The System of the World (13 page)

“I am Mr. Orney,” Brother Norman said pleasantly.

Forty years ago, Daniel might now have flung himself into the river from sheer mortification. In light of recent months’ events, he knew he would survive this, like it or not. The best he could do was to soldier on. He was more concerned about the waterman who’d brought him here. That man had been listening shrewdly to the exchange, and now looked as if he might topple backward off the pier.

“I do beg your pardon, Brother Norman,” said Daniel.

“Oh, not at all, Brother Daniel, for how are we to come closer to God, if our ears be not open to the criticism of godly brethren?”

“Very true, Brother Norman.”

“Thou mightst never wot, O Son of Drake, what a ridiculous figure thou makest, in thy foppish periwig and whorish clothing, unless I were to lovingly put thee in mind of it.”

Another cheer from beyond Lavender Lane reminded Daniel that, as usual, the unrepentant sinners were having more fun.

“I have acquainted the workers with my views on such entertainments,” Brother Norman continued. “Several of our Brethren are there now, handing out tracts. Only God can save them.”

“I thought you were a rigger,” Daniel said idiotically.

“To be an examplar, in a ship-yard, is to show excellence in all of its tributary trades.”

“I see.”

“The baiting-ring is yonder. Tuppence a head. Enjoy!”

“Oh, no, Brother Norman, I have not come for that.”

“Why
hast
thou come then, Brother Daniel?
Solely
to offer me thy opinions as to how I might better look after my affairs? Wouldst thou care to audit my books? The day is young.”

“Splendid of you to offer, but—”

“I am afraid my fingernails are dirty, and might not meet with thine approval, but if thou wouldst come back tomorrow—”

“That is really quite all right, Brother Norman. My father, the
smuggler,
who employed diverse
pirates and Vagabonds,
was frequently observed to have a bit of dirt under his nails after we had been up all night loading contraband.”

“Very well, then, how may I be of help to thee, Brother Daniel?”

“By loading these parcels aboard the first of yonder ships that, if God wills it, does set sail for St. Petersburg.”

“This is not a warehouse. I cannot accept responsibility for aught that happens to them while they are stored in my yard.”

“Agreed. The thief who makes off with them is in for bitter disappointment.”

“You must secure the permission of Mr. Kikin.”

“And he is—”

“The short one. Approach Mr. Kikin from directly in front, with thine hands in plain view, or the tall one shall kill thee.”

“Thank you for that advice, Brother Norman.”

“Not at all. Mr. Kikin is quite certain that London is alive with Raskolniks.”

“What’s a Raskolnik?”

“From the nature of Mr. Kikin’s precautions, I infer that it is a sort of Russian Huguenot, bearded, ten feet tall, and good at throwing things.”

“Well, I don’t think I quite match that description—”

“One can never be too careful. Thou couldst be a Raskolnik disguised as a superannuated
dandy
.”

“Brother Norman, ’tis such a pleasure to be free of the stuffy courtesies of London.”

“The pleasure is entirely mine, Brother Daniel.”

“Tell me, please, have you heard any news of an East Indiaman called
Minerva
?”

“The ship
Minerva
of Rumor and Legend? Or the real one?”

“I have heard no rumors, know no legends…I assure you my interest is practical.”

“I saw a
Minerva
in dry-dock, round the bend, a fortnight ago, and so I can promise thee she was not the one of legend.”

“How does that follow, Brother Norman? I am wanting some knowledge, concerning
Minerva
, that would transform your
riddle
into a
story
.”

“Forgive me, Brother Daniel, I assumed you were as knowledgeable about maritime legends, as you are in
ship-yard management
. Some of the French sailors impose on the credulous, by insisting that there was once a ship, of that name, whose hull, below the waterline, was clad in gold.”

“Gold!?”

“Which could only be seen when she was heeled over, as when a stiff breeze was coming in abeam.”

“What a preposterous notion!”

“Not entirely, Brother Daniel. For the enemy of speed is the barnacle, which makes the hull rub the water. The notion of covering a hull with smooth metal is excellent. That is why I, and half the other shipwrights along the Pool, went to the trouble of having a look at this
Minerva
when she was in dry-dock.”

“But you did not see gold.”

“Copper is what I saw, Brother Daniel. Which might have been shiny and red when it was new. And if the light were to glance off it in just the right way, why, a Frenchman—a Papist, susceptible to gaudy and false visions—might phant’sy it were gold.”

“So that’s how the legend got started, you suppose.”

