The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  Hastings gave a silky laugh. “You wouldn’t credit how they swoon. But this one is most accurate. Lieutenant Nettles described it to the artist just as he witnessed it. Six dead in a matter of moments. What was it he called me? Oh yes, the army’s only Oxford-trained Viking.” Hastings gave another thin laugh and reached for his clothes. “I must confess that when the blood starts spilling a terrible thrill runs through me. What a day that was. Regrettably, only one Frenchman. The rest were just savages. Although,” he added in a contemplative tone, “there is one custom of theirs I learned to enjoy. They take trophies from those they kill. What a collection I got that day. A war ax, a knife with a staghorn hilt, some bulky pouches that hung from their necks, a string of human ears that I threw away for the stench, a couple of old French crucifixes, and some of those belts of white and purple beads they make such a fuss over. What do they call them?”

  “Wampum,” Duncan said, and instantly regretted it.

  “Ah,” Hastings said with a narrow smile as he began dressing, “so among the many things you hide is knowledge of the tribes.”

  Duncan tried not to react. Had Hastings already connected him to the incognitum? For a moment he feared that Reverend Podrake had given Hastings his name, then realized that Podrake had not met Duncan until after his meeting with Hastings in Pittsburgh. “We often encounter natives in the colonies,” he observed, then shifted the subject. “Detached service, you said. Do you often go to America on your assignments?”

  “The main body of the Horse Guards must always remain close to our blessed king. But I go wherever my king needs me. There is greater and greater need in the American colonies. Treason festers, and as you well know, doctor, rotting flesh must be excised.”

  “Your colonels and generals must put great trust in you.”

  Hastings laughed again. “We are a small, intimate unit. Just the one colonel, and I hold a stack of his promissory notes representing his considerable gambling debt. Mostly the Secretary at War and I decide with his Council where my very special services are most needed,” the major explained as he buttoned up his waistcoat. He made a show of opening his enameled snuffbox, decorated with Roman women, and placed some of the powder up his nostril, then extracted a small purse bulging with coins. “What is the protocol on a private vessel? I feel obliged to compensate you.”

  “Not at all,” Duncan replied. “It would seem disloyal to take the coin of a king’s officer.”

  Hastings raised an eyebrow. “So refreshing to hear such words from a colonial.” He nodded before turning away, but paused at the door. “One of the other officers said he thought he had seen you with Deborah Franklin in Philadelphia. I’m not the only one with an interesting life, it seems,” he added with another oily smile. “And I’ve always wondered, is the Scottish cross only reserved for death? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it used outside cemeteries.”

  Duncan watched the brash officer as he disappeared down the passage. Hastings’s visit hadn’t been a medical call—it had been a thinly disguised threat.

  Duncan heard a dull thud on the other side of the wall and found Ishmael in the hold, practicing with his knife. “How much does he know?” the young Nipmuc asked when Duncan reported the encounter.

  “Obviously he knows about the incognitum bones. Now I know he is aware that I am acquainted with Deborah Franklin, and of course he must have connected the bones to her husband. He spoke mockingly of the Scottish cross, which can only mean he has now connected us to the crates in the hold.”

  Ishmael stepped forward as if to retrieve his blade, but instead reached up to the beam above, where Duncan now saw the lanyard with the ancient fang hanging on a peg. Ishmael grew still, gazing solemnly at the tooth, his reminder of the ancient tribal gods. He lifted the tooth and touched it to his forehead, then his heart, before draping it around his neck. He too understood that their conflict with Hastings was about to become more personal. “I don’t know if I can be the warrior the old gods desire me to be,” he said with a dangerous edge to his voice, “but maybe I can be the one the ancient monster needs.”

  Duncan risked much by confiding in the captain, but his instincts about the stubborn Welshman told him he was a man of integrity, and he knew Captain Rhys felt no warmth toward his military passengers. “Our cargo is marked only with the Scottish cross,” he explained. “It is a secret cargo, and death has stalked it from the time we brought it up the Ohio. All I ask is safe passage to London.”

  “That be bought and paid for already,” the captain stated.

  “Before either of us knew His Majesty’s army would be invading the Galileo.”

  “There was no arguing with that garrison commander in Halifax.”

