Dark Matter

  Walking away from the Master’s door, Newton glanced up at the outer ramparts that lay above the King’s Clerk’s house, the Master’s house, and my own house opposite, and watched as one of the Ordnance sentries walked a cold beat along the wall.

  “Whoever stood upon that wall at six o’clock might have seen a hay cart stopped on front of the Sally Port stairs,” he said. “That was the same time that we were in the White Tower, for I remember looking at my watch before beginning my observations.”

  “Why not ask him?” I said, indicating the sentry on the wall.

  “Because it was not he who was on guard,” Newton replied with a certitude that surprised me.

  “But he would surely know the name of the man he relieved,” I said, accepting my master’s word on the sentry’s identity. “Should we not ask him now, before Lord Lucas is informed?”

  “You are right,” said Newton. “Lord Lucas will only try to obstruct our enquiries, and the business of the Mint. He is a fly in a cow turd that thinks himself a king.”

  We went up to the outer rampire, where the cold wind snatched away my hat so that I was obliged to chase after it lest it blow over the wall and into the moat.

  “Look you there now,” said the sentry, a little surprised at our being there. “It is a naughty night to see the sights, gentlemen. Best you hold your hat in your hand, sir, unless you’ve a mind to make a present of it to the moon.”

  “What is your name?” asked my master.

  “Mark, sir,” said the man slowly, his eyes whirling about as if he was not quite sure of this fact. “Mark Gilbert.”

  Up close, he looked to be rather small for a soldier and somewhat round-shouldered, although his countenance and manner were of one who seemed alert enough.

  “Well, Mister Gilbert, this night a body most cruelly murdered has been discovered in the Mint.”

  Gilbert glanced over the wall before spitting down into the Mint.

  “And it is imperative that I question all who may have seen something of what happened down there tonight.”

  “I’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary, sir,” Gilbert said. “Not since I came on duty.”

  “And when was that?”

  Before answering, Gilbert spat again so that I had the apprehension that he spat to loosen up his cogitations.

  “Five o’clock, sir,” he said.

  “And yet you were not walking your beat on this wall at all times since then,” said Newton. “Did Sergeant Rohan and Major Mornay not stand here for a while, also?”

  Gilbert frowned that Newton should know this. “Sergeant Rohan relieved me for half an hour, sir. That’s true. But I didn’t see no officer.”

  “But why did Sergeant Rohan relieve you at all? It is not common, surely, for a sergeant to relieve an ordinary soldier?”

  “True, sir. I cannot say why he did that. And yet I was mighty grateful, for it is that cold, sir. At the time I did think this might be the reason, sir. And Rohan is a good sort for a Frenchie.”

  “Sergeant Rohan is a Huguenot?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you say so?” Newton walked along the wall some way, leaving me with Gilbert.

  “Who got murdered, then?” he asked me.

  “Daniel Mercer,” I replied.

  “No,” said Gilbert. “Danny Mercer? He wasn’t a bad cove, for a Minter. But murdered, you say?”

  “It may be so,” I said, for I could see no purpose in alarming the fellow, and in truth I was watching my master more closely than I was listening to Mark Gilbert. Newton had walked along the rampart as far east as the Brass Mount, and back again, pausing only to pick up something from the wall beneath his feet.

  “Come,” he said, brushing past me on his way back to the stairs. “Quickly. We are in haste. Thank you, Mister Gilbert.”

  Then we repaired to the Byward Tower, which was the entrance to the Tower, where Newton questioned the porter, who confirmed that, provided a man was not carrying a sword or a pistol, no searches were made of those who entered the castle; and that coaches and carts were not searched until leaving, in case, like Captain Blood, they tried to steal the royal jewels. From which explanation it was plain enough to see that it would have been a simple matter to have transported a headless corpse into the Mint in a haycart.

  Thence we walked down Water Lane and, entering the inner ward, made our way toward the Grand Storehouse, where, the porter had informed us, Sergeant Rohan might be found. As we drew level with the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, we saw two men coming toward us in the dark who we only latterly recognised as Sergeant Rohan and Major Mornay.

