This performance, from the detonation of the squib to the almost as explosive ovation given by the groundlings in acclaim for the lady’s role, covered an elapsed time of perhaps five seconds.
The one lady now had to be taken aside and comforted by the other. As their coach had gone missing, this had to be done there in the stands, in full view of all present. It made a sort of side-show to the long-awaited main event: the big dogs were unleashed into the ring. First King Looie and King Philip. They made straight for the bear, until the bear noticed them and stood up on its hind legs; then they had second thoughts, and decided to see what might be achieved with a hell of a lot of barking. Marshall Villars and King James the Third were then let go, and pretty soon it had begun to look like a fight.
The crowd of groundlings were now in a frenzy equal to that of the animals. So much so that they did not notice, for several seconds, when the dogs and the bear stopped fighting, and began to ignore each other. Their muzzles were down in the dirt.
The dogs’ tails were wagging.
The crowd stopped shouting, almost in unison.
Bits of red stuff were hurtling into the ring from somewhere near Daniel, and plumping into the ground like damp rags.
All eyes noticed this and back-traced the trajectories to the Nonconformist. He had stood up and set his basket on the bench next to him. Daniel noticed now that the basket was blood-soaked. The man was pulling great hunks of raw meat from it and hurling them into the ring.
“You men, like these poor beasts, do fight for the amusement, and toil for the enrichment, of men such as this wretch-Mr. Charles White-only because, like these beasts, you are hungry! Hungry for succour, of the physic, and of the spirit! But prosperity temporal and spiritual is yours to be had! It falls from heaven like manna! If you would only accept it!”
To this point the meat-flinger’s performance had been entertaining, after a fashion, and they’d particularly liked it when he’d called a gentleman a Wretch to his face. But in the last few moments it had taken on the aspect of a sermon, which the groundlings did not care for at all. They all began to murmur at once, like Parliament. Daniel for the first time questioned whether he would get out of Rotherhithe today in one piece.
Mr. Charles White-perhaps asking himself the same question-was sauntering diagonally across the stands, casting meaningful looks at several of the blokes who were running the place. From this, and from what the meat-flinger had said, Daniel collected that White was the owner, or at least the backer.
“Splendid proposal, old boy! I do believe I’ll take a bit of this, thank you very mumph.” White’s final word was muffled by the Nonconformist’s left ear.
Now, the removal of said ear was a close re-enactment of a similar undertaking Daniel had witnessed twenty-odd years earlier, in a coffee-house. The hand that gripped the victim’s head, twisting him this way and that to worry the ear off, still bore an ugly stigma from Roger Comstock’s dagger. Daniel had no desire to see such a thing again. But the groundlings were fascinated. This was in other words a shrewd bit of crowd control on White’s part, in that it gave his audience some value for their money; the only value they were likely to get, today.
He got the ear off a lot quicker this time-practice having made perfect-and held it up. The crowd applauded; and as they did, White swiveled the ear back and forth, making it “listen” to whichever side was applauding the loudest. Once they understood this witticism, they went for it with gusto, the left and right flanks trying to out-do each other in noise-making. White meanwhile took this opportunity to dab blood off of his lips with a lace hanky.
“This ear is rather dry and gamy,” he shouted, when the crowd had grown tired of the jest. “I am afraid it has been tanned by listening to too many hellfire-sermons! It does not merit pride of place ’pon my watch-chain. ’Twill serve for dog-meat though.”
White vaulted over the barrier into the ring: a display of physical vigor striking to all. He fed the ear to the surviving poodle, Harley.
This spectacle-a dog eating a piece of a human being-seemed to give the crowd whatever satisfaction they had come for. Though none was pleased by the outcome, none complained. They began to mutter and joke amongst themselves. A few departed straightaway, to beat the crowds. Most milled out in a great herd, occasionally turning their heads back to watch the poodle, its periwig askew, its black lips peeled back from its fangs, grinding up the ear in its back teeth.
