The Shadows of God (32 page)

“That’s all?”

“Ain’t”t’at plenty?“

“That’s only four to one their way. At Belgrade the Turk outnumbered us two to one, but at the end they lost thirty thousand and we only five thousand. I think we can make a good fight of this.” He paused as Unoka gulped down his rum and rolled his eyes at Oglethorpe’s optimism. “How long before they arrive?”

“Two day, I‘’t”ink,“ the African replied.

“Well, we shall make it a hard two days for them, shan’t we? The pine forests were made for ambuscade.”

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“Yes. I take my Maroons out into ”em.“

“That’s not necessary, Mr. Unoka. You’ve already worked them to death as scouts. Let’s give ”em a bit of a rest.“

Unoka looked levelly at him. “General, it come down to a fight in’t”e ranks, my men,“t’ey no good. Pickin‘ ”em off, killin’ “t’ey horses ‘ambuscade,” you call it—fats what
we
good at.“

Oglethorpe surveyed the man, noticed for the first time the blood leaking through a rag on his arm.

“You’re a good man, Mr. Unoka. I’ve never known better, and I’m proud to serve with you. If it pleases you to do this, I won’t stop you.”
“
”Tis always good, when serve wit‘ a madman, be a little mad you“ self,” the Maroon observed.

“Take what you need from the armory,” Oglethorpe said. “No sense in rationing now.”

“Wit” pleasure, General. An‘ anot’er cup o“ rum — ”

“Take the cask. For your men.”

For the next several hours, Oglethorpe bent over the maps, trying to imagine where the lines would form. They would strike at the towers, of course, but where? Though five thousand was a puny number compared to forces in the European wars, he knew he had been overoptimistic with Unoka. There was a great difference between two-to-one odds and four-to-one odds. They could come in a front so long he would have to stand very thin ranks against them.

That wasn’t what
he
would do, if he were they. He would pick a spot and push straight through, especially if he was in the hurry these fellows seemed to be.

Nairne came in and looked the maps over, while Oglethorpe explained his reasoning.

“The best thing we can do is keep our forces mobile and alert,” he said. “The THE SHADOWS OF GOD

Maroons and Choctaw and Yamacraw should be able to keep pretty good account of how they’re coming, though I expect more of their leapfrogging with the airships.”

“We can do a bit of that,” Nairne said. “Franklin has managed to give Us two flying barges of the nondiabolic sort. We’ve manned them with French and Apalachee marines. We also mustered every aetherschreiber We could get our hands on, and so have instant word from our borders and a great many of our companies, so that will help us to respond.”

“Good. This will be a hell of a fight.” Oglethorpe turned his head at’s°rne commotion outside the tent—yelling and gunfire. “What’s that?” The two men drew their pistols and went quickly to see what Was the matter.

But the noise was a sudden burst of cheers and applause, the guns are all aimed at the sky. A new company had ridden into the camp.

Inured to meager numbers, it seemed to Oglethorpe that the column went on forever, but realistically he knew it must be only two hundred or so. But they were such a brave sight that he almost wept The front ranks were all smart in blue and yellow, each man with a musket and broadsword, and at the head of them a small group on horses. One of those mounted was Philippe, beaming, in French uniform, who, despite his pudginess, looked something like a soldier. The other, though, was dressed in the colors of the new company, tall in the saddle, his bloodless lips in a thin smile, his hat doffed to show his mostly bald head.

“That,” Oglethorpe told Nairne, “is His Majesty Charles XII, King of Sweden.”

“Aye,” Nairne said. “I met him, in Venice.”

The exiled monarch spotted them and swung down from his mount, as did Philippe.

Oglethorpe swept his own hat from his head in perfect time with Nairne, and they bowed as the monarchs approached. “Your Majesties,” they said.

“No need for that,” Charles replied. “We are all soldiers today, gentlemen.

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Margrave Oglethorpe, it’s good to see you again, and thank you much for the loan of your amphibian ship. It proved a most interesting voyage, our foray to Apalachee.”

Oglethorpe nodded.
Now here is a man,
he-thought, as he had when he’d first met the king, forty miles from the coast of South Carolina. Charles XII had eyes of gray steel and a thin, patrician nose. His manner was that of a man whose very existence was a victory. “It was my great pleasure, Your Majesty.

