Twin Speex: Time Traitors Book II (26 page)

He didn’t know if he could ever regain Ettie’s trust, but right now they needed each other. Charlie set the teacup down on the floor and said, “I went to the hospital to kill your father. You’ve read Odette’s journal. You know who he was.”

Ettie’s face was as still as stone, but he could see a ripple of terror beneath her skin.

“
She
ordered me to do it, but I couldn’t.” He stood and walked over to the huge window and sat down on the sill. “He’s not Sir Archibald or even the Arthur Bradley your brother knew. He’s just a harmless man who loves his daughter. I think that is why
She
wanted him dead.”

Ettie nodded stiffly, her throat dry. That there were such people in the world… people who kill… who talk about killing… who plan to kill.

“Do you know who she is or why she looks like me?” Ettie finally asked.

“No idea,” he replied abruptly, but added, “Her actions are those of… of a woman possessed, and they are directed at you and your family.” He sighed deeply. “She may be somehow tied to Sir Archibald, like me.”

She looked at him expectantly, and he told her in an emotionless voice how he had been plucked from certain death by the King’s spymaster. How he had been trained from the age of seven or eight, he really didn’t know how old he was, for a mission to the future.

Ettie stood up. She wore a pair of men’s flannel pajama pants and silk night shirt. “They’re Matthew’s,” Abigail had explained. “He’s never worn them. Probably never even knew he had them.” Abigail had shaken her head absently with mild disgust. “There is nothing more wasteful than wealth.”

Ettie felt the pants slide down her hips and hitched them up, pulling the drawstring tighter around her waist. She did this automatically, never taking her eyes off Charlie’s face.

Finally, she asked, “Was it very bad?”

He sat back and rubbed his eyes, expression returning to reanimate his face. “You be the judge,” he replied bitterly. “It made me the man I am today, the man you read about in Odette’s journal.” He stood up and shook off his self-pity. “It was a hard life, yes, isolated as I was in a cottage on his estate. I was put through strenuous physical training, at all hours of the day and night. My education was constant. My living arrangements were Spartan, and the food was simple and… meager. I had little rest, but it was vastly better than where I’d come from.”

“Who looked after you?” she asked. “Surely someone cared for you.”

He walked over to the fire, momentarily diverted by the delicate wooden dragonfly that had come to rest on the mantle. He touched with a gentle finger the fine balsa wood body and said, “I had a series of tutors, trainers, and keepers. No one stayed long, only until what they had to teach me was finished. There was a cook once… Jules, an old Frenchman. He stayed longer than most, two years. I liked him. I think he would have stayed longer if Sir Archibald hadn’t caught him sneaking me food afterhours.”

“Good God! He sounds like a monster!”

“He was. And he created one,” he replied, sitting down in the armchair and leaning back with his eyes closed.

Ettie walked into the circle of heat from the fire. She looked down at his face. In repose it was beautiful and serene. His hands lay on the armrests. Ettie had always loved his hands, large and strong. She wanted to believe that he wasn’t by nature a weak or evil man, that abuse and neglect had molded him into the perfect henchman, too emotionally tied to his abuser to ever question his orders.

Except he had. From Odette’s journal and her own experience, Charlie had, at least twice, defied his maker. Once, for his own self-interest, and now… for her? … for love? Trust danced just out of reach. She longed to feel the relaxation that came with its comfortable embrace. Instead, she tightened the muscles of her shoulders and kept any softness from her voice, “I think he may have made more than one… monster, that is.”

He looked over at her and nodded with quick understanding. “Yes,
She
may be his creature as well.”

“The painting…”

“
She
loved it. I know it’s sick, but she did.”

“Did she ever tell you anything about it, who painted it? Why?”

“No.
She
told me nothing about herself.”

“What hold does she have over you?”

“The strongest of all,” Charlie replied, “my life.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know how she found me. I don’t know how she built up her syndicate, or how she is connected with Sir Knightly. But with the machine she can go almost any-when she wants. The fact that I’m still alive only means she hasn’t wanted me dead yet.”

