Neal Stephenson - Baroque Cycle 1 - Quicksilver

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Neal Stephonson - QuickSilver.htm
======================
Notes:
This book was scanned by JASC
Current e-book version is UC (Uncorrected, Raw Scan).
This is an early release. Someone is proofing it, and it will shortly be
released in a much more palatable and presentable format. So, please
don’t email me, complaining that the scan sucks etc. It is in the process
of being “fixed up”.
Comments: daytonascan4911@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------
Book Information:
Genre: Historical Fiction
Author: Neal Stephonson
Name: Quicksilver
Series: Book 1 of the Baroque Cycle
Published Winter, 2003
======================
Boston Common
OCTOBER 12, 1713, 10:33:52 A.M.
Enoch rounds the corner just as the executioner raises the noose above the woman's head. The crowd on
the Common stop praying and sobbing for just as long as Jack Ketch stands there, elbows locked, for all
the world like a carpenter heaving a ridge-beam into place. The rope clutches a disk of blue New England
sky. The Puritans gaze at it and, to all appearances, think. Enoch the Red reins in his borrowed horse as it
nears the edge of the crowd, and sees that the executioner's purpose is not to let them inspect his
knotwork, but to give them all a narrow—and, to a Puritan, tantalizing—glimpse of the portal through
which they all must pass one day.
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Boston's a dollop of hills in a spoon of marshes. The road up the spoon-handle is barred by a wall, with the
usual gallows outside it, and victims, or parts of them, strung up or nailed to the city gates. Enoch has just
come that way, and reckoned he had seen the last of such things—that thenceforth it would all be churches
and taverns. But the dead men outside the gate were common robbers, killed for earthly crimes. What is
happening now on the Common is of a more Sacramental nature.
The noose lies on the woman's gray head like a crown. The executioner pushes it down. Her head forces it
open like an infant's dilating the birth canal. When it finds the widest part it drops suddenly onto her
shoulders. Her knees pimple the front of her apron and her skirts telescope into the platform as she makes
to collapse. The executioner hugs her with one arm, like a dancing-master, to keep her upright, and adjusts
the knot while an official reads the death warrant. This is as bland as a lease. The crowd scratches and
shuffles. There are none of the diversions of a London hanging: no catcalls, jugglers, or pickpockets.
Down at the other end of the Common, a squadron of lobsterbacks drills and marches round the base of a
hummock with a stone powder-house planted in its top.
An Irish sergeant bellows—bored but indignant—in a voice that carries forever on the wind, like the smell
of smoke.
He's not come to watch witch-hangings, but now that Enoch's blundered into one it would be bad form to
leave. There is a drum-roll, and then a sudden awkward silence. He judges it very far from the worst
hanging he's ever seen—no kicking or writhing, no breaking of ropes or unraveling of knots—all in all, an
unusually competent piece of work.
He hadn't really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things—hangings included
—with a blunt, blank efficiency that's admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish,
they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other
people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is
because most of them came over on ships.
As they are cutting the limp witch down, a gust tumbles over the Common from the North. On Sir Isaac
Newton's temperature scale, where freezing is zero and the heat of the human body is twelve, it is
probably four or five. If Herr Fahrenheit were here with one of his new quicksilver-filled, sealed-tube
thermometers, he would probably observe something in the fifties. But this sort of wind, coming as it does
from the North in the autumn, is more chilling than any mere instrument can tell. It reminds everyone here
that if they don't want to be dead in a few months' time, they have firewood to stack and chinks to caulk.
The wind is noticed by a hoarse preacher at the base of the gallows, who takes it to be Satan himself, come
to carry the witch's soul to hell, and who is not slow to share this opinion with his flock. The preacher is
staring Enoch in the eye as he testifies.
Enoch feels the heightened, chafing self-consciousness that is the precursor to fear. What's to prevent them
from trying and hanging him as a witch?
