The Confusion

This place—the Nikolaikirche—lacked the dark, spooky look of so many churches. The vault was a semicircular barrel supported by fluted columns—but not of the Doric, Ionian, Corinthian, or any other known order of architecture. For the capitals were made to resemble sheaves of slender vertical palm leaves. The high vaults above, sluiced with clear white light rushing in through high windows, gathered themselves together and plunged down into these rich bundles of light green leaves, from which clusters of fruit peeked out. The altar rail described a broad half-circle with a gap in the center, like a pair of arms sweeping out to embrace the congregants. The font was a gilded goblet. Behind it, steps led up to an altar, above which a quicksilver Jesus hung from a plank. This part of the church—the Altarraum—was a sanctum of polished wine-colored and fleece-gray marble with many windows, giving a view of budding linden trees startled by pockets of breeze speeding invisibly through a blue heaven. The patterns in the marble suggested powerful turbulent motion—rapids, say, or lightning streaking through boiling clouds—arrested and silenced. Recalling the notion that if you knew the position and velocity of every particle in the universe at one moment of time, you’d know all—you’d be God. At the back of the church was a balcony claimed by a great organ of silver pipes in a white case in Roman style, lilies and palm leaves rampant. Hunched doggedly at the console was a man in a great periwig and a coat brocaded with hundreds of wee flowers. An elderly man in academician’s robes loitered nearby, gazing down curiously at Eliza, Caroline, and other members of the entourage who were now straggling up the aisle; for Adelaide had been woken out of a nap by the stoppage of her coach, and had pursued her mother, and been pursued in turn by nurses, and by Eliza’s guards, who were under orders not to let Adelaide out of their sight so long as they were on the hostile ground of Leipzig. The organist noticed all this, and raised his hands from the manuals, and the throaty singing of the organ-pipes seeped away, leaving in the still air of the church only the faint hiss of some leakage in the valves, and panting of a couple of pudgy schoolboys who’d been dragooned into pumping the bellows. Eliza applauded, and after a moment Caroline, recognizing the organist, followed suit.

 

 

“My lady. My lady,” said Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz to Caroline and Eliza respectively; and then, to Adelaide: “My lady.” Then, to Eliza: “I am sorry that your arrival in the Nikolaikirche, which ought to have been a moment of Grace and Beauty unalloyed, was dimmed by my maunderings.”

 

“On the contrary, Doctor, the town is so quiet, your music brings life to it. Was that some new Passacaglia from Herr Buxtehude?”

 

“Just so, my lady. ’Twas brought hither in the pocket of a merchant of Lübeck, who means to have it printed and sold at the fair, a fortnight hence; I fetched one of the page-proofs and prevailed upon my old schoolmaster, Herr Schmidt—” the old man in the robes bowed “—to let me pick it out as I awaited your arrival.”

 

Leibniz descended a stair to the floor of the church, and a lengthy round of bowing, curtseying, hand-smooching, and baby-adoration ensued. Leibniz’s eyes lingered on Eliza’s face, but not quite long enough to be offensive. It was to be expected that he’d be curious as to what the pox had done to her, and Eliza was content to have him look. He would return presently to such places as Hanover and Berlin, and propagate the news that the Duchess of Arcachon and of Qwghlm had come through it with only light disfigurement; that she could still see; and that her wits were intact.

 

“I was recalling my first visit to this town—and my first meeting with you—ten years ago, Doctor,” Eliza said.

 

“As was I, my lady. But so many things are different now, of course. You mentioned that the town is quiet. Indeed. You will have speculated it is because the spring fair has not begun yet. That is what I supposed, when I arrived, some weeks ago. But since then I have learned that it is quiet for more reasons than meet the eye. Trade has all but stopped—”

 

“Owing to a mysterious, dire want of specie,” Eliza said, “which is both cause and effect; for all who hear of it are transformed, as if by a magician’s spell, into misers, and hoard whatever coin, plate, or bullion they have.”

 

“You are familiar with the affliction, I perceive,” Leibniz said drily. “So is our friend Dr. Waterhouse; for he tells me that the same plague has spread to London.”

 

“Some would say it originated there,” Eliza said.

 

“Others say Lyon,” tried the Doctor, and watched Eliza’s face a bit too sharply.

 

“Now you are fishing,” said Eliza. Leibniz was pulled up short, but only for a moment; then he chuckled.

 

“Fishing for what? Is that another idiom?” Caroline demanded.

 

“He dangles bait before me, to see if I shall rise to it; for some trading-houses in this town have connexions of long standing to the Dép?t of Lyon, and if Lyon is bankrupt, why, it has consequences here. Do you have friends in Leipzig, Doctor, hungry for news?”

 

“I should not call them friends exactly; not any more.”

 

“Well, I have enemies here. Enemies, and a boy who has not seen his mother in three years and seven months. I must make preparations to meet them. If you would be so good as to entertain the Princess for me, for a few hours—”

 

“No.”

 

“What?”

 

“You are in error. Come with me.” And Leibniz turned his back on Eliza, which was an arrestingly rude thing to do, and walked down the aisle and out of the Nikolaikirche into Leipzig. This left her no choice but to pursue him. Caroline pursued Eliza, and the rest of the train was drawn out behind them. Eliza turned back and with a significant look or two commanded the nurses to bundle Adelaide back into one of the carriages; she screamed at this, loud enough to draw looks from hookah-puffing Turkish merchants half a mile away.

 

“You are very rude. What is the meaning of this?”

 

“Life is short,” said Leibniz, and looked Eliza up and down. It was a blunt allusion to smallpox. “I can stand in the aisle of the Nikolaikirche for two hours and try to get it across to you in words, and at the end of it you’ll only say, ‘I must see it with my own eyes.’ Or I can take you on a five-minute walk and see the thing settled.”

 

“Where are we going? Caroline—”

 

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