The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (207 page)

“Mr. Foot!” Jack called out to a fiery blob hurtling to and fro in pursuit of demoralized foe-men, “turn thee around and let’s to the river. Nothing but dust now lies between us and the Court of the Great Mogul in Shahjahanabad; and he had damn well better be grateful, lest we boil up some urine in
his
town.”

SEPTEMBER
1693

“R
OGER, YOU ARE
a great man now, and worth more than the Great Mogul.”

“So I have heard, Daniel—but it is perfectly all right—I do not mind hearing it again.”

“You are also educated, after a fashion.”

“’Tis better to be
educable
—but pray continue in your flattery, which is so very unlike you.”

“So then. What metaphysical significance do you attach to the fact that you are unable to pay for a cup of coffee?”

“Why, Daniel, I say that I just
did
pay, not for
one
, but
two
—unless that object on the table before you is a
mirage.
”

“But you didn’t, really, my lord. Coffee was brought forth and you incurred a debt, pricked down on Mrs. Bligh’s ledger.”

“Are you questioning my
solvency,
Daniel?”

“I am questioning the whole
country’s
solvency! Empty out your coin-purse. Right there on the table. Let’s have a look.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Daniel.”

“Oh, now ’tis
I
who am vulgar.”

“Ever since you had the stone cut out, you have seemingly regressed in age.”

“I will bet you the whole contents of
my
purse that
yours
contains not a single piece of metal that could be exchanged for a bucket of cods’ heads at Billingsgate.”

“If your purse’s contents were worth so much, you’d be Massachusetts-bound. Everyone knows that.”

“You see? You are afraid to accept the wager.”

“Why do you belabor
me
about the fact that England has no money?”

“Because you are a momentous fellow now, rumors career about you like gulls round a herring-boat, and I want you to
do
something
about it, so that I can go to America…right. Very well, my lord, I shall give you a few minutes to bring your mirth under control. If you can hear what I am saying, wave at me—oh, very good. Roger Comstock, I say ’tis well enough for
you
that you have credit, and can buy cups of coffee, or houses, by simply
asking
for them. Many other men of power enjoy the same privilege—including our King, who appears to be financing his war through some kind of
alchemy.
But some of us are required actually to
pay
for what we buy, and we have nothing to pay
with
at the moment. They say that America is
awash
in Pieces of Eight, and that is a sight I would fain see—alas, ships’ captains do not dispense credit, at least, not to Natural Philosophers…. Oh yes, my lord,
do
be entertained. I am here in Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house, in pied rags, solely as a Court Jester to Creditable Men, and request only that you throw a silver coin at me for every giggle and a gold one for each guffaw. Fresh out? What, no coins in the bank? Does your purse hang as flaccid as a gelding’s scrotum? ’Tis a common condition, Roger, and this brings me round to
another
subject ’pon which I will briefly discourse while you blow your nose, and wipe the tears from your eyes, and that is: What if all debts, public and private, were to be called in? What if Mrs. Bligh were to march over to this cozy corner with her accompt-book resting open on her bosom like a Bible on a Lectern and say, Roger Comstock, you owe me your own weight in rubies, pay up straightaway!”

“But, Daniel, that never happens. Mrs. Bligh, if she wants coffee-beans, can go down to the docks and shew her book—or her Lectern, in a pinch—to a merchant and say, ‘Behold, every powerful man in London is in debt to me, I have collateral, lend me a ton of Mocha and you’ll never be sorry!’ ”

“Roger, what is Mrs. Bligh’s bloody book—by your leave, Mrs. Bligh!—but squiggles of ink? I have ink, Roger, a firkin of it, and can molest a goose to obtain quills, and make ink-squiggles all night and all day. But they are just
forms
on a page. What does it say of us that our commerce is built ’pon forms and figments while that of Spain is built ’pon
silver
?”

“Some would say it speaks to our
advancement
.”

