A Mischief in the Snow (26 page)

T
HE ORMOLU CLOCK
on Longfellow's mantel struck.eight. Yet not one of the four friends sitting around the study fire made any sign to say that it was time for bed. Each couple seemed lost in private speculation, as they recalled the events of the day.

Diana Montagu fingered an attractive volume on the subject of Roman history, one her brother had set down some time before.

“There is much, I suppose, to be learned from the past,” she said, wondering if anyone would comment. “And yet most of the time it only confuses one, and can have little to do with the present, after all.”

“Ancient history perhaps,” her brother replied. “Though I find it restful to be reminded that our own troubles are scarcely new.”

“What do you think, Edmund?” his wife asked, hoping to draw the captain from his own musing.

“I think,” he answered her, “that history makes us what we are. But I was pondering something of recent
history, shown to me last week at Town House. You might be familiar with the story, Richard, as a Bostonian. Do you recall Owen Syllavan?”

“Indeed I do,” said Longfellow, re-crossing his long legs. “A most dedicated moneymaker.”

“I was given a copy of a remarkable document published in Boston ten years ago, taken from his own words. Though self-taught, it seems he succeeded in making above fifty thousand pounds in counterfeit money, spread about for him by a network of unscrupulous men.”

Charlotte raised her eyes, for she'd been thinking of Lem's involvement with Ned Bigelow, in what appeared to be a plot fostered by John Dudley. Had he always been as drunk as he seemed, these many years?

“Didn't Syllavan begin with Boston bills of credit?” Longfellow asked.

“With one Spanish dollar, actually—molded for amusement, he claimed, while he worked as a silversmith. He was earlier a seal cutter, and before that an armorer in the King's service, where he learned to engrave. During his later career he was imprisoned regularly, but still managed to create new bills while in jail—each by hand! For some reason, they would not bring him a rolling press.”

“There is often, I fear, a certain laxity in such places,” Longfellow replied to this irony.

“So it would seem! For he would also escape regularly. Even when he had been pilloried, branded on both cheeks, and had his ears cropped, he continued—though legally he could have been hanged years before. I doubt he would have had such an illustrious career in England.”

“Money is a sensitive subject with our juries,” Longfellow said helpfully. “Perhaps because most who sit have rarely seen much of it.”

“What has happened to him?” Diana inquired. “By now he must be a rich man.”

“He was hanged in New York, having copied bills of that province, and of New Hampshire and Connecticut, too. He seems not to have profited from his work. Instead, it kept him running from place to place, hiding wherever he might, hoping none of his friends would reveal him out of fear, or for reward. That is what finally happened, of course.”

“A life of crime is fraught with difficulty,” Longfellow said lightly.

“Something you might impress on a pair of young men not far from here.”

“That, I will do. I shall also tell them that if they contemplate such a life, they should have sufficient standing, or at least enough backing, to change the name of what they do. Like Clive, first ‘protecting’ India for the Great Mogul, then returning this past summer to effectively steal its vast wealth for Britain.”

“Clive, in many ways, is a man of greatness. His better qualities will probably ruin him in the end—for he's hardly as greedy as most,” Edmund finished with a sigh. At any rate, it was not to his taste to look for boys to catch up in the nets of Justice, such as it was here, especially for what seemed to them little more than games. On the other hand, what might happen when young men followed leaders like Sam Adams, and the enormously wealthy Mr. Hancock? At least in Bracebridge, the “leaders” were no more than a few farmers.

“It is strange,” he remarked, shifting back to the topic of history his wife had advanced, “to find two ends of such formidable English families interwoven in this province.”

“Which families?” asked Diana, always interested in society.

“Dudley and Knowles. Robert Dudley, as I hope you know, Diana, was made Earl of Leicester by Elizabeth. And Knollys, which is where Knowles comes from, was that lady's chamberlain and treasurer, and the keeper of Mary, Queen of the Scots. I'm personally acquainted with another, Sir Charles, who is an admiral. Once the governor of Louisburg, he now supervises Jamaica. I suppose he'll become accessible to his new relation—though Ned Bigelow, or Knowles, is to receive little else. The Navy, at least, pays scant attention to which side of the blanket one has been born on.”

“Often having something to do with it in the first place?” Longfellow asked.

“Lately,” said Charlotte, startling them all as she came to life, “Ned has become interested in sea travel, and the southern islands.”

“Has he, Carlotta?” Longfellow inquired.

They all waited for more, but she seemed to retreat back into her own thoughts.

In fact, she wondered if that could mean Ned had known about his blood relations for some time. And she wished Richard and Edmund would not talk so blithely of Mr. Syllavan, for it seemed to her that a similar noose might now be tightening around the neck of a certain young fiddler, fascinated by warm and distant climes.

“A Knollys of
our
century,” Edmund continued, “was the notorious Earl of Banbury, who killed his brother-in-law in a duel.”

“Shocking behavior,” said Longfellow, making the captain wince at an unpleasant memory of his own. “It
does begin to sound as if the Knowles clan in Philadelphia may have something odd in their veins, after all.”

That, thought Charlotte, was another theory Catherine Knowles had advanced when she'd taken tea with the old woman, dressed in her dated finery. When the dark mirror had seemed to dance… and she'd first seen the sorrow of Magdalene's life.

“Speaking of history and black sheep,” Longfellow added, “I've just finished Horace Walpole's peculiar story.”

