The System of the World

The Launch Prudence
MONDAY, 12 JULY 1714

MR. ORNEY HAD SAID only that Prudence was a Simple and a Virtuous Vessel. No further warning was needed by the other members of the Clubb. They had come down to the stairs this morning laden with cushions, oilskins, umbrellas, spare clothes, food, drink, tobacco, and anti-emeticks. All of them were soon put to use as Prudence wallowed across the Pool of London and made a slow pass upstream before the waterfront of the Borough, struggling against the rain-swollen flow of the Thames towards London Bridge, which taunted them cruelly with visions of pubs and chocolate-houses.

Orney might be oblivious to rain, but, anticipating that the others would whinge about it, he had pitched a tarpaulin over Prudence’s midships. This was waterproof except along the seams; wherever anyone touched it; where it had been patched; round any of its constellations of moth-holes; and wherever else it happened to leak.

Prudence was, in essence, a fat cargo hold partitioned off from the rest of the universe by a carapace of bent planks, with a nod, here and there, to requirements of propulsion: diverse oar-locks, and a stubby mast with elementary rigging. There was no wind to-day-the rain was a steady soaker, not a lashing howler-and so he had hired four Rotherhithe lads to kneel on the deck and stir up the Thames with oars. The oarsmen were situated out-board, along the gunwales, sheltered by naught but big-brimmed hats of waxy canvas. They looked as wretched as any Mediterranean galley-slaves. Daniel, Orney, Kikin, and Threader were in the hold, where Orney had improvised a bench by throwing a plank between two clapped-out sawbucks. When this was augmented by cushions, it rose just high enough that the four Clubb members could sit on it, all in a line like worshippers on a pew, and gaze out through a narrow horizontal slit between the fraying and weeping tarp-hem above, and the bashed and tar-slopped gunwale below. This would make them perfectly invisible to any who might spy on them from the shore or the Bridge, as Orney had pointed out several times already, and would persist in doing until a plurality of the Clubb agreed with him, or told him to shut up. Orney used Prudence to make runs up and down and across the river for supplies, e.g., oakum, brown stuff, tar, and pitch, all of which the hold smelled like. There were other vessels like it scooting about the Pool.

“The point is granted,” Mr. Threader said finally. “As a means to reconnoiter the demesne of the infamous Mr. Knockmealdown, it is better than packing a water-taxi with gentlemen in periwigs and sending them forth on a sunny day with parasols and spyglasses.”

“There!” cried Daniel, who was tilting a hand-drawn map toward the feeble light lapping in through the slit, and menacing it with a Royal Society burning-glass the size of a dessert plate. This artifact, which was encrusted with a Rokoko frame and handle, had been a gift to Natural Philosophy from some member of the House of Tuscany. Beneath its splendour, the map looked very mean. The map had been cobbled together, as Daniel had explained, from rumors, recollections, and suppositions given to him by John Doe, Sean Partry, Peter Hoxton, Hannah Spates’s father, and any of their drinking-companions who’d been in earshot when Daniel had inter-viewed them. “Mark yon brick warehouse,” Daniel continued, indicating Bermondsey.

“There’s been naught but brick warehouses for two hours,” Threader pointed out, in a deprecating tone that moved Mr. Orney to muse:

“A man of the City, who lives off Byzantine manipulations of the Commerce of the Realm-like a fly, influencing the movements of a noble draught-horse by chewing on its arse-cannot perceive the beauty of this prospect. He will prefer the waterfront of Southwark: Bankside, and the Clink. For these were fashioned during indolent times, for the pleasure of idle wretches narcotized by Popery: being a succession of theatres, whorehouses, and baiting-pits strung together by a corniche well-made for preening strollers, beaux, fops, pimps, nancy-boys, et cetera. A lovely prospect doth it make-to a certain type of observer. But below the bridge, most of what meets the eye has been built in recent times-an age of industry and commerce. The same fellow who adores the Vanity Fair of Southwark will complain that Bermondsey and Rotherhithe are a monotonous succession of warehouses, all built to the same plan. But an industrious chap who lives by simple and honest labour will see a new Wonder of the World, not without a sort of beauty.”

“The only wonder of the world I have seen to-day is a man who can speak for ten minutes about his own virtuousness, without stopping to draw breath,” returned Mr. Threader.

