“So a clever fellow could get the Pyx open in an hour, if he had your key, by ‘picking’ the other two locks. But without your key-impossible.”

“Just so, my lord,” said Newton. He was distracted by violent stirrings in his peripheral vision, and glanced over to see Roger Comstock now frantically waving his hands about and drawing his finger convulsively across his throat. But Newton seemed to take these gestures as an inexplicable roadside mum-show.

Bolingbroke noticed, too. “My lord Ravenscar has imbibed too much coffee again and come down with the spasms,” he guessed. Then he turned his attention back to Newton. “Pray take your impregnable lock away, Sir Isaac.” He turned around and gestured at a pair of fellows who were standing together in a corner, each nervously fingering an elaborate key. “The Warden of the Mint has joined us,” Bolingbroke said, “and even the Lord Treasurer has deigned to send a representative bearing his key. We would view the contents of the Pyx.”

It was three-quarters filled with a jumble of leathern packets. Newton’s paper-packet had tumbled down into a corner. He bent down to retrieve it; and though Newton was oblivious to this, others in the room noted that the eyes of White and Bolingbroke tracked every movement of Newton’s, as if they were expecting to catch him out in some sleight-of-hand.

“Is this what you expected to see when the lid was opened, Sir Isaac?” asked Bolingbroke.

“It appears to be in order, my lord.” Newton reached into the Pyx a second time, plucked out a Sinthia, glanced at it, and dropped it back in. He plucked out another. This time, he hesitated.

“Is everything quite all right, Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke inquired, the soul of gentlemanly concern.

Sir Isaac raised the Sinthia higher, closer to window-light, and turned it this way and that.

“Sir Isaac?” Bolingbroke repeated. The Chamber was very still. Bolingbroke flicked his eyes at the Warden of the Mint, who stepped forward and stood on tiptoe to peer over Sir Isaac’s shoulder. Newton had frozen.

The Warden of the Mint’s eyes widened.

Newton dropped the packet into the Pyx as if it had caught fire. He staggered back, towards the Marquis of Ravenscar, like a blinded duellist seeking refuge among his friends.

“My lord,” explained the Warden, “something’s a bit queer about that last packet. The handwriting-it looked forged, somehow.”

Charles White raised a knee and kicked the lid of the Pyx. It closed with a boom like a cannon-shot.

“I say that the Pyx is evidence in a criminal matter,” Bolingbroke proclaimed. “Put the locks on it again, and bring out my seal. I shall set my seal on this evidence to show any further tampering. Mr. White shall return the Pyx to its customary station and use in the Tower but he shall keep it under heavy guard, twenty-four hours a day. I shall bear these tidings to the other Lords of the Council. We may safely presume that the Council will order a Trial of the Pyx forthwith.”

“Good my lord,” said Peer, stepping forward, “what evidence suggests that such tampering occurred? The Warden has asserted that one of the packets looked a bit queer, but this hardly constitutes proof. Sir Isaac himself has said nothing at all.”

“Sir Isaac,” said Bolingbroke, “what is perfectly clear to most of us, is impenetrable to this Whig. He requires evidence. No man is more eligible to testify in such a matter than you. Is it your testimony, before this assembly, that all of the coins in this Pyx were minted in the Tower, under your direction, and placed therein by your hand? I remind you that every coin in the Pyx is subject to assay during a Trial, and that you are under an indenture to Her Majesty; the consequences of a failed Trial are severe.”

“By ancient tradition,” said Roger Comstock behind his hand, “false coiners are punished by amputation of the hand that did the deed, and castration.” From anxiety he had moved on briefly to horror; but now from horror to fascination.

Newton tried to answer, but his voice did not work for a moment, and only a bleat came out. Then he swallowed, grimacing at the pain of swallowing, and got out the words: “I cannot so testify, my lord. But without a more thorough examination-”

“There shall be one anon, at a Trial of the Pyx.”

“I beg my lord’s pardon,” said Peer, who had out of some blind herd instinct blundered out to act as scape-goat for his entire Party, “but why bother to have a Trial of the Pyx, if the Pyx has been tampered with?”

“Why, to get all false coins out of it, so that we shall know that all coins put in thereafter shall be genuine samples of the Mint’s produce-and not frauds put in as a desperate gambit to hide long-standing flaws in the coinage!”

“The poetry of it!” Roger exclaimed, though these reflections were concealed under a hubbub, the sound of Parties and Factions mobilizing and arming. “Sir Isaac dares not assert that the Pyx is clean, for fear that Jack may have salted it with debased coins-which would be found out at the Trial, and laid to Sir Isaac. To save his hand and his balls, he must admit that it has been compromised; but in doing so, he calls his own coins into question, and names himself as a suspect in the assault on the Tower!”

“My lord,” said a Tory, “it is suggested that a year’s coin-samples are now simply gone-stolen by Jack the Coiner! If that is so, how can we gauge the present soundness of Her Majesty’s coinage? Our enemies in the world shall say that the Mint has spewed out false and debased guineas for a year or more.”

“It is a question of extraordinary gravity,” Bolingbroke allowed, “and I say that it is a State affair, since the security of our State is founded on Trade, which is founded upon our currency. If it is true that the conspiracy has deprived us of our Pyx, why then we can only prove the soundness of our money by collecting samples of coins that are in circulation, and bringing them in for assay.”

Ravenscar had told Newton not to pick up any handkerchiefs dropped in his way by Bolingbroke: advice that Newton, with the serene confidence of a man who had nothing to hide, had steadfastly ignored. Now was not the time for him to mend his ways. “But my lord, I protest!” he said, “there is a reason why the method you have just described is never used, and it is that a sampling of coins in circulation shall perforce include a number-an unknowable number-of counterfeits, slipped into circulation by the likes of Jack Shaftoe. ’Twere unfair and unreasonable to lay at my feet an assay of counterfeits!”

Bolingbroke seemed impressed by Newton’s sheer consistency. “Sir Isaac, as a part of my investigations, I have read an Indenture with your name on it, kept under lock and key in the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey, just across the way. We can stroll over and have a look at it, if you should like to review its contents. But I can tell you that, in this solemn contract, you are sworn to pursue and prosecute coiners. Until now I have assumed that you were tending to your duties. Now you astonish this Chamber by testifying to the contrary! Tell me, Sir Isaac, if we make an assay of circulating coins, and discover that they are rife with base metal, is it because you have failed in your duty to prosecute coiners? Or is it because you have debased the coinage produced by the Mint, to enrich yourself and your Whig backers? Or did you debase the coinage first and then allow coiners to flourish in the Realm, so as to cover your traces? Sir Isaac? Sir Isaac? Oh well, he has quite lost interest.”

In fact, Sir Isaac had lost consciousness, or was well on his way to it. During the last speech of Bolingbroke he had gradually softened and crumpled to the floor of Star Chamber, like a candle placed in an oven. He was breathing fast, and his extremities had gone into violent trembling, as if he were having fever-chills; but the hands pressed to his forehead felt a dry and cool brow and thumbs touched to the base of his heaving neck were drawn back in alarm at the furious drum-beat of his pulse. He was not so much sick as seized in an unstoppable paroxysm of mad, animal terror. “Get him into my coach,” commanded Roger Comstock, “and take him to my house. Miss Barton is there. She knows her uncle well, and she shall tend to him better than-God forbid-any physician.”