Dark Matter

Chapter Two

Michael Maier, Viatorium, 1618

January 1697 was an exceedingly cold month, as cold as I could ever recall and, my master assured me, the coldest he could remember since 1683, when he had stayed indoors and written his Universal Arithmetick — his most elementary work. I tried to read it, but did not succeed. Perhaps the cold slowed my intellectual parts, just as it slowed the production of new coin. For the money was still scarce, despite the very best endeavours of the moneyers, and although everyone talked of a peace with France, nothing came of it. And all the time more Jacobites were arrested, so that the country did seem mighty unstable. Meanwhile, James Hoare, the Comptroller of the Mint who had died, was replaced by Thomas Molyneux and Charles Mason, who my master said were both corrupt, and in truth they did soon feud with each other and prove to be ineffectual.

I have mentioned how Newton’s spy, Humphrey Hall, brought us information that some coiners were rumoured to have perfected a new process in application to the gold guinea coin; and it was this business that caused us to be involved in the next part of my story which Newton swiftly came to call his dark matter. Mister Hall’s discourse had greatly disturbed my master, a guinea being a much more serious thing to forge than a silver crown, or a shilling, and yet we lacked the evidence of a counterfeit coin. But on the night of Saturday the thirteenth of February, this shortcoming remedied itself.

I was early to bed and asleep when I woke to find Mister Hall in my bedchamber with a candle in his hand.

“What is it, Mister Hall?” I asked, rather alarmed to find him there because, for all the fact that he was most reliable, Mister Hall was also rather stern of countenance and old and quiet, so that he stood at the foot of my bed like Charon waiting to ferry my spirit over the marsh of Acheron. Charon’s price was one obol, but it was a guinea that Mister Hall wanted to talk about.

“I believe we have found what we are looking for, Mister Ellis,” he said in his stagnant, muddy voice. “The head keeper at Newgate has heard that a prisoner, whose name is John Berningham, has been boasting of having paid for his garnish with a false guinea.”

Garnish was what the keepers called the bribes they extracted from prisoners awaiting trial, for their better treatment; and this they paid for with rhino, or quidds, both of which meant ready money, or cash: since joining Newton’s service I had been obliged to learn a whole dictionary of criminal cant, or else I should never have understood the very depositions I wrote down; and there were times when Newton and I found ourselves speaking to each other like a couple of convicts.

“I thought we ought to go and investigate it now,” added Mister Hall, “for fear that the man will be released, or that we shall lose the guinea.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”

So I made myself ready presently, and straightaway Mister Hall and myself walked to Newgate with much ado, the ways being so full of ice and water by people’s tramping of the recent snow.

From a distance, Newgate looked well enough, being recently restored after the Great Fire, with a handsome pilastered exterior which, when inspected closely, would have yielded the explanation as to why it was also called the Whit, for, upon the base of one pilaster, sits a carving of Dick Whittington’s cat. And yet the Whit did not easily forgive such close inspection. Those foolish enough to linger in the gateway risked being pissed upon or struck with a chamber pot pitched from the upper windows and, approaching the entrance, I, out of habit, so much scrutinised these same windows that I watched not where I was going and put my foot in a great heap of dog turds, which mightily amused those wretches at the begging grate on Newgate Street who otherwise cried out for alms. I never passed these disembodied hands that reached through the grate without thinking of the gates of the infernal city of Dis, in Dante’s Inferno, where howling figures threatened Virgil and the Pilgrim from the walls and, for all that I bridled under the laughter of these wretched men and women, yet I pitied them also, for, truly, Newgate is a habitation of misery and quite the worst place in London.

Inside was yet more pandemonium, there being a great many dogs and cats, poultry and pigs, to say nothing of the roaches and rats that there abound, so that the smell of animals and their excrements being added to the reek of ale and strong water that were brewed there, as well as the smoke of fires and the cold and the damp, can make a man’s head ache for want of good air.

There were four quarters to Newgate: the Condemned Hold in the cellars; the Press Yard; the Master’s Side; and the Keeper’s Lodge, where ale and tobacco were sold and where we met Mister Fell, the head keeper. Fell was a knavish-looking fellow, with a badly pox-marked face and a nose that resembled a small potato gone to seed, sprouting several greenish hairs from his nostrils.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, grinning boozily. “Will you have some comfort? Some mum, perhaps?”

We had some of his mum, for the comfort in his strong water smelled none too palatable, and we drank each other’s health with more optimism than was warranted in that foul place.

“’Tis a great pleasure,” Mister Fell said to me, “to be the messenger of important information to a gentleman such as yourself, sir, who is the friend of Doctor Newton, who does so much to keep us all in work.” He laughed unpleasantly, and added, “I shall not keep you in suspense. Except to say that you must excuse me if my first enquiry relates to the squeamish matter of compensation, for nobody can help the frailty of poverty, sir.”

His poverty I doubted, for I knew that, as head keeper, Fell could make at least several hundred pounds a year in garnish. But I humoured him for the want of his information.

“If your information be good, I’ll warrant you’ll be well rewarded by my master.”

Fell delved into his pockets, scratched his arse for a moment, and then retrieved a gold guinea which he polished briefly on his filthy coat and then laid down upon the table.

“But if my guinea be not good?” he said. “What then? Will it be replaced by a proper yellow boy?”

“You have my word upon it, sir,” I replied, and scrutinised the coin most carefully. “But what makes you think it is bad? Faith, sir, it bears my own examination well enough, although, in truth, I’m not as well acquainted with golden guineas as I should care to be.”

I handed the coin to Mister Hall, who bit the coin hard with no discernible damage. “Aye, sir,” he said. “It looks and tastes all right.”

“Why, sir,” said Mister Fell, “to look at and to chew upon, it passes well enough, don’t it? But then answer me this: Why would a man say a guinea was not real if it were indeed a true coin?”

“You make a good point, Mister Fell,” I said. “Pray tell me more of this man you mention.”

“Yesterday evening there was a fight at The Cock, in Threadneedle Street. Mister Berningham bought his chop at a butcher’s shop in Finch Lane and, as was his wont, took it to The Cock to be cooked, but eating it liked it no more than if it had not been cooked at all, and quarrelled with the landlord; and, drawing upon him, ran him through the belly with his sword, whereupon he was arrested and brought here.

“He paid fifteen shillings for four weeks food, lodging, and strong waters, for I told him it would likely be that long afore his case came before the court. And five shillings in advance for his wife to come and visit him. He said she would come on Sunday afternoon. But later on, in his cups, he boasted to a prisoner named Ross, who keeps his ears sharp for me, that the yellow boy he had presented was counterfeit. Which put me in mind of Doctor Newton and yourself, sir, you two gentlemen being so very diligent in the enquiry of such felonies, sir.”

“You did right, Mister Fell,” said Mister Hall.

“Indeed, sir,” said I. “And we are obliged to you for your trouble. With your permission I should like to borrow this guinea to show to Doctor Newton. It shall be returned unless, if it proves to be counterfeit, it will certainly be replaced. And if your information leads to the arrest and conviction of its manufacturer, I daresay you will be rewarded as well.”

Mister Fell nodded slowly. “You may borrow it, sir. And I am very glad to have been of assistance to you.”

“Shall you require a receipt, Mister Fell?”

“No need of that, sir,” he grinned. “I have a fixed confidence in you and the Doctor, sir, as men of honour. Besides, we have two witnesses here that it’s my guinea what you are borrowing.”

“Did Mister Berningham say when his wife would visit on Sunday?”

“He did, sir. At around five o’clock, and that I should keep an eye our for her, as she was a lady, and not used to the Whit.”

“I’m obliged to you, Mister Fell.”

When at last I got home and to bed again I had a very restless night of it being too excited to sleep soundly, for the next day being St. Valentine’s Day, I was now possessed of the perfect excuse to be at my master’s house in the morning. It being the custom for a woman to take as her valentine and kiss the first person she saw, naturally I hoped to see Miss Barton in advance of any other and so become her valentine.

I rose from my bed at five o’clock since it was also Sunday and I decided I must arrive in Jermyn Street before eight o’clock as, very soon after that, Miss Barton would likely accompany her uncle to St. James’s Church. Finding myself lousy I washed myself with cold water and found in my head and my body above a dozen lice, little and great, which I did not wonder at after my visit to Newgate. Being the Lord’s Day there were no boats to carry me down to Westminster, nor any hackneys, although I should not have taken one, the fare being one and sixpence, and I was obliged to walk from the Tower to Piccadilly, which is a good distance, and took me almost two hours.

Upon arriving in Jermyn Street, I presented myself at my master’s door and knocked, but Mrs. Rogers, the housekeeper, would not open the door until I answered whether I was a man or woman.

“It is I, Christopher Ellis,” said I.

“Wait there, sir,” Mrs. Rogers told me.

And by and by the door was opened by Miss Barton herself. “I am mighty relieved it is you, dear Tom,” she said, using my pet name. “Quite careless of such important matters, my uncle has invited the Dean of St. James’s Church for dinner, and I do not think I would have wanted him as my valentine. He has breath like a stews, and I should have had a sermon and no embrace.”

“Then it is well that I came,” I said, and stepping into the parlour, Miss Barton let me kiss her, being the first time this had happened. This kiss was the most chaste I had had in many a year, and yet it did give me more pleasure than any other I had ever received; and which made Newton laugh out loud, something that I had not seen before that day.

That being done, to Miss Barton’s no less evident pleasure, upon our mirth subsiding, Mrs. Rogers fetched me some bread, a piece of hot salt beef and a tankard of hot buttered ale, and, much refreshed by my breakfast, I acquainted my master with the other reason for my attending him so early in the morning.

“And here was I thinking you had walked all the way here from the Tower solely on my account,” she said, affecting some disappointment. “Christopher Ellis, I do believe you have no more romance in your body than my uncle.”

But Newton expressed great satisfaction at the story of the golden guinea and, upon examining the coin, declared that we should, by experiment, test it in a crucible as soon as possible.

“But before then I should be grateful if you would escort Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers to Church, this morning,” he said. “For it will require the work of a whole morning in my laboratory for me to build the heat up in the furnace.”

“I should be delighted, sir, if Miss Barton is not too disappointed in me.”

She said nothing.

“Or perhaps,” continued Newton, now addressing his niece, “you had hoped to have the Dean all to yourself over dinner. For I was going to ask Mister Ellis to stay and dine with us.”

Miss Barton closed her eyes for several moments, and then opening them again, she did give me her sweetest, most engaging smile.

And so I escorted Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers to St. James’s Church, which gave me great pleasure, although it was the first time I had been in church a month of Sundays, and I had to endure a most tedious sermon of the Dean about Jacob wrestling with an Angel of the Lord, which was only made easier to bear by the content I found in having such a handsome girl as Miss Barton to look upon, and have squeeze my hand once or twice during the prayers.

After church we returned to Newton’s house and, leaving Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers in the kitchen for a while, I sought my master out in his laboratory which was in a basement cellar with a window that gave onto a small back garden. This laboratory was well furnished with chymical materials such as bodies, receivers, heads, several crucibles and a furnace that was by now as hot as the lowest part of hell and which made my master sweat mightily.

At the sound of my footsteps he glanced around and waved me toward him with a cry of satisfaction. “Ah, Mister Ellis,” he shouted over the roar of his furnace. “You are just in time to see my own freakish trial of the pyx,” he said, placing Mister Fell’s guinea in a heated crucible. The trial of the pyx was the ancient ordeal by which the purity of gold and silver in the new-minted coin was tested by a jury of the Company of Goldsmiths.

“To my way of thinking, a man’s trying to turn lead into gold is as absurd as expecting bread and wine to become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is what they represent that should inspire us. Nature is not merely chemical and physical, but also intellectual. And we should accept the spirit of enquiry that is implicit in this opus alchemyicum you see before you now, as another man might accept the opus divinum of the mass. Both are journeys toward understanding. We are all seekers after truth. But not all of us are vouchsafed the grace of faith that provides all the answers. Some of us must find those answers for ourselves. For some the answer in the darkness is the light of the Holy Spirit; while for others the discovery is in the fact that hidden in Nature’s darkness lies another light. To this intellectually illuminating end my whole life has been dedicated.

“Now let us see what has become of this guinea.”

Newton fell to inspecting the contents of his crucible while I thought about what he had said. What his meaning might be, I was not completely able to penetrate into at the time, but later on I saw that he aimed at something beyond the reach of human art and industry.

“Look there,” he said and, holding the crucible with a pair of tongs, showed me the melted metal.

“Is it counterfeit?” I asked. “I cannot tell. Even now it looks to me like real spanks.”

“You see, but you do not observe. Look more closely. There is not one but four, possibly even five, metals present here: I know not yet what they may be, but I’ve a strong fancy this coin is mostly copper. Which brings us much trouble, for I have never seen such an ingenious facsimile, not these past nine months. If there be many more like it besides...” Newton left off speaking and shook his head gravely, as if the prospect was too terrible to countenance.

“But how was it done, master? Do you think this is the same process that Humphrey Hall spoke of?”

“I do indeed,” said Newton. “The process was devised in France, during the last century. I am not privy to understanding all the secrets thereof, but the key is thought to be, as in many, mercury. In truth, no one knows more about mercury than me. About three years ago, I almost poisoned myself through breathing the vapours of mercury — although this effect is not well known. Mercury demands respect. It is not something that may be used with much safety, and this will assist our investigations, for there are many outward signs of mercury’s abuse.”

“What are we to do?”

“What would you have me do?”

“I should question John Berningham about this false guinea. We may perhaps persuade him to make a clean breast of it.”

