Jack Frake (26 page)

He understood Redmagne’s agony. The woman was not
here
; she was not in the next room, nor at the market, nor just down the lane chatting with a neighbor. She was fifty leagues away in the maw of London. Since July, in the idle times between contraband runs, Redmagne would steal away and be gone for days at a time, returning elated and desperate. His tutorials, which many in the gang paid him for, had almost ceased. His evening entertainments were also missed by the men. His desk was growing dusty. Skelly did not question him and could not stop him, for
when there was no smuggling business and none to plan, his time was his own. He had broached the subject with Redmagne of eloping with the woman, of setting her up in a house in Marvel, of even going to the colonies with her. “It can be arranged with Ramshaw,” he told his lieutenant one evening. “He would do it for nothing. He knows men in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and Boston. In all the principal towns. You needn’t worry about finding an occupation or trade.”

Redmagne had shaken his head. “I’ve thought of those things, too, Augustus. But it’s her father. He’s a clerk for one of McRae’s partners. And he owes this employer his life, for this man paid a surgeon to have her father’s arm and leg set after an accident. The man is otherwise a nasty piece of goods. He’d make her father’s life impossible, if she left. And she won’t leave.”

Jack Frake was another matter. Ever since his return from London, Skelly had watched him grow more and more restive. Not in any way that interfered with his tasks, nor in any manner that affected his character. The change lay in the way the boy now looked at things; a greater knowledge of the world showed in his eyes, and his self-assurance was more pronounced.

One day in late September, they sat together on the hill above the caves. Skelly had gone up to the watch post, a patch of grass concealed by outcroppings of rock. The leaves in the brush and trees surrounding the caves were fast turning into a palette of autumnal colors.

“I’m growing envious of Redmagne,” he said to the boy. He knew the story about the highwaymen. “When will you save
my
life?”

“At the first opportunity,” replied Jack Frake.

“Let’s hope one doesn’t present itself,” said Skelly. After a moment, he said, “You ought to think on that subject he told me you raised in the coach. On government reports and mythical lost revenues. You put your finger on something that’s eluded me for years. Perhaps you, too, could have a letter printed in a newspaper.”

Jack Frake was silent for a moment. Skelly saw a spark of interest in his eyes, but this was not the bright eagerness he was accustomed to seeing. The boy shook his head with a pensive frown. “No, sir. Not a letter. I’d want to write a book on it.”

“Another book?” chuckled Skelly. “My gang is producing so many scriveners!” Then, in a serious vein, he added, “Jack, I envy you your future. I truly do.”

“I’d dedicate it to you, if I ever wrote it,” said Jack Frake. “You shouldn’t be living like this. You ought to be living
there
.” He pointed to the vacant Villers mansion in the distance. “Or in London.”

“Thank you,” said Skelly. He lit his pipe, then asked, “Are you beginning to regret your shadowy life with us?”

“No, sir. I’ll never regret it. I think I’ll be a better man for my time with you and Redmagne and the others.”

“You do us proud now. But — there are saner ways of becoming a man. And of being one. I told you in the beginning that ours is not a normal way to live.”

“No, it isn’t. But it’s more honorable.”

Skelly sighed with impatience. “‘Honor’ is such an empty notion nowadays. There is a better word for what you mean. The vilest rake in Parliament can claim honor. No, what moves us, Jack, is something more substantial.” He smiled. “I’m sure you’ll find the right word for it someday.”

Jack Frake’s sight was fixed on the surrounding countryside. Skelly studied his face for a moment, then asked, “Have you thought on Captain Ramshaw’s proposal? You could ship out with him as a cabin boy. This time next year you could be somewhere in the colonies, starting anew. There’s no future for you here, living like
this
.” His pipe swept the panorama and dipped to the ground to include the caves below.

“No, sir,” said the boy. “I mean, I’ve thought on it, but I’d rather stay. I’d like to see London again.” Jack Frake was not thinking of escape, or of relief. His imagination was still dazzled by the possibilities in his life in his own home.

