Duncan pushed through the crowd at the Immortals’ cell, in his dark mood ready to swing at anyone who protested. His heart sank as he saw the effects of the reduced dosage. The old man sat on a low stool along the back wall. His eyes were no longer unfocused. He was staring at his hands and weeping.
A new crier was on the box. “The esteemed Aristotle will not be performing today,” he announced, pausing to adjust his mophead wig. “He has been seized by the melancholy of antiquity. He cannot locate his beloved Parthenon!”
They watched for several minutes, then Noah pulled Duncan toward the side stairs. They opened the stairwell door to the sound of a fearful moan.
Ishmael had the keeper Taggart backed into a corner and had pulled out the crumpled deerskin pouch Conawago had left at Faulkner House. Taggart was staring at it with a wide-eyed, terrified expression. Ishmael acknowledged Duncan and Noah with a quick nod but did not turn from the keeper. “I was explaining to Mr. Taggart that these are the private parts of the last man who lied to me,” Ishmael explained. He emphasized his threat by drawing his belt knife.
“I didn’t lie, sir!” Taggart cried. “Prithee, sir, I swear it! I would never lie to one of the tribes.”
“You didn’t tell me everything. Were you there when Mr. Franklin was brought into the hospital?”
“Yes sir, yes. Dr. Granger likes a tea with brandy when he works. ’Tis his habit. I always bring it to him when he is in his examination room. He was with that man they put the Franklin placard on.”
“You put on the placard?”
“I have to write whatever I’m told. The other man said to do so, and he and the doctor laughed about it. The doctor said it was a splendid idea, that the earl would be most amused.”
“The other man?” Ishmael asked as Noah shed his borrowed tunic, laying it on the stairwell.
“The officer in the brocaded uniform. Hastings, the doctor called him, like the battlefield of the Normans. ‘Major Hastings,’ says he, ‘you are a treasure. What an inspired idea the earl had, to send this one here, and what prowess it took to so secretly bring him here. The alternative might have been embarrassing for the king at this particular moment.’ ” Taggart looked away, staring at his feet now. “ ‘No need to spill blood unnecessarily,’ the doctor said.”
“What else?” Duncan demanded.
“Then that major said the poor old lout would probably enjoy a week of hallucinations. Flying kites with unclad maids and such.” Taggart glanced up. “His words, sir.”
“Then?” Duncan pressed.
“Then an orderly came for the major and said they had to leave. His baggage was aboard, the orderly reported, and the Boston ship would not wait much longer as the tide was shifting.”
“He sailed today?”
“A few hours ago would be my guess.”
Ishmael looked away and Taggart inched toward the gallery door.
“One more thing, Taggart,” Duncan said. “You are giving only a half dose of the Granger tea to Aristotle?”
“Aye, sir, as the young gentleman requested.”
“The same for Franklin,” Duncan instructed. He saw the expectant expression on the keeper’s face and handed him a coin.
“At your service, sir,” Taggart said, and with an anxious glance at Ishmael backed away.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs a forlorn cry echoed from above.
“I’d sooner be a slave again than to live like that,” Noah whispered.
“Milbridge should be put down like the mad animal he is,” Ishmael hissed.
“Years ago we had him tied to a tree,” Duncan recalled, “in the Mohawk forest. It would have been so easy to slide a blade into him. The Mohawks wanted to but I convinced them otherwise, because he was Sarah’s father. Crows flew down to peck at his flesh and I scared them away. Now, looking back on the misery he has caused, I feel responsible for it all.”
“A turtle with two heads!” Hewson exclaimed. “The wonder of it! And is that the foot of the mythical ostrich?”
They did not dare let the Stevenson household know where Franklin was, for Mrs. Stevenson would undoubtedly raise the kind of fuss that would assure the inventor would disappear from Bethlem. The next morning, however, they did arrange to meet with Franklin’s physician. Now, as Hewson exclaimed over Huber’s collection, Duncan had to pull him away. Over tea in the back dining chamber, he asked both Huber and Hewson to indulge him, and soon his friends were uneasy conspirators walking at his side as they passed through the arch leading to Bethlem Hospital.
