The System of the World (75 page)

“Let us continue the interview,” Isaac said.

“W
HEN
J
ACK FIRST RETURNED
to London, the war had resumed under its new name of the War of the Spanish Succession. But the armies had not yet been fully mobilized, and so many unemployed soldiers and sailors were still about, making the city infamously perilous. Jack had the wit to see that these men would presently be called back into service, and so he recruited as many as he could during his first months back. His interview with me was partly with an eye towards getting me to work for him.”

“In what capacity? And did he succeed?” asked Isaac.

“Anyone who has paid the least notice to the newspapers, and to the discourse of Parliament, during the last decade, will know that war breeds corruption as flesh breeds maggots. The vast movements of men and matériel entailed by the maneuvers of the Allied Powers afforded Jack opportunities for profit that were almost inconceivably vast. For every case of peculation that was talked about openly in London, you may be certain there were a hundred others that went unremarked upon—and of those, Jack was probably involved, somehow, in fifty. His method was simple: he recruited soldiers and sailors before the Crown did, and he treated them better.”

“You have answered my first question,” Isaac said, “namely, in what capacity did Jack wish to hire you. But you have not touched on the second.”

“Only because the answer is obvious,” Arlanc said, and held up his manacles. “Oh, I did not do terrible things. But I am ashamed to say that I did look the other way when my regiment’s deliveries of gunpowder, and other commodities, came up a bit short. This I did less out of a desire for profit than fear of a certain suttler who I’m sure would not have hesitated to cut my throat, or arrange for me to be shot in the back, had I raised any objection. God in his mercy took me out of this peril, for in ought-five I suffered a wound that forced me to retire from Her Majesty’s service. I came back to London and, after I recovered, went to work as a porter for Monsieur Nevers, the horologist—”

“Which led in due course to your knowing several Fellows of the Royal Society, who hired Monsieur Nevers to make instruments,” said Daniel.

“Yes, sir, and that is how I ended up working here.”

“But you were also working for Jack,” Isaac pointed out.

“Yes, sir, after a fashion,” Arlanc admitted. “Though it hardly seemed like work. From time to time—perhaps once or twice a year—I was invited to go and meet a certain gentleman at a certain pub, and have a chat with him.”

“If the work was all that trivial, why did you
bother
?” Isaac asked.

“Jack had power over me, as a result of our previous dealings,” said Arlanc. “With a word he could destroy my marriage or blacken the reputation of my brother Calvin. What he asked of me seemed harmless—so I did it.”

“What did you and this man talk about when you met in the pub?” asked Orney.

“He was an educated Frenchman. He professed to be a sort of Enthusiast, an
amateur
of Natural Philosophy. He simply wanted to know what the Royal Society was like. He asked all sorts of questions about what happened during the meetings, and what the Fellows were like—Sir Christopher Wren, Edmund Halley, and especially Sir Isaac Newton.”

“Did you ever mention to this
amateur
that Sir Isaac made a practice of coming to Crane Court on Sunday evenings, and working late?” asked Daniel.

“I don’t remember for certain, sir, but it is quite possible—that is the sort of thing this fellow loved to hear about, sir.” Arlanc then paused, for everyone in the room had exhaled, and some who’d been studying his phizz for the last several minutes were now looking at their fingernails or gazing out the window. “Did I do wrong, sir?” asked Henry Arlanc. He was addressing the question to Daniel. “Foolish question! I know perfectly well I did wrong. But was it a crime? A crime for which a man can be charged, and brought before a magistrate?”

Daniel, moved by sympathy, looked him in the eye and got ready to say,
Of course not!
but Isaac was quicker: “You are guilty of Conspiracy, and to prove as much before a judge shall be simple enough. Mr. Partry, you may take this man away to Newgate Prison.”

With no more ceremony than that, Partry loomed over Arlanc’s shoulder and gathered up a fistful of lapel at the nape of the Huguenot’s neck, by which he hauled him to his feet. Partry kicked Arlanc’s chair aside and began to drag him backwards out of the room, leg-chains raking across the floor-boards. Approaching the exit the pair halted for a moment so that Partry could open the door with his free hand. Arlanc took this opportunity to say: “Beg pardon, sirs, but if I could add a word or two, concerning the man you seek—?”

