Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
“How did you escape your predicament yesterday?” she asked him.
“Made arrangements for the Stadholder to summon the English Ambassador back to the Binnenhof. This compelled him to make a volte-face: a maneuver in which the diplomats of perfidious Albion are well practiced. We followed him down the street and made the first available turn. How did you escape yours?”
“What—you mean, being out for a skate with a lug?”
“Naturally.”
“Tormented him for another half an hour—then returned to his place in the country to transact business. You think I’m a whore, don’t you, monsieur? I saw it in your face when I mentioned business. Though you would probably say courtesan.”
“Mademoiselle, in my circles, anyone who transacts business of any sort, on any level, is a whore. Among French nobility, no distinctions are recognized between the finest commerçants of Amsterdam and common prostitutes.”
“Is that why Louis hates the Dutch so?”
“Oh no, mademoiselle, unlike these dour Calvinists, we love whores—Versailles is aswarm with them. No, we have any number of intelligent reasons to hate the Dutch.”
“What sort of whore do you suppose I am, then, monsieur?”
“That is what I am trying to establish.”
Eliza laughed. “Then you should be eager to turn back.”
“Non!” The comte d’Avaux made a doddering, flailing turn onto another canal. Something bulky and grim shouldered its way into a gap ahead of them. Eliza mistook it, at first, for an especially gloomy old brick church. But then she noticed up on the parapet light shining like barred teeth through crenellations, and many narrow embrasures, and realized it had been made for another purpose besides saving souls. The building had tall poky conical spires at the corners, and Gothic decorations along the fronts of the gables that thrust out into the cold air like clenched stone fists. “The Ridderzaal,” she said, getting her bearings; for she had gotten quite lost following d’Avaux along the labyrinth of canals that were laced through the Hofgebied like capillaries through flesh. “So we are on the Spij now, going north.” A short distance ahead of them, the Spij forked in twain, bracketing the Ridderzaal and other ancient buildings of the Counts of Holland between its branches.
D’Avaux careered into the right fork. “Let us go through yonder water-gate, into the Hofvijver!” Meaning a rectangular pond that lay before the Binnenhof, or palace of the Dutch court. “The view of the Binnenhof rising above the ice will be—er—”
“Magical?”
“Non.”
“Magnificent?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Less bleak than anything else we have seen?”
“Now truly you are speaking French,” the ambassador said approvingly. “The princeling* is off on another of his insufferable hunting expeditions, but some persons of quality are there.” He had put on a surprising—almost alarming—burst of speed and was several paces ahead of Eliza now. “They will open the gate for me,” he said confidently, tossing the words back over his shoulder like a scarf. “When they do, you put on one of those magnificent accélérations and sail past me into the Hofvijver.”
“Very devious…but why don’t you simply ask them to let me through?”
“This will make for a gayer spectacle.”
The gate was so close to the Binnenhof that they would nearly pass underneath the palace as they went through. It was guarded by musketeers and archers dressed in blue outfits with lace cravats and orange sashes. When they recognized Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, they ventured out onto the ice, skidding on their hard-soled boots, pulled one side of the gate open for him, and bowed—doffing their hats and sweeping the ice with the tips of their orange plumes. The gate was wide enough to admit pleasure-boats during the warmer months, and so Eliza had plenty of room to whoosh past the French Ambassador and into the rectangle of ice that was spread out before William of Orange’s palace. It was a maneuver that would have earned her a broad-headed arrow between the shoulder blades if she were a man. But she was a girl in a short skirt and so the guards took her entrance in the spirit intended—as an amusing courtly plaisanterie of the comte’s devising.
