Quicksilver (35 page)

Gomer let the tent-flap fall shut again, and Daniel turned his attention back to the ambassador, who had never taken his gaze off of Daniel.

“Maybe Fraance taakes Maestricht—but not so easily—they lose the hero D’Artagnan. The war will be won by us, however.”

“I am pleased to know that you will have success in Holland—now will you consider changing your tactics in London?” Daniel said this loudly so that Gomer could share in it.

“In whaat waay?”

“You know what L’Estrange has been doing.”

“I know what L’Estrange has been
failing
to do!” the Dutch Ambassador chortled.

“Wilkins is trying to make London like Amsterdam—and I’m not speaking of wooden shoes.”

“Many churches—no established religion.”

“It is his life’s work. He has given up on Natural Philosophy, these last years, to direct all of his energies toward that goal. He wants it because it is best for England—but the High Anglicans and Crypto-Catholics at Court are against anything that smacks of Dissidents. So Wilkins’s task is difficult enough—but when those same Dissidents are linked, in the public mind, with the Dutch enemy, how can he hope for success?”

“In a year—when the dead are counted, and the true costs of the war are understood—Wilkins’s task will be too easy.”

“In a year Wilkins will be dead of the stone. Unless he has it cut out.”

“I can recommend a chirurgeon-barber, very speedy with the knife—”

“He does not feel that he can devote several months to recovery, when the pressure is so immediate and the stakes so high. He is just on the verge of success, Mr. Ambassador, and if you would let up—”

“We will let up when the French do,” the Ambassador said, and waved at Gomer, who pulled the flap open again to show the demilune being re-conquered by French and English troops, led by Monmouth. To one side, “D’Artagnan” lay wounded in a gap in the wall. John Churchill was supporting the old musketeer’s head in his lap, feeding him sips from a flask.

The tent-flap remained open for rather a long time, and Daniel eventually understood that he was being shown the door. As he walked out he caught Gomer’s elbow and drew him outside onto the dirt street. “Brother Gomer,” he said, “the Dutch are deranged. Understandably. But
our
situation is not so desperate.”

“On the contrary,” said Gomer, “I say that
you
are in desperate peril, Brother Daniel.”

Anyone else would have meant
physical
peril by that, but Daniel had spent enough of his life around Gomer’s—which was to say,
Daniel’s—ilk to know that Gomer meant the spiritual kind.

“I don’t suppose that’s just because I was staring at a pretty girl’s bosom just now—?”

Gomer did not much fancy the jest. Indeed, Daniel sensed before those words were out of his mouth that they would only confirm Gomer’s opinion of him as Fallen, or at best, Falling fast. He tried something else: “Your own father is Secretary of State!”

“Then go and speak to my father.”

“The point I am making is that there is no harm—or
peril,
if that is what you want to call it—in employing
tactics.
Cromwell used tactics to win battles, did he not? It did not mean he lacked faith. On the contrary—
not
to use the brains God gave you, and making every struggle into a frontal charge, is sinful—thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!”

“Wilkins has the stone,” Gomer said. “Whether ’twas placed in his bladder by God, or the Devil, is a question for Jesuits. Anyway, he has it, and shall likely die of it, unless you and your Fellows can gin up a way to transmute it into some watery form that can be pissed out. In dread of his death, you have wrought in your mind this phant’sy that if I, Gomer Bolstrood, leave off distributing handbills in the streets of London, it shall set in motion a lengthy chain of consequences that shall somehow end in Wilkins’s suffering some chirurgeon to cut him for the stone, him surviving the operation, and living happily ever after, as the kind father you never had. And
you
say that the
Dutch
are deranged?”

Daniel could not answer. The discourse of Gomer had struck him in the face with no less heat, force, and dumbfounding pain than the branding iron had Gomer’s.

“As you phant’sy yourself a master of
tactics,
consider this whor-ish spectacle we have been witnessing.” Gomer waved at the demilune-work. Up on the parapet, Monmouth was planting the French and English flags anew, to the cheers of the spectators, who broke into a lusty chorus of “Pikes on the Dikes” even as “D’Artagnan” breathed his last. John Churchill carried him down the slope of the earthwork in his arms and laid him on a litter where his body was bedecked with flowers.

“Behold the martyr!” Gomer brayed. “Who gave his life for the cause, and is fondly remembered by all the Quality! Now
there
is a tactic for you. I am sorry Wilkins is sick. I would not put him in harm’s way on any account, for he was a friend to us. But it is not in my power to keep Death from his door. And when Death does come, ’twill make of him a Martyr—not so romantick as D’Artagnan perhaps—but of more effect in a better cause. Beg your pardon,
Brother Daniel.” Gomer stalked away, tearing open the wrapper on a sheaf of libels.

