The Navigator Read online

  “We are family, are we not? There are no secrets among kin.”

  “Then make no secret to me of your wishes.”

  “Yes, of course. Come aboard my ship and we’ll talk.”

  “My ship’s hospitality is open to you as well.”

  The man in purple laughed. “It’s obvious that we lack brotherly trust.”

  “Maybe that’s because we are only half brothers.”

  “We share the same blood, nonetheless.” Melqart pointed to the island. “Let us stop this childish discussion and meet on neutral ground to talk.”

  The captain studied the island. Unlike most of the heavily treed shoreline, the sandy riverbank was flat for a few hundred feet before rising into a low, grassy ridge.

  “Very well,” he shouted.

  The captain told Tarsa to round up a landing party. Tarsa picked four of his most battle-hardened men. Minutes later, the utility boat nudged up to the riverbank. The Scythians stayed with the boat while the captain strode up the sloping beach.

  His half brother stood a hundred feet from the shore with arms crossed. He was dressed in full Phoenician regalia, with a richly patterned two-piece tunic under his purple cloak and a conical cap on his head. A gold collar encircled his neck, and his arms and fingers were adorned with gold.

  He was the captain’s equal in height, and his handsome face bore a sharp resemblance to his brother’s, with its prominent nose, dark complexion, wavy hair and beard. There were major differences, however. The captain’s regal bearing came across as imperious and arrogant while his half brother’s features were brutish rather than strong. His dark eyes had no depth or softness. His prominent chin hinted at stubbornness rather than determination.

  “How wonderful to see you after all these years, dear brother,” Melqart said, with an engaging smile that had more slyness than charm in it.

  The captain was in no mood for insincere niceties. “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  “Perhaps our father decided that you needed help on your mission.”

  “He would never have trusted you.”

  “He obviously entrusted you, and you’re a thief.”

  The captain’s cheeks burned at the insult, but he held his anger in check. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  His half brother shrugged. “I learned that you were on the move. I tried to intercept you, but your ship was too fast and we fell behind.”

  “Why has your ship been fit for war?”

  “These are dangerous waters.”

  “You defy our father by coming here. This would not be his wish.”

  “Our father.” He spit out the words. “Our father was a womanizer who slept with your whore of a mother.”

  “And your whore of a mother as well?”

  Melqart pulled his purple robe back. His hand started toward the pommel of his sword, but he thought better of it and drew his hand it back. “We are foolish to quarre lover family matters,” he soothed. “Let us go back to my ship. I will serve you refreshments, and we can talk.”

  “There is nothing to talk about. You will turn your ship back. We will follow.”

  The captain spun on his heel and strode back toward the river. He kept his ear cocked for footfalls, in the unlikely event that his brother found the courage to attack him. But the only sound he heard was Tarsa, who cried out:

  “Captain! Behind you!”

  The Scythian had seen a dozen or so figures rise from the grassy ridge behind the beach.

  The captain wheeled as the men sprinted in his direction. Tattoos decorated their shoulders and chests.

  Thracians.

  Another fierce-eyed race that hired out its skills with the sword and javelin to the Phoenician navies. The Thracians swept by his half brother, who urged them on:

  “Kill him! Kill him!”

  The captain drew his short broadsword as the screaming Thracians quickly encircled him.

  He pivoted to face his attackers, but he couldn’t guard his back. A Thracian moved in with his javelin in throwing position, only to stop short and drop his weapon. Clutching at the feathered shaft protruding from his throat, he let out a wet cough, sank to his knees, and fell forward face-first into the sand.

  Tarsa calmly notched another arrow to his bowstring. With no more effort than taking a breath, he killed a second Thracian. The others scattered.

  Tarsa’s bowmen unleashed a deadly rain of arrows that found their mark in the backs of the fleeing Thracians.

  The captain let out a mighty war cry and ran up the beach. He swung his sword in a powerful blow that would have decapitated his half brother if Melqart hadn’t sideslipped the blade in a desperate parry. Under the flurry of blows that followed, Melqart tripped over his robes and fell in the soft sand.

