The Lost Kingdom

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “Yes, sir.”

  We descended the staircase onto the Science Deck, which we found in complete disarray. The contents of each desk had been strewn about. Shattered glass, books, and equipment littered the floor.

  “We’ll deal with this later,” my father said, striding through it all into the galley.

  I followed him and found the door to Mr. Kinnersley’s cabin off its hinges, hanging across the opening. My father and I ducked past it, and inside we found Mr. Kinnersley circling the mainmast. He stooped to check the wires and seal on each of the large Leyden jars, nodding and smiling to himself. After all that had happened, he was smiling. Did he even care about Andrew or any of us? Several moments passed before he even noticed us, and when he did, he clapped his hands.

  “John! Billy! I succeeded!”

  My father’s glare, his entire comportment, was the hardest and coldest I had ever seen in him.

  “I trapped lightning!” Mr. Kinnersley said. “It is here, contained in these very jars!”

  Still my father said nothing.

  “Don’t you see?” Mr. Kinnersley scurried over to us. “Our fall was not in vain. Look what we have achieved!”

  “What we have achieved?” My father’s eye twitched.

  He looked around the cabin, calmly walked over to a corner, and pulled a length of wood from a pile of debris. It was the size and thickness of a large ax handle, and he gripped it with both hands, testing its weight. What was he going to do with it?

  “John?” Mr. Kinnersley asked.

  My father strode to the mast and looked at the Leyden jars. Then he lifted the length of wood over his head like a club and brought it down hard. The first jar exploded in a shower of water and crockery.

  “John!” screamed Mr. Kinnersley. “What are you doing?”

  My father smashed another jar. “You want to talk about what you’ve achieved, Ebenezer?” And he destroyed a third.

  Mr. Kinnersley ran at my father, screeching, and tried to wrest the club from his hands.

  “Get off me!” They struggled for a moment, but my father easily cast Mr. Kinnersley aside, menacing him with the club.

  The older man cowered, shielding his head with his arms, and my father turned back to the jars. He broke another, and another. With each, Mr. Kinnersley sank lower to the ground, whimpering, then sobbing.

  I pitied him. And watching him, I felt his loss and his pain, until I couldn’t bear it any longer. As my father, out of breath and soaked to the waist, raised his arm to break the last of the jars, I rushed at him and threw myself between them.

  “Stop, Father!”

  He lowered the club. “Get out of the way.”

  “No, Father. Be merciful.”

  He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Merciful?”

  “Yes. Remember what Mr. Faries said. He didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “All right.” He tossed the club aside. “Then tell me, son, how did this happen? You were there.”

  “We —” I began. “We were flying south, following the river, and then …”

  “Then what?”

  “I — I went to sleep.”

  “You what?” He swung his anger from Mr. Kinnersley to me. “You slept on your watch?”

  “Yes, but, Father —”

  “No,” he whispered, and that one word carried such shock, such weariness and dismay, that I folded under it. I could not carry the weight of his disappointment in me.

  I bowed my head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Do not be angry with him, John.” Mr. Kinnersley staggered to his feet. “I tricked him, you see. He would not have slept but for me.”

  My father nodded. Then he left the cabin. His footsteps were heavy, never lifting far off the ground, and I could not bring myself to call to him or to follow him.

  When he was gone, Mr. Kinnersley got up and rushed to the last remaining jar, poring over it and caressing it.

  “Thank you, Billy,” he said. “At least you saved one of them.”

  In that moment, I resisted the temptation to pick up the club and finish my father’s work.

  I lingered in Mr. Kinnersley’s cabin a few minutes more and then forced myself to leave the room and plod up the stairs to the deck. The sun had fully risen, and the forest around the ship gleamed emerald in that way only seen after a rain. A cool breeze sent waves through the undergrowth of fern, fluttered the oak and hickory leaves, and set the pine boughs breathing like bellows. Light and shadow played across the de Terzi’s deck, while a bird of brilliant scarlet perched at the bow and chirped. It was almost as though the forest were welcoming the wooden ship back home, and I could think of no better burial for her than here among the trees.

  I smelled smoke from a fire, and heard voices from below on the ground. I peered over the side. Other than Mr. Kinnersley, everyone was down there.

  “Billy,” Jane called. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes.”

  At the bottom of the rope ladder, I saw my father murmuring with Mr. Godfrey and Phineas over Andrew. Jane sat by the fire with Mr. Faries.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “He woke up briefly,” Jane said. “But he didn’t remember anything. Mr. Godfrey’s theory is that he was probably knocked overboard by a branch when the ship first landed and then became tangled in the sail. He just went back to sleep.”

  At least he is alive.

  I turned to Jane. “Have they figured out where we are?” I asked.

  Mr. Faries leaned forward, wincing at the movement of his arm. “We’re not as far off course as we might have feared. Apparently Mr. Kinnersley turned west just north of the confluence with the Ohio. And before your father shot the spheres, I was able to direct our fall westward as well. It seems we are in a fine location to begin a search for Madoc’s kingdom by foot.”

  “Why did Mr. Bartram have to shoot the spheres?” Jane asked.

