The Sensorium of God

by Stuart Clark

  Ahead of them a stuttering Frenchman backed away from an irate mob. Halley caught a few words of his protestations and realised that he was pleading for his life. The mob were screaming that if the man was French then he must be Catholic, and that meant he was guilty of starting fires, but Halley had seen the way the wind was urging cinders through the night air and dropping them on the thatched roofs all around. New fires were sparking up everywhere. He tried to speak up but his small voice was lost in the baying of the crowd. A wild-eyed woman landed the first blow on the Frenchman’s chin, and as the rest joined in Halley’s mother ushered him onwards.

  On the frosty slopes of Moorfields, thousands of people had camped out. Halley could still recall the horrified look of a young woman as she stared back at the dying city, her face illuminated by its angry light. She had conjured the strangest of feelings inside him – incomprehensible at the time. It had seemed wrong that a girl so beautiful should look so sad.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he had said to his mother, reaching back to touch her thigh.

  However, it had not been all right. In just a few years his mother, his brother and his sister would be gone for ever, each taken from him by one incomprehensible illness or another.

  Shaking these dark thoughts from his head, Halley circled the fringes of a crowd gathered around a large bonfire. The heat on his face was in stark contrast to the frosty air that chilled the rest of his body.

  Paying little attention to the path in front of him, he almost collided with a gigantic man backing out of a doorway.

  ‘And I say that you, sir, are a charlatan!’

  The voice stopped Halley in his tracks. Robert Hooke?

  A hunched figure also stood in the doorway, rendered comically small beside the giant. Its crabby expression, narrowed eyes and sharp protruding nose were unmistakeable.

  ‘Robert! It’s me,’ said Halley.

  Hooke squinted.

  ‘Edmond Halley. I’m back in England.’

  Hooke’s eyes widened. ‘And not a moment too soon. This gentleman here was . . . ’

  The giant stepped forward. He was clad in heavy academic robes from head to toe. ‘Good evening, Mr Halley, I am John Goad of Oxford.’ He bowed with such a melodramatic flourish of his robes that, if not for his bulk, he might have taken flight.

  ‘Don’t start all that again,’ said Hooke, flapping away the fabric.

  ‘Mr Halley,’ said Goad, ‘I wish to address the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.’

  ‘Then Mr Hooke is your man,’ said Halley.

  Goad and Hooke scowled at each other.

  ‘He’s the secretary and curator of experiments–’

  ‘Also the Gresham Professor of Geometry and Surveyor to the City of London, but you, sir, are a peddler of nonsense,’ said Hooke emphatically to Goad. ‘The Royal Society only welcomes gentlemen inclined to the experimental sciences.’

  ‘I practise the oldest of the sky arts.’

  Halley sighed. An astrologer . . .

  ‘We have rejected astrology as false,’ said Hooke.

  ‘But I can bring personal testimonies of the accuracy of my horoscopes–’

  ‘One needs only to sing a madrigal every day for a fortnight, and lo! it will cure you of your fever,’ said Hooke. ‘Is that to be trusted? Of course not. Without a clear understanding of how one thing links to another, you can believe in nothing.’

  ‘I am aware that my art is falling from favour, but God could not have created the heavens without purpose. And that purpose is the weather – why does it rain one day and shine the next? Why? Because of the planets! The air around us is the shoreline with the heavens. It must be influenced by the planetary positions.’ Goad looked from Halley to Hooke and back again. ‘The movement of the planets is the engine of our seasons – God’s engine for raising our crops, providing the water and the sunlight needed for them to grow.’

  Hooke tutted.

  Goad smiled indulgently. ‘I understand your scepticism, but consider this: Johannes Kepler, that paragon of astronomical achievement and the architect of the Sun-centred astronomy, was also a master astrologer.’

  Halley said, ‘Mr Goad, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion can be tested telescopically and shown to be true. We reject the rest of his work. Astrology cannot be measured by any instrument that I know.’

  ‘Do you similarly reject the Reverend Flamsteed? He cast a horoscope for the founding of the Greenwich observatory.’