“I am not one of those hard cases who believes credit is Satan’s work, do not put me in that poke, Roger. I say only that ink, once dried on the page, is a brittle commodity, and an œconomy made of ink is likewise brittle, and may for all we know be
craz’d
and in a state to crumble at a touch. Whereas silver and gold are ductile, malleable, capable of fluid movement—”

“Some say it is because their atoms, their
particules
are bathed in a
lubricating medium of quicksilver—”

“Stop it.”

“You asked me to wax metaphysical, just a minute ago.”

“You are baiting me, Roger. Oh, it is all right. By all means, amuse yourself.”

“Daniel. Do you really want to go to Massachusetts, and leave all this behind?”

“
All this
is more amusing, not to mention profitable, to
you
than ’tis to
me.
I want to put distractions behind, go to the wilderness, and work.”

“What, in a wigwam? Or do you have a cave picked out?”

“There are plenty of trees remaining.”

“You’re going to live in a tree?”

“No! Cut them down, make a house.”

“I fear you are unused to such labor, Daniel.”

“Oh but I am
educable
.”

“One really would do better to have an
institution
on which to rely. You could be a vicar of some Puritan church.”

“Puritan churches tend not to
have
vicars.”

“Oh, that’s right…then perhaps Harvard College would have you.”

“Then again, perhaps not.”

“Here, Daniel, is my metaphysical reading of your circumstance:”

“I am braced.”

“England is not finished with you yet!”

“Merciful God! What more can England possibly ask of me?”

“I shall come to that momentarily, Daniel. First, I propose a transaction.”

“Is this transaction to conclude with
silver
changing hands? Or ink-squiggles?”

“It is to conclude with a sinecure for Daniel Waterhouse. In Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

“Damn me, and here am I, on the wrong side of the ocean!”

“The sinecure is attended with certain
perquisites
including a one-way trans-oceanic voyage.”

“Are you saying, England wants from me something
so dreadful
that when I have done it, she won’t want me around any more?”

“You read too much into it.
You
are the one who has been bawling about Massachusetts for all these years.”

“But then why do you specify it has to be one-way?”

“You can come back if you think it would be in your best interests,” Roger said innocently. “As long as the Juncto remains in
power, you shall have protectors.”

“Your voice has the most annoying way of fading just when you are on the verge of saying something interesting. Do you do that for effect?”

“Juncto…
juncto
…JUNCTO!”

“What on earth is a junk-toe? Some new type of gout?”

“More like a new type of gov’t.”

“I am quite serious.”

“A scholar might say it Latin-style:
yuncto
. Or, a Spaniard thus:
hoonta
!”

“Why don’t you just say ‘joint,’ which is what it means?”

“I know what it means. But then people would suppose we were discoursing of knees or elbows.”

“But isn’t the
idea
to be mysterious?”

“Then we would call it a
cabal.
”

“Oh, that’s right. So, you are in a juncto?”

“I am in
the
juncto.”

“And your role in
the
juncto is to be—?”

“Chancellor of the Exchequer…Daniel, it is childish to make coffee shoot out of your nostrils. You know of someone
better
qualified?”

“What about Apthorp?”

“Sir Richard, as he is called by
polite
men, will run the bank.”

“But do you not think he would gladly set aside his duties at Apthorp’s Bank to become Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

“No, no, no, no,
no
. I am not speaking of Apthorp’s bank. I refer to the Bank of England.”

“No such institution exists.”

“And no institution exists in Massachusetts Bay Colony that will put a roof over your head and give you a sinecure. But institutions can be
made
, Daniel. That is what an institution
is:
something that has been
instituted
.”

“Oh.”

“Ah, finally light dawns! You
are
educable, Daniel, very much so!”

“The Bank of England…the Bank of England. It sounds, I don’t know,
big
.”

“That is the point.”

“You shall amass some sort of capital, and lend out money.”

“This is the timeless function of a
banca
.”

“I can only perceive two drawbacks to what is otherwise an excellent plan, my lord…”

“Don’t say it. We have no capital…and no money.”

“Just so, my lord.”

“Is it not
admirable,
how simple things are in the beginning? Oh,
how I love to begin things.”

“Let’s take them in order…what is the capital to be?”

“England.”

“Ah, very well, I should have guessed from the name, ‘Bank of England.’ Now, how about the money?”

