Dark Matter

“We must keep these Huguenots under our eye,” said Newton. “And hope that they may reveal themselves. Particularly Major Mornay. I fancy that the more we know about him, the better equipped we shall be to question him again. He is not nearly as strong a character as Sergeant Rohan, who, it seems, was once a galley slave in King Lewis’s navy. We’ll not break down his defences, I’ll warrant. Meanwhile you must learn to be patient, my dear fellow. Nothing is to be gained here by acting with haste. Relations between Mint and Ordnance are delicately poised. And this Gordian knot must be unravelled if we are still to have use of the rope afterward.”

For the next three weeks I worked with a whole network of Newton’s agents to keep the Huguenots who were in the Tower under our scrutiny. Mornay was a frequent visitor to an address in the Strand that was the home of Lord Ashley. Ashley was a Whig and the Member of Parliament for Poole, in Dorset. Sergeant Rohan often attended the courts at Westminster Hall. There he would listen to whatever case was being heard, and the real purpose of his going there seemed to be that he should meet a tall clerical man from whom he seemed to take orders, and who wore a great hat with a black satin hatband and a long, rose-coloured scarf. Bowlegged and bull-necked, the fellow proved too elusive and we lost his trail somewhere in Southwark, so that for a while, at least, he continued to elude identification.

While I was shadowing Sergeant Rohan through the many shops that lined both sides of Westminster Hall, a curious incident occurred which left me better acquainted with him and possessed of a higher estimate of his character.

I had for only a moment taken my eyes off the Sergeant to survey one of the many trading madams who are usually to be found there, possessed of legal papers that help to foster the impression that they come to be clients instead of finding clients for themselves, and was chagrined to discover that I had lost him. Reflecting that I was perhaps not best fashioned to make a spy, for I was too easily distracted by strumpets, I was making my way to the great door of the Hall when, while eyeing another of these pretty jades, I collided with the person of the Sergeant himself. And he, apprehending the true reason for my want of attention to where I was going, was most amused, clapping me on the shoulder and, demonstrating an affability and complaisance I found surprising, he invited me to a nearby tavern. So I went, thinking I might learn something more of his character that might be to our advantage; and learn something of him I did, although not in any way I might have supposed.

“Your Mister Newton,” he said, fetching us two pots of Byde’s best. “He’s a clever one. I don’t know how he came to suspect me for a mutineer, but it ain’t at all like he thinks between the Major and me. We’re old friends, him and me—old enough to forget rank when we quarrel, as all friends do now and then. When you’ve served with a man, fought alongside him in a fight, saved his skin a few times, it gives you a certain privilege. The possession of an advantage, so to speak. A debt, some might call it.”

“You saved Major Mornay’s life?”

“Not so much saved, as kept him alive. He and I were captured at the Battle of Fleuris, in Flanders, fighting for King William. It was the King’s first defeat in the Low Countries. That was in 1690. The French General, Luxembourg, was a cruel fellow and all his prisoners were sentenced to serve as convicts in King Lewis’s galleys, for life. Three days later, the Major and me arrived at Dunkirk, where we were placed in the galley ship L’Heureuse. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

“It means Fortune,” said the Sergeant. “And I can tell you there is precious little of that to be found in a French galley ship.

“Let me tell you about a galley, young fellow. It has fifty rowing benches, twenty-five on each side, six slaves chained to a bench. That’s three hundred men. No one who has not seen the work of a galley slave can possibly imagine it. I myself have rowed for twenty-four hours without a moment’s rest, encouraged by the whips of the comites who commanded us. If you fainted you were flogged until you started to row again, or until you were dead, and then your body was thrown to the sharks. Turks did most of the flogging.” The Sergeant grinned as he recollected the cruelties he described. “There’s no Christian who can flog a man quite like a Turk. Who can flay a man to the bone with a rope’s end, dipped in pitch and brine.