Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  That conversation occurred the day before yesterday, and we have done nothing since then but toil eastwards through the woods. It has had the air of a funeral procession, for as soon as Dr. von Pfung heard the name of Louvois, all doubt vanished that the Palatinate was to be invaded. But the officer who uttered that name might have been guessing, or passing on a baseless rumor, or telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. We must see this thing through and view incontrovertible evidence with our own eyes.

  As I write this we are descending another long tedious grade into what must be the valley of the Meuse. From here that river flows up through the Ardennes and across the Spanish Netherlands into the territory along the Dutch border where the best regiments of the French Army have long been encamped to menace William’s flank and pin down the Dutch Army.

  CRYPTANALYST’S NOTE: At this point the account becomes badly disjointed. The countess blundered into the midst of your majesty’s army and had an adventure, which she did not have the leisure to write down. Later, as she was fleeing north in the direction of Nijmegen, she made a few cryptic notes as to what had happened. These are intermingled with more lengthy espionage reports listing the regiments and officers she observed moving south to join your majesty’s forces along the Rhine. I have been able to reconstruct the Countess’s actions, and thereby to make some sense of her notes, by interviewing several of the persons who saw her in the French camp. The narrative that follows is incomparably more discursive than what appears in her needlework but I believe that it is accurate, and I hope that it will be more informative, and therefore more pleasing, to your majesty than the original. At the same time, I have removed all of the Countess’s tedious lists of battalions, et cetera.

  —B.R.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 7 SEPTEMBER 1688

  I am riding north post-haste and can only jot down a few words during pauses to change horses. The carriage is lost. The driver and Dr. von Pfung are dead. I am traveling with the two cavalrymen from Heidelberg. As I write these words we are in a village beside the Meuse, near Verdun I believe. Now I’m told we must ride again.

  It is later, and I think we are near where France, the Duchy of Luxembourg, and the Spanish Netherlands come together. We have had to strike up away from the Meuse and into the forest. Between here and Liège, which lies some hundred miles to the north, the river does not run in a direct line, but makes a lengthy excursion to westward, running for much of the way through French lands. This makes it perfectly suited to serve as a conduit for French military traffic from the north, but bad for us. Instead we shall attempt to traverse the Ardennes [as these woods are called] northwards.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 8 SEPTEMBER 1688

  Catching our breath and rubbing our saddle-sores along a riverbank while Hans looks for a ford. Will try to explain as I go along.

  When we at last reached the Meuse, three days ago [had to count on my fingers, as it seems nearer three weeks!], we immediately saw the evidence we had been looking for. Thousands of ancient trees felled, valley full of smoke, landing-stages improvised on the riverbank. Vanguards of the regiments from the Dutch front had come upriver, made rendezvous with officers sent out from Versailles, and begun preparations to receive the regiments themselves.

  For many hours Dr. von Pfung did not say a word. When he did, only slurred meaningless sounds came from his mouth, and I understood that he had suffered a stroke.

  I asked him if he wanted to turn back and he only shook his head no, pointed to me, and then pointed north.

  Everything had fallen apart. Until that moment I had presumed that we were operating according to some coherent plan of Dr. von Pfung’s, but now in retrospect I understood that we had been plunging into danger heedlessly, like a man carried into a battlefield by a wild horse. I could not think at all for a while. I am ashamed to report that because of this failure we blundered into the camp of a cavalry regiment. A captain rapped on the door of the carriage and demanded that we explain ourselves.

  It was already obvious to them that most of our party were German-speaking, and it would not take long for them to understand that Dr. von Pfung and the others were of the Palatinate; this would mark us as enemy spies and lead to the worst imaginable consequences.

  During my long journey up the Marne on the chaland I had had plenty of time to imagine bad outcomes, and had concocted and rehearsed several false stories to tell my captors in the event I should be caught spying. But looking into the face of that captain, I was no more able to tell tales than the stricken Dr. von Pfung. The problem lay in that this operation was on a much vaster scale than either Liselotte or I had imagined, and many more people of Court rank were involved; for all I knew, some Count or Marquis might be nearby, with whom I had dined or danced at Versailles, and who would recognize me the moment I got out of the carriage. To adopt some made-up name and elaborate some tale would amount to confessing that I was a spy.

  So I told the truth. “Do not look to this man to make introductions, for he has suffered a stroke, and lost the faculty of speech,” I said to the astonished captain. “I am Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, and I am here in the service of Elisabeth Charlotte, the Duchess of Orleans and rightful inheritor of the Palatinate. It is in her name you are about to invade that land. It is she whom my escorts serve, for they are Court officials of Heidelberg. And it is she who has sent me here, as her personal representative, to look into your operations and ensure that the right thing is done.”

  This bit of nonsense, “that the right thing is done,” was a list of dead words I tacked on to the end of the sentence because I did not know what to say, and was losing my nerve. For even when I stood beneath the Emperor’s palace in Vienna, waiting to feel the blade of a Janissary’s scimitar biting into my neck, I had not felt so uncertain as I did there. But I think the very vagueness of my words had a great effect on this captain, for he stepped back from the window and bowed deeply, and proclaimed that he would send word of my arrival to his superiors without delay.

