The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  Lewis stood frozen.

  Hastings shouted, as if instructing a company of recruits on the parade ground. “Do we have to beat the weakness out of you, boy?” The major grabbed the ensign’s hand with the dagger and drew the blade across the back of Duncan’s hand.

  Duncan jerked at the sudden pain, but could only watch as the blood welled up along the shallow cut. Hastings gestured, and one of the guards began pulling Duncan’s right sleeve past the binding strap.

  “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” Hastings said in a low voice. The sight of the blood clearly excited him. “Do it again, Lewis,” he ordered.

  With a trembling hand Lewis placed the edge of the blade on Duncan’s exposed forearm, but he went no further.

  “Again!” Hastings shouted.

  Duncan flexed his muscle, raising his forearm so the razor-sharp blade sliced into his skin. Another line of blood seeped out of the cut.

  “No!” Lewis moaned. “Duncan, no!”

  Hastings laughed. “This is going to be quite the entertaining evening! We’ll have to find some farrier tools, Nettles, and in the rack room there is a—”

  “Enough, enough, enough!” came a high voice from the corridor. “What is it you men of arms say? Stand down. Yes, stand down, Major. Rest on your laurels. I am forever in your debt and all that.” The voice was coming from a party of men now emerging from the corridor. The front rank parted to make way for the Earl of Milbridge.

  A look of great contentment settled on the earl’s corpulent face as he studied Duncan. “What an unexpected joy, Hastings, to have this Scottish mongrel in my grasp after all these years! You can’t imagine the difficulties he has caused me. I have long suffered from the inability to reach him, and now at last to have him surface under my nose, why, my suffering is rewarded.” He turned to one of his men with a sudden impulse. “What do you have? A riding crop? A cat-o’-nine? Quick, man!”

  The attendant, unprepared for the request, shrugged. “Nothing, my lord. There’s a whip on the wagon.”

  “Your belt, then!”

  The man fumbled with the buckle of the belt he used to carry a short sword, then stripped away the weapon and handed the belt to Milbridge. A heavy scent of rosewater wafted toward Duncan as the earl approached, his eyes wild with cruel desire.

  Everyone seemed to hesitate, not understanding. Everyone but Milbridge, who wound the buckle into his palm and with surprising quickness slashed the belt at Duncan’s head. It cut into the flesh of his cheek, but for the next two strikes Duncan twisted, letting them break their force on his head board, though Milbridge did not seem to notice.

  Milbridge closed his eyes and made a small mewing sound. “Oh, to at last reach the itch that could not be scratched!” He sighed deeply. “I will take him now, Major.”

  Hastings seemed confused. “Lord?”

  “I will relieve you of this Scottish rubbish. A wagon and a cage await behind the building.”

  “But he is a prisoner of the Horse Guards.”

  “Who do the bidding of the Council, of which I am a senior member.”

  Hastings seemed unconvinced. He too had plans.

  Milbridge rolled his eyes. “Dismiss your men, Major, so we may speak freely. The lieutenant and the boy who drew first blood may stay.”

  Hastings frowned, obviously unhappy, but snapped orders. His attendants disappeared down the corridor.

  The earl lowered his heavy body into one of the chairs and straightened his long wig. “You may know I have a new hunting lodge, Major.”

  “I hear it is the envy of all the nobility.”

  “I never appreciated the versatility of such a place. We have kennels filled with hungry hounds, a complete butcher’s shop, even a row of cages in the cellars. The architect wondered about those and I said they were for the prey I captured, so I could keep the meat fresh.

  “So now I have the resources to assure McCallum will be alive for a month at least, though not particularly recognizable after the first few days. My men will know how to work on him, though my orders will be that they may not do so without me present. I will be there tomorrow when my horse doctor castrates him.” Milbridge said with a gleam, then raised the belt from where he sat and lashed out again. Duncan turned his head, taking the end of the belt on his jaw. Blood trickled down his chin.

