The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  “Meaning what?”

  “I think he didn’t believe what he saw. He was looking at phantoms. Perhaps he has decided his senses can no longer be relied upon. He retreated to the corner. Maybe the fact that he wept meant that deep inside the man we know still exists. It’s what you have to do in such a madhouse, push the essence of yourself down into a hidden place inside.”

  It took a long time for Ishmael to reply. “It wasn’t Conawago, only the husk of what was Conawago,” he said in a voice that shook with emotion. “You would have me believe a spark of him still burns despite what my own eyes told me.”

  Duncan revisited the scene again, and again, then turned with a glimmer of hope. “Do you recall the men tossing the globe? Do you remember what they said?”

  “Just more nonsense.”

  “No. One said siga, the other said quin, then next mond. Ishmael, it was a Nipmuc word! But we heard the sounds out of order. Quinsigamond.”

  Ishmael hesitated then slowly repeated the syllables, all together. “Quinsigamond!” he exclaimed. “The original home of the Nipmuc!”

  Duncan nodded, recalling the heart-wrenching night, months earlier, they had spent in the ancient seat of the Nipmuc, now called Worcester. “I think it is a way for Conawago to keep a grip on reality. He taught them the word, and devised a way to keep hearing it. He may be slipping but he is not gone.”

  The excitement slowly faded on the young Nipmuc’s face. “But that hospital is like a fortress. No way to raid it. How can we ever get him out?”

  “The key that locked him in will be the key that opens his door,” Duncan said as they reached the Neptune. Xander the link boy leapt up from the steps to open the cab. Inside, Sinner John greeted them, then blocked their passage as they headed for the stairway, with a nod toward the parlor.

  “ ’Tis a fine representation of the Yarmouth, third rate, before she had her guns reduced,” came a familiar voice. Captain Rhys was bent over a model of a fighting ship, speaking to Darby, but straightened as he recognized his former passengers. “Your golden-haired angel from Philadelphia has arrived,” he announced with a twinkle in his eye. “Her ship anchored next to the Galileo this afternoon and she paid me a visit. Said to tell you she has a monster waiting for you.”

  Duncan and Ishmael tried not to run on the way to Craven Street, wary of drawing the attention of the watch, but still they wove in and out of the throngs at an urgent pace. A vendor with a basket of handkerchiefs stepped in front of them, waving one of his wares in Ishmael’s face, and the Nipmuc nimbly stuffed it in the man’s mouth. A recalcitrant mule with a cart of hay blocked the street until Duncan pushed through the crowd and twisted its tail, producing a bray and a lurch forward.

  The ship from Philadelphia had anchored shortly before noon, Captain Rhys had reported, meaning she had been in London for several hours. The passenger dispatched by the Sons of Liberty had only one address in London, and Duncan was painfully aware of how strangers could be dismissed by the Craven Street staff. He had a horrible vision of Olivia Dumont being turned away and left to roam the streets of London, with no notion of what to do with her special cargo.

  He pounded the heavy brass knocker until the rather cross landlady opened it. “Mr. McCallum, sir, we run a quiet establishment here!” She hesitated, glancing at Ishmael. “McGowan. Pardon, I mean McGowan.”

  “I have no secrets from Ishmael,” Duncan said, “and beg pardon, Mrs. Stevenson, but I must see Dr. Franklin at once! He must be prepared for an unexpected visitor!”

  He did not understand her wry smile. As she stepped aside to offer a polite curtsy to Ishmael to introduce herself, Duncan dashed up the stairs.

  Seeing the sitting room empty, he called out toward the bedroom. “Dr. Franklin! Forgive me. I have vital news!”

  A girlish laugh rose from the hearth, where the two large stuffed chairs had been moved, their backs to him.

  “That particular news, Mr. McCallum,” came Franklin’s amused voice as he rose from one of the chairs, “has already arrived.”

  Olivia Dumont rose from the other chair and with a joyful cry rushed forward to embrace Duncan. Franklin seemed highly entertained by her show of affection. Duncan returned the embrace of Dumont’s sister, then gently pushed her away, hands on her shoulders.

  “Is it safe?” he asked urgently.

  She nodded. “Under guard and awaiting your instructions.”

  “Thank God,” Duncan exclaimed, and gave her another, more brotherly embrace. “Now to decide where,” he said, looking at Franklin.

