Benjamin Franklin's Bastard (39 page)

But William was not yet defeated; when the guard came to bring him before the tribunal the next day he said, “I have no legal business with your congress,” and refused to leave his room.

The guards didn’t trouble to argue with him; they left and returned with thirty more soldiers who carted him off at gunpoint, and at gunpoint he was brought before the tribunal.

IT WAS LIKE A
play, thought William, or a puppet show, these supposed five “justices” acting out their impostor roles in neat wigs and shined buttons, simpering drivel to one another only to make him wait and seethe and wait more. At length the central figure on the stage took his first good look at William, and William returned it evenly.

“Mr. Franklin, is it true that you tried to convene an illegal assembly during this month of June?”

“I know of no illegal assembly beyond this one. And on the grounds of its illegality, I have nothing further to say. You may do as you please.”

The puppets looked at one another in such perfect unison William was more than ever convinced of sticks pushed, strings pulled; one puppet in particular grew red faced as William continued to sit in composed silence.

The lead player resumed. “A letter of yours has been intercepted, sir, written in March of this year, addressed to Lord Dartmouth at the Crown Office. It names certain gentlemen, diplomats on an official mission. Do you recall this letter and who it named?”

So this was the intent—not to elicit already known facts but to humiliate William by making him say his father’s name, by making him repeat the words by which he’d been accused of convicting his father of treason and by doing so convicting himself of the same.

William felt the old rage first, but next the oily sweat of fear.
Say nothing.
He held himself straight and still, and it proved to be all that was needed to bring the red-faced inquisitor leaping to his feet.

“How dare you! How dare you sit before us with your fine airs and pretend yourself a gentleman when everyone knows out of what baseness you were got!”

There all semblance of due process fell away. Several other justices rose from their seats, someone called for quiet, another called for the guard; a third attempted to insert a motion into the pandemonium ordering William’s return to the inn to await his verdict, and someone managed to holler a second. William laughed out loud. Had these fools not heard? The verdict had been delivered. He was his father’s base-born bastard. There was nothing more to be said.

BY NIGHTFALL WILLIAM HAD
become ill, fevered. When he was told to expect no word till the tribunal reconvened in four days, he begged for paper and pen to write to Elizabeth, couching his words in careful terms that he hoped would slip past those who vetted it.

My dearest Elizabeth,

I am well; do not be concerned. I am held at the Burlington Sword and Shield, my room tight and cozy under the northeast eaves, kept company by a half-dozen cheerful and attentive guards. As I shall be here four days more at the least I should like you to inform Hamilton to cancel my meeting on the twenty-fifth.

I am ever your loving,

W. Franklin

If the letter got through, Elizabeth would know what to do; she would alert William’s friends and they would know where William was and under what kind of guard and that they had four days to effect an escape
.

But the letter didn’t pass. It was returned to William in half-inch shreds, accompanied by a good deal of cursing and slamming about of swords. In his fevered sleep he dreamed of Elizabeth pinned at the end of a militiaman’s musket, gasping for air, shouting at him between gasps, “Bastard! Bastard!”—a word she’d never once used, despite having double the cause.

ANOTHER OFFICER, A CAPTAIN
in the rebel militia, arrived at the inn bearing the answer from congress, which he read aloud. “ ‘As the said William Franklin by this and his former conduct, in many instances, appears to be a virulent enemy to this country and a person that may prove dangerous, therefore, it is unanimously resolved, that the said William Franklin be confined in such place and a manner as the honorable Continental Congress shall direct.’ ”

“Such place” proved to be a gaol in Hartford, Connecticut, a place as far away from William’s friends—and Elizabeth—as the Continental Congress could get him. William was carried on the rough, two-hundred-mile journey and displayed along the route to jeers and catcalls like a caged bear. Perhaps the worst moment came as they entered the outskirts of Hartford, and one of his guards decided to taunt him by handing him a local newspaper. William was described as “a noted Tory and ministerial tool exceedingly busy in perplexing the cause of liberty.”

Ministerial tool.
William looked at the top of the paper to make note of the date: July the fourth, 1776. The date could never signify anything to anyone but William, but to him it would forever mark the day he’d been robbed of his freedom and his reputation. Of everything.

54
Philadelphia, July 8, 1776

THEY WERE ALL THERE,
gathered at the steps of the State House—the Germans, the Scots, the Irish, the Quakers, the free Negroes, the English. The Americans. Toward the front of the crowd stood Franklin and four others, one of them extraordinarily tall, with the kind of peppered skin that didn’t like the sun; the other three were so easily lost in the crowd that Anne couldn’t remember one of their faces the minute she turned away. Later, she discovered that they were the members of the committee that had drafted the extraordinary document that was now being read aloud from the balcony above. Anne had come to hear the declaration, but she’d also come to speak to one of these now-famed authors of liberty about his incarcerated son. She reached again into her skirt pocket and withdrew the bit of paper she’d torn from the
Gazette
but hours before.

William Franklin, a noted Tory and ministerial tool exceedingly busy in perplexing the cause of liberty, has been arrested; he is the son of Doctor Benjamin Franklin, the great patron of American liberty . . .

The unknown orator had begun to read what he billed as a unanimous declaration of the thirteen united states of America. Anne folded her bit of newspaper into her palm and gave her best effort to attending the spoken words, words she could once have believed in, and yet how blackened they were now by the printed words she held in her hand!

Separate and equal station . . .
with William in gaol.
Life, Liberty . . .
with William in gaol.
All experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable . . . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government . . .

To throw off William.

The list of royal abuses rolled on.

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures . . .

But how could William not be one of “ours,” born not a half dozen streets away, born to one of the crafters of this noble document, born to Anne?