She was going very fast—faster than she needed to, for this had given her an excuse to stretch cold stiff leg-muscles. She’d entered the southeast corner of the Hofvijver, which extended perhaps a hundred yards north–south and thrice that east–west. Slicing up along its eastern bank, she was distracted by musket-fire from open ground off to her right, and had a wild moment of fear that she was about to be cut down by snipers. But not to worry, it was a party of gentlemen honing their markmanship on a target-range spread out between the bank of the pond and an ornate building set farther back. She recognized this, now, as the headquarters of the St. George Guild. Beyond it, wooded land stretched away to the east as far as she could see: the Haagsche Bos, a game-park for the Counts of Holland, where people of all classes went to ride and stroll when the weather was better.
Directly ahead of her was a cobblestone ramp: a street that plunged directly into the water of the pond, when it wasn’t frozen, and where horses and cattle could be taken down and watered. She had to lean hard and make a searing turn to avoid it. Swaying her hips from side to side, she picked up a bit of speed as she glided down the long northern shore of the Hofvijver. The south shore, spreading off to her left, was a hodgepodge of brown brick buildings with black slate rooves, many having windows just above the level of the pond, so that she could have skated right up and conversed with people on the inside. But she wouldn’t have dared, for this was the Binnenhof, the palace of the Stadholder, William of Orange. Her view of it was obscured, for a time, by a tiny round island planted in the center of the Hofvijver like a half-cherry on a slice of cake. Trees and shrubs grew on it, and moss grew on them, though all was brown and leafless now. But above and behind the Binnenhof she could see the many narrow towers of the Ridderzaal jabbing at the sky like a squadron of knights with lances upright.
That was the end of sightseeing. For as she shot clear of the little island, and curled round to swing back towards d’Avaux, she discovered that she was sharing the ice with a slow-moving clique of skaters. She glimpsed both men and women, finely dressed. To knock them down would have been bad form. To stop and introduce herself would have been infinitely worse. She spun round to face towards d’Avaux, skating backwards now, letting her momentum carry her past the group. She carved a long sweeping U round the west end of the Hofvijver, spun round to face forward again, built more speed without lifting her skates from the ice, by means of sashaying hip-movements that took her down the long front of the Binnenhof, in a serpentine path, and finally stopped just before running into d’Avaux by planting the blades sideways and shaving up a glittering wall of ice. Nothing very acrobatic really—but it was enough to draw applause from Blue Guards, St. George Guildsmen, and noble skaters alike.
“I learnt defencing at the Academy of Monsieur du Plessis in Paris, where the finest swordsmen of the world gather to flaunt their prowess—but none of them can match your grace with a pair of steel blades, mademoiselle,” said the prettiest man Eliza had ever seen, as he was raising her gloved hand to smooch it.
D’Avaux had been making introductions. The gorgeous man was the Duke of Monmouth. He was escorting a tall, lanky, yet jowly woman in her early twenties. This was Mary—the daughter of the new King of England, and William of Orange’s wife.
As d’Avaux had announced these names and titles, Eliza had come close to losing her nerve for the first time in memory. She was remembering Hanover, where the Doctor had planted her in a steeple near the Herrenhausen Palace, so that she could gaze upon Sophie through a field-glass. Yet this d’Avaux—who didn’t know Eliza nearly as well as the Doctor did—had taken her straight into the Dutch court’s inner sanctum. How could d’Avaux introduce her to persons of royal degree—when he didn’t have the first idea who she was in the first place?
I
“No compliments for me, your Grace?” d’Avaux asked, as Monmouth was planting multiple kisses on the back of Eliza’s glove.
“On the contrary, monsieur—you are the finest skater of all France,” Monmouth returned with a smile. He still had most of his teeth. He had forgotten to let go of Eliza’s hand.
Mary nearly fell off her skates, partly because she was laughing at Monmouth’s jest a little harder than was really warranted, and partly because she was a miserable skater (in the corner of Eliza’s eye, earlier, she’d looked like a windmill—flailing without moving). It had been obvious from the first moment Eliza had seen her that she was infatuated with the Duke of Monmouth. Which to some degree was embarrassing. But Eliza had to admit that she’d chosen a likely young man to fall in love with.
