“For the conflagration,” said Newton, “will surely be blamed upon the Papists.”
“Aye,” said Oates, “for it is only what they would do had they sufficient opportunity.”
“Who would doubt such a thing after the Ailesbury Plot?” said Newton. “Or the insurrection of Sir John Fenwick?”
“And yet,” said I, “so many Jacobites have been arrested this year that I fear they are driven underground and we shall find fewer Papists than there are. Were not all Papists banished ten miles from London, last February?”
“Aye, milord,” said Oates. “But the measure was relaxed after only a month; and those few who were obliged to leave were soon back, like rats after the Fire.”
“Then pray tell me, Doctor Oates, how accurate are your lists of who is to be killed? We do not want any Papists getting away.”
“I’ll warrant none shall escape, milord,” said Oates, grinning most fanatically so that I saw how much he relished the bloody prospect that was plotted. “We shall begin with the Spanish Ambassador’s house in Wild Street, Covent Garden, that bestows a Roman Catholic aura upon that whole area. I expect to find papers there that were compiled for the Catholic Minister Apostolic in Flanders as to how many Papists there are in England and Wales, and their names. I do not think we shall slaughter fewer Catholics than Huguenots were murdered in Paris, milord.”
“It seems only appropriate that the number should be the same,” murmured Newton. “But when will it be done?”
“Fool,” said I, counterfeiting to Oates that I already had this knowledge, for I did not think it good that we should seem to know nothing. “I told you already. The damn fellow never listens, Doctor. Tell him.”
“Why, when the King returns from Flanders, of course,” said Oates. “What good is a Catholic plot to kill the King, if the King is somewhere else? It will all come out after this man Isaac Newton is murdered. For with his death, which will be blamed on the Catholics, the rest of their damnable plot will be revealed.”
“How is he to be murdered?” I enquired. “I have heard he is a mighty intelligent fellow, this Isaac Newton. He may yet outwit you.”
“I have not the precise details. But his movements are known to us. He will be assassinated in the street, and the blame put upon a notorious Roman Catholic who works in the Tower.”
“After the peace is concluded, then,” Newton said coolly, as if we were discussing the murder of some stranger.
“That is what we are waiting for, of course,” said I. “Let me die, but you are an ass, John. A mischief to you. Of course it will be after the peace, for when else will the King come back?” I glanced at Titus Oates and shook my head wearily. “Sometimes I wonder that I keep him in my service, Doctor, he abuses me so.”
We spoke again, and gradually and with great subtlety, we learned much of their plans, so that when the coach drew up in Axe Yard, which was between King Street and the cockpit in St. James’s Park, we knew a great deal except what was in the pamphlet which I now pronounced myself most eager to read.
“I will fetch it straightaway,” said Oates and, opening the coach door, climbed down to the street and went inside his house.
“That is a foul, roguish fellow,” remarked Newton.
“Most foul,” said I. “
“A senseless beast, yes, quite so.” Newton smiled. “And you, sir, have missed your true calling. What an actor you would have made, my dear fellow. Your Frenchified English is most appropriate and aristocratic.
“Thank you, sir. And now we shall find out what our Mister Defoe has been writing.”
“That’s another rogue,” said Newton. “I hate all those who issue anonymously what they neither wish nor dare to acknowledge as their own. It’s simple cowardice.”
When Oates came back to the coach with one of his damnable pamphlets, I gave him a guinea, for which the wretched and loathsome fellow was most grateful, turning it over in his curiously blackened fingers, which made me think we had done well to have given him a real one instead of the false ones we had recovered.
“But I would you say nothing to Lord Lucas of our meeting,” said I. “Or else he may think I go behind his back in this enterprise. And he is a person who gives off a most persecuted air, so that I do not want the fatigue of explaining myself to him. I swear he makes himself seem the most persistently wronged person I have ever met.”
“I have seldom met His Lordship,” said Oates. “Yet from what Sergeant Rohan told me, that is indeed his reputation. But Your Excellency may be assured that I shall say nothing to anyone of our conversation. And I look forward to making Your Lordship’s acquaintance again, perhaps when we have made England a better place to live in.”
“You mean without Papists.”
Oates bowed his horrible acquiescence.
“Amen to that,” he said.
Upon which Newton closed the coach door and we drove away, most horrified by what we had heard and much afeared of that knowledge to which we were now privy.
Newton often talked of the story of Belshazzar’s impious feast and the secret writing that Daniel did decipher. Indeed the Book of Daniel was one of his most favourite in the Bible, being full of numerical prophecies. He wondered why those wise men of Belshazzar could not read the words:
This particular anecdote says much about Newton: herein may be found his interest in numismata that was stimulated by being at the Mint; but of greater importance is the meaning of the words themselves—“numbered, weighed and divided”—which encapsulate Newton’s own philosophy and his contribution to the world. Now that I come to think of it, Newton’s whole life could be compared to that disembodied hand whose writing so astonished all the king’s own soothsayers and astrologers, for he had such little interest in his own body that it might not have existed at all.
Like the prophet Daniel, Newton had a low opinion of prophets and wise men in general; and he was especially scathing toward Mister Defoe’s pamphlet that made much of a prediction by the French astrologer, Michel de Nostradamus—whose fame was widespread, although he was dead more than a hundred years—that there would be a conspiracy to kill King William.
“No man can prophesy the future,” said Newton when we were back at the Mint, having read the pamphlet aloud in the coach. “Only God in Heaven can reveal the secrets of the world, through men, who are his chosen instruments. It is he that maketh known what shall come to pass. But it is given to man to understand God’s world only by scientific inquiry and proper observation, and not by horoscopes or other foolish magic.
“And yet the common people are most credulous from their great ignorance,” he said. “And readily believe in such nonsense. Therefore it’s the proper job of science to exorcise these demonhaunted worlds, and to bring light to the regions of superstition. Until then, man will be the victim of his own stupidity, much preyed upon by the likes of Nostradamus, whose prophecies only seem accurate by virtue of their cryptic style and ambiguous content. Thus it seems to me entirely fitting that we should discover perjurers and villains such as Titus Oates and Mister Defoe making employment of the Frenchman’s mountebankeries. For therein lies the true work of horoscopes, as fitting tools for liars and impostors.
“But our Mister Defoe’s a clever man,” admitted Newton. “A most skilful propagator. He blames the lack of coin on Roman Catholic goldsmiths that hoard much bullion. It was the same in Paris in 1572 when the currency was also much debased and it was suspected that the Huguenots hoarded money, for their good business reputation was well known.
