Dark Matter

Chapter One

Michael Maier, Septimana philosophica,1620

On Thursday, November the fifth, 1696, most people went to church. But I went to fight a duel.

Gunpowder Day was then a cause for Protestant celebration twice over: this had been the day, in 1605, when King James I had been delivered from a Roman Catholic plot to blow up the Parliament; and, in 1688, it had also been the day when the Prince of Orange had landed at Torbay to deliver the Church of England from the oppressive hand of another Stuart, the Catholic King James II. Many Gunpowder Day sermons were preached throughout the City, and I would have done well to have listened to one of them, for a little consideration of heavenly deliverance might have helped me to channel my anger against Papist tyranny instead of the man who had impugned my honour. But my blood was up and, my head being full of fighting, I and my second walked to the World’s End Tavern in Knightsbridge where we had a slice of beef and a glass of Rhenish for breakfast, and thence to Hyde Park, to meet my opponent, Mister Shayer, who was already waiting with his own second.

Shayer was an ugly-looking fellow, whose tongue was too big for his mouth so that he lisped like a little child when he spoke, and I regarded him as I would have regarded a mad dog. I no longer remember what our dispute was about, except to say that I was a quarrelsome sort of young man and very likely there was fault on both sides.

No apologies were solicited and none proffered and straightaway all four of us threw off our coats and fell to with swords. I had some skill with the weapon, having been trained by Mister Figg in the Oxford Road, but there was little or no finesse in this fight and, in truth, I made short work of the matter, wounding Shayer in the left pap which, being close to his heart, placed the poor fellow in mortal fear of his life, and me in fear of prosecution, for duelling was against the law since 1666. Most gentlemen fighting paid but little heed to the legal consequences of their actions; however, Mister Shayer and myself were both at Gray’s Inn, acquainting ourselves with a tincture of English law, and our quarrel was quickly the cause of a scandal that obliged my leaving off a career at the Bar, permanently.

It was perhaps no great loss to the legal profession, for I had little interest in the Law; and even less aptitude, for I had only gone to the Bar to please my late father who always had a great respect for that profession. And yet what else could I have done? We were not a rich family, but not without some connections, either. My elder brother, Charles Ellis, who later became an MP, was then the under-secretary to William Lowndes, who was himself the Permanent Secretary to the First Lordof the Treasury. The Treasurer, until his recent resignation, had been Lord Godolphin. Several months later the King named as Godolphin’s replacement the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Montagu, to whom Isaac Newton owed his appointment as Warden of the Royal Mint in May 1696.

My brother told me that, until Newton’s arrival in the position, there had been few if any duties that were attached to the Wardenship; and Newton had taken the position in expectation of receiving the emolument for not much work; but that the Great Recoinage had given the office a greater importance than hitherto it had enjoyed; and that Newton was obliged to be the principal agent of the coin’s protection.

In truth it was sore in need of protecting for it had become much debased of late. The only true money of the realm was the silver coin — for there was little if ever much gold about — which constituted sixpences, shillings, half-crowns and crowns; but until the great and mechanised recoinage, mostly this was hand-struck with an ill-defined rim that lent itself to clipping or filing. Except for a parcel of coin struck after the Restoration, none of the coin in circulation was more recent than the Civil War, while a great quantity had been issued by Queen Elizabeth.

Fate took a hand to drive the coinage further out of order when, after William and Mary came to the throne, the price of gold and silver became greatly increased, so that there was much more than a shilling’s worth of silver in a shilling. Or at least there ought to have been. A new-struck shilling weighed ninety-three grains, although with the price of silver increasing all the time it need only have weighed seventy-seven grains; and even more vexing was that with the coin so worn and thin, and rubbed with age, and clipped and filed, a shilling often weighed as little as fifty grains. Because of this, people were inclined to hoard the new coin and refuse the old.

The Recoinage Act had passed through the Parliament in January 1696, although this only chafed the sore, the Parliament having been imprudent enough to damn the old money before ensuring that there existed sufficient supplies of the new. And throughout the summer — if that was what it was, the weather being so bad — money had remained in such short supply that tumults every day were feared. For without good money how were men to be paid, and how was bread to be bought? If all that was not subversion enough, to this sum of calamity was added the fraud of the bankers and the goldsmiths who, having got immense treasures by extortion, hoarded their bullion in expectation of its advancing in value. To say nothing of the banks that every day were set up, or failed, besides an intolerable amount of taxation on everything save female bodies and an honest, smiling countenance, of which there were few if any to be seen. Indeed there was such a want of public spirit anywhere that the Nation seemed to sink under so many calamities.

Much aware of my sudden need for a position and Doctor Newton’s equally sudden need for a clerk, Charles prevailed upon Lord Montagu to consider advancing me in Newton’s favour for employment, and this despite our not having the fondness which we used and ought to have as brothers. And by and by it was arranged that I should go to Doctor Newton’s house in Jermyn Street to recommend myself to him.

I remember the day well, for there was a hard frost and a report of more Catholic plots against the King, and a great search for Jacobites was already under way. But I do not remember that Newton’s reputation had made much of an impression upon my young mind; for, unlike Newton, who was a Cambridge Professor, I was an Oxford man and, although I knew the classics, I could no more have disputed any general mathematical system, let alone one affecting the universe, than I could have discoursed upon the nature of a spectrum. I was aware only that Newton was, like Mister Locke and Sir Christopher Wren, one of the most learned men in England, although I could not have said why: cards were my reading then and pretty girls my scholarly pursuit — for I had studied women closely; and I was as skilled in the use of sword and pistol as some are with a sextant and a pair of dividers. In short, I was as ignorant as a jury unable to find a verdict. And yet, of late — especially since leaving my inn of court — my ignorance had begun to weigh upon me.

Jermyn Street was a recently completed and quite fashionable suburb of Westminster, with Newton’s house toward the western and better end, close by St. James’s Church. At eleven o’clock I presented myself at Doctor Newton’s door, was admitted by a servant and ushered into a room with a good fire in it, where Newton sat awaiting my arrival upon a red chair with a red cushion and a red morocco-bound book. Newton did not wear a wig and I saw that his hair was grey but that his teeth were all his own and good for a man of his age. He wore a crimson shag gown trimmed with gold buttons and I also remember that he had a blister or issue upon his neck that troubled him a little. The room was all red, as if a smallpox victim did sometimes lie in it, for it is said that this colour draws out the infection. It was well furnished with several landscapes upon the red walls and a fine globe that occupied a whole corner by the window, as if this room was all the universe there was and he the god in it, for he struck me as a most wise-looking man. His nose was all bridge, as across the Tiber, and his eyes, which were quiet in repose, became as sharp as bodkins the minute his brow furrowed under the concentration of a thought or a question. His mouth looked fastidious, as if he lacked appetite and humour, and his dimpled chin was on the edge of finding itself joined by a twin. And when he spoke, he spoke with an accent I should incorrectly have supposed to be Norfolk but now know to have been Lincolnshire, for he was born near Grantham. That day I met him first he was just a month or so short of his fifty-fourth birthday.

“It is not my manner,” he said, “to speak anything that is extraneous to my business. So let me come straight to the point, Mister Ellis. When I be came Warden of His Majesty’s Mint I little thought that my life should become taken up with the detection, pursuit and punishment of coiners, clippers and counterfeiters. But that being my discovery, I wrote to the Treasury Committee to the effect that such matters were the proper province of the Solicitor General and that, if it were possible, to let this cup pass from me. Their Lordships willed it otherwise, however, and therefore I must stand the course. Indeed, I have made this matter my own personal crusade, for if the Great Recoinage does not succeed, I fear that we shall lose this war with the French and the whole kingdom shall be undone. God knows I have, these past six months, in my own person done my full duty, I am sure. But the business of my taking these rascals is so great, there being so many of them, I find I have sore need of a clerk to assist me in my duties.

“But I want no truckle-head milksop in my service. God knows what disorders we may fall into and whether any violence may be done on this office or upon our persons, for coining being high treason carries the harshest penalty and these miscreants are a desperate lot. You look like a young man of spirit, sir. But speak up and recommend yourself.”

“I do believe,” I said nervously, because Newton sounded very like my own father who always expected the worse of me, and usually he was not disappointed, “that I should say something to you in reference to my education, sir. I have my degree from Oxford. And I have studied for the Law.”

“Good, good,” Newton said impatiently. “Likely you will need a quick pen. These miming rogues are agile storytellers and provide such a quantity of deposition as would leave a man feeling in need of three hands. But let us have less modesty, sir. What of your other skills?”

I searched myself for an answer. What other skills did I possess? And finding myself at a loss for words, with little or nothing to commend myself further, I began to grimace and shake my head and shrug, and started to sweat like I was in the hot steam baths.

“Come, sir,” insisted Newton. “Did you not pink a man with your rapier?”

“Yes sir,” I stammered, angry with my brother for having apprised him of this awkward fact. For who else could have told him?

“Excellent.” Newton knocked the table once as if keeping score. “And a keen shot, I see.” Perceiving my puzzlement, he added, “Is that not a gunpowder-spot on your right hand?”

“Yes sir. And you’re right. I shoot both carbine and pistol, tolerably well.”

“But you are better with the pistol, I’ll warrant.”

“Did my brother tell you that, too?”

“No, Mister Ellis. Your own hand told me. A carbine would have left its mark on hand and face. But a pistol only upon the back of your hand, which did lead me to suppose that you have used a pistol with greater frequency.”

“Well, that’s a nice trick, sir. I am trumped.”

“I have others here besides. Doubtless we shall have to visit many a kennel where your apparent fondness for the ladies may serve us good advantage. Women will sometimes tell a young man that which they would deny my older ears. I trust that your fondness for the dark-haired woman you were so recently with might permit such stratagems as would gain us information. Perhaps she was the one who did bring you the juniper ale.”

“Well, if that isn’t Pam,” I proclaimed, quite trumped by this, for I had indeed embraced a wench with brown hair that very morning over breakfast at my local tavern. “How did you know she was dark? And that I had some juniper ale?”

