Two Crowns for America, Page 33

“He continues to be headstrong and single-minded, but the stories of his valor in America have not gone unnoticed. Shortly following his return, the Queen saw to it that he received a promotion from captain to colonel. After that he was allowed to purchase a regiment of the King’s Dragoons. If the invasion had gone forward, he was hoping to win himself further glory; but in his defense I should say that he has continued to badger anyone who will listen—and many who will not—regarding funds and other support for the American war.”

  “And has he been successful?”

  Franklin shrugged. “Who can say what specific action has caused what specific result? At least young Gilbert’s enthusiasm has never been in question. Meanwhile, the French government has all but promised a proper expedition in the spring—though I expect that Lafayette will return as an American officer; they won’t give him command of the expedition.”

  “I doubt he really expects that,” the prince said with a smile. “It will be enough just to be reunited with his beloved general. But poor Gilbert. How he must have chafed, these past months, to be banished to Le Havre, while exciting things happened elsewhere.”

  Franklin chuckled again. “Hardly an arduous banishment, unless one is twenty-one and eager that life not pass one by. But the appointment has not been entirely without compensation. His young wife is expected to present him with another child sometime in December. And there was a bright reminder of former glory a few months ago, when my grandson finally was able to deliver the sword awarded by Congress.”

  “Ah, the diamond-studded prize,” the prince said.

  “Indeed.” Franklin shook his head bemusedly. “But in all, I am pleased with young Gilbert’s progress—which is well, because I understand that conditions are still precarious in America.”

  “And may well grow worse before they grow better,” the prince replied. “We can but carry on and trust that we will be guided as is meant to be.”

  He had already received some additional guidance. Franklin had given the prince letters from himself to Washington and Simon, but also a letter received but days before, inscribed to Dr. Rohan c/o Dr. Franklin, that bore the seal of Saint-Germain.

  “We’re to inform him when the gold has been found,” the prince told his companions the night before they were to sail from Amsterdam. “He will direct what happens next.”

  “Did he say anything about a contact with Falk?” Andrew asked. “Was there a contact?”

  The prince managed a faint smile. “He did not say. Nor did I expect that he would. It will be very interesting to see how events unfold.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  They arrived back in Philadelphia in mid-December, traveling on immediately to Morristown, where Washington again had established his winter headquarters, this time in the gracious Ford mansion. Martha Washington had already taken up winter residence, for the previous season’s campaigning had been light. Washington had never fought a battle, though there was activity in the Southern Department.

  The four of them met Simon and Justin over supper in a private room at the Old Freeman Tavern, on the north side of the village green, reporting details of all that had transpired and what they planned to do next. Later, when Arabella had retired to her room at a nearby inn to share a more intimate reunion with her husband, she confided her ongoing concerns about Ramsay.

  “He’s putting on a very earnest face, but I’m convinced he has his own plans that he isn’t sharing with any of the rest of us. I think even Falk may have sensed that something was not quite right. Several times he seemed to make a point of reminding us that only I could read the directing of the coin and talisman. I almost had the feeling he feared that James might try to take it and recover the gold on his own.”

  Simon played with a tendril of her raven hair, part of his mind still preoccupied from their earlier pleasures.

  “It sounds unlikely that he can actually do that,” he murmured, “though he might try to bolt with the gold once you’ve found it. I’d rather have Saint-Germain’s guidance before we let him do that, but I do have one contingency plan in reserve, involving Justin; and I have little doubt where James will take the gold if he does seize it. Besides, you could track it with your coin and talisman, in any case,” he added with a smug glance.

  She laughed mirthlessly. “You seem to have a great deal of faith in abilities I’ve never even used,” she said.

  “I have great faith in all your abilities,” he replied, passion again stirring him as he bent to nibble kisses along the curve of her throat. “That includes your ability to bewitch your husband.”

  “Simon, we need to talk about James—”

  “Not now,” he whispered. “He can’t do anything until you’ve found the gold.”

