Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “There’s a certain unexamined arrogance to your question, Daniel. Just as Newton presumes that there is some absolute space by which all things—comets even!—are measured and governed, you presume it is all perfectly natural and pre-ordained that the earth should be populated by men, whose superstitions ought to be the ruler by which all things are judged; but why might I not ask of you, ‘Daniel Waterhouse, who or what are you? And why does Creation teem with others like you, and what is your purpose?’ ”

  “I’ll remind you, sirrah, that All Hallows’ Eve was more than a month since, and I am not of a humour to be baited with hobgoblin-stories.”

  “Nor am I of a humour to be rated a hobgoblin or any other figment of the humane imagination; for ’twas God who imagined me, just as He did you, and thereby brought us into being.”

  “Your tankard brims over with scorn for our superstitions and imaginings; yet here you are, as always, in the company of Alchemists.”

  “You might have said, ‘Here you are in the center of the Glorious Revolution conversing with a noted political philosopher,’” Root returned, glancing at Locke, who flicked his eyes downward in the merest hint of a bow. “But I am never credited thus by you, Daniel.”

  “I have only seen you in the company of alchemists. Do you deny it?”

  “Daniel, I have only seen you in the company of alchemists. But I am aware that you do other things. I know you have oft been at Bedlam with Hooke. Perhaps you have seen priests there who go to converse with madmen. Do you suppose those priests to be mad?”

  “I’m not sure if I approve of the similitude—” Locke began.

  “Stay, ’tis just a figure!” Root laughed rather winningly, reaching out to touch Locke’s shoulder.

  “A faulty one,” Daniel said, “for you are an alchemist.”

  “I am called an Alchemist. Within living memory, Daniel, everyone who studied what I—and you—study was called by that name. And most persons even today observe no distinction between Alchemy and the younger and more vigorous order of knowledge that is associated with your club.”

  “I am too exhausted to harry you through all of your evasions. Out of respect for your friends Mr. Locke, and for Leibniz, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt, and wish you well,” Daniel said.

  “God save you, Mr. Waterhouse.”

  “And you, Mr. Root. But I say this to you—and you as well, Mr. Locke. As I came in here I saw a map, lately taken from this house, burning in the fire. The map was empty, for it depicted the ocean—most likely, a part of it where no man has ever been. A few lines of latitude were ruled across that vellum void, and some legendary isles drawn in, with great authority, and where the map-maker could not restrain himself he drew phantastickal monsters. That map, to me, is Alchemy. It is good that it burnt, and fitting that it burnt tonight, the eve of a Revolution that I will be so bold as to call my life’s work. In a few years Mr. Hooke will learn to make a proper chronometer, finishing what Mr. Huygens began thirty years ago, and then the Royal Society will draw maps with lines of longitude as well as latitude, giving us a grid—what we call a Cartesian grid, though ’twas not his idea—and where there be islands, we will rightly draw them. Where there are none, we will draw none, nor dragons, nor sea-monsters—and that will be the end of Alchemy.”

  “ ’Tis a noble pursuit and I wish you Godspeed,” Root said, “but remember the poles.”

  “The poles?”

  “The north and south poles, where your meridians will come together—no longer parallel and separate, but converging, and all one.”

  “That is nothing but a figment of geometry.”

  “But when you build all your science upon geometry, Mr. Water-house, figments become real.”

  Daniel sighed. “Very well, perhaps we’ll get back to Alchemy in the end—but for now, no one can get near the poles—unless you can fly there on a broom, Mr. Root—and I’ll put my trust in geometry and not in the books of fables that Mr. Boyle and Sir Elias are sorting through below. ’Twill work for me, for the short time I have remaining. I have not time to-night.”

  “Further errands await you?”

  “I would fain bid a proper farewell to my dear old friend Jeffreys.”

  “He is an old friend of the Earl of Upnor as well,” Enoch Root said, a bit distractedly.

  “This I know, for they cover up each other’s murders.”

  “Upnor sent Jeffreys a box a few hours ago.”

  “Not to his house, I’ll wager.”

  “He sent it in care of the master of a ship in the Pool.”

