The Lost Kingdom

  “I do owe you,” I said. I wanted to say more, but I wasn’t brave enough to find the words.

  “Your gratitude is payment enough. And what I said before, I didn’t mean to speak ill of the philosophers. They have been gracious and accepting of me. Which is more than I can say for many other white men.”

  Men like my father.

  “But you are half-French, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I have no country,” he said. “The Indian looks at me and sees a white man. The white man looks at me and sees an Indian. They’re both right and they’re both wrong.”

  And I saw that for myself. His clothing bespoke a Pennsylvania farmer, while the pendants and wire in his ears glinted in the cold moonlight. When looking at Andrew, you could see what you wanted to see. What you were prepared to see.

  But his appearance made me wonder something else. How would it be to not belong anywhere? To always feel like an outsider?

  “Living on the border of two nations has made me a good interpreter,” he said. “My mother was an interpreter, and she raised me to be one.”

  “Croghan said your mother was Madame Montour.”

  He nodded.

  “She was French?”

  His smile was one-sided and mischievous. “That depends on who you ask. She never told the same version of her story twice. Even to me. But yes, I believe her father was French, though she was raised among the Six Nations.”

  “Why would she tell different stories?”

  “She did not want others to know where she came from.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He paused. “But she was a good woman. A stern woman, but loving, and a respected interpreter. I only hope to meet her expectations of me.”

  Upon hearing him, I realized that I might easily say something very similar about my father. Andrew and I were both walking in the paths laid down by our parents before us.

  “Tomorrow we’ll fly over a ridge,” Andrew said. “It has high stone walls around it. No one knows who built them. Perhaps it was your Madoc?”

  Stone walls? A fortress? “Perhaps,” I said. “Tomorrow, we should tell my father.”

  When I came up onto the deck the next morning, yawning, I noticed the storm brooding ahead. We all did. It crouched on the horizon, black and baleful, waiting for us to get close enough before it pounced.

  “Our first storm,” my father said. “It’s too big to fly around. But this was expected. Prepare the ship as we planned.”

  “We may not be able to do as we planned,” Mr. Faries said.

  My father turned to him. “Why not?”

  “Our strategy in dealing with storms would have been to fly above them, rather than through or below them. With the damage the ship sustained, I’m not certain it will be safe to attempt the necessary elevation. My repair may not hold.”

  “I see.” My father cupped his elbow with one hand and cradled his chin with the other. He glanced around at the assembled group. “Suggestions?”

  “We fly through it,” Mr. Kinnersley said with what I took to be excitement. “Right into its heart.”

  “I would recommend we fly beneath it,” Mr. Faries said. “Low to the ground. I believe the ship can handle it if I’m at the helm.”

  My father nodded.

  Andrew stepped forward. “May I make a suggestion?”

  My father didn’t look at him, but he said, “Of course.”

  “We could land and wait it out.”

  My father’s hands fell to his sides. “What?”

  Andrew pointed westward. “That is a powerful storm. It might be safest to avoid it altogether.”

  “Are you mad?” my father asked. “The French are coming down the river after us, we have a bear-wolf on our trail, and you think it prudent to land and wait? For what? For them to catch us?”

  “Just until the storm passes,” Andrew said. “There is a place. I spoke with Billy about it last night during our watch, and he thought you should know of it.”

  My father turned to me. “You shared a watch with Andrew?”

  I gave him a firm, defiant nod. “I did. You should hear him out, Father.”

  My father leaned away from me. “Is that so?” His voice held no anger. No judgment. Only disappointment.

  My resolve faltered, but I said, “Yes, Father.”

  He paused. Then he turned to Andrew. “What is it that I should know?”

  Andrew’s gaze roamed among the gathering. “Ahead of us, there is a ridge surrounded by a high stone wall. Rumor and legend suggest it was once the site of a fortress, but no one knows who built it. Perhaps it was made by your Madoc. It might be wise to examine it while we wait out the storm.”

