The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles Page 21

  Phillipe’s voice was edged with irritation: “But I still plan to accept Franklin’s invitation. Talk to him. Talking can’t hurt—”

  He realized Marie hadn’t heard a word. She was caught up in her own wild monologue:

  “—because I’ve no intention of sailing to a land peopled by tradesmen and farmers and those—those hideous red Indians everyone prattles about. I’ve no intention of leaving England until you have your full and rightful share of—”

  “In God’s name, woman, let it die!”

  Die die die die rang the echo in the slowly swirling fog.

  He hadn’t meant to shout. Or call her by any other name than the one he’d used since childhood.

  But he had done both. In an eerie way, that told him something new about their relationship.

  His shout had cowed her a little. She spoke less stridently:

  “Phillipe, what’s happened to you? Don’t you still have a desire to be like your father?”

  He thought briefly of Lady Jane, of Alicia and, with hatred, of Roger. “Only sometimes,” was the most honest answer he could give.

  Marie Charboneau began to cry then. Short, anguished sobs that tore at Phillipe’s heart. Miserable, angry with her as well as with himself, he lifted his head suddenly.

  He’d heard another sound.

  It came again, in counterpoint to her sobbing.

  Shuffle-shuffle-shuffle.

  The sound prickled his scalp and turned his palms to ice. It came from their left, but the source was invisible in the fog.

  Then a second set of footsteps blended in. This time from the right.

  Phillipe realized they must have wandered near St. Paul’s Yard. There was a feeling of open space. High up, he glimpsed very faint lights in the murk. The small windows under the church dome. He groped for Marie’s arm.

  “Mama, I think we’d best turn back—”

  Abruptly, an unfamiliar voice barked out, “I tell ye it’s him! I knew when he yelled.”

  That voice came from the left, where the shuffling grew louder. Another responded from the right:

  “Then old Jemmy weren’t daft, saying ’e thought ’e’d seen ’em along Sweet’s Lane. Let’s find out fer sure—”

  A lantern shutter clacked open. A sulfurous yellow flare lit the mist close by. Phillipe leaped back in alarm.

  The lantern light revealed a graybeard with browned gums and one cocked eye. The apparition exclaimed, “Him, all right!”

  Phillipe didn’t recognize the hideous, leering face. But he wouldn’t have known the face of any of those who had attacked him that first night on the church stairs.

  Holding the lantern high, the beggar seized Phillipe’s forearm with his other grimy hand. His one good eye glared. A second rag-festooned creature appeared behind him. A woman; a crone. Her sagging dugs were partially revealed by torn places in her filthy blouse.

  The crone’s mouth was just as toothless as the man’s. Her eyes shone as she extended her hand, palm upward. The fingers wiggled suggestively.

  “A penny to buy a posy for the General’s grave?”

  Phillipe stepped in front of the frightened Marie, tried to shake off the man’s clutch as the crone shrilled:

  “Just a penny. That’s not much for a lad who works in a fine bookshop. Old Jemmy, he saw sharp. He recognized you!”

  “Let go, damn you!” Phillipe pried harder at the dirty hand holding him. Suddenly the man with the crazed eye dropped his lantern, shot out both hands and closed them on Phillipe’s throat.

  “Can’t buy a flower for a good man’s grave?” he screamed. “You owe him! You killed him!”

  Savagely, Phillipe drove his fist into the beggar’s belly. One punch was enough to tear the broken nails from his throat. He practically jerked Marie off her feet, dragging her away as the old man and the crone began to shrill together:

  “Murderer! Murderer!”

  Their feeble shuffling followed Phillipe and Marie a short distance down Sweet’s Lane, then faded.

  Out of breath, they reached the sanctuary of the rickety stairs ascending to the Sholtos’ second floor.

  They clattered up. Only the closing of the door behind them stilled Phillipe’s hammering heart.

  The beggars had really presented no serious physical threat. He’d been startled, that’s all. Gotten alarmed all out of proportion to the cause.

