He drove past Fraternity Row and along the edge of the college green, where the mist hovered a few feet above the grass, and he fancied that he could see the ghost of Daniel Webster strolling down from Dartmouth Hall. He did not notice the Chrysler Sebring that slipped out of a parking spot to follow him.
He turned on Wheelock Street and headed for the Connecticut River.
Thirty thousand years earlier, thought the professor, after the mountains had risen and settled, the ice had begun to move south. After ten thousand years, it covered all of New England under a mile-thick sheet that sat for ten thousand years more. Then it began to retreat. It scraped the tops off the mountains and dropped them into the valleys. It left lonely boulders in some places, great veins of gravel in others. It retreated around hillocks of ice so dense that they did not melt for centuries more. And it scoured huge furrows that would become the riverbeds of New England.
The Connecticut was born in far northern New Hampshire, in three lakes that were born of the streams that drained the woods of western Maine. It widened quickly, marking the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont. It bisected Massachusetts, creating two unofficial states, one that looked toward Boston, the other that paid Boston and its politicians as little mind as possible. Then it flowed through the state that took its name, laying down a rich riparian plain on its way to the sea.
In New England, only Rhode Island was not touched by its waters.
If the professor had been thinking more about the cars on the road and less about ancient ice, he might have noticed that the Sebring behind him had Rhode Island plates, and it followed him north on Interstate 91, then west a few miles on Route 4.
The dog began to shiver when they passed the plastic moose in front of the Queechee Village gift shops. He let out a whimper when they pulled into the parking lot near the bridge.
It was October, so people from all over the world were coming to see the foliage. They came in cars and SUVs and lumbering tour buses from Boston. Most of them were retirees, taking that fall trip they’d always dreamed about. And retirees got up early. But not this early.
The lot was empty, except for that black Chrysler Sebring pulling in. Its driver was a younger man, around thirty-five. He got out, turned on his digital camera, and glanced up at the hills.
Sunlight had just struck the highest branches. Over the next half hour, as the sun rose and the light descended, the golds and reds glimmering in the treetops would flow down until the whole valley burned with color. Then the tour buses would arrive.
For a man who imagined ice and valued solitude, there was no time to waste. So the professor followed the dog toward the sign: QUEECHEE GORGE FOOTPATH.
The ice had done mighty work here, opening a crevasse a mile long, a hundred and seventy feet deep, sixty feet wide. And year by year the Outaqueechee River continued the work, smoothing out little pools and wearing the rock imperceptibly away.
Whenever he descended the gorge, the professor felt as if he were slicing down into time itself. But he taught American history, so slicing into time was his business.
He had written a book, The Magnificent Dreamers, about the Constitutional Convention of 1787. It had made him an expert, which got him onto television whenever people argued about the Constitution. And as autumn spilled across New England, people were arguing about the Constitution more and more.
Stuart Conrad looked good on television. He had a strong jaw and a professorial brow. And he knew how to handle himself in front of the cameras. Hardball, The O’Reilly Factor, Rapid Fire … he’d done them all. He wouldn’t let Chris Matthews interrupt him. He got the last word with Sean Hannity. And when Bill O’Reilly called him a pinhead, he called O’Reilly a pinhead right back, all in the best tradition of rational, cable-televised political discourse.
Thanks to television, his book was appearing on college reading lists across the country. Better yet, he was mentoring a young woman who had a scholar’s brains and a showgirl’s legs, while he power-tripped on weekends in the bed of a Massachusetts congresswoman. And best of all, he was close to finding the document that some would call the Holy Grail of American history.
But he did not think long about any of that. This was his time for exercise and meditation. He would think later. So he followed his dog into the gorge.
The river, held back by an upstream dam, was a bare trickle near the place where the path reached the bottom.
The dog got there first and ran straight to his favorite pool for a drink. His claws scratched on the rocks.
Time for a clipping, thought the professor.
The dog lapped at the puddle, looked up, and the hackles rose on his back.
The professor followed the dog’s gaze up the side of the gorge. The walls were steep, but there were ledges, bushes, trees clinging tenaciously, as if suspended in space.
The dog must have seen something up there, a rabbit or a squirrel. But whatever it was, he lost interest and went back to lapping.
The rest took only an instant.
Something falling … the dog’s head snapping up again … the professor turning … four boulders, each the size of a jagged-edged basketball, bouncing and tumbling…
The first one missed the professor and shattered on the rocks.
The second one struck him in the face, severed the bridge of his nose, drove into his brain, and killed him instantly.
WEEK LATER, a young woman with a scholar’s brains and a showgirl’s legs appeared at the office of Fallon Antiquaria in Boston.
Peter was on the phone, negotiating the purchase of a private library from an estate in Dover. The prize of the collection was a first edition of Leaves of Grass, inscribed, “To my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman.” Peter was saying that he would buy the whole library just to get a presentation copy of Whitman.
He hung up, leaned back in his chair, put his feet on his desk, and saw her.
“This is Jennifer Segal, boss.” Bernice was leading her into his office. “She doesn’t have an appointment, but … she’s from Dartmouth College.”
