Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“Then it is well that I came,” I said, and stepping into the parlour, Miss Barton let me kiss her, being the first time this had happened. This kiss was the most chaste I had had in many a year, and yet it did give me more pleasure than any other I had ever received; and which made Newton laugh out loud, something that I had not seen before that day.

That being done, to Miss Barton’s no less evident pleasure, upon our mirth subsiding, Mrs. Rogers fetched me some bread, a piece of hot salt beef and a tankard of hot buttered ale, and, much refreshed by my breakfast, I acquainted my master with the other reason for my attending him so early in the morning.

“And here was I thinking you had walked all the way here from the Tower solely on my account,” she said, affecting some disappointment. “Christopher Ellis, I do believe you have no more romance in your body than my uncle.”

But Newton expressed great satisfaction at the story of the golden guinea and, upon examining the coin, declared that we should, by experiment, test it in a crucible as soon as possible.

“But before then I should be grateful if you would escort Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers to Church, this morning,” he said. “For it will require the work of a whole morning in my laboratory for me to build the heat up in the furnace.”

“I should be delighted, sir, if Miss Barton is not too disappointed in me.”

She said nothing.

“Or perhaps,” continued Newton, now addressing his niece, “you had hoped to have the Dean all to yourself over dinner. For I was going to ask Mister Ellis to stay and dine with us.”

Miss Barton closed her eyes for several moments, and then opening them again, she did give me her sweetest, most engaging smile.

And so I escorted Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers to St. James’s Church, which gave me great pleasure, although it was the first time I had been in church a month of Sundays, and I had to endure a most tedious sermon of the Dean about Jacob wrestling with an Angel of the Lord, which was only made easier to bear by the content I found in having such a handsome girl as Miss Barton to look upon, and have squeeze my hand once or twice during the prayers.

After church we returned to Newton’s house and, leaving Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers in the kitchen for a while, I sought my master out in his laboratory which was in a basement cellar with a window that gave onto a small back garden. This laboratory was well furnished with chymical materials such as bodies, receivers, heads, several crucibles and a furnace that was by now as hot as the lowest part of hell and which made my master sweat mightily.

At the sound of my footsteps he glanced around and waved me toward him with a cry of satisfaction. “Ah, Mister Ellis,” he shouted over the roar of his furnace. “You are just in time to see my own freakish trial of the pyx,” he said, placing Mister Fell’s guinea in a heated crucible. The trial of the pyx was the ancient ordeal by which the purity of gold and silver in the new-minted coin was tested by a jury of the Company of Goldsmiths.

“To my way of thinking, a man’s trying to turn lead into gold is as absurd as expecting bread and wine to become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is what they represent that should inspire us. Nature is not merely chemical and physical, but also intellectual. And we should accept the spirit of enquiry that is implicit in this opus alchemyicum you see before you now, as another man might accept the opus divinum of the mass. Both are journeys toward understanding. We are all seekers after truth. But not all of us are vouchsafed the grace of faith that provides all the answers. Some of us must find those answers for ourselves. For some the answer in the darkness is the light of the Holy Spirit; while for others the discovery is in the fact that hidden in Nature’s darkness lies another light. To this intellectually illuminating end my whole life has been dedicated.

“Now let us see what has become of this guinea.”

Newton fell to inspecting the contents of his crucible while I thought about what he had said. What his meaning might be, I was not completely able to penetrate into at the time, but later on I saw that he aimed at something beyond the reach of human art and industry.

“Look there,” he said and, holding the crucible with a pair of tongs, showed me the melted metal.

“Is it counterfeit?” I asked. “I cannot tell. Even now it looks to me like real spanks.”

“You see, but you do not observe. Look more closely. There is not one but four, possibly even five, metals present here: I know not yet what they may be, but I’ve a strong fancy this coin is mostly copper. Which brings us much trouble, for I have never seen such an ingenious facsimile, not these past nine months. If there be many more like it besides...” Newton left off speaking and shook his head gravely, as if the prospect was too terrible to countenance.

“But how was it done, master? Do you think this is the same process that Humphrey Hall spoke of?”

“I do indeed,” said Newton. “The process was devised in France, during the last century. I am not privy to understanding all the secrets thereof, but the key is thought to be, as in many, mercury. In truth, no one knows more about mercury than me. About three years ago, I almost poisoned myself through breathing the vapours of mercury — although this effect is not well known. Mercury demands respect. It is not something that may be used with much safety, and this will assist our investigations, for there are many outward signs of mercury’s abuse.”

“What are we to do?”

“What would you have me do?”

“I should question John Berningham about this false guinea. We may perhaps persuade him to make a clean breast of it.”

“That will take a while,” said Newton. “So very often one such as he will lie and keep on lying until he feels Jack Ketch breathing down his neck. It would be better to know much more of this matter before we questioned him. You say that he paid to have his wife visit him?”

“Yes sir. An ounce of silver for the privilege, in advance.”

“Then she may be the key that will open the door.” Newton looked up. “But I hear that the Dean has arrived, and I must play the host.”

Putting on our coats, we went back upstairs for dinner. The Dean was a more congenial dining companion than he was a preacher, and kept Newton occupied with divers matters of theology while Miss Barton and I made eyes at each other. And once or twice she did even rub my shin with her stockinged foot, while all the time discussing the Dean’s sermon, which made me think she was more wicked than I had ever suspected.

After dinner Newton stood up from the table and announced that he and I had Mint business to attend to, and, reluctantly, I took my leave of Miss Barton.

“Are we going to the Mint?” I asked, when we were outside the house in Jermyn Street.

“Did not Mister Fell, the keeper at Newgate, say that Mister Berningham’s wife would visit him at five of the clock?”

“He did. I confess I had quite forgotten that.”

Newton smiled thinly. “Evidently your mind has been much preoccupied with other, frivolous matters. Now then, if I may have your full attention, sir. You and I will repair to Newgate and while I question Scotch Robin and John Hunter — it may be that they were not the only two rogues employed by the Mint who could have stolen a golden guinea die — you shall keep vigilant for this Mrs. Berningham; and seeing her, follow her, for doubtless her husband will have kept his place of lodging secret.”

We made our way to Newgate, where my master, being recognised from one of the upper storey windows, and much hated among the prisoners for his great diligence, was obliged to dodge a bole of shit that was thrown at him, and with such adroitness that I did perceive how, for all his fifty-four years, he was a most athletic man when the occasion demanded it. Entering at the gate, he made light of the ordure bole, saying that it was as well that it had been an apple that fell on this head and not a turd, otherwise he should never have thought of his theory of universal gravitation, for he would have had nothing in his head but shit.