“That will take a while,” said Newton. “So very often one such as he will lie and keep on lying until he feels Jack Ketch breathing down his neck. It would be better to know much more of this matter before we questioned him. You say that he paid to have his wife visit him?”

“Yes sir. An ounce of silver for the privilege, in advance.”

“Then she may be the key that will open the door.” Newton looked up. “But I hear that the Dean has arrived, and I must play the host.”

Putting on our coats, we went back upstairs for dinner. The Dean was a more congenial dining companion than he was a preacher, and kept Newton occupied with divers matters of theology while Miss Barton and I made eyes at each other. And once or twice she did even rub my shin with her stockinged foot, while all the time discussing the Dean’s sermon, which made me think she was more wicked than I had ever suspected.

After dinner Newton stood up from the table and announced that he and I had Mint business to attend to, and, reluctantly, I took my leave of Miss Barton.

“Are we going to the Mint?” I asked, when we were outside the house in Jermyn Street.

“Did not Mister Fell, the keeper at Newgate, say that Mister Berningham’s wife would visit him at five of the clock?”

“He did. I confess I had quite forgotten that.”

Newton smiled thinly. “Evidently your mind has been much preoccupied with other, frivolous matters. Now then, if I may have your full attention, sir. You and I will repair to Newgate and while I question Scotch Robin and John Hunter — it may be that they were not the only two rogues employed by the Mint who could have stolen a golden guinea die — you shall keep vigilant for this Mrs. Berningham; and seeing her, follow her, for doubtless her husband will have kept his place of lodging secret.”

We made our way to Newgate, where my master, being recognised from one of the upper storey windows, and much hated among the prisoners for his great diligence, was obliged to dodge a bole of shit that was thrown at him, and with such adroitness that I did perceive how, for all his fifty-four years, he was a most athletic man when the occasion demanded it. Entering at the gate, he made light of the ordure bole, saying that it was as well that it had been an apple that fell on this head and not a turd, otherwise he should never have thought of his theory of universal gravitation, for he would have had nothing in his head but shit.

Berningham was in quod on the Master’s Side, which consisted of thirteen wards, each as big as a chapel, and here I loitered on a wooden bench outside the door that held Berningham, like any common cull or warder. While there I was solicited by two or three of the whores that plied their trade in the prison; and sometimes by one of the children who lived there — a small, almost toothless boy that offered to sell me a newspaper that was several days old, and to fetch me some “washing and lodging,” which was another name the occupants of that terrible place did have for gin. Finally I took pity on the lad and gave him a halfpenny for his enterprise, which was at least more bearable than that of the jades who offered me a threepenny upright in some quiet corner of the Whit. All of this I bore until the cull I had garnished with another coin tipped me the wink that a most hand some-looking woman — although she wore a vizard — whom he admitted to her husband’s ward, was the lady in question. To keep her observed was no great skill, for over her grey moiré suit she wore a thickly wadded cloak of bright red cloth that made her stand out like a cardinal in a Quaker church.

Mrs. Berningham stayed with her husband for more than an hour, after which, and hiding her face again, she left the ward and returned to the main gate, with me skulking after her as if I were some Italian in a tragedy of revenge. By and by we both found ourselves out of the Whit again, whither she walked south down Old Bailey, and again I followed her, whereupon, to my surprise, I found my master fall into step beside me, for he was an even better skulker than might be supposed of one who had become so famous.

“Is that Mrs. Berningham?” he asked.

“The same,” I replied. “But what of Scotch Robin and John Hunter? Did you question them?”

“I left them both with much food for thought,” said Newton. “I said that as ever I hope to see heaven I would make certain each of them would meet the cheat before Wednesday if they did not tell me who might have stolen a die. I shall return tomorrow for an answer. For I have always thought that if a man does but reflect upon the prospect of hanging for one night, it greatly loosens his tongue.”

Mrs. Berningham remained very visible in her red hooded cloak, although it was become quite dark and mighty cold besides, which made us glad to hurry after her as she turned east onto Ludgate Hill, for we had no wish to let her out of our sight. But then, turning the corner ourselves, we saw that Mrs. Berningham was surrounded by three ruffians carrying cudgels in their hands, and who seemed to speak very roughly to her, so that I feared they intended to do her some harm. And I shouted at the fellow to desist. At this the villain who was the largest and most ruffianly aspected of the three advanced on me brandishing his cudgel most menacingly.

“I can see that you need a little mortifying, gentlemen,” he growled, “to help you to remember to mind your business.”

I drew the two German double-barrelled Wender pistols I kept about my person whenever I went to the Whit, cocked my piece, and then fired above his head, thinking that this would put him off. But when he continued to advance it was plain to me that the fellow had been fired upon before, and so I was obliged to shoot again, only this time with more aim and, upon his cry and dropping off his cudgel, I was sure that my ball had struck him in the shoulder. Cocking my other piece, I fired twice at one of the others who came on after their comrade, but missed him altogether, for he was moving quickly, and seeing this villain, similarly undeterred, seem as if he meant to have at my master with a plug bayonet, I had at him with my rapier and pinked him on the thigh, which caused him to yelp like a dog and leave off soon enough. Whereupon the three withdrew in various stages of disorder and I even thought to give chase until I saw that my master was lying on the ground.

“Doctor Newton,” I cried, kneeling down beside him with great anxiety, and thinking him to have been run through with that bayonet after all. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, thanks to you,” said Newton. “I slipped on the cobbles when that debauched rogue tried to stab me. Look to the lady, I am quite well.”

I found Mrs. Berningham not much agitated and very pretty besides, her vizard having fallen off during the quarter; but seeing me with my sword still drawn, she seemed to realise what danger she must have been in and suddenly looked fit to swoon so that I was obliged to gather her up in my arms and, with my master leading the way, carry her back up Old Bailey, and place her in the little chariot that was waiting upon us at a short remove from the Whit.

“Pray, madam, tell us where you live so that we may convey you home with safety,” said Newton.

Mrs. Berningham dabbed at her lightly powdered cheeks and nose with a mouchoir and said, “I am much indebted to you two gentlemen, for I honestly believe those ruffians meant to do more than merely rob me. I live on Milk Street, off Cheapside, close by the Guildhall.”

She was a handsome, red-haired woman, with green eyes and good teeth and a dress that showed the tops of her bubbies most fetchingly, which made me feel most amorous toward her. But for Newton’s presence in the coach I think she might have let me kiss her, for she smiled at me and held my hand to her bubbies several times.

Newton instructed his coachman to drive to the address, which took us east along Newgate Street, this being a more direct route to Milk Street than the way she had earlier taken on foot.

“But why did you not come this way before, madam?” Newton asked suspiciously. “Instead of going down Old Bailey and onto Ludgate Hill. You were most conspicuous to us, from the minute you left the Whit.”

“You saw me leave the Whit?” Mrs. Berningham glanced out of the window as a cloud cleared from the sky, and in the suddenly moonshine light, I did think she coloured a little.

“Ay, Mrs. Berningham,” said Newton.

Hearing her name, for she had not mentioned it herself, Mrs. Berningham dropped my hand, and stiffened visibly.

“Who are you?”

“Never mind that for now,” said Newton. “When you left the Whit, where were you going?”

“If you know my name, then you’ll know why I was at the Whit,” she said, “and why I should want to pray for my husband. I went down Old Bailey intending to go to St. Martin’s Church.”

“And did you also pray for your husband before visiting him?”

“Why, yes. How did you know? Did you follow me there, too?”

“No, madam. But I’ll warrant your attackers did. For it was clear they were waiting for you. Did you recognise them?”

“No sir.”

“But I fancy one of them said something to you, did he not?”

“No sir, I think you are mistaken. Or else I do not remember.”

“Madam,” Newton said coldly, “I never misrepresent matter of fact. And there is nothing I dislike more than contention. I am right sorry for your trouble, but let me speak plainly with you. Your husband stands accused of the gravest crimes, for which he might easily forfeit his life.”

“But how can this be? I am reliably informed that the landlord whom John stabbed will soon recover. Surely, sir, you exaggerate the gravity of this matter.”

“What? Do you persist in fencing with us, Mrs. Berningham? The stabbing is a mere bagatelle, of no interest to me or my friend here. We are officials of His Majesty’s Mint, and of graver import is the matter of a counterfeit guinea coin which your husband knowingly passed off as genuine, and for which he will surely hang unless I am disposed to intervene on his behalf. Therefore I beseech you, for his sake, and for yours, to tell us everything you know of this false guinea. And, that being done to my satisfaction, to prevail upon your husband to have like to do the same.”

Mrs. Berningham sighed most profoundly and handled her fur tippet as if, like a Catholic rosary, it might afford her some spiritual guidance in forming her resolution. “What must I do?” she whispered, quite distracted. “What? What?”

“All that is possible to do for your husband, Doctor Newton’s influence may effect,” I told her, and gently took her hand in mine. “It would be vain to suppose there are any other ways of helping him now. You must unburden yourself of all you know of this matter, madam.”

“It’s not much that I know, except that John has been a fool.”

“Unquestionably. But tell us about your assailants,” said Newton. “What words were spoken?”

“He said that if John should peach, then I should get worse than the beating was coming to me now. That the next time they would kill me.”

“And that was all he said?”

“Yes sir.”

“But you knew what it was to which he referred?”

“Yes sir.”

“Then it’s plain you did recognise them after all.”

“Yes sir. My husband was sometimes in their company, but he told me not their names.”

“Where was this?”

“At a mum house in Leadenhall Street,” she said. “The Fleece. Or sometimes they were at The Sun.”

“I know both of those places,” said I.

“But in truth,” she continued, “they were ruffians and he paid them little heed. There were others with whom he seemed better acquainted. Gentlemen from the Exchange, or so I thought them.”

“The Royal Exchange?”

“That was my own apprehension, but now I am not so sure. John was to use false guineas to pay some merchants, which I was much against, thinking he would be caught. But when he showed me the guineas I could not conceive of anyone thinking them to be anything other than genuine, which, I am ashamed to confess, made me quite leave off my objections. Indeed, sir, I am still at a loss to know how the ridge was culled, since it was my husband’s practice to mix good and bad coin.”

“He is not much of a dissembler, this husband of yours. In his gin cups Mister Berningham boasted that the ridge with which his garnish had been paid was false.”

Mrs. Berningham sighed and shook her head. “He never did have a head for strong waters.”

“These other men you thought were from the Exchange. What were their names?”

Mrs. Berningham was silent for a moment as she tried to remember. “John told me, only...” She shook her head. “Perhaps I will remember tomorrow.”

“Mrs. Berningham,” Newton said crossly, “you say much, but you tell us very little of consequence.”

“It has been,” she sighed, “a most vexatious evening.”

“’Tis true,” I said in her defence. “Look here, the lady is encrusted with distress.”

“In time, Mister Ellis, you will learn that the licence of invention some people take is most egregious indeed. For all we do know, this woman is as culpable as her husband.”

Whereupon Mrs. Berningham appeared mightily grieved and began to cry, which only served to make Newton more impatient, for he did tut and look up at the ceiling of the coach and moan as one with the stomach-ache and then yell out to the coachman to make haste or else he would go mad. And all the while I held Mrs. Berningham’s hand and tried to comfort her so that finally she once again composed herself sufficient to comprehend what Newton next had to say to her.

“The man we are looking for, madam,” he said carefully. “The man who did forge the guinea which your husband was foolish enough to pass off. He is very likely French. He is perhaps a man with teeth à la Chinoise, which is to say that they are black and quite rotten and, had he ever spoken with you, his breath would have seemed most foul. Perhaps you would also have noticed his hands, which might have trembled like a milk pudding, and to which you may even have attributed his great thirst for ale or beer, but never wine, for the man I am looking for drinks not for enjoyment but from necessity, wanting moisture as much as doth the parched ground in summer.”

To my surprise, for I had never heard this description before Newton gave it utterance, Mrs. Berningham started to nod, even before my master had finished speaking.

“But, Doctor Newton,” she exclaimed. “Surely you have met my husband.”

“I have not yet had that pleasure,” said Newton.

Mrs. Berningham looked at me. “Then you must have described him to the Doctor.”

“No, madam,” said I.

“Then how do you seem to describe him so well? For ’tis true, he has not been well of late.”

“It is no matter for now,” said Newton.

Newton’s coach drew up at Mrs. Berningham’s address in Milk Street and we set her down, whereupon my master cautioned her to return to the Whit only in daylight when her safety might be better assured.

“But how did you know Berningham’s appearance?” I asked, when she had gone up to the door of her house. “A man you have never seen nor heard of before. And yet Mrs. Berningham recognised him from your description.”

And upon my asking, Newton smiled a quiet little smile so that I thought how he seemed rather pleased with himself. “‘He giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him.’ The Book of Daniel, chapter two, verses twenty-one to twenty-two.”

I confess that I was a little piqued at Newton’s enigmatic resort to the scriptures, for it seemed to confirm in my mind that he enjoyed confounding me, which made me feel and no doubt look mighty ill-humoured, so that my master patted my knee, like a spaniel methought, although his speech was full of much warmth and good intent toward me.

“Oh come, sir, this will not do. I would know if I am to improve myself.”

“Rest assured, my dear young friend, that you who have saved my life shall know my complete confidence. The description was furnished easily enough. Whoever forged that guinea has had a prolonged acquaintance with mercury, which produces in a man all the ill effects that were described: the blackened teeth, the tremulous hands, the great thirst. I might also have mentioned the unsoundness of mind. These effects are not generally known. I only discovered them myself as a result of a great distemper with which I was afflicted during the year of 1693, when I almost lost my mind through much experimentation in my laboratory.

