The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (229 page)

MARCH
1696

“S
ERGEANT
S
HAFTOE REPORTING
as ordered, sir,” came a voice from the dark.

“I have got a letter addressed to you, Shaftoe,” answered a different voice from the dark—a college-cultivated voice. “As a training exercise, I thought we might sally forth in search of some source of light, so that I could do something other than run my fingers over it.”

“Captain Jenkins’s company gathered some brush on their ‘training exercise’ this afternoon, and are burning it yonder.”

“Ah, I phant’sied I smelled smoke. Where the devil did they find something to burn?”

“A wee sand-bar in the Meuse, three miles upstream. We’ve had our eye on it for several weeks. The French had not got to it yet, lacking swimmers. But Captain Jenkins’s company has a man who can dog-paddle, when he has to. Today, he had to. He got over to this sand-bar with a line, and stripped it bare while the French watched shivering, and threw stones, from the opposite bank.”

“That is the sort of initiative I look for in the Black Torrent Guards!” exclaimed Colonel Barnes. “’Twill serve them well in the years to come!”

The conversation to this point had been transacted through a wall of mildewy canvas, for Colonel Barnes was on the inside, and Sergeant Shaftoe the outside, of a tent. The sentences of Barnes were punctuated by thumping and clanking as he got sword, boot, peg-leg, and topcoat on. The tent was a ghostly cloud under starlight. It bulged at one end as Barnes pushed his way out through the flaps; then he became perfectly invisible. “Where are you?”

“Here.”

“Can’t see a bloody thing,” Barnes exclaimed, “it is an excellent
training exercise.”

“You could be living in a house, with candles,” said Bob Shaftoe, not for the first time.

Indeed, Barnes had passed most of the winter in a house up the road from this, the winter camp of his regiment; but some piece of news from England, recently received and digested, had prompted him to vacate, to take up lodgings in a tent among his men, and to begin referring to everything they did as a training exercise. The change had been much noted but little understood. They’d not taken part in anything like a military engagement since half a year ago, when they had participated in King William’s successful siege of Namur. Since, they’d done naught but live on the land, like field-mice. And since the trees and brush had all long since been cut down and burnt, and the farms trampled to unproductive mud-flats, and the animals hunted and eaten, living on this land required some ingenuity.

The brush-fire was, as both men knew, on the opposite side of a swell in the earth, where Captain Jenkins’s company had made its camp. To get there, they had to walk through the camp of Captain Fletcher’s company, which in daylight would have taken all of thirty seconds. With a lanthorn it might have taken a minute or two. But the Black Torrent Guards’ last candle had vanished several days previously, and in the most ignominious way possible, viz. nicked from Colonel Barnes’s coat-pocket by rats when he ventured out to use the latrine, and carried away to be eaten. And so the passage through Captain Fletcher’s company’s camp was, as both men knew, to be an infinitely gradual shuffling and sliding through a three-dimensional labyrinth of tent-ropes and clotheslines. It seemed an opportune time to speak of difficult matters—for there was no way, in darkness, to look someone in the eye.

“Err…it is my duty to inform you,” said Bob, “that private soldiers James and Daniel Shaftoe are absent without leave.”

“Since how long?” asked Barnes, sounding interested, but not surprised.

“That might be debated. Three days ago, they claimed they had come upon the spoor and tracks of a feral pig, and requested leave to hunt it down. They vanished over the horizon, in the direction of Germany, not long after permission was granted.”

“Very good—an excellent training exercise.”

“When they did not return after one, then two days, yet their sergeant was disinclined to think the worst of them—”

“The expectation of bacon for breakfast had impaired his judgment. As my own mouth is almost too full of saliva for me to speak, I
must say that I understand.”

“Now still Jimmy and Danny are not back. I must assume that they have deserted.”

“They trained only too well, and learned the lesson too soon,” Barnes reflected. “Now their lives shall be forfeit, if they are caught.”

“Oh, they shan’t be
caught,
” Bob assured him. “You forget that before I taught them to be English soldiers, Teague Partry taught them to be rapparees.”

“Do you want leave to hunt them down? It would be an excellent—”

“No, sir,” said Bob, “and would you please explain your incessant jesting about everything we do being a training exercise?”

“I have a soft spot in my heart for the men of my regiment—
most
of them, anyway,” said Barnes, “and would see as many of them as possible survive what is to come.”