“You may,” answered Isaac, with a confirmatory nod at Partry. Partry remained in the doorway, watching over Arlanc’s shoulder, while keeping a loose grip on the scruff of the other’s neck. It seemed then to Daniel that this pair looked like a ventriloquist at a country fair, and his marionette. Arlanc began to speak. “I’ve been a student, you might say, of Jack for some years now—as Mr. Halley watches the movements of comets, and understands their nature without being able to alter their courses, why, so it is with me and Jack Shaftoe. And I say that if you think Jack is a slave of
Le Roi,
and dreams only of doing the bidding of Louis, why, you are underestimating the man. That hypothesis—if I may borrow a Royal Society word—does not do the man sufficient credit, and does not explain his actions.”

“And what is
your
hypothesis, Mr. Arlanc?” asked Daniel.

“He’s gone around the world, Jack has. He’s had a pile of gold, lost it, got it back, and lost it again. He’s been a Vagabond, a King, and everything in between. He has more swag now than a man could ever need. You must ask yourselves: what could
move
such a man? When Jack gets up in the morning, what does he think of? What does he desire?”

“You have been given leave to supply us with answers—not to ply us with questions,” Sir Isaac pointed out.

“Very well then, sir, I’ll tell you the answer. It is love that Jack seeks. The love of a woman. A certain particular woman, whom he loved once, and has never forgotten.” Arlanc was looking Daniel in the eye. “She is known to some of you. Her name is—”

“I know her name,” Daniel said, to cut off Arlanc’s maudlin discourse before he could sully the name of some blameless lady or other; but he needn’t have bothered, for Partry at the same instant had jerked back on Arlanc’s shoulder so violently as to throttle his wind-pipe and draw him back through the door.

“Thank you, Mr. Partry,” Isaac called out as Arlanc was removed with a fantastic cacophony: scraping and clanking of chains, gagging and coughing of the prisoner, curses from Partry, and above all the wailing and sobbing
redux
of Mrs. Arlanc. Doors up and down the hall were being hauled open, and diverse savants and vertuosos were thrusting their heads out to see what was the meaning of this. Kikin did the Clubb the favor of closing the door on that scene. This muffled the sound to the point where it was mere noises off: distracting but ignorable. There was a pause for the Clubb to regain its composure. Then Mr. Orney, who was running the meeting, said: “Right. Are there any other items of new business?”

“I have one,” said Mr. Kikin, “which is that we all lie down and take a damned nap.”

I
F THE OTHERS WENT
to sleep, Isaac did not, and neither did Daniel, for Isaac wanted to have words with him. They met in a study off the Library, where Isaac was wont to hold forth as President of the Royal Society.

“You will have seen the deficiency in Arlanc’s account,” was how Isaac opened the conversation.

“What, that nonsense about a woman?”

Isaac got that queasy look signifying that Daniel was being unforgivably slow. “For the Infernal Device to have been placed where it was, it was not sufficient simply for Jack to know that I work late here on Sunday evenings. He must have known, futhermore, that
you
were coming, in company of Mr. Threader, and that you should arrive on a Sunday evening.”

“I sent more than one letter ahead, which Arlanc would have seen, to inform the Royal Society of my intentions…”

“Your intentions
in general,
yes. But the
specific
information that you should arrive on a Sunday evening—the fact that the Device was placed in your trunk on Mr. Threader’s wagon—all this points to Threader’s involvement.”

“We have been over this before. That Jack has a spy in Threader’s retinue I am willing to believe. But to say Mr. Threader himself is a
hashishin
is absurd!”

“Did you mark how quiet he was just now?”

“You call it
quiet
. I call it
asleep
. We have all been awake thirty-six hours!”

“You have learned from Arlanc how Jack builds power: he wheedles a small favor from someone, then comes back again asking for a larger one, and so on, until that person is ensnared, and has lost the power to refuse. Is it so difficult to believe that such a thing could have happened to an inveterate Weigher such as Mr. Threader?”

“I will consider it,” Daniel said, “on the condition that you will entertain another, just as repugnant possibility: that the Royal Society harbors another, of infinitely higher rank than Henry Arlanc, who is working in league with Jack the Coiner.”

