The System of the World (67 page)

After it had died down, Stubbs announced “We’ve had to swop out the straw in John Doe’s cell five times a day,” in case Daniel still had lingering doubts as to the efficacy of those purges. “The other inmates have learnt to stand clear of him—except for the coprophiliacs, of course, who must be beaten back with sticks.” He nodded to a door a short distance ahead. Coincidentally or not, an umber bullet flew out of its window and impacted on the wig of a passing fop, sending up a pretty burst of white powder. “
He
should have paid for a guide,” Stubbs remarked, leading Daniel, Isaac, and Saturn on a long arc to keep them out of turd-range. “I do wonder whether Mr. Doe might respond well to beatings,” Stubbs continued wistfully. “I know you have forbidden it, Doctor, but if you would allow me to have a go at him with the cane—”

“No,” Daniel said. “Your message to me yesterday stated that he had requested an interview—”

“Indeed, guv’nor. Begged for it, more like.”

“Let us withhold the cane, then, and see what the interview yields.”

By this time they had come near enough to the end of the gallery to hear a persistent low hollow grinding and booming noise. Stubbs threw open a door at the end and led them into a spacious room—for they had entered into a sort of bastion anchoring the western end of the hospital, like the fist at the end of an arm—where that noise was a good deal louder. This salon was as cluttered with peculiar exhibits as the Court of Technologickal Arts at Clerkenwell, and as crowded with obstreperous madmen as a meeting of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. But the biggest object in the room—and the source of the noise—was an immense wooden drum, mounted above the floor like a wheel. Its axle spanned the interval between a pair of massive upright timbers, each of which rose to slightly above Daniel’s head. The drum was shaped like a fat coin, perhaps a yard thick. Its rim nearly grazed both floor and ceiling, which would make its diameter rather more than twelve feet. The circular faces of it—the heads and tails of the coin, as it were—had been fabricated in the same way as primitive cart-wheels, viz. of broad deals fastened side-by-side with long iron straps. The rim consisted of more planks pegged crosswise between these two disks.

Projecting from one end of the axle was an enormous crank with
a handle as long as an oar. A stout little stairway led up to a platform, large enough for two or three men to stand abreast and bend their backs to the operation of that crank. One crew was doing so now, and another stood by, quaffing beer to replace the moisture they’d sweated into their clothes.

As the great wheel ground away on its axle of greased iron, muffled thumps and booms sounded from within: sometimes a steady tattoo, as of running feet, always culminating in a series of thuds like a man falling down stairs.

“The therapy is compleat!” Stubbs announced. The laborers gladly let go and stood up straight to stretch their tired backs, whilst keeping wary vigil on the crank-handle, which continued to rotate—its
vis inertiae
might break the jaw of an unwary man. After the drum had slowed to a low idling speed they seized the crank again and nudged it around a quarter-turn or so. It was now possible to see that the near face of the drum was fitted with a long narrow hatch nearly spanning the interval between hub and rim. The crank-men made sure that this was down and vertical, like an hour-hand at the stroke of six. Then they tromped down the stairs in quest of refreshment.

Stubbs leaned into the space between axle-support and drum-side and unlatched the door. It flew open all the way and banged against the outside of the Machine, revealing that its inner surface was entirely covered by a quilted canvas bag, so filthy that it gleamed with a hard shine, stuffed with straw or horse-hair. The open hatchway was mostly empty; but down low, something reminiscent of a human figure could be seen draining lumpily onto the floor, like a half-melted wax statue being poured out of a saucepan.

“You see?” Stubbs announced. “The Machine works!”

The man who had emerged from the Machine seemed to want in the worst way to get clear of it. But he knew better than to stand, or even sit. He straightened himself out on the floor, supporting himself on his forearms and his forehead, and began to creep along like an inchworm, pausing every few inches for an episode of dry heaves. In a minute or so he reached a waiting chamber-pot, dashed its lid off with a blind arm-swing, hugged it, and used it to pull himself up off the floor. With some further exertions, and the aid of a man in indigo, he got himself seated upon this vessel and immediately began to generate sounds of a hydraulic and pneumatic character.

“Has he assaulted any more walls?” Daniel asked.

“Only the one, Doctor. It is a part of his mania that he phant’sies he knows just where the treasure is hidden.”

