"I do not know what the word supernatural means, really," said Isaac, bemused. "But you are not far wrong."

"I do not wish to be at all wrong. So pray correct me, sir."

"King Solomon the Wise, builder of the Temple, was the forefather of all Alchemists," Isaac said. "Set upon the throne, a young man, fearing himself unequal to the task, he made a thousand burnt offerings to the LORD; who then came to him in a dream and said, ‘Ask what I shall give thee.' And Solomon asked not for wealth or power but for an understanding heart. And it pleased the LORD ‘so well that Solomon had desired this thing, that he gave him an understanding heart ‘so that there hath been none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall arise the like unto thee.' First Kings, Chapter Three, Verse 12. Thus Solomon's name became a byword for wisdom: Sophia. What is the name we give to those who love wisdom? Philosophers. I am a philosopher; and though I can never equal the wisdom of Solomon—for it says quite plainly in the chapter and verse I have quoted, that no man who came after Solomon would achieve like wisdom—I can strive to discover some of what is today hidden but was once in plain view in the Temple of Wisdom that Solomon built.

"Now it says, too, that the LORD gave Solomon riches, even though Solomon had not asked for them. Solomon had gold, and moreover he had an understanding heart, so that the secrets hidden within matter—such as I have discoursed of in window-glass and acids—could scarcely have been hidden from his gaze for long. The lucubrations of latter-day Alchemists such as I must be little more than crude mockery of the Great Work that Solomon the Wise undertook in his Temple. For thousands of years, Alchemists have sought to re-discover what fell into obscurity when Solomon came to the end of his years in Jerusalem. Most of their efforts have been unavailing; yet a few of the great ones—Hermes Trismegistus, Sendigovius, the Black Monk, Didier, Artephius—came to similar, if not identical, conclusions as to the process that must be followed to achieve the Great Work. I am very close now—" And here Newton faltered for the first time in several minutes, and took his gaze away from Eliza, and with a little nod and the faintest trace of a smile gathered Fatio once more into the discourse. "We are very close now to achieving this thing. I am told, my lady, that there are those who hold my Principia Mathematica in some high regard; but I say to you that it shall be nothing but a preface to what I shall bring forth next, provided I can only move the Work a short step further.

"It would be of immense help to us in this if we had even a small sample of the original gold given to Solomon by the LORD."

"Now I understand it at last," Eliza said. "That gold that was taken by Jack Shaftoe and his pirates from Bonanza is believed, by you and other Alchemists, to have been a sample of King Solomon's gold, somehow preserved down through the ages. It is somehow different from the gold that the slaves of the Portuguese dig from the earth in Brazil—"

"The theory of how it differs has been developed in more detail than you might care to listen to, particularly if you hold Alchemy to be nonsensical," said Fatio. "It has to do with how the particles—the atoms—of gold are composed, one to the next, to form networks, and networks of networks, et cetera, et cetera, and what occupies, or may pass into, the holes in the said nets. Suffice it to say that the Solomonic Gold, though it looks the same, is slightly heavier than mundane gold. And so even those who know nothing of the Art may recognize a sample of this Gold as extraordinary merely by weighing it, and computing its density. A large trove of such gold was found in Mexico some years ago and brought back to Spain by the ex-Viceroy, who intended to sell it to Lothar von Hacklheber, but—"

"I know the rest. But what do you phant'sy was King Solomon's Gold doing in New Spain?"

"There is a tradition that Solomon did not perish, but rather went into the East," said Newton. "You may credit it, or not; but what is beyond dispute is that the Viceroy was in possession of gold that was heavier than the ordinary."

"And you are so certain of this because—?"

"Lothar von Hacklheber sent three assayers across the ocean to New Spain to verify it beyond any shadow of doubt."

"Hmm. No wonder he was so vexed when Jack snatched it from under his nose!"

"May I inquire, my lady, whether you have heard from this Jack Shaftoe recently?"

"He sent me a present in a box, a year and a half ago, but it had quite spoiled in transit, and was buried. Mr. Newton, you may be assured that I, and certain acquaintances of mine in France, are bending all efforts to establish Jack's whereabouts, but this is well-nigh impossible, as he seems to be flitting all about Araby trading. When I learn anything definite, I shall—"

But here Eliza broke off, for she'd been interrupted. Not by any utterance, for both Fatio and Newton were silent, but rather by the expressions that had come over the faces of Newton and Fatio, and the wild looks that were passing between them. Newton in particular seemed too preoccupied to speak.

Fatio, coming alive to the fact that the room had been silent for rather a long while, explained: "It would be a grievous misfortune if these pirates, ignorant of what they had, coined the Solomonic Gold and spent it. For then it would be dispersed all over the world, and melted down—con-fused—and commingled with ordinary gold, and dispersed to the four winds." Fatio turned his eager gaze back on Newton. His face collapsed, and he launched himself out of his chair, alighting on a knee next to the savant. Newton had raised one trembling hand and clapped it over his eyes. He was shifting about in his chair without letup, almost writhing. Sweat had beaded up on his brow, and a vein in his temple was throbbing at a tempo twice or thrice Eliza's pulse. In all, it seemed Newton was devoting every ounce of will to restraining his body's wild urge to break out into a frenzy. For the moment, his will prevailed, but only just, and he could attend to nothing else.

Eliza might have supposed that Newton was suffering a stroke; but the way Fatio perched next to him, stroking his hand, suggested that this was not the first time it had happened.

Eliza stood. "Shall I summon a physician?"

"I am his physician," was Fatio's answer. Odd that, from a mathematician. But perhaps he'd been reading medicine-books.

To oblige the patient and his physician to rise and bid her a courtly farewell did not seem the wisest course. Eliza curtseyed and walked out of the room.

HALF AN HOUR LATER, she was in the House of the Golden Mercury. The office was full of English lawyers—not stacked lock-boxes containing three tons of silver, as she had every right to expect. Indeed, the lawyers out-numbered their clients: four (presumably German) bankers. Of these she had met three before, when she had stopped by with the Marquis of Ravenscar to present the Bills. The fourth was unfamiliar, and older. Eliza supposed that he had come in from Amsterdam.

"Is this a trading-house, or an art gallery?" Eliza inquired, if only to break the silence that had been her only greeting. "For I expected to see silver pennies stacked to the ceiling. Instead of which I am confronted by a Still Life such as has not been seen since the heyday of the Dutch Masters."

No one was particularly amused. But it did look like a group portrait. This office was scarcely large enough to serve as a muffin-shop. It contained two heavy desks, or bancas, and diverse shelves where ledgers and rolled documents were stored. A strong-box on the floor served as a small reserve of cash; but this was not the sort of place that customarily dealt in large volumes of specie. Such would normally be handled through one of the larger goldsmith's shops, or Apthorp's Bank. A narrow door in the back gave way to a staircase that executed an immediate fierce turn and then shot diagonally upwards through the middle of the office, reducing its volume by one quarter; it was on these stairs that two weeks ago the strong-boxes containing the first installment of the silver had been stacked. But no strong-boxes were there now. Rather, the first stair was claimed by the old banker, who was using it as a sort of dais from which to glower at the entire contents of the London branch of the House of Hacklheber. The old banker was stout, and his bulk entirely filled the width of the stairway, so that as he stood there, just on the far side of the narrow doorway, it looked as if he had been chivvied and tamped into a coffin standing vertically on end with its lid swung open. His jowls bulged like flour-sacks, forming profound vertical crevices to either end of his upper lip, which was as high, white, and sheer as the Cliffs of Dover.