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

by Neal Stephenson

  “Perhaps he only fainted. He has been ailing of late.”

  “A stroke fits better with what I saw. It hit him on his right side—that’s why he dropped the glass, that’s why his right leg gave way. Whether it was a swoon, or a stroke, I do believe it was occasioned—” But here he bit his tongue, and winced.

  “By his recognizing my face, when I turned around,” Daniel said, “thereby proving all his darkest and strangest fears. Which fears have been tormenting him ever since I returned to London and got entangled in the weird saga of the Solomonic Gold. Shit! I killed my friend.”

  “He is neither dead, nor your friend,” Dappa corrected him.

  “If you would be so good as to summon me a water-taxi,” said Daniel, “I must make haste to his niece’s house—which is probably where they’ll take him—and defend him from the physicians.”

  The Temple of Vulcan

  WEDNESDAY, 27 OCTOBER 1714

  THE OPTIMISTIC SIDE OF DANIEL’S nature put in a rare appearance on the evening of Tuesday and convinced Daniel that Isaac’s collapse had been neither swoon nor stroke, but only another of those mad panics that would come over him from time to time and later subside. Daniel was so sure of this that he paid a call on Isaac’s house in St. Martin’s that evening, expecting that Isaac would be there. But he was not. He was in the care of Catherine Barton at the house of the late Roger Comstock.

  Daniel went there on Wednesday, then, and found Miss Barton distraught. In retrospect he now saw it as a marvel that Isaac hadn’t died a long time ago. His troubles had begun in August when Leibniz had knocked him and Daniel over a wall. This had saved them from being roasted by phosphorus-fire, but had done damage to Isaac’s ribs, with the result that he’d breathed but shallowly for weeks afterwards. He’d picked up a catarrh that ought to have been minor, but had been unable to cough effectively because of the pain in his ribs, and so had not been clearing his lungs. This catarrh had entrenched itself and become a pneumonia.

  The event yesterday probably had been a stroke, but not as grave as it might have been; according to Catherine, Isaac had suffered weakness on his right side for a time, but seemed to have regained some of his strength since then. That did not concern her so much as his rapidly mounting fever.

  “Fever!?” Daniel exclaimed, and insisted on going in to see the patient. Isaac had left strict orders to keep all physicians out of his room, and Catherine had obeyed them; but Daniel Waterhouse was no physician.

  Isaac was spread-eagled on a four-poster bed, dressed in a flimsy nightshirt. He had kicked the bedclothes off onto the floor and he or someone else had opened a window to let in cold air. Daniel had to stuff his hands into his pockets to keep them from freezing. “Isaac?” he said.

  The patient’s head stirred, triggering a shift of his flowing white hair, and beneath half-closed lids his eyes focused. But the eyes were not looking Daniel’s way. Daniel came over to the bedside. Isaac was breathing rapidly and shallowly. Daniel bent down and pressed an ear to Isaac’s ribcage, wincing at the heat that came out of his body—like a loaf fresh out of the oven. In the bases of Isaac’s lungs, it sounded as though bacon was being fried. His heart was beating weakly but quickly, albeit with alarming skips and pauses.

  During this examination, Daniel could not help but notice a rash on those parts of Isaac’s chest not covered by the nightshirt. He sat on the edge of the bed and unbuttoned the garment. Isaac’s eyes, then his head moved slightly as Daniel did so; the movement had caught his eye. He watched Daniel’s hands work their way down his heaving sternum, one button at a time, and when Daniel spread the nightshirt apart, Isaac’s eyes tracked his right hand. Daniel recognized it: Natural-Philosophic curiosity.

  Isaac’s torso was covered with the rash. It was most obvious around the left armpit.

  “When was the last time you were in Newgate Prison?” Daniel asked. For he had the sense that Isaac was entering in to a lucid phase.

  “Ah!” Isaac said, and then had to cough for a minute, in a frothy way, to clear the pipes for action. “You and I agree on the diagnosis of gaol-fever, then. That is a comfort. We agree on so little else.” Long pauses held these phrases apart.

  “When was the last time…” Daniel reiterated patiently.

  Isaac cut him off with the answer: “A week ago. I went and spoke to Jack in the Condemned Hold.”

