A Calculus of Angels (21 page)

But his body was wiser than he and would not bear two nights without real sleep. Near midnight it sent some physic thief tiptoeing to his brain to steal his consciousness.

Humming, he rose, changed clothes, and left his rooms at about ten to look for Robert. Emerging into the hall, he noticed a clump of servants absorbed in some serious discourse near Newton’s rooms. One of them—a plump maid named Gertruda—was crying. Curious, he strode toward them.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, as he drew near. He knew two of the four—

Gertruda and an elderly valet named Milos. The other two—a raven-tressed beauty of perhaps twenty and a plain woman with gray-shot hair perhaps twice that—he had seen but did not know by name.

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“Your pardon, Herr Franklin,” Milos said, bowing.

“No need to ask for pardon,” Ben said. “I was only wondering what Gertruda was crying about.”

“It is Stefan, sir, the sweeper.”

“What of him? Is he ill?”

“No, sir, he is dead. They found him here.”

“Dead? Of what cause?”

“God took him, sir.” Gertruda snuffled. “There was never a mark on him. It was as if he just—died.”

An extremely unpleasant notion struck Ben. “I remember Stefan,” he said. “He was not an old man…” He looked more closely at the door to Newton’s apartments. The entire wall seemed to waver faintly, as if seen through water.

“He was only twenty-five,” the beauty said with peculiar vehemence. Ben turned a speculative eye on her—which he had done before, with other interests in mind.

“Anna,” Milos said softly. “Hush.”

Ben cocked his head. “No, please, speak. Better—” He looked around, and lowered his voice. “Better, come into my rooms for a moment that we might all speak privately.”

They exchanged nervous glances, but Milos nodded almost imperceptibly, and they all followed.

Once the door was shut, Ben paced over to sit on his bed.

“Please, sit down.” He indicated some stools. “Now, Mrs.— Anna, what do you suspect?”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“Nothing, sir. I should not have spoken.”

“But you think Stefan died of unnatural causes.”

Anna hesitated and looked at the others for support; but they gave her none, their eyes fastened on the carpet, the ceiling—anywhere but her.

“Anna, this is important. You say that Stefan died near my master’s door. Is my master well?”

“He is well,” Milos said. “The guard inquired after him, of course.”

“What did he say when he learned of Stefan?”

“He
nodded,”
Anna said, a little heat in her voice. “He nodded, like he knew something, and then—” She stopped, because Milos
was
looking at her now, sternly.

“We have to be going, sir,” the older man said, “else we will be wondered at.”

That was that, Ben knew from experience. The servants had their own ways and were as stubborn in them as the nobles they served. But he knew that that
thing
had come for
The Sepher Ha-Razim.
Newton had erected a barrier against it, and it had slain poor Stefan.

“Wait,” Ben said. “Just a moment.” He rose up. “Did Stefan leave relations?”

Gertruda nodded. “A wife and two boys.”

Ben, feeling sicker, reached into his leather wallet. “This is nothing,” Ben said.

“It is not a husband for her, nor a father for her children, but it is all I have.”

He reached a handful of coins toward Gertruda. “I know that you will see to them.”

Gertruda stared at the gold. “Yes, sir,” she mumbled.

“And all of you, take care,” Ben warned. “Avoid this hall when you can.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“We already do, sir,” Milos answered somewhat gruffly.

He tried for two hours to see Newton, to no avail, and finally sought out Robert. He found him where he thought he might, in Saint Thomas‘, a dark and ancient Kleinseit tavern that served good meals and better beer.

“I could wish y‘ wouldn’t make as free with yer life,” his friend told him over a plate of roast beef and boiled dumplings, “but I’ll admit y’ put the bite on the old man—and Frisk an‘ me as well.”

“I don’t know who has bitten whom,” Ben replied dubiously. “Have you heard about the death of Stefan?”

“The sweeper? Aye, ”tis all the talk of the servants.“

“They seem to suspect something dark.”

“They always do, where Newton is concerned.”

“This time I think they have cause,” Ben said, and then outlined his adventures in stealing
The Sepher.

Robert took it all in, frowning more deeply each moment. “What was it?” he asked. “Another one of those things as accompanied that Bracewell fellow?

