The System of the World (58 page)

Johann could smell it now, too: an acrid, smoky reek that reminded him of something.

“Nicotine,” said Daniel.

“Never heard of it.”

“That may be, but you have some in you right now, if you have smoked a pipe in the last few hours.”

“That’s what the smell reminds me of, a bit—an old pipe-bowl that has never been cleaned out.”

“It is an extract of the tobacco plant. When I was your age, it was in vogue, among certain Fellows of the Royal Society, to prepare this poison and inflict it on small animals. It is soluble in oil. It is bitter—”

“You’ve tasted it?!”

“No, but persons who have, invariably remark on its bitterness before they stop breathing.”

“How does it kill?”

“I have just told you—the victim stops breathing. But not before becoming twitchy and spasmodic for a brief time.”

“That was true of the dog, when I saw it. Then I lit out in pursuit of the other assassin. He had been pursued to the edge of the canal, and jumped in rather than perish at sword’s edge. He was sloshing about—for the water was but chest-deep—looking for some apt place to scale the opposite wall of the channel. Then he stopped moving, and sank below the surface. When we pulled him out he was dead.”

“Did water drain from his lungs?”

“Now that you mention it, no.”

“He did not drown then,” Daniel said. “If you examine the corpse carefully you shall find some place where he nicked himself with his dagger, or let it brush against his skin.” Daniel planted a hand to either side of the silver platter and gazed at the weapon. “This is an expert preparation, solved in some fine light oil, such as whale-oil. Smeared on the skin it would convey the nicotine into the capillaries and thence to the lungs in a few minutes’ time.” He looked up at Johann. “When you smoke your pipe, you feel an initial rush of stimulation, followed by a calmness, a steadying of the nerves. This is but a trace, a shadow, of nicotine poisoning. If you were cut with this dagger, that relaxation of the nerves would advance to the point where you would simply forget to breathe, and drown in air…every time you smoke tobacco, you are prefiguring your own death.”

“Horrid…it makes me want to smoke something just to calm down.”

“Mr. Hooke experimented with an herb called
bhang
that would cure what ails you—alas, it is harder to get.”

“I shall make inquiries. It is strange. During the events, I had a clarity of mind, a sharpness of perceptions, I’d never known before. Now, sitting here, I am terrified.”

“As I should be, if I had just received such a tongue-lashing from
the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm.”

“You could hear it this far away?”

“I do believe that the King of France sat up in his bed at Versailles wondering what new war had broken out in Germany.”

“It’s true, I have never seen her so angry. She
did
tell me never to duel. And I
did
promise. But this—”

“You chose the moment well,” Daniel assured him. “Physical violence is a means that I have never employed for any purpose. The risks are enormous, and a man of my mentality, who sees dangers where they are and are not, can always find a reason to take some other course. You are young and—”

“Stupid?”

“No, but less perceptive of risk. When, God willing, you have reached the age of forty, you’ll sit up in bed in the middle of the night, covered in sweat, with the memory of this night fresh in your mind, and say, ‘My God, I cannot believe I once fought a duel!’ Or so I hope.”

“Why do you hope for me to sleep poorly?”

“Because though I have not
done
violence I have
seen
rather a lot of it. Not all of the men who employ it are stupid, or evil. Only most of them. The rest use it reluctantly, as a way, when all else has failed, of seizing the main chance. Thus you tonight. Your mother will understand this and get her equilibrium back. But like a man who imbibes tobacco-smoke, you have died a little death tonight. I do not recommend that you become addicted to it.”

“It is very good advice. I thank you for it. As I thank you, again, for giving us information that saved Caroline’s life. You may expect that she will reward you—”

“I would glady forgo all thanks and rewards if I could simply take a nap.”

“You can nap in the carriage, Dr. Waterhouse,” said a woman’s voice. Hoarse, as if she’d been screaming a lot recently.

Daniel and Johann both looked over to see Eliza in the pantry’s doorway. She looked a good deal calmer.

“My lady,” Daniel said, and sighed, “from any other woman I should interpret this as a jest or
non sequitur,
but from you I fear—”

“It is well known that you stayed behind in Hanover, being too ill for arduous travel—”

“Thank you for reminding me, my lady, my infirmity had quite slipped my mind.”

