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

by Neal Stephenson

  “Consider it done my lord—but Robert Shaftoe is just a sergeant. A very senior one, true, but—”

  “I do take your point, Mr. White. Perhaps Colonel Barnes ought to be questioned. He would have the authority—”

  “Would have, my lord, but—and I have turned this over in my mind a thousand times—Colonel Barnes did never exercise any such authority on that day. I requested that he send a company on the expedition to Shive Tor, because, to hear Sir Isaac tell it, we would need a whole company, or more, to subdue the small army of Black-guards we would find there.”

  “Mr. White. Certainly you are not accusing yourself of complicity!”

  “Even if I did, my lord, ’twould never stand; for the record now shows that the true butt at which Jack the Coiner aimed his shaft was not the Jewels but the Mint—to be specific, the Pyx. And how would I benefit from some compromise of the Pyx?”

  “How could anyone conceivably benefit from it?” Bolingbroke wanted to know.

  “It is of no account,” Isaac Newton broke in, “as the Pyx was never compromised!”

  “Sir Isaac Newton! We’ve not heard from you yet. For the benefit of those here who have never seen the Pyx, would you be so good as to explain its workings?”

  “It would be my pleasure, my lord,” said Newton, stepping forward, eluding the hand of the Marquis of Ravenscar who had groped forward, out of some instinct, trying to yank him back from the abyss. “It is closed by three locks—all three must be removed for the lid to be opened. The top, as you can see, is fashioned with a hatch, devised in such a way that a small object may be deposited into the Pyx without opening the locks. But it is impossible for a hand to reach in and remove any object.” Newton operated the mechanism, letting everyone get a look at a pair of swinging doors rigged just as he had claimed.

  “How is the Pyx employed at the Mint?” Bolingbroke inquired, accurately feigning the sort of elevated curiosity that was good form at Royal Society meetings.

  Newton responded in kind. “Of every lot of coins that is minted, some are plucked out, and deposited. I shall demonstrate, behold!” Newton opened his own coin-purse and spilled a guinea and some pennies—freshly minted, of course—onto his hand. He borrowed a sheet of foolscap from a clerk, laid it on the Pyx, arranged the coins in the center of the page, and then rolled and folded the paper around the money to make a neat little packet. “Here I have done it with paper—at the Mint we use leather. The Sinthia, as we call this little packet, is sewn shut. The worker writes on its outside a notation as to when the sample was taken, and stamps it with a seal, kept for that purpose alone. Then—” Sir Isaac slipped the Sinthia into the Pyx’s hatch, and tripped the mechanism. It vanished and dropped within.

  “And from time to time, as is well known to that scholar of all matters monetary, my lord Ravenscar, the Pyx is brought hither to the Star Chamber by order of the Privy Council,” Bolingbroke said, “and opened, and its contents assayed by a jury of goldsmiths drawn from the most respectable citizens of the City of London.”

  “Indeed, my lord. Anciently it was done four times a year. Of late, less frequently.”

  “When was the last Trial of the Pyx, Sir Isaac?”

  “Last year, my lord.”

  “You say, ’twas around the time that the hostilities on the Continent ceased, and the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guard returned to garrison the Tower.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “And so the Pyx, as of April 22nd, contained samples of all lots of coins minted during the months that the Black Torrent Guard controlled the Tower.”

  “Er, indeed, my lord,” said Newton, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  Bolingbroke was only too happy to lead him out of his confusion. “Mr. Charles White is of the view that those who were responsible for the assault on the Tower, phant’sied that they could somehow benefit more from compromising the Pyx, than from stealing the Crown Jewels! How could such a thing possibly be, Sir Isaac?”

  “I do not know, my lord, and I hold it to be idle, for the Pyx was never compromised.”

  “How do you know that, Sir Isaac? Jack the Coiner might have spent as much as an hour with it.”

  “As you can see, it is sealed with three padlocks, my lord. I cannot attest to the other two, for one is the property of the Warden of the Mint and the other belongs to the Lord Treasurer; but the third is mine. There is only one key to that lock, and I am never without it.”

  “I have heard that there are men who can open a lock, without a key—there is a word for it, they say.”

