Part 67 (1/2)
”The German's been busy with his dictionary,” cracked one of the Messengers.
A nearby rider commanded, ”Silence, and pay due respect when speaking of our King.”
”Long live the King,” said the leader of the riders, and all of his companions echoed it. The Messengers could summon up no more than an incoherent murmur. The rider now broke the seal, unrolled the page, and read it: ”Know all men by these presents that I, George, by the Grace of G.o.d King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, et cetera et cetera, do hereby relieve Mr. Charles White, Esq., of the post of Captain of the King's Messengers, and appoint in his place William, the Earl of Lostwithiel.” He lifted his gaze from the doc.u.ment and began to roll it up. ”I am the Earl of Lostwithiel,” he let them know, almost shyly, ”and as Captain of the King's Messengers I hereby relieve you all of your positions-” sweeping his eyes across the faces of the men on foot ”-and bid you stand down. The men you see around you are the new King's Messengers, and have a.s.sumed all of your duties and responsibilities.”
During all of this the tromp, tromp, tromp tromp, tromp, tromp of the soldiers' boots had been growing louder; it echoed from the fronts of the casemates down around Mint Street's northern elbow, where the Moneyers lived, and had been dining in their halls. But they had all put their faces in the windows to see what was going on. A white charger came into view, followed, at half a length, by a gray one, both ridden by men wearing uniforms of officers in the King's Own Black Torrent Guard; behind them marched a column of regulars. Even if the Old Messengers had been of a mind to cross swords with the New and be ma.s.sacred there in the middle of Mint Street, this might have given them second thoughts. One, then another, then all of them punched their swords back in to their scabbards, peeled off their silver-greyhound badges, and flung them on the cobbles, turned their backs, and walked away in the direction of Bra.s.s Mount, dividing to pa.s.s round Isaac Newton who was coming the other way. of the soldiers' boots had been growing louder; it echoed from the fronts of the casemates down around Mint Street's northern elbow, where the Moneyers lived, and had been dining in their halls. But they had all put their faces in the windows to see what was going on. A white charger came into view, followed, at half a length, by a gray one, both ridden by men wearing uniforms of officers in the King's Own Black Torrent Guard; behind them marched a column of regulars. Even if the Old Messengers had been of a mind to cross swords with the New and be ma.s.sacred there in the middle of Mint Street, this might have given them second thoughts. One, then another, then all of them punched their swords back in to their scabbards, peeled off their silver-greyhound badges, and flung them on the cobbles, turned their backs, and walked away in the direction of Bra.s.s Mount, dividing to pa.s.s round Isaac Newton who was coming the other way.
”My lord,” said Newton.
”Sir Isaac,” said Lostwithiel, and doffed his hat.
”I am pleased that his majesty has been so quick to rid the Mint of those men. I welcome you to the Tower. It is a great day.”
”Here's thanks for that,” said Lostwithiel, and doffed his hat again.
”Those men, you must know, have stood between me and his majesty's Pyx ever since that day in June when I was made aware that it might have been compromised.”
Even as Newton was speaking these words he was edging nearer the door of the Warden's House, watched interestedly by all of the new Messengers.
The column of soldiers stomped to a halt just at the elbow in the street below Bowyer Tower. The second officer-a Colonel, it could now be seen, with a peg-leg-gave some inaudible command to some subordinates in his wake, touching off a long train of ramifications that ended with sergeants bellowing incomprehensible things to the troops. The outcome was that the troops marched away towards their barracks-houses all around the Liberty of the Tower.
Meanwhile the officer on the white charger-a General-rode forward to join the King's Messengers, and presently drew up alongside the Earl of Lostwithiel. This was the Duke of Marlborough, and so a bit of time was devoted, now, to everyone's showing him various degrees of respect. His peg-legged colonel was bringing up the rear; and behind him was a platoon that had not yet been given leave to go back to its quarters. But this kept a respectful distance, and so Newton was left the sole unmounted man on the street, a smudge of red, and a head of white steam, in a gloomy creva.s.se.