  He rolled onto his back and threw his sword aside. “Don’t kill me, my brother.”

  The captain hesitated. Evil as he was, Melqart was still a blood relative.

  Tarsa shouted another warning.

  A second wave of Thracians had appeared on the ridge to reinforce the first line of attackers.

  The captain backed off and dashed for the boat, leaping over the dead bodies of the attackers.

  The Scythians unleashed their last arrows. The hastily aimed shots slowed the Thracians’ advance but didn’t stop it.

  Tarsa threw his bow aside, grabbed the captain in his powerful arms, and lifted him into the boat. The rowers pulled at the oars and put the boat quickly out of range of the javelins, which splashed harmlessly into the water behind them.

  The captain climbed onto the deck of his ship. The lookout man was handing out spears and swords, which he had neatly organized in an on-deck weapons room.

  Melqart’s boat pushed off from the beach with the last of the Thracians. The wicker fence on board the warship dropped to reveal at least a hundred men on a raised combat deck.

  The sun glinted off their spear tips. Their shields were hung over the balustrade to create a defensive wall. The captain saw plumes of smoke rising from the deck and ordered urns of water placed around the ship.

  Trailed by thin streaks of smoke, flaming arrows dipped in pitch rose from the ship and arced down from the skies in a fiery shower.

  No arrow found a human target, but some stuck in the sides and deck of the ship. The flames were doused with water from the urns, but another volley followed the first, and some of the flaming arrows landed in the furled sail.

  Crewmen pulled the sail onto the deck and stamped on the blazing cloth, ignoring the glowing embers that burned their feet and legs.

  The captain barked an order to lift anchor. As the Scythians unleashed a deadly volley of arrows for cover, the rowers moved the ship backward out of range of the fire arrows. But the awkward maneuver left the ship broadside to the other vessel.

  Flames from the sail were spreading. The captain knew that his vessel was doomed. Ships were made of wood, hemp, pitch, and cloth. Within minutes, the vessel would become a huge flaming torch.

  The warship was preparing to come in for the kill.

  The large oars at both ends of the ship were being used to swing the vessel rapidly around in a hundred-eighty-degree turn that would bring the bronze battering ram into play.

  The ram would punch a hole in the burning ship. Once the ship foundered, it would be peppered with more fire arrows. Grenades filled with flaming oil would be suspended from the bow on poles.

  The captain ordered the helmsmen to turn the ship. When the bow pointed downstream, he yelled to the rowers.

  “Full speed ahead!”

  The ship lurched like a lazy whale and gained speed. The enemy vessel was still turning, and would never be in a more-vulnerable position. Although the prow of the captain’s ship was not sheathed with metal, the thick Lebanese timbers could be used with deadly effect.

  Hooves thundered amid the shouts of men. The horses had broken loose from their stable and had climbed up a ramp onto the deck. The Scythians dropped their bows and
tried to drive the horses back below. The animals reared and rolled their eyes, more frightened of the smoke and fire than of the noisy human beings.

  The ships were yards apart. The captain could see a figure in purple striding from one end of the deck to the other as Melqart urged his crew to move faster.

  The burning vessel crunched into the warship. The captain lost his footing and fell to his knees but quickly climbed back to his feet. The horse-head figurehead hung at an angle. The ship had bounced back and was swinging so that its hull would be side by side with the other vessel. Enemy archers could pick them off at will. Spear-carrying warriors would swarm aboard to finish the job.

  Discipline had broken down on his ship. Men ran about the burning deck trying to avoid being cremated or trampled by the rampaging horses.

  The ships crunched up against one another.

  A gust of wind cleared the smoke for an instant. The captain saw the grinning face of his brother staring at him from only a few yards away.

  Galvanized, the captain waded along the main deck through clouds of smoke and tried to rally his panicked crew.