  “Doctor Newton?” said Mornay. “What means this rumour? It’s given out that another body has been found.”

  “Aye, Major. Daniel Mercer. In the Mint.”

  “Mercer?” said Mornay. “I don’t think I knew him. Was he one of yours, Doctor?”

  “Yes, Major,” said Newton. “He was one of the engravers.”

  “This is most vexing,” said Mornay.

  “Aye, for me, too, who must investigate it according to my own judgements.”

  “Lord Lucas will need to be kept informed.”

  “And he will be,” allowed Newton. “But only when I believe I know enough myself not to be wasting His Lordship’s valuable time. He has great affairs to dispatch, I daresay, great affairs.”

  “Yes, most certainly,” agreed Major Mornay with something less than certitude.

  “But perhaps you and the Sergeant may help me expedite my enquiries in one small matter, for you may have seen something when you both met on the Brass Mount earlier this evening. Mercer’s body was left upon the Sally Port stairs at around that time.”

  “You are mistaken, Doctor,” said the Major. “We were not on the Brass Mount.”

  Newton smiled his chilliest of smiles. “The world loves to be deceived.” He removed his hat and, sighing loudly, stared up at the star-encrusted sky. “But myself, I trust not the guise of the world, Major Mornay. And I do not care to be deceived when I have the evidence of my own senses to rely upon. So I say again, you and Sergeant Rohan met upon the Brass Mount and I ask you to tell me if you saw anything untoward happen below you in Mint Street.”

  “I must be gone,” said the Major stiffly. “I have no leisure to throw away on your conversation, Doctor Newton. You have had my answer, sir.”

  “Before you go, Major,” said Newton, “would you like your belt buckle back?”

  The Major reached for the buckle of his own sword belt and, finding it gone, gasped when he saw it held like a magician’s coin in Newton’s outstretched hand.

  “Silver, is it not?” asked Newton.

  “How did you come by that, sir?” he asked, collecting it from Newton’s hand.

  “I found it on the outer rampire,” said Newton. “Close to the Brass Mount. I believe it fell from your belt when Sergeant Rohan struck you to the ground and then wrestled you to your feet again.”

  “It is not possible we were observed,” whispered Major Mornay.

  “Tell me, Major, is it common practice in the Army for sergeants to strike their officers with impunity?”

  “I think you are mistaken, sir,” said Sergeant Rohan. “I struck no officer.”

  “No more did you threaten him, I suppose.”

  “It was a private matter,” said Mornay. “Between two gentlemen.”

  “Nay, sir, between an officer and a sergeant. Tell me, Major, are you still carrying the letter the Sergeant gave you?”

  “Letter?”

  “And you, Sergeant. Are you still in possession of the Major’s guinea?”

  “What manner of a man are you?” Rohan asked, much disturbed, as if he almost believed it to be some kind of witchcraft that Newton knew so much about their affairs.

  “I am a man that sees much and understands more,” said Newton. “Think on that when next you and Major Mornay discourse your hidden matter. Was that what you argued about? The most secret of sec
rets?”

  “I know not what you mean, sir,” answered Sergeant Rohan.

  “I cannot imagine that you could mistake me. I was plain enough. Even for a Frenchman to understand.”

  “I’ll give you no further account of my actions, sir,” said the Sergeant.

  “There’s nothing but impudence can help you out now,” said Newton.

  “Come, sir,” Rohan said to Mornay. “Let’s away, lest this gentleman be foolish enough to call me a liar to my face.” Whereupon the two soldiers walked away toward the Bloody Tower, leaving me almost as surprised as they were themselves.

  Newton watched their retreat with something like delight, rubbing his hands together. “I think that I have put the bear in the pit, so to speak.”

  “But was it wise, Doctor, to provoke them so?” I asked him. “With two murders done here or hereabouts?”

