Isaac was not even looking at him.
“What is your position?” Daniel asked.
“I desire what I have always desired,” Isaac said. “Your machinations with Baron von Leibniz have made it harder to get-for much of it is now locked up in a tomb in Clerkenwell, and promised to the Tsar. But Jack might yet have some. Ergo, I must redouble my pursuit of Jack.”
“What if a situation were to arise, Isaac, in which you were presented with a choice: on the one hand, striking a deal with Jack that would end the peril he poses to the currency and to the King, but leave you wanting what you seek. On the other, pursuing Jack to the bitter end in the hopes of getting his gold, but at the risk of failing the Trial of the Pyx?
“You ask questions like a Regent,” Isaac said.
“Like it or not, I am one, and must ask such questions. And the question boils down to this: Do you respect the authority of the King, or of Regents appointed to act in his stead, and do you place the Mint and the Currency above other, more personal interests? Or does the Philosoper’s Stone come first?”
“I find it astonishing that the son of Drake would even be capable of forming such a question in his mind, let alone asking it. Did you learn nothing from him?”
“You mistake me. I do not care a fig for the King. In this I am one with Drake. But Drake also taught me the value of money. I may not love money as much as some, but I do respect it. Do you?”
“Do you, Daniel, really believe that I left the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, and came to the Mint, solely out of an interest in numismatics?”
“Well answered,” Daniel said. “Since we agree it is in our interests to continue the pursuit of Jack, let us rejoin the others in back.”
YET ANOTHER NEW GUEST HAD come in through the alley-door, and joined the group in the back room, while Daniel and Isaac had been talking. He was a humble humble man, so hunched, so cringing in his posture that one might think Fellows of the Royal Society had waylaid him in the alley and surgically removed his collar-bones. He was kneading his hat to keep his hands from trembling. He smelled bad, and unlike many who do, he well knew it. Yet Mr. Threader was clapping him on the shoulder as if he were a favorite nephew being sworn in to the Bar. “I present Mr. Marsh!” Threader proclaimed. “Mr. Marsh has been the subject of the Clubb’s deliberations before.”
“I have forgotten those deliberations,” Daniel confessed, “and some of us have never heard them in the first place.”
“Infernal Devices require phosphorus,” Threader said, “and we have already heard from Mr. MacDougall about the large order he has recently placed for same. It shall lead, in coming weeks, to the boiling-down of a stupendous volume of urine.”
“We covered this in our meeting two days ago,” Daniel reminded him, “but who is Mr. Marsh?”
“The last time the Clubb attempted to trace the flow of urine from Town to Country, we deputized Monsieur Arlanc, the now infamous, to canvass the Vault-men of Fleet Ditch. He directed our attention to the sad tale of a particular Vault-man who, for reasons unexplained, had driven his load out into Surrey. There he ran afoul of some young blades who were so offended by the fragrance of the vehicle that they drew their swords, and slew his horse, on the spot, depriving the poor owner of his livelihood. Henry Arlanc claimed he had made inquiries, up and down the lower Fleet, as to where the unfortunate fellow might be found, and had been assured that he had gone off to dwell with his family far away.”
“Now I remember it,” Daniel said. “We threw up our hands and no more pursued this thread of the investigation.”
“Arlanc lied,” Mr. Threader proclaimed. “After he was led away in chains, I asked myself, could we credit the representations he had made to us concerning the Vault-man? Since then I have made inquiries of my own. Very little effort was required to learn the truth: the Vault-man had not fled the city after losing his horse, but had gone to work for another chap in the same line of work, and could be found on the brink of the Fleet any night of the week. Last night, I found him. I present to you Mr. Marsh.”
This actually produced a light round of applause-from the looks of it, not a familiar sound to the ears of Mr. Marsh.
“Long have I looked forward to asking you one question, Mr. Marsh,” said Orney. “On the night your horse was slain, what on earth had induced you to drive your load into Surrey?”
“I was to be paid, guv’nor,” said Mr. Marsh.
“Paid by whom?”
“By certain blokes in those parts who pay money for piss from time to time.”