“By virtue of the long dark hair that adorns your handsome ventre d’or waistcoat,” explained Newton. “It proclaims her colouring just as surely as your conversation demonstrates your close acquaintance with the card table. We shall have need of that, too. As much as we shall have need of a man who likes his bottle. If I am not wrong, sir, that is red wine on your cuffs. No doubt you had a good deal of it to drink last night, which is why you were a little sick in your stomach this morning. And why you had need of some juniper ale for your gripes. The smell of that pungent oil in ale upon your breath is most unmistakable.”

I heard myself gasp with astonishment that so much of me was plain to him, as if he could see into my mind and read my own thoughts.

“You make me sound the most consummate rakehell that was ever drawn to the gallows,” I protested. “I know not what to say. I am quite outhuffed.”

“Pray, Mister Ellis,” said Newton, “don’t take on so. We shall have to daggle a bit, you and I. The business of the Mint requires that I have a man who knows his way around London. That being the case, and to fret you no longer, the position is yours if you want it. The pay is not much. Just sixty pounds a year, to start. Which does not sort well with me, and I confess I am at a vile trouble for fear that the right kind of man will not want the employment and I come to shame because I cannot fulfil the proper duties of my office through lack of an assistant, for whom I have such mighty need. That being the case, it being within my power to do so, I have decided to offer my clerk the Warden’s house at the Mint, in the Tower of London, with all the benefits that do pertain to living there.”

“That is very generous, sir,” said I, beginning to grin like an idiot. For this was more than I could ever have expected. Since leaving Gray’s Inn I had taken lodgings in King Street, Westminster, but these were poor quarters and my heart leaped at the thought of a whole house to myself, especially one within the liberties of the Tower, for there a man might avoid taxation altogether.

“Upon my arrival at the Mint last April, I lived there for a while myself before coming here to Jermyn Street, in August. The truth is the Mint is mighty noisy, having the rolling mills going all night, and after the peace and tranquillity of Cambridge, I could not bear with it. But you are a young fellow and it has been my experience that the young have a stronger toleration of noise than their elders. Besides, I have great expectation that my niece will come to live with me in December, and the Mint is a dirty, unwholesome place, with many roguish fellows and where the air is ill, so that I am confirmed not to live there. Come, sir, what do you say? It is a good little house, with a garden.”

A whole house, with a garden. This was too much. And yet still I was moved to ask for more. I have mentioned how I had begun to feel the weight of my own ignorance; and it suddenly occurred to me that there was something in Newton’s demeanour and conducting of himself that made me believe that I could learn much from him. And I thought to make a condition of it. For I was possessed of the notion that to know the mind of such a man who had penetrated so many scientific and philosophical mysteries would be to know the mind of God. Which would make a change from the minds of whores and gamesters.

“Aye, sir,” said I. “I will work for you. But on one condition.”

“Name it, Mister Ellis.”

“That you will always correct my ignorance of something, for I know you are a learned man. I would wish that you will show me something of the world as you understand it, and to discourse with me on the nature of things in furtherance of my own self-improvement. For I must confess that a university degree got me an understanding of the classics and Sanderson’s Logic and not much else. I will work for you, sir. But what in me is dark, I would ask you to illumine. And what is low and base, I would that you might raise and support.”

“Well said, sir. It takes an intelligent man to admit his ignorance, especially one with a university degree. But be warned. I was never much of a tutor. In all my time at Cambridge, Trinity College assigned but three fellow commoners to my tuition, and those I took for the fees rather than some desire to be the centre of a modern Lyceum. It is hard for any of us to know how we may appear to the world, but, in truth, I consider myself to have learned only as much as to confirm how little of the world I know. I’ve a mind that it’s this which vexes those rabbinical parts I might possess. But I agree to your condition. I know not what but I’ll trepan something into that young head of yours. So, give me your hand on the bargain.”

I took Newton’s cold thin hand in my own and indeed, I did kiss it, for it now belonged to the master to whom I owed some return of my fortune and prospects.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. “I will endeavour to do my best for you.”

“I shall write to the Treasury today,” said Newton. “They will have to sanction your appointment. But I do not doubt that they will approve my choice. After which you will have to take an oath to keep secret Mister Blondeau’s method of edge-marking the coin, although I think it can be no great secret since, I am told, the same machine is shown openly to visitors in the Paris Mint.

“But first let’s have some cider, after which I’ll write that letter and then we’ll take my coach to the Tower where I’ll swear you in and show you around the Mint.”

And so I was employed at the Royal Mint.

The Mint was within the Tower since 1299, and by 1696 it was as big as many a sizeable town. Two rows of aged wooden buildings, pinned together with clamps of iron, lay between the inner and outer rampires, beginning at the Byward and Bell Towers, extended some five hundred yards along and around the foot of each wall to finish up at the Salt Tower. A narrow cobbled road, illuminated by lanterns and patrolled by sentries, led between the timber-shored buildings which, some of them, were several jetties high and accommodated houses, offices, barracks, stables, wash-houses, melting-houses, smithies, mill rooms, storehouses, taverns and a sutters selling all kinds of victuals.

As Newton had told me, the noise of metalworking was enough to box a man’s ears, and walking about the Mint we had to shout to each other to make ourselves heard; but to this must be added the cannons that from time to time were fired, the sound of horses and iron wheels on the cobbles, the bellman cries and voices of the soldiers who were stationed there and who cursed as freely as Templars, the dogs that barked, the ravens that cried out like the throat-rattles of dying men, the fires that roared, the cats that howled, the doors and gates that slammed, the keys that jangled, and the wooden signs that creaked in the high wind, for it had been exceedingly stormy of late. Bedlam could not have seemed more noisy than the Royal Mint. My first impression was of some infernal place such as Virgil might have described when Aeneas visits the underworld and, standing between the Bell and Byward Towers, where I could hear the low moaning of wild beasts in the nearby Lion Tower, which stood outside the westward entrance, I almost thought myself before the very forecourt and in the opening of the jaws of hell. Yet the Tower was an exciting place and I was pleased to be there, for I always had a great appetite for history; and visiting the Tower as a boy I little thought I should ever have worked there.

We walked north, up Mint Street, with Newton all the while acquainting me with the work of the moneyers who operated the coinage presses, and the assayers who checked the fineness of the bullion, and the melters and the engravers.

“Of course,” he said, “many of them are villains up to their necks in illegal coining and fit to be hanged. Blank coins are often stolen, as are dies and guinea stamps. At least two men who were in the service of the Mint have been hanged. And another two who were in the service of the Mint are in Newgate Prison, under sentence of death.

“My advice is to trust none of them, from the highest to the lowest. The scoundrel who is Master of the Mint is Mister Neale, although he is so seldom here you would think he would blush to hold the office. But I doubt that you will have sufficient opportunity to know him well enough to recognise his many failings.”

At this point Newton bowed stiffly to a man who came out of one of the offices — a small and consumptive fellow who whooped like a trumpet when he spoke; and as soon as he was gone out of earshot my master enjoined me not to trust him either.

“He is mighty friendly with the Tower Ordnance — the garrison of soldiers with whom we are constantly at odds for the privileges of the Mint. For they regard us as interlopers, although in truth we have been here almost as long as they. But this Tower has too many people in it, and there’s the crux of the problem.

“Until recently the Ordnance had occupied the Irish Mint, which is near the Salt Tower, at the far end of this road we are on. They had seized the Porter’s house and some clerks’ dwellings, and built a barracks on a vacant site. But this Great Recoinage has enabled us to get them out of the Mint again, and back within the inner rampire of the Tower, where the common soldiers now take turns to sleep in a bed, so that they now hate us most bitterly. Trust none of them, nor their officers, for they wish us all ill.”

Newton caught sight of a haughty-looking man who stood watching us from the top of the Beauchamp Tower.

“And there is the great architect of their resentment. Lord Lucas himself. He is the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, a position that enjoys many ancient and peculiar privileges and, but for the office exercised by myself, he might call himself the most powerful man in this castle. Above all other men, do not trust him. He is a drunken Borachio and so arrogant I do believe he must wipe his arse with gilt paper.”

A little farther on, around the corner of Devereaux Tower, we came abreast of the Smithy, wherein as stern and nasty-looking a rogue as ever I saw, left off shoeing a horse for a moment to fix a most unforgiving eye on Doctor Newton and, by association, myself.

“Upon my soul,” said I, when we had walked past, “if that fellow doesn’t have the most disinheriting countenance.”

“He is a most inveterate knave and no friend to the Mint either. But put him out of your mind for now, as here is the King’s Clerk’s house, and next to it the Master’s house, and next to that the Deputy Warden, Monsieur Fauquier’s house.”

“Fauquier? He sounds like a Frenchman.”

“He is one of those Huguenots,” explained Newton, “so lately expelled from his own country by the French King, Lewis. I think that there are several such refugees here in the Tower. The French Church, which is the centre of their community, is but a short walk from the Tower, in Threadneedle Street. Fauquier is a man of considerable substance and, I believe, a diligent one. But do not think to find him in this house — him, or any of these others I have mentioned. It is one of the perquisites of preferment in the Mint that officers may sublet their official residences to whomsoever they wish and for their own personal gain.”

It was now that I perceived how in giving me his own official residence, Newton was giving up the good income he might have derived from the letting of it.

Newton stood still and pointed to a neat two-storey house that was built along the wall underneath that part of the outer rampire known as the Brass Mount — so called because of the piece of brass cannon installed there and which, I soon discovered, was often fired in celebration of royal birthdays, or visits by foreign dignitaries.

