Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “Oh, nasty Vagabonds!”

  “They say he is recovering as well as can be expected.”

  “When I get to Paris, I’ll send you news of him.”

  “Send me news of everything, especially what does not appear to be news,” d’Avaux insisted. “If you can learn to read the comings and goings at Versailles as well as you do the taffrails and insurance-policies of Dutch boats, you’ll be running France in a trice.”

  She kissed the cheeks of the comte d’Avaux and he kissed hers. Jacques and Jean-Baptiste escorted her up the plank and then, as the kaag began to drift down the canal, busied themselves storing her luggage away in the small cabin d’Avaux had procured for her. Eliza meanwhile stood at the kaag’s railing, along with many other passengers, and enjoyed the view of Amsterdam’s canal-front. When you were on dry land in that city you could never slow down, never stop moving, and so it was strange and relaxing to be so close to it, yet so still and placid—like a low-flying angel spying on the doings of men.

  Too, that she was escaping cleanly from Amsterdam, after all that had happened of late, was something akin to a miracle. D’Avaux was right to wonder why she had not been arrested for the matter of the harpoon. She had stumbled away from the scene—the Herring Packers’ Tower—weeping with anger at Jack. But soon anger had been shouldered aside by fear as she’d realized she was being followed, rather obviously, by several parties at once. Looking back wouldn’t’ve done her any good and so she’d kept walking, all the way across the Dam and then through the Exchange, which was as good a place as any to lose pursuers—or at least to remind them that they could be doing more profitable things with their time. Finally she’d gone to the Maiden and sat by a window for several hours, watching—and had seen very little. A couple of tall loiterers, whom she now knew to’ve been Jacques and Jean-Baptiste, and one lolling Vagabond-beggar, identifiable by his humpbacked posture and insistent hacking cough.

  The kaag was being towed in the direction of Haarlem by a team of horses on the canal-bank, but on deck the crew were making preparations to swing her side-boards down into the water and deploy her clever folding mast, so that they could hoist a sail or two. The horses faltered as they came to a section of pavement that was broken and blackened, and ridged with trails of lead that had flowed molten from Mr. Sluys’s house, and spread across the paving-stones in glowing rivers that had divided and combined as they crept toward the bank. Finally the streams of molten lead had plunged gorgeously over the stone quay and dropped into the canal, where they’d flung up a column of steam that dwarfed and enveloped the pillar of smoke from Mr. Sluys’s burning houses. By that time, of course, those who’d set the fire had long since disappeared. It was up to the drost to interrogate the very few witnesses and to figure out whether it had really been done by infuriated Orangers, taking revenge on Sluys for backing the French, or by arsonists in the pay of Mr. Sluys. Sluys had lost so much, so fast, in the recent crash of V.O.C. stock* that his only way of getting any liquidity would have been to set fire to everything he still owned and then make claims against those who’d been rash enough to sell him insurance. This morning—three days since the fire—salvagers in the pay of those insurers were busy with pry-bars and hoists, pulling congealed rivulets and puddles of lead from the canal.

  She heard that whining sound next to her again, but it suddenly crescendoed, as if a cart-wheel were rolling over that leaky bagpipe and forcing the last bit of air through its drones. Then it broke open into a croaking, hacking laugh. That humpbacked boer had taken up a spot on the kaag’s rail not far from Eliza, and was watching the salvagers. “The Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion has made lead a valuable commodity again,” he said (Eliza could understand that much Dutch, anyway). “It’s as valuable as gold.”

  “I beg your pardon, meinheer, but—though it’s true the price of lead has risen—it is nowhere near as valuable as gold, or even silver.” Eliza said this in stumbling Dutch.

  The wheezing boer startled her by coming back in passable English. “That depends on where you are. An army, surrounded by the enemy, running low on balls, will happily exchange coins of gold for an equal weight of lead balls.”

