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

by Neal Stephenson

  “There is no precedent for this, and so pray allow me to suggest one,” Daniel says. “We are soon to move in to the Star Chamber for the Assay, are we not? Then rather than move Sir Isaac twice, I suggest we make him comfortable straightaway in Star Chamber. He can hear the indenture being read from there.”

  “So ordered!”

  Miss Barton curtseys her way out and flits across Star Chamber, calling to Daniel with her eyes. Daniel excuses himself and backs out. Heads lean in and faces turn to line the doorway. Daniel is confronted by the black obelisk of Isaac’s sedan chair, suspended between two astonished-looking porters. Miss Barton is hissing directions: “In the corner! The corner! No, that one!” There is some almost comical turning about, but finally they understand what she wants: for the sedan’s door to face toward a corner of Star Chamber so that when the door is open Isaac, in his pitiful state, won’t be visible to the entire Chamber. Finally they get it set down the way she wants it. Daniel side-steps through a narrow gap between pole and wall, and backs in to the corner. He glances up one time to see all of those faces in the next room peering through the doorway at him. Then he undoes the latch on the sedan chair’s door and opens it. The first thing he sees is a hand, pale and still, gripping an ornate key. He opens the door farther, letting light shine in so that he can see Isaac sprawled against the wall of his black box, eyes open and mouth a-gape, perfectly still. Daniel need not check his pulse to be certain that what he is looking at, here, is the recently deceased corpse of Sir Isaac Newton, dead at age seventy-one of Newgate gaol-fever.

  The Press-Yard, Newgate Prison

  TEN MINUTES LATER they are down in the Press-Yard, just off Phoenix Court. It is called a Yard but is really nothing more than a fortified alley. A short caravan is drawn up there, waiting to convey them all to Tyburn: a wagon containing various tools of Mr. Ketch’s trade; a spacious open cart, already loaded with empty coffins; and, drawing up the rear, a sledge. The cart is for most of the condemnees, for Ketch, and for the Ordinary. The sledge is reserved for Shaftoe, it being the tradition that a traitor be dragged to his death facing backwards. Mere hanging is too good for such a vile person, wheels are too nice.

  As the condemnees progress from each stage to the next, their entourage grows. Here in the Press-Yard there must be two score men, mostly gaolers with cudgels, but a few constables as well. Jack’s beginning to see blunderbusses. A sort of corridor is formed, tending to funnel them straight to the big cart. The other prisoners clamber up and sit down, using coffin-lids as benches. Jack is directed to his wheelless land-barge, which has a plank to sit on, but no coffin; by the end of the day, a coffin, or indeed any other container, will be quite wasted on him.

  Mr. Ketch, who is nothing if not organized, opens one of the several lockers on his supply-wagon, and pulls out several lengths of rope. Each of them has a hangman’s noose in one end. He tosses all but one of them into the big cart, then circles around to the rear where he addresses Jack.

  “It’s a fine one, eh?” he exclaims, holding up the noose.

  “If you were not wearing a black hood you’d be glowing with pride, Mr. Ketch. But I do not know why.”

  “This rope I got from a pirate-captain I hanged last year.”

  “He supplied his own rope?”

  “Indeed. A hawser, he called it. Look at the thickness of it.”

  “He wanted to be sure the rope would not break? That seems very odd to me.”

  “No, no, I’ll show you!” And Ketch steps round to Shaftoe’s left side and fits the noose over the latter’s head. The rope is so thick and stiff, the noose so tight, that it can barely close around Shaftoe’s throat. But the knot lodges under his left ear like a great bony fist. “Feel that leverage—now you’ll take my meaning, sir!” Ketch says, pulling up once or twice on the loose end of the rope. Each time he does, the knot, bearing on the heel of Shaftoe’s skull, crowbars his entire head forward and to one side. “And look at the length of it!” Shaftoe turns to see that Ketch has retreated to a distance of some two fathoms, but still has not run out of rope. “With this I can give you a drop such as few men are afforded, Mr. Shaftoe, very few. By the time you get to the end of this rope you’ll be moving as fast as a cannonball. You’ll be smoking a pipe in Heaven long before I chop off your testicles and shovel your guts out; and the quartering will mean as little to you, as coffin-worms to a dead bishop.”