  Hans has come back saying he has found a place where we may attempt to ford this river and so I will only narrate that in due course, word of our arrival was passed up the chain of command until it reached a man whose rank at Court was high enough that he could entertain me without violating any rules of precedence. That man turned out to be Étienne d’Arcachon.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 10 SEPTEMBER 1688

  They think we are somewhere around Bastogne. Have been unable to do needlework for some while as our day-to-day affairs have pressed in on us sorely. The Ardennes Forest is crowded with Vagabonds and highwaymen [and, some say, witches and goblins] at the best of times. To these have now been added a large number of deserters from the French regiments that are being moved southwards. They jump off the slow-moving barges and wade to the bank and infiltrate the forest. We have had to move carefully and to post watches all night long. I am making these notes on my watch. To sit by a crackling fire would be folly and so I am perched up in the fork of a tree, wrapped up in blankets, sewing by moonlight.

  Men who have weathered terrible trials are wont to have dull and useless children to demonstrate their power, as rich Arabs grow their fingernails long. So with the duc d’Arcachon and his only legitimate son, Étienne. The Duke survived the bad dream of the Fronde Rebellion and built a navy for the King. Étienne has chosen a career in the Army; this is his notion of youthful rebellion.

  It is said of some men that “he would cut off his right arm before doing thus-and-such.” Of Étienne, it used to be said that he would sacrifice a limb before violating the smallest rule of etiquette. But now people say, rather, that he actually did cut off his right arm out of politeness, for several years ago something happened at a party to that general effect-----accounts vary, for I get the impression it was in some way disgraceful to his family. At any rate the details are unknown to me, but the tale rings true. He has become a great patron of woodcarvers and silversmiths, whom he pays to make artificial hands for him. Some of them are shockingly life
like. The hand he extended to help me down out of the carriage was carved of ivory with fingernails fashioned from mother-of-pearl. When we dined on roast grouse in his quarters, he had switched to a hand of carven ebony, permanently gripping a serrated knife, which he used to cut his meat, though it looked as if it would have made an excellent weapon, too! And after dinner, when he undertook to seduce me, he wore a special hand carved out of jade, with an extremely oversized middle finger. That digit was, in fact, a perfect reproduction of a man’s erect phallus. As such it was nothing I had not already seen in various private “art” collections in and around Versailles, for lords, and even ladies, love to have such things in their private chambers, as proof of their sophistication, and many of their rooms are veritable Shrines to the god Priapus. But I was caught unawares by a hidden feature of this hand: it must have been hollow, and stuffed with clockwork, for when Étienne d’Arcachon tripped a hidden lever, it suddenly came alive, and began to hum and buzz like a hornet in a bottle. Inside, it seemed, was a coil spring that had been tightly wound in advance.

  I need hardly tell you, reader, that events of the past few days had left me rather tightly wound myself, and I can assure you that the tension was gone from my body long before it was gone from the spring.

  You may despise me for having reveled in fleshly pleasure while Dr. von Pfung was laid out with a stroke, but to have been pent up in a stifling carriage with a dying man for all that time had left me with a ravening to partake of life. I closed my eyes at the moment of climax and fell back onto the bed, exhausting my lungs in a long cry, and feeling all tension drain from my body. Étienne executed some deft maneuver of which I was scarcely aware. When I opened my eyes, I found that the jade phallus had been withdrawn and replaced by a real one, that of Étienne d’Arcachon. Again, you may well doubt my judgment in allowing myself to be taken in this way. That is your prerogative. Indeed, to marry such a man would be a grievous error. But in looking for a lover, one could do worse than a man who is clean, extremely polite, and has a madly vibrating jade phallus for a right forefinger. The warmth of his trunk felt good against my thighs; it did not occur to me to object; before I could really consider my situation, I realized that he was already climaxing inside of me.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 12 SEPTEMBER 1688

  Still in the damnable Ardennes, creeping northwards, pausing from time to time to observe the movements of the French battalions. These woods cannot possibly go on much farther. At least we have grown accustomed to the territory now, and know how to make our way. But at times we seem to move no faster than mice chewing their way through wood.

  When I woke up in the bed of Étienne d’Arcachon the next morning, he had, in typical fashion, already left; but somewhat less typically, he had written me a love-poem and left it on the bedside table.

  Some ladies boast of ancient pedigrees

  And prate about their ancestors a lot

  But cankers flourish on old family trees

  Whose mossy trunks do oft conceal rot.

  My lady’s blood runs pure as mountain streams

  So I don’t care if her high rank was bought

  Her beauty lends fresh vigor to my dreams

  Of children free of blemish and of blot.

  His quarters was a little château on the east bank of the Meuse. Out the window I could see Belgian river-boats-----variously leased, borrowed, bought, or commandeered-----coming upstream, their decks crowded with French soldiers. I dressed and went downstairs to find Dr. von Pfung’s carriage-driver waiting for me.

