Thriller (69 page)

an inauspicious number—for it reminds one always of that other

supper where the host said, ‘Tonight, one of you shall deny me

and one of you shall betray me.’”

Mme Helvetius shot Franklin a steely sideways glance. Then,

unilaterally changing the subject, she picked up her spoon with

a charming smile, removed a bit of crayfish from her bowl and

deposited it on her plate.

“This month does not have an
R,
” she informed the group.

“One should never eat
les crustaces
in months spelled without

R
—they may contain poison.”

“But, Grandfather,” said Benny Bache, as if she had not spoken, “do you really expect someone to deny or betray you

tonight? And even if you did, it surely wouldn’t be any of us, here

at this table.”

“I have reason, my child, to believe precisely that,” Franklin

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assured his grandson. “In support of this view, I must mention

that I have recently received an encrypted message…”

He paused, for Mme Helvetius was choking on her soup;

Chaumont dashed around the table with some Madeira from the

sideboard, and poured it into her glass. She swilled down several large gulps—more than the Adamses had ever seen a woman

put away at one sitting. When things had calmed a bit, John

Quincy Adams chimed in, “Dr. Franklin, we all realize that an

encrypted message must be held in the greatest secrecy. Especially if it might pertain—as you seem to believe—to someone

in this room. I confess I am fascinated with codes. And Mr. Jefferson here, like you, is an expert of sorts. He has promised to

help train me in the basic ideas while my family and I are in

France. I’d be glad if you could tell us only two things. How did

you know that the message was encrypted? And have you been

able to decipher what it means?”

Franklin was wolfing down his crayfish soup with gusto—

with seeming disregard for whether the month was spelled with

an
R
or not—also disregarding his painful gout and kidney

stones, which he referred to as his “Grit and Gravel.”

“Your first and second questions both have the same reply,”

Franklin said, setting his spoon aside from his empty bowl. “I

knew it was encrypted, and I know what it means because I have

the key!”

There was much commotion, which afforded Mme Helvetius

the opportunity to give Franklin a healthy poke in the ribs. As

he leaned to peck her cheek, he whispered, “Say nothing at all—

the game has just begun.” She lapsed into silence.

“Today is a Tuesday,” Franklin said. “As many of you know,

Mme Helvetius, who sits by my side, for decades held philosophical salons on that day with her husband in their Paris mansion. You may also know that Madame is the founding sponsor

of an elite lodge of Freemasons, here in France, known as the

Loge des Neuf Soeurs. This club, of which I am an initiate and

twice a grandmaster, also meets on Tuesdays, and continues to

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perform many useful services for our United States. What significance can we assign to this day of the week?”

“It’s the day of the Norse god, Tiw, which is Mars in French,”

said Quincy.

“Indeed,” agreed Franklin. “But there is something more.”

The servants had arrived to remove and replace the plates.

When they had passed the platters of duckling, truffled foie gras,

quail, rabbit and legumes, they topped off the wineglasses and

departed. Only then did Franklin take the floor.

“I once attended the meeting of another such club, in another

time and place,” Franklin began. “It was nearly thirty years ago,

in 1754, that I had reason to leave my home in Philadelphia and

travel to points south. At that time, there was no inkling that one

day—a day not far in our future—we colonists would revolt

against the mother country and form a new republic. Indeed, at

the moment we were having more trouble with the French, who

were fortifying the Ohio River Valley. And with the Indians,

whom they were also fortifying, with French weapons and

Louisiana rum.

“In a few years, a young soldier named Washington would fire

the first shot in the French and Indian War. As that war soon

dragged all of Europe, even India, into a Seven Years War leading to our own revolution, it would truly become the first ‘shot

heard round the world.’

“In January of that year, I’d just attended a summit of some of

these disgruntled Indian nations—only to learn, on my return

to Philadelphia, that I’d been appointed deputy postmaster for

the colonies, an important role. As there was another Indian

conference looming in a few months, at Albany, I determined it

would be a prudent time right now for me to make a quick tour

of postal facilities throughout the southern colonies. Among the

most important of these was Annapolis, on the Chesapeake Bay.

“My reputation as an inventor preceded me—as the discoverer, only a few years back, of harnessing lightning from the skies.

The instant the
Maryland Gazette
announced the new deputy

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postmaster’s arrival in the bustling waterfront community, I received a flood of invitations from political, social and scientific

societies.

“The most mysterious of these was from a group of gentlemen claiming to be none of the above. Rather, they represented

themselves as amateur musicians, many of Scottish descent,

who met twice a month to compose and perform music. As

these meetings always took place on Tuesdays, they had dubbed

their little group ‘The Tuesday Club.’” As Franklin began his tale,

the only sound to be heard was that of cutlery scraping on

plates…

The Tuesday evening that I joined the group was a dismal, rain-

splashed night on the waterfront. The founder of the club, who

greeted me at the door, was a native of Edinburgh, a recent trans-

plant to our shores: one Alexander Hamilton—no relation to our con-

gressman and war hero by that name. The Hamilton name is a

powerful one in Scotland. I soon had cause to understand what that

might mean, in the grander scheme.

