The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan watched Ezra performing his ritual for several more minutes, trying to make sense of what the former slave was doing. He had come to greatly admire the quiet, stalwart man whom he had first met in the house of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia during a late-night meeting hosted by Franklin’s wife, who was often her husband’s surrogate while he was in London. Duncan had raised no question when the sponsors of the expedition had told him Ezra would join Duncan and Ishmael, for they had explained that he had been on the Ohio before. He had simply assumed Ezra had been selected for the combination of that knowledge and his great physical strength. But now Duncan reflected on how Ezra had been on surprisingly familiar terms with the leaders of the Sons and wondered if there had been more behind the choice of this freedman, who had been a cheerful companion on their voyage but always guarded when Duncan asked about his past. At the landing the day before, Duncan had thought he had seen a flash of recognition between Ezra and the Shawnee warrior traveling with Boone. But that seemed impossible—and if it were true, why keep it secret?

  He extracted a tattered letter from inside his waistcoat and read it for what might have been the hundredth time since leaving Philadelphia.

  The threat to the colonies grows more acute each day. If they could bend the prime minister into silence I swear they would make membership in the Sons of Liberty a capital offense. Only one path, both secret and treacherous, remains if we are to avoid the bloodletting. You must bring me the relics from the Great Lick in the Kentucky lands. Time, and secrecy, is of the essence. American incognitum and its mortis antiquae may save us yet. God speed and God preserve our liberty.

  B. Franklin

  Craven Street, London

  Franklin’s wife had thrust her husband’s letter to the leaders of the Sons, already tattered from circulation within their circle, inside Duncan’s waistcoat as he left her house that night, bound for Pittsburgh. Duncan was not sure why he had been selected for the strange mission, but the leaders of the Sons in that Philadelphia meeting had spoken with desperation in their voices and pleaded with Duncan to carry out the mission so urgently requested by Franklin. Sarah, Duncan’s betrothed, had bitten her lip and tearfully nodded when he had told her they had to delay their wedding once more. Now, arduous weeks later, he was at the mysterious Lick, facing the American mystery creature. The incognitum and its ancient death may save us yet, Franklin had written.

  The sun was rising into a clear azure sky as they set out across the Lick the next morning. Deer browsing on the salt at the edge of the sulfurous bog looked up, then bounded into the shadows. A raven flew low and dismissed them with a raucous caw. The ground underneath was boggy and the sulfur smell more intense after the rain, but the men were not to be discouraged. They walked in a line, swinging buckets and leaning shovels on their shoulders, singing one of the French ditties Pierre Dumont had taught them during their long days of poling the Arabella downriver. The ebullient Frenchman led three men carrying a scaffold of lashed logs with a mounted pulley he had devised to erect over the pit.

  “Ivory!” one of the rivermen shouted, and half the line broke away to investigate a small horn-shaped object that protruded from the ground. Pierre pushed through the men and dropped to his knees, then, with sudden, intense effort, began scooping away the wet earth with the small gardener’s shovel he carried. By the time Duncan arrived, he had exposed several inches of the curving ivory.

  “Mon Dieu, Duncan! Can it be a tusk?” Dumont exclaimed. He happily agreed to Duncan’s suggestion that he stay with four men to excavate the new discovery while Duncan and the others recovered the large bone they had discovered the day before.

  It took nearly an hour to raise the scaffold and lower the water to the level of the day before, and Dumont and his men were already prying their tusk, nearly seven feet long, out of the mud by the time Duncan had rigged a rope to the pulley and lowered himself into the muddy pit. He attempted to reach under the huge femur to fasten the rope, but something new was blocking it, probably a root. He paused to scan the flat once more for Ezra, who had left the Lick but had not appeared at breakfast, then pushed with his back against the bone’s exposed end, bracing his feet against the wall of the pit. The bone shuddered, then began to rise. Duncan watched the pulley, calling for the men to pull in unison, but a moment later the rope went slack and the man closest to the pit staggered backward, crossing himself. Another dropped to his knees with a terrified groan and vomited.

  “The demon is among us!” Reverend Podrake gasped and clutched his hands together in prayer.

