They warily rose, retreating back into the shadows as the stranger lit a candle before stepping into the hallway. Duncan touched the knife he kept at his waist, his only weapon.
The stranger did not seem surprised to see them. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “Veni vidi vici!” he concluded cheerfully. “They know not what a gift it is,” he added as he pushed back the hood of his cloak, “to have the channels of their brains reenergized.” He handed the candlestick to Conawago, leading them to a door in the middle of the hall before gesturing them to wait as he trotted to lock the rear door. Lighting a second candle from the first, he opened the door and led them up a steep, winding staircase that took them into a spacious chamber, where their host began lighting several oil lamps.
“Dr. Henry Marston,” he announced with outstretched hand.
Duncan did not immediately respond. He gazed in confusion at one of the oddest chambers he had ever seen. The long troughs, designed for feeding livestock, that lined the two sidewalls were filled with salt. In the center of the room was a large, bizarre device of wood and glass. Along the front wall, behind a heavy wooden chair whose arms held straps for restraining its occupant, was a long table on which sat several large glass jars pierced through the top by metal rods. What appeared to be a brass ball hovering over their heads proved on closer examination to be connected to a long brass rod extending up through the ceiling. Duncan recalled the metal spears on the roof. On two smaller tables were an array of glass containers, strips of metal, and discs of what appeared to be hardened tree resin.
The worried query on Conawago’s lips suddenly transformed into wonder. “Electrical flux!” he exclaimed. Vigorously he shook Marston’s hand, then introduced himself and Duncan.
Marston beamed. “All creation can be reduced to the four main elements of earth, fire, water, and air.” He finally removed his cloak as he spoke, revealing himself to be a slight, bespectacled man in his forties. “But it is electrical fluid that binds them all, the great common essence. We have wrung it out of the air to create fire, captured it in the water of the Leyden jars,” he said, pointing to the glass containers on the table, “and used it to reduce any number of minerals to their base earth. We shall one day change the world with it!”
“We?” Duncan asked in a stunned voice.
“Dr. Franklin and I. Of course there are other practitioners today, but I was there in fifty-two to help launch his kite that first wonderful night when we captured the power of the storm in a jar. Such a spectacle! Newton had his apple, Archimedes his bath, Dr. Franklin his kite! When he returns from England I shall require days just to demonstrate the advances I have made since his departure!”
Conawago stepped to the strange device in the center of the room, nearly six feet long and almost as high. The near end was a tower of two wooden pillars between which a glass globe nearly twelve inches in diameter was suspended on wooden spindles. At the far end was a large ornate wooden wheel mounted between two short posts, with a leather belt wrapped around its rim connected to one of the spindles of the globe. “A variation on Nollet,” Marston announced, as though they would surely recognize the name.
Conawago touched the handle extending from the center of the wheel and looked up at their host. It was all the invitation Marston needed. He would not be drawn into answering Duncan’s questions until he had shared his thrilling advances with them.
“This afternoon,” Duncan said as Marston showed Conawago how to turn the handle to spin the globe, “we saw flashes of light coming from here.”
“Which is when I noticed you approach the building and study the lintel. I saw instantly that you recognized my signs. As you left I saw your friend’s hidden braid and his bronze skin. I would have come immediately had I not been with a patient.”
Duncan was more confused than ever. “You practice medical science as well?”
Marston lowered a finger to within an inch of the glass globe. “Here,” he explained proudly as a spark leapt up to his finger, “is the primogenitor of all future science. Dr. Franklin and I began treating paralysis years ago with electrical fluids. Patients come now with toothaches, the cramp, sciatica. We have even seen some success with deafness.”
The scientist gestured Duncan toward the table, took his arm, and extended his open hand over one of the glass containers. “A Leyden jar, with only a small charge left,” he explained, and as he slowly lowered Duncan’s hand toward the brass ball extending from the jar a small sparking arc leapt up and connected with his fingertip. He jerked his hand back in alarm. For an instant he had felt a burning sensation, but quickly confirmed there was no damage to his hand.
