Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “Do not be disheartened,” said Enoch the Red, “I believe that Pegasus, to-night, shall be adorned by a meteor; turn your telescope thither.”

  Eliza and Fatio both turned and looked towards the telescope, which was situated cater-corner from them, meaning that Huygens and Waterhouse could neither hear nor see Enoch Root. When they turned back around, Root had turned his back on them, and was vanishing into one of the many narrow side-streets of the Hofgebied.

  “Most disappointing! I was going to invite him up here…he must have come from the fête at the Binnenhof,” Fatio said.

  Eliza finished the thought herself: Where he was hobnobbing with my brethren of the Dutch court—the same ones who cannot keep their mouths shut concerning you, Eliza.

  Fatio looked toward Polaris. “It is half past midnight, never mind what the church-bells say…”

  “How can you tell?”

  “By reading the positions of the stars. Pegasus is far to the west, there. It shall descend beneath the western horizon within two hours. A miserable place to make observations! And in any case, meteors come and go too quickly for one to aim a telescope at ‘em…what did he mean?”

  “Is this a fair sample of the esoteric brotherhood’s discourse? No wonder that Alchemists are famed mostly for blowing up their own dwellings,” Eliza said, feeling somewhat relieved to get this glimpse into the mystery, and to find nothing but bafflement there.

  They spent the better part of an hour looking at, and arguing about, the gap in Saturn’s rings, which was named after Cassini, the French royal astronomer, and which Fatio could explain mathematically. Which was to say that Eliza was cold, bored, and ignored. Only one person could peer into the telescope’s eyepiece at a time, and these men quite forgot their manners, and never offered her a turn.

  Then Fatio persuaded the others to point the telescope into Pegasus, or those few stars of it that had not yet been drowned in the North Sea. The search of Pegasus was not nearly so interesting to them as Saturn had been, and so they let Eliza look all she wanted, sweeping the instrument back and forth, hoping to catch the predicted meteor.

  “Have you found something, Mademoiselle?” Fatio asked at one point, when he noticed Eliza’s stiff fingers pawing at the focusing-screw.

  “A cloud, just peeking over the horizon.”

  “Weather as fine as today’s could never last,” said Huygens, in a fair sample of Dutch pessimism; for the weather had been wretched.

  “Does it have the appearance of a rain-cloud or…”

  “That is what I am trying to establish,” Eliza said, trying to bring it into focus.

  “Enoch was having you on a bit,” Huygens said, for the others had by now told him the story of Enoch’s enigmatic turn in the Plein. “He felt his joints aching and knew a change in the weather was in the offing! And he knew it would come out of Pegasus since that is in the west, and that is where the wind is from. Very clever.”

  “A few wisps of cloud, indeed…but what I first mistook for heavy rain-clouds, is actually a ship under sail…taking advantage of the moonlight to raise her sails, and make a run up the coast,” Eliza said.

  “Cloth-smugglers,” Waterhouse predicted, “coming in from round Ipswich.” Eliza stepped back and he took a turn at the eyepiece. “No, I’m wrong, ‘tis the wrong sail-plan for a smuggler.”

  “She is rigged for speed, but proceeding cautiously just now,” Huygens pronounced. Then it was Fatio’s turn: “I would wager she is bringing contraband from France—salt, wine, or both.” And so they continued, more and more tediously, until Eliza announced that she was going down to bed.

  SHE WAS AWAKENED BY THE tolling of a church-bell. For some reason she felt it was terribly important to count the strokes, but she woke up too late to be sure. She had left her long winter coat across the foot of her bed to make her toes a little warmer and she now sat up and snatched it and drew it round her shoulders in one quick movement, before the chill could rush through the porous linen of her nightgown. She swung her feet out of bed, poked at the pair of rabbit-pelt slippers on the floor to chase away any mice that might be using them as beds, and then pushed her feet into them.

  For in somewhat the same way as rodents may quietly set up house-keeping in one’s clothing during the hours of darkness, an idea had established itself in Eliza’s mind while she had been asleep. She did not become fully conscious of this idea until a few minutes later when she went into the great room to stoke up the fire, and saw all of Huygens’s clocks reading the same time: a few minutes past nine o’clock in the morning.