How must he look to these people? A man of indefinable age but evidently broad experience, with silver
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hair queued down to the small of his back, a copper-red beard, pale gray eyes, and skin weathered and
marred like a blacksmith's ox-hide apron. Dressed in a long traveling-cloak, a walking-staff and an
outmoded rapier strapped 'longside the saddle of a notably fine black horse. Two pistols in his waistband,
prominent enough that Indians, highwaymen, and French raiders can clearly see them from ambuscades
(he'd like to move them out of view, but reaching for them at this moment seems like a bad idea).
Saddlebags (should they be
qp
Enoch in Boston
searched) filled with instruments, flasks of quicksilver, and stranger matters—some, as they'd learn, quite
dangerous—books in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin pocked with the occult symbols of Alchemists and
Kabalists. Things could go badly for him in Boston.
But the crowd takes the preacher's ranting not as a call to arms but a signal to turn and disperse, muttering.
The redcoats discharge their muskets with deep hissing booms, like handfuls of sand hurled against a
kettledrum. Enoch dismounts into the midst of the colonists. He sweeps the robe round him, concealing
the pistols, pulls the hood back from his head, and amounts to just another weary pilgrim. He does not
meet any man's eye but scans their faces sidelong, and is surprised by a general lack of self-righteousness.
"God willing," one man says, "that'll be the last one."
"Do you mean, sir, the last witch?" Enoch asks.
"I mean, sir, the last hanging."
Flowing like water round the bases of the steep hills, they migrate across a burying ground on the south
edge of the Common, already full of lost Englishmen, and follow the witch's corpse down the street. The
houses are mostly of wood, and so are the churches. Spaniards would have built a single great cathedral
here, of stone, with gold on the inside, but the colonists cannot agree on anything and so it is more like
Amsterdam: small churches on every block, some barely distinguishable from barns, each no doubt
preaching that all of the others have it wrong. But at least they can muster a consensus to kill a witch. She
is borne off into a new burying ground, which for some reason they have situated hard by the granary.
Enoch is at a loss to know whether this juxtaposition— that is, storing their Dead, and their Staff of Life,
in the same place—is some sort of Message from the city's elders, or simple bad taste.
Enoch, who has seen more than one city burn, recognizes the scars of a great fire along this main street.
Houses and churches are being rebuilt with brick or stone. He comes to what must be the greatest
intersection in the town, where this road from the city gate crosses a very broad street that runs straight
down to salt water, and continues on a long wharf that projects far out into the harbor, thrusting across a
ruined rampart of stones and logs: the rubble of a disused sea-wall. The long wharf is ridged with
barracks. It reaches far enough out into the harbor that one of the Navy's very largest men-of-war is able to
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moor at its end. Turning his head the other way, he sees artillery mounted up on a hillside, and blue-coated
gunners tending to a vatlike mortar, ready to lob iron
S
. qp
Ojtfcksil'ver • Book One • Quicksilver
bombs onto the decks of any French or Spanish galleons that might trespass on the bay.
So, drawing a mental line from the dead criminals at the city gate, to the powder-house on the Common, to
the witch-gallows, and finally to the harbor defenses, he has got one Cartesian number-line—what Leibniz
would call the Ordinate—plotted out: he understands what people are afraid of in Boston, and how the
churchmen and the generals keep the place in hand. But it remains to be seen what can be plotted in the
space above and below. The hills of Boston are skirted by endless flat marshes that fade, slow as twilight,
into Harbor or River, providing blank empty planes on which men with ropes and rulers can construct
whatever strange curves they phant'sy.
