Hendon shrugged. “Whatever his conclusions, Lord Jarvis kept his views to himself.”
They walked along in silence, each lost in his own thoughts. Then Sebastian said, “The three of you arrived back in England in June?”
“July. We sailed from New York at the beginning of June. The passage took six weeks.”
“You’re certain it was July?”
Hendon snorted. “It’s not a voyage I’m likely to forget. The ship was dreadfully crowded with dozens of Loyalists fleeing the persecution of their countrymen, poor devils. There was one woman on board who’d watched her husband and fifteen-year-old son stripped, tarred and feathered, and then scalped, right before her very eyes. As for what the rebels did to the woman herself . . . Well, let’s just say it was enough to make me reconsider the wisdom and righteousness of abandoning so many of the King’s faithful subjects to the brutal rule of the mob.”
“The Loyalists on board were from New York?”
“Some. Others were from Massachusetts and Vermont. We even had the King’s former Governor of New Jersey aboard. I remember him particularly because he quarreled so violently with Sir Nigel.”
I once shared a voyage with your father, William Franklin had said. Sebastian’s step faltered. “Are you telling me William Franklin was on the ship with you and Sir Nigel?”
“That’s right. Benjamin Franklin’s son.”
Chapter 24
Hero Jarvis learned of the identification of Sir Nigel Prescott’s mummified remains in the same way as the rest of London: She read about it in the Morning Post. When she and her mother set off after nuncheon on a round of morning visits (amongst those of a certain class, morning visits, like breakfasts, were always held in the afternoon), they discovered that conversation in the drawing rooms of Mayfair revolved around little else.
“Sir Nigel?” said Lady Jarvis to their hostess. “Why, I remember when he disappeared.”
Hero looked at her mother in surprise. “You do?”
“Oh, yes,” said Lady Jarvis as her friend turned away to greet a new arrival. “It was right after he returned from that dreadful mission to the Colonies with your father and Lord Hendon.”
Hero set her teacup down with enough force to rattle it dangerously. “What?”
“Mmm, yes.” Lady Jarvis lowered her voice. “There was quite a stir at the time in government circles. Seems Sir Nigel had discovered evidence of treason, in the form of letters written by someone styling himself ‘Alcibiades.’ The letters disappeared with Sir Nigel. It was all most mysterious. Not that your father told me about any of it, of course. But I overheard him talking to Lord North.”
Having chafed impatiently through the remainder of their social visits, Hero hurried home to find her father preparing to set forth for his clubs. “Your mission with Sir Nigel to the American Colonies,” she said, coming upon him in the library. “Tell me about it.”
Jarvis looked up from organizing some papers. “Wherever did you hear about that?”
“The whole town is talking about the discovery of Sir Nigel’s body,” she said vaguely.
Jarvis locked his papers in a desk drawer and straightened. “There’s not much to tell, really,” he said, and proceeded to give her a succinct rundown.
Listening to him, she found herself wondering, inevitably, what he was leaving out. She asked, “You never discovered the identity of this ‘Alcibiades’?”
“No.” He went to splash brandy in a glass. “What are you thinking? That Sir Nigel was killed by the traitor?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“I suspect it’s more than possible.” He set aside the crystal brandy decanter.
“Or you could have killed him.”
“Really, Hero, I am not responsible for every dead body that turns up in London.”
She gave an inelegant harrumph.
Her father said, “Why are you now interesting yourself in Sir Nigel’s death?”
“Perhaps I like puzzles.”
He took a slow sip of his brandy, his gaze on her face. “No. That’s not it.” When she remained silent, he said, “Do you plan to make a habit of this?”
She turned toward the door. “A habit of what?”
“Involving yourself in murder.”
She looked back at him. “Would you find that more or less objectionable than my more radical projects?”
He pulled a face. “I’m really not certain.”
The aged American rested on a weathered bench in a slice of sunshine that cut down through the ancient yews and elms of the vast churchyard of St. Pancras. He sat hunched forward, both hands wrapped around the handle of the walking stick he held upright between his knees, his eyes closed as if in sleep.
Sebastian had followed him here, to the sprawling burial ground on the outskirts of the city, after a conversation with the old man’s granddaughter. When Sebastian settled on the other end of the bench, Mr. William Franklin grunted and said, without appearing to open his eyes, “I figured you’d be back.”
Sebastian let his gaze wander over the jumble of moss-covered, ancient tombstones and sunken earth. The burial ground was actually the intersection of two churchyards, that of St. Giles adjoining that of St. Pancras, said by antiquarians to be one of the oldest churches in England.
“You told me you’d sailed from America with my father,” said Sebastian. “What you didn’t tell me was that the Bishop of London’s brother was on that ship, as well.”
Franklin opened his eyes. “Didn’t seem important at the time. How was I to know Sir Nigel’s body had been found in that crypt, along with the Bishop’s?”
“You wouldn’t have any idea what Sir Nigel was doing down in that crypt, would you?”
“Me? No. Why would I?”
Sebastian studied the old man’s florid, sagging face, creased with lines left by eighty-odd years of laughter and heartache. “I think you know far more than you’re letting on.”
Franklin chuckled at that, his protuberant belly in its snuff-stained, old-fashioned waistcoat shaking up and down. Fumbling in his pocket, he came up with a battered snuffbox he flipped open with the practiced grace of a Macaroni.
Sebastian said, “I understand you and Sir Nigel quarreled during the course of the voyage.”
“Of course we quarreled. Sir Nigel was an abrasive, arrogant man. He quarreled with everyone—including your father.”
“Over what?”
“The war, mainly. Sir Nigel was adamant that the only reason the King hadn’t managed to put down the rebellion was a lack of firm resolve on the part of Parliament. He was convinced that a sustained surge in the number of troops on the ground would be sufficient to subdue the rebels once and for all.”
“You didn’t think so?”
Franklin lifted a pinch of snuff to one nostril. His hands shook with age, dusting the fine grains over his knees as he leaned forward. “As punishment for my decision to remain loyal to my king, the Revolutionary government seized everything I owned. My home. My estates. Even my liberty for two years. You think I didn’t want to see the King prevail in reestablishing control over the Colonies? But what a man wants and what he recognizes as within the realm of possibility aren’t necessarily the same thing.”
A whirl of pigeons, their wings beating the air as they rose up from beside the church walls, drew Sebastian’s gaze to the massive old west tower of St. Pancras, with its crumbling thirteenth-century arches and broken weather vane. He said, “Lord Jarvis sailed with you, as well?”