“Fate of liberty?” Duncan asked as he lifted the pin to more closely examine it.
Woolford nodded. “This particular pin was distributed to the staff at all his many estates, and to attendees of a War Council meeting last year, where several members considered it very droll, as if it represented some private joke. It was mysterious enough that I made inquiries with his coachmen. Only one would talk, and he just said to take a lens to it. I did. Inscribed on the tombstone in tiny letters is the name Barrett. I asked more questions. Barrett was a groom at the earl’s Merseyside estate. He had organized a meeting in support of John Wilkes. The barn was ringing with cries of ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ led by Barrett when the Earl of Milbridge unexpectedly arrived, a day before his planned visit. Milbridge loathes Wilkes and his movement. He dismissed the steward on the spot, and Barrett’s body was found the next morning in the stall of a stud horse, made frenzied by placing mares in heat in every nearby stall.”
Duncan dropped the pin on the desk.
“Don’t give him a chance to make a pin for you, Duncan. Go home. Let me work with solicitors to help Conawago.”
“The Sons of Liberty trusted me to secretly deliver the bones. I will see them through to their purpose. I made a vow, for Ezra and Pierre.”
“There are ships leaving most every day for the colonies. Ezra and Pierre would not want you to die on their account.”
“The Sons of Liberty,” Duncan whispered, “will take it quite ill if I allow Dr. Franklin to be assassinated.”
Woolford gave a slow, reluctant nod. “As I expected you to say.”
“Ishmael and I are not going to retreat.”
Woolford offered a bitter grin. “This city wears on me. I need a good battle. You, me, and Ishmael. Two rangers and a Nipmuc warrior against the War Council, the Horse Guards, and the castle keep of the lunatics. And if Milbridge gets the slightest hint that you are still alive and in London, he will rip the city apart to find you.”
Woolford was increasingly uneasy as they approached Bethlem Hospital. When they had finally climbed into a hackney by St. James’s Park he tried to make small talk about Sarah, about Duncan’s beloved orchards at Edentown, about his wife Hannah and their expanding family. But Duncan did not miss his anxious glances out the window or his tight grip on the leather seat as they passed under the statues of Melancholy and Raving Madness.
“I was here once before, Duncan,” he said, “many years ago. It gave me nightmares for weeks. I vowed never to go back again. I will wait for you on one of the benches outside.”
“When Conawago decided the gods wanted him to go to London, he went north to Johnson Hall, to see your wife, Patrick. If Sarah or I had known we would have found a way to stop him, even it meant locking him in his room. But your Hannah helped him, and I suspect she wrote to you of it. You never told Sarah or Ishmael. You never tried to stop it, to intercept Conawago. Your wife and Madeline secretly made it possible and now he is locked inside what you so aptly call the castle keep of the lunatics.”
“I had no idea what had happened, you must believe me,” Woolford protested. “I wasn’t even certain Conawago had gone through with his plan to cross the Atlantic. Hannah made me promise to say nothing. Conawago had insisted on secrecy because he knew what you would do. It was Conawago! When have you ever said no to him?”
Duncan ignored the question. “You are going up to the top floor with me.”
Woolford sighed and pulled his cloak tighter over his uniform. “I’m going to the top floor.”
When they met Ishmael at the back of the throng by the Chamber of the Immortals, the young Nipmuc gave the deputy superintendent a cool greeting.
“I’m sorry, Ishmael,” Woolford said. “I only recently returned to London. I did not know until today. I thought that if he was in London he would be safely encamped at the Faulkner House. I was planning to go for a visit.”
Ishmael’s eyes narrowed. “If he was going to see the king it was to stop the bloodshed of English brothers fighting each other,” he said.
Woolford recognized the accusation. His face twisted in torment. It was not a sentiment Duncan had heard before, but Ishmael had spent long hours in the hospital thinking about his uncle and the path that had taken him there. He meant the old Indian had come to London to help the colonists more than the tribes. It was a particularly poignant point to make to the deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs, who himself was married to a Mohawk. Woolford was well aware of how the tribes had been treated by colonials and the British government.
