The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World

by Neal Stephenson

  Now the so-called idlers, who really had been idle for most of the last several weeks, worked night and day re-making Minerva for a coastal voyage. The anchors were brought up out of the hold and hung on the ship’s bow. Likewise cannons were hoisted up from storage and settled on their carriages. The longboat was re-assembled and put on the upperdeck, an obstruction to the men of the watch but a welcome one. While these things were being done Minerva could not come too near the coast, and so they put the distant mountains of California to larboard and coasted southwards for two days, sieving kelp up out of the water and trying to find some way to make it palatable. There were clear signs of an approaching storm, but as luck had it, they were just drawing abreast of the entrance to the great bay of California. As the wind began to blow hard off the Pacific they scudded between two mighty promontories that were lit up by golden sunlight gliding in beneath the storm-clouds. Changing course to the south, they were then able to navigate between a few steep rocky islands and get through a sort of bottle-neck. Beyond it the bay widened considerably. It was lined with salt-pans reminiscent of those at Cadiz, though of course no one was exploiting these. They dropped anchor in the deepest water they could find and readied the ship to wait out the storm.

  WHEN THE WEATHER lifted three days later they found that they had dragged their anchor for a short distance. But not far enough to put them in danger, for the bay behind the Golden Gate was vast. Its southern lobe extended south as far as the eye could see, bounded on both sides by swelling hills, just turning from green to brown. The crew of Minerva now embarked on a strange program of eating California, beginning with the seaweed that floated off-shore, working their way through the mussel-beds and crab-flats of the intertidal zone, chewing tunnels into the scrub that clung to the beach-edge and perpetrating massacres of animals and birds. Foraging-parties would go out one after the next in the longboat, and half of them would stand guard with muskets and cutlasses while the others ransacked the place for food. Certain parts of the shoreline were defended by Indians who were not very happy to see them, and it took a bit of experimentation to learn where these were. The most dangerous part was the first five minutes after the longboat had been pulled up on the beach, when the men felt earth beneath their feet for the first time in four months, and stood there dumbfounded for several minutes, their ears amazed by the twittering of birds, the buzzing of insects, the rustle of leaves. Said Edmund de Ath: “It is like being a newborn babe, who has known nothing but the womb, suddenly brought forth into an unimagined world.”

  Elizabeth de Obregon emerged from her cabin for the first time since Jack had carried her in there, all wet and cold from the Pacific, on the night the Galleon burned. Edmund de Ath took her for a feeble promenade around the poop deck. Jack, lying on his bed directly beneath them, overheard a snatch of their conversation: “Mira, the bay seems to go on forever, no wonder they believed California was an island.”

  “It was your husband who proved them wrong, was it not, my lady?”

  “You are too flattering, even for a Jesuit, Father Edmund.”

  “Pardon me, my lady, but I am a Jansenist.”

  “Yes, I meant to say Jansenist—my mind is still addled, and I cannot tell waking from dreaming sometimes.”

  “That promontory to the south of the Gate would be a brave place to build a city,” said Edmund de Ath. “A battery there could control the narrows, and make this entire Bay into a Spanish lake, dotted with missions to convert all of these Indians.”

  “America is vast, and there are many nice places to build cities,” said Elizabeth de Obregon dismissively.

  “I know, but just look at this place! It’s as if God put it here to be built on!”

  They tottered onwards and Jack heard no more. Which was just as well—he’d heard enough. It was a type of clever, courtly conversation the likes of which he had not been forced to listen to since he’d left Christendom behind, and it filled him with the same old desire to run abovedecks and throw those people overboard.

  As Elizabeth de Obregon ate of the fruits and greens of California and recovered her strength, she began to emerge from her cabin more frequently and even to join them in the officers’ mess from time to time.

  After Jack had related certain things to his partners, and after they’d allowed a day or two to pass, Moseh turned to Elizabeth one evening as they were dining, and remarked, “The situation of this Bay seems so fair that it will probably attract simpletons from all over the world…doubtless the Russians will throw up a fort on that promontory any year now.”