“All of which leads me to suppose that the lady tells us much less than she knows.”

“How is that?”

“She told us that her husband was merely passing off the bad coin as good, when the substance of the matter is that he did forge them himself. Berningham is almost certainly the man who has perfected the d’orure moulu process for making fake gold. But it may be that she still hopes to save him from the gallows, although I have always thought that hanging and marriage go very much together as a fate.”

Newton instructed his coachman to drive to the Tower and from thence back to Jermyn Street.

“I have a favour to ask of you: that Miss Barton shall be told nothing of tonight’s adventure. She is a sensitive child, prey to all sorts of imaginings, and it would greatly inconvenience me if every time I went abroad, she were to detain me with questions regarding the safety of my person. My duties on behalf of the Mint are the only matters on which I am happy for my niece to remain in complete ignorance.”

“Depend upon it, sir. I shall be the very model of discretion where that young lady is concerned.”

Newton bowed his head to me.

“But,” I said, “since I now dare to enjoy your complete confidence, sir, I would take advantage of that to remind you of a matter in which my own continuing ignorance is an affront to me. I would ask if you have had any further thoughts regarding the death of George Macey, of whose murder you bade me to remain silent. And, if you have, I would be grateful if you would share them with me, for I do confess that my own predecessor’s death still much occupies my thoughts.”

“You do well to remind me of it,” said Newton. “But I have not lacked for diligence in obtaining more information.

“Macey was, by several accounts, a most diligent man, but not an educated one, although he does seem to have made an attempt at improving himself. None of this amounted to very much, however, and it seems that Macey often had recourse to consult the mind of a man I suspect was one of Macey’s informers, a goldsmith by the name of St. Leger Scroope. Oddly it is a name that I seem to be familiar with, although I have been unable to fathom why. And since Mister Scroope was to have been out of the country until about this time, I confess I have not pursued the matter any further, and therefore your reminder is most opportune. We shall try and visit Mister Scroope tomorrow, at his place of business in the Strand. It may be that he can shed some further light on a letter written in a foreign language that was rumoured to have come into Macey’s possession, about which, according to Mister Alingham, the Tower carpenter who was a friend of his, Macey was much exercised to comprehend.”

Out of the coach window I saw the familiar castellated outline of the Tower appear in the moonshine like King Priam’s city bathed in the glow of Zeus’s silvery eye. The coach pulled up at the Middle Tower, close by the Barbican wherein the lions restlessly groaned, and set me down upon the esplanade. Before closing the door behind me, Newton leaned out into the cold and feral-smelling night, for the wild beasts below did much pollute the air with their excrements, to speak to me one last word before I took my leave of him.

“Meet me outside the water tower at York Buildings tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, when we shall call upon Mister Scroope. And after that we may visit this Berningham fellow at the Whit.”

Then Newton rapped on the roof of the coach with his stick and the little red chariot was rattling away to the west, along Thames Street.

I turned and approached the guard near the Byward Tower, who was well away from his post, and for a moment I stopped to talk with him, for it was always my habit to try to improve relations between the Mint and the Ordnance. We spoke of how to keep warm on duty, and which Tower was the most haunted, since I never walked about the Tower at night without being afeared to see some spirit or apparition. For shame I could not help it; and yet to speak in my own defence, so many dreadful things had happened there that if anywhere be haunted it might be the Tower. The guard believed that the Jewel Tower, also known as the Martin Tower, was a place of many ghostly legends. But we were soon joined in this conversation by Sergeant Rohan, who knew the Tower as well as any man.

“Every quarter has its own ghostly legends,” opined Sergeant Rohan, who was a great burly figure of a man, almost as wide as he was tall. “But no part is so scrupulously avoided as the Salt Tower, which, it is said, is much disturbed by spirits. As you know yourself, Mister Twistleton, the Armourer, saw a ghost there, which is what lost him his wits. I myself have heard and felt things there I know not how to explain, except to say that their origin be malign and supernatural. Many Jesuit priests were tortured there, in the lower dungeon. You may see the Latin inscriptions carved upon the wall by the hand of one.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He was taken to York in 1595,” said Rohan, “where he was burned alive.”

“Poor fellow,” said I.

Rohan laughed. “Think you so? He was a very fanatical sort of Roman Catholic. Doubtless he would have done the same to many a poor Protestant.”

“Perhaps so,” I admitted. “But it is a very poor sort of philosophical argument that we should do unto others before they do unto us.”

“I doubt there are many philosophers who could know what a needful capacity for cruelty most Roman Catholics have,” insisted the Sergeant. “Dreadful things were done to the Protestants in France during the dragonnades of 1681 and 1685, when King Lewis’s soldiers were quartered in the homes of Huguenots and allowed full licence to behave as cruelly as they wished in order that many might make converts to Rome. Believe me, lad, there were no conceivable cruelties which these brutal missionaries did not use to force people to mass and to swear never to abandon the Roman religion. Old men imprisoned, women raped and whipped, young men sentenced to the galleys, and old mothers burned alive.”

“You speak as if you witnessed these cruelties yourself, Sergeant,” I observed.

“Twenty years I’ve been at war with the French,” said the Sergeant. “I know what they are capable of.”

After a few minutes spent debating this issue with Rohan, who was most obstinate in his hatred of Jesuits, I wished Sergeant Rohan and Mister Grain good night and left the Byward with a borrowed lantern, which did little to allay the apprehension of seeing a ghost that our talk had increased in me.

Walking quickly home to the warden’s house, I thought much about those Jesuits who had been tortured, perhaps with the same Skeffington’s Gyves that had been used on George Macey. It was easy to imagine some tormented priest haunting the Tower. But reaching home and being warm in bed, with a good candle in the grate, I began to think again that ghosts were idle fancies and that it was probably better to be afeared of those living men who had murdered my predecessor and who were still at liberty to kill again.

The next morning, I took a wherry boat from London Bridge to York Building stairs. Upon alighting, I and others found the mud on the jetty quite frozen over, which was so hazardous to our company that I thought fit to complain to the watermen that the steps should have been salted and kept free of ice so that passengers might step off a boat without threat to life or limb. At this the watermen, who were weatherbeaten, strong-looking men, merely laughed, and, sore from the previous evening — for I still had the apprehension that I had been the butt of the Ordnance’s joke — I started to draw my sword; but then I saw my master standing by the water tower and thought better of pricking their arses.

“You were right to contain your anger,” he said, when at last I was safely on the embankment beside him, “for there’s not a more independent lot of men in London. They are generally temperate, for a drunken waterman would hardly be trusted, and yet they can be most violent. If you had drawn your sword you would very likely have found yourself in the river. A seven-year apprenticeship makes a poor man most obdurate in defence of his rights and knowledgeable of his proper duties, which, alas, do not include the cleaning of the jetties. For the Thames, being a tidal river, would make a mockery of anyone that swept these walkways free of mud. High tide was but one hour before you landed.”

Bridling under my master’s lecture, I said that I had no idea he knew so much about London watermen and the tides that affected their trade.

At this he smiled thinly. “About watermen I know only what most people know about all London workmen: that they are a blight. But about tides I know a great deal,” he said. “You see, it was I who first explained them.”

And as we took a short coach ride up to the Maypole in the Strand, Newton proceeded to tell me how by propositions mathematically demonstrated he had deduced the motions of planets, the comets, the Moon, and the sea.

“So it is the gravitational effect of the Moon that makes the tides?” I said, summing up his own much longer account of this celestial phenomenon. Newton nodded. “And you received all this from the fall of an apple?”

“In truth, it was a fig,” he said. “But I cannot abide the taste of figs, whereas I am most fond of apples. I have never been able to tolerate the idea that it was the fruit I despise most in the world that gave me my idea of how the world moves. And it was only the germ of my idea. I remember thinking that if the power of gravity could extend to the top of a tree, how much farther might it extend? And indeed, I perceived that the only limit to its power was the size of the bodies themselves.”

It was clear that Newton saw the world in a different way from everyone else; which made me feel mightily privileged that I enjoyed such a great man’s confidence. Perhaps I was beginning to understand a little of the excellence of his mind; but this was enough to appreciate that it was only my failure to grasp a little more of the actual theories themselves that stopped him and me from becoming friends. In truth, we were always separated by such a wide river of knowledge and ability that he was to me like a man must seem to an ape. In all respects he was a paragon, a human touchstone that might try gold, or good from bad.

The question of why the name of St. Leger Scroope had seemed familiar to my master was answered almost as soon as we arrived at his place of business, in a house at The Bell, near the Maypole. A servant answered the door to us by whose manner of dress — for he wore a small cap upon his head — I took to be a Jew; and having enquired our business, he nodded gravely, and then went to fetch his master.

Scroope himself was a tall man, at least six fingers higher than me, with a black periwig, a beard turned up in the Spanish manner, and fine clothes which were as rich as gold and silver could make them. I thought Scroope recognised my master immediately, although he waited until the Doctor had explained the purpose of his visit before giving expression to this knowledge.

“But do you not know me, Doctor Newton?” he asked, smiling strangely; and seeing Newton’s eyes narrow as he struggled to find Scroope in his remembrances, the goldsmith’s face took on a disappointed aspect.

“I confess, Mister Scroope, that you have the advantage of me, sir,” stammered Newton.

“Why then, that it is a first for me, sir, for I never yet knew any man who could best you.” Scroope bowed handsomely. “Pray, let me remind you, sir. I was your fellow commoner at Trinity College, Doctor Newton, assigned to your tuition, although I neither matriculated in the university, nor graduated from it.”

“Yes,” agreed Newton, smiling uncertainly. “I remember you now. But then you had not the beard, nor the wealth, I’ll hazard.”

“A man alters much in twenty-five years.”

“Twenty-six, as I recall,” said Newton. “Also that you were much neglected by me, although you were not unusual in that respect.”

“Science will thank you for that neglect, sir. I was not a very diligent student, and events have proved that you were better employed with your opticks and your telescope. Not to mention your other chemical studies.” At this Scroope smiled knowingly, as if my master’s devotion to alchemy had not been such a great secret after all.

“You are very gracious, Mister Scroope.”

“It is easy to be gracious to one whom all of England honours.” Mister Scroope bowed once more, which made me think him a most obsequious fellow, better suited to fawning on a king than smithing gold. “But my conscience has its own particular mortification,” added Scroope, whose civilities began to grow tiresome to me. “For I left no plate to the college, as was expected from a fellow commoner. Therefore, to assuage my embarrassment, sir, I should be grateful if you would accept some baubles on behalf of the college.”

“Now?” asked Newton. Scroope nodded. “I should be honoured.”

Scroope left us alone for a moment while he went to fetch his gift.

“This is most unexpected,” said Newton, handling Scroope’s walking stick with some interest.

“Is this one of the three students you ever had?” I asked, remembering what he had told me upon our first acquaintance.

“I am embarrassed to say that he is.”

“Oh fie. I think Mister Scroope has more than enough embarrassment to cover both your consciences.”

“I was a very dull fellow at Cambridge,” admitted Newton. “Dull and most inhumane. But I am a better man since I came to London. This work in the Mint has broadened my horizon. And yet it is not as broad a horizon as perhaps that of Mister Scroope. I fancy he sometimes visits places where a man must be doubly vigilant.”

“How do you mean, sir?” I asked.

“He wears a sword, like most gentlemen. And yet he has also been at some pains to conceal a sword inside this stick. Do you see?”

Newton showed me how the body of the stick ingeniously concealed a blade, two or three feet long, so that the handle of the stick was also the handle of a short but useful-looking rapier. I tried the blade against my thumb.

“He keeps it sharp enough,” I said.

“You would not need to take such precautions unless you had some tangible danger to fear,” he argued.

“Are not all goldsmiths subject to such dangers?” I suggested. “They have more to lose than just their lives. I wonder that you do not carry a sword yourself.”

“Perhaps you are right,” allowed Newton. “Perhaps I might carry a sword. But I do not think I shall ever need to carry two swords.”

Mister Scroope returned to the room bearing four silver cups with a repoussé decoration which, with some pomp, he presented to Trinity College in the person of my master, who, despite his duties at the Mint, was still the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.

“These are very fine,” said Newton, examining the cups with increasing pleasure. “Very fine indeed.”

“I’ve had them down in my cellars for a number of years, and I think it’s time they were properly appreciated. They are ancient Greek, recovered from a Spanish treasure ship. As well as a goldsmith, I have also been a projector of schemes with your own Mister Neale.”

“Mister Neale who is the Master of the Mint?” asked Newton.

“The same. Several years ago we did recover a wreck, the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, which carried much gold and silver. Those cups were but a small part of my share.”

Newton continued to examine the cups with much interest.

“The cups purport to tell the story of Nectanebus, the last native King of Egypt, who was also a great magician. You may read of him in the history of Callisthenes.”

“I shall do so at my earliest opportunity,” said Newton, and then bowed gravely. “On behalf of Trinity College, you have my thanks.”

Scroope nodded back, allowing himself a smile of some satisfaction, and then poured us some burnt wine from an equally fine silver jug that a servant fetched into the room where, the civilities completed, at last we sat down. The wine greatly warmed me for, despite the huge log that was burning on two brass firedogs that were as big as wolfhounds, I was still cold to the marrow from my river journey.

“And now, sir, pray tell me, what it is that brings you here?”

“It is my information that you had the acquaintance of Mister George Macey.”

“Yes, of course. George. Has he returned?”

“Regrettably he is still not accounted for,” said Newton, who neatly sidestepped the lie by this equivocating answer. “But, if I may ask, how was it that you and he were acquainted at all?”

