Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “Why does everyone ask me that?”

  “He addled your brain when he did that. Monmouth is doomed. I have six English and Scottish regiments garrisoned in the Hague, as part of a treaty with England…as soon as I get there, I’ll send them back across the narrow seas to help put down Monmouth’s rebellion.”

  “But why!? James is almost a vassal to Louis! You should be supporting Monmouth!”

  “Eliza, did Monmouth skulk about Amsterdam incognito?”

  “No, he cut a brave swath.”

  “Did he continually watch his back for French assassins?”

  “No, he was carefree as a jay-bird.”

  “Were bombs with sputtering fuses found in his carriage?”

  “No bombs—only bon-bons.”

  “Is d’Avaux an intelligent man?”

  “Of course!”

  “Then—since he must have known what Monmouth was planning—as you made it so obvious—why did he make no effort to assassinate Monmouth?”

  Nothing from poor Eliza.

  “Monmouth has landed, of all places, in Dorset—John Churchill’s home ground! Churchill is riding out from London to engage him, and when that happens the rebellion will be crushed. My regiments will arrive much too late…I despatch them only for the sake of appearances.”

  “Don’t you want a Protestant King of England?”

  “Of course! In order to defeat Louis, I’ll need Britain.”

  “You say it ever so casually.”

  “It is a simple truth.” William shrugged. Then, an idea. “I rather like simple truths. Arnold!”

  Once again, Arnold was in the cabin—he’d found another two letters. “Sire?”

  “I need a witness.”

  “A witness to what, sire?”

  “This girl fears that I’d be a fool to trust her, as matters stand. She is a Qwghlmian girl…so I’m going to make her Duchess of Qwghlm.”

  “But…Qwghlm is part of the King of England’s domains, sire.”

  “That’s just the point,” William said. “This girl will be a duchess, secretly, and in name only, until such time as I sit upon the Throne of England…at which time she’ll become a duchess in fact. So I can trust her to take my side—and she won’t think I’m a fool for doing so.”

  “It’s either this, or the slow boat to Nagasaki?” Eliza asked.

  “It’s not so very slow,” Arnold said. “By the time you arrive, you should still have one or two teeth remaining.”

  Eliza ignored this, and kept her gaze on William’s eyes. “On your knees!” he commanded.

  Eliza gathered her skirts—the only intact clothes she had left—rose from her chair, and fell to her knees in front of the Prince of Orange, who said: “You cannot be ennobled without a ceremony that demonstrates your submission to your new liege-lord. This has been the tradition since ancient times.”

  Arnold drew a small-sword from its sheath and held it out in both hands, making it available to the Prince; but not without striking several braces, bulkheads, and items of furniture with elbows, hilt, sword-tip, et cetera, for the cabin was tiny and crowded. The Prince watched with sour amusement. “Sometimes the lord taps the vassal on the shoulder with his sword,” he allowed, “but there is no room in here to wield such a weapon safely; besides, I am trying to make a Duchess here, not a Knight.”

  “Would you prefer a dagger, my lord?” Arnold asked.

  “Yes,” said the Prince, “but don’t concern yourself with it, I have one handy.” Whereupon he peeled his belt open with a quick movement of the hand, and dropped his breeches. A hitherto concealed weapon popped up into view, so close to Eliza’s face that she could feel its heat. It was neither the longest nor the shortest such blade she had ever seen. She was pleased to note that it was clean—a Dutch virtue—and well-maintained. It oscillated with the beating of the Prince’s heart.

  “If you are going to tap me on the shoulder with that, you are going to have to step a bit closer, my lord,” Eliza said, “for, as splendid as it is, it does not compete with the other for length.”

  “On the contrary, you shall have to approach closer to me,” said the Prince. “And as you know perfectly well, it is not your shoulder that I am aiming for: neither the left one, nor the right, but a softer and more welcoming berth in between. Do not feign ignorance, I know your history, and that you learned this and many other practices in the Harim of the Sultan.”

  “There, I was a slave. Here, it is how I become a Duchess?”

