Read Quicksilver for Free Online

Wilkins’s chambers, and attended meetings of the Experimental Philosophical Clubb. This had beena revelation to him, for during the Civil War, practically nothing had been heard out of England. The savants of Leipzig, Paris, and Amsterdam had begun to think of it as a rock in the high Atlantic, overrun by heavily armed preachers.
    Gazing out Wilkins’s windows, studying the northbound traffic, Enoch had been surprised by the number of private traders: adventuresome merchants, taking advantage of the cessation of the Civil War to travel into the country and deal with farmers in the country, buying their produce for less than what it would bring in a city market. They mostly had a Puritan look about them, and Enoch did not especially want to ride in their company. So he’d waited for a full moon and a cloudless night and ridden up to Grantham in the night, arriving before daybreak.
    T HE FRONT OF C LARKE’S HOUSE was tidy, which told Enoch that Mrs. Clarke was still alive. He led his horse round into the stable-yard. Scattered about were cracked mortars and crucibles, stained yellow and vermilion and silver. A columnar furnace, smoke-stained, reigned over coal-piles. It was littered with rinds of hardened dross raked off the tops of crucibles—the fœces of certain alchemical processes, mingled on this ground with the softer excrement of horses and geese.
    Clarke backed out his side-door embracing a brimming chamber-pot.
    “Save it up,” Enoch said, his voice croaky from not having been used in a day or two, “you can extract much that’s interesting from urine.”
    The apothecary startled, and upon recognizing Enoch he nearly dropped the pot, then caught it, then wished he had dropped it, since these evolutions had set up a complex and dangerous sloshing that must be countervailed by gliding about in a bent-knee gait, melting foot-shaped holes in the frost on the grass, and, as a last resort, tilting the pot when whitecaps were observed. The roosters of Grantham, Lincolnshire, who had slept through Enoch’s arrival, came awake and began to celebrate Clarke’s performance.
    The sun had been rolling along the horizon for hours, like a fat waterfowl making its takeoff run. Well before full daylight, Enoch was inside the apothecary’s shop, brewing up a potion from boiled water and an exotic Eastern herb. “Take an amount that will fill the cup of your palm, and throw it in—”
    “The water turns brown already!”
    “—remove it from the fire or it will be intolerably bitter. I’ll require a strainer.”
    “Do you mean to suggest I’m expected to taste it?”
    “Not just taste but drink. Don’t look so condemned. I’ve done it for months with no effect.”
    “Other than addiction, t’would seem.”
    “You are too suspicious. The Mahrattas drink it to the exclusion of all else.”
    “So I’m right about the addiction!”
    “It is nothing more than a mild stimulant.”
    “Mmm…not all that bad,” Clarke said later, sipping cautiously. “What ailments does it cure?”
    “None whatsoever.”
    “Ah. That’s different, then…what’s it called?”
    “ Cha, or chai, or the, or tay. I know a Dutch merchant who has several tons of it sitting in a warehouse in Amsterdam…”
    Clarke chuckled. “Oh, no, Enoch, I’ll not be drawn into some foreign trading scheme. This tay is inoffensive enough, but I don’t think Englishmen will ever take to anything so outlandish.”
    “Very well, then—we’ll speak of other commodities.” And, setting down his tay-cup, Enoch reached into his saddle-bags and brought out bags of yellow sulfur he’d collected from a burning mountain in Italy, finger-sized ingots of antimony, heavy flasks of quicksilver, tiny clay crucibles and melting-pots, retorts, spirit-burners, and books with woodcuts showing the design of diverse furnaces. He set them up on the deal tables and counters of the apothecary shop, saying a few words about each one. Clarke stood to one side with