“A lot of females!” Daniel remarked.

“We call them women,” Saturn snapped. “I hope you haven’t been peering about like some damned Natural Philosopher at a bug collection.”

“We call them insects,” Daniel shot back. This elicited a gentlemanly nod from Saturn.

“Without peering,” Daniel continued, “I can see well enough that, though it’s untidy, it’s far from loathsome.”

“To a point, criminals love order even more than Judges,” Saturn said.

At that moment, a boy entered the room, breathing hard, and scanned the faces. He picked out Saturn instantly, and moved toward him with a joyous expression, reaching significantly into his pocket; but Peter Hoxton must have given him a glare or a gesture, because suddenly his face fell and he spun away on his heel.

“A boy who snatches your watch in the street, and runs off with it, does not do so out of a perverse longing to cause you grief. He is moved by a reasonable expectation of profit. Where you see sheep being sheared, you may assume there are spinning-wheels nearby; where you have your pocket picked, you know that there is a house such as this one within sprinting-distance.”

“In its ambience ’tis rather like a coffee-house.”

“Aye. But mind, the sort who’re disposed to abhor such kens as this would say its hellishness inheres in its very congeniality.”

“I must admit, it smells less of coffee than of the cheap perfume of geneber.”

“Gin, we call it in places like this. My downfall,” Saturn explained laconically, peering over his shoulder at the boy, who was now in negotiations with a fat, solitary man at a corner table. Saturn went on to give the room a thorough scan.

“You dishonor your own rules! What are you looking at?”

“I am reminding myself of the exits. If this turns out to be a lay, I shall not bother excusing myself.”

“Did you perchance see our buyer?” Daniel inquired.

“Save my fellow horologist in the corner there, and this gager next to us, who is trying to wash away his pox with gin and mercury, everyone here has come in groups,” Saturn said, “and I told the buyer that he must come alone.”

“Gager is what you call an elderly man.”

“Yes.”

Daniel hazarded a look at said gager, who was curled up on the floor in the corner by the hearth, no more than a sword-length from them-for the room was small, the tables close, and the separation between groups was preserved only through a kind of etiquette. The gager looked like a whorl of blankets and worn-out clothes, with pale hands and a face projecting from one end. Resting on the hearth-stones directly before him were a clay bottle of Dutch geneber and a thumb-sized flask of mercury. This was the first clue that he was syphilitic, for mercury was the only known remedy for that disease. But confirmation could be had by looking at his face, which was disfigured by lumpy tumors, called gummas, rimming his mouth and his eyes.

“Every snatch of conversation you overhear in this room shall be riddled with such flash cant as ‘gager,’ ‘lay,’ et cetera, for here, as in the legal and medical professions, the more impenetrable a man’s speech, the higher the esteem in which he is held. Nothing would be more injurious to our reputation in this house, than for us to speak intelligibly. Yet we may have to wait for a long time. And I fear I may fall into drinking gin, and end up like yon gager. So, let us have an unintelligible conversation about our religion.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Remember, Doc, you are my Father Confessor, I your disciple, and your portion of our bargain is that you shall help me draw nigher to Truths ?ternal through the sacrament of Technology. This-” and he scanned the room lightly, without letting his eye catch on anything, “is not what I signed on for. We were to be in Clerkenwell, building things.”

“And we shall be,” Daniel assured him, “once the masons, carpenters, and plasterers have finished their work round the old Temple there.”

“That should not be long. I’ve never seen stones piled up in such haste,” Saturn said. “What is it you mean to make there, then?”

“Read the newspapers,” Daniel returned.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“What’s the matter, you’re the one who wanted to speak in cyphers.”

“I do read the newspapers,” said Saturn, wounded.

“Have you attended to what goes on in Parliament?”

“A lot of screeching and howling as to whether our next King’s son* ought to be given a hero’s welcome in the House of Lords, or barred from the Realm.”

Daniel chuckled. “You must be a Whig, to refer so confidently to George Louis as our next King.”

“What do I look like to you?” said Saturn, suddenly lowering his voice, and looking about uneasily.

“A Jacobite Tory, dyed in the wool!”

Daniel’s chuckling at his own jest was, for a few moments, the only sound in the room. Then:

“There’ll be no such talk in this house!”

The speaker was a short, stout Welshman with a large jaw. He was wrapped in a bulky and bulging black cloak, as if he’d just come in from outside, and was making a sweep through the parlour on his way back to the kitchen. A brace of empty gin-bottles dangled by their necks between the fingers of his right hand, and a full one was gripped in his left. Daniel assumed the fellow was being wry, and chuckled some more; but the Welshman very deliberately swiveled his head around and gave Daniel a glare that shut him up. Most of the people in the room were now looking their way.

“Your usual, Saturn?” the Welshman said, though he continued to stare fixedly at Daniel.

“Have her bring us coffee, Angus. Gin disagrees with me these days, and as you have perceived, my friend has already drunk one bottle too many.”

Angus turned around and stalked out of the room.

“I am sorry!” Daniel exclaimed. Until moments ago he had felt strangely at home here. Now, he felt more agitated than he had out in the alley.

The wretch on the floor went into a little fit of shuddering, and tried to jerk his unresponsive limbs into a more comfortable lie.

“I assumed-” Daniel began.

“That the words you were using were as alien to this place as the Calculus.”

“Why should the proprietor-I assume that’s what he was-care if I make such a jest-?”

“Because if word gets round that Angus’s ken is a haunt of such persons-”

“Meaning-?”

“Meaning, persons who have secretly vowed that the Hanover shall not be our next King,” Saturn croaked, so quietly that Daniel was forced to read his lips, “and that the Changeling* shall be, why, it shall become self-fulfilling, shall it not? Then such persons-who are always in want of a place to convene, and conspire-will begin to come here.”

“What does it matter!?” Daniel whispered furiously. “The place is filled with criminals to begin with!”

“And that is how Angus likes it, for he is a past master among thief-takers,” Saturn said, his patience visibly dwindling. “He knows how it all works with the Watch, the Constables, and the Magistrates. But if the supporters of the Changeling begin to convene here, why, everything’s topsy-turvy, isn’t it, now the house is a heaven for Treason as well as Larceny, and he’s got the Queen’s Messengers to contend with.”

“I hardly phant’sy the Queen’s Messengers would ever venture into a place like this!” Even Daniel had the wit to mouth the name, rather than speaking it aloud.

“Be assured they would, if treason were afoot here! And Angus would be half-hanged, drawn, and quartered at the Treble Tree, ’long with some gaggle of poxy Jacobite viscounts. No decent end for a simple thief-taker, that.”