“It is expected that you will take the slow way back, attended by a nurse. I give you your nurse.” Eliza came all the way into the room now. She was followed by a young woman dressed in a severe habit, her head swaddled in a length of white linen that had been wrapped
around so as to conceal all of her hair, and a good bit of her face—hardly
à la mode
, but not particularly unusual in a time and place when nearly everyone sooner or later got smallpox, and some emerged in good health but almost impossible to look at. “This is Gertrude von Klötze, a petty noblewoman of Braunschweig, who after suffering and surviving a grave illness, has dedicated the remainder of her life to succouring others in need.”

“A noble woman indeed. It is my very great pleasure to meet you, mademoiselle,” said Daniel, adroitly looking past the fact that this woman was, in fact, Princess Caroline.

“Fraülein von Klötze shall accompany you all the way to London.”

“And how shall sweet Gertrude get
back
?” Johann demanded—having taken a few moments to recover from the abrupt transfiguration of his lover into a masked nurse. He made a step toward Caroline, but she sent him back with a dart of the eyes. “Surely her family will miss her!”

“Perhaps she won’t
have
to come back, as her family may be moving to London soon
anyway
,” Eliza said. “Gertrude shall lodge at Leicester House until we make rendezvous with her later.”

“I did not know that I was—we were—going to London!” Johann answered.

“We are,” Eliza said calmly, “but not before a detour to the chateau at Schloß Ubersetzenseehafenstadtbergwald.”

“Eeyuh,
that
place? Are you joking? What’ll we do there, hunt bats?”

“Some minutes ago, you may have heard a woman screaming in this wing of the palace.”

“Indeed, my ears are still ringing.”

“That was Princess Caroline.”

“Are you certain? For during the time this screaming reached my ears I observed movements of your lips, Mother, curiously synchronized—”

“Your wit is tedious. ’Twas the Princess. Her grief over the death of Sophie is even deeper than was realized. Her braveness earlier today a mere affectation, masking a profound derangement of the nerves. Not long ago, she simply dissolved. She has been given tincture of opium and is under strict seclusion in her bedchamber. Before the sun is up, she shall be taken out in a sedan chair and loaded into my carriage. You, son, and I shall convey her to the Schloß I have mentioned—one of the most remote and desolate out-croppings in Christendom. There, her royal highness shall spend several weeks in seclusion, tended only by a few
trusted
servants, turning away all visitors.”

“Especially ones carrying poisoned daggers—?”

“Rumors of assassins in the garden are absurd,” Eliza said, “They are chimæras, figments of her royal highness’s fevered brain. Even if they did exist, they would face grave difficulties gaining entrance to the place to which we are taking her, which, as you know if you have been studying your family history, was built on a rock in a lake by a rich Baron so concerned for his personal security that he believed that even the birds of the air were wind-up toys invented by
hashishin
to fly in his windows and put anthrax into his beer.”

“Oh, was he the chap who invented beer-mugs with lids on them?” Daniel wondered aloud.

But Eliza was in no mood. “I should like it very much, Dr. Waterhouse, if you were to fall down and suffer a medical crisis.”

“I am here to serve, my lady,” Daniel returned gallantly, and began looking round the pantry for a comfortable place to hit the floor.

“Might I spend a moment with ‘Gertrude’ first?” Johann inquired. “There is much, er, advice I would give her concerning London and—”

“There is no time,”
Eliza said, “and your advice is of little value, as ‘Gertrude’ does not expect to participate in any
sword-fights
.” And Eliza drew breath as if to expound upon this theme at greater length. But Daniel’s withered hand suddenly lay gentle on her arm. She faltered. “Gertrude” and Johann had locked their eyes together across the room. Eliza could have detonated a barrel of gunpowder and they would not have heard it.

“Let’s to London, then,” Daniel said.