Hewson stifled a cry with his fist against his mouth when he saw Franklin. The inventor seemed little changed from the day before, his arm still going up and down every few seconds.
“Mein Gott!” Huber cried as he saw his former houseguest.
Franklin glanced up without recognition when Hewson shook the barred door and called his name to no avail. Duncan pulled him back to a window on the other side of the gallery.
“This is unforgivable!” Hewson snapped.
“As is the imprisonment of my friend Conawago,” Duncan said.
The words quieted Hewson, who had been reluctant to help Duncan at the hospital. The anatomist gazed through the barred doors in silence, then finally turned to Duncan. “But you have a plan,” Hewson stated, as if finally agreeing. “Some hope for their release.”
“Our chances would be better with your assistance,” Duncan said. “Both of you,” he added as Huber stepped to his side. “Our troop has sailors, Indians, link boys, smugglers, and a Highlander. The only thing missing is doctors.”
“You’re going to tell Milbridge where the incognitum is?” Woolford asked. “Duncan, you must take more time to rest. You are not thinking clearly.” They were sitting in the library of Faulkner House with Noah, Hewson, Ishmael, and Madeline.
“We are going to tell him on that final day, the last possible day for contact with the king. Later in the day he will get a note purporting to have been stolen by the Guards from one of our runners.” Lewis had offered no protest when Duncan and Ishmael had approached him in an alley near Carven Street, and in fact seemed eager to help confound the earl again. “The note will confirm that all is in place to transport the incognitum to the Royal Observatory after sunset under wagonloads of sand.”
“Will they truly believe such a note?” Woolford wondered.
“They will, because it will be in Franklin’s secret alphabet. And seizing control of the bones will be the crowning victory for Milbridge, one he will not want to share. He lusts for those bones. He will have to have those bones because they will give him even more leverage with the king.”
Woolford tried to see through Duncan’s grin. “But?”
“First, the bones will not be there. Franklin will not make his meeting with the king if he is in Bedlam, so no need to move them. But Milbridge will be ravenous, and will have to be certain no one discovers the bones before he reaches them. So, more importantly, the note will assure that the earl will be racing along the King’s Road in the early evening after receiving the message.” Duncan chose his words carefully. “It is the kind of battlefield intelligence a commander dreams of. It means you can intercept him.”
“Me?” Woolford protested. “Duncan, you do know he is acquainted with me?”
“It is an expedition for a ranger to lead. You can use men of the Galileo and some of the smugglers. He will never see you. You will command from the shadows. By the time you are with him he will be unconscious. Dr. Hewson”—Duncan turned to William Hewson—“will calculate the dose of laudanum needed for a man of, what? Sixteen stone?”
“More like eighteen or nineteen,” Hewson corrected. After witnessing what Milbridge and Granger had done to Franklin, he had become an enthusiastic member of their conspiracy.
Duncan unrolled his chart and laid it over the desk, then indicated the King’s Road. “Here,” he said, pointing to a sharp bend in the road between two guard posts, “is a blind spot. I was thinking o
f a wayward herd of cows blocking the road. The green coach will have to stop. Half of your men will stop the coach, the other half rush in to administer the dose. It will be done in less than a minute.”
“He travels with two footmen and a driver,” Woolford reminded Duncan as Ishmael placed a walnut shell at the bend in the road. “They usually have pistols.”
“Who no doubt were part of the plan to carry me in a cage to be mutilated by Milbridge. You will have the element of surprise. You need not be gentle with them. Tell your men they can keep whatever booty they may find, including any of those weapons. Let his men think it is a robbery.”
Woolford frowned, studying the map. “A fallen tree limb might be better. Cows are such unpredictable creatures.”
“And loosen the team to add to the confusion,” Ishmael suggested. “Scatter his precious Friesians out into the wheat fields.”
“The tactics are for you to decide, Patrick,” Duncan said. “Just get him to Noah at the Bedlam laundry house, no later than nine in the evening.”
“Laundry house?” Woolford asked.
