Dark Matter

by Philip Kerr

  “Be not so damned high,” I continued. “Or take such offence at me, brother. Offer me some wine and some courtesy and you shall find me a turd become honey.”

  Charles fetched us both some wine and I did drink and then talk.

  “In truth, brother, there are so many different possibilities that I can scarce devise which to tell you first. Well then, to speak in strict chronology, it may be some forgers who are behind these murders, for one of the dead men, Daniel Mercer, had been named by others now clapped up in Newgate for coining. There is a murderous gang who are possessed of an ingenious method of forging golden guineas, and it may be that this same Mercer was murdered in order to silence him as to his involvement. The agent we set to watch this Mercer, called Kennedy, was also murdered.

  “And yet there are secret alchemical aspects to the appearanee of these murders that make Newton think there may be some hermetic part to their commission. This is most strange and most bloody, and I trust you will not pick a hole in my damned coat if I tell you it is also very frightening. Whenever I am in the Tower I have the constant apprehension that something untoward is about to happen to my person.”

  “That’s not unusual,” remarked my brother. “At least not in the Tower.”

  I nodded patiently, thinking to get out of his office soon without picking another quarrel with him.

  “Then there has been some talk of the Templars and buried treasure, which would provide almost anyone with motive enough to kill men who might have held a candle to, or hindered, its discovery, I know not which. But it’s plain that there are many who have searched for a treasure already. Barkstead, Pepys—”

  “Samuel Pepys?”

  I nodded.

  “Damned Tory,” he said.

  “Flamsteed, God alone knows who else.”

  “I see.”

  “Then there are a number of French Huguenots in the Tower.”

  “Not just the Tower. The whole country’s rotten with Frenchies.”

  “They are full of secrecy, and arouse Newton’s suspicions by virtue of their secretive ways.”

  “When does a Frenchman not arouse suspicion?” demanded Charles. “It’s their own fault, of course. They think we dislike them simply because we are their historical adversaries. But the truth is we dislike them because of their damned insolence and the airs they give themselves. Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jew or Jesuit, it makes no difference to me. Without exception I wish all Frenchmen to hell.” He paused. “What’s the favourite horse?”

  “Newton is a most scientific gentleman,” I said. “He will not hypothesise without proper evidence. And it is pointless trying to get him so to do. One might as well stick an enema up a bottle and expect it to shit. But he is most diligent in his enquiries and although he says little, I think that he weighs these matters very carefully.”

  “I am right glad to hear it,” said Charles. “Three damned murders in what’s supposed to be the most secure castle in Britain? Why, it’s a scandal.”

  “If anyone can fathom these mysteries, it is he,” I declared. “Just to be near him is to feel his mind vibrate like a Jew’s trump. But I dare not ask him too much, for he is easily put out of countenance and I become obnoxious to his opinion.”

  “So he and I share something in common, do we?” railed my brother.

  “As soon as he has arrived at some conclusion himself, I feel he will tell me, for I have his confidence. Yet not before. Omnis in tempore, brother.”

  Charles picked up his quill and, holding it over a blank sheet of paper, hesitated to write.

  “Well, that’s a pretty report for Mister Lowndes,” he said, and then threw aside the quill. “God’s blood if I can’t think what to write. I could as well describe his damned Principia.” He made a bad-tempered noise. “I looked at it, and could make neither head nor tail of it. It is amazing to me that something so clever can make me feel so stupid. Have you read it?”

  “I have tried.”

  “I can’t understand how one book can create such a stir when I can find no one who has actually read it.”

  “I don’t believe there are a dozen men in all of Europe who could say they understood it,” said I. “But they are such a dozen as might stand head and shoulders above mere mortals. And all of them are agreed it is the most important book that ever was written.”

  Charles looked pained, as well he might, for I knew he had even less of a mind for these things than I had myself.

