The Baroque Cycle - The System Of The World Part 69

"You are asking, what are those ideas worth?"

"Yes."

"That depends on how soon a true Logic Mill can be made. You have not made one, have you?"

"No," Daniel admitted. "We learned much from making the card-punching organs-"

"We meaning-" and Eliza c.o.c.ked her head out the window, reminding him of the vacant stalls being pillaged by soldiers and Messengers. meaning-" and Eliza c.o.c.ked her head out the window, reminding him of the vacant stalls being pillaged by soldiers and Messengers.

"All right," Daniel admitted, "the we we no longer exists. no longer exists. We We have been scattered. It shall be most difficult to re-a.s.semble the have been scattered. It shall be most difficult to re-a.s.semble the we we."

"And the organs are on the bottom of the river."

"Yes."

"You have drawings? Plans?"

"Mostly in our heads."

"Here's what I would say, then," Eliza began, "if I were rendering this accompt. The ideas are very good ones. The quality of the work, excellent. However, they are Leibniz's ideas, and they stand or fall with the Doctor and his reputation. His repute is very low with his House, the House of Hanover, which is now the sovereign power in this Realm. Caroline loves the Doctor, and has tried to effect a reconciliation between him and Sir Isaac, but this came to naught. Even when she is Queen she will have little power to change this-so irreconcilable are Leibniz's ideas with Newton's. It would be different if Leibniz's ideas were useful, but they are not-not yet, not compared to Newton's. It might be a long time before a Logic Mill can be constructed-a hundred years or more. And so the answer is that it is all devoid of monetary monetary value at this time." value at this time."

"Hmm. My life's work, devoid of value. That's hard to hear."

"I am only saying that you'll never find anyone who'll give you money for it. But you have a great Prince in the East who is happy to support the work. Ship it all to him. The golden cards, your notes and drawings, all that Enoch Root shipped over from Boston-send it all into the East, where someone values it."

"Very well. I have been arranging to do just that."

Eliza had turned away from the window and made Daniel Waterhouse the object of her scrutiny. She had, in fact, quite backed him into a corner. Something had occurred to her just now: a wild idea she did not like very much. "You phant'sy that's all there is, don't you? When you, Daniel, speak of your life's work, the only thing you include in that is what you have done on the Logic Mill."

Daniel showed empty hands to her. "What else is there?"

"At the very least, there is your son G.o.dfrey, whom you ought to go home and look in on! One child in Boston today is a million descendants at some time in the future."

"Yes, but in what estate, in what sort of country?"

"That is for you to determine. And setting aside G.o.dfrey-consider all you have done in the year since you received the letter from Princess Caroline!"

"I feel it's all been a muddle."

"You have done much for this country. For the Engine for Raising Water by Fire. For the abolition of Slavery. For Newton and Leibniz both, though neither of them might appreciate it."

"As I said before, 'tis all a muddle to me. But I am a great brooder, and you have given me something to brood on for the rest of my days."

"Don't only brood on it, if you please. Work it out. See what you have done."

"In your rendering of the accompt," said Daniel, "do you find anything at all in the way of a.s.sets?"

"Oh, yes," Eliza said. "The Engine for Raising Water by Fire shall more than pay for all of the losses that I have complained of."

"I didn't feel that you were complaining complaining so much as facing facts," Daniel said. so much as facing facts," Daniel said.

"I lose money all the time," she a.s.sured him. "I have spent rather a lot on this Slavery project, and it is only beginning-it'll take at least as long to do away with Slavery as it will to construct a proper Logic Mill, of that I'm sure."

"Ah, so I'm no worse than you-very kind of you to say so. What is to be your next project, if I may inquire?"

"As far as this investment is concerned? To cut the losses, liquidate what is to no purpose, and redouble investment in what is actually working: the Engine."

