The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  “Flour?” the proprietress asked. “Not likely, lad, when more than enough is available from the Pennsylvania mills.”

  The boy shrugged. “Maybe that’s what made him so curious. Once he found ’em in the warehouse he studied the barrels and made a note of the address in Philadelphia written on top, where they’re to be delivered. My friend watched him from the hayloft, on account of the man’s sharp eyes, always searching where they had no business.”

  “Where’s this man now?” Duncan asked.

  “I told you. He had horses ready for his friends. They ate dinner in a private room, then he took them to see those barrels. The next morning off they went, the two on the Philadelphia pike and him off to the west, toward the Harris ferry. I remember seeing him through the crowd at the ruins of the tinsmith’s shop, which had burned down in the night.”

  “Are those barrels still here in Lancaster?”

  Mathias nodded. “Being shipped in a day or two. I can take you to see ’em right now.” He brightened as he stood. “And ye can see our planetary device, it’s not far from the warehouse!”

  “Not tonight, lad,” Mrs. McCrae said. “In the morning. Now see that Mr. McCallum gets set up in the back bedroom over the kitchen, by himself. Tighten the bed and see that he has the good down quilt from the chest in my own room. It’s not every day we host a Highland warrior.”

  Duncan was barely conscious by the time he lay down in the spacious bed. Even when the roosters started crowing he only rolled over, though he started having unsettling dreams of being chased by monstrous animals ridden by men with devil’s horns, and then, worse, of watching from a battlement as Sarah was being chased by the same demons. At last a ray of sunlight touched his face and he opened his eyes to see the groom Mathias standing by his bed.

  “It’s two hours since the cow was milked,” the boy said as he extended a pewter mug, “but Mrs. McCrae said I was to save some for you.” He backed away as Duncan sat up and accepted the mug. “I can show you the barrels and our amazing device,” he reminded Duncan before he turned. He paused at the door, patting the pockets of his waistcoat. “Oh, and most every traveler on the Pittsburgh road stays at one of the taverns here on High Street.”

  Duncan took a big swallow, then swung his legs off the bed. “I don’t follow, Mathias.”

  “Mother McCrae has me check with the other taverns and the post office when those she calls long travelers come in, because people usually expect them to stop in Lancaster. Ain’t the postal office grand? Sometimes I think about posting a letter to some made-up name in Boston or Charleston just so I can imagine its journey. But Mother McCrae scolded me when I told her, said it would be an abuse of the postal trust, whatever that means. I collect letters for travelers, which is almost as good.”

  “A kind sentiment,” Duncan said. “But I won’t be receiving any letters here.”

  With a perverse grin the boy proved him wrong, producing a crumpled envelope. “ ‘D. McCallum,’ it says, ‘traveler from the west, Lancaster Post Office.’ Traveler from the west. Sounds like a knight on one of those quests. I want to be one someday. Oh, and there was a ha’penny owed.”

  Duncan tossed the boy a penny as he pulled on his britches, then grabbed the letter out of his hand and latched the door as Mathias ran down the hall, clutching his reward.

  Duncan’s heart leapt as he recognized the handwriting, and his hand trembled as he broke the seal. Beloved D., it began:

  Lest you drop your precious cargo and rush to take the first boat north, please know that I am not in Edentown. For important reasons of shared interest I have journeyed to Philadelphia and you will find me at the Preston House, 419 Mulberry Street, though some are taking to calling it Arch Street. If I am not there I will be with Mrs. Franklin or with those who sent you on your journey. I will not begin to express my affectionate longing for you here since I am sending copies of this missive to unknown postmasters in Carlisle, York, Harris Landing, and Lancaster but I assure you I will express it well enough when we meet and at last we shall make our final plans.

  The letter was signed SR and beside it was a drawing of a deer and the Mohawk word for the shy forest creature Ohskennonton. His heart quickened. Sarah was invoking the tender moments when their relationship had blossomed, when they began sharing English and Mohawk words in the Edentown schoolhouse.

  Duncan sat as if in another dream, reading the unexpected letter over and over. He had been separated for months from his betrothed and had assumed it would be another three or four weeks before they were reunited at Edentown in the Catskills. Now he would see Sarah much sooner, perhaps even the next day. Our final plans. Sarah was speaking of the plans for their long-awaited wedding.

