The System of the World (29 page)

For an instant it was almost completely dark in the room, and then Daniel felt in his soul the impact of something huge upon the window. Stakes of broken wood strode end-over-end across the floor, bounding through a skittering wash of sharded glass.

He stood up. A lot of people seemed to be headed his way, as half the space in the room had been claimed by a black bulk thrust in through the obliterated window. Daniel stepped back toward the chimney-corner, knowing that, in a human stampede, he’d be the first to end up with boot-prints on his face; but suddenly there was a fizzing noise nearby, and the room was plastered with hellish light. The faces of the onrushing guests burst out of the gloom, a choir of white ovals, mouths opened, not to sing, but to scream; then they all raised hands or arms to protect their eyes. They parted to the sides of the room, faltered as they bashed into one another and stumbled over furniture, and finally came to a stand.

The center was now clear, except for a treacherous rubble of upended chairs, and Daniel had a clear view of the thing that had come in. It was a large and heavy-built wagon, like the ones used to transport bullion, but reinforced for ramming, and painted a black so profound that, even in the dissolving radiance that now filled the room, it was nothing more than a brooding blur. One part of it stood
out brightly. Fixed to the prow of this terrestrial Ram was a badge of silver metal: a flat plate of polished steel cut into the flashing silhouette of a greyhound in full chase.

Doors flew open on both sides of the wagon, and good boots began to hit the floor; Daniel could see little, but he could hear the jingling of spurs, and the ring of steel blades being whisked from scabbards: Evidence that Angus’s new guests were Persons of Quality.

Daniel half-turned toward the source of the light, shielding his eyes from it with one hand, and looked at Mr. Baynes, who had lost his teeth, and seemed very old and helpless. Of all the strange things that had obtruded on Mr. Baynes’s senses in the last ten heartbeats, the one that owned his attention was the emblem of the silver greyhound. Following Mr. Baynes’s gaze, Daniel began to see it in more than one place: the men piling out of the wagon, and herding Angus’s clients into the corners at sword-point, all wore similar badges on their breasts.

The unoccupied wagon was now withdrawn from the window and dragged off to one side. Suddenly the parlour had become an annex of Salisbury Square. A large cloaked man was cantering toward them on a black stallion, with saber drawn.

He rode right into the center of the room, reined in his charger, and stood up in his stirrups, revealing a silver greyhound pinned to his coat. “High Treason!” he proclaimed, in a voice loud enough to pelt off the opposite side of the square. “I say, on your knees, all of you!”

It was true of beasts and humans alike that when they were terrified—literally scared out of their wits, beyond the pale of reason—they either froze, or ran away. To this point Mr. Baynes had been frozen. Now his instincts told him to flee. He jumped up and turned away from all those silver greyhounds that seemed to be chasing him. In so doing, he turned full into the light. But the light was now coming over him like a burning cloud, seeming to exert a palpable force that pressed him down onto his knees, and then to all fours.

Daniel’s eyes had finally adjusted to the brightness, or perhaps the light was slowly burning out. He could see now that the old gager was gone, his blankets collapsed on the hearth like a snake’s shed skin.

From them had emerged what ninety-nine percent of Christendom would identify as an angel, with flowing white hair and a sword of fire. Even Daniel was tempted to think so; but on a moment’s reflection he decided it was Sir Isaac Newton, brandishing a rod of burning phosphorus.

D
URING THE HOUR
that followed the descent of the Queen’s Messengers on Angus’s boozing-ken, many vivid and novel scenes presented
themselves to Daniel’s organs of sense. But the next time he had a moment to sit and think—which occurred on the head of a sloop anchored in the river off Black Friars, as he was taking a splendid crap into the Thames—these were the salient facts:

Isaac had tossed a handful of some chymical powder on the fire, causing thick smoke to spew out the chimney; this had been the signal for the Queen’s Messengers to mount their assault on Angus’s boozing-ken.

Peter Hoxton and Angus had dived through a sort of bolt-hole that led from the kitchen into the cellar of a neighboring house, gone out the back door into a little poultry-yard, vaulted a wall, streaked through a whorehouse, dodged into another boozing-ken, and taken another bolt-hole into an alley called The Wilderness (this the Queen’s Messengers learned by following their trail and interrogating bystanders).

