Dark Matter

We entered the White Tower and climbed up the main stairs to the third floor, where I lit a lantern, and then up a narrow stone stair to the north-east turret. Newton set his telescope down on a table near the window, and having adjusted the telescope on its plinth, he then peered in a small hole at the top so that he seemed to look back down the body of the telescope toward the polished mirror at its base. And while Newton observed—I knew not what precisely—I walked idly around the turret as might have done one who had been imprisoned there.

I confess, my thoughts dwelled not on bloody murder nor on the treasure of the Templars, but on Miss Barton, for it was several days since I had seen her, so that being in the turret of the White Tower served to remind me of how I was separate from her and, being separate, was not happy until I could see her again. Each hour that I did not see Miss Barton made me feel as if I was dying; but, in truth, death was never very far from my thoughts when I was at the Tower, for there was hardly a walk, a wall, a tower, or a turret that did not have a tale to tell of cruel murder or bloody execution, and so I tried to keep the image of Miss Barton before me as some tormented Jesuit priest might have conjured a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary to ease his pain.

“What do you hope to see?” I asked Newton finally.

“Orion,” he said simply.

“Is this something to do with the treasure?”

“It is something to do with what Mister Pepys told me, which is an altogether different affair.”

“And what might that be?”

But he did not answer, so, for a time, I went down onto the second level and the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist, where I hoped to divert myself by looking upon the shelves of state records in imitation of Mister Pepys and Mister Barkstead who had once searched there for clues to buried treasure.

It being late, the present Keeper of the Records was not to be found and I wandered among the shelves that were arranged behind the simple stone capitals of the outer aisles. Upon these lay books and records which I was now resolved thoroughly to know whenever I found myself with sufficient time. Underneath the tribune gallery stood a great refectory table upon which lay an open book that I perused idly. And, doing so, was much surprised to discover a bookplate that proclaimed the book to be from the library of Sir Walter Raleigh. This book, which I examined for the love of the binding, it being most fine, disturbed me greatly, for it contained a number of engravings, some of which seemed so lewd that I wondered that the book was ever read in a chapel. In one picture a woman had a toad suck at her bare breast, while in another a naked girl stood behind an armoured knight urging him to do battle with a fire; a third picture depicted a naked man coupling with a woman. I was more repelled than fascinated by the book, for there was something so devilish and corrupt about the pictures it contained that I wondered how a man like Sir Walter could have owned it. And upon returning soon thereafter to the north-east turret, I thought to mention that it seemed indecent to leave such a book lying around so that any might examine it.

At this Newton left off looking through his telescope and straightaway accompanied me back down to the second floor, where, in the chapel, he examined the book for himself.

“Michael Maier of Germany was one of the greatest her-metick philosophers that ever lived,” he remarked as he turned the book’s thick vellum pages. “And this book, Atalanta Fleeing, is one of the secret art’s great books. The engravings to which you objected, Mister Ellis, are of course allegorical, and although they are in themselves difficult to understand, they serve no indecent purpose, so you may rest assured on that count. But it was open, you say?”

I nodded.

“At which page?”

I turned the pages until I came upon the engraving of a lion.

“In the light of what happened to Mister Kennedy,” he said, “the page being open at the Green Lion may be suspicious.”

“There is a bookplate,” I said, turning back the pages. “And I showed him Raleigh’s bookplate.

Newton nodded slowly. “Sir Walter was imprisoned here for thirteen years. From 1603 until 1616, when he was released in order that he might redeem himself by discovering a gold mine in Guiana. But he did not, and upon his return to England he was imprisoned in the Tower once again, until his execution in 1618. The same year as this book.”

“Poor man,” I exclaimed.