The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  His knife was in his hand as he entered Franklin’s sitting room. The hearth was freshly stoked. Beams of the early sun were streaming in through the wide windows. Duncan stayed in the shadows along the edge of the chamber, moving stealthily toward the bedroom, until a floorboard creaked.

  “In here,” came a languid voice from the bedchamber.

  Duncan straightened and returned his knife to his belt. “It’s Duncan McCallum, sir,” he called.

  “Duncan, my friend, do come in.”

  Not sure how he felt about entering the great man’s bedchamber, Duncan took a tentative step inside and froze. Franklin was seated on a chair by the open window, reading one of London’s newspapers. He wore nothing but his spectacles.

  “Such an excellent morning!” Franklin exclaimed and rose to greet him. He laughed as Duncan pivoted to avert his gaze. “No need for embarrassment, Duncan. This is my daily air bath. Been doing it for years. An hour every morning in the fresh air, no matter what the weather. So salubrious! Have I told you my theories of how contagion travels in foul air? Bathe away the noxious fumes! Join me and we can read the papers together. Leave your earthly restraints on the chest at the end of the bed.”

  Duncan still did not face Franklin. “I—I have already taken my morning ablution, sir.” He recalled now one of the couplets Woolford had shown him. Ye ladies of London heed my words well, ne’er visit Ben in the morning, he’s au naturel.

  “But you’re a medical man! No false modesty here! There is nothing so invigorating as fresh air on the liberated skin. Every gust is a shilling in the bank of health!”

  “My account is well funded, sir,” Duncan offered, struggling to find a way to delicately disengage.

  Franklin laughed amiably. “The younger generation is not so bold as they think. I have another twenty minutes before I am finished. Pull up a chair on the other side of the door as my secretary Henry does sometimes and we can continue to converse.” Duncan, hearing Franklin walking toward him, darted out the door, to more laughter.

  “The Duke of Grafton continues to struggle as prime minister,” Franklin observed after Duncan had arranged his seat by the door. “And there is a great debate on whether the rains in the north will harm or benefit this year’s wool production,” he continued, then summarized more of the news in the morning papers.

  “The Tories are bent on neutralizing every possible obstruction to their goals,” Duncan observed after the inventor spoke of the battles in Parliament.

  “They are relentless,” Franklin agreed.

  “You are one of their obstructions.”

  “Nonsense. This obsession of yours over my safety is unhealthy. You really should try an air bath. It will relax your nerves. If you are shy, just strip down in there. Open the window. Let the dawn wind massage you.”

  Duncan refrained from replying that the London air seemed more apt to choke him than renew him. “I do not know how I could face your Deborah in Philadelphia if harm came to you during my visit,” he said instead.

  Franklin laughed again. “The only threat to me here is scalding my tongue if the tea is too hot or taking so much port it excites my gout.”

  “You recently had a secret meeting in Billingsgate with the Astronomer Royal. Except it wasn’t so secret. The Horse Guards took news of it to the War Council.”

  The rustle of the newspapers stopped. The sound of a chair creaking, then footsteps, came from the bedroom. “You astound me. How could the Horse Guards know this?” came Franklin’s voice, just inside the bedroom door. “How could you know this?”

  “The Horse Guards were following the Astronomer Royal. You met at one of the sailors’ taverns, no doubt considering it safe for a confidential discussion. You spoke of the transit of Venus and the king’s observatory. After that the Guards switched to watching you. As if they had been waiting for the Astronomer Royal to lead them to some secret and you turned out to be the secret. You had been under suspicion, but after that you were a target. There are those who think clandestine meetings about the king are only conducted by traitors.”

  “Dear God, dear, dear God,” came Franklin’s worried reply. The floorboards in the bedroom creaked again and Duncan tensed, worried that Franklin would walk into the sitting room.

