Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  “Paintings?”

  “You know, where Victory comes down on a sunbeam with her tits hanging out of her frock, waving a laurel for said dying lord’s brow, and the Virgin Mary slides down on another to—”

  “Oh, yes. Those paintings. Yes, I believe what you say.” Daniel had been working his way along the curving wall of the Tower, holding the candle close to the stone, so that its glancing light would deepen the scratchings made there by prisoners over the centuries. He stopped before a new one, a half-finished complex of arcs and rays that cut through older graffiti.

  “I do not think I shall finish this proof,” he announced, after gazing at it for a few moments.

  “We’ll not leave tonight. You shall likely have a week—maybe more. So there’s no cause for breaking off work on whatever that is.”

  “It is an ancient thing that used to make sense, but now it has been turned upside-down, and seems only a queer, jumbled bag of notions. Let it bide here with the other old things,” Daniel said.

  Château Juvisy

  NOVEMBER 1688

  From Monsieur Bonaventure Rossignol, Château Juvisy

  To His Majesty Louis XIV, Versailles

  21 November 1688

  Sire,

  It was my father’s honor to serve your majesty and your majesty’s father as cryptanalyst to the Court. Of the art of decipherment, he endeavoured to teach me all that he knew. Moved by a son’s love for his father as well as by a subject’s ardent desire to be of service to his King, I strove to learn as much as my lesser faculties would permit; and if, when my father died six years ago, he had imparted to me a tenth part of what he knew, why then it sufficed to make me more nearly fit to serve as your majesty’s cryptanalyst than any man in Christendom; a measure, not of my eminence (for I cannot claim to possess any) but of my father’s, and of the degraded condition of cryptography in the uncouth nations that surround France as barbarian hordes once hemmed in mighty Rome.

  Along with some moiety of his knowledge, I have inherited the salary your beneficent majesty bestowed upon him, and the château that Le Nôtre built for him at Juvisy, which your majesty knows well, as you have more than once

  honored it with your presence, and graced it with your wit, as you journeyed to and from Fontainebleau. Many affairs of state have been discussed in the petit salon and the garden; for your father of blessed memory, and Cardinal Richelieu, also were known to ennoble this poor house with their presences during the days when my father, by decyphering the communications passing into and out of the fortifications of the Huguenots, was helping to suppress the rebellions of those heretics.

  Than your majesty no monarch has been more keenly alive to the importance of cryptography. It is only to this acuity on your majesty’s part, and not to any intrinsic merit of mine, that I attribute the honors and wealth that you have showered upon me. And it is only because of your majesty’s oft-demonstrated interest in these affairs that I presume to pick up my quill and to write down a tale of cryptanalysis that is not without certain extraordinary features.

  As your majesty knows, the incomparable château at Versailles is adorned by several ladies who are indefatigable writers of letters, notably my friend Madame de Sévigné; la Palatine; and Eliza, the Countess de la Zeur. There are many others, too; but we who have the honor of serving in your majesty’s cabinet noir spend as much time reading the correspondence of these three as of all the other ladies of Versailles combined.

  My narrative chiefly concerns the Countess de la Zeur. She writes frequently to M. le comte d’Avaux in the Hague, using the approved cypher to shield her correspondence from my Dutch counterparts. As well she carries on a steady flow of correspondence to certain Jews of Amsterdam, consisting predominantly of numbers and financial argot that, read, cannot be decyphered, and decyphered, cannot be understood, unless one is familiar with the workings of that city’s commodities markets, as vulgar as they are complex. These letters are exceptionally pithy, and of no interest to anyone save Jews, Dutchmen, and other persons who are motivated by money. Her most voluminous letters by far go to the Hanoverian savant Leibniz, whose name is known to your majesty—he made a computing machine for Colbert some years ago, and now toils as an advisor to the Duke and Duchess of Hanover, whose exertions on behalf of united Protestantism have been the cause of so much displeasure to your majesty. Ostensibly the letters of the Countess de la Zeur to this Leibniz consist of interminable descriptions of the magnificence of Versailles and its inhabitants. The sheer volume and consistency of this correspondence have caused me to wonder whether it was not a channel of encrypted communications; but my poor efforts at finding any hidden patterns in her flowery words have been unavailing. Indeed, my suspicion of this woman is grounded, not on any flaw in her cypher—which, assuming it exists at all, is a very good one—but on what little understanding I may claim to possess of human nature. For during my occasional visits to Versailles I have sought this woman out, and engaged her in conversation, and found her to be highly intelligent, and conversant with the latest work of mathematicians and Natural Philosophers both foreign and domestic. And of course the brilliance and erudition of Leibniz is acknowledged by all. It is implausible to me that such a woman could devote so much time to writing, and such a man so much time to reading, about hair.

