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

by Neal Stephenson

  “This explains much,” said Sir Isaac Newton, eyeing Daniel very oddly indeed. Daniel hardly cared; he had leaned back flaccid against the wall, and was gazing mindlessly at the oculus of silver light in the cupola. He felt no more alive than stone Melancholy.

  “Yes, it does!” Saturn returned, “we now know what John Doe was looking for!” Then he shut up and swallowed hard, noting the odd, wordless tension joining Daniel to Isaac. “Or were you referring to something else?”

  IN BOSTON DANIEL had known many Barbadian slaves, bred in the Caribbean from stock imported, a generation earlier, by the Duke of York’s Royal Africa Company. They were the most superstition-ridden people he had ever met. It seemed that the most flimsy and volatile elements of African culture had survived the Middle Passage, even as the ballast of history and wisdom had been chucked overboard. Exported to northerly outposts, these slaves stepped off the gangplanks bedizened with voudoun fetishes and spouting the most bizarre words and phrases—’twas as if they lived in a perpetual hallucination. When such persons were placed in the households of literal-minded Puritans inclined to see devils and imps everywhere, the result was poisonous—as several Salemites had learned.

  One phrase that Daniel had heard, more than once, from some such slaves, was dead man walking. It came out of a belief, endemic to the Caribbean, that corpses could be re-animated through sorcery, and made into sleep-walking Myrmidons who would do the sorcerer’s bidding.

  It was impossible for Daniel to bar such thoughts from his mind for a little while. He was as helpless, as susceptible, as a man being tumbled in the Machine for Calming Violent Lunaticks. He was, if not a Dead Man Walking, then a Dead Man Sitting on his Arse for at least a quarter of an hour, as Saturn and his lads began to pack up the Hooke treasure and make it ready for shipment.

  Gradually, that part of his mind where Enlightenment virtues were enshrined got the better of that part where grotesque supersitions waited for opportunities to jump out of the shadows and shout, “Boo!”

  Precisely what Enoch Root was, was not known to Daniel. But Root most certainly was not a voudoun sorcerer. If he had ministered, in some wise, to Daniel following his lithotomy, he had not done so by necromancy. More likely, Daniel had not actually died, but gone into a coma, and Root had brewed up a stimulant to bring him back. It might have been as simple as smelling salts. Seeing which, Hooke—who was gullible about quack medicines—had let his imagination carry him off.

  It was amusing, though, that Daniel had written Root a letter, just the other day, stating his opinion that he, Daniel, was not likely to survive the next few weeks.

  Isaac’s repetition of the phrase “Crane Court” broke in on Daniel’s reverie. While Daniel had drifted away, Isaac had stepped in and begun issuing writs. He was telling them to take all of Hooke’s treasures away to the headquarters of the Royal Society—precisely what Hooke had not wanted.

  “Speaking as one who lives in the attic of the Royal Society,” Daniel said, “I can witness that there is no room there. None.”

  “We can always make room,” Isaac pointed out, “by rubbishing some beetles.”

  “But we do not wish to in this case,” Daniel insisted.

  “Where do you propose to take it, then?” Isaac asked, and sharp was his gaze on the document in Daniel’s hands.

  Before he forgot about this, Daniel folded it up the middle and slipped it into his breast pocket. “I propose it be stored at my lord Ravenscar’s house,” he said. “I go there frequently on Longitude and other business, so I can always get to it there. And as your niece is mistress of the household, you too may visit whenever you please.”

  “Then it were no different from keeping it at Crane Court.”

  “Pray walk with me, Isaac, to pay a call on Mr. John Doe, and I shall explain it as we go.” Daniel rose to his feet, and found that he was as alive as he’d ever been. A live man walking.

  “THE PIECE OF INFORMATION you are lacking,” Daniel explained as they strolled down the gallery, “is that I suspect Henry Arlanc of involvement with the Infernal Devices.”

  “What, the porter?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he is a member of the Clubb, is he not?”

