Dark Matter

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “Lord Ashley and his correspondent have endeavoured to discover if there are any more Catholics who plot against King William. I should think that every patriotic Englishman would wish to identify potential traitors among us.”

“Suspend your judgement just a short while longer,” counselled Newton. “Consider next this message we had from Doctor Wallis, which Macey gave him. I believe it provides the answer to the first message.

“‘Remember Saint Bartholomew’s. Milord A. We shall identify Roman Catholics as were the French Huguenots. From the tax rolls. Also I have lists from the last time that were made by constables for the justices of the peace; also a guide made by Mister Lee, a map by Mister Morgan, and a scheme by Mister King that shall show us where all these nests of Catholic vermin are to be found. None shall escape us. Your servant, Doctor Davies.’

“Now what is your opinion?” asked Newton.

“I confess it sounds like another Popish Plot,” said I.

“It is much more serious than that,” Newton said gravely. “‘None shall escape us’? Is the matter not yet clear to you?”

“Yes, only I am afraid to say it, Doctor.”

“Then I will say it for you, my young friend. It is a plan to massacre London’s Roman Catholics that is here revealed. The tax rolls were how the Huguenots of Paris were identified on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, in 1572. It was said that some ten thousand Protestant men, women and children in Paris were murdered in one night. And yet more in the country at large.”

“But that was more than a century ago,” I objected. “And Englishmen are not like Frenchmen. We do not murder people in their beds. Besides, there are not so many Catholics in London as there were Huguenots in Paris.”

“Do you think so?” scoffed Newton. “London has many secret Roman Catholics—Church papists who pay only lip service to the Anglican Church, and celebrate their mass in private.”

“But does not the Test Act demand that they take the oaths of loyalty to the Anglican Church? A man may be fined for recusancy, after all.”

“And yet few are fined,” said Newton. “The law is a poor one, being seldom enforced.”

“I still say that in this country people are not murdered in their beds, whatever their religion.”

“Were not the Jacobite MacDonalds of Glencoe coldbloodedly slaughtered by King William’s troops in Scotland? That was but five years ago, as I recall.”

“They were Scotch,” I said, as if that explained how such a terrible thing had taken place. “Scotch victims and Scotch soldiers. What else is to be expected of the Scots? Londoners are not so intolerant. Nor are they so barbaric.”

“But if Londoners are provoked, albeit falsely,” said Newton, “what then? You are too young to remember how the Great Fire of London was blamed upon a Catholic named Peidloe, who was hanged for it, although as every schoolboy knows, it was started accidentally by a baker in Pudding Lane. As was the Southwark Fire of 1676, although another Roman Catholic, this time a Jesuit named Grove, was blamed for that. Indeed the Southwark Fire was generally perceived to have been planned by Catholics as a prelude to a massacre of London’s Protestants. And during the Revolution, did not Londoners expect to be massacred by King James’s Irish troops with whom he hoped to keep his kingdom?

“No, Ellis. Londoners are like the people of any great city: most credulous and mad. I would as soon trust a dog with a foaming mouth as depend on the varied and inconstant opinion of a London mob. I wonder that any man who has been to an execution at Tyburn could hold such a good opinion of the populace as you seem to.”

“I agree, sir, if the mob is provoked, then it is most ungovernable. But I do not see Englishmen being led by French Huguenots. How is the mob to be provoked?”

“It would not be difficult,” said Newton. “But we must find out more, and quickly, too, for we have lost much time while I have been solving this cipher.”

“I still find this hard to accept,” said I.

“Then read the message that we found on Major Mornay’s body.”To Sergeant Rohan.If I am killed in this duel, which I did not seek, I ask only that my murderer, Christopher Ellis, be slaughtered with the rest, for among so many, one more will scarcely be noticed, and it will doubtless seem that he was but a secret Catholic. I did my duty as a Protestant.Remember Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. Remember Saint Bartholomew’s.Major Charles Mornay

“Does that not put it beyond any doubt?” asked Newton.

“Yes,” I heard myself say. “And to think that I felt sorry for him.”

Newton nodded silently.