Quicksilver (3 page)

The ferryman is more amused than angry when he discovers a Barker conspiring with his slave, and shoos him away. The Barker identifies Enoch as fresh meat, and begins trying to catch his eye. Enoch moves away from him and pretends to study the approaching shore. The ferry is maneuvering around a raft of immense logs drifting out of the estuary, each marked with the King’s Arrow—going to build ships for the Navy.

Inland of Charlestown spreads a loose agglomeration of hamlets conjoined by a network of cowpaths. The largest cowpath goes all the way to Newtowne, where Harvard College is. But most of it just looks like a forest, smoking without being burned, spattered with muffled whacks of axes and hammers. Occasional musket shots boom in the distance and are echoed from hamlet to hamlet—some kind of system for relaying information across the countryside. Enoch wonders how he’s ever going to find Daniel in all that.

He moves toward a talkative group that has formed on the center of the ferry’s deck, allowing the less erudite (for these must be Harvard men) to break the wind for them. It is a mix of pompous sots and peering quick-faced men basting their sentences together with bad Latin. Some of them have a dour Puritan look about them, others are dressed in something closer to last year’s London mode. A pear-shaped, red-nosed man in a tall gray wig seems to be the Don of this jury-rigged College. Enoch catches this one’s eye and lets him see that he’s bearing a sword. This is not a threat, but an assertion of status.

“A gentleman traveler from abroad joins us. Welcome, sir, to our humble Colony!”

Enoch goes through the requisite polite movements and utterances. They show a great deal of interest in him, a sure sign that not much new and interesting is going on at Harvard College. But the place is only some three-quarters of a century old, so how much can really be happening there? They want to know if he’s from a Germanic land; he says not really. They guess that he has come on some Alchemical errand, which is an excellent guess, but wrong. When it is polite to do so, he tells them the name of the man he has come to see.

He’s never heard such scoffing. They are, to a man, pained that a gentleman should’ve crossed the North Atlantic, and now the Charles Basin, only to spoil the journey by meeting with
that
fellow.

“I know him not,” Enoch lies.

“Then let us prepare you, sir!” one of them says. “Daniel Water-house is a man advanced in years, but the years have been less kind to him than you.”

“He is correctly addressed as Dr. Waterhouse, is he not?”

Silence ruined by stifled gurgles.

“I do not presume to correct any man,” Enoch says, “only to be sure that I give no offense when I encounter the fellow in person.”

“Indeed, he is accounted a Doctor,” says the pear-shaped Don, “but—”

“Of what?” someone asks.

“Gears,” someone suggests, to great hilarity.

“Nay, nay!” says the Don, shouting them down, in a show of false goodwill. “For all of his gears are to no purpose without a
primum mobile,
a source of motive power—”

“The Franklin boy!” and all turn to look at Ben.

“Today it might be young Ben, tomorrow perhaps little Godfrey Waterhouse will step into Ben’s shoes. Later perhaps a rodent on a tread-mill. But in any case, the
vis viva
is conducted into Dr. Water-house’s gear-boxes by—what? Anyone?” The Don cups a hand to an ear Socratically.

“Shafts?” someone guesses.

“Cranks!” another shouts.

“Ah, excellent! Our colleague Waterhouse is, then, a Doctor of—what?”

“Cranks!” says the entire College in unison.

“And so devoted is our Doctor of Cranks to his work that he quite sacrifices himself,” says the Don admiringly. “Going many days uncovered—”

“Shaking the gear-filings from his sleeves when he sits down to break bread—”

“Better than pepper—”

“And cheafer!”

“Are you, perhaps, coming to join his Institute, then?”

“Or foreclose on’t?” Too hilarious.

“I have heard of his Institute, but know little of it,” Enoch Root says. He looks over at Ben, who has gone red in the neck and ears, and turned his back on all to nuzzle the horse.

“Many learned scholars are in the same state of ignorance—be not ashamed.”

“Since he came to America, Dr. Waterhouse has been infected with the local influenza, whose chief symptom is causing men to found new projects and endeavours, rather than going to the trouble of remedying the old ones.”

“He’s not entirely satisfied with Harvard College then!?” Enoch says wonderingly.

“Oh, no! He has founded—”

“—and
personally endowed
—”

“—and laid the cornerstone—”

“—corner-log, if truth be told—”

“—of—what does he call it?”

