Part 12 (1/2)
”There is a way to fool the weighing-test,” Isaac said.
”Impossible! Nothing is heavier than gold!”
”I have discovered the existence of gold of greater than twenty-four-carat weight.”
”That is an absurdity,” Daniel said, after a moment's pause to consider it.
”Your mind, being a logical organ, rejects it,” Isaac said, ”because, by definition, pure gold weighs twenty-four carats. Pure gold cannot become purer, hence, cannot be heavier. Of course, I am aware of this. But I say to you that I have with my own hands weighed gold that was heavier than gold that I knew to be pure.”
From any other man on earth-Natural Philosophers included-this would amount to saying, ”I was sloppy in the laboratory and got it wrong.” From Sir Isaac Newton, it was truth of Euclidean certainty.
”I am put in mind of the discovery of phosphorus,” Daniel remarked, after considering it for a few moments. ”A new element of nature, with properties never before seen. Perhaps there exist other elements of which we are unaware, having properties. .h.i.therto unknown. Perhaps there is such an element, similar in many respects to gold, but having a higher specific gravity, and perhaps the gold you spoke of was alloyed with it to make a metal, indistinguishable from gold in its gross properties, but slightly more dense.”
”I give you credit for ingenuity,” Isaac said, slightly amused, ”but there is a simpler explanation. Yes, the gold I speak of is alloyed with something: a fluidic essence that fills the interstices among its atoms and gives the metal greater weight. But I believe that this essence is nothing less than-”
”The Philosophick Mercury!” Daniel exclaimed. The words came out of his mouth in a spirit of genuine excitement; bounced off the hard walls of dark wood; and, when they entered his ears, made him cringe at his own idiocy. ”You think it is the Philosophick Mercury,” he corrected himself.
”The Subtile Spirit,” Isaac said, not excited, but solemn as Rhadamanthus. ”And the goal of Alchemists for thousands of years, ever since the Art was taken into the Orient, and removed from human ken, by its past master, King Solomon.”
”You have been searching for traces of the Philosophick Mercury since we were boys,” Daniel reminded him. ”As recently as twenty years ago, your efforts to find even the smallest trace of it had met with abject failure. What has changed?”
”I took your advice, Daniel. I accepted the charge of the Mint from my lord Ravenscar. I initiated the Great Recoinage, which brought vast tonnage of gold plate and bullion out from where it had been h.o.a.rded.”
”And you adjusted the ratio in valuation of silver to gold, so that the latter was over-valued,” Daniel said, ”which as everyone knows, has practically driven all silver off the island, and attracted gold from every corner of the globe where commerce has spread its tendrils.”
Isaac declined comment.
”Prior to your-” here Daniel was about to say something like terrifying spasm of dementia terrifying spasm of dementia but corrected himself: ”change of career, twenty years ago, you were only able to work with such modest samples of gold as you could buy from local sources. Your appointment to the Mint-combined with the policies you have adopted there-have made the Tower of London the bottle-neck through which all the world's gold flows, and put you in a position to dip your finger into that flow at will, sampling and testing the gold of many different lands-am I getting it right?” but corrected himself: ”change of career, twenty years ago, you were only able to work with such modest samples of gold as you could buy from local sources. Your appointment to the Mint-combined with the policies you have adopted there-have made the Tower of London the bottle-neck through which all the world's gold flows, and put you in a position to dip your finger into that flow at will, sampling and testing the gold of many different lands-am I getting it right?”
Isaac nodded, and it seemed he looked almost mischievous, in a naughty-old-man sort of way. ”The practice of all Alchemists since the time of Hermes Trismegistus has been to presume that the Gold of Solomon had been forever lost, and to attempt to re-discover his lost Art through patient trials and arcane study. This was the course that defeated me, before what you coyly describe as my change of career change of career. But during my recuperation, as I went to inspect the Mint, and conversed with my predecessors there, I came to realize that the ancient presumption of the Esoteric Brotherhood was no longer true. If Solomon went away into the remotest isles of the Orient, why, Commerce has now gone that far, or farther, and in particular the Spaniards and the Portuguese have left no stone unturned, the world over, in their a.s.siduous search for gold and silver. No matter how far Solomon may have journeyed, he would have left behind traces of his pa.s.sage, in the form of Solomonic Gold, which is to say, gold made through an Alchemical process, bearing traces of the Philosophick Mercury. In the millennia since his kingdom vanished from the earth, this gold might have pa.s.sed from one ignorant set of hands to another a thousand times. It might have been taken across wastes by caravans, forged into pagan funeral-masks, plundered from fallen citadels, buried in secret h.o.a.rds, dug up by thieves, seized by pirates, made into jewels, and coined into specie of diverse realms. But through all of these evolutions it would preserve the traces of the Philosophick Mercury that would provide an infallible proof of its origins. To find it, I need not pore over ancient ma.n.u.scripts for fragments of Alchemical lore, and I need not venture into far reaches to search for ancient gold with my own hands. I need only position myself like a spider at the center of the global web of commerce, and then so arrange matters that all the world's gold would flow inwards toward me, as every point of matter in the solar system naturally falls inwards toward the Sun. If I then remained vigilant, and sampled all the gold that came into the Mint to be made into guineas, in time I should be nearly certain of finding some traces of the Solomonic Gold.”