  He had been in battle before, had been tortured before. He had to focus, had to keep calculating the odds, keep considering scenarios, no matter how hapless his circumstances. They were satisfied to toy with him for now, and though Nettles and Hastings were the most dangerous men present, they had to defer to Milbridge. The earl was going to move him to his hunting lodge, which meant he might at least be seen by his friends. Milbridge’s men were city toughs, not soldiers, shallow men who would not think ahead, and who would not be familiar with the tribal or ranger ways of fighting. No matter the odds, he knew his only chance of escape would be while he was being transported, before he reached the cages in Milbridge’s cellar.

  As Milbridge paused in his amusement to take some snuff, Hastings retrieved the dagger Lewis had tossed onto the table and began rolling up Duncan’s other sleeve.

  “Not his hands, Major,” Milbridge said. “Not yet. The Highlander needs to be able to write for a few more days.”

  Defiance sparked in Duncan’s eyes. “Excellent,” he shot back. “I can record any number of tales of the Highland spirits protecting those who wear the plaid. Not to mention the Mohawk spirits. But then you have personal experience with those protectors. I seem to recall you losing your water when they danced around you years ago. And there were crows that pecked at the flesh of your feet. Remember the crows, my lord?”

  Milbridge flushed, sputtered, and raised the belt again, then lowered it as he saw the totem pouch that had been exposed at Duncan’s breast. He could have snatched it away and even extended a hand as if to do so, but then he lowered it. The tribal spirits still frightened him. “I killed that savage!” he hissed.

  “That only made him angrier,” Duncan said, forcing a grin to his face. “His ghost follows you. Surely you have noticed?”

  The words brought a laugh from Nettles, which grew louder when Milbridge nervously glanced over his shoulders toward the shadows. He snapped at his men to form a line across the darkened hallway. Years earlier, Ramsey had mounted a private campaign on the frontier to find and kill the revered Iroquois prophet who had raised Sarah after she had been captured by the tribe. That man had been the father she had loved, the father who had woven an independent spirit around her deep intelligence, helping to create the fiery, wise woman Duncan loved and Milbridge now loathed. Afterward, Sarah had forced Milbridge to deed to her the vast frontier tract that had become Edentown, oasis for orphans and outcasts.

  Milbridge broke his fearful gaze from the Mohawk pouch and lashed Duncan again. Nettles and Hastings could see that Duncan was letting the headboard break the blows, but they had grown strangely subdued. They were seeing a new side of Milbridge, which seemed to confuse them. Hastings made an inquiring gesture with his dagger.

  “Not his hands,” Milbridge said again. “Find something less useful for now.”

  Hastings gave one of his thin smiles and touched the steel point against Duncan’s neck so lightly that Duncan did not feel the cut, only the blood that trickled down his throat.

  “He doesn’t need all his fingers to write,” Nettles suggested.

  Milbridge chuckled, then steepled his fingers as he studied Duncan. “You must join me at my lodge, Lieutenant. I could use someone of your imagination. Come with us tonight and I will provide amusement of a softer kind.”

  Nettles glanced at Hastings, who nodded. The lieutenant grinned. “There’s a game we played in the war,” Nettles recalled. “Who can slice off the most pieces without opening a major blood vessel. It’s all about making very precise, small cuts.” He reached out with both hands, suddenly grabbing Duncan’s earlobe with one and slicing down with the other. Ensign Lewis g
ave a small, sobbing moan.

  Nettles laid a quarter-inch piece of flesh on the wide chair arm above Duncan’s bound hand. He had taken off the bottom of his earlobe. “You are ours now,” Nettles stated, as if the shortened ear marked Duncan as belonging to them. He pushed the little lump of flesh with the end of his dagger and looked up at Hastings. “One,” he announced to the major. Duncan stared at it, remembering that there was a Bedlam keeper with a mutilated ear who was owned by the War Council.

  “What was your record?” Hastings airily asked. “There was a French soldier, I recall.”

  Nettles’s eyes flashed. “Four hundred thirty-four, until that damned Indian nicked an artery.” He cast a hungry smile at Duncan. “We had some savages in our company who would fry up the pieces in bacon fat and consume them. Eating the flesh of your enemies gives you their strength, they would say.”

