Historical Novels

"My father, Drake, educated me for one reason alone," Daniel finally says. "To assist him in his preparations for the Apocalypse. He reckoned it would occur in the year 1666—Number of the Beast and all that... When I came of age, I would be a man of the cloth, with the full university education, well versed in many dead classical languages, so that I could stand on the Cliffs of Dover and personally welcome Jesus Christ back to England in fluent Aramaic."

"Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was."

""But Enoch knew that the alchemists of Europe were men just like Clarke--hoping, and dreading, that Enoch would return with the news that some English savant, working in isolation, had found the trick of refining, for the base, dark, cold, essential foecal matter of which the world was made, the Philosophick Mercury--the pure living essense of God's power and presence in the world--the key to the transmutation of metals, the attainment of immortal life and perfect wisdom."

"Enoch had made himself something of an expert on longevity...had tried to develop the knack of edging around people's perceptions like one of those dreams that does not set itself firmly in memory, and is flushed into oblivion by the first thoughts and sensations of the day."

"The old stars-and-moons act was a good way to farm the unduly trusting. But the need to raise money in the first place seemed to call into question one's own ability to turn lead into gold."

"So you see, Ben, journeying via Paris might have been roundabout, but it was infinitely safer. Besides, people in Paris had been pestering me, too, and they had more money than Mr. Clarke. So Mr. Clarke had to get in line, as they say in New York."

"Do I look like a schoolmaster to you?"

"Among fine stone sea-merchants' houses, there is a brick-red door with a bunch of grapes dangling above it. Enoch goes through that door and finds himself in a good tavern. Men with swords and expensive clothes turn round to look at him. Slavers, merchants of rum and molasses and tea and tobacco, and captains of the ships that carry those things. It could be any place in the world, for the same tavern is in London, Cadiz, Smyrna, and Manila, and the same men are in it. None of them cares, supposing they even knew, that witches are being hanged five minutes' walk away."

"He hadn't really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things—hangings included—with a blunt, blank efficiency that's admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish, they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is because most of them came over on ships."

"Particular mention must go to Fernand Braudel, to whose work this book may be considered a discursive footnote. … Of particular note is Sir Winston Spencer Churchill’s six-volume biography of Marlborough, which people who are really interested in this period of history should read, and people who think that I am too long-winded should weigh."

"Why Baroque? Because it is set in the Baroque, and it IS baroque. Why Cycle? Because I am trying to avoid the T-word ("trilogy"). In my mind this work is something like 7 or 8 connected novels. These have been lumped together into three volumes because it is more convenient from a publishing standpoint, but they could just as well have been put all together in a single immense volume or separated into 7 or 8 separate volumes. So to slap the word "trilogy" on it would be to saddle it with a designation that is essentially bogus. Having said that, I know everyone's going to call it a trilogy anyway."

"“And so to make such a bother about one chap seems as bizarre, idolatrous, fetishistic, and beside the point to me, as Hindoos venerating Cows.” ”He lived in the neighborhood,” said Mr. Threader, meaning Windsor. ”A local connexion that was not even mentioned in the homily—not, I say, in the first, the second, or the third hour of it. Rather, I heard much talk that sounded to me like politics.” ”To you. Yes. But to me, Dr. Waterhouse, it sounded like church. Whereas, if we were to go there—" and Mr. Threader pointed at a barn in a field to the north side of Tyburn Road, surrounded by carriages, and emanating four-part harmony; i.e., a Meeting-House of some Gathered Church “—we would hear much that would sound like church to you, and politics to me.”"

"But when they had got through the obligatory stuff in the beginning of the service, and the Minister finally had an opportunity to stand up and share what was on his mind, it turned out that all of this fasting, humiliation, and wearing of rough garments was to bewail an event that Daniel had personally witnessed, from a convenient perch on his father’s shoulders, sixty-five years earlier."

