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

by Neal Stephenson

  Thank God for Jones, and for his being such a perfect imbecile. Many a ship’s officer, caught in storm or battle, and seized by a natural tendency to freeze up in terror, was moved to action by the vivid helplessness of his crew.

  Dappa’s body was not answering well to commands from the quarterdeck, so in stepping forward he bashed the table with the brawn of his thigh, nearly toppling it. But he got the libel in his hand and snatched it away. He looked round the coffee-house and met a few eyes, but they showed nothing beyond momentary curiosity at the unbalanced movements of the Blackamoor. None of them had seen this handbill.

  “What’s it say?” Jones repeated.

  Dappa shoved it into the hip pocket of his coat, where it was about as welcome as a turd. But at least it was hidden. “It says something that is not true, about me,” he said, “a perfect and abominable lie.” And he wished that he could have said it in a low and quiet voice. But passion made him squawk like a strangled hen. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think. “An attack,” he said, “ ’tis an attack on me by Charles White—a Tory. Why on me? No reason. Thus ’tis not an attack on me but on what I am a part of, namely, Minerva.” He opened his eyes. “Your ship is under attack, Jones.”

  “I am well enough accustomed to that, sir.”

  “But not with cannonballs. This is a paper attack. Shore artillery is firing on you—what must you do?”

  “Firing on us, you mean, sir,” Jones returned, “and since shore batteries are difficult to silence, we must move out of their range.”

  “Correct. But the indenture that we came here to sign—it must be signed or our obligations to the ship-chandler shall not be met. We must meet those obligations, Jones, or our credit and our good name will be spoilt, do you understand? Mr. Sawyer is honest, as such men go—when he comes here, pretend to read whatever he places in front of you, and sign it. Then run down to the river and hie to Minerva and tell the Captain to begin raising anchor now.”

  “Are you going to leave me alone here, sir?” Jones inquired.

  “Yes. I shall try to get back to the ship. If I’m not aboard at the next high tide, though, then you and Minerva must leave me.” Dappa glanced up toward the window and saw the worst thing he could have seen: the tout who had been handing out the libels had hunted them through the crowd, and was now pressing his shiny face against the window. He met Dappa’s eye. Dappa felt the way he had once in Africa, a little boy playing near the river, when he had looked up and seen the striped eye of a crocodile looking back at him. It was as if a thousand ancestors were standing round him in a great invisible chorus, screaming, “Run! Run!” And run he would have, but for the knowledge that he was the only black man in a mile, and could never run far or fast enough.

  A shadow fell over the coffee-house now, like that of a cloud passing before the sun. But it was not a cloud, but a great black coach, drawn by four black horses, pulling up in front of the coffee-house, coming to a stop.

  The tout paid no mind to the coach-and-four. He had got a wild triumphal look on his face—the only thing that could have made him any less pleasant to look at. Keeping his eye fixed through the window, he began sidestepping toward the entrance.

  “Repeat the instructions I gave to you,” Dappa said.

  “Wait for Mr. Sawyer. Look at the indenture like I’m reading it. Sign it. Run to the ship. Get underway at high tide with or without you.”

  “And when you return from Boston, God willing, we shall sort it out then,” Dappa said, and stepped out from behind the table. He began moving toward the door.

  Before he could reach it, the door was pulled open from outside. The view into the street was blocked by the glossy black flank of the coach. Dappa drew his right hand up his hip, twitched the skirt of his coat behind him, and reached around to the small of his back. There, in the waistband of his breeches, was a dagger. He found its handle with his fingers but did not draw it yet. The tout appeared in the doorway, blocking his way out, ecstatic, hopping from toe to toe like a little boy who needed to piss. He looked to one side, desperately wanting to catch someone’s eye—to get a witness, or recruit an accomplice. Dappa supposed he was looking at whomever had pulled the door open. The tout’s head swivelled round to bear on Dappa again, and he raised one hand and pointed his index finger at Dappa’s face, like aiming a pistol. He had dropped his stack of handbills and they were blowing round his ankles, tumbling into the coffee-house.