“This is the Warden’s house,” said Newton, “where you shall live.” He opened the door and ushered me inside and, looking around at the furniture and the books, which belonged to Newton, I thought that the house would suit me very well. “The house is quite cosy although there is, as you can see, some damp — which I think is inevitable from our proximity to the river — and much dust. The vibration of the cannon brings it down, so it can’t be helped much. You are welcome to use this furniture. It was brought from Trinity, most of it. None of it is any good, and I care little for it, but I would have you look after these books. There is scant room for any more books in my new house, and yet I would not part with these. Since you are bent upon self-improvement, Mister Ellis, you will doubtless want to read them. You may even find one or two of them to your liking. And I look forward to hearing an opinion of them which, sometimes, is as good as reading a book again oneself.”

Going outside again, Newton showed me a little walled garden, rather ill-tended, that curved around the base of the Jewel Tower and which, being the Warden’s garden, was mine to enjoy as well.

“You might grow some vegetables here,” suggested Newton. “If you do, make sure to offer me some. Otherwise, this is a very pretty place to sit in summer if you be not afeared of ghosts, although, in truth, working for me you will have little time for such idle fancies. I myself am very sceptical of the general appearing of spirits, but there are many within these Tower walls who make the greatest warrants of having seen one apparition or another. I count this nonsense, mostly. But it is no great secret that many have died most cruelly in almost every part of this fortification, which explains much general superstition hereabouts, for such a terrible history will always play upon ignorant men’s fancies. It is even put about that your predecessor was quite frightened away by a spirit, but it goes against my mind and I am more likely to believe that he was in league with some of these coiners and ran away for fear of being apprehended, and hanged. For his disappearance almost coincided with my arrival in the Mint, which makes me much suspicious.”

The news that I had a predecessor who had disappeared troubled me a little so that I had a mind to know more, for the possibility now presented itself that my new position might be more hazardous than previously I had believed.

“But what was his name?” I asked. “Were not enquiries of him made? It is a sad thing to see how uncertain a thing my predecessor’s reputation was and how little is to be presumed of his honesty. I trust if I disappeared, you might give me a rather better opinion.”

“Your concern does you credit,” admitted Newton. “His name was George Macey. And I do believe some enquiries of him were made.”

“But pray sir, is it not possible that Mister Macey should be lamented as a victim, as condemned for a villain? By your own reckoning these are desperate men you have been dealing with. Might he not have been murdered?”

“Might, sir? Might? This was six months ago, when I was still finding my way around this strange place. And I can frame no hypothesis after such an interval of time. For to me the best and safest method of philosophising seems to be, first, to inquire diligently into the evidence of things and to proceed later to hypothesis for the explanations as to how they are. What might or might not have happened is of little concern to me. The investigation of mysteries and difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition.

“That is my method, Mister Ellis. To know it is to hit my constitution exactly, sir. But your questions do you justice. I will continue to appreciate your honesty, sir, for I would not make you my creature. But always speak to the point. And make your earliest study my scientific method, for it will stand you in good stead, and then you and I shall get on very well.”

“I will study you and your method most diligently, sir,” said I.

“Well then, what think you of the house and garden?”

“I like them very well, Doctor Newton. I think I was never so lucky at cards as I have been in entering your employment.”

This was true. I had never lived on my own. At the Bar I had shared rooms with another man; and before that, I had been at the University of Oxford where I had lived in college. And it was a great pleasure to close the door of a whole house behind me and be by myself. For all my life I had been obliged to find a space away from brothers and sisters, students and pupil barristers in order that I might read, or dream. But the first night I spent in my new house at the Tower was very nearly my last.

I had gone to bed early with a number of essays on the amendment of English coins that had been written by the leading minds of the day, including Doctor Newton, Sir Christopher Wren, Doctor Wallis, and Mister John Locke. These had been commissioned by the Regency Council in 1695 and Newton had suggested they would give me a good grounding in the various issues surrounding the recoinage. These did not encourage me to stay awake, however; my evening’s reading was as tedious as anything I had seen since abandoning my legal studies; and after an hour or two, I put the candle in the fireplace and pulled the quilt over my head with scarcely a thought for the superstitious fancies that had beset me earlier.

I do not know how long I was asleep. Perhaps it was as little as half an hour, perhaps much longer, but I awoke with a start, as if I had pulled myself out of the grave and back into life. Immediately I was possessed of the certainty that I was not alone; and holding my breath I became convinced that the dark shadows of my bedchamber were animated with the respiration of another. I sat up and, my whole body swayed by the beating of my own heart, I listened as closely to the tenebrous atmosphere as if I had been the prophet Samuel himself. And by and by I was able to distinguish the sound in my own bedchamber as of someone sucking air through a quill, which made my hair stand on end.

“For God’s sake, who is there?” I cried and, swinging my legs out of bed, I went to fetch the stub of candle from the fireplace to light another and illuminate the gloom. In the same instant out of the shadows spoke a voice that chilled me to the bone.

“Thy Nemesis,” said the voice.

I had a brief glimpse of a man’s face and was about to answer when, in a most inhuman manner, he attacked me, forcing me back onto the bed where, with all his weight upon my chest, he set about trying to gouge at my eyes with his thumbs, so that I cried out murder. But the strength of my assailant was formidable and although I caught him a couple of good blows about the head, the power of his attack never faltered and I thought for certain that I should be murdered and if not killed then blinded. Desperately, I forced his hands away from my eyes only to have him fasten them about my throat. Sensible of the fact that I was surely being strangled, I kicked out, in vain. A moment or two later I felt a great weight lifted from my chest and assumed that my soul had begun its upward motion to heaven before, finally, I realised that my attacker had been pulled off me and was now under the restraint of two members of the Ordnance, although he tolerated their hold upon him with such calm that I wondered if these two sentinels detained the right man.

A third member of the Ordnance, one Sergeant Rohan, helped me to come to myself with a little brandy so that I was at last able to stand and confront my assailant in the light of the lantern the Yeoman Warders had brought with them.

“Who are you?” I demanded to know in a voice hardly my own, it sounded so hoarse. “And why did you attack me?”

“His name is Mister Twistleton,” reported the strangely spoken Sergeant Rohan. “And he is the Tower Armourer.”

“I did not attack you, sir,” said Mister Twistleton with such a show of innocence that I almost believed him. “I don’t know who you are. It was the other gentleman I attacked.”

“Are you mad?” I said, swallowing uncomfortably. “There is no other gentlemen here. Come sir, what harm have I done to you that you should attack me?”

“He’s mad all right,” said Rohan. “But as you can see for yourself, there’s no harm in him now.”

“No harm in him?” I repeated with no small incredulity. “Why, he very nearly murdered me in my bed.”

“Mister Ellis, is it?” asked Sergeant Rohan.

“Yes.”

“He’ll not trouble you again, Mister Ellis. I give you my word on it. Mostly he’s close kept in my own house, under my cognizance, and never troubles nobody. But tonight he slipped out when we wasn’t looking and fetched up here. We were out looking for him when we heard the commotion.”

“It’s lucky for me you did,” said I. “Another minute and I wouldn’t be talking to you now. But surely he belongs in Bedlam. Or some other hospital for the distracted and lunatic.”

“Bedlam, Mister Ellis? And have him chained to a wall like a dog? To be laughed at like an animal?” said one of the Yeoman Warders. “Mister Twistleton is our friend, sir. We couldn’t let that happen to him.”

“But he’s dangerous.”

“Most of the time he’s exactly as you see him now. Quite calm in himself. Don’t make us send him there, Mister Ellis.”

“Me? I don’t apprehend how any of you are under my compulsion, Mister Bull. His care is your own affair.”

“It won’t be if you report the matter, sir.”

“Christ Jesus have mercy upon us,” shouted Mister Twistleton.

“You see? Even he asks your indulgence,” said Rohan.

I sighed, exasperated at this turn of events: that I should be attacked in my own bed, near strangled and then asked to forget all about it, as if this had been some foolish schoolboy prank and not a case of attempted murder. It seemed a perfect mockery of the Tower’s reputation for security, how a lunatic should be allowed to wander about the place with no more restraint than some wretched raven.

“Then I must have your word that he will be kept under lock and key, at least at night,” said I. “The next person might not be so lucky as I was.”

“You shall have my word,” said Rohan. “Right willingly.”

I nodded my grudging assent, for I seemed to have little choice in the matter. From what Newton had told me, relations between the Mint and the Ordnance were already quite bad enough without my becoming the author of yet more bad feeling. “What was it that put him out of his wits?” I asked.

“The screams,” said Mister Twistleton. “I hear the screams, you see. Of them as have died in this place. They never stop.”

Sergeant Rohan clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re a good fellow, Mister Ellis,” he said. “For a Minter, that is. He’ll not trouble you again, I promise you that.”

In the days and weeks that followed, I often saw Mister Twistleton about the Tower and always accompanied by a member of the Ordnance; and in truth he always seemed well enough not to be shut up in a madhouse, so that I congratulated myself how I had made a most charitable judgement in the matter; and it was several months afterward before I wondered if I had not made a dreadful mistake.

With public matters in a most sad condition and the country hardly fit to be governed, the Mint worked twenty hours a day, six days a week. As did Newton, for although he had nothing to do with the organising and stimulating of the recoinage, he slept very little, and on the rare occasions when he was not about the business of hunting coiners and clippers, he would occupy himself with the devising of a solution for some mathematic problem or other that would have been set by one of his many mischievous correspondents — for it was their most earnest desire to catch him out in his calculations. But there was always plenty for us to do, and soon we were frequent visitors to the Fleet Prison or to Newgate, to take depositions of evidence from various rogues and scoundrels, many of whom suffered the full penalty of the law.

I mention just one of these cases now, not because it pertains to the telling of this horrible and secret story, which greatly vexed my master for almost a whole year, but to show how many other legal matters at the same time were occupying his virtuoso mind.

