The Confusion

by Neal Stephenson

  "I have already been to see such a physician."

  "That is good," said Eliza, still laughing, "for I would see you sit down before you go home."

  "Fifty-two hours of rowing did its damage, this is true; but this physician has been at my arse with all manner of poultices, and unmentionable procedures, and I am healing well. And this is the best bandage of all!" brushing some lint from the epaulet of his new red coat.

  "If only all wounds could be healed by putting on new clothes, monsieur!"

  "Don't all women believe this to be true?"

  "Sometimes they behave as if they did, Captain Bart. Perhaps I simply have not picked out the right dress yet."

  "Then you should go shopping tomorrow!"

  "It is a fine thought, Captain. But first I need some money. And as there is none in France, you must go out to sea and capture some gold for me."

  "Consider it done! I owe it to you!"

  "Try to keep that in mind tomorrow, Jean Bart."

  JANUARY–FEBUARY 1690

  Mademoiselle de la Zeur,

  Thank you for yours of December '89. It took some time crossing the Channel, and I daresay this shall fare no better. I was touched by your expression of concern, and amused by the narrative of the timber. I had not appreciated how fortunate England is in this respect, for if we want timber in London, we need only denude some part of Scotland or Ireland where a few trees still stand.

  I would be of help to you in your quest to understand money, if for no other reason than that I would understand it myself. But I am perfectly useless. Our money has been wretched for as long as I have been alive. When it is so bad, it is no easy matter to discern when it is getting worse; but hard as it might be to believe, this seems to be occurring. I was bedridden for some months following the removal of my Stone, and did not have to go out and buy things. But when I had recovered sufficiently that I could venture out once again, I found it clearly worse. Or perhaps the long time spent not having to haggle over daily purchases, lifted the scales from my eyes, so that the absurdity of the situation was made clear to me.

  I keep running accounts at several coffee-houses, pubs, and a bottle-ale house in my street, so that every small purchase need not be attended by a tedious and irksome transfer of coin. Many who go out more often than I do have formed together into societies, called Clubbs, which facilitate purchase of food, drink, snuff, pipe-tobacco, &c., on credit. When, through some miracle, one comes into possession of coins recognizable as such, one runs out and tries to settle one's more important accounts. The system staggers along. People do not know any better.

  Here we have Whigs and Tories now. In essence these are, respectively, Roundheads and Cavaliers, under new guises, and less heavily armed. Tories get their money from the land that they own. To simplify matters greatly, one might say that France is a country consisting entirely of Tories; for all of the money there derives ultimately from the land. You might have had Whigs too, if you'd not expelled the Huguenots. And some of your Atlantic seaports are said to be a bit Whiggish. But as I said, I am over-simplifying to make a point: If you understand how money works in France, then you know everything about our Tories. And if you understand how it works in Amsterdam, then you know our Whigs.

  The Royal Society dwindles, and may not last to the end of the century. It no longer enjoys the favor of the King as it did under Charles II. In those days it was a force for revolution, in the new meaning of that word; but it succeeded so well that it has become conventional. The sorts of men who, having no other outlet for their ideas, would have devoted their lives to it, had they come of age when I did, may now make careers in the City, the Colonies, or in foreign adventures. We of the Royal Society are generally identified as Whigs. Our President is the Marquis of Ravenscar, a very powerful Whig, and he has been assiduous in finding ways to harness the ingenuity of the Fellows of the Royal Society for practical ends. Some of these, I gad, have to do with money, revenue, banks, stocks, and other subjects that fascinate you. But I must confess I have fallen quite out of touch with such matters.

  Isaac Newton was elected to Parliament a year ago, in the wake of our Revolution. He had made a name for himself in Cambridge opposing the former King's efforts to salt the University with Jesuits. He spent much of the last year in London, to the dismay of those of us who would prefer to see him turn out more work in the vein of Principia Mathematica. He and your friend Fatio have become the closest of companions, and share lodgings here.

