For the Rectitude of Our Intentions
It wasn’t fully signed yet, of course. Even now, delegates of the Continental Congress who had not been in Philadelphia during the final vote earlier in the week made their way to the city to append their names to the Declaration of Independence and poke a finger in the eye of King George III.
But the whole Committee of Five had signed that day, during the astrological conjunction. It was Franklin who had wrangled the unwitting delegates to ensure the date of independence coincided with a rare four-planet alignment with Sirius. Signing that specific day was the most important thing, according to Jefferson, for the spell’s potency.
Adams stood alone on the low dais in the assembly room of the State House where the Congress met, admiring the clean Roundhand script of the Declaration by lamp light. Timothy Matlack had a good fist for lettering. Who would have thought it of a brewer? Fine as his calligraphy was, though, it was still not half as good as his beer.
Outside, Adams heard the revels of the first Independence Day—the first of one thousand such anniversaries promised by Mr. Jefferson, as the fruit of their magick working. From the sounds of it, many of Adams’s fellow citizens had likewise enjoyed more than a little of good Mr. Matlack’s brown ale.
Surely, even in a time of war, none of them could be begrudged one night’s frivolity.
A great clattering and the heavy thud of a body hitting the wooden floor startled Adams from his reverie. There on the threshold of the door, face down and splayed as a starfish, foundered Benjamin Franklin.
“Jove’s teeth! Dr. Franklin—you startled me.” Adams’ tone was only half angry. He was half amused with himself. Forty years was too old for being afraid of the dark.
“Forgive me, Mr. Adams,” Franklin slurred, as he pushed himself to all fours. Adams rushed to help his colleague, another who had partaken of Matlack’s brew.
“I am obliged, sir,” said Franklin as Adams got him to his feet. Adams pulled off his grey wig, wiping sweat from his bald head with a linen handkerchief.
“One of the guards told me you were here. It is good that I have found you, Mr. Adams. You must do something! It is Mr. Jefferson,” Franklin said. “There is another part to his spell. One he has concealed from us. I only found out because I called at his lodging house unexpectedly, and came upon his prisoner.…”
“Ben—I don’t—I don’t understand. What prisoner?”
“A present, from Colonel Arnold. Arrived three weeks ago. It cost us Quebec, but Arnold captured him.” Franklin’s voice filled with sudden realization. “He must be part of it, too.”
Adams supposed Franklin mean Colonel Benedict Arnold, who had so lately distinguished himself in service to the Continental Army by attempting to open a second front at Quebec City.
“What prisoner, man?” demanded Adams. “Who is he?”
Franklin waited a long moment before speaking again, as if considering whether to tell what secrets he knew. A look of resignation overtook him.
“Sir Edward FitzGeorge, Earl of Lachtcarn,” said Franklin. “Commander of the Royal Fusiliers.”
“One British general? For that Arnold gave up Quebec?”
“No mere general,” said Franklin, taking a pocket square from his waistcoat and wiping away tears that flecked the small, round lenses of his spectacles. “Sir Edward is, in actuality, the secret bastard son of King George III.”
Adams had to sit down. It was almost too much to take in.
Was a royal bastard worth Quebec? Even for ransom? When Adams asked this aloud, Franklin grew agitated.
“You’re not understanding the enormity of what Jefferson intends,” Franklin said. “He’s going to kill the royal bastard. Sacrifice him.”
For a moment Adams struggled to understand the word. “Sacrifice?”
“It is the final part of the spell,” said Franklin, his voice breaking. “And he means to do it tonight.”
Adams shook his head. “Dr. Franklin you are drunk and not making sense. I have known Thomas Jefferson for years, and he would never—”
“I have this from Jefferson’s own mouth—he confessed all to me. It’s the ink, you see.” Franklin rose and stalked to the table where the Declaration rested.
Franklin’s hand trembled just above the parchment, as if he were afraid to touch it. “So long as the ink lasts on the parchment, the nation will endure. Invincible. That was the promise Jefferson made us.” Franklin drew his hand back suddenly from the Declaration, as if burned though he had not touched it.
