Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “I … well, the thing is, I'm sharing a house with a friend of mine. I'm expected to help with the rent there.” And yet the thought of actually living here, of having every spare moment to spend with whatever experiments he might conceive … “I'll think about it,” he finished.

  “I can't say I blame you,” Robert said quietly. “These new friends of yours must be a hell of a lot more interestin' than a footpad like me.”

  “It's not that, Robin. It's that they've nothing to pay me with but the room. And I've nothing to pay you with for this one.”

  “I still owe you a few pounds. Besides, I can get you on as an adjustant on a locomotive,” Robert replied.

  “By my reckoning you've paid me in full,” Ben said. “If it weren't for you, I'd probably be dead several times by now.”

  Robert nodded absently. “The thing is, Ben,” he said, “I'm in a bit of a spot. I had some ill luck at the gambling tables the other night. I'm more than a little in debt. I was truly hoping you would take the locomotive job and stay here until I can settle up and start paying rent again.”

  A sort of sinking feeling had begun in Ben's belly. He owed Robert a lot, he supposed.

  But not that much.

  “Robin,” he said, “I … your gambling and drinking are your affairs. I don't mean that to sound harsh. You're the best friend I have in London. If I had more money to lend, I would. But I have to do this 'prenticeship. It's what I came to London for.”

  “That's odd,” Robert remarked somewhat coldly. “I had the idea that you came here because you were fleeing Boston. How many debts did you leave behind there?”

  Ben's face flushed hot, and he stared hard at the floor.

  “I thought I could count on you,” Robert said softly, “but I should know by now that Robert Nairne must count only on Robert Nairne.”

  Ben had no answer for that.

  Ben moved to Crane Court the next day. The whole scientific world lay before him.

  10.

  Sin

  Louis arose, leaving Adrienne drenched in their commingled sweat. She drew the sheet up over her nakedness. Pressing the linen against her face, she blotted the tears there, knowing that if Louis could not hear her cry, he would not know of it. Whatever sorcery gave him vision would not show him tears.

  I am becoming the ghost of Maintenon, she thought.

  Tonight her body actually hurt. The king was never brutal, but she still bore the bruises from today's adventures, and the dull ache that followed sex was like a key that unlocked those other pains.

  No word had yet been heard from Nicolas, and that was a whole different species of pain.

  Crecy and she had reached the country home that had been their destination, where Adrienne had been bathed and dressed in proper women's fashion. She had then returned to Versailles as if nothing had happened. Bontemps himself had greeted her, asking no unusual questions, and that evening she had played cards with the king and Torcy. Torcy told her of the strange trio who had invaded the masque of the duke of Orléans and slain a number of musketeers, but he did so without irony. The king had quite casually asked about Nicolas, and she had lied, saying that she had released him for two days to visit a cousin in Paris. It had already occurred to her that the king and his minister might know exactly where Nicolas was, but if so she was probably already doomed. At the king's suggestion, she had returned to her rooms early, and he had come to her shortly thereafter.

  She wished she could peel off her body like a soiled dress and throw it on a trash heap, but the best she could do was to hide it from her sight. It had been bad enough that her flesh had been dirtied without the sacrament of marriage. Now she knew she had been whore to the bringer of the apocalypse. Nothing could cleanse the stench of monster from her.

  It was lying there, weeping for dead Nicolas and her own dead soul, that she began to understand what her remaining purpose was.

  She, Adrienne, would kill the king.

  Who else could do it? Who else could have him alone and naked, without his protections against bullets and daggers?

  She might already have waited too long. If Nicolas had been killed, if the musketeers had his body …

  But Louis, who had just lain with her, could not suspect much unless, in his madness, he thought himself invulnerable.

  The outer door creaked open again. “I've ordered you a bath,” Crecy's voice said gently, after a moment.