  He was so lighthearted as he entered the kitchen that he embraced Mrs. McCrae, then laughed as, clucking like a hen, she brushed away the flour that had rubbed onto his waistcoat. She pointed to a linen napkin covering a plate at the end of the long table. “Fresh biscuits and bacon,” she announced, “though ye slept so long we should be serving ye lunch.” Duncan chatted with her between bites, mentioning that he had friends coming from the west with two wagons who might enjoy her stew. He was on his last biscuit when through the window he saw Mathias waiting outside.

  Minutes later the young groom was leading him down an alley toward a substantial brick building when the boy paused, then guided Duncan down a second alley to a shed with stone walls. A youth in his teens sat against the door, apparently asleep. When Mathias kicked him, he gasped and leapt to his feet.

  “Jonathan Wentzel, you slaggard!” Mathias cried and kicked again. “You took a solemn oath!”

  The sentinel straightened but did not look Mathias in the eyes. “No one entered,” he mumbled.

  “What if those scoundrels came back?” Mathias barked. “The vandals! The Huns! You have a duty to civilization and you doze like a common drunkard!”

  Despite his chastising, the older boy blocked the way when Mathias reached for the door latch. “Password,” he demanded.

  Mathias gave an approving nod. “Beyond Mercury to Earth.”

  “Across the wide heavens,” the guard answered, and stepped aside.

  The room was dimly lit, but the sunlight filtering through the small, high loophole window lit the brass tube of Mathias’s planetary device. “Ain’t it grand!” the boy boasted. “Those scrubs thought they had us beat but our Society outfoxed them!”

  Duncan was growing more confused. “It’s a telescope,” he ventured, for the purpose of the long two-inch-wide tube mounted on a tripod seemed obvious, although he was not familiar with the brass rectangle mounted perpendicularly to the tube.

  “More!” Mathias beamed. “We are ready for the glorious third of June! America shall know the shape of her universe!”

  “We? The third?” Duncan asked, silently chiding himself for giving in to the boy’s strange game when he knew he should be searching for a fresh mount.

  “The Philosophical Society of Lancaster and Environs. We correspond with the esteemed society of scholars in Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society!” Mathias declared, pointing to a long chart, pinned to a board on the wall, that showed three precise fold marks and a ragged edge on one side, as if it had been extracted from a journal. “It’s never been properly done in America but it will now, if God shines on us. My momma says we are lucky to be alive in this year since we will be in heaven long before the next one.”

  Duncan yielded to his curiosity, bending to the paper to study its intricate diagrams and equations. Preparation for the June 3 Transit of Venus and Calculation of the Distance to the Sun, it read in large type along the top, then American Philosophical Society. Duncan had friends in the Society, some of whom were waiting for his crates from the Lick. Smaller type along the bottom declared In Gratitude to Charles Mason. He looked up from a drawing of a telescopic device on the paper and saw that it matched that of the device before him.

  “Your bullies from Pittsburgh thought t
hey could stop us, but they didn’t know the skill of our jeweler in town. We made him an honorary member for the fine repair work he did.”

  Duncan still struggled to fit all of the groom’s words together. “Surely you don’t mean the two men I was asking about?”

  The sullen sentinel answered. “We are so proud of it that we like to tell visitors. We have a brotherhood of scholars, we like to say.”

  Mathias sighed. “I told ye, ye can’t say that because the schoolmarm and her daughter are in it,” he chided, then turned to Duncan. “We like to show all visitors, so they can tell the world how important Lancaster is becoming. They seemed quite surprised, and complimented our work, but then before dawn we found them running out of here, laughing as they leapt on their horses and rode off. We found the tube on the floor, dented, and the old tripod smashed to splinters.”

  “The paper,” the older boy muttered.

  “Oh yes,” Mathias recalled, and retrieved a slip of paper tucked in a crack in the wall mortar. “They dropped this when they were doing their mischief.” He handed the paper to Duncan.

  It was a list, written in a precise, well-educated hand. Buttons, spoons, combs, lamp plates, dippers, betty lamps, plug burners.

