The Baroque Cycle - The System Of The World Part 2

"Do you know what they were doing?"

"That I do, sir, for I was in the church too, though I must admit, in a less expensive pew..."

" 'Expiating the horrid Sin committed in the execrable Murder of the Royal Martyr! Remembrancing his rank Butchery at the Hands of the Mobb!' "

"This confirms that we did attend the same service."

"I was there," Daniel said-referring to the rank Butchery-"and to me it looked like a perfectly regular and well-ordered proceeding." He had, by this time, had a few moments to compose himself, and did not feel that he was spewing flames any more. He uttered this last in a very mild conversational tone. Yet it affected Mr. Threader far more strongly than anything Daniel could have screamed or shouted at him. The conversation stopped as dramatically as it had begun. Little was said for an hour, and then another, as the carriage, and the train of wagons bringing up the rear, found its way along town streets to the Oxford Road, and turned towards the City, and made its way eastwards across a green, pond-scattered landscape. Mr. Threader, who was facing forward, stared out a side window and looked alarmed, then pensive, then sad. Daniel recognized this train of emotions all too well; it was a treatment meted out by evangelicals to d.a.m.nable Sinners. The sadness would soon give way to determination. Then Daniel could expect a fiery last-ditch conversion attempt.

Daniel was facing backwards, watching the road pa.s.s under the wheels of the baggage-cart. On that cart, he knew, was Mr. Threader's strangely over-organized collection of strong-boxes. This put him in mind of a much-needed change of subject.

"Mr. Threader. How shall I compensate you?"

"Mm-Dr. Waterhouse? What?"

"You have not only transported me but boarded me, entertained me, and edified me, for two weeks, and I owe you money."

"No. Not at all, actually. I am a very particular man, Mr. Waterhouse, in my dealings. Had I desired compensation, I'd have said as much before we set out from Tavistock, and I'd have held you to it. As I did not do so then then I cannot accept a penny from you I cannot accept a penny from you now. now."

"I had in mind more than a penny penny-"

"Dr. Waterhouse, you have made a lengthy journey-an unimaginable journey, to me-and are far from home, it would be a sin to accept so much as a farthing from your purse."

"My purse need not enter into it, Mr. Threader. I have not undertaken this journey without backing. My banker in the City will not hesitate to advance you an equitable sum, on the credit of the Person who has underwritten my travels."

Now Mr. Threader was, at least, interested; he stopped looking out the window, and turned his attention to Daniel. "I'll not take anyone's anyone's money-yours, your banker's, or your backer's, sir. And I'll not ask who your backer money-yours, your banker's, or your backer's, sir. And I'll not ask who your backer is is, for it has gradually become obvious to me that your errand is-like a bat-dark, furtive, and delicate. But if you would be so good as to indulge my professional curiosity on one small matter, I should consider your account paid in full."

"Name it."

"Who is your banker?" is your banker?"

"Living as I do in Boston, I have no need of a bank in London-but I am fortunate enough to have a family connexion in that business, whom I can call upon as the occasion demands: my nephew, Mr. William Ham."

"Mr. William Ham! Of Ham Brothers! The money-goldsmiths who went bankrupt!"

"You are thinking of his father father. William was only a boy then." Daniel began to explain young William's career at the Bank of England but he bated, seeing a gla.s.sy look on Mr. Threader's face.

"The money-goldsmiths!" Mr. Threader reiterated, "The money-goldsmiths." Something in his tone put Daniel in mind of Hooke identifying a parasite under a microscope. "Well, you see then, it's of no account anyway, Dr. Waterhouse, as I do not think that Mr. Ham's money would have any utility utility for me." for me."

Daniel understood now that Mr. Threader had set a trap by asking for the name of his banker. Saying to Mr. Threader, a money-scrivener, My banker is a money-goldsmith My banker is a money-goldsmith, was like mentioning to an Archbishop I attend church in a barn I attend church in a barn: proof that he belonged to the Enemy. The trap had sprung on him now; and, whether by design or no, it happened at the moment they trundled through Tyburn Cross, where limbs of freshly quartered criminals were spiked to the scaffold, festooned with unraveled bowels. Mr. Threader proclaimed, "Coiners!" with the finality of a Norn.