The Lords Justices of England ruled the country in the absence of the King, who was fighting the French, with no great success, in Flanders. They had received a letter from a William Chaloner, a most clever and egregious forger, who alleged that money had been coined in the Tower containing less than its proper weight of silver, that false guineas had been made there, and that blanks and guinea stamps had been stolen out of the Mint. My master was ordered by their Lordships to investigate these allegations, which he was obliged to do, although he knew full well that Chaloner was Mercury himself when it came to rhetoric and that he had sold their Lordships a worthless jade. In the meantime, Peter Cooke, a gentleman lately condemned to death for coining, sought to bilk the hangman by telling us that the same Chaloner had been his accomplice, as were others.

How these scoundrels did peach upon each other, for my master had no sooner heard from Cooke, than Thomas White, another villain squeamishly affected by sentence of death, accused John Hunter, who worked at the Mint, of supplying official guinea dies to Chaloner. He also named as coiners Robert Charnock, a notorious Jacobite who had been recently executed for his part in the treasonous plot against King William of Sir John Fenwick; James Pritchard, of Colonel Windsor’s regiment of horse guards; and a man named Jones, about whom little or nothing was known. White had been convicted on the evidence of Scotch Robin, who had been an engraver at the Mint, and was a very leaky fellow, most lachrymose; and although my master suspected his sincerity, he always managed to betray at least one more of his friends under Newton’s close questioning.

It was a source of no small wonder to me, that a man who had kept himself close-closeted in Cambridge for a quarter century should prove such an expert interrogator. Sometimes Newton seemed stern and unforgiving and promised White that he would hang before the week was out if he concealed any other criminals; and then, at other times, my master did counterfeit to White such friendship and mirth that a man might have thought they were cousins. By these advocate’s tricks, which Newton seemed to know by instinct, White named five others, which earned him another reprieve.

Most of these rogues made a good conscience of their deeds and accomplices, but a few tried to keep up the lie, and had the cunning to cry a great while and talk and blubber that they knew nothing at all. Newton was not a man who was easy to trick and with those who tried he was most unforgiving, as if anyone that filled his mind with false information was guilty of something even more heinous than coining. With Peter Cooke, who had sought repeatedly to trick my master most vexatiously, the Doctor proved he could be as vindictive as the Three Furies.

First, we visited the wretched man in his Newgate dungeon, as did several hundred others — for it is the custom in England to view the condemned man, as a visitor to the Tower might look at the lions in the Barbican. Second, we attended the foolish miscreant’s condemned sermon, where Newton fixed his eye upon Cooke, who sat alone in his segregated pew, in front of his own open coffin. And still not full-gorged with his revenge, for so I perceived it, my master insisted that we go to Tyburn and see Cooke make his terrible end.

I remember it well, for it was the first time that I saw a man hanged, drawn and quartered, which is a beastly business. But it was unusual besides because Newton seldomly attended the executions of those he prosecuted.

“I think it is right and proper,” he said by way of justifying himself, “that, as officers of the law, occasionally we should oblige ourselves to witness the fate to which our investigations lead some of these transgressors. So that we may conduct ourselves with a proper gravity, and that we shall not make our accusations lightly. Do you not agree, sir?”

“Yes sir, if you say so,” I said weakly, for I had little appetite for the spectacle.

Cooke, who was a brawny fellow, was drawn on a hurdle in his shift to the place of execution, with the halter wound around his waist and the noose in his hand. To my way of thinking he kept his countenance well, although the hangman rode with him upon the hurdle, and all the time held the axe which Cooke knew would shortly sever his limbs. I shook merely to contemplate the instrument of torture.

We were almost an hour at Tyburn, Cooke delaying the time by long prayers, one after another, until finally, half fainting with fright, he was dragged up the ladder by the hangman, who fixed his halter upon the beam and then threw him off, whereupon the mob set up such a roar of excitement and pressed toward the scaffold that I thought we would be crushed.

The hangman had judged it nicely, for Cooke’s toes touched the scaffold so that he was quite alive when the hangman cut him down and, knife in hand, fell upon his victim like one of Caesar’s bloody assassins. The crowd, much quietened, groaned as one when the hangman, gutting Cooke like an old goat, sliced open his belly, stuffed in his hand and drew it out again holding a handful of steaming tripes, for the day was cold; and these he burned on a brazier in front of the still visibly breathing man who, but for the noose still constricting his neck, would surely have screamed out his agonies.

Newton did not flinch at the sight and, studying his countenance for a few seconds, I saw that although he took no pleasure in this sad spectacle, nor did he show any signs of lenity either; and I almost thought my master regarded the whole spectacle as he would have observed the dissection of a human cadaver in the Royal Society, which is to say as some kind of experimental procedure.

Finally, the hangman struck off Cooke’s head and, prompted by the Sheriff, held it up for the encouragement of the crowd, declaring it to be the head of Peter Cooke, a villain and a traitor. So ended this terrible morning of blood.

From Tyburn we took a hackney to Newton’s house for dinner where Mrs. Rogers, the housekeeper, had cooked us a chicken. Newton’s appetite was undiminished by the cruelty of the punishment we had witnessed which I was moved to discuss, finding I had little stomach for eating, the sight of another man’s stomach ripped open being still so vivid in my mind.

“I cannot think the law is best served by such severity,” I declared. “Should a man who coins be punished in the same way as one who plans to kill the King?”

“One is just as disruptive to the smooth governing of the realm as the other,” declared Newton. “Indeed it might even be argued that a king might be killed with little disruption to the country at large, as in ancient Rome where the Praetorians killed their emperors like boys kill flies. But if the money is bad, then so the country lacks a true measure of prosperity and by that same sickness shall it quickly perish. But it is not for us to discourse upon the justice of the punishment. It is a matter for the courts. Or the Parliament.”

“I should as soon be murdered in my bed as treated thus.”

“Surely ’tis always better to be executed than murdered, for any condemned man has an opportunity to make his peace with Almighty God.”

“Tell that to Peter Cooke,” said I. “I should think he would have preferred to make a quicker end of it, and trusted God’s proper judgement afterwards.”

The exceedingly stormy weather of November gave way to a fierce frost in early December, in the midst of rumours about French naval preparations for a landing in Ireland. My master and myself had spent all morning in the office, this being close by the Byward Tower and over the entrance to the Mint. Like everywhere else in the Tower it was a damp little place, which a large fire did little to dispel so that I frequently suffered from a most pernicious cough. Frequently our documents were mildewed so that I was often obliged to dry them in front of the fire.

The office itself was furnished with several comfortable chairs, two or three desks, some shelves and a close stool. There were two windows: one that overlooked Mint Street and the other the moat, wherein we would empty our chamber pot. This moat was ten feet deep and some thirty feet in width, and, in ancient times, had once been filled with snakes, crocodiles, and alligators from the Royal Menagerie.

On this particular morning two dredgers operating under the licence of the Lord Lieutenant — it being one of the Tower liberties that anything which fell into the moat was the property of the Tower and, by extension, of the Lord Lieutenant — were dragging the filthy water. We paid little attention to them at the time, being much concerned with rumours of a new forging process having been perfected in relation to the golden guinea coin, this information being laid before my master by Humphrey Hall, who was one of Newton’s extensive web of informers, and a most reliable and diligent fellow. But presently news reached us that one of the dredgers had fetched out of the moat a man’s body, the condition of which was such that it was strongly suspected he had been murdered, for the feet were bound together and very likely he had been weighed down.

“That is interesting,” remarked my master, who, on hearing these facts, left off stroking the office cat, Melchior, to look out of the window.

“Is it?” I remarked. “I am surprised that more people don’t fall in, the moat being surrounded only by a low picket fence that would not deter a goat.”

But Newton’s curiosity was hardly deterred by my remark. “It may have escaped you, Ellis, but people who fall in rarely take the trouble to weight themselves down,” he said scornfully. “No, this interests me. Why would someone dispose of a corpse in the moat when the river Thames is so close at hand? It would surely have been a much simpler matter to have carried the body down to Tower Wharf and then to have let the river’s tides and eddies work their transporting effect.”

“I offer no hypothesis,” said I, railing him with his own philosophy, which he took in good part. And there we might have left it. However, many Mint workers — who were easily provoked to fear — hearing of the discovery of a body, stopped their machines, which obliged my master to put aside his own business with Mister Hall and, accompanied by me, to go and investigate the matter himself.

The body had been taken to an empty cellar in the Tower along Water Lane, which ran parallel to the river and was the only road between the inner and outer rampire that was not occupied by the Mint. Gathered outside the cellar door, the stench of the much putrefied corpse having quite overpowered them, were one of the Constable’s officers, several Tower warders, the carpenter, and the two dredgers who had found the body. The Constable’s man, Mister Osborne, who was a poxy-looking fellow always standing on his office and often drunk, which sometimes prevented him from standing at all, was instructing the carpenter to fashion a cheap coffin; but seeing my master he stopped speaking, and most insolently rolled his eyes and looked mighty vexed.

“Zounds, sir,” he exclaimed, addressing Doctor Newton. “What business have you here? This is a matter for the Ordnance. There’s nothing that need concern the Mint, or you, this man being already dead and quite beyond any hanging.”

Ignoring this insult, Newton bowed gravely. “Mister Osborne, is it not? I own I am quite at a loss. I had thought to offer my assistance with the identification of this unfortunate soul, and how he came by his death, for many of us in the Royal Society have a small acquaintance with anatomical science. But I perceive that you must already know everything there is to know about this poor fellow.”

The others smirked at Osborne upon hearing this, for it was plain that Osborne knew nothing of the kind and would plainly have conducted his inquest in a most indifferent and very likely illegal manner.

“Well, there’s many a man drinks too much and falls in the moat,” he said, with no great certitude. “No great mystery about that, Doctor.”

“Do you say so?” said Newton. “It has been my own observation that wine and beer are enough to trip up a drunken man; so that tying his legs together is usually quite superfluous.”

“You’ve heard about that, then,” he said, sheepishly. Osborne removed his hat and scratched his close-cropped head. “Well, sir, it’s just that he doesn’t half stink, being quite rotten. It’s as much as a man can do to be alongside of the poor wretch, let alone investigate his person.”

