The Baroque Cycle - The System Of The World Part 12

"There is a way to fool the weighing-test," Isaac said.

"Impossible! Nothing is heavier than gold!"

"I have discovered the existence of gold of greater than twenty-four-carat weight."

"That is an absurdity," Daniel said, after a moment's pause to consider it.

"Your mind, being a logical organ, rejects it," Isaac said, "because, by definition, pure gold weighs twenty-four carats. Pure gold cannot become purer, hence, cannot be heavier. Of course, I am aware of this. But I say to you that I have with my own hands weighed gold that was heavier than gold that I knew to be pure."

From any other man on earth-Natural Philosophers included-this would amount to saying, "I was sloppy in the laboratory and got it wrong." From Sir Isaac Newton, it was truth of Euclidean certainty.

"I am put in mind of the discovery of phosphorus," Daniel remarked, after considering it for a few moments. "A new element of nature, with properties never before seen. Perhaps there exist other elements of which we are unaware, having properties. .h.i.therto unknown. Perhaps there is such an element, similar in many respects to gold, but having a higher specific gravity, and perhaps the gold you spoke of was alloyed with it to make a metal, indistinguishable from gold in its gross properties, but slightly more dense."

"I give you credit for ingenuity," Isaac said, slightly amused, "but there is a simpler explanation. Yes, the gold I speak of is alloyed with something: a fluidic essence that fills the interstices among its atoms and gives the metal greater weight. But I believe that this essence is nothing less than-"

"The Philosophick Mercury!" Daniel exclaimed. The words came out of his mouth in a spirit of genuine excitement; bounced off the hard walls of dark wood; and, when they entered his ears, made him cringe at his own idiocy. "You think it is the Philosophick Mercury," he corrected himself.

"The Subtile Spirit," Isaac said, not excited, but solemn as Rhadamanthus. "And the goal of Alchemists for thousands of years, ever since the Art was taken into the Orient, and removed from human ken, by its past master, King Solomon."

"You have been searching for traces of the Philosophick Mercury since we were boys," Daniel reminded him. "As recently as twenty years ago, your efforts to find even the smallest trace of it had met with abject failure. What has changed?"

"I took your advice, Daniel. I accepted the charge of the Mint from my lord Ravenscar. I initiated the Great Recoinage, which brought vast tonnage of gold plate and bullion out from where it had been h.o.a.rded."

"And you adjusted the ratio in valuation of silver to gold, so that the latter was over-valued," Daniel said, "which as everyone knows, has practically driven all silver off the island, and attracted gold from every corner of the globe where commerce has spread its tendrils."

Isaac declined comment.

"Prior to your-" here Daniel was about to say something like terrifying spasm of dementia terrifying spasm of dementia but corrected himself: "change of career, twenty years ago, you were only able to work with such modest samples of gold as you could buy from local sources. Your appointment to the Mint-combined with the policies you have adopted there-have made the Tower of London the bottle-neck through which all the world's gold flows, and put you in a position to dip your finger into that flow at will, sampling and testing the gold of many different lands-am I getting it right?" but corrected himself: "change of career, twenty years ago, you were only able to work with such modest samples of gold as you could buy from local sources. Your appointment to the Mint-combined with the policies you have adopted there-have made the Tower of London the bottle-neck through which all the world's gold flows, and put you in a position to dip your finger into that flow at will, sampling and testing the gold of many different lands-am I getting it right?"