  Duncan followed their gaze to where the bone crept out of the water. Clutching the femur was a huge muddy hand.

  In his horror, Duncan flattened himself against the wall of the pit. He did not even realize that he was struggling to push himself up over the edge until Ishmael jumped in beside him and grabbed his arm to calm him. The young Nipmuc took the gourd of fresh water that hung from his belt and emptied it over the hand, washing away the grime. The flesh was newly dead, the skin a mahogany color.

  “Not ancient,” Ishmael declared in a grim tone. “And not a demon.”

  “Ezra!” Duncan cried and struggled forward, dropping down to futilely grope for his friend’s body.

  “Stay,” he heard Ishmael say. The word was directed at the rest of the crew, who were backing away. “He was our friend,” Ishmael said. “We must do the right thing. Pull the rope as we planned.” He took the rope that Duncan had left dangling and fastened it lower down, around the breadth of the bone, submerging half his head in the process.

  Minutes later they had pulled the great artifact out of the pit, releasing the body that had been pinned under it. The mask of mud on Ezra’s face made him appear more like some horrid gothic statue than the joyful traveling companion whose deep bass voice had often echoed in song down the river at night.

  Duncan could not recall a task more painful, or more hideous, than transporting the body of his friend out of the pit and across the fetid bog. He first tried with three others, one man to each limb, but as they sank to their shins in the mud, the riverman holding one of Ezra’s legs pitched forward and fell sprawling across the dead man. He spat frantic curses as he struggled to his feet, then retreated, wanting no more of the task. Finally they cut pieces of rope to cradle the body, but Ezra’s head kept lolling down, dragging his face in the mud. At last Gideon, tears streaming down his face, brought a section of canvas for a litter. Several more men came to carry the corpse to camp.

  An hour later Ezra’s body lay on one of the slablike table stones. After bringing buckets of fresh water, the rivermen retreated to the Lick, where Dumont, having expressed his deep regret over Ezra’s fate, had reminded Duncan of the urgency of their mission and resumed the retrieval of artifacts. Gideon, murmuring prayers in his native language, refused all help in cleaning the body, except from Ishmael, who had been whispering his own prayers in a different tribal tongue. As they finished their task, Ishmael inserted fragrant cedar stems between the lifeless hands Gideon had crossed over Ezra’s heart.

  Duncan struggled to push down the agony of the death as he looked over the Lick, trying to understand the tragic accident. He had not seen Ezra since sunset the evening before, when the freedman had continued his vigil in the fading light. Worried about the former slave, Duncan had risen in the night, when a dense fog had settled over the Lick, but when he had started toward the flat, Gideon had appeared out of the shadows to stop him. “Not yet,” Ezra’s cousin had cautioned. “He be back when it’s done; can’t interfere when a man speaks with the gods.”

  There was clearly a secret between the two Africans, something that touched on the sacred, and even now Duncan was loath to pry into it. Weakened by his hours in the rain without rest or nourishment, Ezra must have tried to remove the bone by himself, slipped, and been pinned by it. It was the only possible explanation. He had mired himself in the mud with no firm surface to push against, but in his struggle had slipped farther under t
he heavy bone and been trapped by its weight. Duncan himself had once nearly died in a Virginia bog, being sucked into a pocket of quicksand, so he well knew the dangers of a mud pit. But why would Ezra think he had to retrieve the bone alone in the gloom of night? It made no sense. A crew was coming after sunrise to perform that very task.

  Ever since agreeing to travel to the Lick, Duncan had known there were secrets surrounding their mission. But those were secrets of Philadelphia and London, secrets of the Sons of Liberty leaders and Benjamin Franklin, secrets that surely did not reach hundreds of miles down the Ohio. He and Dumont had been trusted with a straightforward task that simply called for Duncan’s frontier skills and Dumont’s scholarly knowledge. Indeed, now that the sun was drying the ground, Dumont was using that knowledge to assemble an impressive collection of giant ribs, huge vertebrae, and more long curving tusks. The giant femur had already departed with a party of four men carrying it in a sling, with instructions to wrap it with blankets and a cushion of pine needles and moss when they reached the keelboat.