“Gentlemen!” Daniel almost shouted, “I draw your notice to the Church of St. Olave, near the southern terminus of the Bridge.”

“Does Mr. Knockmealdown also control that?” asked Mr. Kikin.

“No, though he is not above posting look-outs in the belfry,” Daniel said. “But I point it out only as a land-mark. Directly below it, as seen from here, along the riverfront, may be seen a pair of wharves, of equal width, separated by a warehouse. The one on the right is Chamberlain’s Wharf. The other is the Bridge Yard. Each communicates with streets in the hinter-land by a labyrinth of crazed alley-ways, whose tortuous wrigglings are only hinted at by this map. The warehouse between ’em, likewise, though it presents to us a straight and narrow front, rambles and ramifies as it grows back into the Borough-like-”

“A tumor spreading into a healthy organ?” suggested Mr. Kikin.

“A hidden fire, spreading invisibly from house to house, sensible from the street only by a smoak-pall of pick-pockets, outraged women, and abandoned property?” tried Threader.

“The abcesses of the Small-Pox, which present themselves first as a diaspora of tiny blisters, but soon increase until they have merged with one another to flay the patient alive?” said Mr. Orney.

For Daniel had employed all of these similitudes and more while drawing their attention to other East London Company facilities.

The oarsmen were giving them curious looks.

“I was going to liken it to a tree-stump in a garden,” Daniel said forbearingly, “which to outward appearances stands alone, and may be easily plucked out; but a few minutes’ work with a mattock suffice to prove it has a vast hidden root-system.”

“Is it in any sense different from any of the other such places you’ve pointed to?” Threader asked.

“Without a doubt. Being so near the Bridge, it is convenient to the City, and so it is where Mr. Knockmealdown conducts a certain type of commerce: trade in objects small enough to be carried across the Bridge by hand, yet valuable enough to be worth the trouble. Whereas bulk contraband, as we’ve seen, is handled downriver.”

“It certainly enjoys a fair prospect of the Bridge,” observed Mr. Kikin, who had half-risen to a beetle-like squatting posture so that he could swivel his head back and forth.

“As does the Bridge of it,” Daniel said. “The place is called the Tatler-Lock, which means, the Watch-Fence. We shall learn more of it in coming days!”

“Is that the end of the reconaissance?” Mr. Orney asked. “For we are getting into the turbulence of the Bridge, which on this rainy day, threatens to upset our boat.”

“Or at least our stomachs,” said Threader.

“Can we make it to Chapel Pier?” Daniel asked, pointing north across the flow to a mole that had been built upon the largest of the Bridge’s twenty starlings, midway along the span. “For I have something to shew the Clubb, not far from it, that shall be of great interest.”

“I vote we make the attempt,” said Mr. Threader, “on the condition that Dr. Waterhouse desist from any more such foreboding, vague, oracular adumbrations, and simply come out and tell us directly what he means.”

“Hear, hear!” said Orney, and after collecting a nod from Kikin, directed the oarsmen to turn north and cut across the river, allowing the current to sweep them away from the Bridge. Following which they were to turn Prudence’s blunt bow into the flow and work up to Chapel Pier. They executed their first turn directly in front of the Tatler-Lock, which Daniel gazed at raptly, as if he had a whole poke full of nicked watches he longed to fence there.

“Next order of business,” said Mr. Threader, “to extract from Dr. Waterhouse an explanation of why we are here; which ought to include some intelligence as to why our Clubb’s treasury, so prudently and jealously husbanded these months, is of a sudden brought to such a desperate pass.”

“Our newest member-though he could not join us to-day, and forwards his regrets-will presently help make it whole,” Daniel assured him.

“That is fortunate-if true-for our other absent member is in arrears.”

“Mr. Arlanc has provided us with a wealth of information instead,” Daniel returned.

“Then why is he not here, further to enrich us?”

“He does not know how useful he has been. I mean to keep him ill-informed.”

“And the rest of us, too, ’twould seem,” returned Mr. Orney, earning him a rare nod from Mr. Threader. As for Mr. Kikin, he had gone into the mode of the Long-Suffering Russian, smoking his pipe and saying naught.

