Quicksilver (88 page)

“But I heard news, as I came into London, that he was on the mend.”

“After the Sons of Asclepius were finished with him, he did not really move for a full twenty-four hours. Some might’ve construed this as sleeping. He lacked the strength to pitch a fit—some might call it recovery. Occasionally I’d hold an ice-cold mirror in front of his lips and the reflection of the King’s face would haze. In the middle of the day today, he began to stir and groan.”

“His Majesty can scarcely be blamed for
that
!” Roger said indignantly.

“Nevertheless, more physicians got to him, and diagnosed a fever. They gave him a royal dose of the Elixir Proprietalis LeFebure.”

“Now that must’ve improved the King’s mood
to no end
!”

“We can only speculate. He has gotten worse. The sorts of Doctors who prescribe powders and elixirs have, consequently, fallen from favor, and the bleeders and purgers are upon us!”

“Then I’ll add my weight as President, to yours as Secretary, of the Royal Society, and we’ll see how long we can keep the lancets in their sheathes.”

“Interesting point you raise there, Roger…”

“Oh, Daniel, you have got that Waterhousian brooding look about you now, and so I fear you do not mean a
literal
point, as in
lancets
—”

“I was thinking—”

“Help!” Roger cried, waving his arms. But the watermen on yonder dock had all turned their backs on the Privy Stairs to watch the approach of the boat carrying those chirurgeons.

“D’you recall when Enoch Root made phosphorus from horse
urine? And the Earl of Upnor made a fool of himself supposing that it must have come from
royal
piss?”

“I’m
terrified
that you’re about to say something
banal,
Daniel, about how the King’s blood, bile,
et cetera
are no different from
yours
. So is it all right with you if I just
stipulate
that Republicanism makes
perfect sense,
seems to work well in Holland, and thereby
exempt
myself from this part of the conversation?”

“That is not precisely where I was going,” Daniel demurred. “I was thinking about how easily your cousin was replaced with Anglesey—how disappointingly little difference it made.”

“Before you corner yourself, Daniel, and force me to drag you out
as usual,
I would discourage any further usage of this similitude.”

“Which similitude?”

“You are about to say that Charles is like Comstock and James is like Anglesey and that it will make no difference, in the end, which one is king. Which would be a dangerous thing for you to say—because the House where Comstock and Anglesey lived has been
razed
and
paved over.
” Roger jerked his head upwards towards Whitehall. “Which is not a fate we would wish on
yonder
house.”

“But that is not what I was saying!”

“What were you saying, then? Something
not
obvious?”

“As Anglesey replaced Comstock, and Sterling replaced Raleigh, I replaced Bolstrood, in a way…”

“Yes, Dr. Waterhouse, we live in an orderly society and men replace each other.”

“
Sometimes.
But some
can’t
be replaced.”

“I don’t know that I agree.”

“Suppose that, God forbid, Newton died. Who would replace him?”

“Hooke, or maybe Leibniz.”

“But Hooke and Leibniz are
different.
I put it to you that some men really have unique qualities and cannot be replaced.”

“Newtons come along so rarely. He is an exception to any rule you might care to name—really a very cheap rhetorical tactic on your part, Daniel. Have you considered running for Parliament?”

“Then I should have used a different example, for the point I’m wanting to make is that all round us, in markets and smithys, in Parliament, in the City, in churches and coal-mines, there are persons whose departure really
would
change things.”

“Why? What makes these persons different?”

“It is a very profound question. Recently Leibniz has been refining his system of metaphysics—”

“Wake me up when you are finished.”

“When I first saw him at Lion Quay these many years ago, he was showing off his knowledge of London, though he’d never been here before. He’d been studying views of the city drawn by diverse artists from differing points of view. He went off on a rant about how the city itself has one form but it is perceived in different ways by each person in it, depending on their unique situation.”

“Every
sophomore
thinks this.”

“That was more than a dozen years ago. In his
latest
letter to me he seems to be leaning towards the view that the city does
not
have one absolute form
at all…
”

“Obvious nonsense.”

