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

by Neal Stephenson

  “I know that there is a—”

  Daniel had been about to say superstition. “—a tradition that it is unlucky to have a woman aboard ship.”

  Van Hoek considered it. Van Hoek considered everything, which made it difficult to engage him in idle chitchat. “The first woman who spent any amount of time aboard this ship was Elizabeth de Obregon, whom we salvaged from the wrack of the Manila Galleon at the same time as him who burned it, one Édouard de Gex.”

  “He’s dead, by the way.”

  “Again? I am glad to hear it. After that voyage, we did come in to some bad luck, to be sure; but I would have to be some sort of imbecile to blame it on the lady de Obregon, when the cause was obviously the malice and cunning of de Gex.”

  “That is just,” Daniel said. “So you are not a believer that women are bad luck on a ship?”

  “Such a belief would be difficult to reconcile with the well-established record of success of the Malabar pirate-queen.”

  “And yet it made you uneasy to have Princess Caroline aboard. But I suppose there were other reasons for that. From the sounds of it, the Navy was after her.”

  “We had been tarrying in certain coves and inlets of Essex, frequented by smugglers—”

  “I know those coves well,” said Daniel with a smile, “it is where my father made his fortune.”

  “On the night of the 28th we received word that it was safe for us to enter the Thames—for the information that the Whigs were gaining the upper hand had been transmitted from London, at great speed, by signal-fires. I felt confident of this, or I should never have approached the Nore in the first place. When I spied that Navy brig harrying that sloop, I guessed that her skipper simply had not received word of the changes that were afoot in London. And indeed, as we made our way upriver with the Princess, we presently saw more than one Navy ship flying an ensign bearing the arms of Lord Berkeley—a Whig.”

  “And yet still you were glad to get her off your ship.”

  “Certain cargo is more trouble than it can possibly be worth,” said van Hoek, and turned away from Daniel to regard Minerva. Cranes and windlasses were at work hoisting stout boxes of round river-rocks and cannonballs out of her bilge.

  “You are not speaking only of Princesses, I detect,” Daniel said.

  “It was only meant to act as a sort of buffer, to see us through lean times,” van Hoek said. “As a merchant keeps silver plate in his home, which may be melted down and coined when liquidity is wanted, so we have had those gold plates in our bilge. Not a single Customs inspector has ever suspected they were there. Most of our seamen do not even know. From time to time we would coin a little. I had no inkling we were in such peril.”

  “The only reason it was dangerous was that the Master of our Mint has an especial interest in this type of gold. As long as you did not coin it, you were safe. But to strike even one guinea and place it into circulation was like firing a pistol into the air in a church.”

  “Before he was arrested, Dappa said you had devised some scheme whereby we could extract the value of this gold without coining it,” van Hoek said, “but beyond that, his discourse became murky. I thought I should hear the story from him during the passage to Boston; but of course we were forced to flee without him.”

  “Briefly, we have a buyer in Muscovy who will buy the gold from us, once we have altered its form in a particular way.”

  “You are going to make something out of it?”

  “Yes, and then he will buy that something, and pay for it in ordinary gold. Or such was the plan, on the day Dappa was kidnapped, and you sailed for Boston.”

  “Do you mean to say there is a new plan now?” asked van Hoek, and made a deep gouge in the crate-lid.

  “There might be,” Daniel said. “Your erstwhile partner—”

  “Jack?”

  “Jack. Jack seems to have struck a deal with the Master of the Mint. Perhaps the danger I spoke of has passed. It might not be necessary to ship this gold—” and Daniel nodded at Minerva “—to Muscovy after all.”

  “It is of no account to me whether the Tsar or the Master buys it from me, provided we get the cursed stuff off our ship,” van Hoek said, “but you had best make up your mind quickly.” He had turned his gaze toward the river. Daniel turned around to espy a many-oared vessel crawling across the water, bearing directly for Orney’s wharf.

  “That is a very odd thing to see on the Thames,” Daniel remarked. “What flag does she fly?” For van Hoek had unlimbered his prospective-glass.