“What treasure do you refer to?” Isaac asked.

“Why, the same one all the lunaticks are searching for, sir,” said Stubbs, “the Gold of King Solomon.”

J
OHN
D
OE WAS
in no condition for an interview just yet. While the attendants busied themselves putting Doe’s chains back on his wrists and ankles, and returning him to his cell, Daniel, Isaac, and Peter Hoxton ascended to the storey above and walked back to the center of Bedlam along a gantlet of cells similar to those below. Fewer visitors came up here. The ones who did tended to be gangs of bloody-minded ’prentices, or the most distasteful sort of fops, or solitary men who looked as if they might themselves benefit from a few hours in the Machine. The prisoners here remained locked in their cells, and for the best reasons. Daniel prudently walked as close to the windows, and as far from the doors, as was practical, and tried not to hear the mutterings of the faces framed in some of those little door-hatches. He led the others on, and they gladly followed, at a brisk pace. Presently they exeunted from the men’s wing and entered the central part of the edifice, above the main entrance, and below the cupola. Here they ascended another stair into a vaulted space: technically an attic, but a carefully finished one, airy and well-lit.

Seen from Mr. Witanoont’s Vinegar-Yard, Bedlam’s center looked as if a squarish funnel had been turned upside-down and clapped on top of it. The broad part of the funnel was a high mansard roof enclosing the ample space in which Daniel, Isaac, and Saturn were now standing. The narrow nozzle was the cupola, which pierced the ceiling, admitting sky-light and (as its windows were ajar) exhausting the fouled air of the asylum. “This was Hooke’s favorite part of the building, his ærie and his
atelier,
” Daniel said, “though it then looked much different.” He approached a railing and gazed down into the central well that vented cupola-light into the entrance hall. “This had planks thrown across it, making it into one great floor, uninterrupted.”

“I only paid one visit, and that was for your going-away party,” said Isaac.

This was of interest to Saturn, who had been distracted, leaning over the rail and beckoning to some blokes loitering on the ground floor, two storeys below them. Now those fellows were ascending the stair in a gang. A man in indigo was moving to intercept them on the landing. Saturn, whilst keeping an eye on their progress, attended to Daniel. “Was that before you went off to Massachusetts?” he inquired.

“
Long
before. I departed for Massachusetts, at long last, in 1695. The party to which Sir Isaac refers was in 1689.”

“That makes no sense,” Saturn pointed out. Then he leaned over the railing, turning his attention to what was happening on the landing
below: the man in indigo had barred the path of the blokes—four in all—who had answered Saturn’s call. They were big, rough-looking lads who could have mowed this man down in an instant, but they had piled to a stop anyway, and were looking up to Saturn for their cue.

“ ’S al’right, sir,” Saturn called, “they’re with us.”

“And who the hell are you?”

Daniel silenced Saturn with a hand on his shoulder, and gave the answer: “Sir Isaac Newton, the Master of Her Majesty’s Mint, investigates an act of High Treason. You are impeding his deputies. Pray stand aside.”

Isaac was as startled to hear this, as was the indigo-suited maniac-wrangler, and stepped up to the railing. He did this not for effect, but simply to see what in heaven’s name was going on. But the apparition of the ancient white-haired sorcerer-knight struck the attendant, and moved him aside, like a blast of wind blowing a door open. “I do beg your pardon, guv’nor,” he said, in a much more moderate tone, after Saturn’s ruffians had filed past him. “Is there any way I can be of service?”

“Prevent sight-seers from coming up here, thank you,” Daniel returned, then wheeled round and began to scan the walls. This upper storey was not as prized by the Governors of Bedlam as it had been by Hooke; rather than situating their best offices here, they had sprinkled tables and trunks about the place, making it into a dovecote for clerks, and a dump for little-used documents.

“When we were here for my party it looked much as it does now,” Daniel said to Isaac, “which is to say that these inward-sloping walls—which are, of course, the inner surface of the roof’s structure—had been plastered over.”

“Yes.”

“But I often visited Hooke here much earlier—back in the seventies. This part of Bedlam went up first—as you’ll recall, the wings took years to complete.”

“Yes.”

