The Sensorium of God

by Stuart Clark

  Halley saw it one day from the road. Pennants fluttered in the breeze and a carnival atmosphere induced the soldiers to drink and cavort with the nearby caravans of whores and tinkers, all too eager to take the men’s money.

  The sight kindled memories of his father’s stories of the civil war: the lootings, the rapes, the burnings. A standing army was an expensive luxury for a monarch. Only if it were well fed, well paid and well serviced was the rest of society safe.

  Halley had made the mistake of telling Mary what he had seen, and every night after that, when she arose to feed their newborn, she imagined the soldiers creeping into the silent streets of Islington. Growing ever more agitated, she stopped sleeping altogether and sat up every night, cradling tiny Margaret and peering through the curtains. Halley realised he had no choice but to move them elsewhere. He chose an old townhouse that put the mass of London between them and the army.

  Cripplegate was huddled into the lee of the city wall to the East of London, but retained enough open space to feel like a village.

  ‘You’ll feel safer here,’ Halley had said on the day they arrived with their wagonloads of furniture and chattels.

  Mary had nodded, but it was a small, anxious gesture.

  The rooms were smaller than those at Islington, yet more in number, giving the house a cosier feel. Mrs Fletcher and William, the boot-boy, had moved with them, and gradually Mary had settled. Eventually she was persuaded to put Margaret’s cot into the nursery, adjacent to the master bedroom.

  Now one year old, Margaret was a source of delight. Already skilled at taking all the gloves out of the box in the hall, she now practised the art of putting them all back in. She made her desires known with urgent gestures and a flashing smile, especially when Halley brought home handfuls of Chinese oranges from Covent Garden.

  ‘You’re too eager to please her,’ Mary would say in tender admonishment as he lay on the floor, feeding his daughter miniature segments.

  ‘How can I not be when she looks so like you?’

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘Besides, she must develop her palate for expensive food if we are to find her a suitable husband.’

  Mary would reach around him from behind, and in those moments they both knew it was only a matter of time before they added a second child to their family, despite the uncertainty of knowing into which religion they would be forced to baptise it.

  The table was laid for dinner. Halley was carving a shoulder of lamb. Through the window, the afternoon light was already fading. In the corners of the panes were the first splinters of frost.

  ‘Monsieur Papin says things are getting worse in France,’ he said. ‘He expects Protestantism to be made illegal by the year’s end, and fears he may never see his home again.’

  ‘Where would we go if that happened here?’ asked Mary, her voice tight. ‘Holland? I’m not sure I could live in a Low Country.’

  ‘And you won’t have to. We’re safe here.’ Changing the subject, Halley busied himself with the joint of meat and said, ‘I’m to report on Mr Newton’s revised paper to the Fellowship this week.’

  ‘Is that what’s been consuming your time?’ she said gently.

  ‘It’s a masterpiece, Mary. I just hope I can persuade the other Fellows; they seem unable to drag themselves to Gresham these days. The last Council meeting had to be postponed again for lack of attendance, so we still have no agreement to actually publish the work. Without it, I fear Mr Newton may yet fail to complete the book. He’s sent me the first two sections but is still working on the third – and from what I hear, just getting this far has almost cost him his sanity. He collapsed with the effort of it.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re too concerned with the state of the country to think very much about philosophy. Now, are you going to serve? I’m hungry.’

  ‘We cannot stop our curiosity because of what may or may not happen with the King,’ said Halley, laying a slice of meat on his wife’s plate. ‘But perhaps you’re right. Anyway, we’ll find out on Wednesday at the next meeting.’

  The Fellows listened as Halley described Newton’s work. He looked from one to another hoping for some flicker of interest. Hooke was studiously indifferent; Pepys slouched in the official chair with his fleshy head resting on his upturned palm; Papin was preoccupied.