"It seems very reasonable when you put it that way," said Daniel, for some reason feeling quite relieved. "If the Engine succeeds, by the way, it will help your Cause, by reducing the demand for slave labor-"

"And yours," she said, "by supplying motive Power for a Logic Mill. Now you are beginning to understand."

"As Roger liked to say, 'tis a good thing to be educable."

"Very well!" she said, and clapped her hands. "But there are details for us to attend to, aren't there, before we become distracted by these grand schemes?"

"We have a way to keep the cards safe from men of that type," said Daniel, gesturing with his head in the direction of the authorities sacking the Court.

"I had guessed as much. I was thinking of Friday."

"Two things are happening on Friday: the Trial of the Pyx, and the Hanging-March," Daniel reminded her. "Which of them do you mean?"

Eliza got that rueful half-smile again. "Both," she said simply, "for they are one thing now."

"Then you and I have arrived at the same conclusion," Daniel said. "It is between Isaac and Jack. For Jack almost certainly placed base metal in the Pyx. If he testifies to that effect, Newton is absolved, and the currency is upheld."

"Would there be any way to save Newton, and the Currency, without without such testimony from Jack?" such testimony from Jack?"

"Wouldn't it be easier to persuade Jack to testify? That would have the added benefit of saving Jack from execution, supposing a deal could be struck-"

"A very questionable supposition, that," she pointed out, "and at any rate, I don't want him to make any such deal. I want him to be executed on Friday."

Daniel was so dumbfounded by this bald utterance that he kept on talking, like a man who has been shot through the head but keeps walking a stride or two before he crumples. "Er-well-even if that is what you want-why not strike a deal that would give him a quick merciful hanging, at least?"

"The original sentence," she insisted, "is what I want to be carried out against Jack Shaftoe on Friday."

"So-" Daniel blinked and shook his head, unable to fathom her placid cruelty. "So you are asking me, is there a way for Newton to triumph, in a Trial of the Pyx, even without testimony from Jack?"

"That is what I am asking you, as a Natural Philosopher."

"You are asking me, then, if the Trial of the Pyx can be rigged rigged!"

"Good day, Dr. Waterhouse; both of us have many things to tend to before Friday," said Eliza, and walked out of the room.

The Chapel, Newgate Prison 24 OCTOBER 1714.

I beseech you, Brethren, by the Mercies of G.o.d, that you present your Bodies a Living Sacrifice, Holy, Acceptable unto G.o.d; which is your Reasonable Service.-ROMANS 12:1 ENGLAND'S P POWERS T TEMPORAL WERE NOT precisely precisely finished finished with Jack Shaftoe. But they'd done everything to him that was within their scope, found him guilty of the worst of all crimes, thrown him in the worst of all places, sentenced him to the worst of all punishments. They were spent. Their Avenging Sword needed a good working-over with a whetstone, and their terrible quiver was empty. And so they had turned him over to the Powers Spiritual of the Realm, viz. the Church of England. This was the first time-and quite obviously the last-in Jack's life that he had attracted the notice of that organization. He did not know how to behave under its strange gaze. with Jack Shaftoe. But they'd done everything to him that was within their scope, found him guilty of the worst of all crimes, thrown him in the worst of all places, sentenced him to the worst of all punishments. They were spent. Their Avenging Sword needed a good working-over with a whetstone, and their terrible quiver was empty. And so they had turned him over to the Powers Spiritual of the Realm, viz. the Church of England. This was the first time-and quite obviously the last-in Jack's life that he had attracted the notice of that organization. He did not know how to behave under its strange gaze.

The Vagabond-camps of his youth had been more than amply supplied with lunaticks. Indeed Newgate was the only place he had ever been since that contained a higher proportion of madmen.

