Quicksilver (131 page)

Roger Comstock answered, “It is true. I give the contents of those glasses to our Alchemical brethren, who use them in their lucubrations. They have learnt how to remove water from wine and
produce the pure spirit. But this is beginning to sound like a
theologickal
discourse, and so let me turn to
practical
matters.” Roger hoisted the beaker up above his head. “Pray, gentlemen, extinguish all smoking materials! We do not wish to set fire to Mr. Hooke’s edifice. The inmates will be so terrified that they will be driven sane, to a man. I hold in my hand the pure spirit I spoke of, and it could burn the place down like Greek fire. It will remain a grave hazard until our Guest of Honor has been so prudent as to sequester it in his belly. Cheers to you, Daniel; and rest assured that this libation will surely go to your head, but not a drop of it will trouble your kidneys!”

Under the center of the cupola they had set up a very stout oaken chair on a platform like a throne, which Daniel thought extremely considerate, as it put his head at or above the level of everyone else’s. It was the first time in ages he’d been able to talk to anyone without feeling as if he were being peered down at. Once he was mounted in that chair, and wedged more or less upright by a few pillows, he did not have to move anything save his jaw and his drinking-arm. The others came round in ones and twos to pay court to him.

Wren spoke of the progress building the great Dome of St. Paul’s. Edmund Palling related details of the voyage to Massachusetts planned for April. Hooke, when not arguing with Huygens about clocks (and fending off bawdy puns on “horology” from Roger Comstock), discoursed of his work on artificial muscles. He did not say that they were for use in flying machines, but Daniel already knew it. Isaac Newton was living in London now, sharing lodgings with Fatio, and had become Member of Parliament for Cambridge. Roger was bursting with scandalous gossip. Sterling was devising some sort of plot with Sir Richard Apthorp, some colossal scheme for financing the eternal follies of Government. Spain might have mines in America and France might have an infinite supply of taxable peasants, but Sterling and Sir Richard seemed to think that England could overcome her lack of both with some metaphysical sleight-of-hand. Huygens came over and told him the melancholy news that the Countess de la Zeur had got pregnant out of wedlock, then lost her baby. In a way, though, Daniel was pleased to hear that she was getting on with her life. He had dreamed once of proposing marriage to her. Looking at his condition now, it was hard to imagine a worse idea.

But thinking about her put him into a sort of reverie from which he did not return. He did not lose consciousness at any one certain point; consciousness slowly leaked out of him, rather, over
the course of the evening. Every friend who came to greet him raised his glass, and Daniel raised his beaker in return. The liquor did not trickle down his throat but raced like panic across his mucous membranes, burning his eye-sockets and his eustachian tubes, and seeping direct from there into his brain. His vision faded. The babble and roar of the party put him gently to sleep.

The quiet woke him up. The quiet, and the light. He phant’sied for a moment that they had carried him out to face the Sun. But there were several suns ranged about him in a constellation. He tried to raise first one arm, then the other, to shield his eyes from the glare, but neither limb would move. His legs, too, were frozen in place.

“Perhaps you imagine you are having a cerebral anomaly, a near-death, or even a post-death, experience,” said a voice quietly. It emanated from down low, between Daniel’s knees. “And that several arch-angels are arrayed before you, burning your eyes with their radiance. In that case I would be a shade, a poor gray ghost, and the screams and moans you hear from far off would be the complaints of other departed souls being taken off to Hell.”

Hooke was indeed too dim to see clearly, for the lights were behind him. He was sorting through some instruments and tools on a table that had been set in front of the chair.

Now that Daniel had stopped looking into the bright lights, his eyes had adjusted well enough to see what was restraining him: white linen cord, miles of it, spiraled around his arms and legs, and cunningly interwoven into a sort of custom-built web or net. This was clearly the work of the meticulous Hooke, for even Daniel’s fingers and thumbs had been individually laced down, knuckle by knuckle, to the arms of this chair, which were as massive as the timbers of a gun-carriage.

His mind went back to Epsom during the Plague Year, when Hooke would sit in the sun for an hour watching through a lens as a spider bound up a horse-fly with whorls of gossamer.