"Winged-footed Mercury, messenger of the Gods, must have very little to do nowadays, as everyone in Europe seemed to be worshipping Jesus. If he could somehow be tracked down and put on retainer and put to work flitting back and forth from city to country and back, carrying information about who owed what to whom, and if one, furthermore, had rooms full of toiling Computers, or (engaging in a bit of Speculative Fiction here) a giant Arithmetickal Engine for balancing the accounts, then most transactions could be settled by moving a quill across a page, and movement of silver across England could be cut back to the minimum needed to settle the balance between city and country."

"To a merchant, England was a necklace of sea-ports surrounding a howling impoverished waste. As with a burning log on a hearth, all the warmth, color and heat lay in the outer encrustation of ruby-red coals. The interior was cold, damp, dark, and dead. ... And yet England did have an interior. Daniel had quite forgotten this until he had been awakened by the sheep-teeth right in front of his face."

"The most important occupants of country estates were not men, but sheep, and the most important activity was conversion of grass into wool; for wool, exported, brought revenue, and revenue, farmed, enable gentle fold to pay rent, buy wine, and gamble in London, all winter long."

"To him, it was monstrously strange that an aged Natural Philosopher should materialize all of a sudden in the middle of Dartmoor, in a coonskin wrapper, and croak out a few words that would cause every gentleman in a twenty-mile radius to liquidate other holdings, and buy stock in that commercial Lunatick Asylum, the Proprietors of the Engine for Raising Water by Fire."

"“But those blows do not hurt me, because I am followed around—some would say, haunted—by a long train of angels and miracles that account for my having survived to such a great age. I think that this explains why I was chosen for this work: either I am living a charmed life, or else I have overstayed my welcome on this Planet; either way, my destiny’s in London.”"

"Daniel declined the tobacco with a wave of his hand. "One day that Indian weed will kill more white men, than white men have killed Indians.""

"“The Druids loved to set great stones on end,” commented the Earl. “For what purpose, I cannot imagine.” "You have answered the question by asking it.”"

"The kings of France and of the Vagabonds were alone together; the former had made a great show of dismissing his glorious courtiers, who had made a great show of being astonished…. ”You know,” said Jack, “I was a King for a while in Hindoostan, and my subjects would get worked up into a lather about a potato, which to them was worth as much as a treasure chest. At first I’d want to know everything about the potato in question, and I would take a large stake in the matter, but towards the end of my reign—“ Here Jack rolled his eyes, as Frenchmen frequently did during encounters with Englishmen. LeRoy seemed to take his meaning very clearly. “It is the same with every King.”"

"“But, cousine, I had always believed that you had only affected an interest in the Black Arts, when it was fashionable. That you considered it all perfect nonsense.” “You have been furious at me, Édouard, for deeming it all nonsense! For to call Satan a figment of man’s phant’sy is but one step from saying the same of God, is it not?” “Indeed, cousine, I should rather you were a sincere Satanist than a pretend one; for the former recognizes God’s majesty, and may be reformed, while the latter is an atheist, and doomed to the Lake of Fire.”"

"“Daemonic necromancy is so tedious, and fraught with unintended consequences,” said Oyonnax, “when syrup of poppies does the job perfectly well.""

"“I do hope you'll reconsider, now, all of the unpleasant things you have had to say in the past about Satan.” This was how Anne-Marie de Crépy, duchesse d’Oyonnax, greeted her cousin when his eyelids — which had been closed, three days ago, by a Jesuit father in Versailles — twitched open."

"Confusion is a kind of bewitchment — a moment when what we supposed we understood loses its form and runs together and becomes one with other things that, though they might have had different outward forms, shared the same inward nature."

"Tactics, are what the Duchess of Arcachon has been pursuing; Baron von Hacklheber has quite neglected tactics for strategy." "Who won?" "Neither, for neither pure tactics nor pure strategy constitutes a wise course for a Prince, or a Princess."