“John Doe confessed he was no madman,” Daniel said-for during lulls he had already narrated to his fellow passengers the first part of the tale of his and Isaac’s raid on Bedlam. “But he said there was nothing we could do to him, to induce him to tell what he knew.”

“A familiar predicament,” mumbled Kikin around his pipe-stem. “He is more scared of Jack than of you. I know some tortures-”

“Sir!” huffed Mr. Threader, “this is England!”

“We bribe people here,” Daniel said. “The negotiations were lengthy, the tale tedious. Suffice it to say that according to the parish records John Doe is dead, and a grave is being dug for him in Bethlem Burying Ground.”

“How did you kill him?” Kikin inquired politely.

“The hole will be plugged with a cadaver from the cellars of the Royal Society, where it will never be missed. A man having marked similarities to John Doe, but a different name, is en route to Bristol. He will ship out to Carolina next week, to work for some years as an indentured servant. And as reward for having seen to all of these arrangements-which were complicated and expensive-we have had from him a full account of why he was knocking holes in the plasterwork of Bedlam.”

“And may we hear it? Or will you, too, insist on being made a farm-hand in Carolina?” Threader said.

“That will not be necessary, thank you,” Daniel returned politely. “John Doe let us know that he was only one of several Hoisters, Dubbers, and Mill-Layers-these are different specialties under the broad heading of House-Breakers-who took it upon themselves to respond to an Opportunity bruited about the Tatler-Lock and other such kens by a personage whose identity was not announced but who was suspected to be Jack the Coiner. This personage let it be known he was interested in certain buildings-specifically for what might be concealed in the walls of those buildings. Anyone who entered a building on the list, and extracted aught from its walls, was to take it to the Tatler-Lock and give the personage an opportunity to buy it. He is only interested in certain items, not others-so each must be carefully appraised before ’twill be paid for.”

“Jack must desire these things-whatever they are-quite ardently, if he is truly willing to expose himself thus,” said Orney.

“Perhaps this gives us a means to entrap him!” said Threader.

“Alas, it is not quite so simple,” Daniel said. “For the goods were to be fenced through an Arabian auction.”

Mr. Kikin was amused by the blank expressions on the faces of Orney and Kikin. “Shall I explain it?” he offered to Daniel. “For it is how Russians trade with Turks, even when we are at war with them.”

“Prithee.”

“When the Arab wishes to trade in dangerous circumstances-for example, across the Sahara with the Negro-he drives his caravan south to some oasis, and goes out some distance into the open waste, and piles up on the sand those goods he offers for trade. Then he withdraws to some remove beyond spear-range, yet still nigh enough that he is able to keep watch over his goods. The Negro now feels safe in venturing to the same place, where he piles up nearby those goods he offers in exchange. He withdraws and the Arab ventures out again, inspects the Negro’s offerings, and adds to or takes from his pile. And so it goes, back and forth, until one is satisfied, which he betokens by packing up and hauling away the counterpart’s offerings. The other waits until he has withdrawn, then goes out a last time to take possession of what remains.”

“Provided one is willing to do without the exotic accoutrements of dunes, camels, et cetera, the same can be done in any empty room of the Tatler-Lock,” Daniel said. “The Hoister and the Client need never see each other. They need only trust Mr. Knockmealdown-which, be it prudent or no, they do.”

“I have a foreboding of what it is that you intend,” Mr. Threader said, “since you are, as of three days ago, in possession of loot from the walls of Bedlam. But do you not think that a Fellow of the Royal Society, if he participates in this Arabian auction, shall be noticed by the sort of man who frequents the kens of Mr. Knockmealdown, and that word of the anomaly shall soon reach the ears of Jack?”

“The plan was proposed by none other than Sir Isaac himself,” Daniel said. “He likened it to the hunter’s stratagem whereby a goat or other expendable beast is tethered to a stake out in a clearing in the woods, to draw predatory animals to a place where they may be easily shot. We know not what Jack seeks, but very likely it is included among the goods we have found in Bedlam-therefore we have what is needed to establish a Stake-out of our own. Mr. Threader avers that this will never work if one of us attempts it. Sir Isaac has foreseen this objection. He suggests that we adopt his practice of going into the ken disguised as members of the criminal element.”

This notion produced frigid silence among the Clubb. Before the others could recover their wits and throw Daniel overboard, he continued: “Fortunately we have already an understanding with Mr. Partry, who is as comfortable in such kens as Mr. Orney is in church. He has agreed to act as our representative in the auction.”

