Assassination of Titans (opening scene and first chapter)

To make history, all you need is to overcome the past ...

 

Late April 1787

The chief virtue of the hunter is patience. The next is endurance. Whether stalking the prey or lying in wait, the important thing was to … wait. To reveal one’s presence too soon, to fire too early would mean to allow the prey to escape and the hunt to fail.

This hunt had been a lie-in-wait. For three bitterly cold days, the hunter had sat perched on a lower limb of the still winter bare maple tree, waiting for the quarry to arrive.

This was where he would have to come. This was where the river narrowed and grew shallow. The tide still affected the depth of the water so at low tide, one could walk across in water barely knee deep. And this was where the inn was – where the expected prey would find a warm meal and a comfortable bed.

A small flock of birds fluttered and twittered from a tree at the water’s edge. Something was in the river, crossing the river, about to reach the shore. The hunter raised the rifle and peered down the long barrel. The hand that squeezed the trigger was calm and steady. The single, sharp crack ripped the morning. The acrid smoke smelled of triumph and defeat, and the report’s echo reverberated up and down the river as if to announce that the deed was done.

This deed was done.

The unsuspecting quarry stopped in mid-step. The hunter could not read the man’s face because the face was now a shambles of blood and flesh. He imagined the expression would have been surprise. Surprise and horror.

The dead man dropped to his knees and then fell face-down into the shallow water. The echo of the one shot faded, and everything was once again silent.

The hunter scrambled down from the tree and sprinted to the corpse. The satchel the man had been carrying held  a small packet of papers folded and sealed with wax. These the hunter  secured in an inner cloak pocket. Nimble fingers untied laces and worked buttons. Before long, the body had been stripped of its clothing. Coat, vest, shirt, and breeches were rolled into a threadbare shoulder sack. When everything was gathered up, the dead man’s killer retreated into the trees, leaving the naked corpse to whatever the birds, the beasts, and the weather might do to it.

 

Monday, May 7, 1787

 

Thomas Mather could not look away from the corpse. The flames of the oil  lamps at the head and the foot of the examination table cast gruesome shadows that danced on the bloated flesh. 

“Gentlemen,” Chief Surgeon Doctor William Shippen announced in the resonant baritone of a stage performer, “despite the outward appearance of our specimen and the fact that this unfortunate fellow was discovered floating in the Delaware River, I am encouraged to hope that the temperature of the water may have slowed the corruption process, and our friend’s relevant organs may be better preserved than those I have been able to show in some time.”

Mather heard his teacher’s voice, but the corpse just lay there indifferent. He was new to the Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and this was his first autopsia cadaverum, his first anatomical examination of a human cadaver. As excited as he was to be beginning his studies, he also feared that the sick feeling deep in his stomach was not due only to anticipation. The great doctor was still talking, but the only facts Mather comprehended were the body on the table in the center of a small cluster of medical residents and the bile rising in his throat. He pressed his hand to his mouth and forced the acid back down with a cough.

Shippen took up a scalpel and cut an incision, deep and straight, from the top of the cadaver’s right shoulder to the bottom of his sternum.

“During the reign of the infamous Bloody Mary of England,” he continued, “the Reverend Thomas Becon wrote that the dead can reveal no secrets. But the good Mr. Becon was mistaken. There is a great deal that the living can learn from the dead.” 

The dead man’s head was completely concealed in a cotton sack – just as someone condemned to the gallows would be hooded before having his head slipped into the noose. The colorless torso shone with a yellow sheen.

“In fact,” Shippen continued, “as early as 44 B.C., the Roman physician Antistius was able to determine that, of the twenty-three stab wounds dealt Julius Caesar, only one was fatal – delivered directly to Mr. Caesar’s sternum.” He indicated the chest of the dead man on the table. “I rather suspect that this fatal blow was delivered by none other than Brutus himself, thus evoking Caesar’s famous, ‘Et tu, Brute?’”  He looked around at the half-dozen medical students who stared back, puzzled by the digression. “Then…of course … fall Caesar.”

“How did this man die, Dr. Shippen?” the student beside Mather asked. “Did he drown?”

Shippen had just begun a second incision, identical to the first, this one beginning at the left shoulder. He paused and peered curiously at the student. “Why would you ask that?”

The student shifted as if he were trying to hide behind Mather. “I’m sorry, sir. Just curious.”

“I will admit that there is ample evidence to suggest a drowning death, though I doubt many of you yet know what that evidence is.” He looked up at his class. “Since the opportunity presents itself, however, if you are interested –”

Several of the students nodded eagerly, and there were a few whispers of assent.

“All right, then,” the doctor continued. “Note, for example, the maceration of the skin –” He set the scalpel on the table beside the body. “– the wrinkling of the fingers and the palm of the hand. You have probably noticed a similar effect on the skin of a laundress whose hands have spent too much time in the wash water.”

Mather felt another gush of acid. He did not look like one subject to fainting, yet he felt the room darken and shrink around him. The floor shifted beneath his feet.

“Observe the curtis anserina – the gooseflesh – on the arms – ” Shippen draped the arm over the body’s torso, but it slid and dropped to the side of the table, swinging like a pendulum. “ – and the legs.”

“Dr. Shippen,” another eager-voiced student interrupted, “why would the legs reveal the same gooseflesh as the arms and the toes...the same...well, the same wrinkling as the fingers. Even underwater, wouldn’t these parts have been protected by the man’s boots?”

Shippen thought not to reprimand the student for the interruption and instead simply answer the question. “One might think, yes. However, the curious truth is that this corpse was in a state of complete undress when it was discovered.”

“He was naked?” Mather asked.

“Indeed,” Shippen replied. “As naked as the day he was born. Now ...” He adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. “What are we to learn from that detail?”

