“How convenient!” Saturn scoffed. “What, are we to believe this Alchemist lurks in Bedlam’s shadows just waiting for someone to give up the ghost during an impromptu tabletop lithotomy?”
“The truth is not so fanciful. He had been present, earlier in the evening, for a social gathering. He overstayed to keep an eye on the procedure,” Daniel said. This much was not written down on the page-it came from Daniel’s memory.
“A social gathering-the oft-mentioned premature going-away party, perhaps!” Saturn said. He meant it as a jest. But neither Daniel nor Isaac laughed.
Daniel continued with the translation: “Hooke had in this room a Reverberatory Furnace, which was already hot for another experiment. The Alchemist went to work in some haste, using some chymicals from Hooke’s own cupboard-which I can testify was well-stocked. For example, he used something that is rendered, on this page, as a bone-cube-cup…”
“Hooke must have meant a cupel.”
“Ah, well done, Isaac. A cupel, and certain materials that he carried on his person in a small wooden chest. The receipt is not easy to translate-I too shall have to revise Wilkins.” He skipped a page, then another. “The result: a small quantity of a light-bearing compound. Placed in the mouth of the dead patient, it caused his heart to resume beating, and cured him of his shock. Several minutes after, he came awake, and professed to have no memory of what had transpired. The Alchemist had by then departed, taking all the residues of the receipt with him. Hooke set it down as best he could from his recollections.”
“This explains much,” said Sir Isaac Newton, eyeing Daniel very oddly indeed. Daniel hardly cared; he had leaned back flaccid against the wall, and was gazing mindlessly at the oculus of silver light in the cupola. He felt no more alive than stone Melancholy.
“Yes, it does!” Saturn returned, “we now know what John Doe was looking for!” Then he shut up and swallowed hard, noting the odd, wordless tension joining Daniel to Isaac. “Or were you referring to something else?”
IN BOSTON DANIEL had known many Barbadian slaves, bred in the Caribbean from stock imported, a generation earlier, by the Duke of York’s Royal Africa Company. They were the most superstition-ridden people he had ever met. It seemed that the most flimsy and volatile elements of African culture had survived the Middle Passage, even as the ballast of history and wisdom had been chucked overboard. Exported to northerly outposts, these slaves stepped off the gangplanks bedizened with voudoun fetishes and spouting the most bizarre words and phrases-’twas as if they lived in a perpetual hallucination. When such persons were placed in the households of literal-minded Puritans inclined to see devils and imps everywhere, the result was poisonous-as several Salemites had learned.
One phrase that Daniel had heard, more than once, from some such slaves, was dead man walking. It came out of a belief, endemic to the Caribbean, that corpses could be re-animated through sorcery, and made into sleep-walking Myrmidons who would do the sorcerer’s bidding.
It was impossible for Daniel to bar such thoughts from his mind for a little while. He was as helpless, as susceptible, as a man being tumbled in the Machine for Calming Violent Lunaticks. He was, if not a Dead Man Walking, then a Dead Man Sitting on his Arse for at least a quarter of an hour, as Saturn and his lads began to pack up the Hooke treasure and make it ready for shipment.
Gradually, that part of his mind where Enlightenment virtues were enshrined got the better of that part where grotesque supersitions waited for opportunities to jump out of the shadows and shout, “Boo!”
Precisely what Enoch Root was, was not known to Daniel. But Root most certainly was not a voudoun sorcerer. If he had ministered, in some wise, to Daniel following his lithotomy, he had not done so by necromancy. More likely, Daniel had not actually died, but gone into a coma, and Root had brewed up a stimulant to bring him back. It might have been as simple as smelling salts. Seeing which, Hooke-who was gullible about quack medicines-had let his imagination carry him off.
It was amusing, though, that Daniel had written Root a letter, just the other day, stating his opinion that he, Daniel, was not likely to survive the next few weeks.
Isaac’s repetition of the phrase “Crane Court” broke in on Daniel’s reverie. While Daniel had drifted away, Isaac had stepped in and begun issuing writs. He was telling them to take all of Hooke’s treasures away to the headquarters of the Royal Society-precisely what Hooke had not wanted.
“Speaking as one who lives in the attic of the Royal Society,” Daniel said, “I can witness that there is no room there. None.”
“We can always make room,” Isaac pointed out, “by rubbishing some beetles.”
“But we do not wish to in this case,” Daniel insisted.
“Where do you propose to take it, then?” Isaac asked, and sharp was his gaze on the document in Daniel’s hands.
Before he forgot about this, Daniel folded it up the middle and slipped it into his breast pocket. “I propose it be stored at my lord Ravenscar’s house,” he said. “I go there frequently on Longitude and other business, so I can always get to it there. And as your niece is mistress of the household, you too may visit whenever you please.”
“Then it were no different from keeping it at Crane Court.”
“Pray walk with me, Isaac, to pay a call on Mr. John Doe, and I shall explain it as we go.” Daniel rose to his feet, and found that he was as alive as he’d ever been. A live man walking.
“THE PIECE OF INFORMATION you are lacking,” Daniel explained as they strolled down the gallery, “is that I suspect Henry Arlanc of involvement with the Infernal Devices.”
“What, the porter?”
“Yes.”
“But he is a member of the Clubb, is he not?”
“Indeed. I saw to it that he was made a member, on the pretext that he was nearly killed by the first Infernal Device, and so was as much a victim as any of us. But really I did so because I suspected him.”
“On what grounds?”
“First: shortly after I arrived in London, some months ago, I began to make inquiries about the location of Hooke’s papers and instruments. Henry Arlanc was the first man I asked. Not long after, I learned that word of my interest had spread through the demimonde with incredible rapidity, which made me suspect that Henry had talked to someone. Second: supposing that you, Isaac, were the intended victim of the first Infernal Device-that this was an attempt by Jack the Coiner to assassinate you, his most formidable foe-how would Jack have known that it was your habit to work late Sunday evenings at Crane Court? For you went to some pains to prevent this from being widely known, specifically so that you would not be disturbed by favor-seekers. Only Arlanc and a few others knew of this.
“Then I should say you have evidence enough, already, to prosecute Arlanc.”
“But I would rather use Arlanc, somehow, to draw Jack out,” Daniel returned. “We ought to do nothing that would make Arlanc phant’sy he is under suspicion. But it were obvious folly to place the items found today in the house where Arlanc dwells!”
“Very well. To the Temple of Vulcan they shall go, and I shall send a note to Catherine directing her to place them under lock and key. There is a vault in the cellar-”
“Can’t think of a better place,” Daniel said.
“I hope it is now plain to you that Threader is a villain,” Isaac said. “Whatever evidence you may have to implicate Arlanc, is as nothing beside the fact that the Device was secreted on Threader’s baggage-wain.”