  “Lock-picking, my lord,” someone said helpfully.

  “Trust a Whig to know such a thing! Could Jack have ‘picked’ the locks?”

  “Locks such as these, perhaps,” answered Newton, passing his hand over two of them. Then he turned his attention to a third, much larger and heavier. He hefted it like Roger Comstock cupping one of his mistress’s breasts. “To pick this one is almost certainly impossible. To pick it and two others in an hour is absolutely impossible.”

  “So a clever fellow could get the Pyx open in an hour, if he had your key, by ‘picking’ the other two locks. But without your key—impossible.”

  “Just so, my lord,” said Newton. He was distracted by violent stirrings in his peripheral vision, and glanced over to see Roger Comstock now frantically waving his hands about and drawing his finger convulsively across his throat. But Newton seemed to take these gestures as an inexplicable roadside mum-show.

  Bolingbroke noticed, too. “My lord Ravenscar has imbibed too much coffee again and come down with the spasms,” he guessed. Then he turned his attention back to Newton. “Pray take your impregnable lock away, Sir Isaac.” He turned around and gestured at a pair of fellows who were standing together in a corner, each nervously fingering an elaborate key. “The Warden of the Mint has joined us,” Bolingbroke said, “and even the Lord Treasurer has deigned to send a representative bearing his key. We would view the contents of the Pyx.”

  It was three-quarters filled with a jumble of leathern packets. Newton’s paper-packet had tumbled down into a corner. He bent down to retrieve it; and though Newton was oblivious to this, others in the room noted that the eyes of White and Bolingbroke tracked every movement of Newton’s, as if they were expecting to catch him out in some sleight-of-hand.

  “Is this what you expected to see when the lid was opened, Sir Isaac?” asked Bolingbroke.

  “It appears to be in order, my lord.” Newton reached into the Pyx a second time, plucked out a Sinthia, glanced at it, and dropped it back in. He plucked out another. This time, he hesitated.

  “Is everything quite all right, Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke inquired, the soul of gentlemanly concern.

  Sir Isaac raised the Sinthia higher, closer to window-light, and turned it this way and that.

  “Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke repeated. The Chamber was very still. Bolingbroke flicked his eyes at the Warden of the Mint, who stepped forward and stood on tiptoe to peer over Sir Isaac’s shoulder. Newton had frozen.

  The Warden of the Mint’s eyes widened.

  Newton dropped the packet into the Pyx as if it had caught fire. He staggered back, towards the Marquis of Ravenscar, like a blinded duellist seeking refuge among his friends.

  “My lord,” explained the Warden, “something’s a bit queer about that last packet. The handwriting—it looked forged, somehow.”

  Charles White raised a knee and kicked the lid of the Pyx. It closed with a boom like a cannon-shot.

  “I say that the Pyx is evidence in a criminal matter,” Bolingbroke proclaimed. “Put the locks on it again, and bring out my seal. I shall set my seal on this evidence to show any further tampering. Mr. White shall return the Pyx to its customary station and use in the Tower but he shall keep it under heavy guard, twenty-four hours a day. I shall bear these tidings to the other Lords of the Council. We may safely presume that the Council will order a Trial of the Pyx forthwith.”

  “Goo
d my lord,” said Peer, stepping forward, “what evidence suggests that such tampering occurred? The Warden has asserted that one of the packets looked a bit queer, but this hardly constitutes proof. Sir Isaac himself has said nothing at all.”

  “Sir Isaac,” said Bolingbroke, “what is perfectly clear to most of us, is impenetrable to this Whig. He requires evidence. No man is more eligible to testify in such a matter than you. Is it your testimony, before this assembly, that all of the coins in this Pyx were minted in the Tower, under your direction, and placed therein by your hand? I remind you that every coin in the Pyx is subject to assay during a Trial, and that you are under an indenture to Her Majesty; the consequences of a failed Trial are severe.”

  “By ancient tradition,” said Roger Comstock behind his hand, “false coiners are punished by amputation of the hand that did the deed, and castration.” From anxiety he had moved on briefly to horror; but now from horror to fascination.