  Adrienne didn't answer, but presently she heard maids bringing in hot water and pouring it into her tub in the adjoining room. When Crecy had helped her into the hot, scented water, she felt better, especially when the other's immensely strong fingers began stroking her shoulders. As the knots in her neck and back were kneaded loose, she considered again how she might murder the king. Feeling the strength of Crecy's fingers, she wondered if Crecy and the Korai had always known that it would come to this, if their plan was to kill Louis XIV all along.

  It seemed reasonable, but she could not work up the anger that she should. After all, someone had to stop him.

  “Is this too hard?” Crecy asked.

  “No.” She paused. “May I call you Veronique? Now that I no longer have Nicolas …” she started, but on his name she choked and began to whimper.

  “I had uncharitable thoughts about you the other night, Cre— Veronique.”

  “You would not be the first, Adrienne,” Crecy answered.

  “I thought you a whore for using your body to extort information from Fatio.”

  Crecy's hands paused, then resumed their work. “Perhaps I was,” Crecy replied. “I did not have to use very much of my body. I did not fuck him, Adrienne, but I would have, to learn what we learned.”

  “You see, I would not have,” Adrienne said bitterly, “though I would let a king fuck me because I have been told to do so. Doing what you did would not have been passive enough for me.”

  “Don't speak of yourself so,” Crecy admonished. “It is difficult enough to survive the humiliations heaped upon you by others without adding your own.”

  “Is it easy for you?” Adrienne asked. “Do you enjoy it?”

  “Do you mean sex?” Crecy asked.

  “I suppose. Did you enjoy seducing Fatio?”

  Crecy chuckled throatily. “I suppose I did—it is a feeling of power, to see men become helpless. Fatio was not much of a challenge.”

  “I used to enjoy my power over him,” Adrienne admitted, “though I was never so bold as you. I only smiled, only implied possibilities. I was jealous of you, I think.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Stupid, isn't it? It's just that I never conquered much, Veronique, and you so quickly overran my possession.”

  “Some would consider the king a great prize,” Crecy pointed out softly.

  Adrienne stiffened. “I did not do that,” she said. “Can't you see that with your prescience? The king's love is for some creature of his mind that I have the poor fortune to resemble.”

  “I said ‘some,’ Adrienne. I do not envy you—your pain is too apparent. I wish I could extricate you from this mess, for I know that I am in large measure responsible.”

  “No,” Adrienne averred, “you may have seen it, but you did not bring it about. I thought that I would be the queen, and powerful. I thought the king might—that I might even enjoy …” She sighed. “I betrayed myself.”

  “You are very young,” Crecy said. “You must want many things you are told you should not have. Such conflict makes one stupid.”

  “I suppose. I suppose that I thought with the king, it would not be sin.”

  “Pfah. Sin. There is your problem, Adrienne. Have not your researches shown you that the universe has no need of God?”

  “Perhaps I have need of God,” Adrienne answered shakily.

  “Weakness.”

  “What would you know of weakness?” Adrienne asked. “You, who do as you please, who hold a man's position in the Hundred Swiss, who wield a sword like Roland or Oliver?”

/>   Crecy laughed. “You admire this?”

  “I have always wanted …” Adrienne stopped. “Castries was right,” she went on. “I have always sought some middle path between marriage and the convent.”

  “Yes, yes, that is clear,” Crecy said. “But I tell you again, your agony is in the contradiction. You want the fruits of the life of Ninon, but you insist on the principles of Madame de Maintenon. As if she had principles.”

  “What? What slander is this? I knew Maintenon, I saw her piety—”

  “You saw her in the prison she built for herself, but she was not always thus. Let me tell you a story, Adrienne. It begins many years ago. Maintenon was Ninon's pupil in love and life. She married the cripple Scarron, who was Ninon's dearest friend. Does this sound like a lie yet?”

  “No,” Adrienne whispered.

  “Scarron was worthless for the lusts of a young beauty like Maintenon. Ninon passed her hand-me-downs to Maintenon. Ninon lent them a room for their lovemaking. And Ninon and Maintenon shared the same bed for some three months.”

