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

by Neal Stephenson

  By this time Braithwaite, and all of the Frenchmen save one, had got their own swords half drawn—a cultivated reflex. De Gex had slipped his right hand into a slit-pocket in the breast of his cassock.

  “Father de Gex,” Johann announced, “you shall not be needing whatever that is.”

  De Gex’s hand dropped to his side. Johann made sure it was empty. “This is not a melee but a duel. Your presence is requested, padre; first, to act as Mr. Braithwaite’s second; after, to give him last rites. My second is one of these two gentlemen behind me; I care not which, and leave them to sort it out. If I should be struck by a meteorite during this combat, and killed, they will convey my apologies and my love to my mother.”

  Johann guessed that he might have derived some low entertainment from observing the faces of Smith and of Jones at hearing this unexpected news; but having gone this far, he could not now remove his gaze from Braithwaite’s eyes until Braithwaite’s heart had stopped beating. De Gex uttered something that caused all of the Frenchmen to re-sheathe their swords. Then he said something rather different to Braithwaite; but Braithwaite remained frozen with his blade half out.

  “Braithwaite! It is my prerogative as a gentleman to make you defend yourself with that weapon you are forever carrying around; will you please act like a gentleman, and draw it?”

  “I propose tomorrow at dawn—”

  “By which time you shall be where? Prague?”

  “A proper duel is never conducted in haste—”

  “This looks like dawn to me,” Johann answered. He could not even tell what language he was speaking now. He advanced a step, quickly, which finally prompted Braithwaite to draw his small-sword. Johann continued, “Dusk and dawn come so close to kissing at this time of year I never know which is which.”

  Braithwaite had finally extracted his small-sword, and, with some assistance from de Gex, got himself disentangled from the scabbard and its strap-work. He got into a stance resembling Johann’s, but with the hand oddly curled under, in the English style. De Gex withdrew. Braithwaite had already cornered himself by standing with his back to the stage. Johann advanced. Braithwaite raised his weapon. Johann stung it out of the way with his dagger, put the tip of his rapier against Braithwaite’s solar plexus, shoved it in six inches, and then punched the hilt downward. Then he jerked it out, turned around, and walked back towards the palace where his mother and his sweetheart were waiting for him. “So much for awkward,” he said.

  DANIEL WATERHOUSE REMOVED a handkerchief from his breast pocket, draped it over his hand, and used it to grip the handle of the assassin’s dagger. The weapon had been borne into the room—a servants’ pantry near Princess Caroline’s apartment—on a silver tray, like an hors d’ouevre. Daniel held it several inches above a candle, so that the blade split the current of warm air rising from the flame. Then he leaned forward and got his beak into a position some distance above that. He gave the air the tiniest sniff, then recoiled and turned away from it. The dagger he set back on the tray, and the handkerchief he wadded up and threw into a cold fireplace in the corner of the pantry.

  Johann could smell it now, too: an acrid, smoky reek that reminded him of something.

  “Nicotine,” said Daniel.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “That may be, but you have some in you right now, if you have smoked a pipe in the last few hours.”

  “That’s what the smell reminds me of, a bit—an old pipe-bowl that has never been cleaned out.”

  “It is an extract of the tobacco plant. When I was your age, it was in vogue, among certain Fellows of the Royal Society, to prepare this poison and inflict it on small animals. It is soluble in oil. It is bitter—”

  “You’ve tasted it?!”

  “No, but persons who have, invariably remark on its bitterness before they stop breathing.”

  “How does it kill?”

  “I have just told you—the victim stops breathing. But not before becoming twitchy and spasmodic for a brief time.”

  “That was true of the dog, when I saw it. Then I lit out in pursuit of the other assassin. He had been pursued to the edge of the canal, and jumped in rather than perish at sword’s edge. He was sloshing about—for the water was but chest-deep—looking for some apt place to scale the opposite wall of the channel. Then he stopped moving, and sank below the surface. When we pulled him out he was dead.”

  “Did water drain from his lungs?”

  “Now that you mention it, no.”