  Yet he was still shivering. He thought that somewhere out in the fog, he could still hear voices crying, “Murderer—”

  Marie went to her room without speaking.

  iii

  Phillipe slept badly that night. In the morning he described the incident to Esau. The big-shouldered young man shrugged it off.

  “It was only an attempt to bully you into giving them drink money. Do you really think they care when one of their own dies? The man you cut down—the General—was probably stripped and left to rot naked five minutes after Hosea and I brought you home.”

  Trying to take reassurance from the words, Phillipe was still troubled. The beggars knew where he lived. What if someone else came searching for him? Inquiring of the street people about a French boy?

  Of course there hadn’t been so much as a hint of any pursuit since the flight from Tonbridge. But he couldn’t shake off the new worry.

  Esau grinned at him. “Look here, stop scowling! Go ink Hosea’s type or I won’t be able to pick up my flute till midnight!”

  Phillipe nodded, started to work. Yet the anxiety lingered with him most of the day.

  He didn’t mention his fear to Marie. In fact he avoided her. He didn’t want to reopen the discussion—the argument—about their future until he’d hit on some way to persuade her that further involvement with the Amberlys was not worth the risk and was futile to boot.

  By the next day, a warm but windy harbinger of spring, he had thrown off some of his apprehension. Though the gray sky threatened storms, he made up his mind to walk to Craven Street that very evening. He hoped he’d find Franklin home.

  Marie retired early. Thus he was spared the need to tell her where he was going. He told the Sholtos, however. Once more they repeated their warnings about the unsafe streets. Out of range of observation by his father, Hosea slipped Phillipe a cheap dirk to stick in his boot.

  “Don’t ask me where I got the bloody thing—or how I use it. Just take it.”

  Phillipe thanked him and set out.

  Thunder rumbled as he proceeded down the Strand. He glanced behind frequently but saw no sign of anyone following him. He located Craven Street, which led south to the river, without incident.

  Going up the steps of the house at Number 7, he dismissed his anxiety about the beggars as foolish. By the end of the week, he was to discover that was a grave mistake. But as the night sky glared white and a thunderclap pealed and fat raindrops began to spatter down, he had no inkling.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Wizard of Craven Street

  i

  EVEN AS PHILLIPE LET the door knocker fall, lightning blazed again, raising white shimmers on the Thames, churning only a few steps further south of the brick residence. All at once the wind turned chill. The rain slanted harder. He huddled close to the building until someone answered.

  A woman. Of middle age, but still attractive. She raised a candle in a holder as she peered at Phillipe from the gloomy foyer.

  “Yes?”

  “Good evening. Is this the house of Dr. Franklin?”

  “No, it’s the house of Widow Stevenson. But he lets rooms from me.” The woman glanced past Phillipe to the dark doorways on the other side of the rain-swept street. Her eyes suspicious, she asked, “Are you a friend?”

  “An acquaintance. Dr. Franklin gave me leave to call. My name is Phillipe Charboneau. If the doctor’s at home, I’d be obliged if you’d announce me.”

  Mrs. Stevenson’s suspicion seemed to moderate. She stepped back, motioned him in. “Very well. But I’m afraid you’ll be interrupting the doctor’s air bath.�
��

  “His what?”

  Phillipe’s words were muffled by more thunder. Mrs. Stevenson didn’t hear. Turning toward an open door on one side of the foyer, she continued:

  “Normally he takes his air bath first thing in the morning. Today, early appointments prevented it.” At the entrance to a well-furnished parlor bright with lamplight, the woman called, “Polly. Polly, my dear—”

  In a moment, a pert, pretty girl appeared. She was about Phillipe’s own age.

  “Benjamin has a caller,” said the older woman. “Mister—?”

  “Charboneau.”

  “My daughter will show you up.”

  Phillipe thanked her, moved aside to let the girl precede him with the candle. Thunder boomed, then faded as they climbed the carpeted stairs. In the lull of silence, Phillipe heard someone singing behind a door on the second floor. He recognized the voice. Franklin’s—accompanied by music unlike any he had ever heard before. Shimmering, almost eerie notes. The melody itself was plaintive; the words equally so:

  Of their Chloes and Phyllises poets may prate—

  I sing my plain country Joan.

