‘Yes, yes.’
‘But what if my mind had run further along the lines it had begun upon? What if there was an area of discovery I did not make public? Because instead of the eternal order of a divinely ordained planetary dance came the possibility of man-made chaos?’
‘Chaos, Sir Isaac?’
‘What if it wasn’t merely objects that were affected by the power of gravity? Not just apples and planets?’
‘I don’t understand, sir. You have shown to the world so brilliantly that gravity is the force that binds all things together and fixes their place and progress in the heavens. What else could gravity exert a force on?’
‘Well, light, perhaps,’ the old man said, glancing at a shaft of sunshine that had appeared through a gap in the curtains as if on cue. ‘Perhaps it might bend light.’
‘Could we then see round corners?’ Bentley enquired, unable to conceal a smile.
‘We might, sir, we might. And then there is something else again.’
‘What else?’
‘Chronos.’
‘Time?’
‘Yes, time, Master Bentley. What if gravity can bend time?’
Newton could not have known that the extraordinary idea that occurred to him in 1691 and which was to cause his mental breakdown the following year would lead directly to Hugh Stanton, a man born in 1989, saving the lives of a Muslim mother and her children in 1914. But what he could see, and see very clearly, was that there was nothing fixed or ordered about the future.
‘Tell me, Mr Bentley,’ Newton asked, staring at the dregs in his wine glass, which was empty once more, ‘if God gave you the chance to change one thing in history, would you do it? And if so, what would you change?’
5
THE PROGRESS OF the day had done nothing to lighten the skies over Trinity College. If anything, the storm raging above Great Court was gathering force. A rare warm thermal current, lost and directionless in the climatic chaos that had torn it from its ancient course, had brought rain among the snow and hail. The icicles hanging from the fountain in the middle of the quad had turned to silvery waterfalls, a grey and grimacing stone overbite of drooling needle teeth.
In the Master’s Lodge Professor McCluskey had been occupying her preferred position of hogging the fire while she told her story. Now she stumped across the room to the window and rubbed a spy hole in the condensation to look out.
‘Blimey,’ she muttered, peering into the violent and sodden gloom. ‘Now that is blooming weather.’
‘Never mind about the weather,’ Stanton replied. ‘Are you seriously telling me that Isaac Newton wrote you a letter?’
‘Yes, he did,’ McCluskey answered, throwing a triumphant fist into the air. ‘Not me personally, of course. The letter he left with Richard Bentley was addressed to the Master of Trinity, New Year’s Day, 2024. It was a sacred trust, to be handed down, unopened, from Master to Master until the appointed date. Imagine how surprised Bentley and old Isaac would have been if they’d known that three hundred years hence the recipient of the letter would be a woman! Now that would have shocked the crusty old buggers. Newton saw plenty standing on the shoulders of those giants he talked about but I doubt he foresaw that the Master of Trinity would be a smokin’ hot babe.’
McCluskey drew a pair of pendulous breasts in the film of water on the window, adding the curves of an hourglass figure on either side. ‘Good story, eh?’ she remarked, turning back towards the room. ‘Perfect for Christmas, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah, and I think “story” is probably the operative word here. Are you seriously telling me that the Masters of Trinity have held in their possession a letter and a box of papers from Isaac Newton for three hundred years and kept it secret?’
‘Of course,’ McCluskey said with genuine surprise, ‘just as I did after I took up my position, waiting for the appointed time. We are all Trinity men, even when we’re women. We had been given a trust.’
‘And not one of them, out of all those masters, even read it?’
McCluskey began clearing up the remains of the breakfast.
‘It’s possible, I suppose; took a peek and resealed it. But they would never have made what they saw public because to do so they’d also have to make public their betrayal. And since the information Newton left us is extremely time specific, there was nothing in it for them anyway. Finished?’
Stanton grabbed the last bit of bacon from his plate before handing it to her.
‘Nothing in it for them beyond a document of incalculable historical value,’ he said.
‘This is Cambridge, Hugh. Documents of incalculable historical value are pretty common here; we don’t get as excited about them as most people do. Newton sent lots of letters, many considerably pottier-sounding than the one I’m telling you about and most of them are gathering dust in the College library. People only ever want to see the Principia anyway. Just like they go to Rome and spend their entire holiday queuing to stand in a crowd and stare at the roof of the Sistine Chapel while the whole Ancient Empire lies scattered at their feet. Anyway, the point is the letter is genuine. I had it carbon-dated and the handwriting checked against known sources.’
‘OK then, I’ll buy it, professor,’ Stanton said. ‘So what did Newton say in his letter?’
‘I’ll read it if you like.’
McCluskey reached for the mantelpiece and took a creased and yellowing parchment from inside a Toby jug of William Gladstone. Then she dug a pair of thick, plastic reading glasses from the pocket of her greatcoat, blew a few strands of tobacco from the lenses and holding them before her face like pince-nez began to read.
‘To Whomsoever be Master of Trinity on New Year’s Day 2024 … That’s me!’ she said, interrupting herself gleefully. ‘Pretty cool, you have to admit. Newton wrote to me!’
‘Yes, I get it, prof.’
‘Just saying,’ McCluskey replied sniffily before turning once more to the letter … ‘Greetings! From three hundred years ago!’
‘Wow,’ Stanton observed.
‘Wow indeed,’ McCluskey agreed. ‘But it gets wowsier. Sir, be you old? Be you with few earthly ties? If so, then the contents of this box belong to you. Otherwise I charge you find another who is without dependants and pass this box to him for it is his business and not yours …’ McCluskey paused to refresh herself with tea and cognac. ‘Bit of luck I fitted the bill, eh? If I had a hubby and thirteen grandkids, I suppose I’d have been honourbound to pass it on.’
‘And would you have done?’
‘Don’t know. Fortunately I wasn’t put to the test. I think Newton knew he was on pretty safe ground there. Most of us Oxbridge Death Eaters are married to the gig … anyway, he goes on. Then, let you, or your designate, search about within the University for Professors and Fellows who are also with few ties. Find ye patriots and men of conscience. Find Classics scholars and those who have studied history, also mathematicians and Natural Philosophers. Men who have spent their lives in consideration of the Universe and its workings. And let them be old, their time remaining among earthly cares short. Find ye these companions even if you must include men of Oxford to do so. Oxford, Hugh! Imagine that? From a Trinity man! You can see how seriously he was taking it.’
Hugh shrugged. He’d always found the supposed rivalry between the two ‘elite’ universities a boring and unconvincing affectation. As far as he was concerned, they were just two halves of the same grimly pleased-with-itself institution. The way they went on about hating each other was really just a way of reminding the rest of the world that no one else mattered.