  Milbridge gave a wheezing laugh. “If you’re not careful, Major,” he said to Hastings, “I may steal this artist from you permanently.” He turned to Nettles with a businesslike air. “The horse doctor will geld him tomorrow. Usually the pain subsides enough for the subject to speak in a day or two. Then a day or two for my letters, and you can begin in earnest.”

  The earl stepped closer to Nettles. “What I require, Lieutenant, is that in a month’s time this Highlander scum wears the expression of a pig on a spit while still having a beating heart. Can you manage that?”

  Nettles offered a brisk salute. “With pleasure, sir. An iron spit through his shoulders would do the trick. Then we can hang him from the rafters as if he were in a butcher’s shop.”

  Milbridge gave a satisfied sigh. “Maybe you can prepare a plan, a chart perhaps,” he said. “Setting forth which pieces will come off on which day. Then I can more easily make adjustments to my schedule. Yes, certainly you must do so. Oh, the anticipation! What pleasure it will bring when I read it years from now. And it will help me fantasize about what I would do if I ever had that traitorous Wilkes, or even Franklin, in my lodge.”

  “I will write no letters,” Duncan declared.

  “Good for you,” Milbridge replied with a satisfied smile. “Your defiance will augment the pleasure. But in the end you will do so. You will beg to do so, and to keep writing, for as long as you are writing you may keep most of your fingers. First you will write to urgently summon my daughter to New York town.”

  “I will write nothing to Sarah,” Duncan vowed. New York town, he knew, was a domain where Milbridge’s gold had bought him much influence.

  Milbridge shrugged. “I can always send men to assassinate her in her home.”

  Duncan’s fear finally welled up. “She’s your daughter.”

  “That bitch stopped being my daughter the day she went off with those savages. If she chooses reconciliation, I will speak with her as a statesman, negotiate treaty terms, as it were. I will find her a suitable match, provide a suitable estate in the north as her dowry. Yorkshire perhaps, or distant Cumberland.”

  “She has a match,” Duncan hissed.

  Milbridge raised his eyebrows. “No. Her Highland servant will soon be no more.”

  “She will never leave Edentown behind.”

  Milbridge shrugged. “If she resists, so much the better. When the witch is gone I will inherit, for the law still sees her as my daughter and she will have no issue. It will all be mine again, Edentown and all its dependencies,” Milbridge gloated, and fixed Duncan with an amused gaze as the words sank in. Milbridge would kill Sarah so he could take over Edentown. It gave a terrible credibility to his threats. Duncan’s resolved faltered. He gazed in desolation at the floor.

  Milbridge turned to Nettles. “Now, Lieutenant, if you want to begin your—”

  “The Duke of Portland!” Lewis suddenly shouted.

  Milbridge seemed to cringe at the name. “What is your meaning, boy?” he asked Lewis, who was rendered speechless by the earl’s gaze. “What of the duke?”

  Lewis collected himself. “He was admiring your green and gold carriage, sir, and your handsome team. He said they were as grand as the Lord Mayor’s. He wants to speak with you about them, invite you to his club to discuss whether you would sell them. He asked if the coach was from the Longacre works or from Dublin. He said he would try to come back after dining tonight to see if you were here at the palace.”

  Milbridge seemed to have forgotten Duncan. “The duke was coming to see me?” he asked with childlike excitement.

  Lewis spoke in a straightforward, earnest fashion, punctuating his words with a short bow. “I can’t say when exactly, my lord, but yes, those were his words.”

  Milbridge’s passion for cruelty was eclipsed only by his appetite for political favor. Lewis had mentioned one of the few men in London who outranked him in the social strata. The earl looked back in chagrin at Duncan, collected his thoughts, and turned to Nettles. “They have my wagon at the back door. No need for chains, they will only attract attention. Just keep your dagger point on him until he is in the cage.” He shouted orders to his men, half of whom darted down the corridor, then studied Lewis for a long moment. “You too. You show promise. I saw you draw first blood.”

  Lewis glanced at Duncan, then quickly looked away. Had he known that the name of the duke would be one of the few that would distract Milbridge? Was it possible the ensign had lied about the duke to save Duncan, at least for a few more minutes?

