The Confusion

Book 5
The Juncto
Mrs. Bligh’s Coffee-house, London
SEPTEMBER 1693

“ROGER, YOU ARE a great man now, and worth more than the Great Mogul.”

“So I have heard, Daniel-but it is perfectly all right-I do not mind hearing it again.”

“You are also educated, after a fashion.”

“’Tis better to be educable-but pray continue in your flattery, which is so very unlike you.”

“So then. What metaphysical significance do you attach to the fact that you are unable to pay for a cup of coffee?”

“Why, Daniel, I say that I just did pay, not for one, but two-unless that object on the table before you is a mirage.”

“But you didn’t, really, my lord. Coffee was brought forth and you incurred a debt, pricked down on Mrs. Bligh’s ledger.”

“Are you questioning my solvency, Daniel?”

“I am questioning the whole country’s solvency! Empty out your coin-purse. Right there on the table. Let’s have a look.”

“Don’t be vulgar, Daniel.”

“Oh, now ’tis I who am vulgar.”

“Ever since you had the stone cut out, you have seemingly regressed in age.”

“I will bet you the whole contents of my purse that yours contains not a single piece of metal that could be exchanged for a bucket of cods’ heads at Billingsgate.”

“If your purse’s contents were worth so much, you’d be Massachusetts-bound. Everyone knows that.”

“You see? You are afraid to accept the wager.”

“Why do you belabor me about the fact that England has no money?”

“Because you are a momentous fellow now, rumors career about you like gulls round a herring-boat, and I want you to do something about it, so that I can go to America…right. Very well, my lord, I shall give you a few minutes to bring your mirth under control. If you can hear what I am saying, wave at me-oh, very good. Roger Comstock, I say ’tis well enough for you that you have credit, and can buy cups of coffee, or houses, by simply asking for them. Many other men of power enjoy the same privilege-including our King, who appears to be financing his war through some kind of alchemy. But some of us are required actually to pay for what we buy, and we have nothing to pay with at the moment. They say that America is awash in Pieces of Eight, and that is a sight I would fain see-alas, ships’ captains do not dispense credit, at least, not to Natural Philosophers… Oh yes, my lord, do be entertained. I am here in Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house, in pied rags, solely as a Court Jester to Creditable Men, and request only that you throw a silver coin at me for every giggle and a gold one for each guffaw. Fresh out? What, no coins in the bank? Does your purse hang as flaccid as a gelding’s scrotum? ’Tis a common condition, Roger, and this brings me round to another subject ’pon which I will briefly discourse while you blow your nose, and wipe the tears from your eyes, and that is: What if all debts, public and private, were to be called in? What if Mrs. Bligh were to march over to this cozy corner with her accompt-book resting open on her bosom like a Bible on a Lectern and say, Roger Comstock, you owe me your own weight in rubies, pay up straightaway!”

“But, Daniel, that never happens. Mrs. Bligh, if she wants coffee-beans, can go down to the docks and shew her book-or her Lectern, in a pinch-to a merchant and say, ‘Behold, every powerful man in London is in debt to me, I have collateral, lend me a ton of Mocha and you’ll never be sorry!’ ”

“Roger, what is Mrs. Bligh’s bloody book-by your leave, Mrs. Bligh!-but squiggles of ink? I have ink, Roger, a firkin of it, and can molest a goose to obtain quills, and make ink-squiggles all night and all day. But they are just forms on a page. 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.”

“I am not one of those hard cases who believes credit is Satan’s work, do not put me in that poke, Roger. I say only that ink, once dried on the page, is a brittle commodity, and an ?conomy made of ink is likewise brittle, and may for all we know be craz’d and in a state to crumble at a touch. Whereas silver and gold are ductile, malleable, capable of fluid movement-”

“Some say it is because their atoms, their particules are bathed in a lubricating medium of quicksilver-”

“Stop it.”

“You asked me to wax metaphysical, just a minute ago.”

“You are baiting me, Roger. Oh, it is all right. By all means, amuse yourself.”

“Daniel. Do you really want to go to Massachusetts, and leave all this behind?”

“All this is more amusing, not to mention profitable, to you than ’tis to me. I want to put distractions behind, go to the wilderness, and work.”

“What, in a wigwam? Or do you have a cave picked out?”

“There are plenty of trees remaining.”

“You’re going to live in a tree?”

“No! Cut them down, make a house.”

“I fear you are unused to such labor, Daniel.”

“Oh but I am educable.”

“One really would do better to have an institution on which to rely. You could be a vicar of some Puritan church.”

“Puritan churches tend not to have vicars.”

“Oh, that’s right…then perhaps Harvard College would have you.”

“Then again, perhaps not.”

“Here, Daniel, is my metaphysical reading of your circumstance:”

“I am braced.”

“England is not finished with you yet!”

“Merciful God! What more can England possibly ask of me?”

“I shall come to that momentarily, Daniel. First, I propose a transaction.”

“Is this transaction to conclude with silver changing hands? Or ink-squiggles?”

“It is to conclude with a sinecure for Daniel Waterhouse. In Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

“Damn me, and here am I, on the wrong side of the ocean!”

“The sinecure is attended with certain perquisites including a one-way trans-oceanic voyage.”

“Are you saying, England wants from me something so dreadful that when I have done it, she won’t want me around any more?”

“You read too much into it. You are the one who has been bawling about Massachusetts for all these years.”

“But then why do you specify it has to be one-way?”

“You can come back if you think it would be in your best interests,” Roger said innocently. “As long as the Juncto remains in power, you shall have protectors.”

“Your voice has the most annoying way of fading just when you are on the verge of saying something interesting. Do you do that for effect?”

“Juncto…juncto…JUNCTO!”

“What on earth is a junk-toe? Some new type of gout?”

“More like a new type of gov’t.”

“I am quite serious.”

“A scholar might say it Latin-style: yuncto. Or, a Spaniard thus: hoonta!”

“Why don’t you just say ‘joint,’ which is what it means?”

“I know what it means. But then people would suppose we were discoursing of knees or elbows.”

“But isn’t the idea to be mysterious?”

“Then we would call it a cabal.”

“Oh, that’s right. So, you are in a juncto?”

“I am in the juncto.”

“And your role in the juncto is to be-?”

“Chancellor of the Exchequer…Daniel, it is childish to make coffee shoot out of your nostrils. You know of someone better qualified?”

“What about Apthorp?”

“Sir Richard, as he is called by polite men, will run the bank.”

“But do you not think he would gladly set aside his duties at Apthorp’s Bank to become Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

“No, no, no, no, no. I am not speaking of Apthorp’s bank. I refer to the Bank of England.”

“No such institution exists.”

“And no institution exists in Massachusetts Bay Colony that will put a roof over your head and give you a sinecure. But institutions can be made, Daniel. That is what an institution is: something that has been instituted.”

