Staring at this through a miasma of the bodily fluids of herring for the thirty-fifth consecutive day, Daniel suddenly announced, “I was thinking that I might go and, God willing, visit John Wilkins.”

Wilkins had been exchanging letters with Daniel ever since the debacle of five years ago, when Daniel had arrived at Trinity College a few moments after Wilkins had been kicked out of it forever.

The mention of Wilkins did not trigger a rant, which meant Daniel was as good as there. But there were certain formalities to be gone through: “To what end?” asked Drake, sounding like a pipe-organ with numerous jammed valves as the words emerged partly from his mouth and partly from his nose. He voiced all questions as if they were pat assertions: To what end being said in the same tones as You and I are but earth.

“My purpose is to learn, Father, but I seem to’ve learned all I can from the books that are here.”

“And what of the Bible.” An excellent riposte there from Drake.

“There are Bibles everywhere, praise God, but only one Reverend Wilkins.”

“He has been preaching at that Established church in the city, has he not.”

“Indeed. St. Lawrence Jewry.”

“Then why should it be necessary for you to leave.” As the city was a quarter of an hour’s walk.

“The Plague, father-I don’t believe he has actually set foot in London these last several months.”

“And what of his flock.”

Daniel almost fired back, Oh, you mean the Royal Society? which in most other houses would have been a bon mot, but not here. “They’ve all run away, too, Father, the ones who aren’t dead.”

“High Church folk,” Drake said self-explanatorily. “Where is Wilkins now.”

“Epsom.”

“He is with Comstock. What can he possibly be thinking.”

“It’s no secret that you and Wilkins have come down on opposite sides of the fence, Father.”

“The golden fence that Laud threw up around the Lord’s Table! Yes.”

“Wilkins backs Tolerance as fervently as you. He hopes to reform the church from within.”

“Yes, and no man-short of an Archbishop-could be more within than John Comstock, the Earl of Epsom. But why should you embroil yourself in such matters.”

“Wilkins is not pursuing religious controversies at Epsom-he is pursuing natural philosophy.”

“Seems a strange place for it.”

“The Earl’s son, Charles, could not attend Cambridge because of the plague, and so Wilkins and some other members of the Royal Society are there to serve as his tutors.”

“Aha! It is all clear, then. It is all an accommodation. ”

“Yes.”

“What is it that you hope to learn from the Reverend Wilkins.”

“Whatever it is that he wishes to teach me. Through the Royal Society he is in communication with all the foremost natural philosophers of the British Isles, and many on the Continent as well.”

Drake took some time considering that. “You are asserting that you require my financial assistance in order to become acquainted with a hypothetical body of knowledge which you assume has come into existence out of nowhere, quite recently.”

“Yes, Father.”

“A bit of an act of faith then, isn’t it.”

“Not so much as you might think. My friend Isaac-I’ve told you of him-has spoken of a ‘generative spirit’ that pervades all things, and that accounts for the possibility of new things being created from old-and if you don’t believe me, then just ask yourself, how can flowers grow up out of manure? Why does meat turn itself into maggots, and ships’ planking into worms? Why do images of sea-shells form in rocks far from any sea, and why do new stones grow in farmers’ fields after the previous year’s crop has been dug out? Clearly some organizing principle is at work, and it pervades all things invisibly, and accounts for the world’s ability to have newness -to do something other than only decay.”

“And yet it decays. Look out the window! Listen to the ringing of the bells. Ten years ago, Cromwell melted down the Crown Jewels and gave all men freedom of religion. Today, a crypto-Papist*and lackey of the Antichrist*rules England, and England’s gold goes to making giant punch-bowls for use at the royal orgies, and we of the Gathered Church must worship in secret as if we were early Christians in pagan Rome.”

“One of the things about the generative spirit that demands our careful study is that it can go awry,” Daniel returned. “In some sense the pneuma that causes buboes to grow from the living flesh of plague victims must be akin to the one that causes mushrooms to pop out of the ground after rain, but one has effects we call evil and the other has effects we call good.”

“You think Wilkins knows more of this.”

“I was actually using it to explain the very existence of men like Wilkins, and of this club of his, which he now calls the Royal Society, and of other such groups, such as Monsieur de Montmor’s salon in Paris-”

“I see. You suppose that this same spirit is at work in the minds of these natural philosophers.”

“Yes, Father, and in the very soil of the nations that have produced so many natural philosophers in such a short time-to the great discomfiture of the Papists.” Reckoning it could not hurt his chances to get in a dig at Popery. “And just as the farmer can rely on the steady increase of his crops, I can be sure that much new work has been accomplished by such people within the last several months.”

“But with the End of Days drawing so near-”

“Only a few months ago, at one of the last meetings of the Royal Society, Mr. Daniel Coxe said that mercury had been found running like water in a chalk-pit at Line. And Lord Brereton said that at an Inn in St. Alban’s, quicksilver was found running in a saw-pit.”

“And you suppose this means-what.”

“Perhaps this flourishing of so many kinds-natural philosophy, plague, the power of King Louis, orgies at Whitehall, quicksilver welling up from the bowels of the earth-is a necessary preparation for the Apocalypse-the generative spirit rising up like a tide.”

“That much is obvious, Daniel. I wonder, though, whether there is any point in furthering your studies when we are so close.”

“Would you admire a farmer who let his fields be overrun with weeds, simply because the End was near?”

“No, of course not. Your point is well taken.”

“If we have a duty to be alert for the signs of the End Times, then let me go, Father. For if the signs are comets, then the first to know will be the astronomers. If the signs are plague, the first to know-”

“-will be physicians. Yes, I understand. But are you suggesting that those who study natural philosophy can acquire some kind of occult knowledge-special insight into God’s Creation, not available to the common Bible-reading man?”

“Er… I suppose that’s quite clearly what I’m suggesting.”

Drake nodded. “That is what I thought. Well, God gave us brains for a reason- notto use those brains would be a sin.” He got up and carried his plate to the kitchen, then went to a small desk of many drawers in the parlor and broke out all of the gear needed to write on paper with a quill. “Haven’t much coin just now,” he mumbled, moving the quill about in a sequence of furious scribbles separated by long flowing swoops, like a sword-duel. “There you are.”

Mr. Ham pray pay to the bearer one pound I say ?1-of that money of myne which you have in your hands upon sight of this Bill

Drake Waterhouse

London

“What is this instrument, Father?”

“Goldsmith’s Note. People started doing this about the time you left for Cambridge.”