Lane, and drink-but not too much-and buy drinks-but never too many-for any flash culls you spy there, and acquire transitory knowledge, and return to my ken and relate to me what you have learnt. And back he comes, a week later, and informs me that a certain old Gager has lately been making the rounds, trying to recover some lost property. ‘What has he lost?’ I inquired. ‘Not a thing,’ came the answer, ‘he is after another cull’s lost property-some gager who was Phinneyed ten years since.’ ‘Go and learn that dead cove’s name,’ says I, ‘and the quick one’s, too.’ Come the answers: Robert Hooke, and Daniel Waterhouse, respectively. Why, he even pointed you out to me once, when you walked past my shop on your way to visit your swine-yard. That’s how I knew you.”

Peter Hoxton now extended his arms. His left hand held the chain of the Hooke-watch, swinging it like a pendulum, and his right offered a handshake. Daniel accepted the watch greedily, and the handshake with reluctance.

“I have a question for you, Doctor,” said Saturn, as he was shaking Daniel’s hand.

“Yes?”

“I’ve made a study of you, and know you are a bit of a Natural Philosopher. Been meaning to invite you into my ken.”

“Did you-sir, did you cause my watch to be stolen!?” Daniel demanded, trying to draw back; but Saturn’s hand had engulfed his, like a python swallowing a gerbil.

“Did you-Doctor, did you fling yourself against my shop-window on purpose!?” Saturn answered, perfectly mocking Daniel’s tone.

Daniel was too indignant to speak, which the other took as permission to go on: “Now philosophy is the study of wisdom-truths ?ternal. Yet, long ago you went over the sea, didn’t you, to set up an Institute of Technologickal Arts. And here you are back in London, aren’t you, on some similar errand. Why, Doctor? You had the life I dream of: to sit on your arse and read of truths ?ternal. And yet I cannot make my way through a chapter of Plato without glancing up to see you sprawled against my shop-window like an enormous spate of bird-shite. Why turn away from the study of truths ?ternal, to traffick in transitory knowledge?”

Somewhat to his own surprise, Daniel had a ready answer, which came out of his mouth before he had had time to consider it. “Why does the minister tell mundane stories during his homily? Why not simply quote direct from sublime works of theology?”

“Anecdotes serve to illustrate the ideas he’s getting at,” Saturn surmised, “and anyway, if those ideas have no relation to mundane things, why, they’re probably rubbish.”

“Then if Newton and Leibniz are sublime theologians, sir, I am an humble vicar. Technology is a sort of religious practice to me, a way of getting at the ?ternal by way of the mundane. Does that answer your question, and may I have my hand back?”

“Yes,” said Saturn. “You have your watch, sir; you have your hand; and you have a parishioner.”

“But I do not want a parishioner,” said Daniel, turning on his heel and walking west into Liquor-pond Street.

“Then you ought to give up preaching, and those religious observances you just spoke of,” said Peter Hoxton, falling into step beside Daniel. “You are a Cambridge man?”

“I am.”

“And is not the ancient purpose of Cambridge to turn out clerics, and send them out into England to minister to the unwashed?”

“You know that perfectly well! But I’ll not minister to you or any other man, Peter Hoxton, for if ever I was a vicar, I am a fallen one now, and not fit to minister to a dog. I went astray early, and have strayed far. The only way I can think of to find my way closer to God is through the strange ministry I spoke of earlier, whereof Hooke and Spinoza were prophets. It is not a way I recommend to any man, for I am as ’stranged from the main line of religion as a stylite monk, sitting on a pillar in a waste.”

“I have strayed further and grown more ’stranged than you, Doc. I have been wandering in that same waste without any pillar to sit upon-therefore, you, perched on your post, are like a Pharos to me.”

“I say to you one more time-”

“There’s that word again! Time. Let me speak of time, Doc, and say to you this: if you continue to walk through Hockley-in-the-Hole unaccompanied, and to wander about the city as you’ve been doing, your time may be measured in days, or hours. You are not leery enough. This fact has been made note of by certain coves who make unleery gagers their prey. Every foot-scamperer and bridle-cull on the upper Fleet pricks up his ears when you trudge out to your swine-yard and disappear into your hole in the ground. Your time will be up very soon, and you will wind up as a scragg’d, naked corpse, floating down Fleet Ditch to Bridewell, if you do not make some large friends soon.”

“Are you nominating yourself my bodyguard, Saturn?”

“I am nominating myself your parishioner, Doc. As you lack a church, we shall have to worship peripatetically, ambling about the streets, as now, and making Hockley-in-the-Hole our Agora. As I am half as old, and twice as big, as you, why, many an idle cove, who does not wot the true nature of our relationship, may ignorantly assume that I am your bodyguard, and, on account of that foolish misapprehension, refrain from stabbing you or bludgeoning you to death.”

They had reached Gray’s Inn Lane. The lawyer-infested gardens and walks behind Gray’s Inn lay to either side of the road here, and beyond them were the settled confines of various Squares: Red Lyon, Waterhouse, Bloomsbury. Roger’s estate was on the far corner of Bloomsbury, where London gave way again to open countryside. Daniel did not want to lead Saturn directly to it. He stopped.

“I am dafter e’en than you guess, Saturn.”

“Why, impossible!”

“Have you heard of a pirate in America, called Edward Teach?”

“Blackbeard? Of course, sir, he is legendary.”

“I say that not so long ago, I heard Blackbeard standing on the poop of Queen Anne’s Revenge, calling for me by name.”

For the first time, Peter Hoxton was taken a-back.

“As you see, I am insane-best leave me alone,” Daniel said, and turned his back on Saturn yet again, looking for an opening in traffic on Gray’s Inn Lane.

“Concerning Mr. Teach, I shall make inquiries among the Black-guard,” said Peter Hoxton.

The next time Daniel dared to look over his shoulder, Saturn had vanished.

“A ROMAN TEMPLE, on the edge of the city. Modest. Nothing gaudy,” had been Roger’s instructions to him, some twenty-five years earlier.

“I suppose that rules out having it be a Temple of Jupiter or Apollo,” Daniel had returned.

Roger had looked out the window of the coffee-house, feigning deafness, which was what he always did when he guessed Daniel was making fun of him.

Daniel had sipped his coffee and considered it. “Among your modest and humble Roman Gods would be…let me think…Vesta. Whose temples, like your house, stood outside the old boundaries of the city.”

“Well enough. Splendid god, Vesta,” Roger had said, a bit distantly.

“Goddess, actually.”

“All right, who the hell was she!?”

“Goddess of the hearth, chaste above all others…”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Worshipped around the clock-or the sundial, I should say-by the Vestal virgins…”

“Wouldn’t mind having a few of those around, provided they were not pedantic about the virginity.”

“Not at all. Vesta herself was almost seduced by Priapus, the ithyphallic God…”

Roger shivered. “I can’t wait to find out what that means. Perhaps we should make my house a Temple of Priapus.”

“Every shack you walk into becomes a Temple of Priapus. No need to spend money on an architect.”

“Who said I was going to pay you?”

“I did, Roger.”