The Last Witchfinder

by James Morrow

  So I’m not bitter anymore. Okay, sure, everybody has warm fuzzy feelings about Einstein, whereas my father is commonly perceived as a frigid fanatic in a silly wig. But one day the world will notice that while E = mc2 ultimately gives you 177,000 dead Japanese civilians, F = ma lets you skate across a frozen lake on a winter’s night, the wind caressing your face as you glide toward the hot-chocolate stand on the far shore.

  A few years after the rise of relativity my ego received a second blow. The deeper physicists peered beneath the surface of things, the clearer it became that my vaunted determinism did not apply at the subatomic level. Predicting the behavior of elementary particles required a different mechanics, keyed to probability rather than causality. This sorry state of affairs culminated in 1927 with Werner Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle, which states that you cannot simultaneously know the position and the momentum of a given particle. Let me hasten to add that Heisenbergian indeterminacy traces largely to the fact that subatomic position and momentum are conjugate attributes. Only in the popular misconception does the imprecision arise from disturbances inherent in the act of measurement.

  Call me a traditionalist, but I don’t really care for quantum physics. The Double-Slit Problem, whereby a single electron flies through two adjacent apertures in one trip, creeps me out. I’m equally unhappy about the Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox, with its requirement that the poor animal be alive and dead at the same time. How weird is that? True, thanks to all those exquisite quantum equations, you humans now have television (though in my opinion the whole thing went downhill after The Avengers), mobile phones (enabling you to walk through a field of stunningly gorgeous wildflowers without actually being there), and personal computers (hour after hour you stare at the screen, a life of cybernetic desperation). But the calculus lets you put a man on the moon! With fluxions at your command, you can build the Golden Gate Bridge!

  Leibniz was correct, by the way: he did invent the infinitesimal calculus entirely on his own. But my father would hear none of it. At the height of their forty-year feud over the paternity of fluxions, he appointed a bogus committee to resolve the dispute “objectively.” The group’s report, the Commercium Epistolicum, was rigged from the start, and the Leibniz camp was right to scorn it. In the years that followed, both geometers hurled cadres of disciples into the fray, until eventually a schism opened in European intellectual life. Generation after generation, much to the detriment of their science, chauvinistic English mathematicians refused to employ Leibniz’s superior system for noting integrals and differentials, which meanwhile swept the Continent owing to its lucidity and elegance.

  For all this, I remain in awe of my father. He never stops surprising me. Centuries before anybody heard of Einstein, he dreamed the dream of unification, imagining that one day the same set of equations might encompass everything from the majestic sweep of a comet to the inner life of an atom. To be sure, his last-ditch attempt to combine the macro-world with the micro via the Æther Christi was screwy, but his earlier ruminations on the problem boasted sophistication and foresight. “It is very well known that greater bodies act mutually upon each other by those forces, and I do not easily see why lesser bodies should not act on one another by similar forces,” he wrote in the unpublished “Conclusio” to my second edition.

  Contemporary physicists speak of a GUT, a Grand Unified Theory. They seek a TOE, a Theory of Everything. And I suspect that one day, through some felicitous convergence of experiment and serendipity,

  quarreling and collaboration, they’ll get one. And when they do, I hope

  they’ll remember that the quest began not with Einstein or Heisenberg,

  not with Max Planck or Enrico Fermi, not with Niels

  Bohr or John Wheeler or Stephen

  Hawking, but with

  the great Sir

  Isaac

  j

  Newton

  did not precisely

  resemble the engraving that

  graced the English-language edition

  of the Principia Mathematica: such was Jennet’s

  impression when, thirty-five years after her failed mission to

  Trinity College, she finally stood before the octogenarian geometer in his carriage-house, where he was supervising a servant’s frantic efforts to hitch two horses to a coach. The lines of Newton’s craggy face seemed deeper than in his portrait, and his cheeks had grown puffier. But this was undoubtedly he. There was no mistaking that hooked nose and rounded chin, those sharp obsidian eyes.

  “Mr. Franklin, I found your theologic treatise most stimulating,” Newton said, wrapping his veiny hands around Ben’s outstretched palm. “True, it wanders into a kind of polytheism on occasion, but such was not your intention.”

