“That is evidence only that Sir Isaac makes good guineas, and that the British coin is the soundest currency of the whole world,” William says doggedly. “Every member of this Jury watched-nay, participated in-the Assay. Did we not? None of us saw anything amiss. By our silence we have already consented to it, and vouchsafed its result. To reverse ourselves now, and say ’twas all done wrong, is to go before that man and say, ‘My lord, we do not know how to do an assay!’ ” William gestures toward the end of Star Chamber, where the Duke of Marlborough’s absorbed in conversation with some other dignitary.
William’s a banker, not a practicing Goldsmith. In the councils of that Company he is of low rank and little account. But outside their Clubb-house, in the City of London, he has earned a gravitas that makes heads turn his way when he speaks. This is why they nominated him as Fusour. Perhaps it is why the senior Goldsmith is calling the Assay into question; he’s spooked by William’s influence. Such political currents are too subtle for Daniel to follow; all he needs to know is that the Goldsmiths and the City men alike are swayed by William’s words. If they trouble to look at the senior Goldsmith at all, it is in glances over their shoulders, as if looking back curiously at one who has fallen behind.
To his credit, the elder sees clearly enough the way it’s going. He cringes once at what he’s being forced to do, then his face slackens. “Very well,” he says, “let us give Sir Isaac his due, then. He has exasperated us more than any other Master of the Mint; but no one has ever claimed he did not know his way around a furnace.” He turns toward Marlborough, as do the other Goldsmiths, and they all bow. Marlborough notes it and nods to the chap he’s been talking to, who turns around to see it. Daniel recognizes the fellow as Isaac Newton, and feels a kind of pride that his friend is being honored in this way, and that he seems at last to have earned the trust of Marlborough. A moment passes before Daniel remembers that Isaac is dead.
This courtly scene is disturbed by trouble in the gallery leading in from New Palace Yard: some uncivil person is trying to crash the party, and the Serjeant is dutifully trying to stop him. Their dispute and their footsteps draw nearer.
“What business-”
“The King’s business, sir!”
“Whom would you-”
“My captain, sir! The Duke of Marlborough! Perhaps you will have heard of him!” The speaker stomps right into Star Chamber, moving in an uneven gait: a uniformed Colonel with a peg-leg of carven ebony. Then he stops, realizing he’s just burst in upon a solemn moment, and doesn’t know what to say. It promptly gets worse: recent evolutions have given the Lords waiting in the side chamber the idea that they have been missing out on something. Most of them choose this moment to debouche into the Star Chamber wearing expressions that say, “Explain, or be hanged!”
Daniel by now has recognized the peg-legged coloneclass="underline" this is Barnes of the Black Torrent Guard. Barnes was already of a mind to dig his own grave and jump into it even before the King’s Remembrancer, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Privy Seal, and Lord Chancellor filed into the room, followed by enough Hanoverian Dukes and Princes to conquer Saxony. Barnes is now not only peg-legged but peg-tongued and peg-brained. The only man who dares make a sound is Marlborough.
“My lords,” he says, when the side-chamber has emptied out, “we have news from the Jurors. And unless I have mistaken the signs, we have got news from Tyburn Cross as well.”
Daniel glances at Barnes, who is going through a chrestomathy of head-shaking, throat-slitting, eye-bulging, and hand-waving. But Marlborough is oblivious; he’s got eyes only for the Lords of the Council, and the Hanoverians. He goes on, “Would the Juries care to make a preliminary report?”
The Pesour and the Fusour make after-you gestures at each other. Finally William Ham steps forward, and bows. “We shall of course draw up the document presently, and give it to the King’s Remembrancer,” he says, “but it is my great pleasure to inform my lords that the assay has been performed, and it has proved beyond doubt that His Majesty’s currency is sounder than it has ever been in all the history of this Realm, and that the highest accolades are owed to the Master of his majesty’s Mint, Sir Isaac Newton!”
Isaac is diffident, but the Fusour’s announcement starts up a round of hip-hip-huzzahs that only bates when he steps forward and bows to the room. Which he does gracefully and with perfect balance; he has not looked so spry in years. Daniel searches the room for Miss Barton, and only finds her when she appears at his side, seizes him by the right arm, and plants a kiss on his cheek.
“It is my very great honor,” says Isaac, “to do what I can for my country. Some distinguish themselves in battle” (a nod at Marlborough), “others in sage advice” (a nod-astonishingly-at Daniel), “still others in grace and beauty” (Miss Barton). “I make coins, and strive to make them sound, as a foundation on which the Commerce of this Realm may be builded by her thrifty and industrious Citizens.” A nod to the Jurors.
“There is another thing that you do very well, besides making coins, is there not, Sir Isaac?”
This Marlborough enunciates very clearly, for the benefit of the Hanoverians, and he waits for Johann von Hacklheber to effect a translation before he goes on: “I refer, of course, to your duty of prosecuting those who make bad coins.”
“That, too, is the charge of the Master of the Mint,” Isaac admits.
Barnes has gone back into frantic pantomiming, but he can’t seem to get the eye of Marlborough, who is rapt on the Germans. Marlborough goes on, “Sir Isaac’s triumph here, in the Trial of the Pyx, has, as I understand it, been matched-some would even say, surpassed-by a simultaneous triumph at Tyburn! Colonel Barnes?” And all eyes turn to Barnes. But he has dropped the gesticulations and now stands there the very picture of martial dignity.
“Indeed, my lord,” he announces. “Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, a.k.a. Jack the Coiner, has been hanged.”
“Hanged, drawn, and quartered, according to the sentence pronounced against him?” Marlborough says, so fiercely that it is more assertion than query.
“Hanged, my lord,” Barnes says. It dangles there for a terrible long time, like a kicking wretch on a gallows, and he feels a need to make improvements: “Hanged by the neck until dead.”
“Half dead, I should say, and then cut down, drawn, and quartered?”
“Mr. Ketch was balked from carrying out the, er, supplemental eviscerations and dismemberments and whatnot, upon the hanged and dead, corpse of the late villain Shaftoe.”
“Prevented by what, pray tell? Squeamishness? Did Mr. Ketch forget to bring his cutlery?”
“Prevented by the Mobb. By the violence and the menace of the greatest and surliest Mobb that has ever assembled upon this Island.”
A murky side-conversation now starts up in the Hanover contingent, as Johann von Hacklheber tries to translate “Mobb” into High German.
“I ordered the King’s Own Black Torrent Guard to defend the gallows, precisely because I expected a larger than usual Mobb,” says Marlborough distractedly, in a sort of quiet prodrome to raging anger. Recognizing it as such, Barnes says: “And that is precisely what we accomplished, my lord, and the hangings were all carried out in good order, and Jack Ketch and the bailiffs and gaolers conveyed out of there safe and sound. The gallows will, alas, have to be rebuilt, but that’s a job for carpenters, not soldiers.”
“I see. But you deemed it prudent to retreat before the drawing and quartering could be performed.”
“Yes my lord, ’twas at that moment when the Mobb became most frenzickal, and rushed the Gallows to cut him down-”
“Him, or his corpse?” Isaac Newton asks.
“Colonel Barnes,” says Marlborough, “did they cut him down, or did they merely rush the gallows to cut him down? There is a difference, you see.”