Ettie sat down in the other armchair and stared into the fire. It didn’t make sense to her. “If she could kill anyone at anytime, what does she need you, or anybody, for? No, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she is all-powerful.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “You may be right.”

“So what happened, Charlie? If you believed she can kill you whenever she likes, why defy her now?

He looked away from her, embarrassed. “She threatened something else.”

“Something more important than your life?”

He looked back at her steadily. “You could say that.”

Twenty

FOR ONCE IN his long and very productive life, Benjamin Franklin was practically bereft of words. It was preposterous! Even if he believed for one second it would work, there was absolutely no way he could convince the others.

“I tell you, the Canadian trip is a failure,” Odell’s voice was suffused with frustration. “They are not prepared to join us in revolution, and the journey will only damage your health.”

Franklin flung a hand in the air in a helpless gesture. “Well, there is no arguing with history, now is there?”

Odell bit back an angry retort. He might react the same if someone showed up from the future knowing how his life had turned out even before he had lived it. A man of Franklin’s genius and disposition was unlikely to relinquish control easily, even if it meant arguing with history.

Odell drew in a deep breath and took a quick, impatient turn about the room. At any other time, he would have been in awe of his surroundings. They met in a small committee room adjacent to the much larger assembly in Independence Hall, or, more accurately at this time, the Pennsylvania State House.

The past two weeks had allowed him little time to sightsee and very few moments for contemplative wonder. Since meeting Jonathon Sinclair on the docks, his efforts had focused wholly on forwarding the only plan he believed could win the war and secure the future. He was joined in this meeting with Franklin by Gabriel, Fancy, and Hugh.

Ava had accompanied them here, but declined to join the meeting, saying, “I put him off.”

He had begun to protest, but she stopped him. “It’s all right. He needs to speak freely, and he won’t in my presence. Gabe said it was fine if I looked around a bit.”

She turned to walk back through the empty assembly room. The long cotton dress with its many petticoats accentuated her graceful movements, and he had stood transfixed by the gentle sway of her hips until she exited the door on the other side.

There was a little corner of Odell’s brain devoted to worrying about Ava. When she was out of his sight, it was host to terrifying speculation. If he didn’t wall it off, it would paralyze him, this fear for her. Although they met every evening when the household was abed to talk over the day’s events, she was often out of his sight as their paths had taken them in different directions.

“What would you have me do?” Franklin finally asked.

It was Franklin’s fallback phrase, “What would you have me do?” He had repeated it already three or four times during this conversation.

“I would have you do what we discussed.”

“Take the delegation, but instead of going to Canada, follow this Sinclair fellow to New York and meet with the Six Nations?”

“Exactly. There is a Mohawk leader sympathetic to our cause, Joseph Louis Cook. Jon can take you to him. The Six Nation Conference is highly decentralized, but you can convince them to unite.” Odell took an almost pleading stance. “Doctor Franklin we can no longer seek merely neutrality from the Indian nations, when we need alliances.”

“How?”

“By offering full participation in our new nation,” Gabriel replied, “and assuring them that their lands will be protected from encroachment.”

“Schuyler did just that in Albany back in August.”

“I know. I was there advising the Indians on English law. But that was for their neutrality. If we want them to fight by our side, they need to be full partners in the revolution,” Gabriel insisted. “We need to guarantee their sovereignty.”

“And the Creek Nation in the south,” Odell added. “If we can convince them—”

“Wait… wait a minute!” Franklin held up his hand to stave off Odell’s flow of words. Looking intently at Gabriel, he asked, “How do we do that? How do we guarantee their sovereignty when you and I both know that the demand for new land is tied up in this revolution and will one day be inexorable?”

“Maybe sovereignty is too strong a word,” Gabriel conceded. “Maybe they become the fourteenth, or fifteenth—or how many tribal lands there are—colonies. Give them representation in the Continental Congress and whatever government forms after the war.”

Benjamin Franklin shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You ask the impossible.”

“If we push for the abolition of slavery, which we all know we must,” Gabriel declared, “the southern colonies will fight for the British. We are going to need native allies.”