27
JULY
1714

“I
CAME AS SOON AS
I
COULD.”

Daniel thought this very like Isaac: to open the conversation by defending himself against imagined allegations of tardiness. Since Daniel was the only man in the room (Saturn’s clock-shop along Coppice Row), some might see it as an excess of caution; but when you were him you could never be too sure.

“Stunning alacrity is the phrase I should have used to describe your response to my message,” Daniel assured him. “I did not expect you for another hour, and do not expect the rest of the Clubb to show up at all.”

In case Daniel’s reassurances were not in good faith, Isaac went on to bolster his rebuttal. “Some kind of storm has broken over the Court of St. James today. The Quality are all out in the streets—it is as if, at some moment in the middle of the day, every courtier and politician in London suddenly decided he was in the wrong place.”

“That is not a bad description of what happened.”

“I was at the Royal Society, going over some documents relating to Leibniz, and when I received your note, I found it nearly impossible to get out onto Fleet Street. At first I feared the Queen must have died; but the bells do not toll for her.”

“I know a few things about what happened at
St. James’s
today,” Daniel said, “but as you came hither, instead of going thither, I presume you are more concerned with happenings at
Newgate
.”

“When did he escape?” Isaac asked.

“Sometime during the night. Mr. Partry is there now, interviewing the gaolers.”

“As we could not trust Mr. Partry to keep Mr. Arlanc in the gaol, I see no reason to entrust him with further responsibilities.”

“It was not his task to
keep
Arlanc at Newgate but to
deliver
him there—which he did. There, the chains that Partry had put on him
were removed, and replaced by much heavier ones, as is the usual practice of the gaolers.”

“It is also their usual practice to accept money to replace those heavy chains with lighter ones.”

“Indeed. After Arlanc had spent a night heavily ironed in the Condemned Hold, he got a new set of chains, which were so light as to be mere tokens, and he was moved—”

“To the Press-yard and Castle!?” Isaac shook his head, and turned his gaze to the traffic moving down Coppice Row. “Someone—obviously Jack, or one of his agents—came in and spread some money round the gaolers, then. They gave him a pleasant flat for a night and then looked the other way as he slid down a drainpipe. I should have anticipated it.”

“Perhaps the reason you did
not,
was that it does not really
matter
.”

“I serve under a solemn Indenture, Daniel. To me, the administration of Justice
always
matters.”

“Let me say it otherwise, then. All that was left in Arlanc’s future was punishment. We should not have gotten any more information from him. This much was obvious. So the tedious business of looking after his incarceration and trial moved to the back of your mind. As it did to mine.”

Both men now saw through the window Peter Hoxton and Sean Partry. They had been coming up Coppice Row from the general direction of Newgate. Saturn was walking in the lead, breaking a trail through the traffic, almost all of which was moving the opposite way.

This was Tuesday. Friday was a Hanging-Day at Tyburn. The streets would be impassable then, and on Thursday. Meat that was brought into the city on the hoof today or tomorrow would fetch a good price later in the week; accordingly, every few minutes a drover would come by, moving a small herd of doomed cattle down towards Smithfield. So the usual traffic of hay-wains, manure-carts, and holiday-makers coming back down from the open swales to the north of town, had to be crammed into the intervals between these herds. Northbound pedestrians, such as Saturn and Sean Partry, had a bad time of it. They entered the shop in a choleric mood, smelling of all the cow-shit they’d been forced to step in. But compared to Newgate this smelled like the gardens of Shalimar.

“There is not a man at Newgate but will aver that the disappearance of Henry Arlanc is a bottomless mystery,” Partry announced, with no preliminaries. “From which you may assume—as you likely have done already—that it was arranged by that infamous Black-guard Jack Shaftoe.”

“It was not worth your going to Newgate to collect that intelligence,”
said Newton, who might have been getting ready to accuse Partry of padding his bill.

But Partry was too quick for him. “In attending so keenly to Arlanc, Jack has forgotten about another inmate, scheduled to be drawn and quartered on Friday, whose testimony might be more useful to the Clubb, and more damaging to Jack, than that of Arlanc.”