  “The name of the ship?”

  “I do not know it.”

  “The name of the messenger, then?”

  Enoch Root leaned over the baluster and peered down the middle of the stairwell. “I do not know that, either,” he said, then shifted his tankard to the other hand so that he could reach out. He pointed at a young porter who was just on his way out the door, bearing another pile of books to the bonfire. “But it was him.”

  HARE RODE AT ANCHOR, LANTERNS a-blaze, before Wapping: a suburb crooked in an elbow of the Thames just downstream of the Tower. If Jeffreys had already boarded her, there was nothing they could do, short of hiring a pirate-ship to overhaul her when she reached blue water. But a few minutes’ conversation with the watermen loitering round the Wapping riverfront told them that no passengers had been conveyed to that ship yet. Jeffreys must be waiting for something; but he would wait close by, within view of Hare, so that he could bolt if he had to. And he would choose a place where he could get strong drink, because he was a drunkard. That narrowed it down to some half a dozen taverns, unevenly spaced along the riverbank from the Tower of London down to Shadwell, mostly clustered around the stairs and docks that served as gate-ways ’tween the Wet and the Dry worlds. Dawn was approaching, and any normal business ought to’ve been closed half a dozen hours ago. But these dockside taverns served an irregular clientele at irregular hours; they told time by the rise and fall of the tides, not by the comings and goings of the sun. And the night before had been as wild as any in England’s history. No sane tavernkeeper would have his doors closed now.

  “Let’s be about it smartly then, guv’nor,” said Bob Shaftoe, striding off the boat they’d hired near Charing Cross and lighting on King Henry’s Stairs. “This may be nigh on the longest night of the year, but it can’t possibly be much longer; and I believe that my Abigail awaits me at Upnor.”

  This was a gruff way of speaking to a tired sick old Natural Philosopher, yet an improvement on the early days in the Tower, when Bob had been suspicious and chilly, or recent times when he’d been patronizing. When Bob had witnessed John Churchill shaking Daniel’s hand on the Tower causeway a few hours earlier, he’d immediately begun addressing him as “guv’nor.” But he’d persisted in his annoying habit of asking Daniel whether he was tired or sick until just a quarter of an hour ago, when Daniel had insisted that they shoot one of the flumes under London Bridge rather than take the time to walk around.

  It was the first time in Daniel’s life that he’d run this risk, the second time for Bob, and the fourth time for the waterman. A hill of water had piled up on the upstream side of the bridge and was finding its way through the arches like a panicked crowd trying to bolt from a burning theatre. The boat’s mass was but a millionth part of it, and was of no account whatever; it spun around like a weathercock at the brink of the cataract, bashed against the pilings below Chapel Pier hard enough to stave in the gunwale, spun round the opposite way from the recoil, and accelerated through the flume sideways, rolling toward the downstream side so that it scooped up a ton or so of water. Daniel had imagined doing this since he’d been a boy, and had always wondered what it would be like to look up and see the Bridge from underneath; but by the time he thought to raise his gaze outside the narrow and dire straits of the boat, they’d been thrust half a mile downstream and were passing right by the Traitor’s Gate once more.

  This act had at
last convinced Bob that Daniel was a man determined to kill himself this very night, and so he now dispensed with all of the solicitous offers; he let Daniel jump off the boat under his own power, and did not volunteer to bear him piggy-back up King Henry’s Stairs. Up they trudged into Wapping, river-water draining in gallons from their clothes, and the waterman—who’d been well paid—was left to bail his boat.

  They tried four taverns before they came to the Red Cow. It was half wrecked from the past night’s celebrations, but efforts were underway to shovel it out. This part of the riverfront was built up only thinly, with one or two strata of inns and warehouses right along the river, crowding in against a main street running direct to the Tower a mile away. Beyond that ’twas green fields. So the Red Cow offered Daniel juxtapositions nearly as strange as what he’d witnessed in Sheerness: viz. one milkmaid, looking fresh and pure as if angels had just borne her in from a dewy Devonshire pasture-ground, carrying a pail of milk in the back door, stepping primly over a peg-legged Portuguese seaman who’d passed out on a heap of straw embracing a drained gin-bottle. This and other particulars, such as the Malay-looking gent smoking bhang by the front door, gave Daniel the feeling that the Red Cow merited a thoroughgoing search.

