The King's Beast

by Eliot Pattison

  Ishmael began asking what had happened. The first two inmates turned their backs and hurried away. The next one just vigorously shook his head and cried, “No, no, no!”

  The fourth one pointed at the closed doors. “Those who are not in the book of life shall be cast into the lake of fire!” he shouted, causing a woman near him to burst into tears.

  Ishmael advanced to the chamber and tried the latch, only to find the doors locked. He knocked on it, to no avail, then kicked in frustration at a pile of towels leaning against the wall. The blow dislodged the clean towel on top. All those under it were soaked with blood.

  The young Nipmuc began pounding on the door now, so furiously he did not react to Duncan’s insistent cries that he stop. The patients in the galleries stopped and stared. Two of them began clapping. One ran for a keeper.

  Duncan dragged Ishmael away, then pressed him against the wall at the end of the corridor. “Attracting attention does neither us nor your uncle any good!” he told the frustrated tribesman, then pushed him toward the narrow stairway. “We will go down and come up again so you can collect yourself. Look for your tamed keeper.”

  Ishmael spied Taggart finishing tea with his colleagues in a small hall off the central stairway. They followed him as he set off for his assigned chambers. “There’s an audience gathering for a performance of the Immortals,” the Nipmuc said when he caught up with the careworn man in brown.

  “Delayed,” the keeper said. “The doctors say we should call such things a spasm of mental disease. This morning one of them laughed and said we should call this one the Peloponnesian War, though Christ knows what that means.” He paused and eyed Ishmael expectantly.

  Ishmael handed Taggart a coin. “What happened?”

  “Took me all morning to clean up, and didn’t it take four of us to carry the old fool out on a laundry pallet.”

  “The old fool?” Duncan asked uneasily.

  “The crier, that’s what most called him. The fat one who called out the news from the wooden box, like yesterday he declared that Julius Caesar had been assassinated and Socrates had committed suicide, though I’m right skeptical that those things happened on the same day. And then before closing up he started shouting that they must stop drinking the tea.” Taggart lowered his voice. “Then as we was closing he starts calling out, ‘We must purge ourselves of Dr. Granger.’ ”

  “An accident of some kind?” Duncan suggested.

  “Or another keeper could have come in here in the night,” Ishmael said accusingly and glanced at Duncan, reminding him there was a senior keeper who worked for Dr. Granger and the War Council.

  Taggart shrugged. “I locked the doors myself last night. When I opened them this morning the blood was all over the floor. They say he liked sleeping under that cracked bust of Caesar. The bust was on his head this morning. The cracked was on the cracked, if you get my meaning. Skull split like an egg.”

  “And the others?”

  “Most were terrified, cowering in the far corner. A couple were happily drawing on the wall with his blood. The overkeepers said wash it all off, bad for business.”

  “So the business goes on,” Duncan said, trying not to betray his bitterness. “When do the doors open?”

  The keeper pointed to the big key on his belt. “As soon as I get there. They gave me a master key today, to keep things efficient,” he added, raising an interested gleam in Ishmael’s eye. The day before he had shown Duncan a slab of beeswax he had procured, to make an impression of a master key should he ever get one in his possession.

  The occupants of the chamber were indeed subdued when the doors creaked open, huddled in the corner like a frightened flock. The metallic scent of blood hung in the air but there was no sign of it other than a pinkish stain on the wall. The bust of Caesar, a pink smear on its ear, was back on its pedestal.

  “How did the death happen?” Duncan asked Taggart.

  “I told you. The bust crushed the man’s skull. No sense in calling it anything but an accident,” he muttered. “How are we to tell what goes on in the night behind the locked doors?”

  “Or whether a murderer with a key found his way inside,” Duncan suggested in a low voice.

  The keeper’s eyes flared. He looked about as if for eavesdroppers. “Never in life! An accident, I said! The fool nudged the pedestal in his sleep and down came Caesar.” As if he needed to defend himself, he added, “These ain’t the criminally insane, mind, just regular lunatics.”

