Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  JOURNAL ENTRY 15 SEPTEMBER 1688

  On a canal-boat bound from Maestricht to Nijmegen. Conditions not very comfortable, but at least we do not have to ride or walk any more. Am renewing my acquaintance with soap.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 16 SEPTEMBER 1688

  I am in a cabin of a canal-ship making its way west across the Dutch Republic.

  I am surrounded by slumbering Princesses.

  The Germans have a fondness for faery-tales, or Märchen as they call them, that is strangely at odds with their orderly dispositions. Ranged in parallel with their tidy Christian world is the Märchenwelt, a pagan realm of romance, wonders, and magical beings. Why they believe in the Märchenwelt has ever been a mystery to me; but I am closer to understanding it today than I was yesterday. For yesterday we reached Nijmegen. We went direct to the bank of the Rhine and I began looking for a canal-boat bound in the direction of Rotterdam and the Hague. Hans and Joachim meanwhile canvassed travelers debarking from boats lately come from upstream. I had no sooner settled myself in a comfortable cabin on a Hague-bound canal-ship when Joachim found me; and he had in tow a pair of characters straight out of the Märchenwelt. They were not gnomes, dwarves, or witches, but Princesses: one full-grown [I believe she is not yet thirty] and one pint-sized [she has told me three different times that she is five years old]. True to form, the little one carries a doll that she insists is also a princess.

  They do not look like princesses. The mother, whose name is Eleanor, has something of a regal bearing. But this was not obvious to me at first, for when they joined me, and Eleanor noticed a clean bed [mine] and saw that Caroline-----for that is the daughter’s name-----was under my watch, she fell immediately into [my] bed, went to sleep, and did not awaken for some hours, by which time the boat was well underway. I spent much of that time chatting with little Caroline, who was at pains to let me know she was a princess; but as she made the same claim of the dirty lump of stuffed rags she bore around in her arms, I did not pay it much mind.

  But Joachim insisted that the disheveled woman snoring under my blankets was genuine royalty. I was about to chide him for having been deluded by mountebanks, when I began to recollect the tales I had been told of the Winter Queen, who after being driven out of Bohemia by the Pope’s legions, wandered about Europe as a Vagabond before finding safe haven at the Hague. And my time at Versailles taught me more than I wished to know about the desperate financial straits in which many nobles and royals live their whole lives. Was it really so unthinkable that three Princesses-----mother, daughter, and doll-----should be wandering about lost and hungry on the Nijmegen riverfront? For war had come to this part of the world, and war rends the veil that separates the everyday world from the Märchenwelt.

  By the time Eleanor woke up, I had mended the doll, and I had been looking after little Caroline for long enough that I felt responsible for her, and would have been willing to snatch her away from Eleanor if the latter had proved, upon awakening, to be some sort of madwoman [this is by no means my usual response to small children, for at Versailles, playing my role as governess, I had been put in charge of many a little snot-nose whose names I have long since forgotten. But Caroline was bright, and interesting to talk to, and a welcome relief from the sorts of people I had been spending time with for the last several weeks].

  When Eleanor had arisen, and washed, and eaten some of my provisions, she told a story that was wild but, by modern standards, plausible. She claims to be the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach. She married the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The daughter is properly called Princess Wilhelmina Caroline of Ansbach. But this Margrave died of smallpox a few years ago and his title passed to a son by an earlier wife, who had always considered Eleanor to be a sort of wicked stepmother [this being a Märchen, after all] and so cast her and little Caroline out of the Schloβ. They drifted back to Eisenach, Eleanor’s place of birth. This is a place on the edge of the Thüringer Wald, perhaps two hundred miles east of where we are now. Her position in the world at that time, a few years ago, was the reverse of mine: she had a lofty title, but no property at all. Whereas I had no titles other than Slave and Vagabond, but I did have some money. At any rate, she and Caroline were suffered to dwell in what sounds like a family hunting-lodge in the Thüringer Wald. But she does not seem to have been much more welcome in Eisenach than she had been at Ansbach following the death of her husband. And so, while spending part of each year at Eisenach, it has been her practice to roam about and pay extended visits to shirttail relatives all over northern Europe, moving from time to time lest she wear out her welcome in any one place.

