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

by Neal Stephenson

  The Chariot, as it turned out, had a cover: a sort of brocaded tarpaulin that could be drawn over its open top and rear, probably to catch dust and bird-shit when it was languishing in Roger’s stables awaiting a Triumph. This had been reefed and tied about the vehicle’s rim with many tasseled golden ropes. The Priestess of Vulcan went round undoing these, and presently unfurled the cover, and drew it down to envelop the whole bed. Daniel was sitting up in the middle of it, elbows on knees, hands clamped over his phizz, tears leaking out.

  “I do not wish to live in a world that does not have Roger in it,” he heard himself saying; and then he thanked God that Roger was not alive to hear him talking this way. “He was my Complement—my protector—my partner—my patron—it’s almost as if he were my wife or something.”

  “Or you his,” said Miss Barton. Having finished with this project of enclosing Daniel in the womb-like interior of the Chariot of Vulcan, she hitched up her skirts and knee-walked up the slope of the bed until she reached Daniel’s side, then put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “God! I really am on the wrong Planet henceforth!” Daniel exclaimed. “What am I going to do?”

  “Roger has made out the most exacting Will. He showed it to me. There is money for the Royal Society. For a Museum he wishes to have made here. For the Kit-Cat Clubb, the Italian Opera, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony of Technologickal Arts.”

  Daniel did not say what he was thinking, which was that for every asset Roger could claim, there would be equal or greater liabilities. He had held his creditors at bay by amazing them, threatening them, distracting them, and drinking them under the table. But now, like ants swarming a defenseless carcass, they would come.

  Daniel pulled his hands from his face and made himself leave off blubbering. “No. It is not that sort of thing I am thinking of. I have much to do before the twenty-ninth of October. Much to do! It seemed nearly impossible even when Roger was about to do most of it for me. The others on the Treasury Commission are mountebanks and time-servers. So it is I who must organize the Trial of the Pyx. What do I know of it? Nothing! Clerkenwell Court and Bridewell must be shut down, liquidated. The Institute of Technologickal Arts has got to be considered dead—I’ll send word to Enoch to sell the cabin. What else!? Oh, yes. The Princess of Wales wants me to help a dear friend of hers sort out her love life—which happens to be more fraught with dangers and complexities than, let us say, the foreign policy of the Venetian Republic.”

  “I am sorry to laugh, on such a sad occasion,” said the Priestess of Vulcan, “but that strikes me as most absurd!”

  Which Daniel might have taken in a resentful spirit, had she not begun to knead the tight muscles at the base of his neck and between his scapulae.

  “In some things you are a very clever chap, or so Roger always used to say. But what would a man such as you know of affairs of the heart? Why, your muscles tie themselves up in knots at the very mention of these things! Roll over on your belly, sir, or else the oil will run down your back.”

  “Oil? What oil!?”

  “This oil…”

  “Oh, my word!”

  “That’s better. Now I can straddle you—your buttocks can take most of my weight—thus—and it becomes easier for me to reach those parts of you that are most in need of lubrication and a good stiff massage.”

  “Is this how Roger did it?” Daniel said wonderingly, a long time later.

  “No, Roger liked to get up on all fours like a—”

  “No, no, no, Miss Barton. I meant something different. Is this how Roger managed to—to keep so many balls in the air—as it were—and not go mad?”

  “Now you ask me to speculate on matters quite beyond my scope, Dr. Waterhouse. Roll over on your back!”

  “I was just reflecting that those affairs that so troubled my mind only a little while ago, seem to have quite fled my mind—oh, my goodness, Miss Barton!”

  “It sounded as if your troubles were beginning to sneak back into your awareness,” she explained, “and so I rather phant’sied some drastic action was called for.”

  “What…what…what troubles, Miss…Miss…Miss Barton?”

  “My point exactly. Tilt your pelvis t’other way, if you please, sir…there! Much better, you’ll admit. Now, leave the rest to me, sir—the balance of this chariot can be a bit…tricky…the ride…a bit rough.”

