Revolution in Time (Out of Time #10) (26 page)

“Ohhh,” Travers said, sounding impressed.

She slipped inside and a few moments later reappeared and climbed back down, hurrying across the garden to the other wing.

“That was fast.”

Victor nodded. Clearly, she knew what she was looking for or what she was leaving.

“What do we do?” Travers asked as they stood.

Victor looked at the balcony.
 

“Oh.”

They shed their jackets and hurried toward the trellis. Victor grabbed hold of it and gave it a shake to test its strength. Something cracked when he did.

He and Travers exchanged worried glances.

He doubted it would hold his weight, but there was no other way in without passing several servants inside.

Victor let out a breath and reached to grab the fragile wood again, but Travers put his hand on his arm.

He smiled. “Allow me.”

With surprising speed and confidence, Travers scrambled up the side of the building. As he reached out for the balustrade of the upper balcony, a piece of latticework broke under his foot, and he nearly fell. He dangled from one arm before swinging his legs up easily onto the ledge. He eased himself over and turned back to grin triumphantly.
 

Despite himself, Victor was impressed.

Travers disappeared inside the rooms just as Quincy had done.

Victor gathered their coats and looked around anxiously as the seconds ticked by. Finally, Travers reappeared on the balcony. He stood on the edge then lowered himself down as Quincy had done. He swung outward and did a small tuck and roll as he landed.

He stood up grinning like a fool. “Lakota East High gymnastics two years running. Go Hawks!”

Victor stared at him blankly.

Travers brushed the grass off his breeches. “I was pretty good.”

“What did you find?”

