Newton's Cannon (14 page)

“How… how did you
do
that?” he asked the young man. But Geoffrey never got his answer, for in the next moment darkness rushed up, and he fell.

Louis XIV remembered the dauphin laughing, his face cherubic in the glow of the flameless lamp above them. He remembered a brighter light, then quickly, darkness. Louis had the distinct impression of a cloak being thrown about him, of it drawing tight against a world gone mad. How much time had elapsed since then he did not know.

He
did
know where he was. He was in his own room in Versailles.
He could even hear the familiar motions of his valet.

Was this morning? Had he merely dreamed?

“Bontemps,” he muttered, “is that you, Bontemps?”

“Yes, Sire,” the man answered from quite near.

“Draw up the shades or light a lamp, then,” he said, trying not to sound irritated.

“Sire…” Bontemps began. He paused, then continued, “Sire, the room is well lit.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Your doctors say that your eyesight is impaired, Sire,” the valet answered, his voice somewhat strained.

“Gone? Entirely gone?”

“That they do not know, my lord. It remains in God's hands.”

“Am I dying, Bontemps?” He had never said these words; before, he had known he was dying. There had never been any question, until the Persian elixir had trickled bitterly down his throat. Today, he felt fine—he simply could not see. He tried once again to open his eyes, but he understood now that they must already be open.

“Other than your eyesight, Majesty, the doctors assure me that you are in perfect health,” Bontemps said.

“Well, send them back in. I want to speak with them.”

“I am sorry, Sire,” Bontemps said, his voice quavering in a peculiar manner. “They have done what they can, and I have sent them away.”

“Away? Why?”

“Because, Sire, I am your foremost valet. I am the head of your secret police and the person to whom your safety is most dearly trusted. And I know of no man whom I may trust at this moment other than myself. Sire, I did not know what better to do.”

“What are you talking about, Bontemps?”

“The attempt on your life, Sire. Someone has tried to kill you.”

“To kill me? How?”

The voice sighed again. “I was hoping you might know, Sire. All any of us know is that the pyramid upon which you stood suddenly burst into flame.”

“The pyramid,” Louis repeated, a sudden well opening in his chest, a sudden plummeting of his heart. “Bontemps, what has become of the dauphin? Is he likewise blinded?”

The pause was a long one this time.

“He … the dauphin is with God, Sire.”

Louis drew a deep breath. “Leave me, Louis-Alexandre,” he said at last. “Send the police and the Hundred Swiss about—”

“I have done that, Sire, and I have sent to Paris for your musketeers.”

“Then leave me. Go outside until I call for you.” He said this quietly, but with all of his authority. There was a moment's silence, and then footsteps retreating.

He fumbled his way out of bed; he meant to pray. But when he had managed to kneel and clutch his hands beneath his chin, he groaned, discovering there, on his knees, that even when eyes were broken, tears could still flow.

“Oh, my lady, your back!” Charlotte exclaimed. Adrienne lay facedown on her bed; the girls had just stripped the beautiful dress from her, and Helen began to rub the burn with butter—or ointment. Adrienne winced.

“There are blisters?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, lady,” Helen answered.

“What could have happened?” Charlotte went on, her high voice tinged with panic. “I hear the dauphin is dead.”

“Someone tried to murder the king,” Helen explained. “They failed, but the dauphin was killed.”

“Were you hurt, milady? Other than your back?”

Adrienne pulled herself up sluggishly. It seemed as if she were made of lead. She forced herself to inventory her body. She could not see her back, but she seemed intact. She felt her head carefully, but could find no bruises or lumps. Her throat felt harsh, perhaps from the smoke. “No,” she said. “Do not call a doctor on my account.”

“I am not certain that I could, to tell you the truth, Mademoiselle.”

“What do you mean by that?” Adrienne asked.

“Only that there are two of the Hundred Swiss at your door. We are none of us allowed to go in or out of this room.”

“What?”

“They search for the murderer,” Helen explained.

“Oh. Oh!” She glanced about and quickly spotted the dress on the floor, where the girls had dropped it. As her eyes lit upon it, Charlotte started guiltily.