  Indeed, the axle-bearings of the Chariot of Vulcan presently began to creak as it got to rocking forward and back, forward and back, on its wheels. Daniel was old, and the ride was correspondingly long. But the primum mobile—the Body of Miss Barton—was young and, as everyone in London agreed, in the most superb condition, and more than equal to the work. Daniel felt a-drift in Absolute Space, and phant’sied that the Chariot had worked its way out the ballroom doors, off the property, down Tottenham Court Road, and was gliding across the dewy turf of Lambs Conduit Fields…on and on…until suddenly it toppled down a well. He opened his eyes. It was over. She executed a back-somersault off of him, and rolled to her feet, poking up the tarpaulin with her head, and artfully stuffed a fistful of Roman priestess vestments up between her thighs.

  “Perhaps your uncle knows something after all,” Daniel said. “It seems so obvious, when one contrasts a dead Roger with a live Daniel, that there is something one lacks and the other has!”

  “You have a bit less of it now,” Miss Barton said playfully. Then she turned her head to one side, attending to some subtle noise without, that Daniel had not heard. “Who is there?” she called, and gathered up an arm-load of tarp, ready to give it a heave. “Don’t!” Daniel called, for he was most indecent.

  “The servants have seen ever so much worse!” she returned with a roll of the eyes, and heaved. The curtain flew back and ended up creased over Daniel’s head like a little roof. He gazed out upon the face of Sir Isaac Newton, who was standing there with his back to the volcano, beaming lanthorn-light at him.

  “I came as soon as I heard the dreadful news,” he announced crisply, at some point during the approximately half an hour during which Daniel was rendered speechless. Isaac had not evinced the slightest surprise at seeing Daniel here, in this pose. This raised interesting questions. Had he been eavesdropping the entire time, and therefore had ample time to master his rage and astonishment? Or was his opinion of Daniel’s character now so abyssal that he simply felt nothing at all?

  “It seems, however,” Isaac went on, “that matters are well in hand here.”

  “That they are, uncle,” said Miss Barton, and glided down off the bed of the chariot to give her kinsman a chaste peck on the cheek.

  “Is there any way that I might be of assistance?” Isaac was desirous of knowing.

  Daniel could not think of anything to say. He would have ample time to re-live the moment later, to savor and amplify his embarrassment. What struck him now, as he sat there in a half-ripped-off night-shirt, gazing upon fully dressed Isaac, was that word of Roger’s death must be out; and all over the metropolis at this instant, people were awake, and out-maneuvering Daniel in ways that he probably would never even know about.

  The Castle, Newgate Prison

  29 SEPTEMBER 1714

  A TURRETED CASTLE BESTRODE Holborn. On the side where the gentleman and his host were taking tea, the building sported a noble façade, to make a great impression on riders entering into London from the west. The ground floor was mostly accounted for by the vaulted arch of the gateway. The floor above that contained the machinery for raising and lowering the siege-grade portcullis; this was hidden behind a row of niches in which Liberty, Justice, and other noble ladies took shelter from the rains. This had not prevented their turning a mottled black from coal-smoke. So they glared down like Furies at all who passed beneath. But the next floor up was adorned by a triple Gothick window centered above the highway, rather like the hatch at the top of a German clock, whence the cuckoo popped out on the hour. Behind those windows lay Jack’s new abode. He would not be popping out
, however, as they were heavily barred. Indeed, the first resident of this flat must have been a blacksmith, who must’ve lived there for a month, forging those gridirons and setting them into the stone frames. But they were excellent windows, taller than Jack and wider than the span of his arms, and despite the massive bars they admitted a fortune in light.

  The Castle, as this part of Newgate Prison was called, was meant for Prisoners of Quality. So it lacked certain facilities that were present in abundance in other parts of the gaol, e.g., iron wall-rings to which difficult prisoners could be fettered. The gaolers had been forced to improvise. A hundred pounds of chain had been looped round some of the window-bars and dragged along the floor to Jack and locked to his ankle-fetters. The chain was long enough that he could hobble to any part of the apartment, save the exit. For the nonce, he was seated at his table, sipping tea.

