A Study in Revenge (52 page)

Was it truly best to let it lie? Too many lives, innocent or otherwise, had already been lost during Jotham Marsh’s mad, desperate search for whatever was buried in the false grave of N. F. Agee. Marsh would be preoccupied for months to come, searching beneath the ruins of the reservoir to locate the mystical alembic, the Count de St. Germain’s secret mechanism for producing the philosopher’s stone. But eventually Marsh would realize the truth: that it wasn’t there. Then what? There was no way to predict what course he’d take next and how many more might suffer as a result. Grey decided on what he would have to do. Not now, when he was still likely being watched. Sometime in the months ahead, he’d have to come back and dig up the alembic himself. And when he had it in his hands, this alleged key to unlocking limitless wealth and the secrets of the ages, what then? The thought made his head hurt even worse.

Grey glanced about and saw no one taking note of him from either of the streets running along the Eastern Cemetery. He drew Thomas Webster’s bequest from his pocket and held the cigarette to a corner of the ancient, yellowed page. He puffed a few times. The brittle paper smoldered briefly, then caught fire. Grey watched the flames devour the final written words of Thomas Webster. When the heat threatened to scorch his fingertips, he set the burning page on the grass in front of the pathetic little tombstone of N. F. Agee and waited until the fire died away, leaving only the blackened, crumbling remnants of the page.

Grey stepped down on it and twisted his shoe, obliterating the sole copy of Thomas Webster’s bequest of his precious thunderstone. The heart of the old alchemist’s last testament, and the key to his riddle, joined the earth beneath Grey’s foot. The edges of the paper exploded into small black flecks that scattered on the wind, chapter and verse.

M
IRA WALKED UP TO THE SECOND FLOOR AND ALONG THE
hallway, past the tall windows that framed the sight of a slow-churning mass of dark gray clouds. Though she’d been longing for the return of sunlight, she didn’t pause to consider the view. The parcel in her hands had monopolized her attention. She could feel a box inside the plain brown paper wrapping, and she was intrigued; it felt heavier than its size would suggest. Urgent voices leaked from Jotham Marsh’s study, but she eased the door open without knocking.

Marsh was seated behind his desk, poring over a selection of old and new maps. Jerome stood just to the side, also peering over the material as he was expected to do. It was a familiar sight in the past two months, as Marsh had grown ever more focused on the exact location of Thomas Webster’s single acre of land beneath the ruins of the Munjoy Hill Reservoir. This time a third man joined them, a heavyset fellow in dusty work clothes. His mud-encrusted boots had been removed downstairs, just inside the front door. Left standing here in his stocking feet, he looked like a little boy—though swollen to grotesque proportions and sporting a thick mustache—being scolded by his father.

“You’ve missed it, then,” Marsh declared. “Moving too quickly these past couple weeks.”

“The men are thorough, sir, just as instructed. It’s the heavy rains—they’ve softened the earth. Made it easier to cover more ground,” the portly workman explained.

Not wanting to acknowledge the reasonableness of that answer, Marsh shifted his attention to the parcel in Mira’s hands. He questioned her with a glance.

“Just delivered. No return address on it.” Mira caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror on the far wall behind Marsh’s desk. She tried to control the look of undue interest she saw on her face.

“Well, go on, open it.” Marsh returned his attention to the maps spread out before him.

Mira set the package on the corner of the desk and used a letter opener to slice away the string that bound the wrapping.

“It has to be there. I know it is,” Marsh muttered. “The old survey was wrong. We’ll just have to move the southern corner’s starting point farther in. Twenty yards more both to the northeast and the northwest.”

Mira opened the box and lifted the single page set atop the contents. She unfolded it and read aloud: ‘My good doctor, it’s been such a pleasure to observe your current efforts from afar. After witnessing the dedication and thoroughness you’ve brought to bear on this endeavor, I felt compelled to pass along this small token of my appreciation. It’s the least I can do after all the kindness you’ve displayed in letting me live this long. As you put it.’ ”

Marsh’s bemused look turned to a scowl as Mira read the final two sentences. “What’s in there?”

She drew out a photograph and offered it to Marsh. He snatched the picture from her hand. The image showed a hand loosely clutching a bright metallic object, roughly cylindrical and maybe eight or ten inches long. It appeared to have several gearlike dials on its exterior, as well as a short type of funnel extending from the top.

“The alembic—Grey has it!”

