Quicksilver (36 page)

Working his way round back of the stage, Daniel found himself among several wagons that had been used to haul dramaturgickal mysteries up from London. Awnings had been rigged to them and tents pitched in between, so tent-ropes were stretched across the darkness, thick as ship’s rigging, and hitched round splintery wooden stakes piercing the (until the actors had shown up, anyway) flawless lawn. Various items of what he could only assume were ladies’ undergarments (they were definitely
garments
, but he had never seen their like—Q.E.D.) dangled from the ropes and occasionally surprised the hell out of him by pawing clammily at his face. Daniel had to plot a devious course, then pursue it slowly, to escape the tangle. So it was really—
really
—just an accident that he found the two actresses, doing whatever the hell it was that females do when they excuse themselves and exchange warm knowing looks and go off in pairs. He caught the very end of it: “What should I do w’th’old one?” said a young lady with a lovely voice, and an accent from some part of England with too many sheep.

“Fling it into the crowd—start a riot,” suggested the other—an Irish girl.

This touched off fiendish whooping. Clearly no one had taught these girls how to titter.

“But they wouldn’t even know what it was,” said the girl with the lovely voice, “we are the first women to set
foot
in this place.”

“Then neither will they know if you leave it where it lies,” the Irish girl answered.

The other now dropped her rural accent and began talking
exactly
like a Cambridge scholar from a good family. “I say, what’s this in the middle of my bowling-green? It would appear to be…fox-bait!”

More whooping—cut short by a man’s voice out of a backstage caravan: “Tess—save some of that for the King—you’re wanted on the stage.”

The lasses picked up their skirts and exeunted. Daniel glimpsed them as they transited across a gap between tents, and recognized the one called Tess from the “Siege of Maestricht.” She was the one he had taken for a Frenchwoman, simply because he’d heard her talking that way. He now understood that she was really an Englishwoman who could talk any way she pleased. This might have been obvious, since she was a professional actress; but it was new to him, and it made her interesting.

Daniel emerged from behind the tent where he’d been (it is fair
to say) lurking, and—purely in a spirit of philosophical inquiry—approached the spot where Tess of the beautiful voice and many accents had been (fair to say) squatting.

In a sort of hod projecting above the stage, more gunpowder was lit off in an attempt to simulate lightning, and it made a pool of yellow light in front of Daniel for just a moment. Neatly centered in a patch of grass—grass that was almost phosphorus-green, this being Spring—was a wadded-up rag, steaming from the warmth of Tess, bright with blood.

Of sooty coal the Empiric Alchimist Can turn, or holds it possible to turn Metals of drossiest Ore to perfet Gold As from the Mine.

—MILTON,
Paradise Lost

IT HAD BEEN A FULL DAY
for the King. Or perhaps Daniel was being naïve to think so—more likely, it was a typical day for the King, and the only persons feeling exhausted were the Cantabrigians who had been trying to maintain the pretense that they could keep up with him. The entourage had appeared on the southern horizon in mid-morning, looking (Daniel supposed) quite a bit like the invasion that Louis XIV had recently flung into the Dutch Republic: meaning that it thundered and threw up dust-clouds and consumed oats and generated ramparts of manure like any Regiment, but its wagons were all gilded, its warriors were armed with jewelled Italian rapiers, its field-marshalls wore skirts and commanded men, or condemned them, with looks—this fell upon Cambridge, anyway, with more effect than King Louis had achieved, so far, in the Netherlands. The town was undone, dissolved. Bosoms everywhere, bare-assed courtiers spilling out of windows, the good Cambridge smell of fens and grass overcome by perfumes, not just of Paris but of Araby and Rajasthan. The King had abandoned his coach and marched through the streets of the town accepting the cheers of the scholars of Cambridge, who had formed up in front of their several Colleges, robed and arranged by ranks and degrees, like soldiers drawn up for review. He’d been officially greeted by the outgoing Chancellor, who had presented him with a colossal Bible—they said it was possible to see the royal nose wrinkling, and the eyes rolling, from half a mile away. Later the King (and his pack of demented spaniels) had dined at High Table in the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, under the big Holbein portrait of the college’s Founder, King Henry VIII. As Fellows,
Daniel and Isaac were accustomed to sitting at High Table, but the town was now stuffed with persons who ranked them, and so they’d been demoted halfway across the room: Isaac in his scarlet robes talking to Boyle and Locke about something, and Daniel shoved off in a corner with several vicars who—in violation of certain Biblical guidelines—plainly did not love one another. Daniel tried to stanch their disputatious drone and to pick up a few snatches of conversation from the High Table. The King had a lot to say about Henry VIII, all of it apparently rather droll.