  “Normally the incubation period for gaol-fever would be—”

  “Longer, a bit. Yes. I know. But I am old. And weakened by other maladies. You are being tedious. I have little time. I stipulate that I have gaol-fever. It will get worse before it gets better. If it gets better at all. Now I am getting chilly. Will you please button me back up. My right hand has lost some of its dexterity.”

  Daniel could hardly deny such a request, and so he began to re-button the shirt—even though he was sure that this was a ploy by Isaac to bring Daniel’s hands into view again so that he could observe the ring. Daniel ignored this, and worked the buttons as fast as he could, and cursed his own stupidity for not having simply pocketed the thing before entering the room.

  “It looks heavy,” Isaac remarked. “You know of what I speak. Does it weigh heavy on your finger?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Who gave it you? Not a woman, surely.”

  Daniel finished with the buttons, and thrust his hands back in his pockets.

  “I should like to give you something as well,” Isaac remarked. His gaze had tracked the bauble all the way to Daniel’s pocket and now flicked up to settle on Daniel’s eyes.

  “And what might that be, Isaac?”

  “Not so much give it you, as draw it to your notice,” Isaac corrected himself. “That stuff of Hooke’s. Found at Bedlam. Reposited here. For me it was neither the most…nor the least…convenient place to look at it. Since the death…of Roger…I have come here more often. For I could not attend to my work…when he was hovering…you know…and asking all manner of questions. I have made a study of that document. The one that figured in the Stake-out…of last summer. You know the one I mean. Hooke’s account of a patient…who died after a lithotomy…and was resurrected…there is no other word for it…by a certain receipt. A remarkable document.”

  “You forged a fake version of it as bait for de Gex,” Daniel said, “but—”

  “But I have returned to it. In recent weeks. As my health was failing. And I took many notes. And interpreted what was cryptic. And set down clearly what Hooke—who was no Alchemist—did not understand. I know you think it is all rubbish. But if you would look after it…and see that it finds its way into the right…hands…it would be a comfort to me.”

  “Of course. Where is it?”

  “Roger’s library. Table before the window. Top drawer on the right.”

  “I’ll fetch it now,” Daniel said, “and take it to your house straightaway.”

  “That is good,” Isaac said. “Take it to my laboratory. Put it with the rest.”

  “The rest of what?” Daniel asked. But he could see plainly he’d not be getting an answer. Isaac drew in his limbs, curled up on his side, and began to shiver like a dog fresh out of the water that cannot fight the urge to shake. Daniel called for Catherine, and together they sorted out the bedclothes and drew them over Isaac’s body.

  “He has asked me to tend to some things,” Daniel announced to justify leaving. “I shall send word to the Council that Isaac is unwell, and cannot attend the Trial of the Pyx, day after tomorrow.”

  “No! You must do no such thing!” Miss Barton said, and laid a hand on Daniel’s wrist. For she knew well enough that her words would penetrate a man’s brain as effectively as a musket-ball, if she touched him while she spoke.

  “Miss Barton,” Daniel said, “look at the poor man! He can’t possibly—”

  “Uncle Isaac told me that he must be present at the Trial of the Pyx no matter what. Even if he’s dead.”

  “Pardon me, but did you really mean that?”

  “
‘Even if I am dead,’ he told me, ‘you stuff my corpse in a sedan chair and carry me to Star Chamber on Friday morning.’ And that, Doctor Waterhouse, is just what I mean to do.”

  “Well, God willing, he’ll still be alive,” Daniel said, and gently disengaged himself from Miss Barton’s smooth grasp, and headed for Roger’s library.

  Newgate Prison

  28 OCTOBER 1714

  …the Bell-man, who is the Prelude to the Hangman, like a Flourish before a damn’d Melancholy Tune, comes next to Torture them with his Inhumane Stanza’s, as if Men in their Condition cou’d have any Stomach to Unseasonable Poetry; for the Night before Execution, placing himself under their Window, he harangues them with the following Serenade, set to the Tune of the Bar Bell at the Black Dog.