At its eastern end, The Wilderness dead-ended in the burying-ground behind Bridewell. There, Angus and Saturn had parted ways among unmarked whores’ graves, and got away clean.

The sores on Isaac’s mouth and eyes were fakes, made from the congealed latex, or sap, of a Brazilian tree.

The Captain of the Queen’s Messengers—the big man who had ridden into the ken on horseback—was none other than Mr. Charles White, he of the bear-baiting and ear-biting.

After most of Angus’s clients had been duly scared out of their wits and sent running, the Queen’s Messengers, with Daniel, Isaac, and Mr. Baynes in tow, had barrelled down the length of The Wilderness with no less speed than Saturn and Angus. Before them, Bridewell rose up above its crowded burying-ground. It was a surplus Royal palace, turned over to the poor a long time ago, half burned down in the Fire, and half rebuilt. Daniel had never really taken a good look at it before, as why would anyone want to? But this was probably the right way to see it: catching the last glimmer of blue twilight, and protected from the denizens of St. Bride’s Parish by its muddy necropolis. As they gathered speed down The Wilderness, Daniel phant’sied that they were about to make a frontal assault on Bridewell Palace, galloping across the pocked lumpy glacis of the burying ground to ram down the doors and round up the whores. But at the last moment they veered right on Dorset and charged straight into the timber yard that spread along the riverbank there.

Two lighters had been tucked up against the timber-wharf, screened, by stacks of logs, from the view of any underworld sentries who might have been peering down from high windows of Bridewell.
They had been well-manned with oarsmen, and ready to cast off and pull away.

A brief twilight row had taken the Messengers (half a dozen in all), Daniel, Sir Isaac, and their prisoner to this sloop,
Atalanta
. For tonight’s purposes, she was all bare spars, and
incognito;
but the coat of arms on one of her furled flags was that of Charles White.
Atalanta
was his own
jacht
. No doubt, when the Queen was made aware, she would be most grateful.

Charles White had spent the brief row sitting knee-to-knee with Mr. Baynes, absent-mindedly fondling the collection of dried human ears strung on his watch-chain, and wondering aloud how long it would take them to sail downriver to the Tower of London, where all of the really first-rate implements of torture were to be found. He had held a speculative colloquy with his fellow Messengers, wondering whether it would suffice merely to keel-haul Mr. Baynes en route; whether the effectiveness of said keel-hauling might be enhanced by doing it at the place (a hundred yards away) where Fleet Ditch emptied into the Thames; whether, in other words, Mr. Baynes’s ability to talk would be impaired or enhanced by being made to inhale sewage; or whether they’d have to keel-haul him
and then
use the facilities in the Tower. The problem being that traitors, who were destined to be publicly half-hanged, castrated, drawn, and quartered
anyway
, frequently saw no incentive to talk.

One of White’s lieutenants—a younger gentleman, probably picked for the role because he was sweet-faced and blond—then raised the following objection: namely, that Mr. Baynes might not be destined for the man-rated butcher-block at Tyburn
at all
, as it was not really demonstrated, yet, that he was, in fact, a traitor. He was roundly hooted down. But a minute later he raised the same objection again, and finally was given leave to explain himself.

A wily barrister, he said, might argue that Mr. Baynes was in truth a loyal subject of Her Majesty.

Stay, stay, ’twas not so preposterous! For clearly
Dr. Waterhouse
was a loyal subject, merely
pretending
to deal with coiners as a trick to gather intelligence. Could Mr. Baynes’s barrister not advance the same claim?

No, it was ludicrous on its face, retorted Charles White—much to the dismay of Mr. Baynes, who had begun to show stirrings of hope.

For (White went on) Mr. Baynes had not, in fact, proffered any such intelligence, indeed probably did not have any. So drawing and quartering was certainly to be the fate of him, and the only question was: how hideous would his tortures have to be, between now and then, to make him do as he ought?

Daniel had the misfortune, during all of this, to be seated in the
prow of the lighter, facing aft. This gave him a clear view of Charles White’s broad back, and Mr. Baynes’s hairless and toothless head, which frequently strained up or sideways to scan the boat for a sympathetic face.

