“Your discourse is strangely like that of John Comstock when he delivered that bag and that keg to me,” Hooke said.
“He brought them around in person?”
Hooke nodded. “He said he no longer trusted anyone to do it for him.”
Whereat Daniel must have looked shocked, for Hooke held up a hand as if to restrain him, and continued: “I understood his state of mind too well. Some of us, Daniel, are prone to a sort of melancholy, wherein we are tormented by phant’sies that other men are secretly plotting to do us injury. It is a pernicious state for a man to fall into. I have harbored such notions from time to time about Oldenburg and others. Your friend Newton shows signs of the same affliction. Of all men in the world, I supposed John Comstock least susceptible to this disorder; but when he came here with this bag, he was very far gone with it, which grieved me more than anything else that has happened of late.”
“My lord believes,” Daniel guessed, “that some enemy of his has been salting the magazines of Navy ships with bags filled with finely milled powder, such as this one. Such a bag, sewn shut, would look the same, to a gunner, as an ordinary one; but when loaded into the bore, and fired-”
“It would burst the barrel and kill everyone nearby,” Hooke said. “Which might be blamed on a faulty cannon, or on faulty powder; but as my lord manufactures both, the blame cannot but be laid on him in the end.”
“Where did this bag come from?” Daniel asked.
“My lord said it was sent to him by his son Richard, who found it in the magazine of his ship on the eve of their sailing for Sole Bay.”
“Where Richard was killed by a Dutch broadside,” Daniel said. “So my lord desired that you would inspect this bag and render an opinion that it had been tampered with by some malicious conspirator.”
“Just so.”
“And have you done so?”
“No one has asked my opinion yet.”
“Not even Comstock?”
“Nay, not even Comstock.”
“Why would he bring you such evidence in person, and then not ask?”
“I can only guess,” Hooke said, “that in the meantime he has come to understand that it does not really matter.”
“What an odd thing to think.”
“Not really,” Hooke said. “Suppose I testified that this bag contained powder that was too fine. What would it boot him? Anglesey-for make no mistake, that’s who’s behind this-would reply that Comstock had made up this bag in his own cellar, as false evidence to exonerate himself and his faulty cannons. Comstock’s son is the only man who could testify that it came from a ship’s magazine, and he’s dead. There might be other such bags in other magazines, but they are mostly on the bottom of the sea, thanks to Admiral de Ruyter. We have lost the war, and it must be blamed on someone. Someone other than the King and the Duke of York. Comstock has now come to understand that it is being blamed on him.”
The daylight had become much more intense in the minutes Daniel had been up here. He saw that Hooke had rigged an articulated rod to the back of the piston, and connected the rod to a system of cranks. Now, by means of a tiny touch-hole in the base of the cylinder, he introduced fire to the chamber. Thump. The piston snapped up to the top of the bore much faster than Daniel could flinch away from it. This caused an instant of violent motion in the gear-train, which had the effect of winding a spring that spiraled around in a whirling hoop the size of a dinner-plate. A ratchet stopped this from unwinding. Hooke then re-arranged the gears so that the giant watch-spring was connected, by a string wound around a tapered drum, to the drive-shaft of a peculiar helical object, very light-weight, made of parchment stretched on a frame of steam-bent cane. Like a Screw of Archimedes. The spring unwound slowly, spinning the screw swiftly and steadily. Standing at one end of it, Daniel felt a palpable breeze, which continued for more than a minute-Hooke timed it with his latest watch.
“Properly wrought, and fed with gunpowder at regular intervals, it might generate enough wind to blow itself off the ground,” Hooke said.
“Supplying the gunpowder would be difficult,” Daniel said.
“I only use it because I have some,” Hooke said. “Now that Anglesey has been elected President of the Royal Society, I look forward to experimenting with combustible vapors in its stead.”
“Even if I’ve moved to Massachusetts by then,” Daniel said, “I’ll come back to London to watch you fly through the air, Mr. Hooke.”
A church-bell began ringing not far away. Daniel remarked that it was a bit early for funerals. But a few minutes later another one started up, and another. They did not simply bong a few times and then stop-they kept pealing in some kind of celebration. But the Anglican churches did not seem to be sharing in the joy. Only the queer churches of Dutchmen and Jews and Dissenters.
LATER IN THE DAY, Roger Comstock appeared at the gates of Bedlam in a coach-and-four. The previous owner’s coat of arms had been scraped off and replaced with that of the Golden Comstocks. “Daniel, do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to Whitehall,” Roger said, “the King wants you there for the signing.”
“Signing of what?” Daniel could imagine several possibilities-Daniel’s death warrant for sedition, Roger’s for sabotage, or an instrument of surrender to the Dutch Republic, being three of the more plausible.
“Why, the Declaration! Haven’t you heard? Freedom of conscience for Dissenters of all stripes-almost-just as Wilkins wanted it.”
“That is very good news, if true-but why should His Majesty want me there?”
“Why, next to Bolstrood you are the leading Dissenter!”
“That is not true.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Roger said cheerfully. “He thinks it’s true-and after today, it will be.”
“Why does he think it’s true?” Daniel asked, though he already suspected why.
“Because I have been telling everyone so,” Roger answered.
“I haven’t clothes fit to wear to a whorehouse-to say nothing of Whitehall Palace.”
“There is very little practical difference,” Roger said absent-mindedly.
“You don’t understand. My wig’s home to a family of swallows,” Daniel complained. But Roger Comstock snapped his fingers, and a valet sprang out of the coach laden with diverse packages and bundles. Through the open door, Daniel glimpsed women’s clothing, too-with women inside of it. Two different women. A thump from the turret, a muffled curse from Hooke. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing foppish,” Roger said. “For a leading Dissident, it is entirely proper.”
“Can the same be said of the ladies?” Daniel asked, following Roger and the valet into Bedlam.
“These aren’t ladies, ” Roger said, and other than that weak jest did not even try to answer the question. “Do London a favor and take those damned clothes off. I shall have my manservant burn them.”
“The shirt is not so bad,” Daniel demurred. “Oh, I agree that it is no longer fit for wearing. But it might be made into a powder-bag for the Navy.”
“No longer in demand,” Roger said, “now that the war is over.”
“On the contrary, I say that a great many of them shall have to be made up now, as so many of the old ones are known to be defective.”
“Hmm, you are well-informed, for a political naif. Who has been filling your head with such ideas? Obviously a supporter of Comstock.”
“I suppose that supporters of Anglesey are saying that the powder-bags are all excellent, and it’s Comstock’s cannons that were made wrong.”