  A jolt ran through the Society members, as though they’d been shocked by Mr. Kinnersley’s electrical fire.

  “Describe these walls you mentioned,” Mr. Godfrey said.

  “I have not seen them myself,” Andrew said. “But they are said to be made of tightly stacked stones, without mortar.”

  “That manner of construction would be consistent with a Welsh origin,” Mr. Godfrey said.

  “You think we should land?” my father asked.

  Mr. Godfrey nodded. “I do.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Phineas said. “If we gain some intelligence on the subject of Madoc while also avoiding the danger of the storm, would that not be worth the risk of landing?”

  “I would rather stay in the air.” Mr. Kinnersley shot his pointed hand straight forward. “Fly through the storm.”

  My father turned to Mr. Faries. “William?”

  “It’s your decision, John. Though I do have concerns for the ship. And our mission is to find Madoc, after all.”

  During the discussion, the storm clouds had reared up, even darker.

  “Where is this ridge?” my father asked.

  Andrew looked over the side. “We should reach it within the hour.”

  “I will make my decision when we arrive,” my father said. “Until then, prepare the ship for the storm.”

  We all set to work stowing, tying, and covering. Jane and I helped Phineas wrap sheets of oilcloth around the instruments to protect them from the rain. When we had finished, we stood at the bow watching the land ahead. Mr. Faries brought us down low, and we swept along a bluff, perhaps two hundred feet high, that buttressed the eastern shore. Black forest smothered every inch of ground and filled every crevice.

  “There.” Andrew pointed.

  Ahead of us, a smaller creek joined up with the Ohio River, running a tight parallel to it in such a way that it almost pinched off a section of the ridge, forming a tear-shaped peninsula of high ground.

  “That is the place,” Andrew said.

  My father squinted down at it. He turned to us. “Bear-wolf and the French notwithstanding, our mission is to find Madoc. If something can be learned of his people down there, we are obliged to risk the pursuit of it.”

  Mr. Kinnersley scowled, but everyone else appeared to be in agreement.

  Mr. Faries brought the de Terzi around the tip of the peninsula and set her down in one of the few open patches of ground near the river. By the time he had let go the anchor and brought us to a halt, thick woolen clouds had moved in and covered the sky. Distant thunder rumbled.

  “I will not have the same mistakes repeated,” my father said. “There will be no independent excursions. Those who leave the ship must remain in company. Mr. Faries, if you’ll pardon me, I wish for you to remain on board so as to keep the ship ready for immediate flight.”

  Mr. Faries accepted this with a nod.

  “At any sign of danger,” my father continued, “storm or not, I want you to leave us behind and take her up. Understood?”

  Mr. Faries hesitated. “Yes, John.”

  “Jane,” my father said. “It is my duty to keep you safe. You will remain on board as well.”

  Jane accepted this with a curt nod, and given what had happened at the Forks, I didn’t think sh
e would disobey such an order again.

  “Andrew.” My father clenched his jaw. “Bring your rifle.”

  “Yes, sir,” Andrew said, and left to retrieve it from below.

  I waited for my father to order me to stay on the ship as well, ready to argue with him, but he never did. Perhaps I had demonstrated the value of having me along. Or perhaps he simply wanted me close by him in the event of another attack.

  Mr. Kinnersley decided to remain with Jane and Mr. Faries, which left Phineas, Mr. Godfrey, Andrew, and myself in my father’s party. We descended a new rope ladder, a spare that had replaced the one ripped down by the bear-wolf. On the ground, by the river’s shore, we peered into a gray mist that had crept in ahead of the storm and made the dense woodland of yew, hickory, and giant hemlock even more impenetrable.

  “Stay close together,” my father said. “Andrew, lead the way.”