Marsh looked up and stared at Mira. From inside the box, she had picked up a small black velvet bag with gold drawstrings pulled tight. She cradled it in her hands as she stared back at him, her eyes wide in anticipation.

“It’s heavy,” she whispered.

“Here!” he hissed at her. His outstretched fingers wriggled uncontrollably, motioning her to hand it over. “Careful.”

Marsh set it down as gently as if he thought the bag itself were about to disintegrate. His fingers pulled at the strings until they came loose, and he slid his hand inside the bag and drew the golden object out into
the light. Rapturous delight crumbled into utter despair in the second or two that it took his mind to grasp what he was seeing.

His gaze shot to the photograph and then back to the distorted lump of gold upon the desk before him. The funnel was still there, and he could make out the shape of one of the prominent dials on the alembic’s side. But the thing itself had been melted down, collapsing and rehardening into a shapeless mass. All traces of its alchemical markings, the secrets to its proper use, obliterated.

“No! He couldn’t have!” Marsh grabbed the golden mass off the desktop. He turned around, unable to bear the looks on the faces of Mira and Jerome, watching him suffer this ultimate failure. He was rewarded by his own incomprehensible likeness, glaring back from a mirror on the wall.

“This is
not
possible!” His arm whipped around in a furious blur, and then the melted alembic hurtled from his hand. It struck the center of the mirror and dropped to the floor. A few shards fell, but most of the mirror hung in place, a spiderweb of cracked glass that now held the seething, fractured reflection of Jotham Marsh. “Dead. With my own hands—I will see him dead!”

F
IRST AND FOREMOST
, I’d like to thank my wife, Cathy, not only for being my first reader but for all the help and support she provides every step of the way.

I’m very grateful for my editor, Sean Desmond, whose insight and good judgment helped shape this book and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. I’d also like to thank my publisher, Molly Stern, as well as all the people at Crown whose efforts have contributed to this series including: Julie Cepler, Ellen Folan, Meagan Stacey, Annie Chagnot, Christopher Brand, Lauren Dong, Stephanie Knapp, and the sharp-eyed Maureen Sugden.

At William Morris Endeavor, many thanks to Erin Malone and Suzanne Gluck for their never-ending faith and support, as well as Cathryn Summerhayes and Tracy Fisher.

A book of this type requires a significant amount of historical research, and I’d be hard pressed to recount every source. However, I often turned to Edward H. Elwell’s
1876 Portland and Vicinity
along with various documents and photographs on the Maine Memory Network at
www.mainememory.net
. The character of Chief Jefferson was inspired in part from material found in
The Life of John W. Johnson
on the very informative
www.nedoba.org
website.

This story features a fictitious final manuscript by Professor Eben Norton Horsford referencing Norse runes at Portland, Maine. With regard to the professor’s actual theories on Viking explorations in New England, I’m indebted to his other existing works, as well as Rasmus B. Anderson’s
The Norsemen in America
, and Gloria Polizotti Greis’s wonderful article, “Vikings on the Charles or, the Strange Sage of Dighton Rock, Norumbega, and Rumford Double-Acting Baking Powder.”

To the extent that my descriptions of the Boston Athenaeum are at all accurate, I credit that institution’s publication:
The Athenaeum Centenary
. Any and all errors in portraying the building’s layout are entirely my own.

The 1775 bombardment of Portland by Capt. Mowat is described by William Willis in his
The History of Portland from 1632 to 1864
. However, I have made alterations to that work to suit my needs, including fictional references to Thomas Webster. Similarly, I made certain abridgments and omissions to Frederick Jackson Turner’s seminal 1893 paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” as necessary for the flow of the story.

Like Mowat’s attack, the collapse of the Munjoy Hill Reservoir was another real tragedy suffered by the city of Portland. Four people died as the result of a flaw in the reservoir, and I meant no disrespect to their memories by reconstructing the events of the collapse in a much more dramatic fashion. Details of the collapse were gleaned from various newspaper accounts as well as John R. Freeman’s “The Bursting of the Distributing-Reservoir at Portland, Maine, August 6, 1893” in:
Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies
, Volume 13, 1894.

In addition to my personal experiences on Katahdin, I used a variety of sources to re-create what a trip up the mountain may have been like in the late nineteenth century, including Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s 1849 newspaper account of her journey, as well as the later words of Percival Proctor Baxter. To the latter, I am, like all Mainers, deeply grateful for the continuing gift of Baxter State Park and Katahdin.

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