The Confusion

“Agreed.”

“Why not admit it, then? Why this stubborn refusal to consider Newton’s system, when yours is just as fraught with difficulties?”

Leibniz drew to a halt before the front stoop of the Schlo?, as if he’d rather freeze than continue the discussion where it might be overheard. “Your question is dressed up in the guise of Reason, to make it appear innocent. Perhaps it is. Perhaps not.”

“Even if you do not think me innocent, pray believe that my confusion is genuine.”

“Isaac and I had this conversation long ago, when we were young, and matters stood quite differently.”

“How odd. You are the only person, other than Daniel Waterhouse, who has ever called him by his Christian name.”

The look of uncertainty on Leibniz’s face now hardened into open disbelief. “What do you call him, when the two of you are alone together in your London house?”

“I stand corrected, Doctor. There are three of us who have known him thusly.”

“That is a very clever sentence you just uttered,” Leibniz exclaimed, sounding genuinely impressed. “Like a silken cord turned in on itself and knotted into a snare. I commend you for it, but I will not put my foot in it. And I will thank you to keep Daniel out of it as well.”

Fatio had turned red. “The only thing I wish to snare is a clearer understanding of what has passed between you and Isaac.”

“You want to know if you have a rival.”

Fatio said nothing.

“The answer is: you do not.”

“That is well.”

“You do not have a rival, Fatio. But Isaac Newton does.”

Ireland 1690-1691

THE KING’S OWN BLACK TORRENT Guards had been founded by a man King William did not like very much (John Churchill), and as a sort of punishment for that, the regiment had now been exiled in Ireland for almost two years. Bob Shaftoe had learned many things about this island during that time: For example, that it was commonly divided into four pieces, which were variously styled Kingdoms or Duchies or Presidencies or Counties depending on whom you were talking to and what peculiar notions they held concerning the true nature and meaning of Irish history. Connaught was one, and the others were Ulster, Leinster, and Munster.

Bob heard about Connaught first, but saw it last. Nevertheless, he felt he knew something of it. He had heard endless discourse of it during the last thirteen years from his Irish “out-laws,” the kin-folk of the late Mary Dolores, most of whom bore the surname of Partry.

Until of late, the Partry clan and their swine, kine, assorted free-ranging poultry, and one bewildered sheep had teemed in a bit of shed in Rotherhithe, which lay across the Thames from Wapping, about a mile downstream of the Tower of London. Teague Partry-one of three Partrys who had, at one time or another, enlisted in the Black Torrent Guards-had often volunteered to stand watch on Develin Tower, the extreme southeastern vertex of the citadel, in spite of the fact that it was sorely exposed to raw weather coming up the River, and detested by all of the other soldiers. The cold wet winds, he claimed, reminded him of Connaught, and from his Develin vantage point he could see all the way downriver to Rotherhithe and keep an eye on his four-legged assets. Teague rhapsodized about Connaught all the time, and did it so convincingly that half the regiment was ready to move there. Bob had taken it with a grain of salt because he knew that Teague had never in his life ventured more than five miles’ distance from London Bridge, and was merely repeating tales told to him by his folk. From which Bob had collected, very early, something that it would have benefited the Partrys to know, namely that Ireland was a mentality, and not a physical place.

After the Revolution the Partrys had slaughtered all their livestock, deserted their Regiment, gathered up what money they could, and escaped to Dublin. Several months later, Bob had been shipped to Belfast with the rest of his regiment, and with the Dutch colonel who’d been put in command of it. Now, King William found John Churchill hard enough to trust when he was inside London Wall. He could not possibly bring himself to trust Marlborough (or any other English commander) with an elite regiment on Irish soil, especially when Churchill’s former master, James, was only a few marches south, in Dublin. So it was under a Colonel de Zwolle that the King’s Own Black Torrent Guards voyaged to Belfast, and under him that they tarried on that island over two winters. When Bob next saw Churchill, he would assure his old chief that he had not missed a thing.