Quicksilver (106 page)

To Leibniz, August 1687

Doctor,

Increase is the order of the day here;
^*
the gardens, orchards, and vineyards are buried in their own produce and the country roads crowded with wagons bringing it to market. France is at peace, her soldiers at home, mending and building
and getting maidens pregnant out of wedlock so that there will be a next generation of soldiers.
New construction is going on all over Versailles, and many here have become modestly wealthy
or at least paid off part of their gambling debts
in the wake of the stock market crash in Amsterdam.

I am sorry not to have written in so many weeks. This cypher is extremely time-consuming and I have been too busy with all of the machinations surrounding the “fall of Batavia.
”

Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax threw a garden party the other evening; the highlight was a re-enactment of the Fall of Batavia—which, as everyone knows by now, never really happened—played out on the Canal. A fleet of French “frigates,” no bigger than rowboats, and trimmed and decorated phantastically, like dream-ships, besieged a model “Batavia” built on the brink of the canal. The Dutchmen in the town were drinking beer and counting gold until they fell asleep. Then the dream-fleet made its attack. The Dutchmen were alarmed at first, until they woke up and understood it had all been a dream…but when they returned to their counting-tables, they found that their gold was really gone! The vanishing of the gold was accomplished through some sleight-of-hand so that everyone in the party was completely surprised. Then the dream-fleet cruised up and down the canal for the better part of an hour, and everyone crowded along the banks to admire it. Each vessel represented some virtue that is representative of
la France,
e.g., Fertility, Martial Prowess, Piety,
et cetera, et cetera,
and the captain of each one was a Duke or Prince, dressed up in costumes to match. As they drifted up and down the Canal they threw the captured coins in showers of gold into the ranks of the party-goers.

The Dauphin wore a golden frock embroidered with…
I have seen this man Upnor now. He enjoys a high rank in the court of James II and has many friends in France, for he was a boy here during the time of Cromwell. Everyone wants to hear about his
Protestant slave-girl and he is not slow to talk about her. He is too well-bred to gloat openly, but it is obvious that he takes great pleasure in owning her. Here, the enslavement of rebels in England is likened to the French practice of sending Huguenots to the galleys, and rated as more humane than simply killing them all as was done in Savoy. I had not been sure whether to credit Bob Shaftoe’s tale and so I was quite startled to see Upnor in the flesh, and to hear him talking about this. It seems shameful to me—a scandal that the guilty would wish to hide from the world. But to them it is nothing. While sympathizing with poor Abigail Frome, I rejoice that this has come to pass. If the slavers had shown more discretion and continued to take their victims only from black Africa, no one would notice or care—why, I am as guilty as the next person of putting sugar in my coffee without considering the faraway Negroes who made it for me. For James and his ilk to take slaves from Ireland entails more risk, even when they are criminals. But to take English girls from farm-towns is repugnant to almost everyone (the population of Versailles excepted) and an invitation to rebellion. After listening to Upnor I am more certain than ever that England will soon rise up in arms—and James apparently agrees with me, for word has it that he’s built great military camps on the edge of London and lavished money on his prize regiments. I fear only that in the chaos and excitement of rebellion, the people of that country will forget about the Taunton schoolgirls and what they signify about slavery in general…
the tiller and rudder of which were all overgrown with living grape-vines.

Forgive me this endless description of the various Dukes and their dream-boats, I look back over the preceding several pages and see I quite forgot myself.

To Leibniz, October 1687

Doctor,

Family, family, family
^*
is all anyone wants to talk about. Who is talking to me, you might ask, given that I am a commoner? The answer is that in certain recesses of this immense château there are large salons that are given over entirely to gambling, which is the only thing these nobles can do to make their lives interesting. In these places the usual etiquette is suspended and everyone talks to everyone. Of course the trick is gaining admission to such a salon in the first place—but after my success with the “Fall of Batavia”some
of these doors were opened to me (back doors, anyway—I must come in through the servants’ entrances) and so it is not unusual for me now to exchange words with a Duchess or even a Princess. But I don’t go to these places as often as you might think, for when you are there you have no choice but to gamble, and I don’t enjoy it
I loathe it and the people who do it is more accurate. But some of the men who will read this letter are heavy gamblers and so I will be demure.

