The Serjeant at Arms Attending the Great Seal comes out in to the yard and summons Daniel’s contingent. They troop into the Palace and enter presently into Star Chamber. Last time Daniel was in this place, he was tied to a chair and being tortured for sport by Jeffreys. Today the scene’s a bit different. The furniture has been removed or pushed to the walls. In the middle of the chamber, planks have been laid down to protect the floor, and bricks piled atop them to make a platform at about the height of a man’s midsection. Resting atop this is a small furnace, similar to the one in which Daniel melted his ring last night. Someone must have been up tending it since the wee hours, for it’s already heated through, cherry red, and ready to go.
They pass out into a side chamber. Marlborough’s here, seated at the high end of a table along with the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the new First Lord of the Treasury-Roger’s replacement-and other Lords of the Council. Seated in the middle of the table, facing the door, and flanked by clerks and aides, is a chap in a white judicial wig, a three-cornered baron’s hat, and black robes. This, Daniel reckons, would be the King’s Remembrancer: one of the most ancient positions in the Realm. He is the keeper of the Seal that is the sine qua non of the power of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in the King’s name he rides herd on the Exchequer in diverse ways-including presiding over Trials of the Pyx.
Such a Trial cannot even get underway without the necessaries that it has been Daniel’s honor to fetch from the Abbey vault. And so what occurs next, encrusted as it might be with protocol and ceremony, is ever so straightforward: Daniel and the other five Key-holders are summoned to the table. The King’s Remembrancer asks for the Indentures, the Weights, and the Plates. These are handed over, but not before Daniel and the others have sworn on stacks of Bibles that they are the genuine articles. One of the King’s Remembrancer’s Clarkes opens up the chest containing the trial plates. There are two of these, one of silver and one of gold: slabs of metal inscribed with great hairballs of cursive asserting just how fine and just how authentic they are, and pocked here and there with goldsmiths’ seals. The Clarke reads these aloud. Another contingent of blokes is summoned and sworn: these have come from his majesty the King’s Treasury at Westminster, whence they’ve fetched out a little chest, sealed shut with a lump of wax. The seal is that of the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor himself is hauled in, at the head of a jury of twelve Citizens, Mr. Threader among them. The Lord Mayor verifies the seal on the chest. It is opened and a die is removed from a velvet bed. The die is compared, by the Mayor and the Citizens, to the stamps on the trial plates, and all agree that the match is perfect. These are indeed the true plates made by the Goldsmiths as a challenge to Sir Isaac Newton; the Trial may proceed.
Similar rites attend the box of weights. This is lined in green velvet, with neat depressions to contain the individual weights: the largest, a full pint or so of brass, marked 500 shillings and much smaller ones for 1 shilling and 4 pence and one pence, amp;c., amp;c., and finally a set of ivory-handled tweezers for manipulating the tiniest of them.
“Summon the Goldsmiths,” intones the King’s Remembrancer. To Daniel and his coterie, he says, “You may stand over there,” and waves at an open space in the corner. Daniel leads the group over, and turns around to find the eyes of the Duke of Marlborough on him: a reminder-as if Daniel needed any-that this is it. The new System is facing its first test, and it’s doing so under the most adverse possible circumstances: a sick and possibly demented Alchemist is in charge of the Mint and a Vagabond has tampered with the Pyx and is now going to meet his Maker without having coughed up the evidence they want. And Roger’s no longer around to make it all better.
The Stone Anvil, the High Hall,
Newgate Prison
“I HAVE FOUND GOD!” Jack Shaftoe announces.
“What, here!?” says his interlocutor, a heavy-set chap in a black leather hood.
They are standing in a queue in the High Hall. Or rather Jack Shaftoe is, and the hooded man has come up to him, the better to inspect Jack’s Hanging-Suit.
The High Hall might be a bit of a grand name for it. It is simply the biggest room in the gaol, outside of the Chapel, and so it is where fitness-conscious felons come to toddle around, in an endless ragged procession. The center of their orbit is a block of stone set in the middle of the floor, and equipped with a few basic smithy-tools. Normally they are a wordy bunch, the Hall a hurricanoe of profanity, a Vortex of Execration. Today they are gagged by their own amazement. All stare inwards toward the two most famous Jacks in London: Shaftoe and Ketch, exchanging civilities like Addison and Steele. There is no sound except for the scraping of their chains on the floor, and the organized chants of the Mobb outside.
Then an ear-splitting clang sounds from the stone anvil. Another prisoner has just had his ankle-fetters struck off. The only restraint upon him now is a length of cord with which Ketch has lately bound his elbows together behind his back.
“The communion-bread, you know, is in the shape of coins,” Shaftoe remarks.
Then he thinks better of it, for Ketch thinks it’s funny, and forgets himself, and exposes his empty tooth-sockets, as well as a few that are soon to be empty. For the hood unfortunately stops at the level of his nose. Somewhere, Ketch must have a whole foot-locker filled with false teeth, as no man in London is in a better position to collect them; but he has not worn any today.
“But how richer a treasure are those coins of bread, than ones of gold!” Shaftoe exclaims. “For gold and silver may buy admission to a Clubb, or other place of debauchery. But coins of bread have bought me admission to the Kingdom of Heaven. Assuming I can manage a few things in the next couple of hours.”
Ketch has utterly lost interest. How many times has he heard this identical speech from a client? He excuses himself very civilly, jumps to the head of the queue, and devotes a few moments to pinioning the next prisoner’s elbows with another length of cord.
When Ketch comes back, it is evident he has been thinking about Jack’s Hanging-Suit. “After this,” he remarks, “it will not be possible for you to change clothes.”
“Oh, you are a subtile one, Jack Ketch!” Shaftoe remarks.
“It is just that-according to some who style themselves in the know-you are destitute.”
“You think I borrowed this suit!? Fie on all such gossip-mongers, Mr. Ketch, you know better than to pay heed to them. This suit is every bit as much my own property, as that handsome hood is yours.”
Another clang. Ketch excuses himself again and binds up the bloke who’s directly in front of Jack. While he is doing so, he sniffles once or twice, juicily, as if the air in the High Hall does not agree with him. But of all men in London, Ketch must be the least sensitive to miasmas, damps, and vapours.
When Ketch turns back round, Shaftoe’s startled, and even a bit alarmed, to see, below the fringe of the hood, a teardrop trickling down his cheek. Ketch steps close to Shaftoe, close enough that Shaftoe, craning his neck (for Ketch is a head taller) can resolve individual cavities in Ketch’s last remaining incisor. “You can’t imagine what this means to me, Mr. Shaftoe.”
“No, I cannot, Mr. Ketch. What does it mean to you?”
“I’m in debt, Mr. Shaftoe, deep in debt.”
“You don’t say!”
“My Betty-the missus-can’t stop having little ones. Every year for the last eight.”
“You have eight little Ketches? How remarkable, that a man in your line of work should be such a fount of new life.”