""Most come to terms with Death sooner or later. My failure to do so was an unintended consequence of a pact that my family had made with Enoch Root. In order for him to dwell among humankind he must don identities, and later, before his longevity draws notice, shed them. My father knew about Enoch — knew a little of what he was…I was in some sense the quickest, for I came to know that Enoch was not like us. And I guessed that this was a matter of his having discovered some Alchemical receipt that conferred life eternal. A reasonable guess — but wrong. At any rate, it fired my interest in Alchemy until of late.”"

"“I had got the news that the Elector and his whore had died,” said Lothar mildly, in French, “and wondered if a visit from the Reaper might not be in store for me as well.”"

"“Pay attention, that’s all,” Eliza said. “Notice things. Connect what you’ve noticed. Connect it into a picture. Think of how the picture might be changed; and act to change it. Some of your acts may turn out to have been foolish, but others will reward you in surprising ways; and in the meantime, simply by being active instead of passive, you have a kind of immunity that’s hard to explain.”"

"If it eases your mind, know that the confusion of which you speak is the death-throes of an old system. The English, being a small and disorderly country, understood this a few years earlier than the French…The tide of quicksilver that rose up in that country around the time of Plague and Fire produced a generation of more than normally acute minds."

"It made her wonder: Did the King know everything? The King continued: “Monsieur le comte d’Avaux has, as usual, spoken wisely. It follows that if we are to baffle Envy’s devotees, we should celebrate all that is magnificent in this Realm: with funerals, the magnificence that has passed, and with weddings, the magnificence that is yet to come. Let it be so.” And it was so."

"You do not have a rival, Fatio. But Isaac Newton does."

""Lord of the Universe, Your humble servants Samuel Pepys and Daniel Waterhouse pray that You shall bless and keep the soul of the late Bishop of Chester, John Wilkins, who, wanting no further purification in the Kidney of the World, went to Your keeping twenty years since. And we give praise and thanks to You for having given us the rational faculties by which the procedure of lithotomy was invented, enabling us, who are further from perfection, to endure longer in this world, urinating freely as the occasion warrants. "Let our urine-streams, gleaming and scintillating in the sun’s radiance as they pursue their parabolic trajectories earthward, be as an outward and visible sign of Your Grace, even as the knobby stones hidden in our coat-pockets remind us that we are all earth, and that we are sinners. Do you have anything to add, Mr. Waterhouse?” “Only, Amen!” “Amen. Damn me, I am late for my next conspiracy! Godspeed, Daniel.”"

"“This is the world you have made,” Mr. White had said to Daniel — blaming him somehow for the Glorious Revolution. But Daniel saw it rather differently. This was the world Drake had made, a world where power came of thrift and cleverness and industry, not of birthright, and certainly not of Divine Right. This was the Whig World, and though Drake would have abhorred everything about most of these people, he would have had to admit that he had in a way caused this Juncto."

"Sir Richard Apthorp's Country dwelling was situated about midway between Cambridge and Oxford.... The nearest town of any size was called Bletchley, and Daniel had to stop to ask for directions there, because Sir Richard had in no way made his house an obvious one. This bland countryside seemed oddly well suited for the hiding of secrets in plain sight."

"Roger got a glazed-over look, as he always did when abstract theological matters were dragged into the conversation. Unlike ordinary men, who required several minutes to become fully glazed over, Roger could do it in an instant, as if a window-sash had dropped in front of him from a great height."

"What does it say of us that our commerce is built 'pon forms and figments while that of Spain is built 'pon silver?" "Some would say it speaks to our advancement."

"Few men were big, strong, and reckless enough to pick up Brigitte and toss her, when she was not of a mind to be. This fellow had been, prior to the loss of his arm. As matters stood, they were evenly matched, unless he elected to beat her senseless with the terrible flail first. Eliza thought she could see a tenderness about his eyes. And so a dire, ungainly, loud struggle, destructive of property and of the dignity of the participants, ranged all across the cabin."

