Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  After months in the country, the trip to the palace through Paris was something of a shock. Versailles, Marly, Triannon, Fountainbleu—the palaces the king frequented were all reflections of Louis' fancy and fantasy.

  Paris was real—and frightening. The sullen faces were more hostile than ever. One person even threw a rock at their carriage. When they at last reached the Palais Royal, it loomed over them, an ancient and potent mistress who would not be neglected forever. Louis believed that the heart of France was where he was; the Palais Royal quietly pronounced that a lie.

  Inside, Paris and its ragged masses were again forgotten. Glowing ephemeral things bobbed in the air, luminescent dandelion puffs dancing to a brittle elfin music. Water jetting from the mouth of a triton fountain became ice and shattered back into its basin as squealing courtiers plunged their hands into the shards. Where Louis used science to re-create the grandeur of his past, the duke of Orléans delighted in the toys it could produce. Adrienne found herself intrigued and saddened by this waste of scientific effort and talent.

  Crecy presented their invitation. The three of them moved onto the floor, where dancing had already begun. Hundreds of people danced, overlooked the dancing from the gallery above, or stood milling about. Glimpses of side chambers showed courtiers at cards or billiards. All wore fantastic masks, many in the Venetian carnival style, many more outrageous.

  “And now?” she asked Crecy as they made their way through the crowd, beginning to relax. Though she had identified several men she knew to be of the king's secret police, her worries about being noticed in such an immense crowd were fast fading. Indeed, they would be lucky to find Fatio in such a swarm.

  “Now, enjoy yourself,” Crecy remarked. “Let me do the work.”

  “Enjoy myself?” Adrienne protested, but at precisely that moment an arm slipped through her own.

  “Dance with me, Monsieur,” a delighted voice lisped into her ear. The music had just changed to a minuet, and Adrienne found herself staring into a delicate black mask that made no real effort to hide the duchess of Orléans.

  “No!” Adrienne said, trying to pull away.

  “My dear, don't cause a commotion! Dance with me!”

  “Someone will notice. The police!”

  “They will only notice if you do not dance,” the duchess insisted.

  In a moment she was in the line, and the duchess was smiling across the floor at her as the first couple began the stately minuet.

  “My God, I can't believe it,” Adrienne gasped, stumbling into the courtyard with the duchess. Adrienne realized she was more than slightly intoxicated. She had never drunk brandy before. How could she have known it would be so much stronger than wine? She finished what was in her cup as the duchess poured her a bit more.

  “Such a wonderful partner, sir,” the duchess complimented, curtseying. “You should dance more often.”

  “Indeed,” Adrienne said. After that first dance with the duchess she realized that people really did believe her to be a man. She realized further that she was not the only person clothed contrary to her sex; more than one man was dressed as a woman. Adrienne knew that the transvestites had been cast out of Versailles nearly twenty years before, but it had never occurred to her to wonder where they had gone.

  Apparently the court of the duke of Orléans was one place, which was fitting since the duke's father, Louis' brother, had been the beloved lord of such men.

  “What are you thinking, dear?” the duchess asked, leaning against one of the white pillars that supported the inner eaves of the palace. “Your face grew long. And you seemed to be enjoying yourself a moment ago.”

  “I was. It's only … This thing the Korai have asked of me— to be the king's mistress and marry him—it is a very hard thing.”

  “Marriage is often hard.”

  “I know. But the king is …” She frowned. “I'm drunk.”

  “Not drunk enough, I think,” the duchess remarked, pouring her another finger of brandy.

  “No, I can't.”

  “No, you must,” the duchess insisted. “For your own good.”

  Adrienne took the newly filled glass, stared at it, and then took another sip. “He is old,” she said at last. “And mad.”

  The duchess took her hand and squeezed it. “Never say that, dear,” she chided, gently.

  “You have not been with him. You have not lain with him. He believes himself to be young!”

