“The Africans cannot propagate, ” said a familiar voice, startlingly close.
“What do you mean? They can do so as well as anyone,” said a different familiar voice. “Perhaps better!”
“Not without Neeger women.”
“You don’t say!”
“You must remember that the planters are short-sighted. They’re all desperate to get out of Jamaica-they wake up every day expecting to find themselves, or their children, in the grip of some tropical fever. To import female Neegers would cost nearly as much as to import males, but the females cannot produce as much sugar-particularly when they are breeding.” Daniel had finally recognized this voice as belonging to Sir Richard Apthorp-the second A in the CABAL.
“So they don’t import females at all?”
“That is correct, sir. And a newly arrived male is only usable for a few years,” Apthorp said.
“That explains much of the caterwauling that has been emanating lately from the ‘Change.”
The two men had been sitting together on the steps of the fountain, facing toward the Gate, and Daniel hadn’t seen them until he’d drawn close enough to hear them. He was just getting ready to shift direction, and swing wide around the fountain, when the man who wasn’t Sir Richard Apthorp stood up, turned around, and dipped a goblet into the fountain-and caught sight of Daniel standing there flat-footed. Now Daniel recognized him-he was only too easy to recognize in a dark Trinity courtyard with blood on his hands. “I say!” Jeffreys exclaimed, “is that a new statue over there? A Puritan saint? Oh, I’m wrong, it is moving now-what appeared to be a Pillar of Virtue, is revealed as Daniel Waterhouse-ever the keen observer-now making an empiric study of us. Don’t worry, Sir Richard, Mr. Waterhouse sees all and does nothing-a model Royal Society man.”
“Good evening, Mr. Waterhouse,” Apthorp said, managing to convey, by the tone of his voice, that he found Jeffreys embarrassing and tedious.
“Mr. Jeffreys. Sir Richard. God save the King.”
“The King!” Jeffreys repeated, raising his dripping goblet and then taking a swallow. “Stand and deliver like a good little scholar, Mr. Waterhouse. Why are Sir Richard’s friends in the ‘Change making such a fuss?”
“Admiral de Ruyter sailed down to Guinea and took away all of the Duke of York’s slave-ports,” Daniel said.
Jeffreys-one hand half-covering his mouth, and speaking in a stage-whisper: “Which the Duke of York had stolen from the Dutch, a few years before-but in Africa, who splits hairs?”
“During the years that the Duke’s company controlled Guinea, many slaves were shipped to Jamaica-there they made sugar-fortunes were built, and will endure, as long as the attrition of slaves is replaced by new shipments. But the Dutch have now choked off the supply-so I’d guess that Sir Richard’s clients at the ‘Change can read the implications clearly enough-there must be some turmoil in the commodities markets.”
Like a victim of unprovoked Battery looking for witnesses, Jeffreys turned toward Apthorp, who raised his eyebrows and nodded. Now Jeffreys had been a London barrister for some years. Daniel suspected that he knew of these events only as a mysterious influence that caused his clients to go bankrupt. “Some turmoil,” Jeffreys said, in a dramatic whisper. “Rather dry language, isn’t it? Imagine some planter’s family in Jamaica, watching the work-force, and the harvest, dwindle-trying to stay one step ahead of bankruptcy, yellow fever, and slave rebellion-scanning the horizon for sails, praying for the ships that will be their salvation-some turmoil, you call it?”
Daniel could have said, Imagine a barrister watching his moneybags dwindle as he drinks them away, scanning the Strand for a client who’s got the wherewithal to pay his legal bills… but Jeffreys was wearing a sword and was drunk. So he said: “If those planters are in church, and praying, then they’ve already found salvation. Good evening, gentlemen.”
He headed for the Gate, swinging wide round the fountain so that Jeffreys wouldn’t be tempted to run him through. Sir Richard Apthorp was applauding him politely. Jeffreys was mumbling and growling, but after a few moments he was able to get words out: “You are the same man as you were-or weren’t -ten years ago, Daniel Waterhouse! You were ruled by fear then -and you’d have England ruled by it now! Thank God you are sequestered within these walls, and unable to infect London with your disgusting pusillanimity!”
And more in that vein, until Daniel ducked into the vault of the Great Gate of Trinity College. The gate was a hefty structure with crenellated towers at its four corners: a sort of mock-fortress, just the thing for retreating into when under attack by a Jeffreys. Between it and the side-wall of Trinity’s shotgun chapel was a gap in the College’s perimeter defenses about a stone’s throw wide, patched with a suite of chambers that had a little walled garden in front of it, on the side facing towards the town. These chambers had been used to shield various Fellows from the elements over the years, but lately Daniel Waterhouse and Isaac Newton had been living there. Once those two bachelors had moved in their miserable stock of furniture, there had been plenty of unused space remaining, and so it had become the world’s leading alchemical research facility. Daniel knew this, because he had helped build it- was helpingbuild it, rather, for it was perpetually under construction.
Entering his home, Daniel pulled his robes close to his body so that they would not catch fire brushing against the glowing dome of the Reverberatory Furnace, wherein flames curled against the ceiling to strike downwards against the target. Then he pulled his skirts up so they wouldn’t drag against the heap of coal that (though the room was dark) he knew would be piled on the floor to his right. Or, for that matter, the mound of horse dung on the left (when burnt, it made a gentle moist heat). He maneuvered down a narrow lead among stacks of wooden crates, an egglike flask of quicksilver packed into each one, and came round a corner into another room.
This chamber looked like a miniature city, built by outlandish stone-masons, and just in the act of burning down-for each “building” had a peculiar shape, to draw in the air, channel flame, and carry away fumes in a particular way, and each one was filled with flames. Some of them smoked; some steamed; most gave off queer-smelling vapors. Rather than explaining what the place smelled like, ‘twere easier to list what few things could not be smelled here. Lumps of gold lay out on tabletops, like butter in a pastry-shop-it being de rigueur among the higher sort of Alchemists to show a fashionable contempt for gold, as a way of countering the accusation that they were only in it for the money. Not all operations demanded a furnace, and so there were tables, too, sheathed in peened copper, supporting oil-lamps that painted the round bottoms of flasks and retorts with yellow flame.