  Simon spent most of the next week sounding out the situation in New York, for recent military intelligence suggested that the British might be preparing for a major offensive elsewhere. If General Clinton pulled troops from the New York area, the risk in going behind the British lines to search out the gold would be considerably reduced. Though Ramsay chafed with the delay, even he agreed that a few weeks would make little difference.

  Meanwhile, lest the time be entirely wasted, he and Andrew set about compiling the most accurate maps of New York that could be made, with Justin gleaning several to copy from the papers regarding Washington’s campaign of 1776. Arabella let herself be persuaded to try out the techniques Falk had taught her over a map of the general New York area, but the talisman seemed to indicate that the gold lay almost squarely in the center of the area of heaviest British occupation. The information was tantalizing, but not enough to risk an immediate foray into enemy territory—especially if the new year might bring a lessening of the British presence in that area.

  Their patience was rewarded. Clinton made his move on December 26, sailing from New York Harbor in relative calm with a fleet of some ninety transports and fourteen warships, carrying some seventy-six hundred men bound for Charleston. The departure was duly noted and express riders sent south to warn General Benjamin Lincoln, but fierce winter storms were already lashing the eastern seaboard by the time Washington received the news in Morristown.

  Aware that the weather would hamper British progress southward—and perhaps prevent it altogether—Washington shifted his concern to the worsening conditions at Morristown, as winter set in with a vengeance. Temperatures plummeted as the old year wound toward its close, and food and clothing were in ever shorter supply. Most reluctantly, Washington began to consider measures he had always rejected in the past: to commandeer supplies from the surrounding area. But he could not allow his army to starve.

  On the last day of the old year, hoping to boost morale, he attended the Festival of St. John’s Day at American Union Lodge in Morristown. Simon was among those who attended with him.

  Afterward, when everyone else had retired, the two of them retreated to the General’s office and drank the best part of a bottle of very fine brandy while they reminisced about the times they had shared as Freemasons over the past five years. Though their conversation was far ranging, touching on Lafayette’s initiation and even skirting close to Justin’s occasional function as a very special kind of Tyler, Washington never once alluded to his dream.

  But he did drink Arabella’s health, shortly before bidding Simon a somewhat less than steady good night. Long after the General had gone up to bed, Simon sat finishing the bottle and wondered how matters were progressing in New York, where his Freemason wife was embarked upon an unorthodox and very dangerous game.

  She had gone north with Andrew, Ramsay, and the prince as soon as the British fleet sailed. Shortly after the new year the four of them infiltrated British-occupied Manhattan and took accommodations very near the area indicated by Arabella’s map work. The owners of the house were loyalists who, until the departure of the fleet a fortnight before, had billeted several British officers as a means of supplementing their income. With the winter deepening, and the availability of sup
plies dwindling with the lessened British presence, they were glad to have paying tenants to supplement their income. Andrew and Arabella posed as father and daughter, sharing a large room on the second floor in the back. The prince and Ramsay occupied a room adjacent, with Justin joining them after a few days.

  Narrowing the focus of their search took most of a week, for they could work but slowly, lest their movements arouse suspicion. The prince must take particular care not to be recognized, for he had served as a British surgeon and might be taken as a deserter. To change his appearance, he had dyed his ginger hair black.

  Each day saw them trolling up and down the streets in a closed carriage, stopping periodically for Arabella to employ the coin and talisman. Their driver was the son of one of the prince’s financial contacts, and well paid not to ask questions.

  The procedure varied but little. Flanked by Andrew and the prince, with Justin consulting their maps and Ramsay poised to relay instructions to the driver, Arabella would hold the end of the talisman’s iron chain and concentrate on the gold coin suspended beside the piece of lapis lazuli, bidding the coin to incline toward the others hidden away by Angus Murray’s father.

