The System of the World (53 page)

Newton dropped the packet into the Pyx as if it had caught fire.
He staggered back, towards the Marquis of Ravenscar, like a blinded duellist seeking refuge among his friends.

“My lord,” explained the Warden, “something’s a bit queer about that last packet. The handwriting—it looked forged, somehow.”

Charles White raised a knee and kicked the lid of the Pyx. It closed with a boom like a cannon-shot.

“I say that the Pyx is evidence in a criminal matter,” Bolingbroke proclaimed. “Put the locks on it again, and bring out my seal. I shall set my seal on this evidence to show any further tampering. Mr. White shall return the Pyx to its customary station and use in the Tower but he shall keep it under heavy guard, twenty-four hours a day. I shall bear these tidings to the other Lords of the Council. We may safely presume that the Council will order a Trial of the Pyx forthwith.”

“Good my lord,” said Peer, stepping forward, “what evidence suggests that such tampering occurred? The Warden has asserted that one of the packets looked a bit queer, but this hardly constitutes proof. Sir Isaac himself has said nothing at all.”

“Sir Isaac,” said Bolingbroke, “what is perfectly clear to most of us, is impenetrable to this Whig. He requires evidence. No man is more eligible to testify in such a matter than you. Is it your testimony, before this assembly, that all of the coins in this Pyx were minted in the Tower, under your direction, and placed therein by your hand? I remind you that every coin in the Pyx is subject to assay during a Trial, and that you are under an indenture to Her Majesty; the consequences of a failed Trial are severe.”

“By ancient tradition,” said Roger Comstock behind his hand, “false coiners are punished by amputation of the hand that did the deed, and castration.” From anxiety he had moved on briefly to horror; but now from horror to fascination.

Newton tried to answer, but his voice did not work for a moment, and only a bleat came out. Then he swallowed, grimacing at the pain of swallowing, and got out the words: “I cannot so testify, my lord. But without a more thorough examination—”

“There shall be one anon, at a Trial of the Pyx.”

“I beg my lord’s pardon,” said Peer, who had out of some blind herd instinct blundered out to act as scape-goat for his entire Party, “but why bother to have a Trial of the Pyx, if the Pyx has been tampered with?”

“Why, to get all false coins out of it, so that we shall know that all coins put in thereafter shall be genuine samples of the Mint’s produce—
and not frauds put in as a desperate gambit to hide long-standing flaws in the coinage!
”

“The poetry of it!” Roger exclaimed, though these reflections were concealed under a hubbub, the sound of Parties and Factions mobilizing and arming. “Sir Isaac dares not assert that the Pyx is clean, for fear that Jack may have salted it with debased coins—which would be found out at the Trial, and laid to Sir Isaac. To save his hand and his balls, he must admit that it has been compromised; but in doing so, he calls his own coins into question, and names himself as a suspect in the assault on the Tower!”

“My lord,” said a Tory, “it is suggested that a year’s coin-samples are now simply
gone
—stolen by Jack the Coiner! If that is so, how can we gauge the present soundness of Her Majesty’s coinage? Our enemies in the world shall say that the Mint has spewed out false and debased guineas for a year or more.”

“It is a question of extraordinary gravity,” Bolingbroke allowed, “and I say that it is a State affair, since the security of our State is founded on Trade, which is founded upon our
currency
. If it is true that the conspiracy has deprived us of our Pyx, why then we can only prove the soundness of our money by collecting samples of coins that are in circulation, and bringing them in for assay.”

Ravenscar had told Newton not to pick up any handkerchiefs dropped in his way by Bolingbroke: advice that Newton, with the serene confidence of a man who had nothing to hide, had steadfastly ignored. Now was not the time for him to mend his ways. “But my lord, I protest!” he said, “there is a reason why the method you have just described is never used, and it is that a sampling of coins in circulation shall perforce include a number—an unknowable number—of counterfeits, slipped into circulation by the likes of Jack Shaftoe. ’Twere unfair and unreasonable to lay at my feet an assay of counterfeits!”