“I am certain of it. Oh, but the ship is quite real, Brother Daniel, I spied her riding at anchor a day or two ago, not half a mile out—I believe that is her, there, in front of Lime-Kiln Dock.” Brother Norman helpfully extended a hand across and downriver, indicating a short stretch that contained a hundred vessels, of which a third were full-sized, ocean-going three-masters. Daniel did not even bother to look. “She is a rakish teak-built sort of Dutch East Indiaman of the later Jan Vroom school, marvelous well-armed, generous tumble-home, a temptation and a terror to pirates.”

“I lived aboard her for two months and yet would never be able to pick her out from that crowd, at this range. Brother Norman, when do you expect that these ships shall set sail for St. Petersburg?”

“July, if God wills it and the cannons are delivered on time.”

“Sir,” Daniel said to his waterman, “I am going to go have a word with Mr. Kikin. While I do, I should be obliged if you would deliver a message to Captain van Hoek of
Minerva
.”

Daniel got out a pencil and a scrap of paper and wrote out the following on a barrel-head:

HALF AN HOUR LATER

A
BOUT THREE-QUARTERS OF THE RING
was subtended by standing-room, the remainder by a stand of benches. Daniel shrugged off the pamphleteers and missionaries trying to block the entrance and paid a whole shilling to get a sack of straw to cushion his bony old arse, and admission to the bleachers. He chose a place at the end of a bench so he’d have some hope of jumping clear if the structure collapsed—clearly it had not been engineered by Wren. From there he was able to look directly across the ring into the faces of the two Russians, who had elbowed their way to the front. This was no mean feat, considering that the other groundlings were Southwark shipyard workers. However, the tall one really was enormous, and he was armed. Mr. Kikin simply stood in front of him; his head came up to the other’s breastbone. Behind them, fellow spectators were reduced to taking turns sitting on each other’s shoulders.

Behind the stands a four-horse carriage was drawn up, defended from the Rotherhithe crowd by its staff of white-wigged footmen and coachmen. Daniel found it a bit odd that someone rich enough to
own and populate such a rig would come so far to see a bear-baiting. The theatres and baiting-rings of
Southwark
were in easy striking distance of London;
that
was a simple matter of ten minutes on a boat. But to get
here
was a long trip in a coach, through a nasty sprawl of tanneries.

On the other hand, if these people were squeamish, they would never have formed the intention of coming hither. Daniel did not recognize the arms on the door of their carriage—he suspected that they were newly minted—and he could divine little by staring at the backs of the wigs worn by the owner and his two lady companions.

Aside from those three, the stands contained half a dozen other well-heeled persons who had evidently come out by water. These had all come alone. Daniel had to admit that he blended in.

The entertainment hewed strictly to the ancient Classical forms, which was to say it consisted of five minutes of actual excitement preceded by nearly an hour of showmanship. A series of pompous introductions, enlivened by cock-fights, led to some big dogs being trotted out on chains and paraded round the ring, so that wagers could be laid as to which would survive. Members of the audience who were too poor or too prudent to bet amused themselves by surging to the front and trying to make the dogs even angrier than they already were by throwing rocks at them, poking at them with sticks, or bellowing their names. One was King Looie, one was King Philip, another Marshall Villars, and yet another, King James the Third.

A fellow came in late and chose a seat at the end of a bench three rows below Daniel. It was another Nonconformist, dressed all in black, with a broad-brimmed hat. He was carrying a basket, which he set down on the bench in front of him, between his feet.

The gentleman who’d come out in the coach stood up, resting a scarred hand on the pommel of his small-sword, and stared at the newcomer. Daniel found the gentleman’s profile annoyingly familiar but could not quite place him. Whoever he was, he was clearly of a mind to go and eject this Nonconformist, who was as out of place
here,
as he would have been at the Vatican. The only thing that held him back—literally—was his companions. The ladies seated to either side of him exchanged a meaningful glance behind the skirts of his coat, then reached up in perfect unison, as if they were mirror images of each other, to lay gloved hands on the gentleman’s forearms. The gentleman did not take kindly to this at all, and shook his arms free with such violence that Daniel flinched, afraid that the fellow was going to elbow the ladies in the faces.

This imbroglio-in-the-making was interrupted by an announcement
that “The Duke of Marlborough” was in the house. Everyone save the gentleman, Daniel, and the Nonconformist cheered. A score of groundlings were shooed out of the path of a gaudy-painted cart, a booth on wheels, which was being backed into the ring with a ponderous slowness meant to build excitement and enhance wagering.