“Ah, you are speaking of that man who was convicted of coining some weeks ago, and whom you were planning to approach this week. I had quite forgotten about him,” said Daniel.

“Do not punish yourself, Doc, for Jack has forgotten about him, too, and therein lies our opportunity.”

“I have never
heard
of him,” Isaac protested.

“You’d know his name, if I spoke it,” Partry assured him, “he was caught up in one of your coining investigations some time ago, and duly convicted. But he made me swear I’d not reveal his name, and so you’ll not know who he is until Thursday evening, at the Black Dogg, in the cellar of Newgate Prison.”

“And then he shall be willing to talk to us of Jack?”

“Yes, sir—provided you come with guineas to put in his pockets.”

“A gratuity for Jack Ketch so that this coiner shall die a swift merciful death the next day at Tyburn. It shall not be the first time I have enriched Mr. Ketch thus, to further my pursuit of bigger game,” Isaac said, in a tone of exhausted resignation.

At this Partry nodded, and seemed satisfied—but only for an instant, because Daniel pulled him up short with a warning look, and a shake of the head. “Hold,” he said, “the transaction as you have set it forth won’t do.”

“What do you mean it won’t do?” asked Partry.

“Pray make yourself comfortable here, Mr. Partry,” said Daniel, moving toward the back door, and staring at Isaac until Isaac noticed, and began staring back. “Or down the street at the pub, if you please. I must go for a stroll with Sir Isaac, and discuss with him certain complications.”

Partry chewed his tongue for a few beats, and answered: “I shall husband my energies for yet another journey to Newgate and back. I wish you a pleasant stroll and a non-fatal.”

“I’ll see to the latter,” offered Saturn, and followed Daniel and Isaac out the back into the Court of Technologickal Arts.

“W
HAT IS IT YOU WISH
to shew me here?”

It was necessary for Isaac to ask this, for as always the Court was a riot of invention. One of Mr. Newcomen’s acolytes had come out from Devon with parts of an Engine, which had lately been put together
in the middle of the yard to form a great smoking and steaming, sucking and thrashing terror, thronged with grimy admirers. In another corner, Mr. Hauksbee was trying out a new and yet more dangerous spark-maker, which had drawn in those few who were not fascinated by the Engine.

Daniel had hoped that Isaac would be enthralled. But he was not. And the tone in which he spoke, his rigid posture, his flared nostrils, all seemed calculated to let Daniel know that he did not especially like what he saw. It was perhaps a small act of mercy that Isaac did not ask any questions more grueling than
What is it you wish to shew me here?
For as Daniel surveyed the Court, he noted that very little progress was being made on the Logic Mill. If he were more responsible-minded, he should have been alarmed by that. Had he styled himself a leader of men, he should have taken measures to bring these aimless
ingénieurs
back to order. But he did not feel so moved. He had brought these men together here and given them what they most longed for: freedom to make things, and to work on whatever they found most interesting. For several months, the most interesting thing had been the Logic Mill, and all of them had glady worked together on it, without having to be told to. Of late they had become interested in new adventures. For a little while Daniel had been annoyed by their fickleness. Then he had reflected that the world, as of July 1714, was of a sudden crowded with interesting projects for men such as these: enough to keep them all busy for hundreds of years. If they let their attention drift from the Logic Mill, who was Daniel to command them not to be interested in sparks, or steam? And if Isaac was bored by the Engine for Raising Water by Fire, what power or right had Daniel to forbid it? It was nothing more than the Boyle/Hooke Rarefying Engine, built larger, and that was from fifty years ago.

“Nothing,” Daniel finally answered. “It is merely a convenient way to get out of doors without being overrun by cattle.” He led Isaac toward a side-exit of the Court, and Saturn—who’d fallen behind, as he’d gone to roust a pair of young culls who’d been playing at dice on a barrel-head—rushed up to grip its heavy bolt and toss it out of the way. The two dice-players fell in behind Daniel and Isaac, each stepping along smartly with a massive walking-stick in his hand, though neither of them seemed to have any trouble with rheumatism.

