by Philip Kerr
“But that is heresy,” said I. “Isn’t it?”
“Indeed, many would say so,” murmured Newton. “But you should concern yourself more with why Macey was killed and where, than with the fate of his immortal soul. For it is plain that he was murdered in the Tower, and by people from the Ordnance who were in a great hurry to be rid of his body.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“For the present I would merely ask you to recall the knot that was tied around poor Macey’s feet. Common enough, you thought. But in reality, much more singular. It is made by twisting two parts of rope in opposite directions, forming two side-by-side eyes through which the base of a hook may be passed so that a sling or weight may be hung from the hook. The knot, called a cat’s paw, is used to attach a rope to a hook and is quite versatile, but I have seldom seen it used outside of this Tower. I have other reasons, also, for believing the Ordnance was involved, which we will investigate as soon as we have wet our whistles.”
The Stone Kitchen was a miniature Babylon of vice and iniquity which did not lack its own scarlet woman, for the wife of the landlord was a whore that could persuade the Minters and warders that went there to do more than just drink away their pay. She, or one of her female friends, was not infrequently to be seen taking some fellow into a dark corner of the inmost ward for a threepenny upright; and once I even saw this bawd plying her wares behind the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. Indeed I am certain of it, for I confess that I myself did, once or twice, gowith her; and others. In truth there were many places in the Tower wherea jade from The Stone Kitchen might fetch a man off for a few coppers; and it was just one of several reasons why my master seldom ventured through the tavern’s door, for he also abhorred drunkenness and the fights that excessive drinking sometimes occasioned between Minters and the Ordnance. I, on the other hand, often frequented the place when my master was back in Jermyn Street, for it was certain that The Stone Kitchen was the cosiest place in the Tower, with a great hearth and an enormous skillet that usually contained an excellent stew, because for all her lewd ways and probable distempers — during the summer her cunny parts smelt as frowzy as a Scotsman’s dog—the landlady was an excellent cook.
As we came throughthe door Newton surveyed the occupants of the tavern with Jeremiah’s disapproving eye, which earned us the greeting of a low murmuring groan and a lesser consort of cat-calls; and perhaps it need be stated again that Newton lacked a facility with ordinary people, so that there were times when he resembled old Mister Prig.
We sat down near the fire, for it was cold outside, and warmed our hands and feet; and having ordered two mugs of hot buttered ale, we looked about the tavern at the Minters who had finished their shifts, and the warders who had come off duty. For myself I nodded at some of the faces I recognised: a surveyor of the meltings; an engraver; a moneyer; and the Tower barber. I even nodded at Mister Twistleton who, wild-haired and white-faced, sat meekly pressed between Yeoman Warder Bull and Sergeant Rohan, and looked like nothing so much as the pages of a book bound with a robust leather cover; he smiled back at me and then continued to study a paper with which he seemed to be much diverted.
And of course I smiled at the landlady who brought our buttered ales, and caressed me with a most venereal eye, although she was kind enough not to speak to me with any great familiarity in the presence of my master, which would have caused me some embarrassment.
Newton regarded all of these with the suspicion of a Witchfinder-General, and sitting amidst those brawny boozers of the Mint and the Ordnance, whose conduct was a scandal to sobriety and whose faces contained much roguery, I swear he fancied each tankard a coiner’s cool accomplice.
We drank our ale and kept our own counsel until Jonathan Ambrose, a goldsmith contracted to the Mint as a melter and refiner, and already much distrusted by Newton on account of how his cousin had been hanged as a highwayman, approached us with a show of contempt and proceeded to subject my master to a most insulting speech.
“Doctor Newton, sir,” he said, almost sick with intemperance. “I declare, you are not much loved in this place. Indeed, I believe you are the most unpopular man in this Tower.”
“Sit down, Mister Ambrose,” yelled Sergeant Rohan. “And mind your tongue.”
Newton remained seated and ignored Ambrose, seemingly unperturbed; but, sensing some trouble, I got up from our bench to interpose my body between the goldsmith and my master.
“God’s whores, it’s true, I say,” insisted Ambrose. He was a tall fellow with a manner of speech that made me think he spoke side-saddle, for his mouth was all to one side of his nose when he was talking.
“Sit down,” I told Ambrose and gently pushed him away.
“Pox on’t, no,” snarled Ambrose, his mouth a slavering diagonal of distaste. “Why should I?”
“Because you are drunk, Mister Ambrose,” said I, moving him still further away, for he had begun to point most belligerently at Newton, as if his forefinger had been a javelin. “And you are most importunate.”
“Have a care, Doctor,” said Ambrose, craning his neck across my shoulder. “People die in this Tower.”
“I think we’ve had enough out of you, Jonathan Ambrose,” declared the landlord.
It was now that Ambrose aimed a blow at my head. It was easily ducked, but I had a mind to pay him back for his insolence and, aiming at his ear, struck him in the mouth with my fist. I was not much of a man for bare knuckles, but the blow knocked Mister Ambrose off his feet and onto the table in front of Mister Twistleton, which earned me a cheer from the men in The Stone Kitchen, as if we had been in the Bear Garden in Southwark. And while the landlord set about the simplified task of ejecting Ambrose from the tavern, I helped Mister Twistleton to collect his paper from the floor, although this was naught but the jumbled-up alphabets of a child.
