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

by Neal Stephenson

  Book 4

  Bonanza

  Mexico City, New Spain

  SUKKOTH 1701

  That Golden Sceptre which thou didst reject

  Is now an Iron Rod to bruise and breake

  Thy disobedience.

  —MILTON, Paradise Lost

  “CARAMBA!” EXCLAIMED DIEGO DE FONSECA, “a cucaracha has fallen onto the tortillas of my wife!”

  Moseh had seen it before de Fonseca had, and had jumped to his feet even before the initial Caramba! had echoed off the far wall of the prison’s courtyard. As he reached over the table, the beads of his colossal rosary—walnut-shells strung on a cowhide thong—whacked the rim of a honey-filled serving-crock. His arm shot free of its sleeve, revealing a ladder of welts and scars, some fresher than others. His shoulder-joint rumbled and popped like a barrel rolling over cobblestones. Most of the men at the table felt twinges of sympathetic pain in their own shoulders, and inhaled sharply. Moseh’s ingratiating smile hardened into a scary grimace, but he got a grip on Señora de Fonseca’s tortilla-plate and pulled it clear. “Allow me to fetch some fresh ones…”

  Diego de Fonseca glanced sidelong at his wife, who had tilted her head back, reducing her chin count to a mere three, and was glaring at the net-work of vines above the table, which was vibrant with six-legged life. The Director, who was not a thin specimen either, leaned slightly towards Moseh and said, “That is most Christian of you…but we prefer our tortillas made with rich lard, and in fact have never seen them made with olive oil before—”

  “I could send out an Indian, Señor Director—”

  “Don’t bother, we are satiated. Besides—”

  “I was just about to say it!” Jack put in. “Besides, you and the Señora get to go home tonight!”

  Diego de Fonseca adjusted the set of his jaw slightly, and favored Jack with the same look his wife had aimed at the cockroach moments earlier. Fortunately, Señora de Fonseca’s attention had been drifting: “Over there, you pay such attention to cleanliness,” she observed, casting a look down an adjacent gallery, where several prisoners were sweeping the paving-stones with bundles of willow-branches. “Yet you lay out your feast with nothing to protect you from the sky, save this miserable thatching of infested vines.”

  “I gather from your tone that you are bemused by our ineptitude where a señora less imbued with Christian charity would be angry at our rudeness,” Moseh said.

  “Quite! Why, those fellows with the willow-branches are not so much sweeping the pavement as spanking it!”

  “Those are from that batch of Jewish monks we arrested at the Dominican monastery three years ago,” said Diego.

  From any other Inquisition prison warden, this might have sounded judgmental—even condemnatory. But Diego de Fonseca presided over what was widely held to be the mellowest and most easy-going Inquisition prison in the whole Spanish Empire, and he said it in mild conversational tones. Then he popped a honey-dipped pastry into his mouth.

  “That explains it!” said Moseh. “Those Dominicans are so rich, each monk hires half a dozen Indians as housekeepers, and consequently they know nothing of the domestick arts.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Say, Brother Christopher! Brother Peter! Brother Diaz! There are ladies present! Try to move some dirt as long as you are sweeping the courtyard, will you?”

  The three monks straightened up and glared at Moseh, then bent their backs again and began scraping dust across the stones. Clouds of volcanic ash built up and rose around their knees.

  “As for this wretched covering, I can only beg you pardon, señora,” continued Moseh. “We like to lie out in this place and recuperate after a question-and-answer session with the Inquisitor, and so we have been training the vines to grow thus, to shade us from the mid-afternoon sun.”

  “Then you need to give them manure, for I can clearly see stars coming out through the gaps.”

  To which the obvious response was Manure!? We get no shortage of that from the priests, and give all of it back to the Inquisitor, but before Jack could say it, Moseh silenced him with a look, and said: “Insofar as the vines cover us, we thank Lord Jesus, and insofar as they don’t, we are reminded that in the end we are all dependent on the protection of God in Heaven.”