  “As it was with Monmouth, and as it shall be in France, so it is here and now,” William said agreeably. His hand came down on the top of her head, and grabbed a handful of hair. “Perhaps you can teach Arnold a trick or two. Arnold, witness carefully.” William pulled Eliza forward. Eliza’s eyes clenched shut. What was about to happen wasn’t so very bad, in and of itself; but she couldn’t stand to have that other man watching.

  “There now,” the Prince said, “ignore him. Open your eyes, and stare into mine, boldly, as befits a Duchess.”

  Coast of Europe and of Northern Africa

  1685

  And Midas joyes our Spanish journeys give,

  We touch all gold, but find no food to live.

  And I should be in the hott parching clyme,

  To dust and ashes turn’d before my time.

  To mew me in a Ship, is to inthrall

  Mee in a prison, that weare like to fall;

  Or in a Cloyster; save that there men dwell

  In a calme heaven, here in a swaggering hell.

  Long voyages are long consumptions,

  And ships are carts for executions.

  Yea they are Deaths; Is’t not all one to flye

  Into an other World, as t’is to dye?

  —JOHN DONNE, “Elegie XX: Loves Warre”

  JACK SOBBED FOR THE FIRST time since he’d been a boy, and brother Dick had been pulled up, all stiff and white, from the Thames.

  The crew was not especially surprised. The moment of a ship’s departure was commonly a time for the colorful venting of emotions, and that went double or triple for young women being left behind at dockside. Mr. Vliet was obviously worried that it would lead to some kind of legal ensnarements, and fled over the plank onto the ship, followed shortly by the duly blessed and sacramentalized Yevgeny. God’s Wounds cast off without any ceremonies and skulked out of the harbor into the Ijsselmeer, where the sails were raised to drive her through ragged, swelling seas. Yevgeny came and planted a giant mukluk against the mast and pulled his harpoon out of it, and of Jack’s arm, muttering in what sounded like embarrassment. One of the crew, who was said to have some experience as a barber-surgeon, stoked up the galley-fire to heat some irons. As Jack had been slashed deeply across the chest, as well as pierced through the forearm, there was much cauterizing to be done. Half the ship’s crew, it seemed, sat on Jack to make him be still while the irons were applied, reheated, applied, reheated, seemingly all the way across the Ijsselmeer. At the beginning of this interminable cattle-branding, Jack screamed for mercy. Some of the men who were sitting on him looked disgusted and some looked amused, but none looked merciful—which made sense when Jack recalled he was on a slaver-ship. So after that he just screamed until he lost his voice and could hear only the wet sizzle of his own flesh.

  When it was done, Jack sat, wrapped in blankets, out on the bowsprit, as sort of a Vagabond-wretch-figurehead, and smoked a pipe that Yevgeny had brought him. Queerly, he felt nothing at all. Big merchant ships, locked into huge air-filled boxes to lift them higher in the water, were being towed over the sand-banks, which were all cluttered with old spidery wrecks. Beyond that, the rhythm of the ocean subtly changed, as before a play, when a frilly overture gives way to the booming music of a Tragedy or History. It got darker and palpably colder, and those ships were set free from their boxes, and began to spread cloth before the wind, like canvas-merchants displaying their wares to an important buyer. The offerings were grudgingly accepted—the sails fille
d with air, became taut and smooth, and the ships accelerated toward the sea. Later, they came to Texel, and all the sailors paused in their chores to view the immense Ships of the Line of the Dutch Navy riding on the huge waves of the North Sea, their flags and banners swirling like colored smoke-clouds and their triple gun-decks frowning at England.

  Then finally they were at sea, bringing a certain kind of solace to Jack, who felt that he must be a condemned man, now, on every scrap of dry land in the world. They put in briefly at Dunkirk to recruit a few more hands. His brother Bob came out to visit Jack, who was in no condition to leave the ship, and they exchanged a few stories, which Jack forgot immediately. This last encounter with his brother was like a dream, a sweeping-together of fragments, and he heard someone telling Bob that Jack was not in his right mind.

  Then south. Off St.-Malo they were overhauled and boarded by French privateers, who only laughed when they learned of the worthless cargo, and let them go with only token pilfering. But one of these Frenchmen, as he left the deck of God’s Wounds, walked up to Mr. Vliet, who cringed. And in response to that cringing, more than anything else, the privateer slapped the Dutchman on the side of the head so hard that he fell down.

