The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

“You be family then,” came a deep voice over Duncan’s shoulder. The groom was gazing at Ishmael with a profound sadness on his face. Duncan stepped aside to let the tall man enter, and the groom approached the bed and put a hand on Ishmael’s shoulder. “The Nipmuc tribe,” he announced. “My friend spoke proudly of a nephew named Ishmael, and said if I ever met him I would be allowed to learn his nephew’s tribal name.”

  Ishmael looked up in surprise. It was a hidden message, meaning that Conawago trusted the big man.

  Madeline, still in the doorway, made a sound of clearing her throat. “Your uncle apparently shunned being treated like a proper guest of the household,” she explained. “I am told he preferred to spend time in the mews, with the horses. I take it Noah and he formed something of an attachment.” She glanced back down the hallway. “I must go select my jewelry for tonight,” she declared airily, “but Noah may provide some small comfort.”

  Duncan and Ishmael exchanged a glance. “Noah?” Duncan asked, trying to recall where he had heard the name.

  “In Conawago’s last letter!” Ishmael said. “He referred to his friend Noah!” He faced the groom. “And you, Noah, sent the letter with the news about him being in Bethlem!”

  The groom gave a melancholy nod of affirmation. As he settled onto a stool by the window, Duncan could see he was of mixed blood. His skin was a light almond color, his hair black with small, tight curls. He watched Ishmael stroke the quillwork on the cartouche, then spoke in a slow, articulate voice.

  “Your uncle was the first from the American tribes I had been able to speak with in over eight years. Such a pleasure it was to meet him. Such an honor to get to know him.” His speech was refined, his accent hinting of Yorkshire. Noah saw the curiosity on their faces and began to explain.

  “I was born on a sugar plantation where many years earlier captives from the old New England wars had been sent in chains, tribesmen turned into slaves. Conawago saw that blood in me right away, said I reminded him of a Narragansett or maybe a Wampanoag, though I told him I knew only that my mother was a high mulatto, herself the offspring of a French overseer and one of those native slaves who worked in the kitchen. I never knew my father, but just before she died of fever my mother told me he had escaped when I was just a year old and gone back to the Massachusetts home of his people, where he fathered another son.” A smile flashed on the groom’s broad face. “Conawago said it was wonderful, to think of all the worlds embodied in me. It was the kind of thing my mama would say, when she gave me lessons at night instead of sleeping. She had great learning, and in her prime was one of those the overseers called a fancy.”

  Noah’s expression grew sadder as he studied Ishmael. “You are the one, then. He was so proud of you, with the love of a father for a son.” The groom tilted his head, his eyes widening as if in sudden recognition. “And the other he spoke of like a son was a Highlander. A man with straw-colored hair, a huge heart, and an overactive mind, he said. Duncan. Duncan who wears McCallum plaid.” He saw Duncan’s nod, and nodded himself. “Both his sons. It’s right that you came. He would have liked that, would say that the old spirits summoned you.” He gestured to the cartouche. “Miss Madeline and I weren’t sure what to do with his things. She said she would take them back next time she went to America.” He gestured for Ishmael to open the bag.

  With a slow reverence the young Nipmuc laid the bag on the bed and lifted its leather flap to reveal Conawago’s personal possessions. He pulled out strands of beads, a wooden spoon with a dark patina of age, a tattered cornhusk doll, and a tiny, tattered buckskin bag, sewn shut, cherished because it held a coin given to the old man’s grandfather by one of the settlers at Plymouth. Finally he withdrew a rolled piece of black broadcloth. With a rush of excitement he unfurled the cloth, then groaned as he saw what lay inside. He was staring at the little quillwork leather pouch that had hung from Conawago’s neck for decades, his totem, the home of his protector spirit.

  “No! He cannot—” Ishmael began in a choking voice. His emotions overwhelmed his tongue.

  “He did. He said it was yours now,” Noah explained. “He said it will see you into the next century like it saw him into this century.”

  Duncan had to push down his own emotion. “Are you saying he knew beforehand what awaited him?” he asked the groom.