  “The double eagle. She is a war-galley of the Russian Navy,” van Hoek said. Then, after a moment’s pause, he laughed at the absurdity of such a thing.

  “Come to collect the three warships that Mr. Orney has been building,” Daniel surmised. “A great day for Mr. Orney!”

  “And for Dr. Waterhouse?”

  “It is all good. This is as I have expected.”

  “You do not say that with as much sincerity as I would like.”

  “I am not insincere, but distracted. Much has happened in recent days. The matter is far more complex than I have let on.”

  “Stab me! They do grow them big in Russia.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That man on the poop deck! If the others around him are of normal stature, then that is the biggest man I have ever seen. How he towers over that poor man who is getting the noogies!”

  “You have me at a disadvantage. May I—?”

  With some reluctance van Hoek handed over the perspective glass. Daniel found a place where he could brace it against the side of a piling, and arranged it so that he could get a view of the on-coming galley. She was still a bow-shot away from Orney’s wharf; the oars continued to pulse, but more and more slowly as she lined up for the last few strokes. Daniel found the poop deck, which was exceptionally high, as was common with military galleys. Right away he saw the man van Hoek had been talking about. To judge his height rightly was made difficult by the presence of several dwarves around him. But there were some who seemed to be of normal stature: one pacing along the rail wearing an admiral’s hat, after the French style. An old man with a long gray beard and a bald head protected under a dome of black felt. And a third about whose neck the tall man had wrapped one arm. Only the top of his bald pate was visible, as the giant had him bent forward in a headlock, and was rubbing the knuckles of his other hand over the poor fellow’s skull. The broad grin on the giant’s face, and the glee on the dwarves’ faces, suggested it was all in good fun; the way that the victim hopped from toe to toe, and flailed his hands around, suggested he took a different view. Finally the big fellow released him, for the galley was now manuvering to the wharf, and passing between a pair of brand-new frigates riding at anchor before Orney’s, which he seemed to find interesting. The victim scurried over and snatched up his periwig, then straightened his posture (slowly and judiciously, for he was an old man) and placed the adornment on his head. Not until he had patted it into place was Daniel able to focus distinctly on his face.

  Daniel sighed.

  “What is it?” van Hoek asked.

  “Everything has suddenly become very complicated.”

  “I thought you said it was complicated before.”

  “Yes, I rather thought it was—before His Imperial Majesty Peter the Great showed up with Baron von Leibniz.”

  “That is the Tsar?”

  “So I am guessing.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I know not. But he is attired as a mere gentleman, with a black sash, hence incognito.”

  “Perhaps he has been routed by the Swedes, and fled here to exile.”

  “It does not have that air about it. A vanquished refugee does not show up attended by Dwarves and Philosophers.”

  “Why’s he here, then?”

  “I hope it is a whim.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if it is not a whim, then it probably has something to do with me.”

  “
I REGRET THAT I missed the funeral of Sophie,” said Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. He had been on English soil for about an hour. Leibniz had never been precisely handsome, and never would be. But in the years since Daniel had last seen him, he had developed creases in his face, and shadows that went with his dark eyes, and (once he had put his wig on, and covered up the Tsar’s knuckle-prints) at least made him look serious and formidable.

  Peter was inspecting one of his new warships, accompanied by most of his entourage and by the startled but game Mr. Orney.

  “Those who know and love you anyway, assumed your absence was for good reason,” Daniel said. “Those courtiers who hold other opinions of you, had those opinions bolstered—if they noticed you were missing at all.”

  Leibniz nodded. “In May I had been summoned to St. Petersburg to work on the establishment of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” he explained.

  “Funny that I never get summoned on such errands.”

