The Shadows of God (3 page)

There followed a nerve-racking pause but finally a shout came back from the thicket.

“Parlez-vous francais? Je ne park pas anglais.”

“Oui, un petit peu,”
Franklin replied.
“Je m’appelle Benjamin Franklin, de
Carolina Sud
—”

“You are in Louisiana,” the fellow replied, still in French. “That is very far from Carolina.”

“I’ve come to treat with the French king,” Franklin replied. “I have the papers to prove it.”

Another hesitation, and then the voice said, “Come forward, you.” Franklin could see the man now, gesturing with his hand. He wore a blue French coat, but his features looked Indian.

“I’m coming,” Franklin replied.

“Hold there, Señor Franklin!”

Another man had emerged from behind them —also an Indian—a silver crucifix bobbing at his throat, a rapier hanging jauntily at his side, and barbaric tattoos decorating his exposed flesh.

“Don Pedro!” Franklin exclaimed gladly.

“The same,” the Apalachee chieftain replied. He jerked his head toward the Indians in the brush. “What do those skulking scoundrels want?”

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“I’m not sure,” Franklin admitted. “They speak French.”

“Yes?” The Apalachee cleared his throat and called out in that language. “I am Don Pedro Salazar de Ivitachuca, prince and Nikowatka of Apalachee. Stop hiding, you rascals, and face me like a man.”

“There are but four of you,” the man in the woods replied. “Lay your arms on the ground or suffer the consequences.”

“You should take your own advice,” Don Pedro replied, and snapped his fingers.

Suddenly, on all sides, the forest began to move as Apalachee warriors seemed to appear magically from behind every tree.

“Much as we despise it,” Don Pedro called, “the Apalachee, too, can skulk. And now, my friend, it is you who are surrounded and outnumbered.”

Another long pause, and then the French-speaker stood. “The French king will mislike this behavior on his own lands.”

“Take us to him, then,” Franklin called back. “That is all we ever desired.

Won’t you come shake my hand and let us have peace between us? What sense for this warlike behavior, when we are not at war?”

“In these days, everyone is at war,” the man replied. “But I am coming.”

He emerged from the forest a moment later. Seeing him more closely, Franklin guessed he was half Indian, for his features owed strongly to the European. He wore a silver gorget at his throat and carried an officer’s smallsword. Beneath his blue coat, his flesh was bare, save for the flap of a loincloth.

“I am Henri Koy Penigault,” he said, when he drew near, “captain of the king’s march guard and war captain of the Mobila. Stand your men down, and I will escort you to New Paris.”

Franklin clasped his hand. “Captain Penigault, it is a great pleasure. We feared you were Coweta, for they have been trying to murder us since before the last THE SHADOWS OF GOD

new moon.”

“Well, we have that in common at least.” Penigault grinned. “An enemy of the Coweta might be a friend of mine. Shall we meet and smoke together?”

Franklin remembered the last time he had smoked the pipe of peace, how near he had come to losing the meal in his belly. But at the moment, his belly was quite empty.

“I would be delighted,” he lied.

After the smoke, however, there was brandy and freshly slain venison, and most fingers came off triggers and sword hilts. Franklin and Voltaire sat around a fire, along with Don Pedro and James McPherson, the rugged captain of the Southern Rangers, regarding Penigault and his chief men across the wavering flames. They were a mixed bunch, French and Indian and one Negro.

“My father was French,” Penigault said. “My mother was Alibamon. I was schooled in New Paris, but I prefer to live here on the frontier, with my mother’s people. We keep the borders, as I told you.”

“Thank you for the brandy. I’ve never tasted the like.”

“Good, yes? We make it from persimmons and wild plums. Now, tell me of your adventures with the Cowetas. We are eager for news of them, and of the Carolinas. We hear little these days, what with the war.

“I’ll want to know what you know of the war,” Franklin said.
Is my wife alive?

But they couldn’t know that.

“Not much,” Penigault said. “The English king has taken both Carolinas. The margravate of Azilia still stands, but word is for not much longer.”

Franklin nodded. “The English king, as you call him, is a pretender to the throne, James Stuart. He took the seaboard colonies by trickery and with the aid of Moscovado troops.”

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“Moscovado?”

“Russians,” Voltaire clarified.