“The wreck of which I spoke, that Mister Neale and I invested in, was brought to Deptford, where I and Mister Neale went to see the treasure brought ashore, and to take our shares. But this was not before Mister Neale, in his capacity as the Mint’s Masterworker, had first removed the King’s Share.Mister Macey accompanied Mister Neale and assisted him in these official duties. This was several years ago, you understand.

“Not long afterward, a second expedition was promoted to search for the rest of the treasure that the first had been obliged to leave behind. Mister Neale invested, I did not, preferring to use the great sum I had made to establish myself in business as a gold and silver smith. I have no skills in working metals. I am no Benvenuto Cellini. I prefer to have others do that work for me. But there are significant profits to be made. And I have been very successful doing it.”

“That much is evident,” said Newton.

“That being said, the second expedition was not successful, and Mister Neale lost some money, for which he blamed me, in part. However Mister Macey and I remained friends.”

At this point Mister Scroope glanced awkwardly at me, as if there was something else he should like to have said, which Newton’s keen eyes quickly detected.

“You may speak freely in front of Mister Ellis,” he said. “He has my total confidence and, as an officer of the Mint, has taken an oath of secrecy. My word upon it.”

Scroope nodded. “Why then,” he said, “to tell it plainly, upon occasion I was in the habit of passing certain information to Mister Macey. Doubtless you will appreciate how, in my business, one hears things about coiners and clippers and other dishonest fellows who undermine the Great Recoinage and, by extension, the prosperity of the realm.”

“That is my greatest concern also,” declared Newton. “Their Lordships at the Treasury have made it very plain to me that we may lose this war against France if we do not put a stop to this heinous practice of coining. That is why I am so diligent in these matters. It is given out by the general population that I do what I do to further my own preferment. But I tell you plain, Mister Scroope, it is because I would not have this country defeated by France and ruled by a Roman Catholic.”

Scroope nodded. “Well, sir, I should be glad to perform the same service for you, Doctor, as I did for Mister Macey, should you so desire. Indeed I should be honoured, for poor Macey and I became quite close confidants as a result.”

“I am grateful to you, sir,” said Newton. “But pray tell me, did Macey ever bring you a letter, written in a foreign language perhaps, that he asked you to translate for him? It is likely he would have been much exercised about its contents.”

“Yes, I think there was such a letter,” admitted Scroope. “And although this was six months ago, I have come to believe that both the time of this visit — which was to be the last time I saw him — and the content of the letter — which, although it was very short, I do remember but inexactly — were connected with his vanishing.”

Scroope appeared to rack his brains for a moment, which made my master leave off prompting him for a closer account of the letter.

“The letter was not addressed to him. That much he told me. And it was written in French. I think it said something like ‘Come at once or my life is forfeit’ Which seemed to interest him a great deal, for I have not yet told you that the letter was discovered by him in the Mint, and I believe George suspected that there was some great plot a foot there to disrupt the Great Recoinage. More than that he did not say. And I did not ask.”

“But did you not think to come forward with this information?” asked Newton.

“For a long while after he disappeared, it was given out that Macey had stolen some guinea dies,” said Scroope. “Therefore I had no wish to draw attention to myself by saying that George had been my friend. Nor could I say very much without revealing myself to have been an informer. My relationship with George Macey was based on many years of trust. But these two men I knew not at all.”

“But you knew Mister Neale,” said Newton. “Could you not have told the Master Worker himself?”

“Doctor Newton, if I may speak frankly with you, Mister Neale and myself are no longer friends. And in truth,I trust Mister Neale not at all. He has too many projections and schemes for one who occupies such a public office. He may have lost his enthusiasm for wrecks and colonies, but he has other, no less hazardous, schemes which may leave him compromised. It is my own information that he is much concerned with arrangements for another lottery using the duties on malt as collateral.”

“That, sir, is my own information, also.” Newton nodded wearily. “But I thank you for your candour.”

“To be candid with one such as yourself, sir, is an honour. And affords me the expectation that we shall meet again, when, if I can, I shall be delighted to be of service.”

Upon our leaving, Newton said something to Scroope’s servant, in a language I did not understand, and for a moment the two men conversed in what I took to be Hebrew; and after this we took our leave of Mister Scroope, for which I was much relieved, thinking him a very pompous fellow.

“An interesting man, this St. Leger Scroope,” said Newton when we were in the coach once more. “Very obviously a rich and successful man, and yet also a secretive one.”

“Secretive? I don’t know how you deduce that,” I said. “He seemed a very preening sort of fellow to me.”

“When we left, his velvet shoes were quite ruined with mud,” said Newton. “Yet when we arrived they were noticeably clean, with new soles. Since the road in front of his premises is cobbled over, with no mud on it at all, I should suppose that he has a back yard, and that there was something out there that he was most concerned we should not see. Sufficiently concerned to ruin a pair of new velvet shoes.”

“He might easily have got them muddy while fetching these silver tankards,” I said, objecting to Newton’s deduction.

“Really, Ellis, it’s time you paid more attention to your own eyes and ears. He himself said that he fetched the tankards from his cellar. Even the cellars in the Tower are not as muddy as that.”

“But I don’t see what it proves.”

“It proves nothing at all,” said Newton. “Merely what I said: that for all his generosity and apparent outwardness to us, Mister Scroope is a man who carries two swords and has something to hide.”

“Was that the Hebrew language you spoke?” I asked.

“It was Ladino,” said Newton. “The man is a Spanish Marrano. The Marranos were Jews who managed to enter England under the guise of Protestants fleeing from persecution in Spain.”

After which he told me, with much apparent satisfaction, of how well the Jews had done in England.

“Egad, sir,” I said with some exasperation, for then I believed the Jews to have been Christ’s murderers. “You speak of them in such terms that one might think you approved of them.”

“The God we honour and worship is a Hebrew God,” said Newton. “And the Jews are the fathers of our Church. We may learn much from a study of the Jewish religion. Therefore I say to you that not only do I approve of the Jews, I also admire and do honour unto them.

“When you entered my service, my dear Ellis, you asked that I should always correct your ignorance of something and to show you something of the world as I understand it. This hatred people have for the Jews is based on a lie. For it is my opinion that much of modern Christian doctrine is a lie; and that scriptures were corrupted by the opponents of Arius in the Council of Nicea, during the fourth century. It was they who advanced the false doctrine of Athanasius, that the Son is of the same body as the Father, even though that idea is not in scripture. Once this misconception has been disposed of, it may be seen how the Jews are no more to be despised.”

“But, sir,” I breathed, for fear that the coachman might overhear us, “you speak against the Holy Trinity and the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. All this is heresy to our Church.”

“To my mind it is the worship of Christ that is heretical. Jesus was merely the divine mediator between God and man, and to worship him is mere idolatry. Jesus became God’s heir not because of his congenital divinity but because of his death, which earned him the right to be honoured. Just as we honour Moses, Elijah, Solomon, Daniel, and all the other Jewish prophets. Honoured, but nothing more than that.”

Newton had an expert’s knowledge of theology, and I knew he could have disputed doctrine with the Archbishop of Canterbury. And yet I was profoundly shocked to discover just what he believed, or, to put the case more correctly, what he did not believe. The beliefs of Galileo, heretical in the eyes of Rome, were as nothing compared with those of my master, for Newton’s Arianism was, like Roman Catholicism, specifically excluded from the Toleration Act of 1689 that offered religious freedom to all faiths. Even a Jew enjoyed more religious freedom than an Arian.

My astonishment was tempered by the sense of trust that Newton had now put in me. For immediately I saw how Newton’s enemies would have taken delight in the public exposure of his avowed heresy, which would also have destroyed his position in society. I could not imagine how an avowed heretic such as he might have been allowed to remain as the Lucasian Professor at Trinity. At the very least he would have lost his place in the Mint. Possibly he might have suffered an even worse fate. It was only two years since a young man of just eighteen years had been hanged for denying the Holy Trinity in Scotland, despite his having recanted and done penance. Of course the Edinburghclergy, like all the Scots, were the most bigoted opponents of anti-Trinitarianism. But even in England the penalties for dissenting opinions could be severe. Although heresy was not punishable at English Common Law, a man’s blasphemous tongue could be branded with a hot iron, and his person whipped and pilloried. Therefore to be made the trustee of such a grave secret was confirmation indeed of the great faith Newton now placed in me. This pleased me greatly; but I confess I never foresaw how being exposed to Newton’s heretical creed would begin to work upon my own Christian conscience.

From the Strand we returned to the Whit, where Newton explained that it was his intention to press Scotch Robin and John Hunter for information in the matter. When I asked why we did not simply question John Berningham, he explained that he still had hopes that Mrs. Berningham might yet work her uxorious way with her husband. Immediately we arrived at the Whit, Newton had Scotch Robin and John Hunter brought up from the Condemned Hold in the cellars to the Keeper’s Lodge, one after the other. Scotch Robin was a mean, red-haired fellow with a scowling fist of a face and a wen on the side of his scurvy-looking neck as large as a plover’s egg. To me he looked such an obvious jailbird the wonder was that he had ever been permitted to work in the Mint at all.

“Have you considered what I said to you last night?” Newton asked him.

“Aye, I have,” said Scotch Robin, and nonchalantly draped his shackles across his shoulders so that his hands hung about his neck like one almost indifferent to his fate. “But I’ve asked about, and I reckon I’ve got a bit more time than you told me. It seems that Wednesday’s not a hanging match.”

“It’s not a regular hanging day, that’s true,” admitted Newton, colouring a little. “But you would do well to remember that yours could hardly be called a regular hanging. Not with all the attendant barbarities that the law requires the executioner to inflict upon your body. Do not take me lightly, Robin. I am a Justice of the Peace in seven counties of England. I have sworn to uphold the Law, and I will do so in the very teeth of Hell. And I can assure you that it is well within my power to go before a judge this very afternoon and obtain a special warrant for your immediate execution.”

“For the love of Christ,” flinched Robin. “Have you no pity?”

“None for such as you.”

“Then God help me.”

“He will not.”

“Is it you who says so?”

“He came not to Saul, who was a King and the Lord’s anointed. Why should he come to a wretch like you? Come, sir,” insisted Newton, “I grow weary of your prevarications. I did not come here to debate theology with you. You’ll dance for me or in the Sheriff’s picture frame with a rope about your neck.”

Robin hung his head for a moment and at last uttered a name.

Then Newton was Draco himself with John Hunter, who said that he would only co-operate with my master’s investigation on condition of a full pardon for all his past mistakes and the sum of twenty-five guineas to start a new life in the Americas.

“What?” sneered Newton. “Is it true? You still hope to profit from your crimes? Have you no shame? Am I bound to satisfy you, sir? Do you hear him, Mister Ellis? It seems he thinks it is not enough that I save him from a wry neck and wet pair of breeches. The Law trades not with ignorant vulgars such as you, sir. I shall only tell you that if you intend to save your life, you must be quick in informing, for I intend to lose no time. And when I am at last satisfied that you have done this, I shall petition the Lords Justices to deliver you from darkness. But hinder me, sir, and the day after tomorrow I shall deliver you to the hangman myself, my word upon it.”

At which Hunter battered his own forehead with his chain darbies while all the air and bluster now seemed to go out of him. Then he smiled a wry smile and remarked that he had meant no harm.

“I don’t like the black air of the cell,” he said. “Forgive me, sir. I was only trying to find a Jacob, I mean a ladder out of there. Any man would have done the same. But it’s a different kind of ladder I’d be mounting if I thwarted you, sir. I can see that now. And a darker kind of air at the top of it, I’ll warrant. Therefore I’ll peach. I’ll help you nail the man you want. The man what is still in the Mint, who is as ready to steal guinea dies to order as a physician is to let blood.”

Then Hunter named one Daniel Mercer, who was known to both Newton and myself as an engraver whom we thought to be an honest man. This was the same man whom Scotch Robin, who was himself an engraver, had named.

I read over the deposition I had taken and had Hunter sign it, as Scotch Robin had signed his, before having the cull return him to the Condemned Hold, for Newton still thought to extract yet more information from these two at some time in the future.

“Shall we obtain a warrant for Daniel Mercer’s arrest?” I asked, when we were alone.

“By heaven, no,” said Newton, fixing me with that eye of his: an eye that had stared into the eternal and the infinite. “We shall leave him at his liberty in the hope that we may observe this body’s orbit, so to speak. We shall have him watched, by Mister Kennedy, and decide what his motion argues. The matter may receive greater light from hence than from any means that might be available to us while he was in this dark place. He may still draw us to the main intelligence behind this scheme, as salt of tartar draws water out of air.”

We returned to the Tower where we left a note for Mister Kennedy, he that was Newton’s best spy, and briefly walked about the Mint, now operating with more noise than a battlefield. We were not long there before Doctor Newton saw Master Worker Neale coming toward us, and remarked upon it as one who looked upon a Tory arrived in a club for Whigs.

“It is he, I swear. Hang me if it isn’t. What on earth brings him here, I wonder?”

“Who?” said I, for this was the first time I ever clapped eyes on Mister Neale, who was notionally in charge of the Mint but whose appearances there were as rare as hen’s teeth.

“This, Ellis, is Mister Neale, who goes by the title of Master Worker, although I think he would count it some kind of misfortune indeed if ever he had to work at all. Indeed I think it would quite spoil the purchase of his office altogether if the business of this Mint were to intrude upon his pleasures and projections. For as I have told you he leaves the general management of this Mint to the joint comptrollers, and the chief clerk.”