Isaac nodded, and it seemed he looked almost mischievous, in a naughty-old-man sort of way. "The practice of all Alchemists since the time of Hermes Trismegistus has been to presume that the Gold of Solomon had been forever lost, and to attempt to re-discover his lost Art through patient trials and arcane study. This was the course that defeated me, before what you coyly describe as my change of career change of career. But during my recuperation, as I went to inspect the Mint, and conversed with my predecessors there, I came to realize that the ancient presumption of the Esoteric Brotherhood was no longer true. If Solomon went away into the remotest isles of the Orient, why, Commerce has now gone that far, or farther, and in particular the Spaniards and the Portuguese have left no stone unturned, the world over, in their a.s.siduous search for gold and silver. No matter how far Solomon may have journeyed, he would have left behind traces of his pa.s.sage, in the form of Solomonic Gold, which is to say, gold made through an Alchemical process, bearing traces of the Philosophick Mercury. In the millennia since his kingdom vanished from the earth, this gold might have pa.s.sed from one ignorant set of hands to another a thousand times. It might have been taken across wastes by caravans, forged into pagan funeral-masks, plundered from fallen citadels, buried in secret h.o.a.rds, dug up by thieves, seized by pirates, made into jewels, and coined into specie of diverse realms. But through all of these evolutions it would preserve the traces of the Philosophick Mercury that would provide an infallible proof of its origins. To find it, I need not pore over ancient ma.n.u.scripts for fragments of Alchemical lore, and I need not venture into far reaches to search for ancient gold with my own hands. I need only position myself like a spider at the center of the global web of commerce, and then so arrange matters that all the world's gold would flow inwards toward me, as every point of matter in the solar system naturally falls inwards toward the Sun. If I then remained vigilant, and sampled all the gold that came into the Mint to be made into guineas, in time I should be nearly certain of finding some traces of the Solomonic Gold."

"And now you would appear to have found it," said Daniel, unwilling to weigh in, yet, on Isaac's side. "How recently has this occurred?"

"For the first several years there was nothing. Not a trace. I despaired of finding it ever," Isaac admitted. "Then, during the respite in the War, round 1701, I found a bit of gold heavier than twenty-four carat. I cannot summon words, here and now, to convey my emotions then! It was just a flake of gold leaf, found in a coiner's shop after it was raided, on my orders, by the King's Messengers. The coiner himself had been slain during the raid-most frustrating! Several years later, I found a counterfeit guinea that was heavier than it ought to be. In time, I hunted down the coiner who had made it, and interrogated him as to where he had obtained his bullion. He had gotten most of it from conventional sources. But he said that he had recently purchased, through a middleman, a quant.i.ty of gold in the form of sheet metal, hand-hammered, about an eighth of an inch thick. Six months later I talked to another coiner who recollected having seen a larger piece of such gold. He said it had been marked on one side with a linear pattern of sc.r.a.pes, and stained on the other face with tar."

"Tar!"

"Yes. But I have never seen such a sample with my own eyes. I only find evidence evidence of its existence in coins-counterfeit guineas of a level of quality such that I myself am sometimes deceived by them!" of its existence in coins-counterfeit guineas of a level of quality such that I myself am sometimes deceived by them!"

"So, 'twould appear that whoever has this gold, has h.o.a.rded it, and used to spend it, in the form of plates stained with tar. But from time to time he will deliver some of it up to a coiner-"

"Not a a coiner but coiner but the the coiner. Jack. Jack the Coiner. My Nemesis, and my prey, these last twelve years." coiner. Jack. Jack the Coiner. My Nemesis, and my prey, these last twelve years."

"Jack sounds like an interesting chap," Daniel allowed, "and I ween I shall learn more of him from you anon-but is it your hypothesis that he has a h.o.a.rd of these gold sheets somewhere, and coins them from time to time?"

"No. They're of no use to him h.o.a.rded. If he had a h.o.a.rd, he would coin every last ounce of it, as fast as his coiners could do the work. No, it is my hypothesis that Jack knows the owner of the h.o.a.rd, and that from time to time that person, wanting some money to spend, takes some plates out, and brings them to Jack."

"Do you have any notion as to who the h.o.a.rder might be?"

"The answer is suggested by the tar, and the sc.r.a.pes. It is coming from a ship."

"There is a vague a.s.sociation between tar and ships, but beyond that, I don't follow you," Daniel said.

"The information you are wanting is that, among sailors and officers of the French Navy, there is a legend-"

"Ah, in truth I have have heard it!" Daniel exclaimed. "But I failed to draw the connexion. You refer to a legendary ship whose hull was plated with gold." heard it!" Daniel exclaimed. "But I failed to draw the connexion. You refer to a legendary ship whose hull was plated with gold."

"Indeed."

"But 'twould seem that in your view this is no legend."

"I have studied it," Isaac announced. "I can now trace the descent of King Solomon's Gold from the pages of the Bible, down through the ages, to the hull of that ship, and thence to the samples that I have a.s.sayed in my laboratory in the Tower of London."

