The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles Page 22

  Franklin waved. “It’s an old story among the supposedly refined upper classes. So now your thoughts turn west across the sea—”

  Phillipe nodded. “My mother’s against it, of course.”

  “Handsome woman. Devilishly handsome! Can you persuade her?”

  “I think so.” It was a hope, not a fact. “Particularly if there’s a more solid future than we’d find back in France.”

  “You couldn’t have found better instructors in the fundamentals of printing than old Solomon and his sons. And the presses in the colonies do grow more numerous by the year. Commerce expands—that means more handbills, more advertising sheets. Literacy rises—the appetite for knowledge and news becomes voracious. Beyond that, we’ve a relatively open society over there—”

  Phillipe shook his head, not understanding. Another intense glare through the shutters preceded a stunning roll of thunder. Franklin helped himself to more Madeira before going on:

  “In America, a man’s free to rise as far and as fast as his wit and industry permit. The colonies are largely spared the constraints of the antique European system of nobility and privilege—with which you hint you’ve had some encounter.”

  The shrewd eyes pinned him from behind the spectacles. Plainly the question was an attempt to draw him out. But Phillipe kept silent except for another nod.

  Without thinking, he’d helped himself to more Madeira. The buzz in his ears had become pronounced. He wasn’t sure he could tell the Amberly tale coherently if he wanted to. He was growing dizzy—from the wine, and from basking in the nearly godlike presence of this famous man who, in some ways, acted as comfortably common as his old lambswool slippers.

  Seeing he’d get no answer, Franklin resumed, “Yes, a man can go far in America, no matter how humble his beginnings. That should continue to be the case unless, God help us, the Crown alters the course of colonial affairs.”

  “You discussed that trouble with Mr. Burke at some length—?”

  “Because it’s seldom out of my mind. The future of relations between the colonies and the mother country depends entirely—entirely—upon the actions of His Majesty.”

  “Can you forecast the next year or so? Will conditions over there be so unsettled that it’s foolish to entertain thoughts of a solid future?”

  Franklin peered into his goblet in an almost crosseyed way. He said somberly:

  “I hope not. As do most of my countrymen, from the Virginia tidelands to the Maine lobster banks. By living where they do, they have already gambled on their futures. I wish I could be more specific, but alas—” A rueful pucker of the mouth. “As a prophet, Poor Richard Saunders is a pious fraud. I do know that Englishmen will not be driven to their knees. To sketch it candidly for you, I would say America in the immediate future represents a unique combination of opportunity and risk. Opportunity to the extent I have already described—in plain terms, the air there is less stifling. On the other hand, German George—and many of his ministers who are supposedly Englishmen!—simply fail to understand the American temper. As you heard me tell Edmund, we seek justice, not enmity. But if they force the issue with their infernal taxes and fiats—that outrageous tea scheme, for example! I investigated Edmund’s rumor—the scheme’s certainly afloat. Should the high-handed ministers eventually push through a law granting an American monopoly to the half-wrecked East India Company—and should this government go on quartering royal troops among us at our expense—continue burdening us with aggravations and harassments of every devising—little ‘innovations,’ the wags in Parliament term them—then, Mr. Charboneau, you will see thirteen colonies pull and haul together as they have never done.”

  Silence. The mantel clock ticked against the murmur of the rain. Abruptly Franklin stuck out his lower lip.

  “No doubt I’m depressing you. I’ve certainly depressed myself. More Madeira!”

  Before Phillipe knew it, both glasses had been refilled. He said, “No, I’m not depresh—uh, depressed. I’m heartened. You’ve been honest. I think I’d welcome the free air in America. Whatever the dangers in the future.”

  “Good! Remember—I may have overstated the grimness of the outlook. As long as there are no new assaults on our liberties, all may continue in, relative calm—”

  Franklin had barely spoken the last words when lightning blazed outside—and the loud, strident dang-dang-dang of a bell brought the half-tipsy Phillipe leaping out of his chair.