Seeing us now, the Master Worker saluted us most affably and walked toward us, while all the time Newton fulminated like salt-petre in a crucible upon Mister Neale’s lack of diligence.

I judged Mister Neale to be about sixty years of age, somewhat fat, but handsomely dressed with wig and silk coat abundantly powdered, bullion-fringed gloves, a fine beaver hat, and a fur-lined cape. But by his conversation I found him to be an easygoing sort of fellow, the very kind of man I would once have chosen for to accompany to a tavern, and mighty merry besides in inveighing against Lord Lucas, the Tower’s Lord Lieutenant, which was all the opinion he and Newton held in common.

“This is unexpected,” said Newton, with a bow. “What brings you here, Mister Neale?”

Mister Neale was accompanied at a distance by a middle-sized fellow who somehow seemed familiar to me. This other man was about forty years old, with a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes and a mole near his mouth; he wore an expensive wig, and a diamond pinkie on his finger; and yet he looked most unaccountably shabby and more melancholy of countenance than perhaps he ought to have.

The Master Worker introduced his glum companion as Mister Daniel Defoe, to whom the Master Worker had let his official house that was in the Tower.

“But I thought it was already let,” objected Newton. “To Mister Barry.”

“It was, it was,” chuckled Mister Neale. “However, another gentleman played me at cards and, having lost all of his money, persuaded me to take the lease as his bet. Which he then lost. But no sooner had I won it back myself than I lost it again to this friend of mine here.” Neale grinned railingly at Mister Defoe who nodded back at him silently.

“Mister Defoe, this is the famous Doctor Newton, a very great scientist. If you stay in the house yourself you’ll see a lot of him about the Mint. He is, by reputation, most diligent in his duties as the Warden.”

“Diligence is but the father of good economy,” said Mister Defoe, bowing to Newton.

“Mister Defoe, I trust you will be very comfortable in your new house,” said Newton.

“Is it always this noisy?” asked Mister Defoe.

Newton glanced around, almost surprised. “I confess that I hardly notice the noise, unless someone mentions it first. One become used to it, I suppose.”

Even as we spoke a cannon fired up on the outer rampire, which made Mister Defoe almost jump out of his own skin.

Newton smiled. “One never becomes used to the sound of the cannon, I’m afraid.”

By and by, these two men took their leave of us, upon which Newton sighed most profoundly and shook his head.

“I thought this a better venture than a church living,” he said. “But with men like that around, their pockets full of false dice and fees from all sides, I’m not so sure. Did you not think Mister Defoe looked like the most dishonest gentleman you ever saw?”

Even as I replied that I did think there were more honest-looking men in the condemned hold of Newgate, and that doubtless Mister Defoe would fit in well with some of the crook-fingered types that were already in the Tower, I remembered where it was that I had seen Mister Defoe.

“I believe I have seen that gentleman before,” said I. “It was when I was still at Gray’s Inn. He was before the King’s Bench for debt, and threatened with the sponging house. I remember him only because of the peculiar circumstances of the case, which pertained to a scheme for the raising of sunken treasure by means of a diving bell.”

“A diving bell?”

“Yes sir, to enable a man to breathe under water.”

Newton’s interest was piqued. “I would wish to know more about our new neighbour,” he admitted. “See what else you may discover about him. For I don’t much like having bankrupt men in a place like this. And at the very least I should like to be told if he be friend, or he be foe.”

I smiled, for it was rare indeed that Newton did make a joke. “I will, master.”

Walking on a way, near the engraver’s house, we saw Richard Morris, who was another engraver, and Newton spoke with him awhile about a great many things, so that I almost did not notice how he subtly enquired after the health of Daniel Mercer, who now stood accused by Scotch Robin and John Hunter.

“He is well, I think,” said Mister Morris. “His uncle in America is lately died. But he is left some money, and does not seem too much put out.”

“A little money will often soften a man’s grief,” said Newton.

“It’s most convenient to have an uncle in America leave him money,” said Newton when we were alone in our office. “For there’s nothing attracts attention like a sudden bout of spending.”

“I had the same thought,” I said.

After this we had dinner, which I was very glad of, and while we dined we talked of other matters pertaining to the Mint as well as religious affairs, for I was keen to know more of why my master disputed Our Lord’s divinity; and I said that it was a strange thing indeed, for one who had been a professor at Holy Trinity College in Cambridge for so many years, not to believe in the very doctrine which had inspired the founding of that same college. But, hearing this, Newton became silent, as if I had accused him of hypocrisy, and I was glad when, by and by, his steel-nosed intelligencer in the mill rooms, Mister Kennedy, visited our office, as requested.

“Mister Kennedy,” said Newton. “What do you know of Daniel Mercer?”

“Only that he is an engraver, whom I had thought to be an honest man. I know him to look at, I think. But not to speak to.”

“You said you thought he was an honest man?”

“In truth, ’tis only your enquiry makes me think that it might be otherwise, sir. I’ve not seen or heard anything that might make me think otherwise. If I had, I assure you I would have told you straightaway.”

“I know you are a good fellow, Kennedy.” Newton placed a bright new guinea on the table in front of him. “I should like you to perform a service for me. I should like you to spy on Daniel Mercer.”

“If it be for the good of the Mint, sir,” said Kennedy, eyeing the guinea. He made it sound as if he had not spied for us before, when he had done so, many times, and for less money than was being offered to him now.

“It is. He is named from inside Newgate by Scotch Robin and John Hunter.”

“I see.” Kennedy sniffed loudly, and then checked that his metal nose, held onto his face by a length of string tied behind his head, was straight. “They might think to save their skin, of course, by naming an innocent man.”

“It does you credit to say so, Kennedy. But they were each questioned apart, and named Mercer separately, without any prompting from me.”

“I see.” Kennedy picked up the guinea.

“Mercer is suspected of stealing guinea dies. I should like you to tell me if you think it be true or not. Who his confederates are. And where they are to be found.” He nodded at the guinea in Kennedy’s grimy hand. “There will be another like it if your evidence may be used in court.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kennedy pocketed the guinea and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

After this, Newton went to the Treasury while I returned to my house all the afternoon and night, writing up the depositions I had taken in several other cases that were pending — which work I was at till midnight, and then to supper, and to bed.

At about three of the clock I was awakened by Thomas Hall, the special assistant to Mister Neale, who appeared before me in a highly agitated state.

“What is it, Mister Hall?” I asked.

“Mister Ellis. Something terrible has happened. Mister Kennedy has been found dead in the most horrible circumstances.”

“Mr. Kennedy? Dead? Where?”

“In the Lion Tower.”

“Has there been an accident?”

“I cannot tell, but it may be that you should fetch Doctor Newton.”

So I made myself ready presently and accompanied Mister Hall to the Lion Tower, that was formerly known as the Barbican, which stood outside the main westward entrance to the Tower. It was a bitterly cold night and I was shivering inside my cloak, the more so when I was informed of the dreadful fate that had befallen Mister Kennedy, for it seemed he had been half eaten by a lion in the Tower menagerie. Amid much loud roaring, for the animal had only just been driven back to its cage with pikes and halberds, I entered the Lion Tower, which was most popular with visitors to the Tower since the Restoration. This tower was open to the elements, having no roof, with the animal cages arranged around the perimeter with a large exercise yard in the centre, where I beheld a scene of almost indescribable carnage.

A great deal of blood lay upon the ground so that my shoes were soon sticky with it, and in a corner of the yard was what remained of Mister Kennedy’s body. Although his neck was quite bitten through and his mouth gagged, his face was easily recognisable, if only by the absence of his false nose which lay on the ground nearby, glinting in the bright moonshine like a dragoon’s decorative cuirass. He was badly mauled, with great claw marks on his belly through which his guts were clearly visible, and was missing an arm and part of a leg, although it was no great mystery to whence these had been removed. Several members of the Ordnance were standing about holding pikes while the animal keeper busied himself with bolting the cage to which the murderous lion had now been returned.

One of the warders was known to me, being Sergeant Rohan, and I entreated him that the body might not be moved or the scene much trampled over until my master should have had an opportunity to examine it.

“Rightly, Mister Ellis,” growled the Sergeant, “this is the proper province of the Ordnance, not the Mint. Lions don’t fall within your proper jurisdiction, except when they appear upon a silver crown.”

“True, Sergeant. However, the man who has been killed was employed in the Mint, and his death may very likely have a strong bearing on its business.”

Sergeant Rohan nodded, his big face only part illuminated by the torchlight, so that his mouth was covered by darkness. “Well, that’s as may be. But Lord Lucas will decide the matter. If he can be woken. So I reckon the quicker you can fetch your master here, the better. Let the two of them dispute the matter like a couple of Titans, I say, and we’ll stay out of it, eh?”

I nodded.

“A proper mess, isn’t it?” he continued. “I seen men bayoneted, men blown to bits with cannonade, men cut to pieces with swords, but I never seen a man chewed by lions before. It gives me a new respect for the courage of them early Christian martyrs. To die for Christ facing such beasts as these, why it’s an inspiration. Aye, that’s what it is.”

“Yes, indeed it is,” I said, although I immediately wondered what my master would have said of those early Christians of whom the Romans made such a spectacle in their arenas. Were they also mistaken in Newton’s eyes?

Leaving Sergeant Rohan still contemplating Christian courage, I ran to Tower Street, where I thought to hire a horse from The Dolphin or The King’s Head in order that I might ride to Jermyn Street, for I had no expectation that I might find a hackney coach at that hour. And yet I did find one setting down a passenger at a house opposite the Custom House, and although the driver was reluctant to take me, it being so late and him intent on going home to Stepney, which is in quite the opposite direction, I persuaded him with the promise of his being handsomely rewarded. And within the hour I was back at the Tower in the same hackney with Newton to learn that Lord Lieutenant Lucas was still not come, and it was being reported that he was too drunk, which delighted my master.

After some words with Sergeant Rohan, Newton walked about the menagerie like an architect who was desirous of knowing every inch of the space that was to be considered in his mind’s eye. Presently he asked one of the wardens for a bowl of water and a towel to be brought and, taking off his coat, which he gave to me, rolled up his shirt sleeves, in spite of the cold. Then he fetched some clean straw and knelt beside the body to examine its condition.

First he removed the cloth that had gagged poor Kennedy’s mouth and, searching inside a mess of bloody pulp and broken teeth with his fingers’ ends, Newton found a smooth stone. This he wrapped carefully inside his handkerchief which he then handed to me for safekeeping.

“Why would anyone—?” I said, beginning a question that I saw no need to finish framing when I saw Newton’s querulous expression directed at me.

“You know the proper method, Mister Ellis, therefore please abstain from idle queries which do little to assist my examination.”

So saying, Newton turned Kennedy over onto what remained of his belly to examine a cord that was tied around his one surviving wrist.

“Where is the other arm?” he said coldly, as if I myself might have taken it.

“I believe one of the lions still has it, sir.”

Newton nodded silently and then examined Kennedy’s pockets, from which he withdrew several items which he entrusted to me. At last he seemed to have finished, and rinsed his hands in the bowl of water that had been fetched. Finally he stood up and, drying his hands, looked about the menagerie. “Which lion?” he asked.

I pointed across the yard and Newton followed the line of my finger to one of the cages where, under the eyes of the animal keeper and several Tower warders, the lion was still making a quiet feast of Mister Kennedy’s leg. Putting his coat back on, Newton walked over to the cage and, removing a storm lantern from the wall, shone the light into the arched vault behind the bars that was the lion’s abode.

“I can see the leg well enough,” he remarked, “but not the arm.”

The keeper pointed at the back of the vault. “There it is, sir,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ve had no luck recovering either of the unfortunate gentleman’s limbs, sir.”

“‘The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way,’” murmured Newton.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Proverbs, chapter twenty-six, verse thirteen.”

“Exactly so, sir,” said the keeper. “Rex, that’s the name of the lion. He refuses to give them up. Mostly it’s horse meat they eats, the lions. But he’s found a taste for human flesh and no mistake.”

“My eyes are not as keen as they were,” said Newton. “But is that a piece of cord tied around the wrist?”

“It is,” said I.

“Then it was murder all right. Someone brought Mister Kennedy down here, tied his hands, and then released the lion from its cage. How is the door fastened?”

“With those two bolts, sir.”

“No lock and key?”

“These are animals, sir. Not prisoners.” But even as the keeper spoke, the lion looked up from its human feast and roared fiercely at us, as if it might have disputed that remark. It was a fearsome-looking beast, a big male with mighty fangs, and its fur and great mane now much stained with blood.

“Mark well the colour of that lion,” Newton said to me. “It is quite red, is it not?”

At the time I thought this interested him because red was his favourite colour, and it was only later on that he explained how he perceived the significance of the red lion.

“Who found the body?” he asked.

“I did, sir,” said the keeper, whose posture was that of a man whose head was permanently bowed in prayer, so that Newton addressed all his questions to the man’s shiny pate. “I sleep with the Ordnance, sir. In the Tower barracks. I put the key there as usual, at about eight o’clock, sir. I went out of the Tower to a local tavern, sir, as is my wont, for I don’t much like The Stone Kitchen. Then to bed. I awoke to hear the animals roaring when they should have been asleep. And thinking that something was amiss with them, I came to take a look and found the bloody mess you see now, sir.”

“The door to the Lion Tower, Mister Wadsworth. Is it locked at night?”

“Aye, sir. Always. The key hangs in the guardroom at the Byward Tower. Except tonight. When I went to fetch it, the key was gone. I thought someone else had gone ahead of me to investigate the commotion. But I was the first to get here, and I found the key in the door, and the door locked.”