  A larger man came into view just behind the tout, and over his shoulder. He was blond and blue-eyed, a young bloke, better dressed, and he had something in his hand: a walking-stick, which he was tossing straight up into the air. The brass handle at its stop leaped above his head. He caught the stick about halfway along its length and in the same motion snapped it down. The brass ball at the top stopped hard against the back of the tout’s head. The tout’s face and then his whole body lost tone, as if all 206 of his bones had been jellied. Before the tout could fall to the ground and block the door, the blond man stepped in beside him and checked him out of the way. The tout disappeared from view, except for his feet, which lay twitching on the threshold. The big blond man allowed his walking-stick to slide down through his fist until the brass grip was back in his hand. He bowed to Dappa in the most genteel way imaginable and extended his free hand toward the carriage, offering Dappa a lift. And it was not until that moment that Dappa recognized this man as one Johann von Hacklheber, a Hanoverian, and a member of the household of the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm.

  DAPPA WAS IN THE WOODEN womb of the carriage. It smelled like Eliza’s toilet-water. Johann did not climb inside with him but closed the door, slapped the side, and began distributing commands in High-Dutch to the driver and a pair of footmen. The footmen sprang from their perch on the back of the vehicle and began wading through the litter on the street, snatching up every copy of the libel that they could find. Dappa watched this through the coach’s window, then, when it began to lurch forward, drew the shutters, leaned forward, and buried his face in his hands.

  He wanted to weep tears of rage, but for some reason they would not come. Perhaps if this had unfolded into a speedy and clean getaway he might have relaxed, and then released the tears. But they were on one of the most congested streets in all of London. Yet he felt no urgency to give the coachman instructions, for it would be a quarter of an hour before they came to any sort of turning-point. That would be at the intersection with Cornhill, a hundred feet away.

  After some moments he reached into his pocket and took out the handbill. He smoothed it out on his thigh and cracked the window-shutters to spill light on it. All of which required conscious effort and a certain fortitude, as in all ways he wanted to lean back and enjoy the gentlemanly comfort of this coach and pretend that this wretched, abominable, vile, vicious thing had never been done to him.

  He did not know exactly how old he was—probably about three score. His dreadlocks were black at the tips but gray at the roots. He had circumnavigated the terraqueous globe and knew more languages than most Englishmen knew drinking-songs. He was an officer of a merchant ship, and better dressed than any member of the Kit-Cat Clubb. And yet this! This piece of paper on his thigh. Charles White had printed it up, but any Englishman could have done the same. This particular configuration of ink upon the page had made him into a hounded fugitive, laid him at the mercy of a loathsome street-corner tout, forced him to flee from a coffee-house. And it had put a cannonball in his stomach. Was this how Daniel Waterhouse had felt when a stone the size of a tennis ball had dwelt in his bladder? Perhaps; but a few minutes’ knife-work and such a stone was gone. The cannonball in Dappa’s stomach was not so easy to remove. Indeed he knew that it would return, every time he recalled the last few minutes’ events, for the remainder of his days. He might be able to reach Minerva and sail out of range, but even if he were in the Sea of Japan, Charles White’s cannonball would hit him in the belly whenever his mind was idle and his thoughts returned to this day. And retu
rn he would, like a dog to his vomit.

  This, he now perceived, was why gentlemen fought duels. Nothing else would purge such dishonor. Dappa had killed several men, mostly pirates, and mostly with pistol-shots. The chances were better than even that, in a fair duel, he could put a pistol-ball into Charles White’s body. But duels were for gentlemen; a slave could not challenge his master.

  Stupid idea anyway; he needed to get to Minerva, to escape. The coach was negotiating a right turn onto Cornhill, therefore working its way back round toward the Pool. If it had turned left it would mean they were taking him toward Leicester House, where Eliza lived with a nest of Hanoverians. Yes, better to get out of town.

  And yet the notion of challenging Charles White to a duel, putting a bullet in him, had seemed so delicious. Really the only thing that had given him any satisfaction since the shock of seeing his own name on this document.