  Duncan searched the man’s face in vain to detect any sign that he was making a macabre jest. As Taggart carried the pile of bloody rags down the hallway, the frightened flock began to disperse and Duncan finally saw his old friend. Conawago had not set the mop head on his skull yet, so Duncan had an unobstructed view of his face. He had aged shockingly. His leathery countenance had new wrinkles, his eyes were locked in a mournful expression, and as he tightened the knot that held up his makeshift toga, his hands were shaking.

  Ishmael’s hand pressed against his waistcoat pocket. At dawn Duncan had found him out on the rooftop perch by his room, whispering into a small smoldering mound of tobacco set on a roofing slate. Duncan had recognized the words, had seen the feathers and strips of fur and linen laid out by the fire, and had backed away. Ishmael was assembling a medicine bundle, a charm of sorts.

  Now the young Nipmuc slowly extracted the charm and held it out for Duncan to examine. “The demonslayer,” he said. “That’s what my mother called such a charm, though I made some alterations since I couldn’t find a snake fang or owl and woodpecker feathers.”

  Among the half dozen feathers arranged in a fan, Ishmael had included those of a pigeon and a seagull, and at the center was a beautiful iridescent feather, that of a kingfisher, that Duncan suspected had come out of the cherished totem pouch that hung around Ishmael’s own neck. Such brilliant feathers were favorites of the gods, and Ishmael had probably been given this one by his mother or father when he was a boy. The feathers were fastened with a strip of dark fur and a red ribbon. Duncan cocked his head at the charm.

  Ishmael recognized the question on his face. “Lizzie found an old fur cap, and she untied one of her stockings to give me the ribbon.”

  Duncan recalled Ishmael’s earlier anguish in questioning whether their gods would even hear them from distant London, but then he understood. “Pigeon, gull, kingfisher. Bird of the city,” Duncan said, “bird of the ocean, and bird of the gods’ own home. A map of sorts, for a prayer to reach from London over the ocean to the American forests.”

  Ishmael nodded solemnly. “Maybe it will bring my uncle back. But I don’t know how to get it to him.”

  As Duncan gazed at the old man, his heart ravaged, a door opened in the back of his mind, unbidden and unexplained. He removed his waistcoat and pulled out the tail of his linen shirt, the closest he could come to a toga, then planted himself in front of the bars and spoke in a loud voice. “Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae.” He had not recited the Latin poem for years, but his Dutch teacher had hammered it into his students, insisting that this, Ode Seven of Horace’s Book Four, was the most beautiful poem ever written. “Mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas flumina pvaetereunt,” he continued.

  “It’s working!” came Ishmael’s excited whisper. Conawago had looked up toward the door and taken a step forward. The last time Duncan had recited it had been under a full moon on a mountaintop near the Susquehanna River. Conawago had been so taken with it he had insisted that Duncan teach the poem to him.

  As Duncan continued, the other inmates slowly approached. “Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus aud ducere nida choros.” The words had been pounded into him so deeply that they came out now without conscious thought. It was about spring, the cycle of the seasons, and the need for men to embrace life before winter overcame them. One of the inmates who had on a prior visit recited poetry began weeping and pushed one of the circlets of dried leaves through the bars and placed it on
Duncan’s head. Others gathered around for another verse, but then fell away. They had a strange deference to Conawago, who now stepped forward with feeble, shuffling steps to stand directly opposite Duncan, only an arm’s length away. The old man’s eyes repeatedly dimmed and brightened; his mouth seemed to try to turn up in a smile, but failed. He lifted a trembling hand to reach through the bars, and he touched Duncan’s chest, as if challenging the illusion before him. As he drew it away Ishmael reached out and folded Conawago’s fingers around the feathered charm. The aged man seemed to take no notice, but kept the charm in his grip as he turned and shuffled back to his corner.

  “Magis! Magis!” one of the other men cried out, and the request for more of the poem was taken up by several other inmates.

  Duncan offered a few more lines but then let Ishmael pull him away. More spectators had arrived and were pressing close for the afternoon entertainment.

  “Darby, you blasphemer!” Sinner John growled. “Stop chewing up the horses!”

  Duncan’s map was back on the inn’s table, strewn again with salts, walnut shells, peas, raisins, and now also currants.

