The System of the World: Volume Three of the Baroque Cycle

by Neal Stephenson

  “Bring it down,” shouted the red-coated soldier on the carriageway.

  A few moments later the wretch emerged from an internal stair-way, which he had descended with conspicuous gallantry and athleticism. He passed the head under the gaze of the soldier, who responded with a perfunctory nod, and then tucked it back under his arm and sauntered over to the western edge of the carriageway, within arm’s length of the grizzled man in the pink coat. Taking it up in both hands, he hollered, “Oy! Heads up, mate!” and gave it a good toss. Daniel could not see its trajectory, but could read it in the postures of the head-thrower and the pink-coat, both of whom were tracking it carefully: quiet anticipation as the head traced a parabola downwards, then shock and dismay as someone down below bobbled it, ending with explosive relaxation as it was caught. The man who’d thrown it wheeled about smartly, like a soldier in a drill. His face looked very much as if he had dodged a cannonball. He marched back to the Great Stone Gate.

  Daniel strolled over to take his place. Looking over the bridge’s parapet he could now see down to the flat top of the starling below: a puddle of rubble circumscribed by a line of pilings, just an arm’s length above the level of the river. Down there were two more redcoats, supervising the labors, but standing well clear, of another pair of unfortunates, who were surrounded by partially decomposed and dismantled heads. These two chaps were working shirtless in the cold, probably because their backs were covered with whip-marks that were still bleeding. But they, too, were vigorous young men. Daniel reckoned they were private soldiers guilty of some infraction, being made to undertake this work as part of their punishment. The work consisted of catching the heads thrown down to them, and cutting off the tops of the skulls with handsaws.

  As Daniel was taking in this scene, one of them finished a cut, and the top of a skull fell to the ground. He picked it up, gave it a quick inspection, and then underhanded it straight up in the air. The man next to Daniel snatched it at the peak of its flight, and gave it a careful look. To Daniel the Natural Philosopher, the specimen appeared in excellent condition: the sutures well knitted, the bone thick and sturdy.

  “If you are talking to me, Daniel Waterhouse, I cannot hear you,” said the man. “Unlike other men whose ears have gone bad, I have schooled myself not to shout, nor to ramble on and on. But you may have to do both.”

  Daniel perceived now that Bob Shaftoe’s coat was an army uniform that had once been red, but lost much of its color from washing. From this, and from the careful mending of it, he deduced that Bob had a wife.

  “Abigail is well, thank you,” Bob announced. “Forgive my presumption, but men with bad ears must learn to read minds, as well as lips; and if you were not about to ask about her, why, the fault is yours.”

  Daniel smiled, and nodded. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, and pointed to the skull.

  Bob sighed. “The Mint men have been melting down a lot of silver, which was taken from a treasure-galleon on the Spanish Main. When it melts, certain fumes rise out of it—surely you know more on this than I—and the men who breathe in those vapors grow ill. There is only one remedy. Sir Isaac learnt of it from some German coiners he hired during the Great Recoinage. It is to drink milk from a human skull. Several of the Mint-men have lately gone down ill; so the call has been put out for skulls and milch-cows. What are you doing here, guv’nor?”

  “In London? I—”

  “No, here,” said Bob, pointing to the pavement between Daniel’s feet. “Observing me like a beetle.”

  “I was at the Tower on other business, and took it into my mind to pay a call on you.”

  Bob did not seem entirely certain that Daniel was telling the truth. He removed his eyes from Daniel’s face and gazed out over the river, towards Whitehall. His thumb had discovered a loose flap of scalp projecting above the rim of the skull-cup, and now he was absent-mindedly peeling the scalp away. The deceased was a red-headed man with close-cropped hair and a freckly bald spot. “I am not available,” Bob said.

  “Not available, for what?”

  “For the Marquis of Ravenscar’s bloody secret army,” Bob answered. “I serve the Queen, long may she reign, and if the Pretender comes to this island, why, then, we shall have a bit of sorting-out to do, and I shall look to John Churchill for his leadership in the matter. But the Whig Army shall have to get ’long without Bob Shaftoe, thank you very much.”

