Wickins was surprised to see that the door leading into Newton's laboratory was open. The bedlinen lay in a crumbled heap. Plates of food had been left ignored on the floor. The window was open and on the wide windowsill stood a bowl of water. It was clean, untouched. Wickins edged his way over to the laboratory. His heart was pounding. A sudden irrational fear had shot through him. Newton was always so careful to maintain his privacy.
His friend had not heard him. Newton was standing with his back to the laboratory door, the glow from the fire lighting up one side of his face. He was cradling something in his palms. It was a thing that Wickins had never before seen in the waking world, a thing of mythology, but something he also knew to be real, sacred beyond words, the nexus of all meaning: the ruby sphere.
Wickins thought he was going to scream, but thankfully no sound came. Yet still the horror would not dissipate. With an almost supernatural effort he managed to raise his hand to his face and grip the skin of his cheeks with his fingernails. It was an almost involuntary act, as though he was trying to convince himself that he was still alive, that what he was witnessing was wholly real.
One of the thrushes landed on the windowsill and tapped at the water bowl. Newton spun round.
During the two seconds that followed, a million clashing thoughts ran through Wickins's mind, but he was really only aware of two. One told him to flee, to race to Oxford and to warn his friends. The other impulse screamed at him to rush into the room to grab the sphere.
In the time it took him to cover the distance to where Newton sat, the scientist had raised himself out of his chair and braced himself for the onslaught.
For a man of almost fifty who had spent his entire life in study, Newton was surprisingly agile. Wickins made a grab for him, but Newton shifted to one side; he lost his balance but managed to break his fall by gripping the table by the fireplace. He spun round and saw Newton grasping at a sheaf of papers that lay on a table close by.
'Isaac, you cannot do this thing,' Wickins screamed. 'Please. . you know not. .'
But Newton seemed oblivious to him. A sudden fury seized Wickins when he realised in an instant that he was wasting his breath. He sprang forward and grabbed Newton by the shoulder. The scientist twisted. Wickins lost his grip and whirled around. He could see the sphere cupped in his room-mate's right hand, and then Newton's fist encasing the sphere came rushing towards his face. He just managed to sidestep the blow, and as he swerved to one side he brought his hand across Newton's face, scratching his cheek. Newton yelped and with blind fury lashed out at Wickins, catching him squarely on the jaw. 'Tis mine,' he yelled, his eyes ablaze.
Wickins fell backwards and landed heavily against the shelves, his head smashing against the wood and causing several jars and bottles to wobble and fall. They crashed to the floor except for a bottle of yellowish liquid labelled 'Oil of Vitriol' which landed squarely on Wickins's shoulder, popped its cork and spilled its contents across his arm. He screamed but, almost before the sound had left his mouth, Newton, a look of manic fury etched into his features, took one step forward and kicked him squarely in the face. Wickins slammed back against the floor, unconscious.
When Wickins awoke, it was completely dark. The fire had dwindled to nothing, it was chilly and the smells that reached him were almost overwhelming.
Most disturbing was the unmistakable odour of corroded flesh.
Wickins pulled himself to his feet. The pain in his head almost made him fall to his knees, and his arm throbbed. Stumbling into the next room he saw that there was a little more light. The moon had risen and a silver haze hung over everything. He looked at his arm. The fabric of his shirt had burned away and his flesh was red and blistered. He strode over to the bowl of water on the sill and, soaking a shirt that lay nearby, he dabbed the wet cloth on his arm.
So Newton had the ruby sphere. This was Wickins's worst nightmare come true. He tried to think through the pain. The cool water on his arm helped, but the burn was agonising and his head felt like a dozen workmen with mallets were slamming into his skull as though attacking a resistant mound of rock.
Wickins remembered the timepiece that Newton kept in his room and went to check it. The fourth hour after midnight had passed. He must have been unconscious for a long time. He cursed under his breath. Cupping his hands in the water bowl again he swilled some water around his mouth before spitting it out, red, into the bowl.
Once again he tried to think, but the pain continued to stifle his thoughts. Newton had gone. He could be close to Oxford now, or perhaps he had gone elsewhere to prepare. The conjunction was less than twenty-four hours away. What was Wickins to do? He could send a message to Oxford, but he could not trust a courier with such a grave matter. And besides, what would he say?
A few moments later he was heading out the door, making for the stables, his jacket and hat on, bag over his shoulder.
The stable boy was not best pleased to see Wickins but a shilling brightened him up and he led the way to the stalls. Newton had been there earlier in the evening, the boy told him, but he had said nothing and had seemed even more distracted and unfriendly than usual.
Wickins chose a chestnut mare, one of the best horses in the stable, and gave the payment to the lad in a sealed envelope to be passed on to the bursar. He would, he told him, explain everything to the stable master upon his return a few days hence. He had urgent business to attend to and he simply could not waste a moment. Then, feeling half-dead, Wickins snapped the reins, pulled the mare round and headed for the gates and the main road beyond.
He made Ickwell village, sixty miles west of Cambridge, in two hours, and as the sun rose full above the hedgerows, a fresh horse, a grey gelding, took him through Brill, Horton-cum-Studley and then Islip before he joined the road that would take him to the Eastgate of Oxford. He reached the city walls an hour and a half later. At a trot, he turned along Merton Street before dismounting and allowing a boy to lead the horse away. Then he headed straight for University College.
'Great shit!' Robert Hooke exclaimed as John Wickins finished recounting his story. 'A pox on the man.' And he took a huge snort of snuff up his nostril.
They were sitting in a commodious apartment in University College overlooking The High, a set of rooms that Robert Boyle occupied each August as part of his honorarium. Wickins felt utterly drained and his arm and head throbbed. He had been received by Boyle who, in spite of the fact that he looked frail and tired himself, had insisted that he inspect and treat the other man's wounds immediately. With practised delicacy, he had probed at the blistered skin on Wickins's forearm before bandaging it tightly. To his sore head Boyle had applied a paste of cat urine and mouse droppings that he found particularly efficacious for headaches. As the old man tended him, Wickins described the recent events in Cambridge. Boyle was calm and he absorbed the information with a sigh here, a mild grunt there. Occasionally pausing for a moment in the task of tending the wounds, he would search Wickins's face, his piercing green eyes searching for something indefinable. Then Hooke had arrived, responding to the urgent message taken to him by a footman. The very opposite of Boyle, he had blustered and fumed, sworn and cursed before throwing himself into a chair by the empty fireplace.
'That abominable creature, that.. that… clyster-pipe,' he growled, reaching for his pouch of snuff.
Wickins, in spite of his agonies, was shocked. 'Sir, please, refrain. .'
'Why should I refrain?' Hooke snapped back. 'There is no better way to describe your esteemed Lucasian Professor. Indeed, 'tis perhaps too mild a description. And I might add that you, sir, are little better than he.'
At that moment Wickins could see precisely why Newton so loathed the man. Hooke's twisted, stunted frame was almost as ugly as his personality.
'Come now, gentlemen,' Boyle interjected. 'I think John would be entirely happy to concede before us here that he has made errors over the matter of his room-mate. But what is now essential is to forge solutions, not recriminations.'
'But it was I who warned you both,' Hooke insisted. Turning from Wickins to Boyle, he added. 'There is no limit to the man's ambition. I told you, sir, in London, after Wren's talk, that Newton had discerned something of value.'
'I do not even recall his presence there,' Boyle replied.
'He stood to the rear of the hall, close to the door. I glimpsed him from the stage. I was not mistaken. He was gone almost as Wren reached his conclusion.'
'And you claimed that you confronted Wren on the matter.'
