The Shadows of God (13 page)

But he knew very well that the slight frame beneath her jade dress was that of a full-grown woman. He had tasted it, loved it, reveled in it, when he himself was barely more than a child.

“What shall I say?” he managed. “Shall I say I am happy to know you are alive?

I suppose I am. Shall I say I am pleased to see you? I cannot say that with the same surety. You betrayed me, Vasilisa.”

“Benjamin! I saved your life. Are you so quick to forget that?” She reached for his hand with both of hers, and so paralyzed was
he
that she managed to catch it. Her skin was warm, her fingers smooth, un-calloused. “I know that it is difficult for you to forgive me. But it was best for you—you must admit it.”

He withdrew his hand. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Karevna? You still serve the Russian tsar, I presume, and so once again, I think we are enemies.

Are you with Sterne?”

She smiled somewhat unconvincingly and stood. He realized with a shock how short she was, for when last he had seen her, he had been only fourteen. She looked suddenly vulnerable in a way he had never imagined she could. “Sterne

— I never met him until I arrived here.

Who I serve has become rather… complicated. Russia is no longer ruled by the tsar, as such. I find myself… confused.“

“You, confused? It is difficult to believe, Mrs. Karevna.”

“Once you called me Vasilisa. You did when we met just now.”

“Once I was a boy with a tender heart. Thanks much to your influence, I am no longer that boy.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Benjamin, that much is true. I think you know it is.” She cocked her head. “Your hand calls you married.”

He touched his wedding band. “Indeed. Some ten years now.”

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“I congratulate the woman. She is American?”

“She is Czech, actually.”

Vasilisa smiled broadly. “You seem to have acquired a taste for Slavic women, my dear.”

That brought a blush he didn’t think he had left in him. “It is good to know you are alive,” he said, a bit of the bluster leaving his voice. “I thought, once, that I saw you on a Russian ship — ”

“When you fell from the sky with the Swedish king and laid waste to the Russian fleet over Venice? Yes, I was there. It was a glad moment for me, to know
you
were alive —but, as you remember, there was not much time or opportunity for a reunion. But seeing you then is, in part, why I am here in America. I assumed you would gather importance and therefore be easy to find.”

“Not in
this
colony.”

“My duty brought me to this colony, from quite a different direction as your Pretender and the Russian traitors with him. My heart would have brought me, eventually, to seek you out, to offer my apologies.”

“That, I cannot believe,” Franklin replied, forcing some of the hardness back into his voice. “You were never in love with me.”

“No, but I did
love
you. And I wronged you. There comes a time when one wants to set things right, to make life over.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, and there is more. I need your help.”

“Which makes more sense to me.”

Now her smile grew even wider. “Benjamin, you have indeed grown up. You THE SHADOWS OF GOD

are more cynical than ever I was. I’m not sure I like it on you, this rough and prickly suit.”

“You helped pick it out.”

She laughed, and it was the laugh he remembered, pure and musical. “In that case, let me be plain and businesslike, yes, Benjamin? I can help you against Sterne and his Pretender. But I need your help as well —help of a scientifical nature.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Our
real
enemies—you know who I mean, I think—gather themselves.

Certain philosophers in the Russian empire have given them new muscles, which soon we shall see flexed. We must stop them, Benjamin, or all the world will burn.”

“You wish me to think you traitor to the tsar?”

“The tsar is probably dead, but I serve him yet,” she said heatedly, her voice actually quavering. “Did I ever tell you how I came to meet the tsar?”

“You never did. Why should I care?”

“He saved my life. More than that, he gave me a new one, a better one. No man

—no person—has ever done such a thing for me. You must believe me when I say I loved the tsar and despise those who have taken his country. And the masters they serve—those creatures Sir Isaac once called the malakim—they will be done with all of us. We
are
on the same side, Benjamin. Do not let your bitterness toward me obscure that. It will not serve either of us well.”

“You’ve always been a great talker, Vasilisa, but you were never shy of turning the truth front to back, and for all I know have made practice perfect these twelve years gone. Can you offer any proof of what you say?”