  Recently she paid a brief visit to Ansbach in an effort to patch things up with her hostile stepson. Ansbach is within striking distance of Mannheim on the Rhine, and so she and Caroline next went there to look in on some cousins who had shown them charity in the past. They arrived, naturally, at the worst possible moment, a few days ago, just as the French regiments were swarming over the Rhine on the barges built at Haguenau, and bombarding the defensive works. Someone there had the presence of mind to pack them on a boat full of well-heeled refugees, bound down the river. And so they passed quickly out of the area of danger, though they continued to hear cannon-fire for a day or more, echoing up the valley of the Rhine. They reached Nijmegen without incident, though the boat was so crowded with refugees-----some of them with suppurating wounds-----that she was unable to take more than the occasional catnap. When they debarked, Joachim-----who is a Person of Quality in the Palatinate-----recognized them as they stumbled down the gangplank, and brought them to me.

  Now the current of the Rhine slowly flushes us, and a lot of other war-flotsam, downstream towards the sea. I have oft heard French and Germans alike speak disparagingly of the Netherlands, likening the country to a gutter that collects all the refuse and fœces of Christendom, but lacks the vigor to force it out to sea, so that it piles up in a bar around Rotterdam. It is a cruel and absurd way to talk about a noble and brave little country. Yet as I look on my condition, and on that of the Princesses, and review our recent travels [blundering about in dark and dangerous parts until we stumbled upon running water, then drifting downstream], I can recognize a kind of cruel truth in that slander.

  We shall not, however, let ourselves be flushed out to sea. At Rotterdam we divert from the river’s natural course and follow a canal to the Hague. There the Princesses can find refuge, just as did the Winter Queen at the end of her wanderings. And there I shall try to deliver a coherent report to the Prince of Orange. This bit of embroidery is ruined before it was finished, but it contains the information that William has been waiting for. When I have finished my report I may make it into a pillow. Everyone who sees it will wonder at my foolishness for keeping such a dirty, stained, faded thing around the house. But I will keep it in spite of them. It is an important thing to me now. When I started it, I only intended to use it to record details of French troop movements and the like. But as the weeks went on and I frequently found myself with plenty of time on my hands to tend to my needlework, I began to record some of my thoughts and feelings about what was going on around me. Perhaps I did this out of boredom; but perhaps it was so that some part of me might live on, if I were killed or made a captive along the way. This might sound like a foolish thing to have done, but a woman who has no family and few friends is forever skirting the edges of a profound despair, which derives from the fear that she could vanish from the world and leave no trace she had ever existed; that the things she has done shall be of no account and the perceptions she has formed [as of Dr. von Pfung for example] shall be swallowed up like a cry in a dark woods. To write out a full confession and revelation of my doings, as I’ve done here, is not without danger; but if I did not do so I would be so drowned in melancholy that I would do nothing at all, in which event my life truly would be of no account. This way, at least, I am part of a story, like the ones Mummy used to tell me in the banyolar in Algiers, and like the ones that were told by Sh
ahrazad, who prolonged her own life for a thousand and one nights by the telling of tales.

  But given the nature of the cypher that I am using, chances are that you, reader, will never exist, and so I cannot see why I should continue running this needle through the dirty old cloth when I am so tired, and the rocking of the boat invites me to close my eyes.

  Rossignol to Louis XIV Continued

  NOVEMBER 1688

  Your majesty will have been dismayed by the foregoing tale of treason and perfidy. If it were generally known, I fear it would do grave damage to the reputation of your majesty’s sister-in-law the duchesse d’Orléans. She is said to be prostrate with grief, and ungrateful for all that your majesty’s legions have done in order to secure her rights in the Palatinate. Out of a gentleman’s respect for her rank, and humane compassion for her feelings, I have been as discreet as possible with this intelligence which could only bring her further suffering if it were known. I have shared the foregoing account only with your majesty. D’Avaux has importuned me for a copy, but I have deflected his many requests and will continue to do so unless your majesty instructs me to send the document to him.