“Jefferson claimed he wanted our blood for his medical research, back at Monticello. But it was for the ink.”
Adams was suddenly cold, despite the humid summer air in the hall. Jefferson had drawn a pint from him some weeks earlier, for his experiments. Had he taken blood from all of them?
“Jefferson made—”
“That’s right,” said Franklin. “The five of us on the Committee; we who helped draft the words. Mingled us with the iron gall. Matlack used it to engross the Declaration and we all, unaware, signed with the same infernal ink.”
Franklin was still for a moment, and in the lamp light Adams saw the man’s eyes grow glassy. “But our blood was not enough,” he said, voice quavering. “Not for the thousand years that Jefferson promised. That’s why he needs him.”
“Sir Edward?”
“Royal blood. The blood of kings, even from a bastard’s veins, can give the working the potency Jefferson seeks.”
And Adams knew in his marrow that no mere pint would be enough.
“The most powerful magic is the oldest kind,” said Franklin. “As old as Cain and Abel.”
* * *
The stone cellar where Mr. Matlack stored his beer smelled of stale alcohol and the peaty humus of its bare earth floor. Adams brought up the rear as they descended the narrow steps, having forced Franklin to go first to ensure he didn’t turn and flee.
The old man made his way down the steps with painful slowness, taking them almost sideways so as to spare his arthritic knees. Adams was thankful that they were able to descend without the need for lamps; the glow of what must be many candles illuminated their way from below. No lamp meant that Franklin was able to hold the rail of the crooked stairs with one hand and keep his pistol in the other.
Adams had also procured the pistol for himself, a rare benefit to living in a city under arms. He prayed neither of them would have occasion to use the weapons.
The cellar was packed close with barrels of beer and wine. Franklin and Adams made their way through narrow aisle between barrels, following the sound of low, droning chanting from the far end of the cellar. Small bells or a tambourine jingled. All around them candles stood in groups on barrelheads or arranged in tall candelabras.
Turning a corner from behind a tall stack of barrels, the men saw an altar of sacrifice had been improvised from a sheet of slate rested atop two upended beer barrels. Four men stood alongside the altar, their backs to the stair: Jefferson, Mr. Matlack, and two slaves that Adams assumed Jefferson had brought with him from Virginia. They all dressed formally in high-collared shirts with cravats, tailored doublets, and full breeches with high stockings. Over this, Jefferson wore something like a barrister’s robe, but of a design Adams was unfamiliar with.
In front of them on the altar, mostly obscured from Adams sight, lay their intended victim, Sir Edward, bound, gagged, and whimpering.
The condemned man thrashed and struggled against his bonds, and when his eyes met Adams and Franklin approaching, he did his best to scream despite his gag.
With this, the chanting ceased, and all four men turned to discover Adams and Franklin standing there, pistols drawn.
Jefferson, who held a vicious carved flint blade, looked shocked, while Matlack showed only anger. The two slaves looked terrified, glancing back and forth at one another, and then to Jefferson for some sense of how they ought to react.
“You two,” said Adams to the slaves, “run. Don’t stop to you reach New York.” He waved his pistol to motion them past, and with one final look to Jefferson the two men dropped their jingling instruments and fled.
“And I’ll thank the both of you to stand away from Sir Edward,” said Adams, again using the pistol to motion the men where he wanted them.
Jefferson did not move. “Dr. Franklin,” he said, locking eyes with the man, “your indiscretion disappoints me.”
Franklin lowered his eyes, but not his pistol.
“It is over, Mr. Jefferson,” said Adams. “Let the man go.”
“You must not prevent me from completing this work,” said Jefferson. “The whole of our future depends on what I have to do here, tonight.”
Franklin sputtered, “There’s no need for, for—”
“For human sacrifice?” Jefferson finished. “It is the most ancient means known to ensure prosperity for a new city. Romulus slew his brother Remus when founding Rome. Phoenicians sacrificed their children to found Carthage. Kublai Khan killed a thousand men to consecrate Beijing his capital. We do it to sanctify our ideals; we do it for the Republic.”
Adams could not contain himself at this. “You should be thanking me for stopping you, before you damn your worthless soul!”