  As on a ship when exhausted sailors climb down from the yards and go to hammocks still warm from the men who replace them, so the late-night drinkers were straggling out, and their seats being taken by men of various watery occupations who were nipping in for a drink and a nibble.

  But there was one bloke in the back corner who did not move. He was dark, saturnine, a lump of lead on a plank, his face hidden in shadow—either completely unconscious or extremely alert. His hand was curled round a glass on the table in front of him, the pose of one who needs to sit for many hours, and who justifies it by pretending he still nurses his drink. Light fell onto his hand from a candle. His thumb was a-tremble.

  Daniel went to the bar at the opposite corner of the room, which was little bigger than a crow’s nest. He ordered one dram, and paid for ten. “Yonder bloke,” he said, pointing with his eyes, “I’ll lay you a quid he is a common man—common as the air.”

  The tavernkeeper was a fellow of about three score, as pure-English as the milkmaid, white-haired and red-faced. “It’d be thievery for me to take that wager, for you’ve only seen his clothes—which are common—while I’ve heard his voice—which is anything but.”

  “Then, a quid says he has a disposition sweet as clotted cream.”

  The tavernkeeper looked pained. “It slays me to turn your foolish bets away, but again, I have such knowledge to the contrary as would make it an unfair practice.”

  “I’ll bet you a quid he has the most magnificent set of eyebrows you’ve ever seen—eyebrows that would serve for pot-scrubbers.”

  “When he came in he kept his hat pulled down low, and his head bowed—I didn’t see his eyebrows—I’d say you’ve got yourself a wager, sir.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Be at your ease, sir, I’ll send my boy round to be the judge of it—if you doubt, you may send a second.”

  The tavernkeeper turned and caught a lad of ten years or so by the arm, bent down, and spoke to him for a few moments. The boy went directly to the man in the corner and spoke a few words to him, gesturing toward the glass; the man did not even deign to answer, but merely raised one hand as if to cuff the boy. A heavy gold ring caught the light for an instant. The boy came back and said something in slang so thick Daniel couldn’t follow.

  “Tommy says you owe me a pound then,” the tavernkeeper said.

  Daniel sagged. “His eyebrows were not bushy?”

  “That wasn’t the wager. His eyebrows are not bushy, that was the wager. Were not bushy, that’s neither here nor there!”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’ve a blackthorn shillelagh behind this counter that was witness to our wager, and it says you owe me that quid, never mind your weasel-words!”

  “You may let your shillelagh doze where it is, sir,” Daniel said, “I’ll let you have that quid. I only ask that you explain yourself.”

  “Bushy eyebrows he might have had yesterday, for all I know,” the tavernkeeper said, calming down a little, “but as we speak, he has no eyebrows at all. Only stubble.”

  “He cut them off!”

  “It is not my place to speculate, sir.”

  “Here’s your pound.”

  “Thank you, sir, but I would prefer one of full weight, made of silver, not this counterfeiter’s amalgam…”

  “Stay. I can give you better.”

  “A better coin? Let’s have it then.”

  “No, a better circumstance. How would you like this place to be famous, for a hundred years or more, as the place where an infamous murderer was brought to justice?”

  Now it was the tavernkeeper’s turn to deflate. It was clear from his face that he’d much rather not have any infamous murderers at all in the house. But Daniel spoke encouraging words to him, and got him to send the boy running up the street toward the Tower, and to stand at the back exit with the shillelagh. A look sufficed to get Bob Shaftoe on his feet, near the front door. Then Daniel took a fire-brand out of the hearth and carried it across the room, and finally waved it back and forth so that it flared up and filled the dark corner with light.

  “Damned be to Hell, you shit, Daniel Waterhouse! Traitorous, bastard whore, pantaloon-pissing coward! How dare you impose on a nobleman thus! By what authority! I’m a baron, as you are a sniveling turncoat, and William of Orange is no Cromwell, no Republican, but a prince, a nobleman like me! He’ll show me the respect I merit, and you the contempt you deserve, and ’tis you who’ll feel Jack Ketch’s blade on his neck, and die like a whipped bitch in the Tower as you should’ve done!”

