“That was a foolish and profligate waste,” Daniel said. “We could’ve burned it to keep warm.”
“Tally-sticks make more heat, guv’nor,” volunteered the waterman, “and they are circulating at a discount of forty percent.”
“Isaac will be sworn in at the Mint at the beginning of May,” said Roger. “It is now February. How shall we occupy ourselves between now and then? Your intention is to carry forward that Comenius-Wilkins-Leibniz Pansophic Arithmetickal Engine-Logick Mill-Algebra of Ratiocination-Automatic Computation-Repository of all Knowledge project, is it not?”
“We need a better name for it,” Daniel conceded, “but you know perfectly well the answer is yes.”
“Then you really had ought to go have a chat with Leibniz first, or do you disagree?”
“Of course I don’t disagree,” said Daniel, “but even if money existed in this Realm, I should not possess any, and so I had not really considered it.”
“I found some old louis d’or, pre-debasement, in a sock,” Roger confided to him, “and should be pleased to advance them to you, while we wait for Isaac to stoke up the Mint.”
“What on earth would I do with French coins?”
“Buy things with them,” said Roger, “in France.”
“We are at war with France!”
“It has been a very slow war of late-one battle of consequence in the last two years.”
“Still-why should I go there?”
“It happens to be on the way to Germany, which is where Leibniz was, the last time anyone bothered to check.”
“It would be more prudent to avoid France.”
“But ever so much more convenient to go there direct-for that is where your jacht happens to be bound.”
“I have a jacht now, too?”
“Behold!” proclaimed the Marquis of Ravenscar. Daniel was obliged to swivel his head around and gaze downstream. They had, by this time, drifted past the Steelyard and were converging on the Old Swan Stairs, just above London Bridge. On the yonder side of the Bridge spread the Pool, which contained above a thousand ships.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what it is you want me to behold,” Daniel complained. “The Fishmongers?” For that was the closest thing along the azimuth that Roger was now forcibly indicating with bladelike thrusts of the hand.
“Oh, bloody hell,” said Roger, “she is at Tower Wharf, you cannot see her from here, let us go and pay her a visit.” And he alighted from the boat and stomped away up Old Swan Stairs without giving any money to, or even glancing back at, the waterman; who, however, seemed perfectly content. Roger must have an Understanding with him, as he seemed to with all London, a few Jacobites excepted.
FROM THE OLD SWAN, where they bated to warm themselves with pints, they could have walked half a mile along Thames Street and then applied themselves to the lengthy and complicated work of burrowing through the Tower’s gates, bastions, causeways, and the micro-neighborhoods that had grown up around, and occluded, the same, as vegetation on infected heart-valves. But Roger was of a mind to see a thing on the river side, and so they walked only far enough to get round the end of the Bridge, then descended the terraced rectilinear cove of Lion Stairs, below the barnlike mass of the Church of St. Magnus Martyr, which Wren had rebuilt, but not got round to putting a tower or a steeple on yet. Another waterman consented to take them downriver from there. Swinging wide round the riotous congestion of Billingsgate and the broad Key before the Customs House, they pounced upon Tower Wharf. For the most part this presented itself to them as a quarter-mile-long wall jumping straight out of the river. But it was adorned here and there with cranes, guns, a wee crenellated castle, and other curios. Two stairs and one arched tunnel were cut into it, and the waterman kept guessing Roger would go to one of those; but the Marquis of Ravenscar kept exhorting him on, on to the downstream end, where two brigs and a ship had been made fast to the wharf. Daniel instinctively looked at the smaller and meaner vessels, until he recollected that he was in the company of Roger; then he had eyes only for what was high and gaudy. They were looking up at the bows of the three-master. Its figurehead was extraordinary. Not only because it was covered in many square yards of gold leaf-that was common enough-but because of its sculpture. It was a face carved into the front of a bulbous golden sphere that seemed to be hurtling forth with utmost impetuosity, drawing behind it a vast swirling wake of golden, silver, and copper flames. It was, Daniel realized, an anthropomorphic phant’sy of a Comet or a great fiery-
“Meteor!” Roger announced. “Or Meteore, as her former owner, Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon, would have it.” Then, to the waterman, “Take us up and down the length of her, and then, when Dr. Waterhouse has finished his inspection, we shall board her by yonder ladder. Daniel, I do hope you are in the mood for some ladder-climbing.”
“I’d climb a rope to see this,” Daniel returned.
“Mmm…any sane man, given a choice between scaling a rope, and going to France on a Duke’s jacht, would choose the latter…so I shall take your remark as a commitment to be in Dunkirk in three days’ time,” said Roger.
EARLIER IN HIS LIFE DANIEL would have counted the guns of Meteore, but as it was he had eyes mostly for the woodcarving and the decoration. The shipwrights had made it appear that Meteore was draped and festooned from stem to stern with garlands of golden laurel. Victory spread her wings across the breadth of the sterncastle, and drew all those wreaths and festoons together in one hand like so many reins, while brandishing a sword in the other. Above the spreading wings was a row of windows. “Your cabin,” Roger explained, “where refreshment awaits us.”
They dined there on a roast quail prepared in Meteore’s galley, “which had to be gutted and re-built,” Roger said, “to remove the taint; for the late Duke had tastes abominable even to the French.” The azure tablecloth was embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis; Daniel suspected it might have been a flag once.
“Is this ship yours now, then, Roger?”
“Please do not be vulgar by speaking of ownership, Daniel; as everyone knows, she was taken as a prize from Cherbourg the last time the Frogs got ready to invade us, and became a trifle for the King to dispose of as he wished; he had thoughts of bestowing her upon his Queen, and so had her repaired-”
“What, the Queen?”
“The ship. But when smallpox took her from this world-the Queen, that is, not the ship-Meteore became a useless bauble, scarcely worth the upkeep-”
“You got this ship for free!?”
“Damn all Puritans and their base obsession with how much it costs!” Roger bellowed, shaking a tiny drumstick at Daniel’s brow as if it were the club of Hercules. “What matters is that the sentimental value of Meteore to the de Lavardac family is very great. And who should be in Dunkirk just now but Eliza de Lavardac.” Roger lost focus for some moments. “I hope it is not all true, what people say about her and the pox.”
Daniel had seen the only woman he’d ever loved chewed up and vomited out by smallpox, and urgently desired a change of subject. “I begin to understand. The Whigs are seen as the party of the Bank, and of War. The Bank is said to be foundering and the War has ground to a halt.”
“Mind you,” put in Roger with one more admonitory shake of the drumstick, “the Bank shall succeed immensely, and we shall prevail over the French, all in good time; but it would help us if we could avoid losing the next election to Harley and Bolingbroke and his lot.” Meaning the Tories.