  Andrew held his rifle at the ready and stepped into the trees. The rest of us advanced in a column behind him. The mist grew thicker among the trees, a shroud that seemed to muffle every sound. Tree trunks and branches loomed out of it with little warning, and the uneven ground of roots and rocks tried to trip me at every step. My eyelashes gathered droplets of moisture. I breathed the heavy air and focused on the shape of my father ahead of me, resisting the childish urge to grab hold of his coattails.

  We marched and stumbled down into a ravine, followed the bed of a trickling stream, then climbed upward, grunting and whispering. Within a short distance I felt very far from the de Terzi, and from Jane. The fear that quickened my heartbeat was not the nervousness I felt at the Forks prior to the French attack, nor the panic that followed, but something nameless and more menacing. The deeper we pressed into the forest, and the higher we climbed, the tighter it gripped me.

  “Where are the animals?” Phineas whispered behind me. “I haven’t even heard a bird.”

  “Quiet,” my father hissed.

  But Phineas was right. Something about this place felt wrong.

  We continued upward, well past what I guessed would have been the highest point of the de Terzi’s tallest mast. Were it not for the mist, we might have been able to look back down on her from above.

  “Halt,” Andrew said.

  I nearly ran into my father, who had stopped in front of me.

  “It is here, Mr. Bartram,” Andrew said.

  I strained to see through the mist and took a step forward.

  And the wall emerged.

  The seemingly endless expanse of stone faded into the fog above us and to either side. It beckoned me to follow it, to chase its edges into the gray void. It had been made as Andrew described. A fortification of flat, tightly packed stones, without mortar. But the wall had fallen into a state of disrepair, collapsed in places, sprouting trees and weeds. A ghostly quality hung about it, ruined, ancient, and somehow untouchable. So I reached out my hand to make sure it was real. The stone felt very cold beneath my fingers.

  The others had done the same. My father, Phineas, and Andrew, their arm’s-length contact with the wall appeared tentative, while Mr. Godfrey’s seemed almost reverent. He eyed it up and down the way my father admired a beautiful plant.

  “What do you make of it, Francis?” my father asked.

  “Difficult to say.” Mr. Godfrey’s mouth hung open as he studied the stone. “It could be Welsh. Or it could be of Indian origin.”

  “Truly?” My father turned to Andrew. “Do you think your people could have built this?”

  I winced, but Andrew appeared unbothered. Perhaps he was simply accustomed to it.

  “I do not know who built it,” Andrew said.

  “What do you think, Phineas?” My father asked. “Phineas?”

  I looked to where Phineas had been standing, but he was no longer there.

  “Phineas!” My father called.

  We waited.

  “I’m here!” came a reply. “I … wanted to follow the wall. Come see this, John.”

  “Wait here,” my father said. He walked away in the direction from which we had heard Phineas’s voice.

  “What do you suppose is on the other side?” Mr. Godfrey asked, looking upward.

  I shivered. The mist had slinked in through my clothes and reached my skin. I didn’t want to know what was on the other side of the wall. Such things were built to keep things out, but also to keep things in.

  Time passed, and my father and Phineas hadn’t returned.

  “Where do you think they are?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Godfrey said.

  “Father!” I called.

  No response came.

  “Perhaps we should go after them,” Andrew said.

  “You go that way,” Mr. Godfrey said. He started in the opposite direction, tracing the wall with his hand. “I’ll go this way.”

  Andrew called to him. “I think perhaps we should —”

  But Mr. Godfrey was already gone, dissolved in the mist.

  “Stay with me, Billy.” Andrew renewed his grasp on his rifle and started forward in the direction my father had gone.

  I followed behind him, though not as close as I had followed my father before. I studied the wall as I walked, the irregular precision in the placement of its individual stones, no two alike. Gradually, the way they fit together into a whole assumed a kind of pattern. And then I thought I heard something. A low murmuring.

  I stopped. “What is that?”

  Andrew looked back at me. “What is what?”

  “That. It sounds like voices.”

  Andrew tipped his head up and held it still. A moment later he said, “I hear nothing. Let’s go.”