At first, it was Old Hank’s approach to polygamy: so ham-handed it was funny. All of it was veiled in royal wit, of course—he didn’t come right out and say anything really, but the point seemed to be: why do people call me a libertine? At least I don’t chop their heads off. If Daniel (or any other scholar in this place) had wanted to die instantly, he could have stood up at this point and hollered, “Well, at least
he
eventually got round to producing a legitimate male heir!” but this did not occur.

Several goblets later, the King moved on to some reflections on what a fine and magnificent and (not to put too fine a point on it)
rich
place Trinity College was, and how remarkable it was that such results could have been achieved by Henry VIII merely by defying the Pope, and sacking a few monasteries. So perhaps the coffers of Puritans, Quakers, Barkers, and Presbyterians might go, one day, towards building an even finer College! This was said as a jest, of course—he went on to say that of course he was speaking of
voluntary
contributions. Even so, it made the Dissenters in the room very angry—but (as Daniel later reflected) no more angry, really, than they’d been before. And it was a masterly bit of Catholic-bashing. In other words, all nicely calculated to warm the hearts and ease the fears of all the High Anglicans (such as John Comstock) in the hall. The King had to do a lot of that, because many assumed he was soft on Catholics, and some even thought he
was
one.

In other words, maybe he had just seen a little slice of Court politics as usual, and nothing of consequence had happened. But since John Wilkins had lost the ability to urinate, Daniel’s job was to
pay attention
and report all of this to him later.

Then it was off to the chapel where the Duke of Monmouth, now a war hero as well as a renowned scholar and bastard, was installed as Chancellor of the University. After that, finally, the Comedy in Neville’s Court.

DANIEL PAUSED IN THE CENTER
of a Gothic arch and looked out over a spread of stone steps that led down into the Great Court of
Trinity College: an area about four times the size of Neville’s Court. In a strange way it reminded him of the ’Change in London, except that where the ’Change was a daytime place, all a-sparkle with Thomas Gresham’s golden grasshoppers and vaulting Mercurys, and crowded with lusty shouting traders,
this
place was Gothickal in the extreme, faintly dusted with the blue light of a half-moon, sparsely populated by robed and/or big-wigged men skulking about the paths and huddling in doorways in groups of two or three. And whereas the ’Change-men made common cause to buy shares in sailing-ships or joint stock companies, and traded Jamaica sugar for Spanish silver, these men were transacting diverse small conspiracies or trading snatches of courtly data. The coming of Court to Cambridge was like Stourbridge Fair—an occasional opportunity for certain types of business, most of which was in some sense occult. He couldn’t get in any trouble simply walking direct across the Great Court to the Gate. As a Fellow, he was allowed to tread on the grass. Most of these lurkers and strollers weren’t. Not that they cared about the College’s pedantic rules, but they preferred shadowy edges, having the courtier’s natural affinity for joints and crevices. Across broad open space Daniel strode, so that no one could accuse him of eavesdropping. A line stretched from where he’d come in, to the Gate, would pass direct through a sort of gazebo in the center of the Great Court: an octagonal structure surmounting a little pile of steps, with a goblet-shaped fountain in the middle. Moonlight slanted in among the pillars and gave it a ghastly look—the stone pale as a dead man’s flesh, streaked with rivulets of blood, pulsing from arterial punctures. Daniel reckoned it had to be some sort of Papist-style Vision, and was just about to lift up his hands to inspect them for Stigmata when he caught a whiff, and recollected that the fountain had been drained of water and filled with claret wine in honor of the King and of the new Chancellor: a decision that begged to be argued with. But no accounting for taste…

“The Africans cannot
propagate
,” said a familiar voice, startlingly close.

“What do you mean? They can do so as well as anyone,” said a
different
familiar voice. “Perhaps
better!
”

“Not without Neeger
women
.”

“You don’t say!”

“You must remember that the planters are short-sighted. They’re all
desperate
to get out of Jamaica—they wake up every day expecting to find themselves, or their children, in the grip of some tropical fever. To import
female
Neegers would cost nearly as much
as to import males, but the females cannot produce as much sugar—particularly when they are breeding.” Daniel had finally recognized this voice as belonging to Sir Richard Apthorp—the second A in the CABAL.