“…that the city is, in some sense, the result of the sum total of the perceptions of it by all of its constituents.”

“I knew we never should have let him into the Royal Society!”

“I am not explaining it very well,” Daniel admitted, “because I do not quite understand it, yet.”

“Then why are you belaboring me with it
now
of all times?”

“The salient point has to do with perceptions, and how different parts of the world—different souls—perceive all of the other parts—the other souls. Some souls have perceptions that are confused and indistinct, as if they are peering through poorly ground lenses. Whereas others are like Hooke peering through his Microscope or Newton through his Reflecting Telescope. They have superior perceptions.”

“Because they have better opticks!”

“No, even without lenses and parabolic mirrors, Newton and Hooke see things that you and I don’t. Leibniz is proposing a strange inversion of what we normally mean when we describe a man as distinguished, or unique. Normally when we say these things, we mean that the man himself stands out from a crowd in some way. But Leibniz is saying that such a man’s uniqueness is rooted in his ability to perceive
the rest of the universe
with unusual clarity—to distinguish one thing from another more effectively than ordinary souls.”

Roger sighed. “All I know is that Dr. Leibniz has been saying some very rude things about Descartes lately—”

“Yes, in his
Brevis Demonstratio Erroris Memorabilis Cartesii et Alio-rum Circa Legem Naturalem
—”

“And the French are up in arms.”

“You said, Roger, that you would add your weight as President, to mine as Secretary, of the Royal Society.”

“And I shall.”

“But you flatter me by saying so. Some men
are
interchangeable,
yes. Those two chirurgeons could be replaced with any other two, and the King would still die this evening. But could I—could
anyone
—fill
your
shoes so easily, Roger?”

“Why, Daniel, I do believe this is the first time in your life you’ve actually exhibited something akin to
respect
for me!”

“You are a man of parts, Roger.”

“I am touched and of course I agree with the point you were trying to make—whatever the hell it might have been.”

“Good—I am pleased to hear you agree with me in believing that James is no replacement for Charles.”

Before Roger could recover—but after he mastered his anger—the boat was in earshot and the conversation, therefore, over.

“Long live the King, m’Lord, and
Doctor
Waterhouse,” said one Dr. Hammond, clambering over the boat’s gunwale onto the Privy Stairs. Then they all had to say it.

Hammond was followed by Dr. Griffin, who
also
greeted them with “Long live the King!” which meant that they all had to say it
again.

Daniel must have said it with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, for Dr. Hammond gave him a sharp look—then turned toward Dr. Griffin as if trolling for eyewitnesses. “It is very good that you have come in time, m’Lord,” said Hammond to Roger Comstock, “as, between Jesuits on the one hand, and Puritans on t’other” (squirting long jets of glowing vitriol out of the pupils of his eyes, here, at Daniel), “some would say the King has had enough of bad advice.”

Now Roger tended to say things after long pauses. When he’d been a clownish sizar at Trinity, this had made him seem not very intelligent; but now that he was a Marquis, and President of the Royal Society, it made him seem exceedingly sober and grave. So after they’d all climbed up the steps to the balcony that led into the part of Whitehall called the King’s Apartments, he said: “A King’s
mind
should never want for the counsel of learned
or
pious men, just as his
body
should never want for a bountiful supply of the diverse
humours
that sustain life and health.”

Waving an arm at the shambling Palace above them, Dr. Hammond said to Roger, “This place is such a bazaar of rumor and intrigue, that your presence, m’Lord, will go far towards quelling any
whisperings
should the worst happen which Almighty God forbid.” Favoring Daniel with another fearsome over-the-shoulder glare, as he followed the Marquis of Ravenscar into the King’s Apartments.

“It sounds as if
some
have already gone far beyond
whispering,
” Daniel said.

“I’m certain that Dr. Hammond is solely concerned with preserving
your
reputation, Dr. Waterhouse,” Roger said.

“What—it’s been nigh on twenty years since His Majesty blew up my father—do people suppose I am still nursing a grudge?”