  “Benjaaamiiin!” came a lighthearted cry from the stairs. Mrs. Stevenson appeared with a tray of tea. “Breakfast in a quarter hour!” She greeted Duncan with a surprised smile. “We shall happily set an extra place for you, Mr. McCallum.” She caught herself and looked over her shoulder. “McGowan,” she corrected herself.

  Duncan could hear Franklin clearing his throat. “Still time to join me, Margaret. Release your skin! Dare to be a renewed woman!”

  She rolled her eyes as she set the tray on the sideboard. “Every morning the same silly joke,” she whispered to Duncan, then raised her voice. “I am quite comfortable with the woman I am, Benjamin.”

  The landlady did not seem to notice that the jovial laugh from the bedroom was forced. She paused at the head of the stairs. “A quarter hour!” she reminded her famous tenant.

  “McCallum!” Franklin pressed as the sound of her footsteps receded down the stairs, then he muttered under his breath and Duncan heard the rustle of fabric. “I have my linen on. Now come in and talk while I ready for breakfast. I am always famished after a good air bath.”

  Duncan quickly explained that Ishmael had discovered, among the Horse Guards spies, a man who was obliged to them, then recounted how Olivia Dumont had helped trap him.

  Franklin looked up from buttoning his britches. “Olivia? What does she have to do with any of this?”

  “They learned she is French and are trying to posture her as a spy against the king.”

  “Sentiment grows hot against France over the Corsican affair.”

  “Allegations of a French spy operating out of the house of an official agent from the colonies—”

  “Would undo me!” Franklin finished. “And dear God, not to mention the danger to dear Olivia!”

  “They know she helps with the incognitum,” Duncan said.

  “She knows much more than—” Franklin faltered, reconsidering his words.

  “They know the incognitum is in London,” Duncan added.

  Franklin closed his eyes and murmured something that sounded, uncharacteristically, like a curse before looking up. “The death of her brother is burden enough for her—we cannot add to her troubles.” His voice was shaking. Duncan pointed to the buttons of his waistcoat, which he had misaligned. “Look at me! I am already being undone!” He steadied himself and paced into the sitting room, reached up to touch the solitary Leyden jar, jerked with a quick convulsion, then breathed more deeply. “They shall not prevail, Duncan,” he said in a steadier voice and began rebuttoning his waistcoat. “I see now why the Sons put such faith in you. I am afraid you are with me now, until the end.”

  “Then there must no longer be any secrets between us.”

  Franklin solemnly nodded, accepting Duncan’s point. “It’s very simple, really. I’ve told you much already. The king’s advisers have us on a path to war. They are blinded by their arrogance and lust for power, thinking they can treat the colonists like the serfs of old. As I’ve said, if the course is not corrected soon there will be troops occupying Philadelphia and New York, and the colonists will not stand for it. That will be the end of compromise. It will mean war, a bloody civil war of the like not seen since Cromwell. There is only one man who has the power to alter that course.”

  “George Rex.”

  “Exactly. But he is protected, sealed off from those who would reason with him, who would be willing to share difficult truths with him. There is only one approach possible, to reach him through his interest in natural philosophy. He takes that interest most seriously, has said he wishes to stand for the advancement of learning. His political advisers are all ambition and envy and no intellect. They don’t understand this deep root that nourishes him. Nevil says he was like an ener
getic schoolboy on the day of the transit.”

  “So you will offer up the American observations of the transit and the American incognitum.”

  “You are seized of the essence, yes.”

  “With all due respect, Doctor, I have known these secrets for days. The Horse Guards know them as well now.”

  “There you go again, suggesting dishonesty in my circle of friends. I refuse to credit such a suggestion.”

  “The slender reed of hope left is the secrecy of the final arrangements,” Duncan said. “That is what the Guards so desperately seek. You must take greater precautions. Don’t use runners for messengers.”

  Franklin nodded reluctant agreement. “Secrecy in implementation is everything. And the king’s other advisers would cut me off in an instant if I attempted it through them.”

  “But Nevil Maskelyne is his trusted natural philosopher.”

