Royal Society Meeting, Gunfleet House

1673

“I RENEW MY OBJECTION—” said Robert Boyle. “It does not seem respectful to inventory the contents of our Founder’s guts as if they were a few keepsakes left behind in a chest—”

“Overruled,” said John Comstock, still President of the Royal Society—just barely. “Though, out of respect for our remarkably generous host, I will defer to him.”

Thomas More Anglesey, Duke of Gunfleet, was seated at the head of his drawing-room, at a conspicuously new gilt-and-white-enamel table in the barock style. Other bigwigs, such as John Comstock, surrounded him, seated according to equally barock rules of protocol. Anglesey withdrew a large watch from the pocket of his Persian vest and held it up to the light streaming in through about half an acre of window-glass, exceptionally clear and colorless and bubble-free and recently installed.

“Can we get through it in fifty seconds?” he inquired.

Inhalations all round. In his peripheral vision, Daniel saw several old watches being stuffed into pockets—pockets that tended to be frayed, and rimmed with that nameless dark shine. But the Earl of Upnor and—of all people—Roger Comstock (who was sitting next to Daniel) reached into clean bright pockets, took out new watches, and managed to hold them up in such a way that most everyone in the room could see that each was equipped, not just with two but three hands, the third moving so quickly that you could see its progress round the dial—counting the seconds!

Many hunched glances, now, toward Robert Hooke, the Hephaestus of the tiny. Hooke managed to look as if he didn’t care about how impressed everyone was—which was probably true. Daniel looked over at Leibniz, sitting there with his box on his lap, who had a soulful, distant expression.

Roger Comstock, noting the same thing: “Is that how a German looks before he bursts into tears?”

Upnor, following Roger’s gaze: “Or before he pulls out his broadsword and begins mowing down Turks.”

“He deserves our credit for showing up at all,” Daniel murmured—hypnotized by the movement of Roger Comstock’s second-hand. “Word arrived yesterday—his patron died in Mainz.”

“Of embarrassment, most likely,” hissed the Earl of Upnor.

A chirurgeon, looking deeply nervous and out of his depth, was chivvied up to the front of the room. It was a big room, this. Its owner, the Duke of Gunfleet, perhaps too much under the spell of his architect, insisted on calling it the Grand Salon. This was simply French for Big Big Room; but it seemed a little bigger, and ever so much grander, when the French nomenclature was used.

Even under the humble appellation of Big Big Room, it was a bit too big and too grand for the chirurgeon. “Fifty seconds!—?” he said.

There was a difficult interlude, lasting much longer than fifty seconds, as a helpful Fellow tried to explain the idea of fifty seconds to the chirurgeon, who had got stuck on the misconception that they were speaking of 1/52S—perhaps some idiom from the gambling world?

“Think of minutes of longitude,” someone called out from the back of the Big Big Room. “One sixtieth of that sort of a minute is called what?”

“A second of longitude,” said the chirurgeon.

“By analogy, then, one sixtieth of a minute of time is—”

“A second…of time,” said the chirurgeon; then was suddenly mortified as he ran through some rough calculations in his head.

“One thirty-six-hundredth of an hour,” called out a bored voice with a French accent.

“Time’s up!” announced Boyle, “Let us move on—”

“The good doctor may have another fifty seconds,” Anglesey ruled.

“Thank you, my lord,” said the chirurgeon, and cleared his throat. “Perhaps those gentlemen who have been the patrons of Mr. Hooke’s horologickal researches, and are now the beneficiaries of his so ingenious handiwork, will be so kind as to keep me informed, during my presentation of the results of Lord Chester’s post-mortem, as to the passage of time—”

“I accept that charge—you have already spent twenty seconds!” said the Earl of Upnor.

“Please, Louis, let us show due respect for our Founder, and for this Doctor,” said his father.

“It seems too late for the former, Father, but I assent to the latter.”

“Hear, hear!” Boyle said. This made the chirurgeon falter—but John Comstock stiffened him up with a look.

“Most of Lord Chester’s organs were normal for a man of his age,” the chirurgeon said. “In one kidney I found two small stones. In the ureter, some gravel. Thank you.”

The chirurgeon sat down very hastily, like an infantryman who has just seen puffs of smoke bloom from the powder-pans of opposing muskets. Buzzing and droning filled the room—suddenly it was like one of Wilkins’s glass apiaries, and the chirurgeon a boy who’d poked it with a stick. But the Queen Bee was dead, and there was disagreement as to who was going to be stung.

“It is what I suspected—there was no stoppage of urine,” Hooke finally announced, “only pain from small kidney-stones. Pain that induced Lord Chester to take solace in opiates.”

Which was as good as flinging a glass of water in the face of Monsieur LeFebure. The King’s Chymist stood up. “To have given comfort to the Lord Bishop of Chester in his time of need is the greatest honor of my career,” he said. “It would be an infamous shame if any of those other medicines he took, led to his demise.”