DAWN,
18
JUNE
1714

I
T WAS SAID THAT
Mahomet had banned bells in the
masjid
, not because they were, in and of themselves, repugnant to Allah, but simply because the Franks were so fond of them, and used them so much, that merely to hear one tolling was to be put forcibly in mind of the profanities of the infidels. If that were true, why a devout Mussulman with the misfortune to be encamped on the fields north of Clerkenwell would have suffered the rudest of all possible awakenings on this Friday: the damp, dark, chill, sewage-scented fog that served, hereabouts, in stead of an atmosphere, was alive with the sounds of church-bells. And none of your merry pealing carillons ringing diverse changes, but the slow stomach-walloping bongs of great solitary bells, gravid with doom.

The tolling conveyed several meanings. First that the day had begun—a fact that most Londoners could only have determined with careful use of ephemeris and chronometer, as it was still dark. Second,
that London was still there. The buildings, despite appearances, had not drifted away from one another in the night-time, like ships of a fog-bound fleet. Though invisible, they were still where they had been the evening previous, and a cockney with a good ear might even find his way round town by them, triangulating from the distinct voices of St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Thomas Apostle, St. Mildred, and Bennet Fink as mariners plotted courses by the lights of Ras Alhague, Caput Medusae, and Cynosura.

Heard from these fields, the sounds of the bells came not only from the south, but from east and west as well, simply because London was that big and Clerkenwell that close to it. Once he had scrambled out of his tent, stuffed Egyptian cotton into his ears, and struck his camp, the offended sojourner would therefore head north to get away from the infernal bonging. But in this he would be balked at every bridge and crossroads. For all of the traffic—mostly pedestrians—was south-bound.

Many had slept rough on these fields and greens the night before, and when the bells had begun to ring, they had arisen and begun to shuffle through the fog, like a whole battle-field of dead soldiers resurrected and ordered to march upon their respective parish-churches. All of them moved southwards, toward High Holbourn. For the tolling of so many melancholic bells had a third meaning: this was Hanging-Day. It happened eight times a year.

The people tromping southwards through the fog were common at best. Honest folk among them tended to move in packs, keeping purses stuffed deep inside their cloaks, and supporting themselves on walking-sticks that were strangely oversized. For there was a stiff proportion of Vagabonds and worse in this throng. They all hoped to make it to Holbourn before broad daylight, so that they could claim places in the front of the crowd, affording them clear views of the condemned journeying to Tyburn Cross. Failing that they might withdraw to side-streets, and execute great westward flanking maneuvers, converging finally on the vast open parks and fields surrounding the Treble Tree.

To a foreign visitor—or even to a good many Englishmen—there would be so much in these sights that was odd, and so much about the atmosphere that was gloomy, eldritch, and macabre, that he might easily over-look one or two peculiar phænomena. But the sort of person who attended Hanging-Marches eight times a year would note an anomalous gathering near an elbow in the road between Sir John Oldcastle’s (a compound of stately buildings and trees, about to be enveloped by Clerkenwell) and Black Mary’s Hole (a tiny alienated settlement on the banks of the upper Fleet).

Stopped by the roadside, harnessed to a team of four horses who were all in their feedbags, was a coach. The driver, with his whip, and two footmen, with cudgels, prowled around it, discouraging Vagabond-boys from coming up to ingratiate themselves with the beasts. A stone’s throw away, in a field strewn with human turds and other evidence of last night’s hanging-jamboree, an old man bestrode a horse. Too much horse. It was feeding selectively on whatever grew in the field, and wandering wherever it pleased to find the choicest herbs. The rider, who was wrapped in a cloak, arms crossed over his torso for warmth, occasionally unfolded himself, grasped the reins, and compelled his mount to repent of its latest wanderings. It was a big gray gelding, obviously military, with simple tack.

The old man on the gray gelding was accompanied by four other horsemen. Of these, two rode mounts similar to the first, but they kept theirs under better control. These men were big and young, dressed in very plain common garments such as yeomen might wear to venture forth on a long cross-country errand.

Even through dimness and fog, everything about the other two riders—save one detail that shall be attended to in a moment—marked them as youths of a privileged class. They had small-swords (actually not all that useful on horseback). Their horses were to the gray geldings as færies were to fishwives. In short, either one could have ridden direct to St. James’s Park and gone for a genteel trot up and down Rotten Row and not drawn a second glance from the toffs and fops who frequented that place.