  Newton tried to answer, but his voice did not work for a moment, and only a bleat came out. Then he swallowed, grimacing at the pain of swallowing, and got out the words: “I cannot so testify, my lord. But without a more thorough examination—”

  “There shall be one anon, at a Trial of the Pyx.”

  “I beg my lord’s pardon,” said Peer, who had out of some blind herd instinct blundered out to act as scape-goat for his entire Party, “but why bother to have a Trial of the Pyx, if the Pyx has been tampered with?”

  “Why, to get all false coins out of it, so that we shall know that all coins put in thereafter shall be genuine samples of the Mint’s produce—and not frauds put in as a desperate gambit to hide long-standing flaws in the coinage!”

  “The poetry of it!” Roger exclaimed, though these reflections were concealed under a hubbub, the sound of Parties and Factions mobilizing and arming. “Sir Isaac dares not assert that the Pyx is clean, for fear that Jack may have salted it with debased coins—which would be found out at the Trial, and laid to Sir Isaac. To save his hand and his balls, he must admit that it has been compromised; but in doing so, he calls his own coins into question, and names himself as a suspect in the assault on the Tower!”

  “My lord,” said a Tory, “it is suggested that a year’s coin-samples are now simply gone—stolen by Jack the Coiner! If that is so, how can we gauge the present soundness of Her Majesty’s coinage? Our enemies in the world shall say that the Mint has spewed out false and debased guineas for a year or more.”

  “It is a question of extraordinary gravity,” Bolingbroke allowed, “and I say that it is a State affair, since the security of our State is founded on Trade, which is founded upon our currency. If it is true that the conspiracy has deprived us of our Pyx, why then we can only prove the soundness of our money by collecting samples of coins that are in circulation, and bringing them in for assay.”

  Ravenscar had told Newton not to pick up any handkerchiefs dropped in his way by Bolingbroke: advice that Newton, with the serene confidence of a man who had nothing to hide, had steadfastly ignored. Now was not the time for him to mend his ways. “But my lord, I protest!” he said, “there is a reason why the method you have just described is never used, and it is that a sampling of coins in circulation shall perforce include a number—an unknowable number—of counterfeits, slipped into circulation by the likes of Jack Shaftoe. ’Twere unfair and unreasonable to lay at my feet an assay of counterfeits!”

  Bolingbroke seemed impressed by Newton’s sheer consistency. “Sir Isaac, as a part of my investigations, I have read an Indenture with your name on it, kept under lock and key in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey, just across the way. We can stroll over and have a look at it, if you should like to review its contents. But I can tell you that, in this solemn contract, you are sworn to pursue and prosecute coiners. Until now I have assumed that you were tending to your duties. Now you astonish this Chamber by testifying to the contrary! Tell me, Sir Isaac, if we make an assay of circulating coins, and discover that they are rife with base metal, is it because you have failed in your duty to prosecute coiners? Or is it because you have debased the coinage produced by the Mint, to enrich yourself and your Whig backers? Or did you debase the coinage first and then allow coiners to flourish in the Realm, so as to cover your traces? Sir Isaac? Sir Isaac? Oh well, he has quite lost interest.”

  In fact, Sir Isaac had lost consciousness, or was well on his way to it. During the last speech of Bolingbroke he had gradually softened and crumpled to the floor of Star Chamber, like a candle placed in an oven. He was breathing fast, and his extremities had gone into violent trembling, as if he were having fever-chills; but the hands pressed to his forehead felt a dry and cool brow and thumbs touched to the base of his heaving neck were drawn back in alarm at the furious drum-beat of his pulse. He was not so much sick as seized in an unstoppable paroxysm of mad, animal terror. “Get him into my coach,” commanded Roger Comstock, “and take him to my house. Miss Barton is there. She knows her uncle well, and she shall tend to him better than—God forbid—any physician.”