Enoch knows where to find the Origin of this coordinate system, because he has talked to ship's masters
who have visited Boston. He goes down to where the long wharf grips the shore. Among fine stone sea-
merchants' houses, there is a brick-red door with a bunch of grapes dangling above it. Enoch goes through
that door and finds himself in a good tavern. Men with swords and expensive clothes turn round to look at
him. Slavers, merchants of rum and molasses and tea and tobacco, and captains of the ships that carry
those things. It could be any place in the world, for the same tavern is in London, Cadiz, Smyrna, and
Manila, and the same men are in it. None of them cares, supposing they even kn6w, that witches are being
hanged five minutes' walk away. He is much more comfortable in here than out there; but he has not come
to be comfortable. The particular sea-captain he's looking for—van Hoek—is not here. He backs out
before the tavern-keeper can tempt him.
Back in America and among Puritans, he enters into narrower streets and heads north, leading his horse
over a rickety wooden bridge thrown over a little mill-creek. Flotillas of shavings from some carpenter's
block-plane sail down the stream like ships going off to war. Underneath them the weak current nudges
turds and bits of slaughtered animals down towards the harbor. It smells accordingly. No denying there is
a tallow-chandlery not far upwind, where beast-grease not fit for eating is made into candles and soap.
"Did you come from Europe?"
He had sensed someone was following him, but seen nothing whenever he looked back. Now he knows
why: his doppelganger is a lad, moving about like a drop of quicksilver that cannot be trapped under the
thumb. Ten years old, Enoch guesses. Then the
6
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qp
Enoch in Boston
boy thinks about smiling and his lips part. His gums support a rubble of adult teeth shouldering their way
into pink gaps, and deciduous ones flapping like tavern signs on skin hinges. He's closer to eight. But cod
and corn have made him big for his age—at least by London standards. And he is precocious in every
respect save social graces.
Enoch might answer, Yes, I am from Europe, where a boy addresses an old man as "sir, " if he addresses
him at all. But he cannot get past the odd nomenclature. "Europe," he repeats, "is that what you name it
here? Most people there say Christendom."
"But we have Christians here."
"So this is Christendom, you are saying," says Enoch, "but, obviously to you, I've come from somewhere
else. Perhaps Europe is the better term, now that you mention it. Hmm."
"What do other people call it?"
"Do I look like a schoolmaster to you?"
"No, but you talk like one."
"You know something of schoolmasters, do you?"
"Yes, sir," the boy says, faltering a bit as he sees the jaws of the trap swinging toward his leg.
"Yet here it is the middle of Monday—"
"The place was empty 'cause of the Hanging. I didn't want to stay and—"
"And what?"
"Get more ahead of the others than I was already."
"If you are ahead, the correct thing is to get used to it—not to make yourself into an imbecile. Come, you
belong in school."
"School is where one learns," says the boy. "If you'd be so kind as to answer my question, sir, then I
should be learning something, which would mean I werein school."
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The boy is obviously dangerous. So Enoch decides to accept the proposition. "You may address me as Mr.
Root. And you are—?"
"Ben. Son of Josiah. The tallow-chandler. Why do you laugh, Mr. Root?"
"Because in most parts of Christendom—or Europe—tallow-chandlers' sons do not go to grammar school.
It is a peculiarity of. . . your people." Enoch almost let slip the word Puritans. Back in England, where
Puritans are a memory of a bygone age, or at worst streetcorner nuisances, the term serves well enough to
lampoon the backwoodsmen of Massachusetts Bay Colony. But as he keeps being reminded here, the truth
of the matter is more complex. From a coffeehouse in London, one may speak blithely of Islam and the
Mussulman, but in Cairo such terms are void. Here
7 ■ CO
• Book One > Quicksilver
Enoch is in the Puritans' Cairo. "I shall answer your question," Enoch says before Ben can let fly with any
more. "What do people in other parts call the place I am from? Well, Islam—a larger, richer, and in most
ways more sophisticated civilization that hems in the Christians of Europe to the east and the south—
divides all the world into only three parts: their part, which is the dar al-Islam; the part with which they
are friendly, which is the dar as-sulh, or House of Peace; and everything else, which is the dar al-harb, or
House of War. The latter is, I'm sorry to say, a far more apt name than Christendom for the part of the
world where most of the Christians live."
