Galapagos Regained (16 page)

“Ere my retirement to this establishment,” the hemp noose declared, “I cleansed the world of nearly three hundred murderers, includin' nine Bombay thuggees, two regicides, and a Lambeth maniac specializin' in streetwalkers.”

“An impressive record,” the jute noose conceded, “but mine's more remarkable yet, for in my day I strangled sixty men sent to the gallows on false testimony.”

“How can you boast of such a thing?” asked the hemp noose.

“When a government executes its citizens willy-nilly,” replied the jute noose, “the people grow fearful, accordin' their rulers the blindest sort of obedience. I'm proud to have made my small contribution to England's social stability.”

The pockmarked man bobbed his head approvingly. “'Tis common knowledge that half the hangings at Newgate send blameless souls to oblivion.”

“This visit has ended,” declared Squibble. “Phineas Bathurst, you will speak no more treasonous bilge within these walls, lest you yourself become a candidate for the scaffold.”

“Executin' treason-mongers a speciality,” bragged the jute noose.

“Upon my return to England, I shall systematically employ this country's gambling dens in redistributing the Empire's wealth,” Algernon promised his father.

“We love you, Papa,” said Chloe as Squibble ushered her towards the stairs. “Even as we seek our fortune in the New World, you will never be far from our thoughts.”

“Be thee well,” said Phineas.

“Good luck,” said the hemp noose.

“Godspeed,” said the jute noose.

*   *   *

Whereas Miss Bathurst's dubious baboon theory of human origins was, as far as Malcolm Chadwick could determine, a monolithic hypothesis, not yet fractured into competing varieties, Samuel Wilberforce's nickname—“Soapy Sam”—enjoyed no such scholarly unanimity. One theory traced the epithet to the bubble-light quality of the bishop's sermons. Another explanation referenced his habit of punctuating his speeches with a florid hand-washing gesture. The least sympathetic conjecture turned on Wilberforce's slick and slippery practice of passing off a parody of an opponent's position as an accurate paraphrase, a skill through which he routinely won philosophical arguments without resorting to reasoned discourse.

Summoned to the bishop's elegant Oxford abode four days after Miss Bathurst's presentation, Malcolm knew he was about to encounter neither Sam of the frothy homilies nor Sam of the spotless hands but the third Wilberforce, the crafty polemicist. The bishop intended to scold him, as he often did in the wake of a Shelley Society meeting. Malcolm was still smarting from Wilberforce's reproach following the most recent appearance at Alastor Hall of the Argument from Evil. “According to the
Evening Standard,
you unhorsed the contestant through Leibniz's observation that ours is the best of all possible worlds,” said the bishop. “I especially appreciated your coda, ‘emphasis on the
possible
.' Splendid. Of course, you might have given an
example
of God deferring to necessity. I myself would have adduced the case of bone. The Creator had no choice but to make our skeletons vulnerable to breakage, for otherwise we'd be unable to move.”

Upon answering Malcolm's knock, Wilberforce's grouchy and officious butler guided him into the oak-paneled privacy of the library, where the reading table held a splayed copy of the
Evening Standard
.
ATHEIST JUDGES UNIMPRESSED BY COSMIC CORRELATIONS,
shouted the page three headline, but it was the subheading that had probably caught Wilberforce's attention:
FREETHINKING FEMALE NATURALIST TO SEEK PROFANE “TREE OF LIFE
.” The paragraphs concerning Miss Bathurst featured quotations from prominent Oxonians, including barrister Andrew Peach, don Wilfred Glenister, physician Amos Crichlow, and rector Simon Hallowborn, who'd called her, respectively, “a deluded fool,” “an obstreperous wench,” “a conceited troublemaker,” and “the Covent Garden Antichrist.”

Though hardly an antichrist, Miss Bathurst was surely amongst the most unappetizing persons Malcolm had ever met. Unlike other contestants of scientific bent, this flighty zookeeper seemed not to care particularly whether God existed, just so long as she pocketed the £10,000. Should he ever become inspired to write an ode to womanly intellect, he would select as his subject not the unprincipled Chloe Bathurst but the formidable Harriet Martineau. Despite her ungainly ear trumpet and intractable atheism, Miss Martineau remained for Malcolm the paragon of her sex.

