The System of the World

Westminster Palace
11 JUNE 1714

Resolved, Nemine contradicente, that the House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution, That a Reward be settled by Parliament upon such Person or Persons as shall discover a more certain and practicable Method of ascertaining the Longitude, than any yet in Practice; and the said Reward be proportioned to the Degree of Exactness to which the said Method shall Reach.

-Journals of the House of Commons, VENERIS, 11° DIE JUNII; ANNO 13° ANN? REGIN?, 1714

IN WESTMINSTER, A HALL darkened Thames-

bank, like a load of gloaming spilt by a sloppy sky-god during the primordial rush to raise the vault of the stars. Efforts had been made to pretty it up, or at least screen it behind new work. The marshes from which it had upheaved had been filled and flattened to support the Hall’s contagions and encrustations. Some of these were styled as minsters, some as forts, others as houses-all mere words, since none was ever put to its builders’ purpose. A man debarking on that Bank and tunneling into the Pile, if he had a compass, and became not a-mazed in the gaudy labyrinth of out-buildings, might penetrate to the Hall.

It was empty. Oh, law-courts, screened behind plank barricades, had colonized the southern corners, and shop-stalls ran like baseboards along the sides, so that the persons who came and went through the emptiness could buy books, gloves, snuff, and hats. But these only pointed to the problematic immensity of the Hall; for what was the point of putting up a building so large that it could not be used until smaller buildings were erected within it? The carven angels at the ends of the out-thrust hammer-beams looked out on a tub of gray space. The bareness of the place, the splintery time-stained reach of its roof-timbers, betrayed it as a somewhat oversized Dark Ages Viking-Hall. Beowulf could have strode in to the place at any moment and called for a horn of mead. He would have felt and looked more at home there than any of the periwigged Persons of Quality who darted across its stone floor, nervously, like stoats trying to make it across a darkling sandbar before owls could stoop on them. The smaller buildings huddled against Westminster Hall, stealing integrity from its flying buttresses, were better suited for plots, machinations, skullduggery, and arcane rites: the timeless occupations of men. So into the peripheral warrens they scurried, abandoning the hall to those bleak angels.

If this grave void at the heart of Westminster had any purpose, it was like the empty chamber that made up most of a violincello. The strings, bridge, bow, and the player itself were all to the outside. Nothing moved, nothing happened in the dark cavity; yet none of it would work unless it were built around a central emptiness that held the parts in their proper relation to one another, and withstood the relentless pulling of the strings while sympathizing with their tiniest stirrings.

There was only one man on this day who did not quicken his steps to cross that floor. It was an elderly knight who had arrived at the north end of the place in a black sedan chair, and bid his porters let him off there. He alit near the pillory, where a fat man was being whipped, writhing and hopping as each new stripe decorated his back, but refusing to cry out. The old man from the sedan chair swung wide of the post so he wouldn’t be flecked by hurtling blood, and stepped into a gap between a pair of coffee-houses that had been troweled onto the ancient facade of the hall, nearly hiding its main entrance. He needed no wig, for his hair, though thin, still grew long and straight, and smallpox had left little mark on him. And he needed no powder, for his hair had been white as salt for half a century. He strolled the length of the Hall slowly, raising his protruberant eyes to meet the gaze of certain of those omniscient angels, paying others no mind. He glanced about from time to time, as if his ears could detect echoes and discern resonances to which all others were deaf. In time he reached the south end of the vault where traffic was funneled between the two makeshift law-courts. With a visible hardening of his face he forced himself into a dissolving noise beyond. He was gone from the Hall. Perhaps he had changed it in his passage, added some faint strain that echoed after he was gone, and echoes there still.

Tribes, clans, factions, sects, classes, houses, and dynasties had raised their standards, and seen them thrown down, in the Hall’s out-buildings for six hundred years. It was to Power what Covent Garden was to vegetables. No point in trying to follow the ins and outs, until you stepped over the threshold. At the moment, as for the past centuries, there was here a thing called Parliament, consisting of two parallel or alternate renderings named Commons and Lords, each the ground of an on-going war between Tories and Whigs, the sons and heirs of Cavaliers and Roundheads, the sons and heirs of Anglicans and Puritans, amp;c., amp;c. Each styled itself The Party and the other The Faction. Milling about in the gloom behind them, brandishing money and weapons, were descendants of ancient warlords, currently going by the names of Jacobites and Hanoverians. The battle itself was carried forward daily with words as many as granules of gunpowder on a battle-field.

The silver-haired knight had been summoned into a high-walled Gothick chapel that for quite some few years had been claimed, occupied, and defended against all comers by the body calling itself Commons. It was dominated by the Tories just now. His summoners were a committee or subset of Commons that happened to consist largely of Whigs. Why had a body of Tories suffered a band of Whigs to form a committee that could arrogate to itself the power to summon Knights into this hallowed Chapel that they used as their Clubb-house? Why, only because the subject of that committee’s deliberations was so abstruse, so recondite, and, in a word, so boring that they were only too pleased to let Whigs expend their powder on it.

“I HAVE BEEN made aware of four diverse Projects for discovering the Longitude,” said Sir Isaac Newton.

“Only four?” asked Roger Comstock, the Marquis of Ravenscar: a Whig, and the bloke who had invited Newton here. He belonged to Lords, not Commons, and was therefore a guest in this chamber. “At the Royal Society, it seems we are exposed to four a week.”

That Roger did not belong to this body at all, would seem to call in question the propriety of his having invited a stranger to come and address them. But he had many friends in the room willing to overlook this and other enormities.

