“DID ROGER COME TO YOU in a dream, or something?”

“I beg your pardon!?”

Saturn opened his eyes for the first time since he had upended his body into the carriage, back at Clerkenwell Court, a quarter of an hour ago. Since then he had only made himself more comfy with every bump and swerve. Confronted now with evidence that his companion had been conscious, and cogitating, the entire time, Daniel was mildly indignant.

Saturn pushed himself up a notch. “It is so unlike you to know of something before it happens. I wondered if you had had a spectral Visitation from the Shade of the late Marquis of Ravenscar.”

“My intelligence came from another source.”

“The Earl of Lostwithiel?”

“Shut up!”

“I thought so. Mortification was writ all over his lordship’s face the other day, at the Sack of Clerkenwell.”

“It’ll be worse if word gets round that he has been talking to me, and so please curtail this!”

“Hmph. I do not think that Ravenscar got people to be discreet by shushing them. I think rather he was an ingenieur of a sort, who balanced interests.”

“What is your point, other than that I am no substitute for Roger?”

“Clerkenwell Court was to me what a Gathered Church was to your dad’s lot. Now what you Gathered has been Scattered by the Powers that Be. Just as certain of your co-religionists, in such a pickle, would abscond to Massachusetts to erect a City on a Hill or something, I phant’sy that I shall get out of this bloody town and go to what, for a Mechanick, will be what Plymouth Rock was for Puritans.”

“And where, pray tell, is that?”

“Another place called Plymouth, but older, and easier to get to.”

The carriage, following Daniel’s instructions, had managed a right turn; Daniel had lost track of where they were, and was disoriented for a moment, until he saw the Church of St. Stephen Walbrook go by to their left. A light or two was already burning in a window there; good.

Saturn seemed a little provoked that Daniel had not risen to this most excellent bait. “Plymouth is where Mr. Newcomen is building his Engine, is it not?”

“Close enough,” Daniel said. “I shall buy you a map of the west country as a going-away present, and on the journey you can master the fine distinctions between Plymouth, Dartmouth, Teignmouth, et cetera.”

“ ’Sblood, the place has as many Mouths as Parliament,” Saturn muttered, and watched Daniel carefully-warily, even. Perhaps he had been worried as to how Daniel would react.

Daniel said, “I shall give Mr. Newcomen an excellent character of you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll not say a word about Infernal Devices, or bursting out of whores’ toilets in the dead of night.”

“I would be indebted.”

“Please don’t think of it in that light…look on it rather as a selfish deed on my part,” Daniel said. “Newcomen needs fewer smiths, and more men like you.”

“I heard he was banging out great bloody monstrosities.”

“That he is. But where he wants help is in the fabricating of the small clever bits-the valves, and so on. Just the job for a Horologist Gone Bad.”

“Right! Let’s sort this, then!” said a radically more energetic Peter Hoxton, rolling out the carriage door even though it had not yet come to a full stop. Daniel smelled River, and felt it condensing on his brow; they’d pulled round on the Three Cranes, a wharf not far from where the lost river of Walbrook buried itself in the Thames. A row of warehouses fronted on it, running parallel to the riverbank and a stone’s throw back from the water. Separating two of these buildings was a narrow chink that anyone might have overlooked in the dark and the fog. Daniel was only able to pick it out because a light was burning some distance along this alley-way, on its right side. As Saturn shambled toward this, his head or shoulders would occult it from time to time. After a minute this stopped happening. Daniel heard a door opening, and eroded stumps of a few words, and then the door closing again.

The alley would broaden, after some distance, into the spacious back-court of the Vintners’ Hall. Many of the establishments around it, including the one Saturn had gone into, were cooperages.

“Back to the Church of St. Stephen Walbrook,” Daniel said to the coachman.

WILLIAM HAM WAS WAITING FOR them there, out front of the church where he’d been baptized. He climbed through the carriage door and settled into Saturn’s former perch with a grunt. “Never has a church been put to such uses,” he remarked.

“I’ve explained to the vicar-and will gladly explain again if need be-that it is all in pursuit of a righteous and Christian undertaking.”

“Pray don’t speak of undertaking, uncle. Not today.”

That got them as far as the front entrance of the Bank of England, all of seven hundred feet away.

“I would like you to know something,” Daniel said, as William was fumbling with his keys. For Daniel had the sense that William’s slowness, his clumsiness, were not due to cold fingers alone.

“What is that, uncle?”

“I’ve never spoken of this to you before, as I know it is delicate. But after your father passed away, and his Vault was opened-forcibly-by order of the Lord Chancellor, I was among the party that went down into it, and found that it was empty.”

“It is a very odd time for you to bring that up,” William said, right snappishly, and smacked the Bank’s door open. His irritation had at least got the blood running through his fingers, and perhaps to his brain. There was now a short interlude in the foyer while he soothed the porter’s nerves, and urged him to get back in bed. Then he began to lead Daniel down into the labyrinthine basements and sub-basements of the Bank. While they walked, Daniel talked.

“Your choler is up, William. And no wonder! King Charles took from your father the plate, specie, and bullion that had been entrusted to the House of Ham by its depositors. The House was ruined. Your father died of shame. Others in the goldsmith trade had suffered likewise-though not as much-and understood that your father had been given no choice. The King had taken the gold by invoking his divine right to it. That’s why you’ve never wanted for a position in the banking trade-because the story is proverbial among money-goldsmiths, and you are a living link to it.

“Anyway,” Daniel continued, “after we found your father’s vault empty we went up on the roof of your house-”

“We?”

“Your uncles Raleigh and Sterling and I, and Sir Richard Apthorp. And do you know what happened up there on the roof?”

“Can’t imagine.”

“Sir Richard founded the Bank of England.”

“What do you mean!? This was not founded until twenty years later! And in any case, how can one man found a bank on the roof of a goldsmith’s shop that is being burned down by the Mobb?”

“I mean he saw it all together in his head. He saw that banks would never work right if the King could sack their vaults whenever he ran low on revenue. This was a revolutionary thought. Probably would not have entered his mind had he not been thrown together with the sons of Drake the King-killer, the enemy of Divine Right, the champion of Enterprise. But when Sir Richard put those elements together in his mind, he created-all this.”

“Bully for him,” said William. “Wish I’d been the one to do that. You know. Redeem the family honour and whatnot.” He had stopped before the door to the vault where the Logic Mill cards had been accumulating, as they had been brought in from Bridewell. There would be more messing about with keys now. Daniel relieved his nephew of the lanthorn and stood there Diogenes-like, shining light on his hands while he worked.

“As you know perfectly well, you were too young to found a Bank,” Daniel reminded him. “Instead, you are redeeming the family honour now. At this moment.”