The other detail that caught his eye was the gleaming of the small devices that Hooke was sorting out on the table. In addition to the various magnifiers that Hooke always had with him, there was the crooked probe that would be inserted up the length of the patient’s urethra to find and hold the stone. Next to it was the lancet for making the incision through the scrotum and up into the bladder. Then a hook for reaching up through that opening and pulling the stone down and out between the testicles, and an assortment of variously sized and shaped rakes for scraping the inside of the bladder and probing up into the ureters to find and withdraw any smaller stones that might be a-building in the crannies.
There was the silver pipe that would be left in his urethra so that the uproar of urine, blood, lymph, and pus would not be dammed up by the inevitable swelling, and there was the fine sheep-gut for sewing him back together, and the curved needles and pliers for drawing it through his flesh. But for some reason none of these sights perturbed him so much as the scale standing by at the end of the table, its polished brass pans flashing inscrutable signals to him as they oscillated on the ends of their gleaming chains. Hooke, ever the empiricist, would of course weigh the stone when it came out.

“In truth you are still alive and will be for many years—more years than I have remaining. There are some who die of shock, it is true, and perhaps that is why all of your friends wished to come and pass time time with you before I started. But, as I recollect, you were shot with a blunderbuss once, and got up and walked away from it. So I am not afraid on that ’count. The bright lights you see are sticks of burning phosphorus. And I am Robert Hooke, than whom no man was ever better suited to perform this work.”

“No, Robert.”

Hooke took advantage of Daniel’s plea to jam a leather strap into his mouth. “You may bite down on that if you wish, or you may spit it out and scream all you like—this is Bedlam, and no one will object. Neither will anyone take heed, or show mercy. Least of all Robert Hooke. For as you know, Daniel, I am utterly lacking in the quality of mercy. Which is well, as it would render me perfectly incompetent to carry out this operation. I told you a year ago, in the Tower, that I would one day repay your friendship by giving you something—a pearl of great price. Now the time has come for me to make good on that promise. The only question left to answer is how much will that pearl weigh, when I have washed your blood off it and let it clatter onto the pan of yonder scale. I am sorry you woke up. I shall not insult you by suggesting that you relax. Please do not go insane. I will see you on the other side of the Styx.”

When he and Hooke and Wilkins had cut open live dogs during the Plague Year, Daniel had looked into their straining brown eyes and tried to fathom what was going on in their minds. He’d decided, in the end, that
nothing
was, that dogs had no conscious minds, no thought of past or future, living purely in the moment, and that this made it worse for them. Because they could neither look forward to the end of the pain, nor remember times when they had chased rabbits across meadows.

Hooke took up his blade and reached for Daniel.

M
EMBERS OF THE NOBILITY
went by more than one name: their family surnames and Christian names, but also their titles. For example, the younger brother of King Charles II had the family name Stuart and was baptized James, and so might be called James Stuart; but for most of his life he was the Duke of York, and so might also be referred to, in the third person anyway, as “York” (but in the second person as “Your Royal Highness”). Titles frequently changed during a person’s lifetime, as it was common during this period for commoners to be ennobled, and nobles of lower rank to be promoted. And so not only might a person have several names at any one moment, but certain of those names might change as he acquired new titles through ennoblement, promotion, conquest, or (what might be considered a combination of all three) marriage.

This multiplicity of names will be familiar to many readers who dwell on the east side of the Atlantic, or who read a lot of books like this. To others it may be confusing or even maddening. The following Dramatis Personae may be of help in resolving ambiguities.

If consulted too early and often, it may let cats out of bags by letting the reader know who is about to die, and who isn’t.

The compiler of such a table faces a problem similar to the one that bedeviled Leibniz when trying to organize his patron’s library. The entries (books in Leibniz’s case, personages here) must be arranged in a linear fashion according to some predictable scheme. Below, they are alphabetized by name. But since more than one name applies to many of the characters, it is not always obvious where the entry should be situated. Here I have sacrificed consistency for ease of use by placing each entry under the name that is most commonly used in the book. So, for example, Louis-François de
Lavardac, duc d’Arcachon, is under “A” rather than “L” because he is almost always called simply the duc d’Arcachon in the story. But Knott Bolstrood, Count Penistone, is under “B” because he is usually called Bolstrood. Cross-references to the main entries are spotted under “L” and “P,” respectively.

Entries that are relatively reliable, according to scholarly sources, are in Roman type. Entries in
italics
contain information that is more likely to produce confusion, misunderstanding, severe injury, and death if relied upon by time travelers visiting the time and place in question.

A
NGLESEY, LOUIS
: 1648–.
Earl of Upnor. Son of Thomas More Anglesey. Courtier and friend of the Duke of Monmouth during the Interregnum and, after the Restoration, at Trinity College, Cambridge.

