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

by Neal Stephenson

  At the mention of Enoch’s name, Dappa glanced away from Daniel’s face, as if the older man had committed an indiscretion, and picked up his dram to take a sip. And that was all the opening needed for the Marquis of Ravenscar to irrupt upon their conversation. He appeared so suddenly, so adroitly, it was as if some machinery had injected him into the Kit-Cat Clubb through a trap-door.

  “From one odalisque to another, Mr. Dappa! Haw! Is it not so! For I take it that you are the writer.”

  “I am a writer, my lord,” Dappa answered politely.

  “I hope I do not offend by confessing I’ve not read your books.”

  “On the contrary, my lord,” Dappa said, “there is nothing quite so civilized as to be recognized in public places as the author of books no one has read.”

  “If my good friend Dr. Waterhouse were polite enough to make introductions, I should not have to rely ’pon guess-work; but he was raised by Phanatiques.”

  “It is too late for formalities now,” Daniel answered. “When another begins a conversation with a cryptickal outburst on odalisques, what is there for a polite gentleman to do?”

  “Not cryptickal at all! Not in the slightest!” protested the Marquis of Ravenscar. “Why, ’tis known to all London now, at” (checking his watch) “nine o’clock, that at” (checking his watch a second time) “four o’clock, Mr. Dappa was on hand to greet the Duchess of Arcachon and of Qwghlm!”

  “I told you!” Daniel said, in an aside to Dappa, and put his two fingers to his eyes, then pointed them across the room toward the phant’sied spies and observers.

  “You told him what!?” Roger demanded.

  “That people were watching us.”

  “They’re not watching you,” Roger said, highly amused. Which told Daniel, infallibly, that they were. “Why should anyone watch you? They’re watching Dappa, making the rounds of the odalisques!”

  “There you go again—what on earth—?” Daniel demanded.

  Dappa explained, “He alludes to a sort of legend, only whispered by discreet well-bred Londoners, but openly bandied about by drunken merry lords, that the Duchess was once an odalisque.”

  “Figuratively—?”

  “Literally a harem-slave of the Great Turk in Constantinople.”

  “What a bizarre notion—Roger, how could you?”

  Roger, slightly nettled by Dappa, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  Dappa proclaimed, “England being a nation of clam-diggers and sheep-shearers, must forever be a net importer of fantastickal tales. Silk, oranges, perfume, and strange yarns must all be supplied from across the seas.”

  “If only you knew,” Daniel returned.

  “I agree with Mr. Dappa!” Roger said forcefully. “The story of his tête-à-tête with the Duchess is racing up and down Grub Street like cholera, and will be in newspapers tomorrow at cock-crow!”

  And then he was gone, as if by trap-door.

  “You see? If you were more discreet—”

  “Then Grub Street would be unawares. Nothing would be written, nothing printed, concerning me, or the Duchess. No one would hear of us—no one would buy my next book.”

  “Ah.”

  “Light dawns ’pon your phizz, Doctor.”

  “ ’Tis a novel, strange form of commerce, of which I was unawares until just now.”

  “Only in London,” Dappa said agreeably.

  “But it is not the strangest form of commerce that goes on in this city,” Daniel pressed on.

  Dappa visibly put on an innocent face. “Do you have some strange yarn to set beside my lord Ravenscar’s?”

  “Much stranger. And, note, ’tis a domestic yarn, not imported. Dappa, do you recollect when we were being harried in Cape Cod Bay by the flotilla of Mr. Ed Teach, and you put me to work, down in the bilge?”

  “You were in the hold. We do not put elderly doctors in the bilge.”

  “All right, all right.”

  “I remember that you obliged us by smashing up some old crockery to make ammunition for the blunderbusses,” Dappa said.

  “Yes, and I remember that the location of that old crockery was pricked down, with admirable clarity, on a sort of bill posted on a beam next the staircase. A diagram, shewing how the hold, and the bilge, were packed with diverse goods.”

  “There you go again with your confusion of ‘hold’ and ‘bilge.’ We do not pack goods in the bilge, as it is generally full of what I will euphemistically call water, which rapidly turns goods into bads. If you doubt it, I’ll pack some of your machinery in the bilge on our return voyage this summer, and you may see its condition ’pon arrival. If you had any idea of the foulness—”

  Daniel was showing Dappa his palms. “Not necessary, my good man. Yet your lading-diagram does include the bilge, and all that lies in that foulness, does it not?”