"They're drawing and quartering people for that that now?" now?"

"Sir Isaac is determined to root them out. He has brought the judicial Powers round to his view, which is that counterfeiting is not just a petty crime-it is high treason! High treason, Dr. Waterhouse. And every coiner that Sir Isaac catches, ends up High treason, Dr. Waterhouse. And every coiner that Sir Isaac catches, ends up thusly thusly, torn by flies and ravens at Tyburn Cross."

Then, as if it were the most natural Transition imaginable, Mr. Threader-who had leaned far forward and screwed his head around to contemplate, at greater length, the festering shreds of Sir Isaac's latest kills-fell back into his repose with a contented sigh, and fastened the same sort of look on the tip of Daniel's nose. "You were there when Charles the First was decapitated?"

"That is what I told you, Mr. Threader. And I was startled, startled, to say the least, to enter a church three score and five years later, and be confronted with evidence that these High Church folk have not yet recovered from the event. Do you have any idea, Mr. Threader, how many Englishmen perished in the Civil War? In accordance with our norms, I shall not even mention Irishmen." to say the least, to enter a church three score and five years later, and be confronted with evidence that these High Church folk have not yet recovered from the event. Do you have any idea, Mr. Threader, how many Englishmen perished in the Civil War? In accordance with our norms, I shall not even mention Irishmen."

"No, I've no idea..."

"Precisely! And so to make such a bother about one chap seems as bizarre, idolatrous, fetishistic, and beside the point to me, as Hindoos venerating Cows."

"He lived in the neighborhood," said Mr. Threader, meaning Windsor.

"A local connexion that was not even mentioned in the homily-not, I say, in the first, the second, or the third hour of it. Rather, I heard much talk that sounded to me like politics. politics."

"To you. Yes. But Yes. But to me to me, Dr. Waterhouse, it sounded like church. church. Whereas, if we were to go there-" and Mr. Threader pointed at a barn in a field to the north side of Tyburn Road, surrounded by carriages, and emanating four-part harmony; i.e., a Meeting-House of some Gathered Church "-we would hear much that would sound like church to Whereas, if we were to go there-" and Mr. Threader pointed at a barn in a field to the north side of Tyburn Road, surrounded by carriages, and emanating four-part harmony; i.e., a Meeting-House of some Gathered Church "-we would hear much that would sound like church to you you, and politics to me me."

"To me me it would sound like common sense," Daniel demurred, "and I hope that in time you would come round to the same opinion-which would be an impossibility for it would sound like common sense," Daniel demurred, "and I hope that in time you would come round to the same opinion-which would be an impossibility for me me, in there there-" Fortuitously, they had just crossed over some important new street that had not existed, or had been just a cow-path, in Daniel's day; but never mind, as looking north he saw Oxford Chapel just where it had always been, and so he was able to thrust his finger at an Anglican church-steeple, which was all he wanted to ill.u.s.trate his point. "-in that there is no sense to it whatever, only mindless ritual!"

"It is naturally the case that Mysteries of Faith do not lend themselves to commonsensical explanation."

"You, sir, might as well be a Catholic, if that is what you believe."

"And you, sir, might as well be an Atheist-unless, like so many of the Royal Society, you have, on your way to Atheism, chosen to pause for refreshment at the Spring of Arianism."

Daniel was fascinated. "Is it widely known-or supposed supposed, I should say-that the Royal Society is a nest of Arianism?"

"Only among those capable of recognizing the obvious, obvious, sir." sir."

"Those capable of recognizing the obvious obvious might conclude from the service you and I have just been subjected to, that this country is ruled by Jacobites-and ruled, I say, thusly from the very might conclude from the service you and I have just been subjected to, that this country is ruled by Jacobites-and ruled, I say, thusly from the very top top."

