The Lost Kingdom

  We had to thread through them to get to our cottage. Their gazes followed us as we walked among them and did not lift until we were inside and had shut the door.

  “Now this is a disaster,” Mr. Godfrey said.

  “That isn’t helpful, Francis.” My father lowered his voice. “How could we have been so wrong?”

  Mr. Kinnersley checked on the Leyden jar he had left in a corner of the room. “What I want to know is: How could Marin have found us?”

  “Why don’t we ask his spy?” My father turned to Andrew. “How many messages did you leave for Marin before we discovered you?”

  I wanted to step between them and challenge my father. Andrew still hadn’t said much, but he spoke up then.

  “With respect, Mr. Bartram, it does not matter what I say. You will believe what you choose to believe.”

  “Not to mention,” Mr. Godfrey said. “It’s entirely possible that Marin followed the sightings and the evidence we all left behind. It’s not as though the de Terzi was a covert vessel. Our conspicuous flying ship, the speed of the river upon which Marin traveled, and our own delays on foot could easily account for the French presence here.”

  “And they are still three days away,” Mr. Faries said.

  “Exactly,” my father said. “Which is why we should prepare to leave at once.”

  “It is a shame, though, isn’t it?” Mr. Godfrey said. “Peace is a precious thing, and they have enjoyed it here.”

  Peace was something rare and precious. I didn’t know much about politics or war, but I knew that. Conflict never seemed to leave the colonies — fighting with the Indians, the French, the Spanish, and even with one another.

  But not here.

  Annwyn.

  Paradise.

  And we had shattered its peace by our mere presence.

  “It is regrettable,” my father said. “But it does not change the fact that we must leave. Are we in agreement?”

  “No.” It may not have been my place to speak. But that no longer concerned me. “This isn’t right.”

  Everyone turned to look at me. Jane, Mr. Faries, and Mr. Kinnersley appeared surprised. Mr. Godfrey seemed amused. The weight of my father’s stare bore down on me, but I continued under its burden.

  “How can we leave knowing what we have done?” I said. “We had no business coming here, and now that we’ve drawn the French here, we owe more to these people than to run.” I made eye contact with each of the men, and then with my father. “Before we left home, my mother told me that you had all done much for the protection of Pennsylvania. Is that true? Is that what this society does?”

  Mr. Kinnersley lifted his chin. “That is exactly what this society does.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then shouldn’t you protect these people?”

  They made no answer. I looked at Jane. She beamed at me.

  “By God,” Mr. Godfrey said. “The boy is right.”

  Mr. Faries and Mr. Kinnersley agreed.

  “We must decide on a strategy and course of action,” Mr. Faries said.

  “You’ll do nothing yet.” My father crossed to the cottage door. “Billy, come with me.”

  And he left.

  I cast one more look at Jane, and then I followed him. Out on the green, most of the crowd had cleared away. My father strode in the direction of Madoc’s hall, and I quickened my pace to keep up. He stopped when we reached the door.

  “You are right, son.”

  “About what?”

  “Our responsibility.”

  He entered the hall, and so did I.

  “John Bartram!” Madoc’s voice from his throne carried anger. “Our hospitality and patience have limits. What do you want now?”

  My father approached him. “Prince Madoc, forgive my immodesty, but you have in your village four of the greatest minds in all the colonies. We have three days to prepare for Marin. Let us defend you.”

  “Defend us?”

  “Yes.” My father came before the throne and folded his arms. “We are the American Philosophical Society. And that is what we do.”

  Mr. Faries, Mr. Godfrey, and Mr. Kinnersley stayed up with my father late into the night, formulating their plans by the strips of moonlight that fell across the table from the windows. I tried to listen but wasn’t able to understand most of what they were saying, and eventually I fell asleep.

  They were still going when I awoke the next morning.

  “They’re doing this because of you,” Jane said during breakfast. “And I must say, I was quite impressed with you yesterday.”

  I felt my face warming. “Thank you.”

  “What is their plan, do you think?”

  “I couldn’t venture a single guess.”

  “Nor I. But I’m looking forward to finding out.”

  After bolting down their breakfasts, Mr. Faries and Mr. Kinnersley left on some errands in the village, while my father and Mr. Godfrey continued to murmur back and forth. Mr. Faries came back a short while later, darting about with excitement, saying something about his glass lenses and bronze shields. When Mr. Kinnersley returned, he spoke about irrigation and seemed pleased. Then more planning and discussion, right through supper.

  Jane and I grew bored and went for a walk around the village, where the residents all seemed hurried, running about with purpose and urgency. At the edge of town, silhouetted by the setting sun, rose a wide wooden tower still under construction. Dozens of men labored over it, and I wondered what it would be used for.

  “Do you think it odd that we haven’t seen anyone our age?” Jane asked.

  “I wondered about that same thing. And, yes, I think it’s odd.”

  “I wonder where all the children are.”

  “Perhaps they have none.”

  “Hm. Perhaps.” But she sounded skeptical.

  When we returned to the cottage, we found a dinner of bread, butter, and milk waiting for us. No one had touched it, so Jane had to direct the Society members to stop and eat, after which we all went to bed.