  “There are two men among them who have connected us to the cargo despite our efforts at secrecy. They seemed sworn to stopping us at whatever the cost. I fear they will be greatly tempted to act with violence against us, and the cargo, before we drop anchor in the Thames.”

  The captain frowned. “I am powerless to act against the army. God knows I’d like to lock the insolent jackanapes in the bilges.” He shrugged. “But t’ain’t no business of mine if the army has a feud against Philadelphia folk.”

  “Not a feud, sir. The cargo is secretly bound for the official agent of the Pennsylvania colony in London. And I speak not of the army—I speak of criminals who happen to wear uniforms. They mean to act against the agent.”

  The captain cocked his head in surprise. “You speak of Franklin? The father of electricity?”

  “The same.”

  Rhys seemed to inflate a bit, clearly proud to be carrying something bound for the famous Dr. Franklin, but as he weighed Duncan’s words his countenance took on a more somber expression. He rose and stood facing the windows across the stern, staring at the long wake of the Galileo, then spoke toward the sea. “The troubles of strangers from Philadelphia is no concern to a merchant vessel. We are but transporters.”

  Duncan’s heart sank. He and Ishmael would be in grave danger without the cooperation of the captain and the crew.

  “But Dr. Franklin,” Rhys added a moment later. “All he asks is for those Englishmen in the colonies to be treated like other Englishmen at home. It’s like Parliament thinks colonists are only half men.” He turned with a solemn, whispered confession. “I am a Wilkes man,” he declared. “Tell me what you desire, McCallum.”

  A relieved smile rose on Duncan’s face. John Wilkes was an outspoken firebrand, but his speeches and pamphlets proclaiming that every man had the right to an equal voice in government had resonated with the common man on both sides of the Atlantic. Wilkes, now in prison for criticizing the king, had become a martyr, a symbol for what was now popularly being called the natural rights of man. His pamphlets were often read in meetings of the Sons of Liberty.

  “When he was imprisoned,” the captain related, “his supporters gathered to chant ‘No liberty, no king.’ The army fired on them and killed seven. Killed seven unarmed men for invoking the cause of liberty. That was a dark day for the free men of England.”

  Duncan let the words hang in the air. “I need these particular soldiers to focus their attentions elsewhere, away from me.”

  “ ’Tis a close world on a ship, McCallum. Hard to avoid others on board.”

  Duncan paused a moment, the words of Catchoka echoing once more in his mind. You will die, again and again. “So what I desire, Captain Rhys,” he declared, “is that you help them kill me.”

  Chapter 9

  THE GALILEO’S BROAD MAIN DECK provided ample space for the circuits Duncan began walking twice each day, just before noon and just before midnight. With less than two weeks left of their voyage, he worked hard both to be predictable and to identify a place amidships that could be concealed from the helmsman by some inconspicuous adjustment to the large hogsheads lashed to the deck.

  Two days after his conversation with the captain, while the army officers were at evening mess, a line was fixed to the corner stan
chion on the port side and inconspicuously dragged behind the ship. The next morning Ensign Lewis awoke screaming, declaring that he had seen the ghost of an Indian hovering over him with a tomahawk in his hand and rats perched on his shoulder. Major Hastings mocked the rattled ensign and ordered him to sick bay for something to quiet his nerves. The next morning it was the turn of Hastings’s aide Lieutenant Nettles to dash out of his berth, with shrill, fearful curses. Under his pillow he had discovered a coiled snake. The army officers seemed less inclined to mock this time, and when Major Hastings appeared with a loaded pistol, insisting on dispatching the creature, the bosun apologized.

  “Caught the serpent and put ’im over the side,” Darby explained. “A bit of seaweed on the tail calms them down ye see, then I grabbed ’im and disposed of ’im. Dreadful poisonous, them sea snakes, though never before did I see one go to the trouble of seeking out his victim,” he added with a suspicious gaze at the still-shaken Nettles. The captain had offered his own men the chance to help Duncan, and they had enthusiastically risen to the challenge. None of the military passengers had lingered long enough to see that the snake was a ragged, dried old dead thing that had been quickly returned to the Cape Verde seaman who kept it as a good luck charm.

