Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  This text is so pithy and fragmentary as to be nearly unreadable, and makes use of many curious word substitutions—“gun” written as “England stick” and so on. Much of its bulk consists of tedious lists of names, regiments, places, et cetera, which are of course staples of espionage, but of little interest now that the war has begun and everything become fluid. Some of it, however, is personal narrative that she apparently set down in crewel when she was bored. This material solves the riddle of how she got from St. Cloud to Nijmegen. I have taken the liberty of translating it into a more elevated style and redacting it into a coherent, if episodic narrative, which is copied out below for your majesty’s pleasure. From place to place I have inserted a note supplying additional information about the Countess’s activities which I have gleaned from other sources in the meantime. At the end, I have attached a postscript as well as a note from d’Avaux.

  If I had to read romances for long stretches at a time, I should find them tiresome; but I only read three or four pages in the mornings and evenings when I sit (by your leave) on my close-stool, and then it is neither fatiguing nor dull.

  —LISELOTTE IN A LETTER TO SOPHIE, 1 MAY 1704

  JOURNAL ENTRY 17 AUGUST 1688

  Dear reader,

  There is no way for me to guess whether this scrap of linen will, on purpose or through some calamity, be destroyed; or be made into a cushion; or, by some turn of events, fall under the scrutiny of some clever person and be decyphered, years or centuries from now. Though the fabric is new, clean, and dry as I sew these words into it, I cannot but expect that by the time anyone reads them, it will have become streaked with rain or tears, mottled and mildewed from age and damp, perhaps stained with smoke or blood. In any event I congratulate you, whoever you may be and in whatever era you may live, for having been clever enough to read this.

  Some would argue that a spy should not keep a written account of her actions lest it fall into the wrong hands. I would answer that it is my duty to find out detailed information, and supply it to my lord, and if I do not learn more than I can recite from memory, then I have not been very industrious.

  On 16 August 1688, I met Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, duchesse d’Orleans, who is known to the French Court as Madame or La Palatine, and to her loved ones in Germany as the Knight of the Rustling Leaves, at the gate of a stable on her estate at St. Cloud on the Seine, just downstream of Paris. She ordered her favorite hunting-horse brought out and saddled, while I went from stall to stall and selected a mount that would be suitable for riding bareback; that being the outward purpose of the expedition. Together we rode off into the woods that line the bank of the Seine for some miles in the neighborhood of the château. We were accompanied by two young men from Hanover. Liselotte maintains close relations with her family in that part of the world, and from time to time some nephew or cousin will be sent out to join her household for a time, and be “finished” in the society of Versailles. The personal stories of these boys are not devoid of interest, but, reader, they do not pertain to my narration, and so I will tell you only that they were German Protestant heterosexuals, which meant that they could be trusted within the environment of St. Cloud, if only because they were utterly isolated.

  In a quiet backwater of the Seine, shielded from view by overhanging trees, a small flat-bottomed boat was waiting. I climbed aboard and burrowed under a tangle of fishing-nets. The boatman shoved off and poled the craft out into the main stream of the river, where we shortly made rendezvous with a larger vessel making its way upstream. I have been on it ever since. We have already passed up through the middle of Paris, keeping to the north side of the Île de la Cité. Just outside the city, at the confluence of the rivers Seine and Marne, we took the left fork, and began to travel up the latter.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 20 AUGUST 1688

  For several days we have been working our languid way up the Marne. Yesterday we passed through Meaux, and [as I believed] left it many miles behind us, but today we came again close enough to hear its church-bells. This is because of the preposterous looping of the river, which turns in on itself like the arguments of Father Édouard de Gex. This vessel is what they call a chaland, a long, narrow, cheaply made box with but a single square sail that is hoisted whenever the wind happens to come from astern. But most of the time the mast is used only as a hitching-place for tow-ropes by which the chaland is pulled against the current by animals on the banks.