“Oh.”

“Ah, finally light dawns! You are educable, Daniel, very much so!”

“The Bank of England…the Bank of England. It sounds, I don’t know, big.”

“That is the point.”

“You shall amass some sort of capital, and lend out money.”

“This is the timeless function of a banca.”

“I can only perceive two drawbacks to what is otherwise an excellent plan, my lord…”

“Don’t say it. We have no capital…and no money.”

“Just so, my lord.”

“Is it not admirable, how simple things are in the beginning? Oh, how I love to begin things.”

“Let’s take them in order…what is the capital to be?”

“England.”

“Ah, very well, I should have guessed from the name, ‘Bank of England.’ Now, how about the money?”

“The Bank will issue some paper. But you are right. We need coinage. To be specific, we need recoinage.”

A silence now fell over this snuggery in the corner of Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house. Roger had spent enough man-years orating in Parliament that he knew when a Pause for Effect was called for. And Daniel for his part was strangely affected, and lost all interest in speaking for a short time. The notion of recoinage made him strangely sad, and he was desirous of figuring out why. It would mean calling in all old coins-as well as the plate, candlesticks, bullion, et cetera-and melting them in the great crucibles of the Tower. Crucibles that purified and separated the genuine metal from the dross of the counterfeiters but thereby melted all those discrete objects together, destroying their individual characters.

Daniel had in his purse a pound coin stamped with a picture of Queen Elizabeth. He knew this because such coins were rarer than flawless diamonds now, and he was holding it back in case he had to ransom his life somehow. The Golden Comstocks-Roger’s ancestors-had imported the metal from Spain and Thomas Gresham had caused the coin to be minted at such-and-such a weight, and had used some of his rake-off to build Gresham’s College. The coin had been passing from hand to hand and purse to purse for more than a hundred years, and probably had more tales to tell than a ship full of Irish sailors-yet it was just a single mote in the dust-pile that was the English money supply. In a certain way to take that dust and shovel it into the maw of the crucibles was monstrous, like burning a library.

But imagine the glowing rivers that would spring from the lips of those crucibles when all of that tarnished silver was made clean, and made quick, and con-fused, and all of its old stories driven off as clouds of smoke that the river wind would carry away. Imagine the shining coins in purses everywhere-Mrs. Bligh striking out the debts from her ledger-book, her strong-box becoming a catch-basin for the new money, overflowing and spilling out gleaming rivulets down the street to the bankside coffee-merchants, and thence down the Thames into the wide.

“We’ve no choice,” Daniel understood.

“We’ve no choice. The Pope has all the gold, all the silver, all the men, and the rich lands where the sun shines. We cannot long stand against Spain, France, the Empire, the Church. Not as long as power is like a scale, with our riches on one pan, and our adversaries’ on the other. What are we to do, then? Daniel, you know that I think Alchemy is nonsense! Yet there is something in the idea of Alchemy; the conceit that we may cause gold to appear where ’twas not, by dint of artfulness and machinations up here.” He pressed the tip of one index finger delicately to his forehead. “We have no mines, no El Dorado. If we want gold and silver we must look not to treasure-fleets from America. Yet if we conduct commerce here, and build the Bank of England, why, gold and silver will appear in our coffers as if by magic-or Alchemy if you prefer.”

A pause to sip cold coffee. Then Daniel remarked, “You’ll want to take a page from Gresham’s book. ‘Bad money drives out good.’ If the new coin is good, ’twill drive away the bad, not only from this island but everywhere. Everyone will desire English guineas, as they desire Pieces of Eight now. The demand will cause ever more gold and silver to wash up on our shores to be coined in the Tower, just as you prophesy.”

Roger was nodding patiently, as if he and the Juncto had figured it all out long ago-which might or might not have been the case-but Daniel found it strangely reassuring all the same, and continued: “At the risk of sounding like a Royal Society partisan-”

“It is not much of a risk. Half of the Juncto are Fellows. And all are partisans of something.”

“Very well, then, I submit that you want a Natural Philosopher running the Mint-not the usual corrupt, drunken, time-serving political hack.”

This drew a brisk turn of the head from a gentleman who had been standing a short distance behind Roger, talking to another gent, or pretending to. Daniel realized he had spoken too loudly.

The gentleman was glaring at Daniel from beneath a copper-colored wig, one of the new model, narrow, with long ringlets trailing far down the back. The wig said that he had money and rank, yet was no admirer of the French. He would be High Church, Old Money, a reflexive backer of Monarchy-a Tory, as they were called nowadays. Odd that he should be passing the time of day in here-Mrs. Bligh’s was a Whig haunt. For that reason Daniel rated it as unlikely that this fellow would challenge him to a duel.

Roger had noticed Daniel noticing all of these things, and had the good instincts not to look back. But his eyes flicked slightly upwards to a windowpane just above Daniel’s head, and he scanned the reflections interestedly for a moment. Which in no way prevented his talking at the same time. “Indeed, Daniel, any man plucked from this coffee-house-with one or two exceptions-would be preferable to the fellows running our mint now, who are tapeworms.”

Daniel was staring fixedly into Roger’s eyes, but in the background he could see the Tory turning away. The Tory planted himself with his back toward Roger, set his coffee-cup down on a sideboard, rested a hand idly on the hilt of his small-sword, and seemed to survey the crowd of merry Whigs filling the house.

“It follows that any Fellow of the Royal Society would be excellent-but merely excellent is not quite good enough, Daniel. Normally it takes me hours to explain why this is true. You, thank God, have perceived it instantly. The fate of Britain and of Christendom hinge upon the power of the new good Pound Sterling to drive out the bad-to sweep all opposition from the field and bring gold and silver to our shores from every corner of the earth. The quality of money is only partly due to the purity of its metal-which any Natural Philosopher could see to. It is also a matter of trust, of prestige.”

Daniel had now realized what was coming, and slid down in his chair, and put his hands over his face. “You don’t want me to enlist him, Roger! I no longer have his ear. You want Fatio, Fatio, Fatio!”

“Everyone knows he is in-Fatio-ated-but passions are fleeting. You have known him longer than anyone, Daniel. You are the man for it. England needs you! Your Massachusetts sinecure awaits!”

Daniel had parted his fingers now and was peering out through slits in between. Unable to look Roger in the face, he was surveying the distant background. Andrew Ellis-a compact young man with a blond ponytail, an enjoyable, harmless young Parliamentarian-was coming over with a glass of claret in each hand, intent on breaking into the conversation and sharing his enjoyableness with Roger. If Daniel had hopes of weaseling out, he had to do it now. To Roger Comstock, silence implied not merely consent, but a blood oath.

“You cannot know what you are proposing, ensconcing such a man at the Tower, giving him control of our money. He has strange ideas, dark secrets-”

“I know all about the beastliness.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Alchemy is an even more common vice.”

