A note from Roger Comstock was on the bench next to Daniel; it had been waiting for him in the carriage this morning. Dear Daniel, it read,
Forgive me my precipitous leave-taking from Mrs. Bligh’s yester-eve. As I am sure you have perceived by now, the whole event was a masque, a trifle. Do not allow Mr. White’s vulgarities to prey upon your good judgment.
Your coachman is Mr. John Hammond and I have charged him to convey you anywhere you desire, until your errand is accomplished; but I have led him to believe that most of your perambulations shall be confined to the triangle formed by London, Cambridge, and Mr. Apthorp’s country house. If you conceive a need to hie to John O’Groats or Land’s End, do break the news to him gently.
Yours very sternly,
(signed with a flourish, two inches high)
Ravenscar
P.S. I seem to have lost my poniard-have you seen it?
Roger was completely free of any taint of cowardice. Craven he might be, but a coward? Never. A trifle. Roger was sincere when he called it that.
It was impossible for Daniel to read in the dim, rocking vehicle, and he had no one to talk to, so sleeping and thinking were the only ways to pass the long drive through the rain up to Cambridge. As he contrasted his fear of Mr. White (which was very much akin to the fear he had previously had of Jeffreys) with how he had once felt about this rock that was now in his pocket, a new hypothesis of cowardice came into his head. The Stone had made him sad, reluctant to die, and anxious-but his fear of it had been as nothing compared to his fear of Jeffreys, and now of White. Yet those men had only spoken threatening words to him. Even when Hooke had reached up between his thighs with the scalpel, Daniel had been gripped by a sort of animal fear, but nothing like the dread of Mr. White, which had kept him awake all last night.
The only difference he could think of was that Hooke liked Daniel and White hated him. Could it be, then, that Daniel’s true cowardice lay in that he could not stand for people to think poorly of him?
That would be a strange shape for cowardice to take. But it tallied well with Daniel’s experiences to date. It was Daniel’s biography in a sentence. Further, perhaps it was the case that there were certain men, such as Jeffreys and White, who were adept at detecting this particular type of fear, and who had learned to cultivate it and use it against their enemies. Mr. John Hammond, the driver, had a long coachman’s whip and used it frequently, but never actually struck the horses with it. Rather, he made it crack in the air around the heads of his team, and used their own fear to drive them.
When Daniel had sent Jeffreys to the Tower and to his scaffold-top meeting with Jack Ketch, he’d phant’sied that he had slain a dragon, and put an end to that part of his life. Yet now Mr. White had appeared out of nowhere. An alarming chap! But much more alarming was what this all implied, namely that the world had more than one dragon-that it was infested with them-and that a fellow who was afraid of dragons must perforce spend all his days worrying about one or another.
This was all very much of the essence, because when Daniel tracked Isaac down, wherever he was, he would not be able to do what needed to be done without first mastering this fear.
AS IT TURNED OUT, he had no occasion to master it in Cambridge. He arrived at Trinity College in time to have a wash and a cat-nap in one of the guest chambers. Then, when the bell rang, he threw on a robe and went to the dining hall and took a place at the high table. Rather close to the head of that table, as it turned out. For between apoplexy and smallpox, Daniel was becoming more senior with every passing month. He was shown respect and even affection. He understood now why men afflicted with his particular brand of cowardice would gravitate to stations like this one, even though the College had fallen on very hard times, and was dishing up thin gruel little different from what was served in the poor-house.
When he inquired after Newton and Fatio, heads turned toward a young man seated near the foot of the table-too far away for Daniel to converse with him-who was called Dominic Masham. This suggested much to Daniel, for he knew that the family Masham were close friends and patrons of John Locke. Locke had been living on their estate at Oates since he’d come back from exile in Holland round the time of the Glorious Revolution. Daniel presumed that Locke had established some sort of alchemical laboratory there, for Newton and Fatio had frequently gone there for lengthy stays, as had Robert Boyle until his death a year or two ago. The Mashams had many children and Daniel guessed that this Dominic was one of them, and that he was here as a protege of Newton.
It was explained to him that Newton, Fatio, and Locke had all been staying in Newton’s (and formerly Waterhouse’s) chambers here until yesterday morning, when they’d all gone away, leaving Masham behind to tie up some loose ends. Newton and Fatio had gone off together bound for Oates. Locke had gone off by himself down the Barton Road, which led generally southeastwards. But he had declined to state his destination.
“I went right by them,” Daniel remarked. For the Mashams’ estate lay just off the London-Cambridge road, some twenty miles north of the capital. “What were those fellows up to?” For they also collaborated on theological projects.
It made the men at High Table nervous that Daniel had even asked.
“That is to say, what sorts of stimulating conversations have I missed by being so long absent from this table? Surely, three such men did not sit here in silence.”
Everyone sat in silence for a few moments. But then, fortuitously, dinner was over. They all stood up and chanted in Latin, and filed out. Daniel tracked Dominic Masham across the Great Court, and caught up with him beyond the main gate as he was unlocking the portal to Newton’s private courtyard. Masham had a distracted and hurried look about him, which suited Daniel’s purposes well enough. Daniel had a lanthorn, which he used to illuminate Masham’s face.
“Going home soon, Mr. Masham?”
“Tomorrow, Dr. Waterhouse, or as soon as I can gather up certain…”
Daniel let Masham’s pause dangle embarrassingly for a while before saying, quietly, “You offend me with this affected coyness. I am not a lass to flirt with, Mr. Masham.”
This had the same effect on the younger man as a whip-crack by a horse’s ear. He froze and began trying to frame a suitably glorious apology, but Daniel cut him off. “You are charged with gathering together the necessaries for the continuation of the Great Work that Misters Newton, Locke, and Fatio are undertaking at Oates. These may be books or chemicals or glassware-it does not matter to me-what matters is that you are going to Oates in the morning, and you may convey this packet to Mr. Newton with my compliments. It came to me the other day in London. It was sent to Newton by Leibniz.”
The mention of the name Leibniz threw a look into Dominic Masham’s wide green eyes.
“It consists of a letter, and a book. The letter is unique, and more important. The book, as you can see, is the first printing of Leibniz’s Protogaea, and you may feel free to peruse it during your trip; it will teach you things you have never dreamed of.”
“And the letter-?”
“Think of it as an overture, an attempt to mend the breach that occurred in these chambers in 1677.”