“Who was the guard on duty there tonight?” asked Newton.

“I believe it was Thomas Grain, sir,” answered the keeper.

“Then we shall want to speak to him.”

“You will do nothing of the sort, sir,” said a loud and imperious voice. “Not without my permission.”

Lord Lucas, the Lieutenant of the Tower, had arrived, a most odious, haughty and quarrelsome fellow, whose jealousy of the Tower liberties made him a mighty unpopular man in the Mint and in the surrounding boroughs.

“As your Lordship pleases,” said Newton and bowed with mock courtesy, for he hated Lucas with as much venom as he hated all stupid people who got in his way — especially those that were supposed to be his betters — although I think his lordship was too crapulent with drink to have noticed Newton’s insolent manner.

“Egad, sir. What the devil do you think you’re doing, anyway? Any fool can see what happened here. A fellow don’t exactly need to be a member of the Royal Society to see that a man has been killed by a lion.” He looked at Sergeant Rohan. “Eh, Sergeant?”

“That’s correct, milord. Any man as has eyes in his head can see that, sir.”

“Accidents will happen when men and wild animals are in close proximity to one another.”

“I do not think it is an accident, Lord Lucas,” said Newton.

“A plague on you, Doctor Newton, if this isn’t any of your damned business.”

“The dead man is from the Mint, my lord,” said Newton. “Therefore I am obliged to make this my business.”

“The deuce you say. I don’t care if he’s the King of France. I’m the law in this Tower. You can do what you please in the Mint, sir. But you’re in my part of the Tower now. And I’ll grind this damned music box whatever way I like.”

Newton bowed again. “Come, Mister Ellis,” he said to me. “Let us leave his Lordship to probe this matter in his own fashion.”

We were making our way back to the door when Newton stopped and bent down to look at a black shape he noticed on the ground.

“What is it, Doctor?” I asked.

“The sad-presaging raven,” answered Newton, collecting a dead but still lustrously plumed black bird off the ground, “that tolls the sick man’s passport in her hollow beak.”

“Is that the Bible, sir?”

“No, my dear fellow, it’s Christopher Marlowe.”

“There are plenty of ravens about the Tower,” I said, as if there were nothing remarkable about a dead raven; and indeed, the Tower’s population of ravens was severely controlled since the time of King Charles II when the Royal Astronomer, John Flamsteed — who was also much disliked by my master, for Newton believed that the theory of the moon was in his grasp but could not be completed because Mister Flamsteed had sent him observed positions of the moon that were wrong, so that he did apprehend some intended practice in the matter — had complained to the King that the ravens were interfering with his observations in the White Tower.

“But this bird’s neck was wrung,” he said, and replaced the dead raven on the ground.

At the Byward Tower he questioned Thomas Grain, the guard, in defiance of the Lieutenant’s orders. Grain had no instructions not to speak to us, and therefore he answered the Doctor’s questions freely enough.

“In the normal course of events, the keeper hung the key in the guardroom at about eight of the clock.”

“How did you know it was eight of the clock?” asked Newton.

“By the toll of the curfew bell, sir,” answered Grain, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder to the rear of the Byward. “In the Bell Tower. Curfew’s been eight of the clock since the time of William the Conqueror.”

Newton frowned for a moment and then said, “Tell me, Mister Grain. Does the key to the Lion Tower form part of the ceremony of the keys, when the main gate is locked?”

“No sir. It stays here until morning, when Mister Wads-worth, the keeper, collects it.”

“Is it possible that anyone could have come in here and removed the key to the Lion Tower without your noticing?”

“No sir. I’m never very far away from these keys, sir.”

“Thank you, Mister Grain. You’ve been most helpful.”

From the Byward, Newton and I returned to the Mint, and straightaway Newton ordered the two sentinels, who were nominally under his command, to search for Daniel Mercer and to bring him to the Mint Office. As soon as they were gone I told my master that the previous evening I had seen Mister Grain standing on the bridge over the moat, about halfway between the Byward and the Middle Tower, which was about thirty feet away from the keys.

“We spoke for almost ten minutes,” I said. “During that time anyone could have taken a key. Therefore if it was possible last night, then it must have been equally be possible tonight.”

“Your logic is irresistible, sir,” he said quietly and, collecting the cat, Melchior, off the floor, set to stroking him thoughtfully as another man might have smoked a pipe.

Then, by candlelight, we examined those items we had found about Mister Kennedy’s person. As well as the stone Newton had removed from the dead man’s mouth were several crowns, a pair of dice, a rosary, a lottery ticket, a pocket watch, some rolling tobacco, and a letter which appeared to have been written by a lunatic but which greatly interested my master. While he examined this, I threw the dice and observed out loud that Mister Kennedy had been a serious gambler.

“What leads you to that conclusion?” asked Newton. “The lottery ticket? The dice? Or both together?”

I smiled, for here I was on familiar ground. “No sir. These dice alone would have told me as much. They are cut perfectly square by a mould and have their spots made with ink, instead of being holes filled with wax, such as would prevent any deceit. No novice would take such precautions.”

“Excellent,” said my master. “Your powers of observation do you credit. We shall make a scientist of you yet.”

He tossed the letter he had been perusing onto the table in front of me. “See what your new powers of observation can make of that, Mister Ellis.”

I looked with puzzlement at the jumble of letters and shook my head. “It is meaningless,” I said. “A fanciful arrangement of letters that has some whimsical purpose, perhaps. I might say that it was some child or illiterate person’s perverse conceit, except that the letters are well formed.”

“Mister Kennedy could read and write well enough. Why would he have such a thing upon his person?”

“I cannot say.”

“And you are still convinced it is some crotchet-monger’s whimsy?”

“Most certainly,” I replied firmly, too tired to perceive that he was making a straw man of me; and, what was more, one he was about to shy with wooden balls.

“It matters not,” he said patiently. “I do believe mathematicians are born, not made. Such things are plain to me. In truth, I see things in numbers that most men could not ever see, even if they could live to be a hundred.”

“But these are letters,” I objected. “Not numbers.”

“And yet one may discern that there must be some numerical order in the frequency of the appearance of these letters. Which makes this more than mere whimsy, Ellis. This is most likely a cipher. And all ciphers, if they are properly formed and systematic, are subject to mathematics; and what mathematics has made obscure, mathematics will also render visible.”

“A cipher?” I heard myself exclaim.

“Why do you sound so surprised?” asked Newton. “All of nature is a cipher, and all of science a secret writing that must be unravelled by men who would understand the mystery of things. This cryptic message, together with the clues we found at the scene of Mister Kennedy’s murder, indicate that this will be a most interesting and unusual investigation.”

“I am the stupidest person in the world,” I said. “For I confess I saw no clues.”

“Perhaps that is too strong a word for the things we observed in the Lion Tower,” Newton said patiently. “Most specifically the stone in the dead man’s mouth, the red lion, and the raven. All of these are possessed of a significance that only one who was versed in the golden game might understand.”

“Do you mean that alchemy is somehow involved?”

“It is a strong possibility.”

“Then tell me what these things mean.”

“That would take too long.” Newton picked the stone off the table and turned it over in his hand. “These things are a message, just as surely as the cipher in this paper, and both must be understood if we are to solve this matter. The meaning of these alchemical signs may be merely allegorical; but I’m certain this cipher contains the key to everything. These are no ordinary coiners with whom we are dealing, but men of learning and resource.”

“And yet they were careless to leave that written message on Mister Kennedy’s body,” said I. “Even if it is a cipher. For ciphers can be broken, can they not?”

Newton frowned, and for a moment I almost believed I had said something else that disagreed with him.

“As always, your thinking troubles me,” he said, quietly, and folding the cat’s ears. “You are right. They might be very careless. But I rather think that they are confident that the cipher will not yield its secret easily. For the message is so short, otherwise I might begin to divine the method in it. And yet by thinking upon this matter continually, I may yet play Oedipus to this particular riddle.”

A heavy step was heard upon the stairs, at which Newton pronounced that the sentinel was returned and that he would be very surprised if Daniel Mercer was accompanying him. An instant later the sentinel came into the Mint office and confirmed what my master had suspected, that Daniel Mercer was not to be found in the whole Tower of London.

“Mister Ellis,” said Newton, “what should be our next course of action?”

“Why, sir, to search for him at his place of lodging. Which I have already made a note of from the employment records in the Mint, after Scotch Robin and John Hunter named him as a likely culprit. Mercer lives across the river, in Southwark.”

We left the Tower at around five of the clock and walked across London Bridge though it was no fair weather and still very cold. Despite the early hour, we found the bridge already congested with people and their animals journeying to the market at Smithfield, and we were obliged to push our way through the arches underneath the tall and elaborate houses that sometimes make the bridge seem more like a series of Venetian palazzos than the city’s only thoroughfare across the Thames.

At the southern end of the bridge, on the Surrey Shore, we came past the footbridge by the Bear Garden, walked around St. Mary Overies and, near The Axe Tavern, between a tanner’s shop and a currier — for Southwark was home to all sorts of leather workers — we found the house where Daniel Mercer had his lodgings.

Mercer’s landlady, who was a most lovely-looking woman, suffered us to come indoors where she told us that she had not seen Mister Mercer since the day before and was now much concerned at his continuing absence. Hearing this, my master counterfeited much anxiety on Mercer’s behalf and, explaining that we were come especially from His Majesty’s Mint, begged to see his rooms that we might find some clue to his whereabouts and perhaps thereby assure ourselves that the injury to his person we suspected had not been received. At which Mrs. Allen, for that was the woman’s name, straightaway admitted us to Mister Mercer’s lodgings, and with tears in her eyes so that I thought she and Mercer were pretty close.

A table covered with green felt occupied the centre of the room, beside a chair on which lay a fine beaver hat, and in the corner stood an uncomfortable-looking truckle bed which was the twin of the one on which I had slept at Gray’s Inn. Such is the life of a bachelor. On top of the table lay an egg, a sword, and several books much torn up, as if the reader had been piqued by the writer, which is a thing I have sometimes been tempted to do myself with a bad book.

“Have you admitted anyone else in here since you last saw Mister Mercer?” Newton enquired of Mrs. Allen.

“It’s strange you should ask that, sir,” said Mrs. Allen. “Last night, I awoke and thought I heard someone in here, but when I came to look to see if it was Mercer, there was no one. And the room looked as you see it now. Which was not at all as Mercer would have left it, for he is a most careful man in his habits, sir, and is very fond of his books, so he is. It is all most alarming and strange to me, sir.”

“Does the sword belong to Mister Mercer?” he asked.

“One sword looks much like another to me, sir,” said Mrs. Allen and, folding her arms as if she was afraid to touch it, stared at it most circumspectly. “But I reckon it’s Mercer’s right enough. His father’s sword, it was.”

“The green tablecloth. Do you recognise that?”

“Never seen it before in me life, sir. And Lord only knows what a goose egg is doing on the table. Mercer couldn’t abide the taste of eggs.”

“Do you lock your door at night, Mrs. Allen?”

“Always, sir. Southwark isn’t Chelsea yet.”

“And did Mister Mercer have a key?”

“Yes sir. But Mercer was never in the habit of lending it.”

“And was your door locked when you rose this morning?”

“Yes sir. So that I almost thought I must have dreamed I heard someone in here. And yet I am certain Mercer would not have torn up these books. These books were his chief enjoyment, sir.”

Newton nodded. “I wonder if I might trouble you for some water, Mrs. Allen?”

“Water, sir? You don’t want water, not on a cold morning like this one. It is too heavy to be good for the health and will give you the stone if you’re not careful. We can do better than that for gentlemen such as yourselves. Will you take some good Lambeth ale, sir?”

Newton said we would, and with great pleasure, although it remained plain to me that in asking for water his intention had only been to remove the woman from Mercer’s room so that he might search it. This he proceeded to do and all the while commented on the appearance of the room, which he found mighty interesting.

“The emerald table, egg, sword, without doubt this is another message,” he said.

The mention of the sword prompted me to pick it up and examine it with the same judicious care Newton himself might have brought to the matter. He himself drew open a small cabinet drawer and examined a box of candles while I brandished the rapier in the air as Mister Figg, my fencing master, had once taught me. “This is an Italian cup-hilted rapier,” I said. “Ivory grip. The hilt deep-cut and well-pierced and engraved with some scrolling foliage. The blade of the lozenge section signed by Solingen, although the bladesmith’s name is illegible.” I tried the edge against my thumb. “Sharp, too. I should say this is a gentleman’s sword.”

“Very good,” said Newton. “If Mrs. Allen had not told us the sword belonged to Mercer’s father, we should now know everything about it.”

Newton, who was still examining the candles thoughtfully, caught sight of my disappointment, and smiled at me. “Never mind, my dear young fellow. You have told us one thing. That Mercer had seen better days than is evident from his present circumstances.”

I waited for him to make some disclosure about the candles, but when he did not, my curiosity got the better of me, and I did look at them myself. “They are beeswax,” said I. “I would have expected tallow candles in Southwark. Mercer was not one for economy. Perhaps he had not lost a taste for better living.”

“You are improving all the time,” said Newton.

“But what do they signify? What is their meaning?”

“Their meaning?” Newton replaced the candles in the drawer and said, “They are for light.”

“Is that all?” I grumbled, seeing that he had mocked me.