“Aye sir,” echoed one of the Tower warders. “He’s quite picquant to the eyes and nose, so he is. We thought to get him boxed up and then to stand him in the chimney to keep the stink out, while the Constable made a few enquiries around the parish.”

“An excellent idea,” said Newton. “Only first let me see what enquiries may be answered from his person. If you will permit it, Mister Osborne?”

Osborne nodded. “My duty suggests that I do permit it,” he grumbled. “And I shall wait upon you.”

“Thank you, Mister Osborne,” Newton said handsomely. “I shall trouble you for some of your rolling tobacco to chaw which will take away the cadaver’s smell from our nostrils. Some candles, for we will need plenty of light to see what we are about; and some camphor, to help take the stink off the room.”

Osborne cut off a chaw for my master and myself and would have put away his knife, but that Newton asked to borrow that, too, and he handed it over willingly enough before going to fetch the candles and the camphor. While he was gone, Newton addressed the two dredgers and, offering each man a new-minted shilling, suffered them to answer a few questions about their occupations.

“How do you dredge?” he asked.

“Why, sir, with a drag net which you use while rowing the peter. That being the boat, sir. There’s an iron frame around the mouth of the net which sinks to the bottom and scrapes along as the peter pulls it forward, collecting into the net everything that comes in its way. Mostly we are river finders, sir. There’s more in the river. But sometimes we try our luck in the moat, as is our licensed prerogative so to do. You always know by the weight when you find a body, sir, but that’s the first time we ever found one in the moat.”

“This would be where in the moat, exactly?”

“On the east side of the Tower, sir. Just below the Devereaux Tower.”

“So then, within the bounds of the Ordnance.” Seeing the man frown, Newton added, “I mean that part of the Tower which is not occupied by the Mint.”

“Yes sir.”

“Was the body deep down?”

“Yes sir. Quite deep, but not on the bottom. We dragged it and for a while it did not budge. But then it came up, sudden like, as if it had been weighted, for as you will see for yourself, sir, the ankles are still tied by a piece of rope that has broken off something else, most likely a heavy object.”

“You searched the pockets?”

The dredgermen nodded.

“Find anything?”

Each looked at the other.

“Come, man, you shall keep whatever you found, or be well compensated, my word upon it.”

One of the dredgers dipped a grimy hand into his pocket and came out with a couple of shillings which Newton examined most carefully before returning them to their keeper.

“Do you see many corpses fetched out of the river?”

“A great many, sir. Them as shoot London Bridge, mostly. As the saying goes, it was made for wise men to go over and fools to go under. Take my advice, gentlemen, and always get off your skiff and walk around the bridge rather than try and go under it.”

Mister Osborne returned with the candles and camphor, and took them into the cellar.

“One last question,” said Newton. “Can you tell how long a man has been in the water?”

“Yes, your honour, and notwithstanding the weather, which affects the dignity of a man’s corpse greatly. The summer, being a cool one, has not much altered the pace of decomposing so much as the rats. But by and by, even the rats lose their stomach as the tallow in a man’s body stiffens and swells and sticks to his bones after the skin has become softened and quite rotted away, so that he doth almost resemble a body consumed in a fire, except that he be white instead of black.”

“So then,” prompted Newton, “by your expert reckoning, what is your estimate of this one?”

“Why, your honour, six months, I reckon. No more, no less.”

Newton nodded and handed each man the shilling he had promised, and me my chaw of tobacco.

“Have you chawed before, Mister Ellis?” he enquired.

“No sir,” I replied, although I might well have added that it was about the only bad habit I had not picked up when I was studying for the Law. “Not even for the toothache.”

“Then have a care to spit often, for it’s not well known that tobacco contains an oily liquid called nicotiana which is a deadly poison, and that all men who chaw are merely experimenting with its toxic effect. But it may be that your stomach shall be churned whether you chaw or no.”

So saying, Newton went into the cellar and I followed him to find Osborne lighting the candles to illuminate the scene.

“Thank you, Mister Osborne, that will be all for the present.”

But for the stench, the corpse seemed hardly human at all, more like some ancient Greek or Roman marble statue, in a poor condition of repair, that now lay on its side upon an oak table. The face was quite unidentifiable, except for the expression of pain that still clung to what remained of the features. That it was a man was clear enough, but in all else I could have said nothing about him.

“What can you observe about that knot?” asked Newton, looking at the rope which bound the corpse’s feet together.

“Very little,” said I. “It looks common enough.”

Newton grunted and took off his coat, which he handed to me; then he rolled up his sleeves, so that I saw how his forearms were much scarred; but also how he was fascinated by this cadaver, and what it seemed to represent, for while he cut away what remained of the dead man’s clothing with Mister Osborne’s knife, he told me what he was doing.

“Make sure you observe nature’s obvious laws and processes,” he said. “Nothing, Mister Ellis, can be changed from what it is without putrefaction. Observe how nature’s operations exist between things of different dispositions. Her first action is to blend and confound elements into a putrefied chaos. Then are they fitted for new generation or nourishment. All things are generable. Any body can be transformed into another, of whatever kind, and all the intermediate degrees of quality can be induced in it. These principles are fundamental to alchemy.”

It was as well he told me what it was to which he referred, as I had possessed not the remotest idea. “You are an alchemist, sir?” I said, holding the candle closer to the body.

“I am,” he said, removing the last shred of clothing from the corpse. “The scars on my arms that you noticed when I rolled up my sleeves are burns from more than twenty years of using a furnace and a crucible for my chemical experiments.”

This surprised me, for the law against multipliers — as were called those alchemists who tried to make gold and silver — had not been revoked until 1689, but seven years before, until when, multiplying had been a felony and therefore, a capital offence. I was somewhat troubled that such a man as he should have admitted his former felony with so much ease; but even more so that he appeared to believe such arrant quackery.

Newton began to examine the cadaver’s teeth, like a man who intended to buy a horse. “You seem a little disconcerted, Ellis,” said he. “If you intend to vomit, then please do it outside. The room smells quite bad enough as it is.”

“No sir, I am quite well,” I said, although my chaw was beginning to lighten my head a little. “But are not many alchemists in league with the devil?”

Newton spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the cellar floor as if he hoped my opinion might be lying there.

“It is true,” he said, “that there have been many who have tried to corrupt the noble wisdom of the magi. But that is not to say that there be no true magicians.” He paused and, averting his face from close proximity to the corpse for a moment, drew a deep breath before coming close to the open mouth of the skull; then stepping back he breathed out again, and said, “This man lacks the molars in his upper left jaw.”

“What is a molar?” I enquired.

“Why, the back grinding teeth, of course. From the Latin molaris, meaning a millstone. I have also observed that the second and third fingers of his left hand are missing.”

“There’s a great deal that is missing from this poor fellow,” I offered. “Ears, nose, eyes...”

“Your powers of observation commend you, Mister Ellis, however, both amputations have occurred in precisely the same location, that being the tip of each finger. It is very singular to this individual. As is the modus mortis. For the condition of the chest is most extraordinary. The ribcage has been quite crushed, as if he was broken by some great compression. And do you see the strange position of the legs? The lower legs pressed onto the thighs, and the thighs up toward the belly?”

“Indeed it is curious,” I admitted. “Almost as if he had been rolled up into a ball.”

“Just so,” Newton murmured grimly.

“Do you think it is possible — No, it will only vex you, Doctor.”

“Speak, man,” he exhorted me.

“It was merely an hypothesis,” said I.

“You will allow me to be the judge of that. It may be that you will have confused it with an observation. Either way, I should like to hear what you have to say.”

“I wondered if this be not another poor victim of the Mighty Giant. Indeed, I heard one of the warders utter the same thought.”

This Mighty Giant was a most notorious and as yet undiscovered murderer who was much feared, having killed several men by crushing their bodies horribly.

“That remains to be demonstrated,” said Newton. “But from what I have read of his previous victims, the Mighty Giant — if there be such a man, which I doubt — has never thought before to dispose of a body, nor indeed to bind the feet with rope.”

“Why do you doubt he exists?” I asked.

“For the simple reason that giants are so few and far between,” said Newton, continuing to inspect the body. “By their very definition they stand out from the crowd. A man who has killed as often as the Mighty Giant must then be rather more anonymous. Mark my words, Mister Ellis, when that particular murderer is apprehended, he will be no more a giant than you or I.

“But what is here undeniable is that this man was killed with great cruelty. It is as plain as the truth of alchemy here demonstrated.”

“I do not understand,” I admitted. “How is that truth of alchemy to be demonstrated from a corpse, master?”

“To be explicit, the living body is a microcosmos. Having lived out its span of life, permeated by heat and air, it comes back through water to final dissolution in earth, in the never-ending cycle of life and death.”

“There’s a merry thought,” I said. “I wonder who he was.”

“Oh, there’s no wonder about it,” said Newton, and grinning at me now, he did add, “This is your predecessor. This is George Macey.”

Before leaving the cellar, Newton bade me say nothing of this to anyone for fear that the information should further delay the recoinage in the Mint.

“There is enough silly superstition among the moneyers already,” he declared. “This would only confound them further and put them in greater fear, for they are the most damnably credulous men I ever saw. If the identity of this poor fellow were generally known, all reason would cease at once. And this place should grind to a halt.”

I agreed to say nothing of what he had told me; nevertheless I was somewhat disturbed by the alacrity with which my master lied to Mister Osborne and the other Tower warders, when we were outside the cellar again.

“I owe you an apology, Mister Osborne. Alas, the fellow is much too decomposed to say anything about him, except that it was not the Mighty Giant who killed him.”

“But how can you tell, Doctor?”

“I have paid some attention to the reported details of these particular murders. In all cases, the victim’s arms were broken. But it was not so with our anonymous friend from the moat. This man’s injuries were exclusively to the torso. If he had been held in the embrace of this Mighty Giant, as is already rumoured, I should have expected broken arms as well as ribs. You may box him now, if you wish.”

“Thank you Doctor.”