Bolingbroke seemed impressed by Newton’s sheer consistency. “Sir Isaac, as a part of my investigations, I have read an Indenture with your name on it, kept under lock and key in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey, just across the way. We can stroll over and have a look at it, if you should like to review its contents. But I can tell you that, in this solemn contract, you are sworn to pursue and prosecute coiners. Until now I have assumed that you were
tending to your duties
. Now you astonish this Chamber by
testifying to the contrary
! Tell me, Sir Isaac, if we make an assay of circulating coins, and discover that they are rife with base metal, is it because you have failed in your duty to prosecute coiners? Or is it because you have debased the coinage produced by the Mint, to enrich yourself and your Whig backers? Or did you debase the coinage
first
and
then
allow coiners to flourish in the Realm, so as to cover your traces? Sir Isaac? Sir Isaac? Oh well, he has quite lost interest.”

In fact, Sir Isaac had lost consciousness, or was well on his way to it. During the last speech of Bolingbroke he had gradually softened and crumpled to the floor of Star Chamber, like a candle placed in an oven. He was breathing fast, and his extremities had gone into violent trembling, as if he were having fever-chills; but the hands pressed to his forehead felt a dry and cool brow and thumbs touched to the base of his heaving neck were drawn back in alarm at the furious drum-beat of his pulse. He was not so much sick as seized in an unstoppable paroxysm of mad, animal terror. “Get him into my coach,” commanded Roger Comstock, “and take him to my house. Miss Barton is there. She knows her uncle well, and she shall tend to him better than—God forbid—any physician.”

“You see?” Bolingbroke was remarking to Charles White, who was standing at his side, in the role of wide-eyed ’prentice a-gawp at the Master’s skill. “It is not necessary to bite their ears off. Oh, this is nothing. I have seen others drop dead in their shoes. One needs an apoplectic for that.” He seemed ready to offer up more advice in this vein, but his attention was drawn by the Marquis of Ravenscar, standing serenely on the opposite side of the Chamber as other Whigs bent their backs to the very odd job of dragging out Isaac Newton. Ravenscar held out a hand. Someone slapped a walking-stick into his palm. He hefted it. Charles White, anticipating physical violence, took half a step forward, then realized he was being absurd, and brought his hands together in front of his silver greyhound medallion, absent-mindedly rubbing at an ancient dagger-scar that went all the way through one palm. Bolingbroke merely elevated an eyebrow.

Roger Comstock raised his walking-stick until it was pointed up at the starry ceiling, and brought the butt of it to his face, then snapped it down briskly. It was a swordsman’s salute: a gesture of respect, and a signal that the next thing to come would be homicidal violence. “Let’s to the Kit-Cat Clubb,” he said to Peer and a few other Whigs who had not yet been able to get their feet to move. “Sir Isaac has the use of my coach; but I am in a mood for a walk. God save the Queen, my lord.”

“God save the Queen,” said Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke. “And do enjoy your walk, Roger.”

JUNE
23 (
CONTINENTAL)
/12 (
ENGLISH
) 1714

“I
LOVE YOU.”

“I loaf you.”

“I
love
you.”

“I
lubb
you.”

“That’s not quite it.”

“How can you
tell
? This ‘I love you’ strikes my ear like the sound of a tin sheet being wobbled. How can I say
‘ich liebe dich’
with such noises?”

“To me you can say it any way you please. But you need to work on certain vowels.” Johann von Hacklheber raised his head out of Caroline’s lap, faltered—his ponytail had snagged in a pearl button—worked it free, sat up, and spun around on the bench so that he could get face to face with her. “Watch my lips, my tongue,” he said. “I
love
you.”

