Jack Frake (12 page)

“Did the
Sparrowhawk
go to Gwynnford?”

Redmagne frowned and dropped the paper. “What do you know about that?” he asked sharply.

Jack Frake explained.

“She hove to a mile or so west of Gwynnford,” said Redmagne, looking at the boy with new interest. “And there we unshipped her.”

* * *

Skelly stood before the boy, his arms folded, much as Parson Parmley had in his classroom. His two pistols winked flashes under the chandelier, and now Jack Frake saw that he had buckled on a sword. There was an earnestness in the man’s face which Jack Frake could not identify. He felt ennobled by the expression, though, for he knew that the man was regarding him as a man, as Redmagne-Smith had earlier.

“I invite you to enlist in my gang,” said Skelly. “I say
gang
, for that is what we are. I don’t trouble myself with sophisticated nomenclature. This
is
a gang. Not a club. Not a society. Not an association. We are outside the law, however wrong that law may be. So, know this: If we are caught and tried and convicted, we shall pay the law’s price.

“I am the leader of this gang. I founded it. I direct it. I set its rules. You may not stay unless you subscribe to every one of them. And the rules are these: We don’t steal, and we don’t accept or trade in stolen goods. We don’t trade with our country’s enemies, whoever they might be at any given time. We don’t employ, use or help murderers, burglars, highwaymen, footpads, or their like. We don’t give them a grin or a nod or a wink. To me the cut-throats and robbers are no different from the ones who take the King’s coin and carry the King’s warrant to do the same things to people. They just do it quicker than the King’s men, that’s all. We make no distinction among them. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Folks cook up legends about me and my men, but they also make heroes of the thieves and their ilk, like Dick Turpin or Edward Bonner. That’s because they see folks being robbed whom they don’t like. They’d
sing a different ballad if they were the ones being chivvied or held-up. It’s as if their rags gave them a right to hate anyone who didn’t wear rags. Me? I’d dress like the King if I didn’t think it would attract attention.

“Next rule: We don’t associate with secret societies or other gangs or aid them in any way. There’s plenty of them around. That’s not made us popular with the other gangs, but it’s saved us the bother of betrayal and being mixed up in the bad sort’s troubles. There are a lot of decent men who smuggle, and a lot who aren’t. We don’t have the time to read letters of reference.

“Next rule: If you enlist in my gang, you’ll
work
. This is a business I run here. I make money selling to townsfolk the goods I buy from merchantmen. You’re to see yourself as my employee. You’ll get prize rates, the same as a Navy or privateer crew when it captures an enemy ship. The difference here is that you won’t have to wait to collect your due. If you enlist, you’ll start as our scullion. We need one. Smith here highly recommends you. You’ll get a share of whatever profit we make on our goods. When I think you’re ready for outside work, you’ll get a bonus rate commensurate with your task. What you do with your earnings is your affair. You’ll have a billet here, your own bedding and all that.

“Last rule: We’re all wanted men here. Every one of us has banns posted announcing our engagement to Rebecca Rope, and no one has objected. So we live here, mostly. We don’t live normal lives. Some of us have sweethearts out there, and friends and family, but none of them are to be brought to this place for any reason. There’s too much chance of betrayal or slips of tongue. So if you have family, don’t expect to see them for a while.”

Skelly paused, then pointed to the buckled shoes on the wall. “See those?”

Jack Frake nodded.

“They were a man’s by the name of Jack Strype. He was a member of this gang. He was wanted for smuggling and breaking into bonded warehouses and beating a particularly vicious customs man to death. He was with us for three years. He took the pledge. One day he disappeared, and the next week Revenue men raided my hideout near Fowey. There was a fight and men were killed on both sides. That hide-out was as perfect as this one, the Revenue men knew nothing about it, so the raid meant only one thing: an informer. We learned that Jack Strype had been arrested. We bailed him out, that is, one night we relieved the sheriff of his prisoner. We learned that he’d made a bargain with the Crown, as is allowed by law: my
neck in exchange for a waiver of all outstanding charges against him, except for the murder. He was bargaining with the authorities on even that, in exchange for information about this place.

“Well, the authorities found him the next day, swinging from an oak outside of Fowey. We hanged him. Those were his shoes.” Skelly paused. “We’d like to grow fond again of the name ‘Jack,’ my boy. It’s a good name.”

Skelly bent to lean on the table with both arms. His face looked as ruthless and cold as Jack Frake remembered seeing it that night on the cliff. “Do you wish to enlist in my gang?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is not a game, my boy. Or a lark. There’ll be damned few sunny days in these caves or out of them.”

