“Not without Sarah’s consent,” the old Nipmuc replied as he leaned on the ship’s rail. “She was going to tell you, in her own time.” They watched a skein of ducks fly across the moon. “All my life I avoided choosing sides. I spent my years searching for my family. It was a fool’s errand. I knew kings. I could have made a difference. But I chose to keep my world small, just as you did. Duncan, we have been obsessed with phantoms. My family is gone. Your clan is gone.
“When you and I were up on the St. Lawrence we could have changed the outcome of the war with the French but I chose to keep the Canadian tribes out of the final bloodshed and you chose to keep all those Scots from dying as traitors. What have we got for the trouble? The French would have peacefully coexisted with the tribes as they had for centuries. But the British king despises the tribes. He and his lords will annihilate the tribes if they have their way, just as they would shackle the colonists with taxes and laws. Helping that kind of king was wrong. I see that now. Such a king has no place in America. That is the side I have chosen now. Not the French side, which is long lost. And not King George’s side. The side of this land. My land. Jahoska’s land. Your land. Europe has no place here. We can make it different.” A shadow emerged and stood beside the old Nipmuc. Woolford had been listening. He was not disagreeing.
“Words like that will get you killed,” Duncan said.
Conawago smiled as if welcoming the remark. “The age is turning, Duncan. Jahoska the half king understood that before the rest of us. And at every turning there is a fulcrum, a small group of men who set the new age in motion. We are the agents of the turning. America is destined as the place of the turning. There is something new meant for America.”
“It will get you killed,” Duncan repeated. “Enough good men have died.”
“I fear before it is over the good men who die will be like leaves on a tree,” the old Nipmuc said. “Does that make it wrong?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The angel on the sign swinging over the tavern door faced an old man with a scythe on the opposite side of a setting sun. From the stable across the road Duncan watched the sign sway in the breeze, wondering if the austere Quaker innkeeper had chosen the image to dissuade the revelers that frequented the other inns of Lancaster. The World’s End, though not the most prosperous, was certainly the most respectable of the establishments in the community, well chosen by the committeemen for its quiet location at the edge of town, with the stable and Sabbath meetinghouse its only close neighbors.
The quick song of a lark came from the loft overhead and Duncan edged closer to the partially open door. An ornate coach was arriving from the direction of Philadelphia, the two guards riding on the top beside the driver springing down before it rolled to a stop. Two more men on escort horses dismounted, and hurried to assist the rotund passenger out of the coach and into the tavern. Gabriel, attired in a poorly fitting suit and tricorn hat, followed a step behind Lord Ramsey, clutching a leather case and muttering in his usual surly tone.
As soon as the door of the tavern closed behind Ramsey’s party, Duncan and Woolford circled behind the building, entered the kitchen, and slipped into the private dining chamber reserved by the committeemen months earlier. They sat in the shadows behind the half-drawn curtain used to divide the room.
The five men at one end of the long table by the row of front windows rose and politely greeted Lord Ramsey, then Gabriel, who was introduced as his secretary. As Ramsey sat at the end of the table nearest the door, the five introduced themselves and Gabriel opened a journal, produced a quill and ink pot, and made a show of recording their names, interrupting to ask spellings. Samuel Adams from Boston, Peter Hopkins from New York, Peyton Randolph of Williamsburg, John Dickinson of Philadelphia, and Mistress Deborah Franklin, speaking for her husband. Dickinson introduced Benjamin Rush as their own secretary. Ramsey’s guards from the coach, each armed with a shortsword and a pistol in a shoulder holster in the style of Scottish troops, sat with stern expressions on either side of the door. Duncan recognized both as pharaoh riders from Galilee.
A maid appeared with a tray of cider and mugs, assisted by a girl with blonde braids carrying a platter of iced sweet rolls. The braids, and her bright white apron, gave Analie the look of an innocent serving girl. She had insisted on playing a role in their little drama.
“We were surprised at the announcement you sent from Philadelphia,” the portly Samuel Adams lied, “but we are always honored to be joined by a member of the House of Lords.”
“Join you?” Ramsey retorted, with a pompous gesture that seemed to dismiss Adam’s words. “Only in the sense that we sit at the same table. Rather I ensnare you.” As he spoke the remaining men of his escort, the two outriders, still wearing their cloaks, entered the room and sat, backs to Woolford and Duncan, as if to corner the committeemen.
Adams ignored Ramsey’s opening. “We are here to discuss the particularities of a colonial congress,” the Boston committeman continued, “but those of us habituated to public discourse can be so long-winded. Why if Dr. Franklin were here he would take thirty minutes just to warm his tongue and continue through at least three pitchers of ale. We know his better half will be so much more succinct.” Mrs. Franklin, a solid-looking woman with deeply penetrating eyes, offered a congenial nod in reply. She had played the gracious hostess to Duncan and his friends the prior week in Philadelphia, taking particular delight in demonstrating the household’s electrical apparatus, and later insisting they all go to church to pray for Devon Gates when she had learned of his fate. “I am sure you would like to be spared the ordeal of our own discourse, Lord Ramsey,” Adams declared in an attentive tone. “Prithee, if you have business with us let us hear you out first, sir.”
An exaggerated sigh escaped Ramsey’s throat. “I once found signs of rats in my country house in Wiltshire,” the patrician began in a conversational tone. “My steward said it was to be expected, that they were doing no real harm. I told the fool that a rat feeling safe in the cellar will soon aspire to enter the kitchen, the dining room, and even the parlor itself. I ordered every barrel and rack moved out. We starved half a dozen terriers for a week then turned them loose. In the end we had nothing left but one very plump terrier.” He cast a frigid smile down the table at the colonials. “We have rats in the cellar of the empire and it is time to loose the dogs.”
With an air of ceremony Gabriel produced a thick bundle of papers from his leather portfolio and handed Ramsey the topmost sheet. “A secret letter from Mr. Hopkins of New York to Mr. Henry of Williamsburg.” The patrician held it toward the window and made a show of scanning it before reading a passage. “The pompous Hanoverian is no longer my king,” Ramsey recited. “He is a false idol which we must tear down.” Ramsey wagged a finger at Hopkins, who silently glared at him. The lord continued with a letter from Adams to Franklin. “The gout in George’s foot has spread to his brain,” Ramsey read. “He who once strutted now only limps and babbles.” He cast a censuring glance when a small laugh escaped Adams’s throat. “We have no obligation to serve the infirm and incapacitated,” Ramsey continued, then read from another, and another, all allegedly letters between known committeemen, all with similarly incendiary passages.
Ramsey glanced without acknowledgment at the two men who stepped from the kitchen and sat behind Rush and Franklin. “This is treason, gentlemen. Men have lost their heads in the Tower for less. In another century we would have had you drawn and quartered in the public square.” He accepted another bundle of papers from Gabriel.