"Your powers of perception put mine to shame, Dr. Waterhouse, if you know the Queen's mind on this question. The Pretender may be a staunch Catholic, and he may be in France, but he is is her brother! And at the end of a poor old lonely woman's life, to expect that she'll not be swayed by such considerations is inhumane." her brother! And at the end of a poor old lonely woman's life, to expect that she'll not be swayed by such considerations is inhumane."

"Not nearly as inhumane as the welcome her brother would receive if he came to these sh.o.r.es styling himself King. Consider the example just cited, so tediously, in church."

"Your candor is bracing. Among my circle, one does not allude so freely to Decapitation of Kings by a Mobb."

"I am glad that you are braced, Mr. Threader. I am merely hungry."

"To me you seem thirsty thirsty-"

"For blood?"

"For royal royal blood." blood."

"The blood of the Pretender is not royal, for he is no King, and never will be. I saw his father's blood, streaming out of his nostrils in a gin-house at Sheerness, and I saw his uncle's blood being let from his jugulars at Whitehall, and his grandfather's plashing all round the scaffold at the Banqueting House, sixty-five years ago today, and none of it looked different from the blood of convicts that we put up in jars at the Royal Society. If spilling the Pretender's blood prevents another Civil War, why spill it."

"You really should moderate your language, sir. If the Pretender did come to the throne, the words you just spoke would be high treason, and you would be dragged on a sledge to the place we have just put behind us, where you would be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered."

"I simply find it inconceivable that that man would ever be suffered to reign over England."

"We call it the United Kingdom now. If you were fresh from New England, Dr. Waterhouse, which is a hot-bed of Dissidents, or if you had been dwelling too long in London, where Whigs and Parliament lord it over ordinary sensible Englishmen, then I should understand why you feel as you do. But during our journey I have showed you England as it is, as it is, not as Whigs phant'sy it to be. How can a man of your intelligence not perceive the wealth of this country-the wealth not as Whigs phant'sy it to be. How can a man of your intelligence not perceive the wealth of this country-the wealth temporal temporal of our commerce and the wealth of our commerce and the wealth spiritual spiritual of our Church? For I say to you that if you did comprehend that wealth you would of our Church? For I say to you that if you did comprehend that wealth you would certainly certainly be a Tory, be a Tory, possibly possibly even a Jacobite." even a Jacobite."

"The spiritual spiritual side of the account is balanced, and perhaps o'er-balanced, by the congregations who gather together in Meeting-Houses, where one does not need to sign a lease, to sit on a pew. So we may leave Church-disputes out of the reckoning. Where side of the account is balanced, and perhaps o'er-balanced, by the congregations who gather together in Meeting-Houses, where one does not need to sign a lease, to sit on a pew. So we may leave Church-disputes out of the reckoning. Where money money is concerned, I shall confess, that the prosperity of the countryside quite overtopped my expectations. But it comes to little when set against the wealth of the City." is concerned, I shall confess, that the prosperity of the countryside quite overtopped my expectations. But it comes to little when set against the wealth of the City."

Timing once again favored Daniel, for they were now on Oxford Street. To the carriage's left side, the Green Lane stretched northwards across open country, threading its way between parks, gardens and farms, darting into little vales and bounding over rises. To the right side it was all built-up: a development that had been only a gleam in Sterling's* eye twenty years ago: Soho Square. Gesturing first this way, then that, Daniel continued: "For the country draws its revenue from a fixed stock: sheep eating gra.s.s. Whereas, the City draws its wealth from foreign trade, which is ever-increasing and, I say, inexhaustible." eye twenty years ago: Soho Square. Gesturing first this way, then that, Daniel continued: "For the country draws its revenue from a fixed stock: sheep eating gra.s.s. Whereas, the City draws its wealth from foreign trade, which is ever-increasing and, I say, inexhaustible."

"Oh, Dr. Waterhouse, I am so pleased that Providence has given me the opportunity to set you right on that score, before you got to London and embarra.s.sed yourself by holding views that stopped being true while you were gone. For look, we are come to Tottenham Court Road, the city begins in earnest." Mr. Threader pounded on the roof and called out the window to the driver, "High Street is impa.s.sable for re-paving, jog left and take Great Russell round to High Holborn!"