  ‘Let me reiterate that this is a most remarkable treatise, advancing a number of propositions taken from observations of the world and backed by experiment. On the shoulders of these propositions is built an understanding of the celestial and Earthly motions. Mr Newton concludes that motion is the result of forces acting upon objects. Without a force, an object cannot be made to start moving or change its existing motion. The heavier the object, and by that I mean the more mass it contains, the more force it requires to achieve the same acceleration.’

  The audience stared back like sculptures. He raised his voice. ‘Chief among Mr Newton’s conclusions is the demonstration that heavenly motions are the exclusive results of a force, here called gravity, that decreases with distance in an inverse square fashion. The planets are held to their paths by the gravity emanating from the Sun. Each of the planets subsequently produces its own gravity, which holds its moons.’ Still there was no reaction, though perhaps there was a curious nod or two – either that, or the Fellows were becoming sleepy. ‘Perhaps once the third section of the book is delivered, this will become more obvious. Mr Newton promises a full discussion of the philosophy rather than the mathematical foundations. Gentlemen, we cannot allow this work to languish. I propose a vote.’

  ‘You cannot do that,’ said Hooke, stirred from his reverie. ‘It’s not for the Fellowship to tell the Council what to do.’

  ‘If the Council cannot drag itself to meet, then the Fellowship must show them the way.’ The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. There were at least three Council members sitting around him – Hooke, Pepys and Wren. There was shuffling and muttering among the Fellows, and things threatened to become uncomfortable.

  ‘Gentlemen, with the greatest of respect, all those in favour of publication, please raise your hand,’ said Halley.

  After an awkward second or two a few arms sprouted, followed by a few more. Halley nodded as one by one the Fellows raised their hands until it was clear that most of them agreed.

  ‘Very well, it is resolved that the Society wishes to publish Mr Newton’s work.’ Halley turned to Hooke. ‘Let that be communicated to the Council, with the greatest of respect.’

  ‘Waste of time and money,’ muttered Hooke.

  A larger than usual number of Fellows had trooped through the alleyways to the coffee-shop after Pepys had closed the meeting, but it was not, as Halley had hoped, to discuss gravity.

  ‘Most of the clergy are refusing to read it to their congregations,’ Papin was saying, his sharp features drawn.

  Pepys blew out his cheeks, cradling a dish of pungent coffee. ‘You make too much of this. All the Declaration of Indulgence allows is the freedom to practise your chosen religion, Roman or Anglican.’

  Papin’s nostrils flared. ‘An Englishman should be able to interpret the subtlety better than a Frenchman. James does not confirm Anglicanism as a legitimate faith, guaranteed a place in English society. Let this pass, and the Church of England will find itself outlawed in a matter of years. That’s why the vicars are defying the King’s order to read it out.’

  Pepys shook his head and shouldered his way into the busy crowd.

  ‘I am coming to think that the only safe place is Germany,’ Papin said, ‘but if England falls, even Germany will be isolated. What is the solution?’

  Halley had no answer. The King’s Protestant daughter, Mary, now lived in exile in Holland. The previous summer, as the Halleys had been carting their possessions to Cripplegate, the disastrous invasion by Charles II’s illegitimate firstborn, the Duke of Monmouth, had culminated in his botched execution, at which it had taken seven swings of the executioner’s axe to sever his head. The
assizes had then cut a bloody swathe through England’s Protestant activists.

  Pepys’s voice interrupted their thoughts. He had returned trailing Hooke behind him. ‘Mr Halley, it seems that Mr Hooke here has something to say on the subject of Mr Newton’s ingenious theory. It appears that it was Mr Hooke himself who struck first upon the idea of the inverse square law.’

  Other Fellows now turned, their interest piqued.

  Halley forced down his impatience. ‘Robert, we all suspected the nature of the force but couldn’t prove it. How can you claim any part of that?’

  ‘I make no claim on his curves and diagrams, but just as surely I gave him the notion of the inverse square in my letters of 1679. He cannot deny that and neither can you. I told him that orbital motion was a compound of two motions: a direct motion and a deflection towards a centre of attraction. Those are the principles upon which his work rests, and he had them from me – and me alone. Mr Newton is nothing but a plagiarist.’