  That afternoon the first mate ordered all the berths vacated for what he called the “regular” scrubbing of wooden surfaces with vinegar, as a precaution against pestilence. The bosun blocked the passage to the army berths as the cleaning crew noisily went about their job.

  An hour later Ishmael entered the sick bay carrying a stack of blankets that had been airing on the deck. He set his load down, closed the door behind him, and lifted away all but the bottom blanket, which he unfolded with a victorious expression. “Like the major told you, he likes mementos,” Ishmael stated.

  On the blanket lay an intricately worked tribal war ax, which ended in a hard, burnished ball with a spike protruding from one side. Beside the ax were two totem pouches, a knife with a stag horn hilt, and two crucifixes. He counted the trophies. “Six. There were six dead men in the tattoo you described.”

  “So your friend from Liverpool had no trouble?” Duncan asked. When they had asked the bosun if anyone in the crew might be able to open a locked trunk, he had chuckled and produced a sailor from Liverpool who had leapt on board as the anchor was being raised in Dover two years earlier, begging to join the crew. He had waved at the constables who had been pursuing him as the ship drifted away. All sins were forgiven once a ship reached blue water.

  “He made short work of it, but was a bit spiteful when I told him he couldn’t touch the coin purse inside. The shilling I gave him brought the smile back to his face.”

  Duncan lifted the items one by one. The war ax had a rich patina, the look of a weapon that had been handed down from father to son, old warrior to young warrior, for many generations. He studied the patterns carved on the handle, glancing uneasily at Ishmael, then reverently touched the totem pouches, each adorned with elegant quillwork.

  “The crucifixes we can’t be sure of, but the rest is all of the same tribe. They are Mohawk,” Ishmael stated in a bitter tone. “Not Abenaki. Not Huron, nor any other Algonquin,” he said, referring to the Indian allies of the French.

  “Not all the Mohawk fought alongside the British,” Duncan said, realizing that Ishmael was suggesting Hastings might have attacked friends of theirs on the frontier. “There were Catholic Mohawks in Quebec who joined the French.”

  Ishmael shrugged, unconvinced. “But Mohawk nonetheless.” With his own tribe nearly extinct, Ishmael’s closest tribal friends were all from Mohawk and Oneida clans. “I should slice the damned tattoo off his chest,” he hissed.

  Duncan extended the war ax to Ishmael. “This belongs with the tribes, not on some London mantel.”

  “A sign from the old gods,” Ishmael said ruefully, but his expression grew sober as he accepted the ax. A new fierceness rose in his eyes when he nodded to Duncan. Neither one gave voice to the conclusion that was becoming more and more obvious. They were two misfit warriors, going to do battle with London.

  The next morning, just after the captain announced that they should sight the mouth of the Thames in four days, several army officers burst onto the deck, clearly shaken. Major Hastings appeared bearing new trophies. Ishmael’s friends had replaced the war booty in his trunk with a dozen live rats. The major, his face and shirt dappled with blood, coolly paraded onto the main deck holding the tails of three dead rats and two others skewered on his long dagger. He walked to the rail and disposed of them, then turned and silently glared up at Duncan, standing beside Captain Rhys at the wheel, before snapping at Lewis to bring him some water and a towel.

  Hastings calmly watched those on deck as he washed away the blood. A moment later when Darby walked by, his eye on the mainsail, Hastings sprang with snakelike quickness, slamming the back of his hand into the man’s jaw. The unexpected blow sent the crew chief reeling backward, slamming against the mainmast. Duncan instantly took a step toward the main deck, and just as quickly the captain clamped his hand around Duncan’s arm. The captain placed Duncan’s hand on the wheel, then darted to the deck himself, just as half a dozen furious seamen closed around Hastings, whose hand was on his dagger. One began wrapping rope around his knuckles. Another was raising a belaying pin like a club when the captain broke through their circle to stand in front of Hastings, shaking his fist in the officer’s face.

  “If you have a complaint against one of my crew you come to me!” he roared, then lowered his voice so that Duncan could only make out the angry tone and not his words. Hastings listened with an amused expression, then gave the captain a mocking bow that drew jeers from the idle military officers. The captain ordered his men back to work, then returned to the quarterdeck.

