The Navigator (NUMA Files 7)

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 1

791. 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.