  Duncan turned at the sound of whispers from the shadows beyond their camp. The woodsman Boone had returned, and now he stood under an oak with his two tribal companions. The three seemed to be arguing about something, and one of them was now pointing at Duncan. Boone grew silent, gazing uncertainly at Duncan, then hesitantly approached Gideon and whispered in his ear. Gideon too stared at Duncan, and Ishmael took a step in Duncan’s direction as if he might need protection.

  “This Seneca,” Boone said as he approached, jerking a thumb to the taller of the two natives, “says we must let the body speak to you. He says he has seen you at council fires and that the wise women of the League consult with you about these things.”

  Duncan cast a new, appraising gaze at the tall warrior. If the man was of the western Iroquois, he might indeed have seen Duncan at one of his frequent visits to Iroquois council fires. “These things?” he asked Boone.

  “Death.”

  “Dying,” the Seneca said, as if correcting the woodsman.

  Ishmael relaxed and cast an apologetic glance at Duncan.

  Boone scratched the stubble of his jaw and studied Duncan with new interest. “For some reason the Iroquois call you the Deathspeaker,” he said and shook his head. “Makes me shudder just to say it,” he added, tightening his grip on his long rifle.

  Duncan looked at Gideon, who nodded, then carefully washed his hands, rolled up his sleeves, and stepped to the body of his friend. “I was trained as a physician in Edinburgh,” he explained. “I will have to touch him, to closely examine his body.”

  “But it was an accident,” Ishmael interjected. “Surely that is obvious. A terrible accident.” His voice trailed off as the Seneca moved closer to the slab on which Ezra lay. The tribesmen were always uneasy when Duncan conducted what they considered his communication with corpses. They wouldn’t lightly ask the Deathspeaker to do so.

  Gideon and Ishmael had already removed Ezra’s filthy shirt, and with clenched jaws they braced the dead man into a sitting position as Duncan examined his back. He paused over the web of old scars along the former slave’s spine, the work of an overseer’s whip, and felt the skin crawl along his own spine, which bore similar, more recent scars from months Duncan had spent enslaved on a Virginia plantation.

  Probing the flesh along Ezra’s shoulders and neck, he discovered a soft, spongy spot at the base of his skull. Making no comment, he helped lower the body onto the slab and studied the rest of the dead man’s skull, pausing over another spongy spot along his left temple. He braced himself and opened Ezra’s eyes, now cleaned of mud and clearly showing the red stain of burst capillaries. Next he studied the lifeless arms and hands, which revealed several small cuts in the palms, and only quickly scanned the tattoos on his torso, knowing that since they were done by a tribe across the ocean, they would be meaningless to him.

  “He had always worn a necklace underneath his tunic,” Duncan said to Gideon. “Did he still have it?”

  “I removed it,” Gideon replied with an edge of warning in his voice.

  Duncan returned Gideon’s defiant stare a moment, then reached inside his own shirt and pulled out the totem he had worn since his early years with the tribes. “I am well aware of how to treat things touched by the gods,” he assured Gideon.

  The cook gave a reluctant nod, then stepped to one of the wooden boxes he kept spices in and extracted a braided lanyard with a leather-bound bundle hanging from it. The worn leather, pocked and with a greenish tint, was unfamiliar to Duncan. It bulged from an irregular shape inside, just as Duncan’s own quillwork totem pouch did. Gideon held it out as if he wanted Duncan to take it. Duncan leaned forward but did not touch the bundle that Ezra had grasped while praying. “Sometimes a totem is taken as a trophy,” he said. “I wanted to know if he still had it, and if so, what people it was from.” He quickly saw, however, that the last inquiry had no simple answer. Several objects were tied around the bundle. He recognized the feathers of an owl, a solemn protector of the woodland tribes, fastened with a strip of black-and-white skunk fur along one side of the bundle, but the other side held objects unfamiliar to him. A three-inch claw was fastened tightly against the bundle, and a large white bead of what must have been ivory carved with intricate patterns was sewn into its end.

