by Philip Kerr
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll come with you.”
So I made myself ready presently, and straightaway Mister Hall and myself walked to Newgate with much ado, the ways being so full of ice and water by people’s tramping of the recent snow.
From a distance, Newgate looked well enough, being recently restored after the Great Fire, with a handsome pilastered exterior which, when inspected closely, would have yielded the explanation as to why it was also called the Whit, for, upon the base of one pilaster, sits a carving of Dick Whittington’s cat. And yet the Whit did not easily forgive such close inspection. Those foolish enough to linger in the gateway risked being pissed upon or struck with a chamber pot pitched from the upper windows and, approaching the entrance, I, out of habit, so much scrutinised these same windows that I watched not where I was going and put my foot in a great heap of dog turds, which mightily amused those wretches at the begging grate on Newgate Street who otherwise cried out for alms. I never passed these disembodied hands that reached through the grate without thinking of the gates of the infernal city of Dis, in Dante’s Inferno, where howling figures threatened Virgil and the Pilgrim from the walls and, for all that I bridled under the laughter of these wretched men and women, yet I pitied them also, for, truly, Newgate is a habitation of misery and quite the worst place in London.
Inside was yet more pandemonium, there being a great many dogs and cats, poultry and pigs, to say nothing of the roaches and rats that there abound, so that the smell of animals and their excrements being added to the reek of ale and strong water that were brewed there, as well as the smoke of fires and the cold and the damp, can make a man’s head ache for want of good air.
There were four quarters to Newgate: the Condemned Hold in the cellars; the Press Yard; the Master’s Side; and the Keeper’s Lodge, where ale and tobacco were sold and where we met Mister Fell, the head keeper. Fell was a knavish-looking fellow, with a badly pox-marked face and a nose that resembled a small potato gone to seed, sprouting several greenish hairs from his nostrils.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, grinning boozily. “Will you have some comfort? Some mum, perhaps?”
We had some of his mum, for the comfort in his strong water smelled none too palatable, and we drank each other’s health with more optimism than was warranted in that foul place.
“’Tis a great pleasure,” Mister Fell said to me, “to be the messenger of important information to a gentleman such as yourself, sir, who is the friend of Doctor Newton, who does so much to keep us all in work.” He laughed unpleasantly, and added, “I shall not keep you in suspense. Except to say that you must excuse me if my first enquiry relates to the squeamish matter of compensation, for nobody can help the frailty of poverty, sir.”
His poverty I doubted, for I knew that, as head keeper, Fell could make at least several hundred pounds a year in garnish. But I humoured him for the want of his information.
“If your information be good, I’ll warrant you’ll be well rewarded by my master.”
Fell delved into his pockets, scratched his arse for a moment, and then retrieved a gold guinea which he polished briefly on his filthy coat and then laid down upon the table.
“But if my guinea be not good?” he said. “What then? Will it be replaced by a proper yellow boy?”
“You have my word upon it, sir,” I replied, and scrutinised the coin most carefully. “But what makes you think it is bad? Faith, sir, it bears my own examination well enough, although, in truth, I’m not as well acquainted with golden guineas as I should care to be.”
I handed the coin to Mister Hall, who bit the coin hard with no discernible damage. “Aye, sir,” he said. “It looks and tastes all right.”
“Why, sir,” said Mister Fell, “to look at and to chew upon, it passes well enough, don’t it? But then answer me this: Why would a man say a guinea was not real if it were indeed a true coin?”
“You make a good point, Mister Fell,” I said. “Pray tell me more of this man you mention.”
“Yesterday evening there was a fight at The Cock, in Threadneedle Street. Mister Berningham bought his chop at a butcher’s shop in Finch Lane and, as was his wont, took it to The Cock to be cooked, but eating it liked it no more than if it had not been cooked at all, and quarrelled with the landlord; and, drawing upon him, ran him through the belly with his sword, whereupon he was arrested and brought here.