  “Damme,” Franklin exclaimed, “I must have forgotten to unfasten the wire to the rod—”

  He rushed toward the doorway where he’d disappeared before. This time, however, the black room beyond was illuminated by a ghostly light that made Phillipe’s scalp crawl.

  Franklin noted his visitor’s white cheeks, chuckled.

  “No need to be alarmed—the house is merely electrified from the storm. Come look.”

  Dang-dang-dang-dang, the bell shattered the eardrums like some tocsin of judgment. Phillipe swallowed, wobbled as far as the doorway, looked in and observed Franklin silhouetted against a weird white aura glowing around a spot on one wall. Dang-dang-dang-dang—

  “The natural force contained in the electrical storm makes them ring,” the scientist shouted over the clatter. He resembled some white-lit creature of hell as he gestured to a little brass ball dancing in the center of that strange fire. The ball—and the white glow itself—appeared to leap back and forth between two bells mounted to the wall. Dang-dang-dang-dang—

  “Normally I keep the roof rod grounded—the charge runs harmlessly through a wire into the earth. But on occasion, I connect the rod to the bells for the amusement of visitors.”

  “Rod?” Phillipe repeated in a blank way.

  “The type of rod I devised to prevent lightning from damaging property. See where the wire comes down, suspending that ball by its silk thread?”

  Phillipe stumbled forward through the semidarkness, past a table littered with laboratory ware and tin-lined jars. The white glow was lessening. The ball moved more slowly; the bells rang with less stridence. Awed, Phillipe extended his hand toward the dancing sphere of brass.

  “For God’s sake don’t touch it!” Franklin cried, seizing his wrist. “You might be fried where you stand.”

  Intoxicated and nearly frightened out of his wits, Phillipe took three long steps backward. He managed a weak grin.

  “That—that’s certainly a diverting demonstration.”

  By now the ball barely touched the bells. The white glow had all but disappeared. Franklin clapped an arm over Phillipe’s shoulder, escorted him back into the sitting room.

  “I imagine you’d prefer to be diverted by that book I promised you.” He adjusted his spectacles, poked along the shelves, withdrew a slender volume—knocking several others on the floor in the process. Phillipe was relieved that he wasn’t the only one feeling the wine.

  Franklin handed the book to his guest. “Glean what facts you can from it. Then, since my friend Solomon is lacking a copy, donate it to him with my compliments.”

  “Dr. Franklin, I thank you most humbly for your time, your friendliness, your—”

  “Electrifying discourse?”

  Both laughed.

  “Please keep me advised of your plans, Mr. Charboneau. Don’t be discouraged or deterred by what might happen. America is a new, brave land—and her free air makes the risks attendant to emigrating there more than acceptable.”

  “I thank you again for the advice.”

  “It costs me nothing! And who knows? It may do the colonies a service by adding a citizen of worth. Truthfully, I can, and would like to be, of more practical help. Should you reach a decision to go, let me know and I’ll write you a list of good printing establishments in the major cities. I’ll also give you a note of introduction and recommendation.”

  “Sir, that’s unbelievably kind. But I’d hate to trouble you—”

  “Trouble me? I can do no less for a marked man.”

  Phillipe gu
lped. White spots seemed to dance behind his eyes. “Marked—?”

  Franklin crooked a finger and walked to a front window. “To visit Craven Street is to be deemed dangerous,” he said, pushing a shutter open and pointing. “At the next lightning flash, look across the way.”

  They waited for several moments. Then the sky glared, clearly illuminating a man lounging in a passageway between houses. The man was dressed as a seaman. A tiny ring in his earlobe glittered while the lightning flickered over Craven Street. Franklin slammed the shutter, his expression sour.

  “I’ll conduct you out the back way. For your own sake.”

  “You have spies watching you, Doctor?”

  “Almost constantly. Certain members of Parliament even declare I should be hanged. And compared to Mr. Samuel Adams and some of the rest of that Boston crowd, vis-a-vis King George I am a moderate! Still want to take up with us Americans, Mr. Charboneau?”

  Full of wine and excitement, Phillipe said to the great man, “Yes, I think so.”

