The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (241 page)

W
HEN THE WEATHER
lifted three days later they found that they had dragged their anchor for a short distance. But not far enough to put them in danger, for the bay behind the Golden Gate was vast. Its southern lobe extended south as far as the eye could see, bounded on both sides by swelling hills, just turning from green to brown. The crew of
Minerva
now embarked on a strange program of eating California, beginning with the seaweed that floated off-shore, working their way through the mussel-beds and crab-flats of the intertidal zone, chewing tunnels into the scrub that clung to the beach-edge and perpetrating massacres of animals and birds. Foraging-parties would go out one after the next in the longboat, and half of them would stand guard with muskets and cutlasses while the others ransacked the place for food. Certain parts of the shoreline were defended by Indians who were not very happy to see them, and it took a bit of experimentation to learn where these were. The most dangerous part was the first five minutes after the longboat had been pulled up on the beach, when the men felt earth beneath their feet for the first time in four months, and stood there dumbfounded for several minutes, their ears amazed by the twittering of birds, the buzzing of insects, the rustle of leaves. Said Edmund de Ath: “It is like being a newborn babe, who has known nothing but the womb, suddenly brought forth into an unimagined world.”

Elizabeth de Obregon emerged from her cabin for the first time since Jack had carried her in there, all wet and cold from the Pacific, on the night the Galleon burned. Edmund de Ath took her for a feeble
promenade around the poop deck. Jack, lying on his bed directly beneath them, overheard a snatch of their conversation: “
Mira,
the bay seems to go on forever, no wonder they believed California was an island.”

“It was your husband who proved them wrong, was it not, my lady?”

“You are too flattering, even for a Jesuit, Father Edmund.”

“Pardon me, my lady, but I am a Jansenist.”

“Yes, I meant to say Jansenist—my mind is still addled, and I cannot tell waking from dreaming sometimes.”

“That promontory to the south of the Gate would be a brave place to build a city,” said Edmund de Ath. “A battery there could control the narrows, and make this entire Bay into a Spanish lake, dotted with missions to convert all of these Indians.”

“America is vast, and there are many nice places to build cities,” said Elizabeth de Obregon dismissively.

“I know, but just
look
at this place! It’s as if God put it here to be built on!”

They tottered onwards and Jack heard no more. Which was just as well—he’d heard enough. It was a type of clever, courtly conversation the likes of which he had not been forced to listen to since he’d left Christendom behind, and it filled him with the same old desire to run abovedecks and throw those people overboard.

As Elizabeth de Obregon ate of the fruits and greens of California and recovered her strength, she began to emerge from her cabin more frequently and even to join them in the officers’ mess from time to time.

After Jack had related certain things to his partners, and after they’d allowed a day or two to pass, Moseh turned to Elizabeth one evening as they were dining, and remarked, “The situation of this Bay seems so fair that it will probably attract simpletons from all over the world…doubtless the
Russians
will throw up a fort on that promontory any year now.”

Elizabeth looked politely amused at the reaction of Edmund de Ath, who turned red and began to chew his food very slowly. She turned to Moseh and said, “Pray tell, why wouldn’t
sophisticated
men build here?”

“Ah, my lady, I would not bore you with the tedious speculations of the Cabbalists…”

“On the contrary, my family tree is full of
conversos,
and I love to steep myself in the wisdom of the rabbis.”

“My lady, we are near the latitude of forty degrees. The golden rays of the sun, and silver rays of the moon, strike the surface of the
globe at a
glancing
angle here, rather than shining down
vertically
onto the ground. Now it has been understood by
Cabbalistickal
sorcerers, ever since the days of the First Temple, that the diverse
metals
that grow in the earth, are created by certain
rays
that emanate from the various heavenly bodies, penetrate the Earth, and there combine with the Elements of Earth and Water to create gold, silver, copper, mercury,
et cetera,
depending on which Planet emanated the Ray.
Videlicet,
the rays of the Sun create Gold, those of the Moon Silver,
et cetera, et cetera
. And it follows naturally that Gold and Silver will be found most abundantly in sunny places near the Equator.”