Preceded by Saturn and followed by the two bludgeon-men, Daniel and Isaac now embarked on a mockery of a country stroll. They were moving through a ragged net-work of paths and alleys chalking out small plots of dirt on the fringe of the metropolis—some still grazing sheep or growing turnips, others active construction sites. One day these would be streets, but now they were too
narrow, soft, and wandersome to support any traffic other than a pair of elderly strollers and their van- and rear-guards. “From here we may ramble north without too much unpleasantness.”

“What is north of
here
that is worth a walk?” Isaac wanted to know. Daniel ignored the question, and Isaac, after a moment’s hesitation, fell in step alongside.

“The arrangement proposed by Mr. Partry won’t do,” Daniel insisted. “We must have answers tomorrow—even tonight, if the prisoner can be induced to talk.”

“Does this have something to do with whatever it was that happened at St. James’s today?” Isaac asked. “For I have not heard such urgency from you before now.”

“Events have overtaken us; we must catch up,” Daniel said. “Bolingbroke has a plan. I know not what it is. It may be a perfectly stupid plan, or brilliant. Strangely, that does not matter. What matters is that
he
has a plan,
he
moves,
he
acts, and all others are forced to observe him and to respond. He is the center of all attention, which, I begin to suspect, is more important to him than to achieve any particular goal. Who does
not
have a plan is my lord Oxford, until recently the Lord Treasurer—”

“What do you mean,
until recently
? Am I to understand that this Realm has a new Lord Treasurer today?”

“I didn’t say that—only that Oxford is gone. He surrendered the White Staff to the Queen today in Council.”

“Of his own volition or—”

“She demanded it of him. Strange to think of anyone so frail demanding anything; but that is what they say.”

“And she still holds it?”

“She has not bestowed it on anyone else just yet, according to my sources.”

“Who
are
your sources, Daniel? They seem to be better than mine—certainly
quicker
.”

“That is another conversation. The point is that Oxford—and with him all the moderate Tories—are out. Thus has the Queen let all the world know, today, that she favors Bolingbroke and the Jacobites. She has set in motion events that shall lead to the overturning of the Settlement Act, the rejection of the Hanovers, and a Catholic King.”

“In her dreams,” Isaac corrected him. “In truth, Britain will sooner have a second Civil War than a Popish King.”

“Of course. Now, consider Bolingbroke’s position. He has captured the Queen, and in the same instant, gained unquestioned dominance of the Tories, and hence of Parliament. His next move will be to parley with the Whigs: his only remaining opposition.”

“Why should he bother?” Isaac asked. “I should think he is in a position to dictate terms.”

“Behold Sir John Oldcastle’s,” was Daniel’s answer. For they had come out into an open place where they could look across a hay-mow to an estate, on the other side of the main road, consisting of a few stately old buildings at the southern end, and a small wooded game-park extending to the north for perhaps two hundred yards, where it covered the slopes of a knobby little hill. Daniel drew Isaac’s attention to the hill, which would have gone unnoticed and unnamed in most parts of England. Here on the boggy floodplain of the Fleet it was really something. One could see for hundreds of yards from its top! And indeed, three men were standing atop it right now, enjoying the prospect. “What do you make of them, Isaac? They put me in mind of observers posted on a height-of-land above a battlefield.”

“That is a very romantick notion, I’m sure,” Isaac said, “but in truth they are likely friends or kin of the Oldcastles, enjoying an afternoon ramble through the coppice.”

“What? Through all of those tents, you mean!” Daniel answered, and pointed into the little wood. The growth at this time of year was too dense to allow a clear look, but a careful, keen-eyed observer—Sir Isaac Newton, for instance—could glimpse, through gaps between branches, taut canvas, and the occasional hemmed edge, tent-pole, or staked rope.

“Why, there is a little encampment there,” Isaac said, “probably Vagabonds come to watch the hangings.”

“Do you really think the lord of the manor would permit Vagabonds?”

“What is your explanation, if you do not favor mine?”

“That is a military encampment. But it is not one of the Queen’s battalions. Ergo, a militia.”

“Whig, or Tory?”

“Remember that Sir John Oldcastle was an early Protestant. The Oldcastles of today are not so fiery as he, but they still lean that way.”