  “Poor dear,” the duchess sighed. Then she brightened, and Adrienne now recognized the future of her own smile—as false as the masks they both wore. “You must learn what all of us at court learned, Adrienne—to gather your pleasures while you can. You must dance, and you must take lovers, and you must be happy when you are able, or you will wither.”

  “Those aren't the things that make me happy,” Adrienne said.

  “Of course they are, dear. Look at how much fun you have had tonight. And how many things you have not tried. A lover for instance.”

  “I couldn't,” Adrienne said. “I won't. And what would be the use? What point of lying with another man?”

  “My dear,” the duchess said, “you must not think that all men are the same in that respect. There are some with whom you might enjoy it quite a lot. That handsome young guard, for instance.”

  “No, I don't think so,” Adrienne replied, though she had a sudden image of Nicolas and knew that she lied. “Thank you for your concern, but I cannot listen to you in this matter.”

  “Dear, you are young. You have a body with every part of it at its height. Do not waste that, for you will not be young for very long, I assure you. Not in Versailles, you won't be.” She put her arm around Adrienne's shoulder. “See what you are doing right now, worrying about things you can't help? You are wasting the pleasure you could be having now by contemplating miseries yet unborn. You are an intelligent woman, Mademoiselle, when it comes to the science, but in this you are a stupid girl. Come, drink your brandy. We have a card game to attend.”

  By the time they reached the card game, Adrienne was having trouble standing steadily.

  She frowned. She had missed something. She was being introduced to someone.

  In a sharp wave of clarity she realized that it was Fatio she was being introduced to. The mathematician wore a small mask across his eyes only—his own nose was more impressive than any carved impostor.

  “It is no matter, sir,” Fatio said, bowing from his seat, apparently responding to her failure to acknowledge him. Was she that obviously drunk? “I am also in my cups tonight,” he went on. “It is good to meet the baron.”

  Baron? Oh yes, she was supposed to be an Austrian, was she not, with little command of French? Baron von Klimmer, or some such nonsense.

  “And I, you,” she said. Crecy was there, she saw, as well as several men and women she did not know. Crecy was carrying out the introductions as well as dealing the cards. Adrienne was sure she gasped aloud. Crecy had unbuttoned her waistcoat and shirt, leaving no doubt whatever that she was not a man. Fatio's face was flushed, and Adrienne suddenly realized that Crecy's hand was beneath the table.

  “Please take a seat, sir,” Fatio said magnanimously. “Play a hand of reversi.”

  Adrienne sat, stupefied in more ways than one.

  “Monsieur de Duillier is a famous mathematician,” Crecy remarked, addressing the duchess. Adrienne blinked, for Crecy pitched her voice low like a man, and recognition struck her like lightning.

  Crecy! It had been Crecy at the canal, Crecy who was her kidnapper, not a man at all.

  The room spun. And she must pay attention, for Fatio was speaking.

  “Not so famous,” Fatio demurred. Both Crecy's hands had reappeared, and cards were sliding across the table. Adrienne stared at them stupidly, realizing Crecy had been dealing her cards for some time. Her scalp tingled, recalling the hours on horseback, the violent intimacy.

  Confession. Tomorrow she must go to confession.

  She squeezed her
eyes shut, but the darkness behind them was cyclonic. Pay attention!

  “No, do not pretend,” Crecy replied to Fatio. “We have all heard of your fabulous invention, the one which will sweep our enemies into the sea.”

  “Oh, I shouldn't talk about that,” Fatio murmured, swallowing more of whatever was in his cup.

  “But of course not,” the duchess interrupted. “It is a state secret, I should think.”

  “The king …” Fatio said, slurring badly, “the king frightens me. I am not afraid to admit it. But I will please him! I will please them all, and then they will see!”

  “What will they see, sir?” Adrienne blurted.

  For an instant Fatio's clouded eyes sharpened. “Do I … do I know you, sir?” he asked.