“By rights I should be furious with you,” boomed Wilberforce, rushing into the library like a diminutive but implacable tornado. “You could have nipped Miss Bathurst's preposterous argument in the bud, but instead you handed her a ticket to Ecuador.”

“If her argument is preposterous, we have naught to fear from it,” said Malcolm.

“Don't waggle your Aristotle at me, sir,” said Wilberforce. “On the face of it you've bungled this whole affair—yet I believe you may have dealt the Devil a deuce.”

“How so?”

Wilberforce sidled towards the shelves devoted to printed sermons, including his own collection,
Sabbath Orations for All Occasions
, a volume thick with (in Malcolm's view) feeble theodicies and anemic exegesis. “By ratifying Miss Bathurst's quest, you have guaranteed that the judges will hear no more of transmutation for at least a year.”

“Which gives us time to detect the flaws in her idea,” noted Malcolm.

“Better yet, it gives us time to learn where she got it in the first place,” said Wilberforce.

“You don't believe the hypothesis is original with her?” asked Malcolm, entering an alcove reserved to Martin Luther and John Calvin, twenty tattered volumes, their bindings now gutters for dust. Evidently Wilberforce hadn't visited the Reformation in years.

“Recall that Miss Bathurst is by training an actress, once employed by such sordid emporia as the Adelphi Theatre,” said the bishop. “Are we really to believe that a scatterbrained thespian devised this Tree of Life persiflage on her own? Mark my words, she stole the theory from some
real
scientist. We must locate the man and alert him to the theft.”

“And once he realizes what mischief is afoot, he'll come to Alastor Hall and explain why his conjectures don't constitute a disproof of God—is that what you have in mind?”

“Precisely,” said Wilberforce, lathering his hands, “which is why I'm giving you a new assignment. Miss Bathurst surely appreciates your recent patronage, so you should have no trouble gaining her trust and learning the origin of her species theory. Indeed, I suspect you'll have coaxed the cat from the bag long before the
Equinox
rounds the Horn.”

“Good Lord, Sam, are you suggesting I accompany her on the voyage?”

“No, Malcolm, I'm
insisting
you accompany her.”

“An order from my bishop?”

Wilberforce nodded emphatically. “It's all been arranged. For the humbling sum of two hundred pounds, Captain Runciter will engage you as ship's chaplain.”

“Two hundred pounds is not
humbling
. It's twice what I make in a year of sermonizing on dry land.”

“Runciter is not paying
you,
” Wilberforce explained. “The Diocese is paying
him
to take you on. An unsavory arrangement, but the best we could manage on short notice.”

“I'm entirely the wrong man for the job,” protested Malcolm. “From the moment I clamped eyes on her, I found in Miss Bathurst a person of unbridled arrogance and unmitigated egotism.”

“Quite possibly she has a different opinion of herself. The two of you will have much to talk about. If you're wondering who might replace you on the judges' bench, fear not. Owen and Symonds have welcomed me into their fellowship.”

Taking Malcolm's arm, Wilberforce propelled him through a set of French doors into the sun-dappled conservatory beyond. The room contained three trilling nightingales in a wicker cage plus two somber men in recumbent postures, one lounging on a divan, the other sprawled across a couch, the first dressed in the blue uniform of a naval commander, the second wearing the immaculate cassock and clean white bib of a cleric who could afford either a laundress or a wife. The bishop made the introductions, presenting Captain Adrian Garrity, “master of the
Antares,
leaving Bristol three weeks hence for the Galápagos archipelago,” and Mr. Simon Hallowborn, “servant of the Lord and passenger on that same brig,” to Malcolm Chadwick, “the canniest advocate God ever had,” then poured everyone sherry from a crystal decanter.

“The Encantadas have become a popular destination,” Malcolm observed.

The pallid and sinewy Simon Hallowborn rose and took a swallow of wine, setting his glass atop the piano lid. “Every fortnight I read the
Standard,
eager to learn of your latest adventure amongst the rakehells.”

“And I've seen
your
name in that same paper,” said Malcolm. “I suspect the epithet you contrived for Miss Bathurst, ‘Covent Garden Antichrist,' is going to stick.”