  Standing before his great window and gazing through the grid-work, the visitor enjoyed a view along the road up Snow Hill to the place where it bridged the Fleet Ditch some quarter of a mile away. Beyond that it swelled to twice or thrice the width, and rambled off among posh squares and courts that had been cow-pastures when Jack was a lad. Much nearer to hand, no more than a bow-shot away, to the right, lay the Church of St. Sepulchre. It was an ancient English church of that school of architecture known to scholars as A Big Pile of Rocks. There, Jack and his fellow Tyburn commuters would be subjected to a tedious rite in one month’s time. So Jack preferred not to let his gaze rest on that Church and especially not its Yard, which had swallowed more dead than it could cleanly digest.

  “All of the best apartments in London, it seems, are in bloody Prisons,” said the visitor, “and all of them are occupied by men who are troublesome to me, in one way or another.”

  Against those windows he made a perfect Fopp-silhouette, like something snipped out of black paper by an ingenious miniaturist on the Pont-Neuf. From the high-styled ringlets of his periwig down to the bows on his shoes, back up the curves of his well-muscled calves and the perfectly cut skirts of his coat, traveled the eyes of Jack. He wore a scabbard and a small-sword, and Jack thought of flattening him with a swing of the mighty chain, and snatching the weapon. But this would boot him nothing and so to think of it was idle. Jack snapped out of this hyper-violent reverie, and tried to make conversation.

  “What, are you speaking of that bloke in the Clink? The famous Dappa?”

  “You know that I am,” said Charles White, and turned his back to the view. He reached out absent-mindedly and stroked Jack’s chain where it was looped about the window-bars. “Before this country became so disorderly, all of those who were troublesome to their betters were pent up in places such as this. I am pleased that there are still remaining some vestiges of civilization.”

  “But isn’t that Dappa more trouble for you in the Clink?”

  “I have plans for Dappa,” said White, “and I have plans for you. And that is why facilities such as the Clink and Newgate are so useful; they hold men like you in one place long enough for men like me to make plans.”

  “All right,” said Jack, “I knew we’d get round to this, and I am ready for it. You are a tedious and obvious bloke, Mr. White. So I need only ask myself, what’s the most tedious and obvious plan that a man could devise? Why, to have me done away with. Not much of a threat, as one month from to-day I’ve an appointment with Mr. Jack Ketch at Tyburn Cross; and there is no way you could murder me here that could be worse than how he’ll carry it off there. So you are powerless to issue threats. You must, therefore, offer inducements.”

  “You rush ahead so!” White exclaimed. “It were proper, first, to speak of what it is that you must do.”

  “There’s nothing in the world I must do,” Jack reminded him. “In that sense I’m the freest man in the world. What is it that you are trying to get me to do?”

  “You are charged with High Treason in the form of coining. Sir Isaac Newton has enough to prove it; there’s little point in offering up a defense. You’ll be asked to plead, guilty or not guilty. It is a necessary formality. If you refuse to enter a plea, you’ll be subject to the peine forte et dur—pressing under weights—until you die, or change your mind.”

  “I have been coming to Newgate since I was a wee lad, and well know the Standard Procedures,” said Jack. “What is your point?”

  “If you agree to make a statement, I’ll see to it that several men are present—not just Sir Isaac. In the presence of those men, you will say that Sir Isaac Newton debased the coinage, and took the gold that he skimmed from Her Majesty’s coffers, and—”

  “Pocketed it?”

  “No.”

  “Gave it to prostitutes?”

  “No.”

  “Drank it up?”

  “No. Used it to perform Alchemical research in the Tower.”

  “Oh! Of course. Stupid me,” said Jack, and slapped himself in the forehead so briskly that his ankle-chains jingled. “That were a far more credible accusation.”

  “My lord Bolingbroke got wind of it,” White went on, in a peculiar singsong cadence meant to remind Jack that this was the made-up Romance that he was supposed to be memorizing, “and quite properly began to make preparations for a Trial of the Pyx. Hearing of this, the guilty Newton flew into a panic, and reached you, Jack, and induced you and your gang—”

  “Gang. Gang. Why is it ever ‘Gang?’ Don’t call them that. It sounds so—I don’t know—criminal. They are my family and friends.”

