“But I’m not an architect-”

“Neither was Mr. Hooke, before he was hired to design Bedlam and diverse other great Fabricks-you can bang out a house as well as he, I wager-and certainly better than that block-head who slapped Raleigh’s together.”

They’d come out into Pall Mall, which was lined with pleasant houses. Daniel was already eyeing their windows and roof-lines, collecting ideas. But Roger kept his eye on the procession, which was nearly upon them: several hundred more or less typical Londoners, albeit with a higher than usual number of Dissident, and even a few Anglican, preachers. They were carrying an effigy, dangling from the top of a long pole: a straw man dressed in ecclesiastical robes, but whorishly colored and adorned, with a huge mitre affixed to his head, and a long bishop’s crook lashed to one mitt. The Pope. Daniel and Roger stood to one side and watched for (according to Roger’s watch) a hundred and thirty-four seconds as the crowd marched by them and drained out of the street into St. James’s Park. They chose a place in clear view of both St. James’s Palace and Whitehall Palace, and planted the pole in the dirt.

Soldiers were already headed toward them from the Horse Guards’ compound between the two Palaces: a few forerunners on horseback, but mostly formations of infantrymen that had spilled out too hastily to form up into proper squares. These were in outlandish fantastickal attire, with long peaked caps of a vaguely Polish style.*Daniel at first took them for dragoons, but as they marched closer he could see nippled cannonballs-granadoes!-dangling from their ox-hide belts and bandoliers, thudding against their persons with each step.

That detail was not lost on the crowd of marchers, either. After a few hasty words, they held torches to the hem of the Pope’s robe and set it afire. Then the crowd burst, granadoe-like. By the time those grenadiers arrived, the procession had been re-absorbed by London. There was nothing for the grenadiers to do but knock the effigy down and stamp out the flames-keeping them well away from the grenades, of course.

“ ’Twas well-conceived,” was Roger Comstock’s verdict. “Those were Royal Guards-the Duke of York’s new regiment. Oh, they’re commanded by John Churchill, but make no mistake, they are York’s men.”

“What on earth do you mean when you say something like this was well-conceived? I mean, you sound like a connoisseur sipping the latest port.”

“Well, that Mobb could’ve burnt the Pope anywhere, couldn’t they? But they chose here. Why here? Couldn’t’ve chosen a more dangerous place, what with Grenadiers so near to hand. Well, the answer of course is that they wished to send a message to the Duke of York… to wit, that if he doesn’t renounce his Papist ways, next time they’ll be burning him in effigy-if not in person.”

“Even I could see, that night at Cambridge, that Gunfleet and the younger Angleseys are the new favorites at Court,” Daniel said. “While Epsom is lampooned in plays, and his house besieged by the Mobb.”

“Not so remarkable really, given the rumors…”

“What rumors?” Daniel almost added I am not the sort of person who hears or heeds such things, but just now it was difficult to be so haughty.

“That our indifferent fortune in the war is chargeable to faulty cannon, and bad powder.”

“What a marvellously convenient excuse for failure in war!”

Until that moment Daniel had not heard anyone say aloud that the war was going badly. The very idea that the English and the French together could not best a few Dutchmen was absurd on its face. Yet, now that Roger had mentioned it, there was a lack of good news, obvious in retrospect. Of course people would be looking for someone to blame.

“The cannon that burst at the ‘Siege of Maestricht,’” Daniel said, “do you reckon ’twas shoddy goods? Or was it a scheme laid by Epsom’s enemies?”

“He has enemies,” was all Roger would say.

“ ThatI see,” said Daniel, “and, too, I see that the Duke of Gunfleet is one of them, and that he, and other Papists, like the Duke of York, are a great power in the land. What I do not understand is why those two enemies, Epsom and Gunfleet, a few minutes ago were as one man in heaping obloquy on the memory of John Wilkins.”

“Epsom and Gunfleet are like two captains disputing command of a ship, each calling the other a mutineer,” Roger explained. “The ship, in this similitude, is the Realm with its established church-Anglican or Papist, depending on as Epsom’s or Gunfleet’s faction prevails. There is a third faction belowdecks-dangerous chaps, well organized and armed, but, most unnervingly, under no distinct leader at the moment. When these Dissidents, as they are called, say, ‘Down with the Pope!’ it is music to the ears of the Anglicans, whose church is founded on hostility to all things Romish. When they say, ‘Down with forced Uniformity, let Freedom of Conscience prevail,’ it gladdens the hearts of the Papists, who cannot practice their faith under that Act of Uniformity that Epsom wrote. And so at different times both Epsom’s and Gunfleet’s factions phant’sy the Dissidents as allies. But when the Dissidents question the idea of an Established Church, and propose to make the whole country an Amsterdam, why then it seems to the leaders of both factions that these Dissident madmen are lighting fuzes on powder-kegs to blow up the ship itself. And then they unite to crush the Dissidents.”

“So you are saying that Wilkins’s legacy, the Declaration of Indulgence, is a powder-keg to them.”

“It is a fuze that might, for all they know, lead to a powder-keg. They must stomp it out.”

“Stomping on me as well.”

“Only because you presented yourself to be stomped in the stupidest possible way-by your leave, by your leave.”

“Well, what ought I to’ve done, when they were attacking him so?”

“Bit your tongue and bided your time,” Roger said. “Things can change in a second. Behold this Pope-burning! Led by Dissidents, against Papists. If you, Daniel, had marched at the head of that Mobb, why, Epsom would feel you were on his side against Anglesey.”

“Just what I need-the Duke of Gunfleet as personal enemy.”

“Then prate about Freedom of Conscience! That is the excellence of your position, Daniel-if you would only open your eyes to it. Through nuances and shifts so subtle as to be plausibly deniable, you may have either Epsom or Gunfleet as your ally at any given moment.”

“It sounds cavilling and pusillanimous,” said Daniel, summoning up some words from the tables of the Philosophick Language.

Without disagreeing, Roger said: “It is the key to achieving what Drake dreamed of.”

“How!? When all the power is in the hands of the Angleseys and the Silver Comstocks.”

“Very soon you shall see how wrong you are in that.”

“Oh? Is there some other source of power I am not aware of?”

“Yes,” said Roger, “and your uncle Thomas Ham’s cellar is full of it.”

“But that gold is not his. It is the sum of his obligations.”

“Just so! You have put your finger on it! There is hope for you,” Roger said, and stepped back from the bench preparatory to taking leave. “I hope that you will consider my proposal in any event… Sir.”

“Consider it under consideration, Sir.”

“And even if there is no time in your life for houses-perhaps I could beg a few hours for my theatre-”

“Did you say theatre?”

“I’ve bought part interest in one, yes-the King’s Comedians play there-we produced Love in a Tub and The Lusty Chirurgeon. From time to time, we need help making thunder and lightning, as well as demonic apparitions, angelic visitations, impalements, sex-changes, hangings, live births, et cetera.”