The Last Witchfinder

by James Morrow

  Not unexpectedly, the mainmast flew a flag depicting a skeleton holding in one bony hand a cutlass and in the other a glass of rum. Someone had screwed a plaque onto the upper larboard rail, rechristening the shallop Judas Tree. Whatever her original name, this once honest packet-ship had evidently been the scene of a mutiny, her officers now probably decomposing at the bottom of the Caribbean.

  The Philadelphians bore William to the royal palace, entrusting him to the King and Queen, whereupon four imposing Bini males hoisted the great sea-chest onto their shoulders. As Jennet and Ben fell in behind them, the bearers brought the treasure to the edge of the jungle, secluding it beneath a heliconia tree. The Bini melted back into the forest. Jennet secured the doubloon-detector inside her hempen sack and availed herself of the telescope, raising it to her eye as six buccaneers in ratty shirts and patchwork breeches rowed away from the shallop.

  “I cannot say whether they’re entirely unacquainted with civilization,” she reported, slipping the telescope under her belt, “but they dress far more crudely than my Nimacook kin.”

  Whilst the buccaneers guided their longboat into the cove, Jennet and Ben pulled the sea-chest free of its hiding place and dragged it across the beach.

  “Ahoy, there!” Jennet cried. “We’ve found your gold for you!”

  The pirate captain vaulted out of the boat and, cocking a silver pistol, marched toward the castaways. He was a hulking Moloch whose most conspicuous feature was his want of a lower jaw. In its place he wore a wooden prosthesis attached to his head by leather thongs and driven by steel springs fitted to wooden cogwheels.

  “Unhand my treasure, ye stinking eels!” the captain ordered. The prosthesis reduced considerably his powers of insolence, turning stinking eels into thtinking eelth.

  Moving synchronously, Jennet and Ben honored their visitor with gracious bows. We look as harmless as rabbits, she told herself. He hath no rational cause to shoot us.

  “You are addressing Jennet Stearne Crompton, museum curator and natural philosopher,” she said. “I was marooned here with my infant son after a hurricane tore the Berkshire to pieces.”

  “This man was but an infant when your ship went down?” the captain said, nodding toward Ben. “Ye’ve been here twenty years?”

  “Not even four,” she said. “The child of whom I speak, my dear and gentle William, sleeps peacefully in a nearby glade. Allow me to present my fellow survivor, Benjamin Franklin, a brilliant scholar and the most talented printer yet born in the American Colonies.”

  “My friend exaggerates,” Ben said, forcing a smile.

  A second pirate appeared, a short dusky man with no left ear and hair suggesting electrified algae. The others remained by the longboat, presumably awaiting an order to come forward and massacre the castaways.

  “I’Christ, this man and his mother must’ve found a copy o’ Bonner’s map!” the one-eared pirate declared.

  “I’m not Ben Franklin’s mother!” Jennet shouted. “Could we all please agree on that right now?”

  “Your associate is understandably curious as to how we came upon the treasure,” Ben said to the captain. “You will find the answer most enchanting.”

  “Arms in the air!” the pirate leader snarled, brandishing his pistol.

  Jennet and Ben did as instructed. Whilst the captain kept his weapon trained on them, the one-eared pirate opened the sea-chest—cautiously, by degrees, as if it might be rigged with a petard. The bright tropical sun caught the doubloons, so that the chest now seemed a great chalice filled with a golden flowing nectar.

  “’Twould appear they’ve not plundered our booty,” the one-eared pirate said.

  “We’re castaways, not idiots,” Jennet said.

  “Thou art truly a printer, young Franklin?” the captain asked, thoughtfully stroking his wooden chin.

  “Aye,” Ben said.

  “Ye print books?”

  “Books, pamphlets, broadsheets.”

  “Then ye’ll be interested to know I recently finished my memoirs, The Amazing Exploits of Hezekiah Creech, Scourge of the Spanish Main.” The captain uncocked his pistol, slammed the lid closed, and turned toward the one-eared pirate. “Mr. Baldwin, prithee row back to the Judas and fetch the manuscript from my desk. ’Tis under the parson’s head.” In consequence of his synthetic jaw, Judas came out Judith.

  “Aye.” The mate glowered and started away, obviously frustrated that Captain Creech had not ordered any butchery.

  “What establishment employs ye?” the pirate leader asked Ben.