“Ah, yes. Tsar Peter. We have heard of him.” There was something in the man’s voice, as if he had a secret.

“Yes, well. You may know that years ago the English colonies signed a treaty of mutual protection with Louisiana, with the Cowetas, and with the Spanish in Florida. I’ve been trying to unite those signatories to fight together against the Pretender and his allies. I went first to the Coweta, and from there was to continue on to New Paris, to treat there with King Philippe.”

“The Cowetas are snakes. They attacked you?”

“They had already been approached by emissaries from the Pretender. They outstripped us, you see, for they came on a flying craft—”

“Shaped something like a great leaf and gliding like a buzzard?”

“Yes. You’ve seen it?”

“We have. We thought it was a lightning hawk—a creature of legend, a sort of demon that eats children.”

“You were not far wrong in that. Their craft is engined with a demon of sorts.

In any event, they had already struck a bargain with the Coweta king, and he determined that we should die by torture. But my good friend Don Pedro prevented that.“

“Praise God, not me,” the Apalachee said, sounding nevertheless quite pleased.

“It was our Lord gave me the strength and the foresight to rescue you from the heathens.” He hunched forward. “I assume, my friend, that you are a baptized man?”

“I am,” Penigault acknowledged.

“Then God has delivered us back to Christian lands, as I knew he would.”

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Penigault acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. “And so you escaped the Coweta,” he pressed. “Did you take many scalps?”

“I do not brag,” Don Pedro said, “For He-Who-Sits-Above saw it all and knows I tell the truth. I took four scalps myself, and would have taken many more, but it was not for me to risk glorious death that day but to make certain I survived, to deliver Mr. Franklin to his destiny. I see that clearly. We are engaged not merely against the English king or the Russian tsar but against the very forces of hell, and those deceived monarchs merely twitch like puppets for them. Our true enemies are not flesh and blood, but are the damned spirits that ride the wind at night and by day stay hidden in black clouds that crawl in the spaces beneath the world, shunning light.”

Penigault, whom Franklin had reckoned a pragmatic sort, suddenly shivered and crossed himself. “The dark things stir,” he said. “It is well known. The accursed beings walk amongst us. Old men have died, eaten from within.

Strange warnings and signs come from the west, where demons dwell. They say the house of the dead has opened up and the damned come to take all our souls. Is this true, Mr. Franklin?”

Franklin drew his brows together, wondering how to explain. The malakim were indeed both the angels and devils of superstition, but they were more than that. Moreover, science had proved them real, and it rankled him to hear them spoken of in these medieval terms, just as Newton’s biblical appellation rankled.

A soft voice spoke from beyond the circle of light.

“It is true.”

Franklin peered out and saw faintly red-glinting eyes. Penigault gasped. “A sorcerer.”

“Please join us, Mr. Euler,” Franklin said.

A young man stepped into the light. His mild eyes, now blue, surveyed them all. “I am Leonhard Euler, gentleman, and I am at your service.”

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“You are accursed,” Penigault said. “I saw your eyes!”

“I was once accursed,” Euler said. “I was a warlock of the malakim, a pair of human hands to work their mischief. But I am no longer their tool.”

Penigault looked to Franklin for confirmation.

“So he claims,” Franklin told the Louisianan. “I once doubted him, but he has been a friend to us. Without Mr. Euler, we would all be dead or captive back in Charles Town.”
Which does not mean I trust him,
Ben finished silently. His brother had been killed by a creature like Euler, and that sort of thing was hard to turn his back on.

“Thank you, Mr. Franklin. Those are kind words.”

Penigault switched his regard back to Franklin.

“And you—you are a wizard, they say. The wizard of Charles Town.”

“I’ve been called that. I am a man of science, which is the most useful form of wizardry.”

“And can you stop these night-goers?”

“Not alone. But with allies, and the spirit of many peoples—yes. I believe I can.”

Penigault nodded. “I hope you can convince the king, then. I do hope you can.”

“You don’t sound optimistic,” Voltaire noticed.

“There are reasons I prefer the marches,” Penigault said glumly.

“There she is, fellows,” McPherson said, “France in America —New Paris.” The ranger’s voice held a note of good-natured contempt that Franklin hoped Penigault and his fellows didn’t catch. After all, Penigault had not only guided them through the silty maze of the lower Mobile River but had obtained the canoes they now traveled in.