“What, then,
is
to come?” Bob asked, “and how does brush-gathering and pig-chasing make us more fit for it?”

“This war is over, Bob. Ssh! Don’t tell the men. But you may be assured there’ll be no fighting in the year to come. We shall occupy this ground, as a bargaining-chit for diplomats to shove to and fro on a polished tabletop somewhere. But there’ll be no more fighting.”

“That is what is always
claimed
,” said Bob, “until a new front is opened, and a campaign launched.”

“True enough—in your boyhood,” said Barnes. “But you must adjust your thinking now, and take into account that the money is all gone. England has ninety thousand men under arms. She can
afford
perhaps
nine
thousand; and she is
willing to pay for
many fewer than that—especially if the Tories throw down the Juncto, as seems likely.”

“The Black Torrent Guards are an elite regiment—”

“You really
must
fucking listen to me, Shaftoe…”

Barnes’s voice was getting fainter and falling away aft.

“I am listening sir,” said Bob, “but mind you don’t stand still and declaim for too long in one place, lest mud swallow up your peg.”

“Shut up, Shaftoe!” said Barnes; but renewed sucking and squelching noises told that he had heard Bob’s counsel too late. There was a long grunt of effort terminated by a succulent pop as he drew his prosthesis out of the mire.

“Yes, sir.”

“It is
all
going away, man! Every bit of it. An elite regiment, you say? Then some draughty chamber in the Tower of London may be set aside, and a sign nailed to the door reading ‘King’s Own Black Torrent Guards,’ and if I am very fortunate, and if my lord Marlborough intercedes, and fights hard for us, I may be allowed to go
behind that door from time to time and push a quill about. On frightfully important occasions of state, I may be prevailed upon to rake together a skeleton Company and dress them up in uniforms so that they may parade before a visiting Embassy, or some such. But I say to you, Bob, that a year from now everyone in this regiment, with a very few lucky exceptions, shall be a Vagabond. If Jimmy and Danny have deserted, and taken to the road, it is only because they have had the wit to anticipate this.”

“Mmph. I have oft wondered over the amount of time you spent in yonder house, over the winter, reading letters from London.”

“I know you have from the queer looks you sent my way.”

“Since the Year of Our Lord 1689,” said Bob, “I have spent all of about three weeks in England. As I cannot read, all that I know of the place now consists of rumors. Your predictions seem unlikely to me—if you are correct, it means England has gone mad. But I do not have knowledge of my own to set against yours, in a debate; and in any case I do not have the standing to over-rule you, sir, if you have made up your mind to turn your Regiment’s winter quarters into a training-ground for Vagabonds.”

“It is more than that, Shaftoe. For their own sakes, I would that these men would survive the coming lean years. And for England’s sake I would conserve this Regiment. Even if we be disbanded for some years, yet the day shall come when we are mustered again, and on that day I’d fain re-constitute the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards from
this
lot, and not, as is customary, from some random collection of criminals, shake-rags, and Irishmen.”

“You want them to stay alive—if possible
honestly
,” Bob translated, “and you want me to know where they are to be found, so that we can call them up again, if there is a need, and if there be money to pay them.”

“That is correct,” said Barnes. “Of course, we can’t tell them any of this!”

“Of course not, sir,” said Bob. “They’ll have to work it out for themselves.”

“As did Jimmy and Danny. Now! It is time to read your letter. Fetch me a burning bush and I shall play Jehovah to your Moses.”

Bizarre witticisms such as this were the price Bob Shaftoe had to pay for having a colonel who’d trained as a churchman. He trudged over to the feeble campfire that Captain Jenkins’s company had made in the midst of their encampment, requisitioned one uprooted shrub from their brush-pile, and shoved it into the coals until it began to burn. Then he hastened back to Barnes and held it up like a candelabra, from time to time waving it about to make it blaze up. Smoldering
leaves snowed down upon the page and on the epaulets and the three-cornered hat of Barnes, and he shrugged or blew them off as he read.

“It is from your lovely Duchess,” said Barnes.

“I had guessed as much.”

Barnes read for a bit and blinked and sighed.

“Am I allowed to know that it says, sir?”

“It concerns your woman.”

“Abigail?”

“She is in a house not thirty miles from here…a house that is for the time being unguarded, as the proprietor has been locked up in the Tower of London. How fortuitous, Sergeant!”

“What is fortuitous, sir?”