“Your uncle has the most generous heart of any man I know,” Woolford replied. The words did nothing to soften Ishmael’s expression. Woolford clenched his jaw and looked toward the barred doors, now blocked by the afternoon audience. He fixed each of his two friends with a sober, determined expression. “We will not let him die here,” he murmured.
Ishmael impassively studied the Englishman, who still held a commission as captain of rangers, then pulled his totem pouch out from under his shirt and extended it. “Say it again,” he instructed.
Woolford, understanding the tribal gesture, solemnly touched the pouch and complied, then gazed in mute astonishment at the huge fang that hung next to the pouch. Ishmael chose not to explain.
When they finally pushed their way through the crowd to glimpse Conawago, Duncan thought Woolford was going to be physically sick. A low groan escaped the lips of the ranger and he clutched his belly. Conawago had been staring blankly at the onlookers, but as they watched he began smearing something brown on the far wall. His linen drape was slipping and his left buttock was exposed.
“Praise the Lord, I’ve seen Aristotle’s breech,” a man quipped, raising guffaws. Duncan wanted to pummel the man.
Ishmael, whose daily visits had steeled him against the horror, commented that his uncle’s color looked better and his hair was clean. “They say he seems to enjoy his morning treatment of being submerged in the cold water,” Ishmael recounted in a hollow voice, and nodded toward a gaunt keeper on duty at the edge of the barred door. “His name is Taggart,” the Nipmuc whispered. “On the second day I gave him half a shilling but made no request, just mentioned I was interested in the welfare of the old man they call Aristotle. The next day I gave him another coin and he said it was a shame, for the old man seemed a gentle soul except he had the wrong eyes. The next day I asked Taggart what he meant and he said Aristotle’s eyes had been deep and defiant at first, so he had to be treated. I asked him to explain, and yesterday he gave me this”—Ishmael revealed a small muslin pouch clutched in his palm—“and said Aristotle and most others in here, as well those in several other wards of the top floor, get a strong brew of this tea with their porridge each morning.” As they watched, another of the Immortals joined Conawago and to Duncan’s surprise the random smears began taking on a shape.
“It calms them, Taggart says, and helps with the entertainments.”
“The entertainments?” Woolford asked.
“That’s all he said. He says he can speak with me only once a day, or otherwise the other keepers will grow suspicious and ask to share in his fee. But he did say that fat one, the town crier, has been agitating the other inmates and hounding the keepers, inflaming them even, by insisting that Conawago doesn’t belong in Bedlam. Taggart told the crier to shut his mouth for once or he would truly have something to cry about. There’s another keeper, the one with a piece of his ear missing, who scares Taggart. He warned me to stay away from the man, says he works for men in high places, that he has a squad of toughs he calls out whenever there’s trouble in these wards, and afterward there’s always blood to wash up.”
Surprised laughter rippled through the crowd. The shape had become a temple, a crude representation of the Parthenon. Conawago finished by writing symbols beneath the building, then straightened his toga to cover his nakedness, raising ribald laughs, and turned to address his fellow inmates.
One of the inmates responded with hoots like those of
a monkey, another with the bleats of a goat. Conawago ignored them and earnestly continued with his speech. “Got to hand it to the old cracked pot,” someone behind Duncan said. “He can spout out gibberish like he really means it, and at such a pace.” The man reached past Duncan to throw a penny into the cell.
But then Conawago stepped aside and Duncan saw more clearly the smears below the temple. They weren’t random smears. They were letters in Greek. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta. One of the inmates began wiping at the marks of the crude temple on the well and Conawago pointed a chastising finger at him. “Min enochleite tous kyklous mou!” he shouted at the man.