"Pray tell me the tale then!"

"Most of it is no tale at all. The Islands of King Solomon lie in the Pacific. There his gold rested, undisturbed by men, until round the time that you and I were young, and Huygens's clock began to tick. A Spanish fleet, driven by a typhoon far off the charted sea-lanes that join Acapulco to Manila, dropped anchor in the Solomons, and took on board certain provisions, including earth to pack round the galley-stoves to protect the planks of the ship from fire. During the voyage home to New Spain, the heat of the fire melted gold-or something that looked like it-out of the sand, and it pooled to form nuggets of astonishing fineness, which were discovered when the ships broke bulk in Acapulco. The Viceroy of New Spain, then just beginning a twenty-five- year reign, was not slow to send out ships to the Solomons to extract more of this gold, and bring it back to Mexico to be piled up in his personal h.o.a.rd. At the end of his reign, he caused the Solomonic Gold to be loaded aboard his private brig, which sailed back to Spain in convoy with the Spanish treasure-fleet. They made it safe as far as Cadiz. But then the little brig foolishly sailed alone up to Bonanza, where the Viceroy had caused a villa to be built, in which he phant'sied he would enjoy a wealthy retirement. Before she could be unloaded, she was set upon in the night by pirates, dressed as Turks, and led by the infamous criminal known to us as Half-c.o.c.ked Jack, the King of the Vagabonds, and to the French as L'Emmerdeur L'Emmerdeur. The gold was stolen and spirited away in long stages to Hindoostan, where most of it fell into the possession of a heathen potentate, an Amazon pirate-queen, black as char-coal, who had not the faintest understanding of what she had netted. But on those sh.o.r.es, Jack and his confederates used their ill-gotten gains to build a pirate-ship. And from some Dutch shipwrights they had the notion-which was in no way a faulty one, as e'en a stopped Clock is correct twice daily-that if the hull of this ship were cladded, below the waterline, with sheets of smooth metal, she would afford no purchase for barnacles, and repel the attacks of the teredo."

" 'Tis a wholly reasonable idea," Daniel said.

" 'Twas a good idea, most strangely executed! For, vain and extravagant man that he was, this Jack decreed that the metal be wrought out of solid gold!"

"So the tale told by those French mariners was in no way fanciful," Daniel concluded.

"I should rather say, 'twas none the less true, for being fanciful!" Isaac returned.

"Do you know where that ship is now?" Daniel asked, trying not to sound nervous; for he he knew. knew.

"It is thought that she was christened Minerva Minerva. But this is not known with certainty, and is of little use, even if true, as hundreds of ships answer to that name. But I suspect that she still roams the seas, and calls at London from time to time, and that some commerce plays out between Jack the Coiner, and those who sail her. Plates of gold are taken out of her bilge-for make no mistake, they were stripped from her hull and replaced with copper, probably in some unfrequented Caribbean cove, many years ago-and delivered to Jack, who coins them into excellent guineas, with which he poisons Her Majesty's stock of money. That is the tale of Solomon's Gold, Daniel. I hoped you would find it a diverting yarn. Why do you look so distracted?"

"I find it very odd that the prize you have sought your entire life, should happen to rest in the hands of the man you describe as your Nemesis."

"My Nemesis, where Mint work is concerned. In other fields, I have other foes," Isaac reminded him shortly.

"That is beside my point. Why shouldn't the h.o.a.rd of Solomonic Gold lie in a vault in Seville, or at the Vatican, or the Forbidden City of Peking? Of all the places in the world where this gold might have ended up, why should it be in the possession of Jack the Coiner-the one man you'd most like to see being dragged on a sledge to Tyburn?"

"Because its density exceeds that of gold, it is valuable to a counterfeiter."

"It is more more valuable to an Alchemist. Do you suppose Jack valuable to an Alchemist. Do you suppose Jack knows knows as much, and do you suppose he is aware that you, Isaac, are an Alchemist?" as much, and do you suppose he is aware that you, Isaac, are an Alchemist?"

"He is a mere criminal. criminal."

"Yes, and a very cosmopolitan one, from the sounds of it."

"I a.s.sure you he has not the faintest comprehension of matters Alchemical."

