Mr. Ketch, who is nothing if not organized, opens one of the several lockers on his supply-wagon, and pulls out several lengths of rope. Each of them has a hangman’s noose in one end. He tosses all but one of them into the big cart, then circles around to the rear where he addresses Jack.
“It’s a fine one, eh?” he exclaims, holding up the noose.
“If you were not wearing a black hood you’d be glowing with pride, Mr. Ketch. But I do not know why.”
“This rope I got from a pirate-captain I hanged last year.”
“He supplied his own rope?”
“Indeed. A hawser, he called it. Look at the thickness of it.”
“He wanted to be sure the rope would not break? That seems very odd to me.”
“No, no, I’ll show you!” And Ketch steps round to Shaftoe’s left side and fits the noose over the latter’s head. The rope is so thick and stiff, the noose so tight, that it can barely close around Shaftoe’s throat. But the knot lodges under his left ear like a great bony fist. “Feel that leverage-now you’ll take my meaning, sir!” Ketch says, pulling up once or twice on the loose end of the rope. Each time he does, the knot, bearing on the heel of Shaftoe’s skull, crowbars his entire head forward and to one side. “And look at the length of it!” Shaftoe turns to see that Ketch has retreated to a distance of some two fathoms, but still has not run out of rope. “With this I can give you a drop such as few men are afforded, Mr. Shaftoe, very few. By the time you get to the end of this rope you’ll be moving as fast as a cannonball. You’ll be smoking a pipe in Heaven long before I chop off your testicles and shovel your guts out; and the quartering will mean as little to you, as coffin-worms to a dead bishop.”
“You are a princely fellow, Mr. Ketch, and Betty is fortunate to have you.”
“Mr. Shaftoe,” says Jack Ketch in a lower voice, stepping up very close to him now, and absent-mindedly wrapping the loose rope into a neat coil, “I shan’t have leisure to exchange words with you again, until we are standing beneath the Tree. For I’ve other prisoners to tend to, as you can see, and the journey to Tyburn promises to be, er…”
“Festive?”
“I was going to say ‘eventful,’ not wanting to show disrespect. I’ll be in the cart. We shall not be able to hear each other. Since you’re facing backwards, we shall not be able to see each other. Even when we are face to face beneath the Tree, the noise will be such that we’ll not be able to exchange a word, though we scream in each other’s ears. So I say to you now, sir, thank you! Thank you! And know that you shall feel less pain today than a man who bangs his head on a door-frame in a dark room.”
“In the way of pain, I ask for nothing more nor less than what I deserve,” says Shaftoe, “and I shall entrust you, Mr. Ketch, with that determination.”
“And I shall prove worthy of that trust sir! Farewell!” says Jack Ketch. He turns his back on Shaftoe as if he’s afraid he might cry again. He straightens his back, works on his composure, smooths down his hood, and steps up into the cart, where he has other clients waiting.
Star Chamber
THE NEXT TIME Daniel has his wits about him, the King’s Remembrancer is reading some document aloud, declaiming in the hoarse lope of one who has been reading for quite a long while. Daniel looks through the doorway to see the King’s Remembrancer peering through half-glasses at a generously sized parchment with a zigzag edge: one of the counterpanes of an indenture. This would be the contract that Isaac signed when he became Master of the Mint. It is one of the treasures that Daniel fetched out of the Abbey vault. What it says is that Isaac accepts sole personal responsibility for whatever is about to be found in the Pyx. It probably seemed like a lot of dry legal gibberish when Isaac signed it, but as the words resound through Star Chamber in the hearing of all the most important men in the Realm, it strikes him as so very grave and formidable as to make Isaac almost lucky to be dead. Daniel notes that he is the object of curious scrutiny by several of those men, and so he fixes his gaze on Isaac’s dead face, smiles, nods, and makes a sotto voce remark as if chatting with the sick man.
The Indenture draws to a thunderous end with invocations of God and of the Sovereign, and then the King’s Remembrancer looks up and demands the three keys of the Pyx.
In taking Isaac’s key out of his hand, Daniel notes that rigor mortis has not set in yet. He can’t have been dead for long.
The other Key-holders of the Pyx have already undone their respective locks by the time Daniel gets in there. Only one lock remains: a beauty, made to look like the front of the Temple of Solomon. Daniel gets it open and flips the hasp out of the way. Two members of the City jury step up and raise the lid of the Pyx. The cervical vertebrae of the Great and the Good pop and creak all round as they vie to see what’s in it: a pile of wee leather packets, called Sinthias, each labeled with a month and a year.
“Very well,” says the King’s Remembrancer, “the Jurors may withdraw to Star Chamber to conduct the Assay.”
While the Jurors are still mumbling and shuffling, Daniel strides out, key in hand, and makes for the sedan chair. Miss Barton has taken up a position in front of it, facing into the room, as if to block any well-wishers-or ill-wishers, for that matter-from trying to get close to her uncle. She’s a bit red around the eyes, but when Daniel comes up to place a steadying hand on her shoulder, she feels solid and strong beneath the sleeve of her frock, and after a moment she shrugs him off and directs him toward the corner with a flick of her eyes. Many a London man-about-town has dreamed of receiving a come-hither look from those lovely Orbs, but Daniel will have to settle for what he’s just been given: a go-thither look. “He said,” she says, “that you would know what to do.”
So he goes into the corner, opens the door again, and verifies that Isaac’s still dead (which might seem a safe enough thing to assume; but with Isaac, you never know). He leans his head and shoulders into the box now, and checks under Isaac’s armpit: still tepid. Looking up, he has a full view of the back of Catherine Barton’s bodice and all of Star Chamber beyond. The black screen darkens everything somewhat, but his eyes soon enough adjust. No one, of course, can see him or Isaac.
On a large table next to the furnace, the City jurors dump out the contents of the Pyx. Sinthias gush out and mound up. A few roll to the floor and are chased down and snatched back. The Pyx is set upright, open, and empty, on the floor. The twenty-four Jurors-Goldsmiths and Citizens working all together, for the nonce-go through the heap, reading the label on each Sinthia, and divide them into two piles: one containing silver coins-shillings, sixpence, and various other penny denominations-and the other gold: guineas, and the odd five-guinea piece. Daniel notes that Mr. Theader has established a commanding position at the end of the table where the gold coins are being piled. Before him is a great two-pan scale. He is wielding a jack-knife, making quick work of the Sinthias, cutting the Yellow Boys out of their leathern straitjackets and stacking them on the table. From time to time he will cup one in his hand and toss it: as always, Daniel cannot make out whether this is a mere nervous tic, or a studied effort to judge its weight.
As the Trial of the Pyx seems well in hand, Daniel turns his attention to matters inside the sedan chair.
He said you would know what to do. Well, yes and no.
Daniel has studied a document, written in Hooke’s hand, asserting that a patient (who happened to be one Daniel Waterhouse, but that is neither here nor there) died, and was brought back to life by a coction brewed up by an Alchemist. Hooke set down the receipt as best as he could from memory. Later Isaac went through and studied this, as only Isaac could study a thing, and made any number of annotations to it, all in the mythology-ridden argot and the queer symbology of the Esoteric Brotherhood. Daniel knows more than he’d like to of such things, from having spent so much of his young life around such people, and he’s had a few days to go over Hooke’s receipt and Newton’s commentary and puzzle out what they mean. Isaac has made several attempts in recent weeks to carry out all of the steps in the procedure save the last, and so all of the necessary crucibles, retorts, amp;c. were lying out in plain sight on his laboratory-table when Daniel began work a couple of days ago, and all of the ingredients were there, too. All, that is, except for the last and most crucial.