The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (250 page)

“Perhaps you would wish to avoid being tortured.”

“Oh no, Édouard, I’m inspired by your example.”

“You are referring to the Inquisition in Mexico?”

“I was wondering: Did the Inquisitor know you were a fellow-Jesuit? Did he go easy on you?”

“If he had given me light treatment, you and Moseh would have detected it—and you would not have decided to trust me. No, I fooled the Inquisitor as thoroughly as I fooled you.”

“That is the most bizarre thing I have heard in my entire circuit of the world.”

“It is not so strange,” said de Gex, “if only you knew more. For, contrary to what you suppose, I do not consider myself some kind of saint. Nay, I have secrets so dark that I myself do not know them! I phant’sied the Inquisitor might somehow wrest out of me through torture what I could not discover by prayer and meditation.”

“That is more bizarre
yet
. I preferred the
first
version.”

“Really, it was not so bad as the Jews are always claiming. There are any number of ways it could be made far more painful. When the Holy Office is reëstablished in London, I’ll institute some improvements—we’ll have a lot of hereticks to prosecute in a short time, and this desultory Mexican style simply will not do.”

“I had not considered suicide when I came up here,” Jack muttered, “but you are bringing me around smartly.” He stuck his head out through a gap between crenels and leaned over the edge of the wall to see what the final few seconds of his life might look like. “Pity the tide is so unusually high—I’d hit water instead of rocks.”

“Pity we are abjured to deliver you in one piece,” de Gex said, gazing at Jack almost lovingly. “I would love to put what I learned in Mexico City to use, here and now, against your person, and get a full accounting of what you did with King Solomon’s gold.”

“Oh, is that all you wanted to know? We took it to Surat, excepting some trivial expenditures in Mocha and Bandar, and there Queen Kottakkal took it from us. If it’s that particular gold you want, get thee to Malabar!”

Édouard de Gex shook his finger at Jack. “I know from Monsieur Esphahnian that the true story is far more complicated. He spent years in the north of Hindoostan, fighting in some infidel army—”

“Only because he failed the Intelligence Test.”

“—and by the time he finally got to Malabar, the Jew had had plenty of time to insinuate himself into the confidence of that pagan Queen. A substantial part of the gold had already been diverted into the ship-building project. What became of it?”

“You said yourself it had gone to the ship-building project!”

Jack naturally turned to look towards the ship in question now. She had foundered perhaps two miles away, but seen from this tower through clear Arctic air, she seemed much closer. She was riding unusually high by this point, which was no wonder since for the last half-hour her hull had been veiled in splashes made by the ballast-stones that the crew were rolling out through the gun-ports. The waves began to nudge her back and forth as her keel lifted off the reef. Finally a cheer sounded, and several cannons were fired as signals
and celebrations. Triangles and trapezoids of canvas began to cloud her spars. “Note how upright she carries herself, even when underloaded,” Jack had pointed out.

“I will not be taken in by this ruse of changing the subject,” de Gex said.

“Oh, but I’m not,” Jack answered, but de Gex plodded onwards with his interrogation.

“Vrej claims that timber and labor are practically
free
in Hindoostan. According to his review of the accounts, too much gold was missing and whatever I may think of his
theology,
I would not dream of calling into question his
accounting.
”

“Vrej has been tiresome on this particular subject for nigh on eight years now,” Jack answered. “When he vaulted over the rail the other day, right out there, the first thing that came to my mind—even before I really grasped that he’d betrayed us—was joy. Joy that I’d never again have to listen to him on this subject. Now,
you
have picked up the torch.”

“Vrej has related his suspicions to me. He says that whenever he raised this subject, the others would shrug it off with all sorts of vague similitudes, about ‘greasing the path’ or some such…”

“We are all old salts now, and prefer
nautickal
terms,” Jack answered. “Instead of talking about some path needing to be greased, we’d more likely think of hulls that become barnacle-covered, which slows them down, and we’d speak of the desirability of keeping ’em smooth, for easy movement through the water.”