"Indeed she made a mental note to ask this question of all prospective employees she interviewed in future: You are on your mistress’s jacht preparing for her petit levée when the vessel is taken by English marines and towed out to sea under fire from shore batteries. Barricaded in a cabin, waiting for a fate worse than death, you are picked up and hurled into the sea by a mysterious one-armed giant who has swung into a window on a rope. Do you (a) struggle bootlessly until you sink and drown, (b) scream until someone rescues you, or (c) dog-paddle to the nearest floating object and wait calmly for your mistress to resolve the difficulty?"

"He was selling us insurance against the contingency that our invasion fails to fail."

"I pray that the question you sent to Dr. Waterhouse has been addressed, to your satisfaction, by the foregoing. If I have failed to satisfy, or (may God forbid it) given offense, I beg you to write back telling me as much, so that I may bend every effort to make it good. For it is my very great honour and pleasure to be your humble and obedient servant. - RAVENSCAR P.S. If your intention is to mint French silver into English coin to pay the French and Irish troops that have been preparing to invade England from around Cherbourg in the third week of May, then I congratulate you on your ingenuity. Delivery of the coins from Mint to Front shall pose a not inconsiderable logistical challenge, and so I make you the following offer: If Admiral Tourville’s invasion-fleet makes it across the Channel without being sunk by the Royal Navy, and if the Papist legion establishes a beachhead on English soil without being destroyed by the Army or torn to bits by an enraged Mobb of English rurals, then I shall personally carry every single one of your coins from the Tower of London to the front in my arse-hole, and Deposit them in some Place where they may be easily Picked Up."

"Teague rhapsodized about Connaught all the time, and did it so convincingly that half the regiment was ready to move there. Bob had taken it with a grain of salt because he knew that Teague had never in his life ventured more than five miles’ distance from London Bridge, and was merely repeating tales told to him by his folk. From which Bob had collected, very early, something that it would have benefited the Partrys to know, namely that Ireland was a mentality, and not a physical place."

"“These distinctions that you draw ’tween noble and common, what is proper and what is not, seem as arbitrary and senseless to me, as the castes and customs of Hindoos would to you,” Eliza returned. “It is in their very irrationality, their arbitrariness, that they are refined,” d’Avaux corrected her. “If the customs of the nobility made sense, anyone could figure them out, and become noble. But because they are incoherent and meaningless, not to mention ever-changing, the only way to know them is to be inculcated with them, to absorb them through the skin. This makes them a coin that is almost impossible to counterfeit.”"

"They tell a story--albeit in a fragmentary and patchwork way--of a sea-change that is spreading across Christendom, in large part because of men like Leibniz, Newton, and Descartes. It is a change in the way men think, and it is the doom of the Inquisition."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo."

"“As soon as it is heated a bright cherry red, the lattice-work dissolves, like sugar in coffee, and the metal becomes brittle and worthless — as the Franks discovered during the Crusades, when we captured fragments of such weapons around Damascus and brought them back to Christendom and tried to find out their secrets in our own forges. Nothing whatsoever was learned, except the depth of our own ignorance — but ever since, we have called this stuff Damascus steel.”"

"Like a few pebbles rattling down into a stoneware bowl, they descended into a rocky crater, maculated with schlock-heaps and filled with a perpetual miasma of woodsmoke. “Even if your taste is abominable, I must grant you credit for consistency,” Jack muttered. “How is it you always end up in the same sort of place?”"

"Just when Jack was convinced that they were utterly lost in the most God-forsaken part of the world, he smelled camels, and they stumbled upon a caravan of Persians headed the same direction. This was a bit like running into a clan of kilted Scotsmen in the middle of the Sahara Desert."

"Jack laughed. “If it’s privacy you want, you’re in the wrong subcontinent.”"

"“Did you bring the thing I asked for?” “We will speak of that later,” Enoch said judiciously. “But I did bring two things you should have asked for, and forgot to.” “Hmm, let me think…I love riddles…a replacement penis, and a keg of decent beer?”"