Smudged faces turned towards Daniel, sequins of perspiration tumbled from drooping eyebrows. He immediately recognized Robert Boyle and John Locke, Fellows of the Royal Society, but, too, there were certain gentlemen who tended to show up at their garden-gate at perverse hours, robed and hooded-as if they really needed to conceal their identities when the King himself was practicing the Art at Whitehall. Viewing their petulant faces by fire-light, Daniel wished they’d kept the hoods on. For, alas, they weren’t Babylonian sorcerers or Jesuit warrior-priests or Druidic warlocks after all, but an unmatched set of small-town apothecaries, bored noblemen, and crack-pated geezers, with faces that were either too slack or too spasmodical. One of them was markedly young-Daniel recognized him as Roger Comstock, he of the so-called Golden Comstocks, who’d been a scholar along with Daniel, Isaac, Upnor, Monmouth, and Jeffreys. Isaac had put Roger Comstock to work pumping a bellows, and the strain was showing on his face, but he was not about to complain. Too, there was a small and very trim raptor-faced man with white hair. Daniel recognized him as Monsieur LeFebure, the King’s Chymist, who’d introduced John Comstock and Thomas More Anglesey and others-including the King himself-to the Art, when they’d been exiled in St.-Germain during the Cromwell years.
But all of these were satellites, or (like Jupiter’s moons) satellites of satellites. The Sun stood at a writing-desk in the center of the room, quill in hand, calmly making notations in a large, stained, yellowed Book. He was dressed in a long splotched smock with several holes burnt through it, though the hem of a scarlet robe could be seen hanging beneath. His head was encased in a sort of leather sack with a windowpane let into it so that he could see out. Where Daniel stood, that rectangle of glass happened to be reflecting an open furnace-door, so instead of the bulging eyes, he saw a brilliant sheet of streaming flame. A breathing-tube, comprising segments of hollow cane plumbed together by the small intestine of some beast, was sewn through the bag. Isaac had tossed it back over his shoulder. It dangled down his back and ran across the floor to Roger Comstock, who pumped fresh air into it with a bellows. So they must be doing something with mercury this evening. Isaac had observed that quicksilver, absorbed into his body, produced effects like those of coffee or tobacco, only more so, and so he used the breathing apparatus whenever he had begun to feel especially twitchy.
The results of some experiment appeared to be cooling down on one of the tables-a crucible hanging in darkness giving off a sullen glow, like Mars-and Daniel reckoned it was as good a time as any to interrupt. He stepped into the middle of the room and held up the bloody rag. “The menstruum of a human female,” he announced, “only a few minutes old!”
A bit melodramatic. But these men thrived on it. Why else would they conceal their persons in wizard-cloaks, and their knowledge in occult signs? Some of them, anyway, were deeply impressed. Newton turned round and glared significantly at Roger Comstock, who cringed and gave the bellows several brisk strokes. The sack around Isaac’s head bulged and whistled. Isaac glared some more. One of the minions rushed up with a beaker. Daniel dropped the moist rag into it. Monsieur LeFebure approached and began to make calm observations in a fifty-fifty French-Latin mix. Boyle and Locke listened politely, the lesser Alchemists formed up in an outer circle, faces strained with the effort of decrypting whatever the King’s Chymist was saying.
Daniel turned the other way to see Isaac peeling the wet sack off his head, then gathering his silver hair and holding it atop his skull to let the back of his neck cool down. He was gazing back at Daniel with no particular emotion. Of course he knew that the rag was just a diversionary tactic, but this did not affect him one way or the other.
“There’s still time to see the second act of the play,” Daniel said. “We’re holding an empty seat for you-practically had to use muskets and pikes to keep scheming Londoners from it.”
“You are taking the position, then, that God placed me on the earth, and in His wisdom supplied me with the resources that He has, so that I could interrupt my work, and spend my hours, watching a wicked atheistical play?”
“Of course not, Isaac, please don’t impute such things to me, not even in private.”
They were withdrawing to another room-which, therefore, in a more dignified sort of house would be called the w’drawing room-but here it was a workshop, the floor slick with wood-dust and shavings from a lathe, and a-crackle with failures from the glass-blowing bench, and cluttered with various hand-tools that they’d used to construct everything else. Isaac said nothing, only gazed at Daniel, all patient expectation. “From time to time-perhaps once a day-I prevail upon you to eat something,” Daniel pointed out. “Does this mean I believe God put you here to stuff food into your mouth? Of course not. But in order for you to accomplish the work that you, and I, believe God shaped you for, you must put food into your body.”
“Is it really your belief that watching Once More into the Breeches is comparable to eating?”
“To work, you require certain resources-nutrition is only one. A stipend, a workshop, tools, equipment-how do you get them?”
“Behold!” Isaac said, sweeping one arm over his empire of tools and furnaces. This caused the cuff of his robe to fly out from under his smock-catching sight of it, he grasped the smock’s sleeve with the other hand and yanked it back to reveal the scarlet raiment of the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. Coming from any other man this would have seemed dramatic and insufferably pompous, but from Isaac it was the simplest and most concise answer to Daniel’s question.
“The Fellowship-the chambers-the laboratory-and the Lucasian Chair-all the best that you could hope for. You have all you need-for now. But how did you get those things, Isaac?”
“Providence.”
“By which you mean Divine Providence. But how-”
“You wish to examine the workings of God’s will in the world? I am pleased to hear it. For that is my sole endeavour. You are keeping me from it-let us go back into the other room and pursue an answer to your question together.”
“By diverting your attention from those crucibles-for a few hours-you could gain a clearer understanding of, and a more profound gratitude for, what Providence has given you.” Devising that sentence had required intense concentration on Daniel’s part-he was gratified when it seemed to at least confuse Isaac.
“If there are some data I have overlooked, by all means edify me,” Isaac said.
“Recall the Fellowship competition of several years ago. You’d been busy doing the work God put you here to do- instead ofthe work that Trinity College expected of you-consequently, your prospects seemed bleak-wouldn’t you agree?”
“I have always placed my faith in-”
“In God, of course. But don’t tell me you weren’t worried you’d be sent packing, and live out your days as a gentleman farmer in Woolsthorpe. There were other candidates. Men who’d curried favor in the right places, and memorized all of the medieval claptrap we were expected to know. Do you remember, Isaac, what became of your competitors?”
“One went insane,” Isaac recited like a bored scholar. “One passed out in a field from too much drink, caught a fever, and died. One fell down stairs drunk and had to withdraw because of injuries suffered. The fourth-” Here Isaac faltered, which was a rare event for him. Daniel seized the moment by stepping closer and adopting a curious and innocent look.