  “But of course, my dear,” Crecy interposed. “You were just introduced.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course. What will they see? They will see that I understand Newton better than anyone. That no one grasps his equations as I do. They will see—” He grinned drunkenly and went on. “—they will see that Lead and Tin have not gobbled all their children. They will see the dogs of Iron sent baying by their master in toward Earth! They will see the ellipsis straighten. They will see the cannon, by God! Look to the west on October twenty-fourth, my friends. You will see something then!”

  “I'm sure we shall,” Crecy said, hand beneath the table again.

  “No, they will,” Fatio insisted. “He will.”

  “The king?” the duchess asked.

  Fatio laughed. “Yes, yes, the king: the king of science, the king of calculus!”

  “Newton?”Adrienne asked suddenly.

  “You see?” Fatio nearly shrieked. “The baron knows! But now they shall know me! I shall steal a cannonball from God's own arsenal and smite him with it.”

  “Using what powder, sir?”Adrienne managed.

  Fatio laughed again, and nearly choked as he finished his glass.

  “Gravity, of course,” he snapped, and then, looking down at his cards, he smiled. “No, I have said too much. The time will come.”

  But Adrienne knew. Now she knew, and she had been stupid not to know all along. But her mind had not been able to conceive of something so monstrous, not coming from sweet, sympathetic Fatio. But it was true.

  She had long known of his obsession with Newton, his thirst for validation and revenge. But she had never suspected that he was willing to kill a million people or more to quench that thirst.

  October twenty-fourth. Her wedding day.

  Adrienne bolted up from the table and fled to the yard, and then things became very confused. Somehow her feet missed the ground, and she sprawled on the green.

  “Monster!” she shouted. “The king is a monster!”

  Behind her eyelids the ocean of space surged, whirled, sucked all into the spiral dance, but she saw what Fatio meant, saw the comet plucked from its path and sent hurling toward Earth. Because Louis told him to. Louis, the monster.

  She struggled to her feet as the courtyard seemed to dim, flatten, recede. Was everyone staring at her? Were they laughing? A frowning face bent near, and she recognized the blurred features of the police lieutenant she had seen earlier.

  “Sir?” he asked.

  “You have to stop him,” Adrienne managed. “The dogs of iron …”

  And then her mouth spoke on as her mind went elsewhere, sinking into the cold depths of space, darkness, forgetfulness.

  5.

  Hermes

  Ben lay on the narrow bed and wondered at the perfection of the universe. Sarah's apartment was pitch dark, but his palm smoothed over the flawless curve of her thigh, the divine junction of thigh and hip, the convex miracle of her belly. Surely there was no more marvelous thing in creation than her body, her lips, her hair.

  Making love was nothing at all as he had imagined it. He thought it would be an ethereal sort of thing, a sublime embrace. That's how the books he had read had spoken of it. Instead, it was a damp, musky, salty, awkward business.

  He loved it. Better, he felt not the slightest bit of guilt.

  “Thank you,” he said, surprised that he could even speak, that God hadn't stolen that to compensate him for what he had just gained.

  “Ben …” Sarah began, and then stopped. He wished he could see her face.

  “Yes? Sarah?” Her name sounded perfect, too.

  “Ben, y' should go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because y'r a nice young fellow.” She sighed. “Because y' weren't mean or rough.” She chuckled throatily. “Because y'give me the money first. Now, please, leave while y'can.”

  Ben's spine prickled, despite the lethargic warmth that seemed to insulate it. “Am I in danger?” he whispered.

  “Yes.”

  He began patting around, feeling for his clothes. “I've been stupid, haven't I?” he muttered.

  “Just naïve,” she answered, a bit wistfully. “Now go. I'm surprised y' made it this long.”

  “Can I have another kiss?” He decided he could button the waistcoat later.

  “For another shilling.”

  Ben quickly counted out five, and she kissed him warmly on the lips.

  “There. Now go, y' butter-head.”

  He went down the dark, dank stairwell, through the heavy battered door, out onto the cold cobbles of the street.

  He made three steps before a hand fell on his shoulder.

  “See here,” a voice rasped, “what'v ye been up to doin'?”

