Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “Err…I’d be less than honest if, er…” he winced. “It sounded gallant in French. Pompous in English. I was wondering…the state of international relations being so troublous and relations ‘tween the sexes more so, and etiquette being an area in which I am weak…whether there was any pretext at all under which I might converse with you, or send letters, without giving offense.”

  “Isn’t this dinner good enough?” she’d asked, flirtatiously mock-offended, and just then Fatio had arrived. In truth, she’d seen him coming across the Plein, and adjusted her timing accordingly. Waterhouse was obliged to stand off to one side and stew and draw up a great mental accompt of his failures and shortcomings while Eliza and Fatio enacted a greeting-ritual straight out of the Salon of Apollo at Versailles. This had much in common with a courtly dance, but with overtones of a duel; Eliza and Fatio were probing each other, emanating signals coded in dress, gesture, inflection, and emphasis, and watching with the brilliant alertness of sword-fighters to see whether the other had noticed, and how they’d respond. As one who’d lately come from the Court of the Sun King, Eliza held the high ground; the question was, what level of esteem should she accord Fatio? If he’d been Catholic, and French, and titled, this would have been settled before he came in the door. But he was Protestant, Swiss, and came from a gentle family of no particular rank. He was in his early twenties, Eliza guessed, though he tried to make himself older by wearing very good French clothes. He was not a handsome man: he had giant blue eyes below a high domelike forehead, but the lower half of his face was too small, his nose stuck out like a beak, and in general he had the exhausting intensity of a trapped bird.

  At some point Fatio had to tear those eyes away from Eliza and begin the same sort of dance-cum-duel with Waterhouse. Again, if Fatio had been a Fellow of the Royal Society, or a Doctor at some university, Waterhouse would have had some idea what to make of him; as it was, Fatio had to conjure his credentials and bona fides out of thin air, as it were, by dropping names and scattering references to books he’d read, problems he’d solved, inflated reputations he had punctured, experiments he had performed, creatures he had seen. “I had half expected to see Mr. Enoch Root here,” he said at one point, looking about, “for a (ahem) gentleman of my acquaintance here, an amateur of (ahem) chymical studies, has shared with me a rumor—only a rumor, mind you—that a man owning Root’s description was observed, the other day, debarking from a canal-ship from Brussels.” As Fatio stretched this patch of news thinner and thinner, he flinched his huge eyes several times at Waterhouse. Certain French nobles would have winked or stroked their moustaches interestedly; Waterhouse offered up nothing but a basilisk-stare.

  That was the last time Fatio had anything to say concerning Alchemy; from that point onwards it was strictly mathematics, and the new work by Newton. Eliza had heard from both Leibniz and Huygens that this Newton had written some sort of discourse that had left all of the other Natural Philosophers holding their heads between their knees, and quite dried up the ink in their quills, and so she was able to follow Fatio’s drift here. Though from time to time he would turn his attention to Eliza and revert to courtly posturing for a few moments. Fatio prosecuted all of these uphill strugglings with little apparent effort, which spoke well of his training, and of the overall balance of his humours. At the same time it made her tired just to watch him. From the moment he came in the door he controlled the conversation; everyone spent the rest of the evening reacting to Fatio. That suited Eliza’s purposes well enough; it kept Daniel Waterhouse frustrated, which was how she liked him, and gave her leisure to observe. All the same, she wondered what supplied the energy to keep a Fatio going; he was the loudest and fastest clock in the room, and must have an internal spring keyed up very tight. He had no sexual interest whatever in Eliza, and that was a relief, for she could tell that he would be relentless and probably tiresome in wooing.

  Why didn’t they just eject Fatio and have a peaceful dinner? Because he had genuine merit. Confronted by a nobody so desperate to establish his reputation, Eliza’s first impulse (and Water-house’s, too, she inferred) was to assume he was a poseur. But he was not. Once he figured out that Eliza wasn’t Catholic he had interesting things to say concerning religion and the state of French society. Once he figured out that Waterhouse was no alchemist, he began to discourse of mathematical functions in a way that snapped the Englishman awake. And Huygens, when he finally woke up and came downstairs, made it obvious by his treatment of Fatio that he rated him as an equal—or as close to equal as a man like Huygens could ever have.

