The System of the World (94 page)

“I suppose not,” said Jimmy at last, “but it does put a friggin’ strain on me like this, having to do the decent thing
twice
in, what, two friggin’ minutes.”

“You’ve had twenty years to do the wrong things,” said Bob. “These two minutes won’t kill you.”

“What about the two minutes at Tyburn?” was Danny’s answer—which left Bob so tongue-tied that Tomba laughed out loud at him.

D
ANIEL HAD NEVER HEARD
I
SAAC
admit to feeling pain, until he and Leibniz each took one of his hands and pulled him to his feet. Then Isaac got an astonished look, as though he’d never hurt before in his life, and let out an “Ooh-oh! Ah! Ah!” He clenched his eyes shut, grimaced, and steepled his brow, then froze just long enough to convince Daniel that he was suffering a cardiac event that would terminate his life. But finally the pain appeared to leak away in slow increments, and his conscious mind assumed control over the nerves that led to the muscles of the face. He could now wear the expression he wished to: one of forced unconcern. “It is,” he said, and stopped to sip air, “nothing. The muscles…about the ribs…were not ready…for Baron von Leibniz’s…
intervention
.”

“Might you have broken a rib?” Daniel asked.

“I do not believe so,” said Newton in one long down-hill gout of breath. Then he regretted having said so much at a go, as this obliged him to breathe deeply once. The grimace came back.

“Let us fetch the carriage, so you do not have to walk,” suggested Leibniz. “Daniel, you might remain with Sir Isaac?”

Daniel stood by Newton while Leibniz—who because of gout moved in an awkward shrugging-and-rolling gait even on a good day—went off to find their carriage. Its team must have fled screaming when the top of the hill had gone off. The place had not precisely exploded—though embedded in the event had been many small explosions. It had, rather, caught fire and burned to cinders very rapidly, as if a fire that ought to have extended over some hours had been compressed into as many seconds. The place had been a kind of slum, growing and running without plan—senseless. But unlike a normal slum, which about itself created middens of bones, gristle, shit, and ash, this one had become filthy with chymical wastes and by-products, many of them highly inflammable. The fire kindled by the Mohawk’s pistol-shot had hopped and rushed across the phosphorus-pocked soil until it had struck a vein: a rivulet of waste trickling from one of the boilers. It had raced up this fuse and ignited, then exploded, one or more of the giant copper retorts, and this blast, like the firing of powder in a musket’s pan, had ignited the main conflagration: some large store of red phosphorus in what had been a barn. The barn had been erased. Not even wreckage remained. The boilers were strewn scraps of copper, some of which was still molten. The dog, horse, and rider were steaming, intertangled bone-piles; they’d been incinerated by the roasting heat of the burning
barn—a sort of action at a distance whereby heat was transmitted across space like gravity. It traveled, like light, in straight lines. This explained why Leibniz, Newton, and Waterhouse still lived, for in tumbling over the hedgerow they had fallen into its shadow, and so intercepted none of the fire’s radiance. The side of the hedgerow facing the barn was now a sterile stone spine with a few stalagmites of charcoal reaching out of it. The opposite side, a few inches away, was unchanged.

These and other impressions fully occupied their Natural-Philosophick faculties for some minutes. Then Daniel’s attention began to wander about. He had never taken a proper look round the area. First fog, then flames had baffled careful observations. He had no idea where they were, save that it was in Surrey, on some elevated stretch of the North Downs. Casting an eye down the hill, he saw undulating country spread out for many miles, church-steeples poking up here and there. Turning about, he saw a sort of cottage a few hundred yards down the road. But before he could gather many impressions of that, his eye was drawn to a much larger building spreading its wings across the breadth of a rise in the distance, and embracing one end of a system of formal gardens. “By god, that is a Great House!” he exclaimed. A stupid remark, but one that had to be gotten out of the way. His eyes were now able to find the tree-lined carriageway from which they had turned off some minutes before. It led around to the opposite face of that house and came up, he supposed, to its front door. “Whose is it?”

Newton had not noticed it before. But when he did, he looked bemused rather than surprised. “If you were a Tory, you would know it by heart. That is a place that my lord Bolingbroke bought, some years ago, from my lord—” and Isaac mentioned the name of a Whig lord who had famously gone bankrupt during an especially festive run on the Bank of England.

