The Confusion: Volume Two of the Baroque Cycle

by Neal Stephenson

  JACK RODE AHEAD to view the battle-field in daylight, and to put the mercenaries where he wanted them. With help from a hired guide, he found a suitable place to feign a crossing. A few miles inland of where the Narmada broadened to an estuary, it described a Z, swept around in an oxbow, described an S, and resumed its westward course. In the center of the SZ was a mushroom-shaped head of gravel and sand bulging northwards into the oxbow, and connected at its southern end by the neck of land pinched between the opposing river-bends. In each of these bends, the river’s flow had undercut the banks, which rose above the water to no more than the height of a man, but were steep, and covered with scrub. Anyone coming to the river from the south would be funneled through a quarter-mile-wide gap between these bends. Beyond that narrow pass, the neck broadened and flattened, sloping imperceptibly down to the inner bank of the oxbow. The river was broad and shallow there, and seemed an inviting place for a ford; but this was of course the inner or concave surface of the oxbow-bend, and anyone who knew rivers would expect the opposite bank—the oxbow’s outer or convex face—to be steeper. Looking across, Jack saw that this was likely the case, though it was obscured by reeds. His local guide assured him that camels, horses, and bullocks could ascend the far bank, and thereby cross over into the North of India, but only if they attempted it in certain places known to him, which he would divulge for a fee. Beasts of burden attempting to ford the river in the wrong places would, however, face slow going through the reeds, only to find their way barred by a bank too steep to scale.

  “I’ll pay you the amount you have named,” Jack promised him, “and I’ll double it if you allow me to strike you a few times with this riding-crop.”

  This required lengthy and difficult translation; but the result in the end was that a ferang on a horse could be seen chasing the poor guide all the way out of the oxbow, flailing at him wildly, and cursing the wretch for his greed. Having done which, he wheeled his mount, rode back to the ford, and began pointing out, to his mercenaries, those places that to him seemed best for a crossing.

  An unexpected but desirable effect of this reconnaissance was that the mercenaries sorted themselves out. For they were scouting Jack, and what they understood to be Jack’s plan. They began clumping together, the better to conduct arguments, and presently whole bands of them turned their backs on the enterprise and bolted down-river, headed for Anklesvar or Broach. Though Jack put on a great show of outrage at this, he was in truth pleased with it. The loss of so many mercenaries would make them seem all the more vulnerable in the eyes of the Maratha scouts who, as he knew perfectly well, were observing his every move; and the ones who had remained probably could be depended on. As soon as the deserters were out of earshot, Jack called the remaining ones together.

  The Cabal had gone out of their way to recruit men who were proficient in the use of that ancient and simple weapon, the sling. They had rounded up approximately two score of them. Almost none of these had deserted—for they were the lowest-paid and most desperate of all mercenaries. Jack divided them into two platoons and bade them make themselves comfortable on the mushroom-shaped peninsula: one platoon on the western or downstream lobe, the other on the eastern or upstream lobe.

  Of the remaining mercenaries, some were edged-weapons men; he set these to work digging a line of fox-holes across the narrowest part of the neck. But he made certain that they could fall back somewhere; and he put those idle slingers to work scooping out some trenches for just that purpose. Others of the mercenaries were archers, and he arranged these in the center of the peninsula so that they could fire volleys over the heads of the men defending the neck.

  A vanguard of the caravan arrived bringing a great rolled-up Turkish sort of tent and its single tree-sized pole, its ropes, stakes, &c., as well as some strange cargo packed in straw. The tent they pitched in the center of the peninsula, and the cargo they dragged inside of it to be unpacked. Some of this was distributed to the platoons of slingers. As dusk fell, these could be seen creeping away from the positions where they had spent the afternoon and descending to the river’s bank. In ones and twos they worked their way south, converging on the neck: but rather than occupying its open center, they were wading in the stream, sheltering behind the undercut banks, concealed from view by the scrubby vegetation and by darkness. It was just as well that they were on the move, for the caravan had now arrived in force, and horses, camels, bullocks, and even two elephants were crowding through the gap, dividing round the tent, and gathering along the inner bank of the oxbow. Jack had identified those parts of the opposite bank most difficult to climb, and now ordered that it be attempted by those creatures most likely to fail: bullocks drawing wagons.