“Don’t play the fool. Just at the moment when you must lay plans for a new life as an unemployed civilian, your two chief sources of distraction and gratuitous complications—Jimmy and Danny—have absented themselves, and you are presented with an opportunity to take a wife!”

“
Take
is an apt word in this case, sir, as she is the legal property of Count Sheerness.”

“Why should that trouble us? If Jimmy and Danny can run off in quest of a feral pig, cannot we steal you a wife?”

“What d’you mean
we,
sir?”

“I am altogether decided on it!” Barnes proclaimed, and thrust the corner of the page into the bush, setting it ablaze. “To establish you in a stable and happy domestic arrangement is to be a linch-pin of my strategy for keeping the Black Torrent Guards together! Besides which, it shall be an excellent training exercise.”

APRIL
1696

“I
T IS THE VERY LAST
fate I should ever have imagined, that two unmarried and childless wretches should end up running a service to deliver children from city to city,” said Daniel.

As the carriage had thumped and veered out of Leipzig up the high road toward Wittenberg, and (later) the very, very low road to Pretzsch, he had settled like a great heap of sand, grabbing pillows and stuffing them under the boniest parts of his frame, and bracing his feet against the base of the bench that supported his companion, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

If Daniel was a heap of sand, Leibniz—far more hardened than Daniel to long-range coach travel—was an obelisk. He sat perfectly upright, as if ready to dip quill in ink-pot and begin penning a treatise. He raised his eyebrows and looked curiously at Daniel, who was now only a few degrees shy of supine, with a knee practically wedged in Leibniz’s groin.

Daniel had assumed his ears had deceived him when the Duchess of Arcachon and of Qwghlm had asked him to deliver Johann to Leipzig. But he had done it—only to discover Leibniz was there, rather than in Hanover, where Daniel had expected him. News had reached Hanover and Berlin that Eleanor, the Electress-Dowager, had fallen gravely ill in the Dower-house of Pretzsch. It seemed likely she would not survive; and if she perished, someone would be required to transport a grieving Princess Caroline to her new foster-home at the Electoral court at Berlin. And who had been chosen for this duty? Leibniz.

Leibniz considered it for a few moments, then said: “Say! How is the youngest son of the Duke of Parma faring these days? Has he recovered from that nasty rash?”

“You have quite lost me, sir. I do not even know the
name
of the Duke of Parma, much less the medical condition of his youngest son.”

“That was already obvious,” said Leibniz, “for he
has
no sons—two daughters only.”

“I am beginning to feel like the Dim Interlocutor in a Socratic dialogue. What is your point?”

“If you asked the Duke of Parma about Leibniz, he might recognize the name vaguely, but he would know nothing of Natural Philosophy, and of course it is absurd to think he would entrust a daughter to me, or you, on a journey. Almost all the nobility are like the Duke of Parma. They don’t know, or care about, us, and we know little of them.”

“You are saying that I have fallen victim to observational bias?”

“Yes. The only nobility who suffer the likes of you, or of me, to come within a mile of them, are those exceedingly peculiar few who
(God help them!) have taken an interest in Natural Philosophy. They used to be more numerous, but now I can count them on the fingers of a hand: Eliza, Sophie, and Sophie Charlotte. Those are the only ones we get to talk to. They are desirous of exposing their young ones to Natural Philosophy. Given a choice between the likes of you or me, Daniel,
versus
some available—which is to say idle—retainer, uncle, stooge, or priest who would be inclined to ignore, molest, corrupt, or convert the child en route, such a woman will unfailingly choose the Natural Philosopher; for the worst
we
will do is bore them.”

“I believe I did just that with little Johann,” said Daniel. “He would respond better, I do believe, to a curriculum centered wholly on Weaponry and its uses. In the absence of weapons, he prefers unarmed combat. I do believe I learned more wrestling-holds from
him
than he Philosophy from
me
.”

“That should serve you well when you get to Massachusetts,” said Leibniz gravely, “for the Indians are said to be brave wrestlers all.”

“After he has fenced with Jean Bart on the deck of a warship, to be shut up in a carriage with the likes of me for several days was a miserable fate.”

“Pfui! A slow and excruciating death by lockjaw is the
miserable fate
of those who play too much with edged weapons,” said Leibniz. “Eliza knows this. You served her well, even if Johann is too young to appreciate it! Tell me, did he really show
no
curiosity at all?”