“I am sorry, lady,” she said. “I was so worried about you that I forgot …” she started toward the dress.

Adrienne clenched her fists in the sheets, wondering what to do. If she told Charlotte to leave it be, it would naturally arouse suspicion. Already, Helen favored her with a puzzled look. So she said nothing as Charlotte lifted the dress and the note from the duchess of Orléans fell wetly to the floor. All three women stared at it.

“Helen,” Adrienne said tiredly, “could you get that for me?”

“Of course, milady.” Helen walked over and picked up the damp, folded paper. Adrienne caught in Helen's eyes, then, a flicker of suspicion, and knew she must take a chance.

“Please read it to me, would you, Helen?” she asked.

“I am sorry, Mademoiselle,” the girl said. “I have not learned to read.”

“Oh,” Adrienne responded. “In that case, my dear, just hand it to me.”

Helen did so, curtseying. “Is it from a man?” she whispered, looking back to see that Charlotte was out of earshot.

“It might be,” Adrienne said mysteriously, and took it from Helen's long fingers. “And now, I believe, I should like some rest,” she said.

Helen nodded. “I will be in the next room,” she said, indicating the parlor, “should you have need of me.”

Adrienne nodded. When the girl was gone, she unfolded the note.

Had she not been so numb, she might have felt real panic. The unknown and the unexpected had too often been her guests today. A dull, creeping chill was the only sign that Adrienne's world had been upended. She blinked slowly, wondering how best to dispose of the note. She continued to stare at it, at the
small drawing of an owl that was its only contents: the owl, sign of Athena, of the Korai.

She suddenly understood Versailles the way the king explained it—as a vast clockwork mechanism whose gears moved irrevocably, indifferent to human wishes. From every side, a different gear now turned to crush her, and she saw no way out of the machine—no way whatsoever.

The door to the print shop burst open with such force that splinters from it struck Ben ten paces away. He yelped and staggered away as a black cloud flowed through the door. He lost his voice entirely as its pulsing heart of flame entered, floating some seven feet off the ground. Beneath the flame strode Trevor Bracewell, a nasty smile on his face.

“I told you, Ben,” he said. “I did warn you, didn't I?” He raised a hand that seemed grotesquely misshapen until Ben realized it held a pistol made of a metal so black it appeared to be a rift in the air. Still smiling, he pointed it at Ben's heart.

Ben awoke clutching at his chest; beneath his clawing hand his heart beat unnaturally.

“Oh, God,” he gasped, sitting up. “God!”

He stumbled down the stairs, away from the darkness of his room. In the print shop, he unshuttered the lantern and let the buttery light envelop him, hoping it would drive the nightmare back into the cobwebs of his brain.

Unfortunately, it refused to go. It had been a dream unlike any other dream; other dreams were confused, and though they might frighten or excite, it was rarely clear upon waking why they should do so. This dream had been knife-keen, paintingbright. It left no doubts, was confused in nothing. Had John's dream been like this? It had sounded so; more fantastical, perhaps, but not less real.

He moved to the tables, searching frantically for something to do. There stood the aetherschreiber, but he felt a sudden horror at the very thought of touching it. He wondered if that
horror had been laid upon him in the dream—another spell, an other thing he was forbidden.

What if it was? He would deal with that in time.

Tiptoeing back up to his room, he took from the book where he had left it the latest letter from “Silence Dogood.” Returning downstairs, he began setting it into type. Now and then he glanced apprehensively at the door, fearing it would burst inward.

Had he dreamt of Bracewell because he and John had spoken of him the day before? But not a day had passed when he hadn't thought of Bracewell and his strange cloud. It couldn't have been triggered by anything scientific—he had not even used the aetherschreiber that day, much less experimented with any novel devices.

Had Bracewell somehow known that they'd spoken of him and
sent
the dream to him? The thought sickened him. That thing had come into his head once; could it do so at will? By God, was it
always
with him? Could Bracewell kill him in a dream, or only threaten him? Ben fumbled another word into place, placed spacing blanks between. He realized that he had already concluded what John had; that his nightmare was of unnatural origin.