  “You are a princely fellow, Mr. Ketch, and Betty is fortunate to have you.”

  “Mr. Shaftoe,” says Jack Ketch in a lower voice, stepping up very close to him now, and absent-mindedly wrapping the loose rope into a neat coil, “I shan’t have leisure to exchange words with you again, until we are standing beneath the Tree. For I’ve other prisoners to tend to, as you can see, and the journey to Tyburn promises to be, er…”

  “Festive?”

  “I was going to say ‘eventful,’ not wanting to show disrespect. I’ll be in the cart. We shall not be able to hear each other. Since you’re facing backwards, we shall not be able to see each other. Even when we are face to face beneath the Tree, the noise will be such that we’ll not be able to exchange a word, though we scream in each other’s ears. So I say to you now, sir, thank you! Thank you! And know that you shall feel less pain today than a man who bangs his head on a door-frame in a dark room.”

  “In the way of pain, I ask for nothing more nor less than what I deserve,” says Shaftoe, “and I shall entrust you, Mr. Ketch, with that determination.”

  “And I shall prove worthy of that trust sir! Farewell!” says Jack Ketch. He turns his back on Shaftoe as if he’s afraid he might cry again. He straightens his back, works on his composure, smooths down his hood, and steps up into the cart, where he has other clients waiting.

  Star Chamber

  THE NEXT TIME Daniel has his wits about him, the King’s Remembrancer is reading some document aloud, declaiming in the hoarse lope of one who has been reading for quite a long while. Daniel looks through the doorway to see the King’s Remembrancer peering through half-glasses at a generously sized parchment with a zigzag edge: one of the counterpanes of an indenture. This would be the contract that Isaac signed when he became Master of the Mint. It is one of the treasures that Daniel fetched out of the Abbey vault. What it says is that Isaac accepts sole personal responsibility for whatever is about to be found in the Pyx. It probably seemed like a lot of dry legal gibberish when Isaac signed it, but as the words resound through Star Chamber in the hearing of all the most important men in the Realm, it strikes him as so very grave and formidable as to make Isaac almost lucky to be dead. Daniel notes that he is the object of curious scrutiny by several of those men, and so he fixes his gaze on Isaac’s dead face, smiles, nods, and makes a sotto voce remark as if chatting with the sick man.

  The Indenture draws to a thunderous end with invocations of God and of the Sovereign, and then the King’s Remembrancer looks up and demands the three keys of the Pyx.

  In taking Isaac’s key out of his hand, Daniel notes that rigor mortis has not set in yet. He can’t have been dead for long.

  The other Key-holders of the Pyx have already undone their respective locks by the time Daniel gets in there. Only one lock remains: a beauty, made to look like the front of the Temple of Solomon. Daniel gets it open and flips the hasp out of the way. Two members of the City jury step up and raise the lid of the Pyx. The cervical vertebrae of the Great and the Good pop and creak all round as they vie to see what’s in it: a pile of wee leather packets, called Sinthias, each labeled with a month and a year.

  “Very well,” says the King’s Remembrancer, “the Jurors may withdraw to Star Chamber to conduct the Assay.”

  While the Jurors are still mumbling and shuffling, Daniel strides out, key in hand, and makes for the sedan chair. Miss Barton has taken up a position in front of it, facing into the room, as if to block any well-wishers—or ill-wishers, for that matter—from trying to get close to her uncle. She’s a bit red around the eyes, bu
t when Daniel comes up to place a steadying hand on her shoulder, she feels solid and strong beneath the sleeve of her frock, and after a moment she shrugs him off and directs him toward the corner with a flick of her eyes. Many a London man-about-town has dreamed of receiving a come-hither look from those lovely Orbs, but Daniel will have to settle for what he’s just been given: a go-thither look. “He said,” she says, “that you would know what to do.”

  So he goes into the corner, opens the door again, and verifies that Isaac’s still dead (which might seem a safe enough thing to assume; but with Isaac, you never know). He leans his head and shoulders into the box now, and checks under Isaac’s armpit: still tepid. Looking up, he has a full view of the back of Catherine Barton’s bodice and all of Star Chamber beyond. The black screen darkens everything somewhat, but his eyes soon enough adjust. No one, of course, can see him or Isaac.