A
NGLESEY, PHILLIP
: 1645–.
Count Sheerness. Son of Thomas More Anglesey.

A
NGLESEY, THOMAS MORE
: 1618–1679.
Duke of Gunfleet. A leading Cavalier and a member of Charles II’s court in exile during the Interregnum. After the Restoration, one of the A’s in Charles II’s CABAL (which see). Relocated to France during the Popish Plot troubles, died there.

A
NNE
I
OF ENGLAND
: 1665–1714. Daughter of James II by his first wife, Anne Hyde.

A
PTHORP, RICHARD
: 1631–.
Businessman and banker. One of the
A’
s in Charles II’s CABAL (which see). A founder of the Bank of England.

D
’A
RCACHON, DUC
: 1634–.
Louis-François de Lavardac. A cousin to Louis XIV. Builder, and subsequently Admiral, of the French Navy.

D
’A
RCACHON, ÉTIENNE
: 1662–.
Étienne de Lavardac. Son and heir of Louis-François de Lavardac, duc d’Arcachon.

D
’A
RTAGNAN, CHARLES DE BATZ-CASTELMORE: C.
1620–1673. French musketeer and memoirist.

A
SHMOLE
, S
IR
E
LIAS
: 1617–1692. Astrologer, alchemist, autodidact, Comptroller and Auditor of the Excise, collector of curiosities, and founder of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.

D
’A
VAUX
, J
EAN
-A
NTOINE DE
M
ESMES, COMTE
: French ambassador to the Dutch Republic, later an advisor to James II during his campaign in Ireland.

B
OLSTROOD
, G
OMER
: 1645–.
Son of Knott. Dissident agitator, later an immigrant to New England and a furniture maker there.

B
OLSTROOD
, G
REGORY
: 1600–1652.
Dissident preacher. Founder of the Puritan sect known as the Barkers.

B
OLSTROOD
, K
NOTT
: 1628–1682.
Son of Gregory. Ennobled as Count Penistone and made Secretary of State by Charles II. The B in Charles II’s CABAL (which see).

B
OYLE
, R
OBERT
: 1627–1691. Chemist, member of the Experimental Philosophical Club at Oxford, Fellow of the Royal Society.

VON
B
OYNEBURG
, J
OHANN
C
HRISTIAN
: 1622–1672. An early patron of Leibniz in Mainz.

CABAL,
THE
: unofficial name of Charles II’s post-Restoration cabinet, loosely modeled after Louis XIV’s Conseil d’en-Haut, which is to say that each member had a general area of responsibility, but the boundaries were vague and overlapping (see table, p. 920).

C
AROLINE
, P
RINCESS OF
B
RANDENBURG
-A
NSBACH
: 1683–1737. Daughter of Eleanor, Princess of Saxe-Eisenach.

C
ASTLEMAINE
, L
ADY
: see Villiers, Barbara.

C
ATHERINE OF
B
RAGANZA
: 1638–1705. Portuguese wife of Charles II of England.

C
HARLES
I
OF
E
NGLAND
: 1600–1649. Stuart king of England, decapitated at the Banqueting House after the victory of Parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell.

C
HARLES
II
OF
E
NGLAND
: 1630–1685. Son of Charles I. Exiled to France and later the Netherlands during the Interregnum. Returned to England 1660 and re-established monarchy (the Restoration).

C
HARLES
L
OUIS
, E
LECTOR
P
ALATINATE
: 1617–1680. Eldest surviving son of the Winter King and Queen, brother of Sophie, father of Liselotte. Re-established his family in the Palatinate following the Thirty Years’ War.

C
HARLES
, E
LECTOR
P
ALATINATE
: 1651–1685. Son and heir to Charles Louis. War-gaming enthusiast. Died young of disease contracted during a mock siege.

C
HESTER
, L
ORD
B
ISHOP OF
: see Wilkins, John.

C
HURCHILL
, J
OHN
: 1650–1722. Courtier, warrior, duellist, cocks-man, hero, later Duke of Marlborough.

C
HURCHILL
, W
INSTON
: Royalist, Squire, courtier, early Fellow of the Royal Society, father of John Churchill.

C
LEVELAND
, D
UCHESS OF
: see Villiers, Barbara.

