The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  “She may scalp you,” Duncan warned lightheartedly as he dropped a coin in the small pail held out by a boy soliciting ha’pennies for the orphan fund.

  The major turned to the officer at his side. “James, surely there must be a game room here. Perhaps we could invite the ladies to a few hands of whist. The tavern keeper no doubt has a deck of cards we can borrow.”

  “It sounds too much like a defensive campaign, Major,” Duncan chided. He was surprising himself, but he knew Sarah was more than capable of dealing with the tipsy soldier.

  The major considered Duncan’s words and nodded. “A flank attack it shall be. James, bring that waif back.”

  Moments later the major had hoisted the boy up to sit on the high counter that divided the public drinking room from the dining chamber. “Good ladies and gentlemen of the City of Brotherly Love,” the major announced in a rich baritone. “If you can but spare a moment for a noble cause, we shall have some entertainment while filling this fine lad’s pail. ’Tis a game we use to help the king’s charities in London.” The diners quieted as the major explained that the lieutenant would compete with all comers in acts of great prowess, the first being to construct a house of ten playing cards standing on edge. The major withdrew a coin from a pocket and laid it on the table. “I put my shilling on Lieutenant Nettles here as the man who can complete the structure faster than anyone in the room. Come challenge him by putting up your own shilling. If you lose, your shilling goes in the pail. If you win, you get my shilling.”

  The major quickly had half a dozen contestants in line and the amused barmaids cleared a space on the long counter as the tavern keeper produced the playing cards. As Duncan stood in the shadows, mostly watching Sarah with weary contentment, the lieutenant prevailed over all the competitors and the pail had six new shillings in it. The nimble lieutenant next beat all comers in balancing a fork, prongs up, on his fingertip, then the major wandered through the diners, encouraging more competitors. He paused at Sarah’s table, repeating his invitation.

  Sarah did not acknowledge the major, even when he suggested the ladies might best the lieutenant, who now was clearly impaired after drinking several tankards during his exploits. When he put his hand on her shoulder, Duncan’s cheer evaporated. He was about to dart to her when with exaggerated effort Sarah lifted the major’s hand away, raising laughter by stating that surely a great warrior for the king should know better than to risk the loss of his hand.

  At last, with a meaningful glance at Duncan, the major extracted the knife he carried on his belt. It was a slim, elegant weapon, not of military issue. He handed the knife to the lieutenant, who tossed it from hand to hand as a serving girl, following his instructions, spaced half a dozen apples on the mantel over the fireplace. As onlookers gasped, the lieutenant suddenly threw the knife over their heads, pinning an apple to the wall behind it. Three gentlemen among the crowd of diners quickly took up the challenge, and their shillings were soon in the waif’s pail. The major retrieved the knife from the last throw, then placed the remaining two apples closer to Sarah’s table and with a deft toss sent the blade through the air so that it landed point first, embedded in her table.

  As the major advanced with a gloating expression, Duncan stepped into the dining chamber, behind the officer. Sarah’s eyes lit and she flushed with excitement as she saw him, then recognized his quick hand signal. She was well acquainted with the silent signals used by Mohawk warriors, for she had taught them to Duncan. She quickly shifted her gaze away, and Duncan realized the major had mistakenly taken her sudden animation as a reaction to himself.

  “I have heard much about the prowess of colonial damsels,” he exclaimed with new vigor, stretching his arms to indicate all three women at the table.

  The woman with the long brunette hair gingerly extracted the knife and held it out. “See how it shines so!” she said in a girlish voice. “And, oh my, there are even jewels in the hilt!”

  “The dagger was made for me in Italy,” the major boasted, then held up another coin, a guinea, and spoke to Sarah. “If you pin an apple, the coin goes in the boy’s pail. If you lose, you pay no penalty other than joining the lieutenant and myself in a game of whist.” He fixed Sarah with an eager smile. “Or perhaps piquet, a game for two?”

  Sarah acknowledged Duncan’s second set of hand signals with a fleeting grin, then touched the gleaming dagger. “But it looks so sharp, General,” she cooed.