  As I lay there, looking up at the ceiling, I realized that one of the three days had just passed. Marin was one day closer. There wasn’t any chance of getting to sleep after that, so I was awake when, several hours into the night, Andrew rose from his bed.

  He crept across the room, shoeless, opened the cottage door, and slipped outside.

  I wondered what could pull him from his bed in the middle of the night, and I peeked through a window to see where he was going. He stole across the village green and entered the grove of oak trees where we had buried Phineas.

  What could he be doing at this hour?

  Clearly something he didn’t want the rest of us to know about. And when I added this to the oddness of his recent behavior, I had to wonder if perhaps I had been too ready to trust him. Questions and doubts rose up through me like specters. I thought back over what I knew about him. Why had he been so ready to come on this expedition? Croghan had tried to discourage him, but he came anyway. Why? What purpose drove him?

  My father’s voice intruded on my thoughts. He is a spy.

  No. He isn’t.

  But what if he was? Perhaps I had so wanted my father to be wrong that I turned my eyes from the truth. Even so, I resolved not to say anything to my father until I knew more.

  It was some time before Andrew returned. I held still in the darkness and watched him steal back into his bed as quietly as he had left it. I was awake long after that, trying to decide what I would do.

  The next morning, after breakfast, my father told Jane and me that he had a duty for us to perform. We went outside and found a dozen large bronze shields leaning up against the cottage in the shade next to a pile of rags and a bucket of clay. The shields varied in size and shape, but each wore embossing on their faces, the same kinds of intricate patterns found in Rhys’s tattoos.

  “You will polish these,” he said. “But I want you to polish the backside.”

  “The backside?” I asked.

&
nbsp; “Yes, the smooth side.” He showed us how to dab some clay on a rag and then rub the shield with it.

  “After you have treated the entire surface with the clay,” he said. “Rinse it off and then polish the shield with one of these.”

  He handed us each a satchel made of supple deerskin, packed tightly with sand.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He handed me the rag he’d been using. “When you are finished, each of these must be a mirror.”

  “Yes, sir.” I set down the deerskin and dipped the rag in the clay. “Where is Andrew today?”

  “He’s helping Mr. Kinnersley out in the fields.”

  “What are they doing out there?”

  “Concern yourself with this task,” he said. “And after this, take these shields to Mr. Faries. You will find him at the tower Madoc’s people are constructing for him. Assist him in any way he asks.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded and left us.

  Jane and I set to work, following his instructions. The first two shields went easily. By the time we were done, I could look into them and see a monstrous and distorted image of myself staring back. And we had to be careful how we held them, because at certain angles, we could sear each other’s eyes with the reflected sun.

  Two shields later, my elbows started to ache, and by the fourth, they throbbed. I looked at Jane. She gritted her teeth, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. But she didn’t complain.

  “I can finish these last ones,” I said. “Give your arm a rest.”

  “No.” She kept rubbing. “Thank you.”

  Some time later, we stood back, flexing and cradling our elbows, facing an array of polished shields. The clay had softened the skin on my hands.

  “I suppose we should get these to Mr. Faries,” Jane said.

  So we each took a shield and carried it through town to the tower I had seen the villagers constructing the day before. It had changed much since then. It stood perhaps fifty feet high. Mr. Faries patrolled around it, calling up directions to the men working at its peak.

  I walked up to him. “Mr. Faries, my father wanted me to bring this to you.”

  He took the shield from me. “Ah, excellent, Billy.” He turned his back to the afternoon sun and held the shield in front of him. He adjusted the angle, and a bright flash of reflected light lit up his face. “Excellent, indeed! Bring them all here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jane and I made the trip to and from the tower several more times, and each time we returned, the wooden structure had changed a little more. By the time we brought the last two shields, a long and narrow platform balanced at the summit.

  Mr. Faries walked around a wooden framework he and several of the Welshmen had built on the ground. It had a slight curve to it, like a shallow saucer. He took the shields one at a time and lashed them to the framework at regular intervals — three shields high, four shields wide — creating an almost continuous surface of bronze.

  Mr. Faries cupped his hand to his mouth. “Raise it! And mind your eyes over there!”

  A team of Welshmen heaved one edge of the shielded frame up to their chests and then over their heads. Then they walked the frame upright, hand over hand, until it stood vertical.

  “Hold it there!” Mr. Faries ran some distance out in front and faced it. He walked a pace or two one way, then the other, eying the giant mirror. He jogged in a few times to make adjustments to the angle of the shields. “That’s it, you can set it down!”

  “What are you building, sir?” I asked.

  Mr. Faries smiled. This was the happiest I had seen him during the entire expedition. “I am attempting to build a type of cannon.”

  “What kind of cannon?” Jane asked.

  “A cannon of light,” Mr. Faries said. He turned back to the Welshmen. “Gentlemen, let’s get this up there in position.”

  They dropped ropes down from the top of the tower, through a network of pulleys, and tied them to the shield mirror. As Jane and I watched them hoist the framework off the ground, Mr. Godfrey appeared at my side.