Travers smiled again. “It’s what I didn’t that matters.”

~~~

December 7, 1777 - Passy, France

In the early morning hours, Lady Dubois’ scream woke the house. Victor needed no such wake-up call. He and Travers had spent the evening keeping watch on Franklin’s chateau. They were fairly certain how the day’s events would play out, but one could never grow complacent in war.

Lady Dubois’ voice came shrilly from down the hall.

“My husband! Help me.”

They joined the others, roused from sleep, in the hall. Franklin’s secretary Bancroft, looking tired, stood there with the other guests.

Agitated and clutching her robe around her body, Lady Dubois came toward them.

“My husband is dead.”

She took hold of Bancroft’s sleeve. “Please, you must help me.”

He squared his shoulders and tightened the sash on his robe. “Of course.”

He turned to address the small crowd that chattered nervously in the hall. “Would everyone please return to your rooms?”

The crowd continued to whisper anxiously, but one by one they did as he asked.

He took Lady Dubois by her arm and started toward her rooms. “Now, tell me what’s happened?”

Victor and Travers followed close behind.

She led them into her bedroom and pointed at her husband who lay still in bed. “I woke this morning, and he was ….”

She shook her head, unable to say it.
 

Oh, she was good.

“He said Franklin might do something—“

“Franklin?” Bancroft demanded.

“I can hardly believe it myself,” she said. “He and my husband fought yesterday. And later, Franklin threatened him. I thought Charles was joking at first.”

Dubois was pale and still.

Bancroft started to move toward the bed, but Travers put a hand on his arm. “Perhaps we should leave things untouched until we understand just what’s happened here.”

Bancroft nodded. “Yes, of course.” He turned to Lady Dubois. “You say Franklin threatened him?”

“I know it sounds absurd. I thought that was why Franklin came to our rooms last night.”

“You spoke with him?”

She shook her head. “I only saw him leaving. I called out, but ….”

She turned to pace across the room and kicked something lying on the floor. A small bottle skittered across the rug. Bancroft bent down to retrieve it.

“Laudanum,” he said, a deep frown coming to his face. “Franklin’s. I remember seeing this bottle, this particular label, in his rooms.”

“Convenient,” Victor said.

Bancroft turned and glared at him. It was convenient, very convenient for Bancroft’s needs.
 

Victor could see the wheels turning in his head. Quincy saw it too and “noticed” a glass on the bedside table.

Bancroft picked it up and wrinkled his nose as he took a sniff. “Laudanum.”

He looked again at the bottle. A little piece of damning evidence that might not hold up in a court of law, but it might serve its purpose in the court of public opinion.
 

“My husband takes powder before bed. He suffers from, suffered from terrible headaches. Doctor Franklin knew that. Do you really think he …?”

Bancroft nodded thoughtfully, a hound on a scent. She was clever, Victor thought. She wouldn’t have to accuse Franklin of anything. Bancroft would make sure it happened.

A very unflattering picture of Franklin would emerge, suitable for framing. A peccadillo gone horribly wrong. An enemy silenced. He and Dubois wouldn’t have to prove anything, just imply enough that negotiations with the crown would be delayed, perhaps even permanently.
 

If Franklin were recalled, and John Adams were to take his place, the treaty America needed so desperately could well die here along with Lady Dubois’ husband.

“Do you really think Franklin could have murdered my husband?” she asked, finally putting the words out there.

 
Bancroft looked all too eager to say yes but knew he had to play this carefully. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but ….”

“There is just one problem with your story, Lady Dubois,” Victor said.

She glared at him, defying him to challenge her.

 
Then Victor kicked the side of the bed so hard both she and Bancroft jumped back.
 

They stared at him in shock.

“Good lord, man—” Bancroft started, but then Lord Dubois groaned and lifted his head.

Victor impaled Quincy with a stare that hopefully told her what an imbecile he thought she was. “Your husband is not dead.”

If looks could have killed, Quincy would have murdered him on the spot.
 

Bancroft looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

“I am sure you do not,” Victor said, relishing the moment. “Perhaps it is all a mere misunderstanding?”

Quincy glared down at her husband who fell back asleep. “How could—?”

“How indeed.”

Bancroft put the glass down. “Please do not waste my time with such nonsense,” he said to Quincy.

He shoved the bottle of laudanum into Travers’ hands as he left.

Quincy, all pretense gone now, narrowed her eyes. “How?”

“There is no keyhole too small for a spy to slip through,” Victor said. “Yours included.”

Travers held up the bottle. “We re-stole what you stole and swapped it out with a less lethal version. Quite diluted.”

“Enough to feign death,” Victor said, “but then that is fitting for an actor, is it not?”

She didn’t respond, and he handed her a piece of paper. “We also found this in your room.”

It was a flier for Henry Jacoby’s triumphant return as
Hamlet
to the Liverpool Theatre Group.
 

He glanced down at her now-snoring husband. “A little old for Hamlet, don’t you think?”

Travers took the flier from her hand and put it into his pocket. “A little insurance.”

Quincy scowled first at him and then at Victor. She lifted her chin defiantly. “Now what? Are you going to kill me?”

“No.”

She smiled, sensing a second chance. She put on her best bedroom eyes and walked over to him. She walked her fingers up his chest. “Maybe we can work something out.”

He grabbed her hand. “I do not think so.”

“I’ll scream,” she said.

“No one will come. You have tried once too often.”

She ripped her hand from his and glared at him. “Then what?”

Travers picked up the glass from the bedside table. “You look like you could use a drink,” he said and held up the glass.

D
ECEMBER
26, 1776 - T
RENTON
, New Jersey

“Fire!”

A man next to him yanked on the long lanyard, and Teddy plugged his ears. Although it all happened in seconds, Teddy saw each stage as though it were a written diagram on paper in front of him.
 

The priming hammer was released, causing a spark to ignite the priming powder. That would travel down the vent hole and light the larger cartridge of black powder inside the breech. The explosion of that powder would cause the projectile, in this case, a six-pound lead ball, to hurtle through the air and rip through anything in its path.

He jumped at the sound of the explosion and watched through squinted eyes as the ball flew through the air. Its damage wasn’t like he’d imagined. There was no explosion when it landed. It bounced and tumbled and tore through anything and everything, including men.

His stomach dropped each time. Everything was so loud, so chaotic. Men yelled orders. They screamed in pain or in victory. The air was thick with acrid smoke and snow swirled inside it.

Men ran toward one another firing their weapons, bayonets ready to slice each other open. Teddy turned away. He did not like this. He did not like this at all.

Even though they’d fought a few minor skirmishes on the outskirts of town, the main garrison was caught completely unaware. The German soldiers ran to their posts, armed themselves and even tried to get their own cannon into the fight, but it was no use.

“Again!” Sullivan barked. “Sponge!”

The men around him were in constant motion; the men below were running for their lives, the smoke of the cannon blurred it all.
 

He’d heard of the fog of war, but always thought it was figurative and not literal. As he stood there numbly, he realized it was both.

“Fiske! Sponge!”

Teddy shook himself from his reverie and grabbed his sponge. It was a long pole with lambskin on the end. He dipped it into the water bucket and rammed it down the length of the cylinder. Another man did the same with a dry pole to clean out any excess bits.
 

The cartridge of powder was put into the barrel followed by the lead ball. Then it was all rammed into place.
 

“In battery!”

The men used long handspikes to leverage the cannon back into place. Each firing sent it backward. Once it was set again, the command to point was given. They aimed crudely but effectively enough, Teddy thought with a wave of nausea. There was a man, or what used to be a man, lying at the mouth of the road, who’d been hit by their first salvo. His torso lay motionless, separated from the rest of him.
 

He’d seen horrific injuries before. The aftermath of the Great Earthquake had taken that innocence from him. But that was an act of God. This was an act of man.

“Fire!”

They, cleaned the cannon, reloaded the shot, the priming powder, and the fuse.

And fired. And then again and again and again.