  “Actually it was,” Ben said.

  “Methinks you exaggerate, dearest brother,” Jennet hastened to add.

  Newton acknowledged Jennet with a dark scowl, but he addressed her in a mellifluous tone. “Should I e’er find myself in the American provinces, I shall be pleased to visit your prodigy museum.”

  “I must tell you that my philosophic interests extend even to your fluxions,” she said. “Just as Dædalus formed his son’s arms into wings, so have you gifted Euclid with the power of flight.”

  Newton glowered again and said, “As I recall the story, Dædalus’s experiment ended disastrously.”

  “My metaphor was ill-chosen,” she said, wincing internally.

  “Most metaphors are. If you would be a natural philosopher, Mrs. Crompton, stick with mathematics, where everything is only like itself.”

  Having affixed the tack to the horses, the beleaguered servant, a fat and beetle-browed man called Padding, announced that the coach stood ready for Newton’s trip to the city.

  “I beg your pardon, Sir Isaac,” Ben said, “but ’twas my understanding we’d be dining at your estate.”

  “We’ll not be dining anywhere, young Franklin, as I have urgent business in the Fleet.”

  A second servant, cadaverous as Padding was corpulent, appeared holding a willow basket and a gnarled blackthorn shillelagh. “Your money cudgel, sir,” he said, handing the weapon to Newton as a chancellor might present a ceremonial sword to his king.

  “Forgive me, Sir Isaac,” Jennet said, “but we simply must speak with you tonight.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Crompton. Duty calls.”

  “Prithee, take us along on your journey. My brother and I crossed the entire Atlantic Sea that we might interview le Grand Newton.”

  The geometer frowned and scratched his head, skewing his periwig and exposing his left ear to the predations of a mosquito. He caught the creature in his palm and, rubbing his hands together, mashed it into nothingness. “Climb aboard if you insist.” He retrieved the willow basket from his servant, looping his arm through the handle. “But hear my warning—we’ll be moving amongst coiners and clippers tonight. You could be murdered.”

  “We could also be murdered if we run afoul of a cutpurse whilst walking back to Mayfair,” she said.

  “Perhaps Sir Isaac will entertain us tomorrow night,” Ben suggested.

  Not if he’s on the point of being killed by counterfeiters, she thought. “Nonsense, brother—we shan’t be so boorish as to spurn this invitation.” Turning toward Newton, she caressed the sleeve of his red woolen topcoat. “I have oft-times noted your exploits as Master of the Mint.” She relieved him of the basket and hoisted herself into the coach. “Had you not become the world’s most accomplished philosopher”—she placed the basket on the floor—“you would have made a formidable general.”

  “Modesty requires that I ignore your opinion,” Newton said, repositioning his periwig, “though honesty forbids me to contradict it.”

  Ben, sighing, clambered up beside Jennet. Newton settled into the seat opposite, flourishing his shillelagh with the oblivious bravado of Henry VIII wielding his marble scepter above the main gate at Trinity. Soon a fourth party joined them, a ruffian n
amed Gunny Slocum, gleefully explaining that he was Newton’s informant and bodyguard. The knave exuded the fragrance of gin and an aura of skullduggery, but Jennet took comfort in the brace of silver pistols protruding from his belt.

  “Dearest sister, I wish I knew what species of peril we’re about to endure,” Ben said under his breath.

  “Darling brother, so do I,” she replied.

  Padding closed the coach door, received Newton’s instructions to depart posthaste, then rushed off to command the team. As the vehicle sped away, Jennet brushed her host’s trembling knee and spoke. “Many years ago you wrote a letter to my late aunt, Isobel Mowbray, mistress of Mirringate Hall in Ipswich. You claimed that you’d disproved the demon hypothesis.”

  “Demons?” Newton said, bristling with pique and indignation. “Demons? To talk of demons is to enter the domain of that hoodwinker Descartes.”

  “My aunt came to imagine that your disproof sprang from Aristotle’s immutables, though I realize they’ve been supplanted by a more modern chemistry.”

