Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  James looked skeptical, and Ben's fury suddenly lashed forth. “It was your idea,” he snarled.

  “Don't yell at me! Don't take that tone with me!” And Ben realized, with a cold, sobering shock, that a tear was working down one of James' cheeks. Ben's hand darted to his mouth in astonishment, and he suddenly felt his own tears crowd thickly around his lids.

  “Go, go,” James hissed, thus saving them both, for Ben had no more than reached the street before his tears poured forth like the hot, wet drops of a summer storm.

  “Will it work?” John Collins asked, touching the odd glass surface with the tip of his index finger.

  Ben shrugged. “If it doesn't, James and I are in the poor-house. Father has no more money for either of us, and with everyone in town selling the Mercury, we won't feed ourselves that way.” He sighed in exasperation. “I thought I was so smart, John.”

  “Well, you can always sell ice,” John began, trying, for once, to brighten the conversation. It didn't work; how could James know that Ben had been forbidden, essentially on pain of death, to continue his experiments?

  Of course, here he was, at it again. But if Bracewell could see him here—in his own, shuttered bedroom—then what hope was there? His only hope was that his nemesis had no magical scrying device that could spy through walls.

  “Well, then, try it,” John continued.

  “I'm afraid,” Ben admitted. Once he began acting on it, the certainty of his vision had ebbed with dismaying swiftness. Now, looking at the thing the glassblower had made for him, he felt faintly ridiculous.

  It was two nested glass cylinders. They stood upright and fit together tightly enough that the inner tube could be drawn up or lowered by gentle pressure from the finger but would remain in whatever position it was left in when one stopped pushing or pulling. In the lower tube rested a silvery fluid; a suspension of philosopher's mercury in its near cousin, ordinary mercury.

  “And the chime itself—” John began.

  “Yes, melted and alloyed with ordinary glass to form the tubes. I went to the mercantile office and found that they had several broken chimes on hand, and they sold me them for next to nothing, so they are included, too.”

  “It seems as likely to work as anything. How will you sound the crystal?”

  “That's the thing—with this arrangement I don't think I'll have to. I guess we'll see.”

  Ben lifted his odd construction, fitting it into the new brace he had made. The tubes now rested where the former, flat chime had—within the translator housing. He pulled the inner tube as far out as it would come without it coming free.

  “Now,” he told John, “wind the scribing arm.”

  John did so. There was already a piece of paper waiting to be written on, and the lead pencil in the arm's grip was sharp.

  “Start it,” John said.

  “It is started,” Ben replied.

  “Oh.”

  After a moment, Ben pushed the tube a bit farther in, but there was still no result. He pushed farther, then farther still. John gave a disappointed sigh.

  The arm suddenly spasmed, and John yelped. Ben froze, his heart pounding, and then slowly eased the tube back up. The arm jumped again, and then, incredibly, began writing in a thick, crabbed hand.

  The Yemassee continue in their rebellious ways and have contriv'd to lure away our former allies such as the Charakee to join their cause. It must be admitt'd that they are not without grievance, but it is more the problem that the Spanish provoke them at every turn, giving their warriors solace in the mission at San Luis …

  Ben felt like shouting in triumph.

  “It works,” he muttered. “By the Lord God, it most certainly works.”

  “You must have known it would,” John said suspiciously. “Did you try this one without me, too?”

  “No, John,” Ben assured him, “I wanted you with me this time in case it didn't work, to save me from throwing myself from the window.”

  “Move it down,” John said, his voice nearly choked on eagerness.

  Another half inch down and the arm jumped again. This time it wrote in a language that neither of them understood, though the letters were Roman.

  “Mark the tube,” John said suddenly, “like a gauge. So you can find them again.”

  “An excellent thought,” Ben replied.

  The third schreiber they found wrote in Latin, which Ben laid aside to translate later. The fourth was English again, and the boys followed it with great interest, for it was what appeared to be news of the European war.