  “A man of my tender age and meager accomplishments cannot give sufficient honor to the gentleman who once dined at this table—”

  “Actually Descartes dined here many times—not just once!” Huy-gens put in gruffly.

  “—and set out his proposal to explain physical reality with mathematics,” Fatio finished.

  “You would not speak of him that way unless you were about to say something against him,” Eliza said.

  “Not against him, but some of his latter-day followers. The project that Descartes started is finished. Vortices will never do! I am surprised that Leibniz still holds out any hope for them.”

  Everyone sat up straighter. “Perhaps you have heard from Leibniz more recently than I have, sir,” Waterhouse said.

  “You give me more credit than I deserve, Doctor Waterhouse, to suggest that Doctor Leibniz would communicate his freshest insights to me, before despatching them to the Royal Society! Please correct me.”

  “It is not that Leibniz has any particular attachment to vortices, but that he cannot bring himself to believe in any sort of mysterious action at a distance.” Hearing this, Huygens raised a hand momentarily, as if seconding a motion. Fatio did not fail to notice. Waterhouse continued, “Action at a distance is a sort of occult notion—which may appeal to a certain sort of mentality—”

  “But not to those of us who have adopted the Mechanical Philosophy that Monsieur Descartes propounded at this very table!”

  “In that very chair, sir!” said Huygens, pointing at Fatio with a drumstick.

  “I have my own Theory of Gravitation that should account for the inverse square relation,” Fatio said. “As a stone dropped into water makes spreading ripples, so a planet makes concentric disturbances in the cœlestial æther, which press upon its satellites…”

  “Write it down,” Waterhouse said, “and send it to me, and we will print it alongside Leibniz’s account, and may the better one prevail.”

  “Your offer is gratefully accepted!” Fatio said, and glanced at Huygens to make sure he had a witness. “But I fear we are boring Mademoiselle Eliza.”

  “Not at all, Monsieur, any conversation that bears on the Doctor is of interest to me.”

  “Is there any topic that does not relate to Leibniz in some way?”

  “Alchemy,” Waterhouse suggested darkly.

  Fatio, whose chief object at the moment was to draw Eliza into the conversation, ignored this. “I can’t but wonder whether we may discern the Doctor’s hand in the formation of the League of Augsburg.”

  “I would guess not,” Eliza said. “It has long been Leibniz’s dream to re-unite the Catholic and Lutheran churches, and prevent another Thirty Years’ War. But the League looks to me like a preparation for war. It is not the conception of the Doctor, but of the Prince of Orange.”

  “The Protestant Defender,” Fatio said. Eliza was accustomed to hearing that phrase drenched in French sarcasm, but Fatio uttered it carefully, like a Natural Philosopher weighing an unproven hypothesis. “Our neighbors in Savoy could have used some defending when de Catinat came through with his dragoons. Yes, in this matter I must disagree with the Doctor, as well-meaning as he is…we do need a Defender, and William of Orange will make a good one, provided he stays out of the clutches of the French.” Fatio was staring at Eliza while he said this.

  Huygens chuckled. “That should not be difficult, since he never leave
s Dutch soil.”

  “But the coast is long, and mostly empty, and the French could put a force ashore anywhere they pleased.”

  “French fleets do not sail up and down the Dutch coast without drawing attention,” Huygens said, still amused by the idea.

  Continuing to watch Eliza, Fatio replied, “I said nothing about a fleet. A single jacht would suffice to put a boat-load of dragoons on the beach.”

  “And what would those dragoons do against the might of the Dutch army?”

  “Be destroyed, if they were stupid enough to encamp on the beach and wait for that army to mobilize,” Fatio answered. “But if they happened to light on the particular stretch of beach where William goes sand-sailing, at the right time of the morning, why, they could redraw the map, and rewrite the future history, of Europe in a few minutes’ work.”