“You called me Vasilisa again,” she said softly.

“Can you prove what you say?” he repeated insistently.

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“I think so. We will speak again.”

“I would rather have it now.”

“All I have to offer you now is my word and myself,” she said simply. “If either will do, take them. If not, then you must wait a bit.”

“I cannot wait too long,” he cautioned. “But I will give you time to prove your case.”

“You will not regret it.”

He left, and the page showed him to a small, damp, drafty apartment. It made him almost yearn for their camps on the forest trails, which at least gave one a view of who might be coming.

He had scarcely seated himself on a hard stool when a rap came at the door.

“And how is the ambassador?”

“Evening, Robin. I’m afraid I can’t really say. The afternoon has left me somewhat… bewildered.”

“Well, we ain’t under arrest as I can tell, so things seem better here than at our Coweta congress.”

“Or perhaps just strung out longer. Sterne is here, as we suspected, pressing his case. The king says it does not please him, but I seem to make him no happier.” He wondered if he should tell Robert about Vasilisa, but he needed to know what he himself thought about that little matter before taking another’s counsel.

“To tell you the honest truth, Robin, I think this was all a tragic mistake. This diplomacy is proving a dry well, and now I think it was water we never even needed. If we had won the Coweta and the French, what would we have? A thousand more soldiers —maybe. I’ve been preaching that our real foe are those in the aether, and yet what have I done to attack them? Not a thing.”

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“Yet wasn’t that what brought you here? The need for such supplies as the French might have?” Robert asked.

“Who knows what they have? Or whether I’ll ever be able to use it?”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t I? Where was our intelligence? How could we have known so near nothing about this place?” Franklin asked, exasperation touching his voice.

“Well, there I may be able to help you. I’ve met up with one of our French brothers.”

“A secret Junto member?”

“Indeed.”

“He is about?”

“No, he’s bein” high cautious. Actually, Penigault introduced us. It’s the Du Pratz fellow, who wrote the history of the Natchez. He paid a call whilst you were in chambers. According to him, the king here has plentiful scientific stuff.“

“He did claim to love things scientific,” Franklin mused. “Maybe there is something to bait the hook with. Maybe. And it may be I have some hope of a defense against the malakim as well, or at least some intelligence about these dark engines of theirs that Euler told us about. And we have Euler himself.”

“There, see? God may well have provided you what you need.”

“This from you, who never once has thought God a reasonable fellow? What, has some Quaker girl worked conversion on you?”

“Hardly. But I figure if God is responsible for all of this, there’s no hope for us at all. If he isn’t, then he may well be against it, so maybe I ought to curry some favor.”

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“The cautious Robin,” Franklin said.

“But what hope have you found, specific? You didn’t say.”

“Nor will I just now. An old foe, maybe a friend now.”

“Hmm. Wasn’t it you who said, ”Beware twice-boiled meat, and an old foe reconciled“?”

“That
was
me, wasn’t it? It must be sound advice then. Are you ready for dinner?”

“I could eat a bear.”

Which was fortunate, as bear was the main course. It was tolerably good, well roasted and exceedingly greasy. Robert was as good as his word, vanishing great hunks of it down his throat. Voltaire, Franklin noticed, was somewhat more cautious.

Franklin didn’t want to look at Sterne, for when he did, he saw the bloody ghost of his brother James Franklin. For more than’t twelve years he had lived with that last sight of James, his death-dimmed eyes and confused expression lit by his burning print shop. For twelve years, Franklin had thought James’

murderer dead.

But in Coweta territory, Sterne had claimed the killing as his own. Was it a lie?

It didn’t matter—that he would claim it was enough. That he was a warlock was enough. That he had worked against Franklin was enough. He would pay the toll for his evil words and deeds, and Franklin would see to it.

So he forced himself into a seeming of good humor and smiled at Sterne, and took comfort that the dinner seemed to disagree entirely with the periwigged fellow. After the first round of toasts to the king, Franklin couldn’t help himself. He raised his cup and said, “To good Mr. Sterne, who was so lately my host in the wild—may I have the chance to host you in as good a fashion—or, I hope before God, better!”

