“It seems, however,” Isaac went on, “that matters are well in hand here.”

“That they are, uncle,” said Miss Barton, and glided down off the bed of the chariot to give her kinsman a chaste peck on the cheek.

“Is there any way that I might be of assistance?” Isaac was desirous of knowing.

Daniel could not think of anything to say. He would have ample time to re-live the moment later, to savor and amplify his embarrassment. What struck him now, as he sat there in a half-ripped-off night-shirt, gazing upon fully dressed Isaac, was that word of Roger’s death must be out; and all over the metropolis at this instant, people were awake, and out-maneuvering Daniel in ways that he probably would never even know about.

A TURRETED CASTLE BESTRODE Holborn. On the side where the gentleman and his host were taking tea, the building sported a noble facade, to make a great impression on riders entering into London from the west. The ground floor was mostly accounted for by the vaulted arch of the gateway. The floor above that contained the machinery for raising and lowering the siege-grade portcullis; this was hidden behind a row of niches in which Liberty, Justice, and other noble ladies took shelter from the rains. This had not prevented their turning a mottled black from coal-smoke. So they glared down like Furies at all who passed beneath. But the next floor up was adorned by a triple Gothick window centered above the highway, rather like the hatch at the top of a German clock, whence the cuckoo popped out on the hour. Behind those windows lay Jack’s new abode. He would not be popping out, however, as they were heavily barred. Indeed, the first resident of this flat must have been a blacksmith, who must’ve lived there for a month, forging those gridirons and setting them into the stone frames. But they were excellent windows, taller than Jack and wider than the span of his arms, and despite the massive bars they admitted a fortune in light.

The Castle, as this part of Newgate Prison was called, was meant for Prisoners of Quality. So it lacked certain facilities that were present in abundance in other parts of the gaol, e.g., iron wall-rings to which difficult prisoners could be fettered. The gaolers had been forced to improvise. A hundred pounds of chain had been looped round some of the window-bars and dragged along the floor to Jack and locked to his ankle-fetters. The chain was long enough that he could hobble to any part of the apartment, save the exit. For the nonce, he was seated at his table, sipping tea.

Standing before his great window and gazing through the grid-work, the visitor enjoyed a view along the road up Snow Hill to the place where it bridged the Fleet Ditch some quarter of a mile away. Beyond that it swelled to twice or thrice the width, and rambled off among posh squares and courts that had been cow-pastures when Jack was a lad. Much nearer to hand, no more than a bow-shot away, to the right, lay the Church of St. Sepulchre. It was an ancient English church of that school of architecture known to scholars as A Big Pile of Rocks. There, Jack and his fellow Tyburn commuters would be subjected to a tedious rite in one month’s time. So Jack preferred not to let his gaze rest on that Church and especially not its Yard, which had swallowed more dead than it could cleanly digest.

“All of the best apartments in London, it seems, are in bloody Prisons,” said the visitor, “and all of them are occupied by men who are troublesome to me, in one way or another.”

Against those windows he made a perfect Fopp-silhouette, like something snipped out of black paper by an ingenious miniaturist on the Pont-Neuf. From the high-styled ringlets of his periwig down to the bows on his shoes, back up the curves of his well-muscled calves and the perfectly cut skirts of his coat, traveled the eyes of Jack. He wore a scabbard and a small-sword, and Jack thought of flattening him with a swing of the mighty chain, and snatching the weapon. But this would boot him nothing and so to think of it was idle. Jack snapped out of this hyper-violent reverie, and tried to make conversation.

“What, are you speaking of that bloke in the Clink? The famous Dappa?”

“You know that I am,” said Charles White, and turned his back to the view. He reached out absent-mindedly and stroked Jack’s chain where it was looped about the window-bars. “Before this country became so disorderly, all of those who were troublesome to their betters were pent up in places such as this. I am pleased that there are still remaining some vestiges of civilization.”

“But isn’t that Dappa more trouble for you in the Clink?”

“I have plans for Dappa,” said White, “and I have plans for you. And that is why facilities such as the Clink and Newgate are so useful; they hold men like you in one place long enough for men like me to make plans.”

“All right,” said Jack, “I knew we’d get round to this, and I am ready for it. You are a tedious and obvious bloke, Mr. White. So I need only ask myself, what’s the most tedious and obvious plan that a man could devise? Why, to have me done away with. Not much of a threat, as one month from to-day I’ve an appointment with Mr. Jack Ketch at Tyburn Cross; and there is no way you could murder me here that could be worse than how he’ll carry it off there. So you are powerless to issue threats. You must, therefore, offer inducements.”

“You rush ahead so!” White exclaimed. “It were proper, first, to speak of what it is that you must do.”

“There’s nothing in the world I must do,” Jack reminded him. “In that sense I’m the freest man in the world. What is it that you are trying to get me to do?”

“You are charged with High Treason in the form of coining. Sir Isaac Newton has enough to prove it; there’s little point in offering up a defense. You’ll be asked to plead, guilty or not guilty. It is a necessary formality. If you refuse to enter a plea, you’ll be subject to the peine forte et dur-pressing under weights-until you die, or change your mind.”

“I have been coming to Newgate since I was a wee lad, and well know the Standard Procedures,” said Jack. “What is your point?”

“If you agree to make a statement, I’ll see to it that several men are present-not just Sir Isaac. In the presence of those men, you will say that Sir Isaac Newton debased the coinage, and took the gold that he skimmed from Her Majesty’s coffers, and-”

“Pocketed it?”

“No.”

“Gave it to prostitutes?”

“No.”

“Drank it up?”

“No. Used it to perform Alchemical research in the Tower.”

“Oh! Of course. Stupid me,” said Jack, and slapped himself in the forehead so briskly that his ankle-chains jingled. “That were a far more credible accusation.”

“My lord Bolingbroke got wind of it,” White went on, in a peculiar singsong cadence meant to remind Jack that this was the made-up Romance that he was supposed to be memorizing, “and quite properly began to make preparations for a Trial of the Pyx. Hearing of this, the guilty Newton flew into a panic, and reached you, Jack, and induced you and your gang-”

“Gang. Gang. Why is it ever ‘Gang?’ Don’t call them that. It sounds so-I don’t know-criminal. They are my family and friends.”

“Induced you and your associates to break in to the Tower, open the Pyx, remove the debased guineas that would prove Newton’s guilt, and replace them with sound ones. To make this possible Newton led me and others on a wild goose chase to Shive Tor. You achieved your mission; but it went awry in some small way-here you can make up something plausible-and people found out about it, and now Newton is trying to commit judicial murder on you and your…associates, to cover his traces.”

“ ’Twould make for a lively half-hour, relating such a yarn in the presence of my persecutor, and a panel of a-mazed Big-wigs,” Jack admitted. “As if ’twere a Statue set up in the middle of my Apartment, I shall, in weeks to come, circle round your Proposition and view it from diverse angles and in different lights, and peruse it for Defects.”