The girl looked to be in her late twenties. She was wearing a tweed jacket and a black turtleneck which, along with her black hair, made her skin seem milk-white. To this she added rimless glasses and an expression that young women often affected to discourage even casual conversation, never mind advances.
Still, she had the kind of beauty that could make a man in his late forties feel wistful, or at least inspire him to suck in his stomach when he stood to shake her hand. Not that Peter had much stomach. He was in better shape than men ten years younger. And he looked ten years younger, too, which he attributed to a daily workout, a job he enjoyed, and a commute of a few blocks.
The girl, however, seemed unimpressed with Fallon’s appearance. She expressed no interest in small talk, coffee, or anything else but business.
She produced a copy of Antiquaria, opened it to a page she had bookmarked, and asked, “Is this still for sale?”
Peter looked at the page: “A letter from Henry Knox to Rufus King RE: William Pike of Pelham, Massachusetts.”
The catalogue offered dozens of letters. Peter couldn’t remember every detail. So he turned to his computer, called up the item, and found that, yes, that letter had been sold to a collector in Litchfield, Connecticut.
“That’s too bad,” she said. “I was hoping I might get a look at it.”
“The text is available.” Peter pretended to be helpful as he tried to guess what she was really after. “It’s written in 1786. Knox was Washington’s artillery commander in the Revolution and later the Secretary of War. In the letter, he recommends a young man named William Pike to the employ Rufus King, who will become—”
“—a Massachusetts delegate to the Constitutional Convention.” The girl smiled for the first time. “I’m a PhD candidate in history at Dartmouth. The so-called Critical Period, between the end of the Revolution and the beginning of the Washington administration—that’s my area of expe
rtise.”
“So, you’re not interested in the letter as a collector?”
“I’m a scholar. I’d like to know its provenance and whether the seller had any other material relating to Rufus King and William Pike.”
Peter looked at his computer. “It says we sold this for another broker who represented an anonymous seller.” Peter tapped in another code and the name of the broker appeared: Morris Bindle of Millbridge, Massachusetts.
The young woman waited quietly, as if expecting him to give up the name.
He didn’t. It was none of her business. Instead he asked, “Are you working for someone, Miss Segal?”
“I was … until a week ago.” And her façade seemed to crack. “I was the graduate student assistant to Professor Stuart Conrad.”
“Conrad of Dartmouth? The Magnificent Dreamers? I read about the accident.”
“That’s what they called it.”
“You think differently?”
“Rock slides are not that common in Queechee Gorge, or that accurate.”
“Accidents happen,” said Peter. “And Murphy’s Law rules. If you’re in a gorge when there’s a rock slide—”
“You sound like the Vermont State Police.” The girl stood.
“What was he working on?”
“The mindset of the men who wrote the Constitution, men like Rufus King … important work, considering what’s going on these days. I don’t want it to end with him.”
Peter sensed that she was telling him what she thought he needed to know but not the whole story. “Why come to me?”
“Professor Conrad enjoyed reading about your hunts for lost tea sets and Shakespeare manuscripts. He said you made the study of history an adventure.”
“He made it an art.”
“When he saw the King letter in your catalogue, he circled it and made a note to call you. Rufus King was present at the creation, so to speak. Professor Conrad was interested in everything he left behind.”
Peter glanced at the catalogue and noticed that the professor had marked the page with a clipping from the Blackstone Valley Weekly, a regional paper from Worcester. The clipping was the obituary of Buster McGillis, last floor manager of the defunct Pike-Perkins Mill. That much was interesting, but this sentence stopped Peter cold: “His body was discovered by Morris Bindle, friend and local antique dealer.”
Peter closed the catalogue and handed it back to Ms. Segal. “Let me look a little deeper. Maybe there’s more information out there on King and William Pike. If I find anything, it might help your dissertation.”
As soon as she left, Peter called his assistant into the office.
Antoine Scarborough was twenty-four, son of a laborer who worked for Peter’s brother. His friends in the hood called him Twan, the nickname of an NBA player who was also tall, black, and shaved his head.
He wanted to go to graduate school in history, while his father wanted him to go to law school. Peter had lived the same conflict with his own father, so he had given Antoine a job and the time to make a decision.
“You did the research on that Rufus King letter, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What about William Pike? Who was he?”
“William Pike. Born in 1770. Mother died in childbirth. Father served with the Massachusetts Artillery during the Revolution, then he went back to his farm in Pelham, Massachusetts—”
“Pelham? That’s the town where Daniel Shays came from, isn’t it?”
“Shays of Shays’s Rebellion. And the Pikes were right in the middle of it….”
THREE
October 1786
WILL PIKE WATCHED THE hawks for twenty miles, until he approached the place where the land dropped away and there seemed a peculiar brightness radiating upward. The power of the Connecticut River was that considerable. Its valley cut a wide furrow through the landscape, and it waters reflected the sunlight, so that the traveler knew, long before he could see the river, that it was there.