  He opened the shutters a bit more and looked round through the side and rear windows. Johann was looking right back at him from no more than twelve feet away. He was following in the wake that the coach had made through the crowd. He told Dappa, with a sharp movement of the head, to close the shutters. Then he turned round to look behind him. Dappa saw now that they were being tailed, at a leisurely walking pace, by a pair of men, each of whom was clutching a copy of the handbill. Scanning the width of Cornhill he saw more copies of the libel being handed out. He supposed that the only thing that prevented a hue and cry from going up was the reward, and the fact that those who seized him would not wish to divide it by the whole number of the Mobb. So for the nonce his pursuers were only two, and they were being held at bay by Johann, who had a sword; but Charles White could stamp out new pursuers as fast as printing presses could be operated.

  How strange a thing that was! How could he have explained it to the villagers he’d grown up with in Africa? These bits of metal, put in a frame, smeared with black stuff, and pressed upon these white leaves, had the magical property that they would make one man out of a whole metropolis into a terrified fugitive, while every other man whose eyes were exposed to the incantation would become his implacable pursuer. Yet the same bits of metal put in the same frame, but in a different arrangement, would have no effect. Indeed, Dappa wondered whether he might print up some handbills naming Charles White his escaped slave, and putting some price on his head.

  The notion was appealing—even more so than that of putting a lead ball through White’s body. But it was idle to think of such things. Escape Dappa might hope for. Revenge was not to be thought of.

  They had come to the broad intersection of Cornhill and a large north-south-running street that changed its name from corner to corner. If they turned left here they’d be north-bound on Bishopsgate, headed for the South Sea Company, Gresham’s College, and Bedlam. More likely, though, they would go right, placing them south-bound on Gracechurch Street. This soon became Fish Street Hill and ran past the Monument straight down to London Bridge.

  The coach halted in the middle of this intersection, for an uncommon number of persons were gathered here. When Dappa looked out the right side he tended to see the backs of their heads, and when he looked to the left he tended to see their faces; for most of them were gazing at some spectacle to the south. Dappa could not tell what. He looked to the left, trying to read the answer in their faces. He found no useful information there, save that what they were looking at was rather high up in the air. But he did catch sight again of South Sea House, a very large compound one of whose gates was situated a couple of hundred yards away, on the left side of Bishops-gate. It was bigger, and newer, than the Bank of England. It was, in a way, the Anti-Bank; its collateral, the Thing of Value against which it lent money, was the Asiento: the trans-Atlantic slave trade, wrested from Spain last year in the war.

  A sudden exclamation came up from the crowd. Dappa glanced to the right, and thought he perceived a trail of black smoke drawn through the air from near the top of the Monument. And then he made a second glance, for the lantern at the top of that colossal spire was disfigured by some sort of jury-rigged block-and-tackle device. A vulgar entertainment for the Mobb, was his guess.

  But back to South Sea House. The sight of this evil place, looming like a pirate-ship off his larboard beam, had caused certain notions to fall together within Dappa’s mind. A plan—not a sketchy one but a Plan whole and entire—had suddenly presented itself in his mind, and it was so obviously the right thing to do that he put it into effect with no deliberations whatsoever. For this Plan had the miraculous effect of removing the enormous ball of lead from his stomach.

  He dropped to his knees on the floor of the coach and flipped the libel over on the facing bench. Out of his pocket came a pencil, and touching it to his tongue, as if this would put eloquence into it, he wrote

  Your grace, my lady—

  Johann did his duty bravely and well. Pray do not rebuke him when this carriage is found empty.

  When last you and I conversed, we spoke of my career as author of books, and teller of slave-stories. A similitude was formed, in which my works to date were likened to so many balls of grapeshot, which when fired at our Enemy pose a nuisance but can never send any slave-ships to David Jones’s Locker where they ought to be all. You exhorted me to leave off gathering more grapeshot and to turn my efforts to finding a single cannonball.

  Until today, I assumed that the cannonball—by which is meant, the story that will convince Englishmen, once and for all, of the absurdity and the enormity of slavery—would be found in some slave-auction in São Paulo, Kingstown, or Carolina. But to my surprise I, this afternoon, found that cannonball in the pit of mine own stomach. Minerva sails on the morning tide but you may find me in a gaol somewhere in London. I shall require paper, ink, and your prayers.