He and Bob had learnt very early that the Nation of the Insane comprised diverse cla.s.ses, sects, and parties, each of which must be treated with in a different way. A matched pair of starving ragam.u.f.fins, roving around a camp in the middle of some ducal game-park, exerted a powerful draw on maniacs of many types. But for those boys to survive, they had to learn to distinguish between, say, the religious Phanatiques and the paedophiles. For the consequences of being caught by them were wholly different. A Phanatique might even take it upon himself to defend a couple of boys from the sort of mad Vagabond who was bent on b.u.g.g.e.ry. For this service he might exact a price, namely, to make them hear a sermon. It was in his nature to give sermons, just as it was to lambaste sodomites. As these two behaviors expressed the same nature, they could not be teased apart. The boys had to accept one with the other. From such sermons had the Shaftoe boys learned everything there was to know about the Anglican Church.

Later in his life, Jack was to recollect those open-air sermons with the skepticism of a world-weary adult. The sermonizers were religious maniacs who'd liefer rove the countryside in the company of pestilential Vagabonds than submit to the authority of Anglicans; and so how could such be expected to give a fair and impartial account of what went on in the Church of England? Of the slanders and calumnies that they flung against that Church's shiny red door, most were probably hallucinations; the remainder might have a germ of truth, but must still consist mostly of perfervid phant'sies. It was not that Jack had any affinity for the Church, any need to hold up their end of the argument. It was rather that he got sick of preachers early on. If he were to give credit to their ravings about the Anglican Church, he must give equal credit to their a.s.sertions, so tediously repeated, that he was bound for h.e.l.l. He preferred to take a dim view of everything they said, rather than picking and choosing.

This chapel he was sitting in now made him think that everything those Phanatiques told him might have been literally true.

The Phanatiques said that Anglican churches-unlike the open-air conventicles and simple barnlike meeting-houses of the Nonconformists-were divided up into boxes called pews. And lest this sound too attractive to a lot of bored Vagabonds who were standing in the mud or, at best, sitting on logs, they likened those pews to livestock pens, in which the churchgoers were pent up like so many sheep waiting to be fleeced, or slaughtered.

Now, here Jack sat, in his first ever Anglican service, and what did he observe but that the floor of the chapel-which was situated on the uppermost storey of Newgate Prison-was indeed divided into boxes. These were pens, and then some. Pens were open to the sky; but these pews (as they were styled by the management) had stout lids on them, to prevent Malefactors from vaulting over the top, or Dissident holy men from ascending directly into Heaven without the intermediation of a deputized representative of the Church of England.

The Phanatiques said that in Anglican churches, Persons of Quality got the best seats; the cla.s.ses could not mingle freely, as they did in a Gathered church. Sure enough, the pews of Newgate chapel were strictly segregated according to degree. Prisoners from the Common Side were penned on one side of the aisle, to the left hand of the Ordinary as he stood in his corner pulpit. Those from the Master Side went to the right. Debtors were boxed separately from Felons, Males walled off from Females. But the very best seats in the house, directly below the pulpit, were reserved for the aristocracy: persons lately condemned to die at Tyburn. These were granted the luxury of an open pew, though they were chained to it, like galley-slaves to their bench.

The Phanatiques said that the Anglican Church was a place of death, a portal to h.e.l.l. Which sounded like lunacy; but this place was hung in black, swathed in funeral-shrouds. Directly before the Condemned pew, between it and the pulpit, was a stout altar; but what rested upon the Lord's Table was not a breakfast of bread and wine, but a coffin. And lest they fail to apprehend the message, the lid of that coffin had been removed, to make it plain that it was vacant, and wanted a lodger. It yawned at them through the service, and the Ordinary wasted no chance to direct their attention thither.

The Phanatiques said that people went to Anglican churches, not to hear and heed the Word of G.o.d, but to see and be seen. That it was a Show, nothing better than a play in a theatre, and probably worse, in that plays made no bones about being vile and bawdy, while Anglican services arrogated to themselves a sort of holiness. It was a claim difficult to make about the front of this chapel, which was full of smelly persons in boxes, peering out through grates. But when Jack tired of staring at the open coffin on the altar, and let his attention wander up the aisle, he noted that the back half of the church was supplied with several rows of open pews, and that they were packed full of churchgoers. Not "parishioners," mind you, for that would mean people who lived in or near Newgate, but "churchgoers," meaning, in this case, free Londoners who had got out of bed this morning, put on their Sunday best, and made a positive decision to travel here-a place so miasmic, that pa.s.sersby had been known to drop dead in the street from breathing what wafted out of its gratings-and sit in a place draped all in black and listen to a gaol-house preacher rant about Death for a couple of hours.