  In the weeks that I have spent in the decypherment of this document, Phobos and Deimos have been unleashed on the east bank of the Rhine. The lead that the Countess so assiduously followed to the banks of the Meuse has been conveyed in bulk to the Palatinate, and ended its long journey traveling at inconceivable velocities through the bodies and the buildings of heretics. Half the young blades of Court have quit Versailles to go hunting in Germany, and many of them write letters, which it is my duty to read. I am told that Heidelberg Castle burnt brilliantly for days, and that everyone is looking forward to repeating the experiment in Mannheim. Philippsburg, Mainz, Speier, Trier, Worms, and Oppenheim are scheduled for later in the year. As winter draws on, your majesty will be troubled to learn of all the brutality. You will draw your forces back, and give Louvois a firm scolding for having acted so excessively. Historians will record that the Sun King cannot be held responsible for all of the unpleasantness.

  From your majesty’s many excellent sources in England, your majesty will know that the Prince of Orange is now there, commanding an army made up not only of Dutchmen, but of the English and Scottish regiments that were stationed on Dutch soil by treaty; Huguenot scum who filtered up from France; mercenaries and freebooters from Scandinavia; and Prussians who’ve been lent to the cause by Sophie Charlotte—the daughter of the cursed Hanoverian bitch Sophie.

  All of which only seems to prove that Europe is a chessboard. Even your majesty cannot gain (say) the Rhine without sacrificing (say) England. Likewise, whatever Sophie and William may gain from their ceaseless machinations they’ll have to pay for in the end. And as for the Countess de la Zeur, why, the new King of England might make her Duchess of Qwghlm, but in return your majesty will no doubt see to it that her sacrifices are commensurate.

  M. le comte d’Avaux has redoubled his surveillance of the Countess in the Hague. He has received assurances from the laundresses who work in the house of Huygens that she has not bled a single drop of menstrual blood in the nearly two months she’s been there. She is pregnant with a bastard of Arcachon. She is therefore now a part of the family of France, of which your majesty is the patriarch. As it is become a family matter, I will refrain from any further meddling unless your majesty instructs me otherwise.

  I have the honour to be, your majesty’s humble and obedient servant, Bonaventure Rossignol

  Sheerness, England

  11 DECEMBER 1688

  Then the Kings countenance was changed, and his thoghts troubled him, so that the joyntes of his loines were loosed, and his knees smote one against the other.

  —DANIEL 5:6

  ON ANY OTHER DAY, DANIEL did not have a thing in common with anyone else at the Court of St. James. Indeed, that was the very reason he was allowed to bide there. Today, though, he had two things in common with them. One, that he had spent most of the preceding night, and most of this day, traipsing all over Kent trying to figure out where the King had got to. And two, that he stood in utmost need of a pint.

  Finding himself alone on a boat-flecked mudflat, and happening on a tavern, he entered it. The only thing he sought in that place was that pint and maybe a banger. In additition to which, he found James (by the Grace of God King of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the occasional odd bit of France) Stuart being beaten up by a couple of drunken English fishermen. It was just the sort of grave indignity absolute monarchs tried at all costs to avoid. In normal times, procedures and safeguards were in place to prevent it. One could imagine one of the ancient Kings of England, say, your Sven Forkbeard, or your Ealhmund the Under-King of Kent, wandering into an inn somewhere and throwing a few punches. But barroom brawling had been pushed off the bottom of the list of Things Princes Should Know How to Do during the great Chivalry vogue of five centuries back. And it showed: King James II had a bloody nose. To be fair, though, he’d been having an epic one for weeks. As past generations sang of Richard Lionheart’s duels against Saladin before Jerusalem, future ones would sing of James Stuart’s nosebleed.

