street to bother glancing inside the shop. Nonetheless, Jake decided Alison was safer coming along with him. She might even provide him with some cover, or at least a way of getting a message back to Culper if he ran into difficulties. In any event, he could not let her wander the city alone.
'Alison is a strange name for a boy,' said the nephew after Jake told them they could rise.
'It will seem stranger still when I flatten you,' she promised.
Timothy's boat was far along the road to Corber's Point, in a discrete yard where no questions would be asked no matter who came or went, day or night. The trio trekked north all the way to Division Street, making sure their intentions were not known and they were not followed. In truth, these precautions were overzealous, but considering the circumstances, understandable. Two hours later they were rowing as quietly as possible across the East River. Jake and Timothy had each taken an oar to use as an Indian paddles a canoe. Alison lay in the bow, acting as lookout as the skiff worked across the bay in the manner of mist stealing into a valley. By the time they reached the small, tree-lined cove on the Long Island shore, it was well past midnight. Jake helped Timothy pull the small boat into the bushes. He and Alison followed the lad up to a dusty road and across a large, uncultivated field.
Alison was beginning to show the signs of fatigue. She had given Jake the pistol she'd 'borrowed' from Daltoons, and left the lieutenant's heavy cloak at the rowboat. But her pace dragged nonetheless, the fatigue of the past few days starting to take their toll. In truth, even Jake's famous constitution was beginning to show signs of wear as the trio hiked across a country road and found another shortcut through a pasture. The warm summer day had given way to a cool night, and the chilly air rubbed at Jake's shoulders like a carpenter works a fresh tabletop.
'Just four or five miles from here,' said Timothy as they climbed over a stone wall and found another road.
'Can we rest?' asked Alison, setting her hands on the wall.
Before Jake could answer, she plopped over on the ground.
'Mouthy for a girl,' said Timothy, leaning over her to make sure she was merely sleeping. 'But pretty, even with the short hair.'
'I'd be careful what I accused her of,' answered Jake. 'She insults very easily. And would most likely be more than your match in a fight.'
'I should like to wrestle her sometime and find out.'
For all his protests against her behavior, Jake was starting to feel just a bit protective — and even fatherly. He scowled toward young Timothy, then hoisted Alison over his shoulder. 'Come on, lead the way.'
The Hulter farm was a fertile holding of nearly twenty cleared acres given over to the cultivation of corn. Indeed, it had been used for that purpose for several generations, spanning back to its original native owners. The house itself was not more than ten years old, a replacement for a structure that had caught fire one winter night when the fireplace was carelessly over-stoked. A story-and-a-half, with finely decorated eaves and handsomely carved shutters, it was typical of the humble farmhouses that dot the island, save in one regard. This was its elaborate garden, which ranged on all four sides at some depth surrounding the building. All manner of bushes and flowers crowded together in an elaborate though specially ordered jumble. Each had its own medicinal purpose; more than a few were rare to these shores, nurtured by Timothy's mother's careful hand.
Grace Hulter was Professor Bebeef s youngest sister. The natural philosopher had always doted on her when she was small; as she grew, she returned the favor severalfold. They were close despite the years between them.
Grace's husband had left to join the Continental Army the previous year; she had had no word from him since. Grace refused to countenance the neighborhood whispers that he had met his fate below White Plains. True or not, the rumors filled even her most vitriolic Tory neighbors with pity for the famously kind woman. Grace administered mild cures to all in the surrounding country without regard to politics. Thus her husband's sins were not held too strongly against her, though she was suspected of being a quiet rebel herself.
By the time Jake unloaded the sleeping Alison from his shoulder onto a wooden chair propped near the front door, the sun was sending an advance party of rays to test the horizon. Timothy led Jake directly to the back yard, where the old professor was sitting beneath a rare and beautiful rose bush. In his hand was a brown-colored rock not more than three inches long and another inch wide, rough-hewn around the edge, as if it were a petrified piece of wood. It seemed to glow faintly; the old man's eyes, wide open in what seemed like perpetual astonishment, shone with the reflected light.
Despite the fact that he was now, well past sixty, Bebeef’s hair was full and thick, the magnificent locks falling around his ears and draping across the velvet of his fine cloak. He wore the doctor's robes of the monastery where he had studied during his youth, as was his habit when engaged in one of his more esoteric experiments.
Jake had never seen him in such a stupor. He advanced cautiously. Despite all his learning and experience, he could not dismiss outright the possibility that the stone did indeed contain some form of black magic.
'Professor, it's Jake Gibbs. I need your help. Professor?'
Bebeef s stare did not alter, nor was there any other sign that he had noticed Jake.
'He does not stir for days at a time,' said Mrs. Hulter, coming out from the house. Dressed in a plain white country dress, she seemed to float across the stone path, her willowy hair tied in a modest bun at the back of her neck. 'He will not move or acknowledge anyone and eats only a small bit of food.'
'It's good to see you, Grace,' said Jake, hugging her.
'And you, too.' There was a look of regret in her eye at that moment, and perhaps a veiled acknowledgment that her husband had indeed met his fate. She quickly stepped back when Jake released her.
'What is the rock?' he asked.
'From looking at it, I would say a simple Bezoar stone. It arrived unannounced, with a note proclaiming its magic as a mad stone. My brother scoffed, then took it with him to the garden here. That was nearly two weeks ago. Nothing I have done has helped.'
'Have you tried to remove it from his hands?'
'I cannot seem to shake it loose. It is as if it were glued.'
Jake knew of mad stones, even if his scientific studies had not included them. Stones of various descriptions had been known for centuries, and they were generally said to cure ailments such as warts and sniffles. Jake's family had even attempted to buy one famous for its fever cures in Virginia. But the spell this stone seemed to have cast on Bebeef was right out of
Or perhaps a very esoteric cure book.
'Is your brother's library still stored in the barn?'
'Of course,' answered Mrs. Hulter.
'There is a book based on notes by Avicenna, the grand vizier and body surgeon of Persia,' said Jake. 'I would like to consult it.'
Mrs. Hulter had no idea which book he was talking about, but was only too happy to do anything that might cure her brother. Most of his store of ancient texts was packed in crates in the cellar below the barn's main floor, protected by a ponderous guard of heavy rocks. It took Jake more than two hours to move the stones away and find the work, a translation in Latin of a text dating from the tenth century. Mad stones were fully described, and though Jake's command of the noble tongue was rusty, he was able to ascertain that no such effect was documented. He therefore turned to Bebeef s own encyclopedic study — not of mad stones, but of paralytic poisons.
It was nearly noon before he had read enough to attempt a cure. As Timothy had gone off to bed and Alison was still slumbering, Jake enlisted Mrs. Hulter as an assistant. He made her wrap her hands in thick gloves, and cover her body with several layers of clothes, until only her eyes showed through. These he covered with gauze so tightly that she could barely see.
'I hope you're not expecting me to speak in tongues,' she declared.
'Hardly,' said Jake. 'There is no magic here, just a powerful poison. The cure is surprisingly simple — largely coca powder and menthol. But first we have to strike the rock from his hands. If my guess is correct, the underside is covered with a gummy substance obtained from a bush in the French Alps, which acts as a glue.'
Jake filled a pot with water and let it boil over the fire. As he waited, he too covered his body with the