"Neither do I. And yet I understand that you desire this gold! And yet I understand that you desire this gold!"

"What does it matter? He knows that I wish to hunt him down and bring him to justice-that is enough."

"Isaac, you have a habit of under-estimating the intelligence of anyone who is not you not you. Perhaps this Jack is using the Solomonic Gold to bait you."

"What matters it if a mouse mouse baits a baits a lion lion?"

"Depends on whether the lion is being baited into single combat with that mouse, or into a pit-fall with sharpened stakes at the bottom."

"I do not think your a.n.a.logy is applicable. But I am grateful for your expression of concern. Now let us end all tedious disputes about Jack, by ending Jack!"

"Did you say 'us'?"

"Yes! Yes, I did. As there are only two men in this room, I can only have meant, you and I you and I. As we shared a room, and worked together, at the beginning of our lives, so shall we do now, as we near their ends."

"What possible use could I be in helping to apprehend Jack the Coiner?"

"You have come from America on a mysterious errand. You have traveled in the company of a notorious weigher, and I am told that you are up to some occult doings in a hole in the ground in Clerkenwell."

"Not true, unless you count real estate development as one of the black arts."

"If you were now to announce yourself, to the criminal underworld of London, as a weigher, in possession of gold from America-"

"I beg your pardon, but I really do not wish to announce myself to the criminal underworld as anything anything!"

"But supposing you did, why, you might be able to establish contacts with Jack's subtile net-work of informants and Black-guards."

"That is the second time today I have heard 'Black-guard' spoken in those portentous tones. I thought a Black-guard was a boy who polished boots."

"Some of those boys have got rather big, and found employment even lower, and even blacker," Isaac remarked.

"Then I'll have nothing to do with any Black-guard."

"If you have heard some other man speaking the word to-day, 'twould seem that you already do do have something to do with them," said Isaac, amused, "which would hardly surprise me considering the company you have been keeping." have something to do with them," said Isaac, amused, "which would hardly surprise me considering the company you have been keeping."

Daniel was silent. But only because he could not divulge to Isaac that his only motive in speaking to the sort of man who spoke of the Black-guard-men such as Peter Hoxton-was to track down whatever remnants Hooke had left behind.

Isaac read his silence as submission. Given more time, Daniel might have disabused Isaac of any such ideas, and extricated himself. But a servant was knocking at the door. A minute earlier Daniel had heard someone calling briefly at the front door of the house, presumably to deliver a message, and now it had penetrated to the study, and interrupted their discourse at the worst possible moment for Daniel. He wondered whether the servant had been lurking outside the door, waiting to knock at some subtle signal from Isaac: I have sprung the trap, now interrupt us lest he wriggle free! I have sprung the trap, now interrupt us lest he wriggle free!

"Enter!" Isaac commanded, and in came the servant who'd admitted Daniel earlier, holding a rectangle of good paper with a few lines scrawled over it in a lazy, important hand. As Isaac decyphered the penmanship, and considered the import, and discussed it in a hushed, elliptical manner with his servant, Daniel had his first opportunity to review all that had pa.s.sed since he had breezed into this room with a riddle concerning guineas.

What had he expected? He had expected that, at best, Isaac would be cool and distant. At worst, he'd know that Daniel was striving to preserve some memory of Hooke, and corresponding with and running errands for Leibniz, and would tear Daniel's beating heart out of his chest then and there, like an Aztec priest. Those had seemed the most likely outcomes. If some oracle had let him know in advance that he was to have a long, cordial, even friendly conversation with Isaac, he'd have accounted it a triumph. And maybe it was-but it was Isaac's triumph and not Daniel's. Whether or not Isaac knew of Daniel's concealed loyalty to Hooke and Leibniz, he had clearly got it into his mind that Daniel needed to be kept close, and kept busy.

"We've not even had time to broach the subject of Baron von Leibniz's pretensions concerning the calculus," Isaac announced in a chummy voice that was very odd coming from him, "and here it is time for me to be on my way."

"I consider myself fortunate indeed to have taken up as much of your time as I have done," Daniel said, trying not to sound ironic about it.