“I think, Ellis,” said Newton, spitting the remains of his chaw on the ground, “that you and I need a drink, to take away the taste of this damned tobacco and, perhaps, to settle our stomachs.”

It was only as we started back along Water Lane toward the Stone Kitchen, which was the name of the tavern in the Tower, that the implications of Newton’s lying began to impinge upon my Christian conscience.

“Sir, you are quite sure it was George Macey?” said I, as we started back along Water Lane. “I could barely determine that it was a human male, let alone have identified the poor fellow.”

“There can be no doubt about it. I met him but once or twice; however, it did not elude my notice that Mister Macey lacked several teeth on his upper jaw. But, more importantly, the upper joints of his second and third fingers were missing from his left hand. It is an injury most peculiar to this Tower, and more precisely this Mint.”

“It is?”

“Perhaps, when you have become better acquainted with the practice of coining, you will recognise that the moneyer who feeds the coining press with blanks must be mighty nimble-fingered. There can be hardly one of them who has not lost one or more finger joints. Prior to his clerkship, Macey was himself a moneyer. These observations, added to the dredger’s expert opinion as to how long the body had been in the water, and the finding of two new-minted shillings on the victim’s person, such as the ones I myself gave the two dredgers, must equal the conclusion I have described. Even though the coins had been a long time in the water, the milled edges were quite unmistakable.”

“Why, then, sir, if it is George Macey—.”

“You may rest assured of it.”

“Then what of his eternal rest in Christ? Does he not deserve a good Christian burial? What of his family? Perhaps they would wish a stone to remember him by? To say nothing of this matter would surely be wrong.”

“I can’t see that it matters very much to him, can you?” He smiled, as if vaguely amused by my outburst. “I believe there was a whore in Lambeth Marsh he liked to visit. But I shouldn’t think she would want to pay for a funeral. And as for his rest in Christ, well, that would all depend on whether or not Macey was a Christian, would it not?”

“Surely there can be no doubt of that,” said I. “Did he not, as I did, lay his hand upon the Bible and swear the oath of secrecy?”

“Oh, he may have done. Not that that proves anything, mind. After all, most of the Bible was written by men who had no knowledge of Jesus Christ. No, the plain fact of the matter is that Macey was no more a Christian than was the prophet Noah. I told you that I only met Macey once or twice. But on each occasion I discoursed with him long enough to learn the true nature of his religious views. He was of the Arian persuasion, which is to say that he believed that Jesus Christ and our Lord God are not of one substance, and that there was no human soul in our Saviour. Therefore he would hardly have wanted a Christian burial, with all its attendant idiosyncrasies.”

“But that is heresy,” said I. “Isn’t it?”

“Indeed, many would say so,” murmured Newton. “But you should concern yourself more with why Macey was killed and where, than with the fate of his immortal soul. For it is plain that he was murdered in the Tower, and by people from the Ordnance who were in a great hurry to be rid of his body.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“For the present I would merely ask you to recall the knot that was tied around poor Macey’s feet. Common enough, you thought. But in reality, much more singular. It is made by twisting two parts of rope in opposite directions, forming two side-by-side eyes through which the base of a hook may be passed so that a sling or weight may be hung from the hook. The knot, called a cat’s paw, is used to attach a rope to a hook and is quite versatile, but I have seldom seen it used outside of this Tower. I have other reasons, also, for believing the Ordnance was involved, which we will investigate as soon as we have wet our whistles.”

The Stone Kitchen was a miniature Babylon of vice and iniquity which did not lack its own scarlet woman, for the wife of the landlord was a whore that could persuade the Minters and warders that went there to do more than just drink away their pay. She, or one of her female friends, was not infrequently to be seen taking some fellow into a dark corner of the inmost ward for a threepenny upright; and once I even saw this bawd plying her wares behind the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Indeed I am certain of it, for I confess that I myself did, once or twice, go with her; and others. In truth there were many places in the Tower where a jade from The Stone Kitchen might fetch a man off for a few coppers; and it was just one of several reasons why my master seldom ventured through the tavern’s door, for he also abhorred drunkenness and the fights that excessive drinking sometimes occasioned between Minters and the Ordnance. I, on the other hand, often frequented the place when my master was back in Jermyn Street, for it was certain that The Stone Kitchen was the cosiest place in the Tower, with a great hearth and an enormous skillet that usually contained an excellent stew, because for all her lewd ways and probable distempers — during the summer her cunny parts smelt as frowzy as a Scotsman’s dog — the landlady was an excellent cook.

As we came through the door Newton surveyed the occupants of the tavern with Jeremiah’s disapproving eye, which earned us the greeting of a low murmuring groan and a lesser consort of cat-calls; and perhaps it need be stated again that Newton lacked a facility with ordinary people, so that there were times when he resembled old Mister Prig.

We sat down near the fire, for it was cold outside, and warmed our hands and feet; and having ordered two mugs of hot buttered ale, we looked about the tavern at the Minters who had finished their shifts, and the warders who had come off duty. For myself I nodded at some of the faces I recognised: a surveyor of the meltings; an engraver; a moneyer; and the Tower barber. I even nodded at Mister Twistleton who, wild-haired and white-faced, sat meekly pressed between Yeoman Warder Bull and Sergeant Rohan, and looked like nothing so much as the pages of a book bound with a robust leather cover; he smiled back at me and then continued to study a paper with which he seemed to be much diverted.

And of course I smiled at the landlady who brought our buttered ales, and caressed me with a most venereal eye, although she was kind enough not to speak to me with any great familiarity in the presence of my master, which would have caused me some embarrassment.

Newton regarded all of these with the suspicion of a Witchfinder-General, and sitting amidst those brawny boozers of the Mint and the Ordnance, whose conduct was a scandal to sobriety and whose faces contained much roguery, I swear he fancied each tankard a coiner’s cool accomplice.

We drank our ale and kept our own counsel until Jonathan Ambrose, a goldsmith contracted to the Mint as a melter and refiner, and already much distrusted by Newton on account of how his cousin had been hanged as a highwayman, approached us with a show of contempt and proceeded to subject my master to a most insulting speech.

“Doctor Newton, sir,” he said, almost sick with intemperance. “I declare, you are not much loved in this place. Indeed, I believe you are the most unpopular man in this Tower.”

“Sit down, Mister Ambrose,” yelled Sergeant Rohan. “And mind your tongue.”

Newton remained seated and ignored Ambrose, seemingly unperturbed; but, sensing some trouble, I got up from our bench to interpose my body between the goldsmith and my master.

“God’s whores, it’s true, I say,” insisted Ambrose. He was a tall fellow with a manner of speech that made me think he spoke side-saddle, for his mouth was all to one side of his nose when he was talking.

“Sit down,” I told Ambrose and gently pushed him away.

“Pox on’t, no,” snarled Ambrose, his mouth a slavering diagonal of distaste. “Why should I?”

“Because you are drunk, Mister Ambrose,” said I, moving him still further away, for he had begun to point most belligerently at Newton, as if his forefinger had been a javelin. “And you are most importunate.”

“Have a care, Doctor,” said Ambrose, craning his neck across my shoulder. “People die in this Tower.”

“I think we’ve had enough out of you, Jonathan Ambrose,” declared the landlord.

It was now that Ambrose aimed a blow at my head. It was easily ducked, but I had a mind to pay him back for his insolence and, aiming at his ear, struck him in the mouth with my fist. I was not much of a man for bare knuckles, but the blow knocked Mister Ambrose off his feet and onto the table in front of Mister Twistleton, which earned me a cheer from the men in The Stone Kitchen, as if we had been in the Bear Garden in Southwark. And while the landlord set about the simplified task of ejecting Ambrose from the tavern, I helped Mister Twistleton to collect his paper from the floor, although this was naught but the jumbled-up alphabets of a child.

“Perhaps,” said Newton, rising to his feet, “we had better be going, too.”

“Sorry about that, gentlemen,” said our landlord. “He’s barred from this moment hence.”

“I think,” replied Newton, “that if every sober man in the Tower should be called to account for the nonsense he speaks in his drink, then you should soon have no customers, Mister Allott. So let’s have no talk of barring anyone, and think no more of this business. Here’s five shillings to buy a drink for all that’s in here.”

“Very generous of you, sir.”

And with that, we took our leave of The Stone Kitchen.

When we were outside again, there was no sign of Mister Ambrose, and Newton let out a breath and smiled at me.

“You are a useful fellow to have around, Ellis,” he said. “I can see I made the right choice. You are quite a Hector.”

“It was nothing,” I said, following him along Water Lane.

“The fellow needed a dry basting. I was glad to do it. He threatened you, sir.”

“No, no,” insisted Newton. “He warned me. That is something very different.”

Instead of proceeding to the Mint, we walked along the south wall of the White Tower, in what was the inmost and oldest ward of the Tower, to the Coldharbour Building and the museum which was there. Inside this place was a splendid collection of mounted armour-clad figures that purported to show the line of Kings upon the throne of England; and a gallery that displayed various instruments of torture and execution. It was these cruel machines and implements that Newton wished to look at now.

I had not seen the rack before, however I had, of course, heard stories of its use, and shuddered as I looked upon it, finding it only too easy to think of myself bound to the two opposite windlasses like some hapless victim of the Holy Inquisition — for it was stated on a nearby placard that all of these instruments had been captured from the wreck of a Spanish Armada ship and had been intended to help in the work of reconverting the people of England to Roman Catholicism.

“God bless Sir Francis Drake,” I murmured. “Or else this rack should have made us all Papists by now.”

On hearing this, Newton laughed. “I hold no candle for Roman Catholics,” he said. “But, mark my words, Rome can teach Englishmen nothing about cruelty.”

“But is the rack not still used in Spain?” I replied.

“It may be so,” admitted Newton. “And would explain why so little science emanates from that country. God knows how many great scientific minds were stunted when Galileo, the greatest mind of the century, was tried for heresy. However, it is not the rack that we have come to see, but this much more portable instrument of torture which, if I am right, was used about six months ago, on poor George Macey.”

