The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  Finally: Is communication between spirits and the living taking place in dreams?

  “An ambitious undertaking,” Mulligan observed judiciously.

  “Who else is facing up to such vital issues?” Thomson asked.

  Mulligan pointed to the bottom of the paper. “I see you were the chairman of the meeting.”

  Thomson winced. “I assure you I do not speak out of self-interest.”

  “And your Society is actively supporting the Proprietary Party,” Mulligan said, referring to the new political group that advocated the continued governing role of the Penn family proprietors. “And if I am not mistaken, the Society for Promoting Knowledge is with the anti-proprietors. As is Mr. Franklin.” There was a hint of amusement in Mulligan’s voice that clearly irritated Thomson. “Philadelphia has become quite a labyrinth.”

  “I am sorry, gentlemen,” Duncan interjected. “I did not undergo our expedition, and Ezra did not give his life, to serve some local feud in Philadelphia. We need to be discussing how to protect the bones. You seem to think those who threaten us have moved on. I am convinced otherwise. These are cunning men we face, and so far they have killed and ambushed with impunity.”

  His words brought a tense silence. Thomson gave a slow, apologetic nod.

  “Messieurs,” Dumont said. “May I remind you that I am a member of both societies, engaged solely in the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world with no stake in issues of the colony. The summer kitchen behind my house is seldom used. The bones may be stored there, both those to be packed and those to remain here. I am sure you can find a sturdy padlock after I have sailed, and I suggest you then give the key to the unassailable Mistress Franklin.”

  Thomson extended a grateful hand to Dumont, readily agreeing. Mulligan offered the services of his Irish attendant as a guard until the bones for Franklin were loaded on their London ship, and they proceeded with selection of the final items for shipment, now giving great deference to the Frenchman. They had completed their task and Thomson was distributing celebratory glasses of sherry when his kitchen boy appeared.

  The boy nodded to Duncan, then gave a cursory bow to his master. “Prithee, sir, a message from Preston House for Mr. McCallum.” He turned back to Duncan to complete his errand. “Miss Ramsey says she will need your help with her buttons tonight.”

  Thomson’s round face flushed scarlet and he quickly looked down into his sherry. A suppressed giggle erupted from Deborah Franklin. Hercules Mulligan burst out in laughter.

  Sarah was standing in a wagon, energetically directing the unloading of the Lancaster barrels into the Preston House courtyard, when Duncan arrived. He stood watching by the gate with a wide smile until she finally noticed him. She straightened her dress and returned his smile, though not before casting a glance at the rear gate, where for the second time in as many days Duncan saw Edwin Jenkins, the assistant blacksmith from Edentown, who was quickly darting away as if to avoid Duncan.

  “We have a baker coming for the flour in the morning,” Sarah reported as he helped her down. “So we have to extract our secret supplies tonight and reseal the barrels.”

  She pushed back a lock of auburn hair that had drifted across her face. “Only half of them hold our smuggled supplies. The barrels are numbered. I have the list, the key, from Virginia, showing which ones are meant for us.”

  Duncan began rolling up his sleeves. “Then let’s put the ones not meant for us by the gate and the others by the door of the shop.”

  “Excellent,” Sarah said with a nod and consulted a piece of paper she pulled from her pocket. “First load, then.” Duncan saw the barrels were in two groups, no doubt reflecting the two wagons they had arrived in. “Barrels marked 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16 to the shop door, where we can work by light of the wall lanterns. The others to the gate.”

  When they finished sorting the barrels Mrs. Pratt tied on an apron. “It’s going to be messy work,” she observed, “and I don’t see why ye just didn’t say move the ones with the peculiar X on their sides.”

  “I don’t follow,” Duncan confessed.

  The feisty widow walked along the barrels and pointed out how the four-inch black X mark Duncan had seen in Lancaster were on all those Sarah asked to be opened. He bent over one of the marks. The sign was not simply an X, for at each end of the legs was a small black disc, giving the Xs a bulbous appearance. Duncan half-remembered the symbol from his university days, but he could not put a name to it.

  “A cooper’s mark,” he suggested. “Sometimes they brand their wares with a hot iron.”

