Dark Matter

by Philip Kerr

  “Danny Mercer is dead? No sir. Not I.”

  “Or perhaps Mister Kennedy? Did you lock him in the Lion Tower?”

  “Not me, sir. I’m a good Protestant. I bear no man any ill will, sir. Not even Roman Catholics. Not even the French King, Lewis, who would murder me if he could.”

  “Why would he murder you?”

  “To make me a good Catholic, of course.”

  “Do you know a secret?” asked Newton.

  “Yes sir. But I have sworn an oath never to reveal it to anyone. Yet I would tell you, sir. If I could remember what it was that I must never reveal. “The poor wretch smiled. “But I think it might touch upon weapons. For I was the Armourer, I think.”

  “Was it to do with alchemy perhaps?”

  “Alchemy?” Mister Twistleton looked puzzled. “No, sir. The only metal I have ever drawn from a fire were the musket balls I made myself. And I have seen very little real gold in my life.”

  Newton unfolded a copy of the encrypted message that we had discovered on the wall of the Sally Port stairs beside Daniel Mercer’s body. “Does this mean anything to you?” he asked.

  “Oh yes,” said the poor lunatic. “It means a great deal to me, sir. Thank you. Here, wait a minute, I have a message for you, I think.” And having searched the pockets of his breeches, he produced a much-folded and dog-eared letter and handed it to Newton, who examined it for a moment, and then let me see that it contained a similarly confounded alphabet of letters as the previous messages that we had discovered. It might even have been the very same letter Mister Twistleton had been reading when I had seen him in The Stone Kitchen.

  “But what is the meaning?” enquired Newton.

  “The meaning?” repeated Mister Twistleton. “Blood, of course. Blood is behind everything. Once you understand that, you understand all that has happened. That’s the secret. You ought to know that, sir.”

  “Is there yet more blood to be shed?”

  “More? Why, sir, they haven’t hardly started, sir.” Mister Twistleton laughed. “Not by my chalk. There’s lots of killing to come. Lots of blood. Well, it’s like this, see? It depends on whether there be peace or war.” He tapped his nose. “More than that I can’t say, because I don’t know. Nobody knows when such a thing comes about. Maybe soon. Maybe not. Maybe never at all. Who can say? But you will help, sir. You will help get us started. You may not know it yet. But you will.”

  “Mister Twistleton,” Newton said gently, “do you know the meaning of the phrase pace belloque?”

  He shook his head. “No sir. Is that a secret, too?”

  I shook my aching head wearily, and withdrew my hand from the madman’s increasingly tight grasp. “This is madness indeed.”

  “Madness, yes,” said Mister Twistleton. “We will make everyone in London mad. And then who will cure it?”

  Seeing that we were about to take our leave of him, Mister Twistleton became quickly agitated: his humour became more frantic, and within less than a minute he was raving and foaming at the mouth. This seemed infectious, for at once other lunatics began to rant and rave, and they had soon set up such a chorus of Pandemonium as would have put Hell in an uproar, with Satan himself fit to complain to the Steward about the damned noise. Immediately several nurse-warders descended upon the inmates with whips, which was a piteous sight to behold, and which prompted my master and me to advance swiftly toward Bedlam’s exit, eager to be out of that festering air.

  Walking through the portico under the melancholy eyes of Mister Cibber’s statues, Newton shook his head and sighed with relief.

  “Of all things, I most fear the loss of my mind,” he said. “During my last year at Cambridge I got a distemper that much seized my head and kept me awake for several weeks so that my thinking was much discomposed.”

  These symptoms were becoming increasingly familiar to me, for my ague seemed to be worsening; and yet I said nothing to my master beyond enquiring if it were indeed possible for a man to be put out of his wits by seeing a ghost, as Sergeant Rohan had told me.

  “There’s no question of a ghost,” said Newton. “Mister Twistleton has the pox. Did you not see the ulcerated lesions on his legs? You might also have noted his atrophied eyes, his trembling lips and tongue, and his partial paralysis. These are most symptomatic of advanced syphilis.”

  “I think,” I said weakly, “that I should like to wash my hands.”

  “Oh, there’s no time for that,” said Newton. “We have to go and see some hatmakers.”

  “Hatmakers?” I sighed wearily. “Unless you do think to have yourself a new hat, sir—although I must confess I do think you the least hat-minded man I ever met—why on earth should we want to visit some hatmakers?”