But why now, when it had been so long since he had seen Bracewell? And how could this damned witch know that he had modified the aetherschreiber?

Witch.
He flinched at the word, but it seemed somehow more appropriate for Bracewell than
scientific philosopher
. Aetherschreibers, lanterns—even such terrible weapons of war as the French fervefactum—all were things of the daylight, the explicable. Bracewell's sorcery was of night, terror; it was illogical, inexplicable.

How could he fight it?

The best answer, he knew, was not to fight it at all. He should flee Boston, perhaps even flee the Americas. He closed his eyes, thinking furiously. He could borrow the sailboat again—Mr. Dare had said he might use it whenever he wished. He could make for New York, and from there book passage to England, find Sir Isaac Newton or some other powerful British philosopher, ask him to help. Of course, he had no money, but he could
earn passage on a ship by working, as one of his brothers had. It was done every day …

The front door creaked open suddenly, and Ben's heart climbed mouthward. He could only stare in horror as the portal swung wider.

But it was James, not some necromantic cloud, who stood framed against the gently illumined street.

“Ben?” James asked, his tone puzzled. “What's wrong, boy?” He chuckled. “By your expression, I would say you were up to no good and I caught you at it. But here you are setting type, and I told you that you might go to bed early.”

Ben heard his voice rise unsteadily as he answered. “I couldn't … couldn't sleep,” he said.

James nodded. “I've that trouble myself now and then.” He stepped fully into the room and closed the door. His eyes were just a bit glassy and his speech slightly slurred. Ben knew that James had been out at a tavern. “Normally when I find you up, however, it's with a book in your hand.”

“I had a bad dream,” Ben explained. He wanted, then, to tell James everything, about Bracewell's attack, about the dream just now. If only he knew how to begin it without sounding insane.

“What are you setting there? I thought we were done,” James asked, settling heavily onto a bench and stretching his back so that it cracked audibly.

“What? Oh, it's the latest letter from Silence Dogood.”

“Ah, the good widow,” James said. “I must admit, I wonder who she is. We were just discussing her down at the Green Dragon.”

“You and the Couranteers?”

“Aye. Do you realize that she has been published in New York, as well as here?”

“Yes,” Ben answered. “I send them her essays in trade for what they send me.”

James frowned and wagged a finger. “You should keep me informed of these things, Ben. Else what will I do when you run off to sea?”

Ben puffed out his cheeks. He wasn't prepared to deal with
James' peevishness just now. “James …” he began, but his brother waved him to silence.

“Never mind, Benjamin, I was wrong to say that. You've a smart mouth, but lately you've been a good 'prentice, and you've given me no cause to whip you in many a day. What's more, I owe you much, and we both know that.”

Beer sometimes made James feel generous, and it sometimes made him mean—occasionally both. “Thank you,” Ben said.

“This is a new age, Ben, a time such as has never been in all of history. Everything is being invented anew, reforged, beaten into new shapes!” He emphasized his last point by slamming his palm into the table. He leaned forward, his eyes alight. “Here in Boston, we will take that reshaping in our own hands, Ben.”

He reached into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “Here, look at this!”

Ben took the paper and unfolded it. For an instant, he was puzzled; it was a handwritten layout for the first page of a newspaper, all ready to be set into type. It looked like their own paper, the
Courant
. But then Ben took better notice of the caption:

The Little Compton Scourge
or
The Anti-Courant

“Who wrote this?” Ben asked, his eyes already picking down the page. There was a long essay attributed to “Zachariah Touchstone,” surely as fictional a name as “Silence Dogood.”

James lifted his hands. “One of the ministers; I suspect the Reverend Walker or Increase Mather, or perhaps several of them. Here, give it back, I want to read you something.”

Ben dutifully handed the paper back to his brother, who searched it a moment, and then, clearing his throat, began to read.

James looked up at Ben, eyes flashing. “Oh, they shall reap the whirlwind for this! We'll set it first thing in the morning.”