“I beg your pardon?”

“High Church?” Meaning Anglicans of the Archbishop Laud school, who according to Drake and his ilk were really no different from Papists-and Drake believed that the Pope was literally the Antichrist. “Low Church?” Meaning Anglicans of a more Calvinist bent, nationalistic, suspicious of priests in fancy clothes. “Independents?” Meaning ones who’d severed all ties with the Established Church, and made up their own churches as it suited them. Daniel did not venture any further down the continuum, for he had already shot well beyond Roger Comstock’s limits as a theologian.

Roger threw up his hands and said merely, “Because of the unpleasantness with the Silver branch, recent generations of the Golden Comstocks have spent rather a lot of time in the Dutch Republic.”

To Daniel, the Dutch Republic meant God-fearing places like Leiden, where the pilgrims had sojourned before going to Massachusetts. But it presently came clear that Roger was talking about Amsterdam. “There are all sorts of churches in Amsterdam. Cheek by jowl. Strange as it must sound, this habit has quite worn off on us over the years.”

“Meaning what? That you’ve become used to preserving your faith despite being surrounded by heretics?”

“No. Rather, it’s as if I’ve got an Amsterdam inside of my head.”

“A what!?”

“Many different sects and faiths that are always arguing with one another. A Babel of religious disputation that never dies down. I have got used to it.”

“You believe nothing!?”

Further debate-if listening to Roger’s ramblings could be considered such-was cut off by the arrival of Monmouth, who strolled in looking offensively relaxed. Roger Comstock had to make a fuss over him for a while-jacking his boots off, letting his hair down, getting him undressed. Comstock supplied entertainment by telling the tale of chasing the killer Puritan across the Backs and into the River Cam. The more the Duke heard of this story, the more he liked it, and the more he loved Roger Comstock. And yet Comstock made so many ingratiating references to Waterhouse that Daniel began to feel that he was still part of the same merry crew; and Monmouth even directed one or two kindly winks at him.

Finally Jeffreys arrived in a freshly blocked wig, fur-lined cape, purple silk doublet, and fringed breeches, a ruby-handled rapier dangling alongside one leg, and fantastical boots turned down at the tops so far that they nearly brushed the ground. Looking, therefore, twice as old and ten times as rich as Daniel, even though he was a year younger and probably broke. He led the faltering Daniel and the implacably cheerful Comstock down the staircase-pausing there for a while to reflect upon the total impossibility of anyone’s seeing the courtyard from it-and across Trinity’s great lawn and out the gate into the streets of Cambridge, where water-filled wheel-ruts, reflecting the light of dawn, looked like torpid, fluorescent snakes. In a few minutes they reached the house of the Justice of the Peace, and were informed that he was at church. Jeffreys therefore led them to an alehouse, where he was soon engulfed in wenches. He caused drink and food to be brought out. Daniel sat and watched him tear into a great bloody haunch of beef whilst downing two pints of ale and four small glasses of the Irish drink known as Usquebaugh. None of it had any effect on Jeffreys; he was one of those who could become staggeringly drunk and yet only wax quieter and calmer.

The wenches kept Jeffreys occupied. Daniel sat and knew fear-not the abstract fear that he dutifully claimed to feel when preachers spoke of hellfire, but a genuine physical sensation, a taste in his mouth, a sense that at any moment, from any direction, a blade of French steel might invade his vitals and inaugurate a slow process of bleeding or festering to death. Why else would Jeffreys have led him to this den? It was a perfect place to get murdered.

The only way to get his mind off it was to talk to Roger Comstock, who continued with strenuous but completely pointless efforts to ingratiate himself. He circled round one more time to the topic of John Comstock, with whom-it could not be said too many times-he had nothing in common. That he had it on good authority that the gunpowder turned out by Comstock’s mills was full of sand, and that it either failed entirely to explode, or else caused cannons to burst. Why everyone, save a few self-deluding Puritans, now understood that the defeat of the first King Charles had occurred not because Cromwell was such a great general, but because of the faulty powder that Comstock had supplied to the Cavaliers. Daniel-scared to death-was in no position to understand the genealogical distinctions between the so-called Silver and Golden Comstocks. The upshot was that Roger Comstock seemed, in some way, to want to be his friend, and was trying desperately hard to be just that, and indeed was the finest fellow that a fellow could possibly be, while still having spent the night dumping the corpse of a murder victim into a river.

The ringing of church-bells told them that the Justice of the Peace was probably finished with his breakfast of bread and wine. But Jeffreys, having made himself comfortable here, was in no hurry to leave. From time to time he would catch Daniel’s eye and stare at him, daring Daniel to stand up and head for the door. But Daniel was in no hurry, either. His mind was seeking an excuse for doing nothing.

The one that he settled on went something like this: Upnor would be Judged-for good-five years from now when Jesus came back. What was the point of having the secular authorities sit in judgment on him now? If England were still a holy nation, as it had been until recently, then prosecuting Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, would have been a fitting exercise of her authority. But the King was back, England was Babylon, Daniel Waterhouse and the hapless Puritan who’d died last night were strangers in a strange land, like early Christians in pagan Rome, and Daniel would only dirty his hands by getting into some endless legal broil. Best to rise above the fray and keep his eye on the year sixteen hundred and sixty-six.

So it was back to the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity without saying a word to the Justice of the Peace. It had begun to rain. When Daniel reached the college, the grass had been washed clean.

THE DEAD MAN’S BODYwas found two days later, tangled in some rushes half a mile down the Cam. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, a scholar of Hebrew and Aramaic who had been slightly acquainted with Drake. His friends went round making inquiries, but no one had seen a thing.

There was a rowdy funeral service in a primitive church that had been established in a barn five miles from Cambridge. Exactly five miles. For the Act of Uniformity stated, among other things, that Independents could not gather churches within five miles of any Established (i.e., Anglican) parish church, and so a lot of Puritans had been busy with compasses and maps lately, and a lot of bleak real estate had changed hands. Drake came up, and brought with him Daniel’s older half-brothers, Raleigh and Sterling. Hymns were sung and homilies delivered, affirming that the victim had gone on to his eternal reward. Daniel prayed, rather loudly, to be delivered from the seething den of reptiles that was Trinity College.

Then, of course, he had to suffer advice from his elders. First, Drake took him aside.

Drake had long ago adjusted to the loss of his nose and ears, but all he had to do was turn his face in Daniel’s direction to remind him that what he was going through at Trinity wasn’t so bad. So Daniel hardly took in a single word of what Drake said to him. But he gathered that it was something along the lines of that coming into one’s chambers every night to find a different whore, services already paid for, slumbering in one’s bed, constituted a severe temptation for a young man, and that Drake was all in favor of it-seeing it as a way to hold said young man’s feet to the eternal fire and find out what he was made of.