  “Indeed. I saw to it that he was made a member, on the pretext that he was nearly killed by the first Infernal Device, and so was as much a victim as any of us. But really I did so because I suspected him.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “First: shortly after I arrived in London, some months ago, I began to make inquiries about the location of Hooke’s papers and instruments. Henry Arlanc was the first man I asked. Not long after, I learned that word of my interest had spread through the demimonde with incredible rapidity, which made me suspect that Henry had talked to someone. Second: supposing that you, Isaac, were the intended victim of the first Infernal Device—that this was an attempt by Jack the Coiner to assassinate you, his most formidable foe—how would Jack have known that it was your habit to work late Sunday evenings at Crane Court? For you went to some pains to prevent this from being widely known, specifically so that you would not be disturbed by favor-seekers. Only Arlanc and a few others knew of this.

  “Then I should say you have evidence enough, already, to prosecute Arlanc.”

  “But I would rather use Arlanc, somehow, to draw Jack out,” Daniel returned. “We ought to do nothing that would make Arlanc phant’sy he is under suspicion. But it were obvious folly to place the items found today in the house where Arlanc dwells!”

  “Very well. To the Temple of Vulcan they shall go, and I shall send a note to Catherine directing her to place them under lock and key. There is a vault in the cellar—”

  “Can’t think of a better place,” Daniel said.

  “I hope it is now plain to you that Threader is a villain,” Isaac said. “Whatever evidence you may have to implicate Arlanc, is as nothing beside the fact that the Device was secreted on Threader’s baggage-wain.”

  “Then do you add my name to the roster of those under suspicion,” Daniel said, “as it was placed in my trunk. But in all seriousness, Isaac, I’ll agree to this much: the Device could not have been placed where it was without the connivance—perhaps unwitting, or unwilling—of a servant in Threader’s retinue.”

  “And it is certain that such Black-guards are numbered among his entourage. For Jack is a shrewd fellow, and would be at pains to plant spies in the households of his confederates.”

  They had paused before the door to John Doe’s cell. Daniel said, “His confederates, yes—as well as his enemies. For as strange as it seems, he appears to have done just that in placing Arlanc at the Royal Society.”

  Isaac listened to this gravely, and then devoted a few seconds to a sort of clinical examination of Daniel’s face: perhaps looking for symptoms of resurrection. “I suppose it does seem strange,” he allowed. “On any other day, Daniel, I should be quite amazed.”

  The Launch Prudence

  MONDAY, 12 JULY 1714

  MR. ORNEY HAD SAID only that Prudence was a Simple and a Virtuous Vessel. No further warning was needed by the other members of the Clubb. They had come down to the stairs this morning laden with cushions, oilskins, umbrellas, spare clothes, food, drink, tobacco, and anti-emeticks. All of them were soon put to use as Prudence wallowed across the Pool of London and made a slow pass upstream before the waterfront of the Borough, struggling against the rain-swollen flow of the Thames towards London Bridge, which taunted them cruelly with visions of pubs and chocolate-houses.

  Orney might be oblivious to rain, but, anticipating that the others would whinge about it, he had pitched a tarpaulin over Prudence’s midships. This was waterproof except along the seams; wherever anyone touched it; where it had been patched; round any of its constellations of moth-holes; and wherever else it happened to leak.

  Prudence was, in essence, a fat cargo hold partitioned off from the rest of the universe by a carapace of bent planks, with a nod, here and there, to req
uirements of propulsion: diverse oar-locks, and a stubby mast with elementary rigging. There was no wind to-day—the rain was a steady soaker, not a lashing howler—and so he had hired four Rotherhithe lads to kneel on the deck and stir up the Thames with oars. The oarsmen were situated out-board, along the gunwales, sheltered by naught but big-brimmed hats of waxy canvas. They looked as wretched as any Mediterranean galley-slaves. Daniel, Orney, Kikin, and Threader were in the hold, where Orney had improvised a bench by throwing a plank between two clapped-out sawbucks. When this was augmented by cushions, it rose just high enough that the four Clubb members could sit on it, all in a line like worshippers on a pew, and gaze out through a narrow horizontal slit between the fraying and weeping tarp-hem above, and the bashed and tar-slopped gunwale below. This would make them perfectly invisible to any who might spy on them from the shore or the Bridge, as Orney had pointed out several times already, and would persist in doing until a plurality of the Clubb agreed with him, or told him to shut up. Orney used Prudence to make runs up and down and across the river for supplies, e.g., oakum, brown stuff, tar, and pitch, all of which the hold smelled like. There were other vessels like it scooting about the Pool.

