Newton’s Fire

III

Making their way across Oxford frayed the nerves of both Luke and Rachel. There were police cars everywhere, and even unmarked cars held menace, particularly the SUVs. The back streets were no soft option, either, because taking them made it so hard to keep their bearings. But finally they made it to a coach stop. They watched for a few minutes but could see no sign of it being monitored, so they went to check the timetable. The first coach of the day was leaving for London in half an hour. At last something seemed to be going their way.

The coach stop itself was too exposed for comfort, so they waited in an alley across the road. Rachel shivered. The night had grown cool, but Luke sensed there was more to it than that. He wanted to comfort her, but feared that a hug would be taken amiss, so he touched her arm instead. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just that I realized something. The police have been looking for couples, right?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘So what if they’ve asked the coach drivers to report any couples they pick up?’

‘We have to get out of here before it gets light,’ said Luke. ‘It’s worth the risk.’

‘I know. I’m just saying that maybe we should get on the coach separately, pretend we don’t know each other.’

‘Good thinking,’ said Luke admiringly. ‘In fact …’ He took out Pelham’s wallet and gave her half the cash inside. ‘The coach stops several times on its way out of town. If I get on at the next stop, they’ll never put us together.’

Rachel’s face became anguished. ‘What if you don’t make it in time?’

‘Then I’ll catch the next one. It’s only another hour.’ He handed her Olivia’s laptop, as carrying it himself would only slow him down. ‘You’ll wait for me at Victoria, right?’

‘Of course,’ she said. Their eyes met for the longest moment and she gave his hand a squeeze. ‘But please don’t miss it.’

‘I won’t,’ he promised. He nodded and headed off, jogging eastwards along the road, glancing back for police cars, making sure the coach wasn’t early. With all the evasive manoeuvres he had to make, the coach just about beat him to the next stop, but he waved frantically and the driver took pity. He was panting hard as he climbed aboard and paid. He pocketed his ticket and his change, walked down the aisle. Rachel was sitting across from the emergency doors, staring out of the window, pretending not to know him, yet not quite able to hide her smile. He slipped into the seat behind her as the coach pulled away.

He looked around. The coach was less than a quarter full. An unshaven man was stretched out along the rear seat, snoring lightly. A harried-looking executive in a rumpled dark suit was tapping away at his laptop, perhaps preparing the report he should have written over the weekend. A pair of prim elderly women clutched handbags in their laps. Four teenagers in shiny leather jackets took turns at a bottle of red wine.

They left Oxford without alarm, reached the motorway. The interior lights dimmed. Passengers rested their heads against companions or the windows, tried to sleep. Rachel turned on Olivia’s laptop and went through the photographs once more, twisting slightly in her seat so that Luke could see over her shoulder. No one was paying them any attention, so he went to sit beside her. She set the laptop between them. Their legs and arms weren’t quite touching, yet he could feel the radiated warmth of her all the same. He glanced sideways and felt a sharp stab of affection for her, an urge to take her hand, put an arm around her, hold her tight. Chance had thrust them together; yet it felt astonishingly like fate.

She became aware of his attention. ‘What?’ she asked, glancing up.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

She gave him a wry smile. ‘Nothing?’

He felt himself blushing like a teenager. He had to say something, if only as cover. The wall with the Newton sculpture was showing on the screen, and he remembered the slight anomaly he’d noticed earlier, so he touched the inscription with his fingertip. ‘These two lines,’ he said. ‘Don’t they look a bit wonky to you?’

‘Wonky?’

‘Offset, then. Closer to the left of the wall than the right.’

She peered intently at it, frowned. ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But what does it mean?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose it means anything. I just …’ But then he realized and snapped his fingers. ‘Sir Isaac Newton,’ he said. ‘Sir Isaac.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘Newton wasn’t knighted until 1705.’ He zoomed in on the inscription, put his finger over the “Sir”. ‘See. Now it’s centred,’ he said.

She shook her head in bafflement. ‘Are you saying that the inscription originally read just “Isaac Newton”, and that the “Sir” was added later?’