  “Yes. The others consider Nevil harmless, sort of a lapdog scholar. But the king respects him, always responds to him. That is the key. We will—” Franklin searched for words.

  “You will secretly meet with the king and his Astronomer Royal so you can recalibrate the sovereign’s thinking on America. But where? The details are all.”

  “Just so! It will be a defining moment, don’t you see? If he can only accept that the colonials are equal to those here in intellectual pursuits, I am convinced all else will fall into place. Intellectual parity, that’s the hinge we can pivot on. The Horse Guards still don’t have the final pieces of the puzzle. They don’t know where the bones are hidden, don’t know when or where the momentous meeting will occur.”

  “And if you would protect those vital secrets, sir, you must share them with me.”

  Franklin, slipping on his shoes, gave a tentative nod, then inserted his ever-present silver watch into a waistcoat pocket.

  “The writer of Poor Richard’s Almanack always struck me as a complex man,” Duncan observed, “but what came through most of all was his tenacious optimism.”

  Franklin smiled, seeming to take the comment as a compliment. “I accept your offer to see the bones achieve their destiny. Our meeting will be at the new Royal Observatory in the old deer park, as close as possible to his departure for his hunting tour, so as to give his advisers no time to react.”

  Duncan considered Franklin’s revelation. “So all we have to do is keep the bones protected now that the Guards know they are in London, secretly transport two wagonloads of them into the heavily guarded royal estate, find a way to hide them there, and protect the details of your secret meeting date from the hordes who make it their business to know all the king’s secrets. If this were a military campaign a general would give it maybe one chance in ten.”

  “Now you’re the optimist,” Franklin said. “More like one in twenty. But prithee, Duncan, tell me again why your friend Conawago came to London?”

  Duncan sighed, conceding the point. “To persuade the king not to start a war.”

  Franklin raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  In answer Duncan stepped to the mantel, raised his hand, and held his cupped hand over the rod of the Leyden jar. He extended his other hand. Franklin solemnly accepted it. Duncan grasped the rod and the shock rippled along his body, down his arm, and into Franklin’s hand.

  “I think they call that a binding,” Franklin said, grinning, when Duncan released the rod.

  “If we were in Iroquois country,” Duncan said, returning the grin, “we would have cut our palms and shared blood.”

  Franklin seemed deeply moved. He opened his mouth and seemed about to say something profound, but then the landlady called up the stairs. “Scones are leaving the oven, Benjamin!”

  For the third time since departing the inn, Duncan ducked into an alley to watch the street behind him. It was hard to put a name to the persistent nagging in the small of his back. Patrick Woolford called it the battle instinct, acquired from his years in the war. Conawago called it the hunter’s sense, acquired from years with the Mohawks. But Duncan suspected it might have been more to do with the smugglers, reivers, and warriors of his own Highland ancestry. Whatever the reason, he could not escape the sense of being followed, although not once on any of his stops did he see any sign of a stalker.

  When he arrived at the big house in Mayfair, he passed it and circled the block, slipping into a narrow alley a few doors down. He pressed himself into the deeper shadow of a recessed doorway, touched the hilt of his knife, and waited.

  The wiry man made no sound as he entered the alley, using it himself as cover as he surveyed the street. Duncan relaxed and sat on the marble step before him. He heard a low, nautical curse, then the man looked back up the street as if he had missed something. Duncan kicked a pebble at his foot.

  The man spun, hand on his own blade, then sighed. “Why, look who it be,” he said. “You too must have thought it prime weather for a walk.”

  “Darby,” Duncan said. “You have been following me since I left the Neptune.”

  “Well, apparently we be going in the same direction, sir.”

  “So you have business at one of these Mayfair palaces, do you?”

  Darby winced, then sat beside Duncan. “Gig’s up, I see. It’s just that the captain be that worried about you. Says when a man dies on his ship he has a certain responsibility to him.”

  “But I didn’t die.”

