Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “I should not be surprised, sweet Adrienne,” the duchess said. “You are dear to all of us for your service to the late Madame de Maintenon. We were most happy when the king informed us you would be attending.” The duchess cast her gaze out over and beyond the barge, and Adrienne, uncomfortable with the conversation, looked out as well. The dark waters of the canal swam with boats: Venetian gondolas; French men-of-war; English frigates; Dutch, Spanish, and even Chinese vessels. They were all perfect in detail but scaled to twenty or thirty feet at largest. Two of these miniature ships had just pulled alongside the barge as escorts. Adrienne noticed with a start that Torcy stood in the bow of one, wearing an admiral's costume surmounted by a ridiculously lofty hat. He looked uncomfortable.

  “Do you understand this setting, Adrienne?” the duchess asked lightly.

  “I am not certain that I do, Madame,” Adrienne replied.

  “This is a representation of the savage American tribe who call themselves the Natchez,” the duchess explained. “They live in our colony of Louisiana, and their chief sits upon just such a structure as this.”

  “Just precisely so?” Adrienne asked, glancing around at the gold, ribbons, and plumes that ornamented the barge.

  “Well,” the duchess allowed, “I am given to understand that the Natchez chief lives upon a mound of earth, and that it is a good deal ruder than this. Still, of all of those savage nations, it is said that they are the most civilized, worshipping the sun and their chief, the earthly child of the sun.”

  Adrienne strained to detect any irony in the tone of the duchess, and for a moment thought she heard it. It was well known that the duchess was terrified of her father. If Louis died, it would be her husband who ruled as regent until the dauphin came of age. Five years ago, he had almost had his opportunity; now it would probably never come. Louis showed no signs of dying, and if he survived a few more years there would be no need of a regent. Adrienne wondered how disappointed the duchess had been to see the throne so close to her grasp and then to watch as it quietly withdrew toward infinity.

  “And so we are Indians, then?” Adrienne asked.

  “Oh, indeed, don't you feel savage?” The duchess grasped Adrienne's hand in an apparent gesture of friendliness, clasping it warmly. Adrienne felt something pressed between their palms.

  At that moment the deck of the barge shivered, and somewhere a giant coughed, gasped, and began a deep-throated hum. Adrienne turned, so astonished that she nearly broke the grip of the duchess and dropped whatever was concealed between their fingers. She smiled delightedly as she saw a thick white cloud rising up behind the seated king and dauphin.

  “My God,” she said, “this is a steamboat!” She looked back to the duchess, whose eyes also seemed genuinely merry.

  “You,” the duchess breathed wonderingly, “are a precious child indeed.”

  Adrienne felt her smile transform from genuine to contrived, even as the barge heaved sluggishly into motion.

  “Dear,” the duchess said, “I have just complimented you. How many of the oafs on this ship have yet guessed that it is powered by steam? How many could explain the workings of such an engine?” The duchess was leaning very close now, her lips nearly touching Adrienne's ear. How many were watching her at this moment, wondering what passed between her and Orléans? How many of Torcy's spies? What would the minister make of this, when he heard? And the duke of Orléans, who had furnished her appointment to the Academy of Sciences, had he put his wife up to this? But most important of all, what was the duchess implying?

  “You certainly overestimate me when you imply that I understand such fabulous, magical engines as drive this boat,” she lied.

  The duchess shook her head. “It is rare for me to misjudge anyone, most particularly someone I take an interest in, my dear.”

  “An interest?” Adrienne said, feeling another blush intrude upon her features.

  “Don't be so surprised, dear.”

  “I have no intention of attracting anyone's interest, Madame— anyone's.”

  The duchess of Orléans's face looked sad and tired. “I know that, dear,” the duchess said, squeezing her hand once again, “but it doesn't matter, you see?”

  “No,” Adrienne answered, her heart sinking, “but I am afraid I may learn.”

  “If I am not mistaken,” she told Adrienne, “if you do nurse an interest in the scientific, I believe I can easily arrange a tour of the engines for you, after the entertainment is ended.”

  “I …” Adrienne began, thinking furiously.