Now a great deal more buzzing, in a different key. Roger Comstock stood up and cut through it: “If Mr. Pepys would be so kind as to show us his stone…”

Pepys fairly erupted to his feet across the room and shoved a hand into a pregnant pocket.

John Comstock sent both men back down with cast-iron eyes. “It would not be a kindness, Mr., er, Comstock, as we’ve all seen it.”

Daniel’s turn. “Mr. Pepys’s stone is colossal—yet he was able to urinate a little. Considering the smallness of the urinary passages, is it not possible that a small stone might block urine as well as a large one—and perhaps better?”

No more buzzing now, but a deep general murmur—the point was awarded, by acclamation, to Daniel. He sat down. Roger Comstock ejaculated compliments all over him.

“I’ve had stones in the kidney,” Anglesey said, “and I will testify that the pain is beyond description.”

John Comstock: “Like something meted out by the Popish Inquisition?”

“I cannot make out what is going on,” said Daniel, quietly, to his neighbor.

“Well, you’d best make it out before you say anything else,” Roger said. “Just a suggestion.”

“First Anglesey and Comstock are united in disgracing Wilkins’s memory—then next moment, at each other’s throats over religion.”

“Where does that put you, Daniel?” Roger asked.

Anglesey, unruffled: “I’m sure I speak for the entire Royal Society in expressing unbounded gratitude to Monsieur LeFebure for easing Lord Chester’s final months.”

“The Elixir Proprietalis LeFebure is greatly admired at Court—even among young ladies who are not afflicted with exquisitely painful disorders,” said John Comstock. “Some of them like it so well that they have started a new fashion: going to sleep, and never waking up again.”

The conversation had now taken on the semblance of a lawn-tennis match played with sputtering granadoes. There was a palpable shifting of bodies and chairs as Fellows of the R.S. aligned themselves for spectation. Monsieur LeFebure caught Comstock’s lob with perfect aplomb: “It has been known since ancient times that syrup of poppies, in even small doses, cripples the judgment by day and induces frightful dreams by night—would you not agree?”

Here John Comstock, sensing a trap, said nothing. But Hooke answered, “I can attest to that.”

“Your dedication to Truth is an example to us all, Mr. Hooke. In large doses, of course, the medicine kills. The first symptom—destruction of judgment—can lead to the second—death by overdosing. That is why the Elixir Proprietalis LeFebure should only be administered under my supervision—and that is why I have personally taken pains to visit Lord Chester several times each week, during the months that his judgment was crippled by the drug.”

Comstock was annoyed by LeFebure’s resilience. But (as Daniel realized too late) Comstock had another goal in sight besides denting LeFebure’s reputation, and it was a goal that he shared with Thomas More Anglesey—normally his rival and enemy. A look passed between these two.

Daniel stood. Roger got a grip on his sleeve, but was not in a position to reach his tongue. “I saw Lord Chester several times in his final weeks and saw no evidence that his mental faculties were affected! To the contrary—”

“Lest someone come away with the foolish opinion that you are being unkind, Monsieur LeFebure,” Anglesey said—shooting a glare at Daniel—“did Lord Chester not consider this mental impairment a fair price to pay for the opportunity to spend a few last months with his family?”

“Oh, he paid that price gladly,” Monsieur LeFebure said.

“I collect that this is why we’ve heard so little from him in the way of Natural Philosophy of late—” Comstock said.

“Yes—and it is why we should overlook any of his more recent, er…”

“Indiscretions?”

“Enthusiasms?”

“Impulsive ventures into the lower realm of politics—”

“His mental powers dimmed—his heart was as pure as ever—and sought solace in well-meaning gestures.”

That was all the poisoned eulogies Daniel could stand to hear—then he was out in the garden of Gunfleet House watching a white marble mermaid vomit an endless stream of clear babble into a fish-pond. Roger Comstock was right behind him.

There were marble benches a-plenty, but he could not sit. Rage had taken him. Daniel was not especially susceptible to that passion. But he understood, now, why the Greeks had believed that Furies were angels of a sort, winged-swift, armed with whips and torches, rushing up out of Erebus to goad men unto madness. Roger, watching Daniel pace around the garden, might have convinced himself that his friend’s wild lunges and strides were being provoked by invisible lashes, and that his face had been scorched by torches.

“O for a sword,” Daniel said.

“Aw, you’d be dead right away if you tried that!”

“I know that, Roger. Some would say there are worse things than being dead. Thank god Jeffreys wasn’t in the room—to see me running out of it like a thief!” And here his voice choked and tears rushed to his eyes. For this was the worst part. That in the end he had done nothing—nothing—except run out of the Grand Salon.

“You’re clever, but you don’t know what to do,” Roger said. “I’m the other way round. We complement each other.”