Woolford grabbed Duncan’s arm. They had both understood. The Greek words were from Archimedes, spoken when a Roman soldier attacked and killed him in Syracuse while drawing geometric shapes. Duncan had never learned Greek, but many students studying the classics were taught the memorable sayings of famous Greeks. Do not disturb my circles. The lunatic “Aristotle” had not been speaking gibberish. Conawago had been speaking in eloquent Greek, taught to him by his Jesuit teachers as a boy.
They were about to turn away when the obese crier stepped to his makeshift podium and loudly intoned toward the audience, “Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!”
They left together, walking in silence. It seemed that by wordless consensus they had decided to walk off their despair. The revelation that at least part of Conawago’s mind still held a bright spark had unexpectedly deepened Duncan’s melancholy, for it seemed to underscore Conawago’s suffering. The man speaking gibberish might be so confused as to not understand his surroundings. The man reciting perfect Greek perceived the hell he was living in. The final words of the crier gnawed at him. The man had recited Virgil, a motto over the door of Duncan’s boyhood school. Fortunate is he who is able to know the causes of things. Duncan understood the cause of nothing.
Woolford seemed even more troubled than Duncan. At last Duncan suggested they pause at a tavern in an effort to lift his friend’s heart. The stealthy, confident ranger, renowned for his deep forays into enemy territory during the French War, said nothing when the barmaid asked his preference. Duncan ordered strong ale for the three of them, then had to push Woolford’s tankard against his folded arms before the deputy superintendent took notice.
“You’re not to blame, Patrick,” Duncan said. “I spoke too hastily earlier today.”
“I could have warned him. I could have interceded had I not been away all these weeks.”
It was Ishmael who responded. “No, you could not have, Captain. It’s my uncle. The depth of his gentleness is exceeded only by the strength of his will.”
Woolford’s face lifted into a bitter smile. “It’s Conawago,” he whispered. “The wisest man I know. Possibly the best educated man I know. He has been the anchor that keeps hope alive in more than one tribe. But for the intolerance of the War Council he should have been made the superintendent of Indian Affairs himself. For him to end up like this—” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Even if he does leave Bedlam, what hope is there that he will ever find his right mind again?”
“The man we saw today was created by Bedlam,” Duncan said. He lifted the little medicine pouch Ishmael had given him. “Maybe this is how they did it,” he said.
“If Milbridge was responsible for sending him there,” Woolford said, “there is no hope of getting him released.”
“Milbridge?” Ishmael asked.
“He is Sarah’s father.”
The news took Ishmael several long breaths to digest, then new alarm rose in his eyes. “You mean the man I am ordered to keep you a mile away from, Duncan?” He saw Duncan’s questioning look. “Sarah made me promise.”
Duncan grimaced. “There is no longer any real hope of getting him released,” he said. “So he will have to escape, and soon.”
“Impossible!” Woolford exclaimed, not noticing Ishmael’s vigorous nod. Duncan knew the Nipmuc had always assumed that his uncle’s freedom would have to be won by warriors.
“Says the man who once spirited half a dozen British captives out of the heart of an enemy camp,” Duncan said.
“That kind of war I understand,” Woolford replied. “This is a terrain we don’t understand, with deadly vipers at every step. We need much more time to plan.”
“I have a friend with a ship that soon sails to Boston,” Duncan said. “We are going to be on that ship, with Conawago.”
Woolford frowned. “Or dead.”
Sarah—Benjamin Franklin now names me friend. I am not certain he even thought about his choice of words but it means much to me. I felt like an awkward schoolboy when going to his Craven Street house the first time, for he had become so much bigger than life to me. You might say I have been in his shadow for years, befriending his wife, visiting his Philadelphia home, meeting his Philadelphia friends. He always stood on such a high pedestal as the wizard of lightning, the father of electricity, the inventor of so many useful objects. I had been moved years ago by Immanuel Kant’s description of him as the Prometheus of the modern age. Yet it was hard to be frightened of him when he presented himself with flour on his nose, and I found him quite affable. The lines of his round countenance are uplifted by frequent laughter, and I begin to realize that his rumored ardor for the fairer sex is mistaken for his larger lust for life. His prodigious intellect is not that of some erudite scholar but that of the energetic schoolboy. He told me that a long time ago he decided that the world was much more interesting if he approached everything with a sense of wonder. Life, he says, is more fulfilling if you understand that it consists of a series of miracles. I want very much to believe so but miracles are hard to come by in King George’s city.