More and more frequently people ask me about my family. Someone has been spreading rumors that I have noble blood in my veins! I hope that during your genealogical research you can turn up some supporting evidence…turning me into a Countess should be easy compared to making Sophie an Electress.
Enough people here now depend on me that my status as a commoner is awkward and inconvenient. They need a pretext to give me a title so that they can have routine conversations with me without having to set up elaborate shams, such as fancy-dress balls, to circumvent the etiquette.

Just the other day I was playing basset with M. le duc de Berwick, who is the bastard of James II by Arabella Churchill, sister of John. This places him in excellent company since as you know this means his paternal grandmother was Henrietta Maria of France, the sister of Louis XIII…
again, forgive the genealogical prattle. Will you please sort out everything to do with sorcerers, alchemists, Templars, and Satan-worshippers? I know that you got your start in life by bamboozling some rich alchemists into thinking you actually believed their nonsense. And yet you appear to be a sincere friend of the man called Enoch the Red, who is apparently an alchemist of note. From time to time, his name comes up around a gambling table. Most are nonplussed but certain men will cock an eyebrow or cough into a hand, exchange tremendously significant looks,
et cetera
, conspicuously trying not to be conspicuous. I have observed the same behaviors in connection with other subjects that are of an esoteric or occult nature. Everyone knows that Versailles was infested with Satan-worshippers, poisoners, abortionists,
et cetera
, in the late 1670s and that most but not all of them were purged; but this only makes it seem murkier and more provocative now. The father of the Earl of Upnor—the Duke of Gun-fleet—died suddenly in those days, after drinking a glass of water at a garden party thrown by Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax, whose own husband died in similar fashion a fortnight later, leaving all his titles and possessions to her. There is not a man or woman here who does not suspect poisoning in these and other cases. Upnor and
Oyonnax would probably come in for closer scrutiny if there weren’t so many other poisonings to distract people’s attention. Anyway, Upnor is obviously one of those gentlemen who takes an interest in occult matters, and keeps making dark comments about his contacts at Trinity College in Cambridge. I am tempted to dismiss all of this as a faintly pathetic hobby for noble toffs bored out of their minds by the ingenious tedium, the humiliating inconsequence, of Versailles. But since I have picked out Upnor as an enemy I would like to know if it amounts to anything…can he cast spells on me? Does he have secret brethren in every city? What is Enoch Root?

I am going to spend much of the winter in Holland and will write to you from there.

Eliza

DECEMBER 1687

No man goes so high as he who knows not where he is going.

—CROMWELL

“
WELL MET, BROTHER WILLIAM
,” said Daniel, getting a boot up on the running-board of the carriage, vaulting in through the door, and surprising the hell out of a dumpling-faced Englishman with long stringy dark hair. The passenger snatched the hem of his long black frock coat and drew it up; Daniel could not tell whether he was trying to make room, or to avoid being brushed against by Daniel. Both hypotheses were reasonable. This man had spent a lot more time in ghastly English prisons than Daniel had, and learned to get out of other men’s way. And Daniel was mud-spattered from riding, whereas this fellow’s clothes, though severe and dowdy, were immaculate. Brother William had a tiny mouth that was pursed sphincter-tight at the moment.

“Recognized your arms on the door,” Daniel explained, slamming it to and reaching out the window to give it a familiar slap. “Flagged your coachman down, reckoning we must be going to the same lodge to see the same gentleman.”

“When Adam delved and Eve span, who
then
was the Gentleman?”

“Forgive me, I should have said chap, bloke…how are things in your Overseas Possession, Mr. Penn? Did you ever settle that dispute with Maryland?”