The gentleman, preparatory to sitting down, put his hands on his arse to smooth the skirts of his coat. He glanced back behind the stands and looked moderately surprised. Daniel followed his gaze and noticed that the coach-and-four was no longer there. For this, the most plausible explanation was that the coachman had decided to move to some place quieter and not so crowded with Bankside rabble; it was certainly the case that many horses would be spooked by the entertainment that was about to begin.

Daniel turned back to look at the gentleman, who patted his belly, blindly groping up the length of a fat golden watch-chain that traversed his brocade vest, and pulled a time-piece out of a wee pocket. The watch-chain had several shriveled brown charms dangling from it—rabbits’ feet? The gent flipped open the lid of the watch, checked the time, and finally sat down.

They had missed nothing: only a mock-pompous ceremony of dragging a length of chain out from under the door of the wheeled booth, and fixing it to a massive stake driven into the ground. Now, finally, the door could be opened to reveal the Duke of Marlborough. And here was where Mr. Kikin and his companion suffered a great let-down. For the Duke might be large, by the standards of European black bears, but he was a runt compared to the brown Siberian monsters that chased people around Muscovy. Worse yet, when the Duke’s muzzle was pulled off by an intrepid trainer, and he opened his mouth to roar, it was obvious that his fangs had been filed down to harmless nubs.

“The Duke’s most fearsome foes: Harley and Bolingbroke!” shouted the master of ceremonies.

A pause for effect. Then the door of an enormous kennel was winched up, like the portcullis of a donjon. Nothing happened. A squib exploded inside the kennel. That did the trick: out came Harley and Bolingbroke, a matched set of poodles with white periwigs strapped to their heads. They rushed out half-blind and deaf, and went separate ways; Harley headed for the edge of the ring, Bolingbroke for the center, where the bear knocked him down with one blow of his paw, then rolled him over on his back and brought the other paw down with a sort of scooping motion.

A big spongy piece of poodle viscera was silhouetted against the white sky. It was throwing off a helix of blood-spray as it spun end-for-end.
It seemed to be hanging motionless in the air, which gave Daniel the idea it was headed straight for him; but then it plunged and struck, with palpable momentum, into the bodice of the powder-blue silk gown currently being worn by one of the gentleman’s two lady companions. From there it tumbled into her lap and lodged in her skirt, between her thighs. Daniel pegged it as a lung. She had the good sense to stand up
first,
and scream
second
.

This performance, from the detonation of the squib to the almost as explosive ovation given by the groundlings in acclaim for the lady’s role, covered an elapsed time of perhaps five seconds.

The one lady now had to be taken aside and comforted by the other. As their coach had gone missing, this had to be done there in the stands, in full view of all present. It made a sort of side-show to the long-awaited main event: the big dogs were unleashed into the ring. First King Looie and King Philip. They made straight for the bear, until the bear noticed them and stood up on its hind legs; then they had second thoughts, and decided to see what might be achieved with a hell of a lot of barking. Marshall Villars and King James the Third were then let go, and pretty soon it had begun to look like a fight.

The crowd of groundlings were now in a frenzy equal to that of the animals. So much so that they did not notice, for several seconds, when the dogs and the bear stopped fighting, and began to ignore each other. Their muzzles were down in the dirt.

The dogs’ tails were wagging.

The crowd stopped shouting, almost in unison.

Bits of red stuff were hurtling into the ring from somewhere near Daniel, and plumping into the ground like damp rags.

All eyes noticed this and back-traced the trajectories to the Nonconformist. He had stood up and set his basket on the bench next to him. Daniel noticed now that the basket was blood-soaked. The man was pulling great hunks of raw meat from it and hurling them into the ring.

“You men, like these poor beasts, do fight for the amusement, and toil for the enrichment, of men such as this wretch—Mr. Charles White—only because, like these beasts, you are hungry! Hungry for succour, of the physic, and of the spirit! But prosperity temporal and spiritual is yours to be had! It falls from heaven like manna! If you would only accept it!”

To this point the meat-flinger’s performance had been entertaining, after a fashion, and they’d particularly liked it when he’d called a gentleman a Wretch to his face. But in the last few moments it had taken on the aspect of a
sermon
, which the groundlings did not care for at all. They all began to murmur at once, like Parliament. Daniel
for the first time questioned whether he would get out of Rotherhithe today in one piece.

Mr. Charles White—perhaps asking himself the same question—was sauntering diagonally across the stands, casting meaningful looks at several of the blokes who were running the place. From this, and from what the meat-flinger had said, Daniel collected that White was the owner, or at least the backer.