  “Oh,” exclaimed the girl named Polly, “he’s playing!”

  “It sounds to me like he’s singing.”

  “Well, of course—that too. What a foolish remark.”

  “Excuse me,” Phillipe snapped. “I was told he was taking something called an air bath.”

  Now twelve years my wife—still the joy of my life—

  Blest day that I made her my own,

  My dear friends—

  Blest day that I made her my own.

  “Dr. Franklin can do all three at once!” responded the girl, her eyes positively sparkling in the candle’s bobbing glow. “He’s very accomplished on the fiddle, the harp—and his armonica.” Her gesture indicated it was this last, unfamiliar instrument upon which Franklin was performing now. “He invented the armonica in this very house. Sometimes I sit with him and listen for hours.” Young Polly Stevenson sounded smitten.

  As they continued up the stairs, the strange, ethereally sweet notes grew louder. Franklin sang with gusto, yet with unmistakable feeling:

  Some faults have we all, and so may my Joan—

  But then, they’re exceedingly small.

  And now I’m used to ‘em, they’re just like my own—

  I scarcely can see ’em at all,

  My dear friends.

  Blest day that I made her my own!

  “He made up that song about his Philadelphia wife years ago,” Polly declared as they reached the landing. “It’s the only one he sings that I don’t care for.”

  Phillipe readily understood why. Admiration had given way to jealousy in the girl’s eyes. She knocked. The vigorous voice pealed on:

  Were the finest young princess, with millions in purse

  To be had in exchange for my Joan,

  She could not be a better wife—might be a worse—

  So I’d stick to my Joggy alone,

  My dear friends—

  Polly rapped louder. “Dr. Franklin! If you please!”

  I’d cling to my lovely old Joan.

  The last high notes melted to silence beneath the distant roar of the storm. Polly’s third knock finally produced a response:

  “That you, Polly my girl?”

  “Yes. You have a caller.”

  “Male or female?”

  “The former. A young man. He says he knows you.”

  “Then he may come in at once. But you stay out—I’m still bathing.”

  Polly giggled. She stood aside for Phillipe to enter. As he walked into the spacious sitting room, bright-eyed Polly was on tiptoe, craning for a view of the apartment’s occupant. Phillipe turned to close the door, catching her. She looked acutely embarrassed. When he pivoted back in response to a boomed-out greeting—“Charboneau! Good evening to you!”—he instantly appreciated why.

  Never in his days had Phillipe beheld such a bizarre combination of sights as in that chamber lit with lamps whose flames were shielded with chimneys. For good reason. All three windows overlooking Craven Street were wide open. The curtains blew, rain gusted in—and so did the wind, exceedingly chilly. The pages of a book lying open on a reading desk fluttered and snapped in the miniature gale.

  But Benjamin Franklin appeared perfectly comfortable, seated on a bench near the opposite wall, in front of a totally incomprehensible device Phillipe took to be the source of the odd musical sounds. Franklin beamed cheerily.

  “Have a chair. Help yourself to that Madeira. I’ll be finished with my air bath in just a few moments.”

  He continued to smile with perfect aplomb, despite the fact that he was totally nude except for his spectacles.

  Now just as embarrassed as Polly had been, but for a different reason, Phillipe made for the sideboard, and the decanter. He poured half a glass, sipped it hastily as Franklin rose, stretched, took several vigorous steps in one direction, then several the opposite way.

  “Glad you fulfilled your promise, Mr. Charboneau. Please excuse my appearance. I’ve always believed fresh air has a salubrious effect on a man’s health and longevity. Winter or summer, I throw open the windows and take the air in this fashion one hour per day—come, come! Don’t look flustered. Is there any need for false prudery among gentlemen?”