  The night before, I had explained my friend’s plight to Étienne d’Arcachon, who had made arrangements for his own personal physician to administer treatment. Having personally witnessed the violence inflicted upon no less a personage than the King of France himself by the Royal Physician, I had assented to this with some ambivalence. Indeed, Dr. von Pfung’s driver now informed me that the poor man had been bled twice during the night and was now very weak. He had signalled his desire to return to the Palatinate without delay, in hopes that he might look upon Heidelberg Castle one last time before he went to his long home.

  The driver and I both understood that this would be impossible. According to the tale I had told my host, we were there as forward observers representing Liselotte. If that were true, we should either stay with the main body, or retire westwards towards St. Cloud-----never run ahead of the invasion force. Yet Dr. von Pfung wanted to do just that, whereas I needed to strike out for the north and inform the Prince of Orange that his southern flank was soon to be free of French troops. And so we devised a plan, which was that our little group would leave that day on the pretext of taking Dr. von Pfung back to the west, but that when conditions were right, the carriage would break eastwards towards Heidelberg while I would go north accompanied by the two cavalrymen [who have imposing names and titles but whom I now call by their Christian names, Hans and Joachim]. When eyebrows were raised about this later, as seemed more than likely, I would claim that the others had turned out to be Protestant spies, working for William of Orange, and that I had been borne along against my will.

  The plan unfolded correctly at first; we crossed the Meuse again as if going back into the west, but then began to make our way northwards up the bank, fighting against an increasing stream of south-bound military traffic. For since the boats were coming up against the river’s current, most of them were drawn by teams of animals on the banks. After we had traveled north for about half a day we came to a ferry, where we resolved to part ways. I went into the carriage and kissed Dr. von Pfung and said some words to him-----though all words, especially ones improvised in haste, seemed inadequate, and the doctor managed to say more with his eyes and his one good hand than I did with my entire faculties. I changed once again into a man’s clothes, hoping to pass myself off as a page to Hans and Joachim, and mounted a pony we’d borrowed from the stables of Étienne d’Arcachon. After some haggling with the ferryman-----who was loath to venture across through the regimental traffic-----the carriage was driven onto the ferry, its wheels were chocked, the horses hobbled, and the short voyage across the Meuse began.

  They had almost reached the eastern bank when they were hailed by a French officer on one of the south-bound vessels. He had perceived, through his spyglass, Dr. von Pfung’s coat of arms painted on the door of the carriage, and recognized him as coming from the Palatinate.

  Now, the driver had a letter from Étienne d’Arcachon giving him permission to travel west-----but he had now been observed crossing the Meuse eastwards. His only hope was therefore to make a run for it. That is what he attempted to do when the ferry reached the east bank. The only available road ran parallel to the bank for some distance before turning away from the river into a village. He therefore had to drive along in full view of all the boats crowding the river, whose decks were thronged with French musketeers. Some of the boats were armed with swivel-guns as well. By this time a hue and cry had gone up among the boats, and there was plenty of time for them to load their guns as the carriage disembarked from the ferry. The officer had traded his spyglass for a saber, which he raised high, then brought down as a signal. Instantly, the French boats were completely obscured in clouds of powder-smoke. The valley of the Meuse was filled with flocks of birds that erupted from the trees, startled by the sound of the guns. The carriage was reduced to splinters, the horses torn apart, and the fates of the brave driver and his stricken passenger perfectly obvious.

  I could have tarried on the spot and wept for a long time, but on this bank were several locals who had seen us arrive in the company of the carriage, and it would not be long before one of them sold that intelligence to the Frenchmen on the river. So we struck out for the north, beginning the journey that continues even as I write these words.

  JOURNAL ENTRY 13 SEPTEMBER 1688

  The peasants around here say that the lord of the manor is a Bishop. This gives me hope that we are now in the Bishopric of Liège, not terribly far from one of the ou
tlying tendrils of the Dutch Republic. Hans and Joachim have been having a long discussion in German, which I understand but meagerly. One thinks he ought to strike out alone to the East, go to the Rhine, and then double back to the South and warn the Palatinate. The other fears it is too late; there is nothing they can do now for their homeland; it is better to seek revenge by throwing all of their energies behind the Protestant Defender.

  Later. The dispute was resolved as follows: we shall ride north past French lines to Maestricht and take passage on a canal-boat down the river to Nijmegen, where the Meuse and the Rhine almost kiss each other. That is some hundred miles north of here, yet it may be a quicker way to reach the Rhine than to cut east cross-country through God knows what perils and complications. In Nijmegen, Hans and Joachim can get the latest news from passengers and boatmen who have lately come down the Rhine from Heidelberg and Mannheim.

  It did not take long, once we left our camp near Liège, to pass out of the zone of French military control. We rode over an area of torn-up ground that, until a few days ago, was the permanent camp of a French regiment. Ahead of us are a few French companies left along the border as a façade. They stop and interrogate travelers trying to come in, but ignore those like us who are only trying to pass out towards Maestricht.