“Now you shall see,” said the jeweler. “This is the art of the patriots. The forefathers. The hidden ones.”
He stopped near a huge canvas that leaned against a steel beam; the painting was caked with grease, darkened by time, but even through the grime Grant could see that it was the work of genius. An imitation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper, but strangely altered…
The guests at Christ’s table wore not biblical attire but that of the eighteenth century. It was no windowed building that sheltered them but a tent whose walls gave the impression of a strong wind beating from without. The thirteen were at supper, men in military outfits, and in their midst a figure of mild yet radiant demeanor, humble in a powdered wig, a mere crust of bread on his plate. Grant did not recognize him, this figure in Christ’s place, but the man in Judas’s place was recognizable enough from the numerous busts and portraits occurring in Arnoldsburg. That was Benedict Arnold.
The Indian pointed at several of the figures, giving them names: “Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, Light-Horse Harry Lee, Lafayette, General Rochambeau…”
“Who painted this?”
“It was the work of Benjamin Franklin,” said his guide. “Painted not long after the betrayal at West Point, but secretly, in sadness, when the full extent of our tragedy became all too apparent. After West Point the patriots continued to fight. But this man, this one man, was the glue that held the soldiers together. After His death, the army had many commanders, but none could win the trust of all men. The revolution collapsed and our chance for freedom slipped away. Franklin died without finishing it, his heart broken.”
“But that man in the middle…?”
The Indian led him to another painting. This was much more recent, judging from the lack of accumulated soot and grease. Several children stood gazing at it, accompanied by a darkie woman who was trying to get them to analyze the meaning of what was essentially a simple image.
“What is this?” she asked.
Several hands went up. “The cherry tree!” chimed a few voices.
“That’s right, the cherry tree. Who can tell us the story of the cherry tree?”
One little girl pushed forward. “He chopped it down, and when He saw what He had done, He said, ‘I cannot let it die.’ So He planted the piece He cut off and it grew into a new tree, and the trunk of the old tree grew, too, because it was magic.”
“Very good. Now, that’s a fable, of course. Do you know what it really means? What the cherry tree represents?”
Grant felt like one of her charges, waiting for some explanation, innocent.
“It’s an English cherry,” the teacher hinted.
Hands went up. “The tree! I know, I know! It’s England.”
“That’s right,” she encouraged. “And the piece he transplanted?”
“America!”
“Very good. And do you remember what happened next? It isn’t shown in this painting, but it was very sad. Tinsha?”
“When His father saw what He had done, he was very scared, he was afraid his son was a devil or something, so he tore up the little tree by the roots. He tore up America.”
“And you know who the father really is, don’t you?”
“The… King?” said Tinsha.
Grant and his guide went on to another painting, this one showing a man in a powdered wig and a ragged uniform walking across a river in midwinter—not stepping on the floes but moving carefully between them, on the breast of the frigid water. With him came a band of barefoot men, lightly touching hands, the first of them resting his fingers on the cape of their leader. The men stared at the water as if they could not believe their eyes, but there was only confidence in the face of their commander—that and a serene humility.
“This is the work of Sully, a great underground artist,” said the jeweler.
“These… these are priceless.”
The Indian shrugged. “If they were lost tomorrow, we would still carry them with us. It is the feelings they draw from our hearts that are truly beyond price. He came for all men, you see. If you accept Him, if you open your heart to Him, then His death will not have been in vain.”
“Washington,” Grant said, the name finally coming to him. An insignificant figure of the American Wars, an arch-traitor whose name was a mere footnote in the histories that Grant had read. Arnold had defeated him, hadn’t he? Was that what had happened at West Point? The memories were vague and unreal, textbook memories.
The jeweler nodded. “Yes, George Washington,” he repeated. “He was leading us to freedom, but He was betrayed and held out as an example. In Philadelphia He was publicly tortured to dispirit the rebels, then hung by His neck after His death, and his corpse toured through the Colonies. And that is our sin, the penance which we must pay until every soul has been brought back into balance.”
“Your sin?”
The Indian nodded, drawing from the pouch at his waist another of the shriveled icons. Christ—no, Washington—on the cross.
“We aided the British in that war. Cherokee and Iroquois, others of the Six Nations. We thought the British would save us from the Colonists; we didn’t know that they had different ways of enslavement. My ancestors were master torturers. When Washington was captured, it fell to them—to us—to do the bloodiest work.”
His hands tightened on the figure of flesh; the splintered wood dug into his palm.
“We nailed Him to the bars of a cross, borrowing an idea that pleased us greatly from your own religion.”
The brown hand shook. The image rose to the golden mouth.
“First, we scalped Him. The powdered hair was slung from a warrior’s belt. His flesh was pierced with thorns and knives. And then we flayed Him alive.”
“Flayed…”
Grant winced as golden teeth nipped a shred of jerky and tore it away.
“Alive…?”
“He died bravely. He was more than a man. He was our deliverer, savior of all men, white, red, and black. And we murdered Him. We pushed the world off balance.”
“What is this place?” Grant asked. “It’s more than a museum, isn’t it? It’s also some kind of school.”
“It is a holy place. His spirit lives here, in the heart of the city named for the man who betrayed Him. He died to the world two hundred years ago, but He still lives in us. He is champion of the downtrodden, liberator of the enslaved.” The jeweler’s voice was cool despite the fervor of his theme. “You see… I have looked beyond the walls of fire that surround this world. I have looked into the world that should have been, that would have been if He had lived. I saw a land of the free, a land of life, liberty, and happiness, where the red men lived in harmony with the white. Our plains bore fruit instead of factories. And the holy cause, that of the republic, spread from the hands of the Great Man. The King was dethroned and England, too, made free. The bell of liberty woke the world; the four winds carried the cause.” The jeweler bowed his head. “That is how it would have been. This I have seen in dreams.”
Grant looked around him at the paintings, covered with grime but carefully attended; the people, also grimy but with an air of reverence. It was a shame to waste them here, on these people. He imagined the paintings hanging in a well-lit gallery, the patina of ages carefully washed away; he saw crowds of people in fine clothes, decked in his gold jewelry, each willing to pay a small fortune for admission. With the proper sponsorship, a world tour could be brought off. He would be a wealthy man, not merely a survivor, at the end of such a tour.