"On the contrary, Mr. Threader. I know that the Tories have established their own Bank, as a rival and a counterpoise to the Bank of England. But the Bank of England is capitalized with East India shares. The equity of the Tories' Land Bank is, simply, land. And East India trade grows from year to year. But of land there is a fixed quant.i.ty, unless you mean to emulate the Dutch, and manufacture your own."

"This is where you need to be set to rights, Dr. Waterhouse. The Land Bank is an antiquarian folly, for just the reasons you have set forth. But this in no way signifies that the Bank of England holds a monopoly. On the contrary. With all due respect to the busy, but misguided men of the Juncto, their Bank's health is as precarious as the Queen's. The war we have just brought to an end was a Whig war, pressed upon a reluctant Queen by the importunities of a warlike Parliament, led by a Juncto intoxicated by dreams of adventures on foreign soil. They got the money by taxing the people of the country-and I know whereof I speak, for they are my friends!-and they got that money into the coffers of the Duke of Marlborough's army by means of loans, brokered in the City, at great personal profit, by Whig bankers and money-goldsmiths. Oh, it was very lucrative for a time, Mr. Waterhouse, and if you were to believe the representations made by my lord Ravenscar, why, you might be forgiven for thinking it was all profitable to the Bank of England. There is his house, by the way," Mr. Threader remarked, as he peered at a spreading Barock pile on the north side of Great Russell Street. "Unspeakably vulgar, quintessentially nouveau nouveau..."

"I was the architect," Daniel said mildly.

"Of the first first bit," said Mr. Threader after only a moment's break, "which was admirable, a jewel-box. Pity what has been inflicted on it since you left. You know both the Golden, and the Silver, Comstocks. Fascinating! Ravenscar is no longer in a position to afford the best, and so, as you can plainly see, he makes up in ostentation and volume what he cannot have in taste and quality. His mistress seems to find it pleasing." bit," said Mr. Threader after only a moment's break, "which was admirable, a jewel-box. Pity what has been inflicted on it since you left. You know both the Golden, and the Silver, Comstocks. Fascinating! Ravenscar is no longer in a position to afford the best, and so, as you can plainly see, he makes up in ostentation and volume what he cannot have in taste and quality. His mistress seems to find it pleasing."

"Oh."

"You do know who my lord Ravenscar's mistress is?"

"I've no idea, Mr. Threader; when I knew him, he had a different wh.o.r.e every week, and sometimes three at once. Who is his wh.o.r.e presently?"

"The niece of Sir Isaac Newton."

Daniel could not bear this and so he said the first thing that came into his head: "That is where we used to live."

He nodded southwards across Waterhouse Square, and slipped far down in his seat so that he could get a look at the house that brother Raleigh had built on the rubble of the one where Drake had been blown up. This change of position brought him knee-to-knee with Mr. Threader, who seemed to know the story of Drake's demise, and observed a respectful silence as they circ.u.mvented the square. Gazing, from his low-down position, over the skyline of the city, Daniel was shocked by a glimpse of an enormous dome: the new St. Paul's. Then the carriage rounded a turn onto Holborn and he lost it.

"You were making some comment about banks, earlier?" Daniel inquired, in a desperate bid to purge his mind of the image of Roger Comstock putting his poxy yard into Isaac's niece.

"It went poorly for the Whigs, very poorly indeed, in the last years of the war!" Mr. Threader answered, grateful to've been given the opportunity to recount the misfortunes of the Juncto. "Bankruptcy forced England to do what France could not: sue for peace, without having accomplished the chief goals of the war. No wonder Marlborough fled the country in disgrace, no wonder at all!"

"I cannot believe East India trade will be depressed for very long, though."

Mr. Threader leaned forward, ready with an answer, but was tripped up by an interruption, of a professional nature, from the driver.

"Dr. Waterhouse, if you would be so good as to specify any destination in greater London, it would be my honor and privilege to convey you to it; but we are approaching Holborn Bridge, the gates and wall of the ancient City are within view, and you must decide now, unless you really want to accompany me all the way to Change Alley."