Daniel was annoyed. Then he reflected that to be the complement of a man with as many deficiencies as Roger Comstock was a high distinction. He turned and looked the other up and down, perhaps with an eye towards punching him in the nose. Roger was not so much wearing his wig as embedded in its lower reaches, and it was perfect—the sort of wig that had its own staff. Daniel, even if he were the punching sort, could not bring himself to ruin anything so perfect. “You are too modest, Roger—obviously you’ve gone out and done something clever.”

“Oh, you’ve noticed my attire! I hope you don’t think it’s foppish.”

“I think it’s expensive.”

“For one of the Golden Comstocks, you mean…”

Roger came closer. Daniel kept being cruel to Roger, trying to make him go away, but Roger took it as honesty, implying profound friendship.

“Well, in any case it is certainly an improvement on your appearance the last time I saw you.” Daniel was referring to the explosion in the laboratory, which was now far enough in the past that both Daniel and Roger had their eyebrows back. He had not seen Roger since that night because Isaac, upon coming back to find the lab blown up, had fired him, and sent him packing, not just out of the laboratory, but out of Cambridge. Thus had ended a scholarly career that had probably needed to be put out of its misery in any case. Daniel knew not whither their Cinderella had fled, but he appeared to have done well there.

Roger plainly had no idea what Daniel was talking about. “I don’t recall that—did you meet me in the street, before I left for Amsterdam? I probably did look wretched then.”

Daniel now tried the Leibnizian experiment of rehearsing the explosion in the laboratory from Roger’s point of view.

Roger had been working in the dark: a necessity, as any open flame might set fire to the gunpowder. And not much of an inconvenience, since what he’d been up to was dead simple: grinding the powder in a mortar and dumping it into a bag. Both the sound, and the feel of the pestle in his hand, would tell when the powder had been ground to a fine enough consistency for whatever purpose Roger had in mind. So he had worked blind. Light was the one thing he prayed he wouldn’t see, for it would mean a spark that would be certain to ignite the powder. Attent on work and worry, he had never known that Daniel had come back to the house—why should he, since he was supposed to be watching a play? And Roger had not yet heard the applause and the distant murmur of voices that would signal its end. Roger had never heard Daniel’s approach, for Daniel, who’d phant’sied he was stalking a rat, had been at pains to move as quietly as possible. The heavy fabric screen had blocked the light of Daniel’s candle to the point where it was no brighter than the ambient furnace-glow. Suddenly the candle-flame had been in Roger’s face. In other circumstances he’d’ve known it for what it was; but standing there with a sack of gunpowder in his hands, he had taken it for what he’d most dreaded: a spark. He had dropped the mortar and the bag and flung himself back as quick as he could. The explosion had followed in the next instant. He could neither have seen nor heard anything until after he’d fled the building. So there was no ground to suppose he had ever registered as much as the faintest impression of Daniel’s presence. He’d not seen Daniel since.

And so Daniel was presented with a choice between telling Roger the truth, and assenting to the lie that Roger had conveniently proffered: namely, that Daniel had spied Roger in the street before Roger had departed for Amsterdam. Telling the truth held no danger, so far as he could see. The lie was attended with a small peril that Roger—who was cunning, in a way—might be dangling it before him as some sort of test.

“I thought you knew,” Daniel said, “I was in the laboratory when it happened. Had gone there to fetch Isaac’s paper on tangents. Nearly got blown to bits myself!”

Astonishment and revelation came out of Roger’s face like sudden flame. But if Daniel had owned a Hooke watch, he would have counted only a few seconds of time before the old look came back down over his face. As when a candle-snuffer pounces on a wild flame and the errant brilliance that had filled one’s vision a moment ago is in an instant vanished, the only thing left in its place a dull sight of old silver-work, frozen and familiar.

“I phant’sied I’d heard someone moving about in there!” Roger exclaimed. Which was obviously a lie; but it made the conversation move along better.

Daniel was keen to ask Roger what he’d been doing with the gunpowder. But perhaps it would be better to wait for Roger to volunteer something. “So it was to Amsterdam you went, to recuperate from the excitements of that evening,” Daniel said.

“Here first.”

“Here to London?”

“Here to the Angleseys’. Lovely family. And socializing with them has its benefits.” Roger reached up as if to stroke his wig—but dared not touch it.

“What, you’re not in their employ—?”

“No, no! It’s much better. I know things. Certain of the Golden Comstocks immigrated—all right, all right, some would say fled—to Holland in the last century. Settled in Amsterdam. I went and paid them a visit. From them, I knew that de Ruyter was taking his fleet to Guinea to seize the Duke of York’s slave-ports. So I sold my Guinea Company shares while they were still high. Then from the Angleseys I learned that King Looie was making preparations to invade the Dutch Republic—but could never stage a campaign without purchasing grain first—purchasing it you’ll never guess where.”