  On a large table next to the furnace, the City jurors dump out the contents of the Pyx. Sinthias gush out and mound up. A few roll to the floor and are chased down and snatched back. The Pyx is set upright, open, and empty, on the floor. The twenty-four Jurors—Goldsmiths and Citizens working all together, for the nonce—go through the heap, reading the label on each Sinthia, and divide them into two piles: one containing silver coins—shillings, sixpence, and various other penny denominations—and the other gold: guineas, and the odd five-guinea piece. Daniel notes that Mr. Theader has established a commanding position at the end of the table where the gold coins are being piled. Before him is a great two-pan scale. He is wielding a jack-knife, making quick work of the Sinthias, cutting the Yellow Boys out of their leathern straitjackets and stacking them on the table. From time to time he will cup one in his hand and toss it: as always, Daniel cannot make out whether this is a mere nervous tic, or a studied effort to judge its weight.

  As the Trial of the Pyx seems well in hand, Daniel turns his attention to matters inside the sedan chair.

  He said you would know what to do. Well, yes and no.

  Daniel has studied a document, written in Hooke’s hand, asserting that a patient (who happened to be one Daniel Waterhouse, but that is neither here nor there) died, and was brought back to life by a coction brewed up by an Alchemist. Hooke set down the receipt as best as he could from memory. Later Isaac went through and studied this, as only Isaac could study a thing, and made any number of annotations to it, all in the mythology-ridden argot and the queer symbology of the Esoteric Brotherhood. Daniel knows more than he’d like to of such things, from having spent so much of his young life around such people, and he’s had a few days to go over Hooke’s receipt and Newton’s commentary and puzzle out what they mean. Isaac has made several attempts in recent weeks to carry out all of the steps in the procedure save the last, and so all of the necessary crucibles, retorts, &c. were lying out in plain sight on his laboratory-table when Daniel began work a couple of days ago, and all of the ingredients were there, too. All, that is, except for the last and most crucial.

  Out of his pocket Daniel now takes the small wooden chest. He sets it on Isaac’s lap and opens it. The contents are a stoppered glass flask containing a red liquid, and a paper packet, like a wee Sinthia no bigger than Daniel’s fingernail. Daniel unfolds this with great care to expose a small quantity of gold dust. This is what remains of the ring that Solomon Kohan gave him, which Daniel melted last night to make a counterfeit guinea. Half of that guinea was snipped up into tiny shards that ought to be up Mr. Threader’s sleeve just now. The rest of it Daniel tediously rubbed against a file until it was all gone, and collected the dust of it into this paper packet. The particles are so fine that one needs a microscope to view them; this ought to mean that their superficies are enormous, and easily penetrable by any surrounding menstruum. Right now that happens to be air, and not much seems to be happening. But it is time to carry out the last step, which is to place them in a very different menstruum, altogether more reactive. Daniel picks up the phial of scarlet fluid and thumbs the cork out of it, then, practically in the same motion, pours the dust of the Solomonic Gold into the fluid. He replaces the cork and, holding the flask between his palms, clamps the stopper in place with both thumbs and gives it a shake.

  A red-orange glow suffuses the interior of the sedan chair. Daniel perceives that it is light shining through the flesh of his hands. But there is no warmth: this is like kaltes feuer, the cold fire of Phosphorus.

  He stuffs the phial under the flap of Isaac’s coat so that the unearthly light won’t shine through the window of the sedan chair, then risks taking the cork off. It is like staring into the swirling and lambent clouds of a thunderstorm. A scent reaches his nostrils, which he cannot identify, but he knows he’s smelled it before, and it brings a powerful urge to lift this draught to his lips and drink it down. He masters this, and considers how to get it into Isaac. It is to be administered orally, he knows that. But how does one get a dead man to drink? Hooke’s notes said something about a spatula. Tilting the vial, Daniel observes that the magma is thick, like porridge—it is congealing. If he waits much longer, he fears, it will be solid and unusable. Daniel grabs the only spatulate object near to hand: the key to Isaac’s padlock. Using this as a spoon, he digs out a gob of the bright stuff as big as the last joint of his little finger, and introduces it to Isaac’s mouth, flips it upside-down, and wipes it off on Isaac’s tongue.

