Dark Matter

by Philip Kerr

  “It is not my manner,” he said, “to speak anything that is extraneous to my business. So let me come straight to the point, Mister Ellis. When I be came Warden of His Majesty’s Mint I little thought that my life should become taken up with the detection, pursuit and punishment of coiners, clippers and counterfeiters. But that being my discovery, I wrote to the Treasury Committee to the effect that such matters were the proper province of the Solicitor General and that, if it were possible, to let this cup pass from me. Their Lordships willed it otherwise, however, and therefore I must stand the course. Indeed, I have made this matter my own personal crusade, for if the Great Recoinage does not succeed, I fear that we shall lose this war with the French and the whole kingdom shall be undone. God knows I have, these past six months, in my own person done my full duty, I am sure. But the business of my taking these rascals is so great, there being so many of them, I find I have sore need of a clerk to assist me in my duties.

  “But I want no truckle-head milksop in my service. God knows what disorders we may fall into and whether any violence may be done on this office or upon our persons, for coining being high treason carries the harshest penalty and these miscreants are a desperate lot. You look like a young man of spirit, sir. But speak up and recommend yourself.”

  “I do believe,” I said nervously, because Newton sounded very like my own father who always expected the worse of me, and usually he was not disappointed, “that I should say something to you in reference to my education, sir. I have my degree from Oxford. And I have studied for the Law.”

  “Good, good,” Newton said impatiently. “Likely you will need a quick pen. These mimming rogues are agile storytellers and provide such a quantity of deposition as would leave a man feeling in need of three hands. But let us have less modesty, sir. What of your other skills?”

  I searched myself for an answer. What other skills did I possess? And finding myself at a loss for words, with little or nothing to commend myself further, I began to grimace and shake my head and shrug, and started to sweat like I was in the hot steam baths.

  “Come, sir,” insisted Newton. “Did you not pink a man with your rapier?”

  “Yes sir,” I stammered, angry with my brother for having apprised him of this awkward fact. For who else could have told him?

  “Excellent.” Newton knocked the table once as if keeping score. “And a keen shot, I see.” Perceiving my puzzlement, he added, “Is that not a gunpowder-spot on your right hand?”

  “Yes sir. And you’re right. I shoot both carbine and pistol, tolerably well.”

  “But you are better with the pistol, I’ll warrant.”

  “Did my brother tell you that, too?”

  “No, Mister Ellis. Your own hand told me. A carbine would have left its mark on hand and face. But a pistol only upon the back of your hand, which did lead me to suppose that you have used a pistol with greater frequency.”

  “Well, that’s a nice trick, sir. I am trumped.”

  “I have others here besides. Doubtless we shall have to visit many a kennel where your apparent fondness for the ladies may serve us good advantage. Women will sometimes tell a young man that which they would deny my older ears. I trust that your fondness for the dark-haired woman you were so recently with might permit such stratagems as would gain us information. Perhaps she was the one who did bring you the juniper ale.”

  “Well, if that isn’t Pam,” I proclaimed, quite trumped by this, for I had indeed embraced a wench with brown hair that very morning over breakfast at my local tavern. “How did you know she was dark? And that I had some juniper ale?”

  “By virtue of the long dark hair that adorns your handsome ventre d’or waistcoat,” explained Newton. “It proclaims her colouring just as surely as your conversation demonstrates your close acquaintance with the card table. We shall have need of that, too. As much as we shall have need of a man who likes his bottle. If I am not wrong, sir, that is red wine on your cuffs. No doubt you had a good deal of it to drink last night, which is why you were a little sick in your stomach this morning. And why you had need of some juniper ale for your gripes. The smell of that pungent oil in ale upon your breath is most unmistakable.”

  I heard myself gasp with astonishment that so much of me was plain to him, as if he could see into my mind and read my own thoughts.

  “You make me sound the most consummate rakehell that was ever drawn to the gallows,” I protested. “I know not what to say. I am quite outhuffed.”

  “Pray, Mister Ellis,” said Newton, “don’t take on so. We shall have to daggle a bit, you and I. The business of the Mint requires that I have a man who knows his way around London. That being the case, and to fret you no longer, the position is yours if you want it. The pay is not much. Just sixty pounds a year, to start. Which does not sort well with me, and I confess I am at a vile trouble for fear that the right kind of man will not want the employment and I come to shame because I cannot fulfil the proper duties of my office through lack of an assistant, for whom I have such mighty need. That being the case, it being within my power to do so, I have decided to offer my clerk the Warden’s house at the Mint, in the Tower of London, with all the benefits that do pertain to living there.”

  “That is very generous, sir,” said I, beginning to grin like an idiot. For this was more than I could ever have expected. Since leaving Gray’s Inn I had taken lodgings in King Street, Westminster, but these were poor quarters and my heart leaped at the thought of a whole house to myself, especially one within the liberties of the Tower, for there a man might avoid taxation altogether.

