“What’s a guy?” I ask Franklin the next morning over breakfast in the kitchen.
He peers at me through his specs like I’m an idiot.
“I mean, I know what a guy is, as opposed to a gal. It’s just, last night is the second time I’ve heard someone talk about burning a guy; and I just wondered if there’s a special meaning.”
“Gal?” asks Elise. “What is gal?”
“You know, a girl, a woman, a lady. A guy’s a boy and a gal’s a girl and—”
“Guy Fawkes,” Franklin says.
“Who?”
“Guy Fawkes. Guido Fawkes, to be more exact: a Catholic rebel who tried to blow up Parliament in 1605 in order to assassinate King James. He was caught just as he was lighting the fuse to a stockpile of gunpowder, tortured for the names of his co-conspirators, and then sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He escaped that most unpleasant punishment—which includes being hanged until almost dead, and then castrated, disemboweled, and decapitated—by jumping off the scaffold to his death.”
“What is quartered?” Elise asks.
“Having your bodily remains chopped into four pieces,” Franklin says matter-of-factly. “It’s the old penalty for high treason. Quite gruesome. I had some reason to fear it not so long ago. Although, I have a feeling that had the British captured me or Messieurs Adams, Jefferson, or Hancock, or any of us in the Continental Congress, they simply would have hanged us and then spent every July 4th burning us in effigy, just as they do ‘the Guy’ every November 5th, ‘Guy Fawkes Day.’”
“What does it mean, in effigy?” Elise asks.
“They fill old clothes with straw to make a man, just like a scarecrow. They build a bonfire, light it, and throw ‘the Guy’ on top to burn. Then they let off fireworks. It’s quite a celebration. Children love it. But Marcus, I’m curious, aside from Gouverneur Morris last night, who else has been talking about ‘the Guy?’”
“Swinbourne and Wimpole, on the ship.”
“I wonder why. It’s not something we celebrate here, obviously. Used to, in colonial times, but no longer. Now we have our Fourth of July.”
“I don’t know, but I heard Swinbourne say he has friends in London counting on it.”
“Really? The logic escapes me. But then logic was never Swinbourne’s strength,” Franklin says, his eyes twinkling. “I shan’t worry over it, not today. The Committee of Style is presenting its draft and that will bring more debate—but hopefully not too much more. We really do need to make an end and present our work to the country.”
***
An exhausted Franklin comes home that afternoon. He leans heavily on me and the banister to climb the stairs.
“Will we never be done? All day on whether it should take two-thirds or three-quarters of the Congress to overrule a president’s veto. It was three-quarters, now it’s two thirds. At least we quashed George Mason’s and Elbridge Gerry’s motion for a declaration of rights—unanimously, after practically no debate.”
“That’s a mistake,” I say flatly.
“No, it’s not!” he says petulantly. But then he masters himself and his tone turns patient. “While I agree such a bill would have advantages, this is not the time. We need this Constitution passed by the convention and ratified by the states, now. If the people want a bill of rights, the Constitution can be amended to include one. But right now, more argument is the last—”
There is a loud, rapid knocking at the door downstairs. It stops, then starts again, stops, and starts again.
“Quite insistent, whoever they are,” Franklin says, peering at his busy-body through the window.
“His hat is so large, I can’t really see—Oh how marvelous! Marcus, quick! Help me downstairs!”
Franklin doesn’t need my help. He’s so eager to get to the first floor he practically pulls me down the stairs.
A short, slight man in white wig and stockings and a sky-blue suit stands just inside the door gesturing emphatically and spraying a machine-gun kind of French at Elise.
“Jean-Pierre, mon ami!” Franklin cries.
The Frenchman beams as he comes to Franklin and embraces him.
French is the only language spoken for the next few minutes. Sally joins us. From the look on her face, it’s clear her French isn’t any better than mine.
“Father, just what is going on?” she finally interrupts.
“Sally, this is my dear friend Jean-Pierre Blanchard, from Paris. He and another man were the first to fly across the English Channel. They did it in a balloon filled with hydrogen gas and brought me the first letter by air from friends in London.”
“Does that mean we have another guest?” she asks flatly. “Richard and the children will be home any day.”
“So?” Franklin says. “What else is this big house for?”
As Sally stands with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face, Franklin and Blanchard jabber at each other. The more Blanchard talks, the more excited Franklin becomes.
“Most excellent news!” he says. “Jean-Pierre is here to demonstrate balloon flight. He wants our help—and quickly, since we’ll want to have the demonstration no later than Sunday. First, Sally, you must go to the printing office and bring young Benjamin here. Second—”
“What? Just like that?” Sally says. “He comes a-knocking without even a letter to say he’s coming; and we’re supposed to—”
“He did write,” Franklin says. “Months ago from Paris. But it never arrived. Who knows? Maybe the ship foundered or the mail was left aboard to sail the Caribbean. It makes no difference. What Jean-Pierre will show us is one of the most exciting developments of the age. I was pleased to be part of it in Paris. I saw the Montgolfiers’ fly their hot air balloon, powered by burning straw. And I put some money into Jacques Charles’s hydrogen filled balloon—which is how I met Jean-Pierre, who follows the hydrogen method.