“Is that all?” He smiled a most damnedly supercilious smile. “All things appear to us and are understood through light. If fear of the darkness had not plagued the heathen, he would not have been blinded by false gods like the Sun and the Moon, and he, too, might have taught us to worship our true author and benefactor as his ancestors did under the government of Noah and his sons, before they corrupted themselves. I have given much to understand light. Once I almost sacrificed the sight in one eye to its understanding by experimentation. I took a blunted bodkin and put it between my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could. And pressing my eye with the end of it, so as to make the curvature in my eye, there appeared several white, dark, and coloured circles. Which circles were plainest when I continued to rub my eye with the point of the bodkin; but if I held my eye and the bodkin still, though I continued to press my eye with it, yet the circles would grow faint and often disappear until I resumed them by moving my eye or the bodkin.

“Light is everything, my dear fellow. ‘God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.’ As we must do, always.”

Mrs. Allen returned, for which I was grateful as I did not much care to be preached at, even by one such as Newton. For what manner of man was it that was prepared to risk blindness in search of understanding? She brought two mugs of ale which we drank and then took our leave, whereupon I, having given some thought to the early occurrences of this day, suggested to Newton it was possible those alchemical symbols he had interpreted were perhaps a kind of warning to those who threatened the Sons of the Art and their hermetick world. To which Newton proceeded to give a most dusty answer:

“My dear young man, alchemists are seekers after truth, and all truth, as I am sure you will agree, comes from God. Therefore I cannot concede that those who have committed murder are true philosophers.”

“Why then,” I said, “if not true philosophers, then what of false ones? It seems to me that Doctor Love and Count Gaetano might easily contemplate such wickedness. Those who are prepared to corrupt the ideals of alchemy for their own ends are perhaps the kind of men who would not shirk from murder. Did the Count not threaten you?”

“That was all bluster,” said Newton. “Besides, it was me they threatened, not poor Mister Kennedy.”

“Yet when first we met them outside my house,” I said, persisting in this argument, “was it not Mister Kennedy who accompanied them? And had they not by their own admission recently come from the Lion Tower? The circumstances would seem to afford some evidence against them, master. Perhaps Kennedy had some private business with Doctor Love and the Count, that gave them a grievance against him.”

“It may be,” allowed Newton, “that there is some truth in what you say.”

“Perhaps if they were invited to offer some account of where they were last evening, they might acquit themselves of any suspicion.”

“I do not think they will be disposed to answer any question I may have for them,” said Newton.

We crossed the bridge once more, where I bought some bread and cheese, for I was mighty hungry. Newton did not eat, for he was invited to dinner by a fellow member of the Royal Society, which was one of his few ways of keeping abreast of its learned activities, since he refused to go to its meetings himself so long as Mister Hooke remained alive.

“You had better come with me,” said Newton. “So don’t eat too much. My friend keeps an excellent table to which I fear I shall not do polite justice. You will help to remedy that defect in my manly parts.”

“Is it me you want, or my appetite?” said I.

“Both.”

We walked to Newgate with Newton complaining about the amount of building work that afflicted the city; and he remarked how, with one town added to an old one, soon there would be no countryside left, only London, which was quickly becoming as vast a metropolis as ever had existed, to the affright of those who lived there and were obliged to suffer its dirt and its general lawlessness; so that it was clear to me how he did not love the city much at all; and although he had told me he had grown tired of Cambridge, yet I often thought he hankered for the peace and quiet of that university town.

Bad news did await us at the Whit, for John Berningham, that had forged the gold guineas, was sick in the stomach and fit to die. Such was the number of prisoners awaiting trial or punishment in Newgate that it was easy enough to fall ill there and then to perish, for no physician would set foot in the place. But Berningham’s sickness was of a most violent and convulsive nature that made my master suspect he had been poisoned. And, questioned by my master, the cull who guarded the ward wherein poor Berningham was confined observed that he had started to vomit soon after a visit from his wife the previous evening.

“That is most coincident,” said Newton, scrutinising the contents of Berningham’s pisspot as if the proof might be found there. “It may be that she has poisoned him. But I fancy there’s a quick way we can prove it, at least to our own satisfaction.”

“How?” I asked, looking in the pot myself.

“How? That is simple. If Mrs. Berningham has left her lodgings in Milk Street, then I’ll warrant she’s as guilty as Messalina, and this poor wretch is poisoned right enough.”

“I cannot believe that lady would do such a thing,” I protested.

“Then we’ll soon find out which of us understands women better,” said Newton, and started to leave.

“But is there nothing we can do for poor Berningham?” I asked, tarrying by the fellow’s grimy cot.

Newton grunted and thought for a moment. Then, removing a shilling from his pocket, he beckoned a girl toward him.

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Sally,” said the girl.

Newton handed her the shilling. “There’s another shilling in it if you look after this man exactly as I tell you.” To my surprise, Newton bent down to the fireplace and removed a piece of cold charcoal, which he then broke into small pulular fragments.“I want you to make him swallow as many pieces of charcoal as he can eat. As in the Psalms of David. ‘For I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping.’ He must eat as much as he can manage until he dies or until the convulsions cease. Is that clear?”

The girl nodded silently as once again Berningham was overcome with a fit of retching so strong that I thought his stomach would fall out of his mouth.

“Very likely it is already too late for him,” Newton observed coolly. “But I have read that charcoal absorbs some vegetable-based poisons. For I think it must be vegetable-based, there being no blood in his water, and that is sometimes indicative of something like mercury, in which case I should recommend he be fed with only the white of an egg.”

Newton nodded as if he had only suddenly remembered useful information that had been long forgotten to him. This was a distinctive characteristic of his. I was always left with the impression that his mind was as vast as a great country house, with some rooms containing certain things that were known to him, but seldom visited, so that sometimes he seem surprised at what knowledge he himself possessed. And I remarked upon this as we walked along Cheapside to Milk Street.

“As to myself,” he replied, “it very much appears to me that the most important thing I have learned is how little I do know. And sometimes I seem to myself to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself with smooth pebbles or pretty shells while a great ocean of truth lies undiscovered before me.”

“There is much that still lies undiscovered in this case,” said I. “But I have the impression, from all our activity, that we shall soon discover something of significance.”

“I trust you shall be right.”

For my own part I could have lived very contentedly without the discovery that lay before us now, which was that no such person as Mrs. Berningham or anyone answering her description lived, or had ever lived, at the house in Milk Street where Newton’s coach had set her down but thirty-six hours earlier.

“Now that I do think of it, I cannot remember that she went through the front door at all,” Newton admitted. “You have to admire the jade’s audacity.”

But the realisation that she had tricked us disappointed me, for I had entertained high hopes of her being innocent of her husband’s poisoning, which her never having lived there at all seemed after all to confirm.

“Who would have thought that I was a keener judge of women than you?” railed my master.

“But to poison your own husband,” I said, shaking my head. “It is quite unconscionable.”

“Which is why the law takes such a dim view of it,” said Newton. “It’s petty treason, and if she’s caught and it be proved that she did murder him by poison, she’ll burn for it.”

“Then I hope she is never caught,” said I. “For no one, least of all a woman, should suffer that particular fate. Even a woman that murders her husband. But why? Why would she do such a thing?”

“Because she knew that we were on to her husband. And hopes to protect someone, perhaps herself. Perhaps others, too.” For a moment he remained in thought. “Those fellows whom you did suspect of accosting her near the Whit.”

“What about them?”

“Are you quite sure that they meant her harm?”

“What do you mean?”

“By the time I saw them, you had engaged with them.”

I took off my hat and scratched my head sheepishly. “It may be that it was only their weapons and rough voices did persuade me that they meant her some harm. In truth I cannot recall that any of them laid a hand upon her.”

“I thought as much,” said Newton.

We returned to the Tower, where we were straightaway summoned to the Lord Lieutenant’s house, which overlooked Tower Green in the shadow of the Bell Tower. And in the Council Chamber where, it was said, Guy Fawkes was put on the rack, Lord Lucas met us with Captain Mornay of the Ordnance and told us that we were to address any questions regarding the death of Mister Kennedy to the Captain who, in accordance with the law, had been ordered to impanel a jury of eighteen men from the Tower that it might be determined whether his death be an accident or not.

“As sure as iron is most apt to rust,” said Newton, “I tell you this was no accident.”

“And I tell you that the jury will decide the matter,” said Lord Lucas.

But Newton’s obvious irritation quickly gave way to anger when he learned that all eighteen of the men who were impanelled for the jury had already been drawn from the Ordnance and that there was to be no representation of the Mint.

“What?” he exclaimed, being most agitated. “Do you intend to have this all your own way, Lord Lucas?”

“This is a matter for our jurisdiction, not yours,” said the Captain.

“And do you seriously think that his death could be accidental?”

“The evidence for murder is very circumstantial,” said Captain Mornay, who was a most cadaverous-looking officer, for his face was most white, so that I formed the apprehension not that he powdered it, but that he might be ill. His eyes were the largest I had ever seen upon a man and very evasive, while his hands seemed very small for one of his height. In short, the whole proportion and air of his being was so peculiar and inexactly formed that, but for his uniform, I should have taken him for a poet or a musician.

“Circumstantial, is it?” snorted Newton. “And I suppose he tied his hands himself?”

“Pray, sir, correct me if I am wrong, but since one of Mister Kennedy’s arms was no longer attached to his body, there is nothing to prove that his hands were ever tied at all.”

“And the gag? And the stone in his mouth?” insisted Newton. “Explain those if you will.”

“A man may chew a stick, sir, to help him bear the pain if he knows he is to be cut by a surgeon. I have myself seen men suck musket balls to make spit in lieu of drinking water. I have even seen a man tie his own blindfold before being shot by a firing party.”

“The door to the Lion Tower was locked from the outside,” said Newton.

“So Mister Wadsworth has said,” answered Lord Lucas. “But with respect to you, sir, I know him better than you. He is a most intemperate, addle-pated fellow who is just as likely to forget his head as where he left a key. It’s not the first time that he has been negligent of his duties. And you may be assured that he will find himself reprimanded for it.”

“Are you suggesting that Mister Kennedy might have committed suicide?” Newton asked with no small exasperation. “And in such a dreadful way? Why, milord, it’s preposterous.”

“Not suicide, sir,” said Lord Lucas. “But it is plain to anyone who has ever visited Bedlam that folk who are troubled by virulent lunacies may often pluck out their own eyes and gouge themselves. Perhaps they may even feed themselves to a lion.”

“Mister Kennedy was no more mad than you or me,” said Newton. “Why then I at least, for you, milord Lucas, begin to show some signs of delusion in this matter. You too, Captain, if you persist with this impression.”

Lord Lucas sneered his contempt, but Captain Mornay, who was Irish, I thought, seemed rather taken aback at this imputation.

“I’m sure there is nothing in what I have said to put me upon a level with a person of that stamp,” he said.

“And now, gentlemen,” said Lord Lucas, “if you will all excuse me, I have work to do.”

But Newton had already bowed and was walking out of the Council Chamber. Captain Mornay and I followed suit, with the Captain almost apologetic to me.

“I am sure I should be very sorry to affront that gentleman,” he said, nodding at the figure of my master ahead of us. “For I believe he is a very clever man.”

“He knows things which I never expected any man should have known,” I replied.

“But you understand, I have my orders and must carry out my duty. I am not free to think for myself, Mister Ellis. I am sure you can receive my meaning.” At which he turned on the heel of his boot and walked off in the direction of the Chapel.

Catching my master, I reported this brief exchange of conversation.

“Lord Lucas would have me thwarted in all things,” he said. “I think he would side with the French if I were their opponent.”

“But why does he dislike you so much?”

“He would hate whoever was charged with conducting the affairs of His Majesty’s Mint. As I told you before. This Great Recoinage has turned the garrison out of the Mint, although it was not of my doing. But I did issue all Minters with a document that protects them from the press-gang and from any exercise of the Tower liberties upon their persons, which Lucas much resents. But we shall make a fool of him yet, Mister Ellis.Depend upon it, sir. We shall find a way to make him look a proper idiot.”

Before dinner I went to The King’s Bench to make enquiries of Mister Defoe, that had taken the Master Worker’s house in the Tower. For since he was to live amongst us in the Mint, my master wished to know what kind of a fellow he was. And I discovered that Mister Neale’s friend was an occasional pamphleteer who also went by the name of Daniel de Foe, and Daniel De Fooe, and that he had once been made bankrupt in the enormous sum of seventeen thousand pounds, for which, prior to my seeing him in court, he had been imprisoned in the Fleet. Before his bankruptcy he had been a liveryman of the Butcher’s Company, a member of the Cornhill Grand Jury, and a projector in several enterprises, none of which had prospered. Currently he was acting as a trustee for the national lottery that Neale managed; but as well as this, he owned a brickmaker’s yard in Tilbury, and acted as the accountant to the commission on glass duty, collecting the tax on glasses and bottles, although not the window tax. But he still owed a lot of money, for the principal debt remained undischarged, so that I wondered how he was ever permitted to remain outside of the debtor’s prison, let alone work for Neale.

All of this I told to Newton when we met for dinner outside York Buildings off the Strand, which was where his friend, Mister Samuel Pepys, of the Royal Society, lived.

“You have done well,” said Newton. “I myself have discovered he is spying on me, for I am certain he followed me here today.”

“A spy?” Instinctively I looked around, but could see no sign of Mister Neale’s strange friend. “Are you certain, sir?”

“Quite certain,” replied Newton. “I saw him first when I got down from my carriage to leave some depositions with Mister Taylor at the Temple. He was speaking to some of the whores who go there. From there I went to the Grecian, and leaving there just now to come and meet you here, I saw him again. Which goes beyond all coincidence.”

“Why would Mister Neale wish to spy on you, Master?”