  Daniel turned to address the other guests in the tavern—not so much the comatose dregs of last night as the breakfasting sailors and watermen. “I apologize for the disruption,” he announced. “You have heard of Jeffreys, the Hanging Judge, the one who decorated trees in Dorset with bodies of ordinary Englishmen, who sold English schoolgirls into chattel slavery?”

  Jeffreys got to his feet, knocking his table over, and made for the closest exit, which was at the rear; but the tavernkeeper raised the shillelagh in both hands and wound up like a woodman preparing to swing his axe at a tree. Jeffreys shambled to a stop and reversed direction, heading for the front of the room. Bob Shaftoe let him build to full speed, and let him enjoy a few seconds’ hope, before side-stepping in front of the doorway and whipping a dagger out of his boot. It was all Jeffreys could do to stop before impaling himself on it; and the casual look on Bob’s face made it clear he would not have turned the point aside.

  The men in the tavern had all got to their feet now and begun reaching into their clothes, betraying locations of various daggers, coshes, and other necessaries. But they did this because they were confused, not because they’d formed any clear intentions. For that, they were still looking to Daniel.

  “The man I speak of, whose name you have all heard, the man who is responsible for the Bloody Assizes and many other crimes besides—judicial murders, for which he has never dreamed he would be made to pay, until this moment—George Jeffreys, Baron of Wem, is he.” And Daniel pointed his finger like a pistol into the face of Jeffreys, whose eyebrows would have shot up in horror, if he still had any. As it was, his face was strangely devoid of expression, of its old power to stir Daniel’s emotions. Nothing he could do with that face could now make Daniel fear him, or pity him, or be charmed by him. This was attributing more power to a set of eyebrows than was really sensible, and so it had to be something else instead; some change in Jeffreys, or in Daniel.

  The daggers and coshes had begun to come out—not to be used, but to keep Jeffreys hemmed in. Jeffreys was speechless for the first time since Daniel had known him. He could not even curse.

  Daniel met Bob’s eyes, and nodded. “Godspeed, Sergeant Shaftoe, I hope you rescue your prin
cess.”

  “So do I,” Bob said, “but whether I live or die in the attempt, do not forget that I have helped you; but you have not helped me yet.”

  “I have not forgotten it, nor will I ever. Chasing armed men cross-country is not something I am very good at, or I would come with you now. I await a chance to return the favor.”

  “It is not a favor, but one side of a contract,” Bob reminded him, “and all that remains is for us to choose the coin in which I shall be repaid.” He turned and bolted into the street.

  Jeffreys looked around, taking a quick census of the men and weapons closing in around him, and finally turned his gaze on Daniel: not fierce any more, but offended, and bewildered—as if asking why? Why go to the trouble? I was running away! What is the point of this?

  Daniel looked him in the eye and said the first thing that entered his mind:

  “You and I are but earth.”

  Then he walked out into the city. The sun was coming up now, and soldiers were running down the street from the Tower, led by a boy.

  Venice

  JULY 1689

  The Venetian Republick began thus; a despicable Croud of People flying from the Fury of the Barbarians which over-run the Roman Empire, took Shelter in a few inaccessible Islands of the Adriatic Gulph…THEIR City we see raised to a prodigious Splendour and Magnificence, and their rich Merchants rank’d among the ancient Nobility, and all this by Trade.

  —DANIEL DEFOE, A Plan of the English Commerce

  To Eliza, Countess de la Zeur and Duchess of Qwghlm

  From G. W. Leibniz

  July 1689

  Eliza,

  Your misgivings about the Venetian Post Office have once again proved unfounded—your letter reached me quickly and without obvious signs of tampering. Really, I think that you have been spending too much time in the Hague, for you are becoming as prim and sanctimonious as a Dutch-woman. You need to come here and visit me. Then you would see that even the most debauched people in the world have no difficulty delivering the mail on time, and doing many other difficult things besides.