“So they don’t import females
at all?
”

“That is correct, sir. And a newly arrived male is only usable for a few years,” Apthorp said.

“That explains
much
of the caterwauling that has been emanating lately from the ’Change.”

The two men had been sitting together on the steps of the fountain, facing toward the Gate, and Daniel hadn’t
seen
them until he’d drawn close enough to
hear
them. He was just getting ready to shift direction, and swing wide around the fountain, when the man who
wasn’t
Sir Richard Apthorp stood up, turned around, and dipped a goblet into the fountain—and caught sight of Daniel standing there flat-footed.
Now
Daniel recognized him—he was only too easy to recognize in a dark Trinity courtyard with blood on his hands. “I say!” Jeffreys exclaimed, “is that a new statue over there? A Puritan saint? Oh, I’m wrong, it is moving now—what
appeared
to be a Pillar of Virtue, is revealed as Daniel Waterhouse—ever the keen observer—now making an empiric study of
us.
Don’t worry, Sir Richard, Mr. Waterhouse
sees
all and
does
nothing—a model Royal Society man.”

“Good evening, Mr. Waterhouse,” Apthorp said, managing to convey, by the tone of his voice, that he found Jeffreys embarrassing and tedious.

“Mr. Jeffreys. Sir Richard. God save the King.”

“The King!” Jeffreys repeated, raising his dripping goblet and then taking a swallow. “Stand and deliver like a good little scholar, Mr. Waterhouse. Why are Sir Richard’s friends in the ’Change making such a fuss?”

“Admiral de Ruyter sailed down to Guinea and took away all of the Duke of York’s slave-ports,” Daniel said.

Jeffreys—one hand half-covering his mouth, and speaking in a stage-whisper: “Which the Duke of York had stolen from the Dutch, a few years before—but in Africa, who splits hairs?”

“During the years that the Duke’s company controlled Guinea, many slaves were shipped to Jamaica—there they made sugar—fortunes were built, and will endure, as long as the attrition of slaves is replaced by new shipments. But the Dutch have now choked off the supply—so I’d guess that Sir Richard’s clients at the ’Change can read the implications clearly enough—there must be some turmoil in the commodities markets.”

Like a victim of unprovoked Battery looking for witnesses, Jeffreys turned toward Apthorp, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. Now Jeffreys had been a London barrister for some years. Daniel suspected that he knew of these events only as a mysterious influence that caused his clients to go bankrupt. “Some turmoil,” Jeffreys said, in a dramatic whisper. “Rather dry language, isn’t it? Imagine some planter’s family in Jamaica, watching the work-force, and the harvest, dwindle—trying to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy, yellow fever, and slave rebellion—scanning the horizon for sails, praying for the ships that will be their salvation—some turmoil, you call it?”

Daniel could have said,
Imagine a barrister watching his moneybags dwindle as he drinks them away, scanning the Strand for a client who’s got the wherewithal to pay his legal bills…
but Jeffreys was wearing a sword and was drunk. So he said: “If those planters are in church, and praying, then they’ve already found salvation. Good evening, gentlemen.”

He headed for the Gate, swinging wide round the fountain so that Jeffreys wouldn’t be tempted to run him through. Sir Richard Apthorp was applauding him politely. Jeffreys was mumbling and growling, but after a few moments he was able to get words out: “You are the same man as you were—or
weren’t
—ten years ago, Daniel Waterhouse! You were ruled by fear
then
—and you’d have England ruled by it
now
! Thank God you are sequestered within these walls, and unable to infect London with your disgusting pusillanimity!”

And more in that vein, until Daniel ducked into the vault of the Great Gate of Trinity College. The gate was a hefty structure with crenellated towers at its four corners: a sort of mock-fortress, just the thing for retreating into when under attack by a Jeffreys. Between it and the side-wall of Trinity’s shotgun chapel was a gap in the College’s perimeter defenses about a stone’s throw wide, patched with a suite of chambers that had a little walled garden in front of it, on the side facing towards the town. These chambers had been used to shield various Fellows from the elements over the years, but lately Daniel Waterhouse and Isaac Newton had been living there. Once those two bachelors had moved in their miserable stock of furniture, there had been plenty of unused space remaining, and so it had become the world’s leading alchemical research facility. Daniel knew this, because he had helped build it—
was helping
build it, rather, for it was perpetually under construction.