Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

Newton spent the morning of the executions closeted with the lost gospels he had found in the Tower library, according to Sergeant Rohan’s instructions. I thought the Templars’ book to be in remarkable condition for a thing so apparently old, and I almost wondered if it were not some kind of fraud, as many of the supposed relics of Christ and the saints proved to be. The book was a codex bound in leather, with the constellation of Orion tooled most beautifully onto its surface — which was exactly like the cross Mister Pepys had shown us — and comprised beautifully illuminated pages of Latin.

When I enquired if these heretical gospels were everything he had expected, Newton said:

“Much is revealed of the nature of Jesus, the early Jewish sects, and the eternal conflict between light and dark. It is clear to me that we are forbidden to worship two Gods, but we are not forbidden to worship one God and one Lord: one God for creating all things and one Lord for redeeming us with his blood. We must not pray to two Gods, but we may pray to one God in the name of the Lord, so that we do not break the first commandment. Christ was not the son of God nor was he an ordinary man, but incarnate by the almighty power of God. He was the angel of God who appeared to Abraham, Jacob and Moses, and who governed Israel in the days of the Judges. Therefore it may be seen how prophecy is the most important aspect of Christ, and not his relationship to God; and that to the true worship of Noah, nothing more has been added.” He smiled and after a moment or two added, “In short, I feel I will have the comfort of leaving Philosophy less mischievous that I did find it.”

For ever after that he was evasive upon the subject of the Templar gospels, so that I soon ceased to mention it to him altogether.

The Templars’ book is still in the chapel as I have described. Perhaps it would provide some people with the answers that they seek. I can only say that I did not find them for the simple reason that I never read the book. For what would a second Bible or a second Koran have told me? Only that the first one was wrong. Every sect contradicts another, which is why there have scarcely been any that did not spill blood.

All such man-made systems of religion are in error, for they presume to understand how God acts. I could not see how any of could ever hope to understand God, when most of us never manage to understand one another. What chance for a man to know the mind of God, when he cannot even fathom the mind of a woman?

Newton rarely spoke to me of Miss Barton after that; and I was never invited to his home while she was there. It was not a subject that could ever have been raised between us. Which is not to say that what Mister Oates had said was without foundation.

There is some uncertainty about precisely when Miss Barton was publicly the mistress of Lord Halifax, the first Lord of the Treasury; but what is beyond dispute is that by early part of the new century Newton’s niece, who now called herself Mrs. Barton, and Lord Halifax were living together openly at his home in Bushey Park, despite his having a wife who was still alive. It was Lord Halifax who created Newton Master of the Mint, upon Neale’s death; and when Newton was knighted by Queen Anne, on the same day as Lord Halifax’s brother, in 1705, the honour was not for his services to science, nor indeed for his services to the Mint, but for his political services in Parliament to Lord Halifax — for Newton had become an MP and a supporter of Halifax in the House of Commons in 1701. Naturally, I always remembered the words of Titus Oates: that it had been a pretty niece and not fluxions and gravitation that had furthered his career; and that Newton had traded her virtue to his own advantage.

What is equally beyond dispute is that Lord Halifax made a will leaving Mrs. Barton a bequest which, including the house, was worth, upon Lord Halifax’s death in 1715 from an inflammation of the lungs, some twenty thousand pounds or more. Nor is it beyond doubt that Halifax’s powerful relatives contested the will so that the house and most of the money remained in the Montagu family. It was only then that she married Mister Conduitt.

Thirty years have passed since then.

Newton was a good old man when he died. All the wise were his brothers. He admired Noah. Noah would surely have placed Newton in his Ark.

I was invited to Newton’s funeral, and despite my feeling ill, I was determined to attend, for I did bear the man great admiration, as did all who had the inestimable honour to know the Doctor’s mind.

Of wise men I saw a great many in the Abbey to see Newton laid to rest on the evening of his funeral, there being present almost every member of the Royal Society. While the Westminster bell tolled for Newton — nine times for his being a man, and then eighty-five times for his eighty-five years of age — Mrs. Conduitt (she that had been Miss Barton) presented each guest with a mourning ring while a servant handed about sprigs of rosemary, for remembrance, and to hide the smell of death, which, despite the best efforts of the embalmer, was beginning to be all too noticeable.

When she saw me, she coloured a little but maintained her composure. “Colonel Ellis, I wonder that you can set foot in a church,” were all the words she spoke to me.

To see Mrs. Conduitt again at Newton’s funeral and have her speak to me thus was most painful. For she was every bit as beautiful as I had remembered, and even though she was in mourning I was quite distracted by her, for black suited her very much and served to contrast her own natural colours in the same way that ebony or jet will offset gold to best advantage.

I was still in love with her, of course. Even after all these years. I married, some years after I left Newton’s service and took my commission; but my own wife died of the ague some ten years ago. It grieved me only a little to see Miss Barton married to Mister Conduitt, who was a Member of Parliament. Perhaps position in society was all that she ever desired. If so, then her uncle’s funeral must have gratified her very much. Those six members of the Royal Society that bore her uncle’s pall out of the Jerusalem Chamber, through a narrow door, and down a few steps into the candlelit nave of the Abbey, were the first in the realm. These were the Lord Chancellor, the dukes of Montrose and Roxburgh, and the earls of Pembroke, Sussex, and Macclesfield. The Bishop of Rochester, attended by the prebends and choir, performed the office while the mourners were led by a Knight of the Bath. Many more came than were bid, however, and by my own reckoning there were almost three hundred present that night to watch him laid, with every civility, in the floor.

It was a fine service, of infinite light, for there were so many candles lit which shone with such a triumphant splendour upon my head that it seemed to remind me of the absolute potentiality of infinity itself. And as I sat there, my thoughts returned to my conversation with Doctor Clarke and I wondered what satisfaction God could have in our having faith in the teeth of reason? What possible use was there in saying to God that I was convinced of something of which one could not rationally be convinced? Did this not make a lie of faith? The more I considered the matter in relation to Newton, the more I perceived his own dilemma. Faith required him to believe not that which was true but that which appeared to him, whose understanding was so great, to be false. The greatest enemy to his faith appeared to be his own genius. How could he whose whole life had been devoted to understanding, subordinate that which had defined him?

Perhaps alchemy provides the best metaphor for Newton’s own belief in God. For it seems to me his religion was like a regulus — the purer or metallic part of a mineral — which sinks to the bottom of a crucible or a furnace and is thus separated from the remaining matter. This regulus is hidden, and the secret is only in the hands of those who are adept. It was wisdom not yet instructed by revelation; all other religions are good sense perverted by superstition.