and Connecticut, too. He seems not to have profited from his work. Instead, it kept him running from place to place, hiding wherever he might, hoping none of his friends would reveal him out of fear, or for reward. That is what finally happened, of course.”
“A life of crime is fraught with difficulty,” Longfellow said lightly.
“Something you might impress on a pair of young men not far from here.”
“That, I will do. I shall also tell them that if they contemplate such a life, they should have sufficient standing, or at least enough backing, to change the name of what they do. Like Clive, first ‘protecting’ India for the Great Mogul, then returning this past summer to effectively steal its vast wealth for Britain.”
“Clive, in many ways, is a man of greatness. His better qualities will probably ruin him in the end—for he's hardly as greedy as most,” Edmund finished with a sigh. At any rate, it was not to his taste to look for boys to catch up in the nets of Justice, such as it was here, especially for what seemed to them little more than games. On the other hand, what might happen when young men followed leaders like Sam Adams, and the enormously wealthy Mr. Hancock? At least in Bracebridge, the “leaders” were no more than a few farmers.
“It is strange,” he remarked, shifting back to the topic of history his wife had advanced, “to find two ends of such formidable English families interwoven in this province.”
“Which families?” asked Diana, always interested in society.
“Dudley and Knowles. Robert Dudley, as I hope you know, Diana, was made Earl of Leicester by Elizabeth. And Knollys, which is where Knowles comes from, was that lady's chamberlain and treasurer, and the keeper of Mary, Queen of the Scots. I'm personally acquainted with another, Sir Charles, who is an admiral. Once the governor of Louisburg, he now supervises Jamaica. I suppose he'll become accessible to his new relation—though Ned Bigelow, or Knowles, is to receive little else. The Navy, at least, pays scant attention to which side of the blanket one has been born on.”
“Often having something to do with it in the first place?” Longfellow asked.
“Lately,” said Charlotte, startling them all as she came to life, “Ned has become interested in sea travel, and the southern islands.”
“Has he, Carlotta?” Longfellow inquired.
They all waited for more, but she seemed to retreat back into her own thoughts.
In fact, she wondered if that could mean Ned had known about his blood relations for some time. And she wished Richard and Edmund would not talk so blithely of Mr. Syllavan, for it seemed to her that a similar noose might now be tightening around the neck of a certain young fiddler, fascinated by warm and distant climes.
“A Knollys of our century,” Edmund continued, “was the notorious Earl of Banbury, who killed his brother-in-law in a duel.”
“Shocking behavior,” said Longfellow, making the captain wince at an unpleasant memory of his own. “It does begin to sound as if the Knowles clan in Philadelphia may have something odd in their veins, after all.”
That, thought Charlotte, was another theory Catherine Knowles had advanced when she'd taken tea with the old woman, dressed in her dated finery. When the dark mirror had seemed to dance… and she'd first seen the sorrow of Magdalene's life.
“Speaking of history and black sheep,” Longfellow added, “I've just finished Horace Walpole's peculiar story.”
“Otranto? I would have guessed that far too romantic for your taste,” said the captain with a smile.
“And you would have been correct.”
“Oh, yes,” said Diana. “The book with the castle. What is that all about, Edmund? Richard tells me any day now one of our Boston friends may ask us about it.”
“Walpole claims in his introduction that his reason for writing it was an artistic one,” Edmund replied. “But that may be as fanciful as the rest. Its true purpose is no doubt hidden.”
“Well, what do you suppose it is?” asked Longfellow, wishing he had something to pass on to Jack Pennywort one day.
“It's not far, I think, from what Mr. Reed brought us, with his talk of wills and responsibilities.” He stopped and looked to his wife, fearing the subject might distress her, not quite sure of his own feelings.
“Go on, Edmund, please,” he heard her ask. Could it be that Diana was even more beautiful tonight, with this new display of bravery?
“For you, I will try—though much of it is foreign to the way things are thought of