The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World (284 page)

“They’ve a French name now, and French titles, inherited from the mother of Louis and Phillip, and they dwell at Versailles, save when they are at the exile court in St.-Germain, paying homage to the Pretender. Only Phillip survived long enough to propagate the line—he had two sons before he was poisoned by his wife in 1700. The sons are in their twenties; neither has been to England or speaks a word of English. But the older of the two remains Lord of the Manor in certain pockets of land around Sheerness, on either bank of the Medway.”

“And ’tis unthinkable he’d be anything but a Jacobite.”

“The situation of his properties is most convenient for smugglers—or for agents of France. In particular he is lord of a certain lonely castle that stands off the Isle of Grain, in view of the open sea, and that may be reached directly from the Continent without interference by Her Majesty’s Customs agents.”

“Was all of this information provided by the Russian? For I am not inclined to trust him.”

“The tale of the absorption of the Angleseys into France is well known. The particulars concerning Shive Tor come from the Muscovite.”

“You stated a minute ago that Jack the Coiner was an agent of Louis XIV,” Daniel said, “and that he was generously supported. You are telling me that this thing you call Shive Tor—”

“Has been made available to Jack,” Isaac concluded. “It is the head-quarters of his criminal empire, his treasure-keep, his bolt-hole, his conduit to France.”

It is a convenient explanation,
Daniel said to himself,
for the fact that a varlet has been able to evade you for so many years.
But he knew if he said it aloud, Isaac would heave him overboard.

“You phant’sy that’s where it is, don’t you?”

Isaac stared at him, and did not so much as blink for a long time. After a bit this made Daniel nervous, and as if he needed to fill in the silence with some words. “It would make sense,” he continued, “if the gold—the Solomonic Gold—came off a ship, as you suppose—what better place to unload it, and to store it, than a remote and obscure watch-tower, without most of Her Majesty’s defenses and customs houses?”

“I shall thank you not to divulge this to the others. We must take utmost care until the gold is safe in the Tower of London.”

“What then?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Suppose you find King Solomon’s Gold in Shive Tor and bring it home to your laboratory, and extract the Philosophic Mercury from it—that’s it, then, isn’t it?”

“That’s
what
, then?”

“It’s the End of the World or something, it is the Apocalypse, you’ve solved the riddle, found God’s presence on Earth, the secret of eternal life—really, this entire
conversation
is idle, in a sense—none of it
matters,
does it?”

“There is no telling,” Isaac said, in the soothing tones of one who is trying to calm a madman. “My calculations from the Book of Revelation suggest that the End of the World will not occur until 1876.”

“Really!?” Daniel said, fascinated. “That’s a hell of a long time. A hundred sixty-two years! Perhaps this Solomonic Gold is over-rated.”

“Solomon had it,” Isaac pointed out, “and the world did not come to an end
then,
did it? Christ Jesus Himself—the Word made flesh—trod the earth for thirty-three years, and even now, seventeen centuries later, the world is a heathenish and foul place. Never did I suppose that the Solomonic Gold was to be the world’s Panacea.”

“What
is
it, then? What is the bleeding point?”

“If nothing else,” Isaac said, “it will furnish me with the means to give the German a
warm welcome
when he comes over the sea.”

And he turned away from Daniel and went belowdecks.

AFTERNOON

S
AID
L
IEUTENANT
-G
ENERAL
E
WELL
T
HROWLEY,
the Lieutenant of the Tower: “I do most humbly beg your pardon, my lord, but I simply
did not understand.
”

His prisoner and guest, Rufus MacIan, Lord Gy, peered with his one extant eye across the dining-room table into the flushing face of
his captor and host. Lord Gy was only thirty years old, but he was big and whiskery and banged-up and haggard. Very clearly and distinctly, he repeated his last statement: “Yeir buird is a fere bit o wrichtwork. A jiner today can never fetch such mastie straiks as these, he must send strags upaland to scaff amang the rammel, an plaister all together oot o skifting his grandfaither would hae tossed inti the chaffer.”

Ewell Throwley was forced to abort, and circle back around. “My lord, we are military men, the both of us, and saw hard service in the late War. This remains true in spite of the revolutions in Fortune that have made you a condemned prisoner, and me the officer in charge of the Liberty of the Tower. I learned in
my
service, as I daresay
you
did in
yours
, that there is a time to set courtly manners aside, and speak
plainly
, one gentleman to another. There is no shame, no dishonor in so doing. May I speak to you in that wise now?”