“Perhaps he was bathing when he met his demise.”

“Too cold. More likely his clothing was stolen by some vagrant.”

Shippen entertained each guess with a cheerless chuckle and a shake of his head. He was a serious-looking man with mournful eyes.

“But how did he die?”

“And how did he come to be floating naked in the Delaware River?”

Shippen made a show of impatience, but his long face revealed a glimmer of amusement. “How he came to be floating naked in the river is indeed a mystery. However, the probable cause of death is considerably easier to determine.”

With a dramatic flourish, he pulled off the cotton sack that had hidden the cadaver’s head. The entire cluster of students – even those nearing the completion of their education – gasped. The bottom of the man’s face was gone, the jawbone shattered, a gaping hole of raw flesh where the mouth should have been.

Shippen then turned the man’s head away from the class. The back of the head was more intact, revealing only one small hole – the size of a peach pit – toward the top of his skull.

Mather gasped audibly and fell backward into the student behind him.

“He was shot!” someone shouted. 

The young man Mather had stumbled into shoved him forward and into the student who had just spoken.

“Indeed,” Shippen agreed, unaware of the growing disturbance in his demonstration theater. “However, we still cannot be certain whether he was shot while he still breathed or after he was already dead.”

“But who would shoot a dead man?” someone toward the back asked.

Shippen replaced the sack over the corpse’s head. “We might just as well ask who would shoot a living man.”

Muttering an apology, Mather righted himself and staggered up the shallow steps toward the back of the theater. As soon as he passed into the corridor, he bent over double and emptied the contents of his stomach.

Shippen pondered the dead man on the table before him. “Interesting as all of this might be, it is neither hither nor thither for our intents and purposes. The time may indeed come when you are called upon to dissect a corpse to aid in an inquiry into the cause and manner of death. But today we are interested only in learning what this poor man has to tell us about saving the living.” He took up the scalpel and completed his incisions, forming a gigantic Y that spanned the corpse’s chest and abdomen. He then produced a small saw – not unlike one a skilled wood carver might use – and began to cut carefully through the exposed sternum and rib cage.

 

The waning moon set early on the night of Thomas Mather’s first autopsy, and a gauzy mist from the river obliterated the feeble candlelight from the street lanterns. No one within the boarding establishment of Mrs. Martha Hoames at 180 High Street heard the carriage pull up to the curb and then drive away again. No one inside saw the carriage’s solitary passenger pause on the walk and cock his head to listen as the bell of the Pennsylvania State House clock chimed the quarter hour. The State House stood only in the next block, but the melancholy toll sounded far, far away.

No one inside heard the visitor exhale an anxious sigh as he retrieved his bag and stepped up to the great dark house’s front door.

The boots that climbed the stoop were immaculately polished. The hand that reached for the knocker was fashionably gloved, and the bright, metallic rap of the knocker was quick and polite.

Sensing no movement in the house in response to his knock, the late traveler raised the brass ring a second time and let it fall more urgently. Finally, he heard the click of a lock and the clack of a bolt, and the door swung open.

“Beg pardon, sir.”

The girl who answered the door was young. Pretty. Her face was well-scrubbed, and the Irish in her voice was thick and musical.

“We warn’t shirr we heard a knock until ye’ knocked again, and then we war’ shirr.”

The caller removed his tricorne hat and bowed his head deeply. He was a handsome man, boyish wisps of sand-colored hair carefully gathered behind his head in a ribbon of silk. His eyes were wide and clear and vivid blue.

“I do apologize for the lateness of my arrival,” he said. His voice was so soft that the girl had to turn her head and lean toward him to hear. “But the roads are so bad, and I almost feared I would not make it tonight.”

The girl offered a clumsy curtsey. “Yes sir. And who should I tell the Missus has arrived?”

“You must be new.” He studied her face with condescending amusement. “What is your name?”

She curtseyed again. “Riona, sir.”

“Riona.” He scraped the mud from his boots and stepped past the girl and into Mrs. Hoames’ bright front hall. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, like someone returning home after a long journey.

 “I am James Madison,” he explained. “Would you please tell your mistress that I have returned?”

Across the High Street, a bulky shadow watched the rectangle of yellow light disappear as the door to the guest house closed. He stared several minutes at the space where the light had been and then turned toward the river.

He thought he heard someone whistling. Someone behind him. A simple ditty.

Pausing, he cocked his head like a dog. After what seemed like a very long time, he heard it again – unmistakable whistling, the same tune only this time a half-step down. It was an old shanty –  about a drunken sailor.

The third line followed immediately,  more or less a repeat of the first.

The man who’d watched James Madison’s arrival glanced to his left and right and then whistled the final five notes, completing the verse.

From out of nowhere a young urchin stood beside him and grasped his hand.

“A penny for a fatherless boy, sir?” he asked. “Killed by the British just five year ago tomorrow … ”

The man fumbled  for his purse, but the boy let go of his hand and disappeared into the fog as quickly as he’d appeared. 

The Drunken Sailor, the man whispered to himself. Five o’clock tomorrow. Again looking around him, he continued on his way toward the Delaware River.

 

It was a night of restless dreams for Thomas Mather. He saw the naked corpse on the table in Dr. Shippen’s demonstration theater. But he wasn’t in the dark classroom. This body lay in a sunny field aglow with yellow crocuses. A mask of congealed blood glossed the raw flesh that had once been a face.

Come away, Thomas!

He stood, transfixed by the naked body that, but for the face, could have been napping on a pleasant afternoon in the meadow.

Thomas!

A strong hand clutched his upper arm and pulled him. Still, he could not look away from the dead man sleeping in the crocuses.