Quicksilver

by Neal Stephenson

  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.

  Étienne d’Arcachon wanted healthy children. He knew that his line had been ruined. He needed a wife of pure blood. I had been made a Countess; but everyone knew that my pedigree was fake and that I was really a commoner. Étienne did not care about about that—he had nobility enough in his family to make him a Duke thrice over. And he did not really care about me, either. He cared about one thing only: my ability to breed true, to make children who were not deformed. He, or someone acting on his behalf, was controlling Marie. And Marie was now effectively controlling me.

  That explained Marie’s unseemly curiosity about what Dr. Alkmaar had felt when he had put his fingers into the baby’s mouth. But what other tasks might Marie have been given?

  The baby trying to escape from my womb, healthy as he might be, could never be anything other than Étienne’s bastard: a trivial embarrassment to him (for many men had bastards) but a gross one to me.

  I had bred true, and proved my ability to make healthy Arcachon babies. When Étienne heard this news, he would want to marry me, so that I could make other babies who were not bastards. But what did it all portend for today’s baby, the inconvenient and embarrassing bastard? Would he be sent to an orphanage? Raised by a cadet branch of the Arcachon family? Or—and forgive me for raising this terrible image, but this is the way my mind was working—had Marie been ordered to make certain that the child was stillborn?

  I looked around the room between contractions and thought of the possibilities. I had to get away from these people and deliver my baby among friends. A day of labor had left me too weak to get up, so I could hardly get up and run away from them.

  But perhaps I could rely upon the strength of some, and the weakness of others. I have already mentioned that Brigitte was built like a stallion. And I could tell she was good. Sometimes I am not the best judge of character, it is true, but when you are in labor, confined with certain people for what seems like a week, you come to know them very well.

  “Brigitte,” I said, “it would do my heart good if you would get up and find Princess Eleanor.”

  Brigitte squeezed my sweaty hand and smiled, but Marie spoke first: “Dr. Alkmaar has strictly forbidden visitors!”

  “Is Eleanor far away?” I asked.

  “Just at the other end of the gallery,” Brigitte said.

  “Then go there quickly and tell her I shall have a healthy baby boy very soon.”

  “That is by no means assured yet,” Marie pointed out, as Brigitte stormed out of the room.

  Marie and the midwife immediately went into the corner, turned their backs to me, and began to whisper. I had not anticipated this, but it suited my purposes. I reached over to the nightstand and wrenched the candle out of its holder. The nightstand had a lace tablecloth draped over it. When I held the flame of the candle beneath its fringe, it caught fire like gunpowder. By the time Marie and the midwife had turned around to see what was happening, the flames had already spread to the fringe of the canopy over my bed.

  This is what I meant when I said I must rely on the weakness of some, for as soon as Marie and the midwife perceived this, it was a sort of wrestling-match between the two of them to see which would be out the door first. They did not even bother to cry “Fire!” on their way out of the building. This was done by a steward who had been walking up the gallery with a basin of hot water. When he saw the smoke boiling out of the open door, he cried out, alerting the whole palace, and ran into the room. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to keep the basin of water steady, and he flung its whole contents at the biggest patch of flames that caught his eye, which was on the canopy. This scalded me but did not really affect the most dangerous part of the fire, which had spread to the curtains.

  Mind you, I was lying on my back staring up through the tattered and flaming canopy, watching a sort of thunder-storm of smoke-clouds clashing and gathering against the ceiling. Quickly it progressed downwards, leaving a diminishing space of clear air between it and the floor. All I could do was wait for it to reach my mouth.

