Dark Matter

“So then, within the bounds of the Ordnance.” Seeing the man frown, Newton added, “I mean that part of the Tower which is not occupied by the Mint.”

“Yes sir.”

“Was the body deep down?”

“Yes sir. Quite deep, but not on the bottom. We dragged it and for a while it did not budge. But then it came up, sudden like, as if it had been weighted, for as you will see for yourself, sir, the ankles are still tied by a piece of rope that has broken off something else, most likely a heavy object.”

“You searched the pockets?”

The dredgermen nodded.

“Find anything?”

Each looked at the other.

“Come, man, you shall keep whatever you found, or be well compensated, my word upon it.”

One of the dredgers dipped a grimy hand into his pocket and came out with a couple of shillings which Newton examined most carefully before returning them to their keeper.

“Do you see many corpses fetched out of the river?”

“A great many, sir. Them as shoot London Bridge, mostly. As the saying goes, it was made for wise men to go over and fools to go under. Take my advice, gentlemen, and always get off your skiff and walk around the bridge rather than try and go under it.”

Mister Osborne returned with the candles and camphor, and took them into the cellar.

“One last question,” said Newton. “Can you tell how long a man has been in the water?”

“Yes, your honour, and notwithstanding the weather, which affects the dignity of a man’s corpse greatly. The summer, being a cool one, has not much altered the pace of decomposing so much as the rats. But by and by, even the rats lose their stomach as the tallow in a man’s body stiffens and swells and sticks to his bones after the skin has become softened and quite rotted away, so that he doth almost resemble a body consumed in a fire, except that he be white instead of black.”

“So then,” prompted Newton, “by your expert reckoning, what is your estimate of this one?”

“Why, your honour, six months, I reckon. No more, no less.”

Newton nodded and handed each man the shilling he had promised, and me my chaw of tobacco.

“Have you chawed before, Mister Ellis?” he enquired.

“No sir,” I replied, although I might well have added that it was about the only bad habit I had not picked up when I was studying for the Law. “Not even for the toothache.”

“Then have a care to spit often, for it’s not well known that tobacco contains an oily liquid called nicotiana which is a deadly poison, and that all men who chaw are merely experimenting with its toxic effect. But it may be that your stomach shall be churned whether you chaw or no.”

So saying, Newton went into the cellar and I followed him to find Osborne lighting the candles to illuminate the scene.

“Thank you, Mister Osborne, that will be all for the present.”

But for the stench, the corpse seemed hardly human at all, more like some ancient Greek or Roman marble statue, in a poor condition of repair, that now lay on its side upon an oak table. The face was quite unidentifiable, except for the expression of pain that still clung to what remained of the features. That it was a man was clear enough, but in all else I could have said nothing about him.

“What can you observe about that knot?” asked Newton, looking at the rope which bound the corpse’s feet together.

“Very little,” said I. “It looks common enough.”

Newton grunted and took off his coat, which he handed to me; then he rolled up his sleeves, so that I saw how his forearms were much scarred; but also how he was fascinated by this cadaver, and what it seemed to represent, for while he cut away what remained of the dead man’s clothing with Mister Osborne’s knife, he told me what he was doing.

“Make sure you observe nature’s obvious laws and processes,” he said. “Nothing, Mister Ellis, can be changed from what it is without putrefaction. Observe how nature’s operations exist between things of different dispositions. Her first action is to blend and confound elements into a putrefied chaos. Then are they fitted for new generation or nourishment. All things are generable. Any body can be transformed into another, of whatever kind, and all the intermediate degrees of quality can be induced in it. These principles are fundamental to alchemy.”

It was as well he told me what it was to which he referred, as I had possessed not the remotest idea. “You are an alchemist, sir?” I said, holding the candle closer to the body.

“I am,” he said, removing the last shred of clothing from the corpse. “The scars on my arms that you noticed when I rolled up my sleeves are burns from more than twenty years of using a furnace and a crucible for my chemical experiments.”