“I know.”

“Now, lad, you will answer a question, and on your answer will depend whether or not I decide to let you enlist. Is this clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Given all my rules, why would I allow
you
to enlist in my gang?” Skelly chuckled in mischief. “Think hard, now. Remember what I said about whom I employ.”

“I struck a sailor, and challenged an officer of the Navy.”

Skelly stood to his full height. “And you don’t think that makes you a criminal?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not, if you please?”

“A man’s life is his own, and the officer wanted to take his,” answered Jack Frake. He glanced at Redmagne, who sat at the other end of the table.

“It’s done by custom and the authority of law and His Majesty,” said Skelly. “So it must be right.”

Through the implacable stoniness of Skelly’s expression, there twinkled a glint of humor. Jack Frake noted it but did not understand it. The boy’s brow hardened. “No,” he answered. It was all he could say. He did not know the law or the King’s authority. But he was certain of his own rightness.

Skelly grinned a little, then turned and faced Redmagne. “You rehearsed him, did you not?”

Redmagne shook his head. “No, my friend. I didn’t think I would need to.”

Skelly turned to Jack Frake again. Someone coughed. The boy looked
and saw some of the gang standing at the portal of the cavern, watching.

Skelly took hold of the scabbard and unsheathed his sword with a flourish. He lay the steel down on the table in front of the boy. “This belonged to a man I killed many years ago. He was a customs man, a man who seduced my wife, bribed my brothers to betray me, and stole my property in the King’s name and his own. We dueled the day he came to arrest me in my own home. He had this fine sword — see? it bears the King’s Arms on the guard — and I had but a paring knife.
That
I left in his gut.” Skelly paused to scrutinize the boy’s face. “Having second thoughts, my boy?”

“No, sir. You’re not a murderer.”

“No? I told you: This is not a lark! I
killed
a man! In fact, I’ve killed a few. If I’m caught, I’ll be surely hanged. And if you’re caught with me, but without a weapon, you’ll be whipped, and transported, and sold to a plantation man in the colonies to work beside slaves and other convicts! And if you’re caught with a weapon, you’ll be hanged, too, or sentenced to a workhouse for the rest of your life! You’ll be swaddled in chains from your neck to your ankles, and if you’re lucky you’ll die of iron fever before you grow a crooked back! But long before that, boy, you’ll
beg
to be hanged!”

Skelly leaned on the table again, studying the boy’s face, searching for a reaction. He saw no fear, no recoil, no diminution of interest in either him or what he had said. He saw nothing but an unswerving attentiveness. He concluded that nothing he could say would extinguish the flame of innocence he saw in the boy, nor move the rock of defiance he saw in that flame. He wondered what Jack Frake might have witnessed in his few years of life that could make him so impervious to his oft-repeated epistle of outlawry.

And — he saw a suggestion of admiration, which Skelly did not contest, mixed with a dash of hero-worship, which made him uncomfortable. Osbert Augustus Skelly was a proud man, but not vain.

On Jack Frake’s part, there was a natural element in everything Skelly had said. It appealed to his young soul to remain apart from the suffocating strictures of normal life to which
he had seen other grown men submit. He had not within him the capacity for the genteel regret of wistfulness. He had tasted real freedom of thought and action; resignation was a foreign sensation to the palate of his mind, a bitter substance to be spat out contemptuously. At the moment, the prospect of dying or of being sentenced to a life of servitude was unreal to him; Skelly was real, Redmagne was real, their thoughts, words and deeds were real. In a dim, as yet undefined way, he knew that he was something like these men. The thing inside him which he had sworn never to allow to be seized told him that it was right to want to be with them, to do what they did, and to reap the rewards they won and to pay the price they paid.

And he knew that Skelly was doing his best to discourage him from wanting to join the gang. It was a gang of men; so, he reasoned, something manly was demanded of him. Abruptly he rose from the bench, reached down with one hand, and gripped the pommel of Skelly’s sword. He asked, more challenge in his words than query, “What is your oath, sir?”