  “Instead of dubious Frenchmen and dead Greeks, let us discuss God instead. Would you not agree that the Trinity is a nonsensical concept? Three equals one equals three—pish!”

  “The formula lacks coherence,” Ben said, nodding.

  “I would sooner import my ale from Amsterdam than my theology from Rome,” Newton said.

  “We were speaking of a letter,” Jennet said.

  “You were speaking of a letter,” Newton said.

  “Do you remember your correspondence with my aunt?” Jennet asked. “You told her that sorcery lies all in the mind.”

  Newton screwed his features into the quintessence of contempt. “Speak not to me of sorcery, Mrs. Crompton! An obscure but vindictive philosopher once sought to soil my reputation by impersonating me at a Colchester witch-trial. I spent five hundred pounds to publish a pamphlet exposing his hoax—and revealing his other moral lapses in the bargain.”

  The coach rolled down Kensington Road and skirted the edge of Hyde Park, its verdant acreage walled by rectilinear hedges and ornamental shrubs, an interval during which Jennet decided to remain silent concerning Colchester, lest she accidentally reveal that Hooke had come to those very assizes at her request. Instead she merely said, “’Tis my ambition to approach Parliament with a potent argument against the Conjuring Statute of James the First. If you can demonstrate that wicked spirits don’t exist, prithee make your calculation public, for’t might save many a blameless soul.”

  “Tell me, Mrs. Crompton, do you not think it presumptuous to brand one soul blameless and another sinful?” Newton plucked a small leather-bound Bible from his topcoat. “Scripture holds us all congenitally corrupt. ’Tis only by his Savior’s mercy that any man avoids damnation.”

  “In my life I’ve cast a considerable quantity of first stones,” she said, nodding. “But not nearly so many as the ghastly prickers.”

  “I grasp your biblical allusion, though in my view ’tis more fruitful to plumb Scripture for prophecy than for parable. After reading the great mystic Joseph Mede, I derived a method most helpful to the endeavor.”

  “’Tis your witch calculation that interests me,” Jennet said.

  “My what calculation?”

  “Witch.”

  “Which calculation, that’s what I’m asking you.”

  “No, witch. W-i-t-c-h.”

  “I see orthography’s not your forte, Mrs. Crompton,” Newton said. “But the topic is prophecy. Mr. Franklin, have you perchance heard of Mr. Mede?”

  “Did the gentleman not argue that when the Bible speaks of days, we must interpret it as years?” Ben said.

  “Quite so.” Newton accorded Ben a nod of respect. “However, being ignorant of calendrical matters, Mede failed to bring precision to his instincts, and so I finished the job. According to the Newton-Mede formula, three hundred and fifty-four secular days, plus six equally profane hours, constitute a single biblical year.”

  Within Jennet’s body two knots formed simultaneously, one jamming her throat, the other clogging her guts. Why was Newton so deaf to her petition? Had she once again happened upon an impersonator?

  Newton turned to his bodyguard and said, “Sir, I am famished for fair.”

  From the willow basket Slocum produced a small white tablecloth, draping it over his knees. Next he lifted out an enormous pie dripping with various fats and bursting with chunks of broiled beef and braised lamb. He set the pie on his lap as he might a beloved child.

  “’Tis a veritable feast,” Ben said, “though you needn’t serve me a piece, as I am of the vegetarian persuasion.” He pulled a large green pippin from his waistcoat. “I shall satisfy my appetite thus.”

  “Thou art exceeding strange, young Franklin,” Newton said.

  “Did I just hear the peacock call the parrot a fop?” Slocum said.

  “Mr. Slocum, you press the bounds of familiarity,” Newton said.

  The ruffian grinned and reached toward his belt, drawing out a knife as large and glistery as a Merrimack River trout. “Sir Isaac, you’re the geometer in our company, but I’ll warrant I can trifurcate our meal without resort to protractor and calipers.”

  “Have at it,” Newton said.