“That’s not it, Daniel—”

“On the contrary! Father’s departure from this plane was so brisk, so hot—leaving behind no physical remains—that it has been a sort of balm to my spirit to sit up with the King, night after night, imbrued in the royal gore, breathing it into my lungs, sopping it up with my flesh, and many other enjoyments besides, that

I missed out on when my Father ascended…”

The Marquis of Ravenscar and the two other Doctors had slowed almost to a standstill and were now exchanging deeply significant looks. “Yes,” Roger finally said, after another grand pause, “too much sitting up, in such a fœtid atmosphere, is not healthful for one’s body, mind, or spirit…perhaps an evening’s rest is in order, Daniel, so that when these two good Doctors have restored the King to health, you’ll be ready to offer his Majesty your congratulations, as well as to re-affirm the profound loyalty you harbor, and have always harbored, in your breast, notwithstanding those events of two decades hence, which some would say have already been alluded to more than enough…”

He did not finish this sentence for a quarter of an hour. Before putting it to a merciful death, he’d managed to work in several enconiums for both Drs. Hammond and Griffin, likening one to Asclepius and the other to Hippocrates, while not failing to make any number of cautiously favorable remarks about every other Doctor who had come within a hundred yards of the King during the last month. He also (as Daniel noted, with a kind of admiration) was able to make it clear, to all present, just what a morbid catastrophe it would be if the King died and turned England over into the hands of that mad Papist the Duke of York whilst, practically in the same phrases—with the same
words
—asserting that York was really such a splendid fellow that it was almost imperative that all of them rush straight-away to the King’s Bedchamber and smother Charles II under a mattress. In a sort of recursive fugue of dependent clauses he was, similarly, able to proclaim Drake Waterhouse to’ve been the finest Englishman who’d ever boiled beef whilst affirming that blowing him up with a ton of gunpowder had been an absolute touchstone of (depending on how you looked at it) monarchical genius that made Charles II such a colossal figure, (or) rampant despotism that augured so favorably for his brother’s reign.

All of this as Daniel and the physicians trailed behind Roger through the leads, halls, galleries, antechambers, and chapels of Whitehall, rupturing stuck doors with shoulder-thrusts and beating back tons of dusty hangings. The Palace must have been but a single building at some point, but no one knew which bit had been put up first; anyway, other buildings had been scabbed onto that first one as fast as stones and mortar could be ferried in, and galleries strung like clothes-lines between wings of it that were deemed too far apart; this created courtyards that were, in time, subdivided, and encroached upon by new additions, and filled in. Then the builders had turned their ingenuity to bricking up old openings, and chipping out new ones, then bricking up the new ones and re-opening the old, or making newer ones yet. In any event, every closet, hall, and room was claimed by one nest or sect of courtiers, just as every snatch of Germany had its own Baron. Their journey from the Privy Stairs to the King’s Bedchamber would, therefore, have been fraught with difficult border-crossings and protocol disputes if they’d made it in silence. But as the Marquis of Ravenscar was leading them surely through the maze, he went on, and on, with his Oration, a feat akin to threading needles while galloping on horseback through a wine cellar. Daniel lost track of the number of claques and cabals they burst in on, greeted, and left behind; but he did notice a lot of Catholics about, and more than a few Jesuits. Their route took them in a sort of jagged arc circumventing the Queen’s Apartments, which had been turned into a sort of Portuguese nunnery quite a long time ago, furnished with prayer-books and ghastly devotional objects; yet it buzzed with its own conspiracies. Whenever they spied a door ajar, they heard brisk steps approaching it from the opposite side and saw it slammed and locked in their faces. They passed by the King’s little chapel, which had been turned into a base-camp for this Catholic invasion, which didn’t really surprise Daniel but would have ignited riots over nine-tenths of England had it been widely known.

Finally they arrived at the door to the King’s Bedchamber, and Roger startled them all by finishing his sentence. He somehow contrived to separate Daniel from the physicians, and spoke briefly to the latter before showing them in to see the patient.

“What’d you tell them?” Daniel asked, when the Marquis came back.