“No!”

“Just so—the Dutch sold France the grain that King Looie is using to conquer them! At any rate—I took my money from the Guinea Company shares, and took a large position in Amsterdam-grain just before King Looie bid the price up! Voilà! Now I’ve a Hooke-watch, a big wig, and a lot on fashionable Waterhouse Square!”

“You own—” Daniel began, and was well on his way to saying You own some of my family estate!? when they were interrupted by Leibniz, stalking through a flower-bed, hugging his brain-in-a-box.

“Dr. Leibniz—the Royal Society were quite taken with your Arithmetickal Engine,” Roger said.

“But they did not like my mathematickal proofs,” said one dejected German savant.

“On the contrary—they were acknowledged to be unusually elegant!” Daniel protested.

“But there is no honor in elegantly proving a theorem in 1672 that some Scotsman proved barbarously in 1671!”

“You could not possibly have known that,” Daniel said.

“Happens all the time,” said Roger, a-bristle with bogus authority.

“Monsieur Huygens should have known, when he assigned me those problems as exercises,” Leibniz grumbled.

“He probably did,” Daniel said. “Oldenburg writes to him every week.”

“It is well-known that GRUBENDOL is a trafficker in foreign intelligence!” announced Robert Hooke, crashing through a laurel bush and tottering onto a marble bench as vertigo seized him. Daniel gritted his teeth, waiting for a fist-fight, or worse, to break out between Hooke and Leibniz, but Leibniz let this jab at Oldenburg pass without comment, as if Hooke had merely farted at High Table.

“Another way of phrasing it might be that Mr. Oldenburg keeps Monsieur Huygens abreast of the latest developments from England,” Roger said.

Daniel picked up the thread: “Huygens probably heard about the latest English theorems through that channel, and gave them to you, Doctor Leibniz, to test your mettle!”

“Never anticipating,” Roger tidily concluded, “that fortunes of War and Diplomacy would bring you to the Britannic shore, where you would innocently present the same results to the Royal Society!”

“Entirely the fault of Oldenburg—who steals my latest watch-designs, and despatches ’em to that same Huygens!” Hooke added.

“Nonetheless—for me to present theorems to the Royal Society—only to have some gentleman in a kilt stand up in the back of the room, and announce that he proved the same thing a year ago—”

“Everyone who matters knows it was innocent.”

“It is a blow to my reputation.”

“Your reputation will outshine any, when you finish that Arithmetickal Engine!” announced Oldenburg, coming down a path like a blob of mercury in a trough.

“Any on the Continent, perhaps,” Hooke sniffed.

“But all of the Frenchmen who are competent to realize my conception, are consumed with vain attempts to match the work of Mr. Hooke!” Leibniz returned. Which was a reasonably professional bit of flattery, the sort of thing that greased wheels and made reputations in small Continental courts.

Oldenburg rolled his eyes, then straightened abruptly as a stifled belch pistoned up his gorge.

Hooke said, “I have a design for an arithmetickal engine of my own, which I have not had the leisure to complete yet.”

“Yes—but do you have a design for what you shall do with it, when it’s finished?” Leibniz asked eagerly.

“Calculate logarithms, I suppose, and outmode Napier’s bones…”

“But why concern yourself with anything so tedious as logarithms!?”

“They are a tool—nothing more.”

“And for what purpose do you wish to use that tool, sir?” Leibniz asked eagerly.

“If I believed that my answer would remain within the walls of this fair garden, Doctor, I would say—but as matters stand, I fear my words will be carried to Paris with the swiftness—though surely not the grace—of the winged-footed messenger of the gods.” Staring directly at Oldenburg.

Leibniz deflated. Oldenburg stepped closer to him, whilst turning his back on Hooke, and began trying to cheer the Doctor up—which only depressed him more, as being claimed, by Oldenburg, as an ally, would condemn him forever in Hooke’s opinion.

Hooke removed a long slim deerskin wallet from his breast pocket and unrolled it on his lap. It contained a neat row of slim objects: diverse quills and slivers of cane. He selected a tendril of whalebone—set the wallet aside—spread his knees wide—leaned forward—inserted the whalebone deep into his throat—wiggled it—and immediately began to vomit up bile. Daniel watched with an empiric eye, until he had made sure the vomit contained no blood, parasites, or other auspices of serious trouble.

Oldenburg was muttering to Leibniz in High-Dutch, of which Daniel could not understand a single word—which was probably why. But Daniel could make out a few names: first of Leibniz’s late patron in Mainz, and then of various Parisians, such as Colbert.

He turned round hoping to continue his conversation with Roger, but Roger had quietly removed himself to make way for his distant cousin the Earl of Epsom—who was stalking directly toward Daniel looking as if he would be happy to settle matters with a head-butting duel. “Mr. Waterhouse.”