  “Nope,” the widow retorted, “it’s only on these, not those by the gate. And t’ain’t no burnt mark,” she added as she rubbed a finger on one of the marks, spreading an oily black smear on the wood. She put her finger to her tongue, winced, then called over the man with the white beard. “That put you in mind of yer early days, Josiah?” she asked the man.

  The spindly man dabbed a finger on the black mark. “Lord help me,” he muttered as he rubbed the black substance between his fingers and smelled it. “Left face, right face, double-time, and make them shine so I can see my reflection, Corporal.”

  Duncan suppressed a smile. “You were in the army?”

  “Orderly to a colonel in the last war,” Mrs. Pratt explained.

  “Sometimes they had me make the stuff myself,” Josiah added. “I didn’t mind if there was good beeswax or lanolin to be had. But usually it was stinking tallow from the bottom of the stewpots. Tallow and lampblack.” The old soldier noticed Duncan’s confusion. “Dubbin, sir, it’s dubbin, used for polishing army boots.”

  A whispered echo from a long-ago classroom finally reached him. The symbol was an alchemist sign. “Tin?” he asked Sarah. “Do you have tin in these barrels?”

  Sarah raised her brows in surprise. “Yes, English tin from Manchester, shipped to a friendly merchant in Virginia. How could you know?”

  “That mark,” he said, pointing to one of the Xs with balled feet, “is an ancient sign for tin. Someone knew tin was being smuggled. They marked the barrels to make it easier to follow. The marks can be seen from a distance, then,” he explained with new worry. It likely meant that their enemies knew the barrels had arrived, and it could mean there were eyes on the house at that very minute. The fact that they had not been opened in transit meant someone in Virginia had known of the Covenant’s secret even before the barrels had been packed with the smuggled tin. Their mysterious adversaries had a copy of Sarah’s secret list of barrel numbers. Instead of seizing them, they had followed them to their destination.

  The next morning Duncan waited in the shadows of an alley until the short, broad-shouldered man hurried out of the gate of the Preston House yard, casting nervous glances over his shoulder, then followed him toward the waterfront. When the man paused on the wharf in front of a narrow aisle between two rows of hogsheads, Duncan hurried forward and gently pushed the man inside the gap.

  “Mr. Jenkins,” Duncan began in a casual tone.

  The man sagged as he recognized Duncan. “May as well try to give the slip to a Mohawk warrior,” he said.

  Edwin Jenkins was the assistant to the blacksmith at Edentown, a reliable, hardworking man who was favored by Sarah for special tasks like retrieving deliveries from port towns. “So you admit you have been trying to avoid me,” Duncan said.

  “Only because the mistress of Edentown told me to,” Jenkins replied. “I meant no offense, sir.”

  “Prithee, Jenkins, why would Miss Ramsey ask you to hide from me?”

  “Don’t know exactly, sir. She’s a good woman and I take her orders without question. Something to do with the change, I reckon.”

  “The change?”

  “Seeing how I was the one she sent to Philadelphia to bring the button works back, but then she showed up herself. Too important a job for me, apparently.” Jenkins looked hurt.

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “No, no, she would never be
so harsh. But what was I to think? Excepting then a few days later she was all upset, and said I had to mind the details after all, that I would be the one to take everything back and set up the new works with Mrs. Pratt.”

  “You mean she came to take over but something changed her mind?” Duncan asked, raising a nod from Jenkins. “And what are you doing here at the docks?”

  “Some days she has me go down to watch the London ships.”

  “Watch for what?”

  “Arrivals and departures. Manifests. Passenger lists.”

  Duncan tried to fit the report with Sarah’s new interest in implementing the Non-importation Pact. “You mean tracking imports.”

  “Imports and such, yessir. And a week ago she had me tell when a certain ship from Boston arrived. She went on board for a couple hours. Old friends, I reckon. Oh, and berths. Sometimes she has me make inquiries about cabins bound for London.”

  Duncan recalled that Sarah’s brunette friend was visiting from London. “You mean for her friend Miss Faulkner.”