  HOOKE, TWISTED AND BENT as he was, had been in the habit of going everywhere on his own two feet, even though his work as City Surveyor, and as a sort of partner to Wren, had made him rich enough to afford a coach and four. Daniel had not understood it fully until today. For a man who wanted to get things done in London, there simply was not time to go in a vehicle, because of the congestion. The sedan chair was a workable compromise, but still a compromise. The only reason not simply to walk was the dirtiness of the streets, and the loss of dignity. After all he’d seen today, Daniel could not, with a straight face, abhor the streets of London for their squalor. As for dignity, he had very little of that to look after, and the sight of the heads and the skulls had set loose in his mind the usual train of ruminations considering mortality, vanity, and all that. Long sour passages from Ecclesiastes were running through his mind as he tromped back up the bridge and up-hill to Eastcheap where he turned left. The sky was crimson in the west. The dome of St. Paul’s, directly ahead of him, looked bluish against it. The Watch were emerging and beginning to range up and down the streets, giving Daniel reason to believe that it was not utterly suicidal to walk home alone. He happened to reach St. Paul’s as Vespers was beginning, so he went in there to rest his feet for a while.

  A new organ was under construction, and Daniel spent more time brooding over it than he did contemplating the meaning of the service. Wren had disparaged it as “a box of whistles.” Daniel understood the complaint. For Daniel, too, had once designed a building, and savored the thrill of seeing it built, only to endure the long indignity of watching the owner clutter it up with knick-knacks and furniture. This box of whistles project was only one of several spats that Wren had conducted with Queen Anne in recent years as to how St. Paul’s ought to be decorated. And so as Daniel looked about at the interior of the place, he understood that certain of the details that met his eye might not be as Wren would have wanted them. And yet, he had to admit that it wasn’t in bad taste at all, at least compared to some other Barock architecture he’d seen. Or perhaps the style was merely growing on him.

  Daniel thought that the fantastically complex ornamentation of Barock churches was a replacement for the complicated things made by God, that had used to surround people when they lived out of doors (or that Hooke had seen in drops of water). Entering into a place such as this, they were surrounded by complicated things made by men in emulation of God—but frozen and idealized, in much the same way as the mathematical laws of Natural Philosophy were compared to the reality they tried to describe.

  When the service was over, the sun had gone down, and it were dangerous to be out alone. Daniel shared a hackney down Fleet Street to Crane Court.

  A note had arrived from Captain van Hoek of Minerva. But it had been written out, and probably composed, by Dappa.

  Dr. Waterhouse,

  We guess that to carry your freight, though less of an honour ought too to be less of a hazard, than to carry your person, and therefore consent. We aspire to leave the Pool in the latter half of April and to return in July. If this will not be too late, kindly inform us as to the approximate tonnage and volume you wish to reserve on our return voyage.

  Dappa will venture ashore some day before we embark, to consult with his publisher in Leicester Square, quite near your current lodgings. With your permission he will meet with you on the same day, to write a contract; for his pen is as versatile and inconstant as his tongue.

  van Hoek

  Orney’s Ship-yard, Rotherhithe

  12 MARCH 1714

  DANIEL SUPPOSED THAT THE MATTER of Orne
y and Kikin and the Science Crapp was finished and settled for good. But one morning, close to a fortnight later, a note was handed to him by Mrs. Arlanc. This document was not merely dated but timed, for it had been written out in haste half an hour ago.

  Monsieur Waterhouse,

  A hellish glow on the eastern horizon early this morning gave notice to any Londoner who chanced to look that way of Trouble in Rotherhithe. You may yet observe a column rising from that district, consisting more of steam than of smoak, as the Fire has been put out; but not before it had consumed one of His Imperial Majesty’s ships. I am, naturally, bound thither in haste. This message (for whose rudeness I apologize) comes to you in a hackney-carriage. Kindly inform its driver whether you will join me at Rotherhithe (in which case he shall convey you at my expense) or not (in which case prithee send him away).

