr. Threader’s well-regulated and steady life. Since then there have been explosions, arguments about politics, letters from the Tsar, and diverse other novelties: making me into a persistent and alarming presence in his life.