  Your humble and obedient servant,

  Dappa

  Leaving this on the bench he flung open the door on the carriage’s left side. A small open space welcomed him, since no spectators would stand where the view to the south was blocked by the coach. Johann did not mark him; he was as fascinated as anyone else by the spectacle at the Monument. Dappa strode, but never ran, north through the crowd onto Bishopsgate. He phant’sied he might hear reward-seekers pursuing him through the crowd; never mind, if those did not, others would soon enough.

  In a few moments’ time he was seated in a coffee-house literally in the shadow of South Sea House, sipping chocolate and pretending to read the Examiner. As if he’d a right to be there.

  Busy men were all around him, unrolling documents on tables: charts of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, loading-diagrams of slave-ships, ledgers heavy with human assets. Familiar names flew around the place: Accra, Elmina, Ijebu, and Bonny. He felt, strangely, at home. Even more strangely, he felt at peace. Flipping the newspaper over, he licked his pencil again, and began to write.

  Shive Tor

  DUSK

  IN A FEW MINUTES SIR Isaac was on the deck of the hooker, his hair gleaming like a comet’s tail in the fierce light of the burning Tor. Daniel stood near him, flat-footed under the weight of his Blanket, peering from beneath his rumpled Cap. A team of four dragoons were bent over the hooker’s rail, straining to heave-ho Colonel Barnes aboard without snapping off his other leg.

  Very quickly the longboat rowed away from them, for the water was now deep enough that it could move free of the dredged channel. The hooker drew a bit more water than that, and was confined to the channel for the time being. Pulling his cap off so that he could feel the flow of air over his scalp, Daniel verified his suspicion that the burning Tor was drawing in a powerful flood of air, some of which was catching on the hull and the bare spars of the hooker. She was being sucked directly into the pillar of fire, like a moth into Vulcan’s forge.

  Barnes was aware of it. The dragoons had begun exploring the ship, looking for an anchor, or anything that would serve the same end. There were none, as the anchor-cables had been chopped through in the coiners’ haste to escape.


  “Is there anything that seems heavy down there?” Barnes demanded of a dragoon who had been groping around belowdecks.

  Isaac pricked up his ears, as he too was very keen on finding something heavy.

  “Only a great bloody chest,” the dragoon answered, “too heavy to move.”

  “Did you look inside of it?” Isaac inquired, tense as a starving cat.

  “No, sir. ’Tis locked. But I know what’s in it.”

  “How do you know what is in it, if you did not look inside?”

  “Why, I can hear it, sir. Ticking away just as steady as you please. It is a great big clock.”

  As if the tips of their noses were joined by a hawser that had just snapped taut, Daniel and Isaac swiveled their heads toward each other.

  Daniel spoke to the dragoon, though he was looking Isaac in the eye. “Is it so heavy that it could not be carried abovedecks and hurled over the side?” he asked.

  “I heaved with all my might and could not budge it a hair’s breadth, sir.”

  Daniel was asking himself whether he ought to let the dragoons know what was obvious to him and Isaac: that they were trapped on a derelict vessel with a ticking Infernal Device. But Isaac made up his mind quicker, and said: “Pray forgive Dr. Waterhouse’s curiosity on so trivial a matter. He and I are amateurs of clock-work. As we have little else to do just now, perhaps he and I shall retire belowdecks and amuse ourselves with Horologickal chit-chat.”

  “And I’ll join you,” said Barnes, who had caught on, “if you’ll have me, that is.”

  “Please be our guest, Colonel,” said Daniel. He then led Isaac and Barnes toward an open hatch, which, against the fire-lit deck planks, stood out as a crisp black rectangle.

  The White Tower

  DUSK

  FATHER ÉDOUARD DE GEX of the Society of Jesus stood up on one leg, for he’d damaged an ankle, and turned around to survey the debris trail he had left across the roof of the White Tower. Chiefly he desired to know where the contents of his satchel were. It seemed a good deal lighter now than when he’d jumped off the Monument a few moments earlier.