Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson Page B

eager witness than Daniel could have claimed he’d heard nothing, and it would have been no lie.
    He stopped then, because his mind had finally come awake, and he was afraid. He was out in the middle of an empty fen, following a dead man toward a dark river, and the wind was trying to blow out his lanthorn.
    A pair of naked men appeared in the light, and Daniel screamed.
    One of the men was tall, and had the most beautiful eyes Daniel had ever seen in a man’s face; they were like the eyes of a painting of the Pieta that Drake had once flung onto a bonfire. He looked towards Daniel as if to say, Who dares scream?
    The other man was shorter, and he reacted by cringing. Danielfinally recognized him as Roger Comstock, the sizar. “Who’s that?” this one asked. “My lord?” he guessed.
    “No man’s lord,” Daniel said. “It is I. Daniel Waterhouse.”
    “It’s Comstock and Jeffreys. What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?” Both of the men were naked and soaked, their long hair draggling and seeping on their shoulders. Yet even Comstock seemed at ease compared to Daniel, who was dry, clothed, and equipped with a lanthorn.
    “I might ask the same of you. Where are your clothes?”
    Jeffreys now stepped forward. Comstock knew to shut up.
    “We doffed our clothing when we swam the river,” Jeffreys said, as if this should be perfectly obvious.
    Comstock saw the hole in that story as quickly as Daniel did, and hastily plugged it: “When we emerged, we found that we had drifted for some distance downstream, and were unable to find them again in the darkness.”
    “Why did you swim the river?”
    “We were in hot pursuit of that ruffian.”
    “Ruffian!?”
    The outburst caused a narrowing of the beautiful eyes. A look of mild disgust appeared on Jeffreys’s face. But Roger Comstock was not above continuing with the conversation: “Yes! Some Phanatique—a Puritan, or possibly a Barker—he challenged my Lord Upnor in the courtyard just now! You must not have seen it.”
    “I did see it.”
    “Ah.” Jeffreys turned sideways, caught his dripping penis between two fingers, and urinated tremendously onto the ground. He was staring toward the College. “The window of your and My Lord Monmouth’s chamber is awkwardly located—you must have leaned out of it?”
    “Perhaps I leaned out a bit.”
    “Otherwise, how could you have seen the men duelling?”
    “Would you call it duelling, or murdering?”
    Once again, Jeffreys appeared to be overcome with queasiness at the fact that he was having a conversation of any sort with the likes of Daniel. Comstock put on a convincing display of mock astonishment. “Are you claiming to have witnessed a murder?”
    Daniel was too taken aback to answer. Jeffreys continued to jet urine onto the ground; he had produced a great steaming patch of it already, as if he intended to cover his nakedness with a cloud. He furrowed his brow and asked, “Murder, you say. So a man has died?”
    “I…I should suppose so,” Daniel stammered.
    “Hmmm… supposing is a dangerous practice, when you are supposing that an Earl has committed a capital crime. Perhaps you’d better show the dead body to the Justice of the Peace, and allow the coroner to establish a cause of death.”
    “The body is gone.”
    “You say body . Wouldn’t it be correct to say, wounded man ?”
    “Well…I did not personally verify that the heart had stopped, if that is what you mean.”
    “Wounded man would be the correct term, then. To me, he seemed very much a wounded man, and not a dead one, when Com-stock and I were pursuing him across the Backs.”
    “Unquestionably not dead,” Comstock agreed.
    “But I saw him lying there—”
    “From your window?” Jeffreys asked, finally done pissing.
    “Yes.”
    “But you are not looking out your window now, are you, Water-house?”
    “Obviously not.”
    “Thank you for telling me what is obvious. Did you leap out of your window, or did you