"That is very kind of you, Mr. Threader. I shall lodge at the Royal Society to-night."

"Right, guv'nor!" said the driver, who could overhear conversations when he needed to. He turned his attention to his horses, then, and addressed them in altogether different language.

"Bad luck that that the Royal Society has moved out of Gresham's College," Mr. Threader a.s.serted.

"The delicacy of your discourse is a continual wonder to me, sir." Daniel sighed, for in truth, the Royal Society had been thrown out of that mouldering pile after Hooke-who, for many years, had defended their lease with his usual vicious tenacity-had died in 1703. Without Hooke, they had only been able to delay the eviction. And they had delayed it superbly, but as of four years ago they were in new quarters off Fleet Street. "Those of us who sank our money into the bonds that paid for the new building, might employ stronger language than 'bad luck.' "

"It is apropos, sir, that you should bring up the topic of investments. I had been about to mention that, should we have taken you to Gresham's College, we should have pa.s.sed by the front of a new edifice, at Threadneedle and Bishopsgate, that might fairly be called a new Wonder of the World."

"What-your offices, Mr. Threader?"

Mr. Threader chuckled politely. Then he got a distracted look, for the carriage had slowed down, and tilted slightly, depressing him and elevating Daniel. They were climbing a gentle grade. Mr. Threader's gaze bounced from the left window to the right, and stuck there, fixed on the sight of St. Andrew's church-yard, a huddled mob of gray head-stones fading into the twilight of the absurdly truncated mid-winter day. Daniel, who even in daylight would have been at some difficulty to keep track of where they were in this new London, realized that they were still rattling eastwards down High Holborn; they had missed several turns, viz. Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane, that would have taken them down toward Fleet Street. As St. Andrew's fell away aft, they missed yet another: Shoe Lane. They were climbing the approaches to the bridge where Holborn, like a country gentleman stepping over a t.u.r.d-pile, crossed the Fleet Ditch.

Mr. Threader rapped on the roof. "The Royal Society is no longer at Gresham's College!" he explained to the driver. "They have moved to a court off of Fleet Street-"

"Crane Court," Daniel said. "Near Fetter Lane, or so I am informed."

The driver now murmured something, as if he were ashamed to speak it aloud.

"Would you be offended, affrighted, sickened, or in any wise put out, if we were to go down the Fleet?"

"As long as we do not attempt it in a boat, boat, Mr. Threader." Mr. Threader."

Mr. Threader put the tips of his fingers to his mouth, lest the mere suggestion should cause him to throw up. Meanwhile with his other hand he made a coded rap on the ceiling. The driver immediately guided his team toward the right edge of the street. "The brink of our Cloaca Maxima has been sh.o.r.ed up since you last, er-"

"Made a Deposit into a Vault?"

"As it were, Dr. Waterhouse. And it is still early enough that the nocturnal traffic shall not have built to the pitch of activity one would so desperately wish to avoid, later."

Daniel could not see where they were going, but he could smell it now, and he could feel the carriage swerving away from the foot of the Holborn Bridge, and slowing to negotiate the turn southwards. He leaned forward and looked out the window down the length of the Fleet Ditch, a black and apparently bottomless slot in a long slab of unspeakably stained pavement, running due south to the Thames. The sky above the river shed a flinty twilight on this gap, from which the buildings of the city seemed to draw back in dismay. In defiance of Mr. Threader's optimistic prediction, an ox-cart, consisting of a giant barrel on wheels, had backed up to the edge of the ditch and opened a large orifice in its rear to spew a chunky brown cataract into this, the least favored tributary of the Thames. The sounds coming up from the depths below, indicated that it was striking something other than clear running water. Making a quick scan of the length of the Ditch between them and the Fleet Bridge, about a quarter of a mile downstream-if "downstream" had any meaning here-Daniel saw two other such carts doing the same thing, or getting ready to. Other than the usual crew of idlers, vagrants, thieves, shake-rags, and disgraced preachers selling instant weddings, there was no traffic, other than a single sedan-chair, which was just emerging from an alley on the opposite bank of the ditch, and in the act of turning north towards Holborn. As Daniel caught sight of it, it faltered and stopped. The faces of the two men carrying it waxed like a pair of moons as they turned to look at Mr. Threader's train. Then the carriage in which Daniel was riding executed its turn. The Ditch swung out of Daniel's view, and was replaced by the first in a various row of cookeries and market-stalls, not all that bad here, close to Holborn, but bound to degenerate rapidly as they moved on. Daniel turned his head the other way to look out at the Ditch. A slablike wall rose from the opposite bank, ventilated by a few windows barred with heavy grids: the front of the Fleet Prison. His view was then blocked by the nostrils of an ox towing a vault-wagon. A whiff came in the window that paralyzed him for a few moments.