“My Lord.”

“You loved John Wilkins.”

“Almost as a father, my lord.”

“You would have him revered and respected by future generations of Englishmen.”

“I pray that Englishmen will have the wisdom and discernment to give Wilkins his due.”

“I say to you that those Englishmen will dwell in a country with one Established Church. If, God willing, I have my way, it will be Anglican. If the Duke of Gunfleet has his, it will be the Roman faith. Deciding which might require another Civil War, or two, or three. I might kill Gunfleet, Gunfleet might kill me—my sons or grandsons might cross swords with his. And despite these fatal differences, he and I are as one in the conviction that no nation can exist without one Established Church. Do you imagine that a few Phanatiques can overcome the combined power of all the world’s Epsoms and Gunfleets?”

“I was never one for vain imaginings, my lord.”

“Then you admit that England will have an Established Church.”

“I confess it is likely.”

“Then what does that make those who stand in opposition to an Established Church?”

“I don’t know, my lord—eccentric Bishops?”

“On the contrary—it makes them heretics and traitors, Mr. Waterhouse. To change a heretic and a traitor into an eccentric Bishop is no mean task—it is a form of Transmutation requiring many Alchemists—hooded figures working in secret. The last thing they need is for a sorcerer’s apprentice to stumble in and begin knocking things over!”

“Please forgive my ineptitude, my lord. I responded impulsively, because I thought he was being attacked.”

“He was not being attacked, Mr. Waterhouse—you were.”

DANIEL LEFT ANGLESEY HOUSE and wandered blindly along Piccadilly, realized he was in front of Comstock House, veered away from that, and fled into St. James’s Fields—now parted into neat little squares where grass was trying to establish itself on the muck of construction. He sat on a plank bench, and slowly became aware that Roger Comstock had been following him the entire way, and that he’d (presumably) been talking the entire time. But he pointedly declined to bring his breeches into contact with the bench, a splintery improvisation strewn with pasty-flakes, pipe-ashes, and rat-shite.

“What were Leibniz and Oldenburg on about? Is German among the many things that you understand, Daniel?”

“I think it was that Dr. Leibniz has lost his patron, and needs a new one—with any luck, in Paris.”

“Oh, most difficult for such a man to make his way in the world without a patron!”

“Yes.”

“It seems as if John Comstock is cross with you.”

“Very.”

“His son is captain of one of the invasion-ships, you know. He is nervous, irritable just now—not himself.”

“On the contrary, I think I have just seen the real John Comstock. It’s safe to say that my career in the Royal Society is at an end—as long as he remains President.”

“Informed opinion is that the Duke of Gunfleet will be president after the next election.”

“That’s no better—for in their hatred of me, Epsom and Gunfleet are one man.”

“Sounds as though you need a patron, Daniel. One who sympathizes.”

“Is there anyone who sympathizes?”

“I do.”

This took a while to stop seeming funny, and to percolate inwards. The two of them sat there silently for a while.

Some sort of parade or procession seemed to be headed this general direction from Charing Cross, with beating of drums, and either bad singing or melodious jeering. Daniel and Roger got up and began wandering down towards Pall Mall, to see what it was.

“Are you making me some sort of proposal?” Daniel finally asked.

“I made a penny or two this year—still, I’m far from being an Epsom or a Gunfleet! I put most of my liquid capital into buying that parcel of land from your brothers…”

“Which one is it?”

“The large one on the corner there, just next to where Mr. Raleigh Waterhouse built his house…what think you of it, by the way?”

“Raleigh’s house? It’s, er…big, I suppose.”

“Would you like to put it in the shade?”

“What can you possibly mean?”

“I want to erect a bigger house. But I didn’t study my mathematics at Trinity, as you know only too well, Daniel—I need you to design it for me, and oversee the construction.”

“But I’m not an architect—”

“Neither was Mr. Hooke, before he was hired to design Bedlam and diverse other great Fabricks—you can bang out a house as well as he, I wager—and certainly better than that block-head who slapped Raleigh’s together.”

They’d come out into Pall Mall, which was lined with pleasant houses. Daniel was already eyeing their windows and roof-lines, collecting ideas. But Roger kept his eye on the procession, which was nearly upon them: several hundred more or less typical Londoners, albeit with a higher than usual number of Dissident, and even a few Anglican, preachers. They were carrying an effigy, dangling from the top of a long pole: a straw man dressed in ecclesiastical robes, but whorishly colored and adorned, with a huge mitre affixed to his head, and a long bishop’s crook lashed to one mitt. The Pope. Daniel and Roger stood to one side and watched for (according to Roger’s watch) a hundred and thirty-four seconds as the crowd marched by them and drained out of the street into St. James’s Park. They chose a place in clear view of both St. James’s Palace and Whitehall Palace, and planted the pole in the dirt.