  My captain and protector is Monsieur LeBrun, who must live in mortal terror of Madame, for whenever I venture near the gunwale or do anything else the least bit dangerous he begins to sweat, and holds his head in his hands as if it were in danger of falling off. Mostly I sit on a keg of salt near the stern and watch France go by, and observe traffic on the river. I wear the clothes of a boy and keep my hair under my hat, which is sufficient to hide my sex from men on other boats and on the riverbank. If anyone hails me, I smile and say nothing, and after a few moments they falter and take me for an imbecile, perhaps a son of M. LeBrun who has been hit on the head. The lack of activity suits me, for I have been menstruating most of the time I’ve been on the chaland, and am in fact sitting on a pile of rags.

  It is obvious that this countryside produces abundant fodder. In a few weeks’ time the barley will be ripe and then it will be easy to march an army through here. If an invasion of the Palatinate is being planned, the armies will come from the north [for they are stationed along the Dutch border] and the food will come from here; so there is nothing for a spy to look for, except, perhaps, shipments of certain military stocks. The armies would carry many of their own supplies with them, but it would not be unreasonable to expect that certain items, such as gunpowder, and especially lead, might be shipped up the river from arsenals in the vicinity of Paris. For to move a ton of lead in wagons requires teams of oxen, and many more wagon-loads of fodder, but to move the same cargo in the bilge of a chaland is easy. So I peer at the chalands making their way upriver and wonder what is stored down in their holds. To outward appearances they are all carrying the same sort of cargo as the chaland of M. LeBrun, viz. salted fish, salt, wine, apples, and other goods that originated closer to where the Seine empties into the sea.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 25 AUGUST 1688

  Sitting still day after day has its advantages. I am trying to view my surroundings through the eye of a Natural Philosopher. A few days ago I was gazing at another chaland making its way up-stream about a quarter of a mile ahead of us. One of the boatmen needed to reach a lashing on the mast that was too high for him. So he gripped the rim of a large barrel that was standing upright on the deck, tipped it back towards himself, and rolled it over to where he wanted it, then climbed up onto its end. From the way he managed this huge object and from the sound that it made under his feet, I could tell that it must be empty. Nothing terribly unusual in and of itself, since empty barrels are commonly shipped from place to place. But it made me wonder whether there was any outward sign by which I could distinguish between a chaland loaded as M. LeBrun’s is, and one that had a few tons of musket-balls in the bilge with empty barrels above to disguise the true nature of its cargo from spies?

  Even from a distance it is possible to observe the sideways rocking of one of these chalands by watching the top of its mast-----for being long, the mast magnifies the small movements of the hull, and being high, it can be seen from far off.

  I borrowed a pair of wooden shoes from M. LeBrun and set both of them afloat in the stagnant water that has accumulated in the bilge. Into one of these, I placed an iron bar, which rested directly upon the sole of the shoe. Into the other, I packed an equal weight of salt, which had spilled out of a fractured barrel. Though the weights of the shoes’ cargoes were equal, the distributions of those weights were not, for the salt was evenly distributed through the whole volume of the shoe, whereas the iron bar was concentrated in its “bilge.” When I set the two shoes to rocking, I could easily observe that the one laden with iron rocked with a slowe
r, more ponderous motion, because all of its weight was far from the axis of the movement.

  After re-uniting M. LeBrun with his shoes I returned to my position on the deck of the chaland, this time carrying a watch that had been given to me by Monsieur Huygens. First I timed one hundred rockings of the chaland I was on, and then I began to make the same observation of other chalands on the river. Most of them rocked at approximately the same frequency as the one of M. LeBrun. But I noticed one or two that rocked very slowly. Naturally I then began to scrutinize these chalands more carefully, whensoever they came into view, and familiarized myself with their general appearance and their crews. Somewhat to my disappointment, the first one turned out to be laden with quarried stones. Of course, no effort had been made to conceal the nature of its cargo. But later I saw one that had been filled up with barrels.