  To which Newton replied, “What? ‘Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich?’” And seeing me frown, he added, “Job, chapter thirty-nine, verse thirteen.”

  In the coach, Newton patted my leg and, exuding some delight, showed me the letter Mister Twistleton had given to him. To my tired eyes, the paper, which showed a familiar but disorderly mixture of letters—

  tqbtqeqhhnuquczrpsvxwkxfklevqtogkxzzlalcsulixpdmctz xlzlbizgtpajpdnfpadykforlfbpfoxlduyxwmilldsdlnriieoerx qxnuiaebpaaafyagfokseicrlexuxtjplttlcgvvmmuqluzgvyqs swncebkmyetybohlckuasyfkthyizmhzbkvzhydumtksrnpjl yxdloqmhnfyczeszrvepnbrvhyleedufuivdehfgdrwdeeuh mmonheybbiktaopigbojcxdgcuouvmnkibhvonxnlzsiefzw krrvsfdedzhmmnsheasgdtpyhriwqupnefiogzrirpmjpnqc dlnxqtpfydgmpluynicsbmkhwvsqtexgzidypjtndgizfkkmb kaoprtdsxyhlmwfflxxaeaklrdcsnnyuouflurtqtnnwzbxyjg wdkcwxylkiajmcykakxkhziqimunavbolltadvfwpfmgwcmz uszpdqaktiemptpcyvkeygeyffhskntduvnfykrshmorrvuok gnbuutclafcpnwwekrkcezaxbpluaezgt’edqwbypuufzqxdziifs kszrktncnuljdvfedpgnohprzdoosyskxshdkdgwktgqwtavd hrusmocxiipiyrlmwopohkdz

  —yielded no obvious meaning, but Newton declared that he discerned the same pattern that he had beheld in the previous messages we had discovered.

  “But Mister Twistleton is a lunatic,” I objected.

  “Without question,” agreed Newton.

  “Then I fail to see why you are taking his letter so seriously.”

  “For the simple reason that Mister Twistleton did not write it.”

  “But how can you tell?”

  “For several years I have made it my amusement to try and infer a person’s character, dispositions and aptitude from the peculiarities of his handwriting,” explained Newton. “One may even determine the state of a man’s health: for example, whether or not he is suffering from some defect in his eyes, or whether he is afflicted with some kind of paralysis.

  “Considering the bold strong hand of these letters and the obvious ill health of Mister Twistleton, it is evident that the author of this message was anything but mad. There is a further point of subtler interest, which is that the author of this particular letter has studied Latin.”

  “How on earth do you determine that?”

  “The letters a and e occur together three times within the coded text; and where they do, the author of the message observes the convention of running them into one another as se. This indicates a diphthong, which is but a complexion or coupling of vowels, and indicates a Latin pronunciation. For example, it shows that we should pronounce the C in the word Cæsar with a hard k. Therefore I have no doubt that we shall find that the author of this message has been a scholar of sorts, which would exclude Mister Twistleton, whose education has been of a more rudimentary nature.”

  “But how do you know that? It is possible he might have had some Latin.”

  “Do you not remember how in response to all his ravings about war and peace, I asked him the meaning of the Latin pace belloque?”

  “Yes, of course. ‘In war and peace.’ That was why you asked him that. I wondered.”

  “He did not know. And it was not because his wits are disordered, but because he did not know. Ergo, he has not Latin.” Newton sighed. “You are very dull today, Ellis. Are you quite well? You do not seem like yourself, sir.”

  “My
headache is troubling me,” I said. “But I’ll be all right,” I added, although I did begin to feel quite ill.

  We arrived in Pall Mall where the foppish Samuel Tuer, a Huguenot milliner, regarded the two of us entering his shop like a couple of Minerva’s birds, being doubtless used to more exotic peacocks, like the gaudy beau in his shop who was examining a hat with the same care and attention that Newton or myself would have devoted to a counterfeit coin. Listening to Newton’s question about plumes, Mister Tuer tossed open the lid of a little enamelled snuff-box and charged his fastidious nostrils with a pinch and then sneezed an answer to the effect that James Chase, a featherman in Covent Garden, provided him with all of the ostrich and peacock plumes for his hats, being the biggest and best supplier of feathers in London.