“The Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts.”

“Where might I find Dr. Waterhouse’s Institute?” Enoch inquires.

“Midway from Charlestown to Harvard. Follow the sound of grinding gears ‘til you come to America’s smallest and smokiest dwelling—”

“Sir, you are a learned and clear-minded gentleman,” says the Don. “If your errand has aught to do with Philosophy, then is not Harvard College a more fitting destination?”

“Mr. Root is a Natural Philosopher of note, sir!” blurts Ben, only as a way to prevent himself bursting into tears. The way he says it makes it clear he thinks the Harvard men are of the Unnatural type. “He is a Fellow of the Royal Society!”

Oh, dear.

The Don steps forward and hunches his shoulders like a conspirator. “I beg your pardon, sir, I did not know.”

“It is quite all right, really.”

“Dr. Waterhouse, you must be warned, has fallen quite under the spell of Herr Leibniz—”

“—him that stole the calculus from Sir Isaac—” someone footnotes.

“—yes, and, like Leibniz, is infected with Metaphysickal thinking—”

“—a throwback to the Scholastics, sir—notwithstanding Sir Isaac’s having exploded the old ways through very clear demonstrations—”

“—and labors now, like a possessed man, on a Mill—designed after Leibniz’s principles—that he imagines will discover new truths through
computation
!”

“Perhaps our visitor has come to exorcise him of Leibniz’s daemons!” some very drunk fellow hypothesizes.

Enoch clears his throat irritably, hacking loose a small accumulation of yellow bile—the humour of anger and ill-temper. He says, “It does Dr. Leibniz an injustice to call him a mere metaphysician.”

This challenge produces momentary silence, followed by tremendous excitement and gaiety. The Don smiles thinly and squares off. “I know of a small tavern on Harvard Square, a suitable venue in which I could disabuse the gentleman of any misconceptions—”

The offer to sit down in front of a crock of beer and edify these wags is dangerously tempting. But the Charlestown waterfront is drawing near, the slaves already shortening their strokes;
Minerva
is fairly straining at her hawsers in eagerness to catch the tide, and he
must have results. He’d rather get this done discreetly. But that is hopeless now that Ben has unmasked him. More important is to get it done
quickly.

Besides, Enoch has lost his temper.

He draws a folded and sealed Letter from his breast pocket and, for lack of a better term, brandishes it.

The Letter is borrowed, scrutinized—one side is inscribed “Doktor Waterhouse—Newtowne—Massachusetts”—and flipped over. Monocles are quarried from velvet-lined pockets for the Examination of the Seal: a lump of red wax the size of Ben’s fist. Lips move and strange mutterings occur as parched throats attempt German.

All of the Professors seem to realize it at once. They jump back as if the letter were a specimen of white phosphorus that had suddenly burst into flame. The Don is left holding it. He extends it towards Enoch the Red with a certain desperate pleading look. Enoch punishes him by being slow to accept the burden.

“Bitte, mein herr…”

“English is perfectly sufficient,” Enoch says. “Preferable, in fact.”

At the fringes of the robed and hooded mob, certain nearsighted faculty members are frantic with indignation over not having been able to read the seal. Their colleagues are muttering to them words like “Hanover” and “Ansbach.”

A man removes his hat and bows to Enoch. Then another.

They have not even set foot in Charlestown before the dons have begun to make a commotion. Porters and would-be passengers stare quizzically at the approaching ferry as they are assailed with shouts of “Make way!” and broad waving motions. The ferry’s become a floating stage packed with bad actors. Enoch wonders whether any of these men really supposes that word of their diligence will actually make its way back to court in Hanover, and be heard by their future Queen. It is ghoulish—they are behaving as if Queen Anne were already dead and buried, and the Hanovers on the throne.

“Sir, if you’d only
told
me ‘twas Daniel Waterhouse you sought, I’d have taken you
to
him without delay—and without all of this
bother.
”

“I erred by not confiding in you, Ben,” Enoch says.

Indeed. In retrospect, it’s obvious that in such a small town, Daniel would have noticed a lad like Ben, or Ben would have been drawn to Daniel, or both. “Do you know the way?”

“Of course!”