”My lord,” Marlborough announced to Lostwithiel, ”in yonder House is a Vault. Within that Vault is a lock-box belonging to his majesty, denominated the Pyx. The Pyx has a unique status in this Realm. It is a repository of Evidence. From time to time that box is opened and the evidence subjected to a judicious examination by a jury of men who have been chosen by the Sovereign. The object of that Trial is to find out whether or not the Master of his majesty's Mint-” and here Marlborough permitted himself a c.o.c.k of the head toward Newton ”-has been fulfilling the terms of the solemn Indenture that bears his name. You will appreciate that the Trial of the Pyx is a matter of utmost gravity; and yet it is only meaningful insofar as the evidence being weighed-which is to say, the Pyx-has been kept sacrosanct. No one who has an interest in the outcome of that Trial, which shall occur in nine days, must be suffered to approach the Pyx. This is the will of the King.”
”My will, your grace, is to please his majesty.”
”Very good, then,” said Marlborough. ”Colonel Barnes, you will a.s.sist my lord Lostwithiel in keeping an eye on the place, won't you?”
”With pleasure, your grace,” said the peg-legged colonel, and then made a head-jerking move that sent the platoon of Black Torrent Guards in to motion. They took up positions flanking the house's doors, and a moment later they were joined by the new Messengers, who had begun to dismount. The Duke of Marlborough turned his charger around and rode away. Newton turned around and went back to his laboratory.
A Letter 21 OCTOBER 1714.
Dappa The Clink The Clink White White The Tower The Tower Mr. White: Mr. White: Am in receipt of yours of yester evening. Am in receipt of yours of yester evening.Gentlemen do not fight duels with slaves, nor do they honourably quit claim on property that by rights belongs to them, and so I, along with all London, shall interpret this as a renunciation of the doctrine of Slavery. To rid the world of that repugnant Inst.i.tution shall require many more such renunciations, as well as legal precedents hard fought and slowly won, but by your letter you have done so much to further this cause that I shall politely overlook the fact that it is really nothing more than a way for you to commit suicide, homicide, or both, before Jack Ketch can lay a glove on you.I look forward to despatching you on Tower Hill tomorrow at daybreak. In supposing that I would prefer firearms to swords, you have guessed correctly; but once again you have under-rated me by supposing that I'd not be able to supply the requisite hard-ware. On the contrary, I have made arrangements for a matched set to be on hand, and, in accordance with the traditions that govern such things, I shall give you the choice as to which weapon you shall prefer.The gaolers are coming to take my chains off.See you tomorrow.Dappa
The Condemned Hold, Newgate Prison 21 OCTOBER 1714.
Newgate is the Horse of Troy, in whose Womb are shut up all the Mad Greeks that were Men of Action.-Memoirs of the Right Villanous John Hall, 1708 1708 THERE WAS AN OLD JOKE that Newgate must be like Heaven, for the way to it was straight and narrow. It must have originated with a waggish prisoner, not with any free man. For a free man would approach Newgate through ways (from the west, Holborn, from the east, Newgate Street) that were broad and crooked. For the convenience of Newgate's exclusive members.h.i.+p, however, there was a short-cut, a chute or gutter running that Newgate must be like Heaven, for the way to it was straight and narrow. It must have originated with a waggish prisoner, not with any free man. For a free man would approach Newgate through ways (from the west, Holborn, from the east, Newgate Street) that were broad and crooked. For the convenience of Newgate's exclusive members.h.i.+p, however, there was a short-cut, a chute or gutter running straight and narrow straight and narrow for about an hundred paces from the holding-pens of the Court to the southeastern corner of the Prison. It was one of those sacred and inviolable English rights-of-way, hemmed in by high walls to either side. For the owners of the properties to the left and to the right sides of it did not love to see long necklaces of chained prisoners marching to and fro across their back yards. for about an hundred paces from the holding-pens of the Court to the southeastern corner of the Prison. It was one of those sacred and inviolable English rights-of-way, hemmed in by high walls to either side. For the owners of the properties to the left and to the right sides of it did not love to see long necklaces of chained prisoners marching to and fro across their back yards.