  ‘Have you seen that horoscope?’ challenged Halley. ‘I was there on the very day it was cast.’

  Goad’s face fell. ‘You know the King’s Astronomer?’

  ‘I do, and written at the bottom of the page in John’s own hand is risum teneatis, amici – can you help laughing, friends? He cast his horoscope as tradition dictated, not because he believed in it.’

  Goad opened his arms. ‘My friend, astronomers can tell us where the stars are, but it is up to astrologers to interpret meaning. Without us, the study of the heavens is futile.’

  ‘The study of the heavens will allow us to safely navigate the oceans. I hardly call that futile.’ Halley pulled his jacket shut.

  ‘We do not believe in strange planetary forces communicating themselves across space,’ added Hooke. ‘That is magic. We believe only what we can measure.’

  Goad flung his hands in the air. ‘Measurement! Always measurement!’

  ‘The measurement of nature is the only sure way of leading us back to God. Yes, Mr Goad, when Adam looked into a drop of water, he saw the microscopic life within it just as plainly as I have seen it using my microscope. When he looked into the sky, he saw all the stars in heaven and in so doing, he saw God. But, during the Fall, man’s senses crumbled, trapping us in these tiny brains with these limited senses. So now we have to build telescopes and microscopes to rediscover the knowledge of creation, and to rediscover God.’

  Goad looked aghast at Hooke, who ploughed on. ‘Once our investigations have revealed nature’s laws, we will be left with a collection of unexplainable phenomena that must therefore require God’s direct intervention.’

  Goad spluttered, ‘Smacks of blasphemy to me. I tell you this with great confidence: my system of astrological weather prognostication will prove more important than any of your efforts at weighing the air.’

  ‘The term is air pressure!’ cried Hooke, bunching his fists and resting them on his hips. ‘And the barometer is an important scientific instrument!’

  ‘Useless!’ barked Goad, leaning forward.

  Halley placed a hand on each man’s chest. ‘Enough! Let him go, Robert, there are those who will never understand.’

  Gown fluttering, Goad took off into the night. The bonfire crackled. A hawker bellowed his sales pitch for roasted chestnuts. A series of sharp reports split the air, and the two men looked up to see the brilliant trails of rockets shooting through the sky and blossoming into colour high above. Their attention was drawn back to Earth by a noisy gang of young apprentices who swaggered past them, swearing and shouting at onlookers to make way. To the men’s horror, the lads appeared to be dragging a body.

  ‘Make way for his Holiness!’ the gang shouted.

  No, not a man, Halley realised, but an effigy dressed in the white robes and mitre of the Pope.

  Egged on by the crowd, they hefted the straw man on to a pyre. Bawdy cheers erupted and drowned the roar of the flames.

  ‘When did England become so mean-spirited?’ said Halley.

  ‘About the same time it dawned on people that the King was inching us back to Rome.’

  ‘Do you really think Charles is a Catholic?’

  ‘Of course. His brother has converted openly.’

  ‘The Duke of York?’

  Hooke nodded. ‘Parliament has forced him to step down as Lord High Admiral.’

  Halley could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Had England changed so much in the two years he had been away? ‘But he’s heir to the throne
. . . ’

  ‘They’re trying to exclude him from that, too. And, if they fail, we’ll surely have a Catholic monarch – if we don’t have one already . . . Tell me, how long have you been back?’

  Halley inhaled the smoky night air. ‘Some weeks, well, maybe a month or so.’

  ‘And only now you want to see me?’

  ‘I’ve been busy making the final calculations for the star chart. I have to present it to the King next week, and it has to be perfect.’

  ‘And you couldn’t even drop in to say hello?’ Hooke eyed him expectantly.

  ‘Robert, I’m not the only thing that’s back. So is the comet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The comet of last month has returned.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘It’s not in the evening sky any more. It’s appearing before dawn. It’s as if it fell towards the Sun, swung round behind it and now travels outwards into space again.’

  Hooke’s eyes glittered in the firelight. ‘Can we see it?’

  ‘If we wait the night out . . .’

