Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  Penn and Waterhouse were ushered to a parlor. It was a raw day outside, and even though a new fire was burning violently on the hearth, making occasional lunges into the room, neither Penn nor Waterhouse made any move to remove his coat.

  There was a girl there, a petite girl with large blue eyes, and Daniel assumed she was Dutch at first. But after she’d heard the two visitors conversing in English she addressed them in French, and explained something about the Prince of Orange. Penn’s French was much better than Daniel’s because he had spent a few years exiled to a Protestant college (now extirpated) in Saumur, so he exchanged a few sentences with the girl and then said to Daniel: “The sand-sailing is excellent today.”

  “Could’ve guessed as much from the wind, I suppose.”

  “We’ll not be seeing the Prince for another hour.”

  The two Englishmen stood before the fire until well browned on both sides, then settled into chairs. The girl, who was dressed in a rather bleak Dutch frock, set a pan of milk there to heat, then busied herself with some kitchen-fuss. It was now Daniel’s turn to be distracted, for there was something in the girl’s appearance that was vaguely disturbing or annoying to him, and the only remedy was to look at her some more, trying to figure it out; which made the feeling worse. Or perhaps better. So they sat there for a while, Penn brooding about the Alleghenies and Waterhouse trying to piece together what it was that provoked him about this girl. The feeling was akin to the nagging sense that he had met a person somewhere before but could not recall the particulars. But that was not it; he was certain that this was the first time. And yet he had that same unscratchable itch.

  She said something that broke Penn out of his reverie. Penn fixed his gaze upon Daniel. “The girl is offended,” he said. “She says that there may be women, of an unspeakable nature, in Amsterdam, who do not object to being looked at as you are looking at her; but how dare you, a visitor on Dutch soil, take such liberties?”

  “She said a lot then, in five words of French.”

  “She was pithy, for she credits me with wit. I am discursive, for I can extend you no such consideration.”

  “You know, merely knuckling under to the King, simply because he waves a Declaration of Indulgence in front of your eyes, is no proof of wit—some would say it proves the opposite.”

  “Do you really want another Civil War, Daniel? You and I both grew up during such a war—some of us have elected to move on—others want to re-live their childhoods, it seems.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and saw the image that had been branded onto his retinas thirty-five years ago: Drake hurling a stone saint’s head through a stained-glass window, the gaudy image replaced with green English hillside, silvery drizzle reaching in through the aperture like the Holy Spirit, bathing his face.

  “I do not think you see what we can make of England now if we only try. I was brought up to believe that an Apocalypse was coming. I have not believed that for many years. But the people who believe in that Apocalypse are my people, and their way of thinking is my way. I have only just come round to a new way of looking at this, a new view-point, as Leibniz would have it. Namely that there is something to the idea of an Apocalypse—a sudden changing of all, an overthrow of old ways—and that Drake and the others merely got the particulars wrong, they fixed on a date certain, they, in a word, idolized. If idolatry is to mistake the symbol for the thing symbolized, then that is what they did with the symbols that are set down in the Book of Revelation. Drake and the others were like a flock of birds who all sense that something is nigh, and take flight as one: a majestic sight and a miracle of Creation. But they were confused, and flew into a trap, and their revolution came to naught. Does that mean that they were mistaken to have spread their wings at all? No, their senses did not deceive them…their higher minds did. Should we spurn them forever because they erred? Is their legacy to be laughed at only? On the contrary, I would say that we might bring about the Apocalypse now with a little effort…not precisely the one they phant’sied but the same, or better, in its effects.”

  “You really should move to Pennsylvania,” Penn mused. “You are a man of parts, Daniel, and certain of those parts, which will only get you half-hanged, drawn, and quartered in London, would make you a great man in Philadelphia—or at least get you invited to a lot of parties.”

  “I’ve not given up on England just yet, thank you.”

  “England may prefer that you give up, rather than suffer another Civil War, or another Bloody Assizes.”

