The System of the World (121 page)

Isaac sighs, and begins to look his age again. “Spare me any further poetick description and just say forthrightly, please, where did you last see the body of Jack Shaftoe?”

“Sort of dissolving into the western horizon.”

Isaac stares at him.

“The Mobb was of tremendous size,” Barnes explains.

“You are quite certain he was dead at the time he was cut down?”

“If I may, sir, that’s easily answered!” says Johann von Hacklheber. “Anyone who was at Newgate this morning can tell you he was wearing a king’s ransom in cloth-of-gold, and that his pockets bulged with coins. All of which, of course, was payment for Jack Ketch—”

“To hang him fast—break his neck in an instant,” Isaac says. “Very well! Let the Mobb have him then. Let him end up in a potter’s field somewhere.”

“Yes,” says Daniel Waterhouse, “it is a most fitting end for such a villainous man. And this—the new King, the strong Bank, the sound coinage, and all the works of Natural Philosophers and
ingénieurs
—are a fine beginning for a new System of the World.”

At this, Johann von Hacklheber looks askance at Marlborough, who is close to getting into a sword-fight with some Duke of Germany.

“Never you mind
that,
” Daniel reassures him, “for it is all part of the System.”

NOVEMBER
1714

M
OST MEN,
standing knee-deep in gold, would talk about that. But not these two eccentric Barons.

“Then he stepped out of his sedan chair and looked perfectly all right,” says Johann von Hacklheber.

He sits down upon an empty barrel. Leibniz, cringing and mincing from the gout, has been seated for some while. They are beneath Leibniz’s great house, in a cellar made to store victuals. But the bottles of wine, the kegs of beer, the turnips, potatoes, and belching buckets of sauerkraut have been hauled out and given to the poor. The place has been filled up with barrels of a different sort. Leibniz, unwilling now to trust anyone in Hanover, left them sealed until Johann arrived. Johann’s been dismantling them, removing the gold plates, and placing them in orderly stacks.

“It sounds as though he was re-animated by the
Elixir Vitae,
” Leibniz admits.

“I thought you didn’t believe in such things,” says Johann, and gestures at the gold plates all around.

“I don’t think about such matters the way
he
does,” says Leibniz, “but I can’t rule out the possibility that monads, ordered in the right way, might do things that would seem like miracles to us.”

“Well, you have got all the magic gold you could ever desire, if you want to cure that gout, or—”

“Live forever?”

Johann looks abashed, and instead of answering, picks up his pry-bar, and goes to work on another barrel.

“I suspect that there are some of us who
have been
living forever,” Leibniz says, “such as your supposed great-uncle, and my benefactor, Egon von Hacklheber. Or Enoch Root, as others know him. Let us suppose that Enoch knows how to manipulate the Subtile Spirit in such a way as to heal diseases and extend life. What of it, then? What has he accomplished? How has it changed anything?”

“Hardly at all,” says Johann.

“Hardly at all,” agrees Leibniz, “save that from time to time he may grant a few years’ undeserved life to someone who would otherwise have perished. Enoch must have been asking himself, these last couple of millennia, what is the point of it all. It is obvious that he took a lively interest in Natural Philosophy, and did what he could to foster it. Why?”

“Because Alchemy was not bringing him satisfaction.”

“Evidently not. Now, Johann, it would seem that Sir Isaac has been granted a few more years by Alchemy, and yet clearly it has not brought him any happiness or enlightenment that he did not possess before. Which gives us another hint as to why it does not satisfy Enoch. You point out that I, likewise, could use the Solomonic Gold in this cellar to extend my life. Let us suppose that it’s true. But obviously this is not the goal toward which I have been directed by Enoch, or by Solomon Kohan. On the contrary! Those two have sought to sequester the gold and keep it out of the hands of the one man who knows how to wield it: Isaac Newton. For me to take up Alchemy at my age, and melt those plates down to make an elixir—why, it’d be Doctor Faustus all over again! And with the same dismal result in the last act.”

“I can’t bear to see Newton triumph, while you sicken and dwindle here in Hanover.”

“I’ve got all of the Solomonic Gold. He doesn’t. That is a triumph. It does not make me glad. No, triumph will not be mine if I only ape what he did. That is surrender. If I am to outlive Newton, it will not be by extending the span of my life with unnatural coctions. We must do all in our power to see that the Logic Mill is built.”

“In St. Petersburg?”

“Or wherever, and whenever, some great prince sees fit to build it.”

“I’ll make arrangements to have some stout crates built,” says Johann, “and delivered here. I’ll take them into this cellar myself and pack the golden cards into them with my own two hands, and nail them shut so that no one will have cause to think that they contain anything more valuable than musty old letters. Once that is done, you may ship them to St. Petersburg, if that is the right place for them, with a stroke of a quill. But if what I hear from Russia has any color of truth, the Tsar is distracted, and may not see the thing through.”