  After stabbing the center of the pie, Slocum slashed it into three unequal servings. He delivered one portion to Newton and another to Jennet, retaining the largest for himself, then extracted from the basket a dark brown flagon of ale stoppered with a cork and bearing a hand-printed label reading Forthergill’s Ordinary.

  Jennet forced herself to take a bite of pie. As the coach started along Piccadilly Street, she again addressed Newton. “Back in America my deluded brother, the Witchfinder-Royal, practices his trade even as we speak. I beseech you to go before the House of Lords and villify the Conjuring Statute.”

  Newton ate lustily, speaking not a word. “Oft-times I envy the witchfinders,” he said at last. “They have their swimming-ropes, their pricking needles, their Paracelsus tridents, but to snare a clipper God gives you no tool save the shrewdness in your skull.”

  Slocum uncorked the ale. “We’ve trapped many a rat in our day, ain’t we, Sir Isaac?”

  “I think especially of the notorious William Chaloner,” Newton said, fixing his inky eyes on Ben. “I instructed a gangrel dog in the olfactory qualities of the debased metals used by guinea forgers, and thus did that excellent hound and I sniff our way to the blackguard’s lair.” He licked his fingers one by one. “On the eve of his appointment with the hangman, Chaloner sent me a letter begging for his life. I wrote back and said, ‘Alas, I must reject your plea, sir, for in Hell they’ve much need of your coining talents, as their currency’s fore’er bursting into flames.’”

  Slocum guffawed spontaneously, Ben let out a politic laugh, and Jennet made not a sound.

  “And what a marvelous execution!” Slocum decanted a pint of ale directly into his stomach. “They strung him up on Tyburn Tree, then brought him down gagging, hacked him open, and unraveled his bowels before the mob.”

  For several minutes the coach hurtled along Shaftesbury Avenue, and then Padding turned his team eastward onto Holborn High Street. Whilst Jennet and Ben exchanged glances of exasperation, their host explained how to employ his system in fathoming the ambiguities of the Apocalypse, the conundrums of Jeremiah, and the auguries of Daniel.

  “Daniel tells us that the Antichrist will reign for 1,290 days, that is—per the Newton-Meade formula—1,194 years,” Newton noted. “Since Popery reached its apex in Anno Domini 609, we can say with certainty that the Hebrew tribes will reclaim Israel in 1803.”

  Jennet felt like the Turtle Who Had No Shell, vulnerable in the extreme, moving naked through a country choked with brambles and thick with burrs. How naïve of her to imagine that the Newton of 1725 would be the Newton of 1688. The Jennet Stearne of 1725 certainly wasn’t the Jennet Stearne of 1688. The geometer had probably never seen his aunt burned alive or watched his daughter die of the
pox, but he’d doubtless been knocked about by Dame Fortune all the same. Such was the way of the world.

  “A similar deduction gives us forty-nine years elapsing betwixt the Jewish repatriation and the Parousia,” Newton said. “Ergo, we should all mark down the Second Coming for 1948!”

  “I wish I could be there,” Slocum said.

  “Read your Bible, say your prayers, steer clear of Popery, and you will be there, Mr. Slocum. I swear to God you will.”

  j

  EVENING BROUGHT A REDUNDANT DARKNESS to London, for the city was already mantled in fog, drizzle, and the smoke of ten thousand chimney-pots. Padding halted the coach at the place where Holborn High Street narrowed to become a stone bridge over the River Fleet, the notorious open sewer that ran from Hampstead down to Black-friars before emptying its swill into the Thames. Stepping into the night air, Jennet inhaled the impacted stench, then joined Ben, Newton, and Slocum as they descended a marble stairway and started along the west bank of the river. A true witch’s brew, she decided, aboil with eye of newt and toe of frog and fillet of fenny snake. On their left rose the battlements of Fleet Prison—destroyed in the Great Fire, Newton explained, then rebuilt at twice the size, “London being now twice as wicked a town as before.” All around them lay the Liberties, the geometer continued, those cramped but not inhospitable environs beyond the prison walls where the better sort of criminal—the panderer, the suborner, the usurer, the rakehell—was permitted to reside unmolested, “provided he compensates his would-be gaolers for the effort they expend in leaving him alone.”