NEAL STEPHENSON: Quicksilver

“Yes-the Asiento. ”

“Ssh! There are a few here, sir, opposed to it, and they are dangerous.”

“You have Barkers here?”

“Yes, sir.”

Enoch studies the boy’s face now with some care, for the chap he is looking for is a sort of Barker, and it would be useful to know how such are regarded hereabouts by their less maniacal brethren. Ben seems cautious, rather than contemptuous.

“But you are speaking only of one war-”

“The War of the Spanish Succession,” says Ben, “whose cause was the death in Madrid of King Carlos the Sufferer.”

“I should say that wretched man’s death was the pretext, not the cause,” says Enoch. “The War of the Spanish Succession was only the second, and I pray the last, part of a great war that began a quarter of a century ago, at the time of-”

“The Glorious Revolution!”

“As some style it. You have been at your lessons, Ben, and I commend you. Perhaps you know that in that Revolution the King of England-a Catholic-was sent packing, and replaced by a Protestant King and Queen.”

“William and Mary!”

“Indeed. But has it occurred to you to wonder why Protestants and Catholics were at war in the first place?”

“In our studies we more often speak of wars among Protestants.”

“Ah, yes-a phenomenon restricted to England. That is natural, for your parents came here because of such a conflict.”

“The Civil War,” says Ben.

“Your side won the Civil War,” Enoch reminds him, “but later came the Restoration, which was a grievous defeat for your folk, and sent them flocking hither.”

“You have hit the mark, Mr. Root,” says Ben, “for that is just why my father Josiah quit England.”

“What about your mother?”

“Nantucket-born sir. But her father came here to escape from a wicked Bishop-a loud fellow, or so I have heard-”

“Finally, Ben, I have found a limit to your knowledge. You are speaking of Archbishop Laud-a terrible oppressor of Puritans-as some called your folk-under Charles the First. The Puritans paid him back by chopping off the head of that same Charles in Charing Cross, in the year of our lord sixteen hundred and forty-nine.”

“Cromwell,” says Ben.

“Cromwell. Yes. He had something to do with it. Now, Ben. We have been standing by this millstream for rather a long while. I grow cold. My horse is restless. We have, as I said, found the place where your erudition gives way to ignorance. I shall be pleased to hold up my end of our agreement-that is, to teach you things, so that when you go home to-night you may claim to Josiah that you were in school the whole day. Though the schoolmaster may give him an account that shall conflict with yours. However, I do require certain minor services in return.”

“Only name them, Mr. Root.”

“I have come to Boston to find a certain man who at last report was living here. He is an old man.”

“Older than you?”

“No, but he might seem older.”

“How old is he, then?”

“He watched the head of King Charles the First being chopped off.”

“At least threescore and four then.”

“Ah, I see you have been learning sums and differences.”

“And products and dividends, Mr. Root.”

“Work this into your reckonings, then: the one I seek had an excellent view of the beheading, for he was sitting upon his father’s shoulders.”

“Couldn’t have been more than a few years old then. Unless his father was a sturdy fellow indeed.”

“His father was sturdy in a sense,” says Enoch, “for Archbishop Laud had caused his ears and his nose to be cut off in Star Chamber some two decades before, and yet he was not daunted, but kept up his agitation against the King. Against all Kings.”

“He was a Barker.” Again, this word brings no sign of contempt to Ben’s face. Shocking how different this place is from London.

“But to answer your question, Ben: Drake was not an especially big or strong man.”

“So the son on his shoulders was small. By now he should be, perhaps, threescore and eight. But I do not know of a Mr. Drake here.”

“Drake was the father’s Christian name.”

“Pray, what then is the name of the family?”

“I will not tell you that just now,” says Enoch. For the man he wants to find might have a very poor character among these people-might already have been hanged on Boston Common, for all Enoch knows.

“How can I help you find him, sir, if you won’t let me know his name?”

“By guiding me to the Charlestown ferry,” Enoch says, “for I know that he spends his days on the north side of the River Charles.”

“Follow me,” says Ben, “but I hope you’ve silver.”

“Oh yes, I’ve silver,” says Enoch.

THEY ARE SKIRTING A KNOBof land at the north end of the city. Wharves, smaller and older than the big one, radiate from its shore. The sails and rigging, spars and masts to his starboard combine into a tangle vast and inextricable, as characters on a page must do in the eyes of an unlettered peasant. Enoch does not see van Hoek or Minerva. He begins to fear that he shall have to go into taverns and make inquiries, and spend time, and draw attention.

Ben takes him direct to the wharf where the Charlestown Ferry is ready to shove off. It is all crowded with hanging-watchers, and Enoch must pay the waterman extra to bring the horse aboard. Enoch pulls his purse open and peers into it. The King of Spain’s coat of arms stares back at him, stamped in silver, variously blurred, chopped, and mangled. The Christian name varies, depending on which king reigned when each of these coins was hammered out in New Spain, but after that they all sayd. g. hispan et ind rex. By the grace of God, of Spain and the Indies, King. The same sort of bluster that all kings stamp onto their coins.

Those words don’t matter to anyone-most people can’t read them anyway. What does matter is that a man standing in a cold breeze on the Boston waterfront, seeking to buy passage on a ferry run by an Englishman, cannot pay with the coins that are being stamped out by Sir Isaac Newton in the Royal Mint at the Tower of London. The only coinage here is Spanish-the same coins that are changing hands, at this moment, in Lima, Manila, Macao, Goa, Bandar Abbas, Mocha, Cairo, Smyrna, Malta, Madrid, the Canary Islands, Marseilles.

The man who saw Enoch down to the docks in London months ago said: “Gold knows things that no man does.”

Enoch churns his purse up and down, making the coins-fragments fly, hoping to spy a single pie-slice-one-eighth of a Piece of Eight, or a bit, as they are called. But he already knows he’s spent most of his bits for small necessaries along the road. The smallest piece he has in his purse right now is half of a coin-four bits.

He looks up the street and sees a blacksmith’s forge only a stone’s throw away. Some quick work with a hammer and that smith could make change for him.

The ferryman’s reading Enoch’s mind. He couldn’t see into the purse, but he could hear the massive gonging of whole coins colliding, without the clashing tinkle of bits. “We’re shoving off,” he is pleased to say.

Enoch comes to his senses, remembers what he’s doing, and hands over a silver semicircle. “But the boy comes with me,” he insists, “and you’ll give him passage back.”

“Done,” says the ferryman.

This is more than Ben could have hoped for, and yet he was hoping for it. Though the boy is too self-possessed to say as much, this voyage is to him as good as a passage down to the Caribbean to go a-pirating on the Spanish Main. He goes from wharf to ferry without touching the gangplank.