The System of the World

The Gallows, Tower Hill
DAWN, 22 OCTOBER 1714

WHEN IT GREW LIGHT enough for them to move around without having to tote flaming objects, four men converged on the scaffold that stood in the middle of Tower Hill. Two came from the sea: a black man, and a short red-head with a hook in place of a hand. Two issued from the outlying fortification of the Tower known as the Bulwark; both of them gentlemen, but afoot, and surrounded by several Yeomen of the Guard, and followed, at a respectful distance, by half a dozen mounted dragoons.

The gallows would not be put to use today, save as a landmark by which the two gentlemen from the Tower, and the two seafarers, could find each other. For Tower Hill was a considerable expanse, mostly open parade-ground, but complicated here and there by earth-works where the Tower’s garrison might conduct rehearsals for Continental siege-wars. It would not be suitable for the duellists to blunder about trying to find each other until daylight had washed broad over the land, and so they had agreed to meet at the scaffold where sometimes the Tower’s lordly inmates were put to death. The Yeomen who had conducted the two gentlemen out the Bulwark’s gates peeled away as soon as the timbers of the scaffold came in view, and kept their distance. The legalities were interesting. There was nothing unusual about a noble prisoner strolling about the Liberty of the Tower, of which Tower Hill was a part. Nor for such a prisoner to be shadowed, on his perambulations, by Yeomen of the Guard, to make sure he would not escape or engage in treasonable discourse with free men. But duelling, though a frequent enough practice, was illegal. And so it could be inferred that Charles White had arrived, in advance, with some understanding with the Lieutenant of the Tower. He would go for an early-morning stroll on Tower Hill. At some point the Yeomen might lose him, for a few minutes, in the fog. A pistol-shot or two might be heard. White would be found dead or alive. If dead, he’d be buried. If alive, he’d go back to his lodging in the Tower. Either way the incident would be explained: the strollers had run afoul of footpads; there’d been a struggle; White had wrested a pistol from one of the attackers; et cetera. It was threadbare, but no more so than any of the other fictions that were routinely put forth to explain duels. Accordingly the Yeomen kept their distance, so as to sustain the lies that they would have to tell in an hour’s time; but the dragoons spread out to surround the area, lest White try to flee into the streets of London, only a hundred running paces distant.

“Where are the pistols?” White demanded.

If his opponent, and his opponent’s second, had been gentlemen, he might have greeted them first. But these were Vagabonds of the sea and so that was how he said hello.

“Pistols? What pistols?” asked Dappa.

“You stated in your letter that you would supply a matched set of pistols,” White said, suspecting tomfoolery.

“Firearms are what I said I would supply,” said Dappa, “and I said I’d let you choose. If you will now follow me and Captain van Hoek, please, I’ll show you the first of ’em.” And Dappa strode into the fog. Van Hoek stepped out of the way to let White and his second-a young gent name of Woodruff-follow. They were leery of being followed by van Hoek and so after an awkward few seconds’ feinting and after-youing, they all fell into step abreast of one another and out of mutual stabbing-range.

“Where is it?” Charles White demanded.

“Less than a hundred paces from here,” Dappa returned.

The ground reared up under their feet. They had come to the base of a brief but stiff rise in the Hill, which traditionally was employed as a natural viewing-stand for Londoners eager to see Lords being hanged. Rather than attempting to scale this slope, Dappa deflected to the right and walked along its base, following fresh wheel-ruts that scarred the ground.

He led them to an artillery-piece, mounted on a two-wheeled carriage, and turned round so that the earth rose up behind it. Directions were not easy to keep track of in this dim light, but it seemed to be aimed generally toward the bank of the river. Resting on the ground beside the piece were a powder-keg, a pyramidal stack of five balls, and relevant tools, viz. scoop, ramrod, amp;c.

Before White could fully take this in, Dappa had made an about-face and begun goose-stepping toward the Thames, counting paces: “One, two, three…”

They were approaching the base of another rise in the ground: this one part of the earthen rampart that surrounded the Bulwark. The sky had brightened, and the fog dissolved, to the point where they could see that he was leading them toward another field-piece, arrayed in the same manner as, and aimed back towards, the first; which loomed down on them from its shelf halfway up Tower Hill.