  … threw up three redoubts during the night, but the grenadiers made short work of two of them by midmorning. The fighting was fierce, however, and we were forced to withdraw. A second sally found their line still holding firm; they managed to entrench two, perhaps three of their drakes which spray clouds of molten lead. God willing, we shall have our own warlock cannon situat'd by morning, but the rain and the sorry condition of these French roads delays their arrival …

  “There is an item for our paper,” Ben said happily.

  Two more untranslatable communiqués followed—one of which Ben was sure was German and another that might be Greek. They had still not moved their “divining rod” down more than half of its length.

  “And these are only those who write at this very instant,” John pointed out. “Who knows, ultimately, how many schreibers you can spy upon?”

  It had already occurred to Ben that they were eavesdropping.

  “We cannot print private communications without permission, I think, unless the public interest be served—as in this dispatch about the war.”

  “But you can write to them, can you not? You can establish correspondence with people all over the world. There is your real stuff, Ben, not in the eavesdropping.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Ben said, again changing the position of the diviner. He stopped when the pencil began writing again.

  This time it wrote in the characters of mathematical formulae.

  “Here, what in the world is this?” Ben said.

  “Mathematicians, exchanging love notes, I would say,” John replied. He squinted at the formula, trying to guess what it might have to do with.

  It went on for two pages, ending with a brief note in English.

  Ye Correspondence is inexact, but today it seems I will do no better. What is lacking, as always, is ye kind and degree of mediation. Ye mechanism is still lacking. Hope for better on ye morrow, my dear Mr. F.

  As always your servant,

  S.

  “How cryptic,” John remarked delightedly. “May I take this home and look at it?”

  “Of course, John,” Ben replied. “For it appears that I have type to set!”

  7.

  The Grand Canal

  Adrienne pursed her lips into a dubious scowl and then gasped as the servant behind her drew tighter on the laces of her bodice.

  “What sort of entertainment is the king planning?” she asked the two young servant girls attending her.

  “It is a sort of masquerade, I think, on the canal. You are to be dressed as the red savages of America,” answered Charlotte, a girl of about twelve years.

  “Truly?” Adrienne glanced down at her dress, but saw little of the savage about it.

  “You will see when we are done,” Charlotte promised, and then giggled. The other servant, a darker, older girl named Helen, only smiled. “You will be lovely, Mademoiselle,” she assured Adrienne.

  An entertainment on the canal was a fete such as the king had not held in over five years—not since just before his last illness. But Adrienne remembered stories of the lavish entertainments of the past century, when the whole of the court had dressed as sultans, nymphs, and Greek gods. Most of that had ended with the king's marriage to Madame de Maintenon, who had brought the semblance of piety to the court.

  But Madame was now dead, of course. And Louis seemed to be returning to his younger ways of extravagant splendor.

  Did he plan to
take her for mistress, if only for a single night? She actually felt herself blush at the thought. Madame d'Alam-bert had been right the other evening, when she said Adrienne knew little of men. She was well beyond the age when most girls were wed or had lost their virginity to a seducer. But for Adrienne, piety was no mere fashion. Despite some intellectual arguments she might muster, in her own heart and soul she knew that God and her sainted mother would see her consumed with guilt if she succumbed to sexual temptation. Living in the midst of corruption was no excuse for becoming corrupted.

  If the king approached her tonight, what would she do? Could she refuse him? Should she?

  Her third path—which had seemed so promising a few days before—now seemed a shaking tightrope. She knew that the few women who had walked it before her—the famous Ninon de Lenclos, for instance—had done so by cultivating important lovers but never marrying.

  Refusing Louis XIV could be a very unfortunate thing, even weighed against damnation.

  It was especially infuriating to have this dilemma now, with the puzzle of Fatio's work so tantalizingly close to her. That was all she really wanted. She desired no part in the court, of the dark intrigues hinted at by Torcy. Why had she come to the attention of both the king and his would-be successor?