“That’s not it, either. He is a heretic, Roger.”

“Look who’s talking!”

“I mean, he does not even believe in the Trinity!”

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. Daniel parted his fingers more to observe this phenomenon. But instead his attention was drawn to something even odder: an expensive copper-colored wig hanging in midair behind Roger’s chair. Its owner had ducked and darted out from under it as fast as a striking cobra and simply left it behind. It fell to the floor, of course. By that time the owner-who had red hair in a close Caesar crop-was whispering something into Andrew Ellis’s ear. It must have been something extremely shocking, to judge from the look of astonishment-nay, horror-that had come over the normally beaming face of Mr. Ellis.

Daniel pushed himself up in his chair to get a better look and perceived that the red-headed gent was now drawing away from Ellis-but Ellis was moving with him, as if they were joined together. Ellis gave out a little whimper.

Daniel could not credit what he was seeing. “Roger, I could almost swear that Mr. Ellis is having his ear bitten.”

Roger now took notice for the first time. He stood up, turned around, and quickly verified it. This prolonged ear-biting had drawn very little notice thus far because Ellis had been too astonished to speak and the biter, of course, could not really talk, either-though he did seem to be mumbling something in a low, grinding voice: “So you want to have the ear of Roger Comstock? Then I shall have yours.”

Oddly, it was Roger’s standing up that drew everyone’s attention. Then awareness splashed across the room.

“In the name of God, sir!” Ellis cried, and slumped against the paneled wall. The red-head stayed with him, of course, maintaining his bite like a bulldog, working his jaw slowly to gnaw through the cartilage. He planted a hand on the wall to either side of Ellis’s head, bracketing him in position. Several of the Whigs in the main room finally moved forward to intervene-but the gentleman who had been talking to the biter earlier whirled to face them, and drew his sword half out of his scabbard. That drove them back like a firecracker.

Roger stepped toward the biter and the bitee, and raised his arm that was nearer the wall, causing his cape to spread open and block Daniel’s view of the whole proceedings. He seemed to slap the back of the biter’s hand where it was planted on the wall. “Mr. White,” he said, in an indulgent tone, “do wipe your chin when you are quite finished.” Then Roger skirted around the pair and walked out of the coffee-house. Andrew Ellis collapsed to the floor with a scream and pressed both of his hands to the side of his head. Mr. White came up with a triumphant toss of his head, like a country boy who has just won at apple-bobbing. Something like a dried apricot was lodged in his smile. He plucked it out with one hand to admire it. Andrew Ellis was lying against Mr. White’s shins and knees, forcing them back, and so White had to keep his other hand braced against the paneling lest he topple forward. Anyway, he pocketed Ellis’s ear and flashed a bloody grin at Daniel.

“Welcome to politics, Mr. Waterhouse,” he announced. “This is the world you have made. Rejoice and be glad in it-for you shall not be allowed to leave.”

“I am freer to leave than you are, Mr. White,” Daniel said on his way out, nodding in the direction of the hand that Mr. White was bracing against the wall.

Mr. White now seemed to notice for the first time that a dagger had been shoved all the way through that hand, between the metacarpals and out through the palm, and lodged deep in the wooden wall. Worked into the dagger’s pommel, in silver letters, as a sort of calling-card, were the initials R.C.

WHEN DANIEL MADE IT out to the street he discovered that his hand had gone into his pocket and got ahold of the Pearl of Great Price and squeezed it so hard, for so long, that his fingers had got tired. The Stone had a sort of devil’s-head shape, with two stubby hornlets that had once been lodged in his ureters. He had a habit of gripping it so that those wee knobs stuck out between his knuckles-it fitted his hand almost as well as his bladder.

Riding north across Hertfordshire in a borrowed carriage the next day, he found his hand had gone to it once again, as he reviewed the ear-biting scene in the theatre of his memory. Daniel was meditating on Cowardice. He knew a lot of cowards and saw cowardice everywhere, but just as Mr. Flamsteed’s observations of the stars were frequently obnubilated by weather, so Daniel’s of Cowardice by Extenuating Circumstances. Viz. a man might explain cowardliness by saying that he had a family to support, or, failing that, with the simple argument that it just was not fair for a young man to give up life or limb. But Daniel had no wife or children of his own, and brother Sterling was doing a fine job of supporting the extended family. And not only was Daniel old (forty-seven), but he ought to’ve been dead by now, and owed his remaining years solely to Mr. Hooke’s pitiless blade-work. So in Daniel Waterhouse, an observer could see cowardliness in its pure form, and perhaps learn something of its nature.

A note from Roger Comstock was on the bench next to Daniel; it had been waiting for him in the carriage this morning. Dear Daniel, it read,

Forgive me my precipitous leave-taking from Mrs. Bligh’s yester-eve. As I am sure you have perceived by now, the whole event was a masque, a trifle. Do not allow Mr. White’s vulgarities to prey upon your good judgment.

Your coachman is Mr. John Hammond and I have charged him to convey you anywhere you desire, until your errand is accomplished; but I have led him to believe that most of your perambulations shall be confined to the triangle formed by London, Cambridge, and Mr. Apthorp’s country house. If you conceive a need to hie to John O’Groats or Land’s End, do break the news to him gently.

Yours very sternly,

(signed with a flourish, two inches high)

Ravenscar

P.S. I seem to have lost my poniard-have you seen it?

Roger was completely free of any taint of cowardice. Craven he might be, but a coward? Never. A trifle. Roger was sincere when he called it that.

It was impossible for Daniel to read in the dim, rocking vehicle, and he had no one to talk to, so sleeping and thinking were the only ways to pass the long drive through the rain up to Cambridge. As he contrasted his fear of Mr. White (which was very much akin to the fear he had previously had of Jeffreys) with how he had once felt about this rock that was now in his pocket, a new hypothesis of cowardice came into his head. The Stone had made him sad, reluctant to die, and anxious-but his fear of it had been as nothing compared to his fear of Jeffreys, and now of White. Yet those men had only spoken threatening words to him. Even when Hooke had reached up between his thighs with the scalpel, Daniel had been gripped by a sort of animal fear, but nothing like the dread of Mr. White, which had kept him awake all last night.

The only difference he could think of was that Hooke liked Daniel and White hated him. Could it be, then, that Daniel’s true cowardice lay in that he could not stand for people to think poorly of him?

That would be a strange shape for cowardice to take. But it tallied well with Daniel’s experiences to date. It was Daniel’s biography in a sentence. Further, perhaps it was the case that there were certain men, such as Jeffreys and White, who were adept at detecting this particular type of fear, and who had learned to cultivate it and use it against their enemies. Mr. John Hammond, the driver, had a long coachman’s whip and used it frequently, but never actually struck the horses with it. Rather, he made it crack in the air around the heads of his team, and used their own fear to drive them.

