Dark Matter

“The accident of uniformity in creation only seems to be thus,” I argued. “As once gravity and the rainbow used to seem which, now explained, are no more accidents than prisms or telescopes. One day all these questions will be answered, but not by reason of a God. Your uncle’s hand has pointed out the way forward.”

“Do not say this,” said Miss Barton. “He does not believe this. For him, atheism is senseless and odious to mankind. He knows that there is a Being who made all things and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared. Fear God, Mister Ellis. Fear him as once you loved me.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Man’s nobility is not born of fear, but of reason. If I must be kin to God by fear, then God is himself ignoble. And if your uncle does not understand this, it can only be because he does not wish to understand, for in all else he is the very spirit of understanding.

“But let us have no more high words, Miss Barton. I can see the insult I have offered you seems very grievous and shall say no more to vex you further.”

I bowed stiffly, and adding only that I would love her forever, to which she said nothing, I took my leave, already weary, to walk the several miles back to the Tower. And as I walked I had the smell of Miss Barton’s privy parts on my fingers to confirm that for a moment I had possessed her, only then to be rejected; and I was like one who had been shown the gates of Paradise only to have been denied entry. Which gave me no more appetite for my life than Judas, if such a man ever did exist. Indeed I might have hanged myself as Major Mornay was in the beginning thought to have done, but for the fear that now infected me of being nothing afterward.

It is no wonder that the early Christians could go to their martyrdoms with hymns on their lips when a place in Heaven seemed assured. But what was there for atheists, except oblivion? And without Miss Barton there was not even Paradise on earth.

It was two of the clock by the time I reached Tower Hill, and I could not have felt worse if I had been told I was to meet the hangman and his axe there in the morning. In the Lion Tower, one of the big cats moaned most pitiably, which sounded much like my own hopeless spirit, so that I pictured myself pacing up and down within the cage of my own disbelief. I passed through the gates at the Byward, with hardly a word for the sentry, Mister Grain, feeling as much sorrow for myself as any who had ever gone into that unhappy place. And when at last I reached my house, I went straightaway to bed but could not sleep all night.

So at six o’clock, with very little repose and rest, I arose and took a turn about the battlements to clear my head in a brisk wind that blew up the Thames from Deptford. London’s early-morning bustle contrasted sharply with my own preternatural calm: barges unloaded cargoes of wood and coal upon the Tower’s wharf at the same time that three-masted ships were setting sail for Chatham and beyond; while on the western side, in range of the dozen and a half cannon that were pointed at the City, maids in wide straw hats were putting down large baskets of fruit, bread and vegetables upon the ruined walls of the Tower’s old bulwark to sell unto the people that were already walking or riding by. Behind me, the flag of Saint George fluttered and snapped loudly in the unrelenting breeze, like a ship’s sail; at seven o’clock the gun on the Brass Mount fired its own salute to another day; and columns of soldiers stiffly marched their clockwork way about the Inner Ward like toys at a fair. And all the while I felt as if the world was passing me by, like a mote in a sunbeam.

My heart full of trouble, I went to the Mint office at around eight o’clock and occupied myself with filing away witness statements in the other cases we still had to deal with; until Doctor Newton came and immediately began to talk about his night’s work with the cipher, for it appeared he had not gone to bed at all. But all the time he spoke, my mind was yet at disquiet that I could not be informed how I stood with Miss Barton and if the morning still found her much offended with me.

“I have a solution,” he said, with reference to the cipher. “Of sorts.”

Chapter Four

Barent Coenders van Helpen, Escalier des sages, 1689

AND THERE CAME IN ME FEAR WITH JOY, FOR I SAW A NEW LIGHT GREATER THAN THE LIGHT OF DAY.(THE APOCALYPSE OF PETER)

was too upset about what had passed between myself and Miss Barton to be much interested in Newton’s solution to the cipher; and yet I feigned some attention while, with much animation, he spoke of it; so that if there was one thing I understood most clearly, it was that Miss Barton had not spoken to her uncle of our disagreement; and since she had avoided mentioning it, quickly I resolved to do the same, although it had occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that I ever knew in this world.