The two cats shot ahead of her, separated, ran in a beeline to each other, leapt straight up in the air, bumped chests, and fell back.
“That’s a show!” Harry laughed, always delighted to see animals play.
Asleep, Tucker didn’t lift her head when the three walked into the kitchen.
Harry sat down in the house office, turned on the big computer that Fair had specially made for his work. He didn’t mind Harry using it. She actually liked looking at the big screen.
The two cats followed her in.
“Don’t bat at the screen. You’ll push her into a bad mood,” Mrs. Murphy warned the gray cat.
Already next to the screen, Pewter called down. “Just words. Nothing good.” She then settled down, dozing.
Harry read, then typed other things in. Read again.
“Hmm. Leukemia first appears in the English language in 1873 in an English pathology text describing an overproduction of white blood cells, which the author, a Dr. Green, thought often attacked the spleen.”
Mrs. Murphy jumped up to sit on the other side of the computer screen. Harry kept reading, clicking on more stuff.
Pushing back in her chair, she rubbed her chin for a moment. “Leukos means white in Attic Greek. You know, Mrs. Murphy, we’ve known about many diseases for thousands of years. We can describe them. Physicians to the pharaohs described cancers, heart attacks accurately. But no one knew what to do. We still don’t. Here I’m reading about all kinds of new drugs. You can prolong life, ease the worst of the pain, but the truth is the stuff is going to kill you.”
“You have to die of something,” the tiger cat sensibly said.
Harry reached over, rubbed the cat’s cheeks. “Governor Holloway doesn’t have but so much time.”
Pewter opened an eye, closed it again. “He’s old.”
Mrs. Murphy laughed. “Doesn’t mean he wants to die.”
Impulsively, Harry picked up the office phone, dialing Cooper. “Hey.”
“Hey back at you.”
“Work?”
“Long day. I’m on my way home.”
“I know you received the medical examiner’s report on Barbara Leader or you wouldn’t have been on your way to Big Rawly yesterday.”
“She was murdered. The odd thing was she had ingested the thallium chloride. They aren’t a hundred percent sure how, but the consensus is she took a gelatin tablet, like a gelatin Motrin or vitamin, and it was inside the tablet. Once the outside dissolved, the drug could take effect.”
Harry considered this. “Someone knew her routine if it was in a vitamin tablet or even a Motrin tablet. Do you think someone at Big Rawly did this?”
“No idea, although she was traveling toward Big Rawly.”
“Right.” Harry then asked, “Maybe the governor was the intended victim?”
“Given all the pills he’s taking, you’d think he’d be long gone by now if that was the intent,” said Cooper. “As it is, not to sound heartless, he will soon be gone.”
“Right,” Harry simply replied. The thought of the beloved old man’s death saddened her.
Tuesday, September 21, 1784
“There.” Charles sprinkled sand on the parchment. He tilted the skin to the side, and the sand fell into a small glass container.
Upon hearing the sand, Piglet’s ears pricked up.
Catherine took the proffered document. “Remarkable.”
Smiling, Charles added, “Forging discharge papers helped my comrades, the other prisoners of war, live unmolested once they escaped. Truth is, I don’t think the guards or even your Congress wanted to find them. Still.”
John leaned down to study Charles’s writing on the document, beautiful flourishes. A hand like that took years to develop. “When you wrote letters to my mother, she thought they were pretty as paintings.”
Rachel looked out the window; Charles’s workroom glowed with light from the setting sun. “The autumn equinox,” she announced before turning to the others. “Can Moses read at all?”
“No,” Catherine answered. “But he’ll know a manumission paper when he sees one. He will have to keep this on him at all times until he’s settled, and even then.” She sighed. “Rachel, Charles, I am sorry to draw you into this. John, Bettina, and I pray day and night for guidance. How do we save Moses and Ailee without compromising Father? And without compromising ourselves? You all know what will happen if either of them are caught.”
Sitting at his drafting table, Charles solemnly reached up to touch his sister-in-law’s wrist. “There might be another way.”
John pulled a chair over for his wife and then for Rachel. He sat on a small high bench after removing papers, books, twine.
“What do you do with this?” John held up the twine.
“I put a little lead sinker on the end and use it for a straight line. Like we did when we built the bridges only wee, tiny. Sometimes if I can see something off the page, see all the dimensions, I can think better.”
Catherine returned to the problem. “A plan?”
“I have been given the commission to design St. Luke’s, as you know. Well, St. Luke’s is a Lutheran church in a new land. I know Winchester Cathedral”—he smiled—“wouldn’t fit here. And a Lutheran church must not be confused with Catholic, right? Or these newer faiths, the evangelical faiths. The Quakers. Lutheran is distinctive. It’s still high church, but less”—he twirled his right hand as he tried to convey his meaning—“bombastic.”
Catherine smiled. “You think the Church of England is bombastic?”
“After Harry the Eighth, it had to rival Rome.” Charles smiled back. “The Dissolution scars still disfigure my homeland, and I truly pray such a terrible thing never happens here.”
“It can’t,” said John. “We have the separation of church and state, thanks to James Madison, who crafted that for Virginia.” John hadn’t fought in the war for nothing.
“And let us hope it holds forever, but back to St. Luke’s,” said Charles. “There are few models in Virginia, but I know there are many in Pennsylvania. Captain Bartholomew Graves, whom John will recall, now lives in York. He says the churches there are uncommonly beautiful, both Episcopal and Lutheran. The good captain swears every second person is a Lutheran, but he mentioned a particular church, Christ Lutheran on George Street.”
“Do you think they will change the street names?” Rachel blurted this out.
“Why? We were a colony of the king. Better to remember than forget,” John levelly declared.
“If it’s any further help, there’s also a King Street, a Queen Street, a Prince Street, a Duke Street. The residents of York will keep their king and queen, which brings me to this church. It was a log cabin in the 1600s. They say it is the first church west of the Susquehanna River. Over the decades, with trade increasing and people moving there, the church has been built out of red brick, all surmounted by a most beautiful proportionate steeple. It can be seen for miles around.”
Rachel bestowed upon her husband her sweetest smile. “Charles, dear, what has this to do with Moses and Ailee?”
“Oh, I digress. What would I do if I didn’t have you to bring me back to the path?”
“You’d listen to me bark.” Piglet guffawed, which made the others laugh, although they didn’t know what the brave fellow had said.
“Yes, dear.” Rachel smiled.
“Yes, well, I will tell all and sundry that I must go to York to study these Lutheran churches, most especially Christ Lutheran. This will be a short visit. Karl can help me build a steeple, an example.” He held up his hands. “A steeple to be looked over by the Lutheran pastors and their architects. We will hide Moses in the steeple, which I will cart up there on a wagon. The steeple will have slits so he can breathe and a door so he can step out at night and sleep in the straw, which will fill the wagon to protect the steeple. A steeple is the only structure I can think of that will work. It can be big enough that he can sit in it. When out of sight, we can pass food and drink to him. At night we can pull into an Ordinary, put the wagon under a shed roof or something. He can climb out, burrow under in the straw, and sleep.”