  Ben jerked away so violently that he completely lost balance and stumbled wildly backward—hitting something warm and soft. Something that grunted.

  “Here,” the voice said. “Ben, it's me!”

  Looking up in the dim light he could just make out Robert's grinning face.

  Ben rolled away from whomever he had fallen on. “Who's that?” he gasped when he could find the spare breath.

  “That's the fellow as was gonna slit y'r throat and drop you in the Thames,” Robert remarked nonchalantly.

  “Let's get out of here,” Ben gulped. “Please. Now.”

  “As you command,” Robert said sardonically, sweeping off his hat in a mock bow.

  Ben didn't speak again until they had reached Fleet Street and the relative comfort of the streetlights and midnight traffic.

  “Where were you? Why didn't you meet me at the coffeehouse? And why didn't you tell me about such coffeehouses?”

  “Would you have gone?”

  Ben grabbed Robert by the lapels of his worn brown coat. “You planned it! Left me sitting in there knowing what would happen.”

  “Oh, is that so?” Robert asked, scratching his head thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose it could be.”

  “And what about the throat cutter?”

  “That's why I was down the street the whole time, watchin' fer y'ta go with one of 'em. Damn, but you took your time about gettin' interested.”

  “I didn't know.”

  “For such a bright lad, the obvious has a way of eludin' you.”

  Ben wondered if he should be angry or grateful. He finally settled on saying nothing at all.

  Another week passed, and Ben began to despair of ever hearing from Newton. He spent his time trying to reconstruct the essentials of the formula he and John Collins had composed, enlarging upon it where he could. Much to Robert's chagrin, he also spent a significant portion of his remaining money on a copy of the Principia to refresh his memory, determined that when he did meet the great man at last, he would not appear completely foolish.

  He sought employment as well, but with no success. Fortunately Robert managed to get a job driving a locomotive, one of the noisy steam-driven machines that rattled in and out of London hauling cargo overland. Robert was sufficiently grateful to Ben for sharing his money in renting the apartment and feeding them for the first few weeks that he was willing to support Ben for a time in compensation. Indeed, Robert still owed him a bit more than twenty pounds.

  He consoled himself with th
e knowledge—gleaned from daily papers in less adventurous coffeehouses—that the war against France was going no worse, and in fact, that gains were being made on the continent. James the Pretender, with French support, was still holding Scotland, but there was no evidence of any terrible new weapon.

  “This whole business with the Pretender seems absurd to me,” he told Robert one day when, lacking anything better to do, he had gone along on the locomotive ride out to Northampton. The carriage they rode in perched atop the water tank, a riveted steel cylinder about the size of a horse. The source of motion was a steam engine whose massive pistons cranked equally gargantuan wheels. Nestled into the steam engine one could just see the torus and cylinder of the fervefactum that boiled the water, and behind the carriage rose the funnel-shaped device that separated water from the air to keep the tank full. He delighted in the machine. It was a joy to behold science in motion, to see theory in practice; but it was better still to ride on a great, steam-snorting beast.

  “What's to understand?” Robert asked. “James claims that the British throne is his, and the House of Hanover claim that it is theirs. So they fight.”

  “Yes, but the issue is really one of religion, true? James is a Catholic, otherwise everyone would acknowledge him as king.”

  “Yes, of course,” Robert affirmed. “And George is a Protestant.”

  “It seems so silly—all this fighting and killing over religion.”

  “What they fight and kill over is power, Ben. Religion's just the clothes they dress it in whilst they do it. If they were all atheists, there'd still be a war. That's the real way of the world.”

  “Then I suppose George imports his troops from Holland and Bavaria because he likes the cut and color of their uniforms, rather than because he fears some of his own British soldiers might have Jacobite hearts.”

  Robert shrugged. “I don't say as some people might not feel religion is worth fightin' over. It's them that kings and ministers send out whilst they smoke their pipes and make shake with their mistresses. But mark, that's not the same motives as drives the engines of George or James or Walpole.”