  Kikin

  It was by no means obvious to Daniel why he ought to heed this oblique summons from Mr. Kikin. That there had been a fire at Orney’s ship-yard was unfortunate. But Daniel’s connection to the matter was tenuous. Kikin, who was an intelligent man, must know this. Yet he had gone to some trouble and expense, and had unlimbered his most diplomatic English, to ask Daniel out to Rotherhithe.

  In the end he decided to go there, not because he could see any clear reason why, but because he could see no reason why not, and because it was likely to be more interesting than staying at Crane Court. The endless carriage-ride gave him plenty of time to make up his mind that he had decided wrong. But by then it was too late. He reached Orney’s ship-yard around midday. From the point on Lavender Lane where he disembarked from the hackney-carriage, he enjoyed an Olympian prospect over the entire ship-yard.

  There was no wind at all today. A silent tide of translucent white smoke had seeped into the maze of stock-piles down on the bank, turning them into blocky islands. These had been little affected by the fire. Daniel’s eyes sought out the pallet where had been piled the Natural Philosophy stuff from Crane Court. Other than a few scorch-marks where cinders had showered down upon the tarpaulin, there appeared to be no damage.

  Having satisfied himself as to that, he raised his eyes to the parallel ways where the Tsar’s three ships had been a-building.

  The fire had started in the middle of the three hulls. As far as Daniel could make out, no attempt had been made to save this one. But expanses of sail-cloth had been drenched in the river and flung over the unfinished hulls to either side. The cloth looked very much the worse for wear—no one would ever make sails of it—but for the most part it had steamed, not smoked, in the heat of the flames. From footprints in the bankside mud and other such evidence, Daniel could infer that bucket-brigades had been formed to wet down the sail-cloth and perhaps to attack the central fire. A hue and cry must have gone up; Orney and many of his workers must have rushed to the yard. But not soon enough to save the middle ship. The fire must have worked in the belly of that hull for some time before it had been noticed. The hull-planks on both sides were charred through, and it was obvious that the keel had been damaged. It would be rated a total loss by Mr. Orney’s insurer.

  This much Daniel could see from a high vantage point at the top of the stairs. Swirling heat-waves still roiled out of the destroyed hull. Through them he could see a weirdly distorted image of men on small boats rowing to and fro, peering at the disaster in something of the same spirit as other men had watched the bear-baiting.

  Daniel found a stairway and descended from the lane to the yard. The smoke that lingered in the lanes among the stock-piles smelled like the aftermath of any house-fire, which was to be expected. But mixed with it, Daniel was surprised to nose out a sharp nostril-stinging fragrance that did not belong there: a chymical fume. Daniel had most recently smelled it in Crane Court, the night of his arrival, just after the Infernal Device had gone off. Before that, he had smelled it many other times in his life; but the first time had been forty years ago at a Royal Society meeting. The guest of honor: Enoch Root. The topic: a new Element called Phosphorus. Light-bearer. A substance with two remarkable properties: it glowed in the dark, and it liked to burn. He suffered a pang of incipient guilt, thinking that perhaps this was all a terrible mishap, laid to him; perhaps there had been a sample of phosphorus in among the goods from Crane Court, which had somehow caught fire, and caused the conflagration, and Kikin had called him out here only to prosecute him. This was extremely unlikely—a fair sample of the stupid terrors that continued to bedevil him from time to time. He went and inspected his pallet, and found that nothing of the sort had happened.

  Daniel found Orney and Kikin in one of the surviving hulls. This was still draped in sopping sail-cloth, presumably in case the fire in the middle hull should flare up again. Orney and Kikin roamed up and down the length of the hull on a strip of temporary decking—a sort of scaffold. Daniel reckoned it had been put there so that the workers could gain access to the upper parts of the ribs, but in present circumstances it made a suitable command and observation post for the proprietor and his customer.

  They took in the curious spectacle of Daniel ascending a ladder, then—since he had survived it—greeted him. Orney was smiling in the way that bereaved persons oft did at funerals. Kikin—whatever emotions he might have felt earlier in the day—was sober, avid, acute, interested in everything. “You have come,” he said more than once, as if this were a significant finding.

  Norman Orney mopped his cindery visage with a corner of wet canvas. Seeing this, a boy stepped in with a bucket of beer and offered Orney a ladle-full. “God bless you, lad,” said Orney, accepting it. He quaffed half a pint in a few impressive swallows.