  It was nearly dawn before the bonfires died away into tiny, smoky columns dotting the city’s skyline. The dampness in the air meant that it would be a race to see the comet before the soot combined with the morning mist to choke the city in a filthy brown fog.

  Halley scanned the horizon from the cramped roof platform atop Gresham College that Hooke had commissioned for his astronomical work. Hooke stifled a yawn and pulled out a handkerchief from his leather money pouch to wipe the lens and tube of the long, thin telescope, preparing it for use.

  Then Halley saw it, just a glimpse at first – a ghostly fan of light, no bigger than a thumb’s width at arm’s length. It was hanging above the rooftops, so faint that it danced in and out of visibility.

  ‘There it is,’ said Halley, pointing into the sky.

  Hooke jostled in beside him and peered into the darkness. ‘You’re imagining it . . . ’ He fell silent.

  Halley slid away to swing the telescope into position and duck his head to the eyepiece. Beautiful! The comet’s tail reminded him of the long hairs that trailed a galloping horse, frozen in a portrait. He traced the threads of ethereal light to the head of the comet, where a small jewel glittered. ‘Come and look.’

  Hooke bent to the eyepiece, knocking the tripod and forcing Halley to realign things. ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’

  ‘Flamsteed thinks that it must be magnetic and that it’s being repelled by the magnetism of the Sun,’ said Halley.

  ‘Impossible! If you melt a magnet it loses its magnetism, and the Sun must surely be molten to be so hot. Even Newton agrees with me on this.’

  ‘You talk to Newton? I must have sailed back to some strange country and mistaken it for England.’

  Hooke looked round from the eyepiece. ‘Not even I can hold a grudge for ever. We’ve been exchanging letters.’

  ‘The controversy over the origin of colours is forgotten?’ Halley moved closer, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice.

  ‘Of course. I asked him if he could use his new mathematics to calculate why the planets stay in orbit.’

  ‘To prove why Kepler’s laws work?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Halley was impressed. ‘I admit I don’t know much about his new mathematics. What’s it called? Fluxions?’

  ‘Fluxions and fluents,’ Hooke said. ‘No one knows much about it. He prefers to keep the method a secret, though I believe there are some papers lodged in the Society’s archives, and Collins once told me that Newton had exchanged something with Leibniz in Hanover – apparently he was thinking along similar lines.’

  ‘Leibniz was?’

  ‘Yes. Both working on a way to calculate the rates of change of moving quantities . . . but you’re distracting me. Newton isn’t really interested in Kepler’s laws any more. He says he’s abandoned natural philosophy altogether, and he made a number of mistakes in his letters that I corrected for him.’

  Halley registered the satisfaction in Hooke’s voice. ‘So, what is Newton doing these days?’

  ‘Alchemy,’ said Hooke.

  ‘But that’s illegal. You must be mistaken.’

  ‘From what I hear, he hardly ever leaves his furnace.’

  ‘I didn’t have Newton down as a dabbler,’ Halley said.

  ‘He’s consumed by some notion of concocting the Philosopher’s Stone.’ Hooke suddenly looked impish. ‘Perhaps if he’s thrown in gaol, he’ll have some time to perform our calculations for us.’

  ‘Perish the thought,’ Halley said, making Hooke chuckle.

  The unexpected sound of someone climbing the rickety staircase caught Halley’s ears. He turned and locked eyes with Grace.

  ‘Mr Halley,’ she said, her eyes smiling at him even if her mouth stayed level.

  ‘Mistress Hooke, I’m delighted to see you again.’

  ‘Will you be staying for breakfast?’

  ‘He’s not staying. He’s just leaving. Off you go.’ Hooke bustled round, barring her entry to the platform.

  The woman allowed her gaze to linger on Halley even as she complied with her uncle’s wishes and descended the staircase. Her image seemed to linger in the air where she had been standing.

  ‘Grace has grown somewhat since last I saw her,’ said Halley.

  ‘Keep well away from her, Edmond.’

  Hooke’s tone was sharp. The young astronomer mumbled, not entirely with veracity, ‘I remark on her as I would a spring flower.’