  After what seemed another eon, Charlotte squeaked in delight and stepped back.

  “Am I so hideous, Charlotte?” Adrienne asked ruefully. For answer both girls took her by the hands and hurried her to stand before a mirror across the salon.

  For a moment, Adrienne simply could not speak. The woman who gazed back at her from the mirror was too astonishing.

  How many times had she lain awake as a little girl, listening to the music of crickets and nightbirds, dreaming of such a gown? Imagining herself the Cinder Girl, with a fairy godmother to clothe her like the ladies of the court? But her family was poor, and though her uncle was a favorite of the king and promised to buy her such a dress one day, it had never come to pass.

  Then the little girl had grown up, and grown up in Saint Cyr, where she learned to love a simpler, more austere beauty, and to put childish thoughts away. And yet …

  Here she stood, in that fairy-tale dress. The black velvet bodice was embroidered with crisscrossing strands of white pearls. In the center of each diamond thus formed winked a real diamond. At her waist and hips were layers of ostrich plumes, and they also edged the richly brocaded silver and black skirt. Its train was short, yet as long as that of a marquise—longer than she deserved.

  The bodice dipped deeply, but a white marten cape was draped across her shoulders. Her straight dark hair had been swept up into a towering creation wound through with more strands of pearls and surmounted with feathers.

  Here she was at last, about to stand before the greatest king in Europe, perhaps the greatest king of all time. And all she wanted was to avoid his attention and return to the life she had worked so long to have: a life devoted to science. She knew that there was more magic in the circumference of a circle than in all of the palace of Versailles.

  Louis' sedan chair swayed slightly on the shoulders of the two men who bore it briskly through the corridors of Versailles. He smiled amiably at the courtiers who packed the halls and crowded against the black balustrades of the marble stair to make way for him.

  His excitement began to rise when they left the chateau. Sedan chairs streaming from different parts of Versailles began to form a procession. Behind him was the young dauphin, his heir, and trailing him were the various dukes and duchesses to whom he was most closely related and, of course, Adrienne. He had taken the liberty earlier of stopping in to see her and had been almost stunned by her appearance, for she was even more fetching than he had anticipated. The girl from Saint Cyr had grown into the woman he had imagined she might. Thinking of her now in her dress of black and silver, he felt a certain revival of interest in matters feminine. His court would not respect him if he mourned too long. He understood that plotters and schemers— and even those who wished him well—must not think him aloof from their influence.

  Perhaps it was time to announce that the way was again open to his bed. Adrienne would be perfect for that; he knew her to have no political desires. She was innocent and compelling, and more than anything, she was the fine and finished product of his late wife. Maintenon had considered Adrienne an ideal young lady, and he had considered Maintenon the ideal woman. He would renew his heart with the child of Maintenon's heart.

  The sedan jostled a bit as the bearers' feet met the manicured stretch of the Green Carpet, the long avenue of grass that led them toward their destination. Beyond the Green Carpet lay the Apollo Fountain, and beyond that was the Grand Canal, which went on until it met the horizon.

  And at every hand courtiers seemed to extend to infinity. He recognized many. Others he did not; doubtless the lazier ones who could not be bothered to wait upon him.

  Louis let down the glass window of his sedan to better see his subjects, but as his eye brushed casually across the crowd, an unease grew in his breast. It was an elegantly dressed throng. Many wore appropriate costumes, bedecked with feathers or at least dressed, as he had insisted, in either predominantly white or red. They were laughing, bowing low as he went past. But there was some vital spark missing, some lack of sincerity.

  Once all of France had loved him. What had happened?

  He felt a tear tremble at the corner of his eye. If only he could tell them. If only he could make them understand that they had but to wait a short time and everything would be right again. The forces sapping the vitality of France would soon vie to see which could grovel lowest, to eat the scraps from the French table. And then they would all know what he had done for them. Then they would love him again without reservation.