It occurred to Daniel to look for the one-eared, meat-hurling Puritan, who, when last seen, had been exiting stage right, making a dreadful noise: half sobbing with pain, half singing a hymn. His basket had been upset during the struggle with Mr. Charles White. Several bits of offal had tumbled out of it, and now lay on the bench in steaming lagoons of dark blood. Daniel recognized an enormous thyroid gland and decided that this had all been removed from a horse, or something equally large, that had been alive a quarter of an hour ago.
The meat-thrower had staggered down out of the stands and into the open space behind, where he was being assisted by a dozen or more of his brethren, who were all showing off forced smiles. Mr. White’s carriage still had not returned; in its place was a conveyance far ruder, and much better suited to this district: a knacker’s wagon, dark and crusty with old gore and bright and runny with new. Daniel from his elevated vantage point was able to see things in the back of that wagon that were hidden from the view of Mr. White, who remained down by the ring’s edge: a newly cut-up horse was in there. Not a worn-out nag but a glossy and well-looked-after steed.
It was one of Mr. White’s carriage-horses.
Mr. White’s footmen and driver were standing very close together a quarter of a mile away, next to a motionless carriage, to which only three horses were harnessed.
Daniel took another look at the Nonconformists and noticed that every single one of them had at least one pistol in his belt.
’Twas an excellent time to be leaving. Daniel descended the benches, trying not to look like a man in a panic, and did not slow or look back until he had put the whole baiting-ring between himself and the scene that had happened, or was about to, behind the stands.
“Mr. Kikin,” he said, having approached from in front, with his hands in plain sight, and offered a formal bow. “I come to you on an errand from Baron von Leibniz, counselor to his Imperial Majesty, Tsar Peter.”
This was an abrupt beginning; but Charles White, on the far side of the ring, was only just now piecing together the picture of how he had been used today by those Dissidents, and was working himself up into a rage limited only by the fact that he was outnumbered by chaps who looked forward to dying, and were carrying loaded pistols. Amid such distractions, the only way Daniel could think of to seize Mr. Kikin’s attention was to invoke the name of Peter the Great.
It worked. Kikin showed not the slightest doubt that Daniel was telling the truth. From this, Daniel knew that Leibniz’s account of the Tsar was on the mark; he did things his own way, be they never so irregular, and his servants, such as Kikin, did not long endure if they wanted the nimbleness to keep pace with his evolutions. Thus Daniel was able to draw Mr. Kikin and his companion aside, and get them clear of the growingly monstrous spectacle in the stands. Mr. White was bellowing threats and execrations at the Dissidents, who were drowning him out with hymn-singing, while a few unusually stupid spectators were darting in to throw stones at them.
HE HAD BEEN TOLD, by people who knew Russians, to expect cheekbones. Lev Stefanovich Kikin (as he introduced himself, once they had edged clear of the brawl, and withdrawn to a quiet corner of Orney’s ship-yard) did have quite a pair. But the slablike elements of Kikin’s face, and his overall fleshiness, hid his bone structure well enough that no one who lived north of, say, the River Seine would have picked him out as having come from a far country that was by all accounts very different from the rest of Christendom. Daniel would have felt more at ease if Kikin had had green skin and three eyes, so as to remind anyone who looked at hi
m that he thought about things differently. As it was, Daniel tried to concentrate on the outlandish hat, and Kikin’s giant companion, who never left off scanning the horizon for Raskolniks.
For his part, Kikin-who was, after all, a diplomat-listened with an air of amused tolerance that Daniel found a bit grating after a while. But never mind; his mission here was not to befriend Kikin (or Orney, for that matter) but to arrange for the Science Crapp to be off-loaded and warehoused here, that it might be shipped to St. Petersburg later. Before an hour had passed, he had accomplished it, and was on his way back across the river. He asked the waterman to convey him to Tower Wharf.