  Now nothing could be heard for a minute or so except the clocks. Fatio still held Eliza fast with his vast eyes, giant blue lenses that seemed to take all the light in the room. What might they not have noticed, and what might the mind in back of them not know?

  On the other hand, what tricks could the mind not conjure up, and with those eyes, whom couldn’t he draw into his snares?

  “It is a clever conceit, like a chapter from a picaroon-romance,” Eliza said. Fatio’s high brow shriveled, and the eyes that had seemed so penetrating a moment ago now looked pleading. Eliza glanced toward the stairs. “Now that Fatio has provided us with entertainment, will you elevate us, Monsieur Huygens?”

  “How should I translate that word?” Huygens returned. “The last time one of your guests became elevated in my house, I had to look the other way.”

  “Elevate us to the roof, where we may see the stars and planets, and then elevate our minds by showing us some new phenomenon through your telescope,” Eliza answered patiently.

  “In company such as this we must all elevate one another, for I carry no advantage on these men,” Huygens said. This triggered a long tedious volley of self-deprecations from Fatio and Water-house. But soon enough they all got their winter coats on and labored up a staircase devious and strait, and emerged into starlight. The only clouds in this sky were those that condensed in front of their lips as they breathed. Huygens lit up a clay pipe. Fatio, who had assisted Huygens before, took the wraps off the big Newtonian reflector with the tense precision of a hummingbird, keeping an ear cocked toward Huygens and Waterhouse, who were talking about optics, and an eye on Eliza, who was strolling around the parapet enjoying the view: to the east, the Haagse Bos, woolly and black with trees. To the south, the smoking chimneys and glowing windows of the Hofgebied. To the west, the windy expanse of the Plein, stretching to the Grenadier’s Gate on the far side, which controlled access to the Binnenhof. A lot of wax and whale-oil was being burnt there tonight, to illuminate a soiree in the palace’s Ballroom. To the young ladies who had been invited, it must have seemed never so glamorous. To Huygens it was a damnable nuisance, for the humid air snared the radiance of all those tapers and lamps, and glowed faintly, in a way that most people would never notice. But it ruined the seeing of his telescope.

  Within a few minutes the two older men had gotten embroiled in the work of aiming the telescope at Saturn: a body that would show up distinctly no matter how many candles were burning at the Binnenhof. Fatio glided over to keep Eliza company.

  “Now let us set aside formalities and speak directly,” she said.

  “As you wish, Mademoiselle.”

  “Is this notion of the jacht and the dragoons a phant’sy of yours or—”

  “Say if I am wrong: on mornings when the weather is not perfectly abominable, and the wind is off the sea, the Prince of Orange goes to his boat-house on the beach at Scheveningen at ten o’clock, chooses a sand-sailer, and pilots it northwards up the beach to the dunes near Katwijk—though on a clear day he’ll venture as far as Noordwijk—then turns round and is back in Scheveningen by midday.”

  Not wanting to give Fatio the satisfaction of telling him he was right, Eliza answered, “You have made a study of the Prince’s habits?”

  “No, but Count Fenil has.”

  “Fenil—I have heard his name in the salon of the Duchess of Oyonnax—he originates in that place where Switzerland and Savoy, Burgundy, and the Piedmont are all convolved, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he is Catholic, and a Francophile.”

  “He is Savoyard in name, but he saw very early that Louis XIV would eclipse the Duke of Savoy, and swallow up his dominions, and so he became more French than the French, and served in the army of Louvois. That alone should prove his bona fides to the King of France. But after the recent show of force by the French Army next door to his lands, Fenil evidently feels some further demonstration of his loyalty is needed. So he has devised the plan I mentioned, of abducting William from the beach and carrying him back to France in chains.”

