The patient’s head stirred, triggering a shift of his flowing white hair, and beneath half-closed lids his eyes focused. But the eyes were not looking Daniel’s way. Daniel came over to the bedside. Isaac was breathing rapidly and shallowly. Daniel bent down and pressed an ear to Isaac’s ribcage, wincing at the heat that came out of his body-like a loaf fresh out of the oven. In the bases of Isaac’s lungs, it sounded as though bacon was being fried. His heart was beating weakly but quickly, albeit with alarming skips and pauses.

During this examination, Daniel could not help but notice a rash on those parts of Isaac’s chest not covered by the nightshirt. He sat on the edge of the bed and unbuttoned the garment. Isaac’s eyes, then his head moved slightly as Daniel did so; the movement had caught his eye. He watched Daniel’s hands work their way down his heaving sternum, one button at a time, and when Daniel spread the nightshirt apart, Isaac’s eyes tracked his right hand. Daniel recognized it: Natural-Philosophic curiosity.

Isaac’s torso was covered with the rash. It was most obvious around the left armpit.

“When was the last time you were in Newgate Prison?” Daniel asked. For he had the sense that Isaac was entering in to a lucid phase.

“Ah!” Isaac said, and then had to cough for a minute, in a frothy way, to clear the pipes for action. “You and I agree on the diagnosis of gaol-fever, then. That is a comfort. We agree on so little else.” Long pauses held these phrases apart.

“When was the last time…” Daniel reiterated patiently.

Isaac cut him off with the answer: “A week ago. I went and spoke to Jack in the Condemned Hold.”

“Normally the incubation period for gaol-fever would be-”

“Longer, a bit. Yes. I know. But I am old. And weakened by other maladies. You are being tedious. I have little time. I stipulate that I have gaol-fever. It will get worse before it gets better. If it gets better at all. Now I am getting chilly. Will you please button me back up. My right hand has lost some of its dexterity.”

Daniel could hardly deny such a request, and so he began to re-button the shirt-even though he was sure that this was a ploy by Isaac to bring Daniel’s hands into view again so that he could observe the ring. Daniel ignored this, and worked the buttons as fast as he could, and cursed his own stupidity for not having simply pocketed the thing before entering the room.

“It looks heavy,” Isaac remarked. “You know of what I speak. Does it weigh heavy on your finger?”

“Sometimes.”

“Who gave it you? Not a woman, surely.”

Daniel finished with the buttons, and thrust his hands back in his pockets.

“I should like to give you something as well,” Isaac remarked. His gaze had tracked the bauble all the way to Daniel’s pocket and now flicked up to settle on Daniel’s eyes.

“And what might that be, Isaac?”

“Not so much give it you, as draw it to your notice,” Isaac corrected himself. “That stuff of Hooke’s. Found at Bedlam. Reposited here. For me it was neither the most…nor the least…convenient place to look at it. Since the death…of Roger…I have come here more often. For I could not attend to my work…when he was hovering…you know…and asking all manner of questions. I have made a study of that document. The one that figured in the Stake-out…of last summer. You know the one I mean. Hooke’s account of a patient…who died after a lithotomy…and was resurrected…there is no other word for it…by a certain receipt. A remarkable document.”

“You forged a fake version of it as bait for de Gex,” Daniel said, “but-”

“But I have returned to it. In recent weeks. As my health was failing. And I took many notes. And interpreted what was cryptic. And set down clearly what Hooke-who was no Alchemist-did not understand. I know you think it is all rubbish. But if you would look after it…and see that it finds its way into the right…hands…it would be a comfort to me.”

“Of course. Where is it?”

“Roger’s library. Table before the window. Top drawer on the right.”

“I’ll fetch it now,” Daniel said, “and take it to your house straightaway.”

“That is good,” Isaac said. “Take it to my laboratory. Put it with the rest.”

“The rest of what?” Daniel asked. But he could see plainly he’d not be getting an answer. Isaac drew in his limbs, curled up on his side, and began to shiver like a dog fresh out of the water that cannot fight the urge to shake. Daniel called for Catherine, and together they sorted out the bedclothes and drew them over Isaac’s body.

“He has asked me to tend to some things,” Daniel announced to justify leaving. “I shall send word to the Council that Isaac is unwell, and cannot attend the Trial of the Pyx, day after tomorrow.”

“No! You must do no such thing!” Miss Barton said, and laid a hand on Daniel’s wrist. For she knew well enough that her words would penetrate a man’s brain as effectively as a musket-ball, if she touched him while she spoke.

“Miss Barton,” Daniel said, “look at the poor man! He can’t possibly-”

“Uncle Isaac told me that he must be present at the Trial of the Pyx no matter what. Even if he’s dead.”

“Pardon me, but did you really mean that?”

“ ‘Even if I am dead,’ he told me, ‘you stuff my corpse in a sedan chair and carry me to Star Chamber on Friday morning.’ And that, Doctor Waterhouse, is just what I mean to do.”

“Well, God willing, he’ll still be alive,” Daniel said, and gently disengaged himself from Miss Barton’s smooth grasp, and headed for Roger’s library.

…the Bell-man, who is the Prelude to the Hangman, like a Flourish before a damn’d Melancholy Tune, comes next to Torture them with his Inhumane Stanza’s, as if Men in their Condition cou’d have any Stomach to Unseasonable Poetry; for the Night before Execution, placing himself under their Window, he harangues them with the following Serenade, set to the Tune of the Bar Bell at the Black Dog.

SINCE SENTENCE OF DEATH had been pronounced upon him, the gaol-keepers had kept Jack’s apartment-door locked, and posted armed men outside to ensure it stayed that way. They’d never once let him go down to the good old Dogg. Jack’s only way of communing with the Dogg’s merry company had been to hear the ringing of its bell every night, at curfew. At that moment it had been his custom to lift a glass of Oporto, chosen from the rather large collection of bottles that had been sent up to his room, during the last week, by admirers.

This evening, however, his libation was rudely interrupted by the clanging of a hand-bell down below, in the vaulted passage-way that tunneled below his Castle and passed by the grated vent-hole of the Condemned Hold. Jack was not the only man slated to die at Tyburn tomorrow. Six more were going there with him, all Common-Side Malefactors who lacked means, or mysterious friends, to buy their way out of the said Hold. This nocturnal Bell-Man was plying his trade to a captive audience down there, spewing noxious poetry through the grating:

All you that in the Condemn’d Hold do lye,

Prepare you, for to Morrow you must die.

Think well upon your Sins, in Time repent,

Lest you are Headlong into Satan sent.

Watch then, and Pray, that so you may be fit

T’Appear so soon before the Judgment-Seat:

And when St. Pulcher’s Bell to Morrow Tolls,

The Lord above have Mercy on your Souls.

Having discharged his obligations there, the Bell-Man removed himself from the stink of the vault. He retreated through the portcullis and out into the middle of Holborn. He planted himself in the middle of the road directly beneath Jack Shaftoe’s triple window, like a swain getting ready to serenade his lady love. Which maneuvers would normally be both dark (as the sun had set quite some time ago) and dangerous (as men who stood in the middle of a highway leading into a gate of the City of London normally did not long survive). But the Bell-Man’s progress was well-lighted by a crowd of Londoners with torches, who had thronged the highway from one side to the other, throwing up a barrier of flame that would dazzle and terrify any horses whose drivers were foolish enough to bring them this way. Newgate was closed for the evening. The Bell-Man stood in a fiery semicircle, blinking in surprise, as normally he must carry out his duties alone and unheralded.