Newton shook his head impatiently. “Neale is nothing,” he said. “But there are some powerful men behind Neale who might wish to discredit me. Lord Godolphin and other Tories who hate all Whigs, like Lord Montagu, and their creatures, like you or I. Perhaps it would explain why our Mister Defoe is permitted to remain out of the debtors’ prison.”

Newton looked up at York Buildings, which were several modern houses that occupied the site of a great house that was once owned by the Archbishops of York.

“It would be well if Mister Defoe did not see us go in here,” he said. “For my friend Mister Pepys has his own fair share of Tory enemies.”

And so we went into the New Exchange nearby and meandered in a most haphazard fashion about its walks and galleries for several minutes, until Newton was convinced that we would be lost to anyone trying to follow us.

In York Buildings our host lived as comfortably as any man I ever saw. He was a most convivial man in his sixties who was a former President of the Royal Society and, until the accession of King William to the throne, had been Secretary to the Admiralty. I liked him immediately for he made me most welcome, as if he and I had been long acquainted. Mister Pepys lived very handsomely, but it was as well I had been asked to do that gentleman’s table the justice it deserved, for our host ate and drank almost as little as my master, explaining that he was troubled with the stone which obliged him to leave off eating and, more particularly, drinking, rather sooner than he often had a mind to.

“And who keeps your house in the Tower, Mister Ellis?” asked Mister Pepys. “Some pretty wench, I’ll be bound.”

“Sir, I cannot yet afford a servant. But I manage well enough. It is a fine little house I have. Thanks to the Doctor.”

“Yes, I know the one. Indeed there is very little about the Tower I do not know.”

Mister Pepys then proceeded to tell us a most curious story that involved the Tower.

“During the December of 1662 I spent several days digging for buried treasure in the Tower, for it had been rumoured that Sir John Barkstead had, while he was Oliver Cromwell’s Lieutenant of the Tower, placed the sum of seven thousand pounds in a butter firkin, and then hidden it somewhere in the Tower. But the search came to nothing.

“Then, not long after my retirement from the Admiralty, in 1689, my enemies reappeared with the aim of having me eliminated beyond recall to any government office. I was imprisoned in the Tower for six long weeks. I was not close-confined, which afforded me the opportunity to study the Tower records. These are kept in St. John’s Chapel at the White Tower. There, to my great fascination, I soon discovered that Barkstead, who was hanged in 1662, had spent a prodigious amount of time working among the Tower records; and, in particular, with those documents that dealt with the Templars.

“The Templars were an order of warrior monks who were accused of heretical practices by Philippe the Fourth of France; but it was generally held that King Philip envied the Order its enormous wealth and influence, and that the charges were falsely trumped up as an excuse to rob the Order. Many Templars were burned as heretics but a large number escaped. It was supposed that as many as eighteen galley ships containing the treasure of the Templars set sail from La Rochelle in 1307. The ships were never heard of again.

“Strenuous efforts were made to arrest those Templars who came to England,” continued Mister Pepys, “and many of these were imprisoned in the Tower. It is said that, fearing the secret of their treasure might forever be lost, the Templars made a map showing its location. This map was never found although a commentary made by a Jew who had seen the map was said to exist that purported to describe the treasure and what was on the map.

“Now before he was come to serve the Commonwealth, Barkstead was a goldsmith in the Strand, in a shop he purchased from Jews. I now believe that this was when he discovered the existence of that same commentary and that upon learning of the existence of Templar treasure, Barkstead did everything in his power to make himself Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, with the sole aim of finding the treasure for himself.

“It was a secret he shared with no one, not even his mistress, who nevertheless suspected something from his assiduous endeavours with the Tower records, and finally he told her that a great sum of money was buried in the basement of the Bell Tower. And yet none of Barkstead’s notes, which may still be found in the Tower records, make any mention of the Bell Tower. Only the White Tower, where many of the Templars were held. It was there that Barkstead concentrated his efforts.”

“Did you say the north-east turret?” remarked my master, frowning. “Until comparatively recently the Astronomer Royal, Mister Flamsteed, under the patronage of Sir Jonas Moore, Surveyor to the Ordnance, occupied that north-east turret as a makeshift observatory.”

“It is my belief,” said Mister Pepys, savouring his own conversation as I had savoured his excellent French wine, “that Flamsteed and Moore were looking for something else beside the stars.”

“But upon what basis did they conduct their search?” I asked. “Did they find the map? Or the commentary?”

“Sir Jonas Moore was a good friend of the librarian,” explained Mister Pepys. “Moore was Official Surveyor to the Ordnance in the Tower since 1669. No man knew the Tower better than he. I was well acquainted with Moore until his death, in 1679. But I never knew the secret of his wealth, which came late in his life. It was given out that the money came from the official and unofficial remunerations he received from his surveying work in Tangier. But I never believed that, for the sums of money were too great.

“When Moore became Surveyor of the Ordnance in 1669, it is my belief that William Prynne, who was the Keeper of the Tower Records, confided something of the secret of the Templar treasure to him, shortly before his own death in that same year. It is also my belief that soon thereafter, Moore stumbled accidentally upon a small part of the treasure and that he spent the last ten years of his life trying to find the rest of it, with Flamsteed’s help.”

“But, sir, pray explain,” I said. “I thought you said that the treasure of the Templars was taken to Scotland.”

“It was only a rumour that it went to Scotland, and it is more likely that part of the treasure was in London during the early fifteenth century. Following the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, Marguerite of Anjou used the treasure to buy her life and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took it to his family estates in Greenwich Park and hid it there.”

“Greenwich Park,” exclaimed Newton. “God’s teeth, this story is the best I ever heard, Mister Pepys. Are you suggesting that our Royal Observatory at Greenwich was chosen because of its proximity to some buried treasure?”

“The pre-eminent sponsor of the new observatory was Sir Jonas Moore,” said Mister Pepys. “It was Moore who acquired the site and who, with the Master General of the Ordnance, organised the Observatory’s construction using money raised from the sale of army surplus gunpowder in Portsmouth. It was Moore who made certain that it was Flamsteed who became Astronomer Royal, and it was the Ordnance who paid and continue to pay his salary.”

“Do you suspect that Flamsteed still searches for the treasure?” I asked.

“I am certain of it,” replied Mister Pepys. “As certain as I am that he cannot ever find it. Moore found only a small part of the greater whole of treasure that still remains intact. And this leads to the second part of my story.”

Newton laughed cruelly. “No sir, I swear you cannot think to amuse me any further than you have already done so. Flamsteed plays Sir Perceval in search of the Holy Grail.”

“For once you say more than you know.” Mister Pepys smiled. “In 1682, I visited Scotland with the Duke of York, where I made the acquaintance of the Duke of Atholl. It was his eldest son, Lord Murray, who declared for King William and fought Viscount Dundee at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. Dundee was killed whereupon Murray found a grand cross of the Order of the Temple of Sion around the dead man’s neck. Murray had a most exact copy of the cross fashioned which he recently gave to me as a keepsake. It is why I asked you here today, to show it to you.”

Here Mister Pepys produced, from the pocket of his coat, a saltire cross the size of a man’s palm which he handed over for Doctor Newton’s inspection. It appeared to be made of silver and was covered with markings which greatly interested my master.

“Why was it thought this was to do with the Order of Templars?”

“Because it was known that Dundee wore a cross of that name. I had hoped you could make some sense of it, Doctor, for it was generally held that this saltire constitutes the key to finding the treasure.”

“The markings are interesting,” conceded my master. “But what are these tiny holes for, I wonder? You say this is an exact facsimile of the original?”

“Exact,” said Mister Pepys.

Newton held the cross up to the window and muttered something beneath his breath. “How very fascinating,” he said, eventually. “This merely seems to be a cross. In truth it is something altogether different.”

“But if it be not a cross,” said Mister Pepys, “then pray, what is it?”

“It’s a constellation of stars,” Newton explained. “The positions of these holes, especially the three holes at the centre of the cross, indicate as much being most distinguishing of Orion, the hunter and master of our winter skies. It is quite unmistakable.”

Newton handed the cross back to Mister Pepys.

“Beyond that,” he said, “I can tell you very little. However, it may be that the positions of the holes, taken in conjunction with the numbers and symbols that also appear on it, may indicate a position on a map.”

Mister Pepys nodded with a great show of wonder. “No sir,” he said. “You have told me more than I ever hoped to know.”

“I am glad to have been of some small service to you,” said Newton, and bowed his head slightly to Mister Pepys.

“This discovery has increased my resolve to discover how the cross may be employed to find the Templar treasure,” declared our host.

“Then I wish you good fortune in your endeavours,” said Newton.

We took our leave of Mister Pepys soon after, and made our way back to the Tower.

“I’m damned if that wasn’t the most fascinating story I have ever heard,” said I.

“’Tis certain the Tower has many secrets,” admitted Newton.

“Would not such a secret be worth killing for?”

Newton stayed silent.

“A treasure in the Tower. Yes indeed. A powerful inducement to commit murder.”

“You know my philosophy, Ellis,” said he. “We must make an observation before we may hypothesise. Until then, I will thank you to keep your idle speculations to yourself.”

Arriving back at the Tower, Newton declared an intention to fetch something from my house; and so I accompanied him to unlock the door, it being my habit so to do since the murder of Mister Kennedy. Entering my house, Newton fetched his reflecting telescope from the same wooden box that housed his microscope, and placed it upon the table. The telescope itself was much smaller than I had supposed, being no more than six inches long and mounted on a small globe so that it resembled some kind of miniature cannon such as would have demolished the walls of a child’s toy castle.

“I have a mind to see the view from the north-east turret in the White Tower,” he declared, carrying the telescope out of the door.

We entered the White Tower and climbed up the main stairs to the third floor, where I lit a lantern, and then up a narrow stone stair to the north-east turret. Newton set his telescope down on a table near the window, and having adjusted the telescope on its plinth, he then peered in a small hole at the top so that he seemed to look back down the body of the telescope toward the polished mirror at its base. And while Newton observed — I knew not what precisely — I walked idly around the turret as might have done one who had been imprisoned there.

I confess, my thoughts dwelled not on bloody murder nor on the treasure of the Templars, but on Miss Barton, for it was several days since I had seen her, so that being in the turret of the White Tower served to remind me of how I was separate from her and, being separate, was not happy until I could see her again. Each hour that I did not see Miss Barton made me feel as if I was dying; but, in truth, death was never very far from my thoughts when I was at the Tower, for there was hardly a walk, a wall, a tower, or a turret that did not have a tale to tell of cruel murder or bloody execution, and so I tried to keep the image of Miss Barton before me as some tormented Jesuit priest might have conjured a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary to ease his pain.

“What do you hope to see?” I asked Newton finally.

“Orion,” he said simply.

“Is this something to do with the treasure?”

“It is something to do with what Mister Pepys told me, which is an altogether different affair.”

“And what might that be?”

But he did not answer, so, for a time, I went down onto the second level and the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist, where I hoped to divert myself by looking upon the shelves of state records in imitation of Mister Pepys and Mister Barkstead who had once searched there for clues to buried treasure.

It being late, the present Keeper of the Records was not to be found and I wandered among the shelves that were arranged behind the simple stone capitals of the outer aisles. Upon these lay books and records which I was now resolved thoroughly to know whenever I found myself with sufficient time. Underneath the tribune gallery stood a great refectory table upon which lay an open book that I perused idly. And, doing so, was much surprised to discover a bookplate that proclaimed the book to be from the library of Sir Walter Raleigh. This book, which I examined for the love of the binding, it being most fine, disturbed me greatly, for it contained a number of engravings, some of which seemed so lewd that I wondered that the book was ever read in a chapel. In one picture a woman had a toad suck at her bare breast, while in another a naked girl stood behind an armoured knight urging him to do battle with a fire; a third picture depicted a naked man coupling with a woman. I was more repelled than fascinated by the book, for there was something so devilish and corrupt about the pictures it contained that I wondered how a man like Sir Walter could have owned it. And upon returning soon thereafter to the north-east turret, I thought to mention that it seemed indecent to leave such a book lying around so that any might examine it.

At this Newton left off looking through his telescope and straightaway accompanied me back down to the second floor, where, in the chapel, he examined the book for himself.

“Michael Maier of Germany was one of the greatest hermetick philosophers that ever lived,” he remarked as he turned the book’s thick vellum pages. “And this book, Atalanta Fleeing, is one of the secret art’s great books. The engravings to which you objected, Mister Ellis, are of course allegorical, and although they are in themselves difficult to understand, they serve no indecent purpose, so you may rest assured on that count. But it was open, you say?”

I nodded.

“At which page?”

I turned the pages until I came upon the engraving of a lion.

“In the light of what happened to Mister Kennedy,” he said, “the page being open at the Green Lion may be suspicious.”

“There is a bookplate,” I said, turning back the pages. “And I showed him Raleigh’s bookplate.

Newton nodded slowly. “Sir Walter was imprisoned here for thirteen years. From 1603 until 1616, when he was released in order that he might redeem himself by discovering a gold mine in Guiana. But he did not, and upon his return to England he was imprisoned in the Tower once again, until his execution in 1618. The same year as this book.”

“Poor man,” I exclaimed.

“He merits your pity, right enough, for he was a great scholar and a great philosopher. It is said that he and Harry Percy, the Wizard Earl, being rightly minded, where possible, to avoid any hypothetical explications, carried out some experiments in matters hermetick, medical and scientific in this very Tower. Thus the book may indeed be accounted for, but not why it is being read now. I shall make sure to ask the Keeper of the Records who has been examining this book when next I see him. For it may that it shall give us some apprehension of who might have murdered poor Mister Kennedy.”