Leibniz smiles. “That’s why I was careful to say
whenever some great prince sees fit to build it.
If not the Tsar, then someone else who will come along after my death.”

“Or after mine, or my son’s or my grandson’s,” Johann says. “Human nature being what it is, I fear that this will only happen when the things that the Logic Mill is good at become important to a war. And that is a difficult thing to imagine.”

“Then pray bring up your son and your grandson, if you have any, to be imaginative. Then impress on them the importance of looking after those dusty old crates in the Leibniz-Archiv. Speaking of which—”

“The Princess of Wales,” says Johann, holding up a hand, “has become most imperious since she got her new lands and titles, and has ordered me to find a woman I have some actual prospect of marrying. My dear mother has weighed in, too. I beg
you
not to start.”

“Very well,” says Leibniz, and lets a respectful silence fall. “That must have been a difficult conversation. I am sorry.”

“It was a difficult conversation that I had been expecting,” says Johann, “and I find it’s easier to have it
behind
me than
in front of
me. I am here now. I’ll go to London from time to time, and dance with her at a ball, and take tea with my mother, and remember. Then I shall return to Hanover and live my life.”

“What about them? What do you hear from those two great ladies?”

“They are on this Continent,” says Johann, “mending fences with their cousins, now that the war is finally over.”

A
CRACK SOUNDS
across still water. Wild geese squawk and take to the air on tired wings. A second crack, and a single bird drops to the bank. A water-dog swims after it, marring the pond’s surface with a vee-shaped wake that could almost be a reflection of the goose-formations high above. A window shatters, a lady whoops in surprise. The laughter of two men can be heard.

A panel of chopped and lashed-down foliage moves suddenly aside, like a door, to reveal a small barge: a floating blind. It is just large enough for two hunters, but rich enough for two kings. For once the panel of sticks and dead leaves is out of the way, it is all gold leaf and bas-reliefs of Diana and Orion. Two men sit in gilded campaign-chairs. Each cradles a fowling-piece of ridiculous length. They are helpless with mirth, for a while, at the breaking of the window.

One of them is very old, pink, bloated, half buried in furs and
blankets that settle toward the deck as he jiggles them with his laughter. He slaps an ermine pelt to keep it from sliding into the pond.
“Mon cousin,”
he says, “you have bagged two birds with one shot: a goose, and a chambermaid!”

The other is in his middle fifties, active, but not spry, for it seems that a life of adventures has left him carrying a vast inventory of aches, pains, cramps, cricks, clicks, pops, and charley-horses. He shuffles across the deck of the barge and heaves open another camouflage-panel to let in the morning sun and release stale air. This gives him time to compose a sentence in bad French: “If she was hurt bad we’d hear more screaming. She was only scared.”

“I believe you scored a hit on the Trianon-sous-
Bois: the residence of my sister-in-law, Liselotte.”

“She sounds ever so high and mighty,” says the younger man. “I dare not talk to one such. Maybe you could let her know how sorry I am.”

“Oh? How sorry
are
you?” asks the older.

“Ah, you are a sly one there, Leroy. Tell me, does this Liselotte know the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm?”

“But yes, they are old partners in mischief, those two! Probably having breakfast together as we speak.”

“Then maybe Eliza can be my apologist. She speaks better French than you anyway.”

“Ho-ho-ho!” chortles the King. “You only think so because you are so besotted with her. I can see it.”

There’s sudden thrashing in the brush beside the water.
“Merde!”
says the King, “we are found out! Close the blind! Hurry!”

The other turns and reaches for the panel, then stops short, grimaces, and cocks his head. “Bloody hell.”

“The neck again?”

“Worst bleeding crick in the neck I’ve ever had.” He reaches up to rub a raw place, then flinches, and settles for re-composing his silk neckerchief.

“You should try to avoid being hanged.”

“I did try to avoid it, but the thing was complicated.”

She
appears on the bank, holding up one hand with thumb and index finger pressed together.

“Morning, Jack.”

“Bonjour, Madame la Duchesse.”
The one named Jack executes a courtly bow, so exaggerated as to border on open mockery. Each and every one of his vertebrae has something to say about it.

“I’ve something here that you lost!” she announces.

“My heart?”

She hurls the bird-pellet at him. The men on the barge avert their
eyes as it impacts on a chair-arm and ricochets around. “
La Palatine
wants you two to know that she is too old to be the target of musket-fire.”

“Fortunately Pepe is bringing you a peace-offering,” says the King, and indicates the curly-haired dog, who’s up on the bank now, wagging his tail at Eliza. He trots up and drops the dead bird at her feet.

“I’ve little taste for such things,” she says, “but Liselotte was a great huntress in her day and so it might placate her.” She bends down, pinches the bird’s neck, and walks away from them holding it out at arm’s length. The men watch in awe. Leroy gives Jack a dig in the ribs.