Soldiers were already headed toward them from the Horse Guards’ compound between the two Palaces: a few forerunners on horseback, but mostly formations of infantrymen that had spilled out too hastily to form up into proper squares. These were in outlandish fantastickal attire, with long peaked caps of a vaguely Polish style.^* Daniel at first took them for dragoons, but as they marched closer he could see nippled cannonballs—granadoes!—dangling from their ox-hide belts and bandoliers, thudding against their persons with each step.

That detail was not lost on the crowd of marchers, either. After a few hasty words, they held torches to the hem of the Pope’s robe and set it afire. Then the crowd burst, granadoe-like. By the time those grenadiers arrived, the procession had been re-absorbed by London. There was nothing for the grenadiers to do but knock the

effigy down and stamp out the flames—keeping them well away from the grenades, of course.

“’Twas well-conceived,” was Roger Comstock’s verdict. “Those were Royal Guards—the Duke of York’s new regiment. Oh, they’re commanded by John Churchill, but make no mistake, they are York’s men.”

“What on earth do you mean when you say something like this was well-conceived? I mean, you sound like a connoisseur sipping the latest port.”

“Well, that Mobb could’ve burnt the Pope anywhere, couldn’t they? But they chose here. Why here? Couldn’t’ve chosen a more dangerous place, what with Grenadiers so near to hand. Well, the answer of course is that they wished to send a message to the Duke of York…to wit, that if he doesn’t renounce his Papist ways, next time they’ll be burning him in effigy—if not in person.”

“Even I could see, that night at Cambridge, that Gunfleet and the younger Angleseys are the new favorites at Court,” Daniel said. “While Epsom is lampooned in plays, and his house besieged by the Mobb.”

“Not so remarkable really, given the rumors…”

“What rumors?” Daniel almost added I am not the sort of person who hears or heeds such things, but just now it was difficult to be so haughty.

“That our indifferent fortune in the war is chargeable to faulty cannon, and bad powder.”

“What a marvellously convenient excuse for failure in war!”

Until that moment Daniel had not heard anyone say aloud that the war was going badly. The very idea that the English and the French together could not best a few Dutchmen was absurd on its face. Yet, now that Roger had mentioned it, there was a lack of good news, obvious in retrospect. Of course people would be looking for someone to blame.

“The cannon that burst at the ‘Siege of Maestricht,’” Daniel said, “do you reckon ’twas shoddy goods? Or was it a scheme laid by Epsom’s enemies?”

“He has enemies,” was all Roger would say.

“That I see,” said Daniel, “and, too, I see that the Duke of Gun-fleet is one of them, and that he, and other Papists, like the Duke of York, are a great power in the land. What I do not understand is why those two enemies, Epsom and Gunfleet, a few minutes ago were as one man in heaping obloquy on the memory of John Wilkins.”

“Epsom and Gunfleet are like two captains disputing command of a ship, each calling the other a mutineer,” Roger explained. “The ship, in this similitude, is the Realm with its established church—Anglican or Papist, depending on as Epsom’s or Gunfleet’s faction prevails. There is a third faction belowdecks—dangerous chaps, well organized and armed, but, most unnervingly, under no distinct leader at the moment. When these Dissidents, as they are called, say, ‘Down with the Pope!’ it is music to the ears of the Anglicans, whose church is founded on hostility to all things Romish. When they say, ‘Down with forced Uniformity, let Freedom of Conscience prevail,’ it gladdens the hearts of the Papists, who cannot practice their faith under that Act of Uniformity that Epsom wrote. And so at different times both Epsom’s and Gunfleet’s factions phant’sy the Dissidents as allies. But when the Dissidents question the idea of an Established Church, and propose to make the whole country an Amsterdam, why then it seems to the leaders of both factions that these Dissident madmen are lighting fuzes on powder-kegs to blow up the ship itself. And then they unite to crush the Dissidents.”

“So you are saying that Wilkins’s legacy, the Declaration of Indulgence, is a powder-keg to them.”

“It is a fuze that might, for all they know, lead to a powder-keg. They must stomp it out.”

“Stomping on me as well.”

“Only because you presented yourself to be stomped in the stupidest possible way—by your leave, by your leave.”

“Well, what ought I to’ve done, when they were attacking him so?”

“Bit your tongue and bided your time,” Roger said. “Things can change in a second. Behold this Pope-burning! Led by Dissidents, against Papists. If you, Daniel, had marched at the head of that Mobb, why, Epsom would feel you were on his side against Anglesey.”

“Just what I need—the Duke of Gunfleet as personal enemy.”

“Then prate about Freedom of Conscience! That is the excellence of your position, Daniel—if you would only open your eyes to it. Through nuances and shifts so subtle as to be plausibly deniable, you may have either Epsom or Gunfleet as your ally at any given moment.”