When Daniel had sent Jeffreys to the Tower and to his scaffold-top meeting with Jack Ketch, he’d phant’sied that he had slain a dragon, and put an end to that part of his life. Yet now Mr. White had appeared out of nowhere. An alarming chap! But much more alarming was what this all implied, namely that the world had more than one dragon-that it was infested with them-and that a fellow who was afraid of dragons must perforce spend all his days worrying about one or another.

This was all very much of the essence, because when Daniel tracked Isaac down, wherever he was, he would not be able to do what needed to be done without first mastering this fear.

AS IT TURNED OUT, he had no occasion to master it in Cambridge. He arrived at Trinity College in time to have a wash and a cat-nap in one of the guest chambers. Then, when the bell rang, he threw on a robe and went to the dining hall and took a place at the high table. Rather close to the head of that table, as it turned out. For between apoplexy and smallpox, Daniel was becoming more senior with every passing month. He was shown respect and even affection. He understood now why men afflicted with his particular brand of cowardice would gravitate to stations like this one, even though the College had fallen on very hard times, and was dishing up thin gruel little different from what was served in the poor-house.

When he inquired after Newton and Fatio, heads turned toward a young man seated near the foot of the table-too far away for Daniel to converse with him-who was called Dominic Masham. This suggested much to Daniel, for he knew that the family Masham were close friends and patrons of John Locke. Locke had been living on their estate at Oates since he’d come back from exile in Holland round the time of the Glorious Revolution. Daniel presumed that Locke had established some sort of alchemical laboratory there, for Newton and Fatio had frequently gone there for lengthy stays, as had Robert Boyle until his death a year or two ago. The Mashams had many children and Daniel guessed that this Dominic was one of them, and that he was here as a protege of Newton.

It was explained to him that Newton, Fatio, and Locke had all been staying in Newton’s (and formerly Waterhouse’s) chambers here until yesterday morning, when they’d all gone away, leaving Masham behind to tie up some loose ends. Newton and Fatio had gone off together bound for Oates. Locke had gone off by himself down the Barton Road, which led generally southeastwards. But he had declined to state his destination.

“I went right by them,” Daniel remarked. For the Mashams’ estate lay just off the London-Cambridge road, some twenty miles north of the capital. “What were those fellows up to?” For they also collaborated on theological projects.

It made the men at High Table nervous that Daniel had even asked.

“That is to say, what sorts of stimulating conversations have I missed by being so long absent from this table? Surely, three such men did not sit here in silence.”

Everyone sat in silence for a few moments. But then, fortuitously, dinner was over. They all stood up and chanted in Latin, and filed out. Daniel tracked Dominic Masham across the Great Court, and caught up with him beyond the main gate as he was unlocking the portal to Newton’s private courtyard. Masham had a distracted and hurried look about him, which suited Daniel’s purposes well enough. Daniel had a lanthorn, which he used to illuminate Masham’s face.

“Going home soon, Mr. Masham?”

“Tomorrow, Dr. Waterhouse, or as soon as I can gather up certain…”

Daniel let Masham’s pause dangle embarrassingly for a while before saying, quietly, “You offend me with this affected coyness. I am not a lass to flirt with, Mr. Masham.”

This had the same effect on the younger man as a whip-crack by a horse’s ear. He froze and began trying to frame a suitably glorious apology, but Daniel cut him off. “You are charged with gathering together the necessaries for the continuation of the Great Work that Misters Newton, Locke, and Fatio are undertaking at Oates. These may be books or chemicals or glassware-it does not matter to me-what matters is that you are going to Oates in the morning, and you may convey this packet to Mr. Newton with my compliments. It came to me the other day in London. It was sent to Newton by Leibniz.”

The mention of the name Leibniz threw a look into Dominic Masham’s wide green eyes.

“It consists of a letter, and a book. The letter is unique, and more important. The book, as you can see, is the first printing of Leibniz’s Protogaea, and you may feel free to peruse it during your trip; it will teach you things you have never dreamed of.”

“And the letter-?”

“Think of it as an overture, an attempt to mend the breach that occurred in these chambers in 1677.”

“Sir! You know what happened in 1677!?” Masham exclaimed, in a tone of voice that was somewhat wistful, which seemed to say that he didn’t.

“I was here then.”

“Very well, Dr. Waterhouse, I shall not let it out of my sight until it is in Mr. Newton’s hands.”

“The future of Natural Philosophy revolves around it,” Daniel said. “Please tell those three gentlemen that I shall call on them in two days.”

“By your leave, sir, there are only the two of them there now. Mr. Locke has gone to…another place.”

“Again you do me a disservice. I know perfectly well that Mr. Locke has gone to Apthorp House.”

“Sir!”

SIR RICHARD APTHORP’S COUNTRY dwelling was situated about midway between Cambridge and Oxford, not far off the high road that ran from London northwest in the direction of Birmingham. 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. In any case, Daniel did not have to utter a word, only slide his window open and watch three Bletchley stable-boys jumping up and down in the street vying with one another to tell him the way to Apthorp House. Meanwhile an older fellow struck up a cheerful exchange with John Hammond. He let Daniel’s driver know that the stables at Apthorp House had long since gone full up, and that Sir Richard, as a courtesy to his guests, had retained this man to look after the overflow at his livery stable, which was just round the corner.

Indeed, the lane that meandered between low hills to Apthorp House was nearly paved with horse manure, and when Hammond drew his team up in front of the main building-yet another Barock neo-classical compound fraught with pagan-god-statues-Daniel’s eyes were treated to the sight of the finest fleet of carriages he had ever seen, outside of a royal palace. The coats of arms told him who was inside the house. The Earl of Marlborough, Sterling Waterhouse, Roger Comstock, Apthorp, Pepys, Locke, and Christopher Wren were all personal acquaintances of Daniel’s. Also well represented was a category Daniel thought of as “men like Sterling,” meaning sons or grandsons of the great Puritan trader/smuggler/firebrands of the Cromwell era, including particularly several Quaker magnates with large holdings in America. There were men with French surnames and others with Spanish: respectively, Huguenots and Amsterdam-Jews who had established themselves in England during the last ten or so years. There were a few nobles of high rank, notably the Prince of Denmark, who was married to Princess Anne. However, Persons of Quality were quite under-represented here, considering the amount of wealth. The nobles who had shown up were what Daniel thought of as “men like Boyle,” meaning sons of great lords who were not especially interested in being great according to the ancient feudal definition of that word, and who instead devoted their lives to hanging around the Royal Society or sailing across oceans to trade or to explore.

“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.

None of these people really had time to talk to Daniel and so his conversations had a meted-out feeling to them. For all that, they were pleased to see him, and interested in what he had to say, which was soothing for a man equipped with Daniel’s particular form of cowardice.