Newton pointed at a curious metal implement that was as tall as a man and shaped like a keyhole, with manacle holes for a man’s head, hands and feet. Newton leaned forward to blow away only a light covering of dust from the object, which action he repeated upon the beam of the rack, thereby setting up a veritable cloud of grime.

“Observe, if you will, how much less dusty this instrument of torture is than the rack.”

Now, from his pocket, Newton produced a magnifying glass that he did sometimes use to read, with which he proceeded to examine the black metal surface of the machine most closely.

“But what is it?” I asked. “I cannot fathom the mechanism.”

“This is the Scavenger’s Daughter, also known as Skeffington’s Gyves, or shackles, and invented by a former Lord Lieutenant of this Tower. The Scavenger’s operation is, in all respects, the very opposite action to the rack; for while that draws apart a man’s joints, this, on the contrary, binds a man into a ball, the human body being almost broken by the compression. This torture was more dreadful and more complete than the rack, so that in some extreme cases the box of a man’s chest was burst and death resulted soon thereafter. Also, it is much more portable than the rack since it may be fetched to a prisoner, rather than the other way around.”

“And you believe this is how poor Mister Macey met his end?”

“His injuries are certainly consistent with it having been used,” he said. “Yes.”

Newton was still in possession of Mister Osborne’s knife and used this to scrape something off the manacles onto a piece of paper which he showed to me. “If I am not mistaken, this is dried blood. But we shall examine it under a microscope later on.”

“You have a microscope? I have never seen through a microscope,” I admitted.

“Then you are to be envied. For the first sight of natural phenomena under the microscope is always most breathtaking.”

“If you are right,” said I, “and this is blood, then George Macey must have been privy to information that others wished desperately to know, or else they should not have tortured him so cruelly.”

“Mint workers are always in possession of some secrets,” said Newton, “although I hazard that there’s not one of them, Macey included, who wouldn’t give up what he knows for a few guineas. No, it is more tempting to conclude that Macey was tortured for information he did not possess, otherwise the excruciating pain of this device would surely have persuaded him to talk much earlier on, and certainly before receiving any mortal injuries.”

“That’s a terrible thought,” I said sickly. “To be tortured for information you had would be bad enough. But how much worse it would be with nothing to betray.”

“Your instinct for self-preservation does you a dubious credit,” said Newton, and, folding away the paper with the suspected dried blood, he offered me a wintry smile. “It persuades me that I need not utter another salutary to remain silent about this matter. Whoever killed George Macey would doubtless slit our throats as easily as other men would slice a cucumber.

“Come, let’s away from here, lest some should see us and feel disquiet at our proximity to this machine.”

Leaving the Storehouse, Newton declared his wish to visit my house and use his microscope which, he said, would assist our further enquiry. But outside the door to the Warden’s house we found Mister Kennedy, who was another of the Mint’s informers, and two gentlemen I did not recognise.

Mister Kennedy was a most forbidding-looking fellow, having a false nose made of silver to cover the gaping holes of the nostrils of the one that was lost: from an accident in the mill room, he said; but there were, I knew, plenty who speculated that the real accident had been received in the cunny parts of a whore. This feature, however, lent Mister Kennedy a villainous aspect that enabled him to mix with some of the worst rogues in London. He, having received a shilling from one of the two gentlemen for having brought them to Newton, now withdrew, leaving them to introduce themselves. It was the taller, older and less modish of the pair who did the talking:

“Sir,” he said, bowing gracefully, “this is indeed an honour. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Christopher Love. Perhaps you have read my work on the chemical teachings that are being done in the University of Leyden?”

“I regret I have not had that pleasure,” Newton said gruffly, for he hated being sought out by new disciples while he was about the business of the Mint.

“No matter,” said Doctor Love. “This is the Count Gaetano, from Italy, who is a most adept and notable philosopher in his own country, and has done great work in the secret art.”

The Count, attired in powdered silk and wearing the largest feather I had ever seen on a man’s hat, contrasted sharply with the scholarly black of his companion, whom I judged to be in the fiftieth year of his age. He bowed with more panache than an Irish actor and then spoke most haltingly to my master, in an accent that was as thick as the braid upon his sleeves.

“Sir, I should be greatly honoured if you would be my guest for dinner. At your convenience, sir. Very much.”

“I am not insensible of the honour you do me, Count,” answered Newton. “However, I accept very few invitations.”

“The Count appreciates you are a busy man,” said Doctor Love.

“Very much.”

“Nevertheless he feels he has something which would be of very great scientific interest to you.”

“Very much.”

And so saying, Doctor Love removed from a square of velvet a gold ounce, which he presented to Newton.

“Before my very own eyes,” explained Doctor Love, “the Count used a tincture of his own discovery to convert what had been a miserable piece of lead into this golden ingot.”

Newton examined the gold with a show of deep feeling.

“I took it at once to a goldsmith,” continued Doctor Love, “who declared it to be the purest gold he had ever seen.”

“Indeed,” said Newton, weighing the gold piece in the palm of his hand and all the while looking greatly affected.

“Who could be better than yourself, Doctor Newton, Warden of the Royal Mint and England’s greatest scientist, to put this gold to the test? And if you were convinced that it was real, we considered that you might care to witness the Count’s process of transmutation for yourself.”

“Very much,” said Newton; and the assignation of a definite time for this demonstration having been made, the two alchemists were persuaded to take their leave of us, and we were at last allowed to go inside the house, whereupon Newton handed me the gold piece.

“It certainly looks and feels like real gold,” said I. “I think should like to see a real transmutation. If such a thing is possible.”

“We have other business before us now.” And, finding his microscope, Newton placed the instrument on the table by the window, and a mirror and a candle next to it to better illuminate the specimen.

“See if you cannot find Mister Leeuwenhoek’s book,” he told me, placing the scraping from the Scavenger on a slide. “Or Hooke’s Micrographia.”

But I could not find either book.

“No matter,” said Newton, and, producing a pin from his lapel, pricked his own thumb so that a small ruby of blood did ooze out. This he pressed onto another slide, compared the two, and then invited me to look myself.

Gradually I was able to distinguish a dim but magnified image that Newton assured me was his own blood. It was one of the most remarkable things I had ever seen. The blood from Newton’s thumb seemed to be almost alive.

“Why, sir, it is composed of thousands of small objects,” I said. “But only some of them are red. And these do flow in a liquid that is almost transparent. It is like looking closely into a pond on a bright summer’s day.”

Newton nodded. “These minute portions are called cells. And it is believed that these are the ultimate elements in all living matter.”

“I did not think it possible that a man might be reduced to something so small. Looking at it so close, human life seems somehow less miraculous. As if we ourselves might not add up to much more than what floats in the village pool.”

Newton laughed. “I think we are a little more complicated than that,” he said. “But pray tell me what is your opinion of the sample we took from the Scavenger?”

“It is without doubt the same, sir. And yet it does not move. It is as if the life that animates the pond has departed.”

“Quite so.”

“It is blood, then,” said I. “What shall we do?”

“Do? Why, nothing at all. I will at my leisure think of this some more and see what might go to explain it. Until then, put this matter from your mind lest these discoveries of ours, weighing on your thoughts, shall spill off your tongue.”

Two or three nights afterwards — Newton having tested the sample of gold himself, and confirmed him in his first opinion, which was that the ounce of gold was genuine — I accompanied him to Doctor Love’s house in Soho, where Count Gaetano received the news about his sample with modest smiles and humble shrugs, almost as if he expected his demonstration was a foregone conclusion and that Newton was already congratulating him on his transmutation. Doctor Love had laid on a splendid dinner, but before we could partake of a mouthful of it, Newton, already bored with the conversation of these two philosophers, looked at his watch and declared that he was anxious to proceed with the transmutation.

“What say you, Count?” asked Doctor Love. “Are you ready?”

“Very much.”

We accompanied Doctor Love and the Count to a workshop at the back of the house where the furnace was already heated so that the shop felt like an oven. At this point Newton opened a bag he had brought with him that now revealed a crucible.

“To avoid all imposition,” he explained, “I have brought along a crucible, some charcoal and some quicksilver with which I am certain no gold has been mixed. I was sure you would agree that it is always important to approach all hermetic matters with as much scientific rigour as possible.”

Count Gaetano smiled broadly. “Very much,” he repeated, and, taking these items from Newton, set about his transmutation.

“While you work, Count,” said Newton, “perhaps you will favour me with some particulars about your preparation of the Mastery?”

“I’m afraid that must remain a secret for now, sir,” said the Count.

“Of course. How long will the work take?”

“No more than several minutes,” replied Doctor Love. “The process is remarkable.”

“Indeed it must be,” observed Newton. “For every sage I have ever read testifies that several months are required to effect a transmutation.”

“Several months to learn the secret of the Magistery,” the Count said firmly. “But once the great secret is known, the work is simplicity itself. Now, sir, if you will stand over there.”

“I confess I am fascinated,” said Newton, moving away from a metal close-stool that stood in the corner.

The Count placed about half an ounce of lead into Newton’s crucible and heated it on the furnace; and presently, the lead having liquefied, he cast his tincture upon it and we saw the lead duly enveloped.

“Gentlemen,” said the Count, “please to stand back a little and cover your eyes, for there will be a great flash of light and perhaps you will be blinded a little.”

We stood back from the crucible. For several minutes nothing happened, so that finally I was tempted to look through my fingers, at which point there was a blinding flash and a strong smell of cinnamon, and, as the Count had predicted, I was blinded by a green spot in front of my eyes for several minutes. But when my sight was recovered and I inspected the crucible once more, I saw to my astonishment that the whole mass had been converted into what looked to be the finest gold.

“I should not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes,” said I.

“That much is certain,” said Newton.

The Count poured the molten gold into an ingot, and, it having cooled sufficiently, he set the ingot in water and then polished it up for our inspection.