  “Are you referring to the ballast?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “The ballast is carefully diagrammed, because it affects the balance and the trim of the ship,” Dappa said. “From time to time we must shift a few tons this way or that, to compensate for an uneven load, and then it is of course useful to have a diagram of where it is.”

  “As I recollect that diagram, the bottom-most hull-planks of the ship are covered with flat rectangular iron pigs, laid down side by side, like floor-tiles.”

  “Kentledge, ’tis called. We also have some cracked cannons and old faulty cannonballs down there.”

  “Atop that, you have piled many tons of rounded stones.”

  “Shingle from a Malabar beach. Some use sand, but we use shingle, because it does not foul the pumps.”

  “It is atop the shingle that you pile up casks of shot, salt, water, and other heavy goods.”

  “As is the common—nay, universal—practice on non-capsizing ships.”

  “But I recall that another layer of ballast was shewn on this diagram. It was below any casks, below the shingle, below the scrap metal, below even the kentledge. It was the thinnest possible layer, a mere membrane, and on the diagram it looked like onion-skin. It was pressed against the tarry inner surface of the hull-planks themselves, and it went by some name such as anti-fouling plates.”

  “What of it?”

  “Why put anti-fouling plates on the inside?”

  “They are spares. You must have noticed that we carry extra stores of everything, Dr. Waterhouse. Minerva’s hull is clad in copper sheets—she’s famous for it—and the last time we had a coppersmith make up an order of such material, we had him make more than we needed, so as to get a better price, and to have some in reserve.”

  “Are you certain you are not confusing them with the spares that are stowed in crates near the foremast step? I seem to recall sitting on them.”

  “Some are stored there. Others are stored against the inside of the hull-planks, under the kentledge, as you described.”

  “What an odd place to store anything. To get at them, one would have to unload the ship entirely, pump out the unspeakable contents of the bilge, shovel out tons of shingle, and winch up the massive pigs of kentledge, one by one.”

  Dappa did not respond, but had taken to drumming his fingers on the table irritably.

  “It seems more like buried treasure than ballast.”

  “If you’d care to test your hypothesis, Doctor, you may do so the next time we are dry-docked, provided you show up with your own shovel.”

  “Is that what you say to inquisitive Customs inspectors?”

  “We are more polite to them—as they generally are to us.”

  “But politeness aside, the underlying meaning is the same. The hold may be emptied, if some official demands it. Minerva shall then bob like a cork, but she shall not capsize, thanks to the ballast. But those anti-fouling plates may not be inspected unless the ballast is removed, which would render the vessel unstable—it could only be done if she were beached, or in dry-dock—as she was just a few weeks ago. No Customs inspector ever demands that, does he?”
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br />   “This is a very odd conversation,” Dappa observed.

  “On an arbitrary numerical scale of conversational oddness, ranging from one to ten, with ten being the oddest conversation I’ve ever had, and seven being the oddest conversation I have in a typical day, this rates no better than five,” Daniel returned. “But to make it less odd for you, I shall now speak directly. I know what those plates are made of. I know that you take some out from time to time, when you are in London, and I know that they find their way into the coinage. It does not matter to me how this is done, or why. But I say to you that you are putting yourselves in danger every time you spend the treasure from that bilge. You imagine that it may be fused, in a coiner’s crucible, with like metal from other sources, and that, once it has been thus con-fused, it has gone out into the world, and can never be traced back to you. But I say that there is one man, at least, who is not con-fused in the slightest, and who has drawn to within a hair’s breadth of divining your secret. You may find him at the Tower of London most days.”

  Dappa had been greatly disquieted early in this little speech, but then had got a distracted, calculating look, as if reckoning how quickly Minerva could weigh anchor and get out of the Pool. “And you tell me this—why? To be good?”

  “As you were good to me, Dappa, when Blackbeard called for me by name, and you refused to give me up.”

  “Oh. We did not do that out of goodness, but stubbornness.”