  “He did not drown then,” Daniel said. “If you examine the corpse carefully you shall find some place where he nicked himself with his dagger, or let it brush against his skin.” Daniel planted a hand to either side of the silver platter and gazed at the weapon. “This is an expert preparation, solved in some fine light oil, such as whale-oil. Smeared on the skin it would convey the nicotine into the capillaries and thence to the lungs in a few minutes’ time.” He looked up at Johann. “When you smoke your pipe, you feel an initial rush of stimulation, followed by a calmness, a steadying of the nerves. This is but a trace, a shadow, of nicotine poisoning. If you were cut with this dagger, that relaxation of the nerves would advance to the point where you would simply forget to breathe, and drown in air…every time you smoke tobacco, you are prefiguring your own death.”

  “Horrid…it makes me want to smoke something just to calm down.”

  “Mr. Hooke experimented with an herb called bhang that would cure what ails you—alas, it is harder to get.”

  “I shall make inquiries. It is strange. During the events, I had a clarity of mind, a sharpness of perceptions, I’d never known before. Now, sitting here, I am terrified.”

  “As I should be, if I had just received such a tongue-lashing from the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm.”

  “You could hear it this far away?”

  “I do believe that the King of France sat up in his bed at Versailles wondering what new war had broken out in Germany.”

  “It’s true, I have never seen her so angry. She did tell me never to duel. And I did promise. But this—”

  “You chose the moment well,” Daniel assured him. “Physical violence is a means that I have never employed for any purpose. The risks are enormous, and a man of my mentality, who sees dangers where they are and are not, can always find a reason to take some other course. You are young and—”

  “Stupid?”

  “No, but less perceptive of risk. When, God willing, you have reached the age of forty, you’ll sit up in bed in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, with the memory of this night fresh in your mind, and say, ‘My God, I cannot believe I once fought a duel!’ Or so I hope.”

  “Why do you hope for me to sleep poorly?”

  “Because though I have not done violence I have seen rather a lot of it. Not all of the men who employ it are stupid, or evil. Only most of them. The rest use it reluctantly, as a way, when all else has failed, of seizing the main chance. Thus you tonight. Your mother will understand this and get her equilibrium back. But like a man who imbibes tobacco-smoke, you have died a little death tonight. I do not recommend that you become addicted to it.”

  “It is very good advice. I thank you for it. As I thank you, again, for giving us information that saved Caroline’s life. You may expect that she will reward you—”

  “I would glady forgo all thanks and rewards if I could simply take a nap.”

  “You can nap in the carriage, Dr. Waterhouse,” said a woman’s voice. Hoarse, as if she’d been screaming a lot recently.

  Daniel and Johann both looked over to see Eliza in the pantry’s doorway. She looked a good deal calmer.

  “My lady,” Daniel said, and sighed, “from any other woman I should interpret this as a jest or non sequitur, but from you I fear—”

  “It is well known that you stayed behind in Hanover, being too ill for arduous travel—”

  “Thank you for reminding me, my lady, my infirmity had quite slipped my mind.”

&nb
sp; “It is expected that you will take the slow way back, attended by a nurse. I give you your nurse.” Eliza came all the way into the room now. She was followed by a young woman dressed in a severe habit, her head swaddled in a length of white linen that had been wrapped around so as to conceal all of her hair, and a good bit of her face—hardly à la mode, but not particularly unusual in a time and place when nearly everyone sooner or later got smallpox, and some emerged in good health but almost impossible to look at. “This is Gertrude von Klötze, a petty noblewoman of Braunschweig, who after suffering and surviving a grave illness, has dedicated the remainder of her life to succouring others in need.”

  “A noble woman indeed. It is my very great pleasure to meet you, mademoiselle,” said Daniel, adroitly looking past the fact that this woman was, in fact, Princess Caroline.

  “Fraülein von Klötze shall accompany you all the way to London.”

  “And how shall sweet Gertrude get back?” Johann demanded—having taken a few moments to recover from the abrupt transfiguration of his lover into a masked nurse. He made a step toward Caroline, but she sent him back with a dart of the eyes. “Surely her family will miss her!”

  “Perhaps she won’t have to come back, as her family may be moving to London soon anyway,” Eliza said. “Gertrude shall lodge at Leicester House until we make rendezvous with her later.”

