Two Crowns for America Read online

  The coat was a slightly darker blue than his old one, with cuffs and facings and tails turned back in buff and new gilt buttons. She had moved his major’s epaulets onto the shoulders while he bathed. His black tricorn had gained a green hackle to match the green staff baldric he already wore. He could not suppress a grin of satisfaction as he shrugged into the coat, inspecting one cuff appraisingly when he had settled the coat over waistcoat and sashes.

  “What a splendid surprise, my dear,” he said. “I shall be the envy of every man at table—even the General, I fancy. You must have worked your pretty fingers to the bone the entire time I was gone.”

  She smiled and gathered up the old coat. “ ’Tis not so fine as some, but you’ll not be put to shame,” she said. “I’ll change the facings on this one in the next few days. A general’s aide must set a good example.”

  “Ah, but you set a standard difficult to meet,” he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her.

  He left them shortly thereafter to walk the half mile to Wadsworth House, where the Commander in Chief would be gathering his staff before moving on to General Ward’s welcome supper. The air was warm and still, the streets mostly deserted, and a brisk British cannonade punctuated the summer evening from the lines on Boston Neck—not terribly loud, at this remove, but it would allow no relaxation for the men manning the miles of redoubts and entrenchments around Boston.

  As he walked, Simon tried to shift his thoughts to the men he was going to meet, and to the task that lay ahead, as they worked in the coming days and weeks to forge a proper army out of the motley troops they had seen as they rode into Cambridge earlier in the afternoon. Listening to the British artillery, he wondered whether the Continental forces would be able to keep the British contained in Boston through the rest of the summer and into the fall, until winter froze both sides into inactivity. It was true that the British could not stand many such victories as Breed’s Hill, but neither could the fledgling colonial forces.

  Which brought Simon back to the more momentous news of the past hour. What were James Ramsay and his Bostonian colleagues really up to, in trying to force a Jacobite restoration this early in the game? Now that a Crown had been offered to Charles Edward Stuart, how would this affect the Master Plan for the American colonies?

  And Washington—where did he fit into that plan, now that he had been named Commander in Chief? What was the true significance of the dream or vision the General had experienced as he lay semiconscious after his fall the previous spring? And did Ramsay know about the dream?

  Finally, what did the Master have in mind for all of them, in his Master Plan for the New World?

  Chapter Four

  The new Commander in Chief took formal command of the Continental Army on July 3, 1775. Despite the scarcity of powder, the colonial artillery offered him an impressive salvo to welcome him, and the local citizenry turned out in the thousands as he rode into Cambridge Square on a white charger, accompanied by his staff, and drew rein in the place prepared beneath a great elm.

  There, drawing his sword, General George Washington assumed responsibility for an army of some seventeen thousand men, few with much in the way of formal military training. His general order for that day left no doubt that he intended a unified command among all the American fighting units.

  “The Continental Congress, having now taken all the troops of the several colonies which have been raised, or which may hereafter be raised, for the support and defense of the liberties of America, into their pay and service, they are now troops of the United Provinces of North America,” wrote the Commander in Chief. “And it is to be hoped that all distinction of colonies will be laid aside, so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole, and the only contest be who shall render, on this great and trying occasion, the most essential service to the common cause in which we are all engaged.”

  In the days and weeks that followed, Washington and his staff began working to make the order’s intent a reality. Justin Carmichael sailed from Boston the day after the General took command, determined to use his own days and weeks of forced inactivity aboard ship to catch up on the studies that had been interrupted by the outbreak of hostilities in the Boston area. Since the ship was British, and Justin had taken care not to become known in British circles as a colonial sympathizer, he was able to pose as a lukewarm loyalist bound for the Mother Country to attend to family business dealings set awry by the increasing disruption in the colonies.