  M. LeBrun really does think I am an imbecile now, but it is of no concern as I shall not be with him for very much longer.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 28 AUGUST 1688

  I have now passed all the way across Champagne and arrived at St.-Dizier, where the Marne comes very near the frontier of Lorraine and then turns southwards. I need to go east and north, so here is where I disembark. The journey has been slow, but I have seen things I would have overlooked if it had been more stimulating, and to sit in the sun on a slow boat in quiet country has hardly been a bad thing. No matter how strongly I hold to my convictions, I feel my resolve weakening after a few weeks at Court. For the people there are so wealthy, powerful, attractive, and cocksure that after a while it is impossible not to feel their influence. At first it induces a deviation too subtle to detect, but eventually one falls into orbit around the Sun King.

  The territory I have passed through is flat, and unlike western France, it is open, rather than being divided up into hedgerows and fences. Even without a map one can sense that a vast realm lies beyond to the north and east. The term “fat of the land” is almost literal here, for the grain-fields are ripening before my eyes, like heavy cream rising up out of the very soil. As one born in a cold stony place, I think it looks like Paradise. But if I view it through the eyes of a man, a man of power, I see that it demands to be invaded. It is spread thick with the fodder and fuel of war, and war is bound to come across it in one direction or the other; so best have it go away from you at a time of your choosing than wait for it to darken the horizon and come sweeping towards you. Anyone can see that France will ever be invaded across these fields until she extends her border to the natural barrier of the Rhine. No border embedded in such a landscape will endure.

  Fortune has presented Louis with a choice: he can try to maintain his influence over England, which is a very uncertain endeavour and does not really add to the security of France, or he can march on the Rhine, take the Palatinate, and secure France against Germany forever. It seems obvious that this is the wiser course. But as a spy it is not my charge to advise Kings how they ought to rule, but to observe how they do.

  St.-Dizier, where I am about to disembark, is a river-port of modest size, with some very ancient churches and Roman ruins. The dark forest Argonne rises up behind it, and somewhere through those woods runs the border separating France from Lorraine. A few leagues farther to the east lies the vale of the river Meuse, which runs north into the Spanish Netherlands, and then becomes convolved with the shifting frontiers that separate Spanish, Dutch, and German states.

  Another ten leagues east of the Meuse lies the city of Nancy, which is on the river Moselle. That river likewise flows north, but it sweeps eastwards after skirting the Duchy of Luxembourg, and empties into the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. Or at least that is what I recollect from gazing at the maps in the library at St. Cloud. I did not think it politic to take any of them with me!

  Continuing east beyond Nancy toward the Rhine, then, the maps depicted twenty or thirty leagues of jumbled and confused territory: an archi pelago of small isolated counties and bishoprics, crumbs of land that belonged to the Holy Roman Empire until the Thirty Years’ War. Eventually one reaches Strasbourg, which is on the Rhine. Louis XIV seized it some years ago. In some sense this event created me, for the plague and chaos of Strasbourg drew Jack there, and later the prospects of a fine barley-harvest and its inevitable result-----war-----drew him to Vienna where he met me. I wonder if I will complete the circle by journeying as far as Strasbourg now. If so, I shall complete another circle at the same time, for it was from that city that Liselotte crossed into France seventeen years ago to marry Monsieur, never to return to her homeland.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 30 AUGUST 1688

  At St.-Dizier I changed back into the clothes of a gentlewoman and lodged at a convent. It is one of those convents where women of quality go to live out their lives after they’ve failed, or declined, to get married. In its ambience it is closer to a bordello than a nunnery. Many of the inmates are not even thirty years old, and never so lusty; when they cannot sneak men inside, they sneak out, and when they cannot sneak out, they practice on one another. Liselotte knew some of these girls when they were at Versailles and has continued to correspond with them. She sent letters ahead telling them that I was a sort of shirt-tail relative of hers, a member of her household, and that I was traveling to the Palatinate to pick up certain art-objects and family curios that Liselotte was supposed to have inherited upon the death of her brother, but which had been the subject of lengthy haggling and disputation with her half-siblings. Since it is inconceivable for a woman to undertake such a journey herself, I was to bide at the convent in St.-Dizier until my escort arrived: some minor nobleman of the Palatinate who would journey to this place with horses and a carriage to collect me, then convey me northeastwards across Lorraine, and the incomprehensible tangle of borders east of it, to Heidelberg. My identity and mission are false, but the escort is real-----for needless to say, the people of the Palatinate are as eager to know their fate as their captive Queen, Liselotte.

