The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles (27 page)

          
Of their Chloes and Phyllises poets may prate—

          
I sing my plain country Joan.

“Oh,” exclaimed the girl named Polly, “he’s playing!”

“It sounds to me like he’s singing.”

“Well, of course—that too. What a foolish remark.”

“Excuse me,” Phillipe snapped. “I was told he was taking something called an air bath.”

          
Now twelve years my wife—still the joy of my life—

          
Blest day that I made her my own,

          
My dear friends—

          
Blest day that I made her my own.

“Dr. Franklin can do all three at once!” responded the girl, her eyes positively sparkling in the candle’s bobbing glow. “He’s very accomplished on the fiddle, the harp—
and
his armonica.” Her gesture indicated it was this last, unfamiliar instrument upon which Franklin was performing now. “He invented the armonica in this very house. Sometimes I sit with him and listen for hours.” Young Polly Stevenson sounded smitten.

As they continued up the stairs, the strange, ethereally sweet notes grew louder. Franklin sang with gusto, yet with unmistakable feeling:

          
Some faults have we all, and so may my Joan—

          
But then, they’re exceedingly small.

          
And now I’m used to ‘em, they’re just like my own—

          
I scarcely can see ’em at all,

          
My dear friends.

          
Blest day that I made her my own!

“He made up that song about his Philadelphia wife years ago,” Polly declared as they reached the landing. “It’s the only one he sings that I don’t care for.”

Phillipe readily understood why. Admiration had given way to jealousy in the girl’s eyes. She knocked. The vigorous voice pealed on:

          
Were the finest young princess, with millions in purse

          
 To be had in exchange for my Joan,

          
She could not be a better wife—might be a worse—

          
So I’d stick to my Joggy alone,

          
My dear friends—

Polly rapped louder. “Dr. Franklin! If you please!”

          
I’d cling to my lovely old Joan.

The last high notes melted to silence beneath the distant roar of the storm. Polly’s third knock finally produced a response:

“That you, Polly my girl?”

“Yes. You have a caller.”

“Male or female?”

“The former. A young man. He says he knows you.”

“Then he may come in at once. But you stay out—I’m still bathing.”

Polly giggled. She stood aside for Phillipe to enter. As he walked into the spacious sitting room, bright-eyed Polly was on tiptoe, craning for a view of the apartment’s occupant. Phillipe turned to close the door, catching her. She looked acutely embarrassed. When he pivoted back in response to a boomed-out greeting—“Charboneau! Good evening to you!”—he instantly appreciated why.

Never in his days had Phillipe beheld such a bizarre combination of sights as in that chamber lit with lamps whose flames were shielded with chimneys. For good reason. All three windows overlooking Craven Street were wide open. The curtains blew, rain gusted in—and so did the wind, exceedingly chilly. The pages of a book lying open on a reading desk fluttered and snapped in the miniature gale.

But Benjamin Franklin appeared perfectly comfortable, seated on a bench near the opposite wall, in front of a totally incomprehensible device Phillipe took to be the source of the odd musical sounds. Franklin beamed cheerily.

“Have a chair. Help yourself to that Madeira. I’ll be finished with my air bath in just a few moments.”

He continued to smile with perfect aplomb, despite the fact that he was totally nude except for his spectacles.

Now just as embarrassed as Polly had been, but for a different reason, Phillipe made for the sideboard, and the decanter. He poured half a glass, sipped it hastily as Franklin rose, stretched, took several vigorous steps in one direction, then several the opposite way.

“Glad you fulfilled your promise, Mr. Charboneau. Please excuse my appearance. I’ve always believed fresh air has a salubrious effect on a man’s health and longevity. Winter or summer, I throw open the windows and take the air in this fashion one hour per day—come, come! Don’t look flustered. Is there any need for false prudery among gentlemen?”

“Well—ah—” Phillipe chucked down the Madeira, which hit his stomach with a sudden exploding warmth. He struggled for words. “No.
No!
But I’ve never walked into a room before and seen—seen—a device like that—”

Somewhat wildly, he pointed past Franklin’s bare paunch to the peculiar instrument against the wall.