“That is even worse!” Kikin cried. “Partry hunts and prosecutes thieves for a living!”

“No, no, no. You still don’t understand,” said Mr. Threader, finding Kikin’s slowness just a bit distasteful. “The whole point of thief-takers is that they are themselves criminals-else, how could they get anything accomplished?”

“So you are going to give some valuables to a thief, entrusting him to take them to the most colossal thieves’ market in Christendom, where he will sell them at auction to another thief-?”

“He is a very reputable thief,” returned Mr. Threader. “I really do not understand you, sir-you are the one who recruited him.”

At this Kikin could only roll his eyes, in the universal manner of foreigners in collision with Anglo-Saxon logic. He sighed and withdrew to his end of the plank.

“The Stake-out commences to-day,” Daniel announced, patting a wooden chest on his lap. “We are going to make rendezvous with Partry at our head-quarters on London Bridge.”

“That’s another thing-I see that you have arrogated to yourself the authority to lease real estate on behalf of the Clubb!” Threader said.

It was Daniel’s turn to roll his eyes. “Mr. Partry and Mr. Hoxton have, on our behalf, evicted a whore and twenty million bedbugs from a room above a tavern. If that is leasing real estate, then Prudence is the Spanish Armada.”

“For the amount you have spent, we could have gotten the Spanish Armada,” Orney returned, “but I supposed good old Prudence were less apt to draw fire from the Tower.”

THE MEN WHO WERE PASSING the time of day under umbrellas and shed-roofs on and around Chapel Pier were oblivious to the charms and virtues of Prudence, and some even ventured out into the rain and tried to wave her off. Most of them were watermen who envisioned that the bulky launch would block half the Pier and create an Impediment to Commerce for some indefinite number of hours. They had ample opportunity to say so, by words and gestures, as Mr. Orney’s stolid oarsmen fought up-current, closing on the Pier’s butt at slower than walking speed. But after a little while the inhospitable watermen were joined by a man bigger than the rest, who ambled to and fro along the brink of the Pier, striking up a chat with each waterman he found. These exchanges tended to be brief, and always ended in the same manner: the obstreperous waterman turned away and withdrew to the shelter of the Bridge. By the time Prudence worked close enough for Orney to cast a line onto the Pier, this bulky cove was the only man left. He intercepted the lead with a flailing arm, passed it thrice around a bitt, and leaned back on it, inexorably ratcheting Prudence forward until she bumped against pier-side.

“Mind the Gap,” Saturn suggested. The passengers did, and crossed it without any fatalities. Orney sent Prudence back to Rotherhithe. Saturn led them over the stony lid of the Pier to an uneven stair, perhaps under desultory repairs, perhaps ne’er finished. They ascended it in the hunched, splay-armed gait of drunks on ice. This got them to the upper world of the Bridge: an ordinary London shop-street that just happened to be thrust up into the air on stone stilts. To their left it was vaulted over, which is to say, the Bridge itself was bridged, by an ancient Chapel. To their right spread the open fire-break called The Square. Following Saturn’s lead, they turned their backs on this and on London, and proceeded southwards, as if they were going off to the Borough to inspect the Tatler-Lock from the street. But far short of this-only a few score paces beyond the Chapel-Saturn sidestepped into a medieval doorway too narrow to admit him square-shouldered. Bracketed to the front of the building above this was a contraption consisting of a wooden platform, about the size of a cutting-board, impaled on a vertical spar, all cobwebbed with lank strands and net-works of hempen cord: a copy in miniature of ship’s rigging, rotted by weather and deranged by nest-building birds. Standing on the platform was a miniature figure of a man, raising a grog-ration; and painted below upon the wall, for the entertainment of literate customers, was the name of the establishment: Ye Main-Topp.