The hundred paces had given White time to grow accustomed to the idea-even to see humor in it. “Where did you get these guns?” he wanted to know.

“It is a passably entertaining story,” Dappa answered, “but if you are about to die, there’s no point in relating it to you. And if I am, then one of the ways I mean to spite you is by leaving you in the dark. Technically, by the way, they are called Hobbits, or Haubitzes,” said Dappa. “Not guns. A gun has a longer barrel, and is much heavier; it throws heavy balls at great speed, to batter down walls. A Haubitz is like a horizontal mortar: it uses a smaller powder-charge. I judged it a more suitable weapon, for a duel. Cannon-shot would carry in to the city, if we mis-aimed. Haubitz-balls, being lighter, will fall to the ground nearby.”

“How can they be lighter if they are made of the same stuff?” asked Woodruff, who had apparently been studying his Natural Philosophy.

“They are hollow, you see,” said Dappa, picking one of them up with only modest effort, even though it was a good six inches in diameter. He spun it over between his hands to reveal a drilled orifice, and a spray of gray strings, radiating outwards, like meridians, to cover one hemisphere of its surface. “Hollow, so that they may be packed with powder. Otherwise, we’d be here all day trying to hit each other with a lucky shot. These shells will burst and kill anything within a few yards.”

“I see. It is quite practical,” said Woodruff, though he seemed a bit preoccupied by the implications of that for him. Van Hoek was eyeing him with amusement.

“Please take as much time as you will to inspect these bombs, the Haubitzes, and anything else you please; I assure you they are quite identical.”

“No need,” said White, “and little time. Quite obviously the most advantageous position is the one on high.” He nodded up toward the first Haubitz. “For that reason, you’d look to me to choose it, and if one of the Haubitzes were deficient, that’s where you’d place it. And so I choose this; you may have the high ground.”

“Very well,” said Dappa, “shall we to the midway-point then?”

They stood back-to-back on the field, each staring in to the muzzle of the gun he’d soon be loading. Their seconds stood off to the side, watching to be sure that all of the rules and formalities were observed.

“It is perfect,” White reflected. “Over yonder I have had victory over Newton, and the Whigs; for make no mistake, he will fail the Trial of the Pyx a week hence. Here I shall have victory over you, or else die; either way I could hardly have expected better.”

“One,” said Dappa, and took a pace away from him-as much to shut the man up as anything else.

“Very well. One,” said White, and took a pace. Thence they counted, and paced, in unison; and round about the time they reached forty (for they were taking very long paces) they dropped all pretense of dignity and fell to work upon the Haubitzes.

White was aided, in this, by his second. Dappa wasn’t. Van Hoek stood with his back to the Haubitz, as if he were an early-morning perambulator pausing to take in the view of Tower Hill’s lower reaches and the Pool. When Dappa gave him a dirty look, van Hoek licked his hook and held it up in the air as if to test the wind.

Dappa cuffed him on the back. “Stop it!”

“Look at them scurrying around down there,” said van Hoek. “They have no idea what they are doing.”

“That’s what concerns me.”

“In Cairo you were much cooler,” van Hoek reminded him, “and it was I who looked on irritably.”

“In Cairo I had nothing to lose!” Dappa reminded him. He had rolled the powder-keg to a safer distance from the Haubitz, and was prying the bung out with a dagger. “Did White and Woodruff move their keg?”

“Ah, you see? Now you ask for the knowledge that I have been collecting.”

“You could have collected it, and done something else useful, at the same time.”

“Oh, very well,” said van Hoek, and ambled round to the butt of the Haubitz. He sighted down the barrel, then changed focus to the target. “Yes. They moved their keg. But not as far as they ought to’ve.” He picked up a stone and used it as a mallet to whack the quoin under the weapon’s butt, depressing its muzzle slightly. “Do you think we need to allow for the rotation of the Earth?”