“Perhaps,” said Newton, rising to his feet, “we had better be going, too.”
“Sorry about that, gentlemen,” said our landlord. “He’s barred from this moment hence.”
“I think,” replied Newton, “that if every sober man in the Tower should be called to account for the nonsense he speaks in his drink, then you should soon have no customers, Mister Allott. So let’s have no talk of barring anyone, and think no more of this business. Here’s five shillings to buy a drink for all that’s in here.”
“Very generous of you, sir.”
And with that, we took our leave of The Stone Kitchen.
When we were outside again, there was no sign of Mister Ambrose, and Newton let out a breath and smiled at me.
“You are a useful fellow to have around, Ellis,” he said. “I can see I made the right choice. You are quite a Hector.”
“It was nothing,” I said, following him along Water Lane.
“The fellow needed a dry basting. I was glad to do it. He threatened you, sir.”
“No, no,” insisted Newton. “He warned me. That is something very different.”
Instead of proceeding to the Mint, we walked along the south wall of the White Tower, in what was the inmost and oldest ward of the Tower, to the Coldharbour Building and the museum which was there. Inside this place was a splendid collection of mounted armour-clad figures that purported to show the line of Kings upon the throne of England; and a gallery that displayed various instruments of torture and execution. It was these cruel machines and implements that Newton wished to look at now.
I had not seen the rack before, however I had, of course, heard stories of its use, and shuddered as I looked upon it, finding it only too easy to think of myself bound to the two opposite windlasses like some hapless victim of the Holy Inquisition—for it was stated on a nearby placard that all of these instruments had been captured from the wreck of a Spanish Armada ship and had been intended to help in the work of reconverting the people of England to Roman Catholicism.
“God bless Sir Francis Drake,” I murmured. “Or else this rack should have made us all Papists by now.”
> On hearing this, Newton laughed. “I hold no candle for Roman Catholics,” he said. “But, mark my words, Rome can teach Englishmen nothing about cruelty.”
“But is the rack not still used in Spain?” I replied.
“It may be so,” admitted Newton. “And would explain why so little science emanates from that country. God knows how many great scientific minds were stunted when Galileo, the greatest mind of the century, was tried for heresy. However, it is not the rack that we have come to see, but this much more portable instrument of torture which, if I am right, was used about six months ago, on poor George Macey.”
Newton pointed at a curious metal implement that was as tall as a man and shaped like a keyhole, with manacle holes for a man’s head, hands and feet. Newton leaned forward to blow away only a light covering of dust from the object, which action he repeated upon the beam of the rack, thereby setting up a veritable cloud of grime.
“Observe, if you will, how much less dusty this instrument of torture is than the rack.”
Now, from his pocket, Newton produced a magnifying glass that he did sometimes use to read, with which he proceeded to examine the black metal surface of the machine most closely.
“But what is it?” I asked. “I cannot fathom the mechanism.”
“This is the Scavenger’s Daughter, also known as Skeffington’s Gyves, or shackles, and invented by a former Lord Lieutenant of this Tower. The Scavenger’s operation is, in all respects, the very opposite action to the rack; for while that draws apart a man’s joints, this, on the contrary, binds a man into a ball, the human body being almost broken by the compression. This torture was more dreadful and more complete than the rack, so that in some extreme cases the box of a man’s chest was burst and death resulted soon thereafter. Also, it is much more portable than the rack since it may be fetched to a prisoner, rather than the other way around.”
“And you believe this is how poor Mister Macey met his end?”
“His injuries are certainly consistent with it having been used,” he said. “Yes.”
Newton was still in possession of Mister Osborne’s knife and used this to scrape something off the manacles onto a piece of paper which he showed to me. “If I am not mistaken, this is dried blood. But we shall examine it under a microscope later on.”
“You have a microscope? I have never seen through a microscope,” I admitted.
“Then you are to be envied. For the first sight of natural phenomena under the microscope is always most breathtaking.”
“If you are right,” said I, “and this is blood, then George Macey must have been privy to information that others wished desperately to know, or else they should not have tortured him so cruelly.”
“Mint workers are always in possession of some secrets,” said Newton, “although I hazard that there’s not one of them, Macey included, who wouldn’t give up what he knows for a few guineas. No, it is more tempting to conclude that Macey was tortured for information he did not possess, otherwise the excruciating pain of this device would surely have persuaded him to talk much earlier on, and certainly before receiving any mortal injuries.”
“That’s a terrible thought,” I said sickly. “To be tortured for information you had would be bad enough. But how much worse it would be with nothing to betray.”
“Your instinct for self-preservation does you a dubious credit,” said Newton, and, folding away the paper with the suspected dried blood, he offered me a wintry smile. “It persuades me that I need not utter another salutary to remain silent about this matter. Whoever killed George Macey would doubtless slit our throats as easily as other men would slice a cucumber.
“Come, let’s away from here, lest some should see us and feel disquiet at our proximity to this machine.”