  —Memoirs of the Right Villanous John Hall, 1708

  SINCE SENTENCE OF DEATH had been pronounced upon him, the gaol-keepers had kept Jack’s apartment-door locked, and posted armed men outside to ensure it stayed that way. They’d never once let him go down to the good old Dogg. Jack’s only way of communing with the Dogg’s merry company had been to hear the ringing of its bell every night, at curfew. At that moment it had been his custom to lift a glass of Oporto, chosen from the rather large collection of bottles that had been sent up to his room, during the last week, by admirers.

  This evening, however, his libation was rudely interrupted by the clanging of a hand-bell down below, in the vaulted passage-way that tunneled below his Castle and passed by the grated vent-hole of the Condemned Hold. Jack was not the only man slated to die at Tyburn tomorrow. Six more were going there with him, all Common-Side Malefactors who lacked means, or mysterious friends, to buy their way out of the said Hold. This nocturnal Bell-Man was plying his trade to a captive audience down there, spewing noxious poetry through the grating:

  All you that in the Condemn’d Hold do lye,

  Prepare you, for to Morrow you must die.

  Think well upon your Sins, in Time repent,

  Lest you are Headlong into Satan sent.

  Watch then, and Pray, that so you may be fit

  T’Appear so soon before the Judgment-Seat:

  And when St. Pulcher’s Bell to Morrow Tolls,

  The Lord above have Mercy on your Souls.

  Having discharged his obligations there, the Bell-Man removed himself from the stink of the vault. He retreated through the portcullis and out into the middle of Holborn. He planted himself in the middle of the road directly beneath Jack Shaftoe’s triple window, like a swain getting ready to serenade his lady love. Which maneuvers would normally be both dark (as the sun had set quite some time ago) and dangerous (as men who stood in the middle of a highway leading into a gate of the City of London normally did not long survive). But the Bell-Man’s progress was well-lighted by a crowd of Londoners with torches, who had thronged the highway from one side to the other, throwing up a barrier of flame that would dazzle and terrify any horses whose drivers were foolish enough to bring them this way. Newgate was closed for the evening. The Bell-Man stood in a fiery semicircle, blinking in surprise, as normally he must carry out his duties alone and unheralded.

  Jack had been playing the recluse since he had been condemned. In the first days, crowds had gathered in Holborn from time to time, apparently drawn by rumors that Jack Shaftoe was going to get out of bed and stand in his window to be viewed, like a King taking the air in St. James’s. All of them had been driven away, disappointed, by constables. But tonight was a special occasion, for how many times in his life would Jack be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered? Jack busied himself for a minute or two, lighting tapers. For sources of illumination were another luxury that was famously in short supply at Newgate, and those sycophants who lacked the Yellow Boys (that is to say, Guineas) to buy Jack bottles of Oporto might at least scratch together thrums (that is to say, three pence) to buy him a taper, so that he might take good aim at his chamber-pot later. He had not been burning many of these, but at this point there was little reason to hoard them, and so he went round and set every one of them alight. The room immediately filled with lambent smoke, and the fragrance of rancid tallow, which took him right back to his boyhood on the Isle of Dogs. There was a small ironbound hatch in one of his windows, which might be opened to admit air. He did so now, to spill out the smoke, and was spotted by the crowd down in Holborn, who phant’sied that Jack Shaftoe had nothing better to do on this, his last night, than to banter with them. That damned bell started up, quieting a surge of excitement from the crowd, and the Bell-Man roared out his stanza.

  Jack was ready for him. He put his face to the open grate and shouted back,

  O tedious Man, who with thy Bell

  Dost ring me down the road to Hell,

  Tomorrow eve, at half past seven,

  I’ll hock a spit on you from Heaven.

  For if, as preachers say, the afterlife

  Smells sweet, sounds pleasant, is free of strife,

  And is, in sum, a Kingdom of Felicity,

  It must be any place that does not harbor Thee.

  The performance was extremely well-received by all hearers save the Bell-Man himself, who slinked away in the direction of St. Sepulchre, stepping a bit lively as turds and expired vegetables began to pelt him in the back.

