NEAL STEPHENSON - Quicksilver

“Trees such as these have not been seen in Europe for hundreds of years,” Enoch says. He measures it against the length of his arm. “Should have gone straight to Her Majesty’s Navy. I am shocked.”

“There is an exemption to that rule,” Waterhouse says, showing for the first time a bit of good humor. “If a tree is blown down by the wind, anyone may salvage it. In consequence of which, Gomer Bolstrood, and his fellow Barkers, have built their colonies in remote places, where the trees are very large-”

“And where freak hurricanoes often strike without warning?”

“And without being noticed by any of their neighbors. Yes.”

“Firebrands to furniture-makers in a single generation. I wonder what old Knott would think.”

“Firebrands and furniture-makers,” Waterhouse corrects him.

“Ah, well… If my name were Bolstrood, I’d be happy to live anywhere that was beyond the reach of Tories and Archbishops.”

Daniel Waterhouse rises and goes over to the fireplace, plucks a couple of loggerheads from their hooks, and thrusts them angrily into the coals. Then he goes to the corner and speaks with the tavern-keeper, who cracks two eggs into two mugs and then begins throwing in rum and bitters and molasses. It is sticky and complicated-as is the entire situation here that Enoch’s gotten himself into.

There’s a similar room on the other side of the wall, reserved for the ladies. Spinning wheels whirr, cards chafe against wool. Someone begins tuning up a bowed instrument. Not the old-fashioned viol, but (judging from its sound) a violin. Hard to believe, considering where he is. But then the musician begins to play-and instead of a Baroque minuet, it is a weird keening sort of melody-an Irish tune, unless he’s mistaken. It’s like using watered silk to make grain sacks-the Londoners would laugh until tears ran down their faces. Enoch goes and peers through the doorway to make sure he’s not imagining it. Indeed, a girl with carrot-colored hair is playing a violin, entertaining some other women who are spinning and sewing, and the women and the music are as Irish as the day is long.

Enoch goes back to the table, shaking his head. Daniel Waterhouse slides a hot loggerhead into each mug, warming and thickening the drinks. Enoch sits down, takes a sip of the stuff, and decides he likes it. Even the music is beginning to grow on him.

He cannot look in any direction without seeing eyeballs just in the act of glancing away from them. Some of the other patrons actually run down the road to other taverns to advertise their presence here, as if Root and Waterhouse were a public entertainment. Dons and students saunter in nonchalantly, as if it’s normal to stand up in mid-pint and move along to a different establishment.

“Where’d you get the idea you were escaping from intrigue?”

Daniel ignores this, too busy glaring at the other customers.

“My father, Drake, educated me for one reason alone,” Daniel finally says. “To assist him in his preparations for the Apocalypse. He reckoned it would occur in the year 1666-Number of the Beast and all that. I was, therefore, produced in 1646-as always, Drake’s timing was carefully thought out. When I came of age, I would be a man of the cloth, with the full university education, well versed in many dead classical languages, so that I could stand on the Cliffs of Dover and personally welcome Jesus Christ back to England in fluent Aramaic. Sometimes I look about myself-” he waves his arm at the tavern “-and see the way it turned out, and wonder whether my father could possibly have been any more wrong.”

“I think this is a good place for you,” Enoch says. “Nothing here is going according to plan. The music. The furniture. It’s all contrary to expectations.”

“My father and I took in the execution of Hugh Peters-Cromwell’s chaplain-in London one day. We rode straight from that spectacle to Cambridge. Since executions are customarily held at daybreak, you see, an industrious Puritan can view one and yet get in a full day’s hard traveling and working before evening prayers. It was done with a knife. Drake wasn’t shaken at all by the sight of Brother Hugh’s intestines. It only made him that much more determined to get me into Cambridge. We went there and called upon Wilkins at Trinity College.”

“Hold, my memory fails-wasn’t Wilkins at Oxford ? Wadham College?”

“Anno 1656 he married Robina. Cromwell’s sister.”

“ That I remember.”

“Cromwell made him Master of Trinity College in Cambridge. But of course that was undone by the Restoration. So he only served in that post for a few months-it’s no wonder you’ve forgotten it.”

“Very well. Pardon the interruption. Drake took you up to Cambridge-?”

“And we called on Wilkins. I was fourteen. Father went off and left us alone, secure in the knowledge that this man-Cromwell’s Brother-in-Law, for God’s sake!-would lead me down the path of righteousness-perhaps explicate some Bible verses about nine- headed beasts with me, perhaps pray for Hugh Peters.”

“You did neither, I presume.”

“You must imagine a great chamber in Trinity, a gothickal stone warren, like the underbelly of some ancient cathedral, ancient tables scattered about, stained and burnt alchemically, beakers and retorts clouded with residues pungent and bright, but most of all, the books- brown wads stacked like cordwood-more books than I’d ever seen in one room. It was a decade or two since Wilkins had written his great Cryptonomicon. In the course of that project, he had, of course, gathered tomes on occult writing from all over the world, compiling all that had been known, since the time of the Ancients, about the writing of secrets. The publication of that book had brought him fame among those who study such things. Copies were known to have circulated as far as Peking, Lima, Isfahan, Shahjahanabad. Consequently more books yet had been sent to him, from Portuguese crypto-Kabbalists, Arabic savants skulking through the ruins and ashes of Alexandria, Parsees who secretly worship at the altar of Zoroaster, Armenian merchants who must communicate all across the world, in a kind of net-work of information, through subtle signs and symbols hidden in the margins and the ostensible text of letters so cleverly that a competitor, intercepting the message, could examine it and find nothing but trivial chatter-yet a fellow-Armenian could extract the vital data as easy as you or I would read a hand-bill in the street. Secret code-systems of Mandarins, too, who because of their Chinese writing cannot use cyphers as we do, but must hide messages in the position of characters on the sheet, and other means so devious that whole lifetimes must have gone into thinking of them. All of these things had come to him because of the fame of the Cryptonomicon, and to appreciate my position, you must understand that I’d been raised, by Drake and Knott and the others, to believe that every word and character of these books was Satanic. That, if I were to so much as lift the cover of one of these books, and expose my eyes to the occult characters within, I’d be sucked down into Tophet just like that.”

“I can see it made quite an impression on you-”

“Wilkins let me sit in a chair for half an hour just to soak the place in. Then we began mucking about in his chambers, and set fire to a tabletop. Wilkins was reading some proofs of Boyle’s The Skeptical Chemist- you should read it sometime, Enoch, by the way-”

“I’m familiar with its contents.”

“Wilkins and I were idly trying to reproduce one of Boyle’s experiments when things got out of hand. Fortunately no serious damage was done. It wasn’t a serious fire, but it accomplished what Wilkins wanted it to: wrecked the mask of etiquette that Drake had set over me, and set my tongue a-run. I must have looked as if I’d gazed upon the face of God. Wilkins let slip that, if it was an actual education I was looking for, there was this thing down in London called Gresham’s College where he and a few of his old Oxford cronies were teaching Natural Philosophy directly, without years and years of tedious Classical nincompoopery as prerequisite.