  “I can arrange it so as to excite the interest of no one.” She smiled more broadly. “Of anyone.”

  “Thank you, Duchess,” she replied. “You are most kind.”

  The duchess gave her hand one more squeeze and then removed hers. Adrienne tightened her grip on what she held; it was almost certainly a note.

  “How are you today, Monseigneur?” Louis asked. For an instant he saw the ghost of the other who had borne that nickname; his only legitimate son, Louis the grand dauphin. This younger Louis—someday to be Louis XV—was the last Monseigneur.

  “I am quite well, Your Majesty,” the young dauphin replied. “I am most entertained by my new barge.” He was a beautiful child, with liquid black eyes and golden curls.

  “That pleases me,” Louis replied, patting the boy on the shoulder. Below, he could just make out Adrienne, and he frowned slightly. Who had seated her next to the duchess of Orléans? She would hardly be a fit influence on the impressionable girl.

  He made a mental note that Adrienne was, in the future, to be kept away from the duchess.

  “When shall the dancing start, Majesty?” the little dauphin asked.

  “Why, it will begin quite soon, Monseigneur,” Louis assured him. “Do you remember your part?”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” the dauphin said. “I am to dance the part of the Stung Serpent.”

  “Very good.”

  “Are you really going to dance, Grandpapa?” the dauphin asked softly so no one could hear the familiarity.

  “Is that so hard to believe?” Louis asked. “I used to dance for my subjects all of the time.”

  “Who did you dance as?”

  “I danced many times. Once, in The Marriage of Pelleas and Thetis, I danced—let me see—six parts: Apollo, of course, and as Fury, a dryad, an Indian, a courtier, and as War.” He smiled at his heir. “The costume you wear today is much like mine was when I played War: red, with great red plumes.”

  “Is the Stung Serpent also War, then?”

  “I hear that the savages have two sorts of chiefs: one who is the chief during peace and one who wages war. The Stung Serpent is the war chief.”

  “And you will dance as the other, the Great Sun?” the boy asked.

  “Precisely so, my good Monseigneur.

  “Listen to the music,” Louis reminded him. “That is your cue, and mine as well. But you must go down first.”

  The boy smiled and began to rise, a little too quickly, too eagerly. “More slowly,” Louis hissed. “Act the king you shall be one day.”

  And Louis watched, gratified, as the boy slowed, his face regal, and began to descend the steps of the pyramid toward the dance floor where the courtiers waited, divided into two groups: those dressed in red, and those dressed in white.

  Adrienne fingered the note nervously as she watched the spectacle unfold. First the dauphin came down from the pyramid, and all of the courtiers in red lined up with him, including the duke of Orléans and the duchess of Maine. They gamboled in what seemed a rather unorganized fashion for some time; then a servant ran among them, passing out feather wands. At that point the duke of Orléans and the dauphin came back up the stairs and pretended to seize Louis and kidnap him.

  “Act as if you are asleep,” the duchess of Orléans hissed, and Adrienne slitted her eyes, her thoughts on the steady thrumming of the engines. Were they fervefactum driven, or was there a furnace?

  “Now!” The duc
hess shook her and thrust a white-feathered wand into her hand.

  “What?” Adrienne asked.

  “We must rescue our chief, the Great Sun, from his enemies.”

  Adrienne stared down at the tableau. The dauphin was now strutting about the “captive” Louis, pronouncing solemnly—in English— “The sun has set.” Was he meant, now, to be George, king of England? Or Marlborough?

  She reluctantly followed the duchess, slipping the note she had been given into her waistband.

  The courtiers dressed in white began howling and shrieking, and the orchestra had begun banging upon tambours and tin kettles. The din was atrocious and barbaric. White-clad courtiers were daintily striking red-clad ones with their feather wands.

  “Come on!” shouted the duchess. Adrienne followed. A young man dashed up to her, struck a fencer's pose with his feather weapon, and lunged clumsily at her. The duchess interposed, poking the fellow in the face. He shrieked in mock pain and staggered convincingly about.