  “Booked that berth last week. She sails tomorrow. But Miss Sarah still sends me to make inquiries.”

  Duncan cocked his head in curiosity, but then stepped aside and gestured Jenkins toward the harbor. “Carry on. I do not mean to interfere with your important work, Jenkins.”

  Jenkins touched his forehead in salute and stepped out of the shadows.

  “And, Jenkins,” Duncan said with a pang of guilt. “Two things.”

  “Yessir?”

  “No need to speak of this conversation to your mistress. And keep close watch over the Preston House. Find a weapon, a staff or club at least. A battle may be brewing in Philadelphia.”

  The next morning Dumont let Duncan inside his house before he could finish the coded knock. “Yes, yes,” the Frenchman said in rushed greeting and motioned Duncan into his sparsely furnished sitting room. The chamber held only three long benches arranged in a U shape, a trestle table bearing remnants of loaves and sausages, and a writing desk in one corner on which papers and quills lay scattered. The air was tinged with tobacco.

  “We worked all night,” Dumont explained.

  “It looks more like another political meeting,” Duncan suggested. He had been up much of the night himself, unable to sleep. He had paced around the empty courtyard of the Preston House, contemplating the mysteries of the past week. It was a puzzle in which new pieces seemed to surface each day. It struck him that if the secret of Sarah’s shipment of English tin had been pierced in Virginia, the Covenant was much more engaged and widespread than he had imagined, and just so its enemies. Ezra’s killers clearly were not acting alone. They were more like the tip of a spear aimed at the Sons, with invisible agents supporting them.

  Dumont sighed, then wiped two glasses with a soiled napkin and filled them with claret. “Sooner or later, Duncan my friend, everything becomes political in Philadelphia and London. If only you and I could have more weeks with the bones, what joy we would have, eh?” He tapped the second glass, still on the table, with his own. “Politics will be the death of us.”

  Dumont nibbled at a piece of bread, then drained half his glass and stared down at the remaining wine. “It was decided after much debate that a report for Mr. Franklin from the proprietors of the bones should accompany them, and me, to London.”

  “Proprietors?”

  “The colony. Or more specifically the society of scholars. Except we have two societies of natural philosophers, so there had to be a joint report that both the American Philosophical Society and the Society for the Propagation of Useful Knowledge can endorse. And thereby hangs hours of haranguing. We had Mr. Thomson here but also Mr. Biddle and Mr. Rittenhouse, both of whom were more interested in speaking of the coming transit of Venus.” Dumont shook his head in frustration. “One would say we hereby present the bones of the incognitum and the other says we can’t say that since we don’t even know the incognitum well enough to say what bones belong to it. Another says we must forgo suggestion of an extinct species for fear it will offend the church and still another says which church do you mean, are you suggesting a primacy of churches, which then triggers a discussion about whether we need more Quakers in the societies so we can fairly represent that the report comes from Philadelphia.”

  “Pierre, my friend, if the bones have any proprietors I think they are you and me,” Duncan observed with a bitter grin. “And perhaps some tribal gods.”

  Pierre conceded the point with an amiable nod and a lifting of his glass, tipped to Duncan. “I had to remind them that our mission is secret, and urgent, so we finally agreed that the best approach is to describe the bones as accurately as possible, and the ground on which they were found, and to offer our warranty that they were not altered in any aspect or otherwise tampered with, and they match no species thus far found on the continent.” Dumont gave a weary smile. “I do so relish the notion that such beasts will be found in the great unmapped West. Oh, my life would be complete if I could but be part of that expedition! I pray it will happen before I am too ancient myself.”

  Dumont emptied the rest of his glass as a rap came from the front door. The Frenchman sighed. “Oh, for the peace of the Ohio again,” he murmured. “Mr. Thomson agreed to complete a first draft for further discussion. More hours of debate, I fear,” he said before opening the door.

  As Duncan hoped, Hercules Mulligan arrived soon after Thomson, with a tall, well-dressed but taciturn man who was introduced as David Rittenhouse, astronomer. Duncan quickly explained the discovery of the secret marks on the barrels. “But McCallum, this is a meeting about the incognitum,” Thomson reminded him.