  “Mrs. Stevenson has an idle chamber on the top floor,” Franklin suggested.

  “The incognitum cannot come here,” Duncan warned. “There’s been too much violence accompanying it.” He did not give voice to his increasing worry that Franklin himself was in danger.

  Franklin cleared his throat. “I was thinking of lodging for the enchanting mademoiselle, Duncan. After the tragedy she suffered in Philadelphia and her arduous journey, it’s the least we could do.”

  Duncan was inclined to reject the suggestion, but as he chewed on Franklin’s words it struck him that she might be safest in this very residence, in plain sight of a busy household. He nodded. “Assuming the landlady consents.”

  “Of course she will!” Franklin replied, then made a clumsy bow to the mademoiselle. “Welcome to the Craven Street family,” he said.

  As Olivia began to recount the adventure of her voyage across the Atlantic, Franklin disappeared and returned with the landlady and Judith, carrying trays of tea and small cakes. The genteel landlady was pleased to accommodate the Frenchwoman, and when Duncan neglected to do so, she introduced his companion to Franklin. “This is Mr. Ishmael, of the Nipmuc tribe,” she explained.

  “An aborigine!” Judith exclaimed and took an eager step forward to examine Ishmael more closely.

  “Judith!” Mrs. Stevenson scolded.

  The maid halted and made a curtsy to Ishmael. “Pardon me, sir. No offense intended. We never had a genuine Nipmish Indian as a guest.”

  “Nipmuc,” Ishmael corrected, then bowed to Judith and made a graceful leg to Franklin. “Your servant, sir.”

  Franklin glanced quizzically at Duncan.

  “Ishmael journeyed to the Lick with me,” Duncan explained. “He has been with me for the entire ordeal.”

  “The amazing epic of the incognitum,” Franklin murmured. His face clouded and he turned to Olivia Dumont. “Beg pardon. I shouldn’t speak so with your brother’s tragedy still overshadowing you.”

  Olivia offered a sad smile. “Pierre would not want it any other way. Recovering the incognitum was the greatest achievement of his career.” Her smile faded, and she stepped to the tooth, now back on the gaming table. “Of his life.” She touched the relic and sighed, then looked up with new energy. “Oh, Dr. Franklin, you will not credit the amazing treasures we have brought you! Why, the rib alone will—”

  “Rib?” Franklin exclaimed, looking now at Duncan. “You brought me a rib? But that was not in your sketches.”

  “A surprise, but one which Olivia deserves to share with you.”

  “C’est magnifique,” the Frenchwoman said. “It takes two men to carry it. We could all fit inside its curvature.”

  “I could not have dreamed of such!” Franklin was almost unable to contain his excitement. With a sudden impulse he hastened to the sideboard and extracted a bottle of port.

  “Your gout, sir,” Duncan warned him in a low voice as Franklin poured out the glasses.

  “Damn the wretched gout! We must celebrate!”

  “Oh, and I neglected the rest,” Olivia said as Franklin extended a glass to her. She bent to a bag embroidered with fleurs-de-lis lying against the wall by the hearth and extracted a bundle of papers tied with blue ribbon. “Mr. Thomson calls it a gift to the Royal Society. But Mr. Rittenhouse, who stayed up all night copying it all before I sailed, said it was Philadelphia’s gift to the world. Both made me promise to give it only to yo
u.”

  “My dear?” Franklin asked, clearly confused.

  “Why, the transit, sir. The complete observations from three American locations.”

  Franklin stared disbelieving for a moment. “You stun me, mademoiselle!” His hand went to his chest. “Lord, how my heart races! Your visit,” he said with a gesture that took in all his guests, “why, it is the completest thing!” He took a long drink of his port, nearly draining his glass. “No one else has reported complete observations yet. We only have those done by himself at his new Royal Observatory at Kew, which he built just for June the third.”

  Olivia’s blond curls tumbled as she turned quickly. “He?”

  Franklin’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Himself. George Rex. The king.”

  After several minutes of excited conversation, Mrs. Stevenson offered to show the exhausted Olivia her bedroom, stifling the Frenchwoman’s protests that all her baggage was still on the ship by saying she would send someone with a note in the morning.