  “Lay to!” the duchess cried. Adrienne blinked, and then waved her feather wand at the nearest red-clad dancer, a plump woman who made an easy target. Despite herself, Adrienne felt a bit giddy at the sheer silliness of this nonsense. Grown men and women, fighting with feather war clubs? What would the citizens of Paris say if they saw this?

  The king and the dauphin had moved apart from the rest, fighting back to the crown of the pyramid. Below them the courtiers continued their mad dashing about. A rather thickset man wearing a diadem of red feathers struck Adrienne in the breast with his feather. He twitched his feather from breast to breast and then, with emphasis, poked it toward her crotch. Adrienne stood frozen for an instant, mortified and uncertain what to do, and once again the duchess came to her rescue, jabbing her feather into the man's face. The fellow gasped in pain, and the duchess stepped back in obvious satisfaction as he clutched his shin—her attack on his face having only been a feint to distract from a vicious kick.

  “Are you injured?” the duchess asked seriously.

  Adrienne opened her mouth to answer, but instead, understanding suddenly, clasped her breast and sank to the deck. “Yes, wounded unto death!” she croaked, and fell forward, hoping no one would step upon her. She wondered if she should hop back up, alive again, as she had seen some of the courtiers doing.

  Then a terrible heat stepped upon her back, and the air was suddenly choked with screams of agony and the smell of burning flesh.

  8.

  Silence Dogood

  Ben could not help but smile as he read over the note he had just schreibed.

  I thank you Most Warmly for the News you send regarding our Brethren in New York, and I shall here endeavor to entertain you by sending forthwith the News of our own Small Colony. But first, as to address your Question of our Native Critics; and of those Skeptics who are desirous of a more Ancient Time than this we presently live in; I tell you that we have none such here as you speak of. For were there those in Boston who, reading the Mercury or this, the Courant, by the light of alchemical lanterns, were then to Criticize both, I would have no recourse but to title them Great Blockheads indeed. It is perhaps to be admitt'd that a few here still raise the hoary cry of Witchcraft, and mutter of the New Fashioned— but it is well known here that they Contrive to be Ridiculous only in order to furnish these our Colonies with an authentic Atmosphere of the Rustic. They thus provide a Service, offering at once Entertainment to ourselves and Assurance to our Brethren in Britain that those of us on American Soil continue to be Quaint, Curious & Did I not know this to be the case, I might be convinc'd that Ignorance and Folly are crown'd as Royally here as you claim them to be in your City. I urge you to reexamine the evidence before you, for as you know, it is common to be an Eagle abroad and an Owl at home.

  Ben bent back to the letter, summarizing the various newsworthy stories of Boston. This he sent in return for a similar summary he had just received from the new sheet being published in New York. It was an arrangement between himself and the publisher there, arrived at by aetherschreiber correspondence. He had managed to strike bargains with four such correspondents: in New York, South Carolina, London, and India. He acted as an exchange for the news from all of these places, for his remained the only aetherschreiber capable of being tuned. As a result of this, The New England Courant—his brother's paper—was as cosmopolitan as any paper from the home country and sold so quickly that it was impossible to print enough copies. Already James had ordered a new press from England. Furthermore, though almost two months had passed since Ben had modified the aetherschreiber, Trevor Bracewell had not put in an appearance to make good on his threat. Nor had Ben seen the man on the streets—which probably meant that he was not in Boston.

  Finishing the letter, Ben reached to sign it, and as he did so, his smile broadened even farther. His letter would appear in New York tomorrow, but it would not bear the name of Benjamin Franklin. Instead, he signed it, in a silly, ornate, and swooping hand:

  Sir, Your Humble Servant,

  Silence Dogood

  Ben was not certain what impulse had driven him to adopt the pseudonym, but he did know that he enjoyed it. To be sure, it was a way of protecting himself should Bracewell really be out there, watchful. And since Silence Dogood also tended to make fun of certain elements in Boston society, when word inevitably got here from New York that other colonies were chuckling at the foibles of certain Bostonians, it would be best that the letters came from an anonymous source.