  He looks out the window, fearful that someone will have noticed the light. But all eyes are on a grave rite being conducted by Mr. Threader: a pile of guineas has been placed on one pan of his great Barock scale, and on the opposite pan, one of the standard weights from the Abbey vault.

  He spoons out another gob. Half of the stuff is now gone from the phial. It continues to congeal, but it is still manageable. It has the useful property of adhering to itself more than to anything else, somewhat like mercury; it leaves no wetness, no residue on the inside of the phial or on the key. The final spoonful seems to take with it every last trace of the stuff, and the key emerges from Isaac’s mouth clean. Daniel notes that the glow has vanished, and now for the first time risks bringing his trembling hand to Isaac’s mouth and pulling his jaw down so that he can inspect the inside of the mouth. He is shocked to find that all of the stuff is gone, as if it had never existed. It has diffused into Isaac’s flesh: the vegetative spirit, if that’s what it really is, pervading the inert matter of the corpse.

  “I find that these coins are satisfactory for weight,” Mr. Threader announces, “and so I propose that we now prevail upon our good friends, the Company of Goldsmiths, to assay the metal for fineness.” As Mr. Threader says this, he glances toward Daniel.

  “The Company of Goldsmiths stands ready to conduct the assay,” announces the eldest of that jury. “We have nominated Mr. William Ham as Fusour.”

  William steps forward and addresses Mr. Threader. “I shall require a fair sample of the metal having an aggregate weight of twelve grains, if you please, sir.”

  “It is my honour to have been nominated Pesour by the Jury of Citizens,” says Mr. Threader agreeably. “I propose to give you your twelve grains by cutting small amounts from several coins, as is the established practice.”

  “The Company of Goldsmiths assents,” says the Fusour.

  “Then let the guineas from the Sinthias be mixed that a fair sample may be drawn,” says the Pesour.

  With that, all the stacks of guineas piled on the table are swept off, in a clashing golden avalanche, into the Pyx. Watched intently by twenty-three other jurors—and now by Daniel, who has withdrawn from the sedan chair, and come over to observe—one of the Citizens stirs through the guineas with his hand, mixing them thoroughly. When that has gone on for long enough, he averts his gaze, displays an empty hand to the room, thrusts it into the middle of the Pyx, and pulls out a single guinea, which he places on the table before the Pesour.

  Each of the other eleven City men does the same. A dozen guineas, chosen at random, are now lined up on the table before Mr. Threade
r.

  Church of St. Sepulchre

  All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor Sinners, who are now going to their Death, for whom this great Bell doth toll. You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable Tears; ask Mercy of the Lord for the Salvation of your souls through the Merits, Death, and Passion of Jesus Christ, who now sits on the right Hand of God, to make intercession for as many of you as penitently return unto Him. Lord have Mercy upon you! Christ have Mercy upon you!

  —THE BELL-MAN OF ST. SEPULCHRE’S

  WHEN THEY DRAG HIM OUT of the Press-Yard he’s startled to see that they’ve actually dropped the portcullis, severing Newgate Street intra muros from Holborn extra. He can hear a seething Mobb on the other side of it, but not see them, as a squadron of mounted soldiers is drawn up on the near side of the mighty Grate, forming up as if to mount a sally.

  Presently, his private ceremonial sledge slews itself round in the street so that he is facing abaft, which means gazing down Newgate toward the heart of old London Town. This ought to provide him a more or less straight view down Newgate and Cheapside all the way to the ’Change, miles away; but instead all he sees is more soldiers. Squadrons are issuing from Phoenix Court on the right, and the grounds of Christ’s Hospital on the left, and forming up in the wide part of the street behind him. This is unusual.

  The air feels heavy, pushing in queerly on his skull. Because of the crowd-noise it is difficult to discern why, at first; then he recollects that every bell in London is ringing, muffled, to announce the Hanging-March.

  The first leg of the three-mile journey encompasses somewhat less than a hundred yards, that being the distance from the portcullis of Newgate to the Church-Yard of St. Sepulchre’s. It only takes them about twenty minutes, which makes Jack phant’sy this isn’t going to be so very difficult as popular legend would have one believe. He remembers these things as being a good deal bigger and rowdier. But then he hasn’t attended one since before the Plague, and everything seemed larger through a child’s eyes.