  Within seconds the double pendulum would begin swinging in a particular orientation, though always with a slightly stronger inclination in one direction or another. Always its swinging pointed them toward a center point that did not change, no matter how they approached it. On the day they narrowed its prompting to a single building, she watched it as she had so many times, then drew a resolute breath.

  “Have the driver head off to the right at the first opportunity,” she said to Ramsay, not taking her eyes from the coin.

  The order was given and the carriage lurched forward, wheels muffled in the snow. They had been working their way closer to the area worst burned out during the fire of 1776, praying that their search would not take them into the canvas town of tents and lean-tos that still sheltered many of the inhabitants of New York. At length their meanderings led them along a side street past a faded and somewhat dilapidated two-story frame house whose unkempt front garden and shuttered and boarded-up windows proclaimed it long unoccupied.

  By now Arabella had learned to feel the tug of the pendulum as well as to see it, when she concentrated on the coin and the rest of the gold. Bidding Ramsay tell the driver to make a great circle around the block the house occupied, and to return to their starting point, she closed her eyes and let the pendulum dangle from her fingertips, feeling it incline always to the right as they circled the house in that direction.

  “Unless I’ve been doing this entirely wrong, that has to be the place,” she said, when the driver had nearly reached their starting point. “I don’t think I can narrow it any closer without actually going in. We’ll pray that the casks are in the house, not buried in the garden somewhere. The only way to know for certain is to go inside.”

  The prince chanced a look past the curtain over the carriage window and gave a slow nod. “We’ll need a closer look at the surrounding area before we actually try to go in. The house looks abandoned, but the neighbors or a British patrol still might object to housebreaking.”

  “Justin and I can scout it on foot,” Ramsay said, muffling a scarf more closely around his throat and preparing to disembark. “Meet us in about an hour, up by the crossroads. We’ll bring you a full report.”

  The logic was sound. After brief discussion as to how the observation would be divided, the two dismounted from the carriage and headed off casually in different directions. The prince watched them go, then instructed the driver to take Andrew and Arabella for a leisurely drive along the river while he made his own inspection of the more general area around the house. They collected him an hour later, not far from where they had left him, then headed for the rendezvous site agreed by Ramsay and Justin.

  “The front door is boarded up and much too exposed,” Ramsay said, settling into his seat as the carriage lurched off. “However, there’s an enclosed garden in the back, walled off and overgrown, and a back door opening onto a low porch. It’s boarded up, too, but it doesn’t look as formidable as the front.”

  “Any neighbors in the back?” the prince asked.

  “One house,” Ramsay replied, “but they’d need to be looking down into the garden from upstairs. The problem is that we may not be able to force that door. What looks far more promising is a boarded-up cellar window on the side where the alley runs. The adjacent house appears to be occupied, but there aren’t many windows on that side.”

  “How exposed is it?” Andrew asked.

  “Not very,” Justin said. “There are weeds and a hedge obscuring it at ground level, and the angle would make it difficult to see anything from an upstairs window, unless one happened to be looking down just at the wrong time. The biggest drawback is that it’s very small. I think I can get through; but the rest of you wouldn’t stand a chance. Arabella would fit, but I don’t know what she might have to contend with once she got in.” He glanced at his sister. “If the door between the cellar and the rest of the house has to be forced, I don’t know if you’d have the physical strength.”

  “I’m perfectly willing to let you try it,” Arabella said with a smile. “I’m no longer the girl who used to climb trees with you when we were children.”

  “We’ll leave it to Justin, then,” the prince replied. “If necessary, we can always try to force the back door and pray that no one hears or sees.”

  “Pray that the snow keeps up, then,” Andrew said. “It will cover our footprints and probably keep most folk inside. God knows it’s cold enough already. We’ll want to bring some shielded lanterns, as well. The shutters look relatively intact, but we still should be careful about showing lights inside.”

  The prince nodded. “We seem to have a workable plan, then. Let’s go back to our quarters and get some rest while we can. We’ll come back on foot, once it’s well dark.”