“Now, Sally, once you’ve told young Benjamin to come, go to Doctor Rush and tell him it is urgent that he attend me here. If he is not at home, then seek him out. Once you’ve done that, go to the ironmongers and tell Mister Sawyer to come.
“And you Marcus, do you think I can trust you to go to the Walnut Street jail and tell the jailer to come immediately?”
“Yes, Dr. Franklin,” I say, pleased to have regained some measure of his trust.
“Good. I’d better give you a note. He can be disagreeable. Be as quick as you can.”
Minutes later, I hurry up Chestnut Street towards the State House. The convention and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court are adjourned, so the place is deserted. I cut through the building and its large back garden and cross Walnut Street to enter the jail.
A guard at the front asks me what my business is. I tell him I carry a message from Franklin for the jailer. With a jerk of his head, he orders me to follow.
The prison is a U-shaped compound with a large courtyard in the middle. The guard directs me to the wood door at the far end of the west wing. As I cross the courtyard, I pass a tall, thick post.
I reach the door and knock. A large, bearded man yanks it open and towers over me.
“Who’re you?” he snarls.
“I … I come from Doctor Franklin,” I answer. “This is his note. He asks that you come to him immediately.”
“Is that so? I’m s’posed to drop everything and come runnin’ just because the great Benjamin—”
“Here, you! Jailer!” a voice behind us calls.
I turn to see the guard escorting a young white man—well dressed in blue coat, tan breeches, and polished riding boots—leading a slave by a chain attached to a metal collar. The slave’s hands are shackled behind his back.
“Jailer, I’m on my way from Camden back to Virginia,” the young man says. “This new slave I bought is giving me trouble. Talks back, looks me in the eye—that sort of thing. A man on the ferry said you’d teach him his manners.”
“Can’t right now,” says the jailer. “I’m wanted elsewhere.”
“Well, how long until you’re back?” The young man whines. “I’m in a hurry.”
“Don’t know. Could be a hour. Could be two,” the jailer says slyly.
“Look, we’re talking five swift licks. Shouldn’t take more than two minutes.”
“Here! Who d’you think you is, wanting me to drop everything and hop to it when it’s Benjamin Franklin who needs me urgent? You want me to keep him waiting, it’ll cost you.”
“How much?”
The jailer looks the young man up and down.
“Five silver dollars.”
The young man laughs a haughty laugh.
“You’re lucky to get a shilling. But as I’m in a hurry and have no time to dicker, I’ll pay you one silver dollar.”
“You’ll pay me four, and like it.”
“Two silver dollars. Final offer.”
The jailer says nothing. He just stands there, arms crossed over his chest, looking down at the smaller man.
“Oh fine! Four it is,” the young man huffs.
Disappearing into his room, the jailer comes back carrying a short-handled cat, a lot like the one I’d seen Lucas Rush carry.
“Right, you,” the jailer says, pointing the whip at me, “go tell Doctor Franklin I’ll be along presently, as soon as I finish this here chore.”
I start to leave. But the clank of the chain behind me makes me stop and turn. The jailer has dragged the slave to the post in the middle of the yard. I can almost feel the iron collar knocking at his jaw and collarbones and chafing his skin.
The jailer frees his hands.
“Shirt!” The owner calls to the jailer. “And don’t go ripping it off him. He’ll need it for the journey home.”
With the butt of his whip, the jailer taps the buttons on the slave’s shirt. The slave’s hands tremble as he undoes them, but his face is like stone as the jailer re-shackles his hands around the post.
His back is to me now. He’s been whipped before. Long, crusted scars crisscross his mahogany skin.
“Not too hard, jailer,” the young man cautions. “I can’t be nursing a sick slave all the way to Richmond. Just enough to remind him to keep his eyes out of mine and that the only words I want to hear are ‘Yes, massa’.’”
I want to turn and go. But I can’t. Something—I’ll never understand what—has me rooted me to that spot.
The jailer takes a wide stance and strikes. The knotted strands whistle, then bite into the man’s back with the sound of a mallet pounding meat. I flinch. My muscles jerk. But the slave does not scream. He takes the lash with a grunt. His back muscles bunch as he braces himself for another. Old cuts weep.
The young man stands in front of his slave, hands on his hips. He nods and the jailer lays on another stroke. Blood, bright red against his brown skin, wells and oozes down his back.
I want to stop it, but know I cannot. After three months in the world of 1787, if I know anything, it is that I am absolutely powerless to help. For once, anger does not rise in me. I have not cried in a very long time, not even when Gus died. But now, as I watch and hear that damned cat’s talons rip into flesh, tears well, then pour down my cheeks.