Two Crowns for America

by Katherine Kurtz

  As often happened when browsing among books, however, looking up one item had led to looking up several more—and then to settling down cross-legged on the braided rag rug, her back braced against the bed, skirts tucked close around her knees, the great iron-bound oak chest yawning open before her and books opened to pertinent passages all around—lost in the magic of the printed word.

  Thus enchanted, she looked more like a schoolgirl than an elegant officer’s lady and the mother of three. Her night-black hair was plaited loosely down her back like a young girl’s, caught at the end with a ribbon of blue moire silk. More blue ribbon was threaded through the deep frill of Honiton lace at her throat, for she had changed her fashionable day dress for a flowing robe de chambre of heavy velvet over her shift, the same pale shade of silver-azure as the moonstone in her hand. A double-branched candlestick on a stand beside the bed shed soft golden light over her shoulder, lost in the blue-black sheen of her hair but reflecting richer gold onto her face from the new volume she lifted closer to peruse. The moonstone seemed to take on a life of its own whenever she turned it in the candlelight.

  Afterward she could never be certain whether the moonstone had been responsible; or perhaps the outcome had been a part of Saint-Germain’s intention all along. Whatever the cause, she drifted off to sleep after only a little while, the moonstone cupped loosely in her right hand, head lolling against the edge of the bed. At some point she huddled down on her left side, drawing her robe closer against the cold and resting her head on one of the books. She was not aware of dreaming, or even of any particular passage of time; only that, when she came to full consciousness again, the measured cadences of male voices had been with her for some time, coming from the room below, intoning ritual secrets that she was not meant to hear.

  The realization paralyzed her for a moment; but even as she struggled to sit upright again, rubbing absently at her eyes with the hand that held the moonstone, she realized that she had already heard far too much. The words of the ritual came all too clearly through the floorboards, burning themselves into her memory—solemn obligations and fearsome penalties and words of power meant only for the initiated.

  Hands set to her ears, her eyes tightly closed, she shook her head in useless denial—for she remembered things she heard as some people remembered things they had seen, in perfect detail. It had been thus from young girlhood, after recovering from a fever that nearly took her life. For many years she had shrugged off the ability as an amusing oddity—though of late she had found it a distinct advantage, when spying among the wives of British officers, later to be able to recall every word that was said.

  But it was not an advantage to have engraved upon one’s memory that which one should not have heard. Right now, if she wanted to, she could pick up from the very beginning the ritual they were working below, reciting each man’s part in perfect mimicry of his voice and intonation.

  And the penalties to be imposed upon those who broached the secrets of Freemasonry were dreadful. She could hear the words in Justin’s voice, as he took the obligation of a Master Mason, vowing never to disclose any of the secrets of the Craft, “under no less a penalty than that of being severed in two, my bowels burnt to ashes, and those ashes scattered over the face of the earth and wafted by the four winds of heaven, that no trace of remembrance of so vile a wretch may longer be found among men, especially Master Masons.…” The words were firmly set in her memory, in her brother’s own voice.

  Heart pounding, she tried to think what to do, pressing to her lips the fist that closed the moonstone inside. She did not know whether the penalties Justin had enumerated applied equally to traitorous Master Masons and to those who merely overheard, however inadvertently. Nor could she think that he or Andrew or Simon would really allow such penalties to be imposed. But she did know that she should not be hearing any more—and that there was no way to avoid hearing, so long as she stayed where she was.

  And yet to move was almost certain to court discovery. The floorboards in the bedroom were creaky, and directly over the heads of the men working below. When she closed her eyes, she could visualize from their words what must be happening physically—Justin, acting out the part of the murdered Master Hiram Abif in ritual drama, being lowered into symbolic death, covered over by the darkness.…

  She shook her head, trying to will away the images, but the words, as well as the pictures and the inner awakenings, still came through. With her psychic link to her brother—strong at most times, and amplified by the emotional focus of the ritual—she might as well have been undergoing the ritual herself.