  Elizabeth looked politely amused at the reaction of Edmund de Ath, who turned red and began to chew his food very slowly. She turned to Moseh and said, “Pray tell, why wouldn’t sophisticated men build here?”

  “Ah, my lady, I would not bore you with the tedious speculations of the Cabbalists…”

  “On the contrary, my family tree is full of conversos, and I love to steep myself in the wisdom of the rabbis.”

  “My lady, we are near the latitude of forty degrees. The golden rays of the sun, and silver rays of the moon, strike the surface of the globe at a glancing angle here, rather than shining down vertically onto the ground. Now it has been understood by Cabbalistickal sorcerers, ever since the days of the First Temple, that the diverse metals that grow in the earth, are created by certain rays that emanate from the various heavenly bodies, penetrate the Earth, and there combine with the Elements of Earth and Water to create gold, silver, copper, mercury, et cetera, depending on which Planet emanated the Ray. Videlicet, the rays of the Sun create Gold, those of the Moon Silver, et cetera, et cetera. And it follows naturally that Gold and Silver will be found most abundantly in sunny places near the Equator.”

  “The Alchemists of Christendom have either borrowed this insight from your Cabbalists, or discovered it on their own,” said Elizabeth.

  “As you know, Lady, the great metropolises of al-Andalus, Cordoba and Toledo, were crucibles in which the most learned men of Christendom, of dar al-Islam, and of the Diaspora commingled their knowledge…”

  “I thought the function of a crucible was to purify and not to intermix,” said Edmund de Ath, and then put on an angelic face.

  “To fall into discussion of alchemichal arcana would be to do the lady a disservice,” said Moseh. “She informs me that the sages of the King of Spain are well-acquainted with the nature and properties of the astrologickal emanations. Yet any half-wit who glances at a map could have inferred that that the Rey knows all about the rays, for it has ever been the wise policy of the Spanish Empire to follow the Line, and establish colonies in the auriferous belt where Sun and Moon beat straight down on the earth. Leave California and Alyeska to the wretched Russians, for gold will never be discovered in those places!”

  “I confess I am somewhat taken a-back,” said Edmund de Ath, “as I never dreamed until now that I was sharing a ship with a Cabbalistic sorcerer.”

  “Don’t hang your head so, monsieur. The North Pacific is not generally considered a Jewish neighborhood…”

  “What possessed you to venture out this way, sir?” asked Elizabeth de Obregon. The sight of land, and fresh food, had brought her back to life, and now this fencing-match between the Jansenist and the Jew was taking years off her age.

  “My lady, you do me a favor to pretend interest in my obscure researches,” said Moseh. “I’ll return the kindness by being as brief as possible: there is an occult legend to the effect that King Solomon, after building the Temple on Mount Zion—”

  “—journeyed far to the East and built a Kingdom on some island there,” said Elizabeth de Obregon.

  “Indeed. A kingdom of vast wealth to be sure, but—more importantly—an Olympian center for alchemical scholarship and Cabbalistic research. There the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Philosophic Mercury were first brought to light—in fact, all the lucubrations of our modern-day Alchemists and Cabbalists are but a feeble attempt to pick over the scraps left b
ehind by Solomon and his court magicians. After I had journeyed to the frontiers of learning during my youth, I reached the conclusion that I could only learn more by seeking out the Solomon Islands and going over them inch by inch.”

  Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to become pink in the face. “Many have died trying to discover those islands, rabbi. If your tale is true, you are fortunate to be alive.”

  “No more fortunate than you, my lady.”

  Now Elizabeth de Obregon locked her gaze upon Moseh, and mystickal Rays passed back and forth between them for a while, until Edmund de Ath could not endure it any longer. He said, “Can you share your findings with us, sir, or must the results be locked up in some encyphered Torah somewhere?”

  “The results are still resulting, sir, there is no definite report to be made.”

  “But you’ve left the Solomon Islands!”

  “I have. That much is obvious. But did you really think I could have journeyed there alone? Of all those who went, monsieur, I am the least. A mere errand-boy, sent this way to fetch a few necessaries. The rest are still there, hard at work.”

