Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
“Five.”
“You know your age very clearly,” Jack said, impressed. “Of a noble family, are you?”
“Mother maintains that all Qwghlmians—”
“Stay. I already know your ma better than I knew mine. What do you remember of Qwghlm?”
“The door of our dwelling, glowing warmly by the light of a merry guano-fire, and all hung about with curious picks and hatchets so that Daddy could chip us out of the place after one of those late June ice-storms, so vigorous and bracing. A clifftop village of simple honest folk who’d light bonfires on moonless nights to guide mariners to safety—Jack, why the noises? Phlegmatical trouble of some kind?”
“They light those fires to lure the mariners.”
“Why, to trade with them?”
“So that they’ll run aground and spill their cargoes on Caesar’s Reef, or Viking’s Grief, or Saracen’s Doom, or Frenchie’s Bones, or the Galleon-Gutter, or Dutch-Hammer, or any of the other Hazards to Navigation for which your home is ill-famed.”
“Aah—” Eliza said, in melodious tones that nearly struck Jack dead on his feet, “puts a new light on some of their other practices.”
“Such as?”
“Going out in the night with great big long knives to ‘put stranded sailors out of their suffering…’”
“At their own request, I’m sure?”
“Aye, and coming back with chests and bales of goods offered as payment for the service. Yes, Jack, your explanation’s much more reasonable—how lovely of my sainted Mummy to shield my tender ears from this awkward truth.”
“Now, then, d’you understand why the Kings of England have long suffered—nay, encouraged, and possibly even bribed—the Barbary Corsairs to raid Qwghlm?”
“It was the second week of August. Mother and I were walking on the beach—”
“Wait, you’ve beaches there?”
“In memory, all is golden—perhaps it was a mud-flat. Yes, it was on the way to Snowy Rock, which gleamed a radiant white—”
“Ha! Even in summer?”
“Not with snow. ’Twas the gifts of seagulls, by which Qwghlm is ever nourished. Mother and I had our slx and sktl—”
“Again?”
“The former is a combined hammering, chopping, scraping, and poking tool consisting of an oyster shell lashed to a thigh-bone.”
“Why not use a stick?”
“Englishmen came and took all of the trees. The sktl is a hopper or bucket. We were halfway out to the Rock when we became conscious of a rhythm. Not the accustomed pounding of mountainous waves on jagged rocks—this was faster, sharper, deeper—a beating of savage African drums! North-, not Sub-Saharan, but African anyway, and not typical of the area. Qwghlmian music makes very little use of percussion—”
“It being difficult to make drum-heads of rat-hides.”
“We turned towards the sun. Out on the cove—a wrinkled sheet of hammered gold—a shadow like a centipede, its legs swinging fore and aft to the beating of the drum—”
“Wait, a giant bug was walking on water?”
“ ’Twas a many-oared coastal raiding-galley of the Barbary Corsairs. We tried to run back towards the shore, but the mud sucked at our bare feet so avidly that we had skwsh for a week thereafter—”
“Skwsh?”
“Heel-hickeys. The pirates launched a long-boat and ran it up on the mud-flat before us, cutting off our escape. Several men—turbaned silhouettes so strange and barbarous to my young eyes—vaulted out and made for us. One of them went straight into quicksand—”
“Haw! Stop! Now, that, as we say in Wapping, is Entertainment!”
“Only a Qwghlmian born and bred could have found her way across that flat without perishing. In a trice, he’d sunk down to his neck and was thrashing about in exactly the wrong way, hollering certain key verses of the Holy Qur’an.”
“And your mother said, ‘We could escape now, but we have a Christian duty to this poor sailor; we must sacrifice our freedom to save his life’ and you stayed there to help him out.”
“No, Mummy said something more like, ‘We could try to struggle away through all of this mud, but those darkies have muskets—so I’ll pretend to stay behind to help that stupid wog—maybe we can rack up some brown-nosing points.’”
“What a woman!”