  The major gave a sigh. “A mere major, mademoiselle, though I appreciate the sentiment. If you prefer to forgo the embarrassment, we can just retreat to the parlor now. Shall I order some port?”

  Sarah had the blade in her hand now, balancing it. “Does the pointy end go first?” she asked as she stood, then gave a pouting frown toward the mantel. “But the target is just miles away, Major.”

  The major gave a silky laugh and stepped to the mantel to move the apple closer. As he began to turn back toward Sarah, the knife flashed over the tables. With a resounding thud it embedded itself in the back of the mantel, pinning not the apple but the tail of his wig to the wall.

  “Bloody hell!” the major gasped. His face drained of blood. As he pulled away, the wig slid off his head.

  Sarah curtsied to him. “Out in the rustic lands we call that a grandee haircut,” she explained, drawing hoots of laughter from the crowd. “If you ever make it to the wilds, Major, tie your hair down.”

  The two women with her gave their own mocking curtsies to the officers and followed Sarah out of the tavern.

  An instant later Duncan was on the cobbled street, sweeping Sarah off her feet with a hearty laugh as she clamped her hands onto either side of his head and kissed him. After a long silent embrace she pushed him away, keeping hold of one hand.

  “This is my betrothed,” she announced to her amused companions.

  “I certainly hope so,” said the dark-haired woman with a laugh. Sarah introduced her as Madeline Faulkner, visiting from London.

  “We have met, Monsieur McCallum,” declared the blond woman, who extended her hand good-naturedly. “When I consigned my awkward brother to your care.”

  “And not a day went by on the Ohio when Pierre did not speak fondly of you, Mademoiselle Dumont,” Duncan acknowledged. “A renowned natural philosopher in her own right, he would often say.”

  The blond woman laughed again. “Not as renowned as my excitable brother.” She surveyed the street. “Where are you hiding him? I am so anxious to inspect your treasures.”

  “Alas, I rode ahead of the wagons,” Duncan said. “But with fair weather they should arrive in two or three days. And if you wish to whet your appetite, I left an ancient tooth with Mr. Thomson.”

  “The thrill of it!” Miss Dumont exclaimed. “We must go immediately!”

  Madeline Faulkner feigned a yawn. “We must get you to London, Olivia dear, so I can show you a proper evening’s entertainment.”

  As they walked through the dimly lit streets, Duncan arm in arm with Sarah, all three women fired questions at Duncan about his western expedition. He kept his answers lighthearted, steering clear of the tragedies of the journey, and soon they were knocking at Thomson’s door. The tutor greeted them cordially. “Mr. McCallum has brought a piece of the incognitum puzzle!” he exclaimed before Duncan could explain their visit. As her two friends stepped inside, Sarah gently tugged his arm.

  “I believe we will take the air,” Duncan announced, and Thomson excused them with a genteel nod.

  Once more Duncan refrained from speaking of the darker aspects of his journey as Sarah questioned him. “The bones will be here soon and you will have all their mystery before you,” he said when she pressed him to explain the objects the Sons of Liberty had sent him to retrieve from the Lick. He turned their conversation to an explanation of her unexpected journey from Edentown, but she echoed his own words.

  “The mystery will soon be before you,” was all she said, then pulled him into the shadow of an elm and kissed him again.<
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  Their route was pleasantly rambling, taking in much of the northern tier of the city, but eventually they approached the compound of Preston House. From the crook of a small tree she produced a key, then opened the door and led him up a dark stairway into a spacious residence. Some of the furnishings were threadbare and all were dusty, but the sitting room was comfortable and afforded an elevated view over the street below.

  “Mr. Preston was a wealthy merchant who died a dozen years ago,” Sarah explained. “His widow has grown too frail to maintain such a large house, so she lets others use it. She is more assertive in her beliefs than most Quakers I have met.”

  Duncan considered her words. “Meaning she supports the Sons of Liberty.”