  POST-SCRIPT—FEB. 1690

  After I wrote the above, but before I could post this, King William and Queen Mary prorogued and dissolved Parliament. There have been new elections and the Tories have won. Isaac Newton is no longer M.P. He divides his time between Cambridge, where he toils on Alchemy, and London, where he and Fatio are reading Treatise on Light by our friend and erstwhile dinner-companion Huygens. All of which is to say that I am now even more useless to you than I was a month ago; for I am in a failing Society linked to a Party that has lost power and that has no money, there being none in the kingdom to be had. Our most brilliant Fellow devotes himself to other matters. It were presumptuous of me to expect a reply to a letter as devoid of useful content as this one; but it would have been insolent of me to have failed to respond to yours; for I am, as always, your humble and obedient servant—

  Daniel Waterhouse

  APRIL 1690

  NEWTON would have us believe that Time is stepped out by the ticking of God's pocket-watch, steady, immutable, an absolute measure of all sensible movements. LEIBNIZ inclines toward the view that Time is nothing more nor less than the change of objects' relationships to one another—that movements, observed, enable us to detect Time, and not the other way round. NEWTON has laid out his system to the satisfaction, nay, amazement of the world, and I can find no fault in it; yet the system of LEIBNIZ, though not yet written out, more aptly describes my own subjective experience of Time. Which is to say that during the autumn of last year, when I and all around me were in continual motion, I had the impression that much Time was passing. But once I reached Versailles, and settled into lodgings at my cottage on the domain of La Dunette, on the hill of Satory above Versailles, and got my household affairs in order, and established a routine, suddenly four months flew by.

  The purpose for which I was sent to Versailles, early in December, was accomplished before Christmas, and all since then has been tending to details. I should probably return to Dunkerque, where I could be more useful. But I am held here by various ties which only grow stronger with time. Every morning I ride down the hill through a little belt of woods, just to the south of the Pièce d'eau des Suisses, that separates the land of the Lavardacs from the royal domain of Versailles. This takes me down into the old hamlet of Versailles, outside the walls of the palace, which is growing up into a village. Diverse monasteries, nunneries, and a parish church have taken root there since the King moved his court to this place some eight years ago, and in one of them, the Convent of Sainte-Genevieve, my little "orphan" boy makes his home. If weather is good, I take him for a perambulation around the King's vegetable-garden: a limb of the gardens of Versailles that is thrust forth into the middle of the town. Being a working garden, whose purpose is to produce food, this is not as formal or as fashionable as the parterres west of the Château. But there is more here for little eyes to see and little hands to grasp, especially now that spring is coming. The gardeners are forever mending their trellises in expectation that peas and beans will climb up them in a few months; and to judge by the thoughtful way that little Jean-Jacques gazes upon these structures, he will be clambering up them like a little squirrel even before he has learned how to walk. Sometimes too we will go a little farther, into the Orangerie, which is an immense vaulted gallery wrapped around three sides of a rectangular garden, and open to the south so that its glazed walls can capture the warmth of the winter sun, and store it in stone. Tiny orange trees grow here in wooden boxes, waiting for summer to come so that the g
ardeners can move them out of doors, and Jean-Jacques is fascinated by the green globes that are to be found among their dark leaves.

  In due time I bring him back to Ste.-Genevieve's for an appointment with a wet-nurse. You might think that I would then go directly to the Château to immerse myself in Court doings. But more often than not I turn around and ride back up through the Bois de Satory to La Dunette, where I tend to various affairs. In my early months here, these were of a financial, but now they are more of a social, nature. Note, however, that La Dunette is no farther away from the King's great Château than is the Trianon Palace or many other parts of the royal domain, and so it does not feel like a separate place from Versailles, but more of an out-building of the King's estate. This illusion is strengthened by the architecture, which was done by the same fellow who designed the King's Château.