  “Induced you and your associates to break in to the Tower, open the Pyx, remove the debased guineas that would prove Newton’s guilt, and replace them with sound ones. To make this possible Newton led me and others on a wild goose chase to Shive Tor. You achieved your mission; but it went awry in some small way—here you can make up something plausible—and people found out about it, and now Newton is trying to commit judicial murder on you and your…associates, to cover his traces.”

  “ ’Twould make for a lively half-hour, relating such a yarn in the presence of my persecutor, and a panel of a-mazed Big-wigs,” Jack admitted. “As if ’twere a Statue set up in the middle of my Apartment, I shall, in weeks to come, circle round your Proposition and view it from diverse angles and in different lights, and peruse it for Defects.”

  “Did you say, weeks?” asked the amused/perplexed White. “Because—”

  “There is ample time for me to consider it,” Jack said authoritatively. “And I shall consider it far more seriously if you can let me know what I might get out of it, other than a few minutes’ entertainment.”

  “Escape,” said Charles White. “Escape to America for you and your…associates in the Fleet Prison.”

  Now at this Jack felt moved, at last, to bestir himself, and shuffled across the floor, dragging the chain behind him until he stood at the window, next to Charles White. It had been the tendency of White to gaze down the street and off to the right, which was his not especially subtle way of trying to draw Jack’s attention to the Church of St. Sepulchre, and other grisly land-marks and way-stations along the route of the Hanging-March. But Jack looked rather to the left. Several buildings of note happened to be arranged in a straight line marching off to the southwest. Nearest to hand, just within musketry range, and therefore almost as convenient to the Old Bailey as Newgate, was the Fleet Prison. It was a great thick wall of Building, fuzzy with myriad chimney-pipes, spreading along the banks of the mighty shit-ditch after which it was named. Beyond that, on the opposite side of said ditch, and down a bit, sprawled Bridewell, infested with Females in Trouble. Then there was the Thames, and finally, miles off, he could see the odd spire belonging, he thought, to the Hall or the Abbey at Westminster. All of these were packed firmly in a matrix of unremarkable London buildings, post-Fire, therefore made of coal-blackened brick, and built wall to wall with nothing green, except for the odd fleck where some nest-building bird had stolen a bit of moss or turf from somewhere and been forced to drop it to evade assault by ravens, N
ature’s footpads. The only reason that the Fleet Prison could be identified as a separate Institution was that its buildings rose up from the middle of an open plaza; it had grounds, and a perimeter.

  “You’d have me believe, then,” said Jack, “that you can spring three blokes out of there, as well as me out of here, on the same night? For you’ll have to do both at the same time. To me it would seem a most difficult thing to put into execution—even if the Whigs hadn’t beaten the stuffing out of your party and sent half of ’em packing to La France.”

  “I must say that I am disappointed to hear such timid and doubtful words from the conqueror of the Tower,” White said.

  “I had resources. You—”

  “You underestimate the tenacity and the wealth of my Party. Do not be misled by the temporary departure of Bolingbroke. Rebellion is brewing, Jack. It might take a year or two, but mark my words: Jacobite armies will soon be on the march in this country and shall sweep away the Spawn of the Usurper.”

  “That would be the King of England you’re referring to, there?”

  “As some style him. To arrange a simple jail-break, or two of them on the same evening, is really a trivial matter, Jack. Particularly from Newgate Prison, which has a history of escapes, by prominent prisoners, almost as illustrious as that of the Tower.”

  “As to that I shall have to accept your word,” said Jack, “since none of the blokes I knew here as a lad, ever escaped save via the Treble Tree.”

  “Then only ponder the immense value, to my Party, of discrediting Sir Isaac Newton, the coinage of this Realm, and the Whigs, all at a stroke; set aside which, the cost of arranging two jail-breaks is derisory.”