  Eliza didn’t doubt the truth of this, but it struck her as an oddly bleak point of view, and so she broke off the conversation, and spoke no more to that boer as the kaag passed through a water-gate in Amsterdam’s western wall and entered flat Dutch countryside, diced by drainage ditches into pea-green bricks that were arrayed by the canal-side as if on a table in the market. The other passengers likewise gave the fellow a wide berth, partly because they didn’t want to catch whatever was afflicting his lungs, and mostly because they tended to be prosperous mercers and farmers coming back from Amsterdam with bags of gold and silver coins; they did not want to come anywhere near a man who would contemplate using florins as projectiles. The boer seemed to understand this all too well, and spent the first couple of hours of the voyage regarding his fellow-passengers with a glum knowingness that verged on contempt, and that would have earned him a challenge to a duel in France.

  Aside from that, he did nothing noteworthy until much later in the day, when, all of a sudden, he murdered Jacques and Jean-Baptiste.

  It came about like this: the kaag sailed down the canal to Haarlem, where it stopped to pick up a few more passengers, and then it raised more sails and set out across the Haarlemmermeer, a fairly sizable lake ventilated by a stiff maritime breeze. The fresh air had an obvious effect on the boer. The pitiable wheezing and hacking stopped with miraculous speed. His ribcage no longer labored with each breath. He stood up straighter, bringing him to average height, and seemed to shed a decade or two. He now appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He lost his dour expression and, instead of lurking at the stern glowering at the other passengers, began striding round the deck almost cheerfully. By the time he’d made several laps around the deck, all the other passengers had gotten used to this, and paid him no mind—which is how he was able to walk up behind Jacques, grab both of his ankles, and pitch him overboard.

  This happened so quickly, and with so little ado, that it might have been easy to believe it had never happened at all. But Jean-Baptiste believed it, and rushed at the boer with sword drawn. The boer had no sword, but the Antwerp merchant standing nearby had a perfectly serviceable one, and so the boer simply yanked it out of the owner’s scabbard and then dropped neatly into a defencing stance.

  Jean-Baptiste stopped to think, which probably did him no good, and much harm. Then he charged anyway. The pitching of the kaag ruined his attack. When he actually stumbled close enough to cross swords with the boer, it was obvious that Jean-Baptiste was the inferior swordsman—miserably so. But even setting aside these differences, the boer would have prevailed anyway, because to him, killing other men in close combat was as kneading dough was to a baker. Jean-Baptiste considered it to be an important matter, requiring certain formalities. A ring of dark windmills, ranged around the shore of the Haarlemmermeer, looked on like grim Dutch eminences, chopping the air. Rather soon, Jean-Baptiste had a couple of feet of bloody steel protruding from his back, and a jeweled hilt fixed to his chest like an awkward piece of jewelry.

  That was all that Eliza was allowed to take in before the gunny sack descended over her head, and was made snug—but not tight—around her neck. Someone hugged her around the knees and lifted her feet off the deck while another caught her by the armpits. She feared, only for a moment, that she was about to be thrown overboard like Jacques (and—to judge from a booming splash audible through the gunny sack—Jean-Baptiste). As she was being carried belowdecks she heard a terse utterance in Dutch, then, all around the kaag, a storm of thudding and rustling: passengers’ knees hitting the deck, and hats being whipped off their heads.

  When the sack came off her head, she was in her little cabin with two men: a brute and an angel. The brute was a thick-set boer, who had managed the gunny sack and borne most of her weight. He was immediately dismissed and sent out
by the angel: a blond Dutch gentleman, so beautiful that Eliza was more inclined to be jealous of, than attracted to, him. “Arnold Joost van Keppel,” he explained curtly, “page to the Prince of Orange.” He was looking at Eliza with the same coolness as she was showing him—obviously he had little interest in women. And yet rumor had it that William kept an English mistress—so perhaps he was the sort who could love anything.