To Daniel it might be perfectly evident that it was a childish masque, scripted to play on Mr. Baynes’s terrors, and to break him without thumbscrews. But Mr. Baynes—an audience of one—was captivated by the show. His disbelief had not merely been suspended; it had been fired out of a cannon into a stone wall. There was little question his resistance was broken. The only open question was: were his wits ruined, too, to the point where he’d be useless?

Would Daniel, put in the same predicament, have been able to see through the ruse so easily? He doubted it.

Though perhaps he
was
in the same predicament, and the show was being staged for
him
as much as for Mr. Baynes.

The shit that he took off
Atalanta
’s head was a masterpiece, exactly two well-formed packages plunging into the river like sounding-leads, and vanishing without a splash—evidence that his gut would keep functioning well after other parts of him had given way to age. He was inclined to sit there for a few minutes with his buttocks cupped in the luxuriously polished wooden annulus of the shite-hole, and to savor this triumph, just as the late Samuel Pepys had taught him to do in the case of urination. But the noises coming from belowdecks told him that he had responsibilities down there, not only to his Queen, but to Mr. Baynes.

For his fears concerning the latter had been realized. The Queen’s Messengers might be very skilled at hounding traitors, but as a theatrical troupe they were rank amateurs, utterly lacking in the all-important Sense of Audience. They had let the show go on too long, and reduced Mr. Baynes to a blubbering imbecile.

Daniel pulled his breeches back on, went aft, and, at the top of the narrow staircase that led belowdecks, nearly collided with a man coming up for some fresh air. The only thing that prevented it was the other chap’s white hair, which shone in the light of the half-moon, and gave Daniel a moment’s warning.

He backed up and allowed Isaac to join him on deck.

“Mr. Hoxton has shown his colours, I should say,” Isaac remarked.

“What—by running off?”

“Indeed.”

“If he had stayed to be keel-hauled, thumbscrewed, drawn, and quartered, we’d know him to be a trustworthy chap, is that it?”

Isaac was mildly affronted. “No such fate would have befallen him, had he shown a willingness to serve the Queen.”

“The only way in which Peter Hoxton
can be
of service to the Queen—or to
you
—is to bring me intelligence from the flash world. If he had
not
run away, he would have thereby declared himself an enemy of all things flash, and become perfectly useless. By escaping, along with Angus, he has enhanced his reputation beyond measure!”

“It is of no account. Your rôle is now played out. And well played. I thank you.”

“Why did you send the smoke-signal? Why not wait to see what else Baynes would divulge?”

“He had already over-stepped, and divulged too much,” Isaac retorted, “and he knew it. He grew reticent, and, to try you, asked you for your story. I knew you had none, or at least, none fit to withstand the scrutiny of this one-armed foreigner, or even of Mr. Baynes. My decision was: Let us advance!”

“What is it you need from Mr. Baynes now, in order to advance?”

A
T
D
ANIEL’S INSISTENCE,
Charles White and his merry men left Mr. Baynes alone for a few minutes in a cabin, though they made sure to put him in irons first, so that he’d not devise some way to evade justice by committing suicide.

Daniel lurked outside the cabin door until Mr. Baynes stopped sobbing and whimpering, then counted slowly to a hundred (for he himself needed to calm down a bit), then opened the hatch and went through, carrying a lit candle.

Mr. Baynes was on a bench with his hands fettered behind his back. Before him was a plank table. He had slumped forward so his head lay on it. Daniel was certain he had expired from a stroke, until he perceived the prisoner’s pinioned arms slowly rising and falling, as his lungs filled and emptied like the bellows of an Irish bagpipe.

Daniel wished he could fall asleep, too. For a few minutes he sat there nodding drowsily in the light of the candle-flame. But he could hear booted and spurred feet pacing round the deck overhead, and he knew perfectly well that he was not anchored in some placid cove, but only a few yards off Black Friars, London.

“Wake up.”

“Eh—?” Baynes pulled against his irons, then regretted it and sat up, his spine creaking and popping like an old mast taking a gust. His mouth was a dry hole, pushed in like a wound. He refused to meet Daniel’s eye.