  A short while later, arriving at the premises of Mister Chase, which was a large aviary with all varieties of ducks, crows, swans, geese, chickens, and several peacocks, Newton produced the long single feather he had brought from the Tower with its rainbow eye ringed with blue and bronze, and, explaining that he had come on the King’s business, continued thus:

  “I am told you are the largest supplier of exotic plumes in London.”

  “That is true, sir. I am to feathers what Virginia is to tobacco, or what Newcastle is to coals. I supply everyone—coachmakers, penmakers, furniture-makers, bed-makers and milliners.”

  “This is the feather of a blue Indian peacock, is it not?”

  Mister Chase, who was a tall, thin and birdlike man, examined the feather but briefly before confirming that Newton was correct.

  “Yes sir. That’s a blue, right enough.”

  “Can you tell me anything more about it?”

  “Never been on a hat, by the look of it, for it is untrimmed. It’s a rare enough bird, the peacock, although a few rich folks like them. But peacocks has a bad disposition, sir, and must be kept apart from other fowl. Apart from the fact that this feather is from one of my birds, I can tell you very little about it, gentlemen.”

  “It is one from one of your birds?” repeated Newton. “How can you tell?”

  “Why, from the calamus, of course.” Mister Chase turned the feather upside down to show the horny barrel end, uponwhich there appeared a single blue stain. “All our feathers is marked thus,” he said. “As a sign of quality. Whether it be a swan’s feather for writing, or an ostrich plume for a ladies’ headdress.”

  “Is it possible you would know to whom you supplied this particular feather?” asked Newton.

  “Nearly all of my peacock plumes go to Mister Tuer, or Madame Cheret, who are both of them French milliners. Huguenots, sir. They’ve been good for the feather business.Occasionally I sell a few to ladies what want to make their own hats. Although not very often. Mister Tuer says there are plenty of women who’ll make a dress, but not many who want to make a hat.

  “I did sell some to a new customer the other day. A man I had never before seen. What was his name? I cannot recall. But not at all the type of man to be a hatmaker.”

  “Can you remember anything else about him?” enquired Newton.

  Mister Chase thought for a moment and then said, “He looked like a Frenchie.”

  “What, a Huguenot?”

  Mister Chase shook his head. “Looked like one. Foreign-sounding name, I thought, although I can’t remember what it was. But to be honest with you, sir, the French are really all the foreigners I know. He could just as easily have been Spanish, I suppose. Not that he spoke like a foreigner. No sir, he sounded English. And educated, too. But then some of these Huguenots parlez-vous English pretty well. I mean, you would think Mister Tuer an Englishman, sir.”

  “An Englishman, of sorts,” said Newton.

  After we took our leave of Mister Chase, Doctor Newton looked squarely at me and said he believed I had need of a dish of coffee; and so we went to The Grecian, a coffee house which was popular with the fellows of the Royal Society. Quite soon after we arrived and had received our coffee, which did seem to revive me for a while, a man of about thirty years old came and sat beside us. I took him for a scholar, which was not so wide of the mark, for he was himself a fellow of the Royal Society and tutor to the children of the Duke of Bedford. His accent seemed to proclaim his Frenchness, although he was in fact a Swiss Huguenot.

  Newton introduced the man as one Nicholas Fatio de Dullier, and although it was quickly plain to me that they had once been close friends, my master exhibited a coolness to Mister Fatio which made me suspect that they had quarrelled and that there was now some distance between them; and Mister Fatio himself regarded me with a degree of arch suspicion that I would have called jealousy but for the suggestion this might have raised against my master’s own character; because it could hardly be ignored that Mister Fatio was delicate to the point of being effeminate.

  By now I had discovered that I had little appetite for coffee after all, and the thick smoke in The Grecian was doing nothing to improve my light-headedness; consequently my recollection of the conversation that passed between my master and Mister Fatio is hardly circumstantial. But from the outset it was clear that Mister Fatio sought to recover some of Newton’s former confidence.

  “I am most glad to have found you here, Doctor,” he said. “Otherwise I should have been obliged to write to you, and tell you that yesterday a man sought me out at the home of the Duke, to ask questions about you. I think he said his name was Mister Foe.”

  “I have met him,” said Newton. “Mister Neale introduced us at the Mint.”

  “Mister Neale, the Master Worker?”

  “The same.”

