Newton's Cannon (27 page)

“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.

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 the 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.”

“I am fortunate to have such a wise counselor,” Ben returned sarcastically. But he chewed over what Robert had said for the rest of the trip and found that it had the flavor of the wider world he had begun to taste.

The run to Northampton took most of the day, and when Ben returned he was dead tired from having helped load and unload several tons of grain. He wilted onto one of the two wooden chairs in their sparsely furnished room.

He had just closed his eyes for an instant, wondering which tavern they would go to for supper, when something tapped him on the head. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at a letter addressed to him.

“Must've been brought while we were out,” Robert told him.

Ben fumbled at the seal. His eyes darted to the signature at the bottom; when he saw it, he sucked in a disappointed breath.

The letter was signed “Hermes.” Who in the devil was Hermes? And then he realized that it was, like Janus, a pen name. More puzzled than ever, he turned his attention to the text.

Two days later, with a lump of anticipation large enough to choke on lodged in his throat, wearing a new coat and waistcoat bought with his last pound and shilling, Ben Franklin walked up the Strand, past the Sommerset and Essex houses and the grand old college of the Temple. Hackneys and sedan chairs hurried up and down the street, bearing bewigged and bepowdered gentlemen and ladies. Footmen hurried after their masters, liveried and plumed, and girls walked in groups along the sidewalk admiring the wares of hawkers and shopkeepers. The Strand was like a river of bright jewels, not certain which way it should flow.

Ben took no real note of this colorful flood of humanity around him. He saw only one thing; the right turn that wound into Devereaux Court, and above it the sign of the Grecian Coffeehouse, growing larger and more legible with each step.

The time was five hours and fifty minutes past noon.

“Awaken, O beauty in the tower,” urged a most unpleasant voice.

Everything was unpleasant: the sickening motion of the carriage; her swollen, papery tongue; the eye-pricking darts of the rising sun. She felt as if she had been drowned in brandy and resurrected in some pagan underworld. What exactly had happened last night?

“I wasn't asleep,” Adrienne growled at Crecy, who was shaking her arm.

“My pardon,” Crecy returned. “What I mean to say is, you must get out of the carriage.”

“What? Why?” For it was clear that they had not reached Versailles. Adrienne saw nothing but trees through either window.

“Because,” Crecy explained, “Nicolas and I are about to sink it into a lake.”

Adrienne blinked. She allowed Crecy to lead her out of the carriage. Her legs seemed nerveless, but she was soon seated against the rough bark of an elm.

“Stay there,” Crecy commanded.

Adrienne squinted at her surroundings. Nature's architecture surrounded them, colonnades of oak and ash supporting green arches above, where unseen birds piped and chattered cheerfully. Perhaps five paces away she could see the lake Crecy spoke of. A pond, really, but it looked deep. They were on a bluff some thirty feet above it.

Meanwhile, Nicolas was unharnessing the horses. Now and then he lifted his head and scanned the woods.

Adrienne digested her situation and found that it gave her
heartburn. She had been drunk, drunk right out of her silly mind. The duchess had done it to her, feeding her glass after glass of brandy, but she should have known better. She remembered meeting Fatio. Fatio had been even drunker than she, she guessed, and he had confessed …

Now she remembered.

“We have to return to Versailles,” she said weakly and then again, with all of the strength she could command. “We
must
return to Versailles.”

“I assure you that is what we are trying to do.”

“You don't understand,” Adrienne said. “Fatio, his formula! It's designed to—”

“Wait!” Crecy entreated, throwing a saddle over one of the horses. Where had she gotten a saddle? “Let me see if I can guess. Fatio's formula will kill
millions
of people. It's a
horror
, a
monstrosity
. The king is the
devil himself
for approving its use. Does that hit the mark?” Crecy delivered the lines like a melodramatic actor, grasping at her chest as if rending her garment.

“Veronique, I demand that you still your tongue!” Nicolas shouted. “It isn't her fault!”

“Not her fault that she was drunk? That she ran screaming about death and destruction and the king's moral character all through the Palais Royal? Well, tell me then, Monsieur Hundred Swiss, whom shall we blame?”

“Nicolas, is that true?” Adrienne gasped.

Nicolas would not meet her eyes, but he nodded reluctantly.

“Oh, no. My disguise?”

“We did our best,” Crecy answered. “We kept you between us, shouting drunkenly ourselves to try and drown you out. We kept your wig and mustache on.”