  Duncan could make no sense of the tale or the paper, other than that it resembled a shopping list, and silently concluded that Mathias and his friends had somehow offended the men and the vandalism had been their reprisal. Mathias declined to take the list back, as if he wanted it gone from his snug scholars’ sanctuary, and Duncan pushed it into a pocket. “We were going to see those barrels,” he reminded Mathias, and saw the disappointment on the boy’s face. “I must hurry to Philadelphia,” he added, “but I shall tell Mrs. Franklin of your great device. I shall name you to her.”

  Mathias’s eyes went round. “The wife of the great Franklin?” he gasped.

  “I count Deborah Franklin as a friend, yes.”

  “And assure her that we do have a chronograph,” the youth at the door added. “We need a chronograph to record the points of the transit, but the parson said he would loan his to us on the great day.”

  “A chronograph,” Duncan repeated distractedly. “The barrels?” he asked Mathias. “Then we must find a horse.”

  Mathias was slowly recovering from the surprise of Duncan’s news. “Oh, aye,” he said, breaking from his trance. “Mrs. McCrae had me out at dawn, securing the best remount in all the town.”

  The barrels were in the large brick warehouse Duncan had seen earlier. Mathias waved at the teamsters loading wagons, then led Duncan down a stone-flagged aisle lined with stacks of casks, crates, hogsheads, and bundles of tanned skins. In a corner under a row of windows were a score of barrels marked FLOUR in black painted letters, all bound for a Philadelphia address marked on top, shipped from the same mill in Virginia, and all bearing shipping numerals chalked on the top, from one to twenty. Duncan walked among the barrels, trying to understand why the murderers’ accomplice from the south would have thought it important that Ezra’s killers see them. It was a mystery, but not one that he could allow to distract him from his urgent business in Philadelphia.

  “They were only interested in certain barrels,” the groom explained, pointing to a small black X on the side of one, inscribed near the top. Each of the bars of the X ended in small black balls. “This sign is on half of them.”

  “Why put a sign on only half the barrels?” Duncan asked. “If it was a miller’s mark, he would put them on all the barrels.”

  “Not a miller’s mark. I told ye. My friend was watching from nearby. The signs were not on the barrels before they entered, he is certain.” Mathias shrugged. “Maybe ye can ask them in Philadelphia.”

  “Ask whom?”

  “Whoever’s at that place. All the barrels have the same destination marked on the top. Preston House, on Mulberry Street.”

  Duncan hesitated, then extracted Sarah’s letter and reread the last lines with a chill. The barrels marked by the accomplice of Ezra’s killers were all going to the address where Sarah awaited him.

  Chapter 5

  HE RODE HARD ALONG THE Conestoga Road for three hours, then, not knowing when he would find another mount, climbed down and led his big bay for nearly a mile. By the time he had repeated the pattern twice, occasionally nibbling on the bread and cheese Mrs. McCrae had stuffed in the saddle pouch, he had reached a cluster of buildings marked by a crude sign stating MORGANTOWN. For the sake of his horse, he took a meal in the solitary tavern and then rented a room for a few hours’ rest. He rose in the small hours and was back on the road long before dawn, his mount falling into a long, easy gait that ate up the miles.

  He did his best to keep the horse from straining, but he could not keep his own mind from racing. Why was Sarah in Philadelphia? She was firmly anchored to Edentown, which had become a thriving community almost by her willpower alone. Sarah was a fixture there, the arbiter of disputes, the patron of the school, the sponsor of resettlement by craftsmen, and most of all the vital, calming link between the Iroquois and the settlers. Just weeks before, she had warned Duncan that because of the increasing tension between the tribes and the settlers who kept pushing west, she felt she could not stray far from her town. In her letter she said she had gone to Philadelphia for “important reasons of shared interest,” but the reasons must have been urgent indeed. What was the sudden crisis that had dragged her away from her beloved settlement? He passed the miles weighing their shared interests. Harmony with the tribes. Strengthening Edentown. Educating the children of settlers. Marriage. Avoiding her demonic father, who wanted Duncan dead. But surely none of these would have caused her to abandon Edentown for the Quaker city.