  “I don’t know. He was frightened. He had gone to the Department of Indian Affairs in Whitehall, but no one was there but clerks. They sent him to the offices of the War Council, where some military man spent hours questioning him. He had been ordered to return there the next day, and he said he had to comply because he still had a chance to convince them to let him see the king. This was the last time I was able to speak with him. That last night I heard him speaking in here in his old tongue, for hours. I think he was praying, though sometimes it sounded like singing. It put me in mind of a funeral. The next day he disappeared.”

  “Disappeared into the oblivion of Bedlam.” It was a funeral, Duncan almost said. His old friend had been singing his death song.

  Ishmael looked into the cartouche and withdrew the last object, wrapped in a tattered velvet pouch. He opened the pouch and emptied it onto the bed. “It’s real!” Ishmael exclaimed. “He talked about it but I had never seen it.”

  They were looking at a round medal rimmed in gold and blue enamel, encircling a shield of white on which a red cross was centered. Underneath in inlaid lettering was George Rex.

  “The cross of St. George,” Duncan said, not sure why he was whispering. “And just George Rex. Not the second, or third.”

  “He said he was given a gift by the first George, which he was going to share with this George,” Ishmael said.

  “It’s the emblem of the Order of the Garter,” Noah said. “Not a gift given lightly.”

  “He left it here,” Duncan said in a sorrowful tone. “He didn’t really expect he would be seeing the king that day.” They stared in silence at the decades-old medal, until Duncan finally turned to Noah with another question. “Why would you send that note about him being imprisoned to Philadelphia?” Duncan asked.

  “I sent it to Miss Madeline in Philadelphia, thinking she would know who to give it to. Someone should know, I thought.”

  “But Noah,” Duncan asked, “how could you know where he was?”

  “I didn’t, not at first. I asked the parish watch, then those in the adjoining parishes. I asked at the prisons, and began to despair that he had taken his own life.” He shrugged. “Then when I realized what had happened, I found some of my friends who work at Bedlam, some cleaning the building, others working the laundry. They let me in and they went from room to room with me. There was no sign of him, but they would not enter the east end of the top floor. They were frightened of it. So I paid for one of those tickets and went in with the visitors. That’s when I finally found him, with those Immortals, but watched over closely by a cruel keeper who was missing part of his ear. The man spoke harshly and told me to be on my way when I showed an interest in your uncle. The next night I went in with the laundry men and I was able to get inside his cell, to sit beside him for a few minutes. He didn’t recognize me at first. He was becoming untethered from reality. He spoke gibberish, and then when he made sense it was only a few words at a time, like he could not focus his mind. That’s when he gave the totem to me, saying someone had tried to eat it the night before. He said that Ishmael must have it. Ishmael the last Nipmuc.”

  A silent sob wracked Ishmael and he wrapped his hands tightly around the totem.

  “He said the totem wouldn’t work in there, that everyone there had their souls ripped open, and their souls were shrieking so loudly that his gods would never hear the groans of one worn-out old Nipmuc.”

  Ishmael lowered his head into his hands. Duncan stepped to the nearest window. The world outside blurred through his tears. He balanced himself with a hand on the wall as he fought a despair so wrenching he feared he might collapse. When he finally spoke it was a whisper. “
How did you know?” he asked the groom. “How did you realize he was in Bedlam?”

  “Like I said,” Noah replied, “it took me a long time, nigh two weeks. But then a man came.”

  “From the Horse Guards?”

  “A man in high riding boots and a flash waistcoat. It was a day when Lord Faulkner was having a banquet and all the staff was over at his big house for the preparations. They would never have me mind the house otherwise. This flash fellow pounds on the door. He demands to know whether the man named Conawago had lodging here. I think he had come to take away Conawago’s belongings, to wipe out any trace of him. But when need be I can play the cringing servant. ‘No, master,’ I said. ‘This be a proper house. Lord Faulkner would ne’er allow nobody with one of those disturbing foreign names to cross his threshold, ’cause Lord Faulkner is a proper Englishman, God save the king.’ He quieted then, and I said maybe look down around Charing Cross or Covent Garden where the bawdy houses and coffee shops are, ’cause that’s where disreputable foreigners linger. He nodded and said there must have been some mistake, then gave me a penny and left.