  Franklin’s gaiety slowly subsided, replaced with a quiet awe as he untied the ribbon, put on his spectacles, and surveyed the astronomical observations. Finally he set the packet down beside the ancient tooth. “All these years I have dreamed of such an opportunity. The incognitum! The American transit! How tongues will wag! Divine Providence shines on us at last!”

  Duncan and Ishmael shared a troubled glance, and Duncan knew the young Nipmuc was having the same reaction as Duncan to Franklin’s behavior. “I explained how two good men, and a woman and her child, died because of the bones,” Duncan reminded Franklin.

  “I am not likely to forget such terrible loss.”

  “Surely they did not just die for some ornaments to be boasted of at a London party.”

  Franklin’s eyes flared as he recognized the challenge in Duncan’s voice. “I have more respect for them than that,” he replied stiffly.

  “Them?” Duncan shot back. “Meaning the bones of the incognitum or the bones of our friends?”

  The fire that lit the older man’s eyes left as abruptly as it appeared. “You shame me, McCallum.” He was silent for several moments, staring into the glowing embers of the hearth. “I will honor them in my own way,” he said at last.

  “Let me honor them,” Duncan replied, “by making sure their purpose is achieved.”

  Franklin’s gaze hardened. “You have delivered the incognitum. That was your mission. You are, I have no doubt, an adept agent for our endeavors in America. But this is London. I have lived here for more than a dozen years. You have been here for what, two days?”

  “The incognitum is a creature of the wilderness. That tooth and claw world has accompanied it. Ishmael and I are also creatures of that world.” Franklin studied Duncan with eyes that had grown cunning. “My instinct, sir,” Duncan continued, “is that the path you mean for the incognitum strikes more into that world than the one you are accustomed to.”

  The learned inventor sighed and gazed again into the hearth. “You’re a Highlander, I take it. I spent three of the happiest months of my life in Scotland. I have entertained the notion of retiring there. I love the Scots. So intelligent, so educated, so affable. But they tend to rub the truth raw.” He paused, not speaking, while he retrieved a pipe from a box on the sideboard, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. “I would welcome such strong souls at my side, but it cannot be. Highland Scots still stir strong feelings in London.” His words triggered a new thought and Franklin lowered his pipe. “You haven’t told me how you were bred in the Highlands but found yourself in America, McCallum.”

  “Like a few hundred others, I was found to have assisted in rebellion. Some were executed, some were transported.”

  Franklin puffed on his pipe in silence, examining Duncan with new interest as Ishmael studied the drawings on the wall. “How could that be?” he asked. “You would have been but a boy during the uprising.”

  “The British army captured all the McCallum men who survived Culloden and hanged them at the toll house in Inverness. I was at a boarding school in Holland when I heard the news. The government and I both thought all had been dealt with, but years later my great-uncle found me at the college in Edinburgh. He had been a fugitive all those years. I felt obliged to give him shelter, but stipulated that he stay out of sight whenever I was away at school. He did, except on his birthday he found a bottle of whisky I had been saving as a gift to a professor on my graduation day. He proceeded to get drunk, and when he began singing Highland songs of his youth the other tenants complained. The watch arrived and he cursed them for abandoning the Scottish king. He was hanged, and I was convicted of harboring an enemy of King George.”

  “That was a different George,” Franklin observed.

  “George the Second,” Duncan agreed. “I was sentenced to seven years hard labor, which was converted to an indenture in America. I served that term and now I sit with the tooth of the incognitum in the parlor of the wizard of lightning.”

  Franklin stared at his pipe with a chagrined expression, then rose and stepped back to the sideboard, from which he returned with a dusty green bottle and three fresh glasses. He uncorked the bottle, releasing a rich peaty scent, and poured out the whisky. “I am more inclined, my friend,” Franklin said as he distributed the glasses, “to say that a very inadequate public servant sits here with the heroic survivors of the battle of the incognitum.” He touched glasses with Ishmael and then with Duncan. “And I am exceedingly grateful to you for supplying a reason to uncork this Highland nectar.”

  Duncan closed his eyes against the flood of memories brought by his first sip. It was the best whisky he had tasted in years. The scent of heather and peat released more smells and even sounds, long hidden in the back passages of his mind, of shaggy cattle, damp wool, and the laugh of his long-dead sisters as they played with the calves. When he opened his eyes, Franklin was rubbing the crust of dust from the whisky’s label. He pushed the bottle toward Duncan and gestured to the elegant calligraphy. PUT IN CASK 1744, it said, then ALEXANDER MACGILLIVRAY OF DUNMAGLASS.