Newton placed the small ingot in the pan of a balance to determine the weight, and smiled. He handed me the ingot, and while I stared in wonder at the miracle I had seen, he inspected the crucible from which it had been poured.

“My doubts are removed,” he said firmly. “Sir, you are a rascal. I thought it proper to remove my doubts about your demonstration by marking the lip of the crucible I gave you. That mark having now disappeared—”

“It was the heat of the fire that consumed it, surely,” protested Doctor Love.

“The mark was most indelible, being a fine groove I chiselled in the stone of my own crucible this very afternoon. I am certain that this crucible containing the gold was substituted for the one I marked and which contained the lead. As soon as the Count advised us to cover our eyes, I was suspicious. He waited just long enough before curiosity overtook us and we peeped to see what had happened. At that moment he threw some phosphorus into the crucible, which blinded us long enough for him to make the substitution. I smelt the fault, however, for phosphorus is most offensive to the nostrils; but it can be rendered less offensive by first dissolving it in oil of cinnamon.”

“Sir,” said the Count, gesturing most innocently with his hands. “You are very much mistaken.”

“Am I?” said Newton and, catching hold of the Count’s wrist, quickly inspected his fingers’ ends, which were most painfully blistered, before the Count snatched away his hand with what looked like a mighty show of guilt. “My late friend Mister Boyle once had occasion to demonstrate phosphorus to me. I seem to recall that his own hands were similarly blistered from handling phosphorus with his bare hands. But I will freely admit I am mistaken if a search of this laboratory finds no evidence of fraud.”

The Count, who was still all innocence, silently invited Newton’s scrutiny. My master hardly hesitated and, advancing swiftly across the laboratory, lifted up the lid of the close-stool in the corner to reveal the second crucible containing the melted lead and bearing Newton’s mark.

“How ever did you know that it was there?” I asked, amazed.

“Before beginning his demonstration, the Count asked me to move away from its proximity, for fear that I should perhaps hear him open it. Moreover, this commodious Ajax is made not of wood, but entirely of metal, which struck me as curious, until now.”

“But what about these two mountebanks?” I asked. “How are we to proceed against them?”

“Sadly, no crime has been committed here,” said Newton. “However, you two gentlemen would be well advised not to repeat your fraudulent demonstrations in London. For then I should be under compunction to denounce you to all men of learning.”

The Count smiled thinly and narrowed his eyes so that I began to perceive how he was less of a bombast and more of a desperado than I had earlier supposed.

“And you, sir, would do well to stay out of my way,” he said quietly. “For if you called me a liar in front of other gentlemen of quality, I should not have very much hesitation in challenging you, Doctor.”

Doctor Love was no less threatening than his rascally Italian friend. “In Italy,” he said, “the Count is a most notorious swordsman and has killed three men in affairs of honour.”

“Come, Ellis,” said Newton. “I think we must be leaving now. We have seen all that we needed to see.” And with that we left, for which I was very glad, since the atmosphere in that laboratory had grown doubly hazardous.

“What a pair of charlatans,” muttered Newton, when we were outside again. “That they should have thought they could trick me.”

I told my master that I did not think the Count looked like a man lightly to be thwarted. “You must be more cautious, Doctor,” I said. “I think we were lucky to get out of there without a fight.”

“This world is full of rogues,” said Newton. “Forget him. He’ll not trouble us again.”

Taking pity on my still empty stomach, Newton invited me to his house, in Jermyn Street, which was but a walk away from Soho. And I have mentioned this matter only because it was on this night that I met Miss Barton, which was as near to a genuine transmutation as I ever beheld, for after I met her, my feelings were become gold and it seemed to me that, by comparison, all fondnesses I had felt for other girls were as dullas lead.

“My niece, Miss Barton, who has come to live?”

“Of course I have. But I confess I understand little of that quality in a body and its mechanical action upon another human mind and its senses.”

“A man might think you were describing not a girl but a problem of geometry, sir,” I said, laughing. “I don’t think beauty is to be apprehended as a matter of mathematics.”

“That,” said Newton, reaching his frwith me, will welcome the company,” he explained while we walked down from Soho toward Piccadilly. “She is the daughter of my half sister, Hannah, who was married to a Northamptonshire cleric, the Reverend Robert Barton. But he died, some three years ago, and left little money for his three children; I have taken upon myself the cost of their upbringing. I have told her I am a dull stick, but she wishes to see London; and besides, Northampton, the nearest town to where she lives, is a dull place, much destroyed by the fire of 1675, and the society there not fit for a girl of Catherine’s intelligence. Or loveliness. I am told by Lord Montagu, who has met her, that she is a great beauty. But I will also value your opinion, Ellis, for I believe you to know more about women than almost anything else.”

“Why, sir, have you never met her yourselfont door, “is only your opinion.”

The young woman to whom I was now introduced was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, and it was hard to perceive in her any great similarity to her uncle, which was perhaps not so surprising given that her mother was only Newton’s half sister. She was pretty, of that there could be no dissent; but in truth, during the first few minutes of our acquaintance, I considered her not altogether so great a beauty as milord Montagu had opined. And it took me several marvellous minutes to understand how it was that beauty rests on more than just a pretty face; there was also the matter of her very obvious intelligence to be take into account. For her excellent mind — most other ladies I had met were much more obviously shy and retiring than Newton’s precocious niece — caused Miss Barton’s lovely features to be much animated with thought, and being added to her prettiness, the effect of each was doubled, so that her great beauty was my inevitable impression. So great a beauty that by and by I found I was very pleased with her and soon found myself too much minding her. By her conversation she was clever and witty beyond her bigness and age and exceedingly well bred as to her deportment, having been a scholar at the local school in Brigstock these nine or ten year.

After we had eaten supper, she said, “My uncle tells me that, prior to entering his service, you were training to become a lawyer, Mister Ellis.”

“Yes, that was my expectation, Miss Barton.”

“But that you fought a duel which obliged you to leave off your studies.”

“Yes, that is true, I did, although I am near ashamed to mention it to you, Miss Barton.”

“Nonsense,” she railed. “I never met anyone who fought a duel. You are my first duellist, Mister Ellis. But I confess I have met dozens of lawyers. Northamptonshire is quite riddled with them. Is that the sword with which you fought?”

I looked down at the hilt of my sword. “Yes, it is.”

“I should like to see it. If I asked you nicely, would you show it to me?”

I looked at her uncle.

“I have no objection,” he said.

No sooner had he spoken thus, than I had drawn my sword and, kneeling before her, presented it to Miss Barton upon the sleeve of my coat. “Have a care, miss, it’s very sharp.”

“I did not think you looked like the kind of man to carry a blunt sword, Mister Ellis.” She took hold of the hilt, raised my sword, and fenced the air for a moment or two. “And did you kill him?”

“If I had, I would not be standing here now,” I said. “I merely pricked him, in the pap.”

Miss Barton inspected the point of my blade in the firelight. “To think that this has drawn a man’s blood,” she breathed; and then: “I should like to learn to fence.”

“With your uncle’s permission, Miss Barton, I should be happy to instruct you.”

“No,” he said flatly. “It is out of the question. Child, what would your mother say?”

She shrugged, as if what her mother said was of no import, and then handed me back my sword. “No matter,” she said. “I didn’t come to London to have gentlemen prick me with their rapiers.”

“Not for the world,” said I.

“Indeed, no,” echoed Newton.

“Pray tell, what was your quarrel about, Mister Ellis?” she enquired.

“With whom?”

“Why, the gentleman you fought a duel with, of course.”

“A matter of such little import that I would blush to tell you, Miss Barton.”

“If I defeated you in a duel, would you tell me then?”

“I should have little choice but to do so. Even so, I should only whisper it, for fear of earning your uncle’s scorn.”

“Then we shall duel, you and I. Will you challenge me?”

“Willingly, if it will amuse you; yes, I challenge you. Which gives you choice of weapons.”

“Then I choose drafts.”

“Be careful, Mister Ellis,” advised Newton. “She does not lack for skill.”

To play drafts with Miss Barton was to understand how much she took after her uncle — whom I had often played at the Tower — for if I gave either of them first move, they were sure to beat me wholly, which, at the hand of Miss Barton, I did not much mind, her being so childishly pleased by winning. After our first game, she demanded her forfeit.

“Come now, pay up. The explanation why you duelled, Mister Ellis.”

I was pleased to have lost, for it gave me the opportunity to whisper in her exquisite ear, which was as close to her sweet-smelling neck as I could have wished to be, short of kissing it.

Hearing it she laughed out loud, and then insisted we play again; and I confess I had never in my life been quite so happy to lose five games of drafts in a row.

My master took to inviting me for supper, once a week, saying that he pitied any man such as I who was obliged to cook for himself, but I think that he saw that Miss Barton and I enjoyed each other’s company, which left him time to read, or to work upon a mathematical problem; I even went to communion with them on Christmas Day. And, by the Twelfth Day of Christmas, this pretty young woman occupied my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night, and I regarded her most fondly. However, I said nothing to this effect, at least not yet, thinking that my loving this beautiful girl should be to the discontent of her uncle, my master. And indeed I endeavoured mightily to put her out of my mind and not to love her at all except that she offered several provocations to my doing so, such as giving me a book of her favourite poems she had copied out in her own hand, and nicknaming me Tom because she said I reminded her of a cat of that name she had once owned, which was most pleasingly familiar; and once, presenting me with a lock of her hair which I kept in a little box by my bed. So that very soon thereafter she was in my head a thousand times each day.

And for the first time in a long time I was happy. For love is mostly optimism.

I never knew as wise a man as Newton. And yet he was as ignorant of the female sex as Achilles. Perhaps, had he had more knowledge of the world and girls, he might have governed her behaviour in a way that would not have left me encouraged as much as I was. And things might have turned out very differently between Miss Barton and myself.

Sometimes it is not so easy to distinguish where love ends and lunacy begins; and I fancy there are a great many Bedlamites who are love’s loyal yeomanry.