  The bosun sobered for a moment. “Well now, there might be different views on that particular question. I’m thinking maybe you died a little bit that night, like maybe you invited the shadow of death to hover over ye, and he knows he has unfinished business.” He shrugged and brightened. “Plus our cargo’s been delayed in Yorkshire and the shipyard has banished us from looking over their shoulders every other minute.” Darby gestured toward the blue sky. “It do be a right pleasant day for exercise.”

  “That’s what the moth was thinking the instant before it hit the spider web,” Duncan said, but heard the determination in the man’s voice. Darby had the bit firmly in his teeth. “You might as well walk alongside me.”

  “No sir. That would defeat the purpose.”

  “Tell me, Darby, is someone following Ishmael as well?”

  “No need. We did, for two days, but it was always just the same. Don’t think a man is likely to get hurt in a hospital.”

  Duncan gave a reluctant nod. Ishmael insisted on going to Bedlam every day, to study the terrain, as he called it. Each day he still gave a coin to the keeper named Taggart, who was gradually growing more talkative. News from Taggart was, in fact, why Duncan had returned to Mayfair.

  Duncan stood. “Very well. I am going to the big house in the center of this block. I won’t be more than an hour.”

  “I’ll give ye until the clocks strike through an hour, then. After that I’ll get worried,” the compact Scot said, tapping a knuckle to his forehead.

  Duncan went straight to the gate that led to the courtyard behind the house but to his dismay found it locked. Reluctantly he stepped to the oversize front door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a maid holding a broom, who made an awkward curtsy, supporting herself on the broom. “Thought ye was the post, sir. I fear Miss Madeline is out.”

  “I came to see Noah. Might I just walk through to the stable?”

  “Mr. Noah won’t be found in the stable, sir. He’s repairing loose bricks in the library hearth,” she said, then turned and beckoned for Duncan to follow her.

  The groom was on his hands and knees inside the fireplace, and hit his head when the maid spoke. “Don’t be putting on airs, Noah, but ye have a caller,” she said, then returned to her labor in the foyer.

  Noah backed out and stood, greeting Duncan with a broad smile, then wiped his hand on a sooty rag before taking the one Duncan offered.

  “It’s about Conawago,” Duncan said. “About Bedlam, really.”

  Noah nodded. “How is our friend?”

  “Not good. His mind is—” Duncan fought a new wave of emotion
as the empty face of his friend once more appeared in his mind’s eye. “I fear he is being drugged.”

  Noah pressed him for details, his expression growing grim as Duncan described the Chamber of the Immortals. “Please, McCallum,” the groom said. “Let me help.”

  Duncan looked at the open door, then stepped past the big desk in the center of the book-lined chamber to confirm the hall was empty. Noah sat in one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk. “You said you know some of those who work at Bedlam,” Duncan began.

  Noah nodded. “At least half a dozen. The board of governors tries to help freed men and women.” He anticipated Duncan’s next question. “Some in the laundry but in the kitchen mostly. It’s a big place. Hundreds of meals three times a day.”

  “Do the same kitchens serve both the staff and the patients?”

  “I don’t know. Probably, yes. I will find out.”

  “Good. And when are the keepers served, who serves the tea for their breaks, and when are the breaks?”

  “I can have answers in a day or two.”

  “And the laundry,” Duncan started, but then his gaze fell upon several complex drawings on the desk. He paused, recognizing the strange contraption he had seen in the sketch on the wall of Franklin’s parlor. But these drawings were much more detailed.

  “The laundry?” Noah asked.

  “Yes, the laundry,” Duncan said absently. Why would Madeline Faulkner have such drawings, he wondered, and why would they be similar to those of Franklin? He was not even aware they knew each other. One of the expanded drawings had lists of materials in the margin. He glanced up at Noah, who watched him with an uneasy expression.

  “The laundry is taken in wagons to a big washhouse just down the street that belongs to the hospital,” the groom offered. “Inside the hospital it is collected in baskets, then transferred to big wicker pallets that take four men to carry.”

  Duncan collected himself. “All on one day or is the work rotated so wagons go every day?”