  Gideon recognized Duncan’s confusion. He pointed to the pocked leather. “Crocodile,” he explained, then “Ingwe” as he indicated the long claw. “Leopard.” Lastly, he pointed to the beautiful bead. “Protector,” he stated.

  “Protector?” Duncan asked.

  “Protector spirit,” Gideon said in an insistent tone. He was clearly not inclined to explain further.

  Duncan did not voice the question that leapt to his lips. Why would Ezra wear a talisman that combined symbols of his African tribe and those of the American woodland tribes? He examined the dead man’s legs and feet, then stepped back so he could address not only Gideon but also Boone and his native companions.

  “Ezra suffered two blows before he died,” he declared. “A slight one here”—he indicated the patch of slight discoloration on the left temple—“then on the back of his skull, more severely. Perhaps he slipped,” Duncan admitted, “hitting the side of his head on the bone, then fell backward onto an unseen rock. If he fell unconscious into the pit, he would have quickly drowned.”

  “You don’t sound convinced,” Boone observed.

  “Both of the blows are well defined, rectangular in shape. They would have been rounder if his head had glanced off the bone and a rock.”

  His companions chewed on Duncan’s words. It was Ishmael who broke the silence. “You mean he could have been hit with a club or war hammer.”

  Duncan nodded. “The blow on the back could have been enough to kill him. There are many fresh abrasions on his hands and wrists. Perhaps they were all from his labors yesterday, but I tend not to think so.”

  “And if not?” Boone asked.

  “He was defending himself with his bare hands. He was attacked.”

  “But the truth of it can never be known,” Gideon said forlornly.

  Duncan leaned over the body. “Ezra can tell us the truth,” he stated. “I am going to push on his chest. If it was an accident and he drowned, water will be discharged. If he died out of the pit and his body was placed there to look like an accident, only air will emerge.” When no one objected, he pressed the dead man’s ribs. Nothing emerged, neither water nor air. Confused, he bent and tried again. The chest was tight, with none of the movement he expected from emptying lungs. He opened the dead man’s jaw, holding it open with one hand as he extended the fingers of the other down Ezra’s throat.

  The rumble of protest from Gideon died away as Duncan drew out a rolled and crumpled piece of paper. It was stained with blood, saliva, and at the topmost portion, muddy water. The natives with Boone gasped and backed away.

  Gideon groaned and a tear rolled down his cheek. “I don’t understand,” he said
in a hoarse voice.

  “He didn’t fall and hit his head,” Duncan replied. “He was knocked unconscious and this paper was forced into his throat. His windpipe was bloody, which means the paper was pounded down with a stick or a handle of some kind to be certain it blocked his breathing.”

  “A handle?” Gideon asked.

  “The handle of a tomahawk or maybe a pistol barrel,” Ishmael suggested, then looked back to Boone. The woodsman’s companions were gone.

  The torn and bloody paper had been a letter, though most of its writing had been dissolved or rendered illegible. Duncan lay it flat at the edge of the rock. He made out the words Philadelphia and Covenant. Only the last line and signature, protected by being folded repeatedly, was fully intact. God grant you the protection of a worthy partner for your noble mission, it said in an elegant hand. Duncan stared at the signature, disbelieving.

  Ezra had been choked to death with a letter from Benjamin Franklin.

  Chapter 2

  THE DISCOVERY THAT EZRA HAD been murdered made the weight of his death almost unbearable. No one spoke, and they paused in their work only to look up when a wood buffalo emerged at the far side of the Lick and gave a long, lonely bellow. Duncan, Ishmael, and Gideon had finally finished wrapping Ezra in soft deerskins brought by the taciturn Boone when Gideon broke the mournful silence. “This place of sulfur and fog is no place for his grave,” Ezra’s cousin said.

  Boone seemed to have been considering the same point. “There’s a little meadow above the river landing, a place of spring flowers and birdsong,” he suggested.

  Gideon agreed, and Duncan spoke to Pierre Dumont and the crewmen preparing to carry the next load to the boat. They laid out a length of canvas and carefully placed the body on it. As four of them lifted the litter, Gideon rushed forward, knelt, and touched his forehead to the shrouded head, murmuring in his African tongue as tears streamed down his cheeks.