  A horse reared up on front of the captain, and he had to draw back to avoid being crushed. Suddenly inspired, he plucked a shred of burning sail from the deck and waved it at the horse. The animal reared, and pawed the air with its sharp hooves. He yelled at the Scythians to follow his lead.

  A ragged line formed. Shouting and brandishing pieces of flaming cloth or leather shirts in the air, they herded the horses against the low ship’s rail.

  Tattooed Thracians lined the rail on the other vessel, their eyes glittering in anticipation of the massacre to come. But then the horses half leaped and half climbed over the rail and onto the deck of the warship. The animals crashed through the line of warriors and raced madly from one end of the deck to the other, trampling anyone in their way.

  The captain vaulted over the rail, with the Scythians close behind. A quick thrust of his sword dropped the first man he encountered. Then his entire crew swarmed aboard. The Thracians drew back in confusion under the fierce attack.

  The captain’s face was black with soot. He was bleeding from several nonfatal sword and spear wounds, but he moved inexorably toward Melqart, who had seen the tide of battle turn and was trying to find safety at the raised aft end of ship. Menelik climbed a short ladder to the stern where his half brother cowered.

  This time he would not hesitate to deliver the fatal blow.

  As his sword struck living flesh, however, something hard crashed into the captain’s skull, and he crumpled to the deck, a curtain of blackness falling over his eyes.

  LATER, when the last trace of the battle had bubbled to the surface, the silent witness who had been hiding in the grass made his way cautiously along the beach not far from where he had first seen the horse-head monster.

  All was quiet. The cries of pain and agony and the clash of weapons had faded. There was only the soft ripple of water along the riverbank, which was littered with the dead. He went from body to body, ignoring gold ornaments in favor of more-useful items.

  He was bending over to pick up more booty when he heard a pitiful meow. The soggy mass of yellowish orange fur had its claws dug into a charred board. The hunter had never seen a cat before, and, for a moment, he considered killing it. But he relented and instead wrapped the animal in a soft leather cloth.

  When he could carry no more, he stole away, leaving only his footprints in the sand.

  THE WHITE HOUSE, 1809

  THE EXECUTIVE MANSION ON Pennsylvania Avenue was dark except for the study, where a crackling fire in the hearth kept the winter chill at bay. The flickering yellow firelight bathed the high-nosed profile of the man who sat at a desk, humming as he worked.

  Thomas Jefferson glanced at the wall clock with the bright blue-gray eyes whose intensity often startled those who met him for the first time. It was two in the morning; he usually retired at ten. He had been working in the study since six o’clock in the evening, having risen at dawn.

  The president had taken his afternoon ride around Washington on his favorite horse, Eagle, and still wore his riding clothes: a comfortable, worn brown jacket, red waistcoat, corduroy pants, and woolen socks. He had exchanged his riding boots for the slippers without heels that had shocked foreign envoys who’d expected more-regal footwear gracing the presidential feet.

  The president’s long arm reached out to a cabinet. The doors flew open at the touch of his finger, a feature that appealed to Jefferson’s love of gadgetry. Stacked neatly inside the cabinet were a cut-glass goblet, a decanter filled with French red wine, a plate of cakes, and a night candle used to navigate the corridors back to his bedroom. He poured half a glass of wine, held it dreamily to the light, and took a sip that brought back fond memories of Paris.

  Tomorrow could not come too soon. Within hours, the onerous burden of office would be shifted to the narrow but capable shoulders of his friend James Madison.

  He savored another sip and returned to the papers spread out on his desk. Written in the same flowing hand that had penned the Declaration of Independence were specimens, arranged in columns, of more than fifty Indian vocabularies collected over a thirty-year period.

  Jefferson had long been obsessed with the question of how the Indians came to North America and had spent years compiling lists of words commonly used in Indian languages and dialects. His theory was that similarities between words from the Old and New World might offer a clue to the Indians’ origin.

