Neal Stephenson: THE System OF THE WORLD

Isaac is diffident, but the Fusour’s announcement starts up a round of hip-hip-huzzahs that only bates when he steps forward and bows to the room. Which he does gracefully and with perfect balance; he has not looked so spry in years. Daniel searches the room for Miss Barton, and only finds her when she appears at his side, seizes him by the right arm, and plants a kiss on his cheek.

“It is my very great honor,” says Isaac, “to do what I can for my country. Some distinguish themselves in battle” (a nod at Marlborough), “others in sage advice” (a nod-astonishingly-at Daniel), “still others in grace and beauty” (Miss Barton). “I make coins, and strive to make them sound, as a foundation on which the Commerce of this Realm may be builded by her thrifty and industrious Citizens.” A nod to the Jurors.

“There is another thing that you do very well, besides making coins, is there not, Sir Isaac?”

This Marlborough enunciates very clearly, for the benefit of the Hanoverians, and he waits for Johann von Hacklheber to effect a translation before he goes on: “I refer, of course, to your duty of prosecuting those who make bad coins.”

“That, too, is the charge of the Master of the Mint,” Isaac admits.

Barnes has gone back into frantic pantomiming, but he can’t seem to get the eye of Marlborough, who is rapt on the Germans. Marlborough goes on, “Sir Isaac’s triumph here, in the Trial of the Pyx, has, as I understand it, been matched-some would even say, surpassed-by a simultaneous triumph at Tyburn! Colonel Barnes?” And all eyes turn to Barnes. But he has dropped the gesticulations and now stands there the very picture of martial dignity.

“Indeed, my lord,” he announces. “Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Jack the Coiner, has been hanged.”

“Hanged, drawn, and quartered, according to the sentence pronounced against him?” Marlborough says, so fiercely that it is more assertion than query.

“Hanged, my lord,” Barnes says. It dangles there for a terrible long time, like a kicking wretch on a gallows, and he feels a need to make improvements: “Hanged by the neck until dead.”

“Half dead, I should say, and then cut down, drawn, and quartered?”

“Mr. Ketch was balked from carrying out the, er, supplemental eviscerations and dismemberments and whatnot, upon the hanged and dead, corpse of the late villain Shaftoe.”

“Prevented by what, pray tell? Squeamishness? Did Mr. Ketch forget to bring his cutlery?”

“Prevented by the Mobb. By the violence and the menace of the greatest and surliest Mobb that has ever assembled upon this Island.”

A murky side-conversation now starts up in the Hanover contingent, as Johann von Hacklheber tries to translate “Mobb” into High German.

“I ordered the King’s Own Black Torrent Guard to defend the gallows, precisely because I expected a larger than usual Mobb,” says Marlborough distractedly, in a sort of quiet prodrome to raging anger. Recognizing it as such, Barnes says: “And that is precisely what we accomplished, my lord, and the hangings were all carried out in good order, and Jack Ketch and the bailiffs and gaolers conveyed out of there safe and sound. The gallows will, alas, have to be rebuilt, but that’s a job for carpenters, not soldiers.”

“I see. But you deemed it prudent to retreat before the drawing and quartering could be performed.”

“Yes my lord, ’twas at that moment when the Mobb became most frenzickal, and rushed the Gallows to cut him down-”

“Him, or his corpse?” Isaac Newton asks.

“Colonel Barnes,” says Marlborough, “did they cut him down, or did they merely rush the gallows to cut him down? There is a difference, you see.”

“If you want to know whose hand wielded the knife that severed the rope, I cannot give you his name,” Barnes says. “Just then, I was preoccupied with the larger task of leading my troops.”

“How did you lead them? What orders did you give?”

“To form a cordon with fixed bayonets around Jack Ketch and those other participants who were still alive.”

“Did you give an order to fire?”

“No,” says Barnes, “as I judged it would be suicidal; and though I am ever ready to die in the line of duty, I was of the view that for us to commit suicide would have impeded us in the conduct of our mission.”

“I have often thought that the Vicar and the Warrior in you were struggling to achieve dominance, Colonel Barnes. Now I see that the Warrior has at last prevailed. For the Vicar would have opened fire and trusted to God. It is only the Warrior who would have chosen the difficult path of an orderly retreat.”

Barnes-who has been expecting anything but praise-salutes, and goes red in the face.

“They wish to know why the soldiers did not fire on the Mobb to restore order!” says Johann von Hacklheber, speaking on behalf of a formation of very disgruntled-looking Hanoverians.

“Because this is England and we don’t massacre people in England!” Marlborough announces. “Or rather, we do but we are striving to turn over a new leaf. Pray translate that into more diplomatic language, Freiherr von Hacklheber, and see to it that the new King quite gets the message, so that we don’t have to send the Barkers after him.” Marlborough winks at Daniel.

Isaac has paid little heed to these last few exchanges. “In truth it is just as well for my purposes that Jack Shaftoe’s corpse was left intact, for I have been looking forward to conducting an autopsy on the wretch at the College of Physicians, to find out what on earth made him the way he was.”

“I know,” says Barnes. “All London knows, for Jack announced as much-somewhat more colorfully-from the gallows. It was this very thing that so infuriated the Mobb.”

“So be it,” says Isaac, with a shrug. “Have your men take the corpse to the College of Physicians.”

“We don’t know where it is,” says Colonel Barnes.

“On Warwick Lane, off Newgate.”

“No. I meant, we don’t know where the corpse is.”

“I beg your pardon?” says Isaac, and looks to Marlborough. But the Duke is in a frank Cultural Exchange with his Hanoverian counterparts and has no time for Isaac. It has taken the Germans some time to fully comprehend the impertinence of Marlborough’s quip about the Barkers, and to believe that the Duke actually said something that rude; now they are waxing wroth, getting a bit foamy even. Johann von Hacklheber, seeing he’s caught in a perilous crossfire, is edging away, trying to make himself party to the safer and more interesting conversation re: Jack Shaftoe’s carcass.

“After the dead body was cut down,” Barnes continues, “some of the Mobb raised it up. I sent soldiers to wrest it from them. The Mobb scampered away and gave it a right good heave.”

“On to the ground?”

“No, it was caught and raised up on high again by others of the Mobb; and when they spied my soldiers coming for them, they gave it another heave, so that others, farther from the gallows, took up the burthen. And from there it developed into a sort of, well, orderly procedure, and I had to climb up on to the scaffold to see where it went. He sort of glided. Like a leaf, floating on a turbulent and swirling stream, dodging and spinning in unseen Mobb-currents, but ever moving in the same general direction: away from me.”

Isaac sighs, and begins to look his age again. “Spare me any further poetick description and just say forthrightly, please, where did you last see the body of Jack Shaftoe?”

“Sort of dissolving into the western horizon.”

Isaac stares at him.

“The Mobb was of tremendous size,” Barnes explains.

“You are quite certain he was dead at the time he was cut down?”