  The grounds of La Dunette spread across the Plateau of Satory, a hilltop that extends southwards from the wooded brow of a rise that overlooks the Pièce d'eau des Suisses and the south wing of the King's Château. This land is hidden by the woods from direct view of the Dauphin, the Dauphine, and other royals who dwell in the palace's south wing. But once that screen of trees has been penetrated, the domain of the de Lavardacs resembles in every way the much larger Royal gardens down the hill. This means that it is divided up, here and there, by great pompous stone walls, with massive iron grilles set into them from place to place; and those walls terminate in brick cottages, which I suppose are meant to recall guardhouses. In fact they have no practical purpose whatever that I can discern. They are there because they look good, like the knobs on the ends of a banister. The domaine of La Dunette contains four such cottages. Two are unfinished on the inside, and one is having its roof replaced. I live in the fourth. There is just enough room in it for my little household. It is tucked in under the eave of the woods of Satory so that I can duck out the back door and ride down into Versailles whenever I please without having to traverse any of the gravel paths that radiate from the main château of La Dunette. I do so frequently, going down to the palace for a dinner-party or to attend the couchée of some Duchess or Princess. And so my existence here is independent of the de Lavardacs for the most part. However, at least once a week I go to the main residence to have dinner with Étienne under the supervision of Madame la duchesse d'Arcachon.

  M. le duc d'Arcachon I have never met. During my earlier life at Versailles, as a governess, I saw him from a distance a few times, surrounded by other big-wigs, but my social standing was so mean that there was no circumstance under which I could have met him. Later my status was elevated; but he was in "the South" tending to business of some nature. He was at Versailles through much of 1689, while I was absent; then he went back into "the South" a few weeks before I came there in December. He was supposed to be back for Christmas; but one thing and then another has kept him away. A few times a week Madame la duchesse receives a letter from Marseille, where M. le duc is looking after the galleys of the Mediterranean fleet; or Lyon, where he is meeting with the King's money-men, and acquiring victuals, powder, &c; or Arcachon, where he is looking after Lavardac family affairs; or Brest, where he is responsible for shipment of men and matériel to the forces in Ireland. Madame la duchesse always replies on the same day, hoping her letter shall catch him before he has moved on to some other port. This has happened often enough that M. le duc has learned a little bit about me and my activities, or lack thereof, here; and lately he has begun writing to me personally at the cottage. It seems that I am to be useful to this family in some way other than as an eligible belle for Étienne. The Duc has recently become involved in some sort of momentous transaction that is in the offing down south, and that he expects to yield a large quantity of hard money when it comes off, which is expected to occur late in the summer. To report any more than this would be indiscreet, but if I am reading his most recent letter correctly, he wishes me to look after certain of the details: a large transfer of metal through Lyon.

  So at last I shall have something to do, and can expect the passage of time to slow down again, as I go into violent movement, and change my relations with all around me.

  Eliza, Countess de la Zeur

  MID-JULY 1690

  LA DUNETTE MEANT "POOP DECK," the high place on a ship's stern-castle from which the captain could see everything. The name had come to Louis-François de Lavardac, duc d'Arcachon, some twelve years earlier, as he had stood upon the brow of the hill, peering, between two denuded trees, across the frozen bog that would later become the Pièce d'eau des Suisses, at the southern flanks of the stupendous construction site that would shortly become the royal palace of Louis XIV.

  The King got things built more quickly than anyone else, partly because he had the Army to help him and partly because he hired all of the qualified builders. And so La Dunette was still nothing more than an empty stretch of high ground with a clever name when le Roi had given his cousin, the duc d'Arcachon, a personal tour of the palace. They had lingered particularly in the Queen's Apartments: a row of bedchambers, antechambers, and salons that stretched between the Peace drawing-room and the King's guardroom on the upper storey of the palace's southern wing. The King and the Duke had strolled up and down the length of those apartments once, twice, thrice, pausing before each of the high windows to enjoy the view across the Parterre Sud, and the Orangerie below it to the rise of the Bois de Satory a mile away. The duc d'Arcachon had, in the fullness of time, perceived what the King had wished him to perceive, which was that any buildings erected on or near the crest of the hill would spoil the Queen's view, and give her the feeling that the de Lavardacs were peering down into her bedroom windows. And so a great pile of expensive architectural drawings had been used to start fires in the Hôtel d'Arcachon in Paris, and the duc had hired the great Hardouin-Mansart and implored him to design a château altogether magnificent—but invisible from the Queen's windows. Mansart had situated it well back from the crest of the hill. Consequently, from the windows of the château of La Dunette proper, the view was limited. But Mansart had laid out a promenade that swung out along a lobe of the garden and led to a gazebo, perched demurely on the brink of the hill, and camouflaged with climbing vines. From there the prospect was superb.