Mary of Orange started to say something, but d’Avaux ran her off the road. “Mademoiselle Eliza has been trying valiantly to teach me how to skate,” he said commandingly, giving Eliza a wet look. “But I am like a peasant listening to one of the lectures of Monsieur Huygens.” He glanced over toward the water-gate through which he and Eliza had just passed, for the house of the Huygens family lay very nearby that corner of the palace.
“I should’ve fallen ever so many times without the Duke to hold me up,” Mary put in.
“Would an Ambassador do as well?” d’Avaux said, and before Mary could answer, he sidled up to her and nearly knocked her over. She flailed for the Ambassador’s arm and just got a grip on it in time. Her entourage closed in to get her back on her blades, the Javanese dwarf getting one hand on each buttock and pushing up with all his might.
The Duke of Monmouth saw none of this drama, engaged as he was in a minute inspection of Eliza. He began with her hair, worked his way down to her ankles, then back up, until he was startled to discover a pair of blue eyes staring back at him. That led to a spell of disorientation just long enough for d’Avaux (who had pinned Mary’s hand between his elbow and ribcage) to say, “By all means, your Grace, go for a skate, stretch your legs—we novices will just totter around the Vijver for a few minutes.”
“Mademoiselle?” said the Duke, proffering a hand.
“Your grace,” said Eliza, taking it.
Ten heartbeats later they were out on the Spij. Eliza let go Monmouth’s hand and spun round backwards to see the water-gate being closed behind them, and, through the bars, Mary of Orange, looking as if she’d been punched in the stomach, and Jean Antoine de Mesmes, comte d’Avaux, looking as if he did this kind of thing several times a day. Once, in Constantinople, Eliza had helped hold one of the other slave-girls down while an Arab surgeon took out her appendix. It had taken all of two minutes. She’d been astonished that a man with a sharp knife and no hesitation about using it could effect such changes so rapidly. Thus d’Avaux and Mary’s heart.
Once they got clear of the Spij the canal broadened and Monmouth executed a dramatic spin—lots of flesh and bone moving fast—not really graceful, but she couldn’t not look. If anything, he was a more accomplished skater than Eliza. He saw Eliza watching, and assumed she was admiring, him. “During the Interregnum I divided my time between here and Paris,” he explained, “and spent many hours on these canals—where did you learn, mademoiselle?”
Struggling across heaving floes to chip gull shit off rocks struck Eliza as a tasteless way to answer the question. She might have come up with some clever story, given enough time—but her mind was too busy trying to fathom what was going on.
“Ah, forgive me for prying—I forget that you are incognito,” said the Duke of Monmouth, his eyes straying momentarily to the black sash that d’Avaux had given her. “That, and your coy silence, speak volumes.”
“Really? What’s in those volumes?”
“The tale of a lovely innocent cruelly misused by some Germanic or Scandinavian noble—was it at the court of Poland-Lithuania? Or was it that infamous woman-beater, Prince Adolph of Sweden? Say nothing, mademoiselle, except that you forgive me my curiosity.”
“Done. Now, are you that same Duke of Monmouth who distinguished himself at the Siege of Maestricht? I know a man who fought in that battle—or who was there, anyway—and who spoke at length of your doings.”
“Is it the Marquis de—? Or the comte d’—?”
“You forget yourself, Monsieur,” said Eliza, stroking the velvet sash.
“Once again—please accept my apology,” said the Duke, looking wickedly amused.
“You might be able to redeem yourself by explaining something to me: the Siege of Maestricht was part of a campaign to wipe the Dutch Republic off the map. William sacrificed half his country to win that war. You fought against him. And yet here you are enjoying the hospitality of that same William, in the innermost court of Holland, only a few years later.”
“That’s nothing,” Monmouth said agreeably, “for only a few years after Maestricht I was fighting by William’s side, against the French, at Mons, and William was married to that Mary—who as you must know is the daughter of King James II, formerly the Duke of York, and Admiral of the English Navy until William’s admirals blew it out of the water. I could go on in this vein for hours.”