  Hooke folded his arms. ‘If you go now, you can still get a few hours’ sleep before the day starts properly.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Halley knew better than to argue when Hooke started behaving like this. He made his way to the stairs; the handrail was slick with dew. Two steps down, he stopped. ‘Robert, just one thing. What you said to Goad, about finding God in the things we cannot understand. Did you really mean that?’

  Hooke gave him an exasperated look. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But what happens if we can explain everything? I mean: what if all our experimenting, all our observations and all our measuring give us a set of mathematical laws that can explain everything? What will we need God for then?’

  ‘That will never happen.’

  But what if it does? Halley thought. What if it does happen?

  7

  Halley awoke with a start at the sound of a horse and carriage outside his bedroom window. After chipping away enough of the ice from the inside of the pane to see the vehicle disappearing around the street corner he let his forehead drop to the frigid glass.

  Tugging on yesterday’s clothes, he bounded downstairs and pulled open the front door. A blast of icy air reminded him to reach for his jacket and shoes. Lord knows what would be said if I turned up at church wearing only a nightshirt, he thought. Despite the throbbing of his head, he forced himself to run after the carriage, barging his way through the Sunday-morning pedestrians. He knew he was behaving abominably, but he had bigger concerns: he had promised his father he would attend church.

  Thankfully the bells were still pealing and the congregation were still taking their seats when he arrived, panting and red-cheeked. He tucked in his shirt and smoothed some of the tangles from his hair. He found the correct pew and, apologising repeatedly to the worshippers he forced to stand, slid in beside the fleshy bulk of his father.

  ‘We’d nearly given up on you,’ said the old man, not turning to look at him.

  ‘Someone could have sent the maid to wake me.’

  ‘We thought you’d gone beyond needing a nanny,’ came a sour voice from beyond his father.

  Joane. Halley cursed her. She had arrived in his life uninvited five years earlier, a mousy woman with squinty eyes and freckled cheeks. Still struggling to come to terms with his mother’s death, he had returned from the first term at Oxford to find Joane in her place at the Christmas table. By the time he had come home for Easter, she was the second Mrs Halley. He soon began to dream of
sea voyages and overseas adventures.

  ‘Please tell the maid to salt the steps tomorrow before my father has an accident,’ he said tartly.

  With a smirk she returned to snooping on the rest of the congregation.

  The vicar appeared and the congregation settled into respectful silence and stood up. He was a solid figure with pale brown hair that skimmed his collar, but the feature Halley noticed the most was the wild look in his eye; it would not have been out of place on a poacher.

  ‘The dead shall rise again,’ he thundered as he launched into his sermon. ‘When the time is right, those who have lain in the ground these many years will rise and join those of us still living, and each of us will kneel before the Lord and justify our lives and actions. It’s not the moment of death that we have to fear, but the inevitable judgement that will follow. That is why we live as God dictated through our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The good will die along with the wicked, but when Christ returns and judgement is made, only the good will be truly saved and raised into Heaven, where we shall spend eternity basking in the glory of God.’

  Halley glanced at those around him, all transfixed by the vicar’s words, fervour written on their faces. Even his father’s features had softened, rolling away the years. What was it they felt? Confusion twisted within Halley. He stared past the congregation, at the walls and windows, and tried to see more than just stone blocks and leaded glass.

  On his voyage to Saint Helena, the ship had been becalmed. Roasting under the fearsome sun, he had prayed like the rest of them for a breath of wind. He had searched inside for his faith, looked out to see some evidence of the Almighty. Yet he found only questions. What would happen when Mother met Joane in Heaven? How would Father choose? How would everyone who ever lived fit into Heaven? Why were there no answers? Why didn’t people seem to mind that there were no answers?

  After the service had ended and the chit-chat was over with, Halley felt morose. In the homeward carriage, he faced his father and Joane in silence. Halley’s mood was not helped by the way his father looked these days. Apart from those few moments in the church, the upright bearing had been replaced with a stoop, the strong body with a portly roll, and the vigour with a couple of noticeably baggy eyes.