”And now you would appear to have found it,” said Daniel, unwilling to weigh in, yet, on Isaac's side. ”How recently has this occurred?”
”For the first several years there was nothing. Not a trace. I despaired of finding it ever,” Isaac admitted. ”Then, during the respite in the War, round 1701, I found a bit of gold heavier than twenty-four carat. I cannot summon words, here and now, to convey my emotions then! It was just a flake of gold leaf, found in a coiner's shop after it was raided, on my orders, by the King's Messengers. The coiner himself had been slain during the raid-most frustrating! Several years later, I found a counterfeit guinea that was heavier than it ought to be. In time, I hunted down the coiner who had made it, and interrogated him as to where he had obtained his bullion. He had gotten most of it from conventional sources. But he said that he had recently purchased, through a middleman, a quant.i.ty of gold in the form of sheet metal, hand-hammered, about an eighth of an inch thick. Six months later I talked to another coiner who recollected having seen a larger piece of such gold. He said it had been marked on one side with a linear pattern of sc.r.a.pes, and stained on the other face with tar.”
”Tar!”
”Yes. But I have never seen such a sample with my own eyes. I only find evidence evidence of its existence in coins-counterfeit guineas of a level of quality such that I myself am sometimes deceived by them!” of its existence in coins-counterfeit guineas of a level of quality such that I myself am sometimes deceived by them!”
”So, 'twould appear that whoever has this gold, has h.o.a.rded it, and used to spend it, in the form of plates stained with tar. But from time to time he will deliver some of it up to a coiner-”
”Not a a coiner but coiner but the the coiner. Jack. Jack the Coiner. My Nemesis, and my prey, these last twelve years.” coiner. Jack. Jack the Coiner. My Nemesis, and my prey, these last twelve years.”
”Jack sounds like an interesting chap,” Daniel allowed, ”and I ween I shall learn more of him from you anon-but is it your hypothesis that he has a h.o.a.rd of these gold sheets somewhere, and coins them from time to time?”
”No. They're of no use to him h.o.a.rded. If he had a h.o.a.rd, he would coin every last ounce of it, as fast as his coiners could do the work. No, it is my hypothesis that Jack knows the owner of the h.o.a.rd, and that from time to time that person, wanting some money to spend, takes some plates out, and brings them to Jack.”
”Do you have any notion as to who the h.o.a.rder might be?”
”The answer is suggested by the tar, and the sc.r.a.pes. It is coming from a s.h.i.+p.”
”There is a vague a.s.sociation between tar and s.h.i.+ps, but beyond that, I don't follow you,” Daniel said.
”The information you are wanting is that, among sailors and officers of the French Navy, there is a legend-”
”Ah, in truth I have have heard it!” Daniel exclaimed. ”But I failed to draw the connexion. You refer to a legendary s.h.i.+p whose hull was plated with gold.” heard it!” Daniel exclaimed. ”But I failed to draw the connexion. You refer to a legendary s.h.i.+p whose hull was plated with gold.”
”Indeed.”
”But 'twould seem that in your view this is no legend.”
”I have studied it,” Isaac announced. ”I can now trace the descent of King Solomon's Gold from the pages of the Bible, down through the ages, to the hull of that s.h.i.+p, and thence to the samples that I have a.s.sayed in my laboratory in the Tower of London.”
”Pray tell me the tale then!”