Never one to affect false modesty, or any sort of modesty at all for that matter, Jack knew perfectly well that they had come to stare at the Condemned, and particularly at him. He stared right back. The Ordinary had been explicating a paltry few lines from Paul's Epistle to the Romans for more than an hour. No one was paying attention. Jack screwed himself around, looked back, and met the eye of each churchgoer in turn, challenging him or her to a stare-down, and he won every one, knocking them down one pew at a time like archery targets pinned to a fencerail. Except, that is, for one whose gaze he could not meet, because her face was hidden behind a veil. It was the same woman who had gone to the Gate of Ja.n.u.s the other day, just to get a look at him. On that occasion, she had flashed by so quickly that he hadn't fixed her clearly in his memory. This Sunday morning, he had a good hour to stare at her. Her face might be hidden, but he could see plainly enough she was rich; there was a lacy fontange fontange perched atop her head, adding six inches to her height, and serving as a sort of mainmast from which the veil was deployed. Her dress was far from gaudy, being almost as dark and dour as mourning weeds, but he could see the sheen on the silk from here; the fabric alone probably cost as much as the whole contents of an average Londoner's wardrobe. And she'd brought a bloke, a young man, bit of a bruiser, blond and blue-eyed. Not a husband and not a beau, but a bodyguard. Jack lost the stare-down with him, but only because he, Jack, was distracted. Something was afoot. perched atop her head, adding six inches to her height, and serving as a sort of mainmast from which the veil was deployed. Her dress was far from gaudy, being almost as dark and dour as mourning weeds, but he could see the sheen on the silk from here; the fabric alone probably cost as much as the whole contents of an average Londoner's wardrobe. And she'd brought a bloke, a young man, bit of a bruiser, blond and blue-eyed. Not a husband and not a beau, but a bodyguard. Jack lost the stare-down with him, but only because he, Jack, was distracted. Something was afoot.

Halfway Along Cheapside DAWN, MONDAY, 25 OCTOBER 1714.

"DID R ROGER COME TO YOU in a dream, or something?" in a dream, or something?"

"I beg your pardon!?"

Saturn opened his eyes for the first time since he had upended his body into the carriage, back at Clerkenwell Court, a quarter of an hour ago. Since then he had only made himself more comfy with every b.u.mp and swerve. Confronted now with evidence that his companion had been conscious, and cogitating, the entire time, Daniel was mildly indignant.

Saturn pushed himself up a notch. "It is so unlike you to know of something before it happens. I wondered if you had had a spectral Visitation from the Shade of the late Marquis of Ravenscar."

"My intelligence came from another source."

"The Earl of Lostwithiel?"

"Shut up!"

"I thought so. Mortification was writ all over his lordship's face the other day, at the Sack of Clerkenwell."

"It'll be worse if word gets round that he has been talking to me, and so please curtail this!"

"Hmph. I do not think that Ravenscar got people to be discreet by shushing shushing them. I think rather he was an them. I think rather he was an ingenieur ingenieur of a sort, who balanced interests." of a sort, who balanced interests."

"What is your point, other than that I am no subst.i.tute for Roger?"

"Clerkenwell Court was to me what a Gathered Church was to your dad's lot. Now what you Gathered has been Scattered by the Powers that Be. Just as certain of your co-religionists, in such a pickle, would abscond to Ma.s.sachusetts to erect a City on a Hill or something, I phant'sy that I shall get out of this b.l.o.o.d.y town and go to what, for a Mechanick, will be what Plymouth Rock was for Puritans."