  “It is not all as delightful as you suppose. The place is literally and figuratively a swamp. Peter wants to do everything personally.” Leibniz nodded at one of the new ships, which was still on the ways, ready to be launched; Peter was clambering up the rat-lines like a three-hundred-pound fly in a monstrous web, leaving his entourage on the deck below, helpless to do anything but cringe or applaud. “When he is out of town fighting the Swedes,” Leibniz continued, “which is most of the time, then nothing happens at all. Then, when he returns, he is outraged that his projects have stagnated, and wants everything done immediately. The result, anyhow, is that I could not work out a way to leave.” Here Leibniz trailed off and turned to look in the direction of the Tsar. His attention had been drawn thither, not by some sudden noise, but by its sudden absence. Peter Romanov had reached the mizzen-top and struck a pose there, peering through a perspective-glass as if he were commanding a naval engagement in the Baltic. As a matter of fact (as Leibniz had already mentioned to Daniel) he had been doing exactly that only a few days earlier, and his galley had the cannonball-holes and bloodstained decks to prove it.

  But now Peter’s glass was aimed, not at the distant sails of some Swedish fleet, but at the two aged Natural Philosophers conversing in Orney’s yard below.

  “Uh-oh,” said Leibniz.

  “HIS TSARISH MAJESTY has commanded that the plates be brought forth,” confided Mr. Kikin to Daniel. For Kikin had dashed out from London as soon as he had got word that a Russian galley was approaching Rotherhithe and, to his credit, had only been struck catatonic for thirty seconds or so after he had walked into the ship-yard to be confronted with the spectacle of the Tsar of All the Russias debating the fine points of hull design with Mr. Orney. Now, he was acting as English interpreter.

  “Which plates would those be?” Daniel asked.

  “The very same ones we shipped to him, late in June,” Kikin said.

  Up and out of the war-galley’s hold now came a solemn, and yet gaudy procession. First to emerge was the wig, the head, and then the body of a young gentleman, presumably of Peter’s household. But he seemed to have been pressed into service as a sedan-carrier, for his arms were straight down to his sides, and in each hand was the end of a pole, carven of an immense tusk, and capped at the end with gold. Close behind him emerged the burden supported by those ivory poles: not a sedan-chair after all, but a box. To call it a box was like calling Versailles a hunting-blind, for this object was wrought mostly of amber, and what was not amber was ivory or gold. At a glance, from a distance, Daniel guessed that the finest jewelers in Christendom had devoted years to carving it. Not that his old eyes could resolve the details from here; he could just tell that it must be so, for this seemed to be how Peter went about things. Succeeding the amber chest, and supporting the aft ends of the tusks, was an outlandish-looking chap whom Daniel pegged as a Cossack. And bringing up the rear was the elderly man with the long gray beard and the black skullcap whom Daniel had noted earlier standing next to Peter on the poop deck. He was a Jew. What made Daniel realize as much was his juxtaposition against this phantastickal box-on-poles, which looked like nothing so much as the Ark of the Covenant, reinterpreted by Russians, and re-wrought in Nordic media and French styles. It was borne through a hushed entourage and set down upon a crate.

  Leibniz cleared his throat and spoke in a voice meant to be heard by all. “The plates for the Logic Mill, which you were so good as to send us some weeks ago, arrived at the Academy in St. Petersburg on the tenth of July (reckoning it in English dates). Your humble servant, and His Tsarish Majesty’s other representatives” (here he seemed to be looking at the old Jew) “have examined them thoroughly and reported to his majesty that they are in order.” Kikin was trying to relate all of this in Russian, but Peter seemed to know more or less what was being said, and went over to the amber box. He lifted its lid and made as if to toss it aside; the Cossack intercepted it before it struck the ground, bowed, and backed away. Peter reached into the chest’s velvet-lined interior and drew out several of the plates. The gold flashed in the midday light. Mr. Orney cringed and lifted his gaze to the public road that ran along the inland side of his shipyard. A sizable picket-line of mudlarks, freelance longshoremen, thief-takers, Black-guards, Vagabonds, bridle-culls, baggage-men, foot-scamperers, and runagates had already formed up there, like flies on the rim of a cider-glass.

  Daniel was struck by a change in the appearance of the plates: while generally they seemed to have been well-treated, each of them was missing a piece. Someone had systematically sheared a fingernail-sized piece off the corner of each plate.

  The Tsar noticed that Daniel had noticed. “I commanded Monsieur Kohan to assay the plates,” he explained via Kikin, and nodded at the aged Jew.