“The Alchemists of Christendom have either
borrowed
this insight from your Cabbalists, or discovered it on their own,” said Elizabeth.

“As you know, Lady, the great metropolises of
al-Andalus,
Cordoba and Toledo, were crucibles in which the most learned men of Christendom, of
dar al-Islam,
and of the Diaspora commingled their knowledge…”

“I thought the function of a crucible was to
purify
and not to
intermix,
” said Edmund de Ath, and then put on an angelic face.

“To fall into discussion of alchemichal arcana would be to do the lady a disservice,” said Moseh. “She informs me that the sages of the King of Spain are well-acquainted with the nature and properties of the astrologickal emanations. Yet any half-wit who glances at a map could have inferred that that the
Rey
knows all about the
rays,
for it has ever been the wise policy of the Spanish Empire to follow the Line, and establish colonies in the auriferous belt where Sun and Moon beat straight down on the earth. Leave
California
and
Alyeska
to the wretched Russians, for gold will
never
be discovered in
those
places!”

“I confess I am somewhat taken a-back,” said Edmund de Ath, “as I never dreamed until now that I was sharing a ship with a
Cabbalistic
sorcerer.”

“Don’t hang your head so, monsieur. The North Pacific is not generally considered a Jewish neighborhood…”

“What possessed you to venture out this way, sir?” asked Elizabeth de Obregon. The sight of land, and fresh food, had brought her back to life, and now this fencing-match between the Jansenist and the Jew was taking years off her age.

“My lady, you do me a favor to pretend interest in my obscure researches,” said Moseh. “I’ll return the kindness by being as brief as possible: there is an occult legend to the effect that King Solomon, after building the Temple on Mount Zion—”

“—journeyed far to the East and built a Kingdom on some island there,” said Elizabeth de Obregon.

“Indeed. A kingdom of vast wealth to be sure, but—more importantly—an Olympian center for alchemical scholarship and Cabbalistic research. There the secrets of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Philosophic Mercury were first brought to light—in fact, all the lucubrations of our modern-day Alchemists and Cabbalists are but a feeble attempt to pick over the scraps left behind by Solomon and his court magicians. After I had journeyed to the frontiers of learning during my youth, I reached the conclusion that I could only learn more by seeking out the Solomon Islands and going over them inch by inch.”

Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to become pink in the face. “Many have died trying to discover those islands, rabbi. If your tale is true, you are fortunate to be alive.”

“No more fortunate than
you,
my lady.”

Now Elizabeth de Obregon locked her gaze upon Moseh, and mystickal Rays passed back and forth between them for a while, until Edmund de Ath could not endure it any longer. He said, “Can you share your findings with us, sir, or must the results be locked up in some encyphered Torah somewhere?”

“The
results
are still
resulting,
sir, there is no definite report to be made.”

“But you’ve left the Solomon Islands!”

“
I
have. That much is obvious. But did you really think I could have journeyed there
alone
? Of all those who went, monsieur, I am the
least
. A mere errand-boy, sent this way to fetch a few necessaries. The rest are still there, hard at work.”

P
LAYING WITH THE MINDS
of Edmund de Ath and Elizabeth de Obregon made for excellent sport, and if done right, might even keep Jack, Moseh, and company alive when they reached Acapulco. But it was a sport Jack could only
watch,
since neither of those two would seriously entertain the idea of having a conversation with him. To Jack, the lady showed faint, perfunctory gratitude, and to all others she showed a sort of amused tolerance—all except Edmund de Ath, who was the only one she treated as an equal. This galled Jack far more than it should have. It was years since he’d been a king in Hindoostan and he should have been used to his reduced status. But being around this Spanish gentlewoman made him want to go back to Shahjahanabad and enlist in the service of the Great Mogul once more. And he was on his own ship!

“The only cure for it is to become a merchant prince,” said Vrej Esphahnian, as they were sailing out of the Golden Gate on a cold, clear morning. “And that is what we are working toward. Learn from
the Armenians, Jack. We do not care for titles and we do not have armies nor castles. Noble folk can sneer at us all they like—when their kingdoms have fallen into dust, we will buy their silks and jewels with a handful of beans.”