Leaving the Storehouse, Newton declared his wish to visit my house and use his microscope which, he said, would assist our further enquiry. But outside the door to the Warden’s house we found Mister Kennedy, who was another of the Mint’s informers, and two gentlemen I did not recognise.
Mister Kennedy was a most forbidding-looking fellow, having a false nose made of silver to cover the gaping holes of the nostrils of the one that was lost: from an accident in the mill room, he said; but there were, I knew, plenty who speculated that the real accident had been received in the cunny parts of a whore. This feature, however, lent Mister Kennedy a villainous aspect that enabled him to mix with some of the worst rogues in London. He, having received a shilling from one of the two gentlemen for having brought them to Newton, now withdrew, leaving them to introduce themselves. It was the taller, older and less modish of the pair who did the talking:
“Sir,” he said, bowing gracefully, “this is indeed an honour. Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Christopher Love. Perhaps you have read my work on the chemical teachings that are being done in the University of Leyden?”
“I regret I have not had that pleasure,” Newton said gruffly, for he hated being sought out by new disciples while he was about the business of the Mint.
“No matter,” said Doctor Love. “This is the Count Gaetano, from Italy, who is a most adept and notable philosopher in his own country, and has done great work in the secret art.”
The Count, attired in powdered silk and wearing the largest feather I had ever seen on a man’s hat, contrasted sharply with the scholarly black of his companion, whom I judged to be in the fiftieth year of his age. He bowed with more panache than an Irish actor and then spoke most haltingly to my master, in an accent that was as thick as the braid upon his sleeves.
“Sir, I should be greatly honoured if you would be my guest for dinner. At your convenience, sir. Very much.”
“I am not insensible of the honour you do me, Count,” answered Newton. “However, I accept very few invitations.”
“The Count appreciates you are a busy man,” said Doctor Love.
“Very much.”
“Nevertheless he feels he has something which would be of very great scientific interest to you.”
“Very much.”
And so saying, Doctor Love removed from a square of velvet a gold ounce, which he presented to Newton.
“Before my very own eyes,” explained Doctor Love, “the Count used a tincture of his own discovery to convert what had been a miserable piece of lead into this golden ingot.”
Newton examined the gold with a show of deep feeling.
“I took it at once to a goldsmith,” continued Doctor Love, “who declared it to be the purest gold he had ever seen.”
“Indeed,” said Newton, weighing the gold piece in the palm of his hand and all the while looking greatly affected.
“Who could be better than yourself, Doctor Newton, Warden of the Royal Mint and England’s greatest scientist, to put this gold to the test? And if you were convinced that it was real, we considered that you might care to witness the Count’s process of transmutation for yourself.”
“Very much,” said Newton; and the assignation of a definite time for this demonstration having been made, the two alchemists were persuaded to take their leave of us, and we were at last allowed to go inside the house, whereupon Newton handed me the gold piece.
“It certainly looks and feels like real gold,” said I. “I think should like to see a real transmutation. If such a thing is possible.”
“We have other business before us now.” And, finding his microscope, Newton placed the instrument on the table by the window, and a mirror and a candle next to it to better illuminate the specimen.
“See if you cannot find Mister Leeuwenhoek’s book,” he told me, placing the scraping from the Scavenger on a slide. “Or Hooke’s Micrographia.”
But I could not find either book.
“No matter,” said Newton, and, producing a pin from his lapel, pricked his own thumb so that a small ruby of blood did ooze out. This he pressed onto another slide, compared the two, and then invited me to look myself.
Gradually I was able to distinguish a dim
but magnified image that Newton assured me was his own blood. It was one of the most remarkable things I had ever seen. The blood from Newton’s thumb seemed to be almost alive.
“Why, sir, it is composed of thousands of small objects,” I said. “But only some of them are red. And these do flow in a liquid that is almost transparent. It is like looking closely into a pond on a bright summer’s day.”
Newton nodded. “These minute portions are called cells. And it is believed that these are the ultimate elements in all living matter.”
“I did not think it possible that a man might be reduced to something so small. Looking at it so close, human life seems somehow less miraculous. As if we ourselves might not add up to much more than what floats in the village pool.”
Newton laughed. “I think we are a little more complicated than that,” he said. “But pray tell me what is your opinion of the sample we took from the Scavenger?”
“It is without doubt the same, sir. And yet it does not move. It is as if the life that animates the pond has departed.”
“Quite so.”
“It is blood, then,” said I. “What shall we do?”
“Do? Why, nothing at all. I will at my leisure think of this some more and see what might go to explain it. Until then, put this matter from your mind lest these discoveries of ours, weighing on your thoughts, shall spill off your tongue.”
Two or three nights afterwards—Newton having tested the sample of gold himself, and confirmed him in his first opinion, which was that the ounce of gold was genuine—I accompanied him to Doctor Love’s house in Soho, where Count Gaetano received the news about his sample with modest smiles and humble shrugs, almost as if he expected his demonstration was a foregone conclusion and that Newton was already congratulating him on his transmutation. Doctor Love had laid on a splendid dinner, but before we could partake of a mouthful of it, Newton, already bored with the conversation of these two philosophers, looked at his watch and declared that he was anxious to proceed with the transmutation.
