The Shadows of God (9 page)

“Well, of course. How could I not? And
they
came well dressed, without need of hand-me-downs. They even gave me a ride in their flying carriage, which much amused me. Did you bring any contrivance as entertaining?”

“No, Majesty, I fear not. We came in through your back door, a charming but strenuous path.”

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“I should think that the wizard of America should have his own flying machines. Did not your old master, Sir Isaac, invent them?”

“Indeed, Highness, but together we discovered that the cost of using them is too high, to body but especially to the soul.”

“Ah, yes.” The king raised his hand, and a Negro servant appeared from behind a curtain to place a glass of wine in it. He took a sip. “Mr. Sterne suggested I arrest you, you know. My ministers like the suggestion very well.”

“I must say, I hope Your Majesty was not swayed by that opinion.”

The king rested the glass on his belly and smiled at it. “Mr. Sterne is a most forceful man. So forceful, in fact, that his suggestion sounded much like a command. I did not like the tone.”

The stale air in the room suddenly felt cleaner to Franklin. “I am most grateful, Sire.”

“Yes. You may take this matter up with Mr. Sterne at dinner, I think.”

“He is still here?”

“Yes, of course, and still eager for my aid in pacifying my cousin’s enemies. I suppose you are here to make the opposite case.”

“Yes, Sire, that is so. And to remind you of the treaty we hold with Louisiana.”

“Ah, yes. The Sieur de Bienville was signatory to that, and had not the power of the throne behind him. You are aware of that?”

“Yes, Sire, I am. But Bienville made that agreement in good faith and without knowledge that a king still lived.”

“May I make suggestion, Sire?” This was one of the courtiers, an oily-sounding fellow with an undoubtedly false mole on his alabaster-powdered face.

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“I am always happy for advice from my court, Monsieur.”

“Wouldn’t it be amusing if Mr. Franklin and Mr. Sterne were to engage in a contest—perhaps a game of tennis — over the right to further petition you for your aid in this little conflict of theirs?”

“Oh,
tres amusant
,” another courtier echoed.

“You have to understand my court, Mr. Franklin,” the king said. “We are short of the best amusements here. Few of our dwarves survived the last winter, and Indian jugglers have lost much of their power to entertain. What do you think?

Shall we decide the future of your country with a tennis match?”

“Sire, I regret that I cannot fully convey to you the gravity of this situation — ”

“Gravity! How droll from a student of Newton!” the oily fellow said. They all laughed.

“Did Mr. Sterne explain to you how deeply indebted James is to the tsar of Russia?” Franklin pressed, ignoring the jibe.

“He forecast you would make much of it.”

“Perhaps a fortune-telling contest,” another of the courtiers quipped, “would be more suited to the talents of our English friends.”

Franklin felt a warmth flush his face. “Very well, sir,” he said to the man who had spoken. “I forecast that if you continue in these posturing games of wit instead of paying serious attention to matters at hand, you will find this castle of yours has crumbled about your ears, that devils you cannot even imagine will perch on your bones, and that your wit will be of very little use when you find yourselves extinguished, excised, extinct.”

“Oh, dear,” the oily fellow said. “That isn’t entertaining in the least, I find.

Have you another soliloquy, perhaps more suited to the occasion?”

The king sighed loudly. “Out, all of you. All of you except Mr. Franklin, begone.”

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D’Artaguiette bridled. “Sire—”

“You, too.”

They hesitated, but not for long. More than one gave Franklin a glance that promised their dislike of him was gaining proportion.

“That’s better,” the king said, once the last of them had closed the door. He rose from his bed and went to a cabinet, from which he drew a worn blue justaucorps to throw over his dressing gown. He went to the blurred window and gazed out at the muddy mess of New Paris.

“I never wanted to be king,” he said. “Never. I was perfectly content as the duke of Orleans. I could do what I wanted to, then. I could do
nothing
if I chose.” He turned back to Franklin. “You see what I am surrounded by now?