  The Fellows turned as one to Halley.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, uncomfortable under their combined gaze. ‘I will write to Mr Newton to clarify the matter.’

  ‘You’re early,’ Grace said, placing the brass candle-snuffer back on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I didn’t feel like staying.’ Hooke looked around the room disconsolately.

  ‘I’ve tidied the ledgers in your study,’ she said.

  ‘They don’t believe me, you know,’ he said.

  Grace tilted her head. The gesture conjured in Hooke a memory of his mother and the way she would comfort him or his brother. He recounted the conversation in the coffee-shop.

  ‘Forget them, Uncle. Don’t upset yourself. I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Why is it so cold in here? There’s no fire,’ he said.

  ‘Seasoned logs are running short. Any that are left are so expensive.’

  ‘Come.’ He took her by the hand, knowing from her warmth that he must feel like ice, and led her towards his bedroom. Her body stiffened and he turned to look at her soft face. ‘That’s not what I want.’ For reasons he still did not understand, all desire had left him. It had vanished so completely it was as if it had never existed at all, but he pulled her onwards.

  ‘Uncle?’

  He led her to an oak trunk in the corner of the room. It had not been polished in years and it was scarred with woodworm pores. He removed the old lathe stool that stood on it and lifted the lid.

  Grace let out an exclamation of surprise at the contents.

  Wad after wad of banknotes, sprinkled with coins.

  ‘This is what I got out of the Fire. We were going to rebuild London with boulevards and squares to rival Paris, but the whole thing got bogged down in legal argument about who owned what. So we abandoned the new plan and just rebuilt along the old streets. They still paid me, of course, and I kept it all here. You know I don’t trust banks and investments.’

  ‘There’s enough for a lifetime,’ she breathed.

  ‘Two lifetimes.’

  ‘Two?’ she searched his face.

  ‘What remains of mine, and then . . .’ He paused; it felt as if he were about to reveal a great intimacy. ‘ . . . and then the rest of your life. This is all for you.’

  Hooke felt his face flush. Grace covered her mouth with her hand and tears gathered in her eyes. He reached out to embrace her and realised what an alien gesture it was; somehow she had always been the one to embrace him.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he said.

  ‘But I don’t deserve this.’

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m feeling my age, despite what you dress me in, and an old man craves simple pleasures: companionship, and the knowledge that you will be safe when I am gone.’

  Grace sobbed on his shoulder. Although the air around them was as cold as before, Hooke no longer felt the chill.

  Pepys stood shivering, hunched inside an overcoat on Halley’s doorstep. ‘Do I catch you at an inconvenient time?’

  ‘No, no. Please come in.’

  Ensconced in the drawing room, Pepys accepted a drink from Mrs Fletcher before speaking. ‘The Council met yesterday to discuss the printing of Mr Newton’s book. We agree with you that it’s worthy of publication and that it should carry the Society’s imprimatur. And all were resolved that you should be placed in charge of ushering it into print–’

  ‘Of course, I would be honoured.’

  ‘– and part of that duty would involve taking care of the financial side of publication.’ Pepys glanced sideways at him.

  ‘You mean I am to be personally responsible for the printing?’

  ‘The Council recognised your interest in the work and thought that you should benefit from its eventual rewards as well.’

  Pepys was a terrible liar; he was all but squirming.

  ‘But the Society has published books before . . .’

  ‘The Society has somewhat strained its finances. Our last publication did not do so well as we had hoped.’

  ‘The History of Fishes’ by Francis Willoughby, thought Halley, handsomely illustrated, beautifully printed and totally unreadable. It had floundered like the creatures it sought so hard to depict.