“My Lord Marlborough, if I may just pursue you down this gallery-”

“I am pleased to see you are in a condition to do so.”

“Thank you, my lord. On the night that James II fled, you spoke to me on the Tower causeway and voiced grave concern as to the motives and machinations of Alchemists.”

“You do not need to remind me, Mr. Waterhouse, I am not the sort who ever forgets.”

“Pray, where stand you now on such matters?”

“I must admit they seem very quaint and queer to me today, where once they seemed occult and menacing. Yet the Marquis of Ravenscar is very forward in saying that one of the Esoteric Brotherhood ought to be put in charge of our Mint. And I do confess I am loath to throw my money in with this new Bank, and my lot in with this Juncto, when our money is to be recoined by a savant whose ideas are recondite, and whose motives are a source of endless puzzlement to me.”

“That will never change, my lord. But if some way could be devised for the motives of this alchemist to be aligned with yours, so that you agreed on the means whilst perhaps differing as to the ends, would that satisfy you?”

“Such alignments of interest are a staple of politics and of war. They may serve for a time. But in the end is always a divergence, and a catastrophe.”

“That is a Janus-like utterance, my lord, and for now I will prefer to look only upon its smiling face.”

“MY LORD RAVENSCAR, tomorrow morning I am off to Oates to tender a version of your proposal to Mr. Newton, unless you say to me beforehand that you have changed your mind.”

“Why on earth should I change my mind?”

“Perhaps you would prefer a Mint-master who, insofar as his motives were more intelligible, would prove more manageable.”

“I am sure I have no idea what you mean, Daniel.”

“I am sure you lie like a dog in the sun. A time-serving hack-a tapeworm-is easy to understand. He will run your mint for you because he receives a stipend, a place to live, influence and prestige. But you must get it very clear in your mind, Roger, that Newton wants none of this. He will benefit from a steady income, it is true. But if I am to interest him in this job, I must hold out enticements. And I say to you that he has the hard, bare soul of a Lincolnshire Puritan, a type of soul I understand well, and the usual incentives are less than nothing to him. If he does it, he shall do it in the name of ideals, and in the pursuit of goals, you may find incomprehensible. And inasmuch as you shall be unable to comprehend his ends, you shall be unable to control, or even influence him.”

“That’s perfectly all right, Daniel, I can always write you a letter in Boston and ask you to explain what he’s on about.”

“MAY I ASSIST YOU carrying one of those tomes, Mr. Halley?”

“Daniel! An unexpected pleasure! I can manage, thank you, but you may assist by telling me in which of these rooms I might find Mr. Pepys.”

“Follow me. He is meeting with one Cabal or other at the end of the opposite wing.”

“Ah, then wait with me while I rest my arms.”

“Are these for his book collection?”

“These are money.”

“On the pages I see numbers. Rumor has had it, Mr. Halley, that you have hired up every computer on this island, and set them to a great work. Now I see the rumors were true.”

“These are only the first fruits of their lucubrations-I have brought them up, at the request of Mr. Pepys, to show them as a sort of demo’.”

“Why do you say that they are money? To me they could be sines and cosines.”

“These are actuarial tables, a sort of extract or distillation from the records of births and deaths of every parish in England. Supplied with these data the Exchequer can raise capital by selling annuities to the general public; and if they sell enough of them, why, the law of averages dictates that they will make a profit without fail!”

“What, by gambling that their customers will die?”

“That is no gamble, Dr. Waterhouse.”

“SAFE JOURNEY TO OATES; I shall see you there on the morrow, Mr. Locke.”

“You may expect nothing but the warmest hospitality from the Mashams. From Newton you may expect-”

“You forget I have known him for thirty years.”

“Right.”

“…”

“I can only guess what machinations you are about, Mr. Waterhouse. But I admit that I shall look forward to your arrival and that I shall feel a weight lifted when you arrive.”

“Why, Mr. Locke, what weighs ’pon you?”

“Newton is unwell.”

“Love-sick?”

“That is the least of his ailments.”

“I shall be there soon, Mr. Locke, with what feeble medicine I may proffer.”

“MR. WATERHOUSE, MY SCHEDULE IS a monolith, seamless and unbroken. Except for piss-breaks. Shall we?”

“As I need hardly explain to you of all men, Mr. Pepys, nothing now gives me greater satisfaction than pissing-but to piss with you, sir, would be to compound honor with pleasure.”

“Let us then leave the company of these fellows who know not what it signifies, and go piss in each other’s company.”

“If it would please you to turn to your right out this door, Mr. Pepys, you shall come in view of a garden wall that, earlier, I was sizing up as-”

“Say no more, Mr. Waterhouse, ’tis a magnificent wall, well-proportioned, secluded, admirably made for our usage.”

“…”

“I say, Mr. Waterhouse, have you been buying your breeches from Turks?”

“I am a man of almost fifty, sir, and am permitted a small repertoire of eccentricities. As pissing gives me so much pleasure I will brook no interference from my clothing-I’ll have my yard out smartly and be finished with my work while you are still fumbling with buttons and clasps.”

“Not so, sir, I am only moments behind you.”

“…”

“Makes you want to sing hymns, eh?”

“I do, sometimes.”

“Word has reached me that you are off to visit Newton tomorrow. I wonder if he has an answer for me on my lottery question.”

“Another way of raising money?”

“Think of it rather as a way for ordinary men to enrich themselves at the (trifling) expense of vast numbers of other ordinary men. Of course the Exchequer will have to collect a small rake-off for overhead.”

“Of course. Mr. Pepys, when we got the Royal Society going, never did I dream you would find such uses for the knowledge it would generate.”

“That is the rub-the lottery is a game of chance, and will founder unless we get the mathematicks just so. I have brought in Newton as a consultant.”

“No harm in going straight to the top.”

“But he seems to be up to too many other things, Mr. Waterhouse, for he rarely answers my letters, and when he does, he does not discourse on probability but rather accuses me of being in league with Jesuits, or of setting fire to his laboratory…”

“Stay. Everyone who has spoken to me concerning Newton in the last few days has employed euphemisms and circumlocutions meant to suggest that he has gone clean out of his mind.”

“I always thought Hooke was our Lunatick in Residence, but lately Newton…”

“Enough. I shall try to get to the bottom of it.”

“Right. Now, on your knees, Mr. Waterhouse!”

“I beg your pardon!?”

“Never fear, I shall be joining you in moments…my knees being older work slower…er…ah!…owf. There. Now, let us pray.”

“You always say a prayer after you piss?”

“Only after a really first-rate one, or when communing with a fellow sufferer, as now. 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.”

For the understanding is by the flame of the passions, never enlightened, but dazzled.

