New York - The Novel

Captain Stanton Rivers came from an important family. The captain was a slim, graceful man in his late thirties, and his father was a lord. But it was his older brother who would inherit the title and estate, and so the captain had to make his way in the world. “Any officer in the British Navy longs for war,” he told them with a pleasant smile, “for it brings the hope of prize money. We navy men are just glorified privateers, you know. And here at Bath,” he added frankly, “there are always plenty of officers like myself hoping to find an heiress or a rich widow. But at present,” he announced, “I have another prospect in mind. I’m thinking of going to America.”
    “And what do you mean to do there?” Albion asked with some amusement.
    “I’ve received word, Arthur, from a friend in Carolina that there’s awidow there, without heirs but of childbearing age, who possesses two excellent plantations, and who hopes to marry again. She wants a gentleman of good family. He sent me a miniature of her, and assures me that despite telling her every fault in my character that he can think of, he has not been able to deter the lady from considering me.”
    “You mean to go to Carolina?”
    “I have already discovered what I can about plantations. I believe I could learn to manage one. I intend to make a tour of the colonies, and visit New York as well,” he said. “Carolina widow or not, I mean to learn as much about our American colonies as I can.”
    A glance from Albion indicated to John Master that his host would like him to oblige his friend. He needed no further hint.
    “Then I hope you’ll do me the honor of staying with us in New York,” he said. “I should be delighted to be of service to you.”
    From Bath they went to Oxford. Here their journey took them on smooth turnpike roads—a far cry, Mercy was forced to admit, from the rutted tracks of New England—and they made the seventy-mile journey in a single day. Oxford, with its cloistered colleges and dreaming spires, charmed her. But before returning to London, Albion had taken them to see the country house of the Churchill family, at nearby Blenheim Palace.
    And here, as she had at Burlington House, Mercy received another shock. The country villas she knew back at home were handsome houses. But nothing could have prepared her for this. A park that stretched as far as the eye could see. A vast mansion, stone wings outstretched, that was half a mile across. It was a quarter-mile from the kitchen to the dining room. The library, which to her should be an intimate haven, was sixty yards long. The cold, baroque magnificence of the mansion was stupefying. And while Albion took them proudly round, and her husband and the two boys stared at everything in awe, her quiet Quaker intelligence saw the grandeur for what it was. This was not the pride of wealth; nor even the arrogance of power. The message of the Churchills was as simple as it was outrageous: “We are not mortal men at all. We are gods. Bow down.” The crime of Lucifer. And Mercy felt a sinking of the heart.
    “I suppose,” John remarked to her that evening, “that to an English lord America must look as provincial Britain did to a senator of imperial Rome.”
    It was not a thought that brought her any comfort. From that day, though she did not tell her husband, Mercy was ready to return to America.

    They met Ben Franklin in December. His lodgings were quite close, in Craven Street, off the Strand. He lived modestly but comfortably in a pleasant Georgian house, of which he occupied the best floor, looked after by a devoted landlady and a couple of hired servants. John was eager that young James should have a sight of the great man, and urged him to take careful note of everything Franklin said.
    Mercy also was excited. Though she knew that Ben Franklin’s experiments with electricity and his other inventions had brought him world renown, her memory of him from Philadelphia was as the author of
Poor Richard’s Almanack:
the jolly friend who’d gone with her to the preaching. The man with the round, spectacled face, like a kindly storekeeper; the thin brown hair falling to his shoulders; the twinkling eyes.
    When the two Masters and their son were ushered in, the man who rose to greet them was still the man she knew. And yet he was different.
    Mr. Benjamin Franklin was now in his early fifties. He was fashionably dressed in a rich blue coat with big gold buttons. He wore a