  Jefferson had shamelessly exercised his presidential power in pursuit of his obsession. He had once invited five Cherokee chiefs to a White House reception and quizzed them about their language. He had instructed Meriwether Lewis to collect vocabularies from the Indians the explorer encountered on his historic journey to the Pacific Ocean.

  The book Jefferson planned to write on the origins of the Indian would be the culmination of his intellectual career. The tumultuous events of his second term had temporarily stalled the project, and he had put off sending the lists to the printer until he could write digests of the reams of new material Lewis and Clark had brought back from their trek.

  Vowing to tend to the task as soon as he was back at Monticello, he stacked the papers into a neat pile, tied it with string, and placed it with the other vocabularies and stationery in a sturdy trunk. It would be transported with his belongings to the James River and loaded onto a boat that would take his baggage to Monticello. He placed the last packet of documents in the trunk and snapped the cover shut.

  His desk was clear now except for a pewter box that had his name embossed on the lid. The president opened the box and removed a rectangular piece of vellum about ten by twelve inches in size. He held the soft animal hide close to an oil lamp. The pebbled surface was covered with strange writing, wavy lines, and Xs. One edge was ragged.

  He had acquired the vellum in 1791. He and his Virginia neighbor “Jemmy” Madison had ridden on horseback to Long Island, New York, to meet some impoverished remnants of the Unkechaug tribe. Jefferson had hoped to find someone who knew the ancient languages of the Algonquin tribe, and, in fact, three elderly women could still speak the old language. Jefferson had compiled a glossary from them that he hoped would help prove his thesis about the European origin of the Indians.

  The chief of the tribe had presented Jefferson with the vellum, saying it had been passed down from generation to generation. Touched by the gesture, Jefferson had asked a rich landowner and fellow signer of the Declaration to provide for the Indians.

  Looking at the vellum now, an idea occurred to him. He took it over to a table, where a horizontal wooden easel had two pens suspended from a framework that allowed them to move simultaneously. Jefferson regularly used this copying machine, known as a polygraph, for his voluminous correspondence.

  He copied the vellum markings and added notes asking the recipient to identify the language in which the words were written. Then he addressed and sealed the envelopes and
placed them in a basket for outgoing mail.

  The Unkechaug word lists were packed with the other papers in the trunk. Jefferson wanted to keep the vellum close, and he placed it back in the box. He would carry the box in his saddlebags on the ride to Monticello. He glanced at the wall clock again, drained his wineglass, and rose from his chair.

  At the age of sixty-five, Jefferson hadn’t an ounce of surplus flesh on his farmer’s body. His thick hair was going from reddish blond to sandy gray as he aged. With his square-shouldered, musket-barrel posture and six-foot-two-inch height, he would always be an imposing figure. Inflammatory arthritis was making inroads, but, after he worked the stiffness out of his limbs, his movements were flexible and easy, and he moved with the grace of a younger man.

  He lit his night candle and made his way along the silent White House corridors to his bedroom.

  Up at dawn, he rode to the new president’s inauguration with his usual lack of pomp and ceremony. With a touch of his hat, he simply galloped past the waiting cavalry escort, dismounted near the Capitol, and hitched his horse to a picket fence. He sat with the public during the inauguration. Later, he paid a farewell visit at the White House. At the inaugural ball he danced with Dolley Madison.

  The next day he finished packing, making certain in particular that the trunk with his Indian material was on the wagon that would take it to the James River. Setting off on horseback for Monticello, he rode eight hours through a driving snowstorm in his eagerness to resume life as a country gentleman.

  The watcher stood in the shadow of a snow-covered oak tree near the edge of the James River, where several cargo boats were tied up for the night. Raucous laughter emanated from a nearby tavern. The voices were growing louder, and he judged from personal experience that the boat crews had reached the last stage before drinking themselves senseless.

  He emerged from the protection of darkness and made his way over the snow-covered ground to a boat that was outlined faintly in the flickering light of its stern lantern. The fifty-foot-long bateau was a narrow, flat-bottomed craft designed to move tobacco along the river.