“D’Artagnan” was being carried along the front of the bleachers in a cortege of gorgeously mussed and tousled Cavaliers, and spectators were doing business with roving flower-girls and showering bouquets and blossoms on those heroes living and “dead.” But even as petals were fluttering down on the mock-Musketeer, Daniel Waterhouse found slips of paper coming down all around him, carried on a breeze from the bleachers. He slapped one out of the air and was greeted with a cartoon of several French cavaliers gang-raping a Dutch milkmaid. Another showed a cravated musketeer, silhouetted in the light of a burning Protestant church, about to catch a tossed baby on the point of his sword. All around Daniel, and up in the stands, spectators were passing these bills hand-to-hand, sometimes wadding them into sleeves or pockets.

So the matter was complicated. And it only become more so ten minutes later, when, during a bombardment of “Maestricht,” a cannon burst in full view of all spectators. Most people assumed it was just a stage-trick until bloody fragments of artillerymen began to shower down all among them, mingling with the continual flurry of handbills.

Daniel walked back to Gresham’s College and worked all night with Hooke. Hooke stayed below, gazing up at various stars, and Daniel remained on the roof, looking at a nova that was flaring in the west end of London: a Mobb of people with torches, milling around St. James’s Fields and discharging the occasional musket. Later, he learned that they had attacked Comstock House, supposedly because they were furious about the cannon that had burst.

John Comstock himself showed up at Gresham’s College the next morning. It took several moments for Daniel to recognize him, so altered was his countenance by shock, by outrage, and even by shame. He demanded that Hooke and the rest drop what they were doing and investigate the remnants of the burst cannon, which he insisted had been tampered with in some way “by mine enemies.”

1672

There are few things, that are incapable of being represented by a fiction.

—H
OBBES,
Leviathan

A COMEDY

D
RAMATIS
P
ERSONAE

MEN:
M
R. VAN
U
NDERDEVATER,
a
Dutchman,
founder of a great commercial empire in
sow’s-ears
and
potatoes’-eyes
NZINGA,
a cannibal Neeger, formerly King of the Congo, now house-slave to Mr. van Underdevater
JEHOSHAPHAT STOPCOCK,
the Earl of BRIMSTONE, an
enthusiast

T
OM
R
UNAGATE,
a discharged soldier turned
Vagabond
THE REV. YAHWEH PUCKER,
a Dissident divine
EUGENE STOPCOCK,
son of Lord Brimstone, a Captain of Foot
FRANCIS BUGGERMY,
Earl of Suckmire, a
foppish courtier
DODGE AND BOLT,
two of Tom Runagate’s accomplices

WOMEN: MISS LYDIA VAN UNDERDEVATER,
the daughter and sole heiress of Mr. van Underdevater, recently returned from a
Venetian
finishing-school
LADY BRIMSTONE,
wife to Jehoshaphat Stopcock Miss
STRADDLE,
Tom Runagate’s
companion

SCENE: SUCKMIRE,
a rural estate in Kent

A
CT
I.
SCENE
I.

SCENE:
a Cabin in a Ship at Sea. Thunder heard, flashes of Lightning seen.

Enter Mr. van Underdevater in dressing-gown, with a lanthorn.

VAN UND:
Boatswain!

Enter Nzinga wet, with a Sack.

NZINGA:
Here, master, what—

VAN UND:
Odd’s bodkins! Have you fallen into the tar-pot, boatswain?

NZINGA:
It is I, Master—your slave, My Royal Majesty, by the Grace of the tree-god, the rock-god, river-god, and diverse other gods who have slipped my mem’ry, of the Congo, King.

VAN UND: SO
it is. What have you in the bag?

NZINGA:
Balls.

VAN UND:
Balls! Sink me! You have quite forgot your Civilizing Lessons!

NZINGA:
Of ice.

VAN UND:
Thank heavens.

NZINGA:
I gathered ’em from the deck—where they are falling like grape-shot—and for this you thank heaven?

VAN UND:
Aye, for it means the boatswain is still in possession of all his Parts. Boatswain!

Enter LYDIA in dressing-gown, dishevelled.

LYDIA:
Dear father, why do you shout for the boatswain so?

VAN UND:
My dear Lydia, I would fain pay him to bring this infernal storm to an end.

LYDIA:
But father, the boatswain can’t stop a tempest!

VAN UND:
Perhaps he knows someone who can.

NZINGA:
I know a weather-god in Guinea who can—and at rates very reasonable, as he will accept payment in rum.