  Even from his less than ideal vantage-point, viz. standing in a tent slathering himself with strange-smelling oil, Jack could picture everything that went wrong just from the bellowing, the immense splashes, futile whip-cracks, curses in diverse tongues, and snapping of spokes and axles.

  Even this tumult, however, did not suffice to drown out the sound of the Maratha onslaught. Crafty and subtle these rebels might be when filtering down out of the hills, but on the attack they were as loud as any other army, and perhaps louder than some, as they were fond of drums, cymbals, and other means of terrifying the enemy’s critters at a distance. Jack put his eye to a hole in the tent to behold their approach. He had been told over and over again about the Marathas’ generous use of elephants in combat, but had scoffed. For all of the strange places Jack had been, there was in him enough of the East London mudlark that he could not believe such a thing was actually done in this world. And yet, on they came: moving battle-towers, lit with torches and agleam with metal, shingled all over with armor, swinging tusks a-bristle with scythe-blades of watered steel. Five abreast these creatures came on to the neck of land, and about their knees swarmed a moving carpet of infantry, their wicked blades gleaming by moonlight, a geometry-lesson from Hell. The air puckered with the peculiar sound made by many arrows: some out-bound from the archers who stood around the tent, but many incoming. A few snicked in through the roof of the tent.

  “Bang!” suggested Jack, and a moment later a musket was fired outside by Vrej, as a signal.

  Their plan was extremely simple, and so many events were triggered by the firing of this one shot. On the northern bank of the oxbow, local guides kindled bonfires; these shone out across the river as beacons marking the places where the bank was easiest to scale. The caravan-drivers, trapped between the river and the Maratha onslaught, needed no further incentive to make for those lights. Soon the river was striped in four places by columns of sloshing beasts.

  The line of sword-wielding mercenaries barring the neck had already begun to desert their earthworks and to fall back, for the elephants were only a few yards away. When the musket sounded, those who had held their ground jumped out, to a man, and split into two groups, occupying the trenches that the slingers had prepared along the flanks of the expected Maratha advance. The archers fired a last volley of arrows. This, and the trenches, and some trip-ropes that had been pounded into place before them, and the congestion caused by the Marathas’ entire battle-front being compressed into the narrow pass, caused the onslaught to slow, just on the threshold. A few impetuous Marathas ventured across the line of fox-holes, or even jumped obstacles on horseback; but these were easy marks for the archers and for the few musketeers they had managed to round up.

  All of which, wild and memorable though it was, remained well within the normal limits of what one saw in warfare. Night battles were unusual, and (to Jack anyway) ones involving elephants were outlandish; but for all that, it was just a battle. Until a hundred glowing bottles of phosphorus were lobbed out of the scrub to either side of the neck, and dropped out of the sky like falling stars, and burst upon the ground among the attackers. They came in a few ragged volleys, and by the time the last one had fallen, most of the ground that stretched before the Maratha vanguard was glowing. And as if that were not enoug
h, some of it was bursting into flame.

  One of the elephants made known his intention to turn around and go back. Jack could not discern, from this range, whether his driver was of the same mind, or not; but it did not matter, for the elephant was leaving. And perhaps he was some sort of a leader among pachyderms, for the idea spread to the others fast and unquenchable as phosphorus-fire. When several elephants with razor-sharp blades all over their tusks decide to pirouette in the midst of a tightly packed mob, there is apt to be disorder, and such was the case now; Jack could not really see through the arch of radiance, but could infer as much from the vocalizations of the Marathas, which sounded like every Italian opera ever written being sung at once.

