Will Adams - Newton’s Fire

Rachel smiled. ‘Must add a bit of cachet.’

‘And makes it harder for the council to tear us down.’ She unlocked and opened the door, turned off the alarm, switched on lights. They found themselves in a display gallery that also served as reception and gift shop. An internal staircase led both up and down. They went down, passed through more doors into a large display room crowded with neat ranks of glass-topped display cabinets, and with sundials, grandfather clocks and other large chronometers against its walls. ‘Conrad said it was in here,’ she said. ‘I don’t know exactly where.’

‘Great,’ said Rachel. ‘Then let’s start looking.’

Walters had stopped off for a burger with Pete and Kieran. The mood was gloomy; the trail was cold. They were beginning to talk of giving up for the night and starting fresh in the morning when his mobile finally rang. He swallowed away a mouthful of dry bread and meat. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know who the hell you think you are,’ said a man.

‘Makes two of us, mate,’ Walters told him. ‘You sure you got the right number?’

‘This is the number I was given. I was told you wanted information about one of our SatNav systems.’

‘Ah,’ said Walters. He beckoned to Kieran for a napkin and something to write with. ‘Go on, then.’

‘I don’t know who the hell you think you-’

‘Yes. I got that bollocks the first time. Where are they?’

‘Oxford city centre.’ He read out the GPS coordinates, gave the name of a road. Walters read it back to make sure he had it right. ‘And they went straight there from Cambridge?’

‘They stopped for a while at a place called Oddington.’ He read out coordinates for that too.

‘Thanks,’ said Walters.

‘This kind of thing shouldn’t be allowed,’ said the man, determined to get it off his chest. ‘Honestly, I don’t know who you people think you are.’

‘We’re the people you just shopped one of your customers to,’ Walters told him, with a certain satisfaction. ‘So I wouldn’t go moaning about it if I were you.’ He ended the call, picked up the remains of his burger and fries, examined them dispiritedly for a moment, tossed them back down. Then he nodded to Kieran and Pete. ‘Come on, fellas,’ he said. ‘We’re in business.’

Luke leaned against the wall and watched admiringly as Rachel assembled the Mala then set to work. No hesitation, no fumbling. It was always a pleasure to watch someone who knew exactly what they were doing. But then he sensed Pelham looking wryly at him. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ smiled Pelham.

Olivia, meanwhile, had spread the Newton papers out on a glass-topped cabinet. ‘The papers of J.D. and J.T.’ she said, tapping the fourth line of Newton’s enigmatic message.

‘We think J.D. is John Dee,’ said Luke, going to join her. ‘We don’t know who J.T. is.’

‘I do,’ said Olivia. ‘And it’s not a “he” so much as a “they”. The John Tradescants, father and son.’

Pelham shook his head. ‘Never heard of them.’

‘Most people haven’t,’ said Olivia. ‘Though they should have done. By rights, this place should have been named after them, not Ashmole. It was their collection that he left to Oxford, not his own.’

‘The Tradescantareum hardly trips off the tongue,’ said Pelham.

‘Who were they?’ asked Rachel.

‘The father was a gardener. His boss sent him to Holland to buy some seeds and he caught the collecting bug. This was around 1610, when the world was really opening up. The Americas, China, India, Africa. He travelled to all parts, gathering specimens and other curiosities to put on display in his Lambeth home. The Ark, he called it. Charged a shilling a time. There was a huge market for curiosity shops back then. The more sensational, the better.’ She nodded towards the rear. ‘We found a mermaid’s hand out back when we put the extension in.’

‘A mermaid’s hand?’ asked Luke.

‘So the Tradescants claimed,’ she smiled. ‘Turned out to be the paw of a manatee. Still. A wonderful find.’

‘And the son went into the business too?’

‘Took it over when his father died. Unfortunately for him and his wife, that’s when Ashmole showed up. A really nasty piece of work, I’m afraid. He set his heart on their collection. The poor Tradescants never realized. Ashmole was an aristocrat, you see, so they trusted him. Then he got John blind drunk one night and somehow tricked him into leaving him the entire collection. Tradescant sued to get it annulled, but he died before his case could be heard. And then the court sided with Ashmole over Tradescant’s widow.’

‘Maybe Ashmole was in the right, then,’ said Luke.

‘Sure. Because courts always put poor widows ahead of wealthy aristocrats. Besides, there’s a curious story about Ashmole just after the Civil War. He fought with the Royalists, so was in the doghouse. Then in 1646 he was inducted into a Staffordshire society of Freemasons. It’s one of the earlier mentions of Freemasonry in English history, seventy years before the first Grand Lodge was formed in London. And within another week, he was swaggering around London like he owned it.’

‘By virtue of being a Freemason?’

‘That’s how it looks. And, afterwards, Ashmole was forever taking people to court. He used to gloat about never losing a case. But then he wouldn’t, would he? Not if he knew which courts had Masonic judges.’

‘Maybe that was his link with Newton,’ frowned Luke. ‘There have been rumours forever about him being a Mason. One of his disciples even became Grand Master of-’

The Mala began suddenly to screech. Rachel muted the volume, checked the display. ‘Your man Josten was right,’ she told Olivia. ‘There is something down there. Big and iron, just like he said.’ She swept the detector left and right. ‘And some kind of cavity too.’

‘How deep?’

‘Ten feet. Twelve feet. Something like that.’

‘Pipes?’ suggested Luke.

‘Maybe.’ She swept the GPR back and forth, mapping its edge, a rough circle perhaps ten feet in diameter. She adjusted the Mala’s controls, the better to investigate the interior of this circle, checking data as she went. ‘I’m getting something else,’ she said, as she reached the centre. ‘Another metal.’ She checked the readings, frowned, checked again. Then she looked up at them all with the strangest expression on her face.

‘What is it?’ asked Luke.

‘Gold,’ she said.

There was silence in the basement gallery, save for the ticking of clocks around the walls. Olivia folded her arms emphatically as they turned to her. ‘No,’ she said.

‘No, what?’ asked Pelham. ‘You don’t even know what we’re about to suggest.’

‘Yes, I do. You’re about to suggest I dig up my floor. And the answer is no. This is a museum, not an oil field.’

‘We’ve got to,’ said Pelham. ‘Don’t you realize what a find this is? There could be anything down there.’

‘Exactly. Which is why we’re not going to risk damaging it.’

‘But we-’

‘No. I’m sorry. That’s the end of it.’

‘Then what do we do?’ asked Rachel. ‘We can’t pretend it’s not there.’

‘And we won’t. I’ll call Albie first thing in the morning. He can verify your readings, put together a plan. And when we next have an appropriate window, he can excavate with the kind of care something like this demands.’

Luke glanced at Pelham. Pelham nodded. ‘I’m afraid there’s something about this business we haven’t told you yet,’ he said to Olivia.