The Confusion

Riding north across Hertfordshire in a borrowed carriage the next day, he found his hand had gone to it once again, as he reviewed the ear-biting scene in the theatre of his memory. Daniel was meditating on Cowardice. He knew a lot of cowards and saw cowardice everywhere, but just as Mr. Flamsteed’s observations of the stars were frequently obnubilated by weather, so Daniel’s of Cowardice by Extenuating Circumstances. Viz. a man might explain cowardliness by saying that he had a family to support, or, failing that, with the simple argument that it just was not fair for a young man to give up life or limb. But Daniel had no wife or children of his own, and brother Sterling was doing a fine job of supporting the extended family. And not only was Daniel old (forty-seven), but he ought to’ve been dead by now, and owed his remaining years solely to Mr. Hooke’s pitiless blade-work. So in Daniel Waterhouse, an observer could see cowardliness in its pure form, and perhaps learn something of its nature.

A note from Roger Comstock was on the bench next to Daniel; it had been waiting for him in the carriage this morning. Dear Daniel, it read,

Forgive me my precipitous leave-taking from Mrs. Bligh’s yester-eve. As I am sure you have perceived by now, the whole event was a masque, a trifle. Do not allow Mr. White’s vulgarities to prey upon your good judgment.

Your coachman is Mr. John Hammond and I have charged him to convey you anywhere you desire, until your errand is accomplished; but I have led him to believe that most of your perambulations shall be confined to the triangle formed by London, Cambridge, and Mr. Apthorp’s country house. If you conceive a need to hie to John O’Groats or Land’s End, do break the news to him gently.

Yours very sternly,

(signed with a flourish, two inches high)

Ravenscar

P.S. I seem to have lost my poniard-have you seen it?

Roger was completely free of any taint of cowardice. Craven he might be, but a coward? Never. A trifle. Roger was sincere when he called it that.

It was impossible for Daniel to read in the dim, rocking vehicle, and he had no one to talk to, so sleeping and thinking were the only ways to pass the long drive through the rain up to Cambridge. As he contrasted his fear of Mr. White (which was very much akin to the fear he had previously had of Jeffreys) with how he had once felt about this rock that was now in his pocket, a new hypothesis of cowardice came into his head. The Stone had made him sad, reluctant to die, and anxious-but his fear of it had been as nothing compared to his fear of Jeffreys, and now of White. Yet those men had only spoken threatening words to him. Even when Hooke had reached up between his thighs with the scalpel, Daniel had been gripped by a sort of animal fear, but nothing like the dread of Mr. White, which had kept him awake all last night.

The only difference he could think of was that Hooke liked Daniel and White hated him. Could it be, then, that Daniel’s true cowardice lay in that he could not stand for people to think poorly of him?

That would be a strange shape for cowardice to take. But it tallied well with Daniel’s experiences to date. It was Daniel’s biography in a sentence. Further, perhaps it was the case that there were certain men, such as Jeffreys and White, who were adept at detecting this particular type of fear, and who had learned to cultivate it and use it against their enemies. Mr. John Hammond, the driver, had a long coachman’s whip and used it frequently, but never actually struck the horses with it. Rather, he made it crack in the air around the heads of his team, and used their own fear to drive them.

When Daniel had sent Jeffreys to the Tower and to his scaffold-top meeting with Jack Ketch, he’d phant’sied that he had slain a dragon, and put an end to that part of his life. Yet now Mr. White had appeared out of nowhere. An alarming chap! But much more alarming was what this all implied, namely that the world had more than one dragon-that it was infested with them-and that a fellow who was afraid of dragons must perforce spend all his days worrying about one or another.

This was all very much of the essence, because when Daniel tracked Isaac down, wherever he was, he would not be able to do what needed to be done without first mastering this fear.