Dappa studiously ignored this baiting. He had filled a long-handled scoop with powder, and now introduced it to the muzzle. The scoop’s diameter was markedly smaller than the weapon’s bore. “This is the part they are likely to get wrong,” Dappa reflected, as he prodded away, trying to get the scoop into a narrower chamber concealed in the butt. “I hope they’ll charge it full bore, and blow themselves up!”

“That would not be sporting,” van Hoek chided him, and used his hook to scrape away some chymical encrustation surrounding the touch-hole. Because of his disability, he could not very easily pick up a shell, and so this duty fell to Dappa, who stuffed in a ball, then set to beating it down the barrel with a ramrod, while gazing attentively down-hill.

“This is what you get for your slowness!” he pointed out. For both he and van Hoek had noticed that White, with a grin, was putting fire to the touch-hole of a fully loaded and ready-to-go Haubitz.

A cloud of flame the size of a parish church appeared between them and their opponents, then winked out and was smoke.

“And that is what they get for their lubberly haste,” said van Hoek.

As both van Hoek and Dappa understood, White and Woodruff had over-charged the weapon. The force of the fire had crushed the shell inside the barrel, causing it to vomit forth a cloud of gunpowder, most of which (fortunately for them) had burned in the open air.

There was nothing to do until the smoke-cloud drifted over them and gave them a clear view of White and Woodruff, who looked woozy and badly sunburned. Then van Hoek put fire to the touch-hole. The Haubitz discharged correctly and, as they were standing nearly behind it, they got to glimpse the shell in flight for a fraction of a second. It spattered against the stone wall of the Bulwark, above and behind and a bit to the left of the opposition, and failed to ignite altogether. Instead it sprayed shell-shards and powder-corns all over White and Woodruff, who scarcely noticed, as they had shaken off their shock and turned their attention back to the Haubitz.

“Now’s when they’ll blow themselves up,” Dappa offered, thrusting a swab into a bucket.

“On the contrary, they found the water you so considerately left out for them, and are swabbing out their Haubitz just as you are. But we have the advantage-we got information about how to adjust our aim, and they did not.” Van Hoek belabored the quoin some more, then kicked at one of the gun-carriage’s wheels to adjust its azimuth. Dappa meanwhile re-loaded. After which he was very keen on firing; but van Hoek kept presenting himself at the weapon’s muzzle with sticks, handfuls of dry grass, leaves, and other such debris, which he stuffed in to the bore until it was full, and even over-full; it ended up looking like a bronze vase sporting a dead bouquet. Dappa grew most peevish and took to waving the torch over the touch-hole, and feinting toward it. Van Hoek was oblivious, and did not even turn around when White’s second shot screamed past his shoulder and buried itself in the embankment behind them. But he saw it strike, and pointed it out to Dappa, who spat on his fingers and reached into the cave it had made, then yanked out a fizzing net-work of fuze. He flung it on the ground and cursed. Van Hoek finally left his blocking-position before the Haubitz’s barrel and used his hook to catch the bail of their water-bucket; he went over to the fizzing and writhing fuze, and doused it. While he was thus occupied Dappa put fire to their Haubitz and got off their second shot; it struck the ground just at the base of the embankment behind White and Woodruff, and a couple of yards to the right of them. Instead of burying itself in the earth, this one caromed straight up in the air and disappeared. Several seconds later, having apparently risen to an apogee and begun to drop, it exploded perhaps ten yards above the ground, and not terribly far from White and Woodruff. But they had marked its ascent and descent, with avid finger-pointing, and scampered clear of it and flung themselves to the ground. They were not injured.

Van Hoek was disgusted. “I’ve a mind to walk down there and put one through White’s skull,” he said.

“Why? It is my duel, not yours,” said Dappa, busy again.

Van Hoek began to rake up such sticks and dry grass as had escaped his first sweep. “As your second, it is my job to have a go at your opponent if he tries to run away. White ran away.”