“That is well, unless pirates or princes take what you have so tediously acquired,” Jack said.

“No, you don’t understand. Does a farmer measure his wealth in pails of milk? No, for pails spill, and milk spoils in a day. A farmer measures his wealth in
cows
. If he has cows, milk comes forth almost without effort.”

“What is the cow, in this similitude?” asked Moseh, who had come over to listen.

“The cow is the web, or net-work of connexions, that Armenians have spun all the world round.”

“It has never ceased to astonish me how you find Armenians everywhere we go,” Jack admitted.

“In every place where we have tarried for more than a few days: Algiers, Cairo, Mocha, Bandar-Abbas, Surat, Shahjahanabad, Batavia, Macao, Manila—I have been able to invest some small fraction of my profits in the diverse enterprises of other Armenians,” Vrej said. “In some cases the amounts were trivial. But it does not matter—those men know me now, they are knots in my net-work, and when I return to Paris, even if we lose
Minerva
and everything aboard her, I’ll be a wealthy man—not in
milk
but in
cows
.”

“Avast there, Vrej,” Jack said, “I am not a superstitious man, but I do not love to hear this talk of losing
Minerva
.”

Vrej shrugged. “Sometimes a man must accept a great loss.”

An awkward stillness for a few moments, made more excruciatingly obvious by the shouting of the riggers as they trimmed the sails for a new course.
Minerva
was leaving the Golden Gate behind, and coming about into a new southeasterly course along the coast. She’d follow this general heading for some two thousand miles to Acapulco.

Finally Moseh said, “Well, I
am
a superstitious man, or at least a
religious
one, and I have been pondering this: When is my trading-voyage finished?”

“When you drop anchor in London or Amsterdam and come ashore with Bills of Exchange, or imported goods,” Jack said.

“I cannot eat those.”

“Very well, change them into silver and buy bread with it.”

“So I have bread then. But did I need to sail around the world for bread?”

“Bread you can get anywhere,” Jack admitted, then glanced at the
open Pacific to starboard. “Save
there
. Why sail round the world, then? For entertainment, I suppose. We do what we have to do, Moseh, and are not frequently given diverse
choices
. What are you getting at?”

“I believe my journey ended when we crossed the Sea of Reeds and escaped from bondage in Egypt,” Moseh said. “Nothing since then has brought me satisfaction.”

“Again, though, you’ve had no choices available.”

“Every day,” Moseh said, “every day I’ve had choices, but I’ve been blind to them.”

“You are being too Cabbalistickal for me,” Jack said. “I am an Englishman and will go to England. You see? Very simple and plain. Now I will ask you a question that should have a simple answer: When we get to Acapulco, will you be in the Wet or the Dry Group?”

“Dry,” said Moseh, “dry forever.”

“Very well,” said Vrej after another of those awkward silences, “as we’ve lost poor Arlanc, it follows that I shall have to be Wet. And that sits well with me, for I am eager to see Lima, the Rio de la Plata, and Brazil, and after all we’ve endured, Cape Horn holds no terror for me.”

Dappa happened along. “For a man without a country, the ship is the only choice. Brazil and the Caribbean are awash in African slaves and I cannot learn or tell their stories unless I voyage there and talk to them.”

“Then since van Hoek obviously goes with the ship, I’m obligated to be Dry,” Jack said, “and my boys will go with me.”

They all stood silently for a few moments, caught between a raw Pacific wind and the coast of California. Then every one of them seemed to understand how many preparations lay ahead of him, and each went his own way.

“T
HE BEST TIME TO NEGOTIATE
is before negotiations have begun,” said Moseh, as he and Jack watched the longboat crawl towards the shore of the port of Navidad. The Alcalde of Chiamela, several priests, and a few men in the full Conquistador get-up stood there waiting for it. “Or anyway that is what I learned from Surendranath, and I hope it has worked in this case.”