Hooke was silent for a time. The room had gone darker, and he’d faded to a gray ghost, that vivid pair of red sparks still marking his eyes. After a while, he sighed, and the sparks winked out for a few moments.
“I shall have to fetch you quill and paper, if this is to be the nature of your discourse, sir,” he said finally.
“I am certain that in the fullness of time, the opinion I have just voiced will be wide spread among learned persons,” Daniel said. “This may not however elevate your stature during the years you have remaining; for fame’s a weed, but repute is a slow-growing oak, and all we can do during our lifetimes is hop around like squirrels and plant acorns. There is no reason why I should conceal my opinions. But I warn you that I may express them all I like without bringing you fame or fortune.”
“It is enough you’ve expressed them to me in the aweful privacy of this chamber, sir,” Hooke returned. “I declare that I am indebted to you, and will repay that debt one day, by giving you something of incalculable value when you least expect it. A pearl of great price.”
LOOKING AT THE MASTER SERGEANTmade Daniel feel old. From the way that lower ranks had alluded to this man, Daniel had expected some sort of graybearded multiple amputee. But under the scars and weathering was a man probably no more than thirty years of age. He entered Daniel’s chamber without knocking or introducing himself, and inspected it as if he owned the place, taking particular care to learn the field of fire commanded by each of its embrasures. Moving sideways past each of those slits, he seemed to envision a fan-shaped territory of dead enemies spread across the ground beyond.
“Are you expecting to fight a war, sergeant?” said Daniel, who’d been scratching at some paper with a quill and casting only furtive dart-like glances at the sergeant.
“Are you expecting to start one?” the sergeant answered a minute later, as if in no especial hurry to respond.
“Why do you ask me such an odd question?”
“I am trying to conjure up some understanding of how a Puritan gets himself clapped in Tower just now, at a time when the only friends the King has are Puritans.”
“You have forgotten the Catholics.”
“No, sir, the King has forgotten ’em. Much has changed since you were locked up. First he locked up the Anglican bishops for refusing to preach toleration of Catholics and Dissenters.”
“I know that much-I was a free man at the time,” Daniel said.
“But the whole country was like to rise up in rebellion, Catholic churches were being put to the torch just for sport, and so he let ’em go, just to quiet things down.”
“But that is very different from forgetting the Catholics, sergeant.”
“Ah but since- since you’ve been immured here-why, the King has begun to fall apart.”
“So far I’ve learned nothing remarkable, sergeant, other than that there is a sergeant in the King’s service who actually knows how to use the word ‘immured.’ “
“You see, no one believes his son is really his son-that’s what has him resting so uneasy.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Why, the story’s gotten out that the Queen was never pregnant at all-just parading around with pillows stuffed under her dress-and that the so-called Prince is just a common babe snatched from an orphanage somewhere, and smuggled into the birth-chamber inside a warming-pan.”
Daniel contemplated this, dumbfounded. “I saw the baby emerge from the Queen’s vagina with my own eyes,” he said.
“Hold on to that memory, Professor, for it may keep you alive. No one in England thinks the child is anything but a base smuggled-in changeling. And so the King is retreating on every front now. Consequently the Anglicans no longer fear him, while the Papists cry that he has abandoned the only true faith.”
Daniel pondered. “The King wanted Cambridge to grant a degree to a Benedictine monk named Father Francis, who was viewed, around Cambridge, as a sort of stalking-horse for the Pope of Rome,” he said. “Any news of him?”
“The King tried to insinuate Jesuits and such-like everywhere, ” said the sergeant, “but has withdrawn a good many of ’em in the last fortnight. I’d wager Cambridge can stand down, for the King’s power is ebbing-ebbing halfway to France.”
Daniel now went silent for a while. Finally the sergeant resumed speaking, in a lower, more sociable tone: “I am not learned, but I’ve been to many plays, which is where I picked up words like ‘immured,’ and it oftimes happens-especially in your newer plays-that a player will forget his next line, and you’ll hear a spear-carrier or lutenist muttering ‘im a prompt. And in that spirit, I’ll now supply you with your next line, sir: something like ‘My word, these are disastrous tidings, my King, a true friend to all Nonconformists, is in trouble, what shall become of us, how can I be of service to his Majesty?’”
Daniel said nothing. The sergeant seemed to have become provoked, and could not now contain himself from prowling and pacing around the room, as if Daniel were a specimen about whom more could be learned by peering at it from diverse angles. “On the other hand, perhaps you are not a run-of-the-mill Nonconformist, for you are in the Tower, sir.”
“As are you, sergeant.”
“I have a key.”
“Poh! Do you have permission to leave?”
This shut him up for a while. “Our commander is John Churchill,” he said finally, trying a new tack. “The King no longer entirely trusts him.”
“I was wondering when the King would begin to doubt Churchill’s loyalty.”
“He needs us close, as we are his best men-yet not so close as the Horse Guards, hard by Whitehall Palace, within musket-shot of his apartments.”
“And so you have been moved to the Tower for safe-keeping.”
“You’ve got mail,” said the sergeant, and flung a letter onto the table in front of Daniel. It bore the address: grubendol london.
It was from Leibniz.
“It is for you, isn’t it? Don’t bother denying it, I can see it from the look on your face,” the sergeant continued. “We had a devil of a time working out who it was supposed to be given to.”
“It is intended for whichever officer of the Royal Society is currently charged with handling foreign correspondence,” Daniel said indignantly, “and at the moment, that is my honor.”
“You’re the one, aren’t you? You’re the one who conveyed certain letters to William of Orange.”
“There is no incentive for me to supply an answer to that question,” said Daniel after a brief interval of being too appalled to speak.