"I know of the war," Ben says coolly. "It is at an end. A Peace has been signed at Utrecht. France gets
Spain. Austria gets the Spanish Netherlands. We get Gibraltar, Newfoundland, St. Kitts, and—" lowering
his voice "—the slave trade."
"Yes—the Asiento."
"Ssh! There are a few here, sir, opposed to it, and they are dangerous."
"You have Barkers here?"
"Yes, sir."
Enoch studies the boy's face now with some care, for the chap he is looking for is a sort of Barker, and it
would be useful to know how such are regarded hereabouts by their less maniacal brethren. Ben seems
cautious, rather than contemptuous.
"But you are speaking only of one war—"
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"The War of the Spanish Succession," says Ben, "whose cause was the death in Madrid of King Carlos the
Sufferer."
"I should say that wretched man's death was the pretext, not the cause," says Enoch. "The War of the
Spanish Succession was only the second, and I pray the last, part of a great war that began a quarter of a
century ago, at the time of—"
"The Glorious Revolution!"
"As some style it. You have been at your lessons, Ben, and I commend you. Perhaps you know that in that
Revolution the King of England—a Catholic—was sent packing, and replaced by a Protestant King and
Queen."
"William and Mary!"
"Indeed. But has it occurred to you to wonder why Protestants and Catholics were at war in the first place?"
"In our studies we more often speak of wars among Protestants."
"Ah, yes—a phenomenon restricted to England. That is natural, for your parents came here because of
such a conflict."
"The Civil War," says Ben.
Enoch in Boston
"Your side won the Civil War," Enoch reminds him, "but later came the Restoration, which was a grievous
defeat for your folk, and sent them flocking hither."
"You have hit the mark, Mr. Root," says Ben, "for that is just why my father Josiah quit England."
"What about your mother?"
"Nantucket-born sir. But her father came here to escape from a wicked Bishop—a loud fellow, or so I
have heard—"
"Finally, Ben, I have found a limit to your knowledge. You are speaking of Archbishop Laud—a terrible
oppressor of Puritans—as some called your folk—under Charles the First. The Puritans paid him back by
chopping off the head of that same Charles in Charing Cross, in the year of our lord sixteen hundred and
forty-nine."
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"Cromwell," says Ben.
"Cromwell. Yes. He had something to do with it. Now, Ben. We have been standing by this millstream for
rather a long while. I grow cold. My horse is restless. We have, as I said, found the place where your
erudition gives way to ignorance. I shall be pleased to hold up my end of our agreement—that is, to teach
you things, so that when you go home to-night you may claim to Josiah that you were in school the whole
day. Though the schoolmaster may give him an account that shall conflict with yours. However, I do
require certain minor services in return."
"Only name them, Mr. Root."
"I have come to Boston to find a certain man who at last report was living here. He is an old man."
"Older than you?"
"No, but he might seem older."
"How old is he, then?"
"He watched the head of King Charles the First being chopped off."
"At least threescore and four then."
"Ah, I see you have been learning sums and differences."
"And products and dividends, Mr. Root."
"Work this into your reckonings, then: the one I seek had an excellent view of the beheading, for he was
sitting upon his father's shoulders."
"Couldn't have been more than a few years old then. Unless his father was a sturdy fellow indeed."
"His father was sturdy in a sense," says Enoch, "for Archbishop Laud had caused his ears and his nose to
be cut off in Star Chamber some two decades before, and yet he was not daunted, but kept up his agitation
against the King. Against all Kings."
9
m
Quicksilver- Book One . Quicksilver
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"He was a Barker." Again, this word brings no sign of contempt to Ben's face. Shocking how different this
place is from London.
"But to answer your question, Ben: Drake was not an especially big or strong man."
"So the son on his shoulders was small. By now he should be, perhaps, threescore and eight. But I do not
know of a Mr. Drake here."
"Drake was the father's Christian name."
"Pray, what then is the name of the family?"
