For the next week or so, at the request of the publisher, I'll be posting short excerpts from my new supernatural thriller, The Newton Cipher. Enjoy! And if they whet your appetite an you want to read the entire book, you can find it here: The Newton Cipher

EXCERPT #5
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THE GRECIAN
The Grecian Coffee House London
Late January, 1683

Isaac settled onto the wooden bench at the back of the room, resting his elbows on the table. The Grecian Coffee House was a small yellow building in Devereux Court, just off Fleet Street near the Strand. It was popular with members of the Royal Society, but today’s meeting was not on Society business. Across the room he caught the stares of men he knew, but they quickly looked away.
“Coffee?” A woman stopped at his table by with a stack of clay cups and a steaming jug.
He shook his head, no.
Isaac was not one for the hot-steeped Arabian berry. The liquid it produced was all blackness and bitterness, a taste that others, but not he, had acquired. With thousands of coffee shops in England, it seemed that all of London had taken to the intoxicating effects of the strange drink. They were not the same effects as gin or other alcohols of grain, but a kind of intoxication none the less: enhancing the senses and intensifying the thoughts of the mind.
Isaac could respect the enhancing benefits of coffee, but disliked the other effects: the jitteriness that enflamed the yellow bile, making him agitated and choleric. He drank the stuff sparingly.
Minutes went by, and he remained alone, listening only vaguely to the din of conversation around him, smelling the scent of tobacco and newsprint.
He reached into his pocket and flipped the little card onto the table, the one that had come to him in Cambridge a few days earlier.
The Grecian, London. Wednesday, after the noon. —♄
Like most requests for his time, he would have ignored it had not been for the signature: not a name, a symbol.
♄, the alchemical symbol for lead, the basest of metals. But also, the metal with the greatest potential for transformation.
In Latin, plumbum.
Plumbago.
Isaac always wondered if, or rather when, this day would come. They
day they would meet again, face to face, instead of Plumbago sending him instructions and Newton complying, creating the formulas and elixirs Plumbago demanded, all in exchange for the man’s silence.
He tapped the table with fingers burned black by caustic chemicals. The tips were cracked, the nails bitten to the quick.
Then the man himself was there, sliding into the opposite bench and setting his hat on the table between them. He’d changed little in the two decades since Isaac had seen him, back in his undergraduate rooms at Cambridge during the time of the plague.
“Isaac Newton,” Plumbago said. “God save the King.”
If Plumbago was a day older than when he saw him last, Isaac couldn’t tell. But the man’s fashion had changed even if his well- groomed mustache had not: the velvet coat remained, but the lace at his cuffs and collar was shorter, and the brim of his hat was upturned on three sides, following the current fashion.
“God save the King,” Isaac said automatically.
“You look ... more mature.”
Isaac’s hair had gone prematurely white. Not the white of an old
man, but silvery-pale, the shimmering color of the philosophick mercury, Quicksilver. Travel from Cambridge had dulled that sheen to a dingy gray, but still remarkable for one whose face and features clearly marked him as a young man.
“I should hope so. It’s been twenty years.”
Plumbago motioned for coffee.
“Your fame as a natural philosopher is known far and wide, Isaac.
When I first approached you, I had heard you were gifted. But even I had no idea: mechanickal philosophy? something called the binomial calculus of fluxions, which, despite my own considerable intellect, I am at a loss to understand? Oh, and the very nature of light! They say you have a book in the works, a book that will change our understanding of the laws of the heavens. A new celestial mechanics? You are indeed a wonder, Mister Newton.”
The coffee came, two steaming ceramic cups rattling on saucers. Isaac didn’t refuse it this time.
Plumbago sipped with evident pleasure, while Isaac watched the steam rise and curl, half of his mind unconsciously calculating the areas traced by their fluctuating curves.
“They say each of London’s coffee houses have different clientele,” Plumbago said, after a time. “Some are frequented by the bankers, others by the insurers. Some, even, by conspirators and radicals.”
Newton knew this already. “I understand Lloyd’s is quite popular. Could we have not met there?”
“Lloyd’s?” Plumbago set his cup down, now half empty. “That is the coffee house for the shipping merchants, just as Jonathan’s is the house for the stock brokers. And this, the Grecian, is the coffee house of the philosophers. England is coffee-mad, Isaac. There’s a coffee house for everyone, and everyone in their proper house. The cosmos itself could not have ordered it better.”
“How very Aristotelian.”
“Don’t overthink it, Isaac. I simply thought you would feel more at home at the Grecian.”
“Nonsense. You wanted me in a public place, one where I am known. Presumably so I will not act out of turn.”
“A safe deduction,” Plumbago said, shrugging. “You do have something of a reputation. You and Mr. Hooke had quite a dispute over the nature of light, I understand? Poor old Hooke. I have no desire to cross swords with you, Isaac. The last time we met, I relied on your ignorance. I misjudged you.”
Isaac’s eyes narrowed. “And now?”
“I rely instead upon your evident genius.”
“Flattery?” Isaac shook his head. “After you’ve spent the past twenty years blackmailing me?”