  “With more time,” Mr. Faries said, “I may have been able to find the valve Mr. Kinnersley had closed. But after lightning struck the mast and set it afire, we had to descend rapidly or risk burning up in the air.”

  “I still find it hard to believe that Mr. Kinnersley did what he did,” Jane said.

  “I suspect it is the very reason he came on this expedition,” Mr. Faries said. “But each of us is devoted to a subject of philosophy that obsesses the mind, myself included. Mr. Kinnersley is hardly alone in that, and I find it difficult to condemn him for it.”

  “You are too kind, sir,” Jane said.

  “Perhaps,” Mr. Faries said. “But while we’re on the subject of obsession, I think I shall take a walk around my ship.” He stood. “I will be forced to part with her soon.”

  We nodded, and he left us.

  “I feel so bad for him,” Jane said, watching him go.

  So did I.

  Later that evening, we sat in a circle around the fire as the sun went down and the wall of night closed in. Andrew had awakened a short while ago. He sat up, staring into the fire. A somber mood hung about all of us.

  “We will remain here one more day,” my father said. “Tomorrow will be spent preparing for a journey by foot. I am accustomed to traveling this way and feel confident we will be adequately provisioned. The following morning, we will depart.”

  No one responded to him.

  “Are we in agreement, gentlemen?”

  “What other choice do we have?” Mr. Godfrey asked. “It would seem our agreement is irrelevant.”

  “And yet,” Phineas said, “I am still unsure how we will actually go about finding the people of Madoc. This land is vast, John.”

  “But we are in the correct region,” my father said. “My strategy for finding the people of Madoc is to do as we have done until now. We follow the rumors. We seek out the Indians of this land and ask them.”

  “But the Indians here are allied with the French,” Phineas said.

  “I doubt their allegiance is so strong they cannot be swayed by trade.”
My father pointed at his open palm. “We came prepared with cloth, ax heads, knives, kettles, and other common goods. But instead of trading for furs, we will trade for information.”

  Phineas turned to Andrew. “Do you know the Indians of these parts?”

  Andrew nodded, slowly, as if he were afraid his head might roll off his neck. “I know of them. The French …” He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them very wide. “They call them the Osage, and these are their hunting grounds. They are … mighty warriors, very tall and strong. But if there are no French with them, they may trade with you.”

  “And what of the bear-wolf, John?” Phineas asked.

  “The beast could not possibly have tracked our scent through the storm,” my father said. “The bear-wolf is behind us now.”

  His conviction comforted me.

  But Phineas appeared unconvinced. “Your plan seems fraught with unknown risk.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the Chemist. I knew he was a spy and an enemy, with nefarious motives. If he objected to my father’s plan, that meant my father’s plan was the very course we should follow.

  “I have heard you, Phineas.” My father then spoke to the group. “I welcome any and all strategies. But in the meantime, let us rest for the night. I believe the sleeping quarters below deck are still serviceable. And we will maintain a two-man watch throughout the night, as before, with the exception of Andrew, due to his wounds. And Ebenezer, for obvious reasons.”

  And me? Would I be given a watch?

  We let the fire burn low and boarded the ship. Andrew leaned against Phineas and hobbled to the rope ladder, which he was able to hold on to as several of us lifted him to the deck. Down below, we found the sleeping quarters usable, as my father had said, but my hammock did hang a little off-kilter with the cant of the ship.

  “Which watch would you like me to take, Father?” I asked.

  “I don’t think we have need of you, Billy.” His voice was flat. “Get some rest.”

  I threw myself into my hammock and closed my eyes. He no longer trusted me.

  Within a short time, the room warmed to an uncomfortable degree, and I realized that up in the sky, the wind and the movement of the ship through it had kept the lower deck well ventilated. But here on the forest floor, our cabin became an oven.

  I rolled in my hammock, trying to escape my own sweat, while my discomfort and my exhaustion sent me strange and fractured dreams. I woke repeatedly, disoriented, only to fall back into a sleep that brought no rest.

  In the morning, we did what my father ordered, and packed for an overland journey. Food, bedrolls, tools, rope, and other supplies, as well as goods to trade with the Indians we might encounter. My father spread it all out on the ground, measuring and taking inventory, ticking things off a list he had made.

  “We’ll have to leave a few of the instruments behind,” Phineas said, assisting him.

  “Brass is heavy.” My father didn’t look up from his paper. “We will likely leave them all behind. Except for a telescope or two.”

  Phineas frowned. “You don’t even seem perturbed by that, John.”

  “I do what must be done, Phineas.”

  Phineas spoke to me from the side of his mouth. “But will he leave his plants behind? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  I ignored him.

  “Yes, I will even leave my plants,” my father said.

  “Hmph,” Phineas said, and a moment later, “Well I’m not leaving my books. Excuse me.”

  I wanted to go, too. I didn’t want to be alone with my father. But before I could think of a reason to leave, he pointed at a pile of blankets on the ground.

  “Count and roll those, Billy.”

  I did as I was asked. The wool picked up fragments of leaf from the ground, and I shook them off before rolling and tying the blankets.

  “There are eight of them,” I said. “Just enough.”

  He nodded. “Hm, yes.”