“Tonight at the tavern,” Duncan said as he rubbed his hand, wondering at the tingling sensation that lingered in it, “you were not coming for a patient.” He looked inside an empty jar. It held a small brass chain resting on the bottom, the top end brought up through a large cork stopper, then wrapped around a rod terminating in a ball. “But for us.”
“I was walking along the river and saw you enter.”
“But you could not have known we were in danger.”
“As the night wore on there would be those who would recognize Mr. Conawago’s features, trust me.” As he spoke Marston gestured them through a side door, into a pleasant parlor that overlooked the street. “More than a few who frequent the Broken Jug have been set upon by Indians in the wilds. And red men arrayed in European clothes have not always been friends of our city.”
Duncan studied the eccentric scientist as Marston lit several lamps. “We have heard of the great festival when the last Indian was hanged,” he declared.
The words seemed to shake Marston. He turned toward the window to gaze into the night.
“You were the one making spirit fire at Shamokin,” Duncan ventured.
“That was never a term I used.”
“Why would you go two hundred miles to conduct your experiments?”
“My partner believed it would be a valuable way to learn about the upcountry. Our new upcountry.”
“Your country?” Duncan asked.
Marston turned with a troubled expression on his face. “We had an alliance, the two of us. He would stake out new claims for our land company, sell half of them in Philadelphia, then use the proceeds to build there. I would have an edifice dedicated to my science, a temple of learning in the wilderness.”
Duncan stared at the man uneasily, wondering now if they had been lured into a trap. “Does your partner have a name?”
“Francis Townsend, of course.”
Duncan looked at the man in disbelief. Surely the coincidence was too much. “You and Townsend had a land company?”
Marston shrugged. “Many a new land company gets formed over cups in Philadelphia taverns. Most don’t endure past the last round of rum punch, the others usually last a few months at most. The Dutch had their tulip craze, London had the South Sea bubble,” he added, referring to two well-known financial disasters in Europe, “Philadelphia has its land companies.”
Marston’s voice grew distant for a moment. “Yet our bubble too was burst.” He sighed heavily. “I used what was left of my inheritance to pay our expenses. Francis, ever the adventurer, went on into the mountains, looking for likely tracts, seeking minerals that might have value. I stayed in Shamokin with my projects.”
“Projects?”
“There is much important work to be done. I correspond with Dr. Franklin. He and I agreed on a course of research to penetrate the mysteries of negative and positive particles and the role of electrical fluid in the human body. There are reports from France of the dead being revived with doses of flux. But,” Marston added, “not all the city fathers share our enthusiasm.”
From behind them Duncan heard a sharp intake of breath. “God’s teeth!” Conawago exclaimed, “you were using Indians for your medical dogs!”
Marston stepped to a wingback chair and collapsed into it. “We forced no one. They were always compensated.”
“What exactly,” Duncan asked in a brittle voice, “did you do?”
“Flew some kites with wires into jars of brass dust. Charted individual tolerances to negative and positive flows. Energized open wounds. There were some possums brought back to life, a lot of frogs.” The scientist looked up. “Dr. Franklin killed a turkey once with a flux machine,” he added earnestly, though Duncan was at a loss as to whether this was an apology or a justification.
“Then why leave a proving ground as fertile as Shamokin?” Conawago wanted to know.
“I was going to stay until Townsend came back from the mountains. There was a man called the French bear. He had a lot of influence with some of the chiefs. I explained the French were in competition with us English for advancement in the sciences, and that it was their duty to help their English allies. But he told them I was experimenting with ways to extract the spirits from Indians.”
Duncan lifted a candle in a pewter holder and explored the shadows of the parlor. Scattered about tables and chests were more Leyden jars. On a work table near the window were pieces of cork being carved into oval shapes, beside a spool of silk thread, with four completed spiders identical to the one Johantty treasured. In the winter, the youth had said, he could make the spiders dance.
