“Our Duke of Gunfleet has much warmer connections with France than anyone appreciates,” Oldenburg said-but then refused to say any more.
And because silver and gold have their value from the matter itself; they have first this privilege, that the value of them cannot be altered by the power of one, nor of a few commonwealths; as being a common measure of the commodities of all places. But base money, may easily be enhanced, or abased.
-HOBBES,Leviathan
OLDENBURG GENTEELLY KICKEDhim out not much later, eager to get into that pile of mail. Under the politely curious gaze of the Beefeaters and their semi-tame ravens, Daniel walked down Water Lane, on the southern verge of the Tower complex. He walked past a large rectangular tower planted in the outer wall, above the river, and realized too late that if he’d only turned his head and glanced to the left at that point, he could’ve looked through the giant arch of Traitor’s Gate and out across the river. Too late now-seemed a poor idea to go back. Probably just as well he hadn’t gawked-then whoever was watching him would suspect that Oldenburg had mentioned it.
Was he thinking like a courtier now?
The massive octagonal pile of Bell Tower was on his right. As he got past it he dared to look up a narrow buffer between two layers of curtain-walls no more than fifty feet apart. Half of that width was filled up by the Mint’s indifferent low houses and workshops. Daniel glimpsed furnace-light radiating from windows, warming high stone walls, making silhouettes of a congestion of carts bringing coal to burn. Men with muskets gazed coolly back at him. Mint workers crossed from building to building in the shambling gait of the exhausted.
Then he was underneath the great arch of the Byward Tower, an elevated building thrown over Water Lane to control the Tower’s land approach. A raven perched on a gargoyle and screeched “Cromwell!” at him as he passed through onto the drawbridge that ran from Byward Tower out to Middle Tower, over the moat. Middle Tower gave way to Lion Tower-but the King’s menagerie were all asleep and he did not hear the lions roar. From there he crossed over a last little backwater of the moat, over another drawbridge, and came into a little walled-in yard called the Bulwark-finally, then, through one last gate and into the world, though he had a lonely stroll over an empty moonlit glacis, past a few scavenging rats and copulating dogs, before he was among buildings and people.
But then Daniel Waterhouse was right in the City of London-slightly confused, as some of the streets had been straightened and simplifed after the Fire. He pulled a fat gold egg from his pocket-one of Hooke’s experimental watches, a failed stab at the Longitude Problem, adequate only for landlubbers. It told him that the Phosphorus Demo’ was not quite finished at Whitehall, but that it was not too late to call on his in-laws. Daniel did not especially like to just call on people-seemed presumptuous to think they’d want to open the door and see him- but he knew that this was how men like Pepys got to become men like Pepys. So to the house of Ham.
Lights burned expensively, and a coach and pair dawdled out front. Daniel was startled to discover his own family coat of arms (a castle bestriding a river) painted on the door of this coach. The house was smoking like a heavy forge-it was equipped with oversized chimneys, projecting tubes of orange light into their own smoke. As Daniel ascended the front steps he heard singing, which faltered but did not stop when he knocked: a very current melody making fun of the Dutch for being so bright, hard-working, and successful. Viscount Walbrook’s*butler opened the door and recognized Daniel as a social caller-not, as sometimes happened, a nocturnal customer brandishing a goldsmith’s note.