“Otranto?
I would have guessed that far too romantic for your taste,” said the captain with a smile.

“And you would have been correct.”

“Oh, yes,” said Diana. “The book with the castle. What is that all about, Edmund? Richard tells me any day now one of our Boston friends may ask us about it.”

“Walpole claims in his introduction that his reason for writing it was an artistic one,” Edmund replied. “But that may be as fanciful as the rest. Its true purpose is no doubt hidden.”

“Well, what do you suppose it is?” asked Longfellow, wishing he had something to pass on to Jack Pennywort one day.

“It's not far, I think, from what Mr. Reed brought us, with his talk of wills and responsibilities.” He stopped and looked to his wife, fearing the subject might distress her, not quite sure of his own feelings.

“Go on, Edmund, please,” he heard her ask. Could it be that Diana was even more beautiful tonight, with this new display of bravery?

“For you, I will try—though much of it is foreign to the way things are thought of in Massachusetts. Walpole,
you must realize, is no longer a young man—he's also a martyr to the gout, which may have something else to do with it—but in his time, he's seen great change in Britain. Kings, lately, have become more powerful than they once were, at the expense of those who share their power of governance. In the current king we have an example of the sins of the fathers, newly magnified. Perhaps Walpole wished to call attention to the fact that the Hanoverians, who were invited to England, have nearly worn out their welcome.”

“That could be part of it, I suppose,” Longfellow considered.

“Yet there's something else that concerns Walpole. I believe the rest of us should be aware of it, as well. In England, indeed in much of Europe, lesser men have for some time been gaining influence and power—”

“Lesser men,” Longfellow interrupted. “Those of us without hereditary stature, Edmund?”

“Those with less investment in family, Richard, yes. Those with less interest in chivalrous behavior, too. Merchants, city traders, men with fleets of ships, investors in new canals and other works that benefit the public—and change it. This trend threatens men like Walpole even more than irritable kings, who might be replaced.
Otranto
, I think, shows us the unhappy effects of an old, corrupt system. And yet it should also remind us that even our children's children will be marked by today's injustices, which will continue to haunt them.”

“And will there be no escape?” asked Longfellow with a gentle smile at this foolishness. “Who, exactly, does Walpole wish to expose?”

“For a start, those now turning whole villages away from
the land, forcing enclosures so they may enrich themselves without responsibility—building gigantic farms, and exclusive pleasure parks where they may hunt and otherwise amuse themselves, all at the expense of poor cottagers, and the older landed aristocracy. Increasingly, they do this with the help of Parliament—”

“I've no doubt,” Longfellow said soothingly, hoping to stem the tide. He'd seen before that his new brother enjoyed romantic philosophy. However, while it made the captain more heated, it somehow left him cool. Some curious natural law, no doubt. “Beware, Edmund,” he added, “or you may one day awake to find yourself a revolutionary.”

“I still maintain the novel is about social injustice, Richard. Do you not agree this is something we should all attempt to define, and address?”

“I do. The question is, what are we to make of Walpole's bizarre attempts, if that is what he's up to? What of his apparent passion for gigantism, and spectral invasions?”

“Those are rather difficult,” Edmund admitted. “Yet I think he implies that power, grown too large, can be toppled only by something greater—something grounded in family and honor.”

“Family, honor, medieval chivalry—rather than Nature, Science, and the Rights of Man. An interesting plan, if one's aim is to march backwards. I seem to recall that Voltaire, several years ago, wrote a work in which our planet was said to have been visited by beings from Saturn. Life for our philosopher-novelists seems a riot of fantastic events! In fact, now that I think of it, I may write a novel myself. Something in Walpole's new style—for it seems to be selling well. I believe I know just where to begin. Let us
look more deeply into the fire; most of our candles seem to have guttered out, anyway. And I think my sister has fallen asleep—”

“I have not!” Diana said indignantly.

“Then nudge Mrs. Willett, will you? A story, in the style of Mr. Walpole—just the thing to prepare some of us for a visit to Boar Island tomorrow. As an Anglican, Edmund, you will have no faith in ghosts, but do your best to follow. Now…”

Longfellow leaned back and put his feet closer to the dying fire, while he examined the plaster overhead.

“A very long time ago, when gentlemen still controlled the world and ladies knew their place, a nobleman set sail from one of Europe's barbaric regions—a little west of Calais. He wished to see the end of the earth, but found instead a great island populated by people hardly unusual, yet oddly smaller than he. Lesser men, it seemed to him as he tottered about on high heels, his head covered by an immense court wig far grander than anything with which these Lilli-puritans, as they called themselves, were familiar.”

When even his poorly schooled sister had groaned at this, Longfellow went on.

“Eventually this great man built a damp castle, in which he installed his family. One ominous day, during which it rained nearly a foot, in a fit of terrible cruelty, he promised his only daughter to a fellow from Philadelphia.”

“Against her wishes?” his sister asked.

“Yes, Diana. Then, however, as romance will rise like cream in a bucket—a reference for you, Mrs. Willett— the daughter foolishly disobeyed her father and formed an entirely unsuitable attachment herself. Because the
neighborhood lacked any really good families, she decided to trust her fate to a brown bear of the forest—”

“Richard!” his sister cried reprovingly.

“It is only fiction, Diana… or perhaps a natural history. Yet as it turned out, this was a visiting coal merchant from Newcastle, and quite a wealthy one, too—which was not quite as bad.”