The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World Read Online Free Page B

The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, the Confusion, and the System of the World
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Minerva is fairly straining at her hawsers in eagerness to catch the tide, and hemust have results. He’d rather get this done discreetly. But that is hopeless now that Ben has unmasked him. More important is to get it done quickly.
    Besides, Enoch has lost his temper.
    He draws a folded and sealed Letter from his breast pocket and, for lack of a better term, brandishes it.
    The Letter is borrowed, scrutinized—one side is inscribed “Doktor Waterhouse—Newtowne—Massachusetts”—and flipped over. Monocles are quarried from velvet-lined pockets for the Examination of the Seal: a lump of red wax the size of Ben’s fist. Lips move and strange mutterings occur as parched throats attempt German.
    All of the Professors seem to realize it at once. They jump back as if the letter were a specimen of white phosphorus that had suddenly burst into flame. The Don is left holding it. He extends it towards Enoch the Red with a certain desperate pleading look. Enoch punishes him by being slow to accept the burden.
    “Bitte, mein herr…”
    “English is perfectly sufficient,” Enoch says. “Preferable, in fact.”
    At the fringes of the robed and hooded mob, certain nearsighted faculty members are frantic with indignation over not having been able to read the seal. Their colleagues are muttering to them words like “Hanover” and “Ansbach.”
    A man removes his hat and bows to Enoch. Then another.
    They have not even set foot in Charlestown before the dons have begun to make a commotion. Porters and would-be passengers stare quizzically at the approaching ferry as they are assailed with shouts of “Make way!” and broad waving motions. The ferry’s become a floating stage packed with bad actors. Enoch wonders whether any of these men really supposes that word of their diligence will actually make its way back to court in Hanover, and be heard by their future Queen. It is ghoulish—they are behaving as if Queen Anne were already dead and buried, and the Hanovers on the throne.
    “Sir, if you’d only told me ‘twas Daniel Waterhouse you sought, I’d have taken you to him without delay—and without all of this bother. ”
    “I erred by not confiding in you, Ben,” Enoch says.
    Indeed. In retrospect, it’s obvious that in such a small town, Daniel would have noticed a lad like Ben, or Ben would have been drawn to Daniel, or both. “Do you know the way?”
    “Of course!”
    “Mount up,” Enoch commands, and nods at the horse. Ben needn’t be asked twice. He’s up like a spider. Enoch follows as soon as dignity and inertia will allow. They share the saddle, Ben on Enoch’s lap with his legs thrust back and wedged between Enoch’sknees and the horse’s rib-cage. The horse has, overall, taken a dim view of the Ferry and the Faculty, and bangs across the plank as soon as it has been thrown down. They’re pursued through the streets of Charlestown by some of the more nimble Doctors. But Charlestown doesn’t have that many streets and so the chase is brief. Then they break out into the mephitic bog on its western flank. It puts Enoch strongly in mind of another swampy, dirty, miasma-ridden burg full of savants: Cambridge, England.
    “I NTO YONDER COPPICE , then ford the creek,” Ben suggests. “We shall lose the Professors, and perhaps find Godfrey. When we were on the ferry, I spied him going thither with a pail.”
    “Is Godfrey the son of Dr. Waterhouse?”
    “Indeed, sir. Two years younger than I.”
    “Would his middle name, perchance, be William?”
    “How’d you know that, Mr. Root?”
    “He is very likely named after Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.”
    “A friend of yours and Sir Isaac’s?”
    “Of mine, yes. Of Sir Isaac’s, no—and therein lies a tale too long to tell now.”
    “Would it fill a book?”
    “In truth, ‘twould fill several —and it is not even finished yet.”
    “When shall it be finished?”
    “At times, I fear never. But you and I shall hurry it to its final act to-day,

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