The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan had not forgotten that the mate of the Muskrat said his passengers had equipped themselves like rangers the night Ezra had died. “If we have to repel boarders, I will be much comforted to have them with us,” he said, then directed Lewis to lean over a basin as he poured sulfur water over the wound. He quickly finished his treatment, reminded Lewis he would need daily attention, and suggested that he linger after the lunch mess in the galley, then slip away to the sick bay in secret. Duncan did not want the other officers to know he was cultivating an informant.

  “In secret?” Lewis asked.

  “I know the army, ensign. I was in the war too. You don’t want to appear to rely too heavily on staff officers or medical men.”

  Ensign Lewis chewed on Duncan’s words a moment, then nodded, though the effort caused him to wince again. “After the midday meal then, sir, as you suggest, though I mustn’t tarry, since that is when I am supposed to be polishing boots.”

  Someone had asked Lewis to pay his nighttime visit to the aft hold, and chances were it had been one of Ezra’s killers, but Duncan still had no proof. He expressed his frustration to Ishmael as he joined him in the mizzentop, where the Nipmuc was absorbed in reading Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

  “But we know three things,” Ishmael pointed out. “We know the killers were a pair of men, and that the pair likely served with the rangers, or at least trained with them. And now we know Ensign Lewis is doing their bidding.” He gazed down at the deck in silence for several breaths. “Robinson Crusoe developed a whole new perspective on the world, as he studied in solitude,” Ishmael observed. “Like being in a mizzentop. It’s remarkable how much you can see looking down on the deck from here. Everyone below takes no notice of those above. I count four sets of two and three who regularly speak with each other, as if friends from before the voyage. If the purser is willing, we may discover if they are from the same units, for he would have a log that identifies each passenger.”

  Ishmael pointed to a familiar figure as he emerged onto the deck. “Ensign Lewis is a popular man, it seems, for he speaks with almost every other officer. Or perhaps it is because he is the most junior, and eager to do the bidding of all. But he seems especially attentive to two pairs of officers.” He indicated a pair by the rail, who were watching a school of flying fish traveling alongside the ship, then another pair who sat on kegs playing cards. As they watched, Lewis approached the cardplayers and handed one a small rectangular object, probably a snuffbox. The man who reached for it, snapping what sounded like a complaint about Lewis’s tardiness, was the major Duncan had encountered in Philadelphia.

  “Hastings,” Duncan said. “Major Hastings and his lieutenant served with the rangers.”

  “Lieutenant Nettles,” Ishmael said, then shrugged. “It proves nothing.”

  Duncan watched in silence for a moment. From the moment he had recognized the major from his encounter in Philadelphia, his instincts had warned him of the man, not because of any specific evidence but because Hastings’s combination of loose-limbed prowess and heartless arrogance made him the kind of man who killed easily. “Once your uncle and I found a small brass gear among the stones in a Catskill creek,” he said. “My interest was sparked and after a few more minutes of searching I had found a lead disc mounted on a wire, several more gears, and a horseshoe with two bent nails still in it. ‘Sometimes truths are constructed of many pieces,’ Conawago said, ‘but it doesn’t make the truth less real. The truth before us is that a reckless settler lost his inheritance.’

  “When I confessed my confusion, he said a pack horse lost its load here, which could have been prevented if the man had paid attention to the loose nails. The horse started, shifting a poorly packed load and spilling a clock into the stream, smashing it into pieces. Conawago said, ‘A poor settler traveling these trails doesn’t have the money to buy a clock, so it would come by inheritance.’ ”

  Ishmael considered Duncan’s words. “Tall with black hair, when he isn’t wearing his wig. The major matches one piece of the puzzle.”

  “As do three or four others. But this particular officer trained with rangers and arrived in Philadelphia with his lieutenant just before me, flashing a treacherous-looking dagger.”

  “Pierre died from a long single slice across his throat. It could have been from a dagger like that,” Ishmael added. “The truth is a puzzle of many pieces.”

  “It doesn’t tell how he came to believe the crates were packed on board this particular ship, which he did not even expect to be traveling on.”