But first they’d have had to don wigs. Bewigged, they’d have blended in perfectly. Dis-covered, they looked more at home in the wilds of North America. For each of these young swells had carefully shaved all of his hair—all, that is, save in a longitudinal stripe, three fingers wide, running from the hairline to the nape. This had been allowed to grow to a length of several inches and then stiffened with some mysterious tonsorial compound so that it stood straight out from the head. Washed, flattened, and tucked under a periwig it would disappear, but thus deployed it looked (to the Classically educated) like the crest on an ancient helmet, or (to readers of Romances) like the battle-coif of the Mohawks.

Now, a wagon had been working its way across the torrent of Hanging-watchers. It was laden with barrels of the type used to transport ale. It seemed to be coming from the general direction of east London, and executing a movement around the northern frontier of the city to strike at Tyburn Cross around mid-morning: an excellent plan. Progress was impeded by a throng of would-be revelers who followed the wagon like sea-gulls swarming a herring-boat. But the
brewer had a formidable van-guard of cudgel-men and a rear-guard of dogs, so he kept firm control of his inventory and made respectable speed. His route happened to bring him past the elbow in the road where the coach, and the five riders, were unaccountably loitering. There he stopped the wagon. Several Vagabonds rushed it. They were driven back, not only by the brewer’s dogs and club-men, but also by the four younger riders, who had wordlessly joined forces with them.

The brewer and an assistant—by looks, his son—deployed a plank from the back of the wagon, making of it a ramp extending to the ground. Down this they rolled a large barrel. It seemed unusually light-loaded, for they did not much exert themselves. But the contents must have been delicate, for they took their time. While his boy stowed the plank, the brewer set the barrel upright on the ground and gave it an affectionate triple thump. When he returned to his bench at the head of the wagon, he was startled to discover a single golden guinea resting in the place where he was about to sit.

“Thank you, guv’nor,” the brewer said to the old man on the gray horse. “But I couldn’t possibly.” And he tossed the coin back. The target was too blind to see it coming through the fog, but stopped it with his chest. It tumbled down into his lap. He trapped it under his hand.

“If it was some other bloke in there,” the brewer explained, “I’d take your money, guv. But this one’s on the house.”

“You are a credit to your profession, sir,” returned the old man, “as if it
needed
any. When next I visit the Liberty of the Tower, I shall buy a round for the house—nay, for the whole garrison.”

Even large objects vanished soon in this miasma, and that was true of the beer-wagon. The four riders now devoted a minute or two to cantering back and forth driving away inquisitive Vagabonds. Then all converged on the barrel. The two Mohawks stood guard while the two common blokes dismounted and went to work on the barrel—carefully—with hatchets. Presently they tipped it over on the grass. One held the barrel. The other bent down, reached into the open end, got a grip on the payload, and dragged it out. It was a human form. From his general looks, no one would have been surprised to learn that he was dead. If so, he had expired recently, for he was still floppy. After a minute, though, he began to stir. In three minutes he was sitting on the barrel, drinking brandy, glaring at the two Mohawks, and conversing with his two rescuers. He called these by their Christian names and they called him Sergeant.

“Sergeant Shaftoe,” said the old man, “I do pity the Grim Reaper on the day that he shall finally come for you in earnest. I fear you’ll use him so roughly that he shall have to go on holiday for a fortnight.”

“And what would be the harm in that?” croaked Sergeant Shaftoe. His voice was very raw, as if he had been shouting or screaming quite a bit in recent days. His wrists were adorned with bracelets of festering scabs.

“Oh, think of the havoc it would play with Her Majesty’s annuities! Think of the carnage at Lloyd’s Coffee-house!”

Sergeant Shaftoe let it be seen that he did not think much of the other’s wit. “You’d be Comstock,” he said, after a suitably uncomfortable silence had passed.

“I would draw nigh and shake your hand—”

“ ’Tis all right, my hand does not work just now.”

“—but I do not trust myself on this animal.”

Shaftoe shook off a brief urge to smile. “Not to your liking, is he?”

“Oh, as an arse-warmer, he has done splendid service. But God help us all if I should essay to
ride
him.”

