“Summon the Goldsmiths,” intones the King’s Remembrancer. To Daniel and his coterie, he says, “You may stand over there,” and waves at an open space in the corner. Daniel leads the group over, and turns around to find the eyes of the Duke of Marlborough on him: a reminder-as if Daniel needed any-that this is it. The new System is facing its first test, and it’s doing so under the most adverse possible circumstances: a sick and possibly demented Alchemist is in charge of the Mint and a Vagabond has tampered with the Pyx and is now going to meet his Maker without having coughed up the evidence they want. And Roger’s no longer around to make it all better.
The Stone Anvil, the High Hall,
Newgate Prison
“I HAVE FOUND GOD!” Jack Shaftoe announces.
“What, here!?” says his interlocutor, a heavy-set chap in a black leather hood.
They are standing in a queue in the High Hall. Or rather Jack Shaftoe is, and the hooded man has come up to him, the better to inspect Jack’s Hanging-Suit.
The High Hall might be a bit of a grand name for it. It is simply the biggest room in the gaol, outside of the Chapel, and so it is where fitness-conscious felons come to toddle around, in an endless ragged procession. The center of their orbit is a block of stone set in the middle of the floor, and equipped with a few basic smithy-tools. Normally they are a wordy bunch, the Hall a hurricanoe of profanity, a Vortex of Execration. Today they are gagged by their own amazement. All stare inwards toward the two most famous Jacks in London: Shaftoe and Ketch, exchanging civilities like Addison and Steele. There is no sound except for the scraping of their chains on the floor, and the organized chants of the Mobb outside.
Then an ear-splitting clang sounds from the stone anvil. Another prisoner has just had his ankle-fetters struck off. The only restraint upon him now is a length of cord with which Ketch has lately bound his elbows together behind his back.
“The communion-bread, you know, is in the shape of coins,” Shaftoe remarks.
Then he thinks better of it, for Ketch thinks it’s funny, and forgets himself, and exposes his empty tooth-sockets, as well as a few that are soon to be empty. For the hood unfortunately stops at the level of his nose. Somewhere, Ketch must have a whole foot-locker filled with false teeth, as no man in London is in a better position to collect them; but he has not worn any today.
“But how richer a treasure are those coins of bread, than ones of gold!” Shaftoe exclaims. “For gold and silver may buy admission to a Clubb, or other place of debauchery. But coins of bread have bought me admission to the Kingdom of Heaven. Assuming I can manage a few things in the next couple of hours.”
Ketch has utterly lost interest. How many times has he heard this identical speech from a client? He excuses himself very civilly, jumps to the head of the queue, and devotes a few moments to pinioning the next prisoner’s elbows with another length of cord.
When Ketch comes back, it is evident he has been thinking about Jack’s Hanging-Suit. “After this,” he remarks, “it will not be possible for you to change clothes.”
“Oh, you are a subtile one, Jack Ketch!” Shaftoe remarks.
“It is just that-according to some who style themselves in the know-you are destitute.”
“You think I borrowed this suit!? Fie on all such gossip-mongers, Mr. Ketch, you know better than to pay heed to them. This suit is every bit as much my own property, as that handsome hood is yours.”
Another clang. Ketch excuses himself again and binds up the bloke who’s directly in front of Jack. While he is doing so, he sniffles once or twice, juicily, as if the air in the High Hall does not agree with him. But of all men in London, Ketch must be the least sensitive to miasmas, damps, and vapours.
When Ketch turns back round, Shaftoe’s startled, and even a bit alarmed, to see, below the fringe of the hood, a teardrop trickling down his cheek. Ketch steps close to Shaftoe, close enough that Shaftoe, craning his neck (for Ketch is a head taller) can resolve individual cavities in Ketch’s last remaining incisor. “You can’t imagine what this means to me, Mr. Shaftoe.”
“No, I cannot, Mr. Ketch. What does it mean to you?”
“I’m in debt, Mr. Shaftoe, deep in debt.”