“I know of only four, my lord, that are true in theory. Of the others I make no account.”

“Is that of Messieurs Ditton and Wiston among the fortunate four, or the phantastickal multitude?” asked Ravenscar.

Everyone in the chapel began barking like a dog except for him, Newton, and Messrs. Ditton (who had turned the color of a pomegranate seed, and begun moving his lips) and Whiston (whose eyelids thrummed like hummingbirds’ wings as sweat coursed in gleaming rills from under his wig and pincered in on the corners of his eyes).

“Their theory is as correct as their ambitions are feeble,” answered Newton.

The House of Commons became silent, not out of shock at Newton’s cruelty, but out of professional admiration. “Supposing their scheme could be executed-a supposition that might be debated, at the Royal Society, as long and as fiercely as the late War was in this House-I say, disregarding all of the practical difficulties entailed in their Project, and supposing it were effected by some latter-day D?dalus-it would not suffice to navigate across an ocean, but only to enable the most diligent mariners to avoid running aground, when they wandered close to a Shore.”

General amusement in the Chapel now, occasioned by the facial expressions of Messrs. Ditton and Whiston, who were no longer even putting forth the effort to be angry or agitated. They now looked as if they were resting on slabs at the College of Physicians, about halfway through their own autopsies.

Not partaking of the entertainment was the Marquis of Ravenscar, who had just been handed a slip of paper by a page. He opened and read it, and for only a moment looked as dismayed as Ditton and Whiston. Then he got the better of himself. Like the deaf dinner-guest pretending that he heard the bon mot, he adopted a knowing grin, and allowed the mood of the House to infiltrate his phizz. He glanced down to review the documents spread out on the table before him, as if he had forgotten the subject of this hearing and needed to jog his memory. Then he spoke: “Merely to avoid ramming the odd continent is a low bar. What of the other three Projects that are true in theory? For it seems to me that if such Herculean efforts are to be made to practice a scheme, they were better directed to schemes that should enable our sea-captains to discover the Longitude anywhere.”

Sir Isaac Newton’s answer comprised many many words, but contained no more than the following information: that one could do it by telling the time with an excellent sea-going chronometer, which no one knew how to make yet; or by watching the satellites of Jupiter through an excellent sea-going telescope, which no one knew how to make yet; or by looking at the position of the moon and comparing it against calculations derived from his, i.e., Sir Isaac Newton’s, lunar theory, which was not quite finished yet but would be coming out any minute now in a book. In the timeless and universal manner of authors conversing in public places, he did not fail to mention its title: Volume III of Principia Mathematica, entitled The System of the World, available shortly where books are sold.

The Marquis of Ravenscar only heard this peroration in its general outlines because he spent the whole time jetting notes onto scraps of paper and stuffing them into minions’ hands. But when his ears detected a lengthy silence, he said: “These, er, calculations-would they be similar to what are already used for finding latitude? Or-”

“Infinitely more complex.”

“Oh, bother,” said Ravenscar distractedly, still scribbling notes, like the naughtiest schoolboy in the entire history of the world. “I suppose every ship would then require an extra deck crowded with computers, and a flock of geese to keep ’em in quills.”

“Or else we should need every ship to carry an Arithmetickal Engine,” Newton returned. Then, not trusting the House to detect his sarcasm, he went on: “-a chim?rical phant’sy of the Hanoverian dilettante and plagiarist, Baron von Leibniz, which he has abjectly failed to complete lo these many years.” And it seemed as if Newton were prepared to enumerate the Baron’s defects at much greater length, but he was interrupted, and distracted, by the hot arrival in his palm of a note still damp from Ravenscar’s quill.

“So the lunar method too requires an apparatus we do not know how to make yet,” Ravenscar said, moving to sum up with an abruptness, a dispatch, that had not been seen in this House since the last time a Papist had tried to blow it up. The benches rustled with the stirrings of many expensively clad arses. A positive start was running through the Chapel.

“Yes, my lord-”

“And so it is your testimony that our ships shall persist in running aground and slaughtering our brave mariners until we shall learn how to make certain things we do not know how to make yet.”

“Yes, my-”

“Who shall invent these remarkable devices?”

“Projectors, entrepeneurs, adventurers, my-”

“What incentive could lead such a man to wager years of his life on attempting to devise a new Technology-if I may borrow a word from Dr. Waterhouse-that may turn out to be infeasible?” Ravenscar asked, standing up, and holding out his hand to let it be known that it was now permissible for someone to hand him his walking-stick. Someone did.

“My lord, some monetary-” testified Sir Isaac Newton, standing up as well-for he had read the note.

“A monetary prize-a Reward! To be awarded to such Person or Persons as shall discover a more certain and practical Method of ascertaining the Longitude? Is that your testimony? Yes? Sir Isaac, once again the Heavens resound with your brilliance and all Britannia gapes in awe at your lapidary ingenuity.” Ravenscar was crossing the floor while he thus orated, a novelty that roused to full wakefulness many a senior back-bencher who had lost, or never found, the faculty of walking and talking at the same time. “ ’Twere a crime to waste any more of the time of the world’s foremost savant on details,” Ravenscar proclaimed, arriving at Newton’s side and snatching his arm. “I have unbounded confidence that Mr. Halley, Dr. Clarke, and Mr. Cotes can bat down any further questions from Commons-as for myself, I have business with certain troublous Lords-I may as well see you out, Sir Isaac, as we go the same way!” By that time he and Sir Isaac were out the door, leaving a House of more or less dumbfounded Commons; Ditton and Whiston, half-murdered but still breathing; and the three lesser savants mentioned, who had been summoned as mere acolytes to the High Priest, and been left in charge of the Rite.