“In any event—I assume this is a Delphic way of saying that bribes were paid to some Mogul or Maratha chieftain?”

“Assume what you like—that would still place the gold far away from you,” Jack pointed out. He was gazing out to sea, watching
Minerva
trim her sails as she came out of the lee of the Sghr and picked up a leading wind across her larboard beam. One by one the yards traversed round, and their sails stopped shivering as the crew braced the yards and made her close-hauled. Immediately
Minerva
began to heel over and pick up speed. But de Gex now blocked Jack’s view, squaring his shoulders and getting his face directly in front of his. “Your ship may be free now, Jack, but you seem to have forgotten that
you are not on her.
You are in my power now.”

“I thought I was in
Leroy
’s power,” Jack said, which was nothing more than an audacious guess; but the look on de Gex’s face told him he’d guessed right.

“My Order is not without influence in his majesty’s court,” de Gex said. “In his efforts to find the gold that the Jew stole, Vrej Esphahnian could do nothing more than
bore
you.
I
can do much more.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Oh come now! If our aim had been to steal from Vrej, we’d have made a proper job of it. We were only chaffing him—we’re not
thieves.
”

“Where, then, is King Solomon’s gold?”

“Turn around,” Jack said.

De Gex finally turned around. The harbor below the Castle was crowded with French ships, most of them riding at anchor; the few that were in a position to get under way were now, however, frantically trying to raise more sail. Their decks were a-swarm with sailors coming up from below, like ants from a damaged hill. De Gex could not fathom why, until he noticed that every spyglass and pointing finger in the harbor was aimed at
Minerva
, now several miles ahead of the French ships that were trying to organize a pursuit. Van Hoek—commanding from a sick-bed lashed into place on the poop deck—had heeled her perilously far over for one so lightly ballasted, but she did not capsize, and seemed to be skimming over the water rather than plowing it up. A ship that hadn’t been careened since before Vera Cruz would normally have been too encrusted with barnacles to make much headway, but
Minerva
moved as if her hull had been freshly scraped and painted. Not until she altered course slightly, and the sun glanced off her exposed hull, did de Gex understand why: the underside of the ship, below the waterline, had been sheathed, from stem to stern, in plates of hammered gold.

Only a sliver of that plating was now visible, but it shone out across the harbor like a gleam of light through a cracked door. Everyone had seen it, and a few French ships were now setting out on a forlorn pursuit, but most of the mariners were content to stand at the railings of their anchored vessels and only gaze in adoration. Jack knew what those sailors were thinking. They did not care about the value of the gold, and they certainly believed no nonsense about King Solomon’s hoard. They were thinking, instead: If I were a sailor on that ship, I’d never have to scrape another barnacle.

J
ACK SAW IT AS ODD
that de Gex had set
Minerva
free so hastily, considering that he had been pursuing this matter for above ten years, and traveled all the way around the world, survived the wrack of the Manila Galleon, given himself up to torture, &c. The next day Jack understood
why
de Gex had wanted to get
Minerva,
and most of the French fleet, clear of the harbor. Sails breached the southern horizon, a ship came into view, maneuvered adroitly round the Dutch-hammer, and dropped anchor directly below the Castle. Jack recognized her from miles out. He’d last seen her in Alexandria, holed and dismasted. Since then
Météore
had been refitted and
cleaned up by ship-wrights who, to judge from the looks of what they’d done, charged a lot of money.

He was taken back to his cell long before the
jacht
came close enough that anyone on its decks might have picked him out through a spyglass. This gave him another hint as to who might be aboard. His suspicions were confirmed later by faint sounds of women’s and children’s laughter, audible when he lay with his ear to the crack under his door. This was not a Naval Expedition but a pleasure-cruise, timed to call at Qwghlm during the magic fortnight around late August and early September when blizzards were least oft observed. The chilly cannonball that Jack had been carrying around for the last fortnight now seemed to have been implanted in his chest, and his heart ripped out to make room for it. De Gex had been oddly disinclined to torture him thus far, which had caused Jack to wonder what new, excruciating horrors might be in store for him. But he’d never phant’sied it’d be
this
bad! He could see how this would end: He would be dragged out naked and chained, and displayed before Eliza, and de Gex would relate the hilarious tale of how Jack had twice had all the money in the world, and twice lost it.