  “Much of England sees it otherwise.”

  “And you may number me in that party, Daniel, but a scattering of Nonconformists does not suffice to bring about the changes you seek.”

  “True…but what of the men whose signatures are on these letters?” said Daniel, producing a sheaf of folded parchments, each one beribboned and wax-sealed.

  Penn’s mouth shrank to the size of a navel and his mind worked for a minute. The girl came round and served chocolate.

  “For you to surprise me in this way was not the act of a gentleman.”

  “When Adam delved and Eve span…”

  “Shut up! Do not trifle with me. Owning Pennsylvania does not make me any better than a Vagabond in the eyes of God, Daniel, but it serves as a reminder that I’m not to be trifled and toyed with.”

  “And that, Brother William, is why I nearly killed myself to cross the North Sea on the front of a wind-storm, and galloped through frost and muck to intercept you—before you met with your next King.” Daniel drew out a Hooke-watch and turned its ivory face toward the fire-light. “There is still time for you to write a letter of your own, and put it on the top of this stack, if you please.”

  “I WAS GOING TO ASK, do you have any idea how many people in Amsterdam want to kill you…but by coming up here, you seem to’ve answered the question: no,” said William, Prince of Orange.

  “You had fair warning in my letter to d’Avaux, did you not?”

  “It barely reached me in time…the brunt of the blow was absorbed by some big shareholders there, whom I held off from warning.”

  “Francophiles.”

  “No, the bottom has quite fallen out of that market, very few Dutchmen are selling themselves to the French nowadays. My chief enemies nowadays are what you would call Dutchmen of limited vision. At any rate, your Batavia charade caused no end of headaches for me.”

  “Establishing a first-rate intelligence source at the Court of Louis XIV cannot come cheaply.”

  “That insipid truism can be turned around easily: when it comes so dear, then I demand first-rate intelligence. What did you learn from the two Englishmen, by the way?” William glanced at a dirty spoon and flared his nostrils. A Dutch houseboy, fairer and more beautiful than Eliza, bustled over and began to clear away the gleaming, crusted evidence of a long chocolate binge. The clattering of the cups and spoons seemed to irritate William more than gunfire on a battlefield. He leaned back deep into his armchair, closed his eyes, and turned his face toward the fire. To him the world was a dark close cellar with a net-work of covert channels strung through it, frail and irregular as cobwebs, transmitting faint cyphers of intelligence from time to time, and so a fire broadcasting clear strong radiance all directions was a sort of miracle, a pagan god manifesting itself in a spidery Gothick chapel. Eliza did not speak until the boy was finished and the room had gone quiet again and the folds and creases in the prince’s face had softened. He was a couple of years shy of forty, but time spent in sun and spray had given him the skin, and battles had given him the mentality, of an older man.

  “Both believe the same things, and believe them sincerely,” Eliza said, referring to the two Englishmen. “Both have been tested by suffering. At first I thought the fat one had been corrupted. But the slender one did not think so.”

  “Maybe the slender one is naïve.”

  “He is not naïve in that way. No, those two belong to a common sect, or something—they knew and recognized each other. They d
islike each other and work at cross-purposes but betrayal, corruption, any straying from whatever common path they have chosen, these are inconceivable. Is it the same sect as Gomer Bolstrood?”

  “No and yes. The Puritans are like Hindoos—impossibly various, and yet all of a type.”

  Eliza nodded.

  “Why are you so fascinated by the Puritans?” William asked.

  It was not asked in a friendly way. He suspected her of some weakness, some occult motive. She looked at him like a little girl who had just been run over by a cart-wheel. It was a look that would cause most men to fall apart like stewed chickens. It didn’t work. Eliza had noticed that William of Orange had a lot of gorgeous boys around him. But he also had a mistress, an Englishwoman named Elizabeth Villiers, who was only moderately beautiful, but famously intelligent and witty. The Prince of Orange would never make himself vulnerable by relying on one sex or the other; any lust he might feel for Eliza he could easily channel towards that houseboy, as Dutch farmers manipulated their sluice-gates to water one field instead of another. Or at least that was the message he wanted to convey, by keeping the company he did.