  Even with his mind impaired in several ways, Jack understood that this action was more damaging to his investment than if the French had fired a broadside of cannonballs through their hull. The sailors became more surly after that, and Mr. Vliet began to spend most of his time closeted in his wardroom. The only thing that kept God’s Wounds from becoming an ongoing mutiny was Mr. Foot, who (with Yevgeny as his muscle) became the real captain of the ship after that, stepping easily into the role, as if his twenty-year hiatus tending bar at the Bomb & Grapnel had never happened.

  Following the coast, they rounded the various capes of Brittany and then steered a southwesterly rhumb-line across the Bay of Biscay, coming in view of the Galician coast after a number of anxious days. Jack did not really share in the anxiety because his wounds had become infected. Between the fevers, and the relentless bleedings meted out by the ship’s barber to cure them, he lacked the faintest idea of where they were, and sometimes even forgot he was aboard ship. Mr. Vliet refused to move from the best wardroom, which was probably a savvy position for him to take, as there was sentiment among the crew for tossing him overboard. But he was the only man on the ship who knew how to navigate. So Jack was tucked into a hammock belowdecks, peering up day after day at blue needles of light between the deck-planks, hearing little but the merry clink of cowrie-shells being sifted to and fro by the ship’s pitching and rolling.

  When he finally got well enough to come abovedecks again, it was hot, and the sun was higher in the sky than he’d ever seen it. He was informed that they had, for a time, dropped anchor in the harbor of Lisbon, and since moved on. Jack regretted missing that, for there was said to be a very great Vagabond-camp outside that city, and if he’d managed to slip away, he might be on dry land again, reigning as Vagabond-king. But that was only the crack-pated phant’sy of a condemned man chained by the neck to a wall, and he soon made himself forget it.

  According to Mr. Vliet, who spent hours taking measurements with a back-staff and making laborious calculations with numbers and tables, they had passed through the latitude of Gibraltar, and so the land they glimpsed off to port from time to time was Africa. But the Slave Coast was yet far, far to the south, and many weeks of sailing lay ahead of them.

  But he was wrong about that. Later on the same day there was a commotion from the lookouts, and coming abovedecks Jack and the others saw two strange vessels approaching from abaft, seeming to crawl across the water on countless spindly legs. These were galleys, the typical warships of the Barbary Corsairs. Mr. Vliet watched them through his spyglass for a time, making certain geometrickal calculations on a slate. Then he commenced vomiting, and retreated to his cabin. Mr. Foot broke open some chests and began to pass out rusty cutlasses and blunderbusses.

  “But why fight for cowrie-shells?” one of the English sailors asked. “It’ll be just like the Frenchies at St.-Malo.”

  “They are not hunting us for what is in our hold,” Mr. Foot explained. “Do you think free men would pull oars like that?”

  Now Jack was not the first or last man aboard God’s Wounds to question the wisdom of nailing their colors to the mast, but when he understood that those Barbary Corsairs intended to make galley-slaves out of them, his view changed. As when powder-smoke is driven away from a battle by a sea-breeze, he saw with clarity that he would die that day. He saw also that the arrival of the corsairs was fortunate for him, since his death was not long in coming anyway, and better to die in fighting for his liberty, than in scheming to take away some other man’s.

  So he went down belowdecks and opened up his sea-chest and took out his Janissary-sword in its gaudy sheath, and brought it up abovedecks. The crew had formed up into a few distinct clusters, obviously the beginnings of mutinous conspiracies. Jack climbed up onto the prow of a longboat that was lashed to the deck, and from there vaulted up onto the roof of a pilot-house that stood just aft of the foremast. From this height, he had a view up and down the length of God’s Wounds and was struck (as usual) by what a narrow sliver of a thing she was. And yet she, or any other European cargo-vessel, was a wallowing pig compared to those galleys, which slid over the top of the water like Dutch ice-skates hissing over the top of a frozen canal. They had enormous saffron-colored triangular sails to drive them forward as well as the oars, and they were approaching in single file from directly astern, so that God’s Wounds’s few paltry cannon could not fire a broadside. There was a single swivel-gun astern that might have pelted the lead galley with a tangerine-sized cannonball or two, but the men near it were arguing, instead of loading the weapon.