  “But then I saw he was waiting across the street for a hackney, so quick as I could I changed into old stable clothes and followed him. On a busy afternoon a cab goes no faster than a man can briskly walk. It took him to the Moorgate, where the hackney waited while he met a man in brown clothes in a tavern. He gave the man some coins, then got back into the cab. I was right tired by then and worried about chasing him all over the city but I didn’t need to, ’cause he yells out ‘Horse Guards barracks’ plain as day to his driver. So then I followed the man in brown, though I thought I recognized his clothing already.”

  “He worked at Bedlam,” Duncan suggested.

  Noah nodded. “A keeper, they call them.”

  “A keeper who spies for the Horse Guards,” Ishmael said. “Would you recognize him?”

  “Of course. He had gray and brown hair cut short, and his left ear was missing its lobe, like it had been bitten off. Made it that easy when I went in during visiting hours. He walks around the top floor like a soldier on guard, especially watching those chambers at the end.”

  “And the officer’s name?” Duncan asked.

  “Briggs. When I answered the door he says he was Captain Briggs and he demanded to see the master of the house. That’s how I could make inquiries.”

  “Inquiries?” Duncan asked.

  “I have friends who sometimes work the coaches for the Horse Guards, ’cause sometimes we are together tending fancy coaches at banquets and balls and such. This Captain Briggs usually works in civilian clothes, even some old tattered ones he wears when he wants to blend in on the streets. He boasts to those in the stables that he does loyalty patrols, saying his job is to redress the loyalty of those closest to the king and dissuade those who seek to impose on the king. Like natural philosophers, if you credit the rumors.”

  Duncan, now intensely interested, sat on the bed, facing Noah. “I do indeed credit them. Speak to me about them.”

  “They say while his commanding officer was out of the country, Briggs was stalking the Astronomer Royal and members of the Royal Society. But Briggs was the one who took my friend—our friend—to Bedlam, I am sure of it. Conawago had been making his visits to Whitehall, and he wouldn’t have tried to hide his intentions. Briggs was the one. Sometimes in the visitors’ registers in Whitehall they ask for an address. That’s how he must have found this place. He came to eliminate any evidence that Conawago had been in London. Once I knew it was Briggs who sent our friend to that living hell, I could at least act with a clear conscience.”

  “A clear conscience?”

  “He had a morning riding routine. Very rigid, very predictable, the same path every day in Hyde Park, out where the Guards have a stable for the training of their mounts. One day when he dismounted to pass water in a clump of bushes, I placed a stalk of thorns under his saddle. His horse threw him against a tree and broke several of his ribs. He still can’t get on a horse. And I don’t feel a bit guilty,” Noah declared with a defiant gleam. He looked down at the stable yard and muttered about the fool mixing up the harness, then excused himself. As he lifted the latch to leave the room there was a sound of hurried footsteps in the hall. Someone had been listening.

  Noah hesitated before he stepped into the corridor. “Don’t do it, son,” he said to Ishmael. “Don’t throw your life away trying to beat the Horse Guards and Bedlam. You think you owe that to your uncle—I can see it in your eyes. But what you owe him is survival. Do him that honor.”

  “Honor?” Ishmael asked.

  “The way you honor Conawago is by leaving now, by going home and living a long life as the last of the Nipmucs.”

  Chapter 15

  DUNCAN SAT IN THE CAVERNOUS sanctuary for over an hour, distracted at first by the carved faces, the tombs, and the impossibly high arches built centuries earlier. Soon enough, however, all he could see were scenes of Bedlam. He felt no less helpless now, in the great abbey near Whitehall, than when he had sat under the bone arches of the Shawnee shrine. He searched the shadows as if for answers, but everywhere he looked the ghastly faces of gargoyles and long-dead knights mocked him. The image of Conawago’s empty face and drooling words gnawed at his consciousness, as did the conjured image of his wise old friend bashing his skull against Bedlam walls and the thought of Conawago’s frantic soul being drowned out by the shrieking souls of other inmates. The assured denial by Franklin when Duncan had warned him that he was on the same track as Conawago was almost as distressing as Noah’s description of a Conawago who had given up all hope.