  As the phosphorus on the ground dried out, it burnt. This went on fitfully for longer than was really convenient. Jack and all of the others in the oxbow could not do anything, because they could not see. To their backs, the convoy dribbled across the fords like streams of molasses running down a chilly plate. It would be hours before they were all across. And Jack had been warned not to underestimate the Marathas. It was one thing to spook their beasts, another thing altogether to break the will of their men. For these were not just peasants with sticks, but veterans belonging to castes such as the Mahar and the Mang whose whole purpose was military service. Such warnings he had been slow to heed, for there was nothing in England that corresponded to it; but Surendranath had drawn a loose analogy between these castes and the Janissaries of the Turks, which began to give Jack the idea. He had accordingly ordered the slingers to hold a few of their bottles in reserve, and when the last of the phosphorus-fires burnt out, he insisted that the mercenaries move up again, and take up their former positions. The archers he moved to the flanks to join the slingers, so that they could fire from behind the protection of the riverbank. All of these measures were soon put to the test by attacks of Mahar and Mang infantry; and so it was that, as much as he had wanted to avoid it, Jack was finally obliged to ride out from the concealment of the tent, flanked by Mr. Foot on one side and Monsieur Arlanc on the other, and to sally across the neck and drive the die-hard Marathas back screaming all the way to the Ravines of Dh¯aroli. For Jack, Foot, Arlanc, and their horses were all glowing in the dark. No one even had the temerity to shoot an arrow at them.

  “Mr. Foot!” Jack called out to a fiery blob hurtling to and fro in pursuit of demoralized foe-men, “turn thee around and let’s to the river. Nothing but dust now lies between us and the Court of the Great Mogul in Shahjahanabad; and he had damn well better be grateful, lest we boil up some urine in his town.”

  *Egypt

  Book 5

  The Juncto

  Mrs. Bligh’s Coffee-house, London

  SEPTEMBER 1693

  “ROGER, YOU ARE a great man now, and worth more than the Great Mogul.”

  “So I have heard, Daniel—but it is perfectly all right—I do not mind hearing it again.”

  “You are also educated, after a fashion.”

  “’Tis better to be educable—but pray continue in your flattery, which is so very unlike you.”

  “So then. What metaphysical significance do you attach to the fact that you are unable to pay for a cup of coffee?”

  “Why, Daniel, I say that I just did pay, not for one, but two—unless that object on the table before you is a mirage.”

  “But you didn’t, really, my lord. Coffee was brought forth and you incurred a debt, pricked down on Mrs. Bligh’s ledger.”

  “Are you questioning my solvency, Daniel?”

  “I am questioning the whole country’s solvency! Empty out your coin-purse. Right there on the table. Let’s have a look.”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Daniel.”

  “Oh, now ’tis I who am vulgar.”

  “Ever since you had the stone cut out, you have seemingly regressed in age.”

  “I will bet you the whole contents of my purse that yours contains not a single piece of metal that could be exchanged for a bucket of cods’ heads at Billingsgate.”

  “If your purse’s contents were worth so much, you’d be Massachusetts-bound. Everyone knows that.”

  “You see? You are afraid to accept the wager.”

  “Why do you belabor me about the fact that England has no money?”

  “Because you are a momentous fellow now, rumors career about you like gulls round a herring-boat, and I want you to do something about it, so that I can go to America…right. Very well, my lord, I shall give you a few minutes to bring your mirth under control. If you can hear what I am saying, wave at me—oh, very good. Roger Comstock, I say ’tis well enough for you that you have credit, and can buy cups of coffee, or houses, by simply asking for them. Many other men of power enjoy the same privilege—including our King, who appears to be financing his war through some kind of alchemy. But some of us are required actually to pay for what we buy, and we have nothing to pay with at the moment. They say that America is awash in Pieces of Eight, and that is a sight I would fain see—alas, ships’ captains do not dispense credit, at least, not to Natural Philosophers…. Oh yes, my lord, do be entertained. I am here in Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house, in pied rags, solely as a Court Jester to Creditable Men, and request only that you throw a silver coin at me for every giggle and a gold one for each guffaw. Fresh out? What, no coins in the bank? Does your purse hang as flaccid as a gelding’s scrotum? ’Tis a common condition, Roger, and this brings me round to another subject ’pon which I will briefly discourse while you blow your nose, and wipe the tears from your eyes, and that is: What if all debts, public and private, were to be called in? What if Mrs. Bligh were to march over to this cozy corner with her accompt-book resting open on her bosom like a Bible on a Lectern and say, Roger Comstock, you owe me your own weight in rubies, pay up straightaway!”

