“And apparently with good reason,” Heisman added, drawing back Gray’s attention. “According to this letter, Archard Fortescue was present at that eruption—even felt guilty about it, as if he’d caused it.”
“What?” Gray couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
Seichan spoke while he struggled to understand. “Excuse my lack of geographical prowess, but where is this volcano?”
Heisman’s eyes widened, as if suddenly realizing he’d never told them. “In Iceland.”
Gray turned to Monk, who wore a big, amused grin. This was the detail he’d been hiding. Monk shrugged. “Looks like we’re following in that Frenchman’s footsteps.”
3:13 A.M.
As the others discussed the volcano’s location using various maps spread on the table, Seichan sat to the side, fingering a tiny silver dragon pendant hanging from her neck. It was a nervous habit. Her mother had always worn one of the same. It was one of the few details she still remembered about the woman.
As a child, Seichan would often stare at the tiny curled dragon in the hollow of her mother’s neck as she slept on a small cot under an open window. While night birds sang in the jungle, the moonlight reflected off the silver, shimmering like water with her mother’s breathing. Each night, Seichan imagined the dragon would come to life if she just watched it long enough—and maybe it did, if only in her dreams.
With a flare of irritation at such sentimentality, Seichan let the silver charm drop from her fingers. She had waited long enough. No one seemed to be addressing the most obvious question in the room, so she asked it.
“Back to that letter, Doc.” All eyes turned to her. “What did you mean when you said that the Frenchman felt guilty about the volcano blowing up?”
Heisman still had the sheaf of papers in hand. “It’s here in Jefferson’s letter.” He cleared his voice, picked out a passage, and read it aloud. “ ‘We have at last heard from A.F. He has suffered greatly and carries a heavy heart after all that befell him during the summer of the year 1783. I am very mindful that it was in supporting our cause that he followed the trail marked on the map recovered from the Indian barrow, a prize he gained at much grievous personal injury due to the ambush by our enemy. A.F. yet bemoans the volcano he caus’d to be born out in those seas during that summer. He has come to believe that the great famines that struck his home shores following that eruption were reason for the bloody revolutions in France, and bears much guilt for it.’ ”
Heisman lowered the pages. “In fact, Fortescue might be right in that last respect. Many scholars now conjecture that the Laki eruption—and the poverty and famine that followed in France—was a major trigger for the French Revolution.”
“And from the sounds of it,” Gray added, “Fortescue blamed himself. ‘The volcano he caus’d to be born.’ What did he mean by that?”
No one had an answer.
“So then what do we know?” Seichan asked, cutting to the quick. “From that first letter, we know Franklin called on Fortescue to find a map buried in some Indian mound. From the gist of this letter, he succeeded.”
Gray nodded. “The map pointed to Iceland. So Fortescue went there. He must have found something, something frightening or powerful enough that he believed it caused the volcanic eruption. But what?”
“It was possibly hinted at in the first letter,” Seichan offered. “Some power or knowledge that the Indians possessed, knowledge they seemed willing to share, possibly in exchange for the formation of that mythical Fourteenth Colony.”
“But that deal got screwed up,” Monk said.
Heisman’s assistant had been sifting through the piles of paper. “Here’s the passage again,” she said. “ ‘The shamans from the Iroquois Confederacy were slaughtered most foully en route to the meeting with Governor Jefferson. With those deaths, all who had knowledge of the Great Elixir and the Pale Indians have pass’d into the hands of Providence.’ ”
Gray nodded. “But now we know that one of the shamans lived long enough to reveal the location of a map, possibly a map to a fount of that knowledge. That’s what Fortescue was sent to find.”
“And apparently he succeeded,” Monk added. “Maybe it was that elixir mentioned in the letter, or something else. Either way, he believed it was powerful enough to trigger a volcanic eruption. Afterward, he was racked with guilt.”
“Until twenty years later, when Jefferson summoned him again,” Heisman said.
Seichan turned to the scholar, realized she was fingering the dragon charm, and forced her arm down. “What do you mean?”