“Splendid proposal, old boy! I do believe I’ll take a bit of
this,
thank you very
mumph
.” White’s final word was muffled by the Nonconformist’s left ear.

Now, the removal of said ear was a close re-enactment of a similar undertaking Daniel had witnessed twenty-odd years earlier, in a coffee-house. The hand that gripped the victim’s head, twisting him this way and that to worry the ear off, still bore an ugly stigma from Roger Comstock’s dagger. Daniel had no desire to see such a thing again. But the groundlings were fascinated. This was in other words a shrewd bit of crowd control on White’s part, in that it gave his audience some value for their money; the only value they were likely to get, today.

He got the ear off a lot quicker this time—practice having made perfect—and held it up. The crowd applauded; and as they did, White swiveled the ear back and forth, making it “listen” to whichever side was applauding the loudest. Once they understood this witticism, they went for it with gusto, the left and right flanks trying to out-do each other in noise-making. White meanwhile took this opportunity to dab blood off of his lips with a lace hanky.

“This ear is rather dry and gamy,” he shouted, when the crowd had grown tired of the jest. “I am afraid it has been
tanned
by listening to too many hellfire-sermons! It does not merit pride of place ’pon my watch-chain. ’Twill serve for dog-meat though.”

White vaulted over the barrier into the ring: a display of physical vigor striking to all. He fed the ear to the surviving poodle, Harley.

This spectacle—a dog eating a piece of a human being—seemed to give the crowd whatever satisfaction they had come for. Though none was pleased by the outcome, none complained. They began to mutter and joke amongst themselves. A few departed straightaway, to beat the crowds. Most milled out in a great herd, occasionally turning their heads back to watch the poodle, its periwig askew, its black lips peeled back from its fangs, grinding up the ear in its back teeth.

It occurred to Daniel to look for the one-eared, meat-hurling Puritan, who, when last seen, had been exiting stage right, making a dreadful noise: half sobbing with pain, half singing a hymn. His basket had been upset during the struggle with Mr. Charles White. Several bits of
offal had tumbled out of it, and now lay on the bench in steaming lagoons of dark blood. Daniel recognized an enormous thyroid gland and decided that this had all been removed from a horse, or something equally large, that had been alive a quarter of an hour ago.

The meat-thrower had staggered down out of the stands and into the open space behind, where he was being assisted by a dozen or more of his brethren, who were all showing off forced smiles. Mr. White’s carriage still had not returned; in its place was a conveyance far ruder, and much better suited to this district: a knacker’s wagon, dark and crusty with old gore and bright and runny with new. Daniel from his elevated vantage point was able to see things in the back of that wagon that were hidden from the view of Mr. White, who remained down by the ring’s edge: a newly cut-up horse was in there. Not a worn-out nag but a glossy and well-looked-after steed.

It was one of Mr. White’s carriage-horses.

Mr. White’s footmen and driver were standing very close together a quarter of a mile away, next to a motionless carriage, to which only three horses were harnessed.

Daniel took another look at the Nonconformists and noticed that every single one of them had at least one pistol in his belt.

’Twas an excellent time to be leaving. Daniel descended the benches, trying not to look like a man in a panic, and did not slow or look back until he had put the whole baiting-ring between himself and the scene that had happened, or was about to, behind the stands.

“Mr. Kikin,” he said, having approached from in front, with his hands in plain sight, and offered a formal bow. “I come to you on an errand from Baron von Leibniz, counselor to his Imperial Majesty, Tsar Peter.”

This was an abrupt beginning; but Charles White, on the far side of the ring, was only just now piecing together the picture of how he had been used today by those Dissidents, and was working himself up into a rage limited only by the fact that he was outnumbered by chaps who looked forward to dying, and were carrying loaded pistols. Amid such distractions, the only way Daniel could think of to seize Mr. Kikin’s attention was to invoke the name of Peter the Great.

It worked. Kikin showed not the slightest doubt that Daniel was telling the truth. From this, Daniel knew that Leibniz’s account of the Tsar was on the mark; he did things his own way, be they never so irregular, and his servants, such as Kikin, did not long endure if they wanted the nimbleness to keep pace with his evolutions. Thus Daniel was able to draw Mr. Kikin and his companion aside, and get them clear of the growingly monstrous spectacle in the stands. Mr. White was bellowing threats and execrations at the Dissidents, who were
drowning him out with hymn-singing, while a few unusually stupid spectators were darting in to throw stones at them.