“You have seen their like before. Whig gentlemen’s sons,” said Daniel, and stopped. “If we rambled deeper into the countryside we should see more like them, scattered about here and there, in parks and hamlets, or on high places where signal-fires may be kindled.” He turned his back on the Mohawk camp before Merlin’s Cave, and began walking back towards Clerkenwell. Isaac, after a pause for a last look, followed him.

Daniel continued, “Those we have seen are the spear-head. On a signal from my lord Ravenscar they should be the first to march down Saffron Hill and in through Newgate to take London. If we went to different suburbs, we should observe, on certain large estates, similar formations of Tory militia, who’ve already sworn allegiance to the Pretender.”

Isaac was silent most of the way back.

Then he said, “What is going to happen tomorrow?”

“A dinner party,” Daniel answered, “in Golden Square.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Bolingbroke has sent word round to Roger and the other Whigs, inviting them to join him tomorrow at his house on Golden Square. All of these great men who have been playing the game for so many years, and with such enormous stakes, must finally lay their cards on the table tomorrow evening. Bolingbroke has chosen the time and place of it, and he has done so most cunningly. The Queen is faring poorly indeed. After the meeting of the Council today she collapsed from the strain-strain placed upon her by Bolingbroke, perhaps with malice in his heart, or perhaps because he is oblivious to the damage he leaves in his own wake. Whatever the case may be, she is not expected to live long. And so Bolingbroke has this one moment-perhaps a day, perhaps as much as a week-when everything is perfect for him. Parliament is prorogued, and so he need not concern himself, for the moment, about the Asiento money. Oh, he has the money, mind you, or the influence he has bought with it, but has not yet begun to suffer the consequences of having stolen it. The Tories are united behind him; he has the Queen’s favor; she is too weak to oppose him, but not weak enough to die; he has thrown all of us Dissidents and Nonconformists back on our heels with his Schism Act; and he has the Pyx. These are the cards he shall lay on the table tomorrow evening. What has Ravenscar in his hand? A few strong cards, to be sure.”

“But we may strengthen his hand immeasurably,” Isaac said, “and at the same instant weaken Bolingbroke’s, by capturing Jack the Coiner, and exonerating the Pyx. It is very clear to me now. Thank you for the walk, Daniel.”

“IT WILL NOT BE an easy negotiation,” Sean Partry said, after giving the matter thorough consideration. “For it matters nothing, to this condemned wretch in Newgate, how high the political stakes may be. A civil war? Why should he care, when his boiled and tarred head shall watch the battle from the top of the Treble Tree?”

“Has he any family?” asked Daniel.

“Dead of the smallpox. Only one thing in all the world matters to this cull, and that is, how much pain shall he suffer on Friday?”

“Then it is a simple affair of bribing Jack Ketch,” Daniel said. “I fail to see-”

“It is a not-so-very-simple affair,” said Partry, “of bribing him most and last, even as Jack’s men-who, as we’ve seen, infest Newgate Prison-are disputing the issue with us. This is why I was keen to do it on Thursday night. ’Twould afford Jack less time to offer a counter-bribe. But to do it on Tuesday evening-” He shook his head.

“Let us forget about today, then, and have a go at it on Wednesday,” Daniel suggested.

“That will help-a little.”

“But it must be in the afternoon-we cannot wait until the evening.”

Partry mooted it, and finally gave up a shrug. “Anything is worth a try,” he said. “But you had better show up with pounds sterling in your purse, and be ready to buy your information a word at a time.”

“If it is simply a matter of showing up with pounds sterling,” Isaac said, “then I know where I can get some.”

“HOW MUCH HARM COULD a stiff drink possibly do you, at this stage of the game?” asked Roger Comstock, the Marquis of Ravenscar. “You and I are already off the charts of the Royal Society’s annuity tables-living affronts to the Actuarial Profession.”

“Hadn’t you better go in there sober?” Daniel asked. He was facing, and Roger was showing his arse to, the best house on the Square. It put Daniel in mind of the stage of a theatre: not the new opera-house style, in which the actors were pent up behind a proscenium arch, but the W. Shakespeare wooden O, consisting of a flat patch of dirt (here the Square) walled in by galleries crowded with well-heeled voyeurs (the houses all round) and dominated by one magnificent edifice thrust out and over all (Bolingbroke’s place) and cunningly shot through with passages, chutes, ladders, and stairs interconnecting diverse balconies, cupolas, windows, amp;c., where, at any moment, important personages might pop up for a conversation, tryst, complot, or sword-fight that would in some way move the drama along. An Arsenal of Possibilities it was. The groundlings salted about the Square could not take their eyes off of it. Except for Roger. But then, Roger was not a groundling. He was no mere spectator, but a leading man-a Capulet or a Montague, take your pick-who was using the Square as a sort of Green Room. He was making ready to enter stage left, and begin his performance; but his lines had not been written yet.

No wonder he was drinking. “You’ve been hoisting tankards in the Black Dogg. Fair is fair.”

The mere idea of putting his lips against any of the available receptacles in the Black Dogg sent exquisite shudders up and down the length of Daniel’s alimentary tract. “I would not even sit down there, much less drink.”

“We’re not sitting down here,” Roger pointed out, “and that’s not stopping me.” One of his less dangerous-looking servants had drawn nigh, bearing a tray, desolate save for two amber thimbles. Roger pinched one off and projected its contents into his ivory-decked maw. Daniel snatched the other, only to prevent Roger from having a double.

“Your unwillingness to come right out and say how the negotiations are going is a kind of torture to me,” Roger explained. Then, to the servant: “Another round, please, to dull the pain inflicted on me by my reticent chum.”

“Stay,” Daniel said, “we have not spoken to the prisoner yet.”

Roger went into an orgasm of coughing.

“It is good news!” Daniel assured him. Which was so brazenly false that it silenced Roger, and straightened him up.

“You toy with me, sirrah.”

“Not at all. Why should our prisoner be so apprehensive that he’ll not even consent to show his face in the Black Dogg?”

“Because he’s a bloody coward?”

“Even a coward should have naught to fear from Jack-unless he possessed information that was dangerous to Jack in the extreme.”

“I have a question for you, Daniel.”

“Pray ask it then, Roger.”

“Have you ever participated in a negotiation in your entire life? For a quality oft found in persons who have, is an ability to look past some of the more fanciful assertions made by the adversary.”

“Roger-”

“Like Cloudesley Shovell, seeing the Rocks of Scilly emerging from the murk, only after ’twas too late to turn his Fleet aside from its fatal Course, I now, on the very threshold of Bolingbroke’s den, perceive my error in despatching you and that other Natural Philosopher to parley with this wily Black-guard.”

“It is not quite as dismal as all that, Roger.”

“Tell me something, then, that is not perfectly and utterly abominably bad news.”

“We got an early start this afternoon, and have worked through all of the preliminary rounds of the Negotiation, using Sean Partry as our go-between. All of the posturing, bluffing, and nonsense is behind us. Now we are down to the final exchange. The prisoner holds out. We are taking a little recess, now, so that he may cool his heels and contemplate the terrors that await him on Friday. Meanwhile I come to you, wanting to know: what is the most we could offer this man, supposing he could bring us information, today, that should enable us to catch Jack-or at least prove that Jack tampered with the Pyx?”