  “How will we move Andrew? With his leg.”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “Father, how will we move Andrew?”

  “We will not be moving Andrew.”

  “What?”

  “We’re leaving him behind.”

  My voice rose with panic. “How can you do that?”

  He lowered the paper. “He is a spy for the French. Why would we slow ourselves down by bringing him with us?”

  “He’s not a spy!” I shouted.

  My father waved me off. “This has already been decided, Billy.”

  “It’s Phineas! He’s the one —”

  “That is enough!” He stalked over to me. “This expedition is a breath away from utter chaos and dissolution. A feather could tip the scale. And I will not have you sowing discord. Do you hear me?”

  I burned inside with a heat to match Mr. Kinnersley’s electrical fire. He was choosing to stay blind to the truth. Choosing to silence me, his son. But I would not be silenced. Not anymore.

  “He will die if you leave him!” I yelled.

  “Then so be it!”

  “So be it?”

  “He is only an Indian!”

  His words rang through the trees and in my ears. They horrified me. Andrew was a man, and I believed him to be a good one. But my father would rather leave him to die than see him as anything more than a savage. But I would not leave him. My actions had almost killed Andrew once, and I refused to allow that to happen again.

  “If you leave him, you leave me,” I said.

  My father rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I am not being ridiculous! If you leave Andrew behind, I will not follow you. I will stay here with him until he is healed.”

  “You would choose an Indian over the will of your father?” His eyes narrowed. “Such disobedience. I can see now I was wrong to bring you with me.”

  His words should have hurt me. But they didn’t. “I don’t need your approval anymore. To have it now would feel like a stain.” I folded my arms and met his gaze with my own narrowed eyes. “I see now that I was wrong to want to come with you. I was wrong to want to be like you.”

  I thought he would strike me. His whole body tensed in a way that said he meant to. But instead, he turned his back and stormed away, leaving me alone among the carefully ordered supplies.

  The second night around the fire was even darker in spirit than the previous night had been. We sat in utter silence. Jane clutched her knees to her chest next to me, orange firelight in her eyes. Andrew reclined against a pile of gear. Who was he, really? I had broken with my father for him. Something about the way he now rubbed his leg and tipped his head to one side made me angry.

  When everyone got up to go aboard, I stayed where I was.

  “I’ll just wait for the fire to burn out,” I said.

  “I’ll stay, too,” Andrew said.

  I could see the anger threatening to erupt from my father. But he said nothing and left, and soon Andrew and I were alone, save for Mr. Godfrey and Phineas, who had the first watch and paced the broken deck of the ship above us.

  Andrew looked at me across the fire. “They say you found me. In the sail.”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you. For everything. I think I would have been burned alive if you hadn’t cut me free of the mast. That’s twice you’ve saved my life.”

  “You’re welcome. How is your leg?”

  “Healing. It is painful. I think perhaps your father might leave me behind.”

  “He won’t,” I said.

  “Perhaps he should. The journey will be difficult for me.”

  “We’ll help you.”

  He looked into the fire. So did I.

  I was tired. Time passed, and the flames diminished to a pulsing glow. The coals smoldered with tiny slithering snakes of fire. I watched their movements, and my eyelids drooped. The forest blurred, and the firelight sparked and stabbed across my vision in multiple directions. And then it went out.

  The next morning,
my father announced that we needed to create a sled on which we could take Andrew with us.

  “We will treat him better than his people treat us.” He never looked at me, and he kept his voice calm and even. “We will show him what it means to be civilized men, even out here, far from civilization.”

  Phineas and Mr. Godfrey cut a length of canvas from a sail and sewed it around two wooden poles salvaged from the ship. As we prepared to leave, they strapped Andrew to it so that he could be carried. He protested, insisted we leave him behind, but no one listened to him.

  Each of us carried a pack. Even Jane, though my father made hers lighter than the rest, and with his arm, Mr. Faries could bear only so much. But even with his injury, he had salvaged the large glass lenses used for lighting the cabins below deck and wrapped them carefully in a separate leather bag. He said they were one of the most expensive and painstaking parts of the ship to make, and he couldn’t leave them behind.

  We gathered one last time before the wreck of the de Terzi, and my father asked Mr. Faries if there were any words he would like to say.

  The Mechanician kissed his fingertips and laid them against the hull. “First and last, farewell. You flew us true and did whatever we bade, even when it meant your ruin.”

  I glanced at Mr. Kinnersley. His bowed head seemed less out of reverence and more to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

  “Be with the trees, now,” Mr. Faries said. “Speak with the birds and woodland creatures. And many years hence, some trader or Indian or settler will find you here, overgrown and fallen down, and the tales will spread. ‘Have you seen the ship on the mountainside?’ they’ll ask. They’ll wonder how you landed here, but to that question, there can be but one answer. They won’t know how, but they will know that once you flew.” He pulled his hand away and turned to us. “I’m ready.”

  My father nodded. “Very well. Let’s be off.”

  He picked up one handle of Andrew’s sled. I picked up the handle opposite him, aware of a vast distance between us, though we stood but a foot or two apart. Mr. Godfrey and Phineas picked up the two rear poles, and we set off westward into the trees.