“She commandeered an oar and extended it to the trapped sailor. Seeing she’d found solid footing, others made bold to leave the boat and haul this fellow in. Mummy and I were then subjected to a curious sniffing procedure administered by an officer who did not speak English, but who made it plain, by his posture and expressions, that he was embarrassed and apologetic. We were taken aboard the long-boat and then to the galley, and then rowed out to a rendezvous with a forty-gun pirate-galleon cruising offshore. Not some ramshackle barge but a proper ship of the line, captured or perhaps bought, leased, or borrowed from a European navy.”
“Where your mother was cruelly used by horny Mahometans.”
“Oh, no. These men seemed to be of that sort who only desire women for that which they have in common with men.”
“What—eyebrows?”
“No, no!”
“Toenails then? Because—”
“Stop it!”
“But the mercy that your Mum showed to the poor sailor was richly repaid later on, right? When, in a moment of crisis, unlooked-for, he appeared and showed her some favor, and thus saved the day—right?”
“He died a couple of days later, from bad fish, and was tossed overboard.”
“Bad fish? On a ship? In the ocean? I thought those Mussulmen were ever so particular about their victuals.”
“He didn’t eat it—just touched it while preparing a meal.”
“Why would anyone—”
“Don’t ask me,” Eliza said, “ask the mysterious Personage who subjected my Mummy to his unnatural vice.”
“I thought you said—”
“You asked me if she’d been used by Mahometans. The Personage was not a Mahometan. Or a Jew. Or any other sort that practices circumcision.”
“Er—”
“Would you like to stop, so that I can draw you a picture?”
“No. What sort of man was he, then?”
“Unknown. He never left his cabin in that high-windowed castle at the stern of the ship. It seemed he had a fear of sunlight, or at least of tanning. When Mummy was taken into that place, that curved expanse of glass was carefully shuttered, and the curtains drawn—heavy curtains they were, in a dark green shade like the skin of the aguacate, which is a fruit of New Spain. But with thread of gold woven through, here and there, to produce a sparkling effect. Before my mother could react, she was thrown back against the carpet—”
“You mean, down onto the carpet.”
“Oh, no. For the walls, and even the ceiling, of the cabin were lined, every inch of them, in carpet. Hand-knotted wool, with a most deep and luxurious pile (or so it seemed to Mummy, who’d never seen or touched a carpet before), all in a hue that recalled the gold of fields ripe for harvest—”
“I thought you said it was dark.”
“She came back from these trysts with the fibers all over her. And even in the dark she could feel, with the skin of her back, that cunning artisans had sculpted the golden carpet into curious patterns.”
“Doesn’t sound that bad, so far—that is, by the standards of white women abducted and enslaved by Barbary Corsairs.”
“I haven’t gotten to the part about the smell yet.”
“The world smells bad, lass. Best to hold your nose and get on with it.”
“You are a child in the world of bad smells, until—”
“Excuse me. Have you ever been to Newgate Prison? Paris in August? Strasbourg after the Black Death?”
“Think about fish for a moment.”
“Now you’re on about fish again.”
“The only food that the Personage would eat was fish that had gone bad—quite some time ago.”
“That’s it. No more. I’ll not be made a fool of.” Jack put his fingers in his ears and sang a few merry madrigal tunes with a great deal of “fa la la” material in them.
A FEW DAYS might have passed here—the road West was long. But in time she inevitably resumed. “The Barbary Corsairs were no less incredulous than you, Jack. But it was evident that the Personage was a man of tremendous power, whose wishes must be obeyed. Every day, some sailor who’d committed an infraction would be sentenced to dress the rotten fish for this man’s private table. He’d drop to his knees and beg to be flogged, or keel-hauled, rather than carry out that duty. But always one would be chosen, and sent over the side, and down the ladder—”
“How’s that?”