Pursuing Saturn through this door, the Clubb found themselves in a public house, whose floor had been strewn with fresh hop-vines in a plucky but hopeless bid to freshen the air. Some half a dozen patrons were scattered against the walls as if they’d been blown into their current positions by the explosion of a shell in the center of the room. They were not mere seamen, for they had shoes; but neither were they Captains, for they wanted wigs. It could be inferred that the Main-Topp catered to the low middle class of Bridge people: ships’ mates, watermen, hackney-drivers, amp;c. Several conversations were put in recess so that drinkers could devote all their powers of concentration to the newcomers. The barkeep, barricaded in his corner fortress, gave them all a nod. The Clubb nodded back and muttered diffident greetings, having no idea what sort of story Saturn had told the proprietor about the strange guests who’d soon be arriving. A door in the back of the room led to a steep and lightless staircase, which had no need of a banister, as a normal man could arrest his fall simply by squaring his shoulders against both sides and inhaling. In some way Saturn squirted to the top of it and through another elf-door into a room.

Though in truth ’twas not the Room they saw first, but what lay beyond its windows, which faced to the east: the Pool of London, so crowded with vessels of all sizes and descriptions that it struck the eye not so much as a body of liquid water as a morass, congested and nearly rafted over by floating wood. Aboard Prudence they had been maneuvering through it-which was to say, they’d been part of it-for a few hours, and so one might not expect the scene to’ve drawn their notice as strongly as it did. But viewed from above, and framed thusly in the lattice-work of the windows, it gave an entirely different impression; the hundreds of ships, variously bobbing, rocking, steaming, smoking, loading, unloading, undergoing diverse mendings, splicings, paintings, caulkings, and swabbings, shrugging off the rain from above while holding back and riding upon Thames-pressure from below, seemed as if they had been arrayed thus solely to be viewed by the Clubb from these windows. As if some tyrant prince had conceived an enthusiasm for seascape-painting and commanded that all the Realm’s trees be cut and all its men pressed into service to create a striking Scene below his easel.

The room’s floor was simply the obverse of the tavern’s ceiling. It was fashioned of planks, generously spaced, so that stripes of light and fumaroles of tobacco-smoke leaked up through the fissures.

Over them was the roof of the building. It was thatched-a quaint touch never seen any more in parts of the city that had been reached by the Fire. This drew undue notice, for some moments, from the Clubb, who stood gaping up at it as if to say, Ah yes, I have heard that once we made shelters out of grass.

Buildings on London Bridge tended to be made by trial and error. Starting with a scheme that was more or less sane, in the broad sense that it had not fallen down yet, proprietors would enlarge their holdings by reaching out over the water with cantilevered add-ons, buttressed with diagonal braces. This was the trial phase. In the next, or error phase, the additions would topple into the Thames and wash up days later in Flanders, sometimes with furniture and dead people in them. Those that did not fall into the river were occupied, and eventually used to support further enhancements. Countless such iterations, spread thick over centuries, had made the Bridge as built-up as the laws of God and the ingenuity of Man would allow.

Daniel, venturing across springy floor-planks to this room’s eastern extremity, found himself embraced by windows-for this had originally been a sort of experimental balcony that had been encased in glass after it had failed to collapse for several consecutive years. Like a curd held up out of the whey by a strainer, he was being kept out of the Thames by perhaps a finger’s thickness of gappy planking. Between the boards he could see a gut of the river clashing and foaming along the edge of a starling. Vertigo-Hooke’s nemesis-claimed his attention for a few moments. Then he got the better of it and turned to gaze southeast at the Borough. A few moments sufficed to identify the Tatler-Lock, whose facade of blackened bricks rose up from the bank no more than two hundred yards away. For the better viewing of which, a perspective-glass lay on the windowsill. Above it, a single diamond-shaped pane had been punched out to allow for clear viewing. Hidden as it was beneath the furry, dribbling brow of the thatched eave, this would never be noted from the Tatler-Lock.

“Enjoy a good look, then,” said a new voice. “The glass is as good as any at your Society.”

Daniel turned to spy Sean Partry sitting crosslegged in a back corner, surrounded by ironmongery, tamping tobacco into a pipe.

Daniel picked up the glass, telescoped it to full length, and set its wide end into the vee of the missing diamond, which had thoughtfully been lined with a rag. This held it perfectly steady, while allowing him to swivel the narrow end to and fro. Putting his eye to it, and making some small adjustments, he was rewarded with a magnified view of some windows on the upper storey of the Tatler-Lock. Several were boarded over, or else veiled with remnants of sails. One was but a vacant window-frame. Through this could be seen the floor-boards of an empty room, starry with bird-shit.