  A terrible little thrill jolted through Adrienne's belly. “Are you saying …”

  “I leave it for you,” Crecy replied, her mouth quite near Adri-enne's ear, so that her breath touched it with warmth. “In the end, Maintenon had another sort of ambition than Ninon. Ninon wanted nothing more than to lead life on her own terms, beholden to no one. Maintenon craved riches and power. When she managed to become governess of the king's bastards by Montespan, she saw her chance. She saw the king had begun to feel the guilt of his many sins. And so, to win him, she put on the mask of piety. And she succeeded, replacing Montespan as mistress. When the queen died, she replaced her, too. The woman you knew, Adrienne, was a woman whose mask had become glued to her face.”

  Crecy fell silent, and Adrienne stared up at the baroquely patterned ceiling. She felt sick, but it was a new sort of sickness. It was true, she knew it.

  “Why do you tell me this?”

  “I told you,” Crecy said quietly. “One day we shall be friends. I want to save you, Adrienne, from Maintenon's fate. You wear a mask, but it has not yet become fixed.”

  “Then you should not have told the Korai of your vision,” she replied.

  “That would not have saved you, only prolonged your silly illusion. Maintenon's so-called morality is what keeps us chained, Adrienne. You cannot be her and Ninon at once.”

  Adrienne wiped her eyes of tears she had not even realized were present and felt a sudden strength, as if something wobbly within her were suddenly unshakable. “Come where I can see you, Veronique. Sit on that stool, please.”

  Crecy did so.

  “You are very convincing,” Adrienne told her, “though I know you lie to me often. But you are right; I have been playing at the wrong game and losing. Torcy once wondered whether I was a queen or a pawn, and I vowed to be a queen. I failed because I did not understand that the queen is as lacking in free will as the pawn. What I wish now is to be neither. I wish to move the pieces myself.”

  “I understand you,” Crecy replied, a suspicion of a grin brightening her features.

  “Good. I do not know what your obligations to the duchess and the Korai are, Veronique. Frankly I do not care what they are, so long as they do not impede my own designs. Some things need doing, and I would prefer help in doing them. These things are very dangerous. Will you help me?”

  Crecy's smile vanished. She stood up from her stool. For the first time since they had met, Crecy looked eager.

  “There you are!” she exclaimed. “The woman I have seen in visions, the woman I hoped you to be. Command me. I am yours.”

  “Do not mock me,” warned Adrienne.

  “Adrienne, I do not mock you. This is not sarcasm. I am giving you what pledge I can.”

  “What does ‘what pledge I can’ mean?”Adrienne asked.

  “I cannot lay aside any earlier oaths, but henceforth I will make no new promises without your permission.”

  Adrienne reached for the towel, staring at this strange woman. What new ploy was this? “Do not say these things if you do not mean them,” she cautioned.

  “I do not.”

  “Then here is what we must do first, tonight.”

  The trouble with sneaking about Versailles at night was that it was as bright as it was during the day. Lanterns of fanciful design lined the halls—nymphs with glowing eyes and mouths, sun standards, seraphim with wings like slivers of moon. Guarding the stair ahead of her was a golden Michael with flaming sword. She wondered briefly how the uneven fluttering of his lantern-sword had been produced. In stockinged feet she glided past the archangel, down the stairs.

  A rustle of skirts and the clatter of shoes on marble followed, and Crecy stood beside her.

  “Well?” Adrienne whispered. They were in the part of the chateau where older ministers and household servants had their lodgings. Most were asleep or in the fashionable salons of Paris or flattering some member of royalty.

  “He is distracted,” Crecy assured her, speaking of the guard who had taken Nicolas' place in front of Adrienne's door. “For an hour or so, anyway.” She smiled. “One of the kitchen girls owes me a favor.

  “Worry not,” Crecy added. “This one had an itch to scratch anyway. She will not suffer, I promise.”

  “Very well. The laboratory will be guarded as well.”