  Then suddenly Brigitte was filling the doorway. She dropped into a squat so that she could peer under the smoke and lock her eyes on mine. Did I call her stupid before? Then I withdraw the accusation, for after a few heartbeats she got a fierce look on her face, stomped forward, and gripped the end-seam of my mattress—a flat sack of feathers—with both hands. Then she kicked off her shoes, planted her bare feet against the floor, and flung herself backwards towards the door. The mattress was practically ripped out from under me—but I came with it, and shortly felt the foot of the bed sliding under my spine. My buttocks fell to the floor and my head rapped against the bed-frame, both cushioned only a little by the mattress. I felt something giving way inside my womb. But it hardly mattered now. It felt as if my whole body were coming apart like a ship dashed on rocks—each contraction another sea heaving me apart. I have a distinct memory of the stone floor sliding along inches from my eyes, boots of the staff running the other way with buckets and blankets, and—gazing forward, between my upraised knees—the huge bare feet and meaty calves of Brigitte flashing out from under her bloody skirt hem, left-right-left-right, as implacably she dragged me on the mattress down the length of the gallery to where the air was clear enough for me to see the frescoes on the ceiling. We came to a stop underneath a fresco of Minerva, who peered down at me from under the visor of her helmet, looking stern but (as I hoped) approving. Then the door gave way under Brigitte’s pounding and she dragged me straight into Eleanor’s bedchamber.

  Eleanor and Frau Heppner were sitting there drinking coffee. Princess Caroline was reading a book aloud. As you might imagine, they were all taken aback; but Frau Heppner, the midwife, took one look at me, muttered something in German, and got to her feet.

  Eleanor’s face appeared above me. “Frau Heppner says, ‘At last, the day becomes interesting!’”

  People who are especially bad, and know that they are, such as Father Édouard de Gex, may be drawn to religion because they harbor a desperate hope that it has some power to make them virtuous—to name their demons and to cast them out. But if they are as clever as he is, they can find ways to pervert their own faith and make it serve whatever bad intentions they had to begin with. Doctor, I have come to the conclusion that the true benefit of religion is not to make people virtuous, which is impossible, but to put a sort of bridle on the worst excesses of their viciousness.

  I do not know Eleanor well. Not well enough to know what vices may be lurking in her soul. She does not disdain religion (as did Jack, who might have benefited from it). Neither does she cling to it morbidly, like Father Édouard de Gex. This gives me hope that in her case religion will do what it is supposed to do, namely, stay her hand when she falls under the sway of some evil impulse. I have no choice but to believe that, for I let her take my baby. The child passed straightaway from the midwife’s hands to Eleanor’s arms, and she gathered it to her bosom as if she knew what she was doing. I did not try to fight this. I was so exhausted I could scarcely move, and afterwards I slept as if I did not care whether I ever woke up or not.

  In the plaintext version of my story of labor and delivery, Doctor, I tell the version that everyone at the Binnenhof believes, which is that because of the disgraceful cowardice of Marie and of that midwife, my baby died, and that I would have died, too, if brave Brigitte had not taken me to the room where the good German nurse, Frau Heppner, saw to it that the afterbirth was removed from my womb so that the bleeding stopped, and thereby saved my life.

  That is all nonsense. But one paragraph o
f it is true, and that is where I speak of the physical joy that comes over one’s body when the burden it has borne for nine months is finally let go—only to be replaced a few moments later by a new burden, this one of a spiritual nature. In the plaintext story it is a burden of grief over the death of my child. But in the real story—which is always more complicated—it is a burden of uncertainty, and sadness over tragedies that may never happen. I have gone back to live by myself at the house of Huygens, and the baby remains at the Binnenhof in the care of Frau Heppner and Eleanor. We have already begun to circulate the story that he is an orphan, born to a woman on a canal-boat on the Rhine as she escaped from a massacre in the Palatinate.

  It seems likely that I shall live. Then I will take up this baby and try to make my way to London, and build a life for both of us there. If I should sicken and die, Eleanor will take him. But sooner or later, whether tomorrow or twenty years from now, he and I shall be separated in some way, and he shall be out in the world somewhere, living a life known to me only imperfectly. God willing, he will outlive me.

  In a few weeks or months, there shall be a parting of ways here at the Hague. The baby and I will go west. Eleanor and Caroline will journey east and enjoy the hospitality, and take part in the schemes of, the women whom you serve.