  Darby withdrew the hand that hovered over a set of four currants arrayed in front of a walnut shell. “Don’t see why ye got two extra berries anyhow!”

  “ ’Cause a wealthy gentleman’s got a coach of four, ain’t he?” Sinner John groused. “Who ever heard of a fine coach pulled by only two nags?”

  Darby hid the offending hand under the table, muttering something about overbearing Methodists, then cast a jealous eye at the small cone of sugar that was marking St. James’s Palace.

  Sinner John whispered an impatient prayer and then, with Woolford hovering beside him, returned to sketching on the chart. Duncan was surprised at their knowledge of the alleys between Hewson’s home and the Westminster Bridge, and of the gated entrances to the King’s Road, which the porter was depicting with small cramped rectangles on Duncan’s chart.

  Lizzie was contributing too, whispering into Ishmael’s ear with a somewhat dreamy expression as the young Nipmuc impassively drew triangles along the river to mark the locations of landing stairs. Duncan knew he would rather be planning the rescue of his uncle than the secret delivery of the incognitum.

  His head shot up at a frantic knock on the inn’s front door. A moment later a breathless Olivia Dumont rushed in. “We need help to get him inside!” she cried, then unexpectedly turned to Captain Rhys. “Captain, your man—” Rhys and Darby shot up and darted out of the room. By the time Duncan and Woolford reached the entry the two were on the front step, bracing a limp figure between them.

  It was a Galileo sailor who had volunteered as one of Darby’s watchers. They laid him on the divan in the sitting room. He was breathing regularly but had a swollen lump on his left temple. Duncan leaned over him, checking his pulse, then lifting an eyelid.

  “He’ll have a nagging headache, nothing more serious,” Duncan concluded.

  “He was attacked?” Olivia asked.

  “He was neutralized,” Woolford said grimly. “They wanted to take out a watcher, make a gap in our line!” He asked Darby where the man’s station was.

  “The block behind,” Darby reported. “There’s an alley that connects to the mews road behind the houses.”

  “Lizzie!” Mrs. Laws cried. “Check to see if the lanterns are lit at the back, to discourage any intruder.”

  As Lizzie hurried away, Sinner John, seemingly oblivious to what was happening, called out. “Finished, Mr. McCallum, including all the alleys to the bridge. No need to worry about traffic on the main streets ’cause ye won’t even need to—”

  His words were drowned out by a shattering scream from the back door.

  Duncan darted into the kitchen as Lizzie staggered backward from the doorway. She turned and raised blood-covered hands, then stumbled to Ishmael, now beside Duncan, and threw her arms around him, sobbing.

  The boy sprawled across the back step had been beaten so badly Duncan couldn’t make out his features. For a terrible moment Duncan thought it might be Xander, but then he came running through the night, frantically shouting the boy’s name.

  “Robbie! Robbie! Robbie!” Xander cried, then collapsed on the step, weeping, as he reached his friend. It was the young boy whom Xander had called his sergeant, the playful youth who that morning had ridden just for fun in the decoy coach.

  Duncan knelt beside the boy, searching vainly for a pulse. Robbie was dead.

  Chapter 18

  THEY HAD HIM FOR HOURS,” sobbed Xander. “Look what they’ve done!” He shook the boy’s shoulders. “Robbie, Robbie, it’s me, wake up!”

  “He’ll have no waking in this world, lad,” a mournful voice said. Sinner John pulled Xander off the body to allow Duncan and Ishmael to lift it. “He’s rising with merciful angels now.”

  They carried Robbie to the scullery table as Olivia and the porter took the stunned Xander into the dining room. Duncan clenched his jaw and began to examine the body. The boy had been cruelly used. The inch-wide abrasions on his forearms showed where he had been bound by straps. His shoes had been removed and the bones of one foot were broken, smashed with repeated blows of what looked like a hammer. His head had been beaten with a cudgel or narrow club, leaving indentations in the scalp. His face bore raw slashes from the blows of what he guessed to be a riding crop, which had reduced one eye to a bloody pulp. The blood around the injuries was congealed and drying, meaning they were hours old. All but one. The single piercing of the boy’s heart still oozed blood. It had been done only minutes earlier.

