The System of the World

Golden Square
LATE AFTERNOON, 28 JULY 1714

“HOW MUCH HARM COULD a stiff drink possibly do you, at this stage of the game?” asked Roger Comstock, the Marquis of Ravenscar. “You and I are already off the charts of the Royal Society’s annuity tables-living affronts to the Actuarial Profession.”

“Hadn’t you better go in there sober?” Daniel asked. He was facing, and Roger was showing his arse to, the best house on the Square. It put Daniel in mind of the stage of a theatre: not the new opera-house style, in which the actors were pent up behind a proscenium arch, but the W. Shakespeare wooden O, consisting of a flat patch of dirt (here the Square) walled in by galleries crowded with well-heeled voyeurs (the houses all round) and dominated by one magnificent edifice thrust out and over all (Bolingbroke’s place) and cunningly shot through with passages, chutes, ladders, and stairs interconnecting diverse balconies, cupolas, windows, amp;c., where, at any moment, important personages might pop up for a conversation, tryst, complot, or sword-fight that would in some way move the drama along. An Arsenal of Possibilities it was. The groundlings salted about the Square could not take their eyes off of it. Except for Roger. But then, Roger was not a groundling. He was no mere spectator, but a leading man-a Capulet or a Montague, take your pick-who was using the Square as a sort of Green Room. He was making ready to enter stage left, and begin his performance; but his lines had not been written yet.

No wonder he was drinking. “You’ve been hoisting tankards in the Black Dogg. Fair is fair.”

The mere idea of putting his lips against any of the available receptacles in the Black Dogg sent exquisite shudders up and down the length of Daniel’s alimentary tract. “I would not even sit down there, much less drink.”

“We’re not sitting down here,” Roger pointed out, “and that’s not stopping me.” One of his less dangerous-looking servants had drawn nigh, bearing a tray, desolate save for two amber thimbles. Roger pinched one off and projected its contents into his ivory-decked maw. Daniel snatched the other, only to prevent Roger from having a double.

“Your unwillingness to come right out and say how the negotiations are going is a kind of torture to me,” Roger explained. Then, to the servant: “Another round, please, to dull the pain inflicted on me by my reticent chum.”

“Stay,” Daniel said, “we have not spoken to the prisoner yet.”

Roger went into an orgasm of coughing.

“It is good news!” Daniel assured him. Which was so brazenly false that it silenced Roger, and straightened him up.

“You toy with me, sirrah.”

“Not at all. Why should our prisoner be so apprehensive that he’ll not even consent to show his face in the Black Dogg?”

“Because he’s a bloody coward?”

“Even a coward should have naught to fear from Jack-unless he possessed information that was dangerous to Jack in the extreme.”

“I have a question for you, Daniel.”

“Pray ask it then, Roger.”

“Have you ever participated in a negotiation in your entire life? For a quality oft found in persons who have, is an ability to look past some of the more fanciful assertions made by the adversary.”

“Roger-”

“Like Cloudesley Shovell, seeing the Rocks of Scilly emerging from the murk, only after ’twas too late to turn his Fleet aside from its fatal Course, I now, on the very threshold of Bolingbroke’s den, perceive my error in despatching you and that other Natural Philosopher to parley with this wily Black-guard.”

“It is not quite as dismal as all that, Roger.”

“Tell me something, then, that is not perfectly and utterly abominably bad news.”

“We got an early start this afternoon, and have worked through all of the preliminary rounds of the Negotiation, using Sean Partry as our go-between. All of the posturing, bluffing, and nonsense is behind us. Now we are down to the final exchange. The prisoner holds out. We are taking a little recess, now, so that he may cool his heels and contemplate the terrors that await him on Friday. Meanwhile I come to you, wanting to know: what is the most we could offer this man, supposing he could bring us information, today, that should enable us to catch Jack-or at least prove that Jack tampered with the Pyx?”

“If it came down to that-Daniel, look me in the eye,” Roger said. “You must not offer this save as a last, desperate measure, and then only if it is sure to bring about our victory.”

“I understand.”

“If this chap can help me bring down Bolingbroke, I’ll break him out of Newgate Prison and set him up with a farm in Carolina.”

“Splendid, Roger.”

“Not a manor, mind you, but a patch of dirt, a pointed stick, and a chicken.”

“It is more than he deserves, and more than I’d hoped for.”

“Now get thee gone to the Black Dogg. I can only draw out the evening’s game for so long.” Roger finally permitted himself a glance toward Bolingbroke’s house. At least three Viscounts were looking back at him, from different windows. This reminded Daniel of something.

“We are to re-convene in an hour,” said Daniel, checking his watch.

“An hour!?”

“Then all should go quickly. And I shall use that hour to our advantage. Enjoy your dinner, Roger, and don’t drink too much.”

“All I need do is drink less than my opponent. Easy.”

“But I would that you were sober enough to enjoy your victory.”

“I would that you were drunk enough to act a little less deliberately.”

But Daniel was already scurrying up the portable steps of the phaethon that Roger had lent him. “Leicester Fields,” he said to the driver.