  Perhaps two years ago, M. le comte d’Avaux, on one of his visits to your majesty’s court, sought me out, and, knowing of my position in the cabinet noir, asked many pointed questions about the Countess’s epistolary habits. From this it was plain enough that he shared some of my suspicions. Later he told me that he had witnessed with his own eyes an incident in which it was made obvious that this woman was an agent of the Prince of Orange. D’Avaux at this time mentioned a Swiss gentleman of the name of Fatio de Duilliers, and intimated that he and the Countess de la Zeur were in some way linked.

  D’Avaux seemed confident that he knew enough to crush this woman. Instead of doing so outright, he had decided that he could better serve your majesty by pursuing a more complex and, by your majesty’s leave, risky strategy. As is well known, she makes money for many of your majesty’s vassals, including d’Avaux, by managing their investments. The price of liquidating her outright would be high; not a consideration that would ever confound your majesty’s judgment, but telling among men of weak minds and light purses. Moreover, d’Avaux shared my suspicion that she was communicating over some encrypted channel with Sophie and, through Sophie, with William, and hoped that if I were to achieve a cryptological break of this channel the cabinet noir might thereafter read her despatches without her being aware of it; which would be altogether more beneficial to France and pleasing to your majesty than locking the woman up in a nunnery and keeping her incommunicado to the end of her days, as she deserves.

  There had been during the first part of this year a sort of flirtation between the Countess de la Zeur and la Palatine, which appeared to culminate in August when the Countess accepted an invitation from Madame to join her (and your majesty’s brother) at St. Cloud. Everyone who knew of this assumed that it was a common, albeit Sapphic, love affair: an interpretation so obvious that it ought by its nature to have engendered more skepticism among those who pride themselves on their sophistication. But it was summer, the weather was warm, and no one paid it any heed. Not long after her arrival at St. Cloud, the Countess sent a letter to d’Avaux in the Hague, which has subsequently found its way back to my writing desk. Here it is.

  St. Cloud

  AUGUST 1688

  Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, to d’Avaux

  16 August 1688

  Monsieur,

  Summer has reached its pinnacle here and for those, such as Madame, who like to hunt wild animals, the best months lie in the future. But for those, such as Monsieur, who prefer to hunt (or be hunted by) highly cultivated humans, this is the very best time of the year. So Madame endures the heat, and sits with her lap-dogs and writes letters, while Monsieur’s only complaint is that the
torrid weather causes his makeup to run. St. Cloud is infested with young men, aficionados of fencing, who would give anything to sheathe their blades in his scabbard. To judge from the noises emanating from his bedchamber, his chief lover is the Chevalier de Lorraine. But when the Chevalier is spent, the Marquis d’Effiat is never far behind; and behind him (as it were) is a whole queue of handsome cavaliers. In other words, here as at Versailles, there is a strict pecking-order (though one must imagine a different sort of pecking), and so most of these young blades can never hope to be anything more than ornaments. Yet they are continually lustful like any other men. Since they cannot satiate themselves on Monsieur inside the château, they practice on one another in the gardens. One cannot go for a stroll or a ride without breaking into the middle of a tryst. And when these young men are interrupted, they do not slink away meekly, but (emboldened by the favor shown them by Monsieur) upbraid one in the most abusive way imaginable. Wherever I go, my nose detects the humour of lust wafted on every draught and breeze, for it is spilled about the place like wine-slops in a tavern.