NEWTON NEARLY LOST AN ARM in the lobby of Commons, for he moved left-towards Lords-as Roger Comstock, the Marquis of Ravenscar, who had possession of the arm, moved right-towards Westminster Hall. “We are summoned by Lords,” Ravenscar explained, re-socketing Newton’s shoulder-joint, and trying it with a wiggle, “but not to Lords.” Dodging round a few bends and negotiating diverse stair-flights they came into the cleft between the two plank law-courts, and entered the great Hall again-just as devoid of Vikings, and strewn with inappropriate modern-day Englishmen, as ever. A man in quasi-genteel clothes browsed a bookshop, to let all the world know he was literate; a straw projected from his shoe, as a signal to barristers that he would give false testimony in exchange for money. A stirring in the air created a serial heaving down rows of sunfaded, smoke-stained, bullet-holed banners: the colors of French regiments that had been taken by Marlborough at Blenheim and other places. These had been hung on the walls to add a bit of color, and been promptly forgotten. A fair bit of noise was coming into the north end of the Hall from the New Palace Yard. The man who’d received the whipping there earlier had been left in the pillory, and a few score common Londoners had gathered in his sight, to fling handfuls of mud and horse-manure at his face in hopes that they might induce suffocation. This sort of thing was common enough in London that most persons could will themselves not to see it. Ravenscar, uncharacteristically, was gazing directly at the scene. His eyes were too old, and too far away, to resolve the details; but he knew what it was. “Ah, fortunate man!” he said wistfully, “if only I could trade places with him for the next hour!”

Newton straightened up and, prudently, slowed down. He glanced up and around as if wondering whether any of the over-looming angels had heard. “Where are we going, my lord?”

“Star Chamber,” Ravenscar announced, simultaneously tightening his grip on Newton’s arm lest these fell words cause the eminent Natural Philosopher to spin away and make a break for it. Sir Isaac did no such thing; but he was startled. He had expected that Roger Comstock would name one of the buildings of the Exchequer, which in recent decades had advanced far, and on a broad front, from the Hall’s northeast corner, so that they nearly filled the space between it and the River. Star Chamber, on the other hand, was small, and ancient; Kings of England had used to meet there with their Privy Councils. “Who has summoned us?” Newton asked.

As if the answer were self-evident, Roger said, “The Eel.” Saying out loud this mysterious epithet seemed to bring his concentration back. “We are only seconds away from the place. We could get more time by walking slowly; but I wish to stride into the place enthusiastically. The importance of this cannot be overstated. You must therefore listen carefully, Sir Isaac, as I’ll only have time to say this once.

“It seems,” Roger continued, “that I have only been given leave to distract myself with Longitude so that my honorable lord, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, could prepare some sort of poppet-show. The invitation was sprung upon me while you were testifying. I am sure Bolingbroke would fainer have tied it round an arrow and shot it into my stomach, but such proceedings, though frequently seen in Lords, are still frowned upon in Commons. You, Sir Isaac, have been given a Backstage Pass to the poppet-show, which makes me suspect that you shall be called upon to play the lead role.”

Sir Isaac Newton now became quiet and still, which was his customary way of showing rage. “It is an affront. I came here to discourse of the Longitude. Now you say I am caught up in an ambuscade.”

“I beg of you, Sir Isaac, be anything but affronted. For it is when men become old and important, and peevish over the odd ambuscade, that they become most vulnerable to just such tactics. Be baffled, unconcerned, gay-what’d be best of all, sporting about it!”

Newton did not look very sporting just now. The portal to Star Chamber was now as large in Ravenscar’s sight, as the whale’s maw to Jonah. “Never mind,” he said, “be as affronted as you please-just don’t volunteer anything. If you see what appears to be an opening in debate, remember that it was ingeniously laid down in front of you by Bolingbroke, as coquettes drop handkerchiefs at the feet of men they would ensnare.”

“Has anyone ever actually done that to you, Roger?” They had been joined by Walter Raleigh Waterhouse Weem, a.k.a. Peer, who was, like Roger, a Whig Lord. “I’ve heard of the practice, but-”

“Nay, ’twas just a figure,” Roger admitted.

But this Weem/Comstock insouciance-in truth a sort of Yogic exercise to relax nerves-misfired in Newton’s case. “What’s the point of participating in a debate if I’m to disregard every opening?” he demanded.

“This is no more a debate than is Hanging Day at Tyburn Cross. Viscount Bolingbroke would be our Jack Ketch. Anything we are allowed to say shall be strictly in the nature of Last Words. Our reply, supposing we can muster any, shall consist of deeds not words, and it shall be delivered…outside…of…this…Chamber!” Roger timed it so that he stepped over the threshold at the moment he uttered the last word. Newton dared not respond, for the Chamber was crowded with Lords Spiritual and Temporal, Knights, Courtiers, and Clerks. And it was as silent as a parish-church when the vicar has lost his place in the middle of the sermon.

“SOMETHING MONSTROUS WAS MADE to happen in the Tower of London a month and a half ago.”

It was terribly unkind for Roger to have dubbed one of his fellow-men “The Eel.” And yet a visitor from another place and time, blundering into Star Chamber, not knowing any of the men in the place, would have been able to pick out the one Roger meant. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, and Secretary of State to Her Britannic Majesty, was strolling about the open center of the chamber as he talked. All others were backed up against the walls, like so many small fry sharing a tank with something toothy and sinuous.