  She could feel herself being sucked into it, reeling as the Worshipful Master performed the symbolic resurrection, raising Justin’s body on the Five Points of Fellowship.

  “Hand to hand I greet you as a Brother,” came Andrew’s deep voice, speaking the ritual words. “Foot to foot, I will support you in all your undertakings; knee to knee, the posture of my daily undertakings shall remind me of your wants; breast to breast, your lawful secrets when entrusted to me as such I will keep as my own; and hand over back, I will support your character in your absence as in your presence.…”

  She could not hear the actual word of power then imparted to her brother, but she felt the upsurge of his emotion. And thus discerning the inpouring of power, unprepared by the prior initiations of Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft—

  Inadvertently, a little cry escaped her lips. She stifled it almost immediately, but in her haste to clap her hands to her mouth, a book that had been teetering precariously on her lap fell onto the floor with a hollow thud.

  The men below had to have heard that, even if they had not heard her cry—which itself they hardly could have missed. As she stared at the floorboards, transfixed by horror, their startled voices queried anxiously among themselves and then broke off at a single knock of wood against wood. The sudden silence was worse than their alarm. And the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs made her blood run cold.

  She could not move. The blood was pounding in her temples, and her vision went a little blurry.

  Please don’t let me faint! she prayed to a childhood guardian angel, closing her eyes and pressing her clasped hands to her lips. And then, more sternly, Arabella, get hold of yourself. They can’t kill you for something like this. There has to be a way out. Simon won’t let them hurt you. Neither will Andrew. They only impose those penalties on people who have betrayed their secrets. They aren’t going to cut your throat, or rip out your tongue. Take a deep breath and stop shaking like a child!

  It was neither Simon nor Andrew who opened the door. The man was older than Simon and younger than Andrew, a rubicund, bandy-legged stranger with a sword in his hand and a look of horrified disbelief on his florid face. In that infinite instant Arabella could not have said which of the two of them was more appalled. Only just in time she remembered she still had Saint-Germain’s moonstone in her hand, and she stuffed it behind her and under the bed in the pretense of sitting up straighter, her eyes wide and frightened.

  “Girl, girl, what are ye doin’?” the man murmured, the r’s in “girl” rolling on his tongue with an Irish lilt as he shook his head in dismay.

  Close behind him came Andrew and then Simon, the father grave and concerned, the son both frightened and angry. She had never seen them in their Masonic regalia before—the distinctive aprons fashioned of white lambskin, and Andrew’s jewel of office supported on a narrow white ribbon. It somehow set them apart, so that even her beloved husband seemed like a stranger.

  “Oh, Arabella,” Andrew said softly, his accent on the “bell” conveying a world of exasperation as he took charge of the scene. “Dear child, what are you doing here? How much did you hear?”

  Addressed as “child,” she felt like one, hanging her head in misery.

  “I—fell asleep, Beau-père,” she said in a small voice. “I came to fetch some books—very early, long before anyone started arriving. I meant to go back to my room r
ight away, but one book led to another, and I—lost track of the time, I suppose. And then I—fell asleep.”

  She dared to glance up at him—though not at Simon, who had closed his eyes and was swaying slightly on his feet, one hand closed tightly on the doorjamb. The Irishman merely looked incredulous, casting indignant looks at Andrew. As Master for the interrupted ritual, Andrew was the one who must make any decision; but Arabella knew that he would never lie in the context of the Lodge, even for her sake. And he was fully aware how much she might have learned, given her unique memory.

  “I think,” Andrew said after a long, studied pause, “that we had better go downstairs. You’re fine as you are,” he added as her eyes widened and her hand clutched at the neck of her dressing gown. “If anything, your attire tends to confirm that you really were meaning to go to bed rather than eavesdrop on something you were not meant to hear.”

  He tried to smile as he held down a hand to help her up, but she could see he was worried. Simon would not even look at her. Drawing her gown more closely around her, she got to her feet.