  “You see?” Bolingbroke was remarking to Charles White, who was standing at his side, in the role of wide-eyed ’prentice a-gawp at the Master’s skill. “It is not necessary to bite their ears off. Oh, this is nothing. I have seen others drop dead in their shoes. One needs an apoplectic for that.” He seemed ready to offer up more advice in this vein, but his attention was drawn by the Marquis of Ravenscar, standing serenely on the opposite side of the Chamber as other Whigs bent their backs to the very odd job of dragging out Isaac Newton. Ravenscar held out a hand. Someone slapped a walking-stick into his palm. He hefted it. Charles White, anticipating physical violence, took half a step forward, then realized he was being absurd, and brought his hands together in front of his silver greyhound medallion, absent-mindedly rubbing at an ancient dagger-scar that went all the way through one palm. Bolingbroke merely elevated an eyebrow.

  Roger Comstock raised his walking-stick until it was pointed up at the starry ceiling, and brought the butt of it to his face, then snapped it down briskly. It was a swordsman’s salute: a gesture of respect, and a signal that the next thing to come would be homicidal violence. “Let’s to the Kit-Cat Clubb,” he said to Peer and a few other Whigs who had not yet been able to get their feet to move. “Sir Isaac has the use of my coach; but I am in a mood for a walk. God save the Queen, my lord.”

  “God save the Queen,” said Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. “And do enjoy your walk, Roger.”

  Garden of Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover

  JUNE 23 (CONTINENTAL)/12 (ENGLISH) 1714

  “I LOVE YOU.”

  “I loaf you.”

  “I love you.”

  “I lubb you.”

  “That’s not quite it.”

  “How can you tell? This ‘I love you’ strikes my ear like the sound of a tin sheet being wobbled. How can I say ‘ich liebe dich’ with such noises?”

  “To me you can say it any way you please. But you need to work on certain vowels.” Johann von Hacklheber raised his head out of Caroline’s lap, faltered—his ponytail had snagged in a pearl button—worked it free, sat up, and spun around on the bench so that he could get face to face with her. “Watch my lips, my tongue,” he said. “I love you.”

  There the English lesson ended. Not that the pupil had failed to observe the master’s lips and tongue. She had done so most attentively—but not with a mind towards improving her vowels. “Noch einmal, bitte,” she requested, and when he arched his sandy eyebrows and opened his mouth to pronounce the “I,” she was up and on him. His lips and tongue went through the movements for “love,” but Caroline felt them with her own lips and tongue, and heard not a thing.

  “That was much more informative,” she said, after a few more repetitions of the étude.

  His ponytail was coming undone, which was largely her doing, for she had her hands to either side of his head and was tugging blond locks free from the black ribbon that bound them in back, bringin
g him into a state of beautiful déshabillement. “They say that your mother was the loveliest woman in all of Versailles.”

  “I thought that honor was reserved for the King’s brother.”

  “Stop it!” She gave him the tiniest tap on the cheek-bone. “I was going to say, she gave her looks to you.”

  “What are you going to say now?”

  “I am about to ask where you got your wit from, for it is not as pleasing to me.”

  “I do beg your royal highness’s forgiveness. I did not know that you had such affection for the late brother of the King of France.”

  “Think of his widow, Liselotte, who lives still, and who exchanged letters almost every day with the lady we are laying in her tomb today.”

  “The connexion was so tenuous I—”

  “No connexions are tenuous on a day such as this. All Christendom mourns for Sophie.”

  “Excepting certain drawing-rooms in London.”

  “For this one day, spare me your wit, and let me enjoy your looks. You need a shave!”

  “The Doctor must have taught you about solstices and equinoxes.”

  “What does that have to do with shaving? Behold, if I were wearing gloves, they should be snagged and ruined by these boar’s bristles!” She dug a thumb in along his jaw-line and shoved the skin up to his cheek-bone. No longer did he look like the son of the most beautiful woman in Versailles, and no longer were his vowels perfectly formed when he said, “A tryst in the garden at dawn’s first light is a romantic conceit, and I do confess that this peachy morning-light makes your face more radiant than any flower, and more succulent than any fruit—”

  “As it sets your golden mane, and your spiky hog-bristles, aglow, my angel.”

  “However, as we dwell at above fifty degrees of latitude—”

  “Fifty-two degrees and twenty-odd minutes, as you’d know, if the Doctor had drilled you as he did me in the use of the back-staff.”

  “In any case, given that we are within a few days of the Solstice, ‘dawn’s first light,’ at this latitude, works out to something like two o’clock in the morning.”