  Ice touched Duncan’s heart. He looked up at Franklin.

  “You’re wondering if I understand the poignancy,” the older man said. “I am aware that Alexander MacGillivray was killed at Culloden two years later. A nephew of his took me to the graveyard at Dunlichity where he and many others who died there are interred. Afterward he presented this bottle to me, saying it was to help me remember all those good men who died fighting tyranny.”

  Duncan stared into the smoky liquid amber as another wave of emotion washed over him. The hands that had put up the whisky had known the joys of the old Highland culture, had not known of the apocalypse that was coming to destroy it. “You do us honor, sir,” he finally said. He drained his glass and sat down. “Like many, MacGillivray died for his clan, not for his prince, who was but a stranger from France. ’Tis the burden and the honor of the clans.”

  Franklin fixed him with a quizzical expression.

  “We commit our blood to our brothers,” Duncan explained. “Ishmael and I have survived the battles thus far. And our mission changed when our brothers Pierre and Ezra were murdered. We are honor bound to our lost brothers to see this war through.”

  Franklin took a moment to grasp his meaning. His voice hardened. “I told you this is London business now.”

  “And I tell you we are honor bound. Need I remind you we control the bones right now?”

  Franklin glanced at Ishmael. “We?”

  “Yes,” came a gentle voice from the shadows by the stairs. Olivia Dumont stepped forward. “We. The bones are here for the American cause.” She stood between Duncan and Ishmael and put her hands on their shoulders. “I too am honor bound. For Pierre’s sake, we must not be quarrelsome. So let’s decide together where we shall deposit our treasure.”

  Franklin filled his pipe again and paced along the hearth, then looked up with sudden excitement in his eyes. “Where better to hide bones than among other bones?” he aske
d, then with a flourish of his pipe gestured them closer.

  They were reviewing the rough map Franklin had drawn for them when Mrs. Stevenson appeared. “He came to the back door,” she said apologetically. “I tried to deal with him by offering a piece of meat pie and a disapproving gaze, for he looks every bit the scoundrel, but he insisted on seeing Mr. McCallum.”

  Darby, the bosun, stepped from behind the landlady, looking deeply worried. “The lap dog of that damned major,” he began, looking only at Duncan, “the one who carried him out of the sick bay when we anchored, who always smells of bergamot and gunpowder and helped toss ye in the drink.”

  “Yes,” Duncan said slowly, not understanding. “You mean Lieutenant Nettles.”

  Ishmael, whose warrior instincts were often sharper than Duncan’s, went to the side of the nearest window to steal a gaze at the street.

  “I wouldn’t trouble you fine folks,” he said, putting a knuckle to his head as he nodded to Franklin and Olivia Dumont in turn, “excepting that very lieutenant and another man wearing the same tall black boots be just outside, watching this Craven Street house.”

  Sarah—Ishmael says he believes the city drains the soul out of men, for it cuts them off from the true things of this world. He is worried that the old tribal gods will become lost trying to find us in such a place. When I consider the noise, the filth, the greed, and the violence that dwells here I fear he may be right. Yet I have also found charity and kindness. It is as if the city were one of those old gardens where for reasons we may not ken, many plants shrivel into gnarled ugly things but still we can find small patches where beauty reigns. Within the confines of this city are the extremes of the hand of man. I have seen buildings whose grandeur would take your breath away but in their shadows lurk human vipers and inside their walls acts of great depravity are committed. It is as if the city were put here to remind us of the heights, and the depths, of humankind.

  That the incognitum had made it from the Ohio to the Thames was a victory that Ezra and Pierre Dumont would have been proud of. Duncan couldn’t help but think of his lost friends as the crates were transferred from the big square-rigged merchantman from Philadelphia to the river barge. When he had at first been reluctant to include Captain Rhys in his planning, the Welshman had fired questions at him. “Do ye know where the revenue agents linger to watch for goods coming up river?” he had demanded. “Do ye know which of the stairways on the upper Thames are closest to your destination? Do ye know what bribes to pay when the watch shows an interest? Do ye even know how to retain the services of a black barge crew experienced in stealthily moving cargo in the night?”