“If we lose the southern colonies, we could lose Virginia, and that means we lose Washington,” Franklin asserted.

“Maybe not.” Fancy had been unusually quiet during this debate, but now added, “I’ve read that Lord Dunmore has already offered any slave or indentured servant their freedom if they fight for us… I mean, the British.” She laughed a little uncomfortably. “Sorry, not quite used to being a colonist yet. My point being, if you do the same, the southern colonies have nowhere else to go. The hope of independence would then seem to be a heavy inducement.”

“They could just sit out the war,” Franklin observed.

“Either way, they won’t fight for the British,” Fancy concluded, “…I hope.”

Benjamin Franklin cast her an amused look and heaved a sigh. He sat down heavily in one of the straight-backed chairs situated around a small table and said, “That is what all this is about, isn’t it? As a contingency if the southern colonies refuse to ratify independence without slavery… if they refuse to stand with us.”

Gabriel pulled a chair up next to him. “We have to stop it here, Ben. You were there on that ship. You heard Ambrosius. If we allow slavery to continue as part of a new nation, as part of a
free
nation, we are releasing a sickness that will infect society for generations to come, perhaps never to recover.”

“We don’t recover,” Odell said matter-of-factly. “The fractiousness of the Civil War never goes away. Bitter anger and defeat seethe always beneath the surface in the south. It poisons our political discourse and makes it almost impossible to come together on important issues. It’s sometimes like we’re two different countries.”

“And with Odell’s strategy, we can at least try to avert another great wrong,” Gabriel added.

“You’re speaking of the natives,” Franklin replied. “You’ve made few friends, Gabe, advocating their cause.”

“Few white friends, you mean,” Gabriel retorted.

Benjamin Franklin laughed and muttered half to himself, “I’m too old for this.”

“If we push for the emancipation of slaves in some sort of… of declaration at the next congress,” Gabriel persisted, “we will likely lose Georgia and South Carolina, maybe Virginia. But I think we have Jefferson on our side, which may have some impact on Washington.”

“I can tell you right now, Washington is resistant to having blacks in his army, definitely not slaves,” Franklin informed them grimly. “He’s afraid, as is every slaveholder, of arming them.”

“They won’t be slaves; they’ll be freemen,” Gabriel declared. “And we must give them every reason to fight for that freedom.”

“If the southern colonies refuse to join us, we lose their slaves as potential soldiers,” was Franklin’s reply.

This produced a quick exchange of glances between the others present. It was not lost on the astute old diplomat. “What?” he demanded.

Hugh cleared his throat. “With respect, Doctor Franklin, we’ve come up with a… um… possible way around that.”

“Oh?” Franklin raised his eyebrows.

“Well, there is… you may not be aware, but there is a network in place to help escaping slaves.”

Benjamin Franklin sat up straight in his chair. “I cannot be party to illegal activities. This—”

“Ben!” Gabriel exclaimed. “The revolution is illegal! And, if we fail, it is unlikely any of us will escape a traitor’s end. Are you really telling me that your scruples are so fine as to parse skin color? That illegality is only a factor of race?”

Franklin sat silent, his crossed arms resting on his stomach. Finally, he said, “I’ve never understood, Gabe, why you eschew politics.”

Gabriel sat back, relaxing. “Yes you do. I’m a failure at compromise.”

“And I’m a master of it?” Franklin queried.

“Of negotiation, yes. And admirably so,” Gabriel replied. “But there is a point where we have to stop negotiating. When that time comes, if the southern colonies decline to join us, we have to have a plan to free their slaves in place.”

“And that plan is…?”

The string of expletives that followed its revelation impressed even Fancy.

*

Odell walked across the paneled assembly room and exited the door he had seen Ava use a little over an hour earlier. He had hoped she would be waiting for him outside the committee room, but she had clearly not had her fill of exploring the historic building.

He entered the central hall and stood looking left and right, uncertain in which direction to search. An old, spare man approached from the rear of the building, just beginning to make his rounds.