“London’s Persons of Quality-members of the Party and of the Faction alike-have done what they could to draw a curtain over the late events in the Tower, and to promulgate the sham that it was a momentary up-welling of the Mobb, quickly suppressed by the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guard. A stable-fire on Tower Hill distracted the locals, and laid a smoke-pall over all-fortunate, that. It shall be writ down in history-books as a civil disturbance, if it is noted at all. But it would be a moral as well as an intellectual sin to mistake the events of April 23rd for anything other than a whited sepulchre. The matter must be investigated. Those responsible must be held to accompt. My lord Oxford, in his capacity as Lord Treasurer, has disappointed me by failing to do anything about it.”

This frank and frontal assault on his fellow Tory Lord was new. It created a buzz in the room. Bolingbroke held his tongue for a few moments, and let his gaze stray over the heads of some of the wallflowers. These reacted as if they’d been switched across the face by a horse-tail. Bolingbroke was not looking at them, however, but simply gazing in the general direction of the various offices, courts, and receipts of the Exchequer.

After that, Bolingbroke’s words poured out into a carefully maintained silence. Even men who were under attack (several of Oxford’s lieutenants had been shouldered to the front rank) said nothing. This was, in other words, no kind of Parliamentary proceeding. Depending on the diurnal velleities of Queen Anne, Bolingbroke was either the first man in England, or the second, after Oxford. Today he certainly believed he was first; he might have come here direct from the right hand of the Sovereign herself. Though Star Chamber was, like Commons and like Lords, an appendage of Westminster Hall, it had nothing to do with Parliament-which was a place to discuss things-and everything to do with Monarchy of the ancient, off-with-their-heads school. The murderous Court of Star Chamber had been abolished during Cromwell days, but this room still did service as a venue for the Privy Council to effect their plans and resolves-some dictated by primordial ceremonies and others improvised moment-by-

moment. This seemed to be one of the latter. In any case, no one spoke unless Bolingbroke asked him to; and he hadn’t asked.

“In the Tower of London is a place called the Mint,” Bolingbroke continued, allowing his gaze to slide over Newton’s face. Newton did not glance away-a detail, but a noteworthy one. Roger Comstock, or any other worldly man, would have advised Sir Isaac to lower his gaze, as this was thought to have a calming effect on mad dogs and Lords of the Council alike. But Newton spent most of his time in other worlds. Those aspects of this world considered most important by men like Ravenscar and Bolingbroke, Sir Isaac was most apt to find trivial and annoying.

Bolingbroke did not know Isaac Newton. Newton was a Puritan and a Whig, Bolingbroke a man of no fixed principles, but with the brainstem reflexes of a Jacobite Tory. Bolingbroke was one of those hommes d’affaires who had sought and obtained entry to the Royal Society because it was the done thing. Out of its recondite deliberations, certain Whigs such as Pepys and Ravenscar had summoned forth magic: Banks, Annuities, Lotteries, National Debt, and other eldritch practices that had conjured latent money and power from out of nowhere. One couldn’t blame a man like Bolingbroke for thinking that the Royal Society was, therefore, all about power and money. Newton’s abandonment of Cambridge for the Mint only confirmed as much. If Bolingbroke had known of Newton’s true reason for being at the Mint-if full understanding of Newton could have been inserted, whole, into the mind of Bolingbroke-it would have been necessary to carry Her Majesty’s Secretary of State out of the room on a door, and give him tincture of opium for days. As it happened, he assumed that Newton had taken the job because the highest thing a man could aspire to was to be a time-serving hack with a sinecure, a pompous title, and as few responsibilities as possible.

And now Newton was staring him directly in the eye. Only a few men in all of Christendom had the kidney for a staredown with Bolingbroke, and until this moment, Bolingbroke had thought he knew who all of them were. For this was his first encounter of any significance with Newton, and his first hint that Newton was at the Mint for reasons that were not obvious.

“How stand matters in the Realm of the Coin, Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke inquired, manipulating his snuff-box-which gave him a pretext to break contact with Newton’s blood-freezing glare.

“Her Majesty’s coinage has never been more sound, my lord-” Newton began, then stopped as Ravenscar put a hand on the small of his back. Bolingbroke had spun away as if to hide from Sir Isaac, while exhibiting to a rank of his supporters an expression of surprise and mirth that had come over his face. For as any well-brought-up person ought to discern, Realm of the Coin was a play on words, a mere witticism, tossed out as a sort of ice-breaker, to establish a feeling of welcome and camaraderie, while giving Newton an opening to respond with a bon mot of his own. Newton had missed this, which showed lack of breeding, and taken it as a literal request for information, which showed he was oddly nervous, keyed-up, trigger-happy. Odd, that! Why so defensive? Bolingbroke took snuff and composed himself, then turned back around to face Newton-but not before all of these things had been communicated to the men standing behind him, and registered on their faces, visible to everyone else in Star Chamber. All were mortified on Sir Isaac’s behalf, except for Sir Isaac, who clearly just wanted to be asked questions so that he could answer them and get away from these people.

“Of course, Sir Isaac-more on that anon. I welcome you, and only wish that more Lords of the Council had not seen fit to attend you.” This as an aside between two players on a stage. Then, a straightening and clearing of the windpipe, and a soliloquy: “Her Majesty’s coins come out of the Mint. Her Majesty’s name and her noble visage are impressed upon every one of those coins. Coinage, therefore, has ever been a State, as well as a Treasury matter. Much as Charing Cross, over yonder, is neither the Strand nor Whitehall, but rather the crux and joint of the two, so coinage is a sort of con-fusion of State and Treasury. The Secretary of State has some interest in it,” Bolingbroke continued, meaning himself. “This marks the beginning, though ’tis far from being the end, of the public phase of the Secretary of State’s investigation. I have been pursuing it quietly for some weeks now, and had not intended to make it known so prematurely; but when I learned that Sir Isaac Newton, who has the honor to be Master of the Mint, was coming to Westminster to testify on some trifling matter ginned up by the fevered minds of the Faction, I resolved to invite him to this Chamber that his visit would not be a perfect waste of his time.”