“The foolish boy gave me an opening, by discoursing too much of mortars and cannons,” Daniel admitted. “We got into parabolas. I halted the carriage in a field between Münster and Osnabrück and we scattered some peasants by conducting a systematic trial, first with archery, later moving on to firearms.”

“You see? He’ll never forget that! Every time Johann sees a Projectile Weapon—which in this benighted world means every five minutes—he’ll know that they are useless without mathematicks.”

“How far are we from this Pretzsch?”

“You are deceived by the understated style of the place,” said Leibniz. “Behold, we are
in
Pretzsch, and have been for some minutes.” He slid his window open, laid a hand atop his wig to prevent its ending up under a wheel-rim, and thrust his head out. “The Dower-house is dead ahead.”

“What will you discourse of with the orphan,” Daniel asked, “assuming she does not share Johann’s curiosity about weapons?”

“Whatever she likes,” Leibniz said. “She is after all a Princess, and almost certain to be a Queen one day.” He regarded Daniel skeptically.

“All right,” said Daniel, moving. “I’ll sit up straight.”

T
HE TRAIN WAS THREE CARRIAGES
, a baggage-wain, and several mounted dragoons. The latter had been sent down from Berlin, which was to say they were Brandenburgish/Prussian. Leibniz had met up with these Berliners in Leipzig. This had occurred only an hour after Daniel—who’d only just dropped off Johann, and cashed his Bill of Exchange, at the House of the Golden Mercury—had tracked down Leibniz. The union of these three separate parties was under the command of a Brandenburger noble who was also a captain of dragoons. He was adamant that they must press on across the Elbe and get into Brandenburg territory before nightfall, lest some Saxons give in to the temptation to make things complicated. Daniel found this a little ridiculous, but Leibniz saw wisdom in it. For Caroline might be an impoverished orphan living out in the middle of nowhere, but she was still a Princess, and to have a Princess in one’s custody, voluntary or in-, was to have power. And though Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, was a much better man than his late brother, yet there was no end to his crafty scheming; who knew if he might snatch Caroline up on a pretext and marry her off to some Tsarevich. So the collection of Caroline and her one item of baggage from the Dower-house of Pretzsch was carried through with a brusqueness normally reserved for kidnappings and elopements. This didn’t make it easier for the orphan Princess, but nothing could have done so, and a lingering farewell might have made it harder. By her choice she shared Leibniz’s coffee-brown, flower-painted carriage with him and Daniel. Tears and smiles passed alternately across her face like squalls and sunbeams on a gusty March day. She was thirteen.

The train crossed the Elbe on a nearby ferry and pounded down the road for some hours until they reached Brandenburg, then stopped for the night at an inn on the Meißen-Berlin road. The next day they got a late start. Some fifty miles separated them from the Palace of Charlottenburg and the hospitality of its namesake, the Electress Sophie Charlotte. “Pray consider me at your disposal, your highness,” said Leibniz. “The road is long, and I shall deem it a high honor to be of whatever assistance I may in making it seem shorter. We may pursue your mathematicks-lessons, which have been neglected during the illness of your late mother. We may discourse of theology, which is something you should tend to; for in the Court of Brandenburg-Prussia you’ll encounter not only Lutherans but Calvinists, Jesuits, Jansenists, even Orthodox, and you’ll need to keep your wits about you lest some silver-tongued zealot lead you astray. I have a blockflöte, and could attempt to give you a music-lesson. Or—”

“I would hear more of the work that Dr. Waterhouse purposes to undertake in Mas-sa-chu-setts,” said the Princess carefully. She had got wind of this from remarks overheard yesterday.

“A fitting topic, but in the end a very broad one,” said Leibniz. “Dr. Waterhouse?”

“The Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technologickal Arts,” began Daniel, “has been founded, and will sooner or later be endowed, by the Marquis of Ravenscar, who looks after his majesty’s money, and who is a great Whig. That means he belongs to a faction whose bank and whose money are founded on Commerce. They are ever opposed to the Tories, whose bank and money are founded on Land.”

“Land seems much the better choice, being fixed and stable.”

“Stability is not always a good thing. Think of lead and quicksilver. Lead makes good ballast, rooves, and pipes, but is sluggish, while quicksilver has marvelous properties of speed, flexibility, fluidity…”

“Are you an Alchemist?” Caroline demanded.