William Penn rolled his eyes and looked out the window. “It will take a hundred years and a regiment of Surveyors to settle it! At least those damned Swedes have been brought to heel. Everyone imagines that, simply because I own the Biggest Pencil in the World, that my ticket is punched, my affairs settled once and for all…but I tell you, Brother Daniel, that it has been nothing but troubles…if it is a sin to lust after worldly goods,
videlicet
a horse or a door-knocker, then what have I got myself into
now”?
It is a whole new universe of sinfulness.”

“‘Twas either accept Pennsylvania, or let the King continue owing you sixteen thousand pounds, yes?”

Penn did not take his gaze away from the window, but squinted as if trying to hold back a mighty volume of flatulence, and shifted his focal point to a thousand miles in the distance. But this was coastal Holland and there was nothing out that window save the Curvature of the World. Even pebbles cast giant shadows in the low winter sun. Daniel could not be ignored.

“I am chagrined, appalled, mortified that you are here! You are
not welcome,
Brother Daniel, you are a problem, and obstacle, and if I were not a pacifist I would beat you to death with a rock.”

“Brother William, meeting as we so often do at Whitehall, in the King’s Presence, to have our lovely chats about Religious Toleration, it is most difficult for us to hold frank exchanges of views, and so I am pleased you’ve at last found this opportunity to hose me down with those splenetic humours that have been so long pent up.”

“I am a plain-spoken fellow, as you can see. Perhaps
you
should say what you mean more frequently, Brother Daniel—it would make everything so much simpler.”

“It is easy for you to be that way, when you have an estate the size of Italy to go hiding in, on the far side of an ocean.”

“That was unworthy of you, Brother Daniel. But there is some truth in what you say…it is…distracting…at the oddest times…my mind drifts, and I find myself wondering what is happening on the banks of the Susquehanna…”

“Right! And if England becomes completely unlivable, you have someplace to go. Whereas
I
…”

Finally Penn looked at him. “Don’t tell me you haven’t considered moving to Massachusetts.”

“I consider it every day. Nonetheless, most of my constituency does not have that luxury available and so I’d like to see if we can avoid letting Olde Englande get any more fouled up than ‘tis.”

Penn had disembarked from a ship out at Scheveningen less than an hour ago. That port-town was connected to the Hague by several roads and a canal. The route that Penn’s driver had chosen ran along a canal-edge, through stretches of Dutch polder-scape and fields where troops drilled, which extended to within a few hundred yards of the spires of the Binnenhof.

The carriage now made a left turn onto a gravel track that bordered an especially broad open park, called the Malieveld, where those who could afford it went riding when the weather was pleasant. No one was there today. At its eastern end the Malieveld gave way to the Haagse Bos, a carefully managed forest laced through with riding-paths. The carriage followed one of these through the woods for a mile, until it seemed that they had gone far out into the wild. But then suddenly cobblestones, instead of gravel, were beneath the wheel-rims, and they were passing through guarded gates and across counterweighted canal-bridges. The formal gardens of a small estate spread around them. They rolled to a stop before a gate-house. Daniel glimpsed a hedge and the corner of a fine house before his view out the carriage-window was blocked by the head, and more so by the hat, of a captain of the Blue Guards. “William Penn,” said William Penn. Then, reluctantly, he added: “And Dr. Daniel Waterhouse.”

THE PLACE WAS BUT
a small lodge, close enough to the Hague to be easily reached, but far enough away that the air was clean. William of Orange’s asthma did not trouble him when he was here, and so, during those times of the year when he had no choice but to stick at the Hague, this was where he abided.

Penn and Waterhouse were ushered to a parlor. It was a raw day outside, and even though a new fire was burning violently on the hearth, making occasional lunges into the room, neither Penn nor Waterhouse made any move to remove his coat.