The waterman rowed hard, not to please Daniel, but out of a selfish desire to put a large expanse of water, or anything, between him and Rotherhithe. They cut diagonally through the Pool, crossing from the south bank to the north whilst working upstream about a mile. This brought them to Wapping. From there another mile’s journey took them past the Red Cow, where Daniel and Bob Shaftoe had run Jeffreys to ground, then St. Catherine’s, and then the long wharf of the Tower. This was pierced in one place by the arch that led to Traitor’s Gate. Daniel had talked his way in there once, but saw no merit in attempting it now. So he had the waterman keep rowing.
Just beyond the Tower’s upstream corner, the river seemed to bend around sharply to the right-a trick played on landlubberly eyes by Tower Dock which was a vestige of the outer moat-system. Looming above this stagnant channel was a bewildering complex of land-gates, water-gates, docks, causeways, and drawbridges, all more or less answering to the appellation Lion Tower, and serving as the front door of the entire Tower of London complex. This was where Daniel paid the waterman for the day, and disembarked.
The outer reaches of the complex were open to the public. Daniel got all the way through Byward Gate, and into the beginning of Mint Street, before anyone bothered to ask him what he was doing. He claimed that he was here to pay a call on Sir Isaac Newton. This got him an escort: an Anglo-Irish private soldier of the Queen’s Own Black Torrent Guards, who accompanied him a short distance up Mint Street. This was narrow, noisy, and long. For the first several yards it was lined with the dwellings of some of the Mint workers. Past that, it was pinched between a porter’s lodge on the right side of the way, and on the left, a building that served as the formal entrance to the Mint, with stairs leading to an office on the storey above.
Daniel’s escort ushered him into the building on the left, which Daniel immediately recognized as one of those miserable places where visitors cooled their heels waiting to be admitted.
For all that, it wasn’t so bad. He could use a respite. On the off chance that Daniel really was a friend of Sir Isaac’s, the porter ventured in from across the street and brought him a cup of tea. Daniel sat for a while, sipping it and watching coal-carts rumble in, and manure-carts out, and feeling the throb of the trip-hammers. Presently he was given the news that Sir Isaac was not on the premises, and the opportunity to leave him a note, which he did.
On his way out, as he passed under Byward Tower, he encountered the private who had escorted him to the office.
“Did you serve in the War, private?” Daniel asked. For this fellow did not look like an utterly raw recruit.
“I marched with Corporal John in ’11, sir,” came the answer. Corporal John was what the Duke of Marlborough was called by his soldiers.
“Ah, the outflanking of the ne plus ultra,” Daniel exclaimed. “Thirty miles in a day, wasn’t it?”
“Thirty-six miles in sixteen hours, sir.”
“Magnificent.”
Daniel did not inquire about the campaign of ’12, which had been a disgrace-the Queen had fired Marlborough on the first day of that year. “I once knew a fellow, a sergeant in this regiment-he did me a favor, and I did him one in turn. Since then, there have been twenty-five years of war. He couldn’t possibly still be here-”
“Only one man saw those twenty-five years through, sir,” the private returned.
“That is a dreadful figure. What is that man’s name?”
“It’d be Sergeant Bob, sir.”
“Bob Shaftoe?”
The private rationed himself a grin. “The same, sir.”
“Where is he now?”
“On a Mint detail, sir.”
“Mint detail?”
“Doing a job that needs doing for the Mint, sir.”
“So he is-?” Daniel pointed back up Mint Street.
“No sir, you’ll find him on London Bridge, sir. ’Tis a task of an unusual nature, sir.”
DANIEL SAW NO SOLDIERS doing anything, usual or unusual, as he walked most of the length of the bridge. Here, at least, was a part of London that had changed very little during his lifetime. The clothing worn by the people, and sold in the shops lining the carriageway, was of course different. But it was late in the afternoon and the sun was shining horizontally downriver, throwing the built-up segments of the bridge into a gloom too profound for his old eyes to penetrate, and so in these stretches he could phant’sy himself a ten-year-old boy again, out running an errand in the Puritan republic of Oliver Cromwell. But these day-dreams were interrupted when he came to the open fire-breaks, where the buildings ceased and the bridge hurried on for a stone’s throw as a naked causeway. As he ventured into these gaps, the sun blasted him on the right side of his face, and when he turned his head away from it and looked down the Thames, he saw two thousand ships-which annihilated the dream that he was back in the simple days of old. He scuttled across these open stretches like a rat across an unwelcome stripe of lanthorn-light, and found refuge in the cool dark canyons between the old buildings.