  “Upon my arrival at the Mint last April, I lived there for a while myself before coming here to Jermyn Street, in August. The truth is the Mint is mighty noisy, having the rolling mills going all night, and after the peace and tranquillity of Cambridge, I could not bear with it. But you are a young fellow and it has been my experience that the young have a stronger toleration of noise than their elders. Besides, I have great expectation that my niece will come to live with me in December, and the Mint is a dirty, unwholesome place, with many roguish fellows and where the air is ill, so that I am confirmed not to live there. Come, sir, what do you say? It is a good little house, with a garden.”

  A whole house, with a garden. This was too much. And yet still I was moved to ask for more. I have mentioned how I had begun to feel the weight of my own ignorance; and it suddenly occurred to me that there was something in Newton’s demeanour and conducting of himself that made me believe that I could learn much from him. And I thought to make a condition of it. For I was possessed of the notion that to know the mind of such a man who had penetrated so many scientific and philosophical mysteries would be to know the mind of God. Which would make a change from the minds of whores and gamesters.

  “Aye, sir,” said I. “I will work for you. But on one condition.”

  “Name it, Mister Ellis.”

  “That you will always correct my ignorance of something, for I know you are a learned man. I would wish that you will show me something of the world as you understand it, and to discourse with me on the nature of things in furtherance of my own self-improvement. For I must confess that a university degree got me an understanding of the classics and Sanderson’s Logic and not much else. I will work for you, sir. But what in me is dark, I would ask you to illumine. And what is low and base, I would that you might raise and support.”

  “Well said, sir. It takes an intelligent man to admit his ignorance, especially one with a university degree. But be warned. I was never much of a tutor. In all my time at Cambridge, Trinity College assigned but three fellow commoners to my tuition, and those I took for the fees rather than some desire to be the centre of a modern Lyceum. It is hard for any of us to know how we may appear to the world, but, in truth, I consider myself to have learned only as much as to confirm how little of the world I know. I’ve a mind that it’s this which vexes those rabbinical parts I might possess. But I agree to your condition. I know not
what but I’ll trepan something into that young head of yours. So, give me your hand on the bargain.”

  I took Newton’s cold thin hand in my own and indeed, I did kiss it, for it now belonged to the master to whom I owed some return of my fortune and prospects.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I will endeavour to do my best for you.”

  “I shall write to the Treasury today,” said Newton. “They will have to sanction your appointment. But I do not doubt that they will approve my choice. After which you will have to take an oath to keep secret Mister Blondeau’s method of edge-marking the coin, although I think it can be no great secret since, I am told, the same machine is shown openly to visitors in the Paris Mint.

  “But first let’s have some cider, after which I’ll write that letter and then we’ll take my coach to the Tower where I’ll swear you in and show you around the Mint.”

  And so I was employed at the Royal Mint.

  The Mint was within the Tower since 1299, and by 1696 it was as big as many a sizeable town. Two rows of aged wooden buildings, pinned together with clamps of iron, lay between the inner and outer rampires, beginning at the Byward and Bell Towers, extended some five hundred yards along and around the foot of eachwall to finish up at the Salt Tower. A narrow cobbled road, illuminated by lanterns and patrolled by sentries, led between the timber-shored buildings which, some of them, were several jetties high and accommodated houses, offices, barracks, stables, wash-houses, melting-houses, smithies, mill rooms, storehouses, taverns and a sutters selling all kinds of victuals.

  As Newton had told me, the noise of metalworking was enough to box a man’s ears, and walking about the Mint we had to shout to each other to make ourselves heard; but to this must be added the cannons that from time to time were fired, the sound of horses and iron wheels on the cobbles, the bellman cries and voices of the soldiers who were stationed there and who cursed as freely as Templars, the dogs that barked, the ravens that cried out like the throat-rattles of dying men, the fires that roared, the cats that howled, the doors and gates that slammed, the keys that jangled, and the wooden signs that creaked in the high wind, for it had been exceedingly stormy of late. Bedlam could not have seemed more noisy than the Royal Mint. My first impression was of some infernal place such as Virgil might have described when Aeneas visits the underworld and, standing between the Bell and Byward Towers, where I could hear the low moaning of wild beasts in the nearby Lion Tower, which stood outside the westward entrance, I almost thought myself before the very forecourt and in the opening of the jaws of hell. Yet the Tower was an exciting place and I was pleased to be there, for I always had a great appetite for history; and visiting the Tower as a boy I little thought I should ever have worked there.

  We walked north, up Mint Street, with Newton all the while acquainting me with the work of the moneyers who operated the coinage presses, and the assayers who checked the fineness of the bullion, and the melters and the engravers.

  “Of course,” he said, “many of them are villains up to their necks in illegal coining and fit to be hanged. Blank coins are often stolen, as are dies and guinea stamps. At least two men who were in the service of the Mint have been hanged. And another two who were in the service of the Mint are in Newgate Prison, under sentence of death.