  “Three,” said Newton. “Let us not forget Mister Macey.”

  “And did you not counsel caution to me, for fear that it might hinder the recoinage? Or perhaps something worse?”

  “It is too late for that, I fear. The damage is done. And it has been in my thoughts this past half an hour that some disruption to the recoinage was surely intended by this murderer.”

  “When this gets out, it may be the Minters will be too afeared to come to the Tower.”

  “Indeed that is so. I shall speak to Mister Hall, and advise him that the wages of the Minters should be increased to take account of their fears.”

  Newton glanced back at the two retreating figures of Rohan and Mornay.

  “But I think that those two should be provoked, for they are much too conspiratorial. Like Brutus and Cassius. Perhaps now they will reveal their design in some way, for it seems certain there is some great secret in this Tower.”

  “But, Master, how ever did you know these things? Their argument. The buckle. The letter. I think that they must have suspected you of some sorcery.”

  “It was only the sorcery of two polished copper plates,” said Newton. “The one convex, the other concave, and ground very true to one another.”

  “The telescope,” I exclaimed. “Of course. You saw them from the north-east turret of the White Tower.”

  “Just so,” admitted Newton. “I saw them as I said, arguing most violently, so that I was surprised to see them again, much reconciled. If one thing is clear to me in this dark matter it is that Sergeant Rohan knows something that holds Major Mornay in thrall to him, or else he should have been arrested and flogged for striking an officer. I must question them both again, and separately.”

  “There was a moment when I swear I thought the Sergeant would strike you. I thought I should have to speak to him by way of my sword.”

  “I’m right glad to have the both of you around,” offered Newton. “Especially in as cold and dark a place as this. Why, a man might think himself come down to hell. We must find out more about Sergeant Rohan and Major Mornay. It shall be your earliest concern.”

  We walked back to the Mint, where we discovered that the night shift of Mint workers had already gathered in the Street outside the Warden’s Office, and now loudly declared themselves of the opinion that the Mint was not a safe place in which to work, and that, French War or not, the King’s Great Recoinage could be hanged.

  “We’ll all of us be murdered if we stay here much longer,” said one. “What with Lord Lucas and his general provocations of us Minters, and now these horrible killings, this is no longer a fit place for God-fearing men to work.”

  “We must nip this in the bud,” murmured Newton, “or else the war will be lost for lack of coin to pay the King’s troops.”

  Newton listened patiently to their remonstrance; and at last he raised his hands to quell the general clamour, and spoke to the disgruntled Minters.

  “Listen to me,” he pleaded. “You have more to fear from the French than from this murderer, for he will soon be caught, you have my word upon it.”

  “How?” shouted a man.

  “I will catch him,” Newton insisted. “Even so, it is only proper that you should be properly compensated for your continuing devotion to the Great Recoinage, in the face of these heinous crimes. I will speak to their lordships and demand that you should receive a boon for your important work here. Any man who stays to work will receive an extra five guineas when this great work shall be completed. Even if I have to pay that boon out of my own pocket.”

  “Does that include the day shift?” asked another.

  “Including the day shift,” said Newton.

  The Minters looked at one another, nodded their assent, and then gradually drifted back to their machines, at which point Newton let out a sigh of relief.

  “And all the time, the Master of the Mint plays cards,” said I. “I do not think the King can know what a loyal servant he has in you, Doctor.”

  “We must hope their lordships agree with you,” smiled Newton. “Otherwise I shall be considerably out of pocket. You have the copy of what was written on the wall of the Sally Port stairs?”

  I handed Newton the paper, which he put away in his sleeve.

  “It will be my evening’s endeavour,” he said, “to solve this conundrum, for I don’t like to be dunned and teased about things which are at base mathematical. For in any cipher I think that the frequency of vowels and consonants depend upon the rules of number, with the former being more frequent than the latter.”