VAN UND:
Rum! You take me for a half-wit? If this is what the weather-god does when he is
sober
—

NZINGA:
Cowrie-shells would do in a pinch. If master would care to despatch My Majesty on the next
southbound
boat, My Majesty would be pleased to broker the transaction—

VAN UND:
You prove yourself a shrewd man of commerce. I am reminded of when I traded the holes in a million cannibals’ ears, for the eyes of a million potatoes, and beat the market at both ends of the deal—

More thunder.

VAN UND: TOO,
slow, too slow! Boatswain!

Enter Lord Brimstone.

LORD BRIMSTONE:
Here, here, what is this bawling?

LYDIA:
Lord Brimstone—your servant.

VAN UND:
The price of ending this tempest is too high, the market in Pagan Deities too remote—

LORD
B: Then why, sir, do you call for the boatswain?

VAN UND:
Why, sir, to tell him to be of good courage and to remain firm in the face of danger.

LYDIA:
Oh, too late, father!

VAN UND:
What mean you, child?

LYDIA:
When the boatswain heard you, he lost what firmness he had, and fled in a panic.

VAN UND:
How do you know it?
LYDIA:
Why, he upset the hammock altogether, and tumbled me onto the deck!

VAN UND:
Lydia, Lydia, I have spent a fortune sending you to that school in Venice, where you have been studying to become a virtuous maiden—

LYDIA:
And I have studied hard, Father, but it is ever so difficult!

VAN UND:
Has all that money been wasted?

LYDIA:
Oh, no, Father, I learned some lovely songs from our dancing-master, Signore Fellatio.

Sings.
^*

VAN UND:
I’ve heard enough—Boatswain!

Enter Lady Brimstone
.

LADY BRIMSTONE:
My lord, have you found who is making that dreadful
noise
yet?

LORD
B: M’lady, it’s that
Dutchman
.

LADY
B:
SO
much for idle
investigations
—what have you
done
about it, my lord?

LORD
B: Nothing, my lady, for they say that the only way to quiet one of these obstreperous Dutchmen is to drown him.

LADY
B: Drown—why, my lord—you’re not thinking of throwing him overboard—?

LORD
B: Every soul aboard is
thinking
of it, M’lady. But with a Dutchman it isn’t necessary, as they live below sea-level to begin with. ’Tis merely a question of getting the sea to go back where the Good Lord put it in the first place—

LADY
B: And how d’you propose to effect
that,
my lord?

LORD
B: I have been conducting experiments on a novel engine to make windmills turn backwards, and pump water
down-hill
—

LADY
B: Experiments! Engines! I say the way to put Dutchmen under water’s with French gunpowder and English courage!

Whatever the actor playing Lord Brimstone said was like expectorating into the River Amazon. For the true
SCENE
of these events was Neville’s Court
^*
on a spring evening, and the true Dramatis Personae a roll that would’ve consumed many yards of paper and drams of ink to set it out fully. The script was an unpublished mas-terwork of courtly and collegiate intrigue, comprising hundreds of more or less clever lines being delivered—mostly
sotto voce
—at the same instant, producing a contrapuntal effect quite intricate but entirely too much for young Daniel Waterhouse to grasp. He had been wondering why persons such as these bothered to go to plays at all, when every day at Whitehall provided more spectacle—now he sensed that they did so because the stories in the theatre were simple, and arrived at fixed conclusions after an hour or two.

Heading up the cast of tonight’s performance was King Charles II of England, situated on the upper floor of Trinity’s miserable wreck of a library, where several consecutive windows had been opened up and converted into temporary opera-boxes. The Queen, one Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese princess with a famously inoperative womb, was seated to one side of His Majesty, pretending to understand English as usual. The guest of honor, the Duke of Monmouth (King Charles’s son by his mistress Lucy Walter), was on the other side. The windows flanking the King’s contained various elements of his court: one was anchored by Louise de Kéroualle, the Duchess of Portsmouth and the King’s mistress. Another by Barbara Villiers, a.k.a. Lady Castlemaine, a.k.a. the Duchess of Cleveland, former lover of John Churchill, and the King’s mistress.

Moving outwards from the three central windows, there was one all filled up with Angleseys: Thomas More Anglesey and his nearly indistinguishable sons, Philip, now something like twenty-seven years old, and Louis, who was twenty-four, but looking younger. For protocol dictated that, as the Earl of Upnor was visiting his
alma mater
, he had to wear academic robes. Though he’d mobilized a squadron of French tailors to liven them up, they were still academic robes, and the object infesting his wig was unmistakably a mortarboard.

Balancing this Anglesey-window was a window all crowded with Comstocks, specifically the so-called Silver branch of that race: John and his sons Richard and Charles foremost, all dressed likewise in
robes and mortarboards. Unlike the Earl of Upnor they seemed comfortable dressed that way. Or at least
had
until the play had begun, and the character of Jehoshaphat Stopcock, Lord Brimstone, had come tottering out dressed precisely as they were.