‘Yes. I suspect so.’

A woman in front of them sighed and turned in her seat. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Some of us are trying to sleep.’

Rachel held up an apologetic hand, dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘But why? Was Newton really that vain? To go back to the vault just to add a Sir to his name?’

Luke shook his head. ‘You know what Dr Johnson said about the Giant’s Causeway? “Worth seeing, yes, but not worth going to see”. I’d guess Newton’s knighthood was much the same: worth doing, yes, but not worth going to do.’

‘So he had some other reason for going back?’

‘It wouldn’t have been Newton himself, I don’t suppose. He was into his sixties by 1705, and his legs were beginning to go. And Evelyn and Wren would both have been into their seventies. But they all had fiercely devoted disciples. Let’s say they each sent one.’

‘And Newton’s decided to give him his knighthood while he was at it,’ nodded Rachel. ‘But what would their real mission have been? Bricking up the doorway?’

‘That wall would scarcely have stopped anyone who’d already found the passage,’ said Luke. ‘I reckon that was just a nod to the Rosicrucians.’

‘Then what?’

‘What do we know? We know they took a hammer and chisel with them, or they wouldn’t have been able to knight Newton so neatly. And why bring a hammer and chisel unless you plan to inscribe something?’

‘The cipher,’ murmured Rachel.

‘That’d be my guess,’ said Luke. He tapped the screen. ‘See how this one is centred directly beneath “Sir Isaac Newton”? That surely implies they’d already added the “Sir” by then. Besides, the vault was the spot. Why mark it with an X unless the X leads somewhere else?’ He jotted down the various elements of the cipher on a scrap of paper, and they wrestled with it for a few minutes; but their minds were too tired to get anywhere.

‘How about your London friend?’ asked Rachel, fighting a yawn.

‘Jay?’ Luke nodded. ‘This is right up his street. And he lives just across the river from the coach station.’

‘Let’s go and see him when we get there.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t have to, you know, Rachel. It could be dangerous for you. And I can do it myself.’

Rachel looked pained. ‘Don’t you want my help?’

‘Of course I do. But not as badly as I want you safe. You can go pretty much anywhere from Victoria. Lie low until this blows over.’

‘There’s nowhere so low that they won’t find me eventually,’ she pointed out. ‘Besides, we owe it to Pelham and Olivia to solve this thing as soon as we can and then get the truth out. And we’ve got a far better chance if we stick together. Agreed?’

He couldn’t help but smile. ‘Agreed.’

‘Good. Now how about catching a little rest?’

‘Go for it,’ he said.

She zipped away the laptop, set it beneath her feet, closed her eyes. Her head began to loll. It tipped against his shoulder only for the jolt to wake her. She sat up straighter, apologised with a rueful smile. But the tiredness soon got to her again; her head began to tip once more. He leaned to his left to give her a softer landing. A strand of her hair fell ticklish across his cheek. He had to put a finger to his nose to stop himself from sneezing. Lack of legroom and the way he was leaning made his posture uncomfortable, but he couldn’t move just yet without risking waking her. Her hair rose fractionally with each exhale, then fell back again. She found sleep. The weariness on her face seemed to fade with every moment. Her colour improved. Still asleep, she felt for and took his arm, and a kind of peace settled over her.

Extraordinary to think that less than twenty hours had passed since he’d seen her photograph on her great-aunt’s kitchen wall. They’d been through so much together since that he felt as if he’d known her forever. It occurred to him, however, that though he’d seen her smile and laugh and joke and tease in that time, he hadn’t yet seen her light up from within in quite the way she’d lit up in that photograph. There was always something reserved about her, something withheld, perhaps from grief or stress or duty or simple tiredness. Whatever the reason, he had a sudden craving to see her smile like that again. He had a sudden craving to see her smile like that for him. And the mere thought of it provoked a painful twist of emotion in his heart: of sadness that he should have caught her up in this wretched business, mixed with an immeasurable gladness that she was here.