–HOBBES

Leviathan

Daniel’s first emotion, unexpectedly, was a pang of sympathy for young Dominic Masham. Daniel, too, would have been amazed by what John Locke, Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, and Isaac Newton were up to at Oates, if he had not been at Epsom during the Plague Year. As it was, the laboratory that those three lonely hereticks had set up on the Masham estate seemed a masque of what Wilkins and Hooke had done as guests of John Comstock.

He had to admit it was a good deal more civilized, though. No dogs were being disembowelled in Lady Masham’s out-buildings. Epsom (in retrospect) had grown up, as if by spontaneous generation, out of earth saturated with blood and manured with gunpowder; it had been dominated by elements of earth and water. Oates was like a potted lily brought over from France; it was made of fire and air. And it was all about the search for the fifth element, the quintessence, star-stuff, God’s presence on earth. When Dominic Masham took Daniel round the place, the sun was shining on the white-plastered Barock buildings, the roses of late summer were still a-bloom, windows flung open to let fresh air infiltrate the galleries and drawing-rooms, and Daniel could very easily comprehend why a young fellow who knew no better might convince himself that there was a quintessence, that it was everywhere, and especially here, and that men as brilliant as these might reach out and take some of it.

They encountered Fatio posed in the middle of a windowed library, surrounded by Bibles in diverse languages and alphabets. Protogaea had been quarantined on a table in the corner. Fatio was putting on a great show of thinking very hard on something and of not noticing that Daniel had entered the room-in effect daring Daniel to interrupt him, so that he could put on a further show of not minding at all. Daniel had no stomach for the game and so with a silent gesture to Masham he ducked out of the room. For about Fatio was a queer aura of fragility; he seemed stiff and scared as a glass figurine perched too close to an edge.

Masham led him on to a study that was obviously Locke’s. He had published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding four years before. To judge from the storm of letters on his desk, angry criticism was still rushing in, and Locke was at work on a sort of apologia for the next edition: “…searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure.”

Locke’s study had French doors that led out into a little rose-garden. The wind blew up now for a few moments and got under the edge of one of those doors, which was hanging ajar, and blew it open, letting cool air curl into the room and blow Locke’s papers around. It felt and smelt of autumn. Masham scurried around chasing the blown pages, which was amusing because they had been in utmost disorder to being with. Daniel stepped to the open door to get out of Masham’s way and to hide the smile on his face. The gust waned and Daniel heard Locke’s voice from the garden, saying things long-winded and soothing and reasonable, interrupted by sharp objections from Isaac Newton.

Daniel stepped out into the garden just in time to be wrapped up in another wind-gust. This weather was stripping browned and withered petals from thousands of shaggy rose-blossoms that dangled like bruised apples from bowers and trellises all around, and they were storming down to earth and scuttling round the place in whorls.

Isaac had not failed to notice him. He was seated in a garden-chaise with his feet up, and he was wrapped in blankets, which did not prevent him from shivering all the time, though the day was only beginning to turn cool. He looked near death: even gaunter than usual, and sunk in on himself, and so devoid of color that one might suppose the blood had been drawn out of his veins and replaced with quicksilver.

“Daniel, it is well that your friend and mine Mr. John Locke foretold your coming, or I should take it the wrong way.”

“How so, Isaac?”

“I have got into an odd turn of mind of late. The world seemeth benign enough, as I sit here in a bright garden among friends. But when night falls, as it does earlier and earlier, darkness stretches over my mind, and I phant’sy long menacing shadows cast by everyone and everything I saw during the day-time, which shades are interconnected in plots and conspiracies.”

“Everyone, save mad-men in Bedlam, has a Plot. Everyone belongs to a conspiracy or two. What is the Royal Society, besides a conspiracy? I shall not claim I am innocent. But the conspiracy I represent wants only good things for you.”

“I shall be the judge of that! How could you possibly know what is good for me?”

“If you could see yourself as I see you, Isaac, you would confess in an instant that I know much more of it than you do. How long has it been since you have slept?”

“Five nights I have sat up by the fire, tending a work.”

“The Great Work?”

“You have known me almost as long as I have known myself, Daniel, why do you waste breath asking? For you know that I will not answer you straight out. And you already know the answer. So your question is idle twice over.”

“Five nights…then I have come haply on this day, as I may be a match for you, Isaac, if you have gone a week without sleep beforehand.”

“In what wise do you seek to be my match, Daniel?”

Behind him Masham started to say something and was quickly shushed. Daniel turned halfway round and discovered that Fatio had followed him as far as Locke’s study; having now been discovered, he emerged into the garden, moving in an odd diagonal gait like a startled dog, acknowledging Daniel with a little bow. But he would not look Daniel in the eye.

“In what wise? Not as Fatio would be-this was settled between you and me on Whitsunday of the year 1662, unless I read the signs wrong.” A slow assenting blink of Newton’s bloodshot eyes told him he hadn’t. “And certainly not as Leibniz seeks to be.”

Fatio scoffed. “We have read Mr. Leibniz’s letter-which is nothing more than a butcherous attack on my theory of gravitation!”

“If Leibniz cuts down your theory of gravitation, Monsieur Fatio, it only means he has the courage and forthrightness to set down in ink what Huygens and Halley and Hooke and Wren have all said amongst themselves ever since you presented it to the Royal Society. And I mean to emulate Leibniz now. Stay, Fatio, no show of indignation, please, I cannot abide it. I see three faces in this garden: Fatio, who has just been attacked, and is ready to respond very hotly; Newton, who is strangely ambivalent, as if he agrees with me in secret; Locke, who perhaps wishes I had never come to disturb your colloquium. But disturb it I have, and now I shall disturb it some more. For as I reflect on my career I believe I could have accomplished more if I had not cared so much what people thought of me. Natural Philosophy cannot advance without attacking theories that are old, and beating back new ones that are wrong, neither of which may be accomplished without doing some injury to their professors. I have been a mediocre Natural Philosopher not because I was stupid but because I was, after a fashion, cowardly. Today I shall try boldness for once, and be a better Natural Philosopher for it, and probably get you all hating me by the time I am done. Then it’s off to Boston on the next boat. Therefore, Fatio, do not defend your theory or attack that of Leibniz with some tedious outburst, but, prithee, shut up and hate me instead. Isaac, this is what I mean when I say that I shall try to be a match for you today. If you hate me when I leave, then let that be a measure of my success.”

“This is a harsh method,” Isaac reflected, shivering even more violently now. “But I cannot deny that in my career scientific disputes have always been coupled with the most intense personal enmity. And I am not of a mood to be tender and conciliatory just now. So, have at it. I may understand you better as an enemy than as a friend.”

“When I saw you here in this rain of dead petals I was put in mind of the spring of 1666 when I came up to Woolsthorpe and saw you in a flurry of apple-blossoms. Do you recollect that day?”

“Of course.”