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled . . . do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . . And for the support of this Declaration . . . we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

At the cost of
William’s
life,
William’s
fortune,
William’s
honor? This, then, was the question that Anne had come to ask. As the crowd cheered, roared, raged in that bloodlust way only a declaration of war could bring on, Anne pushed through the bodies to the front, running afoul of elbows, knees, mouths. To her surprise, Franklin looked more somber than most; to her even greater surprise, before she could reach him he detached himself from the tall man and began to make his way down the street toward the water, alone. He moved at a good pace; Anne took after him as soon as she could free herself from the entangling crowd, but she couldn’t catch him up without breaking into a conspicuous run. She followed behind him; to her amazement, he turned at Christ Church and entered the graveyard.

Anne might have given Franklin his moment to make his peace, or to do whatever it was he’d come to do there, but her shoe crunched over a stick and he turned and discovered her. So there they were, and Anne saw no sense in pretending they weren’t. She drew closer.

“We think the same once again, I see,” Franklin said. “A day to share with them, is it not? In my case, to ask forgiveness, to ask if she might agree that it was worth the sacrifice. And what do you plan to say to Mr. Hewe?”

Anne thrust the crumpled bit of newspaper at Franklin. “How can you do this to your own son?”

Franklin glanced at the paper, and all that had been solemn and vulnerable in his features the minute before hardened into a thunderous black mask. “He is not my son.”

“He is your
son.
”

“He is a son who would have stolen his father’s life, his livelihood, his good name!”

“And so you steal his.”

“I! I! ’Tis the business of Congress. Nay, nay, ’tis
William’s
business. He was warned again and again and yet he goes ahead in disregard of the consequences, accusing his own father of traitorous acts. And you come here and stand before my wife’s grave, my wife who tried day in and out to make something honorable out of our vile spawn—” He stopped, trembling. He held up his hands to keep Anne from speaking—or to keep himself from speaking; he breathed in and out, gathering himself.

He began again. “I . . . forgive me. Dear God, you see what he brings me to. Never was I prouder of a boy, never have I stood in anything but full admiration of you. Well, perhaps there was an instance, aboard ship—” He smiled bitterly. “Would you have done better with him? God’s truth, I don’t know.”

“But what is the charge? Can it be they’ll charge
him
as a traitor? For that he would hang. Surely you cannot stand by and allow your son to—”

“There’s naught I can do.”

“Naught you can do! You who sit in the Congress that voted to hang him?”

“We voted to jail him.”

“ ‘We’! You mean to say that indeed you voted so?”

“Understand this, Anne. William’s fate was his own then and ’tis his own now. We are through.” He turned back to his wife’s grave. “Perhaps if I’d left him here at home and insisted Deborah come with me to London . . . I should have insisted . . . in truth, if I’d even asked her a second time—”

Franklin turned back to Anne. “But what does this day teach us? There’s no going backward now. God alone knows how we shall all end.” He paused. He seemed to study Anne for a long time. “Although I suspect I know where I shall be when it all ends. I’m an old man. How likely am I to return from this next mission? You must speak of this to no one, Annie, but I go to Europe soon, to plead with the French for aid. I plan to take Temple along. If I’m to die in a foreign land, I should have a relative on hand to close my eyes. But ’tis for the boy’s good too. He spends time with his stepmother, who loves him as her own, but presses him to visit his father in gaol. I tremble to think where that might lead. I must take him away from his father’s influence and his father’s friends and put him to work at a better cause.” Franklin looked back at the grave and gave a bitter chuckle. “What
she
might have said of crossing the sea to
France,
with my bastard son’s bastard son along, I think I might know.”

The words chilled Anne; she’d never heard Franklin use the word
bastard
before.

Anne was still attempting to interpret its meaning when Franklin turned to her again, with that old, speculative look in his eye. “What the devil, Annie, why do you not come with me?”

“Come where?”

“Why, to France!”

Anne stared at Franklin, seventy years old and looking it now, his hair receding, his waist expanding; she’d heard rumors of gout, rheumatism, kidney stones. And yet he was ready to travel across an ocean in wartime, to France, to help win this war he’d helped to start, and he wanted her to come. What was he after this time, lover or nurse? Or did he simply prefer a woman’s softer hand to close his eyes?

As if he’d read her thought, as he’d appeared to do so often in the past, Franklin began to grin. He scooped up her hands. “Come! Let’s do it this time! And right, for once! The pair of us unencumbered, with a new boy along to make into an honorable man!”

Anne noted—indeed, how could she not?—there was no mention of making her into an honorable woman, but she didn’t care—she’d already made herself respectable without Franklin’s help. But France! She must admit, he’d caught her with the idea. And Temple—Temple had caught her the first minute he’d stepped into her tavern. It had been William who’d almost lured her to England, hoping to lay some claim to him there; could William’s son now lure her to France?
Could
she claim something of William’s son, if her own son was indeed to be lost to her forever? Anne could still feel the dampening ball of crumpled paper she’d been holding clenched in her fist; she could not give up on William as easily as his father seemed to have done, but she could do nothing for William alone. Surely the Great Patron of American Liberty could do something for his son if he chose, and perhaps in France, with Franklin’s now ailing flesh once again in her hands . . .

Other people began to enter the graveyard. Franklin looked around. “I must go,” he said. “Indeed, I shouldn’t have left, but this day . . . This day of all days—” He looked to the grave, then away. “Say you’ll think on it; say that at least, Annie. Let me call at the tavern tomorrow for your answer. You and I and Temple and France and a new country to be nursed into life. Think on it!” He kissed her hands and took himself off, looking fifty again.