”Most of it is no tale at all. The Islands of King Solomon lie in the Pacific. There his gold rested, undisturbed by men, until round the time that you and I were young, and Huygens's clock began to tick. A Spanish fleet, driven by a typhoon far off the charted sea-lanes that join Acapulco to Manila, dropped anchor in the Solomons, and took on board certain provisions, including earth to pack round the galley-stoves to protect the planks of the s.h.i.+p from fire. During the voyage home to New Spain, the heat of the fire melted gold-or something that looked like it-out of the sand, and it pooled to form nuggets of astonis.h.i.+ng fineness, which were discovered when the s.h.i.+ps broke bulk in Acapulco. The Viceroy of New Spain, then just beginning a twenty-five- year reign, was not slow to send out s.h.i.+ps to the Solomons to extract more of this gold, and bring it back to Mexico to be piled up in his personal h.o.a.rd. At the end of his reign, he caused the Solomonic Gold to be loaded aboard his private brig, which sailed back to Spain in convoy with the Spanish treasure-fleet. They made it safe as far as Cadiz. But then the little brig foolishly sailed alone up to Bonanza, where the Viceroy had caused a villa to be built, in which he phant'sied he would enjoy a wealthy retirement. Before she could be unloaded, she was set upon in the night by pirates, dressed as Turks, and led by the infamous criminal known to us as Half-c.o.c.ked Jack, the King of the Vagabonds, and to the French as L'Emmerdeur L'Emmerdeur. The gold was stolen and spirited away in long stages to Hindoostan, where most of it fell into the possession of a heathen potentate, an Amazon pirate-queen, black as char-coal, who had not the faintest understanding of what she had netted. But on those sh.o.r.es, Jack and his confederates used their ill-gotten gains to build a pirate-s.h.i.+p. And from some Dutch s.h.i.+pwrights they had the notion-which was in no way a faulty one, as e'en a stopped Clock is correct twice daily-that if the hull of this s.h.i.+p were cladded, below the waterline, with sheets of smooth metal, she would afford no purchase for barnacles, and repel the attacks of the teredo.”
” 'Tis a wholly reasonable idea,” Daniel said.
” 'Twas a good idea, most strangely executed! For, vain and extravagant man that he was, this Jack decreed that the metal be wrought out of solid gold!”
”So the tale told by those French mariners was in no way fanciful,” Daniel concluded.
”I should rather say, 'twas none the less true, for being fanciful!” Isaac returned.
”Do you know where that s.h.i.+p is now?” Daniel asked, trying not to sound nervous; for he he knew. knew.
”It is thought that she was christened Minerva Minerva. But this is not known with certainty, and is of little use, even if true, as hundreds of s.h.i.+ps answer to that name. But I suspect that she still roams the seas, and calls at London from time to time, and that some commerce plays out between Jack the Coiner, and those who sail her. Plates of gold are taken out of her bilge-for make no mistake, they were stripped from her hull and replaced with copper, probably in some unfrequented Caribbean cove, many years ago-and delivered to Jack, who coins them into excellent guineas, with which he poisons Her Majesty's stock of money. That is the tale of Solomon's Gold, Daniel. I hoped you would find it a diverting yarn. Why do you look so distracted?”
”I find it very odd that the prize you have sought your entire life, should happen to rest in the hands of the man you describe as your Nemesis.”
”My Nemesis, where Mint work is concerned. In other fields, I have other foes,” Isaac reminded him shortly.
”That is beside my point. Why shouldn't the h.o.a.rd of Solomonic Gold lie in a vault in Seville, or at the Vatican, or the Forbidden City of Peking? Of all the places in the world where this gold might have ended up, why should it be in the possession of Jack the Coiner-the one man you'd most like to see being dragged on a sledge to Tyburn?”
”Because its density exceeds that of gold, it is valuable to a counterfeiter.”
”It is more more valuable to an Alchemist. Do you suppose Jack valuable to an Alchemist. Do you suppose Jack knows knows as much, and do you suppose he is aware that you, Isaac, are an Alchemist?” as much, and do you suppose he is aware that you, Isaac, are an Alchemist?”
”He is a mere criminal. criminal.”
”Yes, and a very cosmopolitan one, from the sounds of it.”
”I a.s.sure you he has not the faintest comprehension of matters Alchemical.”
”Neither do I. And yet I understand that you desire this gold! And yet I understand that you desire this gold!”
”What does it matter? He knows that I wish to hunt him down and bring him to justice-that is enough.”