“If I had such an enemy I would not rest until he was dead,” Eliza said. “As a matter of fact, I do have an enemy, and it has been a long time since I have rested…”
“Who is it?” Monmouth asked eagerly, “the one who taught you to skate and then—”
“It is another,” Eliza said, “but I know not his name—our encounter was in a dark cabin on a ship—”
“What ship?”
“I know not.”
“What flag did it fly?”
“A black one.”
“Stab me!”
“Oh, ’twas the typical sort of heathen pirate-galleon—nothing remarkable.”
“You were captured by heathen pirates!?”
“Only once. Happens more often than you might appreciate. But we are digressing. I will not rest until my enemy’s identity is known, and I’ve put him in the grave.”
“But suppose that when you learn his identity, he turns out to be your great-uncle, and your cousin’s brother-in-law, and your best friend’s godfather?”
“I’m only speaking of one enemy—”
“I know. But royal families of Europe are so tangled together that your enemy might bear all of those relations to you at once.”
“Eeyuh, what a mess.”
“On the contrary—’tis the height of civilization,” Monmouth said. “It is not—mind you—that we forget our grievances. That would be unthinkable. But if our only redress were to put one another into graves, all Europe would be a battleground!”
“All Europe is a battleground! Haven’t you been paying attention?”
“Fighting at Maestricht and Mons and other places has left me little time for it,” Monmouth said drily. “I say to you it could be much worse—like the Thirty Years’ War, or the Civil War in England.”
“I suppose that is true,” Eliza said, remembering all of those ruined castles in Bohemia.
“In the modern age we pursue revenge at Court. Sometimes we might go so far as to fight a duel—but in general we wage battles with wit, not muskets. It does not kill as many people, and it gives ladies a chance to enter the lists—as it were.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Have you ever fired a musket, mademoiselle?”
“No.”
“And yet in our conversation you have already discharged any number of verbal broadsides. So you see, on the courtly battleground, women stand on an equal footing with men.”
Eliza coast
“I must go and meet someone,” Eliza said.
“May I escort you back to the Binnenhof?”
“No—d’Avaux is there.”
“You no longer take pleasure in the Ambassador’s company?”
“I am afraid he will try to give me a fur coat.”
“That would be terrible!”
“I don’t want to give him the satisfaction…he has used me, somehow.”
“The King of France has given him orders to be as offensive as possible to Mary. As Mary’s in love with me today…”
“Why?”
“Why is she in love with me? Mademoiselle, I am offended.”
“I know perfectly well why she is in love with you. I meant, why would the King of France send a Count up to the Hague simply to behave offensively?”
“Oh, the comte d’Avaux does many other things besides. But the answer is that King Louis hopes to break up the marriage between William and Mary—destroying William’s power in England—and making Mary available for marriage to one of his French bastards.”
“I knew it had to be a family squabble of some sort—it’s so mean, so petty, so vicious.”
“Now you begin to understand!”
“Doesn’t Mary love her husband?”
“William and Mary are a well-matched couple.”
“You say little but mean much…what do you mean?”
“Now it is my turn to be mysterious,” Monmouth said, “as it’s the only way I can be sure of seeing you again.”
He went on in that vein, and Eliza dodged him elaborately, and they parted ways.
But two hours later they were together again. This time Gomer Bolstrood was with them.
A COUPLE OF MILES NORTH of the Hague, the flat polder-land of the Dutch Republic was sliced off by the sea-coast. A line of dunes provided a meager weather-wall. Sheltering behind it, running parallel to the coast, was a strip of land, frequently wooded, but not wilderness, for it had been improved with roads and canals. In that belt of green had grown up diverse estates: the country retreats of nobles and merchants. Each had a proper house with a formal garden. The bigger ones also had wooded game-parks, and hunting-lodges where men could seek refuge from their women.