Bolingbroke’s coiling movements about the room had now led him into a position whence he could gaze directly into Newton’s face across some yards of rather good wool carpet. “Sir Isaac,” he said, “my investigation has already established that you were absent from the Tower on the day of the assault. But no doubt your famous curiosity got the better of you when you returned and found that a small war had been conducted there while you were out. You must have looked into those events, asked questions of those who were there. What conclusions have you reached as to the true nature and purpose of the outrage?”

“My lord, it was an attempt-mostly successful, I am sorry to say-by a gang of Black-guards, very likely led by no less than Jack the Coiner himself, to steal the Crown Jewels,” said Sir Isaac Newton. Behind him, Ravenscar was wondering if he would get away with elbowing Newton in the throat to disable his voice-box.

“Perhaps it would help to clarify your mind as to that, if I told you that my investigators have already captured some of the Black-guards in question. Oh, they attempted to flee to Dunkirk in a boat that was overhauled and searched by a brig of the Royal Navy,” Bolingbroke explained, amused by Newton’s naivete, but tolerant for now. “The missing jewels were recovered. The men were kept apart and questioned separately. They have testified, to a man, that even when Jack the Coiner had gained the Inmost Ward, and held the Tower in the hollow of his hand, as it were, standing within bow-shot of the open and unguarded Jewel Tower, he did ignore the lure of those baubles, and held them of no value. Instead he made straightaway for the Mint, and went to the vault where the Pyx is kept.”

“That is absurd,” Newton said. “The Pyx holds but a few samples of pennies and guineas. The Crown Jewels are infinitely more valuable.”

“The theft of the Crown Jewels was an improvisation, carried out by ignorant pawns who never knew the true purpose of the assault. This much is proved by the ease with which those men were captured. I say that Jack the Coiner went to the Pyx.”

“And I hear you saying it, my lord; but I say nothing was stolen from that Vault.”

“Note the careful selection of words,” Bolingbroke mused aloud to a squadron of smirking Tory admirers. “Is this a sentence, or a mathematickal riddle?” Then he whirled to face a closed door, which led not to the exit but to an inner chamber. “Bring it in!” he commanded.

The door was heaved open by a page, revealing several men who had been loitering within. The biggest led them out. He was booted and spurred, and dressed very well, complete with a cape. Dangling on his breast was a silver medallion in the shape of a greyhound. Four other men, similarly got up, followed him, each holding an end of a pole. They looked almost like porters carrying a sedan chair, and this caused a frisson to charge through Star Chamber as everyone phant’sied that the Queen herself was being hauled out. But the burden of those poles was smaller, yet heavier, than the Queen. It was a boxy thing hidden under a velvet cape.

“You’ll all know Mr. Charles White,” said Bolingbroke, “Captain of the Queen’s Messengers. And, as of some weeks ago, provisional commander of the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guard, in relief of the disgraced Colonel Barnes.”

A murmur of diffident greeting welled up about the place and collapsed to silence as the four Queen’s Messengers set their mysterious fardel down in the center of the floor, directly between Newton and Bolingbroke. Charles White, who as the proprietor of a bear-baiting ring in Rotherhithe knew a few things about how to play on the anticipation of an audience, allowed a five-count to elapse, then stepped up smartly and whipped off the cape to reveal a black chest with three padlocks suspended from its hasps.

“As my lord commanded,” White said, “direct from the Mint in the Tower of London, I give you the Pyx.”

“OH, PRAY DON’T BE SO absurd, this is not a Trial of the Pyx!” Bolingbroke exclaimed some time later, when everyone had calmed down a bit, and stopped murmuring in one another’s ears. “As every man in this Chamber ought to know, a Trial would require the presence of the Queen’s Remembrancer, as well as the Lord Treasurer, who has not seen fit to be with us this day. Oh no no no. Quite absurd. This is not a Trial, but a cursory Inspection, of the Pyx.”

“Pray, what is the, er, procedure for such an inspection, my lord? It is a thing I have never heard of,” said Ravenscar. He was acting as a second for Newton, who was still unable to speak; or so Ravenscar guessed from the fact that beneath Newton’s thinning white hair his scalp was red, and covered with goosebumps.

“Of course you have never heard of it, for it is extraordinary. It has never been done before. It has never been necessary. For until recent times, the Pyx was always looked after by guards who could be trusted. To guard it has been a duty of the Tower garrison. Several regiments have had the honor. Of late it has been entrusted to the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guards: a regiment that enjoyed flashes of distinction until my lord Marlborough quite lost his way, and quit the country. Under a Colonel Barnes it fell into degeneracy. He has been relieved of his commission. There is an old master sergeant of that Regiment, a Robert Shaftoe. This Chamber will no doubt be astonished to learn that Sergeant Shaftoe is none other than the brother or half-brother of one Jack Shaftoe, thought to be the same person as Jack the Coiner. In spite of which, this Robert Shaftoe was allowed-through a systematic dereliction of responsibility by Marlborough, extending over many years-to remain in the regiment, under the pretext that he had become estranged from Mr. Jack Shaftoe and had not seen him in many years. It is he, and others like him, who have been given charge of the Mint in general, and the Pyx in particular, since the war ended and their Regiment was brought home. After the events of April 23rd, as I have said, Colonel Barnes was relieved, and more recently Robert Shaftoe has been moved to new quarters. Oh, he still resides within the Tower, no longer in his accustomed billet. He has been given lodgings of a rather different character. There, he has had conversations with Mr. White. Thus far, these conversations have not been terribly illuminating-but I trust this will change, as Mr. White has shown himself to be a skilled and forceful seeker after the truth. Since these changes were put into effect, the Pyx has been safe from any tampering-I dare say, as safe as the Crown Jewels. But it is impossible to know what might have been done to it during the year that it lay bare to the irresponsibility, if not the outright depredations, of Colonel Barnes and Sergeant Shaftoe. And that is why we are gathered in this Chamber today for an event without precedent: an Inspection of the Pyx.”