“The Bank will issue some paper. But you are right. We need coinage. To be specific, we need
recoinage.
”

A silence now fell over this snuggery in the corner of Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house. Roger had spent enough man-years orating in Parliament that he knew when a Pause for Effect was called for. And Daniel for his part was strangely affected, and lost all interest in speaking for a short time. The notion of recoinage made him strangely
sad,
and he was desirous of figuring out
why
. It would mean calling in all old coins—as well as the plate, candlesticks, bullion,
et cetera
—and melting them in the great crucibles of the Tower. Crucibles that purified and separated the genuine metal from the dross of the counterfeiters but thereby melted all those discrete objects together, destroying their individual characters.

Daniel had in his purse a pound coin stamped with a picture of Queen Elizabeth. He knew this because such coins were rarer than flawless diamonds now, and he was holding it back in case he had to ransom his life somehow. The Golden Comstocks—Roger’s ancestors—had imported the metal from Spain and Thomas Gresham had caused the coin to be minted at such-and-such a weight, and had used some of his rake-off to build Gresham’s College. The coin had been passing from hand to hand and purse to purse for more than a hundred years, and probably had more tales to tell than a ship full of Irish sailors—yet it was just a single mote in the dust-pile that was the English money supply. In a certain way to take that dust and shovel it into the maw of the crucibles was monstrous, like burning a library.

But imagine the glowing rivers that would spring from the lips of those crucibles when all of that tarnished silver was made clean, and made quick, and con-fused, and all of its old stories driven off as clouds of smoke that the river wind would carry away. Imagine the shining coins in purses everywhere—Mrs. Bligh striking out the debts from her ledger-book, her strong-box becoming a catch-basin for the new money, overflowing and spilling out gleaming rivulets down the street to the bankside coffee-merchants, and thence down the Thames into the wide.

“We’ve no choice,” Daniel understood.

“We’ve no choice. The Pope has all the gold, all the silver, all the men, and the rich lands where the sun shines. We cannot long stand against Spain, France, the Empire, the Church. Not as long as power
is like a scale, with our riches on one pan, and our adversaries’ on the other. What are we to do, then? Daniel, you know that I think Alchemy is nonsense! Yet there is something in the
idea
of Alchemy; the conceit that we may cause gold to appear where ’twas not, by dint of artfulness and machinations up here.” He pressed the tip of one index finger delicately to his forehead. “We have no mines, no El Dorado. If we want gold and silver we must look not to treasure-fleets from America. Yet if we conduct commerce here, and build the Bank of England, why, gold and silver will appear in our coffers as if by magic—or Alchemy if you prefer.”

A pause to sip cold coffee. Then Daniel remarked, “You’ll want to take a page from Gresham’s book. ‘Bad money drives out good.’ If the new coin is good, ’twill drive away the bad, not only from this island but everywhere. Everyone will desire English guineas, as they desire Pieces of Eight now. The demand will cause ever more gold and silver to wash up on our shores to be coined in the Tower, just as you prophesy.”

Roger was nodding patiently, as if he and the Juncto had figured it all out long ago—which might or might not have been the case—but Daniel found it strangely reassuring all the same, and continued: “At the risk of sounding like a Royal Society partisan—”

“It is not much of a risk. Half of the Juncto are Fellows. And all are partisans of
something.
”

“Very well, then, I submit that you want a Natural Philosopher running the Mint—not the usual corrupt, drunken, time-serving political hack.”

This drew a brisk turn of the head from a gentleman who had been standing a short distance behind Roger, talking to another gent, or pretending to. Daniel realized he had spoken too loudly.

The gentleman was glaring at Daniel from beneath a copper-colored wig, one of the new model, narrow, with long ringlets trailing far down the back. The wig said that he had money and rank, yet was no admirer of the French. He would be High Church, Old Money, a reflexive backer of Monarchy—a Tory, as they were called nowadays. Odd that he should be passing the time of day in here—Mrs. Bligh’s was a Whig haunt. For that reason Daniel rated it as unlikely that this fellow would challenge him to a duel.