The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  “Make way for the Indian princess!” called another as he greeted Madeline with a deep bow. She reached the entrance doors a few paces before Duncan and released the bolts. They each pushed one of the heavy doors open. At the sight of the bonfire the link boys had lit in the center of the courtyard, the disoriented keepers began drifting outside, moving like moths to the flame. As Duncan watched, two of the outside guards dashed past the fire, chasing several sheep. On the far side of the yard the wide entrance gate was open, and bystanders from outside were wandering in under the arch, attracted by both the unexpected sounds of celebration rising from the link boys and the sight of the cask of ale on a rack erected near the fire.

  A refined-looking gentleman in a patient’s gown touched Duncan’s arm. “Pardon me, sir. Have you seen Cromwell?”

  Chaos was descending upon Bethlem Hospital. The handful of keepers who had not taken a tea break were desperately trying to subdue their hallucinating colleagues, a task made more difficult by the fact that several had traded their brown tunics for the more fanciful garb worn by some of the patients.

  Duncan turned back inside as Noah appeared from the rear of the building with three other broad-shouldered men, carrying one of the large wicker trays with long handles that were used as laundry pallets. From under a pile of towels and linens on the pallet a foot extended, wearing a silver-buckled shoe. Duncan pushed ahead of them, clearing a path as they carried their heavy load up the stairs. Darby arrived with three of his crew to relieve them at the first landing. When they finally reached the still-locked cell of the House of Lords, the upper gallery was nearly empty. Only a few of the patients in the chamber awakened as Duncan unlocked the door and hung a lantern on the wall. They watched in silent fascination as the obese man was deposited on a cot at the rear of the chamber. Duncan cautioned his companions not to touch the henbane salve that Huber had rubbed onto the man’s back, then asked Noah to bring the lamp closer.

  “On his head,” Duncan asked, “is that a bruise? Was he dropped?”

  Noah grinned, then stepped aside as Ishmael approached. “Noah has a friend who is well known for his ink work,” the Nipmuc explained. “It was a hurried affair. As he worked, I repeatedly told the gentleman that if he ever lifted a hand to harm Sarah or her friends, the gods of the Iroquois would haunt him forever. The crows would be watching him, I said. I am not sure if he understood in his daze but he has this reminder. His new pet will never let him forget. He started weeping, so I think part of him heard me.”

  Duncan held the lamp closer. Along the front of Milbridge’s bald scalp was a fresh tattoo of two crows, Mohawk messengers to the gods. Milbridge would be wearing wigs and nightcaps the rest of his life.

  “Time for a change in wardrobe,” Madeline said, and helped Noah pull away Milbridge’s elegant waistcoat, handing it to Duncan. One of the patients readily agreed to trade his soiled tunic for the coat, but Duncan decided first to rub it in the dirt on the floor. He paused over a bauble pinned inside the coat, over the chest where it would have been readily visible to Milbridge but no one else, as if for the earl to glance at in private amusement. Duncan pulled it away before handing the coat to the eager patient. It was one of Milbridge’s golden tokens. He had seen it before, for it was an identical version of the pin Nettles had been wearing. POMPA FULGUR VINCERET, it said, over a bursting star superimposed over a lightning bolt. Duncan paused for a moment, once more trying to understand the message, “Fireworks Conquer Lightning,” then Ishmael pulled him away.

  As they propped Milbridge against the wall, Madeline set a pasteboard crown on his head with two long ears, then draped a placard around his neck that declared in two rows of bold letters: EARL MILBRIDGE, ROYAL DONKEY. As she did so the earl began to stir. Milbridge did not resist, but raised a hand as if to fend something else away. “The crows! Not the crows!” he desperately moaned, batting at the air.

  They left the pompous lord in his new court, straightening the pasteboard signs that hung on several other inmates, declaring Lord Grafton, Lord Hillsborough, and three other luminaries of Parliament. If Milbridge drank the usual tea of the patients in the special wards, it could be days before the truth of his identity was discovered.

