Dream last night: I sat at supper with my father and my son. Neither spoke. On the wall, looming over the table, a portrait of General Washington. There was an empty chair at the table. The centerpiece was an enormous platter on which sat a whole roasted calf. All of us held knives, but none was willing to make the first cut.
My gift of eidetic—or “photographic,” I must remember to say, since the word eidetic is not commonly known; I have only recently learned it myself—memory is, I fear, somewhat less impressive in an age when everything is on videotape, a technological wonder in and of itself, now superannuated by digital storage. I try to learn this age’s methods of speaking, its jargon, even its rhythms. As I look back over these pages, do I already detect changes in the natural patterns of my syntax, learned and cultivated for three decades of life in the eighteenth century? Is a few weeks enough to effect such a change?
Totally.
That caused me physical pain.
I am sorry for Father Boland’s death. He knew the tricks of the old demonologists, but was betrayed by that old bugbear, human error. I am intrigued that he knew of the protective qualities of salt. What is the old saying? “The Devil liketh no salt in his meat”? Like other folkloric truisms, this one is rooted in lost knowledge—in this case, salt’s strong repulsion of demonic entities. For salt is eternal and incorruptible; it preserves what it touches, as with salted meats; it is the alchemical antithesis of the corruption and fickleness at the heart of demonic being. Father Boland knew this, and laid lines of salt around the safe house. However, when we had a chance to look over the scene, I noted that someone had interrupted the salt barrier across the threshold of the front door. This must have been an accident, as the demonically possessed officer would have been unable to touch the salt, or by any action cause it to be moved. A terrible misfortune, and one that cost lives—also a lesson in the dire consequences of even the smallest errors in this war we fight.
Abigail has recovered General Washington’s Bible from its hiding place here at the cabin. I again notice a pungent smell about the book—a thoroughly nauseating stench, if I am to be honest—and I believe I now recognize it.
(Abigail’s pithy assessment: “Smells like one of the pigs Jesus put those demons into.”)
One of the pillars of eighteenth-century spycraft, as in any other age, was the transmission of hidden messages. The liquid obtained from the crushed and strained bodies of a certain species of glowworm makes a superb invisible ink—save for the unfortunate odor it begins to emit as the natural processes of decay occur within the molecules of the liquid. It is this smell that emanates from the pages of General Washington’s Bible.
There is a message here.
December 18, 1799. That is the date written in the glowworm extract; it is written in General Washington’s hand, which I know as well as I know my own; and it is four days after his death, when he was no longer general but president—or, more correctly, ex-president, having handed executive authority to his successor Adams.
Did George Washington write in this Bible after his death? One is tempted to employ the principle of Occam’s razor, that the simplest explanation is the best—and that would lead to the conclusion that Washington was simply noting the future date to remind himself of an event or obligation. However, if I have learned anything in the course of my battle with the minions of Moloch, it is this: Demons care not a fig for Occam’s razor.
This date is a clue. It must lead somewhere, and I must find out where. If General Washington meant this Bible to find its way into my possession then I suspect this clue was meant for me. After all, General Washington was a perspicacious man, and would surely have made arrangements for his soldiers to continue to fight in the event he did not survive to see the successful prosecution of the war against Moloch.
And, as he made clear to me, I was one of those soldiers—by which, I now understand, he meant I was a Witness. Why he never told me as much himself is a mystery I have not yet been able to unravel.
Shortly before I fell to the Horseman’s axe, I spoke to General Washington. This was in July 1781, shortly after Comte de Rochambeau had arrived in White Plains with French reinforcements the exhausted Continental Army desperately needed. Washington wished to attack New York, but Rochambeau dissuaded him, arguing that a strike at General Cornwallis in Virginia was both more feasible and in the end more decisive—for to dislodge Cornwallis would cripple the British and isolate their remaining forces in the north. At length Washington agreed. Before he left with the combined Franco-American force (which I have since learned won a great victory at Yorktown!), he wished for a private consultation with me.
We met in a house on the banks of the Bronx River. The army was to begin its march in the morning, but before their departure Washington wished to give me a most grave commission. Crane, he said. It is destiny that has brought you to America, and that destiny calls for you to play a pivotal role in the war that is to come. By that he meant not the Revolution, but the broader conflict of the forces of light against the legions of darkness.
I stand ready, General, said I; whatever task you set me, know that I will not rest until it is completed.
You have a gift, Washington said. You see through the human masks demons have learned to wear.
Of course, he referred to Tarleton. I know this now, but at the time I thought he was speaking figuratively. The nature of the gift to which he referred was unclear to me then. This was the first time General Washington had ever spoken openly of the work we did, the clandestine war that lay behind and underneath the Continental Army’s battle for the independence of the colonies. In my naiveté I took him to mean spycraft; there is much I now see in a different light, and much I wish Washington had shared more openly, that I might have done him better service—and perhaps saved Katrina and Jeremy from what befell them.
Much of what we do—perhaps all of what we do—will be lost to history, he went on. You must not fight for glory, but for what is good and holy and right.
So I have endeavored to do, sir, I answered.
Remain here in New York, he said. Search out those among the redcoats a Hessian with the mark of a drawn bow. It may be a tattoo, it may be a scar. Find this man, for if you do not, he will lead a charge against us, and it will be such a charge that no army solely composed of men shall hope to resist it.
He detailed to me the forces he would leave in my command. Good men, seasoned veterans—Mohawk scouts and fighters as well. We were to hunt these men who bore the mark of the bow. Then it was time for him to rest before the march to Virginia began in the morning. Before we parted for the last time, however, he grasped my arm and offered these parting words:
We parted then, with those words in my mind—I recalled him saying the same thing once before, but more fully, during another meeting: Good will always rise, like Lazarus from the grave.
I did not take his words as prophecy at that time, but in retrospect I see them as such.
I have it. Lazarus. I must let Abigail know.
I have returned home to a most disturbing and mysterious note. While I do not recognize the sender, I have my suspicions about his identity …