  Now that he’d been sent away in disgrace, the only people remaining were members in good standing of the Mobility, a.k.a. the Mobb, a class of people divided by their tendency to rape, murder, and steal from one another, but united in their admiration for Jack. They were expecting something from him, without a doubt. A few groups were trying to sing songs to him, in different keys and meters, but no one tune had taken hold yet. Jack—who must be nothing more, to them, than a silhouette against a smoky candle-lit chamber, half-obscured by the reticule of massive iron bars—waved his arms a bit to quiet them down, then put his face to the grate again, and shouted:

  “The curfew-bell has sounded, and the gentleman from St. Sepulchre has given me his stanzas, and I am retiring! As should you all! For we have a long and busy day ahead of us tomorrow! I have an appointment at Tyburn in the morning, to which you are all invited! And then another at the College of Physicians in the afternoon. For even though my body is to be quartered, my head is expected to come through the ceremony more or less intact, and those Natural Philosophers around the corner there—straight up Newgate Street, take a right on Warwick Lane just across from Grey Fryars, there, then down to the first entry on your right, the large building with the golden pill on the top—they’re going to cut open my skull tomorrow and peer inside, to see if they can ascertain why I am such a bad fellow.”

  He was answered by a general scream of rage, so disturbing to the peace and quiet of his gentlemanly abode, that he shut the hatch immediately. And a good thing, too, for moments later, a hailstorm struck. The noise of small objects assaulting the windowpanes grew until it was louder than the screaming was. Jack approached the window again, out of curiosity, and saw that farthings and pennies, and even a few shillings, were piling up on the stone windowsill outside, so thick that they were forming up into drifts. The people were throwing money at him, money to pay for a Christian burial, to keep him out of the hands of the College of Physicians. And the ones who couldn’t afford to fling coins, were charging up Newgate Street in a torchlight stampede, looking for that first right turn that Jack just told them about. It promised to be a long and eventful night at the College of Physicians; but at least Jack Shaftoe would get some privacy, and some sleep.

  Sir Isaac Newton’s House in St. Martin’s

  EVENING, THURSDAY, 28 OCTOBER 1714

  “MR. THREADER,” the butler announced.

  Daniel looked up, and turned around.

  Mr. Threader stood in the laboratory doorway, hat in hand, decidedly cringing, looking about the room as if expecting Sir Isaac Newton to spring out from behind a glowing furnace and turn him into a newt.

  “He is not here,” Daniel said gently. “He is at his niece’s
house.”

  “Recuperating—or so ’tis rumored—from an attaque of some sort—?” Mr. Threader, emboldened, stepped over the threshold. The butler closed the door behind him and walked away.

  “We shall help him recuperate, you and I. Please, please, come in!” Daniel beckoned with one, then both hands. Mr. Threader obeyed with extreme reluctance. He was not accustomed to Alchemical laboratories. The glowing furnaces, the smells, the open flames, the jars and retorts with their cryptic labels, were all vaguely threatening to him. Seeing as much, Daniel felt, for a moment, what a second-rate Alchemist must feel when a gullible person ventures into his shop: a smug self-satisfaction in the bamboozlement and bewilderment of one’s fellow-man, and a perverse urge to milk the wretch for all he is worth.

  But alas, he had other errands, and must needs put Mr. Threader at ease.

  “It must all seem quite foreign to you. I was fortunate: I was chumming with Isaac during the years that he turned our domicile into one great smoking Lab. So, all the stuff you see around you here was moved in to our house one bit at a time, and I could ask Isaac what it was, and how to use it.” Daniel laughed. “I am more at home here than I should care to admit!”

  Mr. Threader permitted himself a dry chuckle. “I must say that you look quite at home here, which is quite amusing after all of the unkind remarks you have made about Alchemy.”

  Daniel wondered what Mr. Threader would make of it if Daniel were to let him know that tomorrow he, Daniel, might be the most eminent Alchemist since King Solomon went in to the East. But he shook it off as being too uncanny to speak of just now.

  “Is Sir Isaac expected to be in any condition to attend the Trial?”

  “He would not miss it for anything.”

  “It is good to know his condition improves.”

  Daniel said nothing. Isaac’s condition was not improving; he suspected that the gaol-fever was creating a lesion on Isaac’s heart. As a boy Isaac had tried to make perpetual motion machines, seeing in them a model of the heart. But Isaac’s heart, Daniel suspected, was about to give out. Men had not been able to fashion perpetual motion machines because men were mechanics who only knew how to work with inert matter. Hearts pumped longer than any machine could, because the matter of which they were made—or so Alchemists supposed—was suffused with the vegetative spirit.