Some witchy familiar?”

“A different sort,” Ben replied, shaking his head. “I think Newton knows, but he will not say.”

“How many sorts of these things can there be?”

Ben pressed his forehead with his fist. “Only God knows,” he muttered. “There are a thousand species of life on the links below us in the chain of being. It may be that there are at least as many above, between us and God.”

“Like the angels? Don’t Newton call ‘em angels?”

“Yes.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“That seems strange. If they’re nearer’t‘ God, I’d think ’em more perfect—we’d have naught to fear of ‘em.”

Ben smiled grimly. “Oh? You mean as an insect underfoot has nothing to fear from you?”

“Ah.” Robert took a thoughtful bite of his beef. “And so Stefan ‘uz the insect.”

Ben nodded. “That’s my guess. The thing scents after the book, but Sir Isaac has erected a barrier. It beats at the obstacle, enraged, and when a servant comes around…”

“Yet you stood near his door an‘ went unaccosted.”

“True. I have no explanation.”

“How’s this? Maybe our master struck a bargain with the devil. Maybe he
gave

‘im Stefan as sacrifice.”

“Oh, come, Robin—”

Robert pushed back his plate, and Ben saw his friend was really angry. “How is it that y‘ are so credulous an’ so skeptical all in the same breath?” he snapped.

“Y‘ concede the existence of the things, y’ guess that one murdered Stefan, an‘

swear that Sir Isaac is makin’ up a system about ‘em the like of you know not what. And so tell me, if they be angels or devils or the whatnots from the dark caves of the moon, then why may they not drink Christian blood or come at a dark Sabbath? If the devils exist, why is it that what we hear of them is wrong?”

Ben regarded Robert for a long moment, ordering his words, and then leaned forward. “Robin, the sun, moon, and stars were known to Aristotle, and he could not have been more wrong about them. It isn’t
what
you know, but how you come to know it—whether you can trust the
method.
Now, I will not trust Aristotle about the sun going ‘round the earth, and I will not trust some medieval necromancer on the nature of aethereal beings. I will know what I know because I observe, because I experiment, because I observe again, because I keep my conclusions in the bounds of what I have seen, can A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

demonstrate, can do again. Do you see? And so you say that the sun revolves around the earth, and I say how do you know that, and you say, “because I read it in Aristotle.” And do you know what that makes you?“

Robert’s sour expression twisted just slightly so as to form a sardonic smile.

“The graduate of a university?”

“Just so,” Ben replied, pleased to feel the tension ease between them. “Just so.

And so you say that you heard that the Jews sacrifice Christians to demons or that the angels bleed honey. I’ll agree with you that there are angels—or some things we might name as such—”

“Aye, good, stop up y’r maw. Y’r point has found me. But just answer me this.

This method—is it Newton’s?” “He is the author of it. He is the master of it.”

“In his madness, could he have forgotten it himself?” Ben stared at his plate for eight or so heartbeats before replying. “God help us if he has.” He sighed, reaching for his nearly untouched food. “But soon, by heaven and earth, I shall discover it.”

Ben shivered beneath the weight of the cathedral rising night against night above him, its thousand knobbed spires like the spines of some poisonous insect, beautiful and terrible at once. It seemed to Ben a place built from fear of God rather than love of Him, as if its dark quills and snarling gargoyles could keep the Almighty at bay, prick His toes if He trod upon the castle.

“The air is clear,” a woman’s voice said, from nearby. Ben turned to regard Lenka, some ten paces away.

“I didn’t hear you approach,” he said.

“I didn’t. I’ve been waiting here.”

“It may not be safe, wandering the castle alone.”

“I heard about Stefan,” she said. “I heard that you sent his widow money. It won’t work. They still won’t talk to you.”

He suppressed an angry retort, and instead said, “Will you?”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

She pointed a finger at the moon.

“Very well.” He sighed in resignation. “Come along.”

They crossed the courtyard, passing a statue of Saint George battling a dragon of decidedly unheroic size. Beside the mass of the cathedral, the tower rose, slender by comparison, a fairy-tale spire decapitated by science, its ancient conical roof replaced just that year with a polyhedron of tough alchemical glass.

“Take my arm,” he whispered.

“Why?”