C
OMENIUS
, J
OHN
A
MOS
(J
AN
A
MOS
K
OMENSKY
): 1592–1670. Moravian Pansophist, an inspiration to Wilkins and Leibniz among many others.

T
HE
CABAL

C
OMSTOCK
, C
HARLES
: 1650–1708.
Son of John. Student of Natural Philosophy. After the retirement of John and the death of his elder brother, Richard, an immigrant to Connecticut.

C
OMSTOCK
, J
OHN
: 1607–1685.
Leading Cavalier, and member of Charles II’s court in exile in France. Scion of the so-called Silver branch of the Comstock family. Armaments maker. Early patron of the Royal Society. After the Restoration, the C in Charles II’s CABAL (which see). Father of Richard and Charles Comstock.

C
OMSTOCK
, R
ICHARD
: 1638–1673.
Eldest son and heir of John Comstock. Died at naval battle of Sole Bay.

C
OMSTOCK
, R
OGER
: 1646–.
Scion of the so-called Golden branch of the Comstock family. Classmate of Newton, Daniel Waterhouse, the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Upnor, and George Jeffreys at Trinity College, Cambridge, during the early 1660s. Later, a successful developer of real estate, and Marquis of Ravenscar.

DE
C
RÉPY
:
French family of gentlemen and petty nobles until the Wars of Religion in France, during which time they began to pursue a strategy of aggressive upward mobility. They intermarried in two different ways with the older but declining de Gex family. One of them (Anne Marie de Crépy, 1653–) married the much older duc d’Oyonnax and survived him by many years. Her sister (Charlotte Adélaide de Crépy 1656–) married the Marquis d’Ozoir.

C
ROMWELL
, O
LIVER
: 1599–1658. Parliamentary leader, general of the anti-Royalist forces during the English Civil War, scourge of Ireland, and leading man of England during the Commonwealth, or Interregnum.

C
ROMWELL
, R
OGER
: 1626–1712. Son and (until the Restoration) successor of his much more formidable father, Oliver.

E
AUZE
, C
LAUDE
: see
d’Ozoir, Marquis.

E
LEANOR
, P
RINCESS OF SAXE-EISENACH: D.
1696. Mother (by her first husband, the Margrave of Ansbach) of Caroline, Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach. Late in life, married to the Elector of Saxony.

E
LISABETH
C
HARLOTTE
: 1652–1722. Liselotte,
La Palatine.
Known as Madame in the French court. Daughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatinate, and niece of Sophie. Married Philippe, duc d’Orléans, the younger brother of Louis XIV. Spawned the House of Orléans.

E
PSOM
, E
ARL OF
: see
Comstock, John.

F
REDERICK
V, E
LECTOR
P
ALATINATE
: 1596–1632. King of Bohemia (“Winter King”) briefly in 1618, lived and died in exile during the Thirty Years’ War. Father of many princes, electors, duchesses, etc., including Sophie.

F
REDERICK
W
ILLIAM
, E
LECTOR OF
B
RANDENBURG
: 1620–1688. Known as the Great Elector. After the Thirty Years’ War created a standing professional army, small but effective. By playing the great powers of the day (Sweden, France, and the Hapsburgs) against each other, consolidated the scattered Hohenzollern fiefdoms into a coherent state, Brandenburg-Prussia.

DE
G
EX
:
A petty-noble family of Jura, which dwindled until the early seventeenth century, when the two surviving children of Henry, Sieur de Gex (1595–1660), Francis and Louise-Anne, each married a member
of the more sanguine family de Crépy. The children of Francis carried on the de Gex name. Their youngest was Édouard de Gex. The children of Louise-Anne included Anne Marie de Crépy (later duchesse d’Oyonnax) and Charlotte Adélaide de Crépy (later marquise d’Ozoir).

DE
G
EX
, F
ATHER
É
DOUARD
: 1663–.
Youngest offspring of Marguerite Diane de Crépy (who died giving birth to him) and Francis de Gex, who was thirty-eight years old and in declining health. Raised at a school and orphanage in Lyons by Jesuits, who found in him an exceptionally gifted pupil. Became a Jesuit himself at the the age of twenty. Was posted to Versailles, where he became a favorite of Mademoiselle. de Maintenon.

G
REAT
E
LECTOR
: see Frederick William.

G
UNFLEET
, D
UKE OF
: see
Anglesey, Thomas More.

G
WYN
, N
ELL
: 1650–1687. Fruit retailer and comedienne, one of the mistresses of Charles II.