  “Why, this is very strange. I had it from Mister Robartes, in this very coffee house, that Mister Neale has asked Hooke to introduce an Italian chemist, the Count Gaetano, to the fellows of the Royal Society. It is said that the Count has perfected a method for the transmutation of lead into gold. Mister Neale has already confirmed the purity of the Count’s transmuted gold, and it awaits only Hooke’s imprimatur for the introduction to go forward to the society.”

  “Faith, this is good news,” said Newton. “For the Count is a scoundrel and can no more work a transmutation than you can raise the dead, Fatio.”

  Mister Fatio bristled and for a moment looked most womanly so that he would have given us a gale with his fan if he had held one in his little white hand; and which I might have enjoyed, for suddenly I felt such a want of good air as a man with a halter about his neck.

  “You are sick, sir,” said Newton, perceiving my want of health. “Come, let me help you to the door and a more wholesome draught. Fatio? Make some enquiries concerning this Count Gaetano with your friends on the Continent, and you will earn my gratitude.” And with that Newton helped me to my feet, for it was much as I could do to stand.

  Outside The Grecian I stood swaying like a rotten tree, so that Newton was obliged to offer me his arm; and beckoning his carriage, he offered the following remarks about his friend.

  “Do not deceive my good opinion of you, Ellis, by apprehending anything unseemly in my relationship with Mister Fatio, for I know what other men think of him. But he has a good heart and an excellent mind, and once I did love him as a father might love his own son.”

  I remember smiling at Newton and assuring him that nothing would alter my high opinion of him; and then I think I must have fainted.

  Newton fetched me to his own home in Jermyn Street and put me in a bed with fine white Holland sheets, where Mrs. Rogers and Miss Barton might nurse me, for the fever was now become an ague that left me feeling as weak as a basketful of kittens and full of shakes and sweats and the headache and pains in my legs so that I felt like some plaguey person in all symptoms save the buboes that distinguish that awful pestilence. But when the fever broke, and I saw who was my nurse, I thought I had died and was gone to heaven. For Miss Barton was sitting next to a window, reading in the sunlight, with her hair much like gold, and her eyes as blue as cornflowers; and when she did see that I was awake, she
smiled and put down her book straightaway, and held my hand.

  “How are you feeling, dear Tom?” she asked, using her fond name for me.

  “Better, I think.”

  “You have had an ague. And have been in a fever now for almost three weeks.”

  “So long as that?” I heard myself croak.

  “But for my uncle’s remedies, you were fit to have died,” she explained. “For it was he who effected your cure. Soon after Mister Woston, our coachman, brought you to Jermyn Street, my uncle went to an apothecary in Soho to fetch Jesuit’s bark, and also some dried meadowsweet, which he then ground to a powder in a pestle, for he had read that these sometimes served as an ague remedy. And so it has proved, for you are restored to us.”

  She mopped my brow with a damp cloth, and then helped me to drink some beer. I tried to sit up, but found I could not.

  “You must stay still, for you are very weak, Tom. You must rely on me and Mrs. Rogers as if we were your own hands.”

  “I cannot allow it, Miss Barton,” I protested. “It is not proper that you should look after me.”

  “Tom,” she laughed, “don’t take on so. I am a woman who has brothers. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  It was some time before my condition improved enough to take proper cognisance of what had happened to me. By which time it was Lady Day. But Newton would not hear of my coming back to his service until I was fully recovered. Nor would he answer any of my enquiries relating to the investigations we had been working on. Instead he brought a piece of blackboard to my room which he did set upon a painter’s easel and, with the aid of some chalk, would, upon occasion, attempt to explain his system of fluxions to me. He meant well, of course; and yet I had not the brain for it, and these lectures in mathematics merely served to increase my resolve soon to be well again despite the fact that with Miss Barton nursing me I had good reason to lie abed thinking myself to be a man much blessed by being ill. For she baptised me with her love, and resurrected me with her tender care. When I was feverish, she mopped my brow. There were days when I lay awake and just looked at her for a whole afternoon. Other days I remember not at all. I have not the words to describe my love for her. How is love described? I am no Shakespeare. No Marvell. No Donne. When I was too weak to feed myself, she fed me. And always she read to me: Milton, Dryden, Marvell, Montaigne, and Aphra Behn, of whose work she was especially fond. Oroonoko was her favourite—although I myself did think the end much too gruesome. That book contains the history of a slave, and ’tis no exaggeration to say that by the time I was strong enough to return to the Mint, I was hers.