“I did not know Bolingbroke had a house in these parts,” Daniel confessed.

“That is because he has not occupied it yet,” said Isaac, “only subjected it to an endless series of remodeling-projects.” Then he paused to sift his own words. “Remodeling means that diverse tradesmen are forever passing in and out of the place with wagon-loads of stuff. The local people grow accustomed to such traffic…”

“You are saying that a criminal enterprise, headquartered on some of the out-buildings of the manor, could conceal its presence and its activities by blending in with such traffic,” said Daniel. He did not want to oblige Isaac to speak any more than was necessary, as it was quite obviously painful. “It is remarkable. We have suspected
some link between Bolingbroke and Jack. But who would have imagined that the Secretary of State would suffer such goings-on in his own property?”

“Perhaps not
so
remarkable,” said Isaac. “He does not actually
live
here. We have lately seen that Bolingbroke was weaker, and more desperate, than we had supposed when he was at the zenith of his power and we in terror of him. He may have been beholden to Jack in ways we can only guess at. So for Jack to make use of some out-buildings on a piece of surplus property owned by Bolingbroke, and probably paid for by the King of France…” Newton shrugged to indicate it was not all that surprising, but then he wished he hadn’t, as the movement seemed to ignite racking pains in his ribs.

“I see another carriage headed this way,” said Daniel, “probably that of Monsieurs Kikin, Orney, and Threader.” He waved to it and the driver waved back. “Let us sit down and await it.”

“I prefer to stand,” said Isaac, “so that I shall not have to get up again.”

“Whither shall we ask the driver to convey us?” asked Daniel, hoping Isaac would say,
the nearest physician
.

“To yonder cottage,” Isaac said. “Let us discover what Jack has got going in
there
. Though I think I know already.”

“I
T IS AS
I
THOUGHT,”
he was saying twenty minutes later. He was seated at a work table in the cottage. Daniel, Leibniz, Orney, Threader, and Kikin were gathered about, standing on shards of glass that had been blown out of the frames during the recent entertainments. The carriage in which Daniel, Newton, and Leibniz had come out from London had been hunted down and driven back here, and a certain box of instruments fetched from it. From this Newton had selected an excellent convex lens mounted in a loupe, which he was using to inspect some pieces of evidence they had found lying out in plain sight on this table.

On the upper storey of this cottage, in a bedchamber, under a bed, the “Mohawks” had found three men who spoke no English. One was middle-aged and the other two might have been apprentices, sons, or both. They had been herded down stairs, and Leibniz had figured out that they were Saxons. They were relieved he could speak German but terrified that he was a Baron. He had been conversing with them, and Kikin (who knew German) had listened in, while Newton had inspected the exhibits on the work table. Left with nothing to do, Orney and Threader stood by, and Daniel was struck by the difference in their faces: Orney as ebullient as he was ever likely to get, Threader curiously distracted and rigid.

“Before I relate my findings,” said Newton, “have you learned anything from these men, Baron von Leibniz?”

“This will hardly surprise anyone, given the nature of these tools and workpieces,” said Leibniz, “but these men are engravers. They came from Dresden.”

“And the elder is quite obviously a master,” said Newton. “Please tell him who I am, and give him my highest compliments.”

Leibniz did so. The mention of Newton’s name nearly struck the Saxons dead with terror, but the compliment that followed close on its heels caused the oldest of the three to go all pink. He bowed very low—then, perhaps fearing that this was not obsequious enough, he got down on both knees. The younger men followed suit. Daniel had rarely seen humans so abject. “Isaac,” he said, “they are probably wondering whether you intend to kill them.”

“What they have been doing here would be High Treason, were they Englishmen,” Isaac allowed. “Whether Saxons can be accused of treason against the United Kingdom is a question for scholars of the law.”

“They have told me,” said Leibniz, “that they were induced to come here on false pretenses. Having arrived, they were made prisoners in this cottage, and told that they would neither be paid nor allowed to depart until they had accomplished a certain work, which is now nearly finished.”

“That it is!” said Newton. From the table before him he picked up a dun-colored wafer that earlier had come in for prolonged inspection under his glass. “This is a wax impression of a die for a one-guinea piece. I invite you all to inspect it.” He handed it to Daniel. It was quite familiar, and at the same time very strange.