  Before dinner was served, the Duke and Duchess of Arcachon invited their guests—twenty-six in all—to stroll out to the gazebo, enjoy the breeze (for the day was warm), and take in the view of the Royal Château of Versailles, its gardens, and its waterways. From this distance it was difficult to make out individuals and impossible to hear voices, but large groups were obvious. Out in the town, beyond the Place d'Armes, the Franciscans had lit a bonfire before their monastery and were dancing around it in a circle; from time to time, a few notes of their song would blow past on a slip of breeze. Another revel was underway along the Grand Canal, a mile-long slot of water stretching away from the Château along the central axis of the King's garden. From here, it was a milling mob of wigs. Even the stable-hands out in the Place d'Armes had got a bonfire going, which had attracted hundreds of commoners: townspeople, servants of Versailles and nearby villas, and country folk who had seen the pillars of smoke and heard the pealing of bells, and come in to find out what all the excitement was about. Many of these probably had only the haziest of ideas as to who William of Orange was and why it was good that he was dead; but this did not hold them back from lusty celebration.

  Étienne d'Arcachon raised his glass, and silenced the little crowd around the gazebo. "To toast the death of the Prince of Orange

  5 AUGUST 1690

  The Spaniards tho' an indolent Nation, whose Colonies were really so rich, so great, and so far extended, as were enough even to glut their utmost Avarice; yet gave not over, till, as it were, they sat still, because they had no more Worlds to look for; or till at least, there were no more Gold or Silver Mines to discover.

  —DANIEL DEFOE, A Plan of the English Commerce

  WITH ONE EYE JACK peered through his oar-lock ac
ross the gulf. He was looking edge-on through a slab of dry heat that lay dead on the water, as liquefacted glass rides above molten tin in a glass-maker's pan. On a low flat shore, far away, white cabals of ghosts huddled and leaped, colossal and formless. None of the slaves quite knew what to make of it until they crawled in closer to shore, a cockroach on a skillet, and perceived that this Gulf was lined with vast salt-pans, and the salt had been raked up into cones and hillocks and step-pyramids by workers who were invisible from here. When they understood this, their thirst nearly slew them. They had been rowing hard for days.

  Cadiz was a shiv of rock thrust into the gulf. White buildings had grown up from it like the reaching fingers of rock crystals. They put into a quay that extended from the base of its sea-wall, and took on more fresh water; for one of the ways that the Corsairs kept them on a leash was by making sure that the boat was always short of it. But the Spanish harbor-master did not suffer them to stay for very long, because (as they saw when they came around the point) the lagoon sheltered in the crook of the city's bony arm was crowded with a fleet of Ships that Jack would have thought most remarkable, if he had never seen Amsterdam. They were mostly big slab-sided castle-arsed ships, checkered with gun-ports. Jack had never seen a Spanish treasure-galleon in good repair before—off Jamaica he had spied the wrack of one slumped over a reef. In any event, he had no trouble recognizing these. "We have not arrived too early," he said, "and so the only question that remains is, have we arrived too late?"

  He and Moseh de la Cruz, Vrej Esphahnian, and Gabriel Goto were all looking to one another for answers, and somehow they all ended up looking to Otto van Hoek. "I smell raw cotton," he said. Then he stood up and looked out over the gunwale and up into the city. "And I see cargadores toting bales of it into the warehouses of the Genoese. Cotton, being bulky, would be the first cargo to come off the ships. So they cannot have dropped anchor very long ago."