  The cover gave him reasonable latitude to explore the sympathies of his fellow passengers. The man nearest his age, a titled subaltern carrying dispatches to Parliament from Generals Gage and Howe, proved too high-and-mighty to consort with a colonial “yokel” of mixed French and Scottish extraction, even if professing English loyalties. However, Justin found both a challenge and eventually a kindred spirit in the quiet Hessian artillery officer returning from observation duty with the British batteries at Boston. Hauptmann Hans Schiller, it emerged, was on assignment from the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, Frederick II—whose brother, Prince Karl, was the very man Justin had been told to seek out, in a first attempt to locate the Master.

  It was an acquaintance worth cultivating. Schiller was only a handful of years older than Justin; and despite the fact that Justin’s German was only rudimentary when their conversations began, it was better than anyone else’s on the ship. Schiller was grateful for the companionship. As Justin’s comprehension increased, he managed to learn a great deal about Hesse and Leipzig, where he was bound, and also about Parliament’s intention to hire German mercenaries for service in North America, if the colonists continued their defiance. In that regard Schiller proved a thoroughgoing professional, with a keen eye for the real issues at stake in the New World and a genuine regret that war seemed inevitable.

  By the time the ship docked in Southampton, in mid-August, Justin’s German had improved greatly, as had his opinion of his Hessian shipmate. Not only was Hauptmann Schiller intelligent and well read, but he was a brother Freemason, having been raised Master Mason only the year before by Prince Karl himself. Justin was still Fellow Craft, but the two of them spent many an hour comparing experiences in Lodge, struggling along in a patois of German and English mixed. Justin was genuinely sorry when they had to part, Schiller to continue on to the War Office in London and Justin to make his way to Dover and the Channel crossing. He was sorrier still that, in the future, he and Schiller might be obliged to regard one another as enemies.

  The journey overland to Dover took three days by coach. From Dover to Calais was another day, by the time he worked out the arrangements and actually made the Channel crossing. He had experienced only a few queasy hours at the very beginning of his Atlantic voyage, but the brief stretch between Dover and Calais was to prove his bane. By the time he made landfall in France, he was all but convinced that he had left his stomach somewhere in midchannel.

  He spent the night in Calais recovering. Then, following the instructions of his mentors back in Cambridge, he hired a post chaise and engaged the same French driver to take him and his single trunk all the way to Leipzig. Though he felt more confident about his German after his weeks of practice with Schiller, he knew his French was fluent, thanks to his French-born mother. Best not to risk ending up somewhere other than where he was supposed to be.

  It was an afternoon late in August before Justin reached his German destination. He had spent the previous night at a small inn on the southern outskirts of Leipzig, where he left his trunk to be collected once he determined he was in the right place. He had changed the post chaise for a hired horse before leaving that morning, to avoid attracting undue attention.

  His plain blue coat was well suited to that intent, though as a traveler, he did wear a sword at his hip. His tricorn now bore a discreet white cockade that would pass for a fashion affectation here in Germany, where folk cared little about a rebellion in England, now thirty years past; but it would identify him as a Jacobite sympathizer to those
disposed to notice such things. His breeches and boots had started out clean that morning, but a sheen of dust dulled the black leather after a day’s ride, and the linen breeches bore a smear of dirt across the top of one thigh, where the horse had butted its sweaty head against him as he watered it at midmorning. He hoped his cravat was not too wilted, for the heat was far worse than he had expected—though probably not so hot as it was back in Cambridge.

  Breathing a heavy sigh, Justin drew rein in a street called Ritterstrasse and briefly removed his hat to wipe a damp handkerchief across his forehead, scanning the row of elegant town houses ahead. His instructions had been explicit, both from Andrew and from the innkeeper at the Drei Könige; but operating in a foreign country, in a language still awkward on his tongue, necessitated especial caution. He replaced his hat and glanced at the scrap of paper in his hand, reviewing the description of the coat of arms he had been told to seek, then kneed his horse into a reluctant trot as he spotted the right colors on a flag farther along the street.

  Closer approach confirmed the odd crowned and striped lion rampant of the House of Hesse-Cassel: on an azure field, a lion rampant, barry of ten, gules and argent, differenced by the cadency marks of a second son—which would be correct for Prince Karl, the Landgrave Frederick’s younger brother. A liveried groom emerged from a stair descending to a service entrance as Justin drew rein just outside the iron gates and dismounted at the mounting block.