Daniel colored. “No, your highness. But I will go so far as to say that Alchemists think in metaphors that are sometimes instructive.” He shared a private look with Leibniz, and smiled. “Or perhaps we are all born with such habits of thought ingrained in our minds, and the Alchemists have simply fallen into the trap of making too much of them.”

“Mr. Locke would disagree,” said Caroline. “He says we start out a
tabula rasa
…”

“It might surprise you to learn that I know Mr. Locke well,” Daniel said, “and that he and I have argued about it.”

“What has he been up to lately?” Leibniz asked, unable to hold himself back. “I’ve been working on a reply to his
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
…”

“Mr. Locke has spent much time in London of late, debating Recoinage; for while Newton would devalue the pound sterling, Locke is a staunch believer that the standard laid down by Sir Thomas Gresham must never be tampered with.”

“Why do England’s greatest savants spend so much time arguing about coins?” Caroline asked.

Daniel considered it. “In the old world, the Tory world, when coin was nothing more than an expedient for moving rents from the country to London, they would never have paid it so much notice. But Antwerp suggested, and Amsterdam confirmed, and London has now proved, that there is in Commerce at least as much wealth as in Land; and still no one knows what to make of it. But money makes it all work somehow, or, when it is managed wrong, makes it
collapse. And so coins are as worthy of the attention of savants as cells, conic sections, and comets.”

Leibniz cleared his throat. “The way to Berlin is long,” he said, “but not
that
long.”

Daniel said, “The Doctor complains of our digression. I was speaking of the new Institute in Boston.”

“Yes. What is to be the nature of its work?”

Here Daniel was stumped; which was odd, and embarrassing. He did not quite know where to begin. But the Doctor, who knew Caroline much better, said, “If I may,” and gratefully Daniel gave the floor to him.

Leibniz said, “Persons such as your highness, who woolgather, and ponder things, are apt to be drawn into certain labyrinths of the mind—riddles about the nature of things, which one may puzzle over for a lifetime. Perhaps you have already visited them. One is the question of free will versus predestination. The other is the composition of the continuum.”

“The
what
of the
what
?”

“Simply that if you begin with observable things around you, such as yonder church-tower, and begin dividing them into their component parts, viz. bricks and mortar, and the parts into parts, where does it lead you in the end?”

“To atoms?”

“Some think so,” said Leibniz, agreeably enough. “At any rate, it happens that even the
Principia Mathematica
of Mr. Newton does not even attempt to settle such questions. He avoids these two labyrinths altogether—a wise choice! For in no way does he address the topic of free will versus predestination, other than to make it plain that he believes in the former. And he does not touch on atoms. Indeed, he is reluctant even to divulge his work on infinitesimal mathematics! But do not be misled into believing that he does not have an interest in such things. He does, and toils night and day on them. As do I, and as will Dr. Waterhouse in Massachusetts.”

“Do you toil on these two problems
separately
or—”

“A most important question, and one I should have anticipated,” said Leibniz, clapping his hands. “I should have mentioned that both Newton and I share a suspicion that these two problems are connected. That they are not two separate labyrinths, but a single large one with two entrances! You can enter either way; but by solving one, you solve the other.”

“So, let me see if I am understanding you, Doctor. You believe that if you understood the composition of the continuum—which is to say, atoms and whatnot—”

Leibniz shrugged. “Or monads. But pray continue.”

“If you understood that, it would somehow settle the question of free will versus predestination.”

“In a word: yes,” said the Doctor.

“Atoms I understand better,” began Caroline.

“No, you only phant’sy you do,” said Leibniz.

“What’s to understand? They are wee hard bits of stuff, jostling one another…”

“How big is an atom?”

“Infinitely small.”

“Then how can they touch each other?”

“I don’t know.”

“Supposing they do, by some miracle, come in contact, what happens then?”

“They bounce off each other.”

“Like billiard balls?”

“Precisely.”

“But, your highness, have you any idea just how complicated a billiard ball must be, to bounce? It is a fallacy to think that that most primitive of entities, the atom, can partake of any of the myriad qualities of a polished spherical lump of an elephant’s tusk.”

“Very well, then, but, too, sometimes they stick together, and form aggregates, more or less porous…”

“How does the sticking-together work? Even billiard balls can’t do that!”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, Doctor.”

“Nor does
anyone,
so do not feel bad about it. Not even Newton has figured out how atoms work, for all his toil.”