Lord Gy shrugged. “Aye, let’s hae it.”

Gy was the name of a river near Arras. Back in the days when he had been named simply Rufus MacIan, this man had, on an impulse, splashed across it and cut a French gentleman in two with one swing of a five-foot-long Claymore. The Frenchman had turned out to be a Count, and a Colonel, with a poor sense of direction. The tide of a battle had been turned as a consequence of that Claymore-stroke. MacIan had been ennobled as Lord Gy.

“I knew that I could rely upon you, my lord, as a fellow-soldier,” Lieutenant-General Ewell Throwley went on. “ ’Tis well. For there is a certain matter never spoken of in polite society, and yet known to all, which will, if we ignore it—pretending that it does not exist—turn what should be a pleasant social occasion into an insufferable ordeal. You do know—or as you would say, ‘ken’—what I speak of, my lord?”

“Crivvens!” exclaimed Lord Gy. “Wha hae foostit ben the heid-hoose!?” Then he added, with unmistakable sarcasm: “Serr’s, a coud gae through the fluir.”

“Brilliant, that is a paradigmatic specimen,” said Throwley. “It is this, my lord: you do not speak English.”

An awkward moment across the table there. Rufus MacIan drew breath to answer, but Throwley headed him off: “Oh, you understand it perfectly. But it is not what you
speak
. The polite euphemisms are many. We say, my lord Gy has a Highland lilt, a brogue, a burr. But this is to gloss over the true nature of the problem, which is that you simply and in fact are not speaking English. You could if you wanted, but you don’t. Please, I beg of you, my lord Gy, speak English, and consider yourself welcome in my house, and at my table.”

“ ’Twas o the table—the buird—a was discoursing, when ye set in with such an uncanny rant concerning ma accent.”

“It is
not
an accent. This is my
point
. My Lord.”

“Sixteen month hae a lodged in the Tower o London,” said Lord Gy very slowly, “and never seen th’inside o this hoose till now. A meant only to offer a compliment on the furnishings.” The Scotsman gripped the edge of the tabletop with both hands and lifted it half an inch off the floor, testing its weight. “These baulks wuid serve to stop bools. Which is to say, cannonballs.”

“Your compliments are accepted with gratitude,” said Throwley. “As to the delay in extending my hospitality—most regrettable. As you know, it is a long-standing tradition for the Lieutenant of the Tower to take tea with Persons of Quality who have been committed to this place. As a fellow-veteran, I have impatiently awaited the day when I could share this table with you. As no one knows better than you, my lord, during the first year of your incarceration, it was felt best to keep you in heavy irons stapled to the floor of Beauchamp Tower. This I do most sincerely deplore. But since then, we have not heard from you the threats, the promises of death, dismemberment, and mayhem; or if we have, we have not understood them. It has been deemed suitable to move you to a Yeoman Warder’s house, like the other guests. You and Mr. Downs have been getting along famously, I presume?”

Both Rufus MacIan and Ewell Throwley now turned their attention to the portly, bearded Beefeater who had escorted the prisoner across the Parade and into the Lieutenant’s Lodgings. Yeoman Downs looked tremendously satisfied. Indeed, had looked that way, without letup, since he had opened the door of his wee house on the green a quarter of an hour ago, and led his guest across the grass in a flying wedge of armed Sentinels.

“We hae gaen alang,” said Lord Gy gravely, “like a hoose afire.”

The Lieutenant of the Tower and the Yeoman Warder alike seemed just a bit uncomfortable with this simile; and so there was now an awkward silence. Lord Gy filled it by humming some sort of weird aimless Gaelic chaunt.

The Lieutenant’s Lodging, which was situated in the southwestern corner of the Inner Ward, was a Tudor sort of house, typical of pre-Fire London; now it was remarkable chiefly in that it had never burned down. Downs, Throwley, and MacIan were in a dining-room that had seen a lot of hard service. Throwley’s maid and steward hovered in a corridor. Another maid—a servant of Lord Gy, who had followed Downs and Gy across the green—tarried in the entrance-hall with a covered basket. Several armed guards stood outside the front door, looking out over the Parade, which was quiet. Drumbeats, and the bellowing of sergeants, could be heard drifting over the fortifications
from the direction of Tower Hill, where the garrison was drilling. Too one could hear the sporadic
pock, pock, pock
of carpenters building the platform where, in seven days, Rufus MacIan’s head would be detached from his body.