  “Poor lamb couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve,” Mrs. Laws said as she brought a basin of hot water and some towels.

  “He would have been ten next month,” came a voice choked with emotion. “I promised to take him fishing on his birthday.” Sinner John stepped forward and took Robbie’s hand in his and began to stroke it as if to comfort the boy. “His ma died of consumption last year. He never knew his father.”

  “He was so happy today.” The trembling words came from the kitchen doorway, where Xander stood with tears streaming down his cheeks. “He was keen as mustard about our ride. He’d never been in such a grand coach before. He was laughing and saying how the other boys will be so jealous when he told them he had been in the coach of Benjamin Franklin. When the driver finally stopped at Whitehall, like Mr. Franklin said to, I told Robbie we didn’t need to get out but he did anyway, ’cause he said that was what the gentry would do, step out of the fancy coach in front of the palaces. So he did get out, and I figured I’d join his playacting ’cause it made him smile so.

  “We had gone maybe thirty paces down the street when those soldiers shouted for us to stop. He laughed when I said we gotta fly, ’cause didn’t he love a good run. I thought he was keeping up with me but when I turned he had stumbled on the cobbles and they were on him, dragging him back to the parade grounds.”

  With a shudder Duncan recalled the tale of dungeons below the Horse Guards Palace. “You mean to the Horse Guards?”

  “They put him in a coach by their stables. The driver protested and took a riding crop on his cheek for it, then one of them got up on the seat beside him and pointed out the gate.”

  “Any idea of where they went?” Woolford asked.

  “I know for certain, sir, ’cause didn’t I leap on the back of the coach down the street and hold on. They went into Hyde Park, to a horse ground full of soldiers and young horses.”

  “Their training field,” Woolford said. “I know the place.”

  “There’s barns and sheds and such. They took him into a big shed past the barns. A workshop for the farrier and saddlemaker I reckoned, for I saw racks of saddles and harnesses and a forge at the far end when I lifted myself up at a window. Then some soldiers spotted me and called out ‘thief!’ and I had to save my own skin. I watched from the trees for a while but then they brought out dogs and I knew they would have me if I stayed.” He stared forlornly at the b
oy’s ruined foot. “There was tools in that shop,” he said with another sob.

  “But how,” Duncan asked, “how did you know to come looking for him here?”

  “I didn’t, but I was spreading the word and one of the other boys said he saw a couple of those brutes in black boots two blocks from here, and one had something rolled up in a blanket over his shoulder.”

  Xander watched with silent sobs as Duncan finished his examination of the dead boy, then began helping Mrs. Laws wash the body. “He didn’t tell ’em anything, Mr. Duncan,” Xander blurted out, as if he had to defend his friend. “He wouldn’t. He didn’t know anything he could tell ’em anyway, ’cepting he met the great Mr. Franklin.”

  Duncan and Woolford exchanged a worried glance. The boy had also known about the Neptune, and obviously had revealed it to his captors, or they wouldn’t have known to bring the body there. Duncan tried to recall whether Robbie had known his name, or those of Ishmael and Woolford.

  Mrs. Laws cleaned the blood from the boy’s face, then gently patted his forehead. “There, there,” she cooed, “we’ll see you have a proper Christian burial. No pauper’s grave for you, Robbie boy.”

  Sinner John, still standing by the body, had his eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer. “Amen,” he murmured, then with a look of cold fury turned to whisper in Xander’s ear. The link boy’s face lit with fierce determination as he listened. He followed Sinner John out into the back courtyard.

  “Poor man takes it personal, I fear,” Mrs. Laws said. “He cares so for the boys. Last year he formed a choir and had the boys sing along the streets during Yuletide.”

  Lizzie appeared with more towels and handed the proprietress a hair brush, which she used to straighten Robbie’s hair as Duncan cleaned the boy’s mangled foot. “Why, Mr. McCallum,” the maid asked with a sob, “why did poor Robbie have to die?”

  It took him a moment to recognize the accusation in the maid’s words. Robbie would still be alive if Duncan hadn’t brought his troubles to the inn. “He wanted to ride in the coach,” he said, immediately shamed by his words.