  Louis blinked. They had reached the canal and the great barge that awaited them.

  It was, Adrienne reflected, impossible not to be impressed by the Grand Canal. More like a cruciform inland sea with banks of polished marble, it summed up many things about Versailles. It was monumental in proportion, insanely expensive, impossible to overlook, and entirely frivolous.

  A gangplank bridged the noisome water, their avenue to the barge. The king was already aboard the monstrous, gaudy vessel, as were the young dauphin, the duke of Orléans, and the duke of Maine. The wives of these latter two men, she was un-comfortably aware, were lined up behind her, a bizarre breach of precedence. Last of all came perhaps threescore courtiers on foot, and on all sides were the Hundred Swiss, the household guard clad in blue and silver. On the barge, a small orchestra had taken up a martial-sounding piece she did not recognize. It had a barbaric ring to it, enhanced by the primitive whine of a musette, the small bagpipe so in vogue these days.

  The gangplank clopped hollowly beneath the feet of her bearers. A moment later, a footman opened the door of her sedan, and strong hands lifted her to the deck, where she was politely ushered toward her appointed place.

  The decor of the barge was very strange, even for Versailles. The vessel was flat and rectangular in shape, little more than a floating island. Two-thirds of the way back from its bow was a pyramid built in four great steps. At each corner of each terrace stood a standard surmounted by the wavy-rayed sun that was Louis' emblem. At the apex of the pyramid was a large throne and a smaller one, and from the back of the largest rose a taller standard with a grander emblem, this one radiating a brilliant golden light. Two other, similarly ornate alchemical lanterns adorned the bow and stern of the barge, and a hundred smaller suns edged the gunwales. The orchestra played from another, slightly raised stage near the bow. Feathers and ribbons festooned each standard and almost every other surface.

  For a terrible moment, Adrienne was afraid that she would actually be seated next to the king in the second, smaller armchair. To her vast relief, however, she found herself ushered instead to the third tier. The dauphin, the king's great-grandson and heir, took his seat upon the smaller throne, his boyish face radiant beneath the magic
al light. He was dressed in a scarlet coat, a waistcoat of deeper crimson, and a headdress with voluminous plumes erupting from it like a sanguine fountain.

  Next to him sat Louis, clad in a brilliant white coat trimmed in gold, with gold stockings. His albescent plumes seemed impossibly tall. The rest of the royal family present, she could see, were similarly, if less spectacularly, dressed. Only Louis and the dauphin were seated in armchairs; everyone else rested on the tiers of the pyramid. Adrienne remained standing, at a loss as to what to do.

  “Sit, dear,” someone whispered, tugging at her arm.

  The whisper made Adrienne flinch. The sisters at Saint Cyr had taught her to fear whispers.

  Glancing over in startlement, she met a pair of large brown eyes glowing with more than a hint of quiet amusement.

  “Duchess,” Adrienne acknowledged, bending her knees to curtsey.

  The duchess of Orléans quirked her small lips in a sweet smile. She was one of the king's illegitimate children by his renowned mistress Athenais. Adrienne saw his face in hers, especially, somehow, about the eyes and the set of her lips. Adrienne recalled with chagrin that it was her husband—the duke of Orléans—against whom the minister Torcy had so recently warned her.

  “My dear demoiselle,” the duchess said, as sweetly as her smile. “It is so delightful to have you amongst us on this otherwise dreary day.” She lisped slightly, a defect her enemies never failed to comment on.

  “Thank you, Madame,” Adrienne replied. “I must admit, I am most surprised to be here.” Another woman had just seated herself on the other side of the duchess; Adrienne recognized the duchess of Maine, who treated both her and the duchess of Orléans to an icily indifferent glance before turning pointedly away. Behind Adrienne, one tier up, Adrienne was acutely aware of the dukes of Orléans and Maine, while below her, on the lowest tier, the threescore courtiers bickered about precedence.