  The sound was coming from my right. From the wall. I leaned toward it, and it grew louder. Were they voices? They seemed to be shouting. Screaming. But heard at a great distance. I leaned in closer, until my ear was almost touching the stone. I thought I heard the clang of metal, grunts and groans, as though a battle were being fought on the other side of the wall. I leaned away, and the sound faded.

  Ahead of me, I could still see Andrew creeping forward through the fog.

  I put my ear against the stone and closed my eyes.

  The sounds I had heard before returned, and the voices assaulted me. I gasped. I did not know the language in which they spoke, or even if they spoke in words, but I understood them. Pain, rage, and grief require no translation. It was as though the echo of a great war had become trapped in the stone, the rock itself crying out in anguish and blood. Was I imagining it?

  “Andrew,” I whispered. “Come listen to this.” I opened my eyes.

  Andrew was gone.

  I leaped away from the wall.

  “Andrew?”

  I was alone. I set off at a trot along the wall, thinking I would catch up with him.

  But I didn’t.

  “Andrew!” I shouted. And then, “Father!”

  More wall. And more wall. And no one else.

  I stopped. Would it be better to keep going? Or should I wait here? Andrew would realize he had left me behind, wouldn’t he?

  A peal of thunder exploded overhead. It took the world by the throat and shook it, announcing the oncoming storm. I found it hard to breathe through my growing fear. The wall ran straight. If I followed it, I would have to reach someone eventually, Andrew or my father.

  And then I heard a different sound. Not from the wall, but from the forest. A deep, rumbling breath, almost a growl. Leaves and branches cracked and crunched under something very heavy as it moved through the trees. It couldn’t be. And then I smelled the pungent musk of damp fur. How could it have found us?

  I backed up tight against the wall and held my body still, staring into the blank mist, my eyes suggesting movement where there was none. The haze seemed to writhe around the smudged black tree trunks. And then a larger shadow lumbered into view.

  I held my breath. A quivering seized my legs.

  The shadow came closer. And then it stopped. It turned s
ideways and moved along the wall in the direction Mr. Godfrey had gone. I was just out of its view, and it out of mine, but I could make out the shifting silhouette of its head, the massive bulk of its body, and its long, long limbs. The bear-wolf had found us, and it was stalking through the woods but feet from where I stood. Could it not smell me?

  It disappeared into the mist, and I waited, terrified, until I couldn’t hear it anymore. And then I crept in the opposite direction, careful of each footstep, avoiding twigs and leaves. I hurried along the wall as quickly as I could, pausing with almost every step to listen, expecting to hear the roar of the beast and the crashing of its charge toward me.

  But it never came. And eventually, I heard someone talking. Not the voices from the wall, but someone real. It was Phineas. And then I heard Andrew. And my father. They were speaking out loud, for anything to hear them. I hurried forward, and they materialized out of the mist, standing next to the wall.

  They turned at my approach. My father smiled, and then I guessed he saw the expression on my face. “What is it, son?”

  I formed my lips into words without speaking. Bear-wolf.

  Their eyes all widened, scanning the fog.

  “Are you sure?” my father whispered.

  I nodded.

  “Back to the ship,” he said, and indicated the direction with the chop of his hand through the air.

  “What about Mr. Godfrey?” Andrew asked. “He went off exploring in the other direction.”

  “That’s the way the bear-wolf went,” I said.

  My father closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. “We’ll fire Andrew’s rifle once we’ve reached the de Terzi. Hopefully Mr. Godfrey will interpret the signal, and the sound will drive the bear-wolf away, out of his path. Andrew, lead on.”

  Andrew nodded and skulked away into the trees. Phineas followed him, and then it was my turn. My father came after me. We traveled several hundred yards without any sign of pursuit, and I felt relief with every step closer to the ship.

  A few moments later, Andrew yelped up ahead, and then so did Phineas as he appeared to vanish right into the ground.