  “I did not know that I was—we were—going to London!” Johann answered.

  “We are,” Eliza said calmly, “but not before a detour to the chateau at Schloß Ubersetzenseehafenstadtbergwald.”

  “Eeyuh, that place? Are you joking? What’ll we do there, hunt bats?”

  “Some minutes ago, you may have heard a woman screaming in this wing of the palace.”

  “Indeed, my ears are still ringing.”

  “That was Princess Caroline.”

  “Are you certain? For during the time this screaming reached my ears I observed movements of your lips, Mother, curiously synchronized—”

  “Your wit is tedious. ’Twas the Princess. Her grief over the death of Sophie is even deeper than was realized. Her braveness earlier today a mere affectation, masking a profound derangement of the nerves. Not long ago, she simply dissolved. She has been given tincture of opium and is under strict seclusion in her bedchamber. Before the sun is up, she shall be taken out in a sedan chair and loaded into my carriage. You, son, and I shall convey her to the Schloß I have mentioned—one of the most remote and desolate out-croppings in Christendom. There, her royal highness shall spend several weeks in seclusion, tended only by a few trusted servants, turning away all visitors.”

  “Especially ones carrying poisoned daggers—?”

  “Rumors of assassins in the garden are absurd,” Eliza said, “They are chimæras, figments of her royal highness’s fevered brain. Even if they did exist, they would face grave difficulties gaining entrance to the place to which we are taking her, which, as you know if you have been studying your family history, was built on a rock in a lake by a rich Baron so concerned for his personal security that he believed that even the birds of the air were wind-up toys invented by hashishin to fly in his windows and put anthrax into his beer.”

  “Oh, was he the chap who invented beer-mugs with lids on them?” Daniel wondered aloud.

  But Eliza was in no mood. “I should like it very much, Dr. Waterhouse, if you were to fall down and suffer a medical crisis.”

  “I am here to serve, my lady,” Daniel returned gallantly, and began looking round the pantry for a comfortable place to hit the floor.

  “Might I spend a moment with ‘Gertrude’ first?” Johann inquired. “There is much, er, advice I would give her concerning London and—”

  “There is no time,” Eliza said, “and your advice is of little value, as ‘Gertrude’ does not expect to participate in any sword-fights.” And Eliza drew breath as if to expound upon this theme at greater length. But Daniel’s withered hand suddenly lay gentle on her arm. She faltered. “Gertrude” and Johann had locked their eyes together across the room. Eliza could have detonated a barrel of gunpowder and they would not have heard it.

  “Let’s to London, then,” Daniel said.

  Between Black Mary’s Hole and

  Sir John Oldcastle’s, North of London

  DAWN, 18 JUNE 1714

  Enlisting Soldiers without Authority. An ingrossed Bill from the Lords, intituled, An Act, to prevent the listing of her Majesty’s Subjects to serve as Soldiers, without her Majesty’s License, was read a Second time.

  Resolved, That the Bill be committed.

  Resolved, That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.

  Resolved, That this House will, To-morrow Morning, resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, upon the said Bill.

  —Journals of the House of Commons, JOVIS, 1° DIE JULII; ANNO 13° ANNÆ REGINÆ, 1714

  IT WAS SAID THAT Mahomet had banned bells in the masjid, not because they were, in and of themselves, repugnant to Allah, but simply because the Franks were so fond of them, and used them so much, that merely to hear one tolling was to be put forcibly in mind of the profanities of the infidels. If that were true, why a devout Mussulman with the misfortune to be encamped on the fields north of Clerkenwell would have suffered the rudest of all possible awakenings on this Friday: the damp, dark, chill, sewage-scented fog that served, hereabouts, in stead of an atmosphere, was alive with the sounds of church-bells. And none of your merry pealing carillons ringing diverse changes, but the slow stomach-walloping bongs of great solitary bells, gravid with doom.