  The feast had been brought in by the prisoners’ families and laid out on a long deal table at the edge of the prison courtyard, under a makeshift awning of bougainvilleas. It was a lot of harvest-time food: particularly squashes, baked with Caribbean sugar, cinnamon from Manila, and an infinity of beans. Jack had taken a liking to mushy food since losing most of his teeth crossing the Pacific. Up in Guanajuato he’d hired an Indian to make him a new set out of gold and carven boar’s tusks, but this accessory had been mislaid, somewhere along the line, after he and Moseh had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition. He guessed that some familiar or alguacil was chewing his pork with Jack’s teeth at this very moment, probably just over the wall in the dormitories of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición.

  “Consider your apologies accepted, and your flattery disregarded,” said Señora de Fonseca. “But a lady who attends a social function in a prison, organized by men—hereticks and infidels at that!—does not expect that the niceties will be observed. That is why every man seeks a wife, no?”

  There followed a long silence, which quickly became embarrassing to those hereticks and infidels, and then stretched out to a point where it seemed likely to become fatal. Finally Jack kicked Salamón Ruiz under the table. Salamón had been rocking back and forth on his bench and muttering something. When Jack’s boot impacted on his shin he opened his eyes and shouted, “Oy!”

  Then, amid sharp inhalations from all around the table, stretched it out thus: “Oigo misa!”

  “You are going to Mass!?” said Diego de Fonseca, perplexed.

  “Misa de matrimonio,” said Salamón, and then finally remembered to unclasp his hands and grope for the hand of his supposed novia, this evening’s nominal guest of honor, Isabel Machado, who was seated on his right. He had never seen the girl before, and for a moment Jack was afraid he was going to grab the wrong woman’s hand. “In my head, you know, I was going to Mass on my wedding day.”

  “Well, keep your hands out of your lap when you’re doing it please!” Jack returned. The comment was not well received by the warden’s wife, but Moseh plastered it over by rising to his feet and hoisting his chocolate-cup into the air: “To Isabel and Sanchez,* whose betrothal we celebrate tonight, may the Inquisitor be merciful to Sanchez, may the auto da fé be of the non-violent sort, and may their marriage be long and prosperous.”

  That toast led to others, which continued in chocolatey volleys until the Cathedral bells rang vespers. Then the dinner broke up as the prisoners and their guests got to their feet and began to walk in a long uneven procession around the perimeter of the courtyard.

  “To walk around thus after eating is a custom up north,” Jack heard Moseh explaining to Señora de Fonseca.

  “In Nuevo Leon? But that place was settled by Jews!”

  “No, thank God, I meant the new mining country: Guanajuato, Zacatecas…”

  She shuddered. “Brr, it is a land of Vagabonds and Desperadoes…”

  “But pure-blooded Christians all. And after a big meal they always march around the town square seven times.”

  “Why seven?”

  “Five times for the Five Wounds of Christ,” Jack blurted out, “and three for the three persons of the Trinity.”

  “But five and three make eight!” observed Señor de Fonseca, now becoming interested.

  Moseh now literally stepped in between Jack and the Fonsecas and continued, “All right, I did not wish to bore you with all of the details, but really the tradition is this: formerly they would go eight times around, turning always to the right. Then they would reverse direction and march around four times, one for each of the four gospels, turning to the left. Then reverse again and three additional times to the right, one for
each of the crosses on Calvary. But then some Jesuit came along and pointed out that five and three, take away four, add three, make seven all together, and so why not simply go around seven times and leave it at that? Of course he was not taken seriously until they got a new priest up there, who had gout in one foot, and did not like so much walking. A letter was sent to the Vatican. Twenty years later the answer came back that the Jesuit’s arithmetick had been examined, and determined to be sound. By that time the gouty priest had died of a fever. But his replacement was in no position to argue sums with the Pope, and so the tradition was established anyway.”

  Visibly exhausted, Moseh now lapsed into silence, as did the Fonsecas, who had been driven into a profound stupor. Not until several orbits of the courtyard had been tallied up did anyone speak again.

  “Damn all this dust!” said Diego de Fonseca, waving a flabby hand before his face. The monks who had been sweeping earlier were now shaking their branches in the air, releasing clouds of Popocatepetl ash.

  “I heard unfamiliar screaming today,” Jack remarked. “Sounded as if someone was being given the strappado, but I didn’t recognize his voice.”