There was a girl there, a petite girl with large blue eyes, and Daniel assumed she was Dutch at first. But after she’d heard the two visitors conversing in English she addressed them in French, and explained something about the Prince of Orange. Penn’s
French was much better than Daniel’s because he had spent a few years exiled to a Protestant college (now extirpated) in Saumur, so he exchanged a few sentences with the girl and then said to Daniel: “The sand-sailing is excellent today.”

“Could’ve guessed as much from the wind, I suppose.”

“We’ll not be seeing the Prince for another hour.”

The two Englishmen stood before the fire until well browned on both sides, then settled into chairs. The girl, who was dressed in a rather bleak Dutch frock, set a pan of milk there to heat, then busied herself with some kitchen-fuss. It was now Daniel’s turn to be distracted, for there was something in the girl’s appearance that was vaguely disturbing or annoying to him, and the only remedy was to look at her some more, trying to figure it out; which made the feeling worse. Or perhaps better. So they sat there for a while, Penn brooding about the Alleghenies and Waterhouse trying to piece together what it was that provoked him about this girl. The feeling was akin to the nagging sense that he had met a person somewhere before but could not recall the particulars. But that was not it; he was certain that this was the first time. And yet he had that same unscratchable itch.

She said something that broke Penn out of his reverie. Penn fixed his gaze upon Daniel. “The girl is offended,” he said. “She says that there may be women, of an unspeakable nature, in Amsterdam, who do not object to being looked at as you are looking at
her;
but how dare you, a visitor on Dutch soil, take such liberties?”

“She said a lot then, in five words of French.”

“She was pithy, for she credits me with wit. I am discursive, for I can extend you no such consideration.”

“You know, merely knuckling under to the King, simply because he waves a Declaration of Indulgence in front of your eyes, is no proof of wit—some would say it proves the opposite.”

“Do you really want another Civil War, Daniel? You and I both grew up during such a war—
some
of us have elected to move on—
others
want to re-live their childhoods, it seems.”

Daniel closed his eyes and saw the image that had been branded onto his retinas thirty-five years ago: Drake hurling a stone saint’s head through a stained-glass window, the gaudy image replaced with green English hillside, silvery drizzle reaching in through the aperture like the Holy Spirit, bathing his face.

“I do not think you see what we can make of England now if we only try. I was brought up to believe that an Apocalypse was coming. I have not believed that for many years. But the people who believe in that Apocalypse are my people, and their way of thinking
is my way. I have only just come round to a new way of looking at this, a new view-point, as Leibniz would have it. Namely that there is something to the
idea
of an Apocalypse—a sudden changing of all, an overthrow of old ways—and that Drake and the others merely got the
particulars
wrong, they fixed on a date certain, they, in a word,
idolized.
If idolatry is to mistake the symbol for the thing symbolized, then that is what they did with the symbols that are set down in the Book of Revelation. Drake and the others were like a flock of birds who all sense that something is nigh, and take flight as one: a majestic sight and a miracle of Creation. But they were confused, and flew into a trap, and their revolution came to naught. Does that mean that they were mistaken to have spread their wings at all? No, their senses did not deceive them…their higher minds did. Should we spurn them forever because they erred? Is their legacy to be laughed at only? On the contrary, I would say that we might bring about the Apocalypse now with a little effort…not precisely the one they phant’sied but the same, or better, in its effects.”

“You really should move to Pennsylvania,” Penn mused. “You are a man of parts, Daniel, and certain of those parts, which will only get you half-hanged, drawn, and quartered in London, would make you a great man in Philadelphia—or at least get you invited to a lot of parties.”

“I’ve not given up on England just yet, thank you.”

“England may prefer that you give up, rather than suffer another Civil War, or another Bloody Assizes.”

“Much of England sees it otherwise.”

“And you may number me in that party, Daniel, but a scattering of Nonconformists does not suffice to bring about the changes you seek.”