The last and shortest of these open stretches was practically in Southwark, seven-eighths of the way across. On the far end of this gap the carriageway was over-arched by a stone castle, of ancient-looking design, but only about three hundred years old. It was the highest structure on the Bridge, for it served both as watch-tower and as choke-point. It dated to an ?ra when military operations were of a more straightforward character, so that a bloke on the top of the tower, looking south to discover Frenchmen or Saracens coming up in force, could sound the alarm and slam the doors to the Bridge. It was called the Great Stone Gate.
The last of the old wattle-and-daub houses was supported by one starling, and the Great Stone Gate by the next one to the south, and the fire-break between them, above the carriageway, coincided with the broad stone arch that spanned the interval between the starlings below. The flume of Thames-water that raced through that arch was called Rock Lock, and was the broadest of all London Bridge’s twenty locks. Passengers who were willing to brave the rapids of the Bridge were sometimes offered the option of detouring all the way down here to take Rock Lock, which was the least dangerous, being the widest; but to do so was generally scorned, by your inveterate Bridge-shooters, as unmanly.
The Bridge’s several fire-breaks exerted a mysterious attraction upon contemplative or insane Londoners. Daniel passed one-he was not sure which-standing with his back to the carriageway, looking upstream. He was wearing a pinkish or flesh-colored coat. He was not enjoying the distant view of west London. Rather, his grizzled, scarred, close-cropped head was bent down to look at the starling beneath. He was gesticulating with an ebony walking-stick, and jabbering: “Have a care, have a care, remember the object of the exercise-there’s no point in doing it, is there, if the result is crack-pated, and cannot hold milk.” The words sounded insane, but he spoke them with the weary patience of a man who has been ordering people around for a long time.
A soldier in a red coat was planted to one side of the carriageway, craning his neck to look almost vertically upwards. Daniel stepped to the side, so that he would not be run over, and followed that soldier’s gaze to the top of the Great Stone Gate, where a pair of young men in filthy old shirts were at work.
In company with Ludgate, Temple Bar, Aldgate, amp;c., this was one of the old gates of the City of London. And in accordance with an a
ncient and noble tradition, common to most all well-regulated Christian nations, the remains of executed criminals were put on display at such gates, as a way of saying, to illiterate visitors, that they were now entering into a city that had laws, which were enforced with gusto. To expedite which, the top of the tower above Great Stone Gate had been fitted with numerous long iron pikes that sprayed out from its battlements like black radiance from a fallen angel’s crown. At any given time, one or two dozen heads could be seen spitted on the ends of these, in varying stages of decomposition. When a fresh one was brought in from Tower Hill, or from one of the City’s hanging-grounds, the wardens of the gate would make room for it by chucking one of the older heads into the river. Though here as in every other aspect of English life, a strict rule of precedence applied. Certain heads, as of lordly traitors who’d been put to death at the Tower, were allowed to remain long past their Dates of Expiration. Pick-pockets and chicken-stealers, by contrast, were swapped through so rapidly that the ravens scarcely had time to peel a good snack off of them.
Some such operation was seemingly underway now, for Daniel could hear some authoritative chap atop the tower, chiding those men in the ragged shirts: “Don’t-even-think-of touching that one, it is Baron Harland of Harland-peculation, 1707, hanging by a thread as you can see…yes, you may inspect that one.”
“Thank you, sir.” One of the wretches gripped an iron pikestaff and lifted it carefully out of its socket, then brought it round so that the head mounted to its end was face to face with the other wretch-who proceeded to feel the skull all over, like a phrenologist.
“I phant’sy this’n’s sound, sir. It don’t give when I mash it.”
“Bring it down,” shouted the red-coated soldier on the carriageway.
THE System OF THE WORLD Page 13