“Testaments to our science,” Marston explained. “Teaching instruments I give to the uninitiated.” He saw Duncan’s confusion and gestured to the adjoining table. “The largest jar still has a charge.”
Still uncertain, Duncan lifted one of the cork spiders by the thread glued to its back and held it over the brass rod extending from the jar. The legs began to move as they approached the jar, jerking up and down when he placed it directly over the rod.
“When it is cold and dry you can rub fur or wool together to much the same effect,” Marston said.
Duncan stared at the little spider in fascination, moving it in and out of the invisible flux field. But as he did so a vision of Johantty sprang into his mind, Johantty somberly, desperately, playing his graveside drum, followed by an image of Stone Blossom weeping over her ruined island shrine.
He lowered the spider and took a seat in a chair beside Marston. “Did you first meet Skanawati at his village or at Shamokin?”
Marston’s head jerked up, and he stared suspiciously at Duncan. “Who are you?”
“Friends of the Iroquois. They have too few in Philadelphia.”
Marston pursed his lips, then slowly nodded. “I met him at Shamokin.” His voice trembled as the scientist spoke of the Onondaga chieftain. “He was fascinated by my work, brought several of his clan to watch. He beseeched me to return with my equipment to his village.”
“Did you?”
“It was full of smallpox,” Marston explained. “He thought if I ran electrical charges through the infected it might help them. I knew there was no hope, but I couldn’t say no. He wanted to pay me in furs, but I refused. They all had such desperate hope in their faces when I touched them with my jars. Beautiful children. Old men and women, even some warriors built like bulls who had lost all their strength. Eight out of ten weren’t going to survive the week. I didn’t argue any more with the French bear. Not long after, I packed up my equipment and came home.”
“But Skanawati knew how to find you.”
“I gave him a piece of paper with my address on it, then placed the Iroquois signs on my door. His people moved me. I had seen too many Indian drunks and beggars on our streets. The city becomes like a trap to them. The missionaries fill them with grand ideas about the equality of all men, the tavernkeepers fill them with rum. Some are kept at the alehouses to perform tricks like tamed bears, throwing tomahawks, shooting arrows and such. Most die of drink, or of some European disease. I wanted to do what I could. . . .”
Townsend and Marston, in their own peculiar way, had been friends of the Iroquois, Duncan realized. It was perhaps not so great a coincidence that Townsend’s partner had appeared at the Broken Jug tavern, for that was where the two had met in the first place, nor too great a coincidence that Marston had recognized Conawago and gone to help him.
As his guests digested his troubling words Marston seemed to reflect on Duncan, his brow knitting. “At the tavern, McCallum, it wasn’t Conawago who seemed to be in danger, but you.”
“There is a gentleman now residing here who seems to think I am in bond to him. A man who knows my face was unexpectedly in the tavern tonight.”
Marston frowned. “The law is not sympathetic to those who flee from indenture.”
“The bond was transferred to his daughter. She takes a liberal view of my obligation. But he has sworn otherwise in an affidavit. He is a vindictive man, and I caused him much shame last year.”
“Might I know his name?”
“Ramsey.”
Marston’s jaw dropped. “Bestowed with the title of Lord? Cousin to the king?”
“A distant cousin.”
The scientist sagged. “You pick your enemies well. Since he arrived last year Ramsey has bought his way onto the council of the city, has the governor’s ear. His house is like a palace, he is one of Philadelphia’s self-declared royalty. If he knows you are in the city he will have men on every street.”
“We will flee soon,” Conawago said. “We only seek a Shawnee named Red Hand here.”
Marston shook his head. “As I said, the Indians come and go. And when in the city most stay in the shadows.”
“We can linger but a day,” Conawago cast an apologetic glance toward Duncan. “Our real business waits in Lancaster.”