  “The point is granted,” Mr. Threader said finally. “As a means to reconnoiter the demesne of the infamous Mr. Knockmealdown, it is better than packing a water-taxi with gentlemen in periwigs and sending them forth on a sunny day with parasols and spyglasses.”

  “There!” cried Daniel, who was tilting a hand-drawn map toward the feeble light lapping in through the slit, and menacing it with a Royal Society burning-glass the size of a dessert plate. This artifact, which was encrusted with a Rokoko frame and handle, had been a gift to Natural Philosophy from some member of the House of Tuscany. Beneath its splendour, the map looked very mean. The map had been cobbled together, as Daniel had explained, from rumors, recollections, and suppositions given to him by John Doe, Sean Partry, Peter Hoxton, Hannah Spates’s father, and any of their drinking-companions who’d been in earshot when Daniel had inter-viewed them. “Mark yon brick warehouse,” Daniel continued, indicating Bermondsey.

  “There’s been naught but brick warehouses for two hours,” Threader pointed out, in a deprecating tone that moved Mr. Orney to muse:

  “A man of the City, who lives off Byzantine manipulations of the Commerce of the Realm—like a fly, influencing the movements of a noble draught-horse by chewing on its arse—cannot perceive the beauty of this prospect. He will prefer the waterfront of Southwark: Bankside, and the Clink. For these were fashioned during indolent times, for the pleasure of idle wretches narcotized by Popery: being a succession of theatres, whorehouses, and baiting-pits strung together by a corniche well-made for preening strollers, beaux, fops, pimps, nancy-boys, et cetera. A lovely prospect doth it make—to a certain type of observer. But below the bridge, most of what meets the eye has been built in recent times—an age of industry and commerce. The same fellow who adores the Vanity Fair of Southwark will complain that Bermondsey and Rotherhithe are a monotonous succession of warehouses, all built to the same plan. But an industrious chap who lives by simple and honest labour will see a new Wonder of the World, not without a sort of beauty.”

  “The only wonder of the world I have seen to-day is a man who can speak for ten minutes about his own virtuousness, without stopping to draw breath,” returned Mr. Threader.

  “Gentlemen!” Daniel almost shouted, “I draw your notice to the Church of St. Olave, near the southern terminus of the Bridge.”

  “Does Mr. Knockmealdown also control that?” asked Mr. Kikin.

  “No, though he is not above posting look-outs in the belfry,” Daniel said. “But I point it out only as a land-mark. Directly below it, as seen from here, along the riverfront, may be seen a pair of wharves, of equal width, separated by a warehouse. The one on the right is Chamberlain’s Wharf. The other is the Bridge Yard. Each communicates with streets in the hinter-land by a labyrinth of crazed alley-ways, whose tortuous wrigglings are only hinted at by this map. The warehouse between ’em, likewise, though it presents to us a straight and narrow front, rambles and ramifies as it grows back into the Borough—like—”

  “A tumor spreading into a healthy organ?” suggested Mr. Kikin.

  “A hidden fire, spreading invisibly from house to house, sensible from the street only by a smoak-pall of pick-pockets, outraged women, and abandoned property?” tried Threader.

  “The abcesses of the Small-Pox, which present themselves first as a diaspora of tiny blisters, but soon increase until they have merged with one another to flay the patient alive?” said Mr. Orney.

  For Daniel had employed all of these similitudes and more while drawing their attention to other East London Company facilities.

  The oarsmen were giving them curious looks.

  “I was going to liken it to a tree-stump in a garden,” Daniel said forbearingly, “which to outward appearances stands alone, and may be easily plucked out; but a few minutes’ work with a mattock suffice to prove it has a vast hidden root-system.”

  “Is it in any sense different from any of the other such places you’ve pointed to?” Threader asked.

  “Without a doubt. Being so near the Bridge, it is convenient to the City, and so it is where Mr. Knockmealdown conducts a certain type of commerce: trade in objects small enough to be carried across the Bridge by hand, yet valuable enough to be worth the trouble. Whereas bulk contraband, as we’ve seen, is handled downriver.”