  It was, in sum, not a scenario that had ever been contemplated by the authors of the etiquette-books that Daniel had perused when he’d gone into the Courtier line of work. He’d have known just how to address the King during a masque at the Banqueting House or a hunt in a royal game-park. But when it came to breaking up a royal bar-fight in a waterfront dive at the mouth of the Medway, he was at a loss, and could only order himself that pint, and consider his next move.

  His Majesty was standing up to the treatment surprisingly well. Of course, he’d fought in battles on land and at sea; no one had ever accused him of being a ninehammer. And this altercation was really more of a cuffing and slapping about: not so much fight as improvised entertainment by and for men who got out to Punchinello shows only infrequently. This was a very old tavern, half sunk into the riverside muck, and the ceiling was so close to the floor that the fishermen scarcely had room to draw their fists back properly. There were flurries of jabs that failed to connect with any part of the King’s body. The blows that did land were open-handed, roundhouse slaps. Daniel sensed that if the King would only stop flinching, say something funny, and buy a round for the house, everything would change. But if he were that sort of King he wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place.

  At any rate Daniel was immensely relieved that it was not a serious beating. Otherwise he would’ve been obliged to draw the sword hanging from his belt, which he had no idea how to use. King James II most certainly would know what to do with it, of course. As Daniel plunged his upper lip through the curtain of foam on his pint, he had a moment’s phant’sy of unbelting the weapon and tossing it across the room to the sovereign, who’d snatch it from the air, whip it out, and commence slaying subjects. Then Daniel could perhaps embroider ’pon his deed by smashing a bit of crockery over someone’s head—better yet, sustain an honorable wound or two. This would guarantee him a free, all-expenses paid, but strictly one-way trip to France, where he’d probably be rewarded with an English earldom that he’d never be able to visit, and get to lounge around in James’s exile court all day.

  This phant’sy did not last for very long. One of the King’s attackers had felt something in His Majesty’s coat-pocket and yanked it out: a crucifix. A moment of silence. Those here who were conscious enough to see the object, felt obliged to give it due reverence; either because it was an emblem of Our Lord’s passion, or because it was made predominantly out of gold. Through the tavern’s atmosphere, which had approximately the mass and consistency of aspic, the artifact gleamed attractively, and even cast off a halo. Descartes had abhorred the idea of a vacuum, and held that what we took to be empty space was really a plenum, a solidly packed ocean of particles, swirling and colliding, trading and trafficking in a fixed stock of movement that had been imparted to the universe at its creation by the Almighty. He must have come u
p with that idea in a tavern like this one; Daniel wasn’t sure a pistol-ball would be able to dig a tunnel through this air from one side of the room to the other.

  “What’s this, then!?” the fellow holding up the crucifix wanted to know.

  James II looked suddenly exasperated. “Why, it is a crucifix!”

  Another blank moment passed. Daniel had completely let go of the idea of being an exiled earl at Versailles, and was now feeling uncomfortably rabble-like himself, and strongly tempted to go and take a poke at His Majesty—if only for the sake of Drake, who’d never have hesitated.

  “Well, if you’re not a bleeding Jesuit spy, then why’re you bearing this bit o’ idolatry about!?” demanded the fellow with the quick hands, shaking the crucifix just out of the King’s reach. “Didjer loot it? Didjer steal this holy object from a burnin’ church, didjer?”

  They had no idea who he was. At this the scene made sense for the first time. Until then Daniel had wondered just who was suffering from syphilitic hallucinations around here!

  James had surprised all London by galloping away from Whitehall Palace after midnight. Someone had caught sight of him hurling the Great Seal of the Realm into the Thames, which was not a wholly usual thing for the Sovereign to do, and with that he’d pelted off into the night, east-bound, and no person of gentle or noble rank had seen him since, until the moment Daniel had blundered into this tavern in search of refreshment.