Idiots, all of them. They insisted I greet you as I did, impress you with our indifference. Well, you are suitably impressed, I hope? As impressed as you are by my great city, my wonderful palace? You must think me mad. Sire —”

“Where
have you been, you English?” he exploded. “You left us alone here with Indians. New Orleans is a moldering ruin. The Natchez slaughtered our concessionaires on the great river. Hundreds have starved and died from the pox, and all my court can do is to shrink from it, imagine we still have a kingdom, lose themselves in dreams. Now you come to me and ask for help—against my royal cousin? What care I if he has Russians at his back? What care I, if he might help restore the world I once knew?”

“Sire, he will not do that.”

The king was silent for a moment. “I love science, did you know? I was a great admirer of Newton, and have admired your own papers in the last few years. I have a laboratory here, where I perform experiments when I have time. That perfume you smell —I made it myself, would you believe? I was the head of the Academy of Sciences, which—which —” He suddenly broke off, and Franklin understood that the sovereign was weeping. “Which
did this thing.”
He groaned. “And I did not know, did I? I, who thought myself in command—I never knew what my damned uncle — ” He broke off again. “I was nothing. I am nothing. What do you imagine you will find here, Mr. Franklin? My five THE SHADOWS OF GOD

hundred pitiful soldiers? My four ships? Do you think I really have anything you need?”

Franklin’s heart sank. The French were weaker than he had suspected. No wonder Bienville had signed the protection treaty—the Atlantic colonies outnumbered and outgunned them thirty to one.

But— He ordered his thoughts. “Yes, Sire, I do,” he said at last, and found that he meant it. “The battle we wage is not just for ourselves but for our very race.

And it is not merely a battle of arms over territory but a fight for our very souls. If you have any men at all who will fight—we need them. If you have any ships that can sail, or cannon that will yet fire—we need them. But most of all, we need your heart and your courage and your conviction. I, too, played a role in the tragedy that is upon us, that fist of heaven that smote the Earth and spoiled it. A greater role, Sire, than ever you did, I swear. I may be damned for it. But I will be twice damned if I do nothing to correct what I have done, if I do not find the courage to face the children of my mistake and tell them that they will inherit no more evil from me. That is what I hope to find here, a spirit of that kind.”

The king turned back toward the window. “Go,” he said. “Go away from me.”

“Majesty—”

“Go. I will see you at dinner tonight. Perhaps I will ask you to play tennis after all.”

Franklin bowed before leaving, but the monarch did not turn to look at him again. He spoke, still facing away.

“There is someone recently come to my court, Mr. Franklin, who would like a word with you. I will grant it to her, I think. She may say much that shall enlighten you. Then again, perhaps not— She has said much to me, and I remained most unenlightened, though her company is pleasant enough.”

“Thank you for hearing me out, Sire.”

“Do not thank me yet. My page shall escort you.”

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As promised, one of the pages was waiting outside.

“
Suivez-moi, je vous en prie, Monsieur”
the boy said.

Franklin could only follow the boy farther into the maze of the chateau, up stairs and down yet another dark corridor. “

The room he was admitted to was illumined by a new untarnished lanthorn. It was like opening a door in hell and finding the sun.

And his breath caught, for in that light, more beautiful than ever, on a small tabouret, sat the first woman he had ever loved.

“Vasilisa?” he croaked.

“Hello, Benjamin, my dear,” she said in that low voice he remembered so well, that he still heard in guilty dreams now and then. “My, but how you’ve grown.”

6

Geneaologies

Time eased by like a summer breeze, unhurried. Adrienne blinked at the stars, felt the tendons of her neck tightening in anticipation of the keen-edged knife that came to part them.

Maybe it was best that she die.

It was a brief thought, a coward’s thought. The stars dissolved from patterns of light into spidery matrices of gravity and affinity, and her servant angels, her THE SHADOWS OF GOD

djinni crowded around.

Mistress?

Her attacker’s body was a complicated minuet of matter and spirit, but its dancers were mostly one compound, water, which was in turn made of phlegm, aer, and lux. At her silent command, the djinn split each ferment of water into constituent atoms. The dance became a riot.

The fellow never even managed a scream but fell away from her, a tongue of flame licking from his gaping mouth, twin jets from his nostrils, his eyes popping like fireworks.