“My armonica? Performances on musically tuned glasses are all the rage over here, I found. I merely improved on the primitive arrangement generally in use. Here, I’ll give you a demonstration—”

A mantel clock chimed the half-hour. “Ah, but time’s up. Your momentary indulgence—”

He disappeared into a dark adjoining room, returned clad in a much-worn dressing gown and old slippers of yellowed lambswool. He bustled from window to window, closing the shutters and latching them. Then he crossed to his armonica, while Phillipe, now less nervous, poured another tot of Madeira.

He walked over to the bench at which Franklin had seated himself. He was beginning to notice other details of the room: books and portfolios of papers stacked everywhere; on the mantel, a trio of miniature oils in expensive gold frames. The central portrait was that of a plain-faced, even homely woman. She was flanked by a young, bright-eyed boy and a charming little girl. Franklin’s children? Phillipe wondered briefly whether the young man was the bastard governor, William.

Franklin’s fingers ranging over the armonica captured Phillipe’s attention again. The high, shimmering notes faded away as cracks in the shutters admitted lightning glare. Thunder rocked the house. Phillipe bent forward to look while Franklin explained:

“Until the advent of my little creation, performers on the musical glasses simply had to arrange their vessels helter-skelter—and seldom within easy reach. I approached the problem a bit more scientifically, that’s all.”

He indicated the closely spaced glass hemispheres containing varying amounts of water. Each hemisphere resembled the bowl of a wineglass, but with a hole in place of a stem. Each hole fitted onto a peg on a spindle which, as Dr. Franklin demonstrated, moved back and forth at the touch of a foot treadle. Thus, certain glasses could be brought closer to the performer, or moved away. So precisely arranged were the hemispheres, not a drop of water spilled when the shaft changed position.

“Thirty-seven hand-blown glasses from three to nine inches—ranging through three octaves—and originally tuned with the aid of a harpsichord. Using a diamond, I engraved the note’s letter on each glass.”

Phillipe saw that when Franklin pointed it out. The older man moistened his fingertips in a bowl of water on a taboret beside the bench. Then he began to touch the rims of different hemispheres while operating the pedal. A surprisingly lovely tune rang forth, complete with simple chords that swelled and diminished as Franklin varied the finger pressure.

In mid-phrase, he laughed and turned back to the amazed younger man.

“That’s enough musicology for the evening, I think. You’re more interested in America. Sit down again, and let’s have another glass of Madeira.”

As a result of the two he’d drunk, Phillipe was already hearing a slight buzz. His eyes were a bit blurry, too. But he accepted the full glass Franklin poured and took the chair offered.

Franklin selected an even larger goblet for himself. He filled it to the brim, then relaxed in a second chair in front of jammed bookshelves, facing his visitor.

“I do recall I am supposed to give you a copy of my population essay before you depart. But tell me, Mr. Charboneau—where’s your home? France, to guess from your accent.”

“That’s right, sir. My mother and I came to England from Auvergne.”

“On business? To visit relatives? What?” Phillipe was about to blurt that he was the son of a member of the nobility. He checked the impulse. Franklin might not be friendly with all the peers of the realm—and very likely not with the so-called King’s Friends, among whom the late Duke had been numbered. Still, he wasn’t eager to have the story of his origins too widely circulated, especially not since the unsettling incident with the beggars. So he answered:

“Business, I suppose you’d call it. My mother was never married to my father, who was an Englishman of—good station.” He saw Franklin’s eyes dart quickly to the boy’s framed portrait; unabashed affection showed before the doctor returned his attention to the goblet he was warming between his palms. Phillipe continued, “When my father died, I was supposed to receive an inheritance, but—well, let’s say there were complications.”

“Some pack of rascally relatives cut you off, eh?”

“You’re very quick to get to the heart of it, sir.”

Franklin waved. “It’s an old story among the supposedly refined upper classes. So now your thoughts turn west across the sea—”

Phillipe nodded. “My mother’s against it, of course.”

“Handsome woman. Devilishly handsome! Can you persuade her?”