“I had just ridden up from Epsom where Hooke and Wilkins and I had been holding a colloquium much like this one. The overriding subject of it could be called ‘Life: what it is, and is not.’ Now I come here and find you studying what I will summarize as ‘God: what god-head is and is not.’ Have I said it well?”

“This way of saying it is very easily misunderstood,” Locke demurred.

“Stay, John,” Newton commanded, “Daniel misunderstands nothing.”

“Thank you, Isaac,” Daniel said. “If what you say is true, ’tis so only in that I have strived for so many years to follow your tortuous windings through these matters. It has been no easy task. Bible-stuff has always been intermingled with your philosophical work, and I could never understand why, in our chambers, star-catalogs were so promiscuously thrown together with Hebraic scriptures, occult treatises on the philosophic mercury interleaved with diagrams of new telescopes, et cetera. But at last I came to understand that I was making it too complicated. For you, this is no mingling at all; for you the Book of Revelation, the ramblings of Hermes Trismegistus, and Principia Mathematica are all signatures torn from the same immense Book.”

“Why is it, Daniel, that you understand all of these matters with such clarity, and yet will not join with us? It seems to me as if some friend of Galileo had looked through his telescope and seen the moons of Jupiter making their circuits and yet refused to believe his own eyes, and taken the dead view of the Papists instead.”

“Isaac, I have done nothing but ask myself that for sixteen years.”

“You refer to what happened in 1677.”

“What did happen in 1677, anyway?” Fatio inquired. “Everyone wants to know.”

“Leibniz made his second visit to England. He went incognito to Cambridge, for no purpose other than to have a conversation with Isaac. Which did occur. But as they punted down the Cam, discoursing, I came upon papers in our chambers proving that Isaac had fallen into Arianism, which I saw as an unspeakable heresy. I burned those papers, and with them many of Isaac’s alchemical notes and books-for to me they were all of a piece. To which crime I now confess freely, and offer my repentance, and ask for forgiveness.”

“You speak as if you never expect to see me again!” Newton exclaimed, with tears in his eyes. “I perceived your shame, and knew your heart, and forgave you long ago, Daniel.”

“I know it.”

“Most of what you burned anyway was twaddle. You’ll see none of it here. Yet here I am infinitely closer to the Grand Magisterium.”

“I know you have torn Alchemy down to its foundations, and built it back up, and are recording it in a book called Praxis, which will be to Alchemy what Principia Mathematica was to physics. And perhaps ’tis hoped that in combination with some new reading of scriptures from Fatio, here, and new philosophy from Locke, there, and a reworking of Christianity on Arian principles from your disciples scattered round England, it shall all come together in some grand unifying discourse, a kind of scientific apocalypse in which the whole universe, and all history, shall be made clear as distilled water.”

“You mock us, by making it simple.”

“It is not simple, then? ’Twill not all happen at once, in a flash?”

“It is not for us to say in advance the manner of how it might happen.”

“Yet you have been awake five nights tending some work that you’ll not entrust to any assistant. You suffer obvious ill effects of quicksilver poisoning. You will not admit it is the Great Work, but what else could it be? And I cannot read your mind, Isaac, or ask you to divulge secrets, but I can see plainly enough that it failed. And if it was meant to combine with Fatio’s theory of gravity, then that has failed as well.”

“Before you mock our work, sir, prithee tell us in what way Leibniz’s has succeeded,” Fatio demanded.

“His differs from yours in that it does not need to succeed-only not to fail. And I take that to be a more sound way of doing science than your approach, which is all-or-nothing. For as I grow older and see new men coming into the Royal Society I perceive that though Natural Philosophy may have begun with our generation, it need not end with us. Nor am I alone in thinking so.” Daniel now lifted up a sheet he had taken from Locke’s study, and read: “It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him.”

“What sniveling fool penned that nonsense?” Fatio demanded.

“Mr. John Locke. And the ink is still damp on it,” Daniel replied.

“I am quite sure he did not mean it to apply to Isaac Newton!” Fatio returned, jarred, but recovering quickly.

“I believe what you really mean to say is, ‘Newton and Fatio,’ ” Daniel said.

Newton and Fatio looked at each other, and Daniel looked at them. Fatio had a kind of tender, insinuating look on his face, and Daniel got the idea it was very far from the first time he had shown that sort of face to Newton, and that Fatio was used to seeing a tender and loving face looking back his way. But not today. Newton was staring at Fatio not with love, but with avid curiosity, as if suddenly perceiving what had escaped his notice before. Daniel had no love for Fatio, but this made him so uneasy that he lost the courage he’d maintained up until now.

“I wish to tell you a story about Robert Hooke,” he announced.

This was one of the few things that could get Isaac’s attention away from his minute, penetrating study of Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. He turned his eyes toward Daniel, who went on: “Before I came up to Woolsthorpe, Isaac, I did an experiment with him. We set up a scale above a well, and weighed the same object at the level of the ground, and again three hundred feet below it, to see if there was a difference. For you see, Hooke had an inkling of the inverse-square law.”

Isaac did a little calculation in his head and said, “There was no observable difference.”

“Just so. Hooke was let down, of course, but as we drove home he conceived a refinement of the experiment, which has never been carried out. But the point of the story is that our colloquium at Epsom succeeded at much, but failed in that, its most ambitious effort. Did it mean the end of Natural Philosophy? No. The end of Hooke’s career, or Wilkins’s, or mine? By no means. On the contrary, it led straight on to a flourishing of all those things. Which has led me to mistrust apocalyptic readings of Science or of Society. I have not been quick to learn that lesson, either. For example, I phant’sied that the Glorious Revolution would change all, but now I see that Cavaliers and Roundheads have only been replaced by Tories and Whigs, and the war goes on.”

“Am I to gather that you intend to draw some parallel between the failures of Hooke, and the prospects for our collaboration?” Fatio said, with forced hilarity. “I supposed you were here as a cat’s paw for Leibniz! He at least is a worthy opponent! He came out with calculus after Isaac and I did so, but at least he knows what it is! Hooke is nothing more than a sooty, bloody empiricist!”

“I am here as a cat’s paw for Isaac Newton, my friend of thirty years. I fear for him because I perceive that he has an idea of what Natural Philosophy is, and of what he is, that is false. He is so far above all of the rest of us that he has come to believe that he carries the burden of some millennial destiny, and that he must bring Natural Philosophy to some ultimate omega-point or be a failure. He has been encouraged to believe this by certain sycophantic admirers.”

“You want him back! You want Isaac to revoke the decision he made on Whitsunday of 1662!”

“No. I want him to repeat the same decision in respect of you, Fatio. He withdrew from me in ’62. From Leibniz in ’77. Now it is ’93, and your card has been dealt.”

“I know all about what happened in ’62 and ’77. Isaac told me. But with us it is a different case. With us there is a real, lasting, mutual affection.”