The King’s Comedians, performing on a temporary stage that had been erected in Neville’s Court, had decided to plow onwards in spite of the fact that no one could hear a word they were saying. “Lord Brimstone” seemed to be upbraiding his wife about something—presumably, her reference to “French gunpowder,” as opposed to “English,” which, on some other planet, might have been a rhetorical figure, but here seemed very much like a stab at John Comstock. Meanwhile, most of the audience—who, if they had the good fortune to be seated, were seated on chairs and benches arranged in the corner of Neville’s Court, beneath the windows of King and Court—were trying to break out into the opening stanza of “Pikes on the Dikes,” the most widely plagiarized song in England: a rousing ditty about why it was an excellent idea to invade Holland. But the King held out one hand to silence them. Not that he was lacking in belligerence—but down on the stage, “Lydia van Underdevater” was delivering a line that looked like it was meant to be funny. And the King didn’t like it when the buzz of Intrigue drowned out his Mistress.

All of the Comedians suddenly fell down, albeit in dramatickal and actorly ways—and that went double for Nell Gwyn, who wound up draped over a bench with one arm stretched out gracefully, displaying about a square yard of flawless pale armpits and bosoms. The audience were poleaxed. The long-called-for boatswain finally ran in and announced that the ship had run aground in sands just off Castle Suckmire. “Lord Brimstone” sent Nzinga out to fetch his trunk, which arrived with the immediacy that can only happen in stage-plays. The owner pawed through its contents, spilling out a strange mixture of drab outmoded clothing and peculiar equipment, viz. retorts, crucibles, skulls, and microscopes. Meanwhile Lydia was picking up certain of his garments, such as farmers’ breeches and cowherds’ boots, holding them at arm’s length and mugging. Finally, Lord Brimstone stood up, tucking a powder-keg under one arm, and slapping a frayed and bent mortarboard onto his head.

LORD
B: What’s wanted to move this ship is Gunpowder!

Among the groundlings in their chairs and on the grass, much uneasy shifting and muttering, and tassels flopping this way and
that, as mortarboard-wearing scholars turned to each other to enquire as to just who was being made fun of here, or shook their heads, or bowed them low to pray for the souls of the King’s Comedians, and of whomever had written this play, and of the King who’d insisted he couldn’t make it through a one-night stand at Cambridge without being entertained.

Very different reactions, though, from the windows-cum-opera-boxes: the Duchess of Portsmouth was undone. Her bosom was heaving like a spritsail gone all a-luff, her head was thrown back to expose a whole lot of jewelled throat. These spectacles had already caused diverse groundling scholars to fall out of their chairs. She was being supported by a pair of young blades in huge curled and beribboned wigs, who were wiping tears of mirth away from their eyes with the fingertips of their kid gloves—having already donated their lace hankies to the Duchess.

Meanwhile, mortarboard-wearing gunpowder magnate John Comstock—who’d long opposed the Duchess of Portsmouth’s efforts to introduce French fashions to the English court—was managing a thin, oddly distracted smile. The King—who, until tonight anyway, had generally sided with Comstock—was smiling, and the Angleseys were all having the times of their lives.

An elbow to the kidney forced Daniel to stop gaping at the Duchess’s efforts to rupture her bodice, and to pay some attention to the rather homelier sight of Oldenburg, who was seated next to him. The hefty German had been released from the Tower as suddenly and as inexplicably as he’d been clapped into it. He glanced down toward the far end of Neville’s Court, then frowned at Daniel and said, “Where
is
he? Or at least
it!
” meaning Isaac Newton and his paper on tangents, respectively. Then Oldenburg turned the other way and peeked up round the edge of his mortarboard toward the Angleseys’ box, where Louis Anglesey, the Earl of Upnor, had somehow gotten his merriment under control and was giving Oldenburg a Significant Glare.

Daniel was glad to have a pretext for leaving. All through the play he had been trying and trying to suspend his disbelief, but the damned thing just wouldn’t suspend. He rose to his feet, bunched his robes up, and sidestepped down a row of chairs, treading on diverse Royal Society feet. Sir Winston Churchill:
Cheers on your boy’s Maestricht work, old chap.
Christopher Wren:
Let’s get that cathedral up, what, no dilly-dallying!
Sir Robert Moray:
Let’s have lunch and talk about eels.
Thank God Hooke had had the temerity to
not
show up—too busy rebuilding London—so Daniel didn’t have to step on any of
his
parts. Finally, Daniel was out on open grass. This was
really a job for John Wilkins—but the Bishop of Chester was lying on his bed down in London, ill of the stone.