  Pepys continued. ‘You must be aware that paper costs are higher than ever; the number of illustrations that Mr Newton requires – each requires engraving – and then there is the editing . . . So much work and money that we cannot take the risk. And who will read this new work? We only have your word that it is incomparable. You claim that you believe in it, whereas most of us cannot get past the first page. If you believe in it so wholeheartedly, you should feel it your duty to publish in the Society’s name.’

  Halley realised he had been backed into a corner. ‘Very well,’ he said slowly, ‘I will publish it; this book is more than incomparable. It is divine. I believe it will change our world for ever.’

  As Pepys departed, so did most of Halley’s bravado. He returned to the drawing-room, feeling foolish under Mary’s gaze.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘How much will the publication cost?’ Her voice was neutral.

  ‘A few hundred pounds at most, I think. I’ll make inquiries in the morning. It will stretch our budget . . .’ He braced himself for an angry outburst.

  Mary shook her head at him. ‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic. We’re far from destitute. We’ll make a few economies and all will be well.’ She stood and combed her fingers through his hair. ‘But I’m afraid the Chinese oranges will have to stop.’

  24

  Cambridge

  ‘We’re done for!’ announced the squat little man, chopping the air with his hands. ‘The University will be ruined piece by piece.’

  If there were two things that hovered near the top of Newton’s list of intolerances, they were prevarication and whining. As fate would have it, those were the exact two characteristics that this man wove together in his vain attempt to assemble a personality. In any other situation Newton would have ignored him, but John Peachell was Cambridge University’s Vice-Chancellor.

  Newton scanned the letter that Peachell had thrust into his hand. It was a royal proclamation. ‘You’ve objected to this, I take it?’

  ‘A letter was sent to London. We await a reply.’ Peachell’s skin was covered in angry blotches. ‘Our riders tell us that Alban Francis left Whitehall to return to Cambridge this morning by coach. He’ll be back tomorrow with the King’s reply, the day after at the latest. That’s why I summoned you this morning. I need help.’

  ‘James will not back down. He cannot show any weakness. This is the devil’s work indeed,’ said Newton, looking angrily at the missive. It instructed Peachell to confer the degree of Master of Arts upon the Benedictine monk Alban Francis.

  Father Francis had become an increasingly visible figure around Cambridge of late, his black habit whispering along the corridors as he glided from one rendezvous to another.

  ‘We cannot have papists in the university hierarchy,’ spluttered Peachell
, spraying the contents of a tin mug over the white lace of his shirt.

  ‘Oh, I agree. But calm down, Vice-Chancellor. There’s a way out of this.’

  ‘Really? How?’ Peachell’s eyes were wider than Newton had ever seen them before, pale grey irises in yellowing balls. They peered at him from above a brandy-ruined nose.

  ‘We oppose the King on a point of law: no one can graduate without taking the oath of supremacy. Father Francis cannot possibly do that because it’s an oath to uphold the Anglican religion.’

  Peachell scowled. ‘But we’ve conferred degrees without the oath before.’

  ‘The Moroccan ambassador’s secretary? We both know the two cases are entirely different. The first was an honorary entitlement that the secretary could take home as a token of esteem. Alban Francis – correct me if I’m wrong – lives in Cambridge and intends to contribute to University business, as the degree will entitle him to do. How can he do that without swearing one of our most important oaths? Have faith, Vice-Chancellor, no man can be prosecuted for sticking to the law.’ Newton forced himself to look into Peachell’s uninspiring eyes. ‘Bow to this and it will open the sluices for more Catholic effluent. I would rather see our divine halls burn to the ground than be subverted to Roman will.’

  Peachell scratched his lank silver hair, covering his shoulders with white flecks. He bit his bottom lip so hard Newton thought he might draw blood. ‘Very well,’ said Peachell, ‘but you must prepare the defence.’

  Newton returned to his rooms to find Humphrey pacing.

  ‘Mr Newton, you have a letter.’ He handed over the folded sheet. ‘And the Master says to remind you that you are late with your lecture notes.’

  Newton slipped a finger into the fold and popped the letter free of its wax.