  “Then my warning to you is strictly an act of Christian charity,” Daniel said.

  “God bless you, Doctor!” Dappa replied, but he was still wary.

  “Until such time as we arrive at an understanding concerning the disposition of the gold,” Daniel added.

  “There is something in this word disposition that makes me leery. How do you imagine we’ll dispose of it?”

  “You have to get rid of it before it is found by the gentleman I spoke of,” Daniel pointed out. “But if you coin it, ’twill be as if you sailed Minerva under the guns of the Tower at noon, and ran those sheets of gold up the yard-arms.”

  “But what good is it, if not coined?”

  “Gold has other uses,” Daniel said. “Of which I shall tell you more some day. But not today. For we are approached by Peer, and must bring the oddness of our discourse down to a value of one or two on the scale I mentioned earlier.”

  “Peer? Who or what is Peer?”

  “For a man who, moments ago, was lecturing me ’pon the workings of Grub Street, you’ve not been attending to your newspapers at all, have you?”

  “I know it exists, how it works, and that it’s important, but—”

  “I read the papers every day. Let me tell you quickly then: there is a newspaper called Ye Lens which was started by Whigs, when their Juncto held power; several clever men write for it; Peer is not one of them.”

  “You mean, he doesn’t write for the Ye Lens?”

  “No, I mean he is not very clever.”

  “How’d he get the job, then?”

  “By being in the House of Lords, and always taking the Whig side.”

  “Ah, so he is a peer!”

  “A Peer of the Realm, with writerly ambitions. And as he writes for the Lens, and a lens is something you peer through, he has given himself the pen-name of Peer.”

  “This is the longest prolog to an introduction I’ve ever heard,” Dappa remarked. “When is he actually going to show up?”

  “I believe he—they—are waiting for you to notice them,” Daniel said, pointing with his eyeballs. “Brace yourself.”

  Dappa narrowed his eyes, flared his nostrils, and then torqued himself round in his chair until he had—heeding Daniel’s sage advice—braced one elbow on the table.

  Facing him from roughly twelve feet away were the Marquis of Ravenscar, planted stolidly on the booze-slickened Kit-Cat floor-boards, and an even better-dressed chap, who was dangling by both arms from one of the Clubb’s low-hanging beams, his impeccably shod feet swinging back and forth just a few inches above the floor.

  When this man saw that Dappa was looking his direction, he let go and dropped to the floor with a loud, chesty “Hoo!” His knees bent deeply, creating alarming strains in the crotch of his breeches, and allowing his knuckles to dangle near the floor. After making certain he’d caught Dappa’s eye, he moved in a waddling gait to the Marquis of Ravenscar, who was standing still as a star, his face pinched up in a pickled smile.

  Peer now pursed his lips, thrust them out as far as they would go, and, glancing back frequently to make sure he still had Dappa’s attention, began to make little “Hoo! Hoo!” noises while circling cautiously around Roger. After completing a full orbit of Roger, he shuffled in closer, leaned in so that he was almost nuzzling Roger’s shoulder, and began to make snuffling noises whilst cocking his head this way and that. Noting something apparently caught in the tresses of Roger’s splendid wig, he raised one hand off the floor, reached into the luxuriant mass of curls, pinched something tiny, pulled it out, examined it, gave it a good thorough sniffing, then popped it into his mouth and began to make exaggerated chewing noises. Then, in case Dappa had glanced away during this, he sidled around Roger and repeated the performance some half-dozen times, until even Roger became sick of it, raised one hand in the mildest of threats, and muttered, “Oh, will you stop it!”

  Peer’s response was extreme: he jumped back out of cuffing-range, came to rest on his knuckles and the balls of his feet, made excited screeching noises (or as near as a member of the House of Lords could come to it), then sprang into the air while flinging his arms above his head. He grabbed the beam again, knocking loose a shower of dust that sifted down, stained his white wig gray, and caused him to sneeze—which was most unfortunate, as he’d been taking snuff. A bolo of reddish-brown mucus hurtled out of his nose and made itself fast to his chin.