  “Of late, Palmer’s in London. Once back in Philadelphia, I shall seek a foreman’s position with Samuel Keimer.”

  “How’s this for an arrangement? Your Mr. Keimer gives me a thousand pounds sterling, and I allows him to publish my memoirs and keep a full fifth o’ the profits.”

  “That’s not exactly how the man does business. In truth, you would pay him.”

  “In a tart’s twat I would! I’ve written the best adventure book since Robinson Crusoe!”

  “If such be the case, then I’m sure some London house would relish the chance to print and sell it,” Ben said.

  “Ye think so?” Captain Creech’s simulated jaw permitted smiles of twice the normal span.

  “Verily.”

  “And now we should like to show you how we happened upon your gold,” Jennet said. “The demonstration requires that we use our hands.”

  Creech gave her a tepid nod. She dropped her arms, reached into the sack, and removed the clay bowl and its skewered cork.

  “Amongst the items we rescued from the Berkshire was this, the most useful invention yet contrived by Mr. Franklin and myself.” She sidled toward the rolling surf. “’Tis an Albertus Magnus Goldfinder. Behold.”

  Stooping, she filled the bowl with seawater, then set the cork adrift. Instantly the door-nail swung toward the chest.

  “It seeks the doubloons?” Creech asked, his factitious jaw descending.

  “Like a compass hungering for the northern pole,” Ben said.

  “Marry!” Despite himself, Creech giggled. “A pirate with such a device need ne’er chase down a brig only to discover she’s full o’ naught but linen and tea!”

  “Conduct us to Port Royal, and the trinket’s yours to keep,” she said. “The secret’s in the needle. It appears an ordinary door-nail, but ’tis actually a sliver from the philosopher’s stone Mr. Franklin and I recently refined in our Philadelphia laboratory.”

  “I’ve heard o’ these philosopher’s stones, but I ne’er knew a person that could make one,” the pirate said. “Do they not turn lead into gold and grant immortality in the bargain?”

  “Alas, the one we fashioned performs only the function you’ve observed,” she said.

  Captain Creech announced that he would now determine exactly how much distance might separate the doubloons and the goldfinder ere it ceased to work. For his first test, he carried the bowl fifty yards from the chest. The device performed splendidly, as Jennet expected it would. He increased the gap to a hundred yards. Again the finder did its job. Three hundred yards. Success.

  Still skeptical, he fished the cork free of the bowl, then bid Jennet and Ben join him in ascending a towering limestone cliff to the south. The climb took the better part of an hour, but at last they all stood two hundred feet above the surf, Creech poised to perform his experimentum crusis. The treasure lay a half-mile away, a mere speck on the beach even when viewed through the Bini telescope.

  Before Creech could refloat the cork, the mate appeared on the bluff clutching The Amazing Exploits of Hezekiah Creech. The pirate captain transferred the manuscript from Mr. Baldwin to Ben, who proceeded to scan the first page.

  “Chapter Six tells how I lost my jaw to a Dutch cannonball,” Creech said.

  “A diverting anecdote, I’m sure,” Ben said, then passed the manuscript to Jennet. “An auspicious beginning, Mrs. Crompton, would you not agree?”

  BY WAYE OF PROLAWG. Heerin the
Reeder will fynde narrat’d the most fantastical Advenchures yet written down by any mortul Hande. Those book Buyers who enjoye to hear Tales of Daring by the Whorled’s Buccaneers shan’t be disappoint’d by these Payges, but furst I must recounte something of my Mother’s Familee, my uncommun Childehood, and my earlyest Years at Sea.

  “I’m favorably impressed,” she said.

  “Be truthful now,” Creech said.

  “I note certain orthographic lapses.”

  “I suspected as much. Any other defects?”

  “Mayhap a whit less bombast would please the London publishers,” she said.

  “Bombast’s out o’ favor?” Creech said.

  “In recent seasons, aye.”

  Turning away from the Philadelphians, the captain offered Baldwin a prolix discourse on Albertus Magnus Goldfinders, then cast the cork adrift within the bowl. For a tense and protracted interval the door-nail pointed out to sea, but then Mr. Gilbert’s principle joined forces with the inverse-square law, and the dial swung landward and fixed on the doubloons.

  “I’Christ, ’twill save us many a fruitless pursuit!” exclaimed Baldwin.