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Franklin mopped his brow, grimacing at the slimy sweat that seemed to somehow ooze up from the river itself. He peered ahead to see what the ranger found worthy of his disdain. Not that he was expecting much. The last several leagues had taken them past villages — Indian, European, and Negro — more squalid and impoverished than any he had seen in the interior. While some of the
habitants
halfheartedly tilled wilted fields of corn, more came wading into the river, begging for food and brandy—especially brandy.

But even thus introduced, even with expectations lowered, to call the town he saw ahead “New Paris” required a breathtaking amount of wishful thinking.

The muddy shores sloped up from the bay, and houses, scarcely distinguishable from the Indian habitations he had grown accustomed to, spilled down to the water and even walked on stilts to mingle with dilapidated docks. At one long stone quay were moored a sloop, a frigate, two brigantines, and a ragged collection of canoes and pirogues—which, for all he knew, was the sum of the modern French navy. Beyond, south, he could see the squat form of Fort Conde commanding the mouth of the bay. It, at least, looked sturdy, though Franklin knew his eye for such things was questionable.

As for the city itself, the mud huts did give way to larger, more impressive dwellings as the eye tracked farther from the shore. And surmounting all of this was a truly… if not grand, at least bizarre structure. It looked like some idiot madman’s attempt to construct a chateau. Never in London, Prague, Venice, or anyplace between had Franklin ever seen such a rambling monstrosity, half built of timbers, half of stone, decked in places with a mishmash of columns and towers that even to his untrained eye seemed completely wrong.

But, by God, it was
big
.

“
Mon dieu
!” Voltaire exclaimed. “It is a parody of Versailles itself!”

“I hope the real one looks a bit better,” Ben said.

“The real Versailles was in questionable taste, I’ll grant you, though doing such questioning aloud once was a faux pas of the Bastille sort. Next to that—that thing—however, it was sublime.” He cocked his head. “Who rules here? Do you THE SHADOWS OF GOD

know?”

“The last I heard it was Philippe VII. Does that explain anything to you?”

“The former duke of Orleans? No, it doesn’t explain much to me.

He was a strange little man, flighty, not given much to serious matters, but not known for such dramatic bad taste either. He was a lover of science, though.“

“Perhaps that would explain why the upper tier of the palace is crusted with those glowing gargoyles,” Ben said. It was almost dusk, and the pale pink glow of alchemical light was clearly visible, both in the castle and outside.

“Here come the gunboats,” McPherson said.

“Let me talk to them,” Penigault said. “I’ll explain who you are.”

Franklin turned a wary eye on the approaching craft. “Sterne and his cronies have been here for almost a month. He’s had plenty of time to poison the well, as he did at Coweta. I hope we fare better here.”

“It does feel a bit stupid just walking in,” Robert added by way of agreement.

“Sterne is a persuasive warlock.”

“And a murdering one,” Franklin said. “But what else are we to do? Skulk about? That will never get us a meeting with these French. The only way to do it is to be bold. Still, it’s been nice knowing you fellows, should anything go wrong.”

“And if it don’t?” McPherson asked.

“Then you are the smelliest bunch of blockheads I’ve had the poor fortune to share a canoe with,” Franklin replied. That got a few nervous laughs.

He glanced back. Don Pedro and his Apalachee warriors filled two more boats, which was comforting, though Franklin doubted that their increased numbers would matter much here.

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“Voltaire, you say you know this duke somewhat.”

“I’ve met him.”

“How do y” suppose he would take to Sterne and Sterne’s King James?“

Voltaire offered a Gallic shrug. The journey had taken pounds from him that he could ill afford, and he looked almost like a scarecrow in his muddy justaucorps. “Louis XIV, his uncle, was always kindly disposed toward the pretenders to the English throne, as they were thorns in the British backside.

He supported both James’ conquest of Scotland, and was supporting it still when the comet fell. Orleans and James used to sport a bit, though I seem to remember they also had some argument over a certain mistress. As I said, Philippe never had much of a political head on his shoulders—what with the way things have gone, I’m very much surprised he has
any
sort of a head on his shoulders, much less any fraction of a kingdom to rule.” He repeated the shrug. “I’m sorry. I cannot say.”