  “It is a Belgian priest, supposedly with heretickal leanings—they brought him up from Acapulco,” said the warden. “I believe he is a material witness in your case.”

  FATHER EDMUND DE ATH was sitting in his cell staring with a kind of dull curiosity at his own arms, which were laid out on the table in front of him like lamb shanks in a butcher’s shop. They were still attached to his shoulders, but they were bloated and bluish, except around the wrists where ropes had sawn nearly to the bone. The only part of him that moved was his eyeballs, which swiveled toward the door as Jack and Moseh entered.

  “You know, there was a monk in Spain who was thrown into the common jail for some petty crime, fifty or a hundred years ago,” said de Ath. He was speaking in a quiet voice. Jack and Moseh knew why: the strappado ripped all of the muscles around the ribs and spine, giving the victim every incentive to breathe shallowly for the next couple of weeks. Jack and Moseh came round to either side and bent close so that de Ath could get by with a mere whisper. “After a few days in the squalor of that jail, he called the jailer over and uttered certain heretickal oaths. Of course the jailer denounced him to the Inquisition without delay. Before the next sundown, this monk had been moved to the Prison of the Inquisition, where he had his own cell, clean and well-ventilated, with a chair and—ahh—a table.”

  “A table’s a good thing to have,” Jack allowed, “when your arms have been pulled out of their sockets, and have nothing to support their weight save a few strands of gristle.”

  “You are not really a heretick, are you, Father?” asked Moseh.

  “Of course not.”

  “So it follows that you believe in turning the other cheek, that the meek shall inherit the earth, et cetera?”

  “¿Como no? As the Spaniards say.”

  “Good—we shall hold you to it,” said Jack, raising one foot and planting it in the middle of de Ath’s chest. He grabbed one of the priest’s hands and Moseh the other. A violent shove sent the victim toppling backwards in his chair. Just as he was about to bash his head on the stone floor, Jack and Moseh jerked as hard as they could on de Ath’s arms, yanking him back up like Enoch Root’s yo-yo. A loud pop sounded from deep in each shoulder. The scream of Edmundde Ath, like the blowing of the legendary horn of Roland, could presumably be heard several mountain ranges away. Of course it emptied his lungs, which forced him to draw a deep breath, which was so painful that he had to scream some more. But after a while this Oscillatory Phenomenon damped out and de Ath was left in the same position as before, viz. sitting bolt upright with his arms on the table. But now he was cautiously clenching and unclenching his fists, and in the light of the candles that Jack and Moseh had brought in, it seemed his flesh was becoming a pinker shade of gray.

  “Pardon me while I try to come up with theologickal analogies for what you just did to me,” he said.

  “You could do that until the vacas came back to the hacienda, I’m sure,” said Moseh.

  “Now that we are all devout Catholics we’ll have plenty of opportunities to listen to homilies,” Jack said. “For now, only tell us what you know of the proceedings against us.”

  Edmund de Ath said nothing for a long time. In Mexico, time was as plentiful as silver.

  “The warden says you are a witness,” Moseh said, “but they would not torture you unless you were also a suspect.”

  “That much is obvious,” agreed de Ath, “but as you know perfectly well, the Inquisition never tells a prisoner what the charges are against him, or who denounced him. They throw him in prison and tell him to confess, and leave him guessing what he’s supposed to confess to.”

  “’Tisn’t hard for me to guess,” Jack said. “I’m an Englishman missing the end of his dick, which means the only question is: Jew, or Protestant?”

  “I hope you’ve been wise enough to tell them you’re a Jew who was never baptized.”

  “That I have. Which—assuming they believe me—marks me as an infidel. And as this Church of yours thinks it is its mission to preach to infidels rather than burn ’em, I’m likely to escape with nothing worse than having to listen to a whole lot o’ preaching.”

  “Your sons?”

  “When the alguaciles came for me and Moseh, they were on a trip to Cabo Corrientes to dig up some of that buried quicksilver. No doubt they are drinking mezcal in some mining-town saloon about now.”

  “And you, Moseh?”