“Allow me to state the obvious,” said the rector. “The Church owes you a debt of gratitude for defeating every supposed disproof to cross your path, thus exposing this contest as the ludicrous national distraction it has become.”

“A distraction, exactly,” said Wilberforce. “And yet I worry that even if Miss Bathurst's Tree of Life dies a dog's death at Alastor Hall, it may eventually flourish elsewhere in Britain. I'm pleased to report that at last month's General Synod we took steps to preclude that possibility.”

“It's a devilishly dexterous scheme,” said Captain Garrity, a lantern-jawed giant who looked capable of severing a towline with his teeth.

“Dexterous, to be sure,” said Wilberforce, “but the Devil had naught to do with it.”

Fearing that he was about to hear something ignoble, Malcolm drifted into the vicinity of the caged nightingales and attempted to calm himself with their song. Bequeath to transmutationism the world's finest lathe, he mused, give it a flawless loom, a perfect kiln, and still it could never fashion such creatures without divine assistance.

“When the rector and I set sail for Galápagos, our passengers will include scores of criminals from Dartmoor Prison, all slated to reinvigorate an Ecuadorian penal colony on Charles Isle,” said Garrity. “The overseers in Quito call the place Ciudad del Diablo, the Devil's City—‘Mephistropolis' on all the Royal Navy's maps.”

“To understand Her Majesty's unusual interest in Mephistropolis,” said Hallowborn, “we must go back nineteen years to the moment when a young American frontiersman, one Orrin Eggwort, took title to Charles Isle. Evidently Eggwort had fought with great valor during Ecuador's war of independence, and so President Flores awarded him his own private island. Eggwort lost no time turning his portion of Galápagos into some sort of Christian utopia and appointing himself emperor—that's right, emperor—as well as
de facto
administrator of the penal colony.”

“With the coming of the
Antares,
” said Wilberforce, “the population of Mephistropolis will increase by ninety-two English-born convicts—four times the number of Ecuadorian inmates—a figure sufficient to make Charles Isle of a piece with Her Majesty's global penal system. The present Galápagos governor, one Jonathan Stopsack, should then have no difficulty breaking Eggwort to the rank of figurehead and assuming jurisdiction over the whole archipelago, per the 1832 agreement between London and Quito making the Encantadas at once a British protectorate and an Ecuadorian possession.”

A disconcerting grin claimed Hallowborn's face. “Beyond their political utility, our ninety-two prisoners will have a spiritual mission as well. Upon disembarking, they will perform a boon on God's behalf.”

Malcolm winced and took a long sip of sherry.

“The General Synod, as it happens, was gifted with a twofold revelation concerning the reptiles and birds with which Miss Bathurst intends to demonstrate her theory,” said Wilberforce. “First revelation: these creatures are so unloved by Providence that we should regard them as the very spawn of Satan.”

“When the Bishop of Panama stumbled upon Galápagos in 1535,” added Hallowborn in a tone of corroboration, “he thought he'd found the Devil's
pied-à-terre
.”

“Second revelation: nothing would please God more than the elimination of these demonic beasts,” said Wilberforce.

“Elimination?” said Malcolm, dumbfounded.

Garrity replied, “My sailors will get rid of the birds: you may be sure we're not about to give fowling pieces to criminals—they'll receive only machetes for the lizards and wire garrotes for the tortoises. If the convicts do their jobs properly, Governor Stopsack will reduce their sentences accordingly.”

“We call it the Great Winnowing,” added Hallowborn.

The sherry suddenly turned against Malcolm, causing his brain to reel and waves of nausea to roll through his stomach. “What an appalling idea.”

“A deadly poison demands a strong emetic,” said Wilberforce, clasping Malcolm's shoulder. “Do you remember how John the Baptist called for every unwholesome tree to be cut down and thrown into the fire? For John alone knew that Christ had come, ‘whose winnowing-fan is in his hand, and he will purge his threshing-floor.' So shall we scrape Galápagos clean of its wicked finches, depraved mockingbirds, fallen tortoises, and sinful lizards.”

“If there's a biblical precedent for your scheme,” asserted Malcolm, cringing internally, “it would be the massacre by which Herod sought to murder our Savior in his crib.”

“Do not confuse a slaughter of the innocents with a cleansing of the corrupt,” said Hallowborn.