When the crucible was empty, Charles Ham set it down by the scales, then picked up the crucible that was full of silver coins and put it into the fire. Through all of this, the man on the floor never paused counting coins out of the lock-box, his reedy voice making a steady incantation out of the numbers, the coins going chink, chink, chink.
Daniel stepped forward, bent down, took a coin out of the lock-box, and angled it to shine fire-light into his eyes, like the little mirror in the center of Isaac’s telescope. He was expecting to see a worn-out shilling with a blurred portrait of Queen Elizabeth on it, or an old piece of eight or thaler that the Hams had somehow picked up in a money-changing transaction. What he saw was in fact the profile of King Charles II, very new and crisp, stamped on a limpid pool of brilliant silver-perfect. Shining that way in firelight, it brought back memories of a night in 1666. Daniel flung it back into the lock-box. Then, not believing his eyes, he thrust his hand in and pulled out a fistful. They were all the same. Their edges, fresh from Monsieur Blondeau’s ingenious machine, were so sharp they almost cut his flesh, their mass blood-warm…
The heat was too much. He was out in the street with Uncle Thomas, bathing in cool air.
“They are still warm!” he exclaimed.
Uncle Thomas nodded.
“From the Mint?”
“Yes.”
“You mean to tell me that the coins being stamped out at the Mint are, the very same night, melted down into bullion on Threadneedle Street?”
Daniel was noticing, now, that the chimney of Apthorp’s shop, two doors up the street, was also smoking, and the same was true of diverse other goldsmiths up and down the length of Threadneedle.
Uncle Thomas raised his eyebrows piously.
“Where does it go then?” Daniel demanded.
“Only a Royal Society man would ask,” said Sterling Waterhouse, who had slipped out to join them.
“What do you mean by that, brother?” Daniel asked.
Sterling was walking slowly towards him. Instead of stopping, he flung his arms out wide and collided with Daniel, embraced him and kissed him on the cheek. Not a trace of liquor on his breath. “No one knows where it goes-that is not the point. The point is that it goes- it moves-the movement ne’er stops-it is the blood in the veins of Commerce.”
“But you must do something with the bullion-”
“We tender it to gentlemen who give us something in return” said Uncle Thomas. “It’s like selling fish at Billingsgate-do the fishwives ask where the fish go?”
“It’s generally known that silver percolates slowly eastwards, and stops in the Orient, in the vaults of the Great Mogul and the Emperor of China,” Sterling said. “Along the way it might change hands hundreds of times. Does that answer your question?”
“I’ve already stopped believing I saw it,” Daniel said, and went back into the house, his thin shoe-leather bending over irregular paving-stones, his dull dark clothing hanging about him coarsely, the iron banister cold under his hand-he was a mote bobbing in a mud-puddle and only wanted to be back in the midst of fire and heat and colored radiance.
He stood in the forge-room and watched the melting for a while. His favorite part was the sight of the liquid metal building behind the lip of the canted crucible, then breaking out and tracing an arc of light down through the darkness.
“Quicksilver is the elementary form of all things fusible; for all things fusible, when melted, are changed into it, and it mingles with them because it is of the same substance with them…”
“Who said that?” Sterling asked-keeping an eye on his little brother, who was showing signs of instability.
“Some damned Alchemist,” Daniel answered. “I have given up hope, tonight, of ever understanding money.”
“It’s simple, really…”
“And yet it’s not simple at all,” Daniel said. “It follows simple rules-it obeys logic-and so Natural Philosophy should understand it, encompass it-and I, who know and understand more than almost anyone in the Royal Society, should comprehend it. But I don’t. I never will… if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than Alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules…”
“Alchemists say that veins of minerals in the earth are twigs and offshoots of an immense Tree whose trunk is the center of the earth, and that metals rise like sap-” Sterling said, the firelight on his bemused face. Daniel was too tired at first to take the analogy-or perhaps he was underestimating Sterling. He assumed Sterling was prying for suggestions on where to look for gold mines. But later, as Sterling’s coach was taking him off towards Charing Cross, he understood that Sterling had been telling him that the growth of money and commerce was-as far as Natural Philosophers were concerned-like the development of that mysterious subterranean Tree: suspected, sensed, sometimes exploited for profit, but, in the end, unknowable.
THEKING’SHEADTAVERNwas dark, but it was not closed. When Daniel entered he saw patches of glowing green light here and there-pooled on tabletops and smeared on walls-and heard Persons of Quality speaking in hushed voices punctuated by outbreaks of riotous giggling. But the glow faded, and then serving-wenches scurried out with rush-lights and re-lit all of the lamps, and finally Daniel could see Pepys and Wilkins and Comstock, and the Duke of Gunfleet, and Sir Christopher Wren, and Sir Winston Churchill, and-at the best table-the Earl of Upnor, dressed in what amounted to a three-dimensional Persian carpet, trimmed with fur and studded with globs of colored glass, or perhaps they were precious gems.
Upnor was explaining phosphorus to three gaunt women with black patches glued all over their faces and necks: “It is known, to students of the Art, that each metal is created when rays from a particular planet strike and penetrate the Earth, videlicet, the Sun’s rays create gold; the Moon’s, silver; Mercury’s, quicksilver; Venus’s, copper; Mars’s, iron; Jupiter’s, tin; and Saturn’s lead. Mr. Root’s discovery of a new elemental substance suggests there may be another planet-presumably of a green color-beyond the orbit of Saturn.”
Daniel edged toward a table where Churchill and Wren were talking past each other, staring ever so thoughtfully at nothing: “It faces to the east, and it’s rather far north, isn’t it? Perhaps His Majesty should name it New Edinburgh…”
“That would only give the Presbyterians ideas!” Churchill scoffed.
“It’s not that far north,” Pepys put in from another table. “Boston is farther north by one and a half degrees of latitude.”
“We can’t go wrong suggesting that he name it after himself…”
“Charlestown? That name is already in use-Boston again.”
“His brother then? But Jamestown was used in Virginia.”
“What are you talking about?” Daniel inquired.
“New Amsterdam! His Majesty is acquiring it in exchange for Surinam,” Churchill said.