“Thanking you?” Jefferson’s face grew dark. He edged slowly along the near side of the altar, as Sir Edward struggled behind him. The man was naked but for a loin cloth and bloodied where bindings cut into his skin.
“You had no objections to the protection our spell would bestow upon our country, nor the power that it promised you.” Jefferson slipped down the short side of the altar, placing the struggling victim between him and Adams.
“I had no objections when it was some chanting and fasting and star-watching that you asked of us. When there was no harm to anyone by it.” Adams shook his head. “I regret ever encouraging your hermetic pursuits.”
“Spare me, Mr. Adams. We are traitors to England and rebels. Many have already died in this war. At Lexington and Concorde. At Bunker Hill. We will kill more British before our business with King George is concluded. And many American patriots, too. Why such scruples about this one life? Especially if this one life gives a thousand years of life to our republic?”
“I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain our Declaration and support and defend these states. But I cannot see a way safe to prosperity as a nation if this is our first act as a free and sovereign people!”
“Royal blood is the capstone of our incantation,” said Jefferson. “It lends our spell the potency that our blood alone cannot provide. I feared none of you on the Committee would have the stomach for what needed doing. A lack of courage I was right to expect.”
“Courage?” offered Franklin. He kept his pistol trained on Matlack, who still seethed. “You think it courageous to butcher a man? To truss him like a pig for slaughter?”
“You will cost this nation a thousand years of life and liberty for the life of one worthless aristocrat,” said Matlack.
“A thousand years without honor! With evil at the very root of the tree. Would you have that be our legacy?” Adams demanded.
“This isn’t just about us!” Jefferson slapped the slate altar with his palm. “No nation, however designed, however enchanted, endures forever. But think of the example that a thousand years of democracy would be for future posterity! Think of the fruit that would bear. Neither Greeks nor Romans dared dream of such a legacy, and their lessons are ones that mankind remembers in our bones. Do not let your conscience withhold such a boon from the world.”
“Mr. Jefferson, come out from behind there,” Adams demanded. Jefferson shook his head.
“This is the only way, John. England is too strong. We cannot defeat the most powerful nation on earth without magical aid.” Jefferson rested a hand on Sir Edward’s forehead in a gesture that in another time and place Adams would have described as gentle. “By his blood will our Declaration be made an indestructible talisman, and with it our nation and her ideals.”
“Are they just words to you, Thomas? ‘All men are created equal.’ You wrote them. But is it empty rhetoric? Is that how you can conscience keeping slaves? Is that why you can take this man’s life so unfeelingly?”
“Oh, but I do feel it,” Jefferson said softly. “I dread this necessity. It has taken me a long time to screw up the courage for this moment. You can’t possibly know what it has cost me, what it costs me still.”
Jefferson held up the flint knife for Adams to see. The milky, translucent stone seemed alive in the candlelight.
“This tecpatl belonged to Monctezuma,” he said. “It was a rare day indeed when this came into my possession. This knife sacrificed countless victims to protect a people—a nation!—before it was surrendered to Cortez. And now, it will sacrifice one more.”
At that moment Matlack lunged at Franklin, who in his stupor had not noticed the brewer edge too close to him. Matlack grabbed Franklin’s arm in a struggle for the pistol. There was a tremendous bang and concussion that filled the low cellar, but which might as well have filled the whole world.
Jefferson doubled over in a coughing fit from the sulfurous smoke. Sir Edward writhed on the altar, howling behind his gag. Adam’s ears rang painfully, and his eyes stung from the acrid smoke that, when cleared, showed Matlack’s knife at Franklin’s throat.
“Now you have but a single shot, Mr. Adams,” said Matlack. “Interfere further and Franklin, too, will die today.”
“Lower your knife,” said Jefferson, now recovered from his coughing. “We are in no danger from Mr. Adams, despite his talk. I have counted Mr. Adams a friend for many years. I know him as I know myself. He is an intellect, a patriot, and many other things besides. But he is not a killer. He will not use that weapon on me or anyone else.”
Adams’s grip tightened on the butt of his pistol. “You think me a coward then?”