"The good fortune is all mine, and I a.s.sure you that the meeting I go to now shall never be half so enjoyable as this!" Isaac returned. "If the Mint were strictly a temple of Natural Philosophy-as it ought to be-supervising it would be pure pleasure. As it is, I waste many hours in meetings of a political political nature." He was getting to his feet. nature." He was getting to his feet.

"Is it Whigs or Tories today, then?" Daniel asked, rising. From here on out it would be all banter: pleasant noises that might as well have been spoken in Iroquois.

"Germans," Isaac returned, offering him priority out the door. Catherine Barton, or someone, must have taught him manners.

"Really! They'll be running the country soon enough, why are they pestering you now?"

They paused in a hall so that Isaac could shrug off his scarlet robe and have a vest and coat thrown across his shoulders by a valet. "They don't pester me me, but other other men, of higher station-ramifications ensue," Isaac said. "I would offer to convey you somewhere, but my conveyance only has room for one. May I have a hackney summoned for you?" men, of higher station-ramifications ensue," Isaac said. "I would offer to convey you somewhere, but my conveyance only has room for one. May I have a hackney summoned for you?"

"I'll walk, thank you," Daniel said. Isaac followed him into the vestibule, which was crowded. Two large men were in here, smelling of the street. Between them stood a vertical black box, open on one side to reveal a crimson leather seat. Isaac sidled into it, smoothing the skirts of his coat under him. A servant stood at the ready to slam the door to.

"I shall hear from you concerning the proposal that I made," Isaac predicted. "And do let's not forget to have a conversation, some day soon, about the calculus."

"Not a day pa.s.ses without my thinking of it," Daniel answered. With that the door was latched shut. Isaac had vanished inside the black box. His voice came out of it clearly, "G.o.d save the Queen, Daniel," reminding Daniel that the only thing between them was a sheer black screen through which Isaac could see and hear everything, though he was quite invisible to anyone outside.

"G.o.d save the Queen," Daniel returned, and then he followed the sedan chair out the door and onto St. Martin's. Isaac was carried rapidly southwards, toward St. James's and Westminster and all things great and important. Daniel, not wanting the awkwardness of walking along abreast of Isaac's chair, went the other way.

Pa.s.sing immediately through a gate at the head of the lane, he came out into an open plaza, squarish, about a bow-shot on a side. This was called Leicester Fields, and on three sides-including the one where Daniel had entered-it was now hemmed in by the sort of new town-houses that had started going up all round here after the Fire. But on the north edge-which Daniel was facing directly across a few hundred feet of open turf-it was walled off by one of the few remaining old-fashioned Tudor compounds: a congeries of red brick and half-timbered buildings called Leicester House. It had formerly been one of the few houses around London deemed suitable for royalty to dwell in, and had been used by diverse Tudor and Stuart princes as a palace. Elizabeth Stuart had dwelt there before she'd gone off to Europe to become the Winter Queen and to sp.a.w.n Sophie and many others. Changes in the royal line had weakened the sentimental ties to this house, and the re-building of London in a new style had quite over-shadowed it and made it seem a mere English farm-house.

As Daniel came into Leicester Fields, he gazed in that direction curiously, trying to get his bearings, like a mariner looking for the old familiar stars. He saw a lot of horses and vehicles in front of the place, and felt a pang, supposing that the wreckers had arrived to tear it down. But as he strolled across the Fields, creating localized panics among sheep and chickens, he perceived that these were not rubbish-wagons but baggage-carts, and rather well-maintained ones at that. Among them was a carriage, a coach-and-four drawn by a matched set of black horses. A woman was alighting from that carriage, walking away from Daniel toward the house, and servants were drawn up in two lines to greet her. Daniel could not see anything of the woman, other than that she was pet.i.te, and trim. Her head was shrouded in a voluminous silk scarf covering a big hat or wig. And he was too far away, and his eyes were too far gone, to resolve lips, eyes, and noses on the faces of those servants. But something in their posture, and in the way they turned their faces and bodies toward the woman as she progressed across the court, told Daniel that they were smiling. They loved her.