  “It certainly enjoys a fair prospect of the Bridge,” observed Mr. Kikin, who had half-risen to a beetle-like squatting posture so that he could swivel his head back and forth.

  “As does the Bridge of it,” Daniel said. “The place is called the Tatler-Lock, which means, the Watch-Fence. We shall learn more of it in coming days!”

  “Is that the end of the reconaissance?” Mr. Orney asked. “For we are getting into the turbulence of the Bridge, which on this rainy day, threatens to upset our boat.”

  “Or at least our stomachs,” said Threader.

  “Can we make it to Chapel Pier?” Daniel asked, pointing north across the flow to a mole that had been built upon the largest of the Bridge’s twenty starlings, midway along the span. “For I have something to shew the Clubb, not far from it, that shall be of great interest.”

  “I vote we make the attempt,” said Mr. Threader, “on the condition that Dr. Waterhouse desist from any more such foreboding, vague, oracular adumbrations, and simply come out and tell us directly what he means.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Orney, and after collecting a nod from Kikin, directed the oarsmen to turn north and cut across the river, allowing the current to sweep them away from the Bridge. Following which they were to turn Prudence’s blunt bow into the flow and work up to Chapel Pier. They executed their first turn directly in front of the Tatler-Lock, which Daniel gazed at raptly, as if he had a whole poke full of nicked watches he longed to fence there.

  “Next order of business,” said Mr. Threader, “to extract from Dr. Waterhouse an explanation of why we are here; which ought to include some intelligence as to why our Clubb’s treasury, so prudently and jealously husbanded these months, is of a sudden brought to such a desperate pass.”

  “Our newest member—though he could not join us to-day, and forwards his regrets—will presently help make it whole,” Daniel assured him.

  “That is fortunate—if true—for our other absent member is in arrears.”

  “Mr. Arlanc has provided us with a wealth of information instead,” Daniel returned.

  “Then why is he not here, further to enrich us?”

  “He does not know how useful he has been. I mean to keep him ill-informed.”

  “And the rest of us, too, ’twould seem,” returned Mr. Orney, earning him a rare nod from Mr. Threader. As for Mr. Kikin, he had gone into the mode of the Long-Suffering Russian, smoking his pipe and saying naught.

  “John Doe confessed he was no madman,” Daniel said—for dur
ing lulls he had already narrated to his fellow passengers the first part of the tale of his and Isaac’s raid on Bedlam. “But he said there was nothing we could do to him, to induce him to tell what he knew.”

  “A familiar predicament,” mumbled Kikin around his pipe-stem. “He is more scared of Jack than of you. I know some tortures—”

  “Sir!” huffed Mr. Threader, “this is England!”

  “We bribe people here,” Daniel said. “The negotiations were lengthy, the tale tedious. Suffice it to say that according to the parish records John Doe is dead, and a grave is being dug for him in Bethlem Burying Ground.”

  “How did you kill him?” Kikin inquired politely.

  “The hole will be plugged with a cadaver from the cellars of the Royal Society, where it will never be missed. A man having marked similarities to John Doe, but a different name, is en route to Bristol. He will ship out to Carolina next week, to work for some years as an indentured servant. And as reward for having seen to all of these arrangements—which were complicated and expensive—we have had from him a full account of why he was knocking holes in the plasterwork of Bedlam.”

  “And may we hear it? Or will you, too, insist on being made a farm-hand in Carolina?” Threader said.

  “That will not be necessary, thank you,” Daniel returned politely. “John Doe let us know that he was only one of several Hoisters, Dubbers, and Mill-Layers—these are different specialties under the broad heading of House-Breakers—who took it upon themselves to respond to an Opportunity bruited about the Tatler-Lock and other such kens by a personage whose identity was not announced but who was suspected to be Jack the Coiner. This personage let it be known he was interested in certain buildings—specifically for what might be concealed in the walls of those buildings. Anyone who entered a building on the list, and extracted aught from its walls, was to take it to the Tatler-Lock and give the personage an opportunity to buy it. He is only interested in certain items, not others—so each must be carefully appraised before ’twill be paid for.”