  “I’m sorry, Beau-père. I’m sorry, Simon,” she managed to say in a very quiet voice, not daring to look up.

  The Irishman had let his sword blade come to rest on his right shoulder as he watched and listened, and now he moved in to take her elbow with his other hand.

  “Best you address your good-father as ‘Worshipful Master’ until this is settled, lass,” he told her gruffly. “And there are a number of other gentlemen downstairs who are going to be sore distressed when they hear what you’ve done.”

  “Let her be, Sean,” Simon murmured, speaking for the first time, though he still would not look at her. “I think she knows all too well what she’s done.”

  She could hardly forget it. As she followed Andrew down the stairs, Simon at her back and the Irishman still clasping her elbow, she felt like a prisoner being led to execution. Her anxiety was not relieved when, just outside the closed library door, Andrew stopped and turned to look beyond her at Simon.

  “Brother Wallace, I’ll trouble you for the loan of your cravat,” he said quietly. “It’s for a blindfold,” he added, for her benefit. “We call it a hoodwink in the Craft. You’ve already heard things you should not have heard. I would not compound the problem by having you see forbidden things as well—though you must be brought before the brethren.”

  Even as he finished explaining, her husband was stripping off his cravat, laying its snowy folds firmly over her eyes. Automatically her hands lifted to help him, holding the folds and layers in place while he wrapped it several times around her head and knotted it at the back, shaking her head at his wordless interrogative of whether she could see.

  “Courage,” he whispered, his hand brushing hers in brief caress just before he stepped back.

  “Worshipful, I would strongly recommend the cable-tow as well,” the Irishman said quietly, suddenly right beside Simon—and her. “I’m thinkin’ there may be a precedent to resolve this, if all agree, but we must follow all the proper procedures. If she’s to enter the Lodge, she must be hoodwinked, on a cable-tow, and at the point of a sword.”

  Not a word broke the silence for several seconds; then Andrew’s voice said, “See to it, Brother O’Driscoll.”

  Footsteps receded and then returned as she waited anxiously. She knew what a cable-tow was, and even its symbolism: a token of submission to the discipline of the Craft of Freemasonry. She tensed, though, as strange hands passed a cord around her neck—from one of her curtains? an irrational part of her wondered—snugging the slipknot underneath her chin, other hands freeing her braid in the back. She could feel the loose end dangling nearly to her knees as O’Driscoll took her right elbow again and led her forward once more. A faint squeak and a brief movement of air bespoke the opening of the library door.

  “Alarm, alarm,” came the voice of the Irishman behind her, in what she realized was a ritual warning. “There is an alarm at the door, and a stranger approaches. Take care that the secrets of the temple are guarded.”

  She felt the stir of attention focusing directly on her—shocked, amazed, hostile—and she tried to keep her head up as she was led farther into the room, glad even for the unrelenting grasp of O’Driscoll’s hand on her elbow, for at least the contact was human. She could feel the difference as she crossed the threshold, like a wave of otherness surrounding and enfolding her within the darkness behind the hoodwink, dizzying and disorienting. Seeking equilibrium in the familiar, she made herself visualize what would not have changed in the room: the location of the fireplace, the windows, the door. She guessed that the floor cloth she had painted and embroidered would be there too, so she took comfort from that familiarity as well.

  From there, based on what she had heard from the room above, she could even venture some idea of the ritual setting—though whether her visualization bore any resemblance to reality, she might never know. She had recognized several of the voices but had no idea how their owners were configured in the room. Directly in front of her she heard Andrew’s distinctive, limping footsteps continuing on toward the side of the room opposite the door. Simon, she sensed, had remained somewhere slightly behind her.

  “The Tyler’s post is unattended,” came Andrew’s brisk statement. “Inner Guard, you will take the Tyler’s post for the present, but do not close the door. We shall have need of your counsel. Junior Warden, you will cover for the Inner Guard.”

  Briefly Arabella heard the sound of movement behind her; then nothing.