  PLAYING WITH THE MINDS of Edmund de Ath and Elizabeth de Obregon made for excellent sport, and if done right, might even keep Jack, Moseh, and company alive when they reached Acapulco. But it was a sport Jack could only watch, since neither of those two would seriously entertain the idea of having a conversation with him. To Jack, the lady showed faint, perfunctory gratitude, and to all others she showed a sort of amused tolerance—all except Edmund de Ath, who was the only one she treated as an equal. This galled Jack far more than it should have. It was years since he’d been a king in Hindoostan and he should have been used to his reduced status. But being around this Spanish gentlewoman made him want to go back to Shahjahanabad and enlist in the service of the Great Mogul once more. And he was on his own ship!

  “The only cure for it is to become a merchant prince,” said Vrej Esphahnian, as they were sailing out of the Golden Gate on a cold, clear morning. “And that is what we are working toward. Learn from the Armenians, Jack. We do not care for titles and we do not have armies nor castles. Noble folk can sneer at us all they like—when their kingdoms have fallen into dust, we will buy their silks and jewels with a handful of beans.”

  “That is well, unless pirates or princes take what you have so tediously acquired,” Jack said.

  “No, you don’t understand. Does a farmer measure his wealth in pails of milk? No, for pails spill, and milk spoils in a day. A farmer measures his wealth in cows. If he has cows, milk comes forth almost without effort.”

  “What is the cow, in this similitude?” asked Moseh, who had come over to listen.

  “The cow is the web, or net-work of connexions, that Armenians have spun all the world round.”

  “It has never ceased to astonish me how you find Armenians everywhere we go,” Jack admitted.

  “In every place where we have tarried for more than a few days: Algiers, Cairo, Mocha, Bandar-Abbas, Surat, Shahjahanabad, Batavia, Macao, Manila—I have been able to invest some small fraction of my profits in the diverse enterprises of other Armenians,” Vrej said. “In some cases the amounts were trivial. But it does not matter—those men know me now, they are knots in my net-work, and when I return to Paris, even if we lose Minerva and everything aboard her, I’ll be a wealthy man—not in milk but in cows.”

  “Avast there, Vrej,” Jack said, “I am not a superstitious man, but I do not love to hear this talk of losing Minerva.”

  Vrej shrugged. “Sometimes a man must accept a great loss.”

  An awkward stillness for a few moments, made more excruciatingly obvious by the shouting of the riggers as they trimmed the sails for a new course. Minerva was leaving the Golden Gate behind, and coming about into a new southeasterly course along the coast. She’d follow this general heading for some two thousand miles to Acapulco.

  Finally Moseh said, “Well, I am a superstitious man, or at least a religious one, and I have been pondering this: When is my trading-voyage finished?”

  “When you drop anchor in London or Amsterdam and come ashore with Bills of Exchange, or imported goods,” Jack said.

  “I cannot eat those.”

  “Very well, change them into silver and buy bread with it.”

  “So I have bread then. But did I need to sail around the world for bread?”

  “Bread you can get anywhere,” Jack admitted, then glanced at the open Pacific to starboard. “Save there. Why sail round the world, then? For entertainment, I suppose. We do what we have to do, Moseh, and are not frequently given diverse choices. What are you getting at?”

  “I believe my journey ended when we crossed the Sea of Reeds and escaped from bondage in Egypt,” Moseh said. “Nothing since then has brought me satisfaction.”

  “Again, though, you’ve had no choices available.”

  “Every day,” Moseh said, “every day I’ve had choices, but I’ve been blind to them.”

  “You are being too Cabbalistickal for me,” Jack said. “I am an Englishman and will go to England. You see? Very simple and plain. Now I will ask you a question that should have a simple answer: When we get to Acapulco, will you be in the Wet or the Dry Group?”

  “Dry,” said Moseh, “dry forever.”

  “Very well,” said Vrej after another of those awkward silences, “as we’ve lost poor Arlanc, it follows that I shall have to be Wet. And that sits well with me, for I am eager to see Lima, the Rio de la Plata, and Brazil, and after all we’ve endured, Cape Horn holds no terror for me.”