Dr. Hewson was clearly fatigued from a long day of calling on patients when he returned to his house at dusk, but he brightened when he saw Duncan waiting for him. After sharing a pot of tea he gladly took Duncan into his cellar workshop, where bones and medicinal jars were scattered over a workbench.
“I must confess,” Hewson confided, “I came down here last night and took out some of the bones from the Ohio.” He glanced uneasily at Duncan. “With no ill intention, I assure you.”
“I sat with them for hours at a time while coming up the Ohio,” Duncan admitted. “I understand. They are a wonder. There was a shrine built by the tribes near the Lick where the ancient animals died. An old chieftain told me the bones gave him visions of huge creatures unknown to humans today. At first I felt a strange fear when I heard that. But I have long wondered whether the people of the forest, the people who live embraced by nature, don’t see and hear and feel things that the rest of us cannot. After a while I was envious of that old Shawnee. I pine for such visions.”
Hewson gave a knowing nod. “So old, old as the mountains as far as we know. What did the earth look like when these creatures lived? What plants did they see? What did the sky look like? What stars did they look up to? They are so humbling,” Hewson mused, in a physician’s matter-of-fact tone. “Despite the arrogance of this modern world, a few years after we are gone, you and I will be dust. But these bones were preserved, as if the creatures of that ancient world were sending us a message.” Duncan felt the pang of a sudden memory. Pierre Dumont had voiced almost identical words when they had sat together with the bones in Philadelphia.
“If Dr. Franklin can raise that sense of wonder in the king for even an instant,” Hewson continued, “I know the king will listen to whatever Benjamin has to say.” The doctor spoke earnestly, almost pleadingly. “There are things greater than we mortals, greater than politics. Isn’t that what binds us all? In the end maybe that is really what Benjamin is trying to achieve, to strike that chord with George Rex.”
Duncan smiled. “Maybe you should be the one speaking to the king.”
Hewson gave a self-deprecating laugh. “The Astronomer Royal holds that key and he would never give me the time of day. He dwells in much higher altitudes than I.”
&
nbsp; “But Dr. Franklin is no aristocrat.”
“Benjamin Franklin is a species apart. The wizard of lightning, the holder of honorary degrees from famous institutions, and American Fellow of the Royal Society.”
Duncan suppressed a grin as he recalled Franklin in the kitchen with the maid, smeared with flour. “A species apart,” he agreed, then motioned to the muslin pouch he had laid on the bench. “Brewed into a tea for patients at Bedlam.”
Hewson hesitated. “Surely you know I cannot interfere with a regimen prescribed by another physician.”
“I only want to know if you recognize it.”
“You mean, physician McCallum, can I confirm your own surmise?”
“I studied at Edinburgh but never received a diploma. I had a few months remaining when someone else decided my lessons should be those of a prison.”
Hewson’s expression turned cold and he fixed Duncan with an intense stare.
“I gave a long-lost uncle shelter. Only later did I learn that he was a fugitive from charges of treason, stemming back to the uprising. We were both arrested. He was given a noose and I was thrown into a cell and sold in indenture.”
Hewson relaxed and was silent for several heartbeats. “I am sorry, Duncan.”
“If it had not been so I never would have gone to America, never made this new life and found the woman I love. What happened in Edinburgh is long behind me.” He motioned to the granules from the pouch, which Hewson had poured onto a sheet of blank paper. “Do you have some tinctures for testing?”
His companion moistened a fingertip and lifted some of the granules to his nose, then sampled them on his tongue. “An alkaloid,” he suggested. “Mandrake perhaps, or nightshade. In mild doses they have a strongly calming effect.”
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