"Deposits must be down to-day, and vaults empty, as so many are fasting in remembrance of the Royal Martyr," Daniel observed sourly, for he could tell that Mr. Threader wanted to continue talking about Financial Inst.i.tutions.

"If I were coming to London a-fresh, Dr. Waterhouse, and wished to align my personal interests with a bank, I should pa.s.s the Bank of England by-pa.s.s it right by, I say! For your own sake! And keep right on going."

"To the Royal Exchange, you mean...one or two doors down, on the opposite side..."

"No, no, no."

"Ah, you are speaking of Change Alley, where the stock-jobbers swarm."

"That is off Cornhill. Therefore, in a strictly cartographic sense, you are getting colder. But in another, you are getting warmer."

"You are trying to interest me in some security that is traded in Change Alley. But it issues from an Eighth Wonder of the World that is on Threadneedle, near Gresham's College. It is a most imposing riddle, Mr. Threader, and I am ill-equipped to answer it, as I've not frequented that busy, busy neighborhood for twenty years."

Daniel now leaned to one side, planting his elbow on an arm-rest and supporting his chin on his hand. He did so, not because he was tired and weak from hunger (though he was), but so that he could see round Mr. Threader's head out the rear window of the carriage. For he had glimpsed a peculiar apparition overtaking them. A rustic person would have guessed it to be a coffin levitating through the air. And considering the number of corpses that had been disposed of in Fleet Ditch over the centuries, there was no better place in London for a haunting. But Daniel knew it was a sedan chair, probably the same one that had emerged, a few moments ago, from the alley across the way. Looking across the Ditch Daniel could see directly into that alley, or one like it, and it seemed to him like the vertical equivalent of the Fleet Ditch itself, a black slot filled with who knew what sort of vileness. What had a sedan chair been doing in such a place? Perhaps taking a gentleman to an unspeakably perverse tryst. At any rate it was now gaining ground on them, coming up along one side. It got close enough that Daniel could sit up straight and view it directly out the carriage's side window. The windows of the sedan chair-a.s.suming it had windows-were screened with black stuff, like a confession-booth in a Papist church, and so Daniel could not see into it. He could not even be certain that anyone was inside, though the ponderous jouncing of the box on its poles, and the obvious strain on the two ma.s.sive blokes who were carrying it, suggested that something was in there.

But after several moments these porters seemed to hear some command from inside the box, and then they gratefully slackened their pace and allowed Mr. Threader's carriage to pull away from them.

Mr. Threader, meanwhile, had resorted to complicated hand-gestures, and was staring at a distant point above Daniel's head.

"Proceed to the fork in the road, there, where Pig Street leads away from Threadneedle. Whether you go right, toward Bishopsgate, or left up Pig toward Gresham's College, you will in a few moments come to the offices of the South Sea Company, which, though it is only three years old, already spans the interval between those two ways."

"And what do you propose I should do there?"

"Invest! Open an account! Align your interests!"

"Is it just another Tory land bank?"

"Oh, on the contrary! You are not the only one to perceive the wisdom of investing in the future increase of foreign trade!"

"The South Sea Company, then, has such interests...where? South America?"

"In its original conception, yes. But, as of a few months ago, its true wealth lies in Africa."

"Africa! That is very strange. It puts me in mind of the Duke of York's Africa Company, fifty years ago, before London burned."