  “Brethren,” Andrew said then, his words falling into the silence like drops of water into a well, seeming to come from a long way away, “the Lodge now being close tyled once more—or as close tyled as may be, under the circumstances—I declare this Lodge reopened in the first degree, for the purpose of dealing with this most unfortunate situation. As is most patently obvious, we have a problem. For those of you who may not have deduced it already, this is Brother Simon’s wife, Mistress Arabella Wallace. She is also sister to Brother Carmichael. She also, I fear, has heard far more than she ought to have done of our recent work.”

  “Perhaps the lady would care to offer an explanation for her actions,” said an unidentifiable voice from the left of Andrew.

  “Indeed,” said another voice from Andrew’s other side, “but let a chair be brought first. Mistress Wallace is frightened enough, I think, without having to worry over whether she will faint in front of all of us.”

  Arabella dipped her head in gratitude at that, sinking gratefully onto the chair that quickly presented itself against the backs of her legs. She thought the second speaker might be Dr. Franklin; she was not sure about the first. That voice had been rather cooler than she would wish and gave little promise of leniency.

  “Very well, Mistress Wallace,” came Andrew’s voice. “Please tell the brethren exactly what happened, as you related it upstairs.”

  She folded her hands in her lap, lifting her chin courageously.

  “Gentlemen, please be assured that it was never my intention to spy upon your ceremonies,” she said. “The Worshipful Master knows of my passion for books and learning and will tell you that I have his permission to borrow books from his room whenever I wish. That was all I sought to do tonight. Dressed to retire, as you see me now, I went into his room in search of several specific volumes, intending to take them back to my room to pass the time while my husband was occupied in your company. I did this long before any of you began to arrive—which is why you did not hear me walking above your heads. As—sometimes will happen, when browsing among books, I not only lost track of the time but fell asleep. When I awoke, a little while ago, it was to—to realize that your ritual had been in progress for some time.”

  She drew a deep breath to continue, wondering whether she should tell all the truth—how any word or sound she heard went instantly into memory, to be recalled at will, in perfect detail.

  “Unfortunately, that room lies directly above this one,�
� she went on, avoiding the problem for the moment. “Until I awoke, I had not realized how sound carries from the library below. I feared to stay and hear more—and feared to go, for fear of being caught for what I had already heard. While I debated what to do, a book slid off my lap, rendering my dilemma academic. The sound brought your Brother O’Driscoll to investigate. The rest is as you may surmise, by my presence here before you. If it will—ease your justifiable outrage at my all unwitting act, I vow to you that I shall never speak a word of what I have heard. Or write it down,” she added, in a small, hesitant voice, when no one spoke. “Or communicate it to anyone, in any way whatsoever.”

  After a short silence the voice she thought was Dr. Franklin’s spoke.

  “Worshipful, I am minded to inquire how much Mistress Wallace actually could have heard—and more important, how much she could be expected to remember.”

  “Mistress Wallace has a most interesting memory,” came a new voice from behind and to her right.

  She knew that one: James Ramsay. She found her head turning slightly in his direction in resentment, for she had hoped none of those who knew about her memory would betray her; but even as she thought it, she realized they could hardly keep silent about something that bore on the integrity of the Lodge they all had sworn to guard and preserve. If Ramsay had not said it, Justin or Andrew or even Simon would have been obliged to do so.

  “Perhaps Brother Ramsay would care to elaborate upon that remark,” said the cool, measured voice from the left of Andrew. “Are we to infer that Mistress Wallace’s memory is somehow extraordinary?”

  “There are those who have the gift of remembering everything they see,” Ramsay replied. “Mistress Wallace remembers everything she hears, exactly as she hears it. Many a British matron would be shocked to learn that her idle words concerning her husband’s activities had been recalled verbatim by Mistress Wallace and taken down to be forwarded to our agents. ’Tis a talent well useful to our patriot cause, but it bodes ill for the security of the Lodge.”