“Who are they, and where do they live?”
“No one knows, guv’nor.”
“But if you bring them urine, and they pay you money, how can you not know?”
“You takes your wagon to a certain crossroads at midnight, and you blindfolds yourself. When they see you’re blindfolded, they come out of hiding, and get into the driver’s seat beside you without saying a word. Round and round and up and down and to and fro they drive, for an hour or more, so you’ve no notion of where you are. Finally you comes to a place where the wagon is emptied. Then they drive you back by the same mazy way you came. Off comes the blindfold. You’re back where you started. A purse of money is on the seat beside you.”
There was a silence as Mr. Marsh’s singular narration was considered. Then Newton spoke: “Your horse is slain. But what became of your wagon?”
“It is still in Surrey, guv’nor.”
“Then let us go and fetch it, and bring it to the Court of Technologickal Arts-assuming that Dr. Waterhouse gives his consent-for some repairs, and some alterations,” Isaac said. “I have an idea.”
Orney’s Ship-yard, Rotherhithe
MORNING OF 13 AUGUST 1714
DANIEL ARRIVED EARLIER THAN most, and sat on a bale of Bridewell oakum. It was not a bad place to await the other members of the Clubb. The day was perfect. Later he would be hot, but for the nonce his suit was perfectly matched to the warmth of the sun and the temperate breeze off the river. Before him, three great greased skids declined into the Thames. They had exhausted their burdens-the Tsar’s warships-and lay open to new projects. One of Orney’s shipwrights stood at the head of the middle way. When he did not move for some minutes, Daniel guessed that something must be wrong. But then the man shifted his weight, cocked his head minutely, froze for a few seconds, then hunched his shoulders and let his chin drop almost to his breast-bone. Daniel perceived, then, that the man was thinking. And it was no aimless woolgathering, but a sort of work. As some built ships in bottles, this man was building one inside of his skull; and if Daniel had the fortitude to remain on this perch for some weeks or months, why, he would see the vision in the shipwright’s mind take material form. A year hence, men would be sailing around on it! This Daniel found wondrous. He envied the shipwright. Not simply because he was a younger man but because he was being left alone in a quiet place to create something new, and, in sum, seemed, by grace or by craft, to have ensconced himself in a simpler and sweeter Story than the one Daniel was doomed to act out.
So much did he enjoy this interlude on the oakum, that he had to master a distinct flash of annoyance when the tick, tick, tick of a certain approaching wagon obtruded. The shipwright-lucky man-was free to ignore it. Daniel must attend.
The wagon was a great rank barrel mounted in a shallow wheeled box. Hunched on a plank bench at the front was a man, manipulating the reins of a single listless nag. He drove the rig down in to the middle of Orney’s yard, then leaned back and let his head loll. Members of the Clubb were converging from diverse places round the Establishment where they had been smoking pipes, bowling, chatting, or tending to their very important correspondence.
When Mr. Marsh-for it was he-recovered from his exhaustion sufficiently to open his eyes and have a look round, he found himself surrounded by most of the would-be Prosecutors he had met nine days earlier at the Kit-Cat Clubb. The only one missing was Kikin. But Kikin’s bodyguard was there, and so was Saturn. These two squatted down beneath the wagon and went to work with prybars. Another man in his position might have raised objections to having his wagon dismantled while was still sitting on it, but Mr. Marsh seemed past caring. Planks were removed from the vehicle’s flat underbelly; Saturn stood and tossed them into the bed of the wagon while the big Russian carefully extracted a smuggled burden from a hidden cavity. This looked, for a moment, like a bale of clothing; but presently it sprouted extremities, and began to stretch, writhe, and complain. The bodyguard stood it upright next to the wagon. The head of Mr. Kikin could now be seen, wigless, hatless, hairless, red-eyed, blinking, and emitting swear-words that would make Cossacks clap their hands over their ears and run home to their mothers. A wig was produced and jammed over Kikin’s pate. He was disgorging all manner of stuff from his pockets: paper scraps, pencil stubs, a compass, a watch.