  It was plain to see that he relished the task that now lay before him, much as the prophet Daniel might have enjoyed revealing the will of God to Belshazzar when the fingers of a man’s hand did write upon the plaster of the wall in the great king’s palace. For my own part, however, I was very tired and, despite the close proximity to my house of a headless corpse, and the clamorous noise of the Mint being now resumed, I was looking forward to my bed.

  I awoke, if awakening is how it can be described, for I hardly slept at all, at the mercy of a slight fever. But I attempted to play the Stoic and reported to the office as usual, where Newton told me that we were going to visit Bedlam.

  “To see your friend Mister Twistleton. Enquiring about him this morning I discovered that he was taken there last night at Lord Lucas’s order. After Mercer’s body was discovered. Is it not strange?”

  “But do you hope to question the man?”

  “Why not?”

  “He is mad, sir.”

  “Nature seldom bestows an enduring and constant sanity even on her most advantaged sons. And if Mister Twistleton’s madness be of the kind that makes him speak whatever comes into his head, then we may find that we are able to order his thoughts for ourselves.”

  We went by coach to Moorfields and the Bethlehem Royal Hospital, which was a most magnificent building designed by the same Robert Hooke whom Newton regarded as his great scientific rival, and therefore, I was not at all surprised to hear my master speak most dismissively of the shape and pattern of the hospital.

  “Only a madman would make a madhouse look like a palace,” he complained. “Only Hooke could perpetrate such a fraud.”

  But there was nothing palatial about Bedlam’s hellish interior.

  We passed through the entrance, flanking either side of which stood statues of Melancholy and Madness, as if some horrible Gorgon had stared into the eyes of two mindless brothers, which was a better fate, to my mind, than that which lay inside, where all was screams and echoing laughter and such a dreadful picture of human misery and distasteful imbecility as would have given only Beelzebub comfort. And yet raw minds went there to make sport and diversion of Bedlam’s miserable inhabitants, many of whom were chained and placed in cells, like the animals in the Lion Tower. To my untutored eye—for I knew nothing about caring for mad folk—the atmosphere was that of an enduring Tyburn holiday, for there was cruelty and callousness, drunkenness and despair, not to mention a great many whores who plied their trade in the hospital among the visiting public. In short, the picture was a facsimile of the world at l
arge, disjointed, supped full of horror and pleasure both, and such as would have caused any man to doubt the existence of God in his Heaven.

  We found Mister Twistleton rattling his chains and wheedling charity behind an iron barricade. His naked shoulders already bore the unmistakable weals of a nurse-warder’s whip, and what wits he still possessed were much agitated by the noise and clamour of his new surroundings. And yet he recognised me immediately, and kissed my hand in a way that caused me to apprehend he believed we had come to fetch him back to the relative safety of the Tower.

  “How are your eyes, Mister Ellis?” he asked me straightaway.

  “Much recovered, Mister Twistleton, thank you.”

  “I am sorry I gouged them. Only I don’t much like being looked at. I feel people’s eyes on me, as some men feel the heat of the sun. When I attacked you, I mistook you for this other gentleman, who I think is Doctor Newton.”

  “I am he, Mister Twistleton,” Newton said kindly, and held the poor man’s hand. “But pray, why did you wish to gouge my eyes?”

  “My own eyes are not so good. But your eyes, Doctor, are the hottest eyes I have ever felt. It was like God himself staring into my soul. An’t please your honour, I’m sorry for thinking it, as now I perceive that your eyes are not as unforgiving as once I had thought.”

  “Is it forgiveness that you seek? If so, I give it to you freely.”

  “I’m beyond all forgiveness, sir. I did a terrible thing. But I am justly punished, for as you can see, I am quite out of my wits. Even my legs will not obey my mind, for I find I can walk very little.”

  “What was this terrible thing you did?” I enquired.

  Mister Twistleton shook his head. “I can’t remember, sir, for I have made myself mad to forget it. But it was something awful, sir. For I never stop hearing the screaming.”

  “Mister Twistleton,” said Newton, “was it you who killed Mister Mercer?”