Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“Rubbish,” snorted the Count. “Nonsense. The Dutch ambassador is as wicked a liar as you are, Doctor Newton; either that or a drunkard and a sot, like the rest of his countrymen.”

This last remark did not sit well with Their Lordships, and it was Lord Halifax who articulated their obvious irritation.

“Count Gaetano, or whatever your name is, it may interest you to note that, as well as being a distant cousin of the Dutch ambassador, our own dear King William is also a Dutchman.”

All of which left the Italian in considerable disarray.

“Oh well, I did not mean to suggest that His Majesty was a drunkard. Nor indeed that all Dutchmen are drunkards. Only that the ambassador must be mistaken—”

“Be silent, sir,” commanded Lord Halifax.

After this, Newton had little difficulty in discrediting Count Gaetano’s story even further; and finally Their Lordships ordered the Count removed, and conveyed under guard to Newgate, pending further investigation.

“We are not out of the woods yet, I fear,” murmured Newton as the porters escorted Gaetano from the Whitehall chamber.

“Bring in the next witness,” commanded milord Harley. “Bring Mister Daniel Defoe.”

“How did he get out of Newgate?” I whispered; and yet while my bowels were wracked at what Defoe might say against my master, I let my face dissemble a different story, smiling confidently at him as he entered the chamber, so that he might apprehend the improbability of his doing any injury to the reputation of one so great.

It cannot be doubted how the Italian’s arrest had a most palpable effect on Mister Defoe; and when he came into the chamber he seemed mighty put out by the other man’s fate. But he soon recovered his composure, and proved to be a much more obdurate sort of witness.

The allegations he made against Newton were twofold: one, that he had entered a dissenting church of French Socinians in Spitalfields; and the other, that he was a close friend of Mister Fatio, the Swiss Huguenot to whom I had been introduced in the coffee shop, just before I became sick with the ague.

“This same Mister Fatio,” explained Defoe, “is strongly suspected of belonging to a cult of extreme dissenters who believe that they can resurrect a dead man in whatever cemetery they see fit.”

“How do you answer, Doctor Newton?” asked Lord Harley.

Newton stood and bowed gravely. “What he says is entirely true, milord,” said Newton, which drew a loud murmur from their Lordships. “But I’ll warrant that these matters can easily be explained to your satisfaction.

“I entered the French church in an effort to find information that might enable me to shed light upon certain murders that have occurred in the Tower, and which I believe are known to you. One of the dead men, Major Mornay, had been a member of this French church, and I went there in the hope that I might speak to the Major’s friends and to see if there were any circumstances that might have led him to take his own life.

“As to Mister Fatio, he is a young man who holds certain views that are repugnant to me. But he is a member of the Royal Society and my friend also, and I am satisfied in time that his intelligence will allow him to appreciate his youthful folly, and to see the good sense of the arguments I have frequently advanced in opposition to his obviously blasphemous views.”

At which point Newton did glance at me, as if his words were meant for me, too.

“For I believe it better that we live in a country where foolish men can be led out of their ignorance by the wiser counsel of their elders, than by torture and execution as still persist in less happier countries than ours, such as France.”

“Is it true,” asked Lord Harley, “that you, Doctor Newton, did order Mister Defoe thrown into prison?”

“Milord, what else was I to do with a man whom I caught in the very act of conducting a clandestine search of the Mint office, where there were many Government papers of a secret or sensitive nature affecting the Great Recoinage?”

“Is this true, sir?” Lord Harley asked of Defoe. “Were you apprehended in the Mint Office?”

“I was arrested in the Mint office, it’s true,” said Defoe. “But I was not searching the office for Mint papers.”

“Then what was your business in the Mint office?” asked Lord Halifax. “Did you not go there when Doctor Newton and his clerk were elsewhere?”

“I did not know that they were elsewhere. I sought to bring before the Warden information regarding certain coiners.”

“The Mint office is kept locked when my clerk and I are not there,” said Newton. “It was not I who admitted Mister Defoe to the office. Nor my clerk. Moreover, his so-called information was no more than a lie to try to explain his unauthorised presence in our office. And can Mister Defoe now swear out a warrant against one of these coiners whose names he sought to bring to my attention?”

“I did not have names,” said Defoe. “Only suspicions.”

“Suspicions,” repeated Newton. “I have those, too, Mister Defoe. Do not think that you can try to hoodwink Their Lordships as you tried to hoodwink me, sir.”

“It is you who are the liar, sir, not I,” insisted Defoe, who now played his best card. “Are you prepared to take the Test Act in front of Their Lordships, to prove that you are a good Anglican?”

This Test Act of 1673 required that a man, usually someone in public office, receive Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church of England; which was something I knew the anti-Trinitarian Newton would never do; and for a moment I persuaded myself that all was lost. Instead, Newton sighed most profoundly and bowed his head.

“I will always do what Their Lordships require of me,” he said, “even if that means humouring a man who has been imprisoned for bankruptcy and who is himself a dissenter from the established religion.”

“Is this true, Mister Defoe?” asked milord Halifax. “That you are a bankrupt?”

“It is, milord.”

“And are you yourself prepared to take the Test Act?” persisted Lord Halifax.

“Doctor Newton plays a loose game of religion and Bo-peep with God Almighty,” declared Defoe, and then hung his head. “But, in all conscience, milord, I cannot.”

Perceiving this self-righteous and peevish streak in Mister Defoe, Their Lordships dismissed him with a warning to be more careful of whom he accused in future. After which Lord Halifax moved that Lord Harley offer Their Lordships’ apologies for having had Newton endure such baseless charges by such worthless rogues as those we had seen. Lord Harley did so, but said that Their Lordships had only conducted this inquiry in the best interests of the Mint. And with that the hearing ended.

When we were outside the chamber, I congratulated Newton most warmly, and declared myself most mighty relieved at the outcome. “It is as Aristotle says in his Poetics ,” I said. “That the plot is the soul of tragedy. For this plot could very easily have succeeded and left you dismissed from your office. Perhaps worse.”

“That it did not is partly thanks to your diligence, in discovering much about Mister Defoe,” said Newton. “And Mister Fatio’s, too. For it was Fatio who wrote to his friends on the Continent about Count Gaetano. But in truth my enemies were ill-prepared. Had they been stronger, they would have felt better able to reveal themselves.”

I shook my head. “To think of what might have happened, sir. You must return home at once.”

“Why must I?”

“Your niece, Miss Barton, will be most anxious to hear what has happened, will she not?”

But already his thoughts lay elsewhere.

“This has all been an unwelcome distraction from the main business in hand,” he said. “Which is the decipherment of that damned code. I have cudgelled my brains and still I can make nothing out of it.”