“I think so.” It was a hope, not a fact. “Particularly if there’s a more solid future than we’d find back in France.”

“You couldn’t have found better instructors in the fundamentals of printing than old Solomon and his sons. And the presses in the colonies do grow more numerous by the year. Commerce expands—that means more handbills, more advertising sheets. Literacy rises—the appetite for knowledge and news becomes voracious. Beyond that, we’ve a relatively open society over there—”

Phillipe shook his head, not understanding. Another intense glare through the shutters preceded a stunning roll of thunder. Franklin helped himself to more Madeira before going on:

“In America, a man’s free to rise as far and as fast as his wit and industry permit. The colonies are largely spared the constraints of the antique European system of nobility and privilege—with which you hint you’ve had some encounter.”

The shrewd eyes pinned him from behind the spectacles. Plainly the question was an attempt to draw him out. But Phillipe kept silent except for another nod.

Without thinking, he’d helped himself to more Madeira. The buzz in his ears had become pronounced. He wasn’t sure he could tell the Amberly tale coherently if he wanted to. He was growing dizzy—from the wine, and from basking in the nearly godlike presence of this famous man who, in some ways, acted as comfortably common as his old lambswool slippers.

Seeing he’d get no answer, Franklin resumed, “Yes, a man can go far in America, no matter how humble his beginnings. That should continue to be the case unless, God help us, the Crown alters the course of colonial affairs.”

“You discussed that trouble with Mr. Burke at some length—?”

“Because it’s seldom out of my mind. The future of relations between the colonies and the mother country depends entirely—
entirely
—upon the actions of His Majesty.”

“Can you forecast the next year or so? Will conditions over there be so unsettled that it’s foolish to entertain thoughts of a solid future?”

Franklin peered into his goblet in an almost crosseyed way. He said somberly:

“I hope not. As do most of my countrymen, from the Virginia tidelands to the Maine lobster banks. By living where they do, they have already gambled on
their
futures. I wish I could be more specific, but alas—” A rueful pucker of the mouth. “As a prophet, Poor Richard Saunders is a pious fraud. I do know that Englishmen will not be driven to their knees. To sketch it candidly for you, I would say America in the immediate future represents a unique combination of opportunity and risk. Opportunity to the extent I have already described—in plain terms, the air there is less stifling. On the other hand, German George—and many of his ministers who are supposedly Englishmen!—simply fail to understand the American temper. As you heard me tell Edmund, we seek justice, not enmity. But if they force the issue with their infernal taxes and fiats—that outrageous tea scheme, for example! I investigated Edmund’s rumor—the scheme’s certainly afloat. Should the high-handed ministers eventually push through a law granting an American monopoly to the half-wrecked East India Company—and should this government go on quartering royal troops among us at our expense—continue burdening us with aggravations and harassments of every devising—little ‘innovations,’ the wags in Parliament term them—
then,
Mr. Charboneau, you will see thirteen colonies pull and haul together as they have never done.”

Silence. The mantel clock ticked against the murmur of the rain. Abruptly Franklin stuck out his lower lip.

“No doubt I’m depressing you. I’ve certainly depressed myself. More Madeira!”

Before Phillipe knew it, both glasses had been refilled. He said, “No, I’m not depresh—uh, depressed. I’m heartened. You’ve been honest. I think I’d welcome the free air in America. Whatever the dangers in the future.”

“Good! Remember—I may have overstated the grimness of the outlook. As long as there are no new assaults on our liberties, all may continue in, relative calm—”

Franklin had barely spoken the last words when lightning blazed outside—and the loud, strident
dang-dang-dang
of a bell brought the half-tipsy Phillipe leaping out of his chair.

“Damme,” Franklin exclaimed, “I must have forgotten to unfasten the wire to the rod—”

He rushed toward the doorway where he’d disappeared before. This time, however, the black room beyond was illuminated by a ghostly light that made Phillipe’s scalp crawl.

Franklin noted his visitor’s white cheeks, chuckled.

“No need to be alarmed—the house is merely electrified from the storm. Come look.”