“It sounds cavilling and pusillanimous,” said Daniel, summoning up some words from the tables of the Philosophick Language.

Without disagreeing, Roger said: “It is the key to achieving what Drake dreamed of.”

“How!? When all the power is in the hands of the Angleseys and the Silver Comstocks.”

“Very soon you shall see how wrong you are in that.”

“Oh? Is there some other source of power I am not aware of?”

“Yes,” said Roger, “and your uncle Thomas Ham’s cellar is full of it.”

“But that gold is not his. It is the sum of his obligations.”

“Just so! You have put your finger on it! There is hope for you,” Roger said, and stepped back from the bench preparatory to taking leave. “I hope that you will consider my proposal in any event…Sir.”

“Consider it under consideration, Sir.”

“And even if there is no time in your life for houses—perhaps I could beg a few hours for my theatre—”

“Did you say theatre?”

“I’ve bought part interest in one, yes—the King’s Comedians play there—we produced Love in a Tub and The Lusty Chirurgeon. From time to time, we need help making thunder and lightning, as well as demonic apparitions, angelic visitations, impalements, sex-changes, hangings, live births, et cetera.”

“Well, I don’t know what my family would think of my being involved in such things, Roger.”

“Poh! Look at what they have been up to! Now that the Apocalypse has failed to occur, Daniel, you must find something to do with your several talents.”

“I suppose the least I could to is keep you from blowing yourself to pieces.”

“I can hide nothing from you, Daniel. Yes. You have divined it. That evening in the laboratory, I was making powder for theatrickal squibs. When you grind it finer, you see, it burns faster—more flash, more bang.”

“I noticed,” Daniel said. Which made Roger laugh; which made Daniel feel happy. And so into a sort of spiral they went. “I’ve an appointment to meet Dr. Leibniz at a coffee-house in the theatre district later…so why don’t we walk in that direction now?” Daniel said.

“PERHAPS YOU MIGHT HAVE STUMBLED across my recent monograph, On the Incarnation of God…”

“Oldenburg mentioned it,” Daniel said, “but I must confess that I have never attempted to read it.”

“During our last conversation, we spoke of the difficulty of reconciling a mechanical philosophy with free will. This problem has any number of resonances with the theological question of incarnation.”

“In that both have to do with spiritual essences being infused into bodies that are in essence mechanical,” Daniel said agreeably. All around them, fops and theatre-goers were edging away towards other tables, leaving Leibniz and Waterhouse with a pleasant clear space in the midst of what was otherwise a crowded coffee-house.

“The problem of the Trinity is the mysterious union of the divine and human natures of Christ. Likewise, when we debate whether a mechanism—such as a fly drawn to the smell of meat, or a trap, or an arithmetickal engine—is thinking by itself, or merely displaying the ingenuity of its creator, we are asking whether or not those engines have, in some sense, been imbued with an incorporeal principle or, vulgarly, spirit that, like God or an angel, possesses free will.”

“Again, I hear an echo of the Scholastics in your words—”

“But Mr. Waterhouse, you are making the common mistake of thinking that we must have Aristotle or Descartes—that the two philosophies are irreconcilable. On the contrary! We may accept modern, mechanistic explanations in physics, while retaining Aristotle’s concept of self-sufficiency.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical of that—”

“It is your responsibility to be skeptical, Mr. Waterhouse, no forgiveness is needed. The details of how these two concepts may be reconciled are somewhat lengthy—suffice it to say that I have found a way to do it, by assuming that every body contains an incorporeal principle, which I identify with cogitatio.”

“Thought.”

“Yes!”

“Where is this principle to be found? The Cartesians think it’s in the pineal gland—”

“It is not spread out through space in any such vulgar way—but the organization that it causes is distributed throughout the body—it informs the body—and we may know that it exists, by observing that information. What is the difference between a man who has just died, and one who is going to die in a few ticks of Mr. Hooke’s watch?”

“The Christian answer is that one has a soul, and the other does not.”

“And it is a fine answer—it needs only to be translated into a new Philosophical Language, as it were.”

“You would translate it, Doctor, by stating that the living body is informed by this organizing principle—which is the outward and visible sign that the mechanical body is, for the time being anyway, unified with an incorporeal principle called Thought.”

“That is correct. Do you recall our discussion of symbols? You admitted that your mind cannot manipulate a spoon directly—instead it must manipulate a symbol of the spoon, inside the mind. God could manipulate the spoon directly, and we would name it a miracle. But created minds cannot—they need a passive element through which to act.”

“The body.”

“Yes.”

“But you say that Cogitatio and Computation are the same, Doctor—in the Philosophical Language, a single word would suffice for both.”

“I have concluded that they are one and the same.”