  The tolling conveyed several meanings. First that the day had begun—a fact that most Londoners could only have determined with careful use of ephemeris and chronometer, as it was still dark. Second, that London was still there. The buildings, despite appearances, had not drifted away from one another in the night-time, like ships of a fog-bound fleet. Though invisible, they were still where they had been the evening previous, and a cockney with a good ear might even find his way round town by them, triangulating from the distinct voices of St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Thomas Apostle, St. Mildred, and Bennet Fink as mariners plotted courses by the lights of Ras Alhague, Caput Medusae, and Cynosura.

  Heard from these fields, the sounds of the bells came not only from the south, but from east and west as well, simply because London was that big and Clerkenwell that close to it. Once he had scrambled out of his tent, stuffed Egyptian cotton into his ears, and struck his camp, the offended sojourner would therefore head north to get away from the infernal bonging. But in this he would be balked at every bridge and crossroads. For all of the traffic—mostly pedestrians—was south-bound.

  Many had slept rough on these fields and greens the night before, and when the bells had begun to ring, they had arisen and begun to shuffle through the fog, like a whole battle-field of dead soldiers resurrected and ordered to march upon their respective parish-churches. All of them moved southwards, toward High Holbourn. For the tolling of so many melancholic bells had a third meaning: this was Hanging-Day. It happened eight times a year.

  The people tromping southwards through the fog were common at best. Honest folk among them tended to move in packs, keeping purses stuffed deep inside their cloaks, and supporting themselves on walking-sticks that were strangely oversized. For there was a stiff proportion of Vagabonds and worse in this throng. They all hoped to make it to Holbourn before broad daylight, so that they could claim places in the front of the crowd, affording them clear views of the condemned journeying to Tyburn Cross. Failing that they might withdraw to side-streets, and execute great westward flanking maneuvers, converging finally on the vast open parks and fields surrounding the Treble Tree.

  To a foreign visitor—or even to a good many Englishmen—there would be so much in these sights that was odd, and so much about the atmosphere that was gloomy, eldritch, and macabre, that he might easily over-look one or two peculiar phænomena. But the sort of person who attended Hanging-Marches e
ight times a year would note an anomalous gathering near an elbow in the road between Sir John Oldcastle’s (a compound of stately buildings and trees, about to be enveloped by Clerkenwell) and Black Mary’s Hole (a tiny alienated settlement on the banks of the upper Fleet).

  Stopped by the roadside, harnessed to a team of four horses who were all in their feedbags, was a coach. The driver, with his whip, and two footmen, with cudgels, prowled around it, discouraging Vagabond-boys from coming up to ingratiate themselves with the beasts. A stone’s throw away, in a field strewn with human turds and other evidence of last night’s hanging-jamboree, an old man bestrode a horse. Too much horse. It was feeding selectively on whatever grew in the field, and wandering wherever it pleased to find the choicest herbs. The rider, who was wrapped in a cloak, arms crossed over his torso for warmth, occasionally unfolded himself, grasped the reins, and compelled his mount to repent of its latest wanderings. It was a big gray gelding, obviously military, with simple tack.

  The old man on the gray gelding was accompanied by four other horsemen. Of these, two rode mounts similar to the first, but they kept theirs under better control. These men were big and young, dressed in very plain common garments such as yeomen might wear to venture forth on a long cross-country errand.

  Even through dimness and fog, everything about the other two riders—save one detail that shall be attended to in a moment—marked them as youths of a privileged class. They had small-swords (actually not all that useful on horseback). Their horses were to the gray geldings as færies were to fishwives. In short, either one could have ridden direct to St. James’s Park and gone for a genteel trot up and down Rotten Row and not drawn a second glance from the toffs and fops who frequented that place.

  But first they’d have had to don wigs. Bewigged, they’d have blended in perfectly. Dis-covered, they looked more at home in the wilds of North America. For each of these young swells had carefully shaved all of his hair—all, that is, save in a longitudinal stripe, three fingers wide, running from the hairline to the nape. This had been allowed to grow to a length of several inches and then stiffened with some mysterious tonsorial compound so that it stood straight out from the head. Washed, flattened, and tucked under a periwig it would disappear, but thus deployed it looked (to the Classically educated) like the crest on an ancient helmet, or (to readers of Romances) like the battle-coif of the Mohawks.