Saturn had been quite let down when Peter had disarmed him and gone forth into the fray. He did not recover for a minute or so; then, bewitched by the eldritch sympathy that conjoined all of the spectators, he squared his shoulders and headed for the exit, saying: “It has been great fun having the Tsar here incognito, but I suppose it was inevitable that word would get out and that this sort of thing would start to happen.”

Of the group who’d been sitting round the table, the only ones now left were Daniel, Isaac, Leibniz, and (in the corner, a bit removed from the others) Solomon Kohan. The table itself, of course, was still resting on one edge.

“Had I not heard it direct from the Tsar,” said Isaac to Daniel, “I could never have credited such a conceit: that, after all that has passed between us-”

“All that has passed between me and you, Isaac, is as nothing compared against the doings and machinations and skullduggery attending the damned gold. As to myself, I no longer give a fig where it goes. I would have been happy to give it all to you, until a few hours ago, for I phant’sied you were the only man on earth who knew of it, or cared.”

“And what has changed so much in the last few hours?” Isaac asked, quite shocked.

“There is now, in the Ointment, not merely a Fly, but a Praying Mantis,” said Daniel, nodding in the direction of the Peter-melee, “and one equipped with a mind that is excellent, not only by the standards of Mantises, but of men. He has claimed the Solomonic Gold. I am sorry.”

Daniel now gave a few moments’ thought to whether he should try to introduce Solomon, and how; but Isaac had got to his feet and stalked away. As Isaac went out the tavern-door he brushed past a chap who was coming in. Though this was not the most noble person who had ever set foot in the establishment (an honor that would have to go to Peter, or-who knows?-Solomon), he was unquestionably the best-dressed, and identifiable, from a thousand yards, as a courtier. Daniel, pent up behind the table, waved one arm in the air until he got the attention of the newcomer, who approached, looking befuddled. “Was that-?”

“Sir Isaac Newton? Yes. Daniel Waterhouse at your service.”

“Frightfully sorry to intrude,” said the courtier, “but word has reached the Household that an Important Man has come to London incognito.”

“It is true.”

“From Muscovy, ’tis said.”

“Also true.”

“The Lady of said Household is deathly ill. On her behalf, I have come to greet the said Gentleman, and to observe the requisite formalities.”

Daniel nodded out the window toward the melee. “As we say in Boston: get in line.”

“Look for the chap in the sable hat,” said Leibniz in French, “that is the chamberlain, you may take it up with him.”

The courtier bowed and left.

“As may be obvious,” Leibniz said, “my coming to London was brought about by force majeure, and was not part of any coherent plan. But as long as I am here, I thought I might stay on a bit, and try to patch matters up with Newton.”

“Then I am sorry to tell you,” Daniel said, “that your timing could not have been worse, for this matter of the gold will make it all much more complicated than you appreciate.”

He was afraid he would now have to enter into discussion of Alchemy; but Leibniz nodded and said, “I knew a gentleman in Leipzig, also very interested in this gold.”

“The heavy gold is of great political importance here, in that it could mean the difference between Newton’s surviving a Trial of the Pyx, or not.” And here he was forced to explain a great deal concerning Jack the Coiner, Bolingbroke, and the Clubb.

On balance, Leibniz seemed to take it as good news: “It sounds as if this difficulty can be cleared up, then. If this deal that you negotiated with Jack goes through as planned, Newton shall get what he requires to survive the Trial of the Pyx; and if not, why, how difficult can it possibly be to track down this gang of coiners when Newton, Waterhouse, and Leibniz are numbered among the thief-takers, and when two of the master-criminals-Edouard de Gex and Yevgeny the Thief-taker-have recently been slain in brawls?” For it was plain that the melee outside was over, and if the Tsar had lost, they probably would have heard about it by now.

“I find it difficult to believe, Gottfried, that, at this point in your career, what you really want to do is hang around the worst parts of London pursuing a band of criminals.”

“All right, I admit it’s only a pretext.”

“What then is your real reason?”

“I would attempt, one last time, to attain some reconciliation with Newton, and to settle the calculus dispute in some way that is not squalid.”

“A much sounder and nobler motive,” Daniel said. “Now, let me explain to you why it shall not work, and why you should simply go home.” And then he did, against his better judgment, discourse of Alchemy for a little while, explaining that Newton’s desire to control the Solomonic Gold arose not simply out of a practical need to survive the Trial of the Pyx but out of a quest to obtain the Philosophick Mercury and the Philosopher’s Stone.

But it was to no avail. It only confirmed Leibniz’s desire to remain in London. “If what you are saying is true, Daniel, it means that the root of the problem is a philosophical confusion on Newton’s part. And as I need not explain to you, it is the same confusion that underlies our disputes in the realm of Natural Philosophy.”

“On the contrary, Gottfried, I think that the question of who invented the calculus first is very much one of the who-did-what-to-whom type; a what-did-you-know-and-when-did-you-know-it sort of affair.”

“Daniel, it is true, is it not, that Newton kept his calculus work secret for decades?”

Daniel assented, very grudgingly. He was perfectly aware that to admit to any premise in a conversation with Leibniz would lead to a Socratic bear-trap banging shut on his leg a few minutes later.

“Who started the Acta Eruditorum, Daniel?”

“You, and that other chap. Listen, I stipulate that Newton tends to hide his work while you are very forward in publishing yours.”

“And hiding one’s results-restricting them to dissemination among a tiny fraternity-is a characteristic of what group?”

“The Esoteric Brotherhood.”

“Otherwise known as-?”

“Alchemists,” Daniel snapped.

“So the priority dispute would never have arisen if Sir Isaac Newton were not thoroughly infected with the the mentality of Alchemy.”

“Granted,” Daniel sighed.

“So it is a philosophical dispute. Daniel, I am an old man. I’ve not been in London since 1677. What are the chances I shall ever return? And Newton-who has never set foot outside of England-will not come to me. I shall not have another opportunity to meet with him. I will remain in London incognito-no one need never know I was here-and find some way to engage Newton in Philosophick discourse and help him out of the labyrinth in which he has wandered for so many years. It is a labyrinth without a roof, affording a clear view of the stars and the moon, which he understands better than any man; but behold, when Newton lowers his gaze to what is near to hand, he finds himself trapped and a-mazed in dark serpentine ways.”

Daniel gave up. “Then consider yourself a member of our Clubb,” he said. “You have my vote. Neither Kikin nor Orney shall dare with-old his support from a savant whose pate still glows with the knuckle-prints of Peter the Great. Newton would doubtless vote against you. But he came to a separate peace with the Clubb’s quarry a few evenings since, and no longer has any reason to attend our meetings.”

YEVGENY THE RASKOLNIK had fallen like a tree in the dust of Hockley-in-the-Hole. From the looks of things he had given a fine account of himself. In this posture, viz. lying on his back, his face to the sky and framed in the iron-gray burst of his hair, it was obvious that he must be close to sixty years old. Had he been closer to Peter’s age (the Tsar was forty-two) and in possession of both of his arms, the fight might have gone differently. As it was, Daniel could only interpret this as a spectacular form of suicide. He could not help but wonder whether Yevgeny knew about today’s transfer of the gold from Minerva, and had somehow taken the notion into his head that, as a result, his time in the world was finished.