Duncan grinned again and gestured to Noah. “Take those details up with the captain of that particular company,” he said, raising a mischievous smile on the groom’s face. Duncan turned to Ishmael. “Next?”
Ishmael consulted the list in his hand. “The carriages will be waiting by Moorgate at midnight. Greta says she will keep them there no matter what the clamor.”
Woolford rolled his eyes. “The clamor?”
“The link boys will release the sheep at the appointed hour, then light a bonfire in the center of the grounds with a barrel of ale beside it.”
“For the sheep?”
“For the neighbors. The gate will be opened. The link boys will have spread the word that there is to be a celebration under the moon. For St. Michael’s day.”
“St. Michael’s day is not until the end of September,” Woolford pointed out.
“St. Michael is the protector of Scottish warriors,” Duncan replied with a grin, “and any day Scots offer free ale, that will be St. Michael’s day.” He had hoped that they would find a more subtle way to deal with Bedlam but now, sitting with his friends as they planned their campaign, he knew it was always going to end like this. He had argued with Ishmael, because of the many dangers, but in the end had no other solution. “It’s what the gods need,” Ishmael had said with finality. “It’s how we get back our honor.”
The dangerous gleam Duncan had seen on Woolford’s face before ranger missions in the war began to shine again on his friend’s countenance. He sipped tea as Duncan explained the planned sequence, altered slightly now to include Franklin, then began making notes of supplies, starting with hooded cloaks, clubs, ropes, and ale.
The deputy superintendent looked up when he finished writing. “If any of us are caught there will be no mercy. Some tribes will slowly roast their captives over fires. The earl and his friends will think of something much more painful.”
“Which is why, Patrick,” Madeline said, “we shall have disguises. No one must be recognized at Bedlam.”
“But there is no time for all of us to find—”
Madeline held up a hand to interrupt him. “Allow me to address that particular challenge,” she said with an impish smile. “Do you not know I am a wizard of wardrobes?” She lifted a quill from the desk and stuck it upright in her hair.
Chapter 23
THE SKY WAS CLEAR AND the moonlight brighter than Duncan would have preferred for his raid on the castle keep of lunatics. The two coaches emptied by the northeast corner of Bedlam’s high wall, met by Sinner John and more than a dozen eager link boys. His party had eagerly accepted the apparel Madeline had distributed at the Neptune’s stable. Some wore leggings, others old waistcoats painted with tribal signs. All had put on headbands of sorts, most with feathers, and some of the sailors had even braided feathers into their hair. Those wearing sleeveless waistcoats over bared torsos had mimicked the ghost warrior by sprinkling flour on their arms. Darby, who had already thrown a rope with a grapnel over the wall and climbed to the top, sat and watched with amusement as a figure wearing a cloak and an oversize tricorn hat applied paint to the faces of a line of the volunteers. All of the patterns were configurations of lightning bolts.
As the last man was painted, Duncan approached the cloaked figure, who wore Iroquois leggings and moccasins, and lifted away the hat. He contained his surprise and just shook his head. “No. It is too dangerous. You have too much to lose.” It was Madeline Faulkner, wearing a belted green linen shirt over her leggings. Several exotic feathers, no doubt stripped from some high-fashion hairpiece, extended from her headband. Her wampum necklace was uncovered.
“Duncan, did you think you were going to lead a Mohawk raid without me?” she asked, and flung her cloak into the nearest coach. “I am more Mohawk than anyone here,” she added. Without waiting for a reply, she flipped her braided hair over her shoulder, grabbed the rope, and adeptly scaled the wall.
He watched with a mixture of admiration and fear. If she were caught, her life in London would be over, and her father’s wrath, like that of Milbridge for his own daughter, would know no bounds.
“Ishmael?” Duncan asked. The young Nipmuc had left two hours earlier than the rest, to help Noah, but had promised to join them at the wall. He turned to Sinner John, whose only concession to disguise had been to drape a black handkerchief over his black britches, a pious loincloth, and to paint two black crosses on his cheeks.
“No sign of him,” Sinner John said, and began helping the link boys up over the wall.
