The Confusion

“The sinecure is attended with certain perquisites including a one-way trans-oceanic voyage.”

“Are you saying, England wants from me something so dreadful that when I have done it, she won’t want me around any more?”

“You read too much into it. You are the one who has been bawling about Massachusetts for all these years.”

“But then why do you specify it has to be one-way?”

“You can come back if you think it would be in your best interests,” Roger said innocently. “As long as the Juncto remains in power, you shall have protectors.”

“Your voice has the most annoying way of fading just when you are on the verge of saying something interesting. Do you do that for effect?”

“Juncto…juncto…JUNCTO!”

“What on earth is a junk-toe? Some new type of gout?”

“More like a new type of gov’t.”

“I am quite serious.”

“A scholar might say it Latin-style: yuncto. Or, a Spaniard thus: hoonta!”

“Why don’t you just say ‘joint,’ which is what it means?”

“I know what it means. But then people would suppose we were discoursing of knees or elbows.”

“But isn’t the idea to be mysterious?”

“Then we would call it a cabal.”

“Oh, that’s right. So, you are in a juncto?”

“I am in the juncto.”

“And your role in the juncto is to be-?”

“Chancellor of the Exchequer…Daniel, it is childish to make coffee shoot out of your nostrils. You know of someone better qualified?”

“What about Apthorp?”

“Sir Richard, as he is called by polite men, will run the bank.”

“But do you not think he would gladly set aside his duties at Apthorp’s Bank to become Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

“No, no, no, no, no. I am not speaking of Apthorp’s bank. I refer to the Bank of England.”

“No such institution exists.”

“And no institution exists in Massachusetts Bay Colony that will put a roof over your head and give you a sinecure. But institutions can be made, Daniel. That is what an institution is: something that has been instituted.”

“Oh.”

“Ah, finally light dawns! You are educable, Daniel, very much so!”

“The Bank of England…the Bank of England. It sounds, I don’t know, big.”

“That is the point.”

“You shall amass some sort of capital, and lend out money.”

“This is the timeless function of a banca.”

“I can only perceive two drawbacks to what is otherwise an excellent plan, my lord…”

“Don’t say it. We have no capital…and no money.”

“Just so, my lord.”

“Is it not admirable, how simple things are in the beginning? Oh, how I love to begin things.”

“Let’s take them in order…what is the capital to be?”

“England.”

“Ah, very well, I should have guessed from the name, ‘Bank of England.’ Now, how about the money?”

“The Bank will issue some paper. But you are right. We need coinage. To be specific, we need recoinage.”

A silence now fell over this snuggery in the corner of Mrs. Bligh’s coffee-house. Roger had spent enough man-years orating in Parliament that he knew when a Pause for Effect was called for. And Daniel for his part was strangely affected, and lost all interest in speaking for a short time. The notion of recoinage made him strangely sad, and he was desirous of figuring out why. It would mean calling in all old coins-as well as the plate, candlesticks, bullion, et cetera-and melting them in the great crucibles of the Tower. Crucibles that purified and separated the genuine metal from the dross of the counterfeiters but thereby melted all those discrete objects together, destroying their individual characters.

Daniel had in his purse a pound coin stamped with a picture of Queen Elizabeth. He knew this because such coins were rarer than flawless diamonds now, and he was holding it back in case he had to ransom his life somehow. The Golden Comstocks-Roger’s ancestors-had imported the metal from Spain and Thomas Gresham had caused the coin to be minted at such-and-such a weight, and had used some of his rake-off to build Gresham’s College. The coin had been passing from hand to hand and purse to purse for more than a hundred years, and probably had more tales to tell than a ship full of Irish sailors-yet it was just a single mote in the dust-pile that was the English money supply. In a certain way to take that dust and shovel it into the maw of the crucibles was monstrous, like burning a library.

But imagine the glowing rivers that would spring from the lips of those crucibles when all of that tarnished silver was made clean, and made quick, and con-fused, and all of its old stories driven off as clouds of smoke that the river wind would carry away. Imagine the shining coins in purses everywhere-Mrs. Bligh striking out the debts from her ledger-book, her strong-box becoming a catch-basin for the new money, overflowing and spilling out gleaming rivulets down the street to the bankside coffee-merchants, and thence down the Thames into the wide.

“We’ve no choice,” Daniel understood.