And I cannot say what it means to have you with us.”

Charles clapped Nairne on the shoulder. “How are you, Mr. Nairne? I’ve not seen you since our victory in Venice. My debt to you Americans is not one I’d easily forget, nor do I ever shrink from a just war, and, by our savior, there can be no more just a war than this. I’ve ridden at the head of my troops for thirty years and more”. How can 1 fail to do so now?“

“I never doubted it, Your Majesty.”

“We had to pay the devil to get here, I’ll tell you, and would have paid more if it weren’t for your margrave Oglethorpe, who saved us from the fire at Fort Marlborough. Even so, three ships were lost, or I would offer you many more guns. But we will show them the same thing we showed them at Venice, yes?

We’ve stopped demon Peter before, and we shall stop him again.”

“Ah —about that,” Philippe interrupted. “You and I must have a conversation regarding Tsar Peter, before he gets here.”

“Peter himself is with the invading army?”

“Actually, no—he’s with my regulars, right over there.”

A peculiar fire entered the Swedish king’s eyes. “You’ve captured him?”

But there was no time to answer, Oglethorpe saw, for the tsar was striding straight toward them.

Charles was already looking that way. Now he drew a basket-hilted broadsword, and the glint in his eye became a blaze. “Thanks to Almighty THE SHADOWS OF GOD

God!” he roared.

The tsar watched him come. “I have no sword,” he said.

Charles spat on the ground. “Then get one, you coward.”

“Gentlemen — ” Philippe squeaked.

“I said get one, damn your eyes!” Charles shrieked.

Peter’s face spasmed, and there they stood, two madmen who happened to have crowns. “Sword,” Peter grated, holding his hand out.

No one moved to give him one, and when he saw that, he closed the distance to Charles. Angry as he clearly was, the Swedish king did not, as Oglethorpe feared, lift his blade against an unarmed man. But they stood for half a second, glaring at each other, inches apart.

Peter struck the first blow, a great backhand to the face. Charles almost impaled him then, but instead he dropped his weapon and tackled the tsar at the waist.

His men went mad, screaming like Turks — actually, some of them were Turks

—and chanting the monarch’s name.

The two men crashed heavily to the ground and began to roll, Punching and clawing at each other.

Should we do something?“ Oglethorpe asked.

Nairne shook his head slowly. “It’s been hundreds, maybe thousands, of years since anyone saw a spectacle like this—two great kings bawling like drunken linkmen. Who are we to stop it?”

“I understood the tsar brawled on occasion, but—”

The two had broken apart and were now boxing each other on the sides of the head. It seemed a contest of wills more than a fight—as if by agreement both THE SHADOWS OF GOD

had chosen not to defend, only to attack. Peter had split ears, and both men were bleeding from the nose and mouth. Both were cursing copiously, too, in their native tongues. It all sounded very colorful.

Then a single shot was fired, kicking up a branch between their feet, and both paused to see who had done the shooting.

Philippe stood there, pistol smoking, face as red as the inside of a melon.

“By God!” he shouted. “By God, you will stop or I shall shoot you both!”

He sounded convincing to Oglethorpe. He must have convinced the two kings as well, for they continued to stare at the Frenchman.

“Look, you two! The three of us are all that remain, so far as I can tell, of the old monarchies. Notwithstanding that the two of you come from countries one degree removed from Huns and Vandals, by
God,
when you are in my realm you will acquit yourselves like kings, not like schoolyard brats! King Charles, the tsar is under my protection. His throne has been usurped, and the army marching on us is not his. He came to me seeking asylum, and I have given it to him. If you cannot accept this, with all due respect, I thank you for the aid you have already given us and urge you back to your ships.” He whirled on the tsar. “You, sir, came here a beggar and now you repay my generosity by cheapening your station and thus my own. I will not have it. If you two must settle your differences, you will do it like gentlemen, by the sword, and you will do it
when this damned war is over!”

He paused, breathing so hard Oglethorpe feared him apoplectic.

Charles and Peter looked at each other, their fists still clenched. But then slowly Charles turned away from Peter and bowed to the French king—not on bended knee, but bowing nevertheless, from the waist.