“There is little to see,” Partry admitted. “Mr. Knockmealdown has a violent aversion to eavesdroppers.”

“It is very good,” was Daniel’s verdict. “The hunter who stakes out bait, must establish a nearby blind, from which to observe his quarry. But not too close, lest the beast nose him, and be put on his guard. This room shall do. And you are correct, Mr. Partry, about the glass. The opticks were ground by a master.”

A concentration of dust-bunnies and feather-shards marked the location of the previous tenant’s Bed and Engine of Revenue. This had been cast into the river and supplanted by more furniture of the plank-and-cask school, on which Threader and Kikin had already claimed seats. Orney moved towards the windows to mark Prudence’s progress downriver but pulled up short as he felt the balcony losing altitude under his weight.

“What have you told the proprietor about who we are, and what we are doing?” Mr. Threader was asking Saturn.

“That you are Royal Society men making observations of the daily currency of the river.”

“He’s not going to believe that, is he?”

“You didn’t ask me what he believes. You asked me what I told him. What he believes, is that you are City men investigating a case of insurance fraud by spying on a certain ship anchored out in the Pool.”

“Fine-our true purpose shall not be suspected as long as he is telling people that.”

“Oh no, he’s not telling people that. He’s telling them that you are a Sect of Dissenters forced to meet in secret because of the recent passage of Bolingbroke’s Schism Act.”

“Let the blokes in the tap-room think we are Dissenters then, is all I’m trying to say.”

“That’s not what they think. They think that you are Sodomites,” Partry said. This silenced Threader for a while.

“No wonder we are paying such exorbitant rent,” reflected Mr. Kikin, “considering the vast scope of activities going on in this one room.”

Partry had spread a trapezoid of sail-cloth over the planks in the corner of the room and was sitting on it. He’d have looked like a tailor, except that he was working with the tools of the thief-taker’s trade: an array of manacles, fetters, neck-rings, chains, bolts, and padlocks, which he was sorting, inspecting, and oiling. Probably this had done nothing to improve their reputation among the regulars drinking porter six feet below.

“What is it we are to put up for auction to-day?” Partry inquired.

Daniel stepped away from the window, handing the glass to Mr. Orney, and retrieved a small wooden chest he had earlier set down on a barrel-head. “Since you are a connoisseur of Opticks, Mr. Partry, you’ll find this of interest. It is a collection of lenses, some no larger than mouse’s eyes, but ground to perfection.”

Partry narrowed his eyes. “You think Jack the Coiner has gone to so much trouble to get a box of lenses?”

“I think he desires Hooke-stuff. I know not what, or why. By proffering these, we show him our bona fides. That is, we prove that we have Hooke-stuff to sell, for only Hooke made lenses like these. Whether Jack buys them or not, we’ll have his attention after to-day.”

“To-day, or tomorrow, or a week hence,” Partry corrected him. “There is no telling how long this will sit in the Tatler-Lock before Jack, or his deputy, comes round to appraise it.” With that Partry accepted the box from Daniel, and tucked it under a sort of pea-coat he had put on as protection from the rain. He descended the stairs. Saturn followed after, and through the floor the Clubb could hear him asking the proprietor to send up four mugs of flip.

And so the Stake-out commenced. Daniel dragged an empty crate over to the balcony and sat down where he could keep an eye on the Tatler-Lock. It was unlikely there’d be anything to see, but he felt he ought to do this for the sake of form. Four mugs of steaming flip arrived on the shoulder of a fascinated bar-maid. It was, as a rule, a winter beverage, but suited them in to-day’s weather. Orney produced an octavo Bible from his pocket and began memorizing it, oblivious to displays of withering scorn being directed his way by Mr. Threader. Kikin put on glasses and began to read an impressive document in Cyrillic letters. Threader grubbed a pencil out of his pocket and began to dash off notes using a barrel-head as desk. Daniel had not thought to bring anything to pass the time. Partry’s hobby of fetters and chains held no allure. But Peter Hoxton, who was avidly literate, had already strewn reading materials about the place, viz. an English translation of Spinoza. This was too weighty for Daniel’s mood. He picked up a libel instead.

A Diplomatick OVERTURE from the Queen of Bonny, to Her Britannic Majesty translated from the Africk by DAPPA, Ambassador to the Liberty of the Clink.