"And where, pray tell, is that?"

"Another place called Plymouth, but older, and easier to get to."

The carriage, following Daniel's instructions, had managed a right turn; Daniel had lost track of where they were, and was disoriented for a moment, until he saw the Church of St. Stephen Walbrook go by to their left. A light or two was already burning in a window there; good.

Saturn seemed a little provoked that Daniel had not risen to this most excellent bait. "Plymouth is where Mr. Newcomen is building his Engine, is it not?"

"Close enough," Daniel said. "I shall buy you a map of the west country as a going-away present, and on the journey you can master the fine distinctions between Plymouth, Dartmouth, Teignmouth, et cetera et cetera."

" 'Sblood, the place has as many Mouths as Parliament," Saturn muttered, and watched Daniel carefully-warily, even. Perhaps he had been worried as to how Daniel would react.

Daniel said, "I shall give Mr. Newcomen an excellent character of you."

"Thank you."

"I'll not say a word about Infernal Devices, or bursting out of wh.o.r.es' toilets in the dead of night."

"I would be indebted."

"Please don't think of it in that light...look on it rather as a selfish deed on my part," Daniel said. "Newcomen needs fewer smiths, and more men like you."

"I heard he was banging out great b.l.o.o.d.y monstrosities."

"That he is. But where he wants help is in the fabricating of the small clever bits-the valves, and so on. Just the job for a Horologist Gone Bad."

"Right! Let's sort this, then!" said a radically more energetic Peter Hoxton, rolling out the carriage door even though it had not yet come to a full stop. Daniel smelled River, and felt it condensing on his brow; they'd pulled round on the Three Cranes, a wharf not far from where the lost river of Walbrook buried itself in the Thames. A row of warehouses fronted on it, running parallel to the riverbank and a stone's throw back from the water. Separating two of these buildings was a narrow c.h.i.n.k that anyone might have overlooked in the dark and the fog. Daniel was only able to pick it out because a light was burning some distance along this alley-way, on its right side. As Saturn shambled toward this, his head or shoulders would occult it from time to time. After a minute this stopped happening. Daniel heard a door opening, and eroded stumps of a few words, and then the door closing again.

The alley would broaden, after some distance, into the s.p.a.cious back-court of the Vintners' Hall. Many of the establishments around it, including the one Saturn had gone into, were cooperages.

"Back to the Church of St. Stephen Walbrook," Daniel said to the coachman.

WILLIAM H HAM WAS WAITING FOR them there, out front of the church where he'd been baptized. He climbed through the carriage door and settled into Saturn's former perch with a grunt. "Never has a church been put to such uses," he remarked. them there, out front of the church where he'd been baptized. He climbed through the carriage door and settled into Saturn's former perch with a grunt. "Never has a church been put to such uses," he remarked.

"I've explained to the vicar-and will gladly explain again if need be-that it is all in pursuit of a righteous and Christian undertaking."

"Pray don't speak of undertaking, undertaking, uncle. Not today." uncle. Not today."

That got them as far as the front entrance of the Bank of England, all of seven hundred feet away.

"I would like you to know something," Daniel said, as William was fumbling with his keys. For Daniel had the sense that William's slowness, his clumsiness, were not due to cold fingers alone.

"What is that, uncle?"

"I've never spoken of this to you before, as I know it is delicate. But after your father pa.s.sed away, and his Vault was opened-forcibly-by order of the Lord Chancellor, I was among the party that went down into it, and found that it was empty."

"It is a very odd time for you to bring that up," William said, right snappishly, and smacked the Bank's door open. His irritation had at least got the blood running through his fingers, and perhaps to his brain. There was now a short interlude in the foyer while he soothed the porter's nerves, and urged him to get back in bed. Then he began to lead Daniel down into the labyrinthine bas.e.m.e.nts and sub-bas.e.m.e.nts of the Bank. While they walked, Daniel talked.