“He paid fifteen shillings for four weeks food, lodging, and strong waters, for I told him it would likely be that long afore his case came before the court. And five shillings in advance for his wife to come and visit him. He said she would come on Sunday afternoon. But later on, in his cups, he boasted to a prisoner named Ross, who keeps his ears sharp for me, that the yellow boy he had presented was counterfeit. Which put me in mind of Doctor Newton and yourself, sir, you two gentlemen being so very diligent in the enquiry of such felonies, sir.”
“You did right, Mister Fell,” said Mister Hall.
“Indeed, sir,” said I. “And we are obliged to you for your trouble. With your permission I should like to borrow this guinea to show to Doctor Newton. It shall be returned unless, if it proves to be counterfeit, it will certainly be replaced. And if your information leads to the arrest and conviction of its manufacturer, I daresay you will be rewarded as well.”
Mister Fell nodded slowly. “You may borrow it, sir. And I am very glad to have been of assistance to you.”
“Shall you require a receipt, Mister Fell?”
“No need of that, sir,” he grinned. “I have a fixed confidence in you and the Doctor, sir, as men of honour. Besides, we have two witnesses here that it’s my guinea what you are borrowing.”
“Did Mister Berningham say when his wife would visit on Sunday?”
“He did, sir. At around five o’clock, and that I should keep an eye our for her, as she was a lady, and not used to the Whit.”
“I’m obliged to you, Mister Fell.”
When at last I got home and to bed again I had a very restless night of it being too excited to sleep soundly, for the next day being St. Valentine’s Day, I was now possessed of the perfect excuse to be at my master’s house in the morning. It being the custom for a woman to take as her valentine and kiss the first person she saw, naturally I hoped to see Miss Barton in advance of any other and so become her valentine.
I rose from my bed at five o’clock since it was also Sunday and I decided I must arrive in Jermyn Street before eight o’clock as, very soon after that, Miss Barton would likely accompany her uncle to St. James’s Church. Finding myself lousy I washed myself with cold water and found in my head and my body above a dozen lice, little and great, which I did not wonder at after my visit to Newgate. Being the Lord’s Day there were no boats to carry me down to Westminster, nor any hackneys, although I should not have taken one, the fare being one and sixpence, and I was obliged to walk from the Tower to Piccadilly, which is a good distance, and took me almost two hours.
Upon arriving in Jermyn Street, I presented myself at my master’s door and knocked, but Mrs. Rogers, the housekeeper, would not open the door until I answered whether I was a man or woman.
“It is I, Christopher Ellis,” said I.
“Wait there, sir,” Mrs. Rogers told me.
And by and by the door was opened by Miss Barton herself. “I am mighty relieved it is you, dear Tom,” she said, using my pet name. “Quite careless of such important matters, my uncle has invited the Dean of St. James’s Church for dinner, and I do not think I would have wanted him as my valentine. He has breath like a stews, and I should have had a sermon and no embrace.”
“Then it is well that I came,” I said, and stepping into the parlour, Miss Barton let me kiss her, being the first time this had happened. This kiss was the most chaste I had had in many a year, and yet it did give me more pleasure than any other I had ever received; and which made Newton laugh out loud, something that I had not seen before that day.
That being do
ne, to Miss Barton’s no less evident pleasure, upon our mirth subsiding, Mrs. Rogers fetched me some bread, a piece of hot salt beef and a tankard of hot buttered ale, and, much refreshed by my breakfast, I acquainted my master with the other reason for my attending him so early in the morning.
“And here was I thinking you had walked all the way here from the Tower solely on my account,” she said, affecting some disappointment. “Christopher Ellis, I do believe you have no more romance in your body than my uncle.”
But Newton expressed great satisfaction at the story of the golden guinea and, upon examining the coin, declared that we should, by experiment, test it in a crucible as soon as possible.
“But before then I should be grateful if you would escort Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers to Church, this morning,” he said. “For it will require the work of a whole morning in my laboratory for me to build the heat up in the furnace.”
“I should be delighted, sir, if Miss Barton is not too disappointed in me.”
