“Is the Queen’s-pardon me, the King’s Own Black Torrent Guard not garrisoned at the Tower, and charged with guarding the coinage?” Orney inquired.
“Yes, but they are also under the command of Charles White,” said Newton.
“After Jack compromised the Pyx in April,” Daniel explained in an aside to Leibniz, “Bolingbroke made hay of it in Parliament, and said that this shewed the Whigs could not be trusted with the Mint. Thus did he gain authority over such matters.”
“Which he then delegated to White?”
“Indeed. Now, he is bound to be stripped of that authority when the Hanovers come in and the Whigs take power; but for now he commands both the King’s Messengers and the Black Torrent Guards; and he controls the Mint, and the Pyx.”
All faces had turned their way. Daniel’s sidebar with Leibniz had become the center of attention. Newton, in particular, was gazing into Daniel’s eyes, and had an expectant look about him.
“Since the events of a fortnight ago,” Daniel volunteered, “tensions between Whig and Tory, Hanover and Jacobite, have ebbed, but not altogether vanished. The troops of the Whig Association are still bivouacked all round the capital, ready to be called out in the event Bolingbroke attempts to seize power. Perhaps a company of such troops could be detailed to assist us in this matter. I shall make inquiries among men who have a say in such matters.”
The meeting went on for some little while after that, but in truth Daniel’s utterance had been the end of it. Isaac soon thought up a pretext for leaving. Kikin was gone a few minutes after that, and he took Leibniz with him so that they could transact unspecified Tsar-business en route. Threader and Orney were left to bait each other, as was their practice; though neither of them would dream of admitting to it, they had developed a kind of friendship.
Daniel and Saturn shared a water-taxi. Long before it reached London, Saturn had cause to regret this, for Daniel-who had been so content at the beginning of the day, sitting on his bale and watching the river flow by-had now become gloomy and brooding even by Saturnine standards. “Isaac will bring this to a head,” Daniel predicted. “Not for him the dodge, the accommodation, the quiet understanding. The armistice we made with Jack in the Black Dogg is forgotten. He must slay the bete noire. Ha! I wonder what he has in mind for me.”
Saturn had been squinting at some inconsequential thing on the river’s bank, hoping that his fellow-passenger would shut up if ignored long enough. This last remark, however, caused him to turn his head and fix his gaze on Daniel. “Why should he have anything in mind for you?”
“I am all that stands between him and the Solomonic Gold, or so he imagines.”
“Is it true?”
“The Tsar, and various of his minions, such as Monsieurs Kohan and Kikin, would have something to say about it, if Isaac confiscated the stuff,” Daniel allowed, “but they are far away, and not really part of Newton’s world. He will not take such persons into consideration. Me he will hate for having done the wrong thing.”
“What are the practical consequences of being so hated?” Saturn wondered.
Daniel thought of Hooke, and how Hooke’s legacy had disappeared. But if that happened after one was dead, did it really matter?
Saturn went on, “He is civil to you when the Clubb is together-”
“And I had wondered why, until today,” Daniel said. “Isaac no longer has the King’s Messengers and the Black Torrent Guard at his disposal. Bolingbroke has stripped him of the temporal power he had, or phant’sied he had, a few months ago. To act against Jack the Coiner, Isaac requires that sort of power-and I have got such power, at least indirectly, through Roger.”
“But why on earth,” asked Saturn, “should you consent to any such thing, if you hold it to be the case that Sir Isaac counts you as a foe, and would sweep you out of his way?”
“A perfectly sensible question,” said Daniel. “I think it is simple for him, complicated for me, snared as I am in a mare’s nest of compromises and accommodations, which to him would seem like one of those hair-balls we used to pull from cows’ bellies-a nasty mess that ought to be swept away. He’ll not be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of Bolingbroke, Charles White, Jack Shaftoe, Leibniz, and-if I’ve been so foolish as to get tangled up with ’em-me. Peter, I cannot summon anything like the fury of Newton, hot as a refiner’s fire. Perhaps I and the others really are nothing more than schlock to be raked off the top of his crucible and dumped on the ground to harden and blacken.”
Surrey
BEFORE DAWN, 15 AUGUST 1714
And armes shal stand on his parte, and thei shal pollute the Sanctuarie of strength, amp; shal take away the dailie sacrifice, amp; they shal set up the abominable desolation.
-DANIEL 11:31
When ye therefore shal se the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet, standing in the holie place (let him that readeth consider it). Then let them which be in Iudea, flee into the mountaines. Let him who is on the house top, not come downe to fetch anie thing out of his house. And he that is in the field, let not him returne back to fetch his clothes.
-MATTHEW 24:15-18
HE HATED TO BE LEADING troops across English soil. Ireland, Belgium, Holland, and France were the natural champs de Mars; armies roamed across and fed off them like sheep on English downs. But to lead a company of armed troopers across an English field made him reconsider his choice of profession.
That was, as he knew, confused and stupid thinking, for armies were no more natural and no more welcome in Belgium than they were here; but anyway it was how he felt. As always, he would be keeping those feelings to himself.
They had crossed over to Lambeth on the horse ferry two hours after midnight and marched, or rather walked, south on the Clapham road. The beating tromp of a proper march would be heard for miles across this drowsy landscape, and they did not want alarms to race across the countryside. So they had broken stride, separated into platoons, and made their way southwards, dividing and merging around the odd settlement. Watchmen, insomniacs, and busybodies who came out on to the road to pose troublesome questions, were told to mind their own business, and then asked for directions to Epsom. The strategy was to march faster than Rumor, but if some eager messenger were to get out ahead of them on horseback, they hoped he would spread the lie that they were going generally southwest. Which was just what they did, for some hours; but then, having gathered together in a dell off to the side of the way to eat their rations of biscuit, they executed a sharp change in direction, double-timed four miles eastwards along a road, then took to the fields. Scouts led them up and down gentle slopes that they could feel but not yet see. He thought there was rather more of up, than of down, but then it always felt thus to a tired infantryman. His ears were bad, and so he could not hear the rustling of leaves, but he sensed the presence of trees by their auras of stillness and of scent. These developed into copses that had to be circumvented, lest in walking through them the soldiers disperse, rustle leaves, and pop branches.
The light sifted down out of the sky like motes and flakes of ash from a burning city. At some point there was suddenly enough of it that he could make sense of the blobs and vestiges that, for the last hour or so, had marred the darkness. He stopped to look round. He had imagined, until now, that they had been marching across open ground, diverting around the occasional wood. But it was not like that. Trees grew more or less densely everywhere, and made it impossible to see more than a stone’s throw in any direction, except where a hill rolled up in the distance. Through the mottled shadow of the wood meandered a pale river: a way paved with grass that was becoming prickly and tinder-like in the summer heat. This chalky soil was as powerless to retain moisture as the fingers of a skeleton to hold money. It set off a hue and cry in his mind: he had marched a company into a high place where ponds and streams would not exist! In a few hours they would be out of water! He silenced these alarms by means of elaborate thinking and exhausting mental effort; ten paces later they started back up again, and reigned over his mind for an age. The thoughts became dry and worn-out, like straw that has been slept on too many times, and finally disintegrated in the first clear light of the morning.