  Eliza sensed that she had quite inadvertently gotten into danger. William had found an inconsistency in her, and if it weren’t explained to his satisfaction, he’d brand her as Enemy. And while Louis XIV kept his enemies in the gilded cage of Versailles, William probably had more forthright ways of dealing with his.

  The truth wasn’t so bad after all. “I think they are interesting,” she said, finally. “They are so different from anyone else. So peculiar. But they are not ninehammers, they are formidable in the extreme; Cromwell was only a prelude, a practice. This Penn controls an estate that is stupefyingly vast. New Jersey is a place of Quakers, too, and different sorts of Puritans are all over Massachusetts. Gomer Bolstrood used to say the most startling things…overthrowing monarchy was the least of it. He said that Negroes and white men are equal before God and that all slavery everywhere must be done away with, and that his people would never let up until everyone saw it their way. ‘First we’ll get the Quakers on our side, for they are rich,’ he said, ‘then the other Nonconformists, then the Anglicans, then the Catholics, then all of Christendom.’”

  William had turned his gaze back to the fire as she spoke, signalling that he believed her. “Your fascination with Negroes is very odd. But I have observed that the best people are frequently odd in one way or another. I have got in the habit of seeking them out, and declining to trust anyone who has no oddities. Your queer ideas concerning slavery are of no interest to me whatever. But the fact that you harbor queer ideas makes me inclined to place some small amount of trust in you.”

  “If you trust my judgment, the slender Puritan is the one to watch,” Eliza said.

  “But he has no vast territories in America, no money, no followers!”

  “That is why. I would wager he had a father who was very strong, probably older brothers, too. That he has been checked and baffled many times, never married, never enjoyed even the small homely success of having a child, and has come to that time in his life when he must make his mark, or fail. This has become all confused, in his thinking, with the coming rebellion against the English King. He has decided to gamble his life on it—not in the sense of living or dying, but in the sense of making something of his life, or not.”

  William winced. “I pray you never see that deep into me.”

  “Why? Perhaps ‘twould do you good.”

  “Nay, nay, you are like some Fellow of the Royal Society, dissecting a living dog—there is a placid cruelty about you.”

  “About me? What of you? To fight wars is kindness?”

  “Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you.”

  Eliza could not help laughing. “I do not think my description of the slender one is at all cruel. On the contrary, I believe he will succeed. To judge from that pile of letters, he has many powerful Englishmen behind him. To rally that many supporters while remaining close to the King is very difficult.” Eliza was hoping, now, that the Prince would let slip some bit of information about who those letter-writers were. But William perceived the gambit almost before she uttered the words, and looked away from her.

  “It is very dangerous,” he said. “Rash. Insane. I wonder if I should trust a man who conceives such a desperate plan.”

  A bit of a silence now. Then one of the logs in the fireplace gave way in a cascading series of pops and hisses.

  “Are you asking me to do something about it?”

  More silence, but this time the burden of response was on William. Eliza could relax, and watch his face. His face showed that he did not like being put in this position.

  “I have something important for you to do at Versailles,” he admitted, “and cannot afford to send you to London to tend to Daniel Waterhouse. But, where he is concerned, you might be more useful in Versailles anyway.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  William opened his eyes wide, took a deep breath, and sighed it out, listening clinically to his own lungs. He sat up straighter, though his small hunched body was still overwhelmed by the chair, and looked alertly into the fire. “I can tell Waterhouse to be careful and he will say, ‘yes, sire,’ but it is all meaningless. He will not really be careful until he has something to live for.” William looked Eliza straight in the eye.

  “You want me to give him that?”