  Sarah answered with a smile. They stood by the front window and held each other, watching a plodding horse draw a cart of hay to the livery stable down the block. Duncan turned toward a tapping noise coming from the rear of the house. He passed through the double door that led into a musty dining room, then to an open window overlooking the enclosed courtyard. In the center of the stone-flagged yard, a man with a white beard was tending a fire under a steaming kettle. A breeze wafted the vapor toward the window, and Duncan recognized the acrid, slightly metallic odor. The man was boiling horns cut from cattle, to soften them for cutting and stretching flat so they could be used for shaping combs, spoons, and other useful implements. But why, he wondered, was the man doing this at night, and why in the Sons’ secret compound?

  “It was good of them to let you stay here,” Duncan said to Sarah, returning to the sitting room. “They couldn’t know how long you would be waiting for me.”

  Sarah wrinkled her face in an expression that was at once peevish and amused.

  He cocked his head. “I don’t understand.”

  She shot him an impatient frown.

  It took him another confused moment to understand as he recalled the letter she had sent to him in Lancaster. “You are here because of the Sons?” he asked. “But why Philadelphia?” It wasn’t as though Sarah had never helped in his secret work for the Sons, but that had always been on the New York frontier. As he spoke, he heard the tapping sound again and realized it was coming from the floor below them.

  In reply, she took his hand and led him down a back staircase. The heavy oak door at the bottom opened into a shop lit by bright oil lamps, where two men, two boys, and three women were bent over workbenches. They all looked up and offered cheerful greetings to Sarah.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” Sarah exclaimed.

  Duncan was not sure how to reply. Instead he walked along the workbenches. The workers were leaning over wooden rods and sheets of horn with drills, saws, and punches. At the end of each bench was a small crate they were filling with the fruits of their labor. He bent and scooped his hand into a crate.

  “Buttons?” he asked in surprise.

  “We shall do this in Edentown, Duncan! Mrs. Pratt”—she indicated a plump woman wearing a white apron and kerchief on her graying hair—“says she will come and teach our people.”

  Duncan tried not to show his confusion. Why was Sarah using a secret Sons house to make buttons? “I was not aware we suffered a shortage of buttons,” he said, regretting his words instantly as resentment flashed on Sarah’s face.

  “Not for us! For the colonies! For the Pact! Mr. Thomson, Mr. Mulligan, and I gathered information by visiting merchants in Philadelphia and New York. Nearly all import their buttons from Cardiff and Bristol. This is how the people of Edentown will help the cause of liberty.”

  A smile slowly rose on Duncan’s face. The Sons were quietly working not just to establish new trade routes but also to set up manufacturing shops to replace those of Britain. He recalled reading Sarah a letter from Samuel Adams, months earlier, urging him to make inquiries during his travels to identify craftsmen who might expand their operations, especially with the help of some capital from John Hancock and other wealthy Sons. “The Covenant,” he whispered.

  Surprise appeared on Sarah’s face, but she did not respond.

  “We can sell for half the price of what those English factories charge and still make a going concern of it,” said a rough feminine voice from behind him. Mrs. Pratt had paused in her work and now stepped forward to examine Duncan. Without warning, she reached out and grabbed his tunic, pulling him closer. He was about to object when he realized she was studying his clothing. “Look at ye. Two buttons missing and Lord knows what shape yer small clothes be in.” She turned to the young girl. “Becky, dear, make Mr. McCallum a pouch of the new horn buttons, the walnut-dyed ones, I think.” She punctuated her request with a spit of tobacco juice into a heavily used spittoon. “Ye can be like one of those promoting cads. When someone admires yer buttons ye can tell them they come from the soon-to-be-famous Edentown Buttonworks,” she said, then slapped Sarah on the shoulder and offered her appraisal of Duncan. “He’s a passable specimen,” she said. “After ye two are hitched ye’ll need to get familiar with each other’s fastenings,” she added with a guffaw and another slap. “Mr. Pratt knew all of mine well enough, may the rascal rest in peace.”

  Sarah showed Duncan her store of materials, including sheets of horn and lathe-turned rounds of walnut and cherrywood. “Back home we can pay the Iroquois for the antlers of stags and slice them into discs. Oh, and tin. We have good forge-made stamps for cutting through sheets of tin. And the smith at home made some bullet molds last year. I will ask him to make some button molds so we can use pewter.”