“The farthest thing from,” said Jefferson. “Yours is a noble soul. And that nobility will not permit the stain of homicide. It was the reason for my subterfuge, Mr. Adams. I knew you could never countenance with this grim necessity.” Jefferson spread wide his arms to frame his victim on the altar. “Put the gun down, John.”
His grip tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened on the pistol. Adams’s eyes shot from the man on the altar, to Jefferson, to Matlack and that old fool Franklin, who looked close to passing out from terror.
Adams had never been a soldier. He had been a lawyer, in Boston. He’d been a farmer, too, and a delegate to the Continental Congress. And though he had hunted many rabbit and deer in his day, Adams had never fired a weapon at a person. And Jefferson, damn him, was right that he never could. He knew that about himself, knew it as keenly as his own name. And at that moment he hated himself for it.
Adams lowered the pistol and uncocked it.
Jefferson nodded to Matlack, who released Franklin. The old man moaned and grabbed at his throat, staggered to the cellar stair where he sat down.
“Leave us now, and take Dr. Franklin if you would,” said Jefferson. “Matlack and I will conclude the ritual. I would spare you that, at least.”
Matlack crossed back to the altar, taking his place at Jefferson’s side. He began the same low droning that Adams heard when he first descended into the cellar. Sir Edward’s cries were muffled behind his gag, but his eyes screamed to Adams for his life.
Franklin hauled himself to his feet and was halfway up the stairs. “Come Mr. Adams. Let us away,” he called over his shoulder. “We have lost the night.”
“I can’t let you do this, Thomas,” said Adams, shaking his head. This once more derailed Matlack’s chanting.
“Really, John,” sighed Jefferson. “This is most exasperating. I take no pleasure in what must be done, but I would have it done quickly and over with. Away with you! You can make no threat I will believe.”
“I make no threat,” Adam said, “but I can take action.”
From within his coat Adams drew a folded parchment. “You would found our nation on this kind of abomination? Make a talisman of our Declaration?”
With two sharp shakes the parchment unfolded, revealing the Declaration and the signatures of the Committee of Five.
“I deny you your prize.”
Adams held the corner of the Declaration to the flame of a candle on a nearby barrelhead.
“No, John—don’t!” Matlack rushed from behind the altar.
The parchment took light like no parchment ought and was consumed in a flash by a flame the color of dried blood accompanied by what sounded like the distant scream of a child.
Matlack seized Adams by the lapels as he reached him. “Madman!”
“Unless you mean to do me harm, Mr. Matlack, unhand me. Otherwise, I am quite prepared to die for the ideals of our revolution.”
Matlack fumed for a moment, bunching Adams’s lapels tighter in his fists. But then, like a fever, his rage broke. He seemed smaller, diminished, and let Adams go.
Jefferson was weeping behind the altar. “You fool,” he repeated again and again.
Seizing on their bewilderment, in one swift motion Adams was at the altar with his pocketknife, cutting the ties that bound Sir Edward’s legs. He helped the man down from the altar, but before Adams could remove his other binding Sir Edward pushed Adams away hard and ran for his life, shoving past Franklin on the cellar stair and nearly sending the old man tumbling.
“He won’t make it out of the city, you know,” said Matlack. “As soon as anyone hears his accent, patriots will tear him limb from limb.”
“You are wrong, sir,” said Adams. “I have rather more faith in the kindness of our countrymen.”
“And if he does make it back to the British?” Franklin asked from the stair. “I did not wish to see him sacrificed, but he has seen and heard a great deal while Mr. Jefferson’s … guest. What he tells his masters will help them. Perhaps even to capture Philadelphia, threaten the revolution. Perhaps even fatally, now that our palladium in parchment is gone.”
“The words endure, Dr. Franklin,” said Adams. “Broadsheets have been printed and distributed. All thirteen colonies will shortly have them. I have faith in our words on their own merits.”
***
Adams was the last of the Committee of Five to sign his name to the Declaration. It had been more than a month since July 4 and the strange events of that night, but Adams would be lying to pretend what happened in Mr. Matlack’s cellar had not weighed on him every day since, nor been front of mind as he appended his name to the ceremonial copy of the Declaration.