  Dappa happened along. “For a man without a country, the ship is the only choice. Brazil and the Caribbean are awash in African slaves and I cannot learn or tell their stories unless I voyage there and talk to them.”

  “Then since van Hoek obviously goes with the ship, I’m obligated to be Dry,” Jack said, “and my boys will go with me.”

  They all stood silently for a few moments, caught between a raw Pacific wind and the coast of California. Then every one of them seemed to understand how many preparations lay ahead of him, and each went his own way.

  “THE BEST TIME TO NEGOTIATE is before negotiations have begun,” said Moseh, as he and Jack watched the longboat crawl towards the shore of the port of Navidad. The Alcalde of Chiamela, several priests, and a few men in the full Conquistador get-up stood there waiting for it. “Or anyway that is what I learned from Surendranath, and I hope it has worked in this case.”

  Jack noticed that, as Moseh was saying this, he was fingering the scrap of Indian bead-work he had inherited from his Manhattoe ancestors. It was something that Moseh did, in an absent-minded way, whenever he was afraid of getting a raw deal. Jack decided not to mention it.

  After two weeks of working their way down the coast of California they had crossed the Tropic of Cancer and weathered the bald promontory of Cabo San Lucas on New Year’s Day of 1701. Then they had set their course due southeast so as to traverse the mouth of the Gulf of California, a journey that had ended up taking several days because the Virazon, or northwest wind down the coast, had failed. Eventually they had come in sight of the trio of islands called the Three Marys, which lay off the bony elbow of New Spain, Cabo Corrientes—the Cape of Currents. Two rather tense days had followed. Those two Capes (San Lucas and Corrientes) formed the gate-posts of the long narrow body of water that ran between lower California and New Spain, which was called a Strait by those who still believed California was an island and a Gulf by those who didn’t. Whether it was a Strait or a Gulf, the Three Marys had a commanding position near its entrance. Yet they were far enough north to be out of reach of the Spanish authorities in Acapulco. Consequently they were a popular place for English and French pirates to spend winters. And to this human danger were added certain natural ones: the Three Marias were nearly joined to Cabo Corrientes by vast shallows. Even if they’d been able to salvage the latest Spanish charts from the Manila Galleon—which they hadn’t—these would have been nearly useless,
because the powerful currents passing between the two Capes in and out of the Strait or Gulf shifted the sands from one tide to the next. The only persons in the world who would have the cunning to pilot a ship in that area would be the aforementioned pirates—if there were any. If there were, and they were English, they might or might not be the natural allies of Minerva. If French they would certainly be enemies.

  But a nerve-wracking circuit of Maria Madre, Maria Magdalena, and Maria Cleofas had not turned up anything beyond a few decaying bivouacs, some abandoned and some manned by skeleton crews of dumbfounded wretches who fired guns in the air in weak bids to beckon them closer. “This year’s crop of pirates—if any made it around Cape Horn—must be wintering in the Galápagos,” van Hoek had said one night at mess, as they supped on the meat of some tortoises that had been captured from the longboat.

  “The only pirates are we,” Dappa had remarked. This had not sat very well with van Hoek, but it had made something of an impression on Elizabeth de Obregon and Edmund de Ath. They had excused themselves early, withdrawn to the taffrail, and had yet another in their seemingly un-ending series of obscure conferences. “They’ll be re-writing their damned letters all night long,” Jack had predicted.

  More conferences, and more re-writing, had followed the next day, as they’d dropped anchor off Maria Madre (the largest of the islands) and used the longboat to ferry Heavy Objects back and forth between Minerva and shore. Elizabeth and Edmund were confined to their cabins the whole time, and the longboat’s load was covered with sailcloth whenever it was within view of their windows. The cargo hold was off limits to them. There was no way for them to know what had been done. The obvious interpretation was that part of the quicksilver had been taken ashore and buried, and stones brought out from the island to ballast the ship. But it might just as well have been a mountebank’s shell-game: quicksilver-flasks going in to shore and then coming right back out again to be put back in their places in the hold.