  “I don’t know when you intend to act, McCallum,” he growled as he took over the helm. “But if that popinjay isn’t dealt with soon, I’ll be hauled before the War Board to explain how I misplaced one of their officers.”

  Duncan was not surprised when he found the bosun waiting in the sick bay. “I’ll be fine, sir,” Darby said as Duncan examined the bruise on his jaw. “But ye best tell me everything ye plan and what ye need,” he said, echoing the captain’s sentiments, “ ’cause if someone don’t deal with ’im soon I’ll have the damned lobster in a pot!”

  The bosun’s grizzled face grew long as Duncan explained his intentions. “ ’Tis why you had us drag that line over the stern,” he concluded with a frown. “Don’t like it, sir, not one bit, even if you do be a prodigious swimmer. Ye could perish that easy,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  “Perhaps you could reduce sail an hour before midnight,” Duncan suggested. “That would help. And do what you can for Ishmael. I’m more of a fish than he is a bird.”

  When Lewis arrived at sick bay that afternoon, he announced that it was his last visit. “The major knows that I come here. He ordered me to tell him where I went after lunch,” the boyish ensign explained. “I’m sorry, Mr. McCallum.”

  “You can’t disobey an order,” Duncan said as he examined Lewis’s old wound. “And I declare you healed, Ensign. You’re not going to die, at least not from this wound. But you need to pick your battles more wisely,” he suggested.

  “I don’t believe an ensign has much choice in the matter,” Lewis replied with a sour expression. He was twisting his cap in his hand. He glanced up, then gazed down at the floor. “It isn’t what I signed up for. My ma has had a run of bad luck ever since she was thrown off her croft. We moved to a cousin’s house at first but they was poor fisher folk and some days we were living on naught but seaweed pudding, and only then when the cow weren’t sick. When we moved to Chester she worked as a scullery maid, a proud woman of the Hebrides just washing other people’s dishes all day. I meant to lift her spirits by being a proper soldier.”

  “Seaweed pudding?” Duncan asked. It was a staple of his own childhood. “Where was this?”

  “Why, t
he isle, sir.”

  Duncan gazed at the ensign as if for the first time. “The isle of Lewis?” he asked in surprise, referring to the westernmost of the Hebrides.

  “Aye, though the old chieftain it was named for died centuries ago.”

  “My clan was just across the water, Ensign. But you have no island accent.”

  “Because when I turned ten my ma insisted we move to her sister’s in Chester. She said I would get nowhere in the world speaking like a Highland waif. My aunt beat it out of me. She never knew I kept the Gaelic, sir,” he added with a small smile.

  Duncan was developing a liking for the earnest youth. “I’m sure your mother is proud of you.”

  “I send her a letter every few months, with as much of my pay as I can manage, so she can save for a new croft.” Lewis hesitated. “I guess I’m what they call a broken man in the old lands.”

  Duncan eyed him more closely. Lewis meant he was a Highlander who had lost his clan affiliation. “Half the Scots I know are broken men, Lewis.”

  “But you have a clan.”

  “Aye, though it be quite small. I kept my plaid and have my pipes back at my home in New York province.” Duncan was not sure what to make of Lewis’s solemn nod.

  “There’s six now, sir,” the soldier blurted out.

  “Six?”

  “Six in the major’s little army. That’s what he calls it. The captain from York, the lieutenant from Coventry, the lieutenant from Ipswich, and the older ensign. Plus Nettles and me. The others owe him considerable sums from their gaming. I’m frightened. The seamen spread talk of evil spirits and a ghost warrior haunting the ship. And the major, he wants us back in that hold tonight. If there’s evil on this ship that’s where it lurks, and tonight we be rid of it, he says.” With a forlorn whisper, Lewis added, “I had a coney foot for protection but I lost it in the storm.”

  “You’ll be in London soon,” Duncan assured him. “Back with your unit. For now, you need to obey orders.” He helped Lewis to his feet, then bent over the small desk of the sick bay and drew a series of images on a slip of paper: a cross, an arrowhead, a snake, and a bird. “A charm of the clans and the tribes,” Duncan explained as Lewis leaned over his shoulder. He wrote in Gaelic underneath it and handed it to the ensign.