“The fish was ripened in an open long-boat towed far, far behind the ship. Once a day, it would be pulled up alongside, and the luckless sailor would be forced, at pistols drawn, to descend a rope-ladder, clutching a scrap of paper in his teeth on which was inscribed whatever receipt the Personage had selected. Then the tow-rope was hastily paid out again by a gagging team of sailors, and the chef would go to work, preparing the meal on a little iron stove in the long-boat. When he was finished, he’d wave a skull and crossbones in the air and be pulled in until he was just astern. A rope would be thrown out the windows of that gaudy castle—below, the chef would tie it to a basket containing the finished meal. The basket would be drawn up and in through the window. Later, the Personage would ring a bell and a cabin-boy would be heartily bastinadoed until he agreed to go aft to recover the china, and toss it overboard.”
“Fine. The cabin smelled bad.”
“Oh, this Personage tried to mask it with all the spices and aromatic gums of the East. The place was all a-dangle with small charms, cleverly made in the shape of trees, impregnated with rare perfumes. Incense glowered through the wrought-gold screens of exotic braziers, and crystalline vials of perfumed spirits, dyed the colors of tropical blossoms, sloshed about with great sodden wicks hanging out of ’em to disperse the scent into the air. All for naught, of course, for—”
“The cabin smelled bad.”
“Yes. Now, to be sure, Mummy and I had noticed an off odor about the ship from about a mile out, as we were being rowed to it, and had chalked it up to the corsairs’ barbarous ways and overall masculinity. We had watched the spectacle of the dinner preparation twice without understanding it. The second time, the chef—who, that day, was the very man Mummy had saved—never waved the Jolly Roger, but seemed to fall asleep in the long-boat. Efforts were made to rouse him by blowing horns and firing cannon-salvos, to no avail. Finally they pulled him in, and the ship’s physician descended the rope-ladder, breathing through a compress soaked in a compound of citrus oil, myrrh, spearmint, bergamot, opium, rose-water, camphor, and anise-seed, and pronounced the poor man dead. He had nicked his hand while chopping some week-old squid-meat, and some unspeakable residue had infected his blood and slain him, like a crossbow bolt ’tween the eyes.”
“Your description of the Personage’s cabin was suspiciously complete and particular,” Jack observed.
“Oh, I was taken there, too—after Mummy failed the sniff-test, he flew into a rage, and in desperation they offered me up as a sacrifice. He got no satisfaction from me, as I’d not, at that age, begun to exude the womanly humours that—”
“Stop. Only stop. My life, since I approached Vienna, is become some kind of Bartholomew-Fair geek-baiting.”
HOURS, OR A DAY or two, might’ve passed.
“So, then, I suppose I’m meant to believe that you and dear Mummy were originally taken from the mud-flats simply in hopes that Mummy would pass the sniff-test.”
“ ’Twas thought she had passed it—but the officer who administered that olfactory examination was deceived—his sensorium overwhelmed—by—”
“By the miasma of those Qwghlmian mud-flats and guano-mountains. My God, it is the worst thing I have ever heard—to think I feared that you would be appalled by my story.” Jack waved his arms in the air, gaining the attention of an approaching friar, and shouted: “Which way is Massachusetts? I’m become a Puritan.”
“Later in the voyage, finally, the Personage had his way with poor Mummy on one or two occasions, but only because no other choices were available to him, and we did not pass near any more remote settlements where women could be easily abducted.”
“Well, c’mon, let’s have it—what’d he do in that carpeted castle?”
Eliza then became uncharacteristically shy. Now, by this time they were several days out of Vienna. She had taken off the wounded-officer disguise and was sitting in the saddle with a blanket wrapped around her, covering the tent she’d been wearing the first time Jack had seen her. From time to time she’d offer to dismount and walk, but she was barefoot, and Jack didn’t want to be slowed down. Her head, anyway, projected from a vast whorl of fabric, and Jack could therefore turn round and look at it anytime he chose. Generally he didn’t, because he knew that only trouble could come of paying undue attention to that visage—its smooth symmetry, its fine set of teeth, and all of those ever-so-important Feelings flickering across it, supple and quick and mesmerizing as fire-light. But at this particular moment he did turn round to look, because her silence was so sudden that he supposed she’d been punched out of the saddle by a stray cannon-ball. She was there, gazing at some other travelers just ahead of them: four nuns.
