The Dakota Cipher

Indian legends and making lists of supplies for our expedition west and, not as trusting as me, put up makeshift bars across our hotel door and windows.

‘Maybe we frightened the villains off,’ I theorised.

‘Or maybe they wait where we’re going.’

While my colleague studied, I cultivated an air of importance, trading on my connections to Bonaparte and Talleyrand. More than one Washington damsel hinted that she was available if I was interested in permanent disciplined domesticity but I was not, trying out the whores who served Congress instead. One adventuress, Susannah by name, said she’d made it to Washington one week after the clerks and two weeks before the first lawmakers, and it was the best relocation she’d ever made. ‘They seems able to get a dollar from the government whenever they need,’ she explained, ‘and the most of them don’t take more than half the hour to finish off.’

Businessmen, meanwhile, tried to reform me.

‘Now then, Gage, we aren’t getting any younger, are we?’ a banker named Zebulon Henry put it to me one day.

‘Ageing does annoy me.’

‘We all have to think about the future, do we not?’

‘I worry about it all the time.’

‘That’s why investments that compound are just the thing for a man like you.’

‘Investments that what?’

‘Compound! As your investment grows, you earn money not just on your original sum, but its growth as well. In twenty or thirty years it can work financial miracles.’

‘Twenty or thirty years?’ It was an abyss of time nearly inconceivable.

‘Suppose you were to take a job with a firm like mine. Ledger clerk to begin, but possibility for a man of your ambition and talent. And let’s say you invest ten percent of earnings as I advise, and don’t touch it until, ah, age sixty. Here, lean in and we’ll do the arithmetic. You could purchase some property, take on some debt, let your wife supplement with mending or washing until the children are old enough to contribute …’

‘I do not have a wife.’

‘Details, details.’ He was scribbling. ‘I say, Gage, even a man with as tardy a start as you – what have you been doing with your life? – could have a respectable estate by, say …’ he pondered a moment. ‘1835.’

‘Imagine that.’

‘It requires punctuality and consistency, of course. No raiding the nest egg. A smart marriage, work six days a week, business contacts on the Sabbath, hard study in the evenings – we could develop a plan that makes sense even for someone as improvident as you. The magic of compounding interest, sir. The magic of compounding interest.’

‘But this involves work, does it not?’

‘Damn hard work. Damn hard! But there’s joy in a job well done!’

I smiled as if in agreement. ‘Just as soon as I see the president.’

‘The president! Remarkable man! Remarkable. But by rumour not all that financially prudent himself. Spends beyond his means, what? Word has it he’s ordering bric-a-brac for Monticello out of excitement with his new executive salary while retaining no real financial understanding. The man, like most Virginians, is chronically in debt! Chronically, sir!’

‘I hope he doesn’t want a loan from me.’

‘Mention my advice, Gage. Tell him how I’ve helped you. I could straighten Jefferson out, I’m sure of it. Discipline! That’s the only secret.’

‘If our talk turns to money, I will.’

He beamed. ‘See how men in high places help each other?’

I knew Zebulon Henry meant well, of course … but to live your brief life for compound interest seemed wrong somehow. I’m a man cursed with the compulsion to toss the dice, to bet all on the main chance, to listen to dreamers. I believe in luck and opportunity. Why else was I allied with Bloodhammer? Why else did I orbit Napoleon?

Magnus did say this hammer, if it existed, might be worth money, or power, or something. So treasure hunting was an investment of another kind, was it not? It’s not that I’m lazy, just easily bored. I like novelty. I’m curious to see what is over the next hill. So I resolved to let my lunatic have his say, nod encouragingly – and put it all in Jefferson’s hands.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The President’s House, smart enough on the outside with its limestone sheen and classical decorations, was still just half-finished without and half-occupied within. The pile was a grand two-story affair, ostentatious for a democracy, with a little republican rawness provided by a plank walkway that reached the posh porch and pillars by crossing a yard of mud and sawdust like a drawbridge. The house had two rows of ten grand windows each on the north side where we entered – hellish to heat, I’d bet – and the lower row was capped by fancy narrow pediments like eyebrows. The panelled door itself was unexpectedly human-sized, not some bronze gate, and when we pulled a cord to ring its bell the modest oak was opened not by a servant but by a secretary, in plain suit. He was a shy, strapping, strong-chinned young man with prominent nose and small, thin-lipped mouth who looked out at the pillars as if surprised at his own surroundings. His hair was neatly clipped in the Roman fashion I now favoured myself, and his feet were shod in moccasins.

‘Howdee-do,’ he said in the patois of the frontier, pulling us in. ‘I’m Meriwether Lewis. Only arrived a few days ago from Fort Detroit and still exploring. You can make an echo in this pile. Come, come: President Jefferson is expecting you.’

The entrance hall had eighteen-foot ceilings but was barren of furniture or paintings. Like the Capitol, it still smelt of paint. Directly ahead was a panelled door leading into a rather elegant but empty oval room, its windows framing a view of the Potomac. Lewis led us to the right, past stairs that I assumed led up to the president’s private quarters, and into a smaller salon with a couch and side table. ‘I’ll tell him you’ve arrived.’ The secretary stepped through another door with the stride of a hunter, his experience as a frontier soldier obvious.

Magnus looked about. ‘Your president isn’t much for furniture, is he?’

‘Jefferson’s only just moved in, and Adams lived here only a few months. It’s a challenge to decide what fits a republic. He’s been a widower for nearly twenty years.’

‘He must rattle around in here like a pebble in a powder horn.’

Then we heard a bird call.

A door to Jefferson’s office opened and we were beckoned again. This room, in the southwest corner, was more inhabited. The mahogany floor was bare of any carpet but a long table covered with green baize occupied the room’s middle, and fires burnt at either end. Three of the walls were occupied by bookshelves, maps, writing tables, cabinets, and globes; the fourth was windows. One shelf bore an elephant tusk of extraordinary width, curled at its end in a peculiar manner. Others displayed arrowheads, polished stones, animal skulls, Indian clubs, and beadwork. On tables by the windows on the south side were terracotta pots, spring shoots just poking through the black dirt. There were also bell jars, boxes of planting soil, and, in one corner, a bird cage. Its inhabitant sang again.

‘The most beautiful sound in nature,’ Jefferson said, rising from a chair at the table and putting a book aside. ‘The mockingbird inspires me while I work.’

Close up, Jefferson was more commanding than he’d seemed at the inauguration: tall, with a planter’s fitness, his striking red hair matching his ruddy complexion. The speech I’d heard was one of the few Jefferson would ever give; with his high voice he preferred to communicate by letter. But his eyes had a bright intelligence more arresting than any I’d seen. Napoleon had the gaze of an eagle, Nelson a hawk, Djezzar a cobra, ageing Franklin a sleepy owl. Jefferson’s eyes danced with curiosity, as if everything he encountered was the most interesting specimen he’d ever seen. Including us.

‘I’d not expected the president’s office to be a naturalist’s laboratory,’ I said.

‘My habit at Monticello is to bring the outdoors in. Nothing makes me more content than tending my geraniums. I am a student of architecture, but nature’s architecture has the most pleasing proportions of all.’ He smiled. ‘So you are the hero of Mortefontaine!’