  “My advice is to trust none of them, from the highest to the lowest. The scoundrel who is Master of the Mint is Mister Neale, although he is so seldom here you would think he would blush to hold the office. But I doubt that you will have sufficient opportunity to know him well enough to recognise his many failings.”

  At this point Newton bowed stiffly to a man who came out of one of the offices—a small and consumptive fellow who whooped like a trumpet when he spoke; and as soon as he was gone out of earshot my master enjoined me not to trust him either.

  “He is mighty friendly with the Tower Ordnance—the garrison of soldiers with whom we are constantly at odds for the privileges of the Mint. For they regard us as interlopers, although in truth we have been here almost as long as they. But this Tower has too many people in it, and there’s the crux of the problem.

  “Until recently the Ordnance had occupied the Irish Mint, which is near the Salt Tower, at the far end of this road we are on. They had seized the Porter’s house and some clerks’ dwellings, and built a barracks on a vacant site. But this Great Recoinage has enabled us to get them out of the Mint again, and back within the inner rampire of the Tower, where the common soldiers now take turns to sleep in a bed, so that they now hate us most bitterly. Trust none of them, nor their officers, for they wish us all ill.”

  Newton caught sight of a haughty-looking man who stood watching us from the top of the Beauchamp Tower.

  “And there is the great architect of their resentment. Lord Lucas himself. He is the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, a position that enjoys many ancient and peculiar privileges and, but for the office exercised by myself, he might call himself the most powerful man in this castle. Above all other men, do not trust him. He is a drunken Borachio and so arrogant I do believe he must wipe his arse with gilt paper.”

  A little farther on, around the corner of Devereaux Tower, we came abreast of the Smithy, wherein as stern and nasty-looking a rogue as ever I saw, left off shoeing a horse for a moment to fix a most unforgiving eye on Doctor Newton and, by association, myself.

  “Upon my soul,” said I, when we had walked past, “if that fellow doesn’t have the most disinheriting countenance.”

  “He is a most inveterate knave and no friend to the Mint either. But put him out of your mind for now, as here is the King’s Clerk’s house, and next to it the Master’s house, and next to that the Deputy Warden, Monsieur Fauquier’s house.”

  “Fauquier? He sounds like a Frenchman.”

  “He is one of those Huguenots,” explained Newton, “so lately expelled from his own country by the French King, Lewis. I think that there are several such refugees here in the Tower. The French Church, which is the centre of their community, is but a short walk from the Tower, in Threadneedle Street. Fauquier is a man of considerable substance and, I believe, a diligent one. But do not think to find him in this house—him, or any of these others I have mentioned. It is one of the perquisites of preferment in the Mint that officers may sublet their official residences to whomsoever they wish and for their own personal gain.”

  It was now that I perceived how in giving me his own official residence, Newton was giving up the good income he might have derived from the letting of it.

  Newton stood still and pointed to a neat two-storey house that was built along the wall underneath that part of the outer rampire known as the Brass Mount—so called because of the piece of brass cannon installed there and which, I soon discovered, was often fired in celebration of royal birthdays, or visits by foreign dignitaries.

  “This is the Warden’s house,” said Newton, “where you shall live.” He opened the door and ushered me inside and, looking around atthe furniture and the books, which belonged to Newton, I thought that the house would suit me very well. “The house is quite cosy although there is, as you can see, some damp—which I think is inevitable from our proximity to the river—and much dust. The vibration of the cannon brings it down, so it can’t be helped much. You are welcome to use this furniture. It was brought from Trinity, most of it. None of it is any good, and I care little for it, but I would have you look after these books. There is scant room for any more books in my new house, and yet I would not part with these. Since you are bent upon self-improvement, Mister Ellis, you will doubtless want to read them. You may even find one or two of them to your liking. And I look forward to hearing an opinion of them which, sometimes, is as good as reading a book again oneself.”

  Going outside again, Newton showed me a little walled garden, rather ill-tended, that curved around the base of the Jewel Tower and which, being the Warden’s garden, was mine to enjoy as well.

  “You might grow some vegetables here,” suggested Newton
. “If you do, make sure to offer me some. Otherwise, this is a very pretty place to sit in summer if you be not afeared of ghosts, although, in truth, working for me you will have little time for such idle fancies. I myself am very sceptical of the general appearing of spirits, but there are many within these Tower walls who make the greatest warrants of having seen one apparition or another. I count this nonsense, mostly. But it is no great secret that many have died most cruelly in almost every part of this fortification, which explains much general superstition hereabouts, for such a terrible history will always play upon ignorant men’s fancies. It is even put about that your predecessor was quite frightened away by a spirit, but it goes against my mind and I am more likely to believe that he was in league with some of these coiners and ran away for fear of being apprehended, and hanged. For his disappearance almost coincided with my arrival in the Mint, which makes me much suspicious.”

  The news that I had a predecessor who had disappeared troubled me a little so that I had a mind to know more, for the possibility now presented itself that my new position might be more hazardous than previously I had believed.