“I am trying to recollect what it looked like, before lath and plaster were put up. I phant’sy that behind these surfaces are large cavities—particularly—if memory serves—
here,
between where the chimney is hidden as it pierces the roof, and the corner. There are four chimneys—hence, four such cavities.” Daniel had been dragging a hand along the plaster as he spoke, occasionally thumping with his knuckles. He’d stopped at a place, near the corner, where it answered with an especially resonant boom. Without allowing his hand to move, he turned round now to scan the other three corners.
His gaze lit on one that was stained with fresh plaster. Then—fortuitously—he noticed that Timothy Stubbs had finally caught up with them.

Pleasantly baffled
might have described Stubbs’s state of mind when he’d reached the head of the stairs;
horrified
was nearer the mark now. Daniel favored him with a thin smile. “Does my discourse have a familiar ring to you, Mr. Stubbs?”

“Indeed, Doctor, it is very like what John Doe was saying to his confederates, after I followed them hither that night.”

“You showed commendable nerve, Mr. Stubbs, in sneaking up on a gang of madmen.”

The praise caused Stubbs to relax a bit. “Wish I’d been so cool as to’ve tackled
all
of ’em, guv.”

“You did just the proper thing by capturing their leader. Is that the place, over yonder, where they attacked the wall?” Daniel asked, pointing to the fresh plaster.

“Indeed, sir.”

“Mad as hatters—or so ’twould seem,” Daniel mused. “On the other hand, suppose there really is treasure, or something, hidden in one of these corners. Then John Doe is no madman, but a burglar or worse; and all of the treatments I have prescribed for him are to no purpose. They might even be detrimental! He should in that event be at Newgate awaiting justice, not at Bedlam seeking a cure. The only way to be certain is to look. I take it that Doe found nothing, when he broke through the wall?”

“Wasps’ nests and bat droppings only,” Stubbs returned, speaking slowly, as he was a bit lost.

“That is not surprising. Mr. Hooke would have placed his cache in the corner most sheltered from the prevailing winds—
there,
” Daniel said, and pointed along the wall to the next corner. Saturn looked at him, and Daniel nodded. Saturn turned his back to the others and sauntered to the corner indicated. He gave his right arm a little twitch as he went, and a loggerhead of black iron dropped out of his sleeve, fat end first. His fingers closed round the narrow end just in time to keep it from dropping to the floor. Then with a sudden movement he brought it diagonally up and across his body, and with a ponderous swing of his whole trunk delivered a massive back-hand blow to the wall. The loggerhead burst through the plaster and the underlying lath like a musket-ball piercing a melon. Saturn drew it out, transferred the loggerhead to the other hand, and shoved half of his arm through the hole.

Mr. Timothy Stubbs was not in the least pleased by any of this, and looked as though the only thing preventing him from adding Saturn
to Bedlam’s roster was the implicit threat of the four lads Saturn had summoned up. But Peter Hoxton quickly settled the issue by declaring: “The verdict is in. John Doe is no lunatick, but a common burglar.” And he drew his arm out of the hole, and held up, as proof, a rolled sheaf of dusty papers. “Or perhaps an
uncommon
one.”

“ ’T
WOULD APPEAR YOU HAD WARNED
Mr. Stubbs to be on alert for madmen who would wish to knock holes in the walls,” Isaac said, “but how could you have anticipated this?”

He and Daniel had retreated to the opposite corner of the upper storey to get away from the dust and noise created by the assault on the wall. Saturn’s lads, who had come with diverse crowbars, steve-dore’s hooks, &c., secreted on their persons, had demolished a few square yards of plaster and lath, exposing a prism of dark space in which two or three bodies might have been concealed, if Hooke had been that sort of chap. Instead, he had packed in two wooden trunks, and a few leather wallets, then caulked the interstices with wadded or rolled papers. The dust was now settling to the point where Daniel and Isaac were tempted to approach. But first Isaac wanted an explanation.

“The story is not wholly known to me,” Daniel said. “Several of Hooke’s buildings, including the Royal College of Physicians and my lord Ravenscar’s house, have recently been invaded.”

“Catherine told me about the attack on
her
domicile,” Isaac said. “A queer lot of burglars they were—knocking holes in my lord Ravenscar’s walls to discover naught, while ignoring treasures that were sitting out in plain view.”