“Can’t say I blame you,” said Skelly. “I may visit London myself again, soon. And you’re welcome to come with me. Well, Redmagne — blast it, Jack, you’ve got me calling him that, now! — he’s brought a letter from Ramshaw. The
Sparrowhawk
will be laid up in Boston for a while, having her hull scraped and all new rigging strung to her. We won’t see her again until next spring at the earliest. Give his offer a farthing’s more thought, Jack. Promise me?”

Jack Frake looked at Skelly with alarm. “Have I displeased you somehow, sir?”

“Displeased me?” scoffed Skelly. “Huh! Quite the opposite, Jack. I value your company highly. I simply want to see you put your energy to better use.” He paused. “I said I envied you your future. I didn’t mean as a smuggler.”

The boy smiled in gratitude. “I promise I’ll think on it. About Ramshaw, I mean.”

Jack Frake did not immediately find the right word, nor did he identify the last piece of a puzzle, the rivet that sealed the independence of his mind.

Until London, he had been content to remain with Skelly and the gang; indeed, prepared to remain indefinitely outside the bounds of what he observed passed for normal human existence. Skelly, Redmagne and the others — but especially Skelly and Redmagne — were his measures of all other men, including himself. Skelly he regarded as a kind of father, a model of practical wisdom and moral rectitude. Redmagne he saw as an ideal older brother, even though the man was not many years Skelly’s junior.

But there comes a time in every man’s life when he must make himself the measure, not of any others, but of all else. “All else” encompasses animal and inanimate matter, and so it is implied that he should command these, and not men. This is a bold but necessary step; growth and the ineluctable cementing of character require it. It is a time when character sets itself for life, and all other aspects of oneself become derivatives and extensions of it. A few men are able to reach this state of autonomous self-possession; others cease to be their measures or models. The world begins when such a man is born in this sense — to paraphrase an American poet — and the world is his to win. He reaches this state, thanks neither to divine favoritism nor to special pedigree, but because he has retained a tight grip on his original, uncorrupted, and undiminished perspective.

Far at the bottom of this scale of character, many, many more men fail utterly, do not even try to reach that threshold, and become the puppets of things as they are. To cement one’s character requires one to commit oneself to one supreme, achievable thing, and these latter men wish only to indulge everything and devote themselves to the minuscule or to nothing.

Jack Frake was of the first echelon. The Whitehall Stairs were his threshold. Handel’s anthem, “See, the conquering hero comes,” informed him of this moment. It had been sung with heartfelt gusto by the soprano and chorus, hurled imperiously by them at the audience, and Jack Frake was a ready subject of this spiritual assault. He did not sing with others in the audience, but remained solemnly still and surrendered to the music. One does not join in a tribute to oneself.

He had seen things in London that he would not care to see every day,
or ever again. He did not think he would want to live there, except on his own terms. Skelly and Redmagne belonged there, too: Skelly with his business acumen, his ability to buy and sell, his talent for juggling the wealth of the world and redistributing it in ingenious ways, to his own profit; Redmagne with his literary vision, and his need to address men of like mind, if not of like spirit. But Jack Frake had seen the devastated lot of Skelly’s former emporium, and had witnessed the sabotaging of Redmagne’s chances.

He was of two minds, concerning London. It was a city that granted the possible to everyone but these two men, and for that should be put to a fiercer torch than that which leveled it in the Great Fire. It was a city that could be conquered and remade so that he and Skelly and Redmagne could live in it and thrive. He hated London; he loved London. London with its various species of customs men — the beggars, the footpads, the court sycophants, the dilettantes, the yes-men — as well as the appointed ones at Customs House, was uninhabitable by the likes of him. The London that birthed and reared all the wonderful things possible only in a great city was his natural field of action.

It was October. He sat on a length of driftwood on a beach with four other men. A dozen ponies stood tethered together in back of them. They were waiting for the first galley to return from the
Ariadne
with its contraband, which they would quickly unload and secure to the sides and backs of the ponies while the galley returned for another load. It was dark, the clouds scudded past the moon, but the wind and waves were calm. He could not help but think of all the ships anchored below London Bridge in the bright sunlight, waiting to be cleared or unloaded by the lightermen.