In particular, the property to the right, as one went from the Bailey to the Prison, had notably fastidious and particular tenants. For that parcel, a good acre and a half, was the demesne of the College of Physicians. Your common Newgate felon knew it only as a mystery and a terror. A mystery because no part of it could be seen, owing to the high featureless wall that lined the chute. A terror because the bodies of poor men, cut down from the Treble Tree, were sold to that College by the enterprising Jack Ketch. And there, instead of being given a Christian burial, they were cut up into pieces, ensuring that the unquiet spirit that once animated those dismembered parts must roam the earth until Judgment Day.
To Jack Shaftoe it was no terror because when Ketch had done with him there'd be little left of him to cut up. And neither was it a mystery. For he had made a bit of a study of the place. Just on the other side of that wall, he knew, was a garden, where Physicians could stroll about and stretch their legs, or relax on benches, after a long night of cutting up dead criminals. The remainder of the ground was claimed by a great building that had been thrown up, after the Fire, by one Robert Hooke. It was famous because its turret was decorated with a large golden Pill. But it faced the other way, toward Warwick Lane, turning its back upon Newgate. Dead prisoners were brought in through the back way: a cul-de-sac, running from Prison to College, called Phoenix Court.
In the Old Bailey yesterday, a certificate had been bestowed upon him, a sort of diploma. A considerate bailiff had toted that rare doc.u.ment back up the straight and narrow way to Newgate, following Jack and Jack's entourage of cudgel-toting gaolers, and presented it to the officialdom there. The import of this paper was that Jack had graduated from the Press-Room, and might now be admitted to the Condemned Hold.
According to the ways of the place, this meant that he exchanged the Press-Room's lead weights for fetters of iron.
These now sprawled around him on the oaken planking. For the Condemned Hold was furnished with wooden shelves that kept some of its occupants up above the floor, and at the moment Jack had the whole place to himself. Jack did not feel the weight of his chains unless he attempted to move.
The discomforts that the chains inflicted upon his body, though, troubled him less than the unmistakable whiff of Mockery present in these arrangements. What ink was to a writer, fine metals-mercury, silver, gold, and watered steel-had always been to Jack.
That metals consisted partly of water was obvious from the fact that, when you heated them up, they became fluids. But some other substance must be combined with water in order to create a metal. The missing ingredient was supplied by invisible rays from the planets, which penetrated the ground and combined with the water that was there in the earth. The rays from that dimmest and most sluggish of planets, Saturn, created the basest of all metals, lead. Jupiter was responsible for tin and Mars for iron. Venus did copper, the moon silver, Mercury, obviously, accounted for mercury, and the Sun made gold. This was why the gold-hungry Spaniards, in their explorations and conquests, had never strayed far from the Equator, for that was where the Sun beat down most directly, and produced the richest deposits of its precious Element.
As even the most ignorant miner understood, base metals were continually being trans.m.u.ted into n.o.bler ones by a kind of dark vegetation within the earth. A deposit of lead, left to ripen in the ground for some centuries, would become silver, and silver would in time become gold.
For many years Jack had derived pride and fame from a supposed affinity between himself and Quicksilver, that s.h.i.+mmering fluid spirit. According to a learned man Jack knew, by the name of Enoch, Mercury (the planet) ran closer to the Sun than any other body, and whipped round it at terrific speed, without being consumed. Jack had flattered himself by seeing, in that, a token of his relations.h.i.+p with the Sun King. For as the Alchemists loved to jabber, ”What is above is as that which is below, and what is below is as that which is above.” Jack might have sprung from the basest imaginable stock, the commonest folk in the whole world, but he had been trans.m.u.ted over time into a man linked in the common mind with quicksilver and with gold.