“But your Engine does computation. And so I am compelled to ask, at what point does it become imbued with the incorporeal principle of Thought? You say that Cogitatio informs the body, and somehow organizes it into a mechanical system that is capable of acting. I will accept that for now. But with the Arithmetickal Engine, you are working backwards—constructing a mechanical system in the hopes that it will become impregnated from above—as the Holy Virgin. When does the Annunciation occur—at the moment you put the last gear into place? When you turn the crank?”

“You are too literal-minded,” Leibniz said.

“But you have told me that you see no conflict between the notion that the mind is a mechanickal device, and a belief in free will. If that is the case, then there must be some point at which your Arithmetickal Engine will cease to be a collection of gears, and become the body into which some angelic mind has become incarnated.”

“It is a false dichotomy!” Leibniz protested. “An incorporeal principle alone would not give us free will. If we accept—as we must—that God is omniscient, and has foreknowledge of all events that will occur in the future, then He knows what we will do before we do it, and so—even if we be angels—we cannot be said to have free will.”

“That’s what I was always taught in church. So the prospects for your philosophy seem dismal, Doctor—free will seems untenable both on grounds of theology and of Natural Philosophy.”

“So you say, Mr. Waterhouse—and yet you agree with Hooke that there is a mysterious consonance between the behavior of Nature, and the workings of the human mind. Why should that be?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, Doctor. Unless, as the Alchemists have it, all matter—Nature and our brains together—are suffused by the same Philosophick Mercury.”

“A hypothesis neither one of us loves.”

“What is your hypothesis, Doctor?”

“Like two arms of a snowflake, Mind and Matter grew out of a common center—and even though they grew independently and without communicating—each developing according to its own internal rules—nevertheless they grew in perfect harmony, and share the same shape and structure.”

“It is rather Metaphysickal,” was all Daniel could come back with. “What’s the common center? God?”

“God arranged things from the beginning so that Mind could understand Nature. But He did not do this by continual meddling in the development of Mind, and the unfolding of the Universe…rather He fashioned the nature of both Mind and Nature to be harmonious from the beginning.”

“So, I have complete freedom of action…but God knows in advance what I will do, because it is my nature to act in harmony with the world, and God partakes of that harmony.”

“Yes.”

“It is odd that we should be having this conversation, Doctor, because during the last few days, for the first time in my life, I have felt as if certain possibilities have been set before me, which I may reach out and grasp if I so choose.”

“You sound like a man who has found a patron.”

The notion of Roger Comstock as patron made Daniel’s gorge rise a bit. But he could not deny Leibniz’s insight. “Perhaps.”

“I am pleased, for your sake. The death of my patron has left me with very few choices.”

“There must be some nobleman in Paris who appreciates you, Doctor.”

“I was thinking rather of going to Leiden to stay with Spinoza.”

“But Holland is soon to be overrun…you could not pick a worse place to be.”

“The Dutch Republic has enough shipping to carry two hundred thousand persons out of Europe, and around the Cape of Good Hope to the furthermost islands of Asia, far out of reach of France.”

“That is entirely too phantastickal for me to believe.”

“Believe. The Dutch are already making plans for this. Remember, they made half of their land with the labor of their hands! What they did once in Europe, they can do again in Asia. If the last ditch is stormed, and the United Provinces fall under the heel of King Louis, I intend to be there, and I will board ship and go to Asia and help build a new Commonwealth—like the New Atlantis that Francis Bacon described.”

“For you, sir, such an adventure might be possible. For me, it can never be anything more than a romance,” Daniel said. “Until now, I’ve always done what I had to, and this went along very well with the Predestination that was taught me. But now I may have choices to make, and they are choices of a practical nature.”

“Whatever acts, cannot be destroyed,” said the Doctor.

Daniel went out the door of the coffee-house and walked up and down London for the rest of the day. He was a bit like a comet, ranging outwards in vast loops, but continually drawn back toward certain fixed poles: Gresham’s College, Waterhouse Square, Cromwell’s head, and the ruin of St. Paul’s.

Hooke was a greater Natural Philosopher than he, but Hooke was busy rebuilding the city, and half-deranged with imaginary intrigues. Newton was also greater, but he was lost in Alchemy and poring over the Book of Revelation. Daniel had supposed that there might be an opportunity to slip between those two giants and make a name for himself. But now there was a third giant. A giant who, like the others, was distracted by the loss of his patron, and dreams of a free Commonwealth in Asia. But he would not be distracted forever.

It was funny in a painful way. God had given him the desire to be a great Natural Philosopher—then put him on earth in the midst of Newton, Hooke, and Leibniz.

Daniel had the training to be a minister, and the connections to find a nice congregation in England or Massachusetts. He could walk into that career as easily as he walked into a coffee-house. But his ramble kept bringing him back to the vast ruin of St. Paul’s—a corpse in the middle of a gay dinner-party—and not just because it was centrally located.