She said nothing.
“Or perhaps,” continued Newton, now addressing his niece, “you had hoped to have the Dean all to yourself over dinner. For I was going to ask Mister Ellis to stay and dine with us.”
Miss Barton closed her eyes for several moments, and then opening them again, she did give me her sweetest, most engaging smile.
And so I escorted Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers to St. James’s Church, which gave me great pleasure, although it was the first time I had been in church a month of Sundays, and I had to endure a most tedious sermon of the Dean about Jacob wrestling with an Angel of the Lord, which was only made easier to bear by the content I found in having such a handsome girl as Miss Barton to look upon, and have squeeze my hand once or twice during the prayers.
After church we returned to Newton’s house and, leaving Miss Barton and Mrs. Rogers in the kitchen for a while, I sought my master out in his laboratory which was in a basement cellar with a window that gave onto a small back garden. This laboratory was well furnished with chymical materials such as bodies, receivers, heads, several crucibles and a furnace that was by now as hot as the lowest part of hell and which made my master sweat mightily.
At the sound of my footsteps he glanced around and waved me toward him with a cry of satisfaction. “Ah, Mister Ellis,” he shouted over the roar of his furnace. “You are just in time to see my own freakish trial of the pyx,” he said, placing Mister Fell’s guinea in a heated crucible. The trial of the pyx was the ancient ordeal by which the purity of gold and silver in the new-minted coin was tested by a jury of the Company of Goldsmiths.
“To my way of thinking, a man’s trying to turn lead into gold is as absurd as expecting bread and wine to become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is what they represent that should inspire us. Nature is not merely chemical and physical, but also intellectual. And we should accept the spirit of enquiry that is implicit in this opus alchemyicum you see before you now, as another man might accept the opus divinum of the mass. Both are journeys toward understanding. We are all seekers after truth. But not all of us are vouchsafed the grace of faith that provides all the answers. Some of us must find those answers for ourselves. For some the answer in the darkness is the light of the Holy Spirit; while for others the discovery is in the fact that hidden in Nature’s darkness lies another light. To this intellectually illuminating end my whole life has been dedicated.
“Now let us see what has become of this guinea.”
Newton fell to inspecting the contents of his crucible while I thought about what he had said. What his meaning might be, I was not completely able to penetrate into at the time, but later on I saw that he aimed at something beyond the reach of human art and industry.
“Look there,” he said and, holding the crucible with a pair of tongs, showed me the melted metal.
“Is it counterfeit?” I asked. “I cannot tell. Even now it looks to me like real spanks.”
“You see, but you do not observe. Look more closely. There is not one but four, possibly even five, metals present here: I know not yet what they may be, but I’ve a strong fancy this coin is mostly copper. Which brings us much trouble, for I have never seen such an ingenious facsimile, not these past nine months. If there be many more like it besides … ” Newton left off speaking and shook his head gravely, as if the prospect was too terrible to countenance.
“But how was it done, master? Do you think this is the same process that Humphrey Hall spoke of?”
“I do indeed,” said Newton. “The process was devised in France, during the last century. I am not privy to understanding all the secrets thereof, but the key is thought to be, as in many, mercury. In truth, no one knows more about mercury than me. About three years ago, I almost poisoned myself through breathing the vapours of mercury—although this effect is not well known. Mercury demands respect. It is not something that may be used with much safety, and this will assist our investigations, for there are many outward signs of mercury’s abuse.”
“What are we to do?”
“What would you have me do?”
“I should question John Berningham about this false guinea. We may perhaps persuade him to make a clean breast of it.”
“That will take a while,” said Newton. “So very often one such as he will lie and keep on lying until he feels Jack Ketch breathing down his neck. It would be better to know much more of this matter before we questioned him. You say that he paid to have his wife visit him?”
“Yes sir. An ounce of silver for the privilege, in advance.”
“Then she may be the key that will open the door.” Newton looked up. “But I hear that the Dean has arrived, and I must play the host.”