Marston cocked his head. “Lancaster?”
“The treaty conference. Where Skanawati awaits trial. We mean to keep the rope from his neck.”
Marston’s face darkened with the news. He opened his mouth several times but seemed unable to find words. Finally he rose, pulled a news journal from a table under the window, and dropped it onto Duncan’s lap. It was an edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, dated the day before. The first page was nearly filled with notices of ships arriving and departing, listing their cargos and ports of call. There was only one headline. Treaty Conference Adjourned to Philadelphia for Hanging of Iroquois Murderer.
When he spoke, Marston’s voice was tight with emotion. “He dies as soon as a Philadelphia judge hears the evidence and confirms the sentence. A formality. He has two, maybe three days.”
Duncan stared numbly at the paper and did not see Marston leave, only saw him return, carrying glasses and a bottle, which he wordlessly uncorked. “Let us have full explanations, all around,” Marston offered solemnly as he poured out the claret.
Duncan and Conawago told their story first, starting with their discovery of Captain Burke and proceeding through their tour that afternoon of watchmakers, interrupted only by the appearance of a serving woman in a dark blue dress and apron who left a tray of ham and bread. As he listened Marston ate, then cleaned his spectacles on a napkin, looking up with a worried expression as they finished.
“The governor of the province had demanded a treaty,” he observed, “and convinced the general that the success of the British military in the north would be meaningless without a settlement of the many issues around the western lands. When Magistrate Brindle reported that the Indian delegations threatened to decamp over the imprisonment of Skanawati, the governor then invited all the delegations to Philadelphia. There he could personally court the Indians, attempting to repair the damage they say Brindle has done. The governor this very night has hosted a dinner for the chiefs in the state house. But the Virginians worry him as much as the tribes. They still thirst for vengeance.”
“The governor understands the tribes. Surely he will arrange for appropriate condolences for Skanawati to be freed,” Conawago said.
“And break with the Virginians? It will be a hollow accord indeed if that is the price. As bad as that Virginia land company may be, they are private owners. If they do not succeed, the Virginian governor will press official claims, in the name of
the crown colony. Do not forget Pennsylvania is but a proprietary colony, while Virginia is held in the name of the king.”
Duncan pushed down his bile. He was well-acquainted with the way men’s lives could be ruined when those in power invoked distant kings and proprietors. “Magistrate Brindle is a reasonable man,” he offered. “If only I could speak with him.”
“It is all out of his hands now. And were he to be seen speaking with you, a fugitive from justice, his own office would be jeopardized. He may be an honored judge, but Ramsey is on the council that reigns over Philadelphia and has the governor over to dine frequently.”
“Operating in the shadows, you mean, like the Indians,” Duncan shot back.
Marston sipped at his claret. “You speak of codes on trees,” he said with the scientist’s curiosity. “Tell me of them.” He listened in rapt attention to Duncan’s description, then brightened. “The pigpen code!” he exclaimed. “Boxes and three-sided squares? Open triangles and dots?”
Duncan leaned forward excitedly. “You know it?”
Marston’s enthusiasm ebbed. “Know of it. Called the pigpen because it is a matrix onto which the alphabet is overlaid, like a mass of pens, some enclosing empty spaces, some dots. But I don’t know the arrangement, nor the details of the code.”
Duncan sighed with disappointment. “But in Philadelphia there are people who know such codes, other learned men?”
“Assuredly. But their codes are secret, and a man’s use of such codes always so as well.”
The pigpen. It aptly described the morass of clues in front of Duncan.
As Duncan now lifted the carving knife and a fork to work on the ham, Marston watched with interest. “You cut with the precision of a surgeon.”
“I completed three years of my medical studies at Edinburgh.”
“Edinburgh! Why, it is the capital of all medical science! This is destiny!” Marston exclaimed. “You can assist me. I need—”
“The treaty,” Duncan reminded him.
Eye of the Raven Page 22