  William, Prince of Orange, Stadholder, Admiral-General, and Captain-General of the United Provinces, Burgrave of Besançon, and Duke or Count or Baron of diverse other tiny fragments of Europe,* entered the cabin a few minutes later, ruddy and unshaven, slightly blood-flecked, and, in general, looking anything but Dutch. As d’Avaux never got tired of pointing out, he was a sort of European mongrel, with ancestors from all corners of the Continent. He looked as comfortable in that rough boer’s get-up as Monmouth had in Turkish silk. He was too excited and pleased with himself to sit down—which anyway would have led to a tedious welter of protocol, since there was only one place to sit in this cabin, and Eliza had no intention of vacating it. So William shooed Arnold Joost van Keppel out of the place, then braced his shoulder against a curving overhead knee-brace and remained on his feet. “My god, you’re but a child—not even twenty yet? That’s in your favor—it excuses your foolishness, while giving hope that you may improve.”

  Eliza was still too angry about the gunny sack to speak, or even to give any sign that she’d heard him.

  “Don’t delay writing a thank-you note to the Doctor,” said William, “if it weren’t for him, you’d be on a slow boat to Nagasaki.”

  “You are acquainted with Doctor Leibniz?”

  “We met at Hanover about five years ago. I traveled there, and to Berlin—”

  “Berlin?”

  “A town in Brandenburg, of little significance, save that the Elector has a palace there. I have various relations among the Electors and Dukes of that part of the world—I was making the rounds, you see, trying to bring them into an alliance against France.”

  “Evidently, without success—?”

  “They were willing. Most Dutchmen were, too—but Amsterdam was not. In fact, the Regents of Amsterdam were plotting with your friend d’Avaux to go over to the French so that Louis could wield their fleet against England.”

  “Also without success, or someone would’ve heard about it.”

  “I like to flatter myself that my efforts in northern Germany—aided to no small degree by your friend Doctor Leibniz—and d’Avaux’s exertions here, produced a stalemate,” William announced. “I was pleased to have fared so well, and Louis was furious to have made out so poorly.”

  “Is that the reason he raped Orange?”

  This made William of Orange very angry, which Eliza considered to be fair exchange for the gunny sack. But he mastered his rage, and answered in a tight voice: “Understand: Louis is not like us—he does not trifle with reasons. He is a reason. Which is why he must be destroyed.”

  “And it’s your ambition to do the destroying?”

  “Humor me, girl, by using the word ‘destiny’ instead of ‘ambition.’”

  “But you don’t even have control over your own territory! Louis has Orange, and here in Holland you skulk about in disguise, for fear of French dragoons—”

  “I am not here to rehearse these facts with you,” William said, now much calmer. “You are right. Furthermore, I cannot dance or write poetry or entertain a company at dinner. I’m not even a particularly good general, never mind what my supporters will tell you. All I know is that nothing that opposes me endures.”

  “France seems to be enduring.”

  “But I will see to it that France’s ambitions fail, and in some small way, you will help me.”

  “Why?”

  “You should be asking how.”

  “Unlike le Roi, I need reasons.”

  William of Orange thought it was amusing that she thought she needed reasons, but killing a couple of French dragoons had put him into a playful mood. “The Doctor says you hate slavery,” he offered. “Louis wants to enslave all of Christendom.”

  “Yet, all of Africa’s great slave-forts belong to the Dutch or the English.”

  “Only because the duc d’Arcachon’s navy is still too incompetent to take them away from us,” William returned. “Sometimes in life it is necessary to do things incrementally, and that goes double for a Vagabond girl-child who is trying to do away with a universal institution such as slavery.”

  Eliza said, “How remarkable that a Prince would dress up like a farmer and go on a boat-trip only to edify a Vagabond girl-child.”

  “You glorify yourself. First: as you have already pointed out, I always go incognito in Amsterdam, for d’Avaux has assassins all over the city. Second: I was going back to the Hague anyway, since your lover’s invasion of England has imposed certain obligations on me. Third: I have got rid of your escorts, and brought you to this cabin, not to edify you or anyone else, but to intercept the messages d’Avaux hid in your baggage.”

  Eliza now felt her face getting hot. William eyed her bemusedly for a few moments, and decided, perhaps, not to press his advantage. “Arnold!” he shouted. The cabin door opened. Through it, Eliza could see her things spread out all over the deck, stained with tar and bilge-water, some of the more complicated garments ripped into pieces. The luggage given to her by d’Avaux had been broken up into fragments, now being peeled apart layer by layer. “Two letters so far,” Arnold said, stepping into the cabin and, with a little bow, handing over sheets covered with writing.