  “Take us to Port Royal,” Ben said, “and we shall afterward make you a present of this machine.”

  “I saved the best news for last.” Jennet set Creech’s dreadful manuscript on the ground, securing it beneath the telescope. “Mr. Franklin and I have forsworn any further such inventiveness. Of all the buccaneers cruising the Spanish Main, you gentlemen alone will possess a doubloon-detector!”

  “Mrs. Crompton and Mr. Franklin are clearly two of the world’s great brains,” Creech said to Baldwin. “When you slit their throats, do’t quickly, so as to minimize their discomfort.”

  A tremor passed through Jennet’s frame, vibrating every bone. “Faugh!”

  “My Lord Captain, you cannot mean what you say!” Ben wailed.

  In Jennet’s opinion Creech had meant every syllable—and so she did what the situation required: she reached toward the clay bowl, disassembled the compass, and hurled the door-nail over the cliff. Briefly the little spike sailed on the wind, then fell into the surf.

  “Swine-swiver!” Baldwin cried, raising his cutlass.

  “’Sheart, Jennet!” Ben wailed.

  “How durst ye thwart me?” Creech screamed, his jaw flapping like a tavern sign in a hurricane.

  “Surely a man so intelligent as yourself can fathom my motives,” she said to the pirate captain. “You must now bear Ben and me and little William to Philadelphia, that we might extract a second detector from our philosopher’s stone.”

  “Shall I run ’em through?” Baldwin inquired.

  Creech said nothing. He rubbed his timber chin. A cloud drifted past the sun, casting a shadow on his already gloomy face.

  “What manner o’ man be the Pennsylvania Governor?” he asked Ben. “Will he welcome my crew graciously? Like all buccaneers, we’re known to give local economies considerable stimulation, for we buy our rum and sundries exclusively with silver and gold. What’s the man like?”

  “William Keith is innately indolent, bereft of scruples, and prepared to sell his own mother for political gain,” Ben said.

  “Aye, but doth he have any flaws?” Creech asked.

  “None whatsoever. Best of all, he hath been like a father to me. ’Twas Sir William sponsored my recent trip to England. Upon our arrival in Philadelphia, I shall see to’t he grants you freedom from harassment.”

  Creech retrieved his manuscript and clutched it to his chest. For two full minutes he paced back and forth on the cliff, lost in thought, an experience to which he was evidently unaccustomed.

  “The Governor’s in sooth your friend?” he said at last.

  “We’re thick as thieves,” Ben replied. “Honorable thieves, I mean.”

  “Then the three of ye may board the Judas Tree at dawn,” Creech said, “for we sail on the morning tide.”

  j

  WITH NIMACOOK STEALTH and vulpine subtlety, Jennet and Ben made their way through the nocturnal forest, speaking not a word and snapping not a twig, until at last they reached the village gates. As arranged, Ebinose-Mbemba and his wife were waiting for them, Ossalume cradling the sleeping William whilst gently stroking his brow. It occurred to Jennet that her son was having far too eventful an infancy. Once back in Philadelphia, she must somehow arrange for his life to remain free of maroonings, buccaneers, and Utopias for runaway slaves.

  Despite the considerable distance separating Ewuare from the pirate shallop, Ebinose-Mbemba feared that even the quietest colloquy might betray their whereabouts, and so he proceeded to guide the party along a jungle trail painted in pale lunar hues. In time they reached an outcropping of limestone sheltering a convivial pavilion framed in acacia wood and roofed by heliconia fronds.

  “This is where I do my thinking,” Ebinose-Mbemba explained. “’Tis also quite suitable for conversation. Speak to me of the buccaneers.”

  Jennet and Ben began chattering in tandem, words flying from their mouths at peregrine velocities, phrases tumbling around each other like acrobats, so that their African listeners were oft-times obliged to ask for reiterations, but eventually the whole story came out. The goldfinder ploy had worked. Creech had been fooled. Ewuare was safe for the nonce.

  “Even if I could talk as quickly as you two,” Ossalume told the Philadelphians, “I would need until noon to voice the gratitude in my heart.”

  “You have lifted a great cloud from our lives,” Ebinose-Mbemba added. “And yet one tittle of mist remains, and I would have us discuss it ere we part company.”

  “If I can burn away the last of the vapor, I shall,” Ben said, receiving William from Ossalume.