“Mount up,” Enoch commands, and nods at the horse. Ben needn’t be asked twice. He’s up like a spider. Enoch follows as soon as dignity and inertia will allow. They share the saddle, Ben on Enoch’s lap with his legs thrust back and wedged between Enoch’s
knees and the horse’s rib-cage. The horse has, overall, taken a dim view of the Ferry and the Faculty, and bangs across the plank as soon as it has been thrown down. They’re pursued through the streets of Charlestown by some of the more nimble Doctors. But Charlestown doesn’t
have
that many streets and so the chase is brief. Then they break out into the mephitic bog on its western flank. It puts Enoch strongly in mind of another swampy, dirty, miasma-ridden burg full of savants: Cambridge, England.

“I
NTO YONDER COPPICE
, then ford the creek,” Ben suggests. “We shall lose the Professors, and perhaps find Godfrey. When we were on the ferry, I spied him going thither with a pail.”

“Is Godfrey the son of Dr. Waterhouse?”

“Indeed, sir. Two years younger than I.”

“Would his middle name, perchance, be William?”

“How’d you know that, Mr. Root?”

“He is very likely named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.”

“A friend of yours and Sir Isaac’s?”

“Of mine, yes. Of Sir Isaac’s, no—and therein lies a tale too long to tell now.”

“Would it fill a book?”

“In truth, ‘twould fill
several
—and it is not even finished yet.”

“When shall it be finished?”

“At times, I fear
never.
But you and I shall hurry it to its final act to-day, Ben. How much farther to the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts?”

Ben shrugs. “It is halfway between Charlestown and Harvard. But close to the river. More than a mile. Perhaps less than two.”

The horse is disinclined to enter the coppice, so Ben tumbles off and goes in there afoot to flush out little Godfrey. Enoch finds a place to ford the creek that runs through it, and works his way round to the other side of the little wood to find Ben engaged in an apple-fight with a smaller, paler lad.

Enoch dismounts and brokers a peace, then hurries the boys on by offering them a ride on the horse. Enoch walks ahead, leading it; but soon enough the horse divines that they are bound for a timber building in the distance. For it is the
only
building, and a faint path leads to it. Thenceforth Enoch need only walk alongside, and feed him the odd apple.

“The sight of you two lads scuffling over apples in this bleak gusty place full of Puritans puts me in mind of something remarkable I saw a long time ago.”

“Where?” asks Godfrey.

“Grantham, Lincolnshire. Which is part of England.”

“How long ago, to be exact?” Ben demands, taking the empiricist bit in his teeth.

“That is a harder question than it sounds, for the way I remember such things is most disorderly.”

“Why were you journeying to that bleak place?” asks Godfrey.

“To stop being pestered. In Grantham lived an apothecary, name of Clarke, an indefatigable pesterer.”

“Then why’d you go
to
him?”

“He’d been pestering me with letters, wanting me to deliver certain necessaries of his trade. He’d been doing it for years—ever since sending letters had become possible again.”

“What made it possible?”

“In my neck of the woods—for I was living in a town in Saxony, called Leipzig—the peace of Westphalia did.”

“1648!” Ben says donnishly to the younger boy. “The end of the Thirty Years’ War.”

“At
his
end,” Enoch continues, “it was the removal of the King’s head from the rest of the King, which settled the Civil War and brought a kind of peace to England.”

“1649,” Godfrey murmurs before Ben can get it out. Enoch wonders whether Daniel has been so indiscreet as to regale his son with decapitation yarns.

“If Mr. Clarke had been pestering you
for years
, then you must have gone to Grantham in the middle of the 1650s,” Ben says.

“How can you be that old?” Godfrey asks.

“Ask your father,” Enoch returns. “I am still endeavouring to answer the question of
when
exactly. Ben is correct. I couldn’t have been so rash as to make the attempt before, let us say, 1652; for, regicide notwithstanding, the Civil War did not really wind up for another couple of years. Cromwell smashed the Royalists for the umpteenth and final time at Worcester. Charles the Second ran off to Paris with as many of his noble supporters as had not been slain yet. Come to think of it, I
saw
him, and them, at Paris.”

“Why
Paris
? That were a
dreadful
way to get from Leipzig to Lincolnshire!” says Ben.

“Your geography is stronger than your history. What do you phant’sy would be a
good
way to make that journey?”