Which made it all the more offensive that, since he had been brought to Newgate, he'd been been immobilized by the basest of metals, substances that did not in any way partake of the spirit of quicksilver. The best face he could put on it was that he had moved from lead (in the Press-Room) to iron (in the Condemned Hold)-a small but indisputable step up the ladder.
These Alchemical ruminations were now most rudely broken in upon by a persistent choking and gagging noise. Some one else had entered the Condemned Hold; and, from the sounds of it, he had swallowed his own tongue. This was most irregular. It was a common enough thing for free men to pay a gaoler to let them go in to the Condemned Hold for a few minutes' time and gape at the soon-to-be-dead men, much as people would go to Bedlam to see the Raving Mad; but the practice had been suspended for as long as Jack Shaftoe was in the place, for Ike Newton was leery of escape-plots. So this choking wretch, whoever he was, must have some special dispensation. Jack rotated his head-carefully, for the iron neck-collar had a few nasty burrs on it-and saw naught save a wee hand gripping a rope. Rotating his head a bit more, and sacrificing some neck-skin, he at last got sight of a boy, standing on tiptoe, and hanging himself. That is, he had a noose round his neck and was holding the free end of the rope up above him, acting as his own gallows. Seeing that he had at last got Jack's attention, he now went in to a phantastickal parody of a hanged man, rolling his eyes, pawing at the noose with his free hand, and dancing about the Condemned Hold on tippy-toe when he wasn't spasmodically twitching.
”It is not bad,” was Jack's verdict after a particularly affecting round of convulsions, ”but I have seen better. In fact, I have done done better. I once followed your trade, boy.” better. I once followed your trade, boy.”
”What trade is that, Jack Shaftoe, King of the Vagabonds?” asked the boy, letting the rope drop.
”That of hanging from condemned men's legs to make 'em die faster, and thereby undercutting Jack Ketch, who demands far too much silver for a quick death.”
”Then you know why I'm here,” said the boy.
”Knew it the moment I spied the noose. What's the going rate nowadays?”
”A guinea.”
”Oh, you're a sly one. Don't you know I can't afford guineas?”
”Everyone knows. Don't hurt to ask, though.”
”Very shrewd. I commend you. But tell me this: does the Mobb mock me now, for having had so much, and lost it?”
”No,” said the boy, ”they love you for it.”
”Never!”
”When you were Jack the Coiner, and flyin' above London in yer Sky-Chariot, in a golden waistcoat, with that Papist henchman, they din't care for none of that,” said the boy. ”But now you've been brought low, and lost all, and are Jack the Vagabond again, why, the people are sayin', he's all right, he is! One of us, like.”
”And that is why they came to the Court of Sessions to crown me even as the King was being crowned at Westminster,” Jack said. ”So 'twasn't mockery at all.”
”Blokes are raising pints and saying 'G.o.d save the King,' and they don't mean George the German.”
”You know, I got a homily the other day, when I was being Pressed, from the ghost of that Papist henchman, as you called him, and he had some things to say concerning Pride. And my mind went back to Amsterdam, 1685, when I had to choose between two Opportunities. One, to go out into the world and become a man of affairs and make a lot of money, all to impress a certain Lady and make her think I was the right man for her. Two, to write off that venture, lose all, remain in Amsterdam, and go on being the f.e.c.kless Vagabond I'd always been, and to rely upon the said Female for food, shelter, et cetera et cetera.”
”Which did you choose?” asked the boy.
”Don't blame you for not being able to guess,” said Jack, ”for as all London knows, I have been a money-man, Jack the Coiner, and I have been a Vagabond, too, in the estate you see me here. The answer is, I chose to seek my fortune. Failed. Lost all. Then got a fortune I had not ever looked for. Lost it though. Got it back. Lost it. Got another-the story is somewhat repet.i.tious.”
”Yes, I was noticing.”