  “The gods,” Ishmael whispered. Duncan had not forgotten the haunted way Ishmael had spoken of the old gods that night on the Ohio, nor Ishmael’s fear that he would fail them.

  They stared out over the endless water for several minutes.

  “Our cargo has distinctive shapes,” Duncan reminded Ishmael. “If he believes the bones are to be conveyed across the Atlantic, then surely he will be checking every cargo hold he encounters. And if he knows the crates are on board, does he truly believe no one is accompanying them?” He pointed. A stone’s throw away from their perch, an albatross glided past. They watched the huge, elegant bird until it was lost on the horizon.

  “What if the bones themselves are meaningless to them?” Ishmael asked. “What if they just see the bones as bait, drawing out the secret Sons operatives so they can kill them? They’ve already eliminated two.”

  Duncan weighed the words. “The bones are important, or the killers would not have tried to steal them on the Ohio. But we should sleep in shifts, switching when the ship bell rings the change in watch,” he suggested. He touched a pocket of his waistcoat, which held a slip of paper that he had been given in Philadelphia. He had long since memorized the address on it. 7 CRAVEN STREET. He prayed the powerful Dr. Franklin could protect them once they reached London.

  Ishmael noticed Duncan’s motion. He well knew what was in the pocket. “We have nothing to fear,” he declared with a hollow smile. “We’ll soon have the wizard of lightning on our side.”

  Sadness had never entirely left the young Nipmuc’s countenance since they arrived in Philadelphia, when, as Duncan now knew, he had learned of his uncle’s fate. His questions about the place called Bedlam were becoming more frequent. Duncan had at first professed to know only that it was a famous London hospital, the proper name of which was Bethlem Hospital, itself an abbreviation for Bethlehem. But after a few days in the company of the crew, Ishmael had confronted Duncan in the narrow confines of the sick bay.

  “How is it,” the Nipmuc had impatiently asked, “that a medical man has no real knowledge of Bedlam when half the crew has tales of its horrors? I can’t deal with an enemy I do not understand, but you become a stone wall whenever I ask you. Shall I just accept the stories the crew tells me? That it is really run as a freak show where human oddities can be viewed for a penny? That its long halls echo with screams and insane laughter all night and day? That no one ever leaves except as a hollow shell of a human, driveling saliva and muttering to themselves with no recognition of friends and family?”

  “I haven’t been there,” Duncan explained. “And do you believe all the tales told around campfires of beasts in the woods that shift their shape from man to bear, or of trees whose fruit will grant immortality? Please, Ishmael, we must wait until we reach the Thames and discover the truth for ourselves.”

  “The bosun had an older cousin sent there. He went to visit him with an aunt and she fainted at the sight of him. He was in a room with bars on the door, stark naked, banging his head bloody against the wall. When the bosun called out to him he just turned and crowed like a rooster.”

  The words squeezed Duncan’s heart like a vise.

  “It’s Conawago, Duncan! The last great man of our tribe! If even half of what I hear about Bedlam is true, he will be destroyed in there!” Ishmael’s voice cracked. “He’d rather die than suffer the horrors I’ve heard. I don’t care about the bones. I don’t care about Shawnee gods. I need
Conawago.”

  “All I know is from professors in Edinburgh,” Duncan finally said. “So it is not true knowledge, it is second knowledge,” he added, using cautionary words they had sometimes heard at Iroquois council fires. “I will tell you what they said.” With a chill heart, Duncan explained that Bedlam had been established as a charitable hospital centuries earlier and gained a reputation for its treatment of those who were mentally unbalanced. “There are renowned medical men there,” Duncan said doubtfully. He too had heard the terrifying tales of Bedlam, some worse than those Ishmael related.

  “The stories make it sound like a living hell,” Ishmael said. “We can’t even be sure he is still—” Emotion choked his words away. “And you have other business, with the great Franklin.”

  Duncan gripped his shoulder. “We are going to London to bring Conawago home,” he vowed. “Neither the bones nor the king shall interfere.”