They may act in the sunshine, he thought, because they are willing to pay a duty, or a bribe. We must move in darkness, and exile ourselves to the shadows. They may move in daylight, and reap all the benefits of liberty, without fear of arrest, under their own names, and sit in the coffeehouses and taverns and concert halls. They may plan their days and nights and lives without hindrance. We may plan only our nights, and assume other names and trades by day, when we dare. They may, and we may not — because we will not submit.

He wished with all his heart that he could want to live in London. But his knowledge of it smothered any seed of self-delusion about his chances of prospering there. The knowledge stung him to the core. But then, he thought, the price of free, unfettered movement now was slavery, or servitude.
The import of Skelly’s words to him that first night in the caves came to him again and again. “Chains are a more honest form of slavery than the specious liberty enjoyed by most of our countrymen.”

It was a mean, trifling thing to complain about being a slave for only a fraction of one’s time. He knew that this was how most men thought about the matter. To surrender that fraction granted one entree to the world. But it was a great source of solace, he also knew, to refuse that trifling fraction, for then the world was truly one’s own, and nothing in it could be held hostage by any kind of customs man.

It was solace, he thought, but a disturbing kind of solace. He was not certain that he could live with it the way Skelly and Redmagne could.

When the first galley sliced through the breakers and glided ashore, he splashed into the surf with the others to help tow it in. Five minutes later the galley plunged back into the waves. Fifteen minutes later four of the ponies were laden with parcels of beaver pelts and salt.

One Sunday morning in November, while the majority of Gwynnford’s respectable citizens were attending early services at St. Brea’s, Hiram Trott wandered out of his bedroom to answer a knock on the kitchen door. He yawned as he ambled through the darkened tavern. He had packed Bob and Clarissa off to St. Brea’s, and would dress soon to attend the second service while they prepared the tavern for the day’s business. The Sea Siren had been busy until four o’clock in the morning, and the tables had not yet been cleared. Francis Autt, his new scullion, had risen long enough to start a new fire in the main fireplace, then rolled back into his blanket and straw beneath the steps.

Trott paused to glance at the prone figure. He did not like Francis Autt, who was the latest in a series of scullions that followed Jack Frake’s departure. Autt was a full-grown man who had worked as a roustabout on the lighters and as a farm laborer. He came from near Trelowe, where he lived with his mother in a cottage. He could not read, could barely count, and his intelligence was as unpredictably mercurial as was his mood. He was a squat, ungainly, dirty little man. Ugly, too, thought Trott, and the long scar on his face did not improve his looks any. He had had to warn the man off Clarissa, who did not welcome his suggestive chit-chat, and had beaten him once when he caught him pocketing his daughter’s gratuities.

Autt had applied for the position in late July, and had lasted. And he did the job well enough. He had a good mind to kick the man awake and set him to work clearing the tables. But the man had worked hard last
night, and Trott decided to let him sleep a while longer. If he was right about the knock on the door, it was the Skelly courier come to take orders, per arrangement with the previous courier. Autt could stay where he was for the time being.

Trott opened the kitchen door and was pleased to see Jack Frake. The boy had come on this errand many times over the last three years, alternating with Richard Claxon and other members of the gang. It was safe for Jack Frake to come directly into town this Sunday morning; anyone who could recognize him was asleep or in church. “Jack Frake, my boy! Come in!” he exclaimed. Then he remembered his scullion in the next room, and put a finger to his lips. Trott waved him in and closed the door. In a whisper, he offered the boy a mug of coffee.

Jack Frake shook his head, unwrapped the scarf from around his face, and went directly to business. “It’s to be west of Penlilly-by-Sea, on the night of the twelfth,” he said.

“Humph! Fancy that!” exclaimed Hiram Trott. “My late wife hailed from Penlilly.”

“Spread the word to the right ears.”

“Oh, be sure of that, Jack. If Mr. Pannell don’t hang his ears at the Sea Siren, I’ll see the word goes to where he does.” Trott paid a handful of trusted local men to patronize his own and other public houses — wherever Commissioner Pannell’s agents happened to be — and to talk quietly, but not too quietly, about where a man might pick up some extra coins unloading contraband at night. In exchange for helping in this ruse, Trott was permitted to buy important staples for his inn for less than what other Skelly customers paid. “Meanwhile, you’ll be far up the coast?”