  They gained access to the house without major mishap, though they had to resort to their backup plan of entering via the cellar window. The night was wind whipped and bitter cold, with snow falling heavily, the streets even more deserted than they had dared to hope. Gloved and well muffled in cloaks that also concealed a shielded lantern and several pry bars, Ramsay and Justin crept along the alley and made their way into the back garden only to remove the boards from the back door and confirm that it could not be easily forced.

  Back they went to the cellar window, which proved larger than anticipated once they got its boards off. While Ramsay kept nervous watch, it was a relatively simple matter for Justin to wriggle through, take the lantern Ramsay then handed him, and disappear into the inner darkness.

  As soon as Justin was inside, Ramsay set about replacing the boards loosely over the window, then circled around to the rear to keep watch. The others were already huddled in a sheltered part of the back garden that could not be seen from the alley or the house behind. Ten minutes later the back door eased open a crack, and the low call of a barn owl floated briefly on the snow-muffled stillness.

  It was the agreed signal. Immediately the prince glided up the steps and inside. When, after a few minutes, no alarm disturbed the silence, a second owl call briefly screeched and then was silent. A minute later Arabella eased her way along the edge of the garden, another shielded lantern under her cloak, and ghosted up the back steps and inside. Andrew followed a few minutes later, with Ramsay entering last and lingering to close the door and make the lock secure.

  He found the others crouched in a small parlor whose only window, well shuttered, faced the house across the alley. The cold was bone chilling, even sheltered from the howling wind. The prince had unshuttered one of their lanterns far enough to cast a sullen pool of light directly onto the floor, where it was also screened by the dark-cloaked bulk of their bodies. By that light Arabella was drawing the talisman from around her neck, stripping off her right glove and blowing on her fingers to warm them, grasping the end of its chain between
thumb and forefinger as she drew a breath and half closed her eyes.

  The talisman seemed to move more erratically now that they were inside the house, sometimes quite strongly in a given direction, sometimes in tiny circles. It took them most of an hour and two complete circuits of both the ground and first floors of the house to realize that their talisman was drawing them downward, toward the cellar level. Justin muttered under his breath as he led them down the steps—hardly more than a ladder with wide rungs—a shielded lantern in his hand. He had come this way to enter and perhaps had walked right over the gold.

  Again he picked his way through the debris littering the earthen floor, feeling the cold suck the warmth through the soles of his boots, sweeping the lantern light from side to side as the rest gathered around Arabella, to see which way her talisman would move. It was the back wall of the basement, lined with battered paneling of tongue and groove boards, that seemed to draw her most strongly. As she held the iron chain alongside the wall, they could see the talisman and coin visibly incline in that direction, tapping lightly against the wood.

  “Behind there?” Justin said softly.

  “Only one way to find out,” Andrew replied.

  Eagerly Ramsay slid a narrow end of his pry bar into one of the cracks between the boards and bore down. The first board screeked as it began to move, so that he had to pause often lest the noise be heard outside. But as it came free and Justin worked loose a second board, the light of Andrew’s lantern spilled into deeper darkness—and glinted on the metal-bound corner of something within.

  Ramsay stifled a little cry and tried to contain his excitement as they continued working loose boards until the opening at last revealed the side of a wooden casket, perhaps a foot long and nearly as high, banded with iron. Grinning fiercely, he began to drag it out of the opening, Justin and the prince giving a hand while Arabella held the second lantern closer.

  The weight of it was promising. As they pulled it free with difficulty and lowered it to the earthen floor—rather faster than intended, and hissing with the exertion—an ancient lock on the side away from them rattled against a sturdy-looking iron hasp. No sooner had the casket touched the ground than Ramsay’s eager hands were all over it, stripping off his gloves to caress the ancient oak, to brush lightly the icy-cold lock. The wood was damp with green mildew, the lock red with rust. As Andrew bent for a closer look, holding his lantern nearer, its light shone into the space from which they had pulled it—and revealed a second casket.