Duncan waited until all the others had climbed the wall, then surveyed the shadows with increasing worry and grabbed the rope. They could not afford to wait.
The night patrols around the grounds were usually conducted by two pairs of guards, working different sections of the broad gardens and field in front of the hospital building. Duncan watched as the link boys darted along the wall toward the sheep pens on the other side, then motioned his company along the adjoining wall, shielded by the shrubbery that grew there. His heart was leaden by the time they reached the building.
Madeline noticed his hesitation. “What is it?” she asked.
“Ishmael. His tame keeper agreed to keep the last window on the top floor open,” Duncan explained, gesturing to the window high overhead, “because Ishmael, who has a careless disregard for heights, was going to scale the ivy vines and mortar joints to it, then run down the stairs to unbolt the side door for us. He was with Noah and Woolford but should have been here by now. Something is already amiss and we’ve barely begun,” he said with new foreboding. He studied the shadows along the building, praying for sight of Ishmael, then turned back as several of the men began to softly laugh. With the agility of a Mohawk warrior, Madeline Faulkner was climbing the building.
He watched breathlessly as she advanced up the heavy vines. When, twenty-five feet in the air, she reached the final few feet, which were devoid of vines, she paused only a moment to study the mortar cracks, then began climbing again. In less than a minute she was in the window. A minute later the door on the side of the building swung open. Madeline stood beside a grinning Ishmael, who motioned the company up the stairs, brandishing a big key.
“The keepers have been taking a long tea break, enjoying the special brew prepared by Dr. Huber and served out by Noah and his friends. Their thirst seems encouraged by the trays of pastries baked by Greta,” Ishmael reported. “And Patrick arrived with his overstuffed cargo, unconscious but unharmed.”
“Late, I take it,” Duncan observed.
“Not late. But we had some special preparations for our guest that required extra time,” Ishmael said enigmatically. “And who should we meet but the mysterious Dr. Granger,” he added. “He proved to have a great fondness for German pastries and enjoyed a double serving of the special tea served out by Taggart, complementing its flavor.” The Nipmuc turned and without further explanation dar
ted up the stairs.
They confirmed that the top gallery was empty, with dim lamps burning on hangers every fifty feet along the corridor. Ishmael ran to the door of the chamber of the Savages and with his forged key unlocked the door. As the patients inside, all wearing their own makeshift tribal clothing, stirred and began drifting out into the hallway, Duncan dispatched half a dozen of his own company to create chaos at the far end. Ishmael kept opening more cells as Duncan and Madeline ran to the main stairwell. Duncan froze as he saw several keepers in brown tunics on the stairs below.
“No, Duncan,” Madeline whispered, seeing his fists clench as if for readying for a fight. “It’s working. Stay true to our plan. We must walk unflinching through the enemy camp.” She pulled him down the stairs.
To his immense relief Duncan now saw that Huber’s brew was having the desired effect. Some of the keepers were simply sitting on the stairs, smiling dumbly into the air. Others were engaged in animated, if disjointed conversations.
“I swear it, Jimmy,” said the first keeper they passed to his companion, sitting dreamily on the step below, “there’s a great bear sitting in the water closet. And he’s reading a newspaper.”
“Mind yer feet, ye oaf,” his friend said. “Yer going to squish the pretty frogs!”
Madeline squeezed Duncan’s arm. “Granger!” she whispered in warning, nodding toward a distinguished-looking older man. The nefarious Dr. Granger was walking arm in arm with a large man in a pink dress, zealously speaking about a unicorn he had spied on the second floor.
Soft laughter came from a keeper sitting close to them. Taggart had been surprisingly easy to recruit for their final plan, and had actually given back half the extra coins Ishmael had offered. He had refrained from drinking the tea he had served and was now obviously enjoying the consequences. “Two cups of the brew for him,” Taggart said, indicating a man stumbling down the gallery, frantically looking over his shoulder. Duncan recognized the cruel overkeeper with the maimed ear. “I told him if he had ever killed anyone, their ghosts will be chasing him this night.”
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