  “Both encyphered,” William observed. “No doubt he’s had the wit to change over to a new code since last year.”

  Like a rock that had been struck by a cannon-ball, Eliza’s mind split into a few large independent pieces about now. One piece understood that the existence of these letters made her a French spy in the eyes of Dutch law, and presumably gave William the right to inflict any imaginable punishment on her. Another part was busily trying to figure out what d’Avaux’s plan had been (this seemed an over-elaborate way of mailing some letters!—or perhaps not?), and yet a third part seemed to be carrying on polite conversation without really thinking (maybe not such a good idea, but—). “What happened last year?”

  “I had d’Avaux’s previous dupe arrested. The messages he was carrying to Versailles were deciphered by my cryptologist. They had to do with all the fine things Sluys and certain Amsterdam Regents were doing on behalf of Louis.”

  This remark, at least, gave Eliza something to think about other than Doom and Rage. “Étienne d’Arcachon was visiting Sluys several weeks ago—but apparently not to discuss investments…”

  “She stirs—the eyelids flutter—I do believe she is about to Wake Up, sire,” said Arnold Joost van Keppel.

  “Would you get that man out of my cabin now, please?” said Eliza to William, with evenness that surprised everyone. William made some subliminal gesture and van Keppel was gone, the door closed—though the shredding and seam-popping noises now redoubled.

  “Is he going to leave me with any clothing at all?”

  William considered it. “No—except for one garment—the one you are wearing now. You will sew this letter into the corset, after Arnold has made a copy. When you arrive in Paris—exhausted, dishevelled, sans escort or luggage—you’ll have a magnificent tale to tell, of how the cheese-mongers molested you, slew your traveling-companions, rifled your bags—and yet you’ll be able to produce one letter that you cleverly secreted in your undergarments.”

  “It is a beautiful romance.”

  “It will create a sensation at Versailles—much better, for you, than if you’d showed up fresh and well-dressed. Duchesses and Countesses will pity you, instead of fearing you, and take you under their wings. It is such an excellent plan that I wonder why d’Avaux didn’t come up with it himself.”

  “Perhaps d’Avaux never intended for me to find a place in the French court. Perhaps I was to deli
ver these messages, and then be discarded.”

  This remark was meant to be a self-pitying trifle. William was supposed to object vehemently. Instead he seemed to weigh it seriously—which did nothing to steady Eliza’s nerves.

  “Did d’Avaux introduce you to anyone?” he asked thoughtfully.

  “That same Étienne d’Arcachon.”

  “Then d’Avaux has plans for you—and I know what they are.”

  “You have a smug look about you, O Prince, and I don’t doubt that you have read Monsieur d’Avaux’s mind, just as you’ll read those letters. But since you have me at such a disadvantage, I would fain know of your plans for me.”

  “Doctor Leibniz has taught you cyphers that put these French ones quite to shame,” said William, rattling d’Avaux’s letter. “Use them.”

  “You want me to spy for you, at Versailles.”

  “Not only for me but for Sophie and all of the others who oppose Louis. For now, that’s how you can be useful. Later, perhaps, I will require something else.”

  “Now I am in your power—but when I reach France, and those Duchesses begin fawning over me, I’ll have all of le Roi’s armies and navies to protect me…”

  “So how can I trust you, girl-child, not to tell the entire tale to the French, and become a double-agent?”

  “Just so.”

  “Isn’t it sufficient that Louis is repellent, and I stand for freedom?”

  “Perhaps…but you’d be foolish if you trusted me to act accordingly…and I won’t spy for a fool.”

  “Oh? You did for Monmouth.”

  Eliza gasped. “Sir!”

  “You should not joust if you are afraid to be punched out of the saddle, girl-child.”

  “Monmouth is no scholar, admitted—but he’s a fine warrior.”

  “He is adequate—but he’s no John Churchill. You don’t really believe he’ll overthrow King James, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t have abetted him if I didn’t think so.”

  William laughed very grimly. “Did he offer to make you a Duchess?”