  Hewson and Huber joined them as they reached the inventor’s cell. “William? Is it you, William?” Franklin asked in a fearful voice as he studied Hewson, the first to enter the chamber. “The horror!” he cried, then seemed incapable of further speech. He rose with great difficulty, then fell back onto his cot with a groan. Darby and his men, standing by with the laundry pallet, gently eased Franklin onto its platform, then lifted it and headed for the stairs with Hewson at his side.

  A patient pushed past Duncan as he watched Franklin disappear down the staircase. “Jimmy, come see!” the man called as he reached the window, where the flames of the bonfire could be seen. “It’s Guy Fawkes Night!”

  Duncan hesitated, extracting the golden pin he had taken from Milbridge. There had been one last enigma he had failed to pierce, the cause of all their misery. Now the answer struck him like a lightning bolt.

  Ishmael waited for Duncan at the Chamber of the Immortals. His hand trembled as he unlocked the door. Conawago sat in the back corner again, sitting on his cot and rocking back and forth. He seemed to take no notice when Ishmael and Duncan gently lifted him, other than uttering a low “Oh, bath already?” They threw his arms across their shoulders and pulled him out into the gallery, leaving the door open for the inmates to wander out.

  As they reached the cool night air, the old Nipmuc began making low humming sounds. Before reaching the coach, his weight still supported by Duncan and Ishmael with Madeline and Noah clearing a path through the now crowded courtyard, he began what sounded like another of his recitations in Greek. Ishmael, spectator to such performances for weeks, recognized it. “An account of the fall of Troy,” he explained. Conawago seemed to have almost no physical strength left; they had to lift him bodily into the coach. His mind drifted and he gave no sign of recognition of where he was or whom he was with. As he settled into the seat, he began a bawdy song of French trappers that Duncan hadn’t heard him sing for years.

  Darby arrived with the crewmen of the Galileo, confirming that Franklin and the doctor, with Noah as a guard, had boarded the coach for Craven Street. With a victorious gleam in his eyes, Ishmael climbed in beside his uncle and offered a hand to Duncan. Duncan hesitated.

  “I can’t,” he said, his heart sinking. “Get him on board. Tell the captain to wait as long as he can, but the Galileo must be gone with the tide whether I am on board or not.” He gestured Darby to take the seat meant for him.

  The bosun hesitated. “Ye need to be with us, Highlander.”

  Duncan held up the golden pin. “Remember, remember the fifth of November,” he said, then motioned Darby up and pushed the door shut.

  He set off through the streets in the loping gait of the forest runner, ignoring the calls of watchmen. He had four hours to save Franklin, again, and if he missed the Galileo he might not be able to save Sarah. By the time he reached Craven Street, after a stop at the Neptune to enlist Mrs. Laws’s assistance, an informal celebration was already in progress. Hewson, Polly, Olivia Dumont, Henry Quinn, and the Stevenson household staff were welcoming Franklin “back among the living” as Hewson declared in the toast that was underway when Duncan and the innkeeper appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Mrs. Stevenson warmly greeted Clementine Laws as an acquaintance from the market. Franklin, looking much revived, spread his arms and gave Duncan an uncharacteristic embrace. “How can I ever repay you, McCallum?” he asked.

  “By continuing to be the voice of conscience in Whitehall,” Duncan replied with a smile.

  “They have not heard the last of me, I assure you! And we shall have such a feast tonight!” Franklin declared, and turned to Mrs. Stevenson. “Roast beef, Meg, and the new case of claret! Duncan will be our guest of honor!”

  “I would like that of all thing
s,” Duncan said, “but I fear this is farewell. I am away at dawn.”

  Franklin sighed in disappointment. “With Conawago I pray,” he said, and hesitated. “Is he—did he—” Franklin was not sure how to complete his question.

  “He is away from Bedlam,” Duncan said, “and sails to America with the tide.” He desperately wished he could say more, but his old friend had given little hope that his crushed spirit could be mended.

  “I should have—” Franklin paused and started over. “I should have taken your friend’s plight more seriously. I didn’t quite grasp how dire things were at that particular institution. They dosed me out of my wits. Before I stopped drinking that dreadful tea I saw things! The incognitum was chasing me! The citizens of Venice were coming for me with a noose,” he groaned. For a moment, Franklin drifted into one of the absent stares Duncan had so often seen at Bedlam, then just as quickly he was back, gazing sheepishly at Duncan. “I saw things,” he whispered.