  “I speak of Creech’s map,” the King said. “’Twould be desirable to destroy it, lest it one day lead a slave-catcher to Ewuare.”

  “Destroy the map?” Ben said. “I’faith, Your Majesty, as we continue to gain the pirates’ trust, I shall use every means short of martyrdom to bring about that result.”

  “Mr. Franklin, you are a saint,” Ossalume said.

  “Oh, he’s hardly that,” Jennet said, “but he does own a passing impressive perfection-matrix.”

  With his free arm Ben gestured broadly, a flourish encompassing the entire pavilion. “And what does the Grand Oba think about of late when he enters his sanctuary?”

  “Carnal comforts,” Ebinose-Mbemba replied, flashing his wife a moon-lit smile. “Also Hobbes, More, and Locke.” He sighed prolifically. “Every day our Bini grow more difficult to govern.”

  Elaborating, the King explained that since his last political conversation with Ben, nearly a year ago, the tribal and temperamental differences amongst the ex-slaves had fractured the community into three sub-villages, each with its own vision of the future. The inhabitants of North Ewuare, the Orishanlists, believed that the general welfare lay in maximum obscurity, and hence they urged a combination of isolationism and reproductive restraint. The people of East Ewuare, by contrast, insisted that fertility control was precisely the policy their former white masters would have wanted them to pursue, and therefore these Uhranwists—the name derived from the Bini kick-the-dodecahedron game—advocated exploratory voyages in quest of hospitable islands to which their descendants might immigrate. Even more radical were the South Ewuareans, the Barabbasians, who hoped to make Amakye-Isle the birthplace of a mighty African army that would one day sweep through the New World’s rice plantations, tobacco farms, and cane fields, breaking chains and smashing shackles.

  “I’Christ, how e’er will you reconcile these philosophies?” said Ben.

  “Ossalume and I have drafted a constitution,” Ebinose-Mbemba said. “The parliamentary component of our government will comprise two separate assemblies.” He unfurled his left index finger. “A lofty upper house consisting of two elected agents per sub-village.” He extended his right index finger. “And a less exalted lower house in which each sub-village enjoys representation proportiona
l to its size.”

  “Tell us your opinion of this scheme,” Ossalume said.

  “A cumbersome compromise,” Ben said.

  “Quite so,” Ebinose-Mbembe said.

  “As unwieldy as my ill-starred Franklin Typesetter,” Ben said.

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “But preferable to any alternative I can imagine.”

  “Indeed.”

  At the first intimation of dawn, Jennet, Ben, and the Africans once again gave themselves to silence. Ebinose-Mbemba and Ossalume escorted the Philadelphians and their slumbering child back to the village gates, where the Grand Oba, much to everyone’s surprise, broke his own rule and spoke.

  “Fare thee well, Ben Franklin,” he whispered. “Fare thee well, Mrs. Crompton.”

  “This constitutional republic of yours—’tis a most noble experiment,” Jennet murmured.

  “The whole business may end in chaos and carnage,” Ebinose-Mbemba said. “But this I swear. ’Twill be an entirely illegal chaos and a most unlawful carnage. I shall allow no sanctified slaughter on Amakye-Isle.”

  Firming his grip on little William, Ben lowered his head in a gesture of respect. Ebinose-Mbemba and Ossalume deserved such deference, Jennet concluded, for by their own account they were arranging to put themselves out of business, which was not how royalty normally behaved. And so it was that—ere joining Ben on his walk back to the beach—she too bowed before the monarchs, humbled by their humility, awed by their modesty, and speculating that they might well be the brave and canny meek who would one day inherit the earth.

  C H A P T E R

  The

  Tenth

  abababababababab

  At Great Risk to Her Person Our Heroine Inaugurates a Scheme to Rid the World of Several Unnecessary Delusions

  j

  Abetted by favorable winds and congenial currents, the Judas Tree’s northward voyage should have taken a mere eleven days, but in fact it lasted twice that long, for Hezekiah Creech insisted on attacking and looting every merchant ship that blew his way. This violent agenda proved unremunerative. Of the seven carracks and brigs he boarded that month, only one carried a treasure chest, and it contained silks and spices, not doubloons. If there were indeed such a thing as an Albertus Magnus Goldfinder, Jennet mused, this sorry pirate could certainly have done with one.