  The wind freshened, and caught the white triangle of cloth with a firm snapping sound as the boom swung sixty degrees. Ben ducked absently, more intent on John Collins than on the stout wooden bar. He shifted the rudder to make the most of the wind, sending the small boat scudding up the Charles River. Coming from behind them, the wind carried the thick salt scent of the Roxbury Flats, wood smoke from three thousand houses, and the resiny perfume of pitch from the shipyards. It was Boston following them, a ghost sensible only to the nose.

  John looked up from the page he was reading. “This is ingenious,” he crowed. “Have you set this yet or read it? Shall I read it to you?”

  “ 'Twas just delivered,” Ben replied. “By all means, read it aloud.”

  “I will summarize parts. But here is how it begins.

  “Sir,

  It has been the complaint of many Ingenious Foreigners, who have travelled amongst us, That good Poetry is not to be expected in New-England.”

  John paused, blue eyes sparkling with amusement. “Then she pretends that she will discover to the world the beauties of our native poetry.”

  “I can see the need for that, since it isn't readily obvious,” Ben commented.

  “You'll see. Here, she begins talking about a specimen of ‘our’ poetry. For her subject she chooses ‘An elegy upon the much lamented death of Mrs. Mehitebell Kitel, Wife of Mr. John Kitel of Salem & ’”

  “An apt and representative piece, I would imagine,” Ben replied.

  “Oh, yes. As she says, ‘One of the most extraordinary poems ever writ in New England, moving, pathetic, so natural in its rhyme.’ Listen, here the verse itself is quoted.” He cleared his throat and read, in lamenting tones:

  “Come let us mourn, for we have lost a Wife, a Daughter, and a Sister,

  Who has lately taken Flight, and greatly we have mist her,

  “In another place,

  “Some little Time before she yielded up her Breath,

  She said, I ne'er shall hear one Sermon more on Earth.

  She kist her Husband some little Time before she expir'd,

  Then lean'd her Head the Pillow on, just out of Breath and

  tir'd.”

  John had to stop reading, for he had begun to laugh. “Sister, missed her,” he chortled, wiping one eye. “Expired, tired!”

  “Very moving,” Ben remarked. “Very pathetic.”

  “Aye, pathetic indeed,” John agreed.

  “Because see how cleverly it is written,” Ben continued. “To
say that we've lost a wife, daughter, and sister, is to give the impression that we've lost three women, rather than one, which is triply pathetic.”

  John frowned. “You have read this.”

  Ben shook his head. “Why do you say that?”

  “It's precisely what Mrs. Dogood claims, in the next paragraph.”

  “Oh,” said Ben, innocently. “It just seems obvious, that's all. Do go on.”

  John regarded him doubtfully for a moment. “Well, the long and short of it is, she gives a formula for how one can write one's own elegy.”

  “What a useful thing to know.”

  “Very useful. The most important thing is to choose the right person to elegize, it seems; someone who has been killed, drowned, or froze to death.”

  “Well, of course. We can't go elegizing someone hung for stealing chickens.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Nor someone without real virtues,” Ben went on, “though I suppose one can borrow virtues for the deceased, if they didn't have an appropriate quantity.”

  John frowned. “You have read this, damn you. Why did you let me go on, so?”

  “You really think such rude nonsense is amusing?” Ben asked, seriously. “Poking fun at heartfelt verse written by a sincere and grieving man?”

  “Grief is no excuse for bad poetry,” John returned. “If he cannot grieve eloquently, let him at least do it silently. And yes, I think Mrs. Dogood's criticism is witty, wittier than anything else I've seen in that sheet of your brother's. Perhaps it's just that you don't appreciate well-turned irony, is all.”

  Ben grinned. “I appreciate it more than you will in a few seconds,” Ben predicted.

  “How is that?

  “Because I am Silence Dogood, you butter-head.”

  John just stared at him for a heartbeat or so. “You are Silence Dogood?” he managed to choke out.

  “None other,” Ben replied, trying to seem nonchalant, though he knew his almost imbecilic grin must give that the lie.

  “God take me for a fool that I never guessed,” John swore. “It has your mark all over it! Does your brother know?”