“Nicolas, that much is true,” Isaac said. “But you misunderstand. Daniel is working his way round towards another matter.”

“What could Mr. Waterhouse possibly say that would be of interest? He is an amanuensis, a secretary.”

“Do not make any more such offending statements about Daniel,” Isaac commanded. “He has done us the favor, Nicolas, of thinking about our future. Which is a matter we did not consider at all, so confident were we. But Daniel is right. We have failed. Our line was not long enough to fathom the depths on which we had ventured. It will be necessary to regroup, to start over again. We shall require time and money and leisure.”

“Isaac,” Daniel said, “two or three years ago, before you set out on the Great Work that has just come to an end, you made inquiries, with Pepys and Roger Comstock and others, concerning the possibility of a position in London. Since then Trinity College has only become more impoverished-your need of a reliable income cannot have been met from that quarter. Now I have come to offer you the Mint.”

Everyone now observed a prayerful silence for a minute or two as Isaac Newton considered it.

“In normal circumstances the position would be without interest,” he said, “but Comstock has sent adumbrations my way concerning a great Recoinage.”

“It is intended that Recoinage would be your Great Work. Which I do not say in jest. For perhaps that is indeed the only way that the Philosophic Mercury could ever be recovered.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Hooke could not find the inverse-square law in a well because there was too little of what he was looking for, for his equipment to find it. You could not extract the Philosophic Mercury from gold, perhaps for a like reason.”

“You hypothesize that my methods are sound but that there is too little of it in my sample. I disprove your hypothesis by reminding you that my methods are those of the ancients, who, as I believe, did not fail to get what they sought.”

“Would you number King Solomon among them?”

“You know as well as I do that he is regarded as the father of Alchemists.”

“If King Solomon had been in command of the Grand Magisterium, he would have used it. His wealth was fabled. He must have gathered together a moiety of the world’s supply of gold, and extracted the Philosophic Mercury from it.”

“Many adepts believe that he did just that.”

“It would follow that ordinary gold, such as you employ in your Great Work, was depleted, while King Solomon’s gold was enriched, in the quintessence.”

“Again, this supposition is commonplace.”

“Comes now word that King Solomon’s Gold was found by a Viceroy of Mexico who then lost it to the King of the Vagabonds-who absconded with it to India, and there dispersed it, commingling it with the ordinary gold that circulates all over the world as money.”

“That is what we are told.”

“Short of conquering the whole Orient and collecting all its riches by tyrannical confiscations, there is then no way to recover what the Vagabond King has pissed away-unless you could, by some magical incantation, cause the gold to come from every corner of the earth to London, and pass through the crucibles of the Tower.”

Fatio stepped forward, almost blocking the sight-line between Daniel and Isaac. “Now that you have got down to business, you offer up a most reasonable and attractive proposition,” he proclaimed. “Prithee explain what you meant earlier.”

“I shall explain it, Nicolas,” Isaac said. “Daniel has done all the explaining we may justly require of him. He means-but is unwilling to say-that your theory of gravity is nonsense and that it has weakened my position vis-a-vis Leibniz. He probably refers also to your claim to be a co-inventor of the calculus, which is, I am sorry to say, perfectly false. Perhaps he has also in mind your pretensions of becoming a medical doctor and curing thousands with a new patent-medicine, and your fanciful interpretations of the Bible, and strange prophecies drawn therefrom.”

“But he knows nothing of these!”

“But I do, Fatio.”

“What are you saying? I confess the Bible is easier to interpret than you, Isaac.”

“On the contrary, I feel that I am all too transparent, for Daniel, and God only knows how many others, have seen through me.”

“Not that many-yet,” Daniel said quietly.

“The nub of it is this: I have let my affection for you cloud my judgment,” Isaac said. “I have given much greater credit to your work, Nicolas, than I ever should have, and it has led me down a cul-de-sac and caused me to waste years, and ruin my health. Thank you, Daniel, for telling me this forthrightly. Mr. Locke, you have worked in a gentle way to bring about this epiphany, and I apologize for thinking poorly of you and accusing you of plotting against me. Nicolas, come to London and share lodgings with me and be my help-meet as I move forward in the Great Work.”

“I am not willing to be less than your equal partner.”

“But you cannot ever be my equal partner. Only Leibniz-”

“Then go and make love to Leibniz!” Fatio cried. He stood poised where he was for a few moments as if he could not believe he’d said it-waiting, Daniel thought, for Newton to retract everything he’d said. But Isaac Newton was long past being able to change his mind. Fatio was left with only one thing he could possibly do: He ran away.

Once Fatio had passed out of view, Daniel began to hear a distant moaning or wailing. He assumed that he was hearing Fatio crying out in grief. But it grew louder. He feared for a moment that Fatio might be coming back toward him with a weapon drawn.

“Daniel!” said Locke sharply.

Locke had gotten to his feet and was standing over Newton, blocking Daniel’s view. Locke had begun his career as a physician and seemed to have reverted to his old form now; with one hand he was throwing off the mass of blankets in which Newton had been wrapped up this whole while, with the other, he was reaching for Newton’s throat to check his pulse. Daniel rushed toward them, fearing that Isaac had suffered a stroke, or an apoplectic fit. But Newton knocked Locke’s hand away from his neck with a shout of “Murder! Murder!”

Locke took half a step back. Daniel drew up on Newton’s other side to find him flailing all of his limbs, like a man who was drowning in air. The violence of his movements seemed to levitate his whole body out of his chair for an instant. He fell hard onto the stone patio, yelped, and went stiff, his entire body trembling like a plucked twist of catgut. Daniel dropped to a knee and placed a hand on one of Newton’s bony shoulders. What meager flesh he had was hard and thrumming. Newton started away as if Daniel had touched him with a hot iron and rolled blindly against the chair leg, which caught him in the midsection. In a heartbeat he contracted into a f?tal position, wrapping his whole body round the leg of the chair like a toddler who grips his mother’s leg with his whole being because he does not want her to walk away. “Murder, murder!” he repeated, more quietly now, as if dreaming of it, though it might have been Mother, mother.

Locke spoke from between his hands, which he had clapped over his face like the covers of a book. “The greatest mentality of the world-demented. Oh, God have mercy.”

Daniel sat down crosslegged next to Isaac. “Mr. Locke, if you would be so good as to have one of the servants bring me a cup of coffee. I am going to do something I have not done in three decades: sit up all night worrying about Isaac Newton.”

“What you have done was necessary and in no way do I fault you for it,” Locke said, “but gravely I fear that he shall never be the same.”

“You are right. He will be merely the most successful Natural Philosopher in all of history. Which is a better thing to be than a false Messiah. It will take him years to get used to his new station in the world. By the time he is himself again, I’ll be out of his reach, in Boston, Massachusetts.”