  The Kit-Cat Clubb had become quiet as a monastery. Perhaps three dozen men were in the place. By and large, they were of a mind to find nearly anything funny. Rarely did a minute tick away without all conversation in the Clubb being drowned out by a storm-burst of booming laughter from one table or another. But there was something in Peer’s performance so queer that it had shut them all up. Daniel, who had phant’sied that the crowding and the hubbub gave him and Dappa some sort of privacy, now felt even more exposed, and acutely spied upon, than ever.

  The Marquis of Ravenscar swaggered toward Dappa. Behind him, Peer dropped from the rafters and got busy with a Belgian gros-point lace handkerchief. After Roger had moved along for a few paces, Peer followed him, cringing along in Roger’s wake.

  “Dr. Waterhouse. Mr. Dappa,” said Roger with tremendous aplomb. “It is good to see you both again.”

  “And you likewise, et cetera,” answered Daniel shortly, as Dappa had been temporarily robbed of the power of speech.

  Conversations resumed, tentatively, around the Clubb.

  “I pray you will not take it amiss if I refrain from picking lice out of your hair, as my lord Wragby has been so considerate as to do for me.”

  “It’s not even my hair, Roger.”

  “May I introduce to you, Dappa, and re-introduce to you, Daniel, my lord Walter Raleigh Waterhouse Weem, Viscount Wragby and Rector of Scanque, Member of Parliament, and Fellow of the Royal Society.”

  “Hullo, Uncle Daniel!” said Peer, suddenly straightening up. “Very clever of someone to dress him up in a suit of clothing! Was that your conceit?”

  Dappa was staring sidelong at Daniel. “I forgot to mention that Peer is my half-great-nephew once removed, or something like that,” Daniel explained to him, behind his hand.

  “Who are you talking to, uncle?” Peer inquired, looking past Dappa’s head into a void. Then, with a shrug, he continued, “Do you phant’sy my demonstration worked? I did ever so much research, to get it right.”

  “I’ve no idea, Wally,” Daniel returned, and then looked over at Dappa, who was still frozen in the sidelong-glare attitude. “Dappa, did you
understand, from what you just observed, that my lord Wragby, here, is a member of my lord Ravenscar’s ape-tribe, and that he plays a submissive role, fully acknowledging my lord Ravenscar’s dominance?”

  “Who are you talking to?” said Peer for the second time.

  “To whom are you talking!” Dappa corrected him.

  A few moments’ silence from Peer, greatly savoured by Roger and Daniel. Peer raised one hand, pointed his index finger at Dappa as if holding him at bay with a pistol, and turned to Daniel with his mouth a-jar.

  “What you didn’t know, my nephew,” Daniel said, “is that Dappa was, at a very young age, taken aboard ship by pirates as a sort of pet. And these pirates, being a polyglot group, amused themselves by training Dappa to speak twenty-five different languages fluently.”

  “Twenty-five different languages!” Peer exclaimed.

  “Yes. Including better English than you, as you just saw.”

  “But…but he doesn’t actually understand any of them,” Peer said.

  “No more than a parrot does, when it squawks out a demand for a cracker,” Daniel affirmed, then let out a squawk of his own as Dappa kicked him in the shin under the table.

  “What a remarkable feat! You should exhibit him!”

  “What do you think I’m doing right now?”

  “How was the weather yesterday?” Peer inquired of Dappa, in French.

  “In the morning it was miserable and rainy,” Dappa returned. “After noon I thought it would clear but, alas, it was still overcast until nightfall. Only as I was getting ready for bed did I begin to see stars shining through gaps between clouds. Could I trouble you for a cracker?”

  “I say, the French pirate who taught him that trick must have been an educated man!” Peer exclaimed. Then he got a look on his face as if he were thinking. Daniel had learned, in his almost seventy years, not to expect much of people who got such looks, because thinking really was something one ought to do all the time. “One would suppose there would be no point in holding a conversation with a man who does not understand what he is saying. And yet he described yesterday’s weather better than I could! In fact, I think I’ll use his wording in tomorrow’s edition!” Again, now, the thoughtful look. “If he could relate other experiences—such as his tête-à-tête with the Duchess—as faithfully as he recalls the weather, it would make my interview with him ever so much easier. I had come prepared to do it all in grunts and sign language!” And Peer gave a note-book in his hip-pocket an ominous pat.