“You don’t say!”
“My Betty-the missus-can’t stop having little ones. Every year for the last eight.”
“You have eight little Ketches? How remarkable, that a man in your line of work should be such a fount of new life.”
“After the last hanging, one of my creditors tried to arrest me in the street! I’ve never been so ashamed.”
“Indeed! For a man in such a respectable profession, to be accosted in a public place, and accused of indebtedness, that is a grave humiliation!”
“What would my boys think of me if I wound up here, in Newgate?”
“You have wound up here in Newgate, Mr. Ketch. But never mind, I take your meaning.”
“They’d have to come and live with me. Here.”
“It is not the best environment for raising small children,” Shaftoe allowed.
“That’s why-excuse me-” Ketch steps behind Shaftoe, draws out another length of cord, and strings it between the latter’s elbows. Ketch makes a sliding knot, and begins to draw it tighter, bringing Shaftoe’s elbows closer together-but only a bit.
“It would be a shame to wrinkle the Hanging-Suit,” Shaftoe remarks.
“A great shame, Mr. Shaftoe, but more important to me is your comfort.”
Shaftoe smiles in spite of himself at this polite evasion. And with that smile on his face, he steps forward, raises a knee, and places one immaculate polished shoe on the stone anvil. “Do have a care with that hammer, my good man,” he says to the smith-a pox-ravaged prisoner who looks like he has been in Newgate since the Fire. “These clothes mean nothing to me, but they will soon be inherited by my good friend Mr. Ketch here. For he is not only my friend, and my sole heir, but the executor of my will. By the immemorial traditions of this Realm, all that I wear upon my person, and the contents of its pockets, are his at the moment of my expiration. In those pockets reside several coins of diverse denominations. If you go about your work soberly, and leave my shoes unmarked, Mr. Ketch may choose to reach into one of my pockets and fish out a rather large coin for your Civility Money; but if you ruin them, Mr. Ketch may have to recoup his losses by giving you nothing.”
In consequence of this, the smith spends more time getting Jack’s chains off than all the other condemnees put together. But get them off he does, and for his pains receives a handsome shilling from Shaftoe’s pocket and Ketch’s hand.
The Trial of the Pyx
NO TWO TRIALS of the Pyx are the same. Details vary depending on whose ox is being gored at the time, and who’s goring it. Anciently the Mayor and Citizens of London would stand by and witness the whole rite, which was the most reasonable thing in the world given that the City men had a greater stake in the soundness of the coinage than anyone else. It made for some crowded and riotous Trials, and so at some point a jury of twelve respected City men came to stand in for the whole Citizenry. They would take a hand in those parts of the Trial that did not require any special Guild expertise, and observe the Jury of Goldsmiths carrying out those that did, and when the assayers had rendered their verdict, they would go out into London and relate the good or bad news to their fellow-Citizens.
In recent centuries the presence of the City men has slowly dwindled, to the point where Sir Isaac Newton has felt moved to complain that Trials of the Pyx have become a shadowy rite conducted by a cabal or conspiracy of Goldsmiths, unobserved and unaccountable. It is safe to say the Goldsmiths are no more pleased by these remarks than by anything else Isaac has done during his tenure at the Mint. Still and all, the entire point of the exercise is to prove Isaac a traitorous fraud, and, if at all possible, to see his hand chopped off in New Palace Yard. All of which is less likely to come to pass if Isaac can make a credible case that the Trial is rigged by a shadowy Guild. So for today’s Trial the pendulum has swung back as far as it can without inviting the whole City. It is a full-dress, dual-Jury affair. The City’s represented not only by the Lord Mayor but also by a full jury of twelve Citizens, separate from and independent of the jury of Goldsmiths. And they’ll not just watch but-mostly through their chosen delegate, Mr. Threader-participate. Only after these dozen Citizens have been recognized and sworn and shunted off to their own corner is it time for the Principals to be brought in and the Trial to begin in earnest.