  “Archimedes himself could not have done better under the circumstances.”

  “Sir?”

  “This device is not without precedent. A similar weapon set the ships of Rome afire as they laid siege to Syracuse. But Mr. Faries has the benefit of modern optics.”

  Several moments later, they had the shield mirror mounted vertically at one end of the platform. Mr. Faries slung his leather bag over his shoulder, the one in which he’d brought his glass lenses.

  “Care to join me, Billy?”

  “Up there?”

  “Of course.”

  He walked to the base of the tower and took hold of a ladder. I did the same, and we climbed. It felt higher than I thought it would, and I took every rung with great caution. We reached the platform, where Mr. Faries sighed over the vista below us. To the north lay the village, and I could see our cottage and Madoc’s hall. Mountains rose up behind and to either side of the settlement. To the south, the land opened up into fields with fewer trees, cut through by a river. Welshmen worked out there, but I couldn’t tell what they were doing. It did not look like farming.

  Jane and Mr. Godfrey waved to me from below, and I waved back. A wooden rib arched over us, with an iron ring at its peak. There were four of these arches along the length of the platform, descending in height by degrees until the final one rested just before the level of our eyes.

  “Before I arm this cannon,” Mr. Faries said, “let’s aim it somewhere harmless. Take those two ropes there on either side.”

  I stood to the rear, near the shields, and grasped the two ropes he indicated.

  “If you pull on one, the platform will move in that direction. Try it.”

  I leaned to one side and pulled. The planks under my feet shifted, and I widened my stance to keep my balance as the entire platform rotated, facing us away from any people below.

  “Pull the other rope, and we swing the other way. And now …” Mr. Faries brought the leather bag around in front of him. He pulled out one of the glass lenses, polished it with a cloth, and carefully lifted and clamped it into the first iron ring. He did the same with the remaining lenses, until each ring held one. “Those bronze shields will catch the sun’s light, and when I pull this rope, the trigger, they’ll shoot that light down the barrel of these lenses, firing a highly concentrated ray out of the end.”

  “A cannon of light,” I said.

  “Exactly. I had to make do with the materials available, but this will be serviceable, I should think. Shall we test it?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Be ready. This will be bright.” He shielded his eyes with his hands and pointed. “Let’s aim for that bush there, by the river. You see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Move the ropes like I showed you.”

  I pulled the rope on the right and swung the light cannon around.

  “Now, those ropes there, the two running up and down near your shoulder, those will raise and lower the barrel.”

  I found the ropes he referred to and pulled on one. The end of the platform lurched upward.

  “Whoa, not that one,” Mr. Faries said.

  I pulled on the other rope, and the barrel pivoted downward. I let go when I could see the intended bush through the farthest lens.

  “Ready?” Mr. Faries asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Give the order to fire.”

  I watched the bush. “Fire!”

  He pulled the trigger. I heard no sound, but I felt an instant heat on my neck, and a blinding flash lit up the bush. He let go of the trigger.

  The bush had burst into flames. It had taken less than a second.

  Welshmen rushed to put out the fire with water scooped from the river. I watched them, stunned by what had just happened, almost disbelieving it but for the smoke I smelled in the air.

  “Aim us somewhere safe, Billy,” Mr. Faries said.

  “Oh.” I pulled
on the guide ropes, and the cannon lifted and swiveled, the barrel pointing at the distant horizon.

  Mr. Faries looked around at his device and nodded. “Yes. This will do nicely.”

  On the morning of the third day, reports came in from Madoc’s scouts that Marin’s army would be at Annwyn that evening. We were gathered in the prince’s hall. Madoc sat upon his throne, Rhys to his right and Myrddin to his left.

  “Are you ready, Ebenezer?” my father asked.

  “I am,” Mr. Kinnersley said.

  “Your wisdom exceeds my own,” Myrddin said. “Cannons that shoot light. And you say your fire burns through water?”

  Mr. Kinnersley held up a finger. “Electrical fire, yes.”

  “So are we ready to flood the fields?” my father asked.

  “When Prince Madoc gives the order,” Mr. Kinnersley said.

  My father turned toward the throne.

  Madoc stood. “You have the order.”

  Mr. Kinnersley bowed and left the hall.

  “Rhys,” Madoc said. “Are your men ready?”

  “They are, my prince. Swords and spears sharpened.”

  “I want everyone not fighting to go to the forest. They should be ready to flee if things go badly for us.”

  “It will not go badly,” my father said.

  “I trust not.” Madoc resumed his throne. “The only other matter I would like to address before the battle concerns this man you call Andrew Montour. I would speak with him alone.”

  My father looked at Madoc askance. “Why?”

  I wondered if this was somehow connected to Andrew’s late-night wanderings.

  “That is not your concern. Andrew, please come forward. The rest of you may go. I will meet you on the field of battle shortly.”

  Andrew glanced at each of us and stepped forward. We all lingered a moment and then filed toward the door. My father stayed where he was, and I wondered if he would refuse to leave. It would be intolerable to him to think of Andrew, the spy, in a secret conference with Prince Madoc.