Without him to support her, she fell ungracefully. She barely felt the cold earth, but the stars were still there, untroubled.

Fever slashes came after that. People around her, then someone lifting her, Crecy’s face. Father Castillion, another bloody knife, a castle of pain that built higher and higher and finally collapsed. And then, at last, darkness.

But not silence. She felt she was in a great mausoleum, for the voice echoed many times.

I’m sorry. My enemies must have found you. They are everywhere. But I will
help. I will help to heal you.

Apollo
—

Do
not exert yourself. Sleep
.

So she did.

Adrienne woke, her hands resting on the quilts mounded upon her. She was nine years old, in her father’s house, the chateau at Montchevreuil. She had the fever, she remembered, and she was cold. But where was Grandpapa? He had been here with her, and, despite what the doctor said, he made her know she would be safe, that the black angels had not come for her yet. “

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“Grandpapa?”

“Ah. You wake. How do you feel?”

The voice wrapped her more securely and warmly than any blanket—for an instant only, and then that security turned to sudden fright. The gentle words had the same rustic accent her grandfather had spoken with, but it was not the same voice.

She turned toward the sound and saw Father Castillion, and it all came back.

She was not nine, she was thirty-two. Where could twenty-three years go, even for a moment? What was wrong with her?

He must have seen the confusion and the terror, and he put a hand on hers. He was in a chair; and beyond him, in another, sat Crecy, chin dropped down to her breast. “All is well,” the priest said. “Your wound was grave, but God has given you the strength to survive it.”

She remembered Father Castillion standing over her, and pain. “God gave you the skill to heal, it seems.”

“He blessed me with knowledge, yes. I studied the healing arts and learned many peculiar things in China. Yet I know my measure. If my hands had been the only ones at work, you would no longer be among us. You lost a grievous amount of blood.” He gripped her hand. “Do you see Him now, among us?

Can’t you see He is here?”

“He is here,” she repeated. But she did not mean God. She knew from whom the miracle had come.

Nicolas, her son. She had given him life, and now he had done the same for her.

“Who did this to me?” she asked.

Crecy started awake then, with a sudden gasp, her fingers flying to the hilt of her sword. Then she understood and relaxed somewhat.

“I told you to wake me,” she said to the priest, an angry edge in her voice.

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“She only now woke,” he said.

“It’s true, Crecy. We’ve only spoken a few words. I was just asking who tried to kill me, and why.”

“It was Karoly Dimitrov, the Orthodox priest we brought along with us. I have asked questions, and believe he must have been a spy for the metropolitan.”

“I see.” She frowned. “He was going to cut my throat, as Irena’s throat was cut.

Do you suppose he killed her, too?”

Crecy hesitated. “Perhaps we should discuss these matters when you are stronger.”

“Discuss them now, please.”

“Very well. I’ve believed Irena was going to meet her lover when she was killed.

And, as you say, her throat was cut ear to ear. But I have a reliable report that at that time Father Dimitrov was on board the
Dobrynya,
which never landed that day. Irena was killed in the woods. What’s more, Dimitrov was never far out of sight of our men.”

“Maybe your sources are not as reliable as you believe.”

“I think they are.”

“Where is Hercule?”

“Questioning everyone who knew Dimitrov, and not too gently. He thinks, as you do, that the attempt on your life is connected to his wife’s death. Dimitrov is dead —and in a singularly unlovely way, I must say—but the other killer is still free. We guess that both work for the metropolitan or perhaps the Golitsyns.”

“Why Irena? What did killing her accomplish?”

“It divided your people. It gave Menshikov the wedge he needed to steal some THE SHADOWS OF GOD

of your supporters.”

“Because they thought I killed Irena. But why not kill me in the first place?”

“You are too well protected, generally. Your guardians are not usually all drunk.”

“This was not your fault, Veronique.”

“Tell me no such nonsense. I should have been at your side, and so should have Hercule. We both failed you.”

“I failed myself. If I had been sober, the man would never have touched me and, further, would still be alive for our questioning. Enough of this. Our people have lost their priest and I have killed him. How was that taken?”