They overtook the nuns shortly and left them behind. “Now you can say it,” Jack said. But Eliza just set her jaw and gazed into the distance.
A quarter of an hour later they passed the actual nunnery. And a quarter of an hour after that suddenly she was back to normal, relating the details of what had gone on behind those aguacate-colored curtains on the carpet of harvest gold. Several odd practices were described—Books of India stuff, Jack suspected.
The high points of Eliza’s story were, in sum, curiously synchronized with the appearance of nunneries and towns along their route. At a certain point Jack had heard all he wanted to—a bawdy tale, when told in so much detail, became monotonous, and then started to seem calculated to inspire Feelings of profound guilt and self-loathing in any male listeners who happened to be nearby.
Reviewing his memories of the last few days’ journey from Vienna, Jack observed that, when they’d been in open country or forest, Eliza had kept to herself. But whenever they’d neared any kind of settlement, and especially nunneries (which were thick as fleas in this Popish land), the tongue would go into action and reach some highly interesting moment in the tale just as they were passing by the town’s gate or the nunnery’s door. The story would never resume until they’d passed some distance onwards.
“Next stop: the Barbary Coast. As we’d proven unsatisfactory to the Personage, we were added to the general pool of European slaves there—some tens of thousands of ’em.”
“Damn, I’d no idea!”
“Their plight is ignored by all Europe!” Eliza said, and Jack realized too late he’d set her off. A torrential rant ensued. If only her head was still wrapped in those fake bandages—some tightening and knotting and his troubles would be over. Instead, by paying out the reins Jack was able to lead the noble horse, which he’d named, or re-named, Turk, from a distance, much as the Corsair-ship in Eliza’s ridiculous fable had towed the unspeakable fish-boat. Snatches and fragments of the Rant occasionally drifted his way. He learned that Mummy had been sold into the harem of an Ottoman military official at the Qasbah of Algiers, and in her copious spare time had founded the Society of Britannic Abductees, which now had branches in Morocco, Tripoli, Bizerta, and Fez; which met on a fortnightly rotation except during Ramadan; which had bylaws running to several hundred pages, which Eliza had to copy out by hand on filched Ottoman stationery whenever a new chapter was founded…
They were close to Linz. Monasteries, nunneries, rich men’s houses, and outlying towns came frequently. In the middle of Eliza’s sermon about the plight of white slaves
“Now, when you started that sentence,” Jack observed, “you were telling me about the procedure for amending the bylaws of the Society of Britannic Abductees, but by the time you got to the end of it, you had begun telling me about what happened when the ship packed to the gunwales with Hindoostani dancing-girls ran aground near a castle of the Knights of Malta—you’re not worried that I’m going to drop you off, or sell you to some farmer, are you?”
“Why should you care about my feelings?”
“Now has it never occurred to you that you might be better off in a nunnery?”
Clearly it hadn’t, but now it did. A most lovely consternation flooded into her face, and she turned her head, slightly, toward the nunnery.
“Oh, I’ll hold up my end of the partnership. Years of dangling from hanged men’s feet taught me the value of honest dealings.” Jack stopped talking for a moment to stifle his mirth. Then, “Yes, the advantages of being on the road with Half-Cocked Jack are many: no man is my master. I have boots. A sword, axe, and horse, too. I cannot be but chaste. Secret smugglers’ roads are all known to me. I know the zargon and the code-signs of Vagabonds, who, taken together, constitute a sort of (if I may speak poetically) network of information, spreading all over the world, functioning smoothly even when damaged, by which I may know which pays offer safe haven and passage, and which oppress wandering persons. You could do worse.”
“Why then did you say I might be better off there?” Eliza said, nodding toward the great nunnery with its wings curling around toward the road like a beetle’s tongs.
“Well, some would say I should’ve mentioned this to you earlier, but: you’ve taken up with a man who can be hanged on arrival in most jurisdictions.”
“Ooh, you’re an infamous criminal?”
“Only some places—but that’s not why.”