  He had passed the late afternoon of the previous day with Franklin at Craven Street. As if by unspoken agreement, they had spoken of Franklin’s experiments, his travels in Scotland, his house in Philadelphia—anything but the treacherous intrigue that surrounded them. As he grew more familiar with the inventor, Duncan had begun to discern a profound innocence in the man, a stubborn tendency to see only the good in others. It was surprising to find such qualities in a man of Franklin’s years, and Duncan could see it endeared him to those in his makeshift family, but it meant others had to protect him. He recalled a bitter day in Philadelphia when he had called the leaders of the Sons of Liberty gullible, but Franklin was more so, and now Duncan wondered if the inventor himself was endangering secrets of the Sons.

  Failing to find the peace he had so desperately wanted, Duncan made his way out of Westminster Abbey and then to the rear of the complex that housed the Horse Guards. In sternly warning him away from the compound, Captain Rhys had emphasized that although the small Department of Indian Affairs office was indeed based there, it also housed the Horse Guards officers, the Secretary at War, and a mix of officers and civilians, used by the Council, who advised the secretary and administered the army. He wasn’t merely in enemy territory; he was in the enemy headquarters.

  Duncan had reconnoitered the perimeter, confirming through the signage and the busy traffic of well-dressed civilians that the main entrance was off the parade grounds, where the elegant coaches that called on the building had ample space to maneuver and await their passengers. He had discovered a familiar face among those exercising horses at the side of the large grounds. Ensign Lewis was one of those leading a string of horses at a slow trot along the walls. For a moment he felt a twinge of sympathy for the awkward young Scot, but it was quickly banished as he recalled that Lewis had been among those who had tumbled him into the Atlantic.

  Duncan discovered an inconspicuous door at the rear of the building, at the end of a shadowed alley, where men in civilian clothes briskly came and went without being challenged, some of them in clothes no better than Duncan’s own worn waistcoat and britches. He had begun to understand that the War Office managed information to suit its purposes, and was not above using secrets like weapons. It meant the office would have many informers and watchers, some of whom would be dressed to blend with London’s street traffic. He screwed up
his courage, waited as two men busily engaged in conversation entered the alley, and followed them inside.

  He pushed in close behind the pair and the sleepy guard at the door gave them a cursory nod. Knowing that Indian Affairs would be a small, less prestigious office, he had decided it was likely to be relegated to the top floor, so he mounted the first stairway he found. After the first flight he peered out into the hallway, seeing a noisy collection of uniformed men gazing out a row of windows overlooking the parade grounds, commenting on the riders and coaches. He quickly continued his ascent, emerging into an alarmingly busy hallway where bewigged men in starched collars walked alongside senior officers in the uniforms of several different army units. Duncan selected the direction with the fewest officers and soon found them thinned out to just a handful lingering on a bench outside a chamber with a double set of doors. Past them the furniture and paintings on the walls seemed to grow less elegant. He reached the end of the hall only to find another hallway joining it from the left, then followed this corridor past doors with small neatly printed placards declaring CORDAGE, EQUINE, GUNPOWDER, VICTUALS, and other supplies requisitioned by the military.

  Encouraged by a painting of tribesmen standing with officers around a captured French banner, he quickened his pace and entered the double doors at the end of the hall. Over the head of the inquisitive clerk who sat inside was a portrait of Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indian Affairs.

  The clerk assessed Duncan with a skeptical eye. “Yes?” he asked.

  Duncan simply stated, “The deputy superintendent.”

  The clerk frowned, glancing at a set of inner doors that were slightly ajar, where two more clerks anxiously lingered, each holding thick journal books. “All appointments were cancelled today. The secretary convened an urgent meeting and everyone—”

  A chorus of voices interrupted him, followed by the scraping of chairs. The two clerks retreated with deferential backward steps. Grinning at what he took to be a confirmation that he would soon know how to reach the deputy superintendent, Duncan stood by the doors as they opened and richly attired men began filing out. The first man in a uniform froze as he saw Duncan, then darted to him, shoving him into a nearby office.