  Duncan nodded. “It will take some days for the medicine to fully dissipate,” he said, then added, “I’m afraid your date with the king has gone by.” Despite their victory that night, he still felt a sense of failure. The purpose of their costly effort to retrieve the incognitum had been frustrated. The colonies would be invaded.

  “The date is past, but the ladies have a clever plan! I am going to write a letter to the king announcing that I have been preserving the bones and the American transit calculations for him alone, then recounting all that the Earl of Milbridge and the clandestine soldiers did to prevent the king from receiving them.”

  “It will never get to him.”

  “That’s what is so brilliant!” Franklin, showing fatigue again, stepped to the mantel, touched the solitary Leyden jar, and with a satisfied moan let the electricity revive him. “The distaff connection! Olivia and Madeline had the inspiration. What better couriers!”

  “Couriers?” Duncan asked.

  “Olivia and Madeline have all the talent and, one might say, all the other assets to be the most desirable maidens at the royal ball. The king will most certainly dance with one or even both.”

  Olivia took up the explanation. “We shall each have a copy of the letter in our bodice, Duncan, and tell the royal George that it is for his eyes only, that we know not the contents but agreed to deliver it to the king because we adore him so, and that we know he wants to be a man of the real truth, not the truth arranged by his advisers. And there will be another copy that we will give to Queen Charlotte, who plays the mother hen to all the eligible maidens in attendance. The queen will insist he read it, we are certain.”

  “But still, just a letter,” Duncan said.

  “Not just a letter,” Franklin corrected. “A coup de grace. A decisive stroke! Truly inspired!” He raised his glasses to the ladies, then saw the confusion in Duncan’s gaze. “A copy shall also find its way to the prime minister, who has the final meeting with the king just before he leaves for his hunting tour. The balance of power is precarious. A handful of votes one way or the other determines most outcomes. If the king were to lose votes in the scandal these revelations would inevitably cause if publicized, the army’s plans will never stand up in Parliament, and he will have to back away from half a dozen other initiatives. The Whig prime minister and the king will reach the obvious accommodation. The army will have to abandon its plans.”

  “But the incognitum?” Duncan asked. “And the transit observations?”

  “I am proposing that the king publish the transit observations himself, announcing them as a gift to the people of England from America. No intrigue, none of the Royal Society’s favoritism. They will be available to everyone, as if they were published in my almanac.” Franklin smiled at Duncan. “I seem to recall an old tribesman saying that the function of civilized society is to advance the common knowledge.”

  A smile slowly grew on Duncan’s wary face. “And the incognitum?”

  “I will explain to the king that I shall send an itemized list of the relics to the Royal Palace and the Royal Society at the same time, stating publicly that I will formally present them to the king when he returns from his hunting season.”

  “The real leverage point isn’t the bones,” Duncan suggested. “It is what our enemies did because of the bones.”

  “Exactly!” Franklin exclaimed. “A circular kind of justice! A solution worthy of a great chess master,” he added, then took the hands of Olivia and Madeline in each of his own. “Chess mistresses!” he corrected with a hearty laugh.

  As Duncan digested the plan, his approving smile grew. He caught Mrs. Stevenson’s eye as she carried a tray toward the stairs. “Allow me, ma’am,” he said, then nodded to Mrs. Laws as he descended the stairs. Once in the kitchen he asked Mrs. Stevenson for her forbearance in allowing some other visitors invited by Mrs. Laws to use the servants’ rear stairs.

  Minutes later, as he helped arrange new refreshments brought from the kitchen, he asked who would write the momentous letter to the king. “Such a challenge,” he observed, “but such a glorious accomplishment when it is completed. Who is up to the task?” he wondered out loud.

  Franklin threw a cheerful nod toward his secretary, who was pouring more claret into Olivia’s glass. “We will compose it together. Henry is always an excellent collaborator.”