“Splendid,” said Throwley weakly, “that is what Mr. Downs has reported, and most fortunate it is that I have been able to share this table with you before your, er, departure.”

“Ye spake a minute or of lang-standin traditions,” said Lord Gy, and looked significantly at the Yeoman Warder. Downs relayed the signal to the young woman in the entry hall, who now ventured into the dining-room. Ewell Throwley raised his eyebrows and blinked, for she was a tall and muscular lass with enough red hair to cover three average heads. As she burst across the threshold of the room she executed a sort of running curtsey and tossed a grin at Throwley.

“On the Muir of Rannoch, they grow braw, or they grow na at all,” MacIan offered by way of explanation.

“Ah, you have imported a…clanswoman from the…country to look after you.”

“
A
look oot for
her
, sir…an orphant she is…a trigidy, if ye must know.” MacIan cleared his throat. The red-headed lass withdrew a bottle from the market-basket perched on her arm. She gave it to Downs, then curtseyed and backed out of the room. Gy purred some phlegmy endearment to her. Downs handed him the bottle. Gy clasped it tenderly in both hands. “I have prepared an Oration!” he announced in something quite a bit closer to the English spoken by Throwley. This silenced the house. “Sir, ye treat us well here, for condemned traitors. The Tower isna a bread-and-water sort of nick, if a man will only comport himself civilly. Nay, all manner of victuals are allowed iz, and many a laird dines better in the Tower, after he’s doomed, than he did a free man in London town. ’Tis a tradition, or so a am told, to share with the Warders, the Major, the Deputy Lieutenant, and—sir—the Lieutenant hissell, some moiety o the comforts ye so generously allow iz to partake of. And this hae a done with the other officers. But—sir—not yet with ye, for a hae na the privilege, till this moment, of making your acquaintance.” He raised up the bottle. “Ye alluded afore to my carnaptious first twelvemonth on these premises. A do confess a was frawart and bool-horned. A did misca ye. A wes less than a Highland gentleman should be. But a Highland gentleman is never wantin the comfort of a refreshment that we know as usquebaugh. Some call it the water of life. When a wes allowed to hae it, ma mood an ma manners improved. But today a hae a guid deal more o the
water
than o
life;
for ma social calendar says a hae an Engagement on Tower Hill wi one Jack Ketch, a week
frae today. And so a wanted ye to hae this, Lieutenant-General Throwley. It came to me frae a blude-friend only yesterday, and as ye can see, the bottle’s never been opened.”

Throwley bowed, but did not reach out to accept the bottle, since Rufus MacIan had not yet formally presented it. He contented himself, for now, with a glance at the label. “Glen Coe, twenty-two years old,” he read. “Why, ’tis as old as the lassie who brought it in!”

Downs laughed in the manner of all subordinates subjected to the boss’s wit. Lord Gy took it gravely. “You’re rare gleg in the uptak, sir, why, the twae ir precisely alike in age.”

“My lord, I know some London gentlemen who make a study of this usquebaugh, in all its varieties, even as Frenchmen do of Burgundy wine. I confess I know little of Glen this or Glen that—but I have at least the wit to recognize that any bottle aged two and a score years must be of rare excellence.”

“Oh, ’tis rare—very few hae survived. Very few. Ye maun learn usquebaugh, sir. For many Jacobites wul be dwellin in this Tower in years to come, an a moiety of ’em wul be Highlanders. Nae man is better poised than ye to make o hissell a collector and a connoisseur.”

“Then do let my collection, and my education, begin to-day! David, bring some dram-glasses,” Throwley called to the steward who had been waiting outside the servants’ entrance to the dining-room. “What can you tell me, my lord, concerning this bottle? What distinguishes it from the common dram?”

“Och, sir, ye maun no consider only its age, but its provenance, or what the French call its
terroir.
For Scotland’s a big varyand countra, as crazed, riven, and pitted as ma own visage, gowstie here, cosie thare. Nae brae, nae glen, nae ben like the next. Each wi its own clime, its own sile, its own water. Adam’s wine, we call water. A hae known Highlandmen who, when they were lost in smochy weather, could ken just where they were by scoopin up a handful o water frae a burn or a loch, an havin a wee gust.”