The members of the Continental Congress who were present applauded after each man’s signature, and Adams stepped from the dais to shake hands with his colleagues. Near the back of the room, Mr. Hancock was too loudly regaling Mr. Hamilton with what he thought was the hilarious story of his oversized signature on the Declaration.
The delegation from Virginia stood by the southeast windows, conferring. Jefferson was there with them, studiously avoiding looking in Adams’ direction.
They had not spoken since the cellar.
Abigail, bless her, was forever entreating John to be the better man, to bury grudges. Adams had not the heart to tell her what had become of their friend Jefferson on July 4. He wondered whether she would be so eager for magnanimity if she knew the truth.
With a deep exhale, Adams made his way over.
“It is a momentous day, Mr. Jefferson!” Adams tried to affect as much joviality as he could. He wondered, though, whether the mask he put on could conceal his real feelings.
“Momentous, yes,” said Jefferson. “But not auspicious.” The smile withered on Adams’s face.
“My word, Mr. Jefferson,” said Madison, one of the Virginians. “What an odd turn of phrase.”
Jefferson met the man’s smile with an impassive gaze.
Adams, who understood the implication, cleared his throat and forced again his smile. “Gentlemen, would you excuse us?”
Putting his arm around Jefferson’s shoulder, Adams guided him away from the befuddled delegates and to the hall outside the assembly room.
“You must tread carefully, Mr. Jefferson,” cautioned Adams in barely more than a whisper. “I have thought it wisest to keep secret all that … transpired between us last month. It would not be well for the architect of our great Declaration to be seen in so sinister a light. Dr. Franklin is in agreement.”
Franklin had not been himself since that night. Whenever he and Adams spoke the conversation turned sooner rather than later to Franklin’s desire that the Congress should dispatch him to Europe, there to act as an ambassador. He needed time, he said, to clear his head, to get away from Philadelphia and its ghosts.
“I do not require such … considerations from you or any man,” Jefferson said, in equally hushed tones. “I have set my legacy before the world, though not in the manner I first intended.”
“Yes, well. So much the better. The words of your Declaration ring out on their own. They should be a beacon, sir, to freedom loving peoples for all time. No need for spells or superstition to see to that.”
A look of sincere surprise crossed Jefferson’s face. “But Mr. Adams, our spell continues.”
It was Adams’s turn for surprise. “I don’t—” He cast a glance around before continuing. “Your … parchment is gone.”
Adams thought again, not for the first time since that day, of the strange flame and of the keening, distant wail that still came to him in his sleep.
“But I had Mr. Matlack inscribe a second, and you have just signed it, as have we all.”
Adams sputtered as no words would form in his mouth. “But,” he finally managed, dropping his voice low again, “Dr. Franklin’s planetary alignment. The ink.”
“Oh, you are quite right, sir. This August 2nd lacks the same power and blessings of the heavens as July 4th had. So too will the working. As for the ink, I had prepared two batches. The second I had intended to ink the documents of our Constitution, when it is decided upon. But your actions forced me to use it in reproducing the Declaration.”
Through the open doors of the assembly room, Adams saw the delegates had nearly finished signing. They would be expected back.
“So I salvaged what I could,” Jefferson said. “With the blood just from the five of us on the Committee the spell will work, but only weakly in comparison.”
“How long?” Adams found himself asking with genuine surprise.
Jefferson considered his answer, clearly balancing figures and calculations in his mind.
“The total of our remaining years, we five, added together, from this day until our last.”
Adams considered this. How long did he have left? How long did any of them? Franklin was already seventy. Any of the rest of them could die at any moment. If the British took the city. Yellow fever season would be upon them, soon. They could be run over by a horse cart in the streets.
“And the last of us,” Jefferson said. “The last of the five. That one you should pray lives a hundred years, for his death begins it all. The full span of his days will be added to the years of the rest and the spell is complete. But once he dies the ink will begin to fade from the Declaration, and with it the power and safety of the nation. Then begins the slow descent into chaos and tyranny.… The fate of all nations.”
Adams did some figuring of his own. “A few hundred years then?”