  “It started in the wee hours, then?” Daniel hazarded.

  “Two of the clock, Brother Daniel.”

  “It burned for a long while, then, before anyone noticed.”

  “Oh, no, Brother Daniel. In that, you are quite off the mark. I employ a night-watchman, for these banks are infested with mudlarks.”

  “Sometimes they fall asleep.”

  “Thank you for supplying me with that intelligence, Brother Daniel; as ever, you are keen to point out any mismanagement or incompetence. Know then that my watchman has two dogs. Both began to bark shortly after two of the clock. The watchman smelled a pungent fume, and observed smoke from yonder hull. He raised the alarm. I was here a quarter of an hour later. The fire had spread with inconceivable rapidity.”

  “Do you suspect arson?” Daniel asked. The thought had only just come to him; even as he was giving voice to it he was feeling the first flush of shame at his own stupidness. Orney and Kikin made polite efforts to mask their incredulity. In particular, Kikin would presume arson even if there were evidence to the contrary; for these were, after all, warships, and Russia was at war.

  What must Kikin make of Daniel?

  “Had you, or your watchmen, seen any strangers about the shipyard recently?”

  “Other than you, Brother Daniel? Only a pair of prowlers who stole in, night before last, on a longboat. The dogs barked, the prowlers departed in haste. But they can have had nothing to do with the fire; for the ship was not on fire yesterday.”

  “But is there any possibility that these prowlers might have secreted a small object in the hull—down in the bilge, say, where it might have gone unnoticed for twenty-four hours?”

  Orney and Kikin were gazing at him most intently.

  “The ship is—or was—large, Brother Daniel, with many places of concealment.”

  “If you find clock-work in the bilge of the burnt ship, please be so good as to inform me,” Daniel said.

  “Did you say clock-work, Brother Daniel?”

  “It may have been damaged beyond recognition by the combustion of the phosphorus.”

  “Phosphorus!?”

  “Your men must inspect the bilges and any other hidden cavities in the surviving hulls every morning.”

  “It shall be done, Brother Daniel!”

  “You have a fire agent in the City?”


  “The Hand-in-Hand Fire-Office on Snow-Hill!”

  “Pray consider me at your disposal if the Hand-in

  -Hand Fire-Office tries to blame this on you, Brother Norman.”

  “You may have hidden virtues, Brother Daniel. Pray overlook my stubborn unwillingness to see them.”

  “Pray forgive my hiding my light under a bushel, Brother Norman.”

  “Indeed,” said Kikin, “there is much that is hidden in you, Dr. Waterhouse. I would see it uncovered. Would you please explain yourself?”

  “The pungent reek that your watchman complained of, and that still lingers over yonder, is that of burning phosphorus, and I last smelled it on the evening of the thirty-first of January in Crane Court,” said Daniel. He went on to relate a brief account of what had happened that night.

  “Most remarkable,” said Kikin, “but this ship was not exploded. It was set afire.”

  “But one who knew how to make an Infernal Device, triggered by clock-work, might rig it in more than one way,” Daniel said. “I hypothesize that the machine uses phosphorus to create fire at a certain time. In one case, that fire might be conveyed to a powder-keg, which would explode. In another, it might simply ignite a larger quantity of phosphorus, or of some other inflammable substance, such as whale-oil.”

  “But in any case, you are saying, the machines—and their makers—are the same!” said Orney.

  “Then it is a matter for your Constables!” Kikin proclaimed.

  “As the evildoers are nowhere to be seen, there is nothing for a Constable to do,” Daniel pointed out. “It is ultimately a matter for a Magistrate.”

  Kikin snorted. “What can such a person do?”

  “Nothing,” Daniel admitted, “until a defendant is presented before him.”

  “And who should do that, in your system?”

  “A prosecutor.”

  “Let us find a prosecutor, then!”

  “One does not find a prosecutor in England, in the way one finds a constable or a cobbler. One becomes a prosecutor. We who are the victims of these Infernal Machines must be the Prosecutors of those who made them.”