  “I cannot afford to lose him, and the men who put their signatures on these letters, because he suddenly decides he cares not whether he lives or dies. I want him to have some reason to care.”

  “It is easily done.”

  “Is it? I cannot think of a pretext for getting the two of you in the same room together.”

  “I have another oddity, sire: I am interested in Natural Philosophy.”

  “Ah yes, you stay with Huygens.”

  “And Huygens has another friend in town just now, a Swiss mathematician named Fatio. He is young and ambitious and desperate to make contacts with the Royal Society. Daniel Waterhouse is the Secretary. I’ll set up a dinner.”

  “That name Fatio is familiar,” William said distantly. “He has been pestering me, trying to set up an audience.”

  “I’ll find out what he wants.”

  “Good.”

  “What of the other thing?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said you had something important for me to do at Versailles.”

  “Yes. Come to me again before you leave and I’ll explain it. Now I am tired, tired of talking. The thing you must do there for me is pivotal, everything revolves around it, and I want to have my wits about me when I explain it to you.”

  M. Descartes had found the way to have his conjectures and fictions taken for truths. And to those who read his Principles of Philosophy something happened like that which happens to those who read novels which please and make the same impression as true stories. The novelty of the images of his little particles and vortices are most agreeable. When I read the book…the first time, it seemed to me that everything proceeded perfectly; and when I found some difficulty, I believe it was my fault in not fully understanding his thought…But since then, having discovered in it from time to time things that are obviously false and others that are very improbable, I have rid myself entirely of the prepossession I had conceived, and I now find almost nothing in all his physics that I can accept as true…

  —HUYGENS, P. 186 OF WESTFALL’S 1971

  The Concept of Force in Newton’s Physics:

  The Science of Dynamics in

  the Seventeenth Century

  CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS SAT at the head of the table, the perihelion of the ellipse, and Daniel Waterhouse sat at the opposite end, the aphelion. Nicolas Fatio de Duilliers and Eliza sat across from each other in between. A dinner of roast goose, ham, and winter vegetables was served up by various members of a family that had long been servants in this house. Eli
za was the author of the seating plan. Huygens and Waterhouse must not sit next to each other or they’d fuse together and never say a word to the others. This way was better: Fatio would only want to talk to Waterhouse, who would only want to talk to Eliza, who would pretend she had ears only for Huygens, and so the guests would pursue each other round the table clockwise, and with a bit of luck, an actual conversation might eventuate.

  It was near the time of the solstice, the sun had gone down in the middle of the afternoon, and their faces, lit up by a still-life of candles thrust into wax-crusted bottles, hung in the darkness like Moons of Jupiter. The ticking of Huygens’s clock-work at the other end of the room was distracting at first, but later became part of the fabric of space; like the beating of their hearts, they could hear it if they wanted to, its steady process reassured them that all was well while reminding them that time was moving onwards. It was difficult to be uncivilized in the company of so many clocks.

  Daniel Waterhouse had arrived first and had immediately apologized to Eliza for having taken her for a house-servant earlier. But he had not dropped the other shoe and asked what she really was. She’d accepted his apology with tart amusement and then declined to offer any explanation. This was light flirtation of the most routine sort—at Versailles it would have elicited a roll of the eyes from anyone who had bothered to notice it. But it had been more than enough to plunge Waterhouse into utter consternation. Eliza found this slightly alarming.

  He had tried again: “Mademoiselle, I would be less than…”

  “Oh, speak English!” she’d said, in English. This had practically left him senseless: first, with surprise that she could speak English at all, then with alarm that she’d overheard his entire conversation with William Penn. “Now, what was it you were saying?”

  He scrambled to remember what he had been saying. In a man half his age, to’ve been so flustered would have been adorable. As it stood, she was dismayed, wondering what would happen to this man the first time some French-trained countess got her talons into him. William had been right. Daniel Waterhouse was a Hazard to Navigation.