Mayflower Ham, nee Waterhouse-tubby, fair, almost fifty, looking more like thirty-gave him a hug that pulled him up on tiptoe. Menopause had finally terminated her fantastically involved and complex relationship with her womb: a legendary saga of irregular bleeding, eleven-month pregnancies straight out of the Royal Society proceedings, terrifying primal omens, miscarriages, heartbreaking epochs of barrenness punctuated by phases of such explosive fertility that Uncle Thomas had been afraid to come near her-disturbing asymmetries, prolapses, relapses, and just plain lapses, hellish cramping fits, mysterious interactions with the Moon and other c?lestial phenomena, shocking imbalances of all four of the humours known to Medicine plus a few known only to Mayflower, seismic rumblings audible from adjoining rooms-cancers reabsorbed-(incredibly) three successful pregnancies culminating in four-day labors that snapped stout bedframes like kindling, vibrated pictures off walls, and sent queues of vicars, midwives, physicians, and family members down into their own beds, ruined with exhaustion. Mayflower had (fortunately for her!) been born with that ability, peculiar to certain women, of being able to talk about her womb in any company without it seeming inappropriate, and not only that but you never knew where in a conversation, or a letter, she would launch into it, plunging everyone into a clammy sweat as her descriptions and revelations forced them to consider topics so primal that they were beyond eschatology-even Drake had had to shut up about the Apocalypse when Mayflower had gotten rolling. Butlers fled and serving-maids fainted. The condition of Mayflower’s womb affected the moods of England as the Moon ruled the tides.
“How, er… are you?” Daniel inquired, bracing himself, but she just smiled sweetly, made rote apologies about the house not being finished (but no fashionable house ever was finished), and led him to the Dining-Room, where Uncle Thomas was entertaining Sterling and Beatrice Waterhouse, and Sir Richard Apthorp and his wife. The Apthorps had a goldsmith’s shop of their own, and lived a few doors up Threadneedle. The attire was not so aggressively fine, Daniel not so monstrously out of place, as at the coffee-house. Sterling greeted him warmly, as if saying, Sorry old chap but the other day was business.
They appeared to be celebrating something. Reference was made to all the work that lay ahead, so Daniel assumed it was some milestone in their grand shop-house-project. He wanted someone to ask him where he’d been, so that he could offhandedly let them know he’d been to the Tower waving around a warrant from the Secretary of State. But no one asked. After a while he realized that they probably would not care if they did know. The back door, fronting on Cornhill, kept creaking open, then booming shut. Finally, Daniel caught Uncle Thomas’s eye, and, with a look, inquired what on earth was happening back there. A few minutes later, Viscount Walbrook got up, as if to use the House of Office, but tapped Daniel on the shoulder on his way out of the room.
Daniel rose and followed him down a hall-dark except for a convenient red glow at the far end. Daniel couldn’t see around the tottering Punchinello silhouette of his host, but he could hear shovels crunching into piles of something, ringing as they flung their loads-obviously coal being fed to a furnace. But sometimes there was the icy trill of a coin falling and spinning on a hard floor.
The hall became sooty and extremely warm, and gave way to a brick-lined room where a laborer, stripped to a pair of drawers, was heaving coal into the open door of the House of Ham’s forge-which had been hugely expanded when the house was reconstructed after the Fire. Another laborer was pumping bellows with his feet, climbing an endless ladder. In the old days, this forge had been a good size for baking tarts, which made sense for the sort of goldsmith who made earrings and teaspoons. Now it looked like something that could be used to cast cannon-barrels, and half the weight of the building was concentrated in the chimney.
Several black iron lock-boxes were open on the floor-some full of silver coins and others empty. One of the Hams’ senior clerks sat on the floor by one of these in a pond of his own sweat, counting coins into a dish out loud: “Ninety-eight… ninety-nine… hundred!” whereupon he handed the dish up to Charles Ham (the youngest Ham brother-Thomas being the eldest), who emptied it onto the pan of a scale and weighed the coins against a brass cylinder-then raked them off into a bucket-sized crucible. This was repeated until the crucible was nearly full. Then a glowing door was opened-knives of blue flame probed out into the dark room-Charles Ham donned black gauntlets, heaved a gigantic pair of iron tongs off the floor, thrust them in, hugged, and backed away, drawing out another crucible: a cup shining daffodil-colored light. Turning around very carefully, he positioned the crucible (Daniel could’ve tracked it with his eyes closed, by feeling its warmth shine on his face) and tipped it. A stream of radiant liquid formed in its lip and arced down into a mold of clay. Other molds were scattered about the floor, wherever there was room, cooling down through shades of yellow, orange, red, and sullen brown, to black; but wherever light glanced off of them, it gleamed silver.