“
Magnifique,
eh?”

“Old goat.”

“Ah, she is a great woman,” says the King, “and you,
mon cousin,
are a fortunate man.”

“To meet her in the first place was fortunate, I’ll give you that. To lose her was stupid. Now, I don’t know the word to describe what I am, besides tired.”

“You will have ample time to rest from your travails, and lovely places in which to do it,” says Leroy.

Jack, suddenly alert, pulls one of the blind doors to, and crouches behind it. A trio of French courtiers, drawn by the sound of the fowling-pieces, are approaching. “Lovely places indeed,” says Jack, “as long as I stay out of sight, and out of gossip.”

“Ah, but in such places as La Zeur and St.-Malo, this is not so terribly difficult, eh?”

“That is where I shall live out my retirement,” Jack allows, “as long as she’ll have me.”

The King looks mock-astonished. “And if she throws you out?”

“Back to England, and back to work,” says Jack.

“As a coiner?”

“As a gardener.”

“I do not believe such a thing!”

“Believe it, Leroy, for ’tis a notorious weakness of Englishmen who are too old to do anything useful. My brother has found a position on a rich man’s estate. If Eliza ever grows weary of supporting a broken-down old Vagabond, I may go thither and live out my days killing the Duke’s weeds and poaching his game.”

“F
INE!
S
O BE IT,
then! I’ll get along unshod!” bellows a man of similar age and proportions to Jack. He seizes one of his knees with both hands and yanks up. A bare foot emerges from a boot, which is sunk almost to its top in the mud. He plants the foot, grabs the other knee, and repeats. Bob Shaftoe now stands, a free man, in mud almost up to his knees. His boots are stranded nearby, rapidly filling with rain. He salutes them. “Good riddance!”

“Hear, hear!” calls a voice from a tent, pitched nearby on slightly higher and firmer ground. A man rises from a table and turns toward him. The table is lit by several candles even though it is two o’clock in the afternoon.

Bob’s wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat, which supports approximately a gallon of rainwater, distributed among several discrete pools. He cocks his head in a most deliberate and calculating manner, and the pools slide, merge, slalom round the hat’s contours, and spring off its back brim, splatting into the mud behind him. This enables him to get a clear sight-line into the tent.

The man who has just spoken stands in its entrance, gazing down on him; at the table, a peg-legged fellow sits on a folding chair and graciously accepts a cup of chocolate from a woman who has been at work over a little cook-fire in the rear. “Bob,” calls the standing gentleman, “you are now barefoot in the rain, which calls to mind how I first saw you nigh on fifty years ago, and I say it becomes you, and may you leave those boots there to rot, and never again wear such odious contraptions. Now, do come back to us before you catch your death. Abigail has made chocolate.”

Bob wrenches a foot clear of the mud, plants it on a rock, and uses this as a foundation on which to pull the opposite one free. He risks a glance back at the abandoned boots. “Do the bloody
plans
call for a pair o’boots there?”

“They call for a shrubbery!” announces the peg-leg, peering at Bob through a transit, and consulting a garden-plan spread out on
the table. “But never you mind, those boots will be eaten by vermin long before planting-season.”

“What would the Vicar of Blenheim know about planting-season?”

“As much as I know about being a vicar.”

“And that is as much as
I
know about being a country gentleman,” says the Duke of Marlborough, gazing fretfully across a half-mile of mud and stumps at the still-building pile of Blenheim. “But we must all adapt—we must all learn. Except for Abigail, who is already perfect.” Abigail gives him a skeptical look and a cup of chocolate. Bob squelches another step closer. The gaze of (formerly) Colonel, (and now) the Reverend Barnes strays back to the great map, which looks ever so fanciful when contrasted against the gloomy reality outside. His eye wanders across the orderly geometry of the plan until it fixes upon a wee Chapel and a nearby Vicarage.

Marlborough says, “We shall mount a last Campaign from this tent, and pick off the vermin who are drawn hither by the intoxicating fragrance of Bob’s boots. Bob shall study how to look after plants, Barnes shall learn how to look after souls, I shall learn how to be idle, and Abigail shall look after all of us.”

“It sounds as if it ought to work,” says Bob, “so long as my brother does not show up.”

“He is dead,” Marlborough avers. “But if he shows up, we’ll shoot him. And if he recovers, we’ll pack him off to Carolina, where he may work alongside his offspring. For I am told that you are not the only Shaftoe, Bob, to have turned over a new leaf, and become a tiller of the soil.”

Bob has finally reached the tent’s threshold. “It is a strange fate indeed,” he mutters, “but only fitting.”

“Why fitting?”

“Jack, Jimmy, and Danny ought by rights to become tillers of the soil,” says Bob, “because they have made so much trouble in the past, as soilers of the till.”

“If you are going to make such jests,” says Barnes, “you are welcome to stay out in the rain.”