  “It was the Sons who asked me to retrieve the bones,” Duncan said, “not some fraternity of Philadelphia scholars. It is the Sons who are secretly assisting the manufacture of new goods to punish the English merchants and engaging new trade routes through your Covenant organization. All those secrets have been pierced, and by the same group of men, men connected somehow to the British military.”

  “You must not overreact,” Thomson warned again. “We cannot let the incognitum be tainted by scandal.”

  “Become tainted? You mean also ignore the lies, treachery, and murder that have already accompanied it? They will disrupt all the work of the Sons if you do not take measures! These men are ruthless. They mean to bring the Sons to their knees. They will grind every ancient bone to dust if it serves their purpose.”

  “You are still distraught over the loss of Ezra, Duncan,” Thomson said. “We all share that pain. But Mr. Rittenhouse has pointed out that that was the wilderness. You must recall that he married into a native tribe. His death has all the markings of the work of savages.”

  Duncan turned to Thomson, aghast. Dumont stared down into his folded hands, struggling to keep out of the argument. “Savages, yes,” Duncan hissed. “Savages in powdered wigs. You would prefer to sip tea and blather about Cotton Mather’s poetry and your societies and planets while they do their bloody work.”

  Thomson’s anger was instant. His face deepened in color as he glared at Duncan.

  It was Mulligan who broke the brittle silence. “What are you asking, McCallum?”

  Duncan drained his glass as he collected his thoughts, then stood with his hands on the back of a chair as he addressed his companions. “People say that Highland Scots are the champions of lost causes, the greatest of which was the Jacobite Uprising. That rebellion destroyed my family, destroyed my clan, destroyed the entire Highland way of life. And it failed because honorable but proud men refused to face harsh truths. Instead, every debate of strategy collapsed into bickering. The Camerons couldn’t stand by Frasers in battle line. The Chisholms wouldn’t bother with muskets or cannon because Highland claymores had been good enough for their ancestors. The Macleans refused to guard the supply train because there was no glory in it, and the McDonalds bristled at taking orders from a Murray. Ultimately no one would stand up to Bonnie Prince Charlie to say Culloden was a profoundl
y poor choice for a battlefield because it was rude to disagree with the Royal Stuart. They all had the information they needed for success, but they blinded themselves to it. The British troops weren’t the cause of the Highland defeat—the bickering and blindness of Highlanders was. I am not going to be destroyed by another cause lost by shortsighted, gullible men.”

  Thomson looked down into his folded hands. Rittenhouse gazed out a window, stroking his prominent jaw.

  “I repeat,” Mulligan said in a sour tone, “What are you asking?”

  “I am asking that you recognize that we have unseen enemies. I am asking you to recognize that they are playing a game of chess and we have yet to engage on the board.”

  “We will not let anyone distract us from our course,” Thomson said in a simmering tone, as if Duncan was saying otherwise.

  “Our course?” Duncan demanded. “All we do is stumble along their course! You want to convince yourselves that our opponents are just uncouth vandals and men being paid to cause distractions. You’re wrong. These acts are being orchestrated by a common hand, and that hand is on the other side of the Atlantic. They knew of the English tin being smuggled to Sarah. They knew of the plan for Mississippi trade devised by Franklin and the Covenant’s leader, Hephaestus. They knew of the secret incognitum mission. Draw the lines. They intersect on the other side of the Atlantic. Someone in London has pierced the secrets of the Sons!”

  “Please, Duncan, the greatest mistake we could make would be to overreact,” Thomson said. “There is more at stake than you know. We are not at liberty to divulge all. I accept your point about the danger to the Covenant. If you think there is some threat to our manufacturing plans, then by all means we must discuss how to protect them. For the rest, you have our gratitude. It may be best if you return to the frontier.”

  Mulligan stepped closer to Thomson. “Charles, Duncan deserves to—”

  Thomson interrupted with a raised hand. “We will not sacrifice our noble goals to emotion or to feed someone’s misplaced notion of vengeance!” He fixed Duncan with a scolding eye. “Or be cowed by someone else’s lost causes!”