“AND SO, TO SUM UP, I must confess that I too was absent during the onslaught of these Black-guards-

a shame that I shall never out-live,” said Charles White, who had just related, to an astonished Chamber, an improbable yarn about a wild goose chase down the River Thames: a venture that had been undertaken on the strength of assurances from Colonel Barnes and Sir Isaac Newton that it would culminate in the capture of Jack the Coiner, but that in fact had ended with a fire in a broken-down, abandoned coastal watch-tower, and a lot of confused and misled dragoons storming around in benighted mud-flats. A boat or two had been sighted, and pursued, until darkness had fallen. Sir Isaac had been rescued from a drifting wreck where he and another aged Whig Natural Philosopher had been found down in the bilge playing with a jack-in-the-box.

“Your sense of duty is an example to us all, Mr. White,” Bolingbroke protested, in a voice soaked with amusement over the concluding detail of the jack-in-the-box. “If you were misled, ’twas only because the Byzantine intrigues that were afoot on that day, are so alien to the mentality of an honest Englishman. Tell me, when you returned to the Tower, and found that indescribable scene, were you concerned as to the Crown Jewels?”

“Naturally, my lord, and hied thither straightaway.”

“Does anyone really hie nowadays?” asked Roger.

Perfect was the silence at his levity.

Charles White cleared his throat and continued. “Finding several of the jewels missing, I supposed, at first, that this explained all.”

“In what way, Mr White?” Bolingbroke inquired, now in a sort of friendly cross-examination mode.

“Good my lord, I reasoned that the Black-guards had been after the Crown Jewels, and that all of the day’s happenings in the Tower had been parts of their plan to steal them.”

“But you are using the past tense, Mr. White. Your opinions on the matter have undergone some change?”

“It was not until some weeks after, when some of the Black-guards were caught, and made to tell what they knew, that I began to perceive faults in that hypothesis.” He pronounced it wrong.

“But it seemed a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, didn’t it? No one would have found fault with it, had the prisoners not given us the information that Jack the Coiner evinced no desire to see the Crown Jewels.”

“It did indeed seem reasonable, my lord, or so I tried to tell myself for quite some little while; but viewed with a more critical eye, it does not hold up.”

“Why does it not, Mr. White?”

“The journey downriver, which I have just related, was, as my lord will have plainly seen, a diversion, meant to remove me and the first company of Guards from the Tower.”

“So it would seem.”

“It must therefore have been arranged, with some cunning and forethought, by some who were secretly confederated with Jack, and who would profit by the success of Jack’s undertaking.”

“A reasonable enough supposition,” Bolingroke allowed. Then he reminded White, “We look forward to a confession to that effect from Sergeant Shaftoe.”

“Consider it done my lord-but Robert Shaftoe is just a sergeant. A very senior one, true, but-”

“I do take your point, Mr. White. Perhaps Colonel Barnes ought to be questioned. He would have the authority-”

“Would have, my lord, but-and I have turned this over in my mind a thousand times-Colonel Barnes did never exercise any such authority on that day. I requested that he send a company on the expedition to Shive Tor, because, to hear Sir Isaac tell it, we would need a whole company, or more, to subdue the small army of Black-guards we would find there.”

“Mr. White. Certainly you are not accusing yourself of complicity!”

“Even if I did, my lord, ’twould never stand; for the record now shows that the true butt at which Jack the Coiner aimed his shaft was not the Jewels but the Mint-to be specific, the Pyx. And how would I benefit from some compromise of the Pyx?”

“How could anyone conceivably benefit from it?” Bolingbroke wanted to know.

“It is of no account,” Isaac Newton broke in, “as the Pyx was never compromised!”

“Sir Isaac Newton! We’ve not heard from you yet. For the benefit of those here who have never seen the Pyx, would you be so good as to explain its workings?”

“It would be my pleasure, my lord,” said Newton, stepping forward, eluding the hand of the Marquis of Ravenscar who had groped forward, out of some instinct, trying to yank him back from the abyss. “It is closed by three locks-all three must be removed for the lid to be opened. The top, as you can see, is fashioned with a hatch, devised in such a way that a small object may be deposited into the Pyx without opening the locks. But it is impossible for a hand to reach in and remove any object.” Newton operated the mechanism, letting everyone get a look at a pair of swinging doors rigged just as he had claimed.

“How is the Pyx employed at the Mint?” Bolingbroke inquired, accurately feigning the sort of elevated curiosity that was good form at Royal Society meetings.