  Ensign Lewis dutifully arrived after the lunch mess, appearing more nervous than the day before. Duncan surveyed his uniform as he pushed Lewis down onto a cot. A faint line of yellow paint ran across his shoulder.

  As Duncan washed the wound on his scalp, they exchanged pleasantries about the weather, the spectacular sunrise, and the great shark that the army officers had been taunting with scraps of food.

  “I believe we can save your scalp,” Duncan declared as he finished, “but I am not certain about your brains.” Lewis seemed unaware of the strands soaked in yellow paint hanging from beams of the dimly lit hold.

  Lewis looked up, startled. “Sir?”

  “You surely must have lost them if you were rummaging around the cargo again like some sneak thief. A merchant ship holds its cargo in trust to the owners. British laws impose severe penalties for tampering with it. But that punishment would pale by that the captain would inflict if he discovered someone stealing or destroying his cargo. That shark would no doubt relish one of your appendages.”

  The blood drained from Lewis’s face before Duncan had finished speaking. “I never—” he sputtered. “I couldn’t say nae to—” His face was twisted with fear.

  “If you could let me help,” Duncan said, “I might soften the captain’s temper. Perhaps there is a story, an excuse that could earn his forgiveness.”

  “Prithee, sir, I beg you! My career would be over before it began! I wasn’t tampering exactly. He ordered to me look, said it was just a reconnaissance mission. He’s a major! He dwells among the gods in London! The Horse Guards!”

  “Major Hastings, you mean,” Duncan suggested, then hesitated, considering Lewis’s new disclosure. The Horse Guards were the army elite, responsible for the security of the king and for the overall administration of the army.

  Lewis did not disagree. “Just look, he said. Find a big curving object, longer than my own height, wrapped in canvas. Look for shipping numbers or names or any other mark, then seek out trunks or crates with the same mark. Note how many there are and where they sit in the hold and what names are on them. That’s all.”

  “And you found what you sought?”

  Lewis winced. “There’s rats down there, as big as cats. And the stink from the bilge is enough to steal your breath away. I found the big curving thing but it was packed tight between other cargo. I found its mark, a cross with a circle centered over it. It’s what they call a Scottish cross, I know because it’s the kind of cross my mother keeps over our hearth, from her days as a girl. But I could find the mark on only two crates. He wasn’t well pleased, said the rest must be buried beneath other crates and that I had to look harder.”

  “Why would the major be interested in some civilian’s cargo?” Duncan asked.

  “He would never trust such a secret to a lowly ensign. His aide Lieutenant Nettles says some of the other officers owe him gambling debts and he’s probably trying to locate the assets they pledged to him. I’m just an ensign,” Lewis reminded Duncan. “Major Hastings says back at the Horse Guards stables he scrapes ensigns off his boots each morning.”

  As Lewis turned, one more question occurred to Duncan. “Ensign, one of the crew found a snuffbox, one with a hunting scene etched on it. The major partakes of snuff. Could it be his?” Duncan had remembered that Podrake had mentioned Hastings’s snuffbox, adorned with naked Roman women.

  “Oh no, sir, the major’s snuffbox has women on it, in fine enamel. Gypsies or Italians or such, I guess, for they be all shamelessly unclad.”

  The Horse Guards. Duncan stared down at Major Hastings from the mizzentop where he sat with Ishmael once more. It explained Duncan’s confusion over the ornate uniform the major sometimes wore, for the unit was stationed in London and had not served in the American theater. He had never heard of any of its soldiers even traveling in America, but two had gone in civilian clothes to murder his friends.

  “He wants to block the unloading of our shipment,” Ishmael suggested when Duncan related what he had learned. When Duncan did not reply, he added, “It doesn’t matter what uniform he wears, Duncan. He killed Ezra and Pierre.”

  “I didn’t understand at first when Lewis said Hastings resided with the gods in London,” Duncan said. “But he’s right. A major of the Horse Guards is well known to the Secretary at War, probably even to the king himself.”

  “There he is again,” Ishmael said.

  Misunderstanding, Duncan looked down at the deck. “Who?”