“It is a gray area,” Dappa averred. “It is expected of a ship-captain in battle that he’ll not flinch when broadsides come at him; on the other hand, if a fizzing shell lands nearby, he is not expected to stand there and watch it burst.”

“Hmmph,” said van Hoek, repeating his performance of barrel-stuffing; and this time, as if to add emphasis, he ripped off his auburn periwig and jammed it down the throat of the gun to tamp down all of the loose vegetation he’d emptied into it. A shell flew past him. This time, White and Woodruff had used less powder yet, and so it had already caromed once off the ground by the time it reached them. It went by knee-high and executed a loop-the-loop off the hillside, landing directly in front of Dappa: a black, smoking sphere with a burning fuze projecting from one side. It was rolling down-hill, but too slowly for their purposes, and so Dappa bolted toward it and kicked out wildly; missed; drew his leg back, and gave it a hard shove. In almost the same motion he spun round and flung himself full-length on the ground. Van Hoek meanwhile had turned his back on the thing and embraced the powder-keg, spreading out his coat around him to make it a curtain against sparks. The shell rolled and toddled down-hill for one, two, three heartbeats and then blew up.

It was answered a moment later by a second boom, for it seemed that a spark had flown close enough to their Haubitz to ignite the powder in the touch-hole, and fired the weapon prematurely. Dappa and van Hoek were both several moments getting to their feet, as each had suffered survivable wounds from shell-fragments or pebbles, and both were a bit stunned. They saw their shell explode over the Thames.

The blast of White’s shell had knocked their Haubitz askew. A trail of smouldering sticks and grass was, however, spread down the hillside like a road of fire, and Woodruff could be seen kicking furiously at something that emitted dense smoke, and kept adhering to his foot in a way that made him very cross: the wig. White meanwhile was making preparations to re-load.

It was then that they ceased to exist. Dappa’s and van Hoek’s view of the Bulwark was eliminated, replaced by a sphere of flame with ugly dark bits spiraling out of it. Once again they threw themselves to the ground. Burning debris began to shower their position. They jumped up and ran, putting distance between themselves and their stock-piles of explodables. They made rendezvous at the scaffold, which was gaily decorated by the prostrate forms of several Beefeaters who had all sought cover there. About then a ripping BABABA sounded from below as all of White’s shells detonated. This was the signal for Dappa and van Hoek to depart at a sprightly pace for the waterfront. If any of the Yeomen of the Guard lifted his head to watch, he saw them simply disappear into a storm-front of powder-smoke that now obnubilated the lower reaches of the Hill.

Within that immense pall, however, it was possible to see for short distances. And so Dappa and van Hoek paused, or at least slowed down, as they passed by the erstwhile position of White and Woodruff. They did not see anything identifiable as a body; though Dappa was fairly certain he had tripped over someone’s spine.

“Here’s a marvel,” van Hoek said reflectively. He was staring at something down on the scorched earth, using his hook in lieu of an index finger to count several small objects, over and over again. “One, two, three, four, five! One, two, three, four, five!”

“What is it?”

“There are too many ears!” van Hoek exclaimed.

Dappa went over and touched heads with him. There were, indeed, five ears: four all together, all wizened, and, off to one side, a fifth, which looked fresh, as it had blood on it.

“This is explainable, actually,” said Dappa, kicking some dirt over the four dry ones, “but not now. Let’s back to my ship, if you please. The Yeomen, the Watch, the Dragoons: they’ll be all over us!”

“They’ll all be scared shitless.”

“The point is granted; but I really am eager to see my ship again.”

Dappa and van Hoek still could not see far, but they both stumbled down-hill: an infallible trick for locating oceans. “I hope this means you have finally put an end to this writing foolishness. It has grown most tiresome.”

“I have discharged my cannonball. I shan’t be quick to re-load. As a writer, however, I am ever a devoted slave to the Muse, whose privilege it is to command me…”

“Then let’s do get to the ship,” said van Hoek, quickening his pace, “and prepare to sail out on to the high seas where the bitch won’t be able to reach you with any such directions.”