“Two hundred and sixty. Two hundred and seventy, perhaps,” Jefferson said, matter-of-factly. “Franklin is already old. Sherman is in his fifties. Livingston and I are younger than you, so there is hope there. But I’d be shocked if our remaining years totaled as much as three hundred.
“Our new nation might live to see the twenty-first century, barring the Second Coming at the millennium. But it won’t see that century’s end.”
“Two hundred and sixty years,” said Adams, breathless. “So short a season for a nation.”
“And they will be fraught years now,” said Jefferson. “Full of faction and division. Our hard-won liberties always in peril from man’s natural impulse toward avarice and despotism.
“Blood is still demanded, Mr. Adams. With no royal blood to sate the spell, it will have to come from the common man, and in great quantity. We shall be a nation unaccustomed to peace. The tree of liberty will now be watered regularly with the blood of patriots.”
Adams’s mouth was dry. “I don’t believe any of this.”
Jefferson smiled. “A brave face, John. But you remain, as ever, a terrible liar.” He made to go but stopped and turned back a moment.
“There is one more thing that was sacrificed to achieve this working,” Jefferson said. “Our friendship. A cost I had not anticipated. We both want the revolution to succeed and our young nation take root. But beyond those goals look for no more friendship or succor from me. Please give my regrets to your wife. I shall miss our fellowship, we three.” As his voice faltered, Jefferson strode back into the assembly room. “Good day, Mr. Adams.”
* * *
It was raining that Fourth of July. Such a pity, thought Louisa. A great fireworks display had been planned in Boston for the 50th anniversary.
Rain tapped against the window glass as Louisa wrung out a cloth in the wash basin and placed it with care on her uncle’s forehead. He had been in and out of consciousness all morning, and while she didn’t know whether the damp cloth provided him any relief, she felt the need to do something, for his passing would not be long.
His eyes closed but fluttering, Uncle John’s lips moved in a silent, feeble attempt at words. At ninety years old, with Abigail and most of his children already gone before him, Louisa was almost all the family he had left. His oldest son, John Quincy, was already en route from the White House. But Louisa feared the President would not arrive in time to pay final respects to his father.
And less than a handful of her uncle’s colleagues from ’76 remained, either. Uncle John was nearly the last.
At that moment, with a sharp intake of breath, her uncle’s eyes opened wide.
“The day? The day?” John began thrashing and straining with momentary vigor to sit upright in bed.
Louisa placed her hands on his shoulders and tried to gently lower him back to his pillow. “Mister President,” she said loudly enough that even Uncle John could hear despite his deafness. “Mister President, you must lie still.”
But Uncle John kept asking and asking, until Louisa relented. “It is the Fourth. The Glorious Fourth. Our nation’s Golden Jubilee.”
At that Uncle John seemed to find some contentment and allowed himself to be laid back down.
“The nation. The nation,” he managed. “The Committee … all dead. No—no. Not him. Not yet.” Then Uncle John muttered something Louisa couldn’t make out. Something was right? No. Someone was right.
“Jefferson!” Uncle John’s breathing became rapid and shallow. Fear and pain twisted his face as he struggled for breath. He squeezed Louisa’s hand with surprising strength, and his gaze cut right through her, as if willing her to understanding.
“I … not the last. The end … Not yet! Jefferson survives!”
Uncle John went limp, gave a long sigh, and was still.
Louisa was to think some days later, when the news from Virginia finally reached Boston, how strange it was that her uncle should have spoken the name of Jefferson as he died. For though Adams couldn’t have known, at the moment when he breathed his last, Jefferson had already been dead at Monticello for five hours, having died like Adams on that same July the 4th.
Stephen Kotowych is a World Fantasy Award finalist and winner of Canada’s Aurora Award, Spain’s Premi Ictineu, and the Writers of the Future Grand Prize. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the UK and the US, and have been translated into a dozen languages. He is the series editor for Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, and his first collection of short stories, Seven Against Tomorrow, is available now. He lives near Toronto with his family and enjoys guitar, tropical fish, and writing about himself in the third person. Visit his website, www.kotowych.com.
Copyright © 2025 Stephen Kotowych.