  “I had that feeling shortly after we met. You’re the right sort, young man. Yes indeed, the right sort.”

  The compliment, and another stout clap of Phillipe’s shoulder, put him into a state of complete euphoria. With the precious book tucked inside his clothes, he whistled and hummed all the way back to Sweet’s Lane—and didn’t realize until he arrived that he’d gotten thoroughly soaked.

  But after an experience like tonight’s, what did it matter?

  ii

  He found Hosea drinking a pot of ale in the nearly dark kitchen. All but a few embers had gone out on the hearth. Esau perched on a stool, chin on his chest, snoring. His flute lay beside his right foot.

  “Well!” Hosea grinned, tottering up. “The specter from the storm. No robberies?” Phillipe shook his head, tugging off his sodden shirt. “No assaults by wenches?” Phillipe shook his head. “Gad, what a dull evening.”

  “The most exciting evening of my life, Hosea. The man is—he’s a giant!”

  Hosea shrugged, weaving as he grabbed Phillipe’s arm. “Listen. Himself is tucked up in his nightshirt. I smuggled this ale out of the cellar. Private stock. Join me—”

  “No, I want to read.”

  “Read instead of drink?” Hosea leaned closer, blinking. “You must be drunk.” He sniffed. “You are drunk. Pickled in the doctor’s well-known Madeira. All right, if that’s your pleasure, be unsociable!”

  It wasn’t a question of sociability, but of consuming eagerness to delve into the book. Phillipe lit a taper beside his bed, pulled off the last of his wet clothes, crawled under the blankets and turned to the first page. Within minutes, Franklin’s prose began to light his thoughts almost as that electric display had lit the room at Craven Street.

  In carefully structured phrases, and with precise logic, Franklin put forth his case for the coming greatness of the colonies. At the time he was writing— the fifties, hadn’t someone said?—there were over one million Englishmen in North America. Yet only about eighty thousand had emigrated from the mother country since the start of colonization.

  That fact alone established a fundamental difference between the Old World and the New. In Europe and the British Isles, population was more or less stable. But America, with its virtually unlimited land—land beyond the mountains of the eastern seaboard; land as yet unexplored except by soldiers and the hardiest woodsmen—gave families room to grow. The land provided them with sustenance as well. In Franklin’s view, there was hardly any restriction on the number of people the American continent could support.

  In fact, the mind-expanding essay predicted that America’s population would double every twenty to twenty-five years—and a distant century in the future, “the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this side of the water.”

  Dawn’s light found Phillipe still reading—drunk now on the words and their promise, intoxicated by the night just past, and by the force and vision of the man who had so patiently spoken with him—

  Starting, he heard the dawn church bells. His head hurt. So did his eyes. He’d soon have to be up and working—a full, long day.

  But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the sonorous word that rang and rang in his mind, a thousand times louder and more majestic than Franklin’s electrified bells—

  America.

  America.

  He blew out the taper and drowsed, murmuring the name.

  CHAPTER V

  The One-Eyed Man

  i

  THE FIRST HINT THAT Phillipe and his mother were in danger came disguised as no more than an item of dinner conversation, three evenings after the visit with Franklin.

  He was busy spooning the last of Mrs. Emma’s delicious lentil soup from his bowl. Talk at the table was animated this evening. But as usual, Marie did not enter in. Whether this was because she felt secretly superior to the Sholto family or because she was still not at ease among English people, Phillipe could never decide.

  As Mrs. Emma moved around the table, ladling extra portions of soup into the bowls of the three young men who had worked up their customary ravenous appetites in the press room, she said:

  “The strangest person appeared in the shop this afternoon.” An aside to Marie: “Just when you’d come up here to light the fire for tea time.”

  Marie responded with a faint nod. Her glance met Phillipe’s briefly, slid away. They hadn’t discussed their differences since the night the beggars accosted them in the fog. He’d been anxious to tell her about his remarkable evening at Craven Street, but thus far he’d lacked the opportunity—

  Or was it the courage? They had been alone several times. But on each occasion, Marie’s morose behavior quelled his enthusiasm.