“My apologies,” he said. “I was overcome.”

“I also apologize,” the tsar said. It sounded like it hurt. “King Charles—you want satisfaction from me. When the appropriate time comes, you shall have it.”

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Charles nodded. “We shall discuss it again.” He smiled grimly. “Though I must say, I have received some satisfaction already.” He rubbed his bloody knuckles.

Oglethorpe coughed quietly. “If we are all quite ready, there is a war to fight, and I would greatly appreciate the advice of generals more experienced than I.”

As Franklin faced the sorceress for the second time, he tried to put his feelings where they belonged—nowhere. His head understood everything he had been told about her. His heart did not, probably
would
not. That was the way it ought to be, he supposed, like good English government. A Parliament to check the king, a king to check the Parliament.

He did not know whether his heart was king or Parliament, but it had already had its say.

“You see, I come unarmed this time,” he remarked, as jovially as he could.

She did not take it so lightly. He was struck again by her beauty and by the serious lines of her face, by her enigmatic little smile that seemed to mean nothing. “When I was a young girl,” she said, “no gift would have been greater to me than meeting for one minute Sir Isaac Newton. I read his works over and over—in secret, you understand, so no one would know that a woman had the impertinence to — Well, that’s beside the point. I worshipped Newton and his philosophies. I lived for the beauty, the elegance of his mathematical demonstrations. I took a place as a transcriber in the French Academy of Sciences just to be near those who discussed his theories.” Her eyes were lamps of darkness, empty of pleading or argument. She was just talking, as she might to herself.

“And in the end, I killed him. He wasn’t the first man I killed; he Wasn’t the last. I understand how you must feel, but I think we must talk, you and I. We share something.”

“If you mean a love for Newton, I hardly see how—”

“No.” Her voice sounded strange. “No. You see, we have met before.”

“At Venice.”

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She shook her head. “You were in Boston — I was in Paris. You called yourself Janus. I called myself Minerva.”

A tingle like a thousand needles crept across his face and down his limbs. His heart tripped oddly, and the room seemed to blur at the edges.

“What are you telling me?”

“I was the amanuensis of a man named Fatio de Duillier. Mr. F. I watched his aetherschreibers. He was working, I knew, on some sort of weapon for the king, but I did not know
what.
It was a great secret, and a key element was missing. Fatio… could not find it. Since the problem was even more a cipher to me, I did not either, nor did our English colleague, Mr. S. But then I got a letter signed Janus, which made strange claims: that he had found a way to tune an aetherschreiber, that he also had a solution to part of Fatio’s problem.

And there was an equation. I took it, hid it, worked on it in my room, corrected it, then rewrote it as if Mr. S — ”

“Stirling,” Franklin said. “Stirling.”

“Stirling? Well, I never knew— In any event, it was the answer Fatio was looking for. It was only later that I understood what he was doing, what I had done. And much, much, later that Vasilisa Karevna told me the story of a young boy named Benjamin Franklin, come to London from Boston because he feared he had given the French an awful secret.”

Franklin put his head in his hands. “I didn’t—I was only fourteen. I wanted to make my mark in the world early, to snow—”

“And I only wanted to solve an equation. And yet look what our ambitions did together.”

“No,” Franklin said. “No, no!” He leapt up, started to pace, pounded the wall with his palms instead. “No! No! This was not how it was supposed to be! By God!” He whirled on her. “Do you know? Do you know how long I’ve imagined finally meeting the Frenchman who called down the comet? Do you? I knew him, knew him in my heart. An evil, corrupt man, a man who would do anything, who cared no more for human life than a horse cares for the fly it THE SHADOWS OF GOD

swats! A terrible man, a sick man, a twisted bastard of science and Satan. And
I
now you tell me—you
rob
me—“ He couldn’t go on. He didn’t know I what he was saying.

“Fatio was a pathetic creature,” Adrienne said, “but even he wasn’t evil. I think, in the end, he only wanted to show Newton that he was worthwhile, after Newton broke with him.”

Franklin gritted his teeth. It sounded right. How often had he felt the same way, when he was Newton’s apprentice?

“Louis XIV was a sick old man who thought he was saving his country. He was deceived, too.”

“Someone is to blame. Someone!” Franklin shouted.