“I am defenseless against your japes. But as we are not within earshot of anyone, please avail yourself of this opportunity to speak plainly.”
“Very well. I know many things, Mr. Waterhouse, because I make it my business to converse with fellows like those-we trade news as fervidly as traders swapping stocks on the ‘Change. And one thing I know is that Isaac Newton is in London to-night.”
It struck Daniel as bizarre that John Churchill should even know who Isaac was. Until Churchill continued, “Another thing I know is that Enoch turned up in our city a few days ago.”
“Enoch the Red?”
“Don’t act like an imbecile. It makes me distrustful, as I know you are not one.”
“I take such a dim view of the Art that my heart denies what my mind knows.”
“That is just the sort of thing you would say if you were one of them, and wished to hide it.”
“Ah. Now I perceive what you meant with your talk of chess-pieces and colors-you think I am hiding the red robes of an Alchemist beneath these weeds?! What a thought!”
“You’d have me just know that the notion is absurd? Pray tell, sir, how should I know it? I’m not learned as you are, I’ll admit it; but no one has yet accused me of being stupid. And I say to you that I do not know whether you are mixed up in Alchemy or no.”
“It is vexing to you,” Daniel thought aloud, “not to follow it.”
“More than that, it is alarming. In a given circumstance, I know what a soldier will do, what a Puritan will do, what a French cardinal or a Vagabond will do-certain ones excepted-but the motives of the esoteric brotherhood are occult to me, and I do not love that. And as I look forward to being a man of moment in the new order-”
“Yes, I know, I know.” Daniel sighed and tried to gather himself. “Really, I think you make too much of them. For never have you seen such a gaggle of frauds, fops, ninehammers, and mountebanks.”
“Which of these is Isaac Newton?”
The question was like a bung hammered into Daniel’s gob.
“What of King Charles II? Which was His Majesty, ninehammer or mountebank?”
“I have to go and talk to them anyway,” Daniel finally said.
“If you can penetrate that cloud, Mr. Waterhouse, I shall consider myself obliged to you.”
“ Howobliged?”
“What is on your mind?”
“If an earl dies on a night such as this, might it be overlooked?”
“Depends on the earl,” Churchill said evenly. “There will be someone, somewhere, who’ll not be of a mind to overlook it. You must never forget that.”
“I entered from the river tonight,” Daniel said.
“This is an oblique way of saying, you came in through the Traitor’s Gate-?”
Daniel nodded.
“I arrived from the land, as you can see, but there shall be many who shall say that I passed through the same portal as you.”
“Which puts us in the same boat,” Daniel proclaimed. “Now they say that there’s no honor among thieves-I wouldn’t know-but perhaps there may be a kind of honor among traitors. If I’m a traitor, I’m an honorable one; my conscience is clear, if not my reputation. So now I am holding my hand out to you, John Churchill, and you may stand there eyeing it all night long if you please. But if you would care to stand behind me and shore me up as I look into this question of Alchemy, I should like it very much if you took that hand in yours and shook it, as a gentleman; for as you have noticed the esoteric brotherhood is powerful, and I cannot work against it without a brotherhood of sorts to stand with me.”
“You have entered into contracts before, Mr. Waterhouse?” asked Churchill, still appraising Daniel’s out-stretched hand. Daniel could sense Bob Shaftoe looking at them from one end of the causeway.
“Yes, as when working as an architect, et cetera. ”
“Then you know every contract involves obligations reciprocal. I might agree to ‘shore you up’ when you are undermined-but in return I may call upon you from time to time.”
Daniel’s hand did not move.
“Very well, then,” said Churchill, reaching out across smoke, damp, and dark.
CHARINGCROSSwas strewn with bonfires. But it was the green one that caught Daniel’s eye.
“M’Lord Upnor’s town-house lies this way,” shouted Bob Shaftoe, pointing insistently in the direction of Piccadilly.
“Work with me, Sergeant,” Daniel said, “as if I were a guide taking you on a hunt for strange game of which you know nothing.” They began to push their way across the vast cosmos of the square, which was crowded with dark matter: huge mobs pressing in round bonfires, singing Lilliburlero, and diverse knaves who’d come up out of Hogs-den to prey upon ’em, and patchwork mutts fighting over anything that escaped the attention of the knaves. Daniel lost sight of the green flames for a while and was about to give up when he saw red flames shooting up in the same place-not the usual orange-red but an unnatural scarlet. “If we should become separated, I shall meet you at the northern end of the Tilt Yard where King Street loses itself in the Cross.”
“Right you are, Guv.”
“Who was that boy I saw you talking to before the Bulwark, as we were leaving the Tower?”
“A messenger from Bob Carver.”
“Ah, what news from him?”
“The house of Jeffreys is boarded up, and dark.”
“If he went to the trouble of having it boarded up, then he’s done a proper job.”
“It’s as we reckoned it, these many weeks ago, Guv,” Bob answered, “Jeffreys planned his departure well.”
“Well for us. If he fled in a panic, how would we find him? Has Mr. Carver any other news?”
“The intent was not to supply us with news, so much as to impress on us what a hard-working and diligent bloke he is.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Daniel said, distracted by a rage of blue flame up ahead.
“Fireworks?” Bob guessed.
“Some plan their departures better than others,” Daniel answered.
Finally they reached the southwestern margin of the square, where King Street bent round into Pall Mall, and the view of the park and the Spring Garden was screened by an arc of town-houses that seemed to bulge out into Charing Cross, like a dam holding back pressure behind. The bonfire that kept changing its color was planted before those houses, a bow-shot away. This one was not surrounded by any crowd. This might’ve been because the true center of drinking, singing, and sociability lay elsewhere, up towards Haymarket, or perhaps it could be laid to the fact that this fire sputtered evilly and let off vile smells. Daniel fell into orbit round it, and saw books, maps, and wooden boxes being dismantled and dissolved in the flames. A chest was being devoured, and small glass phials spilled out of it a few at a time, bursting in the heat to release jets of vapor that sometimes exploded in brilliant-colored flames.
Bob Shaftoe nudged him and pointed toward one of the town-houses. The front door was being held open by a servant. Two younger servants were lugging a portmanteau out and down the front steps. The lid was half open and papers and books were spilling out. The servant who had held the door open let it fall to and then scurried after the others, picking up what they’d let drop, and stuffing it all together in a great wad, a double armload, which rested comfortably on his belly as he waddled across the dirt towards the fire. It looked as if he were planning to fling himself headlong into the particolored inferno, but he stopped just short and with a final grand belly-thrust projected the load of goods into the flames. A moment later the other two caught up with him and heaved the portmanteau right into perdition. The fire dimmed for a minute, seeming taken aback, but then the flames began to get their teeth into the new load of fuel, and to whiten as they built heat.