  “Of course he’s very clever,” grumbled Charles. “I think we all know that. It says it in his Treasury file. But he’s a strange bird. His devotion to his duty is well known and much admired. But he cares not for praise, I think. Only to be told that he is right. Which he already knows well enough by himself. And which makes him a damned awkward customer to employ in Government. He is too independent.”

  “He is a strange bird, it is true,” said I. “But one that flies so high that it all but disappears from the sight of ordinary men. I think he is an eagle that soars up to the very limits of our world and perhaps beyond, to the moon and stars, to the very sun itself. I never knew his like. No man ever did.”

  “S’blood, Kit, you make him sound like one of the Immortals.”

  “It is certain that his name and reputation shall evermore endure.”

  “Would that reputation was so durable,” said Charles. “God’s sores, if he is so certain of posterity, then I do wonder how it is that he needs people like me to warn him that the world is thickly stocked with his enemies. For there are those who would wish that the Warden could be less diligent in the pursuit of his duties. Certain Tory gentlemen who would like to see him removed from office and who search for some evidence of his malpractice.”

  “Then why did they appoint him? He himself asked for his forensic duties to be given to the Solicitor General, did he not?”

  “There were some who thought that a man who had spent twenty-five years hidden away at Trinity would know little of the world. And would make a most pliable Warden. Which is why they agreed to his appointment. Do not mistake me in this, brother. I am on his side. But there are others who would find some corruption against him. Even if none were there, if you see what I mean.”

  “Faith, he’s the least corrupt man I ever met,” said I.

  “If not his corruption,” continued Charles, “then perhaps his deviation from what is considered orthodox. I hope you perceive my meaning here.”

  At this I stayed silent for a while, long enough to find my brother nodding at me as if he had found Newton out. “Yes,” he said. “I thought that might quieten you, brother. Your master is suspected of holding certain dissenting opinions, to put it mildly. And there are others who are inclined not to put it mildly. Tongues have wagged. The word ‘heresy’ has been mentioned. And he’ll be dismissed if it be proved against him.”

  “This is idle gossip.”

  “Aye, gossip. But when in this world did gossip ever go ignored? Listen closely, Kit. For this was the main purpose of my asking you here today. That you might gently warn your master to be much on his guard and prepared for the moment when his enemies shall move against him. As they certainly shall, before long.”

  All of which I did relate to Newton when I did see him in our office back at the Mint.

  “I have suspected as much for some time now,” admitted Newton. “Nevertheless I am greatly indebted to your brother. To be warned thus is to be forearmed. However, I must conclude that no concrete thing has yet been found against me, but only a heap of froth and mischief.”

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “Why, nothing,” exclaimed Newton. “Except my duty. You too. We must put it away from our minds. Do you agree?”

  “If you wish it.”

  “I do, most heartily.” He paused and, collecting the cat Melchior from the floor, set about stroking his fur like a feeder from the Shake-bag Club smoothing the goose-green plumage of his champion cock. I thought to leave him awhile alone with
his thoughts, but then he said:

  “This Major Mornay. We must look closely at him, as through a prism, and see if he be refrangible or no.”

  “You have the advantage of me, Doctor,” I told him. “For I confess I know not what you mean by that word.”

  “What?” exclaimed Newton. “Is it possible that you are ignorant of my experimentum cruets?”

  I confirmed that I was, and so we went to my house, where Newton searched in an old brass-bound chest from which he fetched a prism of his own manufacture and showed me how the ordinary daylight was a complex mixture of colours, and how, by holding a second prism within the spectrum he had made with the first, colours could be diverted or deflected from their previous course, like streams of water. This diversion Newton called refraction, and the property of refraction he called refrangibility. All prismatical colours were immutable and could not be altered by projecting upon them other colours.

  “Thus you may perceive a very useful object lesson for those of us whose occupation it is to discover matters artfully or criminally concealed: that all is never as it seems; and that purity is sometimes an illusion.”