  “King George.” The name had a strangely chilling effect. “I never really grasped the notion of a king,” Ishmael said. “They pretend to have authority over men’s lives. But I never gave him authority over me. Conawago never gave him authority. And I know you too well to think you had given consent to be governed by the man who destroyed the Highland clans.”

  “That was his father,” Duncan said in a bitter voice. “And you are sounding more and more like your uncle, Ishmael,” he added with a melancholy smile, knowing they might never see Conawago again. “We live in the king’s nation, so have to abide by the king’s rules.”

  “Most of them,” Ishmael amended. “Elsewise there would be no point to the Sons of Liberty.”

  “Most of them,” Duncan agreed.

  “My uncle once told me that kings held public debates over whether Indians had souls,” Ishmael added after a moment.

  “That was in another century,” Duncan said, “in Spain and Portugal.”

  Ishmael gave an absent nod. “I was thinking that the closer we get to London the closer we are to the other side of the debate, the proper side.”

  “Other side?”

  “Whether the king has a soul.”

  When Major Hastings finally presented himself, it was without his wig and uniform. He was dressed in a dun-colored sleeveless waistcoat and linen shirt, with a long silver chain extending from a buttonhole into a waistcoat pocket. He was the last of the three men in line for the morning sick call. Duncan quickly dealt with the other two, an infantry officer seeking a cure for his hangover and a seaman with a six-inch splinter in his foot.

  “My father suffered from consumption,” Hastings declared. “I have a cough at night and thought I might get a renowned medical man to listen to my lungs.”

  “Renowned in the sense that I am the only one for a thousand miles,” Duncan replied, lifting the infirmary’s hollow section of horn used for listening to chests.

  “Nonsense! The captain from the Buffs says you cured an intimate disease of his.”

  Duncan spoke in his stiff professional voice. “I gave him blue ointment for his rash and the condition went into relapse, as it is known to do. It will return when he reaches the brothels of London.”

  Hastings laughed and removed his waistcoat and shirt, leaving only his thin small clothes vest, then studied Duncan’s face. “By God, it’s true! My lieutenant said he recognized you from the tavern in Philadelphia. I declare, you made light practice of me that evening! What fun we had, eh?”

  “I recall that I gave you fair warning about frontier women,” Duncan rejoine
d, and pressed the horn against Hastings’s chest.

  “I regretted your abrupt departure. I would have gladly shared a bottle of port once I freed my hair from the wall.”

  “I was weary and the crowd was noisy,” Duncan said, and pushed his ear to the curved horn, holding up his hand for a moment’s silence.

  “What a coincidence to find you on this ship,” Hastings said when Duncan rose. “You gave no indication that you were a seafaring man.”

  “The opportunity arose rather suddenly,” Duncan said. “I was in search of new employment and have always been lured by watery horizons.”

  “But surely an educated man like yourself should be dining with His Majesty’s officers. Don’t let the uniforms intimidate you, doctor.”

  “The ship isn’t fitted out for so many passengers. The captain asked my assistant and myself to take accommodation with the crew.”

  “Such a musty, belching lot,” the major said.

  “I don’t mind them. And it shall be a short voyage if the weather holds.” He made a dismissive gesture with the horn. “Your chest seems clear.”

  “But the linen may obscure the sound,” Hastings pointed out, and pulled off his vest.

  Duncan froze. Across the major’s right shoulder and chest was an intricate tattoo. It appeared to have been done by a practiced artisan, in the style of the woodland tribes. It depicted a man in a British army uniform with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. Scattered about him were half a dozen bodies, two of which were decapitated.

  “You were in the war, I take it,” Duncan said as he collected himself and bent with the horn again.

  “Here and there. Detached service in the French War. And the Indian War,” Hastings added, meaning the short-lived tribal rebellion of 1763.

  Duncan gazed at the tattoo again. The figure’s uniform consisted only of the tunic. The rest of his accoutrement was the more casual attire of a ranger. “Artists do tend to exaggerate,” he observed with studied disinterest. “A good show for London bedchambers, no doubt.”