  “Oh,” Duncan said, feigning surprise. “Such a task. No doubt candles will burn far into the night. Four identical letters. With a copy for the desk here. Not to mention the copy for the War Council.”

  Franklin cocked his head at Duncan. “No, no,” he said with a tentative chuckle. “Secrecy is all.”

  “Remember, remember the fifth of November,” Duncan abruptly said, taking in the entire company with a sweeping gaze.

  “Duncan?” Hewson asked. “You’re very tired. Perhaps you should sit. Have some tea.”

  “Very tired indeed,” Duncan agreed. “Tired and still recovering from my wound. So much so I almost forgot the greatest mystery about the death of our friend Ezra,” he said. “When I extracted the letter that Lieutenant Nettles had pounded into his throat, his cousin said dark magic was at work, because he had seen the letter for Dr. Franklin torn up and dropped into the Ohio. Except it wasn’t magic. There were two letters, the original and the copy brought to America by Hastings and Nettles, made here in this room.”

  “Nonsense,” Quinn insisted. “We are most careful about who has access to our desk. I close it up every night.”

  “We would never touch Benjamin’s desk,” Mrs. Stevenson said, sharpness in her voice now.

  Quinn turned to Franklin. “I told you about those men who repaired the windows last spring, sir. They tended to ask too many questions about you. I was never too comfortable with them.”

  Franklin brightened. “There, you see, Duncan. Unfortunate, but no concern at present.”

  “I recall you speaking about the wonderful front-row box you had for the royal fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day,” Duncan said to the inventor.

  It was Polly who responded. “Oh yes, we all went, it was the most spectacular display. We called it a double celebration because of Henry’s arrival.”

  Duncan found no joy in the response he had been waiting for. “So November the fifth was the date your service began, Henry?” he asked the secretary.

  “Who can recall such things?” Quinn replied. “The months fly by so quickly it all seems a blur.”

  “Oh no, of course it was, because Benjamin loves fireworks so,” Polly exclaimed. “Don’t you recall, when we were interviewing you, Henry, you mentioned that your cousin, some duke or earl or such, had a box he could not use and if we could but conclude arrangements in time we all might celebrate together . . .” The last few words trailed off and she looked at Duncan with new concern.

  “Remember, remember the fifth of November,” Duncan said again, and held up the pin he had taken from Milbridge. “A private victory token of the earl’s. ‘Fireworks Conquer Lightning,’ it says. It never really ma
de sense to me until tonight. The timing is everything. In order for Hastings to arrive on the Ohio in time to intercept us, the War Council would have had to begin receiving the secrets discussed in this house last autumn. Say early November. Secrets about the Covenant and the mission for the incognitum.” Duncan turned to Franklin. “You wrote to Charles Thomson and your wife about the incognitum in November. I saw the letter. Your wife gave it to me, to inspire me on my mission. I suspect your letter to Ezra about his mission for the Covenant was sent at the same time.”

  The joy of their celebration left Franklin’s face. “I don’t know, Duncan. I suppose. Yes, two or three days after the fireworks, I recall. But we would never have kept copies, not like other correspondence. Though of course Henry often helps me with final composition.”

  “No, no,” Quinn insisted. “I am sure I would have recalled if I had been present. I may have been at the fireworks but I didn’t start until much later in the month.” He turned in surprise at the sound of the desk cabinet being opened. Polly was running her fingers along the thick pasteboard folders that contained copies of correspondence, arranged by month.

  “Here we are,” she declared, extracting a folder. “Correspondence for November 1768.”

  Quinn stepped to the desk, reaching for the folder, but Polly ignored him, stepping to the window seat. Seconds later she pulled out a sheet of paper. “The very first one in Henry’s writing. A letter to Lord Hillsborough, dated November sixth.”

  Franklin broke the silence. “It doesn’t signify, Duncan,” he said.

  “Who recommended Henry to you?” Duncan quietly asked as Quinn, with some irritation, took the folder from Polly.

  “The Royal Society. Impeccable recommendations.”

  “The Royal Society that helped to kidnap you at Boodles. How many of its members also serve on the War Council? Three, four? A half dozen?”