  She looked out a window over the Plein and saw high white clouds. From the myriad chimneys of the Binnenhof, plumes of smoke trailed eastwards before a steady onshore breeze. Perfect day for sand-sailing.

  She went to the door of Huygens’s bedchamber and raised a fist, then held off. If she were wrong, it were foolish to disturb him. If she were right, it were foolish to spend a quarter of an hour waking him up and trying to convince him.

  Huygens kept only a few horses here. The riding-fields of the Malieveld and the Koekamp lay only a musket-shot from the house, and so when he or any of his guests felt like going riding, they need only stroll to one of the many livery-stables that surrounded those places.

  Eliza ran out a back door of the house, nearly knocking down a Dutch woman out sweeping the pavement, and took off round the corner running in her rabbit-slippers.

  Then she faltered, remembering she’d not brought any money.

  “Eliza!” someone shouted.

  She turned around to see Nicolas Fatio de Duilliers running up the street after her.

  “Do you have money?” she called.

  “Yes!”

  Eliza ran away from him and did not stop until she reached the nearest livery stable, a couple of hundred long strides away, far enough to get her heart pounding and her face flushed. By the time Fatio caught up with her she had wrapped up a negotiation with the owner; the Swiss mathematician came in the gate just in time to see Eliza thrusting a finger at him and shouting, “and he pays!”

  Saddling the horses would take several minutes. Eliza felt on the verge of throwing up. Fatio was agitated, too, but breeding was at war with common sense in him, and breeding prevailed; he attempted to make conversation.

  “I infer, Mademoiselle, that you too have received some communication from Enoch the Red on this morning?”

  “Only if he came and whispered in my ear while I was sleeping!”

  Fatio didn’t know what to make of that. “I encountered him a few minutes ago at my usual coffee-house…he elaborated on his cryptic statement of last night…”

  “What we saw last night was enough for me,” Eliza answered. A sleepy stable-boy dropped a saddle, and instead of bending to pick it up, tried to make some witty comment. The owner was doing sums with a quill-pen that wouldn’t hold its ink. Tears of frustration came to Eliza’s eyes. “Damn it!”

  “RIDING BARE-BACK IS LIKE RIDING, only more so,” Jack Shaftoe had said to her once. She preferred to remember Jack as little and as infrequently as possible, but now this memory came to her. Until the day they had met underneath Vienna, Eliza had never ridden a horse. Jack had taken obvious pleasure in teaching her the rudiments, more so when she seemed uncertain, or fell off, or let Turk run away with her. But after she had become expert, Jack had turned peevish and haughty, and lost no opportunity to remind her that riding well in a saddle was no accomplishment, and that until one learned to ride bare-back, one didn’t know how to ride at all. Jack knew all about it, of course, because it was how Vagabonds stole horses.

  Choosing the proper mount was of the utmost importance (he had explained). Given a string or stable of horses to choose from, one wanted to pick a mount with a flat back, and yet not too wide-bodied or else it wouldn’t be possible to get a good grip with the knees. The wither, or bony hump at the base of the neck, should not be too large (which would make it impossible to lie flat while galloping) nor too small (w
hich gave no purchase for the hands), but somewhere in between. And the horse should be of a compliant disposition, for at some point it was bound to happen that the horse-thief would become disarranged on the horse’s back, as the outcome of some bump or swerve, and then it would be entirely up to the horse whether the Vagabond would be flung off into space or coaxed back into balance.

  Now it might have been pure chance that Eliza’s favorite horse in this stable—the mare she asked for by name whenever she called—possessed a flat but not overly broad back, a medium-sized wither, and a sweet disposition. Or perhaps Jack Shaftoe’s advice on the finer points of horse-thievery had subtly informed her choice. At any rate, the mare’s name was Vla (“cream”), and Eliza rated it as unlikely she would ever try to pitch Eliza off her bare back. The stable-boy was attempting to saddle up a different mare, but Vla was in a stall only a few paces away.