There the English lesson ended. Not that the pupil had failed to observe the master’s lips and tongue. She had done so most attentively—but not with a mind towards improving her vowels.
“Noch einmal, bitte,”
she requested, and when he arched his sandy eyebrows and opened his mouth to pronounce the “I,” she was up and on him. His lips and tongue went through the movements for “love,” but Caroline felt them with her own lips and tongue, and heard not a thing.

“That was much more informative,” she said, after a few more repetitions of the étude.

His ponytail was coming undone, which was largely her doing, for she had her hands to either side of his head and was tugging blond locks free from the black ribbon that bound them in back, bringing him into a state of beautiful
déshabillement.
“They say that your mother was the loveliest woman in all of Versailles.”

“I thought that honor was reserved for the King’s brother.”

“Stop it!” She gave him the tiniest tap on the cheek-bone. “I was going to say, she gave her looks to you.”

“What are you going to say
now
?”

“I am about to ask where you got your
wit
from, for it is not as pleasing to me.”

“I do beg your royal highness’s forgiveness. I did not know that you had such affection for the late brother of the King of France.”

“Think of his
widow,
Liselotte, who lives still, and who exchanged letters almost every day with the lady we are laying in her tomb today.”

“The connexion was so tenuous I—”

“No connexions are tenuous on a day such as this. All Christendom mourns for Sophie.”

“Excepting certain drawing-rooms in London.”

“For this one day, spare me your wit, and let me enjoy your looks. You need a shave!”

“The Doctor must have taught you about solstices and equinoxes.”

“What does that have to do with shaving? Behold, if I were wearing gloves, they should be snagged and ruined by these boar’s bristles!” She dug a thumb in along his jaw-line and shoved the skin up to his cheek-bone. No longer did he look like the son of the most beautiful woman in Versailles, and no longer were his vowels perfectly formed when he said, “A tryst in the garden at dawn’s first light is a romantic conceit, and I do confess that this peachy morning-light makes your face more radiant than any flower, and more succulent than any fruit—”

“As it sets your golden mane, and your spiky hog-bristles, aglow, my angel.”

“However, as we dwell at above fifty degrees of latitude—”

“Fifty-two degrees and twenty-odd minutes, as you’d know, if the Doctor had drilled you as he did me in the use of the back-staff.”

“In any case, given that we are within a few days of the Solstice, ‘dawn’s first light,’ at this latitude, works out to something like two o’clock in the morning.”

“
Pfui,
it’s not that early!”

“I note that your Ladies of the Bedchamber have not had a crack at
you
yet—”

“Hmph.”

“Which suits me very well,” Johann added hastily, “as powder, lacings, and beauty-spots can only detract from one who is perfect to begin with.”

“ ’Twill be double powderings and lacings this day,” Caroline lamented. “The usual one, that I may receive our noble and royal guests, and a second, for the funeral.”

“It is well that you have a sturdy husband to take the brunt of the
ceremonies,” Johann reflected. “Stand behind him, fan yourself, and look bereaved.”

“I
am
bereaved.”

“You
were
, and are becoming less so by the day, I think,” Johann said. Which was not the gentlest thing he could have said. But he had spent enough time among royals to know their heart-ways. “Now your mind has already begun to turn elsewhere. You are getting ready for the burden to fall on your shoulders.”

“I wish you had not reminded me. Now the mood is spoiled.”

Johann von Hacklheber got to his feet. He was careful to take Caroline’s hand in his own first, and to keep it clasped. “Oh, I’m afraid the morning was ruined for me before it began. I have an extraordinary engagement. One that I could not get myself out of by pleading, ‘I am very sorry but I shall be busy at that hour cuckolding the Prince of Wales.’ ”

She smiled, though she tried ever so hard not to. “He’s not technically the Prince of Wales
yet
. We have to go to England and get coronated.”

“
Crowned
. Try pronouncing
that
—it’s got a
W
in the middle of it. I shall see you in a few hours, my lady, my princess.”

“And—?”

“My lover.”

“Fare well on your mysterious errand—my lubber.”