  Newton allowed me to hold the second prism and to divert the colours in various directions to my heart’s content.

  “It may be that Major Mornay can be similarly refracted from his normal course,” I suggested, understanding his original meaning. “But what shall we use for a prism?”

  “Something broad,” mused Newton. “Something strong and pure. Yes, I do believe I have just the instrument we need. You, my dear fellow. You shall be our prism.”

  “Me? But how?”

  “Has Major Mornay ever noticed that he has been followed?”

  “Never. He does not seem to be a particularly observant man.”

  “Then you must help him. Let the Major see that he is followed and then observe how he is refracted. Will he go away from Lord Ashley’s house without going in? Will he remonstrate with you? Whom will he tell that he is being followed? And what will happen then? It may prove to be a tedious and dangerous task to do as it ought to be done, but I cannot be satisfied till we have gone through with it.”

  “I am not afraid,” said I. “I shall carry both my pistols and my sword.”

  “That is the spirit,” urged Newton, and clapped me on the shoulder. “If he asks why you are following him, say that you are not. It will only serve to divert him yet further. But be careful not to fight with him, though. If you kill him we shall learn nothing.”

  “And if he kills me?”

  “For Miss Barton’s sake, please don’t be killed, Ellis. She would hold me responsible and I should never hear the end of it. Therefore I say to you, if you pity me, Ellis, then keep yourself safe.”

  “I will, sir.”

  This information pleased me enormously, of course; and for the rest of the afternoon I diverted myself with a most elegant fancy in which Miss Barton pressed my most grievously wounded body to her bare bosom as Cleopatra mourned Mark Antony. Since my recovery from the ague, I saw her but once a week, at the weekly suppers at Newton’s house; this was hardly enough to satisfy one who loved her as much as I; yet there was no proper way for us to meet more than this and so I did construct many baroque but harmless fantasies of her such as this one.

  But not all my fantasies of Miss Barton were so innocent as this one.

  That very same evening, when Mornay came off duty, I followed him out of the Tower and straightaway I made myself as plain as a pikestaff. Not that it mattered, for he was quickly away in a hackney and heading west along Fleet Street, which I pursued in a hackney of my own. At one of the many alleys on the east side of the Fleet Ditch, between Fleet and Holborn bridges, his coach stopped. A minute later my own coach pulled up and, having handed the driver a shilling, I looked around for Mornay, but not finding him in sight, was obliged to ask the driver who had set him down. The driver snorted loudly and then shrugged.

  “He didn’t come to get married, I can tell you that much,” he said sourly. “Look, mate, I just drive them. Once they’re out the back of that coach they’re invisible.”

  “I’ll tell you for a penny,” offered the links boy who had carried a lighted taper in front of my coach to light our way through the dark streets.

  I handed over a coin.

  “He’s gone for a bit of trumpery,” said the boy. “There’s a nice buttered bun along the alley, name of Mrs. Marsh, who keeps a nunnery where the vows ain’t so strict, if you know what I mean, sir. Just ask one of those other bunters if you want to find the place.”

  The Fleet Alley was an unsavoury sort of place, though I knew it well enough from the time when I had read for the Bar. As well as being the location for many marriage houses where couples went that thought to avoid paying as much as a guinea’s tax for the privilege of getting married in a church, the Fleet was a popular area with prostitutes, especially at night, when the trade in illegal marriages dropped off a bit. Even as I walked up the alley, severaljades drew open their dresses most brazenly and, showing me their cunny parts, invited me to partake of their frowzy-smelling flesh. I have seldom cared for a threepenny upright, not even when money was scarce, for thissort of buttock often works with at wang to rob you when you are engaged with cock in cunny, so to speak. But I jested with these squirrels awhile until one of them directed me along the cobbled alley where, next to a most boisterous tavern, was the jettied frame of a house whose double-height windows, separated by friezes embellished with a number of indecent grotesques, lit up the whole alley like a giant lantern.