  Liselotte has been putting up with this for seventeen years now, ever since the day when she crossed over the Rhine, never to cross back. And so it’s no wonder that she ventures out into society only rarely, and prefers the company of her dogs and her ink-well. Madame has been known to grow very attached to members of her household—she used to have a lady-in-waiting named Théobon who was a great comfort to her. But the lovers of Monsieur—who are supported by him, and who have nothing to do all day long but hatch plots—began to whisper vile rumors into Monsieur’s ear, and caused him to send this Théobon away. Madame was so angry that she complained to the King himself. The King reprimanded Monsieur’s lovers but balked at intervening in the household affairs of his own brother, and so Théobon has presumably ended up in a convent somewhere, and will never return.

  From time to time they entertain guests here, and then, as you know, protocol dictates that everyone dress up in the sort of costume known as en manteau, which is even stiffer and less comfortable (if you can imagine it) than dressing en grand habit as is done at Versailles. As an ambassador, you see women dressed in that manner all the time, but as a man, you never see machinations that go on in ladies’ private chambers for hours ahead of time, to make them look that way. Dressing en manteau is an engineering project at least as complicated as rigging a ship. Neither can even be contemplated without a large and well-trained crew. But Madame’s household has been reduced to a skeleton crew by the ceaseless petty intrigues of the lovers of Monsieur. And in any case she has no patience with female vanities. She is old enough, and foreign enough, and intelligent enough, to understand that Fashion (which lesser women view as if it were Gravity) was merely an invention, a device. It was devised by Colbert as a way to neutralize those Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who, because of their wealth and independence, posed the greatest threat to the King. But Liselotte, who might have been formidable, has already been neutralized by marrying Monsieur and joining the royal family. The only thing that prevents her country from being annexed to France is a dispute as to whether she, or another descendant of the Winter Queen, should succeed her late brother.

  At any rate, Liselotte refuses to play the game that Colbert devised. She has a wardrobe, of course, and it includes several costumes that are worthy of the names grand habit and manteau. But she has had them made up in a way that is unique. In Madame’s wardrobe, all the layers of lingerie, corsetry, petticoats, and outer garments that normally go on one at a time are sewn together into a single construct, so heavy and stiff that it stands by itself, and slit up the back. When Monsieur throws a grand party, Liselotte plods naked into her closet and walks into one of these and stands for a few moments as a lady-in-waiting fastens it in the back with diverse buttons, hooks, and ties. From there she goes straight to the party, without so much as a glance in the mirror.

  I will complete this little portrait of life at St. Cloud with a story about dogs. As I mentioned, la Palatine, like Artemis, is never far from her pack of dogs. Of course these are not swift hounds, but tiny lap-dogs that curl up on her feet in the winter to keep her toes warm. She has named them after people and places she remembers from her childhood in the Palatinate. They scurry about her apartments all day long, getting into absurd feuds and controversies, just like so many courtiers. Sometimes she herds them out onto the lawn and they run around in the sunshine interrupting the amours of Monsieur’s hangers-on, and then the peace of these exquisite gardens is broken by the angry shouts of the lovers and the yelps of the dogs; the cavaliers, with their breeches down around their ankles, chase them out from their trysting-places, and Monsieur comes out onto his balcony in his dressing-gown and damns them all to hell and wonders aloud why God cursed him to marry Liselotte.

  The King has a pair of hunting-dogs named Phobos and Deimos who are very aptly named, for they have been fed on the King’s own table-scraps and have grown enormous. The King has indulged them terribly and so they want discipline, and feel they are entitled to attack whatever strikes their fancy. Knowing how much Liselotte loves hunting and dogs, and knowing how lonely and isolated she is, the King has tried to interest her in these beasts—he wants Liselotte to think of Phobos and Deimos as her own pets and to look upon them with affection, as the King does, so that they can go hunting for large game in the east when the season comes around. So far this is nothing more than a proposal. Madame is more than a little ambivalent. Phobos and Deimos are too big and unruly to be kept at Versailles any more, and so the King prevailed upon his brother to keep them at St. Cloud, in a paddock where they can run around loose. The beasts have long since killed and eaten all of the rabbits who used to dwell in that enclosure, and now they devote all their energies to searching for weak places in the fence where they might tunnel out or jump over and go marauding in the territory beyond. Recently they broke through the southeast corner and got loose in the yard beyond and killed all the chickens. That hole has been repaired. As I write this I can see Phobos patrolling the northern fence-line, looking for a way to jump over into the neighboring property, which is owned by another nobleman who has never had good relations with my hosts. Meanwhile Deimos is working on an excavation under the eastern wall, hoping to tunnel through and run amok in the yard where Madame exercises her lap-dogs. I have no idea which of them will succeed first.