“I s’pose it’s you I have to thank for my liberty, then,” Shaftoe remarked.

“From the fact that you are here, and alive, I collect that all went off as planned?”

“En route from the
dungeon
to the
cooperage
were some misadventures. Without those, it would have been as routine as removal of horse-dung. The Regiment is under new, not very competent direction.”

“What of the Queen’s Messengers?”

“All they do is stand in a Mobb around the Pyx day and night.”

Comstock permitted himself a dry chuckle. “You are a man of many words but few specifics. You’d do well in Parliament.”

Shaftoe shrugged. “I’m old. Your hirelings, who broke me out of the Tower, they are young lads, and were moved greatly by each little happening. Ask them to relate the story to you, and you shall hear a yarn far longer and more diverting than any I would tell.”

“And less strictly
true
, I suspect,” said Comstock.

“What’s it to be now, guv’nor?” Shaftoe asked, and decided to try standing up. This he accomplished with a rolling tocsin of cracks and pops.

“Sergeant Shaftoe, ’twere absurd for me to go to the trouble of making you a free man, only to take away your liberty in the next instant by telling you what to do.”

“My mistake, guv’nor. I am accustomed by long habit to being in a chain of command.”

“Then, if it would be of any comfort to you, know that your longtime superior, Colonel Barnes, is now my guest. Oh, not here in London! He is at my seat, Ravenscar, on the North York Moors, above the sea.”

Shaftoe looked to the two dragoons who had pulled him out of the barrel. They confirmed it with nods.

“Am I to gather that Colonel Barnes is not alone there?” Shaftoe asked.

“I daresay the best part of your regiment is drinking up my wine-cellar.”

One of the dragoons could be heard supplementing Comstock’s account, muttering about “three companies.” Sergeant Shaftoe was not the sort who would admit to being startled or impressed by
anything;
but at least he did not look bored or contemptuous—a signal achievement for Roger Comstock.

“I know all about your Whig Association,” Shaftoe said. He had advanced now to walking, and tottered a few steps in Comstock’s direction. “I have heard the rumors about all the money you have raised from the merchants of the City. And as to your efforts to recruit soldiers away from Her Majesty’s regiments, and sign them up in your private army: I recruited them
first
, and trained them, so do not think that a single one has escaped my attention.”

“I shouldn’t dare to, Sergeant Shaftoe.”

“I am too young to’ve witnessed the Civil War with these eyes, but as a lad I heard tales of it from ones who managed to survive. And I have seen all of the
improvements
that War made in Ireland and Belgium and other places. I could not be less inclined to take part in such an action on English soil.”

“Then don’t.”

“Pardon?”

“Don’t take part, Sergeant Shaftoe. Oh, by all means go to Ravenscar—” and here Comstock launched into the procedure of dismounting from his horse—so evidently fraught with perils for man and beast alike that the sergeant stepped forward to intervene. “Take this steed—yes—there—oh, no! I beg your pardon—thank you—that was most painful—I am in your debt—may I please have my teeth back—there! Whew! I say, take this steed, Sergeant Shaftoe, which is as glad to be
rid of
me, as
ridden by
you—ha—these two fine dragoons who, as I believe, are known to you, shall accompany you all the way to Ravenscar. Go there, drink Colonel Barnes’s health, recuperate, trout-fish, as you like. There is not going to be another Civil War, Sergeant Shaftoe, if I have aught to say about it—which, as it happens, I do.”

“What if you are wrong?”

“Then you are welcome, nay, encouraged to retire from military service.”

“And in what way does this benefit you?”

“Always an important question to ask. I am presently engaged in a sort of duel with the Viscount Bolingbroke—the same chap you have to thank for your recent travails in Tower-dungeons. In a duel, it is customary for each participant to have a second: a friend to stand behind him to back him up. The second rarely has to
do
anything. You may think of the Whig Association’s battalions as
my
second. As for Bolingbroke, he has always had the Queen’s Messengers, and now, too, he has much of your old Regiment in his pocket. Most of the other regiments are too cowed to stand against him. It is important that
I
not be cowed, Sergeant Shaftoe. Having an army in Ravenscar gives me a warm feeling.”