  “And that is what I am for, is it not?” Crecy asked.

  Adrienne did not answer, but Crecy kissed her on the cheek and started ahead.

  Adrienne stood at the head of the stairway and waited, until she heard whispered conversation, and then more dubious sounds, down the corridor. She edged up and peered down the hall.

  Crecy was leading the guard away by the hand; the young man was kissing her neck playfully. They vanished around a corner.

  So simple. She wondered if she could unlearn this use of people when everything was over.

  Of course, when everything was over, she would doubtless be dangling from a gallows.

  Her key still fit the laboratory lock. She opened the door gently and then shut it behind her and locked it again.

  She found the papers she sought, copying the parts of the formula she did not already know. She no longer needed the broad outlines. In fact, looking at Fatio's final calculations, she saw that she could have even suggested improvements. She understood this city-killing spell now; what she wanted were the specifics.

  She found them. She also found a sheaf of papers with odd, stippled patterns on them, as if they had been smudged by dirty fingers. A closer examination revealed that the patterns had been burnt on.

  The comet's mass and dimensions and gross composition— the alchemical symbol for iron in greatest proportion—were recorded. A rough sphere of iron half a league in diameter was going to hit London. How fast would it be moving? Did it matter?

  Something nagged her that it did, so she found that, too, and wrote it down.

  She didn't have to check the date when it would strike London. That she knew already.

  Now there was one more thing, perhaps the most important. She rapped very lightly on the door of Fatio's bedchamber.

  If a kitchen girl and Crecy could do it, so could she. She closed her eyes, preparing what she would say.

  But no answer came, so she tried the handle and found the door was unlocked. She glanced in.

  The bedchamber was lit by a half-shuttered lantern but Fatio was out. He could return anytime. Her heart was thumping, but she knew she only needed a few moments to commit the treason she planned. Where was his aetherschreiber?

  She found it immediately. It was a very old one, probably one of the first fifty made, sitting on a little stand in the corner.

  Removing the lid, she found that spiders had made a home within; cities of silk tore as she readied the device for use. When Fatio went to use it next, he would know that someone else had.

  She was dreadfully aware of the clock ticking by the nightstand as she lay pap
er in the machine.

  She began to write. If this machine's mate was not there, if it was not wound, her labors would be for nothing.

  She was not finished when she heard the outer door open. Condensing as much as she could, she hurried through formulae, omitting explanatory text, knowing that if this machine had its mate where she thought it did, a longer explanation was not necessary. It had to be with Newton himself. Given Fatio's betrayed love and his sick pride, it could not be otherwise.

  Someone fumbled at Fatio's chamber door.

  No time to remove the paper. She wrote the last line and quickly placed the lid on the machine. Just as Fatio stumbled into the chamber, she dashed into the open closet.

  She was not quick enough, and Fatio glimpsed her. He looked puzzled, then laughed.

  He was very, very drunk. He tried to get his breeches off and fell on the floor, then he whimpered a bit before rising unsteadily and flopping across the bed.

  After Adrienne counted a hundred breaths and he hadn't moved, she slipped out of the closet and removed the paper from the schreiber.

  Once back in the laboratory she moved to one of the windows that opened onto a broad ledge. She planned to walk along it until she reached an outside stairway. She could then reenter the chateau as if she had merely gone out for some air.

  The window creaked as it opened, and suddenly all of the hairs on Adrienne's neck stood up. The pane before her reddened with reflected light. She turned, and her heart seemed to stop in her chest.

  Drifting toward her from the center of the room was a cloud of smoke and flame with a single glowing orb that resembled a huge eye.

  11.

  Newton

  “Don't get stupid, Ben, I need you payin' attention,” Maclaurin snapped, interrupting Ben's speculations.

  “Maybe if I understood what we were doing,” Ben grumbled.

  “I'll explain in a moment,” Maclaurin said. “For now just keep up wi' me. This all must be performed wi'in a certain short period of time.”