  As of this writing my escort has not arrived, and no word has been heard of him. I am anxious that they have been detained or even killed, but for now there is nothing for me to do but go to Mass in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, and carouse with the nuns in the night-time.

  I was making polite conversation with the Mother Superior, a lovely woman of about threescore who turns a blind eye to the young women’s comings and goings. She mentioned in passing that there are iron works nearby, and this caused me to doubt my own judgment concerning those slow-rolling chalands. Perhaps they were only carrying iron, and not lead. But later I went out on the town with some of the younger girls, and we passed within view of the river-front, where a chaland was being unloaded. Barrels were being rolled off and stacked along the quay, and heavy ox-carts were standing by waiting. I asked these girls if this was typical, but they affect complete ignorance of practical matters and were of no use at all.

  Later I claimed I was tired, and went to my allotted cell as if to sleep. But instead I changed into my boy-clothes and sneaked out of the convent using one of the well-worn escape-routes used by nuns going to trysts in the town. This time I was able to get much closer to the quay, and to observe the chaland from between two of the barrels that had been taken from it earlier. And indeed I saw small but massive objects being lifted up out of its bilge and loaded onto those ox-carts. Overseeing the work was a man whose face I could not see, but of whom much could be guessed from his clothing. About his boots were certain nuances that I had begun to notice in the boots of Monsieur’s lovers shortly before my departure from St. Cloud. His breeches-----

  No. By the time anyone reads these words, fashions will have changed, and so it would be a waste of time for me to enumerate the details-----suffice it to say that everything he wore had to have been sewn in Paris within the last month.

  My observations were cut short by the clumsiness of a few Vagabonds who had crept down to the quay hoping to pilfer something. One of them leaned against a barrel, assuming it was full and would support his weight, but b
eing empty it tilted away from him and then, when he sprang back, came down with a hollow boom. Instantly the courtier whipped out his sword and pointed it at me, for he had spied me peering at him between barrels, and several men came running towards me. The Vagabonds took off at a run and I followed them, reasoning that they would know better than I how to disappear into this town. And indeed by vaulting over certain walls and crawling down certain gutters they very nearly disappeared from me, who was but a few paces behind them.

  Eventually I followed them as far as a church-yard, where they had set up a little squat in a tangle of vines growing up the side of an ancient mausoleum. They made no effort either to welcome me or to chase me away, and so I hunkered down in the darkness a few paces off, and listened to them mutter. Much of their zargon was incomprehensible, but I could discern that there were four of them. Three seemed to be making excuses, as if resigned to whatever fate awaited them. But the fourth was frustrated, he had the energy to be critical of the others, and to desire some improvement in their situation. When this one got up and stepped aside for a piss, I rose and drew a little closer to him and said, “Meet me alone at the corner of the convent where the ivy grows,” and then I darted away, not knowing whether he might try to seize me.

  An hour later I was able to observe him from the parapet of the convent. I threw him a coin and told him that he would receive ten more of the same if he would follow the ox-carts, observe their movements, and report back to me in three days. He receded into the darkness without saying a word.

  The next morning the Mother Superior delivered a letter to one of the girls, explaining that it had been left at the gate the night before. The recipient took one look at the seal and exclaimed, “Oh, it is from my dear cousin!” She opened it with a jerk and read it then and there, pronouncing half the words aloud, as she was barely literate. The import seemed to be that her cousin had passed through St.-Dizier the night before but very much regretted he’d not been able to stop in for a visit, as his errand was very pressing; however, he expected to be in the area for some time, and hoped that he would have the opportunity to see her soon.