“True…but what of the men whose signatures are on these letters?” said Daniel, producing a sheaf of folded parchments, each one beribboned and wax-sealed.

Penn’s mouth shrank to the size of a navel and his mind worked for a minute. The girl came round and served chocolate.

“For you to surprise me in this way was not the act of a gentleman.”

“When Adam delved and Eve span…”

“Shut up! Do not trifle with me. Owning Pennsylvania does not make me any better than a Vagabond in the eyes of God, Daniel, but it serves as a reminder that I’m not to be trifled and toyed with.”

“And that, Brother William, is why I nearly killed myself to cross the North Sea on the front of a wind-storm, and galloped through
frost and muck to intercept you—
before
you met with your next King.” Daniel drew out a Hooke-watch and turned its ivory face toward the fire-light. “There is still time for you to write a letter of your own, and put it on the top of this stack, if you please.”

“
I WAS GOING TO ASK,
do you have any idea how many people in Amsterdam want to kill you…but by coming up here, you seem to’ve answered the question: no,” said William, Prince of Orange.

“You had fair warning in my letter to d’Avaux, did you not?”

“It barely reached me in time…the brunt of the blow was absorbed by some big shareholders there, whom I held off from warning.”

“Francophiles.”

“No, the bottom has quite fallen out of
that
market, very few Dutchmen are selling themselves to the French nowadays. My chief enemies nowadays are what you would call Dutchmen of limited vision. At any rate, your Batavia charade caused no end of headaches for me.”

“Establishing a first-rate intelligence source at the Court of Louis XIV cannot come cheaply.”

“That insipid truism can be turned around easily: when it comes so dear, then I demand first-rate intelligence. What did you learn from the two Englishmen, by the way?” William glanced at a dirty spoon and flared his nostrils. A Dutch houseboy, fairer and more beautiful than Eliza, bustled over and began to clear away the gleaming, crusted evidence of a long chocolate binge. The clattering of the cups and spoons seemed to irritate William more than gunfire on a battlefield. He leaned back deep into his armchair, closed his eyes, and turned his face toward the fire. To him the world was a dark close cellar with a net-work of covert channels strung through it, frail and irregular as cobwebs, transmitting faint cyphers of intelligence from time to time, and so a fire broadcasting clear strong radiance all directions was a sort of miracle, a pagan god manifesting itself in a spidery Gothick chapel. Eliza did not speak until the boy was finished and the room had gone quiet again and the folds and creases in the prince’s face had softened. He was a couple of years shy of forty, but time spent in sun and spray had given him the skin, and battles had given him the mentality, of an older man.

“Both believe the same things, and believe them sincerely,” Eliza said, referring to the two Englishmen. “Both have been tested by suffering. At first I thought the fat one had been corrupted. But the slender one did not think so.”

“Maybe the slender one is naïve.”

“He is not naïve in
that
way. No, those two belong to a common sect, or something—they knew and recognized each other. They dislike each other and work at cross-purposes but betrayal, corruption, any straying from whatever common path they have chosen, these are inconceivable. Is it the same sect as Gomer Bolstrood?”

“No and yes. The Puritans are like Hindoos—impossibly various, and yet all of a type.”

Eliza nodded.

“Why are you so fascinated by the Puritans?” William asked.

It was not asked in a friendly way. He suspected her of some weakness, some occult motive. She looked at him like a little girl who had just been run over by a cart-wheel. It was a look that would cause most men to fall apart like stewed chickens. It didn’t work. Eliza had noticed that William of Orange had a lot of gorgeous boys around him. But he also had a mistress, an Englishwoman named Elizabeth Villiers, who was only moderately beautiful, but famously intelligent and witty. The Prince of Orange would never make himself vulnerable by relying on one sex or the other; any lust he might feel for Eliza he could easily channel towards that houseboy, as Dutch farmers manipulated their sluice-gates to water one field instead of another. Or at least that was the message he wanted to convey, by keeping the company he did.