  Duncan did not resist as they unstrapped him and shoved him down the passage, escorted by Nettles and four of Milbridge’s bullies. They made their way up a worn, cupped set of stone stairs and out into the cool summer night. He froze as he saw the wagon. Two men were struggling to upright a tall, narrow cage of iron bars, perhaps seven feet high and two feet to a side. They set it against the low sidewall of the wagon, opposite a bench where guards no doubt would sit.

  Nettles began to push Duncan toward two other men who seemed ready to manhandle their prisoner up onto the wagon, then paused as the wagon driver raised a hand. A group of link boys was passing by, singing a song, lanterns and torches held high.

  “Damned brats have been at it all night,” the driver groused. “I’d have called the watch except many of them be Methodists too.”

  Duncan didn’t understand until he made out the words of the song. The boys were singing a hymn. Oh for a thousand tongues to sing. The hymn was the one Sinner John had sung on their first failed visit to meet Franklin.

  The small choir passed and he was shoved up onto the wagon and herded toward the cage.

  The Mohawks called it trading the fear. In battle you had to make certain fear belonged only to your enemy. In battle fear is the spirit killer. You had to push it away or you would die. Trade your fear for stealth, trade your fear for hatred of your enemy. The talk about castration and mutilation was about someone else. Here within his reach was the man who had killed Robbie, the man who killed Ezra’s wife and unborn child and laughed about it. He had to keep Nettles close. Milbridge had given him a gift by making it clear no one was to kill Duncan, not yet.

  He stayed silent as they opened the side of the cage that served as its door and shoved him inside. The driver handed Nettles a key on a lanyard which Nettles used to lock the door. He slipped the lanyard around his neck, then took out his dagger and, laughing, made a sawing motion toward his groin.

  “The pin, boy,” the driver said to Lewis, pointing to a heavy iron pin that had to be slid through a coupling bolted to the floor in order to stabilize the heavy cage. Lewis pushed the pin through the coupling, then sat beside the two guards who had already settled onto the bench. The remaining men, armed with pistols and short swords, mounted horses that had been tied to the wagon wheels.

  I am not an animal in a cage, Duncan told himself. I am a warrior who will make these men sorry they ever met Milbridge. He felt an unexpected spark of energy from his totem, the magical water creature, then knew he had imagined it because they were nowhere near the sea.

  The wagon lurched forward, movi
ng along the shadows behind the palace. Guards saluted as they saw Lieutenant Nettles standing in the wagon, still in his uniform. The streets were quiet but not devoid of life. From somewhere behind him a steeple clock struck the hour. As he counted eleven peals, the roving link boy choir appeared from an alley and halted in front of the wagon team, swinging their lamps and torches high as they sang out Soldiers of Christ arise and put your armor on. Despite the driver’s seething curses, the boys were insistent on finishing their hymn, and as they continued Duncan recognized it as one of the songs he had heard coming from the Neptune’s stable.

  “Damn the Wesley brothers for the troublemakers that they are!” the driver spat as he worked to control the horses, skittish from the moving lanterns.

  Suddenly the boys spun about and began marching down the narrow street, still singing. The driver had no choice but to follow slowly behind, and as the passage reached the broader Bridge Street and the wagon began to turn left, the boys spread and wheeled as though they had rehearsed the movement, momentarily blocking the wagon. The driver stood and lashed his whip over the boys’ heads. Their tight formation began to break and by the time the wagon rolled onto the stone flags of Bridge Street they had fallen back, clearing just enough of the road for the party to pass.

  As their procession veered onto the street, the last horse of their escort gave a sharp cry and reared, knocking its rider onto the cobblestones. The man rose in obvious pain, then grabbed the reins to steady the horse. “Stepped on something,” he declared. “God’s blood! Some fool dropped tacks all over the road!” The rider on the lead horse ordered the man to find his way back as best he could, then gestured for the party to continue. He looked back in angry suspicion at the boys, who struck up a new song.

  Bridge Street. Milbridge had said his lodge was near the king’s lodge, which meant they had to cross the Thames. Over the heads of the boys Duncan made out the parallel lines of lanterns along Westminster Bridge.