Alexander C. Irvine Read Free Page B

fairly sophisticated chemical laboratory and a fine selection of scientific and medical books.
    Why, Steen had wondered, is Burr hesitating? He has brought us to this point. Is he afraid to go through with it?
    Blennerhassett grew impatient. “It’s here, Aaron. We’re here. Look into it.”
    For a long moment Burr looked tempted. Then he held up a hand. “I don’t believe I should,” he said. “Leave sorcery to the sorcerers; if this works as you say it will, that will be proof enough. Who would I see? Wilkinson?”
    Burr had laughed then, and looking back on the evening, Steen laughed now, because even at that moment General Wilkinson had been drafting the letter that led to the collapse of the Burr Conspiracy, the exile of Harman Blennerhassett, and the slow, unnoticed ascent of Riley Steen. Whether out of belated loyalty to Spain or fear of his own life, Wilkinson had alerted Thomas Jefferson to the conspiracy. Jefferson had been hearing rumors of it for at least a year but acted only in November of 1806, commanding the arrest of Burr and Blennerhassett. On December 10, the Wood County militia arrived on Blennerhassett’s Island just as the expedition force—and Blennerhassett himself—were escaping by boat. Before pursuing the traitors, the militia depleted the estate wine cellar, and Aaron Burr’s supposed army escaped down the river. Burr himself was in Frankfort, Kentucky, answering charges of inciting war.
    But of course none of them had known that at the time, when it seemed that they might really be able to bring it off. This had all been before the battle of Trafalgar had broken the Spanish navy and inclined Spain to sell Florida rather than fight over it, before Wilkinson had realized that supporting Burr endangered his lucrative spying arrangement with the Spanish government. Absent a war with Spain, Burr’s army of disaffected young men broke apart, providing the western territories—it would later be said—with an abundance of dance and penmanship instructors.
    Steen remembered that night as a lesson. The contrast between Burr and Blennerhassett had struck him at the time: Burr diminutive but fiercely handsome, charismatic, immersed in the pragmatic world of political ambition and personal advancement, and Blennerhassett tall, stooped, myopic and homely, his head full of ideals, concocting magical schemes while a thousand miles away a man wrote a letter that would bring all of his fantasies crashing down around him. If this goes wrong, Steen had told himself at the time, Burr will survive it. Blennerhassett will not. And Riley Steen? He would keep the power of his knowledge and his anonymity, and when the moment came, his moment, he would not hesitate to commit himself.
    “Well,” Blennerhassett had said when Burr refuset to look into the tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror. “Perhaps not. But perhaps it might assist you in locating the chacmool. April, as you said, approaches.”
    “Sorcery to sorcerers,” Burr repeated. “You and your man here can be trusted with it. And, I hope, with this.” He removed a leather-bound journal from his coat pocket. “The location of the chacmool is hinted at in this book, but I have spent a good part of the spring and summer scouring Kentucky and cannot find it, and I believe there is no longer time to look. April will have to take care of itself; I must concern myself with munitions, men, and statecraft.” He tapped the journal. “It is no longer safe for me to keep this. Can I trust your man here to return it to the correct parties in New York?”
    “Steen has never failed me,” Blennerhassett said. Burr’s uncertainty seemed to settle over him like an invisible weight. His stoop grew more pronounced, and he removed his spectacles to rub at the hooked bridge of his nose.
    “Never?” Burr said. “A remarkable record. Pray extend it, Mister Steen.”
    Steen took the journal and slipped it into his own coat pocket. “I will get it where it needs to