“If you want to get into the tower, take my arm.”

“Very well.” She slipped her small-boned arm around his, and he was abruptly reminded of another woman holding him so—Vasilisa Karevna. Was that what disturbed him about Lenka?

A guard nervously greeted them as they drew near. “Who goes?” he grunted, hand on his sword.

“Benjamin Franklin, apprentice to Sir Isaac Newton. I’ve business in the observatory.”

“Oh, yes, I know you now, sir. And the lady—”

“My assistant,” Ben replied, winking broadly.

“I see,” the man replied knowingly. “Please be free.”

Ben gave him a little bow, and they passed on.

“Was that so necessary?” Lenka asked, as Ben opened the door and produced a small lanthorn to guide them. “It’s difficult to keep a good reputation in the castle.”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“Especially accompanying me, eh? Well, there’s a cost for everything, as you’ve shown me.”

“Some costs I will not pay,” she answered, stiffening.

“Yes, yes. You have laid down your coin already, never fear,” he said, and was rewarded by her arm relaxing.

“Are there more guards?” she asked a moment later.

“No.”

“Good.” And she disentangled her arm. Feeling a trifle insulted, he continued up the narrow, winding stair. Except for their footfalls, there was no sound, and it was easy to imagine that even those did not belong to them, but to the ghosts of John Dee, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, or the mad Emperor Rudolf himself. Legend had each of those men haunting the tower, and even his brave speech to Robert about scientific method could not rob him of all worry at such tales. Might not the soul, surely an aetheric entity, survive its corpse?

He paused briefly at the door he believed hid Newton’s new laboratory, glaring at the recently added Pythagorean lock. Knowing it wouldn’t work, he tried his key anyway.

“What’s in there?” Lenka asked.

Ben grinned sardonically. “The wheel of Ezekiel, I expect. Come on. It’s farther up we go.”

The upper story—the observatory—was as he had left it, save that tonight the sky had thrown off all but the gauziest of her veils, her thousand suns and planets naked to their sight. The telescope gazed up at them already, crystal eyes tireless.

“Well, then, here we are.”

“Yes.” Lenka sighed, seeming a little breathless.

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

“What would you see?”

“I would see the moon.”

“Very well.” He walked over to the instrument and began to adjust it a bit impatiently. Why was this girl wasting his time, when so much danger threatened?

Squinting through the ocular, he turned the wheels until the creamy half-moon filled the view.

“There,” he said, stepping back.

At the telescope, she paused. “How do I do it?”

“Close one eye and look through the eyepiece with the other.”

She nodded and bent to the ocular, and stood there like a statue for a long, long moment, while Ben tapped his foot restlessly. Finally, when he was just going to ask her how long one could
look
at the moon, she raised up, and he felt an odd, warm shock at the base of his skull as he noticed streams of silver glistening down her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she whispered unsteadily. “We can go.”

He could not move nor answer, for her tears and the moonlight caught in the fine hollows of her face mesmerized him.

“We can go,” she repeated, reaching to wipe her eyes.

“Please,” he said. “Leave them.”

Her hand paused and then dropped to her side. “Why? So you can say that you saw the servant girl weeping?”

“Now why would I do such a contemptible thing?” he replied, and the corners of her mouth lifted a bit. “Why?” he pressed softly. “Why do you weep?”

A CALCULUS OF ANGELS

She seemed astonished by the question. “Why do you
not
?”

Frowning at her, Ben bent back to the scope, found the ocular damp with her tears. The night sky had shifted a bit, but he brought the satellite back into view with ease.

“It is the moon,” he said, still gazing.

“Don’t you see them?” she asked. “There, where the dark lies? The mountains, casting their shadows? Mountains so lofty that they must blot the Earth from the sky if you stand next to them? If you
could
stand next to them?”

Her words were soft, cadenced, almost a sort of song, and then, all of a sudden, he
did
see them. Oh, he had seen them before, known what they were

—could even name some of them. But now, suddenly, the privilege of it struck him, the magnificence.

“I have gazed on the mountains of the moon,” Lenka said. “In my whole life, I never thought to do that. And yet always I have dreamed…” Now, as her tears had held him, so did the moon. Until he heard her feet softly start down the stairs.