“Oh, ’tis nothing—just an insomniacal Englishman who wants to go for walkies.”

“Val-kees?”
Caroline repeated. But Johann had tossed the troublesome word over his shoulder as he unlatched an iron gate, and stepped out into an avenue of the great garden. All she heard after was the clank of the gate closing, and the diminishing
crunch-crunch
of Johann’s boots on the gravel path. Then she was alone under the writhing limbs of the Teufelsbaum.

She had not mentioned to Johann that this was the place where Sophie had died. She had been afraid that having such a thing in his mind would make him less amorous. Perhaps she needn’t have worried, for
nothing
seemed to make men of his age (he was twenty-four) less amorous. As to herself, she had lived through the deaths of her father, her mother, her stepfather, her stepfather’s wicked mistress, her adopted mother (Sophie Charlotte), and now Sophie. Death and disease only made her more amorous—eager to forget the bad parts of life and to enjoy good flesh while it lasted.

Now she distinctly heard another gravel-crunch. It seemed to come from one of the triangle of paths that outlined this plot where the Teufelsbaum grew in its iron cage. Her hope that Johann had
changed his mind was evanescent, for the first crunch was not followed by a second. After a rather long time she
did
hear another, but it was faint and prolonged, as if a foot were being placed very cautiously. This was followed by a “Ssh!” so distinct that she turned her head around to look.

Everyone who mattered knew that Caroline’s husband had a mistress named Henrietta Braithwaite, and anyone who bothered to ask around could find out that Caroline had her Jean-Jacques (which was the pet name that she used for Johann). As a setting for trysts, intrigues, and tiptoeing about, the
Grosse Garten
almost aspired to the level of Versailles. So it was not as if Caroline had any great secret to keep here. She was not worried about eavesdroppers. Of course there were eavesdroppers. This was, rather, a point of etiquette. For such persons to be audibly shushing each other, a few yards away, was like farting at dinner. Caroline inhaled deeply and fired off a sharp sigh.
That
should fix them!

But she’d never know whether the message had struck home, for now iron wheel-rims, and the shoes of a four-horse team, could be heard above all else. This team was coming her way, and the horses were blowing as if very tired. Had they been driven all night? If so, they weren’t the only exhausted horses hereabouts. The nobility of Europe were converging on Herrenhausen, using Sophie’s funeral as an excuse to stage a reunion of the largest, most bizarre, violent, and incestuously cross-linked family in the world. Caroline had scarcely been able to sleep last night for all the nocturnal arrivals.

She rose from the bench. Through the tree-limbs she glimpsed a couple of tawny blurs loping down the path. “Scylla! Charybdis!” called a gruff voice, and they stopped.

Stepping away from the bench and ducking under a low-hanging bough, Caroline saw a pair of large dogs, panting and drooling. She was protected from them by the iron fence, and saw no danger in moving closer, picking her way over Teufelsbaum-limbs that undulated along the ground, unable to decide whether they were roots, branches, or vines. Along the path came the team—four matched sorrels—and behind them a black carriage, once shiny, now dusty all over. Mud-comets radiated from the wheels and lashed the polished wood. Nevertheless she could make out the arms on the door: the Negro-heads and fleurs-de-lis of the House of Arcachon quartered with the gray pinnacle of the Duchy of Qwghlm. Above that, an open window. Framed in it, a face strikingly similar to the one she’d been kissing a few minutes earlier—but without the bristles.

“Eliza!”

“Stop here, Martin.”

Eliza’s face was now blocked from view by a spray of leaves, but Caroline could hear the smile in her voice. Martin—evidently the driver—reined in his team. Their gait collapsed and they pocked gradually to a stop, taking the momentum of the carriage in the breeching straps slung round their backsides.

Caroline had by now advanced to the iron fence. The Teufelsbaum had been pruned back from it, leaving a clear space for the gardeners to walk the perimeter. Caroline hurried along for some yards, letting her hand count the iron verticals, in case her gown-hem should snag on a shrub and trip her.