  “But, Daniel, that never happens. Mrs. Bligh, if she wants coffee-beans, can go down to the docks and shew her book—or her Lectern, in a pinch—to a merchant and say, ‘Behold, every powerful man in London is in debt to me, I have collateral, lend me a ton of Mocha and you’ll never be sorry!’ ”

  “Roger, what is Mrs. Bligh’s bloody book—by your leave, Mrs. Bligh!—but squiggles of ink? I have ink, Roger, a firkin of it, and can molest a goose to obtain quills, and make ink-squiggles all night and all day. But they are just forms on a page. What does it say of us that our commerce is built ’pon forms and figments while that of Spain is built ’pon silver?”

  “Some would say it speaks to our advancement.”

  “I am not one of those hard cases who believes credit is Satan’s work, do not put me in that poke, Roger. I say only that ink, once dried on the page, is a brittle commodity, and an œconomy made of ink is likewise brittle, and may for all we know be craz’d and in a state to crumble at a touch. Whereas silver and gold are ductile, malleable, capable of fluid movement—”

  “Some say it is because their atoms, their particules are bathed in a lubricating medium of quicksilver—”

  “Stop it.”

  “You asked me to wax metaphysical, just a minute ago.”

  “You are baiting me, Roger. Oh, it is all right. By all means, amuse yourself.”

  “Daniel. Do you really want to go to Massachusetts, and leave all this behind?”

  “All this is more amusing, not to mention profitable, to you than ’tis to me. I want to put distractions behind, go to the wilderness, and work.”

  “What, in a wigwam? Or do you have a cave picked out?”

  “There are plenty of trees remaining.”

  “You’re going to live in a tree?”

  “No! Cut them down, make a house.”

  “I fear you are unused to such labor, Daniel.”

  “Oh but I am educable.”

  “One really would do better to have an institution on which to rely. You could be a vicar of some Puritan church.”

  “Puritan churches tend not to have vicars.”

  “Oh, that’s right…then perhaps Harvard College would have you
.”

  “Then again, perhaps not.”

  “Here, Daniel, is my metaphysical reading of your circumstance:”

  “I am braced.”

  “England is not finished with you yet!”

  “Merciful God! What more can England possibly ask of me?”

  “I shall come to that momentarily, Daniel. First, I propose a transaction.”

  “Is this transaction to conclude with silver changing hands? Or ink-squiggles?”

  “It is to conclude with a sinecure for Daniel Waterhouse. In Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

  “Damn me, and here am I, on the wrong side of the ocean!”

  “The sinecure is attended with certain perquisites including a one-way trans-oceanic voyage.”

  “Are you saying, England wants from me something so dreadful that when I have done it, she won’t want me around any more?”

  “You read too much into it. You are the one who has been bawling about Massachusetts for all these years.”

  “But then why do you specify it has to be one-way?”

  “You can come back if you think it would be in your best interests,” Roger said innocently. “As long as the Juncto remains in power, you shall have protectors.”

  “Your voice has the most annoying way of fading just when you are on the verge of saying something interesting. Do you do that for effect?”

  “Juncto…juncto…JUNCTO!”

  “What on earth is a junk-toe? Some new type of gout?”

  “More like a new type of gov’t.”

  “I am quite serious.”

  “A scholar might say it Latin-style: yuncto. Or, a Spaniard thus: hoonta!”

  “Why don’t you just say ‘joint,’ which is what it means?”

  “I know what it means. But then people would suppose we were discoursing of knees or elbows.”

  “But isn’t the idea to be mysterious?”

  “Then we would call it a cabal.”