  Now, if the prince was just at home—and more important, if his sometime guest was here …

  Murmuring a properly accented “Danke schön,” Justin handed over the reins and a small coin to the groom and headed up the cut-stone steps to the front entrance. Schiller had advised him that a small gratuity always helped ensure attentive service. The paneled door ahead was painted a tasteful soldier blue that echoed the azure of the princely banner, and the door brass gleamed like gold in the afternoon sunlight. Before Justin could lift his hand to knock, the door was opened by a liveried butler who looked him up and down appraisingly.

  “Guten tag,” Justin said. “Ich heisse Carmichael. Der Prinz Karl von Hesse—er ist hier?”

  With a slight bow the butler stood aside to admit him.

  “Your German is quite acceptable, Herr Carmichael, but perhaps you would be more comfortable speaking English. Please to come in. His Highness is not at home, but you are expected. If you please, I will show you to the library.”

  Both relieved and a little puzzled—for he could not think how anyone might have been expecting him—Justin let the man take his hat and sword, also suffering a silent footman to remove his spurs and dust off his boots with a cloth. After that he followed the butler along a lavish hallway paved with black and white tiles and peopled by half a dozen near life-size alabaster statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses perched on pedestals of porphyry. As the butler opened the double library doors, the faint scent of beeswax tickled at Justin’s nostrils, along with the heartier smell of good leather bindings and an undertone of something sweeter that he could not quite identify—not tobacco, like what Andrew smoked, but something more akin to incense.

  The room was paneled in pale oak, its bookshelves crowded with leather-bound volumes of russet and burgundy and forest green, stamped with gold along their spines. A baroque fireplace carved of red marble dominated the wall to the right, with a spray of carefully arranged greenery and garden flowers decorating the grate; it made the room seem cooler. A mirrored overmantel reflected the rest of the room in double. From opposite the door, sunlight streamed through mullioned windows, filtering past heavy fringed velvet drapes swagged to either side of a book-laden writing desk.

  “May I inquire whether you have brought letters, mein Herr?” the butler asked, recalling Justin from his quick perusal of the room.

  Justin only just stopped his hand from going to his breast pocket. He was under orders to deliver his letters only to the Master.

  “You said that I was expected,” he said, ignoring the butler’s question. “By whom?”

  The butler gave him a little bow. “With respect, Herr Carmichael, I am not at liberty to say. Wait here, please.”

  Before Justin could inquire further, somewhat taken aback by the tone of the exchange, the butler had withdrawn and closed the doors quietly behind him. Justin glanced nervously into the mirror to straighten his cravat and slick back an errant curl that was escaping from the ribbon tied at his nape, but when no one returned within a minute or two, his attention began to wander around the room.

  He had never seen so many books before. Back home in Cambridge, his father had left him and his sister a library of more than a hundred volumes, considered a prodigious collection by New World standards; but the Prince von Hesse must have many times that number, perhaps as many as a thousand. There were folios and unbound scrolls as well, the latter stored in leather tubes on a pigeonholed shelf beside one window.

  The prince’s tastes apparently ran to the esoteric, too. The stack on the writing desk angled in the window bay revealed an astonishing selection of titles in a variety of languages: Latin volumes by Albertus Magnus and H. Cornelius Agrippa; a French text by Paracelsus, the Swiss-born alchemist and physician; the latest edition of Culpepper’s Herbal; Lilly’s treatise on Christian astrology, right next to Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft. And something of fairly recent publication called Vox Stellarum, which, when he opened its cover to flip through the pages, seemed to be about astrological predictions.

  “Interesting,” he murmured under his breath, bending down for a closer look at one of the charts set out at the back of the book.

  “Yes, I have always found it so,” said a low, faintly accented voice behind him.

