Daniel smiled. “You are infinitely patient, it seems, save where the Solomonic Gold is concerned. It is amusing. Of the three of us, I’m the only one who is convinced he is really going to die soon-both of you, Isaac and Gottfried, are believers in life ?ternal. Why don’t you have the courage of your convictions, and agree to re-convene the discussion a few centuries from now, or whenever there are sufficient data to resolve these issues philosophically?”

Which was a little bit of a cheap trick-forcing their hands thus, by challenging the sincerity of their religious convictions. But Daniel was exhausted, and could see that the thing was doomed, and wanted only to wind it up.

“I accept!” said Leibniz. “It is a sort of duel-a philosophick duel, to be settled, not with weapons, but with ideas, at a time and on a field yet to be chosen. I accept.” And he held out his hand toward Isaac.

“Then I’ll look for you on that field, sir,” said Newton. “Though our philosophies are so different that I do not really expect both of us can possibly be there; for one of us must be wrong.” He shook Leibniz’s hand.

“Every duellist needs a second,” said Leibniz. “Perhaps Daniel shall act in that capacity for both of us.”

Daniel snorted. “Isaac may believe I was resurrected, but I did not think you would hold with such beliefs, Gottfried. No, if you require seconds, it now seems that there are any number of immortal personages who shall be willing to show up on the appointed date, and hold your coats: for you, Gottfried, there is Enoch Root, and for you, Isaac, that ancient Jew who works for the Tsar and calls himself Solomon.” And so he did not take his right hand from his pocket to shake hands with them, for the ring felt terribly heavy and obvious, and he had a sort of lurid phant’sy that Gottfried and Isaac would suddenly recognize it for what it was, and fall to scuffling over it.

“BRR, MY FATHER-IN-LAW is frightfully cross with me,” Caroline announced, “at least, if I have made sense of his letter correctly.” She had read through it three times as Johann and Eliza watched. Leicester House resounded with booming and dragging noises: the sound of Royal baggage being packed and positioned.

“So much time has passed, and so many things have occurred, since I claimed I was going away to that Schlo? to recover from June’s traumas, that I had quite forgotten that his majesty was expecting me back. But now he seems to have figured out where I am.”

“Probably some intelligence reached him after our little adventure on the Thames,” Johann suggested. His discourse had been clipped and gloomy, and he’d been supporting his head on his fingertips-or perhaps that was self-administered massage. To Caroline, being bawled out by the King of England and Elector of Hanover might have been a trivial family dust-up, but for him it was a different matter.

“Very well,” said Caroline, “it’s back to Hanover I go, then.”

“Right!” said Johann, and got up and strode out. If anyone had had the temerity to stop him and ask him why, he’d have said he was off to do something ever so practical and important. But as both Caroline and Eliza understood perfectly well, the fact of the matter was that he had become so agitated that he’d go mad if he spent any more time sitting and talking.

“Off to Hanover,” Caroline repeated, “only to return in a few weeks! It says here that his majesty intends to reach England late in September. Supposing that the Prince of Wales and I are to accompany him, that means that as soon as I reach Hanover I shall have to turn round and come right back.”

“Geographically, yes, you shall return to the same latitude and longitude,” said Eliza, after thinking about this one for a moment. “But you will no longer be incognito. And so socially you shall be coming to a city you have never before visited, and to a different life altogether.”

“I suppose that shall be quite true, as long as we dwell in places like St. James’s Palace, with all the courtiers and the ambassadors, and the Duke of Marlborough right next door,” said Caroline. “But if there’s one thing I learned from Sophie, it’s that there are very practical reasons for a Princess to have more than one Palace. For her, the Leine Schlo? served as St. James’s shall for me and George Augustus. But at every chance she got, she removed herself to Herrenhausen, where she could live as she pleased, and walk in the garden. That’s why I have been so keen on this place. It’s going to be my Herrenhausen,” Caroline announced, “and you are going to be its doyenne.”

“Thank God,” said Eliza, “I was afraid you were about to say, ‘dowager.’ ”

“Lady of the Bedchamber or Mistress of the Stole or something,” Caroline said, a bit absently. “We shall have to choose the right English title for you. Whatever you’re called, the point is that I’d like you to live here, at least part of the time, and walk in the garden with me, and talk to me.”

“That doesn’t sound too onerous,” said Eliza with a smile. “But know that any place where I live is liable to have a flux of odd persons running through it, connected with the work that I pursue on the abolition of Slavery, and so on.”

“So much the better! It’ll remind me that much more of the Charlottenburg back when Sophie Charlotte was still alive.”

“Some of my lot may be odder and rougher yet…”

“You have a faraway look in your eye when you say that…are you thinking of your long-lost beau?”

At this Eliza sighed and threw Caroline a mean look.

“I have not forgotten our fascinating chat in Hanover,” Caroline said.

“Let’s speak of a different fascinating chat!” said Eliza. “What tidings from the Library?”

“When I left, they were still having at each other. They are both very proud men. Newton, especially, is not of a mind to back down. The court is coming here, and leaving poor Leibniz behind in Hanover. Advantage Newton. Newton has won the calculus dispute, or so it is believed by the savants of the Royal Society. And the recent controversies surrounding the Mint have cleared up, or so it would seem.”

“Is that what he told you? Now that would be some kind of a miracle, if true,” Eliza said.

“Why do you say so?”

“Is it not the case that the Pyx is still under the control of Charles White? And is Newton not still answerable to a Trial of the Pyx?”

“That is what they tell me,” said Caroline, “but Newton seems to believe he has now got the upper hand where that is concerned, by arresting the arch-villain known as Jack the Coiner. The fiend is now utterly in Sir Isaac’s power, and doomed to be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn Cross…Johann? Johann! Bring the smelling salts, the Duchess has got the vapors!”

Johann banged into the room only a few moments later, but by then his mother had got her color back, and prevented a slide to the floor by getting a white-knuckled grip on the arms of her chair. “It is nothing,” she said, swiveling her eyes at her first-born. “Carry on, please, as you were.”

Johann departed, seething and quizzical.

“It is just a sort of catalepsis that comes over me sometimes, when suddenly I have got rather a lot to think about all at once. Shortly it passes. I am fine. Thank you for your expression of concern, highness. Moving on-”

“We shall not move on!” announced the Princess of Wales. “We shall stick right here, on this, the most fascinating topic of conversation in the history of the world! You are in love with the most infamous Black-guard ever!”

“Stop that! It’s not like that at all,” said Eliza. “He happens to be in love with me, that is all.”

“Oh, well, that’s different altogether.”

“There is no call for sarcasm.”

“How did you meet? I love to hear stories of how true lovers met.”

“We are not true lovers,” said Eliza, “and as to how we met-well-it’s none of your business.”