Newton responded in kind. “Of every lot of coins that is minted, some are plucked out, and deposited. I shall demonstrate, behold!” Newton opened his own coin-purse and spilled a guinea and some pennies-freshly minted, of course-onto his hand. He borrowed a sheet of foolscap from a clerk, laid it on the Pyx, arranged the coins in the center of the page, and then rolled and folded the paper around the money to make a neat little packet. “Here I have done it with paper-at the Mint we use leather. The Sinthia, as we call this little packet, is sewn shut. The worker writes on its outside a notation as to when the sample was taken, and stamps it with a seal, kept for that purpose alone. Then-” Sir Isaac slipped the Sinthia into the Pyx’s hatch, and tripped the mechanism. It vanished and dropped within.

“And from time to time, as is well known to that scholar of all matters monetary, my lord Ravenscar, the Pyx is brought hither to the Star Chamber by order of the Privy Council,” Bolingbroke said, “and opened, and its contents assayed by a jury of goldsmiths drawn from the most respectable citizens of the City of London.”

“Indeed, my lord. Anciently it was done four times a year. Of late, less frequently.”

“When was the last Trial of the Pyx, Sir Isaac?”

“Last year, my lord.”

“You say, ’twas around the time that the hostilities on the Continent ceased, and the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guard returned to garrison the Tower.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And so the Pyx, as of April 22nd, contained samples of all lots of coins minted during the months that the Black Torrent Guard controlled the Tower.”

“Er, indeed, my lord,” said Newton, wondering what that had to do with anything.

Bolingbroke was only too happy to lead him out of his confusion. “Mr. Charles White is of the view that those who were responsible for the assault on the Tower, phant’sied that they could somehow benefit more from compromising the Pyx, than from stealing the Crown Jewels! How could such a thing possibly be, Sir Isaac?”

“I do not know, my lord, and I hold it to be idle, for the Pyx was never compromised.”

“How do you know that, Sir Isaac? Jack the Coiner might have spent as much as an hour with it.”

“As you can see, it is sealed with three padlocks, my lord. I cannot attest to the other two, for one is the property of the Warden of the Mint and the other belongs to the Lord Treasurer; but the third is mine. There is only one key to that lock, and I am never without it.”

“I have heard that there are men who can open a lock, without a key-there is a word for it, they say.”

“Lock-picking, my lord,” someone said helpfully.

“Trust a Whig to know such a thing! Could Jack have ‘picked’ the locks?”

“Locks such as these, perhaps,” answered Newton, passing his hand over two of them. Then he turned his attention to a third, much larger and heavier. He hefted it like Roger Comstock cupping one of his mistress’s breasts. “To pick this one is almost certainly impossible. To pick it and two others in an hour is absolutely impossible.”

“So a clever fellow could get the Pyx open in an hour, if he had your key, by ‘picking’ the other two locks. But without your key-impossible.”

“Just so, my lord,” said Newton. He was distracted by violent stirrings in his peripheral vision, and glanced over to see Roger Comstock now frantically waving his hands about and drawing his finger convulsively across his throat. But Newton seemed to take these gestures as an inexplicable roadside mum-show.

Bolingbroke noticed, too. “My lord Ravenscar has imbibed too much coffee again and come down with the spasms,” he guessed. Then he turned his attention back to Newton. “Pray take your impregnable lock away, Sir Isaac.” He turned around and gestured at a pair of fellows who were standing together in a corner, each nervously fingering an elaborate key. “The Warden of the Mint has joined us,” Bolingbroke said, “and even the Lord Treasurer has deigned to send a representative bearing his key. We would view the contents of the Pyx.”

It was three-quarters filled with a jumble of leathern packets. Newton’s paper-packet had tumbled down into a corner. He bent down to retrieve it; and though Newton was oblivious to this, others in the room noted that the eyes of White and Bolingbroke tracked every movement of Newton’s, as if they were expecting to catch him out in some sleight-of-hand.

“Is this what you expected to see when the lid was opened, Sir Isaac?” asked Bolingbroke.

“It appears to be in order, my lord.” Newton reached into the Pyx a second time, plucked out a Sinthia, glanced at it, and dropped it back in. He plucked out another. This time, he hesitated.

“Is everything quite all right, Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke inquired, the soul of gentlemanly concern.

Sir Isaac raised the Sinthia higher, closer to window-light, and turned it this way and that.

“Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke repeated. The Chamber was very still. Bolingbroke flicked his eyes at the Warden of the Mint, who stepped forward and stood on tiptoe to peer over Sir Isaac’s shoulder. Newton had frozen.

The Warden of the Mint’s eyes widened.

Newton dropped the packet into the Pyx as if it had caught fire. He staggered back, towards the Marquis of Ravenscar, like a blinded duellist seeking refuge among his friends.

“My lord,” explained the Warden, “something’s a bit queer about that last packet. The handwriting-it looked forged, somehow.”

Charles White raised a knee and kicked the lid of the Pyx. It closed with a boom like a cannon-shot.

“I say that the Pyx is evidence in a criminal matter,” Bolingbroke proclaimed. “Put the locks on it again, and bring out my seal. I shall set my seal on this evidence to show any further tampering. Mr. White shall return the Pyx to its customary station and use in the Tower but he shall keep it under heavy guard, twenty-four hours a day. I shall bear these tidings to the other Lords of the Council. We may safely presume that the Council will order a Trial of the Pyx forthwith.”

“Good my lord,” said Peer, stepping forward, “what evidence suggests that such tampering occurred? The Warden has asserted that one of the packets looked a bit queer, but this hardly constitutes proof. Sir Isaac himself has said nothing at all.”

“Sir Isaac,” said Bolingbroke, “what is perfectly clear to most of us, is impenetrable to this Whig. He requires evidence. No man is more eligible to testify in such a matter than you. Is it your testimony, before this assembly, that all of the coins in this Pyx were minted in the Tower, under your direction, and placed therein by your hand? I remind you that every coin in the Pyx is subject to assay during a Trial, and that you are under an indenture to Her Majesty; the consequences of a failed Trial are severe.”