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Franklin’s friends—the rangers and the Apalachee drank to that with great enthusiasm—the French with some puzzlement. Sterne, of course, did not drink to himself. The smile he managed looked uncomfortable. Franklin took all this as a good sign—a sign that the court had not thrown its weight behind the Englishman.

The king seemed to have recovered a certain amount of good cheer. In fact, he raised his own cup in toast.

“To Sir Isaac Newton,” he exclaimed. “He brought us the benefits of a new science to help us through these dark days. And to his greatest apprentice, whom they call the Wizard of America, Benjamin Franklin. I do hope I can convince Mr. Franklin to demonstrate an experiment or two for us.”

Franklin couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. He began to think Robert might be right about God, after all.

“I would be most delighted to do so, Your Majesty. Indeed, as you have told me you are a scientific man, I greatly desire that we might collaborate on something. Perhaps we can speak of this later?”

He guessed nothing he could have said would have had a more profound effect on the king. His eyes positively gleamed. “That sounds most delightful, Mr.

Franklin. Most delightful indeed.”

Sterne couldn’t sit still for that, and he didn’t. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I must remind you that your cousin James has been kept waiting for too long. You promised an answer when Mr. Franklin arrived; as you see, he is here now.

Will you delay longer? Consorting with him in matters scientific can only add to the insult my sovereign already perceives. I — ”

The king slammed his cup onto the table, bringing an end to Sterne’s speech and to every other sound at the table.

“Mr. Sterne, I do not wish to discuss politics while taking my pleasure. It is disgusting—and with ladies present! Mr. Franklin has the good grace and manners to understand that. Your own behavior baffles me. As for my cousin, he was always an overbearing, self-important little shit, and I will hear no THE SHADOWS OF GOD

more of his indirect pomposity here. If he truly wished to make an impression, he would have come to see me himself, yes?”

“Sire,” Sterne began again, in a more humble voice, “my sovereign has the pressing matter of the rebellion to occupy him, else he most assuredly would be here.”

“Of course he would — eating my food and drinking my wine as he and his father did for decades at my uncle’s court. Yet when has he invited me to dine at his?”

“Hush, Mr. Sterne. This will be a pleasant evening, even if
you
must spend it in irons.”

“Your Majesty would not dare.”

Another dead silence, and this one stretched long, until the king lifted a single finger. Immediately, from the wings, two guards appeared and grabbed Sterne by the shoulders.

“See here!” he shouted.

“Gag him and put him in irons,” the king said, “but leave him at the table. I would not have my cousin say I did not receive his envoy as honorably as I could.”

And it was done.

“Now, Mr. Franklin. I have often wondered on the nature of colors and what their origins might be. I recall in his
Optics,
Sir Isaac did some experiments using thin films…”

And they talked, as they say, of quinces, bears, and cabbages, but not of politics. Franklin found it immensely cheering and stimulating to his conversation to glance —every now and then—at Sterne’s flushed face, and wink.

That night he dreamed of Vasilisa, of their first dinner together, in which she THE SHADOWS OF GOD

proffered cup after cup of Portuguese wine, and with each sip her face grew more beautiful. He dreamed of her naked limbs, wrapped about him, of her sleeping face the next morning.

He dreamed of the nightmare sky, after she had kidnapped him, of her grip on his hand as the horizon vomited toward heaven.

He dreamed of a magnetism that connected them, that had never let him think she was dead. And in his dream, he loved her as only a joy in love for the first time can love, a love as full of fear as of hope, brittle and beautiful as a snowflake — and as impermanent.

Or was it? he thought, on waking. It was still in him, wasn’t it? Not really gone, just buried.

He lay in the dark and forced thoughts of his wife, Lenka, instead, of how he had felt when he thought she was dying, of the joys he had known in her embrace. Solid joys, dependable ones.

Of course, Lenka had as much as threatened divorce last time he had seen her…