"I will not tell you that just now," says Enoch. For the man he wants to find might have a very poor
character among these people—might already have been hanged on Boston Common, for all Enoch knows.
"How can I help you find him, sir, if you won't let me know his name?"
"By guiding me to the Charlestown ferry," Enoch says, "for I know that he spends his days on the north
side of the River Charles."
"Follow me," says Ben, "but I hope you've silver."
"Oh yes, I've silver," says Enoch.
They are skirting a knob of land at the north end of the city. Wharves, smaller and older than the big one,
radiate from its shore. The sails and rigging, spars and masts to his starboard combine into a tangle vast
and inextricable, as characters on a page must do in the eyes of an unlettered peasant. Enoch does not see
van Hoek or Minerva. He begins to fear that he shall have to go into taverns and make inquiries, and spend
time, and draw attention.
Ben takes him direct to the wharf where the Charlestown Ferry is ready to shove off. It is all crowded with
hanging-watchers, and Enoch must pay the waterman extra to bring the horse aboard. Enoch pulls his
purse open and peers into it. The King of Spain's coat of arms stares back at him, stamped in silver,
variously blurred, chopped, and mangled. The Christian name varies, depending on which king reigned
when each of these coins was hammered out in New Spain, but after that they all say d. g. hispan et ind
rex. By the grace of God, of Spain and the Indies, King. The same sort of bluster that all kings stamp onto
their coins.
Those words don't matter to anyone—most people can't read them anyway. What does matter is that a man
standing in a cold breeze on the Boston waterfront, seeking to buy passage on a ferry run by an
Englishman, cannot pay with the coins that are being stamped out by Sir Isaac Newton in the Royal Mint
at the Tower of
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10
CD
The Charlestown Ferry
London. The only coinage here is Spanish—the same coins that are changing hands, at this moment, in
Lima, Manila, Macao, Goa, Bandar Abbas, Mocha, Cairo, Smyrna, Malta, Madrid, the Canary Islands,
Marseilles.
The man who saw Enoch down to the docks in London months ago said: "Gold knows things that no man
does."
Enoch churns his purse up and down, making the coins-fragments fly, hoping to spy a single pie-slice—
one-eighth of a Piece of Eight, or a bit, as they are called. But he already knows he's spent most of his bits
for small necessaries along the road. The smallest piece he has in his purse right now is half of a coin—
four bits.
He looks up the street and sees a blacksmith's forge only a stone's throw away. Some quick work with a
hammer and that smith could make change for him.
The ferryman's reading Enoch's mind. He couldn't see into the purse, but he could hear the massive
gonging of whole coins colliding, without the clashing tinkle of bits. "We're shoving off," he is pleased to
say.
Enoch comes to his senses, remembers what he's doing, and hands over a silver semicircle. "But the boy
comes with me," he insists, "and you'll give him passage back." "Done," says the ferryman.
This is more than Ben could have hoped for, and yet he was hoping for it. Though the boy is too self-
possessed to say as much, this voyage is to him as good as a passage down to the Caribbean to go a-
pirating on the Spanish Main. He goes from wharf to ferry without touching the gangplank.
Charlestown is less than a mile distant, across the mouth of a sluggish river. It is a low green hill shingled
with long slender haymows limned by dry-stone fences. On the slope facing toward Boston, below the
summit but above the endless tidal flats and cattail-filled marshes, a town has occurred: partly laid out by
geometers, but partly growing like ivy.
The ferryman's hefty Africans pace short reciprocating arcs on the deck, sweeping and shoveling the black
water of the Charles Basin with long stanchion-mounted oars, minting systems of vortices that fall to aft,
flailing about one another, tracing out fading and flattening conic sections that Sir Isaac could probably
work out in his head. The Hypothesis of Vortices is pressed with many difficulties. The sky's a matted reticule of
taut jute and spokeshaved tree-trunks. Gusts make the anchored ships start and jostle like nervous horses
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