Peter was inspecting one of his new warships, accompanied by most of his entourage and by the startled but game Mr. Orney.
“Those who know and love you anyway, assumed your absence was for good reason,” Daniel said. “Those courtiers who hold other opinions of you, had those opinions bolstered-if they noticed you were missing at all.”
Leibniz nodded. “In May I had been summoned to St. Petersburg to work on the establishment of the Russian Academy of Sciences,” he explained.
“Funny that I never get summoned on such errands.”
“It is not all as delightful as you suppose. The place is literally and figuratively a swamp. Peter wants to do everything personally.” Leibniz nodded at one of the new ships, which was still on the ways, ready to be launched; Peter was clambering up the rat-lines like a three-hundred-pound fly in a monstrous web, leaving his entourage on the deck below, helpless to do anything but cringe or applaud. “When he is out of town fighting the Swedes,” Leibniz continued, “which is most of the time, then nothing happens at all. Then, when he returns, he is outraged that his projects have stagnated, and wants everything done immediately. The result, anyhow, is that I could not work out a way to leave.” Here Leibniz trailed off and turned to look in the direction of the Tsar. His attention had been drawn thither, not by some sudden noise, but by its sudden absence. Peter Romanov had reached the mizzen-top and struck a pose there, peering through a perspective-glass as if he were commanding a naval engagement in the Baltic. As a matter of fact (as Leibniz had already mentioned to Daniel) he had been doing exactly that only a few days earlier, and his galley had the cannonball-holes and bloodstained decks to prove it.
But now Peter’s glass was aimed, not at the distant sails of some Swedish fleet, but at the two aged Natural Philosophers conversing in Orney’s yard below.
“Uh-oh,” said Leibniz.
“HIS TSARISH MAJESTY has commanded that the plates be brought forth,” confided Mr. Kikin to Daniel. For Kikin had dashed out from London as soon as he had got word that a Russian galley was approaching Rotherhithe and, to his credit, had only been struck catatonic for thirty seconds or so after he had walked into the ship-yard to be confronted with the spectacle of the Tsar of All the Russias debating the fine points of hull design with Mr. Orney. Now, he was acting as English interpreter.
“Which plates would those be?” Daniel asked.
“The very same ones we shipped to him, late in June,” Kikin said.
Up and out of the war-galley’s hold now came a solemn, and yet gaudy procession. First to emerge was the wig, the head, and then the body of a young gentleman, presumably of Peter’s household. But he seemed to have been pressed into service as a sedan-carrier, for his arms were straight down to his sides, and in each hand was the end of a pole, carven of an immense tusk, and capped at the end with gold. Close behind him emerged the burden supported by those ivory poles: not a sedan-chair after all, but a box. To call it a box was like calling Versailles a hunting-blind, for this object was wrought mostly of amber, and what was not amber was ivory or gold. At a glance, from a distance, Daniel guessed that the finest jewelers in Christendom had devoted years to carving it. Not that his old eyes could resolve the details from here; he could just tell that it must be so, for this seemed to be how Peter went about things. Succeeding the amber chest, and supporting the aft ends of the tusks, was an outlandish-looking chap whom Daniel pegged as a Cossack. And bringing up the rear was the elderly man with the long gray beard and the black skullcap whom Daniel had noted earlier standing next to Peter on the poop deck. He was a Jew. What made Daniel realize as much was his juxtaposition against this phantastickal box-on-poles, which looked like nothing so much as the Ark of the Covenant, reinterpreted by Russians, and re-wrought in Nordic media and French styles. It was borne through a hushed entourage and set down upon a crate.
Leibniz cleared his throat and spoke in a voice meant to be heard by all. “The plates for the Logic Mill, which you were so good as to send us some weeks ago, arrived at the Academy in St. Petersburg on the tenth of July (reckoning it in English dates). Your humble servant, and His Tsarish Majesty’s other representatives” (here he seemed to be looking at the old Jew) “have examined them thoroughly and reported to his majesty that they are in order.” Kikin was trying to relate all of this in Russian, but Peter seemed to know more or less what was being said, and went over to the amber box. He lifted its lid and made as if to toss it aside; the Cossack intercepted it before it struck the ground, bowed, and backed away. Peter reached into the chest’s velvet-lined interior and drew out several of the plates. The gold flashed in the midday light. Mr. Orney cringed and lifted his gaze to the public road that ran along the inland side of his shipyard. A sizable picket-line of mudlarks, freelance longshoremen, thief-takers, Black-guards, Vagabonds, bridle-culls, baggage-men, foot-scamperers, and runagates had already formed up there, like flies on the rim of a cider-glass.
Daniel was struck by a change in the appearance of the plates: while generally they seemed to have been well-treated, each of them was missing a piece. Someone had systematically sheared a fingernail-sized piece off the corner of each plate.
The Tsar noticed that Daniel had noticed. “I commanded Monsieur Kohan to assay the plates,” he explained via Kikin, and nodded at the aged Jew.
“Solomon Kohan at your service,” said the Jew in English. Beyond that, he had to resort to Latin to make himself understood. “Since none of the plates had holes punched in the corners, I reasoned that these corners were of no importance to the workings of your Logic Mill. And so I cornered, or quoined, each one of them, to try the fineness of your gold, as commanded by C?sar.”
All of which made sense to Daniel except for the reference to C?sar. Then he recollected that “Tsar,” or “Czar,” was simply a rendering into Russian of that ancient Latin title.
“And what did you report concerning the quality of the gold to C?sar?”
“The truth, of course.”
“Of course. But different men have different views as to what truth is, and I would fain know yours, sir.”
“No. The entire point of the assay is that it is not subject to opinion, taste, or debate. It is what it is.”
“You invoke the Tetragrammaton. And yet men may dispute the meaning even of that. What were your findings?”
“The same as yours, I’m sure.”
“That gold is gold?”
Peter broke in now, and there was a pause as Kikin translated: “The Tsar has decreed that, since the finest gold on earth was used to make the first batch of plates, with which he is well pleased, the remainder of the plates are to be made using the same stuff. What the hell do you suppose he means by that?”
Leibniz rolled his eyes. “Some have put it into his head that there exists a superior form of gold.” He regarded Solomon Kohan none too benignly.
Meanwhile Peter had been unburdening himself further. Kikin translated: “Every plate sent to St. Petersburg henceforth shall, before it is accepted, be quoined in the same manner by Solomon Kohan.”
“For your sake, and for your friend’s,” said Solomon to Daniel, with a glance toward Leibniz, “I hope you have an adequate supply of this type of gold.”
“Perfectly adequate, thank you,” said Daniel, and nodded at Minerva. He let a few moments elapse for Kikin to translate. By the time Daniel was ready to resume speaking, all the others had followed his gaze, and marked certain members of Minerva’s crew bringing up out of her hold flat packets of something heavy, wrapped in sack-cloth.