  I was divided in my own mind as to whether or not I should go in; but finally I decided that it was safer in than out and knocked upon the door, in which, after a moment or two, a lattice opened to reveal a woman who asked me my business. This was a common enough precaution in London. At that time it was not so very long since a Shrove Tuesday riot when some of London’s apprentices had pulled down a bawdy house with ropes, and most cruelly beaten the jilts that poured out of it like rats. But I knew the code well enough. Better than I could have described the importance of a judgement in any case at law.

  “I hear you admit of very few,” I said, with no small humility, for some of these pussies do think most highly of themselves and the power they possess between their legs. “But I am a gentleman and can present expense in advance should you wish.” And so saying I held up my purse and jangled my coins with much intent.

  “Five shillings,” said the whore. “To do what you would.”

  I handed over my ounce and waited for the jilt to draw the bolts. After a moment or two the door opened and I was admitted to a small hall by Mrs. Marsh herself who, though quite presentable, was, like many of her kind, the strangest woman in her conversation. Helping me off with my cloak—which she called a toga—and taking my hat—which she called my calm—she then pointed to my sword.

  “You had better leave the tail as well,” she said. “And the brace of wedges,” she added, meaning my two pistols. “Here, have you come for a fuck or a fight?”

  Having assured her that my intentions were strictly amorous, I enquired of her as to whether my friend Major Mornay was already in the house.

  “If you mean that officer of Guards, yes. Only we call him Monsieur Vogueavant.”

  “Why? Is he so much in the front of fashion?”

  “No, it’s on account of his little partiality,” said Mrs. Marsh.

  “I confess I did not know he had one,” said I.

  “Then you don’t know much about your friend,” she said.

  “In England,” said I, “I believe that is how one remains friends with someone.”

  “True,” she admitted, with a smile.

  I followed her through to the parlour, where all sorts of girls sat and lay around in various stages of undress. Mrs. Marsh offered me a chair and fetched me a glass of ale. But looking around the room I could not see the Major and asked her where he might be.

  “Upstairs, I’ll warrant,”
she said. “See anything you fancy, dear?”

  Even as she spoke, a servant came into the parlour carrying a large silver plate which he placed upon the table, and a young girl, having made herself naked, lay upon it and struck indecent postures for my amusement. It is certain that life has some strange tricks up its sleeve to play upon us for our general confoundment. If there be such a thing as the devil, he knows how to make sport of our inmost thoughts and feelings. For it could hardly be ignored that the girl who struck these wicked postures, and showed me her bumhole and the inside of her cunny, was like the very twin of Miss Barton, and I was repelled and fascinated by the prospect of her nakedness. This was the same sweet girl that I loved; and yet it was not. Could I ever look upon Miss Barton again and not remember this brazen whore that touched her own bubbies and rubbed her cunny parts so lasciviously? But things were about to become yet more vexatious, for, seeing my interest in the girl that postured, and thinking that by affording me the liberty to do what I wanted with her she might get me out of her house all the more quickly, Mrs. Marsh took the girl by the hand and raised her up from the silver platter and brought us both upstairs, where she left us alone in a bedchamber.

  The girl, who told me her name was Deborah, was most lovely and, drawing back the bedclothes, invited me to lie with her; but I had no courage to meddle with her, for fear of her not being wholesome, until she sold me a length of sheep’s intestine with which I could sheath my manly parts, whereupon I fucked her. It was most ignoble of me, but all the time I stayed mounted upon her and gazed upon her face, which demonstrated much enjoyment, I told myself that this was indeed Miss Barton and that I was taking my carnal pleasure of her flesh. So that when at last I ejaculated within her, it felt like the best I had ever had, and I shuddered all down my shanks like some horrid dog, before collapsing upon her breast in the manner of one shot through the heart.

  For a moment the whim of doing it thus amused me greatly.

  “Want to go again, dear?” asked Deborah.

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.”