Skelly threw an appreciative glance at Redmagne, then stood up. “All right, Mr. Jack Frake, you will take the oath.” He waved a hand at the men at the portal. “There are your witnesses and colleagues. Repeat after me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I pledge, upon my soul, to be always a true and mindful patriot… ”

“I pledge, upon my soul, to be always a true and mindful patriot
— ”

“… and to obey all laws in this kingdom that secure my rights as an Englishman to life, liberty and property… ”

“— and to obey all laws in this kingdom that secure my rights as an Englishman to life, liberty, and property — ”

“… and to flout and oppose, with wit or weapon, at every chance… ”

“— and to flout and oppose, with wit or weapon, at every chance — ”

“… all those that befog, confound, or belittle them.”

“— all those that befog, confound, or belittle them.”

“God save the King!”

“
God save the King
,” said Jack Frake.

Skelly stepped forward and thrust out his hand. “Welcome, Master Frake!”

Jack Frake let go of the pommel and reached up to clasp the man’s hand. “I hope I live up to your expectations.”

There was a smile on Skelly’s face, but his eyes now were dark pools of solemnity.

Redmagne appeared at his colleague’s side and also shook the boy’s hand. “Well done, Jack,” he said. “I know you’ll do right by us. Tonight we’ll feast to celebrate your enlistment. And tomorrow morning you’ll don an apron and help clean up.”

“In the meantime,” said Skelly, “let me introduce you to our gang. Then Smith here will set you up a billet, and then you and I will have a frank talk about what you know about the
Sparrowhawk
.”

Thus did Jack Frake begin his criminal career.

S
KELLY THRUST A HEAVY IRON CHAIN INTO
J
ACK
F
RAKE’S HANDS
. “T
ELL ME
something about this chain, Mr. Frake.” He sat down, unbuckled and removed his sword and scabbard, and laid them across his lap. He leaned back to wait for an answer, drumming his fingers along the length of the scabbard.

The boy stood in Skelly’s quarters, a large, domed cave, more spacious than his home in Trelowe. He saw a case of books, an oaken desk and chair where the man sat, a high, slanted desk with a high stool, and a four-poster bed in a corner. There was a cabinet and a wing-table, and ten candle sconces on the walls. A framed map hung on the wall over the oaken desk; he recognized the coast of Cornwall. There were blue ribbons pinned to many points along the coast, and green ones to points inland. An ungainly looking three-legged stand stood in one space; on it a cloth covered some large, flat rectangle. The floor was smothered with a wild variety of colorful rugs.

After he had shaken hands with the rest of the gang, he was taken by Skelly through the caves and brought here. The man had asked him what he knew about the
Sparrowhawk
. Jack Frake answered as completely as he could.

“You must show me this cubbyhole of yours some time,” said Skelly. “It might come in handy one day.” It was then that he had picked up a length
of chain from under his desk and had given it to the boy.

Jack Frake examined the chain. There were ten links to it, all coated with rust that left a dry, brownish powder on his hands. “It’s not new, sir,” was all he could say.

Skelly laughed. “A plain observation! I like that about you, young sir!” Then the smile disappeared. “What you are holding, Mr. Frake, is the chain that once connected a pair of leg irons. There are two links missing, one each still fastened to the irons on a man’s ankles. The locks were rusted shut and could not be opened. This man, Hal Tyler, once lived near the lovely town of Sheffield. He was a simple, honest man who owned his own patch — not a commons plot, mind you — and who grew apricots and apples and strawberries and cabbages and other edibles. And — he grew tobacco, which he cleverly planted amongst his brilliant cabbages, for which he was famous in his parts. But the growing of tobacco is not permitted in our kingdom, young sir. It can be too easily sold without benefit of tax, you see. However, one autumn he needed to lay in his firewood for the winter, and the wood the town’s firewood merchant was selling that year was some nasty Continental stuff that wouldn’t burn properly, or if it did, burned too fast. And it was costly. So Hal Tyler took his horse and cart into the King’s forest and emerged from it with a load of fine oak. He cut no trees, mind you, as tree-poachers are wont to do, but simply took up branches that lay on the ground or ones he could reach on tiptoe. And the King’s warden was there at his home, waiting for him. He was charged with theft of the King’s wood and with growing a forbidden commodity, and sent down to London to be tried, for these were royal matters. He was convicted, and the judge and jury showed mercy by sentencing him to life in Newgate Prison. And after three years in Newgate, Hal Tyler escaped. Newgate, I should remind you, is in London. One of the links had broken, and so he was able to walk a distance. We found him on a road near Witchampton, in Dorset, as far as he was able to beg and steal. The chain in your hands he’d wrapped around his other leg. He was starving, and in pretty bad shape from other ailments as well. He managed to tell us his story before he died. We buried him in a pretty little glen near the town.