The members, whose names I’ve long forgotten, played amusing

songs all the night. We were dubbed with secret names—I was called

Electrico Vitrifico, I recall, for my bringing of the power of light-

ning to earth. They had made a model of my glass ’armonica for

playing watery tunes. There was a supper, much drinking of alco-

hol, and between, some Freemason ditties were sung. Since I’d been

a chartering member of Philadelphia’s lodge in the 1730s, I recog-

nized myself to be among the brethren, and felt well at ease. There

is nothing better than the camaraderie of a club.

It was late that same night, after most of the young gents had re-

turned to their households, when I found myself alone with Hamil-

ton’s inner clique, as it were. It was then that I came to pose the most

important question: “What song is it that you’ve asked me here to

listen to?”

The members, by all appearances, were exceedingly pleased by

my remark. They stood one by one to sing, a cappella, a familiar

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rondel or canon of ancient origin. First they sang in French, then in

English, a song like this:

Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,

Dormez-Vous? Dormez-Vous?

Sonnez les Matines, Sonnez les Matines,

Din-Dan-Don, Din-Dan-Don…

Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?

Brother John, Brother John,

Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing,

Ding-Ding-Dong, Ding-Ding-Dong…

As each singer finished his repeats of the song he took his seat,

one by one, until only a sole singer was standing, singing the last

chiming bell. When he, too, was seated, the men all looked at me in

silence. Only the sound of rain could be heard, pattering on the roof.

I was the first to speak:

“Simple ditties like this one, gentlemen,” I said, “have long been

used to communicate hidden meaning across time and place. In the

case of ‘Frère Jacques,’ as I now perceive, it is a meaning that may,

indeed, have been hidden for a hundred years or more. Not only a

secret is hidden—perhaps even a conspiracy of sorts, from the Latin

conspirare,
‘to breathe together’—suggesting a mystery of the kind

that oughtn’t be more than whispered. But I believe I do compre-

hend your mission, and I shall assist you, my brethren, in any way

I can.”

They applauded this comment, and each man came up in turn to

give me a “brotherly” handshake. When the others had departed,

their leader, Hamilton, offered to see me home in his carriage. As we

drove to my lodgings, only the sounds of the clopping horse hooves

on cobbles broke the silence. Despite the wintry season, you could

smell the fresh aroma of salt in the air.

“My dear doctor,” Hamilton addressed me as we moved through

the deep black velvet of the Annapolis night. “I wonder if you do un-

532

derstand completely what we meant tonight, in singing that old

nursery song for you?”

“Why yes, I think I do,” I told him. “You’ve sung me a charming

French song, with a very poor English translation. For in French, I do

not need to point out that the word ‘Jacques’ does not mean ‘John’ as it

might in English—it means James. And
‘matins’
are not ‘morning bells,’

but a canonical hour of both the Catholic and Anglican Churches—the

call to prayer, just after midnight, with the related offices of devotion.

“Brother James,” I went on to suggest, “would be James the

Greater, brother of Jesus in Holy Scripture, who founded the first

Celtic Church in Spain (Santiago, as they call him there) as well as

those ancient parish churches of the French Pyrenees.

“You are mostly Scotsmen here by origin, are you not?” I added. “It

seems to me that the Scots, in recent memory, have been aligned with

only one dynasty of great power and ancestry, and with whom the Scot-

tish royal families have intermarried on numerous occasions—that

is, with the French. There was Mary of Guise, who married the king

of Scotland two hundred years ago—and then her daughter, Mary

Queen of Scots, who married the French dauphin. And of course,

young Mary’s Scottish son, James Stuart, the successor to Queen Eliz-

abeth who became King James I of England.” I turned to Hamilton in

the darkness of the carriage, and added, “Given the canon of the song,

this is the true ‘James’ that your chantey refers to—is it not?”

“It is,” Hamilton replied quietly. “It is, indeed.”

It took no Doctor of Philosophy to read the meaning in that mes-

sage. But it did take a bit of initiation into other hidden significance.

The Tuesday Club was asking my future aid, as a brother, in the time

of their need…

Franklin paused in his story to look about the room of attentive listeners, then he added with effect, “This very same
chan-

son
was delivered to me, only this morning, from Scotland. I at

once recognized its import—for nearly thirty years ago, I’d been

warned by a club of Scotsmen, an ocean away from here—a

warning that has now come home to roost.

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“As we know, my friends, for more than one hundred years,

the Scots have continually struggled to expel the Hanover

usurpers from the throne of England and to restore the Scottish

blood. From the English Civil War right down to the battles of

Bonnie Prince Charlie, the son of the last King James who tried

to seize England again only nine years before my trip to Annapolis!

“This song’s deeper meaning was that my fellow Masons at Annapolis were initiates into an ancient, hidden rite of masonry

known only to Scotland. Some call it the Rite of Strict Obedience,

others the Rite of Kilmarnock, named for an earl who founded the

rite and who was executed, nearly one hundred years ago today,

for supporting the Stuart return to the throne. The Tuesday Club

knew the meaning of Brother Jacques, and seemed prepared to implement its logical outcome—as they might, even today.

“But how many realize,” Franklin asked his fellow diners, “that

that same Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Stuart, who claims the

British throne, lives only kilometers from where we sit? At St. Germain en Laye, on the road from Paris to Versailles. There the Stuarts have remained under the protection of the Bourbon kings for

one hundred years, ever since their ouster from Britain’s throne.”

“You don’t mean to suggest,” interjected John Adams indignantly,

“that the exiled Stuarts are still a factor in European politics?”

“Europe—no,” agreed Franklin. “It is America that is forefront