  They had now paused at a corner where they could look out over the Plein toward the Binnenhof. To Eliza this had seemed grand (at least by European standards) when d’Avaux had taken her skating there. Now that she’d grown accustomed to Versailles, it looked like a woodshed. Lit up for this evening’s fête, it was as grand as it would ever be. William Penn would be there, and various members of the diplomatic corps—including d’Avaux, who had invited her to attend it on his arm. She had accepted, then changed her mind so that she could organize the present dinner. D’Avaux had not been happy about it and had asked questions that were difficult to answer. Once d’Avaux had recruited her, and sent her down to Versailles, their relationship had changed to that of lord and vassal. He had allowed her to see his hard, cruel, vengeful aspects, mostly as an implicit warning of what would come if she disappointed him. Eliza supposed it must have been d’Avaux who had supplied intelligence to Fenil concerning William’s routine.

  It had been a mild winter so far, and the Hofvijver, in front of the Binnenhof, was a black rectangle, not yet frozen, reflecting gleams of candlelight from the party as gusts of wind wrinkled its surface. Eliza recalled her own abduction from a beach, and felt like crying. Fatio’s yarn might or might not be true, but in combination with some cutting remarks that d’Avaux had made to her earlier, it had put real melancholy into her heart. Not connected with any one particular man, or plan, or outcome, but melancholy like the black water that ate up the light.

  “How do you know the mind of M. le comte de Fenil?”

  “I was visiting my father at Duillier—our seat in Switzerland—a few weeks ago. Fenil came on a visit. I went for a stroll with him and he told me what I have told you.”

  “He must be an imbecile to talk about it openly.”

  “Perhaps. Inasmuch as the purpose is to enhance his prestige, the more he talks about it, the better.”

  “‘Tis an outlandish plan. Has he suggested it to anyone who could realize it?”

  “Indeed, he proposed it to the Maréchal Louvois, who wrote back to him and directed him to make preparations.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Long enough, mademoiselle, for the preparations to have been made by now.”

  “So you have come here to warn William?”

  “I have been striving to warn him,” Fatio said, “but he will not grant me an audience.”

  “It is very strange, then, that you should approach me. What makes you believe that I have the ear of the Prince of Orange? I live at Versailles and I invest money for members of the Court of the King of France. I journey up this way from time to time to consult with my brokers, and to meet with my dear friend and client the comte d’Avaux. What on earth makes you believe that I should have any connection to William?”

  “Suffice it to say, I know that you do,” Fatio returned placidly.

  “Who else knows?”

  “Who knows that bodies in an inverse square field move on conic sections? Who knows that there is a division between the Rings of Saturn?”

  “Anyone who reads Principia Mathematica, or lo
oks through a telescope, respectively.”

  “And who has the wit to understand what he has read, or seen.”

  “Yes. Anyone can possess Newton’s book, few can understand it.”

  “Just so, mademoiselle. And likewise anyone may observe you, or listen to gossip about you, but to interpret those data and know the truth requires gifts that God hoards jealously and gives out to very few.”

  “Have you learned much of me, then, from talking to your brethren? For I know that they are to be found in every Court, Church, and College, and that they know each other by signs and code-words. Please do not be coy with me, Fatio, it is ever so tedious.”

  “Coy? I would not dream of so insulting a woman of your sophistication. Yes, I tell you without reserve that I belong to an esoteric brotherhood that numbers many of the high and the mighty among its members; that the very raison d’être of that brotherhood is to exchange information that should not be spread about promiscuously; and that I have learned of you from that source.”

  “Are you saying that my lord Upnor, and every other gentleman who pisses in the corridors of Versailles, knows of my connexion to William of Orange?”

  “Most of them are poseurs with very limited powers of understanding. Do not change your plans out of some phant’sy that they will penetrate what I have penetrated,” Fatio said.

  Eliza, who did not find this a very satisfying answer, said nothing. Her silence caused Fatio to get that pleading look again. She turned away from him—the only alternative being to scoff and roll her eyes—and gazed down into the Plein. There something caught her eye: a long figure darkly cloaked, silver hair spilling out onto his shoulders. He had lately emerged from the Grenadiers’ Gate, as if he had just excused himself from the party. A gust of steam flourished from his mouth as he shouted, “How is the seeing tonight?”

  “Much better than I should like,” returned Eliza.

  “Bad, very bad, Mr. Root, because of our troublesome neighbor!”