Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“My headache is troubling me,” I said. “But I’ll be all right,” I added, although I did begin to feel quite ill.

We arrived in Pall Mall where the foppish Samuel Tuer, a Huguenot milliner, regarded the two of us entering his shop like a couple of Minerva’s birds, being doubtless used to more exotic peacocks, like the gaudy beau in his shop who was examining a hat with the same care and attention that Newton or myself would have devoted to a counterfeit coin. Listening to Newton’s question about plumes, Mister Tuer tossed open the lid of a little enamelled snuff-box and charged his fastidious nostrils with a pinch and then sneezed an answer to the effect that James Chase, a featherman in Covent Garden, provided him with all of the ostrich and peacock plumes for his hats, being the biggest and best supplier of feathers in London.

A short while later, arriving at the premises of Mister Chase, which was a large aviary with all varieties of ducks, crows, swans, geese, chickens, and several peacocks, Newton produced the long single feather he had brought from the Tower with its rainbow eye ringed with blue and bronze, and, explaining that he had come on the King’s business, continued thus:

“I am told you are the largest supplier of exotic plumes in London.”

“That is true, sir. I am to feathers what Virginia is to tobacco, or what Newcastle is to coals. I supply everyone — coachmakers, penmakers, furniture-makers, bed-makers and milliners.”

“This is the feather of a blue Indian peacock, is it not?”

Mister Chase, who was a tall, thin and birdlike man, examined the feather but briefly before confirming that Newton was correct.

“Yes sir. That’s a blue, right enough.”

“Can you tell me anything more about it?”

“Never been on a hat, by the look of it, for it is untrimmed. It’s a rare enough bird, the peacock, although a few rich folks like them. But peacocks has a bad disposition, sir, and must be kept apart from other fowl. Apart from the fact that this feather is from one of my birds, I can tell you very little about it, gentlemen.”

“It is one from one of your birds?” repeated Newton. “How can you tell?”

“Why, from the calamus, of course.” Mister Chase turned the feather upside down to show the horny barrel end, upon which there appeared a single blue stain. “All our feathers is marked thus,” he said. “As a sign of quality. Whether it be a swan’s feather for writing, or an ostrich plume for a ladies’ headdress.”

“Is it possible you would know to whom you supplied this particular feather?” asked Newton.

“Nearly all of my peacock plumes go to Mister Tuer, or Madame Cheret, who are both of them French milliners. Huguenots, sir. They’ve been good for the feather business.Occasionally I sell a few to ladies what want to make their own hats. Although not very often. Mister Tuer says there are plenty of women who’ll make a dress, but not many who want to make a hat.

“I did sell some to a new customer the other day. A man I had never before seen. What was his name? I cannot recall. But not at all the type of man to be a hatmaker.”

“Can you remember anything else about him?” enquired Newton.

Mister Chase thought for a moment and then said, “He looked like a Frenchie.”

“What, a Huguenot?”

Mister Chase shook his head. “Looked like one. Foreign-sounding name, I thought, although I can’t remember what it was. But to be honest with you, sir, the French are really all the foreigners I know. He could just as easily have been Spanish, I suppose. Not that he spoke like a foreigner. No sir, he sounded English. And educated, too. But then some of these Huguenots parlez-vous English pretty well. I mean, you would think Mister Tuer an Englishman, sir.”

“An Englishman, of sorts,” said Newton.

After we took our leave of Mister Chase, Doctor Newton looked squarely at me and said he believed I had need of a dish of coffee; and so we went to The Grecian, a coffee house which was popular with the fellows of the Royal Society. Quite soon after we arrived and had received our coffee, which did seem to revive me for a while, a man of about thirty years old came and sat beside us. I took him for a scholar, which was not so wide of the mark, for he was himself a fellow of the Royal Society and tutor to the children of the Duke of Bedford. His accent seemed to proclaim his Frenchness, although he was in fact a Swiss Huguenot.

Newton introduced the man as one Nicholas Fatio de Dullier, and although it was quickly plain to me that they had once been close friends, my master exhibited a coolness to Mister Fatio which made me suspect that they had quarrelled and that there was now some distance between them; and Mister Fatio himself regarded me with a degree of arch suspicion that I would have called jealousy but for the suggestion this might have raised against my master’s own character; because it could hardly be ignored that Mister Fatio was delicate to the point of being effeminate.

By now I had discovered that I had little appetite for coffee after all, and the thick smoke in The Grecian was doing nothing to improve my light-headedness; consequently my recollection of the conversation that passed between my master and Mister Fatio is hardly circumstantial. But from the outset it was clear that Mister Fatio sought to recover some of Newton’s former confidence.

“I am most glad to have found you here, Doctor,” he said. “Otherwise I should have been obliged to write to you, and tell you that yesterday a man sought me out at the home of the Duke, to ask questions about you. I think he said his name was Mister Foe.”

“I have met him,” said Newton. “Mister Neale introduced us at the Mint.”

“Mister Neale, the Master Worker?”

“The same.”

“Why, this is very strange. I had it from Mister Robartes, in this very coffee house, that Mister Neale has asked Hooke to introduce an Italian chemist, the Count Gaetano, to the fellows of the Royal Society. It is said that the Count has perfected a method for the transmutation of lead into gold. Mister Neale has already confirmed the purity of the Count’s transmuted gold, and it awaits only Hooke’s imprimatur for the introduction to go forward to the society.”

“Faith, this is good news,” said Newton. “For the Count is a scoundrel and can no more work a transmutation than you can raise the dead, Fatio.”

Mister Fatio bristled and for a moment looked most womanly so that he would have given us a gale with his fan if he had held one in his little white hand; and which I might have enjoyed, for suddenly I felt such a want of good air as a man with a halter about his neck.

“You are sick, sir,” said Newton, perceiving my want of health. “Come, let me help you to the door and a more wholesome draught. Fatio? Make some enquiries concerning this Count Gaetano with your friends on the Continent, and you will earn my gratitude.” And with that Newton helped me to my feet, for it was much as I could do to stand.

Outside The Grecian I stood swaying like a rotten tree, so that Newton was obliged to offer me his arm; and beckoning his carriage, he offered the following remarks about his friend.

“Do not deceive my good opinion of you, Ellis, by apprehending anything unseemly in my relationship with Mister Fatio, for I know what other men think of him. But he has a good heart and an excellent mind, and once I did love him as a father might love his own son.”

I remember smiling at Newton and assuring him that nothing would alter my high opinion of him; and then I think I must have fainted.

Newton fetched me to his own home in Jermyn Street and put me in a bed with fine white Holland sheets, where Mrs. Rogers and Miss Barton might nurse me, for the fever was now become an ague that left me feeling as weak as a basketful of kittens and full of shakes and sweats and the headache and pains in my legs so that I felt like some plaguey person in all symptoms save the buboes that distinguish that awful pestilence. But when the fever broke, and I saw who was my nurse, I thought I had died and was gone to heaven. For Miss Barton was sitting next to a window, reading in the sunlight, with her hair much like gold, and her eyes as blue as cornflowers; and when she did see that I was awake, she smiled and put down her book straightaway, and held my hand.