“Oh, Sir Isaac,” he said, and began flailing for a handhold. “Help me to rise,” he said to no one.

“I think you should stay down,” said Daniel.

“That moment has arrived I prayed would never come,” said Threader. “I must get down on my knees and pray to Sir Isaac Newton for my life-or, barring that, an honorable death-or if that is not feasible, an expeditious.”

“Then you admit collusion with coiners?” said Isaac, quite as bored as the others were astonished.

“You figured it out ages ago, didn’t you, Sir Isaac? Yes. Collusion with coiners. With the coiner. Now, mind you, in the beginning-”

“It seemed like nothing,” said Isaac, and waved his hand as if shooing off a wasp. “Forgive me, but I detect the onset of a long and well-rehearsed narration, for which I have no sufferance. The longer you make the story, the more gradual, insensible, and innocent seems your descent into…High Treason.”

Threader jumped, if such a thing was possible for a man lying flat on his back.

“But no matter how you stretch it, the beginning and the end are the same, are they not?” Isaac continued. “At the beginning you fall into the seemingly harmless practice of weighing guineas, and culling out those that are infinitesimally heavier. At the end you have been thoroughly compromised by Jack the Coiner. He has placed his agents in your company-he owns you so completely that he can even place an Infernal Device in your luggage-wagon, in the hope of assassinating the Master of the Mint at the Royal Society.”

“Oh, Sir Isaac, I did not know about that!”

“That much I believe. Jack would have had no reason to warn you-on the contrary. Yet even if the matter of the Infernal Device is left out of the accompt, you too are guilty of High Treason!”

“Oh, but what if I testify? Put me before a magistrate, Sir Isaac! No counter-tenor at the Italian Opera ever sang as I shall!”

“I do not need to hear you sing,” said Isaac. “Your offer has come too late. With no assistance from you, I have obtained all I wished for.”

“What if I could give you Jack the Coiner?” said Mr. Threader. Which struck Daniel and the others as frightfully dramatic; but Newton smiled thinly, like a chess-master who always knew that his foe would bring his Queen out eventually.

“Then there is an opportunity for negotiation,” said Newton. “Give me what you have.”

“Every Sunday evening, it is my lord Bolingbroke’s habit to go to a certain Clubb frequented by Tories. There is a back room, a private salon with a servants’ door leading back into the kitchens. At a certain signal Bolingbroke withdraws to that room on some pretext or other. Meanwhile Jack has entered the same Clubb through the back, in the guise of a knife-grinder who has come to whet the cooks’ cutlery. He comes into that salon through the servants’ door and doffs his disguise, and there the two villains hatch their plots and coordinate their schemes. It should happen again, just as I’ve said, in only a few hours, this being Sunday.”

“Perhaps Jack will have heard about what has happened this morning, and will know better than to attend the meeting,” said Isaac.

“Who shall bring him intelligence of it? The estate has been sealed off.”

“Everyone in the county saw the top of the hill explode.”

“Perhaps news of it shall reach Jack, perhaps not,” said Mr. Threader. “He must still meet with Bolingbroke from time to time. If this fails, why, I know other things about Jack, and can suggest other stratagems.”

“Then let us go to London so that the snare may be laid,” said Newton; and with that, the Clubb’s most eventful meeting (to date anyway) was adjourned, and its Treasurer manacled.

Library of Leicester House

For the sovereign is the public soul, giving life and motion to the commonwealth; which expiring, the members are governed by it no more, than the car-case of a man, by his departed, though immortal, soul.

-HOBBES, Leviathan

THE PLACE HAD NOT been fixed up in more than a hundred years, and was irredeemably Tudor: one could easily imagine Gloriana calling Sir Walter Raleigh on the carpet in here. No books by living authors were in evidence. The coastlines on the globe were hopelessly out of fashion.

Sir Isaac Newton did not have leisure to peruse this convex Artifact, however. He had been escorted to the library by young Johann von Hacklheber-a Leipziger baron. And so he was not extremely surprised to recognize a second North German baron-Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz-rising from a chair to bid him welcome. Newton’s face showed that he was annoyed to have been ensnared into yet another extraordinary and irregular meeting with his Nemesis, but that he would stiffen his upper lip and get through it. He glanced for only a moment at the young woman seated in an armchair near the globe. His eyes then snapped back to Leibniz. “I was led to believe I should be paying a call on the Duchess of Arcachon-Qwghlm,” he began. But his protest trailed off as his eyes wandered back to behold the young woman. It was not just that she was good looking, though she more or less was. It was rather that she was turned out in clothing and jewels-especially, jewels-the likes of which Newton had not feasted his protruberant eyes on since the last time he had been summoned into the presence of Royalty. The woman was, in fact, wearing an actual tiara, and something in her bearing told Newton that it was no affectation, and that the sparkly bits were no rhinestones.

Johann von Hacklheber had already ducked out. Leibniz had the floor. “Your royal highness,” he said to the young woman, “this is Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac, it is my honor to present Her Royal Highness Caroline, Princess of Wales, Electoral Princess of Hanover, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Stay! Do not move, Sir Isaac,” said Caroline, causing the savant to freeze in the opening of what promised to be a deep and lengthy formal bow. “We have heard already the story of how you were injured in our service-an inadvertent consequence of Baron von Leibniz’s heroics. You are in no condition for courtly bowing. Pray sit down.”

“You need not narrow your eyes thus at Freiherr von Leibniz,” said another voice, from the corner. Newton looked over to see Daniel Waterhouse, who had been delving into a brown and crusty Tome. “It is I, not the Baron, who related the story to her royal highness, and I who ought to be blamed for any misapprehensions I may have planted in her mind. True, it’s not every day that a German Baron has a go at Sir Isaac Newton with a great stick. Some might be tempted to make something out of it; but I suffered the same, and have forgiven him, and thanked him.”

“As do I,” said Newton easily, and then sat down-with conspicuous stiffness-in the side chair indicated by Caroline. Now it was Caroline in the big throne-like armchair next the globe, symmetrically flanked by Newton and Leibniz. Waterhouse prowled about the dim periphery, like a furtive librarian or, as it were, a philosophick Butler.

Caroline broke the ice-which was passing thick and cold-with small talk of the last days’ events in London. Were the rumors true?

This was just the gambit to use on Sir Isaac, who desired more than anything to set the new Dynasty’s mind at ease about the coinage of their Realm.

“Jack Shaftoe is ours!” he proclaimed. “The Coiner shall coin no more in this world.”

“If our understanding of the thing is correct,” said Caroline, “then this is momentous news indeed, and I am surprised I have not heard more of it.”

“Ah, but your royal highness, I did not know you were in London until I stepped over the threshold of this room-otherwise your royal highness should have been notified within the hour of Mr. Shaftoe’s arrest.”

“That is not what I meant. I refer to the fact that we have not heard anything of it from Grub Street.”