  He was growing concerned about her health again. She was wan, too silent all day long. He knew she was probably worried about their future, which would have to be decided eventually. But she seemed to be retreating into herself—as if, that way, the issue could be sidestepped altogether.

  He heard Esau ask, “What was so strange about the visitor, Mother?”

  “For one thing, he had a positively frightening phiz. Particularly his eyes. No, that should be singular. Eye. One was covered with a greasy patch of old leather. But the other had a distinctly mean glare. He was a tall chap. Imposing—though I’ve seldom seen cheeks so pitted with the marks of the pox. He kept darting glances every which way. As if he were ill at ease in a bookshop.”

  “How was he dressed? Was he a gentleman?” Esau wanted to know.

  “A flash gentleman! Ill-assorted clothes. Old mended breeches. Jackboots. His coat, very dirty, might have been shot silk of bright orange—once.”

  “Orange was the macaroni color ten years ago,” Hosea put in. “Today a gentleman dresses in more restrained hues.”

  Chuckling, Esau reached for his tankard of ale. “Naturally you speak from hope, not personal experience.” Hosea scowled.

  Mrs. Emma ignored the banter, seated herself next to her husband and continued, “Well, I certainly have little knowledge about high fashion. But it was obvious this person wanted to look like a gentleman but couldn’t quite bring it off. His sword had a very fancy French knot. He didn’t appear wealthy enough to have bought it new.”

  “From your description,” said Mr. Sholto, “it sounds like he might have bought it on a coach road. At pistol point.”

  His wife replied, “That’s exactly how he struck me, Solomon! A thief in stolen finery.”

  “Well, maybe some victim gave him books instead of rings, and he acquired a taste for literature,” Hosea said between mouthfuls of bread. “I can’t exactly see why such a fellow’s worthy of so much discussion.”

  Mrs. Emma gestured helplessly. “He—he frightened me, that’s all. His beetling stare. His darted looks at every cranny and closed door.”

  “Did he say anything ill-mannered?” Esau inquired.

  “No. No, but—”

  “Then for once I agree with Hosea. What’s the fus
s?”

  “Well, it occurred to me that perhaps our store was being examined for possible robbery!” Mrs. Emma exclaimed. “The man did not belong here!”

  Sholto asked, “How long did he stay?”

  “Oh, ten minutes, perhaps. He spent most of his time at the bookshelves, taking down one volume and studying several different pages a long while. I finally got up nerve enough to speak to him a second time. I greeted him when he came in, of course. I got a hawkish, flash from his good eye, and a bare nod. On the second occasion, he snapped the book shut and said he was searching for some diverting, fictional adventure. But the volume he’d been examining didn’t measure up. With that, he walked out.”

  It was one of those rare occasions when Solomon Sholto laughed aloud. “Emma, Emma, you are a dear nervous wren. Some gutter peacock leafs through a novel and you’re alarmed—”

  “But you still don’t understand! The book to which he’d devoted so much attention was Mr. Chambers’ Cyclopaedia Britannica. I’m positive the fellow couldn’t read! And if not, what was he doing loitering in our shop?”

  Phillipe lowered his spoon back into the bowl and sat stock still. He didn’t so much as flicker an eyelash to reveal one possible answer.

  Mr. Sholto pondered his wife’s information and, after a modest belch, said, “Then it might be as you say. Maybe he was looking us over with robbery in mind. Puzzling, since any flash gentleman would have to fall quite low indeed to think about robbing a bookseller’s. Looting one of the new mansions out in Mayfair would be much more lucrative. However, there’s no accounting for the peculiarity of persons in London. Any big city attracts some strange ones. We’ll lock up tight. Hosea, you put your pallet in the press room for a few nights, just in case.”

  Hosea grumbled that he’d planned to be out late a couple of evenings during the week.

  His father replied blandly, “That is why you may put your pallet in the press room instead. Guard duty will keep you out of your unsavory haunts—and perhaps prevent a misadventure. I’d just as soon not lose my book stocks to some deranged captain who’s been temporarily forced off the highway.”