A pair of footmen had clambered down from their perch on the back of the carriage, moving as if splints had been bound to their arms and legs. No telling how long they had been standing there, hands stiffening round the railings as they held on for dear life. Eliza lost patience with them and kicked the carriage door open. The edge of it nearly sheared off a footman’s nose. He recovered in time to set down a wee portable stair and assist the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm down to the path—though to be honest it was not so obvious who was assisting whom. The mastiffs Scylla and Charybdis had circled back. They had planted their eyes on Eliza, and their butts on the path, where they were sweeping out neat gravel-free quadrants with their tails.

Eliza was dressed for mourning, hard travel, or both, in a dark grim frock, with a black silk scarf over her head. She was in her mid-forties, and if she were starting to gray, it was not easy to tell, as she had been light blond to begin with. An attentive observer—and this Duchess had many—might phant’sy that the gold was now alloyed with a small proportion of silver. The skin around her eyes and the corners of her mouth gave a fair account of her age.

The number of her male admirers had not diminished over the years, but their nature had changed. When she’d been an eligible mademoiselle at Versailles she had caught the eye of the King and been pursued round the place by a horde of lust-blind fops. Now, having passed through marriage, maternity, smallpox, and widow-hood, she was the kind of woman that important forty-, fifty-, and sixty-year-
old men were always talking about in hushed corners of Clubbs and Salons. From time to time one of these would screw up his courage, sally forth from his redoubt, and buy her a château or something, always to retreat, defeated but not humiliated, honorably scarred, and ennobled in reputation, clustered around by other gentlemen who desperately wanted to know what had happened. To be spurned by a lady who was rumored to have bedded the Duke of Monmouth, William of Orange, and Louis XIV was to enter into a sort of communion with those figures of legend.

None of which mattered to Caroline, of course, for Eliza never spoke of it, and when the two of them were together, it was of no account to either one of them. But when they were in the company of others—as they would be for most of the day—she had to forcibly remind herself of it. To Caroline the reputation of Eliza was nothing, but to others it was all.

“I’ll walk in the garden with her royal highness, Martin,” Eliza called. “Drive to the stables, tend to the animals, and tend to yourself.”

It was not entirely usual for ladies of Eliza’s rank to be so concerned with such minutiae; but she had much concern for details, and little for class. If Martin was surprised he didn’t show it. “My lady,” he answered placidly.

“Our grooms and stable-hands will see to the animals—you may tell them I have said so,” said Caroline. “You look after yourself, Martin.”

“Your royal highness honors me,” said Martin. He sounded weary—not of the long night drive, but of noble and royal ladies who phant’sied he was incapable of looking after his own horses. He allowed the team to move forward, taking up the slack in the harness. The two footmen, finally unlimbered, sprang back to their perches, and the dogs began to whine, not knowing which group to follow. Eliza silenced them with a glare and Martin summoned them with a grunt.

“Let’s to the gate, and not converse through bars of iron,” Caroline said, and began to walk in the same direction as the carriage was moving. Eliza walked abreast of her on the gravel side of the fence. They were separated by an arm’s length, but the Princess was on a march through the forest while the Duchess strolled on a groomed path. “You couldn’t possibly have come all the way from London—?”

“Antwerp.”

“Oh. How is the Duke?”

“He sends his respects, and his condolences. He was a great admirer of Sophie, as you know, and much desired to attend her funeral. But the late reports from London are most troubling to him and he did not wish to put himself so far out of his countrymen’s reach.”

They had come to the gate. Caroline reached for the latch but Eliza was quicker; she got it open and stepped through it decisively, closing with Caroline and flinging her arms round the taller woman’s neck with a kind of passion, even abandon. A very different thing from the restrained and courtly greetings that would fill the rest of this day. When she let go, which was a good long time later,
her cheeks, which were devoid of any powder or rouge, were shiny with tears.