  “What a world!” Jack hollered.

  Most everyone looked at him.

  “Year after year at home, chopping wood and drawing water and going to church, nothing to divert us save the odd hailstorm or famine—and yet all a man need do is board ship and ride the wind for a few days, and what’ve you got? Barbary Corsairs and pirate-galleys off the coast of Morocco! Now, Mr. Vliet, he has no taste for adventure. But as for myself, I would rather cross swords with corsairs than pull oars for them—so I’m for fighting!” Jack pulled out the Janissary-sword, which, compared to Mr. Foot’s pitted relics, burnt and glittered beneath the African sun. Then he flung the scabbard away. It fup-fup-fupped off to port and then stopped in midair and dove vertically into the waves. “This is the only thing they’re going to get from Half-Cocked Jack!”

  This actually wrung a cheer from the approximately half of the crew who’d made up their minds to fight anyway. The other half only looked embarrassed on Jack’s behalf. “Easy for you to say—everyone knows you’re dying,” said one of the latter group, one Henry Flatt, who until this moment had been on easy terms with Jack.

  “And yet I’ll live longer’n you,” Jack said, then jumped down from the pilot-house and began to approach Flatt—who stood and watched dumbly at first, perhaps not aware that all of his fellows had fled to other parts of the ship. When Jack drew closer, and turned sideways, and bent his knees, and showed Flatt the edge of his blade, Flatt went en garde for just a moment, then seemed to come to his senses, backpedaled several yards, then simply turned and ran. Jack could hear men laughing—satisfying in a way, but, on second thought, vexing. This was serious work, not play-acting. The only way to make these half-wits understand that weighty matters were at stake was probably to kill someone. So Jack cornered Flatt up at the bow, and pursued him, actually, out onto the very bowsprit, weaving and dodging around the points of the inner jib, the outer jib, and the flying jib, all of which were quivering and snapping in the wind as no one was paying attention to keeping them trimmed. Finally the wretch Flatt was perched on the tip of the bowsprit, gripping the last available line* to keep from being tossed away by the routine pitching of the ship. With the other hand he raised a cutlass in a feeb
le threat. “Be killed now by a Christian or in ten minutes by a heathen—it’s all one to me—but if you choose to be a slave, your life is worthless, and I’ll flick you into the ocean like a turd,” Jack said.

  “I’ll fight,” Flatt said. Jack could see plainly that he was lying. But everyone was watching now—not just the crew of God’s Wounds, but a startlingly large crowd of armed men who had emerged onto the decks of the galleys. Jack had to observe proper form. So he made a great show of turning his back on Henry Flatt, and began to work his way back down the bowsprit, with the intent of whirling around and striking Flatt down when Flatt inevitably came after him. In fact, he was just about to do so when he saw Mr. Foot swinging his cutlass at a taut line that had been made fast to a pinrail at the bow: the sheet that held the obtuse corner of the flying jib, and transferred all of its power into the frame of the ship. The jib went slack above him. Jack dove, and grabbed at a line. He heard a sort of immense metallic fart as the shivering canvas wrapped around Flatt like a shroud, held him for a moment, and then dropped him into the sea, where he was immediately driven under by the onrushing hull.

  Jack nearly fell overboard himself, as he ended up dangling by a rope with one hand, maintaining a grip on the sword with the other—but Yevgeny’s big hand seized his forearm and hauled him up to safety.

  That is, if this could be considered safety: the two galleys, which until now had been idling along in single file, had, during the dispute with Flatt, forked apart so that they could come up on both flanks of God’s Wounds at the same time. For some minutes it had been possible to hear, from those galleys, a faint musick: an eerie chaunt sung by many voices, in a strange keening melody, that, somewhat like an Irish tune, struck Jack’s English ears as being Not from Around Here. Though, come to think of it, it probably was from around here. Anyway, it was a strange alien melody sung in some barbarous tongue. And until very recently, it had been sung slowly, as the crashing of the galleys’ many oar-blades into the brine had served as the drum-beat marking the time.