  “They can see perfectly well I’m half Indian, so they’ve pegged me as a mestizo spawned by one of those crypto-Jews who went up to Nuevo Leon a hundred years ago.”

  “But that lot was exterminated in the autos da fé of 1673.”

  “Ridding a country of Jews is easier than purging every last phant’sy and suspicion from an Inquisitor’s mind,” Moseh returned. “He supposes every Indian between San Miguel de Allende and New York has a Torah concealed in his breech-clout.”

  “He wants to find that you are a heretick,” said Edmund de Ath.

  “And hereticks burn,” Moseh added.

  “Only if they are unrepentant,” said Edmund de Ath, and his eyes followed the lines of Moseh’s tunic until they found the rosary. “So you have made the decision to pass as a Christian, and avoid the stake. As soon as you are set free you’ll go far away and become a Jew again. That is exactly what the Inquisitor suspects.”

  “Go on.”

  “He has been asking me questions about you. He would like for me to testify that you are a sham Christian and an unrepentant Jew. That is all he needs to burn you over a crackling mesquite fire…your only choice then would be to accept Christ as they were tying you to the stake…”

  “In which event they’d charitably strangle me as the flames were rising—or, I could live for a few minutes longer as a devout Jew.”

  “Albeit an uncomfortable one,” Jack concluded.

  “Jack, he would also like for me to testify that you and Moseh prayed together in Hebrew, and observed Yom Kippur aboard Minerva.”

  “Go ahead, it just confirms I’m an infidel.”

  “But now that you are pretending to be a Catholic you’ve burned that excuse—any lapses make you a heretick.”

  Jack now became mildly irked. “What is your point? That you could, with a few words, send me and Moseh to the stake? We already knew that.”

  “There must be something more,” Moseh said. “A witness they would not torture. Edmund has been accused of something by someone.”

  “Under normal circumstances there would be no guessing who my accuser was,” said de Ath, “since the Inquisition keeps such matters a secret. But here in New Spain, no one knows me except for those who disembarked from Minerva in Acapulco. Obviously you two did not denounce me to the Inquisition.” De Ath said this deliberately, and looked Jack and then Moseh in the eye, examining each for signs of a guilty consci
ence. Jack had been subjected to this treatment countless times in his life, first by Puritans in English Vagabond-camps and subsequently by diverse Papists eager to hear him confess all his colorful sins. He met the gaze of de Ath directly, and Moseh looked back at the Belgian with a sorrowful look that showed no trace of guilt or nervousness. “Very well,” said de Ath, with a faint, apologetic smile. “That leaves only—”

  “Elizabeth de Obregon!” Moseh exclaimed, if a whisper could be an exclamation.

  “But she was your disciple,” Jack said.

  “Judas was a disciple, too,” de Ath said quietly. “Disciples can be dangerous—especially when they are not right in the head to begin with. When Elizabeth returned to awareness in that cabin on Minerva, mine was the first face she saw. I believe now that my face must somehow haunt her nightmares, and that she seeks to exorcise it in flames.”

  “But we thought—”

  “You imagined I was exerting some sinister influence on a susceptible mind—I know you did,” said de Ath. “In fact, I was ministering to one who was not right in mind or body. Ever since that disastrous expedition to the Islands of Solomon she had been a little daft—confined to a nunnery in Manila. Finally her family in Spain arranged for her to come home, which is how she ended up on the Manila Galleon. To outward appearances she was entirely sane. But the fire on the Galleon burned away what was left of her good sense. By treating her with tincture of opium, and staying by her side at all times, I was able to keep her madness in hand as long as we remained aboard Minerva. But when I became the cargador for your enterprise, my responsibilities took me down to Lima. Elizabeth came here to Mexico City. I am afraid she has fallen under the influence of certain Phanatiqual Jesuits and Dominicans. Churchmen of that stripe loathe such as me, because I keep a civil tongue in my head when talking to Protestants. I fear that they have preyed upon Elizabeth’s mind and that in her madness she has said things about me that have made their way to the stupendous and omniscient annals of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición. The Inquisitor wants to make me, and by extension every other Jansenist, out to be a heretick. Along the way he would like for me to utter words that would send both of you to the stake.”