Springfield was there, too. Washington himself had chosen it as the safest yet most accessible New
England site for an arms depot. A windowless stone warehouse had been built on a rise near the Post Road and stocked with muskets, flints, bullets, and powder. It was surrounded, on what was now called Armory Hill, by storehouses and barracks.
Will positioned himself opposite the entrance, noted the things that Shays had asked him to observe, and waited less than an hour before he saw Henry Knox.
The Secretary of War was arriving on foot, in company with several men of the town, no doubt after a dinner at some local tavern. It was easy to pick him out. He stood six foot three and well fit the description Will’s father had drawn: “Imagine two men rolled together and stuffed into a waistcoat, with one man’s huge head comin’ out the top and the other man’s big feet stickin’ out the bottom and the bulk of them both fillin’ out the breeches.”
Will had planned to follow Knox to his lodgings and beg an audience that night. But he might not get a better chance than now. So this polite young man, who seldom spoke unless spoken to, cleared his throat and cried out, “General Knox! A word, sir!”
Knox and the others stopped and looked across the road.
“Who is it?” said one of the gentlemen.
“I’m the son of George North Pike, a captain in the Massachusetts Artillery.” Will strode toward them. “You may remember him, General.”
“Pike?” said Knox.
“A debtor,” said one of the others, whom Will recognized by his height and spider-thin body as Nathan Liggett, the very creditor who had lodged the complaint against Will’s father.
“A brave soldier, sir,” said Will. “A man hard-used by the state and by certain merchants, too.”
“Sir,” said Liggett to Knox, “this boy can offer you nothing.”
Will kept his eyes on Knox. “I seek a favor, sir, for a veteran, sir.” Will knew that he was inserting a few too many “sirs,” but he was nervous.
Knox gestured to Liggett and the others. His coarse features and high-crowned tricorne made him seem even more enormous than he was. “These gentlemen have priority on my time, young man—”
“Thank you, sir,” said Liggett, as smug as a priest. “That’s as it should be.”
Knox cocked an eyebrow at Liggett, then went on, “But I’ll never turn away the son of one of my captains.”
Without so much as a glance at Liggett, which was a smugness of its own, Will followed Knox into the barracks office. Papers covered the table, and a big-seated wing chair, suitable for a man as big-seated as Knox, had been pulled over from the hearth.
Knox dropped into the chair with a great huff, dropped his hat on the table, and gestured Will to the other side.
As he sat, Will’s eyes scanned the papers.
And Knox noticed the boy’s interest. “A report to General Washington. My impressions of the crisis here in central Massachusetts.”
Will closed his mouth, realizing he was slack-jawed before a letter bound for the great Washington.
“What would you have me say to the general?” asked Knox.
“I think that … er … I would say that—” Will had rehearsed a speech in behalf of his father. He had not expected to offer opinions for George Washington.
So Knox read from the letter: “ ‘It is indeed fact that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotions, but that they are the real cause is as far from the truth as light from darkness. The insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes—’ “
“That’s not true!” blurted Will.
Knox stopped. “Oh?”
Will swallowed his awe of Knox and his surprise at own outburst. “My father paid his taxes, and he had nothing left to pay his debts to men like Nathan Liggett, because Liggett and his ilk won’t take paper money.”
“Paper money loses value too quickly,” said Knox.
“Then something should be done, sir.”
“What would you sugge
st?”
Will grew bolder. “I would not allow a man like my father to be imprisoned.”
“I remember your father. A good officer. But there are laws—”
“There are God-made laws, sir, and there are manmade laws. We cannot change God’s laws, but a wise man should know enough to change an unwise law.”
Knox ruminated a moment, as if he liked the young man’s answer and perhaps his spirit, too. “Would you agree also that the creed of the rebels—”
“Regulators, sir. They call themselves Regulators.”
“Regulators, then … would you agree that their creed is”—Knox read from his letter—” ‘that the property of the United States has been protected from confiscation of Britain by the joint executions of all, and he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice and ought to be swept off the face of the earth’?”
Will swallowed. “No, sir. I would not.”
“You would not?” Knox leaned across the table, and the effect was as if the moon had passed between the earth and sun, so enormous was the face blocking the light from the window. “Why would you not?”
“Because you include”—Will did not to mention his brother—”men who are neighbors of mine. I know their spirit to be constructive.”
Knox worked his lips together. “Would one of these neighbors be Daniel Shays?”
“Yes, sir.”
Knox grew angry at the mention of the name. “A leveller. An anarchist. You’d do well to stay away from him. He and his ilk will bring our American experiment to ruin. I’m writing as much to General Washington.” Knox picked up his quill and began to scratch out a few more words.
It had been said that the uprisings had greatly disturbed Knox, and his sudden change of mood suggested the depth of his emotion.
But Will had not come to defend Shays. So he held his peace until Knox paused to dip his quill again, then asked, “May I speak of my father, sir?”
“You already have.” Knox kept his eyes on the paper. “If your father is allied with Daniel Shays, there’s nothing I can do for him.”
“My father is allied with the cause of America, sir.”
The Lost Constitution Page 4