  When, God willing, I reach London I shall write you a letter. If you receive no such letter, it means that while I was recuperating I fell victim to some larger scheme of d’Avaux. He may or may not want the baby dead. He certainly wants me at Versailles, where I shall be none the less in his power for being the unwilling wife of Étienne d’Arcachon. The next few weeks, when I am too weak to move, are the most dangerous time.

  There remain only two loose ends to clear up: one, if Étienne is the father, why is the baby flawless? And two, if my cypher has been broken, and my private writings are being read by the cabinet noir, why am I telling you all of these secrets?

  Actually there is a third loose end, of a sort, which may have been troubling you: why would I sleep with Étienne in the first place, when I had my pick of ten million horny Frenchmen?

  All three of these loose ends may be neatly tied up by a single piece of information. During my time at Versailles I got to know Bonaventure Rossignol, the King’s cryptanalyst. Rossignol, or Bon-bon as I like to call him (hello, Bon-bon!) was sent out to the Rhine front last autumn during the build-up to the invasion of the Palatinate. When I blundered in to the middle of it all, and got into trouble, Bon-bon became aware of it within a few hours, for he was reading everyone’s despatches, and came galloping—literally—to my rescue. It is difficult to tell the story right under present circumstances, and so I’ll jump to the end of it, and admit that his gallantry made my blood hot in a way I had never known before. It seems very crude and simple when I set it down thus, but at root it is a crude and simple thing, no? I attacked him. We made love several times. It was very sweet. But we had to devise a way out for me. Choices were few. The best plan we could come up with was that I seduced Étienne d’Arcachon, or rather stood by numbly in a sort of out-of-body trance while he seduced me. This I then parlayed into an escape north. I wrote it all down in a journal. When I got to the Hague, d’Avaux became aware of the existence of that journal and prevailed upon the King’s cryptanalyst to translate it—which he did, though he left out all the best parts, namely, those passages in which he himself played the romantic hero. He could not make me out to be innocent, for d’Avaux already knew too much, and too many Frenchmen had witnessed my deeds. Instead Bon-bon contrived to tell the story in such as way as to make me into the paramour of Étienne: the true-breeding woman of his, and his family’s, dreams.

  I must stop writing now. My body wants to suckle him, and when at night I hear him cry out from across the square, my breasts let down a thin trickle of milk, which I then wash away with a heavier flood of tears. If I were a man, I’d say I was unmanned. As I am a woman, I’ll say I am over-womanned. Good-bye. If when you go back to Hanover you meet a little girl named Caroline, teach her as well as you have taught Sophie and Sophie Charlotte, for I prophesy that she will put both of them in the shade. And if Caroline is accompanied by a little orphan boy, said to have been born on the Rhine, then you shall know his story, and who is his father, and what became of his mother.

  Eliza

  Bishopsgate

  OCTOBER 1689

  Thou art too narrow, wretch, to comprehend

  Even thy selfe: yea though thou wouldst but bend

  To know thy body. Have not all soules thought

  For many ages, that our body’is wrought

  Of Ayre, and Fire, and other Elements?

  And now they thinke of new ingredients,

  And one Soule thinkes one, and another way

  Another thinkes, and ’tis an even lay.

  Knowst thou but how the stone doth enter in

  The bladders cave, and never break the skinne?

  —JOHN DONNE, Of the Progresse of the Soule, The Second Anniversarie

  THE VISITOR—FIFTY-SIX YEARS old, but a good deal more vigorous than the host—feigned aloofness as he watched his bookish minions fan out among the stacks, boxes, shelves, and barrels that now constituted the personal library of Daniel Waterhouse. One of them strayed towards an open keg. His master warned him away with a barrage of clucking, harrumphing, and finger-snaps. “We must assume that anything Mr. Waterhouse has placed in a barrel, is bound for Boston!”

  But when the assistants had all found ways to make themselves busy cataloguing and appraising, he turned towards Daniel and foamed up like a bottle of champagne. “Can’t say what an immense pleasure it is to see you, old chap!”

  “Really, I do not think my countenance is all that pleasing at the moment, Mr. Pepys, but it is extraordinarily decent of you to fake it so vigorously.”