~~~

September 29, 1774 - London, England

The Pantheon of London wasn’t exactly the Pantheon of Rome, but it was no schlub either, Elizabeth thought as she looked around the enormous rotunda lavishly decorated in reds and golds for Countess Pawluk’s ball. She and Simon had done their bit and had spent most of the day left waiting for their time to return. Thomas Paine shuffled along behind them like a teenager going to church. When they’d invited him to join them at the party Franklin had mentioned, he said the whole affair was “frivolous to the point of indecency.”
 

It was, and Elizabeth couldn’t have been more delighted. She needed a little bit of frivolous. Eventually, they’d managed to convince Paine to come but, looking at his dour face, maybe they should have let him stay home.

Franklin’s calling card worked better than an invitation at the door. Elizabeth looked around at the large gathering. Anyone with any blue or even bluish tint to their blood was here along with every wit and twit in town, as Franklin called them.

She looked for the good doctor and found him sitting on the far side of the room. His leg was propped up for his sometimes gouty foot. He half rose from his chair as they arrived.

“So good of you to come,” he said holding out his hand in welcome.

Simon fought down a smile as Franklin beckoned Elizabeth to his side. Quick introductions were made to the others of his social circle.

Thomas Paine bowed politely and then planted himself in a chair—a petulant wallflower.

A polite cough caused them all to turn their heads. A handsome woman in her early sixties stood regally before them. Her dress was something Elizabeth might expect Marie Antoinette to wear. Lavish didn’t cover it. Layers of gold silk overlaid with a thin veil of red lace down the front. But it wasn’t the get-up that got everyone up. It was the woman inside it. Everyone, including Franklin, stood.

He bowed at the waist with a flourish. “Lady Pawluk.”

After another round of introductions, she smiled at the doctor. “I hope you have saved a dance for me,” she said with an Eastern European accent Elizabeth couldn’t quite identify.

Franklin smiled sadly and gestured to his bandaged foot. She looked disappointed and then a smile came to Franklin’s face. “Perhaps someone else. Sir Simon?”

Simon gaped for a moment, caught off guard, but gathered himself quickly. He bowed deferentially. “I would be most honored, Lady Pawluk.”

She eyed him up and down, and her smile showed he passed muster. She inclined her head slightly in acceptance.
 

Simon held out his arm.

“Don’t worry about your wife,” Franklin assured him with a grin. “I’ll keep an eye on her. Or two.”