Dark Matter

“Why, yes,” I said. “I was but a child at the time. But he was the magistrate who was murdered by Roman Catholics during the Popish plot to kill King Charles II, was he not?”

“I abhor Roman Catholicism in all its aspects,” said Newton. “It is a religion full of monstrous superstitions, false miracles, heathen superstitions and foul lies. But there was nomore wicked lie perpetrated against the safety of the realm than that Popish Plot. It was given out by Titus Oates and Israel Tonge that Jesuit priests conspired to murder the King at Newmarket races. I don’t doubt that there were Jesuits who conspired to do much to restore the Roman Catholic faith to this country. But murdering the King was not one of their designs. Nevertheless, many Catholics were hanged for it before Oates was found to be a vile perjurer. He ought to have been hanged himself but for the fact that the law does not prescribe the penalty of death for perjury. Instead, Oates was whipped, pilloried and sent to prison for life.”

“Did Oates murder Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, then?”

“Who killed him is a more abiding mystery,” said Newton. “Some have thought that he was killed by a villain whom he had sentenced to prison as a magistrate, and who bore him a grudge. We are no strangers to such situations ourselves. I have even heard talk that Godfrey was one of those Green Ribboners that did seek to make the country once more a Republic; and that he was murdered when he threatened to betray them. But I myself favour another, simpler opinion.

“It is my belief that Godfrey strangled himself by leaning upon a ligature; he was by all accounts a most melancholy man, and feared being discovered a traitor and punished accordingly. Finding his body, Godfrey’s two brothers feared the shame and the loss of Godfrey’s money, for he was a rich man, and a suicide’s estate is forfeit to the state, being felo de se. Therefore they mutilated his body and blamed it on Roman Catholics.

“What is certain is that no one will ever know the truth now. But there are many who still persist in the belief that he was murdered by Catholics. Major Mornay’s opinion seems clear enough. His possession of this dagger and his conduct in the stews would seem to indicate that his detestation of Catholics knows no bounds.”

“What then shall we do?”

Newton’s brow gathered in a knot above his eyes and one slender finger stroked his long nose as if it had been a small shock dog, so that he did look most shrewd.

“We shall return this dagger to him,” he said quietly. “And in doing so we shall further provoke him. It is a simple matter of motion, as are many other things to which proof, one day I shall find a pencil of black lead and sum it up for you on a page of paper, so that you might understand the world. For every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it be compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it. That’s as true of Major Mornay as it is of the planets and the comets. But we must also be prepared. We must be vigilant. For to every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”

“But, sir, this is your great theory, is it not?”

“Well done, Ellis. But it is no theory. It’s as much codified fact as the laws of England. More so, for I have the mathematical proofs that do render these laws immutable.”

“I would understand what they mean for the world,” I said. “If I could.”

“Then understand only this,” said Newton, and dropped the Godfrey dagger to the floor so that the point was left sticking in the boards. “The fall of this dagger is the same as the fall of the moon. The force that draws this dagger also draws the moon. The force that draws the moon also guides the planets and everything that is in the heavens. For the heavens are here on Earth. That, my dear fellow, is gravity.”

The heavens are here on Earth? Perhaps this Earth is all the Heaven there is.

At first I only turned my back on Jesus. And that was Newton’s doing, for there was very little in the New Testament to which he did not take some exception. The Old Testament he could only accept in parts. The Book of Solomon was very important to him. As was Daniel. And Ezekiel. But that a man might choose those books that suited him and reject those that did not seemed to me a very strange kind of religious faith.

For a long time I believed that it was Newton’s opinions of holy scripture that had shaken the tree of my life and causedthe apple of my religious faith to fall to the ground, where it started to rot and perish. But this was only part of the story. Because of Newton, asking questions became second nature to me. And I began to perceive that it is our duty to ask whether these religious things be true; and if true, whether they be good or not. If we wish to find God we must banish all ignorance of ourselves, our world and our universe.