  Samuel Pepys straightened up, blinked once, and parted his lips as if to follow up on the Conversational Opportunity Daniel had just handed him. The hand trembled and crept toward the Pocket where the Stone had lurked these thirty years. But some gentlemanly instinct averted him; he’d not crash the conversation onto that particular Hazard just yet. “I’d have thought you would be in Massachusetts by now, from the things the Fellows were saying.”

  “I should have begun making my preparations immediately following the Revolution,” Daniel admitted, “but I delayed until after Jeffreys had his encounter with Mr. Jack Ketch at the Tower—by then, ’twas April, and I discovered that in order to leave London I should have to liquidate my life—which has proved much more of a bother than I had expected. Really, ’tis much more expedient simply to drop dead and let one’s mourners see to all of these tedious dispositions.” Daniel waved a hand over his book-stacks, which were dwindling rapidly as Pepys’s corps of librarian-mercenaries carried them towards their master and piled them at his feet. Pepys glanced at the cover of each and then flicked his eyes this way or that to indicate whether they should be returned, or taken away; the latter went to a hard-bitten old computer who had set himself up with a lap-desk, quill, and inkwell, and was scratching out a bill of particulars.

  Daniel’s remark on the convenience of dropping dead laid a second grievous temptation in the way of Mr. Pepys, who had to clench his fist to keep it from stabbing into the pocket. Fortunately he was distracted by an assistant who held before him a large book of engravings of diverse fishes. Pepys frowned at it for a moment. Then he recognized and rejected in the same instant, with revulsion. The R.S. had printed too many copies of it several years ago. Ever since, Fellows had been fobbing copies off on each other, trying to use them as legal tender for payment of old debts, employing them as doorstops, table-levelers, flower-presses, et cetera.

  Daniel was not normally a cruel man, but he had been laid flat by nausea for days, and could not resist tormenting Pepys yet a third time: “Thy judgment is swift and remorseless, Mr. Pepys. Each book goes to thy left hand or thy right. When a ship founders in a hurricano, and Saint Peter is sudde
nly confronted with a long queue of soggy souls, not even he could despatch ’em to their deserved places as briskly as thee.”

  “You are toying with me, Mr. Waterhouse; you have penetrated my deception, you know why I have come.”

  “Not at all. How goes it with you since the Revolution? I have heard nothing of you.”

  “I am retired, Mr. Waterhouse. Retired to the life of a gentleman scholar. My aims now are to assemble a library to rival Sir Elias Ashmole’s, and to try to fill the void that shall be left by your departure from the day-to-day affairs of the Royal Society.”

  “You must have been tempted to plunge into the new Court, the new Parliament—”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Really?”

  “To move in those circles is a bit like swimming. Swimming with rocks in one’s pockets! It demands ceaseless exertions. To let up is to die. I bequeath that sort of life to younger and more energetic strivers, like your friend the Marquis of Ravenscar. At my age, I am happy to stand on dry land.”

  “What about those rocks in your pockets?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I am giving you a cue, Mr. Pepys—the segue you have been looking for.”

  “Ah, well done!” said Pepys, and in a lunge he was by Daniel’s bedside, holding the auld Stone right up in his face.

  Daniel had never seen it quite this close before, and he noticed now that it had a pair of symmetrically placed protrusions, like little horns, where it had begun growing up into the ureters leading down from Pepys’s kidneys. This made him queasy and so he shifted his attention to Pepys’s face, which was nearly as close.

  “BEHOLD! My Death—premature, senseless, avoidable Death—mine, and yours, Daniel. But I hold mine in my hand. Yours is lodged thereabouts—do not flinch, I shall not lay hands on you—I wish only to demonstrate, Daniel, that thy Stone is only two inches or so from my hand when I hold it thus. My Stone is in my hand. A distance of only two inches! Yet for me that small interval amounts to thirty years of added life—three decades and God willing one or two more, of wenching, drinking, singing, and learning. I beg you to make the necessary arrangements, Daniel, and have that rock in your bladder moved two inches to your pocket, where it may lodge for another twenty or thirty years without giving you any trouble.”