  “Solomon Kohan at your service,” said the Jew in English. Beyond that, he had to resort to Latin to make himself understood. “Since none of the plates had holes punched in the corners, I reasoned that these corners were of no importance to the workings of your Logic Mill. And so I cornered, or quoined, each one of them, to try the fineness of your gold, as commanded by Cæsar.”

  All of which made sense to Daniel except for the reference to Cæsar. Then he recollected that “Tsar,” or “Czar,” was simply a rendering into Russian of that ancient Latin title.

  “And what did you report concerning the quality of the gold to Cæsar?”

  “The truth, of course.”

  “Of course. But different men have different views as to what truth is, and I would fain know yours, sir.”

  “No. The entire point of the assay is that it is not subject to opinion, taste, or debate. It is what it is.”

  “You invoke the Tetragrammaton. And yet men may dispute the meaning even of that. What were your findings?”

  “The same as yours, I’m sure.”

  “That gold is gold?”

  Peter broke in now, and there was a pause as Kikin translated: “The Tsar has decreed that, since the finest gold on earth was used to make the first batch of plates, with which he is well pleased, the remainder of the plates are to be made using the same stuff. What the hell do you suppose he means by that?”

  Leibniz rolled his eyes. “Some have put it into his head that there exists a superior form of gold.” He regarded Solomon Kohan none too benignly.

  Meanwhile Peter had been unburdening himself further. Kikin translated: “Every plate sent to St. Petersburg henceforth shall, before it is accepted, be quoined in the same manner by Solomon Kohan.”

  “For your sake, and for your friend’s,” said Solomon to Daniel, with a glance toward Leibniz, “I hope you have an adequate supply of this type of gold.”

  “Perfectly adequate, thank you,” said Daniel, and nodded at Minerva. He let a few moments elapse for Kikin to translate. By the time Daniel was ready to resume speaking, all the others had followed his gaze, and marked certain members of Minerva’s crew bringing up out of her hold flat packets of something heavy, wrapped in sack-cloth.

  “Is that a Vroom?
” asked Peter in Dutch. “She is a beauty.”

  “Indeed!” broke in van Hoek, who had been loitering on the edge of the crowd, “she is the last ship that the great Vroom ever designed, and if his Tsarish Majesty would care to—”

  “I would,” said Peter, and then he and van Hoek went off ranting in Dutch ship-jargon for some minutes. A lot of throat-clearing and eyebrow-wiggling on Daniel’s part finally penetrated the awareness of van Hoek, who with reluctance brought the Tsar’s attention back round to Daniel.

  “Months ago,” Daniel announced, “we set in motion work that has culminated, within the last few days, in the arrival of that Vroom that his Tsarish Majesty is admiring. She brought the gold that is to be used for the completion of the Logic Mill. It is being down-loaded at this very moment…” here Daniel trailed off, for Peter was already bounding across the muck of the yard to intercept one of those burlap bundles. Kikin ran after him, translating as he went, and the rest of the group hustled along behind. Daniel found himself bringing up the rear, alongside Solomon Kohan.

  “It is curious,” said Daniel, “that you take so keen an interest in this matter.”

  “It is curious,” returned Solomon, “that you incorporate such gold into your device and expect that it shall go unnoticed by the Wise.”

  Solomon stared at Daniel with eyes that rarely blinked and that were such a pale gray as to be nearly colorless, though they were rimmed and flecked with black. His features were generally Semitic. This gave Daniel the idea that Monsieur Kohan had been born with dark eyes, befitting his race, but that they had become washed out and faded over time, like garments that have seen too many washings and too much sun. Immersed in that gaze, Daniel felt like a lump of sugar plunged into a stream of warm water. He was at a loss to answer, and so trudged across the churned muck of the yard in silence until he and Solomon had re-joined the group. All were gathered round a bundle that Peter had wrested from a barefoot seaman, thrown down on a barrel-head, and slashed open. The package was perhaps a foot and a half wide, four long, and an inch thick. Peeled bare, it was revealed as a metal plate, scratched and speckled, but unquestionably gold. Solomon muttered something in Hebrew. Peter regarded it with mild curiosity. “He says it looks like any other gold,” Kikin explained.