  Duncan warmed to see her excitement. She had long been frustrated at seeing Duncan off on missions for the Sons while she stayed to manage Edentown and had bitterly complained when friends had died in the Sons’ cause while she stood by safely at home. The Iroquois had bred a warrior’s spirit in their adopted daughter.

  Sarah led Duncan back out into the courtyard. “Soon we shall have enough supplies to keep Mrs. Pratt busy for months, and then we shall make our own materials. Friends from the south are helping.”

  Duncan paused, remembering the barrels in Lancaster. “Supplies hidden in barrels of flour, perhaps?”

  Sarah’s eyes flashed. “How could you know that? Yes, from our secret allies in Williamsburg, where the governor is most irate over the Pact. Nothing that might support manufacturing in the colonies is allowed to openly leave Williamsburg. Once those barrels arrive, we can extract their secret cargo and all will be packed up for Edentown. I think they will like Mrs. Pratt there. She’s a bit unvarnished but very droll. She tells me coarse jokes about men and women, and the more I blush the more she laughs, saying if I am betrothed I must learn about such things. Yesterday she urged me to put tobacco in my cheek! She said it would put fizz in my mouth for when my man nips me.”

  They laughed, and Duncan pulled her close and kissed her again. “Your mouth is perfect the way it is, mo nighean,” he said, then held her tightly and whispered in her ear. “Mo chridhe.” My heart.

  They sat on a bench at the back of the courtyard and watched the bearded man toss more logs on the fire under the kettle, sending a shower of sparks to join the stars. Sarah yawned and leaned into his shoulder. “Buttons are the beginning,” she said in a tired, dreamy voice. “Then spoons and combs, lamp plates, dippers, and later betty lamps and even plug burners.”

  Duncan grinned at hearing Sarah speak so uncharacteristically of such things, then froze and turned her face toward him. “Did you say plug burners?”

  “You know, the new wick plugs for whale oil lamps. Most don’t know that a lamp with a two-wick plug burns brighter than two lamps. Dr. Franklin discovered that.”

  “I didn’t know,” Duncan said absently, for his question wasn’t about the functioning of wicks. Sarah had just recited the list dropped by the killers at the smashed telescope in Lancaster.

  Chapter 6

  I WILL SEE THE BONES WELL stored on the London ship and then I return to Edentown! That was the bargain!” Duncan said to Charles Thomson for the third time that hour
, and the loudest. “We are to be wed at the full of the moon! Mr. Franklin asked for the treasures to be accompanied by Dumont. I have important work on the frontier.” He longed to be back in the western forests, walking hand in hand with Sarah and sitting at Iroquois council fires.

  Hercules Mulligan, who had just arrived in Thomson’s parlor, now cast an uneasy glance at Thomson and turned to Duncan. “These are difficult times, McCallum, requiring sacrifices by many. Do you not wish to avoid hostilities?”

  “You really need to ask me that? No one wants war.” The Sons of Liberty had never spoken in favor of a violent break with Britain—only for an equal voice in Parliament for the colonies.

  “You spent weeks with Pierre. He is an accomplished naturalist but not a man for”—Mulligan searched for words—“taking physical reactions when they are called for.”

  “Now you speak like a London courtier!” Duncan snapped. He did not understand why these leaders of the Sons were suddenly interested in sending him to London, but he did understand they could say nothing to convince him to leave Sarah.

  “Ezra’s murderers remain at large,” Mulligan observed.

  “And yesterday you seemed content to believe they were only interested in finding a secret agreement about Mississippi trade,” Duncan argued. “Which they failed to obtain.”

  Mulligan winced and narrowed his eyes. “You know that is not true. They tried to steal the bones.”

  “Mr. Franklin’s bones will soon be packed on board an Atlantic ship, out of harm’s way.”

  “On their way to London, where the conspiracy against them was hatched. You of all people know whoever is doing this is looking for a stranglehold on the Sons!”

  Duncan silently returned Mulligan’s stare. “What has changed since yesterday?” he finally asked.

  “This list, for one,” Thomson replied, and tossed the list that the groom Mathias had given Duncan in Lancaster, left by the murderers, onto his table. “It evidences a broader purpose.”