At the apex of this formation, where the two lines of servants came together in front of the house's main entrance, stood a man who was not a servant: he was dressed in the clothes of a gentleman. But there was something odd about him, which Daniel could not make sense of until he went into movement, extending a leg to make a low bow, and accepting the woman's hand to kiss it. The man's skin was entirely black. The woman took his arm and the black man escorted her into Leicester House; the lines of servants broke up and everyone made him- or herself busy unloading the baggage carts, &c.

As there was nothing more to see, Daniel turned on his heel and ambled toward the edge of Leicester Fields; and as he did, he became aware that he was only one part of a general slow evacuation. Diverse tinkers, vagabonds, strolling gentlemen, and boot-blacks were also making their way towards the exits, and in the fronts of the new town-houses around the square, curtains were being drawn.

Leicester House TEN SECONDS LATER.

HE WAS OBLIGED TO PURSUE her to the upper storey, for she talked as she went. She stormed a long dangerous wooden staircase and then faltered, only for an instant, as a great splintery-looking wooden door had presented itself in her way. By the time Dappa could get the words "Allow me-" past his lips, she'd clobbered it with her shoulder, got it open, and vanished into a big-sounding s.p.a.ce yonder. The door remained ajar, shuddering from end to end. her to the upper storey, for she talked as she went. She stormed a long dangerous wooden staircase and then faltered, only for an instant, as a great splintery-looking wooden door had presented itself in her way. By the time Dappa could get the words "Allow me-" past his lips, she'd clobbered it with her shoulder, got it open, and vanished into a big-sounding s.p.a.ce yonder. The door remained ajar, shuddering from end to end.

He took the last few steps with some care. His His legs, anyway, were unused to pushing off against things that did not pitch and roll. After all he'd been through, he didn't want to die falling down a nasty old stairway in a strange English house. legs, anyway, were unused to pushing off against things that did not pitch and roll. After all he'd been through, he didn't want to die falling down a nasty old stairway in a strange English house.

They were now in an isosceles triangle made by the converging planes of the roof and a somewhat dodgy floor of loose deals. In any house made to normal scale it would have been pigeon-nesting s.p.a.ce, but here it was large enough to throw a country dance.

Dappa wished he had some sailors with him, so that they could all share a good laugh at this room. Persons who fell into the habit of dwelling on dry land soon acquired queer and comical ways. They forgot that everything in G.o.d's creation moved, and they fell into the phant'sy that an object, such as a wardrobe, could be dragged to a certain position in a room such as this one, covered with a sail, and let go of, without in any way being lashed down, and that twenty years later one might come back and find it just where it had been left.

Certain of these people then let themselves go altogether. Rooms such as this one were the monuments that they built to themselves. The draped furniture, crated paintings, and heaps of books were as chock-a-block as ice-floes driven into a blind cove by a boreal breeze. Spiders had been at work: a Navy of diligent riggers working day and night to tie it all down and lash it smartly together. Eliza was undoing their work, moving down the length of the room in carefully considered lunges and clever sideways darts. Her gown was growing a diaphanous train of cobwebs, and her wake in the air was visible as a serrated line of dust-explosions and plunging vortices. She was thinking hard about which way to go next, and had forgotten to talk.

Wee dormers were cut into the pitch of the roof every few yards, shedding plentiful light, and giving Dappa an excellent prospect of the many ways he could soil his dark suit if he attempted to follow her. Forgetting that this house could be trusted not to move under his feet, he reached up with one hand and braced it absent-mindedly on a tie-beam running between rafters above his head. A small avalanche of pale gray bat-s.h.i.t tumbled down his sleeve and made itself one with the expensive black wool. " 'Tis well my head's grizzled to begin with to begin with," he muttered, and then was struck by how well his voice carried down the utterly silent room.

"Beg pardon?"

"Never mind, only grumbling and muttering."

"It is all right," she called back in her alert way. "Do keep in mind, though, that when we are in the presence of others-especially, Persons of Quality-"

"Then you are my n.o.ble patroness," Dappa said, "and I the ink-stained wretch. So very ink-stained, as to've become black from head to toe, save the soles of my feet, where I walk about collecting slave-narratives-"

"And the palm of your hand, where you grip your quill. I recognize these phrases from the Apology of your new ma.n.u.script," she said, favoring him with a trace of a smile.

"Ah, you've read it!"

"Of course I have," she answered, affronted. "Why ever not?"