“By ancient tradition,” said Roger Comstock behind his hand, “false coiners are punished by amputation of the hand that did the deed, and castration.” From anxiety he had moved on briefly to horror; but now from horror to fascination.

Newton tried to answer, but his voice did not work for a moment, and only a bleat came out. Then he swallowed, grimacing at the pain of swallowing, and got out the words: “I cannot so testify, my lord. But without a more thorough examination-”

“There shall be one anon, at a Trial of the Pyx.”

“I beg my lord’s pardon,” said Peer, who had out of some blind herd instinct blundered out to act as scape-goat for his entire Party, “but why bother to have a Trial of the Pyx, if the Pyx has been tampered with?”

“Why, to get all false coins out of it, so that we shall know that all coins put in thereafter shall be genuine samples of the Mint’s produce-and not frauds put in as a desperate gambit to hide long-standing flaws in the coinage!”

“The poetry of it!” Roger exclaimed, though these reflections were concealed under a hubbub, the sound of Parties and Factions mobilizing and arming. “Sir Isaac dares not assert that the Pyx is clean, for fear that Jack may have salted it with debased coins-which would be found out at the Trial, and laid to Sir Isaac. To save his hand and his balls, he must admit that it has been compromised; but in doing so, he calls his own coins into question, and names himself as a suspect in the assault on the Tower!”

“My lord,” said a Tory, “it is suggested that a year’s coin-samples are now simply gone-stolen by Jack the Coiner! If that is so, how can we gauge the present soundness of Her Majesty’s coinage? Our enemies in the world shall say that the Mint has spewed out false and debased guineas for a year or more.”

“It is a question of extraordinary gravity,” Bolingbroke allowed, “and I say that it is a State affair, since the security of our State is founded on Trade, which is founded upon our currency. If it is true that the conspiracy has deprived us of our Pyx, why then we can only prove the soundness of our money by collecting samples of coins that are in circulation, and bringing them in for assay.”

Ravenscar had told Newton not to pick up any handkerchiefs dropped in his way by Bolingbroke: advice that Newton, with the serene confidence of a man who had nothing to hide, had steadfastly ignored. Now was not the time for him to mend his ways. “But my lord, I protest!” he said, “there is a reason why the method you have just described is never used, and it is that a sampling of coins in circulation shall perforce include a number-an unknowable number-of counterfeits, slipped into circulation by the likes of Jack Shaftoe. ’Twere unfair and unreasonable to lay at my feet an assay of counterfeits!”

Bolingbroke seemed impressed by Newton’s sheer consistency. “Sir Isaac, as a part of my investigations, I have read an Indenture with your name on it, kept under lock and key in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey, just across the way. We can stroll over and have a look at it, if you should like to review its contents. But I can tell you that, in this solemn contract, you are sworn to pursue and prosecute coiners. Until now I have assumed that you were tending to your duties. Now you astonish this Chamber by testifying to the contrary! Tell me, Sir Isaac, if we make an assay of circulating coins, and discover that they are rife with base metal, is it because you have failed in your duty to prosecute coiners? Or is it because you have debased the coinage produced by the Mint, to enrich yourself and your Whig backers? Or did you debase the coinage first and then allow coiners to flourish in the Realm, so as to cover your traces? Sir Isaac? Sir Isaac? Oh well, he has quite lost interest.”

In fact, Sir Isaac had lost consciousness, or was well on his way to it. During the last speech of Bolingbroke he had gradually softened and crumpled to the floor of Star Chamber, like a candle placed in an oven. He was breathing fast, and his extremities had gone into violent trembling, as if he were having fever-chills; but the hands pressed to his forehead felt a dry and cool brow and thumbs touched to the base of his heaving neck were drawn back in alarm at the furious drum-beat of his pulse. He was not so much sick as seized in an unstoppable paroxysm of mad, animal terror. “Get him into my coach,” commanded Roger Comstock, “and take him to my house. Miss Barton is there. She knows her uncle well, and she shall tend to him better than-God forbid-any physician.”

“You see?” Bolingbroke was remarking to Charles White, who was standing at his side, in the role of wide-eyed ’prentice a-gawp at the Master’s skill. “It is not necessary to bite their ears off. Oh, this is nothing. I have seen others drop dead in their shoes. One needs an apoplectic for that.” He seemed ready to offer up more advice in this vein, but his attention was drawn by the Marquis of Ravenscar, standing serenely on the opposite side of the Chamber as other Whigs bent their backs to the very odd job of dragging out Isaac Newton. Ravenscar held out a hand. Someone slapped a walking-stick into his palm. He hefted it. Charles White, anticipating physical violence, took half a step forward, then realized he was being absurd, and brought his hands together in front of his silver greyhound medallion, absent-mindedly rubbing at an ancient dagger-scar that went all the way through one palm. Bolingbroke merely elevated an eyebrow.

Roger Comstock raised his walking-stick until it was pointed up at the starry ceiling, and brought the butt of it to his face, then snapped it down briskly. It was a swordsman’s salute: a gesture of respect, and a signal that the next thing to come would be homicidal violence. “Let’s to the Kit-Cat Clubb,” he said to Peer and a few other Whigs who had not yet been able to get their feet to move. “Sir Isaac has the use of my coach; but I am in a mood for a walk. God save the Queen, my lord.”

“God save the Queen,” said Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. “And do enjoy your walk, Roger.”