“In exchange for which, I suppose you require that you not be prosecuted, and that your sons get the farm in Carolina.”

“My sons, and Tomba,” Jack said. “That is an African who has been with me since we met him racing horses on the beach near Acapulco. Fine lad.”

“I remind you that there is a reason why we insisted that this conversation happen this evening,” Daniel said.

“Bolingbroke has Ravenscar backed up against the wall,” Jack returned, “and Ravenscar needs something.”

“Yes.”

“Show Bolingbroke that, then.” Jack nodded at the Sinthia. “It’ll hit him like a bolt between the eyes; for he has pestered me without letup these many months, wanting them from me.”

This silenced Daniel and Isaac for some moments. They had to look at each other for a while, before they looked at Jack. “Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, her majesty’s Secretary of State, has been pestering you?”

“Call him by as many names as you like, the answer is yes.”

“Let us go and see your good friend Bolingbroke, then,” Daniel suggested, with a not very subtle look at his watch.

“He is not my friend, but a damned nuisance,” Jack returned, “and I’d not go in to his house again even if he invited me. But you may have that packet, as proof of my bona fides, and I shall ride with you to Golden Square, and go for a constitutional round the green, as you go in to strike your bargain with him. When you have done, come out and tell me the results. I’m keen to know whether the next English King is going to be German or French.”

“The only defect in your plan is a terribly mundane one,” Daniel said. “We came in a phaethon.”

“What a rake you are, Dr. Waterhouse! Do stay away from my sons!”

“Two may fit inside, only with a lot of stuffing and bending.”

“Then do you stuff and bend yourselves into it,” said Jack, walking over to the door. He hauled it open and extended a hand to say, after you. “I shall ride on the running-board, like a footman, as befits my station in life, and if any footpads or Jacobite fops get after us, why, I’ll run ’em through.”

The phaethon had been waiting in the Press-Yard next to the gaol. This opened onto Newgate Street intra muros. Driving west, they passed immediately beneath the vault of the city gate: a Gothick castle housing wealthy prisoners. Thence they could have got directly to Holbourn and taken a northerly route toward Golden Square, but Daniel knew it was an infernal gantlet of bonfires to-night: the bright line where Whig and Tory orders of battle were being drawn up. So he requested the southerly approach. The Old Bailey connected to the street extra muros and took them south to Ludgate Hill which, going west, became the last bridge over the Fleet Ditch, which became Fleet Street, which became the Strand.

The scheme of placing Jack on the running-board worked well, for the phaethon was equipped with a grate, situated next to where a footman’s face was likely to be, so that master and servant could mis-communicate as freely and grievously on the road as they did at home. Daniel left it open. Jack was able to chat with the passengers almost as easily as if he were sharing the compartment with them. He was in a cheery mood-more so than Isaac, certainly-and offered up wry comments upon the Old Bailey, the odor of the Fleet, the Royal Society’s headquarters, Drury Lane, the Kit-Cat Clubb, and other exhibits as they rattled past. Daniel took most of these in good humor, but Isaac, who suspected that Jack was baiting him, fumed quietly, like a beaker just tonged from a furnace. There were bonfires, fist-fights, and dogs fucking each other in Charing Cross, and Jack was silent for a while, because alert. But Roger’s driver-who was of the best-negotiated this adroitly and got them on the short street called Cockspur that would soon fork into Pall Mall and Hay Market just before the Opera House.

“There must be an opera tonight,” Jack remarked through the grate.

“ ’Tis not possible,” Daniel returned. “It is out of season. I do believe they are erecting sets, and rehearsing, for a revival of The Alchemist by Ben Jonson.”

“I saw that a hundred times as a boy,” Jack said, “why ever are they reviving it now?”

“Because Herr Handel has written new music for it.”

“What? It is a play, not an opera.”

“Styles change,” Daniel said. “Mr. Vanbrugh’s theatre, there, is nothing like the theatres of your boyhood: it is all indoors, and ornate beyond description, and the actors are imprisoned on a stage, behind a proscenium.”

“Stay, I have been to a few such,” said Jack. “I could not hear a damned word. My ears are ruined; too much early horseplay with firearms.”

“Your ears are fine. No one can hear what the actors are saying, in a place like that. And this one in Hay Market is worse than most.”

“When Vanbrugh designed it,” said Newton, suddenly thawing, “it was styled the Theatre Royal. When it opened, nine years ago, and the audience thought they were witnessing a mum-show, then they had to change the name of it to the Opera, which empowered the performers to make themselves heard, by bellowing at the tops of their lungs in the style that is customary in that Art.”

“It chagrins me to hear that the good old Alchymist is being subjected to such perversion,” said Jack. “I’ve a mind to pop Mr. Handel in the gob.”

“It might not be so bad,” Daniel said. “When yonder Opera got into financial straits-which did not take long-my lord Ravenscar stepped into the breach, and remodeled the inside-made it smaller, lowered the ceiling, et cetera.”

“Ah, and that fixed the problem?”

“Of course not. So he had to rip it out and redo it again-anyway, he defrayed the expense by selling subscriptions for half a guinea.”

“Only half! I’d have bought one, had I known.”

“I shall ask my lord Ravenscar to throw one in as a soupcon,” said Daniel.

“While you are at it, let him know his Opera is invested by the Mobb,” said Jack. “For what I at first took to be the fireworks to celebrate an Opening Night, now takes on the appearance of a small Riot. There are several blokes on horseback, and I do believe I see a formation of infantry flanking them from behind the Opera House.”

“Infantry!?”

“Some would call it more Mobb, but to my eye their movements are altogether too orderly and platoonishly clumped. They are some militia. Ah, and there is something else, just before the entrance: I think it is an overturned carriage.”

Just then they swung round a curve onto Hay Market, and the Italian Opera House became visible out the left side of the phaethon. It was all as Jack had described it, save that Daniel did not see any of the phantom infantry spoken of by Jack. But he knew there was an open lot behind the building that was a perpetual construction camp as the theatre was gutted and remodeled by Ravenscar in his never-ending quest to make his performers audible, and where sets were erected for the operas. That was a very likely place for some Whig Association militia to have bivouacked. If it was really true that Jack had seen infantry, he’d have seen them there.

The phaethon bounded up on its suspension, as if they had driven over a sudden rise. Jack had jumped off. Looking back through the grate, Daniel saw him receding. He was standing in the middle of Hay Market, squarely in front of the Italian Opera. “I have just recognized that overturned carriage,” he called. “I have deeds to do here.”

“Our transaction is not finished!” Newton shouted back.

“It cannot be helped. I shall try to meet you in Golden Square later.”

“If you do not, you may consider that the deal is null and void,” Newton returned, his voice faltering, as he was no longer so sure that anyone was listening. Jack had dissolved into the Mobb.

The Fabrick’s Finish’d, and the Builder’s part

Has shown the Reformation of his Art.