Putting on our coats, we went back upstairs for dinner. The Dean was a more congenial dining companion than he was a preacher, and kept Newton occupied with divers matters of theology while Miss Barton and I made eyes at each other. And once or twice she did even rub my shin with her stockinged foot, while all the time discussing the Dean’s sermon, which made me think she was more wicked than I had ever suspected.
After dinner Newton stood up from the table and announced that he and I had Mint business to attend to, and, reluctantly, I took my leave of Miss Barton.
“Are we going to the Mint?” I asked, when we were outside the house in Jermyn Street.
“Did not Mister Fell, the keeper at Newgate, say that Mister Berningham’s wife would visit him at five of the clock?”
“He did. I confess I had quite forgotten that.”
Newton smiled thinly. “Evidently your mind has been much preoccupied with other, frivolous matters. Now then, if I may have your full attention, sir. You and I will repair to Newgate and while I question Scotch Robin and John Hunter—it may be that they were not the only two rogues employed by the Mint who could have stolen a golden guinea die—you shall keep vigilant for this Mrs. Berningham; and seeing her, follow her, for doubtless her husband will have kept his place of lodging secret.”
We made our way to Newgate, where my master, being recognised from one of the upper storey windows, and much hated among the prisoners for his great diligence, was obliged to dodge a bole of shit that was thrown at him, and with such adroitness that I did perceive how, for all his fifty-four years, he was a most athletic man when the occasion demanded it. Entering at the gate, he made light of the ordure bole, saying that it was as well that it had been an apple that fell on this head and not a turd, otherwise he should never have thought of his theory of universal gravitation, for he would have had nothing in his head but shit.
Berningham was in quod on the Master’s Side, which consisted of thirteen wards, each as big as a chapel, and here I loitered on a wooden bench outside the door that held Berningham, like any common cull or warder. While there I was solicited by two or three of the whores that plied their trade in the prison; and sometimes by one of the children who lived there—a small, almost toothless boy that offered to sell me a newspaper that was several days old, and to fe
tch me some “washing and lodging,” which was another name the occupants of that terrible place did have for gin. Finally I took pity on the lad and gave him a halfpenny for his enterprise, which was at least more bearable than that of the jades who offered me a threepenny upright in some quiet corner of the Whit. All of this I bore until the cull I had garnished with another coin tipped me the wink that a most hand some-looking woman—although she wore a vizard—whom he admitted to her husband’s ward, was the lady in question. To keep her observed was no great skill, for over her grey moiré suit she wore a thickly wadded cloak of bright red cloth that made her stand out like a cardinal in a Quaker church.
Mrs. Berningham stayed with her husband for more than an hour, after which, and hiding her face again, she left the ward and returned to the main gate, with me skulking after her as if I were some Italian in a tragedy of revenge. By and by we both found ourselves out of the Whit again, whither she walked south down Old Bailey, and again I followed her, whereupon, to my surprise, I found my master fall into step beside me, for he was an even better skulker than might be supposed of one who had become so famous.
“Is that Mrs. Berningham?” he asked.
“The same,” I replied. “But what of Scotch Robin and John Hunter? Did you question them?”
“I left them both with much food for thought,” said Newton. “I said that as ever I hope to see heaven I would make certain each of them would meet the cheat before Wednesday if they did not tell me who might have stolen a die. I shall return tomorrow for an answer. For I have always thought that if a man does but reflect upon the prospect of hanging for one night, it greatly loosens his tongue.”
Mrs. Berningham remained very visible in her red hooded cloak, although it was become quite dark and mighty cold besides, which made us glad to hurry after her as she turned east onto Ludgate Hill, for we had no wish to let her out of our sight. But then, turning the corner ourselves, we saw that Mrs. Berningham was surrounded by three ruffians carrying cudgels in their hands, and who seemed to speak very roughly to her, so that I feared they intended to do her some harm. And I shouted at the fellow to desist. At this the villain who was the largest and most ruffianly aspected of the three advanced on me brandishing his cudgel most menacingly.