A few hours after
Météore
’s arrival, when aromas of French cooking had suffused the entire castle, large Bretons came to Jack’s cell and dragged him to a part of the château that, as best as Jack could make out, was near the bedchambers. It was a windowless, hence torch-lit corridor joining an irregular series of chambers, closets, and wide spots. It had received little attention during the remodel, and still looked much as the last band of Vikings, Saracens, or Scots had left it. Here and there Jack glimpsed the backside of a wall: strips of lath, or wattle, with curls of plaster, or daub, squirting through. Casks and crates were piled in some places. They took him to a wide place in the passage where an iron grid had been leaned against the wall: a portcullis hammered out by some blacksmith a thousand years ago, torn down and thrown aside in some upheaval, and left to gather rust and cobwebs ever since. The Bretons pinned Jack against this, spreadeagled, and lashed him to it with cords. Here it became obvious that they were sea-faring men. When Jack opened his mouth to issue some remark to that effect, one of them opportunely shoved a rag-wad into his mouth, and lashed that in place, and lashed his head to the grate. They lashed his fingers down even, which struck Jack as gratuitous, unless they were afraid of his rapping out some message. When they were satisfied, they dragged the gridiron, Jack and all, down the passageway a short distance and through a curtain of mildewy sailcloth. Jack was then blinded for a few moments by sudden light. But as his eyes adjusted, he began to think he was back
in the bedchamber where they had kept him for the first week. As he saw clearer, though, he came to understand he was gazing into that bedchamber from without. He was looking through the back sides of the mirrors that glazed the wall. His view of the room, from here, was total; he was positioned at the head of the canopied bed, arm’s length from where a sleeper would lay his, or her, head.

“It is a style of architecture that has served me well,” said a voice in French.

Jack would have jumped out of his skin, had he not been restrained, for the Bretons had taken their leave, and he hadn’t suspected anyone else was in here. All he could move was his eyeballs. By swiveling these as far as they’d go, he was able to perceive movement in a dim corner of this hidden chamber.

A man came into view. He wore a periwig—powdered white, as was the new vogue—and what Jack could only assume were the most excellent fashions from France, so ridiculous were they. Something was funny about one of his hands, but, beyond that, he was splendid to look upon, and (as Jack could now detect, even with dirty rags jammed into his gob) he smelled good.

“You shan’t recognize me, I’m afraid,” said the only man in the room who could talk. “I scarcely recognize
you
. We last met in the Grand Ballroom of my residence in Paris: the Hôtel Arcachon. You took your leave of
most of me
hastily, and impolitely; though you did carry my hand for several miles, tangled in the bridle of that magnificent horse. Later it was found in the middle of the post-road to Compiègne with my signet-ring still on it; which is how it was traced back to me. Still you were not done re-arranging the body-parts of Lavardacs, for some years later you kindly shipped me the head of my father.”

Étienne de Lavardac, duc d’Arcachon, raised now the stump of his arm so that Jack could view it. A cup had been strapped thereto, and extending from this was a black leather riding-crop. If Jack hadn’t been gagged, he’d now have volunteered some observations as to how Étienne had a paltry and disappointing view of how to inflict pain, compared to the Spanish Inquisition; but Étienne anticipated him. “Oh, this is not for you. My revenge on you I have contemplated, and prepared for, these seventeen years, and it shall involve more than a riding-crop. It takes time to build a place like this, you know! I have had several of them made: there is another at St.-Malo and yet another at La Dunette. I have stood in them and watched my wife whore herself to sergeants and cryptologists. That, however, is not why I caused them to be made. Only today are these chambers being put to their true purpose. Vrej Esphahnian is in the
one at La Dunette even at this moment. He is trussed up like you, staring through such a mirror, and listening as his brothers, dressed in the finest clothing, serve expensive coffee to dinner-guests.