  Now I must lay down my pen, for some months ago I promised Madame that I would one day give her a demonstration of bareback riding, Qwghlmian-style, and now the time is finally at hand. I hope that my little description of life at St. Cloud has not struck you as overly vulgar, but since you, like any sophisticated man, are a student of the human condition, I thought you might be fascinated to learn what peasant-like noise and rancor prevail behind the supremely elegant façade of St. Cloud.

  Eliza, Countess de la Zeur

  Rossignol to Louis XIV Continued

  NOVEMBER 1688

  Your majesty will already have perceived that Phobos and Deimos are metaphors for the armed might of France; their chicken-killing escapade is the recent campaign in which your majesty brought the rebellious Protestants of Savoy to heel; and the question of where they might attack next, a way of saying that the Countess could not guess whether your majesty intended to strike north into the Dutch Republic or east into the Palatinate. Just as obviously, these sentences were written as much for William of Orange—whose servants would read the letter before it reached d’Avaux—as for the recipient.

  Perhaps less transparent is the reference to bareback riding. I would have assumed it signified some erotic practice, except that the Countess is never so vulgar in her letters. In time I came to understand that it was meant literally. As hard as it might be for your majesty to believe, I have it on the authority of several of Monsieur’s friends that Madame and the Countess de la Zeur did indeed go riding that day, and moreover that the latter requested that no saddle be placed on her horse. They rode off into the park thus, esc
orted by two of Madame’s young male cousins from Hanover. But when they returned, the Countess’s horse was bare, not only of saddle, but of rider, too; for, as the story went, she had fallen off after the horse had been startled, and suffered an injury that made it impossible for her to ride back. This had occurred near the banks of the river. Fortunately they had been able to summon a passing boat, which had taken the injured Countess upriver to a nearby convent that is generously supported by Madame. There, or so the story went, the Countess would be tended to by the nuns until her bones had mended.

  Needless to say, no one but the smallest child would believe such a story; everyone assumed the obvious, which is that the Countess had become pregnant and that her period of recuperation in the nunnery was to last only long enough for her to arrange an abortion, or to deliver the baby. I myself gave it no further thought until I received a communication from d’Avaux several weeks later. This was, of course, encyphered. I enclose the plaintext, shorn of pleasantries, formalities, and other impedimenta.

  French Embassy, the Hague

  17 SEPTEMBER 1688

  From Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux

  French Embassy, the Hague

  To Monsieur Bonaventure Rossignol

  Château Juvisy, France

  Monsieur Rossignol,

  You and I have had occasion to speak of the Countess de la Zeur. I have known for some time that her true allegiance lay with the Prince of Orange. Until today she has been at pains to conceal this. Now she has at last run her true colors up the mast. Everyone believes she is in a nunnery near St. Cloud having a baby. But today, below the very battlements of the Binnenhof, she disembarked from a canal-boat that had just come down from Nijmegen. Most of the heretics who came pouring out of it had originated from much farther upstream, for they are people of the Palatinate who, knowing that an invasion was imminent, have lately fled from that place as rats are said to do from a house in the moments before an earthquake. To give you an idea of their quality, among them were at least two Princesses (Eleanor of Saxe-Eisenach and her daughter Wilhelmina Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach), as well as any number of other persons of rank; though as much could never have been guessed from their degraded and bedraggled appearance. Consequently the Countess de le Zeur—who was even more dishevelled than most—attracted less notice than is her wont. But I know that she was there, for my sources in the Binnenhof inform me that the Prince of Orange ordered a suite to be made available to her, for a stay of indefinite duration. Previously she has been coy about her dealings with the said Prince; today she lives in his house.