  Justin could feel the blood rushing to his face as he whirled to confront the speaker. Despite the butler’s denial that his master was at home, the man standing before the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back, must surely be the prince. His aristocratic bearing declared him totally at home in his surroundings. His coat was of a rich black brocade, impeccably cut; his smallclothes close fitting and of a startling whiteness. A diamond glittered in the lace at his throat.

  “Your Highness, I—”

  “Not ‘Highness,’ my young friend,” the man said, making a disparaging gesture with one elegantly ringed hand. “At least not here, though I have answered to that courtesy in the past. Rheinhardt tells me that you call yourself Carmichael—which may explain your interest in my books.”

  Justin closed the book quickly and stepped back from it, convinced that his face must be as red as the volume’s cover. “I do beg your pardon, sir. I meant no offense. Is my name familiar to you?”

  “It is. The Chevalier Wallace holds you in very high regard, as does his son, who is married to your sister. It was I who asked that you be sent. Incidentally, you may call me Francis, and I shall call you Justin. You were told, I hope, that the letters you carry are intended for me, and not for Prince Karl.”

  Justin felt his pulse begin to throb in his temples, for he suddenly had an inkling just who this elegant stranger must be—though addressing that man by his Christian name was inconceivable.

  “I was—instructed to seek out Prince Karl,” he said carefully. “I hoped that he might direct me to a poor widow’s son, who would meet me on Weldon Square.”

  “I have been known as the Chevalier Weldon,” the man admitted with a faint smile, “and I am a poor widow’s son.” Justin barely dared to breathe as he waited to see if the man would finish the recognition by making the appropriate correction to the ritual phrase.

  “But if I were the man you seek,” the man went on, “I think I should rather meet you upon the level than upon the square. Do you not agree?”

  It was all Justin could do to whisper, “Yes, sir.”

  “Eh, bon.” The man gave him an amused nod. “That said, I think it fitting that we then might act upon the plumb. If that is acceptable to you, where do you think we should part?”

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nbsp; “Upon—the square, sir,” Justin whispered, giving the required countersign.

  “Good. Andrew and Simon have taught you well.” The man smiled again. “This is all quite tedious, of course, for I know perfectly well who you are, and I believe you no longer have any doubts on my account. However, such things will not always be so obvious—which is why you must become proficient in using such signs of recognition. May I have the letters, please?”

  Not daring to trust himself to speak, and daring even less to disobey, Justin fumbled inside his coat and handed over the oilskin-wrapped packet of letters.

  “I thank you.” The man indicated a chair by the fireplace. “Please take your ease while I deal with these.”

  Gingerly Justin eased himself onto the edge of one of the Queen Anne chairs, trying not to stare as the man seated himself behind the desk and unwrapped the oilskin. The letter on top bore the name: HH The Prince Lucien Rene Robert de Rohanstuart. The other three were addressed to the Chevalier Weldon.

  “Ramsay’s letter?” the man asked, lifting the letter addressed to the prince.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Somewhat to Justin’s surprise, his host broke the letter’s seal and briefly scanned its contents before laying it aside to deal with the other three. Each was composed of several pages, but he leafed through each one almost as if merely verifying the number of pages rather than making any attempt to digest and understand.

  But, clearly, he had read them. When he had shuffled through the pages a second time, he set them aside distractedly and sat for some time gazing silently out the window, not moving, hardly even breathing, giving Justin ample opportunity to study the man he now knew to be the Hidden Master he had been sent to find.

  It was easy to see how Justin had mistaken him for a prince. Viewed against the sunlit window, especially in profile, he resembled a classical painting by Rembrandt or Tintoretto. Both his costly raiment and his finely drawn features proclaimed aristocratic station, though unlike most men of his obvious gentility, he wore no wig; nor did he powder the dark hair pulled back in a silk ribbon at the nape of the neck, though time had brushed the temples with silver, causing Justin to estimate his age in the midforties. When at last he bestirred himself, it was to pull two separate sheets of paper before him and take up a pen in each hand, after which he began to write simultaneously on the two pages.