  “Well—ah—” Phillipe chucked down the Madeira, which hit his stomach with a sudden exploding warmth. He struggled for words. “No. No! But I’ve never walked into a room before and seen—seen—a device like that—”

  Somewhat wildly, he pointed past Franklin’s bare paunch to the peculiar instrument against the wall.

  “My armonica? Performances on musically tuned glasses are all the rage over here, I found. I merely improved on the primitive arrangement generally in use. Here, I’ll give you a demonstration—”

  A mantel clock chimed the half-hour. “Ah, but time’s up. Your momentary indulgence—”

  He disappeared into a dark adjoining room, returned clad in a much-worn dressing gown and old slippers of yellowed lambswool. He bustled from window to window, closing the shutters and latching them. Then he crossed to his armonica, while Phillipe, now less nervous, poured another tot of Madeira.

  He walked over to the bench at which Franklin had seated himself. He was beginning to notice other details of the room: books and portfolios of papers stacked everywhere; on the mantel, a trio of miniature oils in expensive gold frames. The central portrait was that of a plain-faced, even homely woman. She was flanked by a young, bright-eyed boy and a charming little girl. Franklin’s children? Phillipe wondered briefly whether the young man was the bastard governor, William.

  Franklin’s fingers ranging over the armonica captured Phillipe’s attention again. The high, shimmering notes faded away as cracks in the shutters admitted lightning glare. Thunder rocked the house. Phillipe bent forward to look while Franklin explained:

  “Until the advent of my little creation, performers on the musical glasses simply had to arrange their vessels helter-skelter—and seldom within easy reach. I approached the problem a bit more scientifically, that’s all.”

  He indicated the closely spaced glass hemispheres containing varying amounts of water. Each hemisphere resembled the bowl of a wineglass, but with a hole in place of a stem. Each hole fitted onto a peg on a spindle which, as Dr. Franklin demonstrated, moved back and forth at the touch of a foot treadle. Thus, certain glasses could be brought closer to the performer, or moved away. So precisely arranged were the hemispheres, not a drop of water spilled when the shaft changed position.

  “Thirty-seven hand-blown glasses from three to nine inches—ranging through three octaves—and originally tuned with the aid of a harpsichord. Using a diamond, I engraved the note’s letter on each glass.”

  Phillipe saw that when Franklin pointed it out. The older man moistened his fingertips in a bowl of water on a taboret beside the bench. Then he began to touch the rims of different hem
ispheres while operating the pedal. A surprisingly lovely tune rang forth, complete with simple chords that swelled and diminished as Franklin varied the finger pressure.

  In mid-phrase, he laughed and turned back to the amazed younger man.

  “That’s enough musicology for the evening, I think. You’re more interested in America. Sit down again, and let’s have another glass of Madeira.”

  As a result of the two he’d drunk, Phillipe was already hearing a slight buzz. His eyes were a bit blurry, too. But he accepted the full glass Franklin poured and took the chair offered.

  Franklin selected an even larger goblet for himself. He filled it to the brim, then relaxed in a second chair in front of jammed bookshelves, facing his visitor.

  “I do recall I am supposed to give you a copy of my population essay before you depart. But tell me, Mr. Charboneau—where’s your home? France, to guess from your accent.”

  “That’s right, sir. My mother and I came to England from Auvergne.”

  “On business? To visit relatives? What?” Phillipe was about to blurt that he was the son of a member of the nobility. He checked the impulse. Franklin might not be friendly with all the peers of the realm—and very likely not with the so-called King’s Friends, among whom the late Duke had been numbered. Still, he wasn’t eager to have the story of his origins too widely circulated, especially not since the unsettling incident with the beggars. So he answered:

  “Business, I suppose you’d call it. My mother was never married to my father, who was an Englishman of—good station.” He saw Franklin’s eyes dart quickly to the boy’s framed portrait; unabashed affection showed before the doctor returned his attention to the goblet he was warming between his palms. Phillipe continued, “When my father died, I was supposed to receive an inheritance, but—well, let’s say there were complications.”

  “Some pack of rascally relatives cut you off, eh?”

  “You’re very quick to get to the heart of it, sir.”