"I am here as a cat's paw for Isaac Newton, my friend of thirty years. I fear for him because I perceive that he has an idea of what Natural Philosophy is, and of what he is, that is false. He is so far above all of the rest of us that he has come to believe that he carries the burden of some millennial destiny, and that he must bring Natural Philosophy to some ultimate omega-point or be a failure. He has been encouraged to believe this by certain sycophantic admirers."
"You want him back! You want Isaac to revoke the decision he made on Whitsunday of 1662!"
"No. I want him to repeat the same decision in respect of you, Fatio. He withdrew from me in '62. From Leibniz in '77. Now it is '93, and your card has been dealt."
"I know all about what happened in '62 and '77. Isaac told me. But with us it is a different case. With us there is a real, lasting, mutual affection."
"Nicolas, that much is true," Isaac said. "But you misunderstand. Daniel is working his way round towards another matter."
"What could Mr. Waterhouse possibly say that would be of interest? He is an amanuensis, a secretary."
"Do not make any more such offending statements about Daniel," Isaac commanded. "He has done us the favor, Nicolas, of thinking about our future. Which is a matter we did not consider at all, so confident were we. But Daniel is right. We have failed. Our line was not long enough to fathom the depths on which we had ventured. It will be necessary to regroup, to start over again. We shall require time and money and leisure."
"Isaac," Daniel said, "two or three years ago, before you set out on the Great Work that has just come to an end, you made inquiries, with Pepys and Roger Comstock and others, concerning the possibility of a position in London. Since then Trinity College has only become more impoverished—your need of a reliable income cannot have been met from that quarter. Now I have come to offer you the Mint."
Everyone now observed a prayerful silence for a minute or two as Isaac Newton considered it.
"In normal circumstances the position would be without interest," he said, "but Comstock has sent adumbrations my way concerning a great Recoinage."
"It is intended that Recoinage would be your Great Work. Which I do not say in jest. For perhaps that is indeed the only way that the Philosophic Mercury could ever be recovered."
"Why do you say that?"
"Hooke could not find the inverse-square law in a well because there was too little of what he was looking for, for his equipment to find it. You could not extract the Philosophic Mercury from gold, perhaps for a like reason."
"You hypothesize that my methods are sound but that there is too little of it in my sample. I disprove your hypothesis by reminding you that my methods are those of the ancients, who, as I believe, did not fail to get what they sought."
"Would you number King Solomon among them?"
"You know as well as I do that he is regarded as the father of Alchemists."
"If King Solomon had been in command of the Grand Magisterium, he would have used it. His wealth was fabled. He must have gathered together a moiety of the world's supply of gold, and extracted the Philosophic Mercury from it."
"Many adepts believe that he did just that."
"It would follow that ordinary gold, such as you employ in your Great Work, was depleted, while King Solomon's gold was enriched, in the quintessence."
"Again, this supposition is commonplace."
"Comes now word that King Solomon's Gold was found by a Viceroy of Mexico who then lost it to the King of the Vagabonds—who absconded with it to India, and there dispersed it, commingling it with the ordinary gold that circulates all over the world as money."
"That is what we are told."
"Short of conquering the whole Orient and collecting all its riches by tyrannical confiscations, there is then no way to recover what the Vagabond King has pissed away—unless you could, by some magical incantation, cause the gold to come from every corner of the earth to London, and pass through the crucibles of the Tower."
Fatio stepped forward, almost blocking the sight-line between Daniel and Isaac. "Now that you have got down to business, you offer up a most reasonable and attractive proposition," he proclaimed. "Prithee explain what you meant earlier."
"I shall explain it, Nicolas," Isaac said. "Daniel has done all the explaining we may justly require of him. He means—but is unwilling to say—that your theory of gravity is nonsense and that it has weakened my position vis-à-vis Leibniz. He probably refers also to your claim to be a co-inventor of the calculus, which is, I am sorry to say, perfectly false. Perhaps he has also in mind your pretensions of becoming a medical doctor and curing thousands with a new patent-medicine, and your fanciful interpretations of the Bible, and strange prophecies drawn therefrom."
"But he knows nothing of these!"
"But I do, Fatio."
"What are you saying? I confess the Bible is easier to interpret than you, Isaac."
"On the contrary, I feel that I am all too transparent, for Daniel, and God only knows how many others, have seen through me."
"Not that many—yet," Daniel said quietly.
"The nub of it is this: I have let my affection for you cloud my judgment," Isaac said. "I have given much greater credit to your work, Nicolas, than I ever should have, and it has led me down a cul-de-sac and caused me to waste years, and ruin my health. Thank you, Daniel, for telling me this forthrightly. Mr. Locke, you have worked in a gentle way to bring about this epiphany, and I apologize for thinking poorly of you and accusing you of plotting against me. Nicolas, come to London and share lodgings with me and be my help-meet as I move forward in the Great Work."
"I am not willing to be less than your equal partner."
"But you cannot ever be my equal partner. Only Leibniz—"
"Then go and make love to Leibniz!" Fatio cried. He stood poised where he was for a few moments as if he could not believe he'd said it—waiting, Daniel thought, for Newton to retract everything he'd said. But Isaac Newton was long past being able to change his mind. Fatio was left with only one thing he could possibly do: He ran away.
Once Fatio had passed out of view, Daniel began to hear a distant moaning or wailing. He assumed that he was hearing Fatio crying out in grief. But it grew louder. He feared for a moment that Fatio might be coming back toward him with a weapon drawn.
"Daniel!" said Locke sharply.
Locke had gotten to his feet and was standing over Newton, blocking Daniel's view. Locke had begun his career as a physician and seemed to have reverted to his old form now; with one hand he was throwing off the mass of blankets in which Newton had been wrapped up this whole while, with the other, he was reaching for Newton's throat to check his pulse. Daniel rushed toward them, fearing that Isaac had suffered a stroke, or an apoplectic fit. But Newton knocked Locke's hand away from his neck with a shout of "Murder! Murder!"
Locke took half a step back. Daniel drew up on Newton's other side to find him flailing all of his limbs, like a man who was drowning in air. The violence of his movements seemed to levitate his whole body out of his chair for an instant. He fell hard onto the stone patio, yelped, and went stiff, his entire body trembling like a plucked twist of catgut. Daniel dropped to a knee and placed a hand on one of Newton's bony shoulders. What meager flesh he had was hard and thrumming. Newton started away as if Daniel had touched him with a hot iron and rolled blindly against the chair leg, which caught him in the midsection. In a heartbeat he contracted into a fœtal position, wrapping his whole body round the leg of the chair like a toddler who grips his mother's leg with his whole being because he does not want her to walk away. "Murder, murder!" he repeated, more quietly now, as if dreaming of it, though it might have been Mother, mother.