“This bears an image of George Louis of Hanover!” he exclaimed.

“A fortnight ago, I directed the engravers at the Tower Mint to begin work on a die for the new King George guineas,” Newton said. “Since then—as many can testify—I have not once set foot in the Liberty of the Tower. I have never seen the dies from which that wax impression was struck. And yet here in this cottage in Surrey—the property of my lord Bolingbroke—we find the impression, and—” he picked up a cylinder of metal, bearing on one end an engraved mirror-image of the relief on the wax “—an essentially perfect copy of the die, which may be put to use in coining counterfeit guineas! This evidence, and the testimony of the Saxons, have delivered our enemies into our hands. Those charged with guarding the Mint—under the command of Charles White—have quite obviously colluded in making the wax impression, and delivering it here, where we have found coining-equipment, and caught the two sons of Jack Shaftoe red-handed. And since I have taken care not to enter the
Mint, Bolingbroke cannot accuse me of having had a hand in any of this. I’ll see them all at Tyburn—and as for these Saxons, they shall be free to go home after they have assisted us with our inquiries.”

Norman Orney—a heavy-built man, but strong and even spry from working in his ship-yard—was able to catch the smaller and frailer Mr. Threader before he struck the floor.

Assisted by one of the younger Saxons, he carried Threader upstairs and heaved him on to a bed. Hankies were waved, hands rubbed, feet propped up, &c., and presently blood seeped back in to the old money-scrivener’s face and he woke up. But, plainly enough, he wished he hadn’t.

“Oh, Sir Isaac,” he said, and began flailing for a handhold. “Help me to rise,” he said to no one.

“I think you should stay down,” said Daniel.

“That moment has arrived I prayed would never come,” said Threader. “I must get down on my knees and pray to Sir Isaac Newton for my life—or, barring that, an honorable death—or if that is not feasible, an expeditious.”

“Then you admit collusion with coiners?” said Isaac, quite as bored as the others were astonished.

“You figured it out ages ago, didn’t you, Sir Isaac? Yes. Collusion with coiners. With
the
coiner. Now, mind you, in the beginning—”

“It seemed like nothing,” said Isaac, and waved his hand as if shooing off a wasp. “Forgive me, but I detect the onset of a long and well-rehearsed narration, for which I have no sufferance. The longer you make the story, the more gradual, insensible, and innocent seems your descent into…
High Treason.
”

Threader jumped, if such a thing was possible for a man lying flat on his back.

“But no matter how you stretch it, the
beginning
and the
end
are the same, are they not?” Isaac continued. “At the
beginning
you fall into the seemingly harmless practice of weighing guineas, and culling out those that are infinitesimally heavier. At the
end
you have been thoroughly compromised by Jack the Coiner. He has placed his agents in your company—he
owns
you so completely that he can even place an Infernal Device in your luggage-wagon, in the hope of assassinating the Master of the Mint at the Royal Society.”

“Oh, Sir Isaac, I did not know about that!”

“
That
much I believe. Jack would have had no reason to warn you—on the contrary. Yet even if the matter of the Infernal Device is left out of the accompt, you too are guilty of High Treason!”

“Oh, but what if I testify? Put me before a magistrate, Sir Isaac! No counter-tenor at the Italian Opera ever sang as I shall!”

“I do not need to hear you sing,” said Isaac. “Your offer has come too late. With no assistance from you, I have obtained all I wished for.”

“What if I could give you Jack the Coiner?” said Mr. Threader. Which struck Daniel and the others as frightfully dramatic; but Newton smiled thinly, like a chess-master who always knew that his foe would bring his Queen out eventually.

“Then there is an opportunity for negotiation,” said Newton. “Give me what you have.”

“Every Sunday evening, it is my lord Bolingbroke’s habit to go to a certain Clubb frequented by Tories. There is a back room, a private salon with a servants’ door leading back into the kitchens. At a certain signal Bolingbroke withdraws to that room on some pretext or other. Meanwhile Jack has entered the same Clubb through the back, in the guise of a knife-grinder who has come to whet the cooks’ cutlery. He comes into that salon through the servants’ door and doffs his disguise, and there the two villains hatch their plots and coordinate their schemes. It should happen again, just as I’ve said, in only a few hours, this being Sunday.”