Quicksilver

“Knew it would happen.”

“I don’t think you appreciate just how unpleasant it is.”

“You don’t appreciate how well I know Sir Isaac.”

“I’m saying that its repercussions may extend to here, to this very room, and might account for your (forgive me for mentioning this) solitude, and slow progress.”

“Ludicrous!”

“Have you seen the latest flying letters, speeding about Europe unsigned, undated, devoid of even a printer’s mark? The anonymous reviews, planted, like sapper’s mines, in the journals of the savants? Sudden unmaskings of hitherto u

“No,” Daniel says. “I moved here to get away from European intrigues.” His eyes drop to the Letter. Enoch can’t help looking at it, too.

“It is purely an anomaly of fate,” Enoch says, “that Gottfried, as a young man, lacking means, seeking a position-anything that would give him the simple freedom to work-landed in the court of an obscure German Duke. Who through intricate and tedious lacework of marryings, couplings, dyings, religious conversions, wars, revolutions, miscarriages, decapitations, congenital feeble-mindedness, excommunications, et cetera among Europe’s elite-most notably, the deaths of all seventeen of Queen A

“ Somewould call it fate. Others-”

“Let’s not get into that. ”

“Agreed.”

“A

“I take your point. It is most awkward.”

“George Louis is the embodiment of awkwardness-he doesn’t care, and scarcely knows, and would probably think it amusing if he did. But his daughter-in-law the Princess-author of this letter-in time likely to become Queen of England herself-is a friend of Leibniz. And yet an admirer of Newton. She wants a reconciliation.”

“She wants a dove to fly between the Pillars of Hercules. Which are still ru

“It’s supposed that you are different.”

“Herculean, perhaps?”

“Well…”

“Do you have any idea why I’m different, Mr. Root?”

“I do not, Dr. Waterhouse.”

“The tavern it is, then.”

BEN ANDGODFREY ARE SENTback to Boston on the ferry. Daniel scorns the nearest tavern-some sort of long-ru

Waterhouse enters a tavern but immediately backs out of it. Looking into the place over his companion’s shoulder, Enoch glimpses a white-wigged Judge on a massive chair at the head of the tap-room, a jury empaneled on plank benches, a grimy rogue being interrogated. “Not a good place for a pair of idlers,” Waterhouse mumbles.

“You hold judicial proceedings in drinking-houses!?”

“Poh! That judge is no more drunk than any magistrate of the Old Bailey.”

“It is perfectly logical when you put it that way.”

Daniel chooses another tavern. They walk through its brick-red door. A couple of leather fire-buckets dangle by the entrance, in accordance with safety regulations, and a bootjack hangs on the wall so that the i

“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. Spi

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 begi

He ca