“Trinity College does not allow us to have wives,” Daniel reminded him, “but I’ll take it anyway-perhaps I’ll have a niece or something who has pretty hair, and who isn’t squeamish about a bit of paganism.” For it was clear now that the hairpin was fashioned in the shape of a caduceus.

“Paganism? Then we are all pagans! It is a symbol of Mercury-patron of commerce-who has been worshipped in this cellar-and in this city-for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adopts the shape of any container-and someday, Daniel, you’ll meet a young lady who is just as adaptable. Take it.” Putting the silver coin next to the caduceus in Daniel’s palm, he folded Daniel’s fingers over the top and then clasped the fist-chilled by the touch of the metal-between his two warm hands in benediction.

DANIEL PUSHED HIS HAND-CARTwestwards down Cheapside. He held his breath as he hurried around the reeking tumulus that surrounded St. Paul’s, and did not breathe easy again until he’d passed out of Ludgate. The passage over Fleet Ditch was even worse, because it was strewn with bodies of rats, cats, and dogs, as well as quite a few plague-corpses that had simply been rolled out of wagons, and not even dignified with a bit of dirt. He kept a rag clamped over his face, and did not take it off until he had passed out through Temple Bar and gone by the little Watch-house that stood in the middle of the Strand in front of Somerset House. From there he could glimpse green fields and open country between certain of the buildings, and smell whiffs of manure on the breeze, which smelled delightful compared to London.

He had worried that the wheels of his cart would bog down in Charing Cross, which was a perpetual morass, but summer heat, and want of traffic, had quite dried the place up. A pack of five stray dogs watched him make his way across the expanse of rutted and baked dirt. He was worried that they would come after him until he noticed that they were uncommonly fat, for stray dogs.

Oldenburg lived in a town-house on Pall Mall. Except for a heroic physician or two, he was the only member of the R.S. who’d stayed in town during the Plague. Daniel took out the GRUBENDOL packet and put it on the doorstep-letters from Vienna, Florence, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Moscow.

He knocked thrice on the door, and backed away to see a round face peering down at him through obscuring layers of green window-glass, like a curtain of tears. Oldenburg’s wife had lately died-not of Plague-and some supposed that he stayed in London hoping that the Black Death would carry him off to wherever she was.

On his long walk out of town, Daniel had plenty of time to work out that GRUBENDOL was an anagram for Oldenburg.

By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge, to examine the definitions of former authors; and either to correct them, where they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds, and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see, but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

-HOBBES,Leviathan

JOHNCOMSTOCK’S SEATwas at Epsom, a short journey from London. It was large. That largeness came in handy during the Plague, because it enabled his Lordship to stable a few Fellows of the Royal Society (which would enhance his already tremendous prestige) without having to be very close to them (which would disturb his household, and place his domestic animals in extreme peril). All of this was obvious enough to Daniel as one of Comstock’s servants met him at the gate and steered him well clear of the manor house and across a sort of defensive buffer zone of gardens and pastures to a remote cottage with an oddly dingy and crowded look to it.

To one side lay a spacious bone-yard, chalky with skulls of dogs, cats, rats, pigs, and horses. To the other, a pond cluttered with the wrecks of model ships, curiously rigged. Above the well, some sort of pulley arrangement, and a rope extending from the pulley, across a pasture, to a half-assembled chariot. On the roof of the cottage, diverse small windmills of outlandish design-one of them mounted over the mouth of the cottage’s chimney and turned by the rising of its smoke. Every high tree-limb in the vicinity had been exploited as a support for pendulums, and the pendulum-strings had all gotten twisted round each other by winds, and merged into a tattered philosophickal cobweb. The green space in front was a mechanical phant’sy of wheels and gears, broken or never finished. There was a giant wheel, apparently built so that a man could roll across the countryside by climbing inside it and driving it forward with his feet.

Ladders had been leaned against any wall or tree with the least ability to push back. Halfway up one of the ladders was a stout, fair-haired man who was not far from the end of his natural life span-though he apparently did not entertain any ambitions of actually reaching it. He was climbing the ladder one-handed in hard-soled leather shoes that were perfectly frictionless on the rungs, and as he swayed back and forth, planting one foot and then the next, the ladder’s feet, down below him, tiptoed backwards. Daniel rushed over and braced the ladder, then forced himself to look upwards at the shuddering battle-gammoned form of the Rev. Wilkins. The Rev. was carrying, in his free hand, some sort of winged object.

And speaking of winged objects, Daniel now felt himself being tickled, and glanced down to find half a dozen honeybees had alighted on each one of his hands. As Daniel watched in empirical horror, one of them drove its stinger into the fleshy place between his thumb and index finger. He bit his lip and looked up to see whether letting go the ladder would lead to the immediate death of Wilkins. The answer: yes. Bees were now swarming all round-nuzzling the fringes of Daniel’s hair, playing crack-the-whip through the ladder’s rungs, and orbiting round Wilkins’s body in a humming cloud.

Reaching the highest possible altitude-flagrantly tempting the LORD to strike him dead-Wilkins released the toy in his hand. Whirring and clicking noises indicated that some sort of spring-driven clockwork had gone into action-there was fluttering, and skidding through the air-some sort of interaction with the atmosphere, anyway, that went beyond mere falling-but fall it did, veering into the cottage’s stone wall and spraying parts over the yard.

“Never going to fly to the moon that way,” Wilkins grumbled.

“I thought you wanted to be shot out of a cannon to the Moon.”

Wilkins whacked himself on the stomach. “As you can see, I have far too much vis inertiae to be shot out of anything to anywhere. Before I come down there, are you feeling well, young man? No sweats, chills, swellings?”

“I anticipated your curiosity on that subject, Dr. Wilkins, and so the frogs and I lodged at an inn in Epsom for two nights. I have never felt healthier.”

“Splendid! Mr. Hooke has denuded the countryside of small animals-if you hadn’t brought him anything, he’d have cut you up.” Wilkins was coming down the ladder, the sureness of each footfall very much in doubt, massy buttocks approaching Daniel as a spectre of doom. Finally on terra firma, he waved a hundred bees off with an intrepid sweep of the arm. They wiped bees away from their palms, then exchanged a long, warm handshake. The bees were collectively losing interest and seeping away in the direction of a large glinting glass box. “It is Wren’s design, come and see!” Wilkins said, bumbling after them.