  Duncan had become sufficiently familiar with the grid pattern of Philadelphia’s streets that he had no trouble finding the livery stable to return his rented mount, leaving another shilling to assure the horse would have both added grain and an extra day of rest. Feeling unsteady himself after so many hours of hard riding, he found a table at a quiet tavern and drank several cups of strong black tea, keeping one hand on the leather knapsack he had brought from Pittsburgh. He couldn’t shake the sense that despite the violent mysteries that stalked his journey, the greatest mystery was that represented in the bag, the mystery of ancient earth. You took the bones without asking the gods, the aged Catchoka had declared. The gods will follow. Once again Duncan tried to parse the words, wondering if the gods would follow to punish him, or to protect him. There had been more words. There will be blood in the night. You will die again and again. In the fables of his Highland youth there had been reluctant mortals given missions by the gods that lived under the earth. Those who tried to outsmart the gods never survived, suffering hideous deaths. The tribes considered that the bones had been entrusted to them by their gods. Duncan had broken the trust. Had Ezra sensed that? Duncan wondered. He had not spoken with Duncan after they had exposed the big bone in the pit. Had he died believing Duncan had betrayed the gods?

  Not for the first time on his journey, Duncan extracted a little bone, roughly cylindrical, no larger than the top joint of his thumb, with a central hole running down its length. It was an incognitum bone, taken from the bone pit. Although he could not tell if it was from a toe, a tail, or some other mysterious appendage, it surely belonged to the ancient beast. He rolled it in his palm with a sense of foreboding. It had become a reminder of his duty, his shame, and the treacherous, unknown path before him.

  Preston House was a half hour’s walk away, just below the fields of the Northern Liberties. It was a spacious clapboard house that, like many in the district, appeared to have housed a shop or business in its ground floor. The windows at street level had been whitewashed, perhaps to obliterate the slogan that was now a dim shadow on the glass. WILKES AND LIBERTY, it said, a defiant call, invoking the British defender of freedom, that was seen and heard much more often on the streets of Boston and New York than in conservative Philadelphia. Above the ground floor, however, Duncan
saw a prosperous-looking residence with elegant brass candlesticks visible on the windowsills and brightly colored quilts draped out the windows of the third floor. He rapped with the large brass doorknocker, to no avail, then stepped back to look for signs of movement in the windows above, without success.

  Hoisting his knapsack to one shoulder, he moved down Fifth Street to Market Street, turning into the bricked walkway in the middle of the block that led to a handsome house in the middle of a walled courtyard. The front door was opened on his third knock by a tired-looking woman in a white apron and cap. “Deliveries in the rear,” she instructed, then hesitated.

  He smiled, brushing his hair back, and nodded to the woman. “I am pleased to see you in good health, Mrs. Hanks.”

  “Mr. McCallum?” she asked, then pushed the door wide open. “Lord, we didn’t expect you for another fortnight or more!”

  “Urgent business hastened my return,” Duncan replied, looking past the housekeeper. “I was hoping to find Sarah Ramsey with Mrs. Franklin.”

  “Oh dear, and didn’t they have luncheon here not two hours ago! But Mistress Franklin went off to the government house to hear the debates and Miss Sarah—” She paused and turned toward the kitchen. “Priscilla!” she called. When there was no answer, she gestured for Duncan to follow her down the hall to the rear of the house. They found the young scullery maid picking peas in the kitchen garden, singing to herself so loudly she could not hear Mrs. Hanks call from the back step. Duncan slipped past the housekeeper and, stopping at the end of the garden, tossed a pebble into the girl’s basket. The sudden irritation on her face vanished as she recognized him.

  “Duncan!” she cried, dropping her basket as she leapt forward to throw her arms around his waist. “Thank God the wilds did not kill you!” The girl had helped Duncan on more than one of his visits to Philadelphia. Laughing, he pushed her to arm’s length, then fished a glistening black stone from a pocket and handed it to the girl, who pushed back her curly mop of hair to see it better. “Obsidian,” he explained. “From a cliff on the Ohio. A token of my appreciation.” On his last visit, Priscilla had diverted a patrol searching for a secret Sons meeting by screaming “Thief!” and chasing an imaginary culprit down a nearby alley.