“Or, I daresay, a wee dram from the nearest still!” put in Lieutenant-General Throwley, to the great entertainment of Yeoman Warder Downs. But Rufus MacIan accepted the jest with equanimity, and settled the chuckling of the two Englishmen with the calm stare of his clear blue eye.

“Dinna you make fun! ’Tis true. For the usquebaugh is the daughter of the cold clear waters tha dance in those Highland burns.”

“My lord, modest chap that you are, you do not do justice to the men who dwell in those glens. For surely there is skill, there is technique—it is not a mere matter of stirring together a few natural constituents.”

Rufus MacIan raised his eyebrows and held up an index finger. “Point well taken, sir, an a thank ye for gien me a fair opportunity to blaw mynes ain horn!”

Downs and Throwley laughed. A silver tray, a-rattle with small cups, had been brought in and set down. “Please, my lord, sit with us.”

“A wul stand, thank ye, as befits a professor afore his scholars.”

The two Englishmen were left slightly ill at ease, but Lord Gy made it plain by gestures that they were to sit, and even pulled out Downs’s chair for him. He explained: “In that wee tissle at Malplaquet, which ye may hae heard of, ma company were ruggin an rivin wi some Frenchmen. A took a muckle cloot frae a musket butt, fell frae ma horse, an bemang’d my rig.” He put his hands on his kidneys and shoved his pelvis forward. His sporran flew at the Englishmen and a barrage of pops and creaks came out of his lower spine.

“ ’Tis true, he never sits, but drives me mad with his pacing,” Downs put in.

MacIan was at such obvious pains to make them at ease that Downs and Throwley acquiesced, and leaned back comfortably in their chairs to hear the continuation of the lecture.

“As the landscape o ma countra is fractured into diverse muirs, glens, gullions, snibs, howes, scaurs, linns, lirks,
et cetera,
so ma nation, as is well known, is divided into many clans, and the clans into septs. And it is among the auld men, the lang in the horn as we say, that the wit and the airt of usquebaugh-making is concentrated—I maun wax poetic an say,
distilled
. As the septs and clans differ, so do the stills and the airt of their use, and so, accordingly, does the produce.”

“Prithee, then, tell us of the sept and clan of this place whose name is on the bottle,” Throwley said. “For some reason the name of Glen Coe is familiar to me; but during the War my head got so over-flowed with outlandish place-names, I can no longer sort them out.”

“Why, ’tis remarkable ye should inquire, sir, for it is
ma
clan and
ma
sept!”

Downs and Throwley laughed heartily at this, as it seemed to have been ingeniously laid, like a conjuror’s trick. The Englishmen were looking a bit wide-eyed at Lord Gy now, seeing him anew, as a regular bloke, a merry companion.

The Scotsman made the faintest suggestion of a bow to acknowledge the glow of appreciation on their faces, and continued: “That is why a am givin ye this praisent now, Lieutenant-General Throwley. For a Highlander, the water of life that comes frae his oon glen is as much a part of him as his oon livin blude. A gie ye this so it wul aye be livin on after the deid-strake hae fallen on ma neck on yonder Hill.” And now, finally, he extended the bottle across the table to Throwley.
Throwley, with an Englishman’s eye for the ceremonial gesture, stood up smartly and accepted the gift with a bow. When he sat, so, finally, did MacIan.

“But my lord, again modesty obstructs your duty as our professor. We should learn something of the people of Glen Coe before we drink their, er…”

“The water o their life, sir.”

“Indeed.”

“There isna much to relate of MacIan of MacDonald,” said Lord Gy. “We ir a wee sept, much more so of late. Glen Coe is an uncommon high, weather-glim scaup o land in the north of Argyll, no far frae Fort William. It runs from a lofty gowl in the Grampians down to the slate-mines at Ballachulish, at the heid of the loch called Linnhe, which runs down to plash the shores of Mull and spaw into the Atlantic. A wilsome, out o the way place is Glen Coe. When we do receive outdwellars, ’tis ever a surpreese, and more oft than na, they turn out to be lost on the way to Crianlarich. We try to show them hospitality none the less. Hospitality, we have learnt, is an uncannie thing. One may never tell how ’twill be repaid.”