  Eliza walked over and opened the gate to that stall, greeting Vla by name, and then stepped forward until her nose was caressing the mare’s, and breathed very gently into Vla’s nostrils. This prompted Vla to raise her enormous head slightly, trying to draw closer to that warmth. Eliza cupped the mare’s chin in her hand and exhaled into those nostrils again, and Vla responded with a little shudder of gratitude. Giant overlapping slabs of muscle twitched here and there, coming awake. Eliza now stepped into the stall, trailing a hand along the mare’s side, and then used the stall’s side-planks as a ladder, climbing to a level from which she was able to dive across Vla’s back. Then, by gripping that convenient medium-sized wither with one hand, she was able to spin herself round on her belly and get her legs wrapped around Vla’s body—this required pulling the narrow skirts of her nightgown up round her hips, but her coat hung down to either side and covered her legs. Her bare buttocks, thighs, and calves were pressed directly against the mare’s body, which was exquisitely warm. Vla took this all calmly enough. She did not respond the first time Eliza pinched her bottom, but on the second pinch she walked out into the stable-yard, and when Eliza told her what a good girl she was and pinched her a third time she broke into a trot that nearly bounced Eliza straight off. Eliza flung herself full-length onto the mare’s back and neck, and buried her face in the mane, and clenched a hank of the coarse hair in her teeth. All her attention was concentrated for those few moments on not falling off. The next time she looked around, they had trotted out into the street, pursued none too effectively by a few grooms and stable-hands who still could not make out whether they were witnessing a bizarre mishap or a criminal act.

  They were headed northwards along the edge of the riding-ground called Koekamp, which was limned on this side by the big canal that ran straight to Scheveningen. Vla wanted to turn her nose out of the stinging sea-wind and stray off into the Koekamp, which was what she did for a living. Every time her nose bent that way, Eliza gave her a sharp reprimand, and a dig on that side with her foot. So progress was balky, and relations between horse and rider were tense, as long as the Koekamp and then the Malieveld beckoned to their right. But once they had ridden clear of such temptations, Vla seemed to understand that they were riding up the canal to Scheveningen, and settled down noticeably. Another pinch caused Vla to break into a canter, which was both smoother and faster. Very soon after that Eliza was galloping down the canal-side hollering “Make way in the name of the Stadholder!” whenever she saw anyone in the way. But this was rarely, for by now they were out in open country, and cows were more common than people.

  Jack had been right, she decided—remaining on the back of a galloping horse without benefit of saddle was a question of balance, and of anticipating the horse’s movements, while also relying on some cooperation from the horse! Soon Vla began to sweat, which made her slippery, and then Eliza had to abandon all pretense of holding on by brute force and rely entirely on a very complicated and ever-changing sort of sympathy between her and the mare.

  Fatio did not catch up with her until she was most of the way to Scheveningen. They were being pursued, at a distance, by two men who were presumably members of the St. George Guild. As long as these did not draw close enough to loose any pistol-balls in their direction, they did not especially care. It could all be explained later.

  “The ship…we saw…” Eliza shouted, forcing out the occasional word when not gasping for breath or being jolted by the mare. “‘Twas the jacht?”

  “The same…It is…Météore, the flagship…of the Duc…d’Arcachon! We may…assume it…to be full…of dragoons!” Fatio returned.

  Behind them, someone had begun blowing a horn from the top of a watch-tower in the Hague. It was a signal to the sheriff in Scheveningen, who was answerable to the town council of the Hague; very soon Fatio and Eliza would find out how diligent this sheriff was, and how well he had organized his watchmen.

  They reached the boat-house at Scheveningen at ten minutes past ten o’clock. As they approached, Eliza saw a sand-sailer out on the beach, being worked on by a ship-wright, and cried “Aha!” thinking they’d arrived in time. But then she noticed wheel-tracks in the sand, and followed them north up the beach until she saw another sailer, already a mile away, heeled over by the sea-breeze.

  The boat-house was not really a single house, but a horseshoe-shaped compound of diverse sheds, shacks, and workshops scabbed on to one another, crammed with distracting detail: tools, forges, lathes, lofts…Eliza got lost in that detail for a few moments, then turned around to look behind them, and discovered a landscape of pandemonium in their wake: breathless Guildsmen from the Hague, Blue Guards, marines from ships in the harbor, enraged members of Scheveningen’s Watch, all seemingly contending with one another to lay hands first on Fatio—who was trying to explain everything in French. He was throwing unreadable looks at Eliza, half pleading for assistance, half wanting to defend her from the mob.

