“I did not observe it closely,” Daniel said, “I am familiar with the general procedure.”
“You might’ve watched more carefully had you known that the man being whipped calls himself Mr. Dick Gripp.”
Daniel was at a loss for words.
“They came for you last night,” said Bob Shaftoe. “I had them clapped into separate cells while I decided what to do with ’em. Talked to ’em separately, and all they gave me was a deal of hot talk. Now. Some men are entitled to talk that way, they have been ennobled, in a sense, by their deeds and the things they have lived through. I did not think that Bob Carver and Dick Gripp were men of that kind. Others may be suffered to talk that way simply because they entertain the rest of us. I once had a brother who was like that. But not Bob and Dick. Unfortunately I am not a magistrate and have no power to throw men in prison, compel them to answer questions, et cetera. On the other hand, I am a sergeant, and have the power to recruit men into the King’s service. As Bob and Dick were clearly idle fellows, I recruited them into the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards on the spot. In the next instant, I perceived that I’d made a mistake, for these two were discipline problems, and wanted chastisement. Using the oldest trick in the book, I had Dick-who struck me as the better man-whipped directly in front of Bob Carver’s cell window. Now Dick is a strong bloke, he is unbowed, and I may keep him in the regiment. But Bob feels about his chastisement-which is scheduled for dawn-the same way you feel about being cut for the stone. So an hour ago he woke up his guards, and they woke me, and I went and had a chat with Mr. Carver.”
“Sergeant, you are so industrious that I almost cannot follow everything you are about.”
“He told me that Jeffreys personally ordered him and Mr. Gripp to cut your throat. That they were to do it slow-like, and that they were to explain to you, while you lay dying, that it had been done by Jeffreys.”
“It is what I expected,” Daniel said, “and yet to hear it set out in plain words leaves me dizzy.”
“Then I shall wait for you to get your wits back. More to the point, I shall wait for you to become angry. Forgive me for presuming to instruct a fellow of your erudition, but at a moment like this, you are supposed to be angry.”
“It is a very odd thing about Jeffreys that he can treat people abominably and never make them angry. He influences his victims’ minds strangely, like a glass rod bending a stream of water, so that we feel we deserve it.”
“You have known him a long time.”
“I have.”
“Let’s kill him.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Slay, murder. Let us bring about his death, so he won’t plague you any more.”
Daniel was shocked. “It is an extremely fanciful idea-”
“Not in the least. And there is something in your tone of voice that tells me you like it.”
“Why do you say ‘we’? You have no part in my problems.”
“You are high up in the Royal Society.”
“Yes.”
“You know many Alchemists.”
“I wish I could deny it.”
“You know my lord Upnor.”
“I do. I’ve known him as long as I’ve known Jeffreys.”
“Upnor owns my lady love.”
“I beg your pardon-did you say he owns her?”
“Yes-Jeffreys sold her to him during the Bloody Assizes.”
“Taunton-your love is one of the Taunton schoolgirls!”
“Just so.”
Daniel was fascinated. “You are proposing some sort of pact.”
“You and I’ll rid the world of Jeffreys and Upnor. I’ll have my Abigail and you’ll live your last year, or whatever time God affords you, in peace.”
“I do not mean to quail and fret, Sergeant-”
“Go ahead! My men do it all the time.”
“-but may I remind you that Jeffreys is the Lord Chancellor of the Realm?”
“Not for long,” Shaftoe answered.
“How do you know?”
“He’s as much as admitted it, by his actions! You were thrown in Tower why?”
“For acting as go-between to William of Orange.”
“Why, that is treason-you should’ve been half-hanged, drawn, and quartered for it! But you were kept alive why?”
“Because I am a witness to the birth of the Prince, and as such, may be useful in attesting to the legitimacy of the next King.”
“If Jeffreys has now decided to kill you, what does that signify then?”
“That he is giving up on the King-my God, on the entire dynasty -and getting ready to flee. Yes, I understand your reasoning now, thank you for being so patient with me.”
“Mind you, I’m not asking you to take up arms, or do anything else that ill suits you.”
“Some would take offense at that, Sergeant, but-”
“E’en though my chief grievance may lie with Upnor, the first cause of it was Jeffreys, and I would not hesitate to swing my spadroon, if he should chance to show me his neck.”
“Save it for Upnor,” Daniel said, after a brief pause to make up his mind. In truth, he’d long since made it up; but he wanted to put on a show of thinking about it, so that Bob Shaftoe would not view him as a man who took such things lightly.
“You’re with me, then.”
“Not so much that I am with you as that we are with most of England, and England with us. You speak of putting Jeffreys to death with the strength of your right arm. Yet I tell you that if we must rely on your arm, strong as it is, we would fail. But if, as I believe, England is with us, why, then we need do no more than find him and say in a clear voice, ‘This fellow here is my lord Jeffreys,’ and his death will follow as if by natural law, like a ball rolling down a ramp. This is what I mean when I speak of revolution.”
“Is that a French way of saying ‘rebellion’?”
“No, rebellion is what the Duke of Monmouth did, it is a petty disturbance, an aberration, predestined to fail. Revolution is like the wheeling of stars round the pole. It is driven by unseen powers, it is inexorable, it moves all things at once, and men of discrimination may understand it, predict it, benefit from it.”
“Then I’d best go find a man of discrimination,” muttered Bob Shaftoe, “and stop wasting the night with a hapless wretch.”
“I simply have not understood, until now, how I might benefit from the revolution. I have done all for England, naught for myself, and I have lacked any organizing principle by which to shape my plans. Never would I have dared to imagine I might strike Jeffreys down!”
“As a mudlark, Vagabond soldier, I am always at your service, to be a bringer of base, murderous thoughts,” said Bob Shaftoe.
Daniel had receded to the outer fringes of the light and worried a candle out of a bottle on his writing-table. He hustled back and lit it from Bob’s candle.
Bob remarked, “I’ve seen lords die on battlefields-not as often as I’d prefer, mind you-but enough to know it’s not like in paintings.”
“Paintings?”
“You know, where Victory comes down on a sunbeam with her tits hanging out of her frock, waving a laurel for said dying lord’s brow, and the Virgin Mary slides down on another to-”
“Oh, yes. Those paintings. Yes, I believe what you say.” Daniel had been working his way along the curving wall of the Tower, holding the candle close to the stone, so that its glancing light would deepen the scratchings made there by prisoners over the centuries. He stopped before a new one, a half-finished complex of arcs and rays that cut through older graffiti.
“I do not think I shall finish this proof,” he announced, after gazing at it for a few moments.
“We’ll not leave tonight. You shall likely have a week-maybe more. So there’s no cause for breaking off work on whatever that is.”