  “Fire guns!” Eliza shouted in Dutch. “The Prince is in danger.” Then she explained what she could, in what little Dutch she had. Nodding his head the whole time was the Captain of the Blue Guards, who, she collected, had always taken a dim view of the Prince’s beach-sailing anyway. At some point he decided he had heard plenty. He fired a pistol in the air to silence the crowd and tossed the empty, smoking weapon to a guardsman, who tossed him a loaded one back. Then he uttered a few words in Dutch and everyone scattered.

  “What did he say, mademoiselle?” Fatio asked.

  “He said, ‘Guards, ride! Watchmen, fire! Sailors, launch! Others, get out of the way!’ ”

  Fatio watched in fascination: a squadron of mounted Blue Guards took off hell-for-leather up the beach, galloping in pursuit of the Prince. Sailors were sprinting down towards the waterfront, the gunners on the harbor batteries were loading their cannons. Anyone with a loaded firearm was shooting in the air; but the Prince, far away in a cosmos of wind and surf, could not hear them. “I suppose we belong in the category of ‘others,’” Fatio said, a bit dejectedly. “It will be all right, I suppose…those cavalrymen will catch up to him anon.”

  The sun had found a rift in the high clouds and illuminated veils of steam rising from the sweaty coats of their horses. “They’ll never catch him,” Eliza demurred, “in this wind he can out-sail them with ease.”

  “Perhaps the Prince will take notice of that!” Fatio said, startled by a ragged volley of cannon-fire.

  “He’ll only assume it is a salute, for some ship approaching the harbor.”

  “What can we do, then?”

  “Follow orders. Leave,” Eliza said.

  “Then pray tell why are you dismounting?”

  “Fatio, you are a gentleman,” Eliza called over her shoulder, kicking off the rabbit-pelts and stepping barefoot across the sand towards the other sailer. “You grew up near Lake Geneva. Do you know how to sail?”

  “Mademoiselle,” said Fatio, dismounting, “on a rig of this plan I can out-sail a Dutchman. I want only one thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “The craft will heel over. The sail will spill wi
nd and I will lose speed. Unless I had someone small, nimble, tenacious, and very brave, to lean out of the vehicle on the windward side, and act as a counterweight.”

  “Let us go and defend the Defender then,” Eliza said, climbing aboard.

  THEY COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE moving as fast as it seemed, or so Eliza told herself until they caught up with the squadron of Blue Guards. With a twitch of the tiller Fatio could have veered round them as if they were standing still. Instead he let out the main-sheet and spilled a huge dollop of air, causing the sailer to drop to what felt like a slow walking pace—and yet they were staying abreast of the galloping Guards. The sailer dropped back onto all three wheels and Eliza, leaning way out on what had been the high side, nearly planted her head in the sand. Fortunately she was gripping with both hands a line that Fatio had hitched round the mast, and by pulling hard on this she was able to draw herself up faster than the zooming sand could lunge at her. And now she had a few moments to wipe spray and grit out of her face, and to tie her hair into a sodden knot that lay cold and rough against her neck. Fatio had got the attention of some of the Blue Guards by gesticulating and shouting in a hotchpotch of languages. Something came flying towards them, tumbling end-over-end, plopped into the mainsail, and slid down the curved canvas into Fatio’s lap: a musket. Then another, flung by a different Guard, whirled just over their heads and embedded itself barrel-first in the sand, surf swirling around its stock, and fell away aft. Now a pistol came flying toward them and Eliza, finally ready, was able to reach up and slap it out of the air with one hand.

  Instantly Fatio hauled in on the sheet and the sailer hurled itself forward. He got in front of the foremost of the Guards and then veered up away from the surf onto drier and firmer sand. Eliza had had time to shove the pistol into her coat-sash now, and to get that rope wrapped securely round her hands; Fatio hauled the sheet in recklessly, and the sailer bit so fiercely into the wind that it nearly capsized. One of its wheels was spinning in the air, flinging sand and water at Eliza, who clambered over its rim, planted both of her bare feet on the end of the axle, and let the rope slither through her numb hands until she was leaning back almost horizontally and gazing (when she could see anything) at the undercarriage of the sand-sailer.