Jack Frake (36 page)

On Christmas day, a local attorney, Oswald Frew, arrived at the prison and solicited Leith’s custom. Leith, desperate, frightened, and still recovering from the shock of his arrest, listened intently to the man. Mr. Frew suggested that Leith plead guilty to the
petit
jury’s certain finding the next day, on the chance that, having saved the Crown the time and expense of trying him, Justice Ashton would commute his certain death sentence to life imprisonment or to indentured servitude in Jamaica. “Justice Ashton is a fair-minded man, Mr. Leith,” he assured his client, “and will take your circumstances into account. Why, I’ve represented other men who were found guilty of, well, far more barbarous crimes, and he sent them to Jamaica and even to the colonies, where, I have learned, they are doing quite well, and have even acquired property.”

Leith exclaimed with exasperation, “I’m doin’ well here! I already got property!”

“Do you, now?” remarked Mr. Frew. “Well, it’s up to you, of course, how you answer the charges, but I know that the Crown has weighty evidence against you. If you force the prosecutor to present it, you will incur not only
his
added enmity, but that of the jury and magistrate.”

Leith hedged on the matter of his plea. He could not think clearly. Mr. Frew, however, succeeded in having his client sign a document in which he surrendered most of the value of the letter of claim to the attorney in lieu of his fees. He tucked the document inside his folio and stood up to leave. “Think on your plea, Mr. Leith. You have all the particulars. I will see you in court tomorrow morning. Oh, and Merry Christmas to you.” Then he turned and pounded on the cell door to be let out.

Jack Frake, on the same day, was visited in his cell in the workhouse by Simon Haslam and his secretary, and informed of his own arraignment, and also of the arrest of Leith. News of Leith took the boy’s mind off of his separation from his friends. He was told by Haslam that his certain death sentence would be commuted to a seven-year term of imprisonment or to a like period of indentured servitude if he would act as a witness at Leith’s trial. “You do want to see justice done, don’t you?” asked the barrister, sitting on a stool in the cell opposite the boy, who sat on the edge of a crude frame bed.

“Yes,” said Jack Frake. “The parson was a good man. He taught me so much. I think I was fond of him.”

Haslam had not expected so frank an admission from the boy. “Yes,” he said. “Well, to make certain that there is no room for error, you must tell me what happened that day.”

The boy searched his memory and told the barrister everything, from overhearing his mother and Leith discuss the “spirits” to the moment he hurled the globe through the parson’s study window.

“Hmm,” mused Haslam. “But you did not actually see Leith enter the rectory?”

“No, sir,” said the boy. “But I turned around once when I was running through the field in back, and I saw them standing at the window. Reverend Parmley and Leith.”

Haslam suppressed a whoop of joy. “Jack,” he said, “— may I call you ‘Jack’? — can you write?”

“Of course.”

Haslam clapped his hands together once. “This is perfect, Jack! Now, Leith will be arraigned tomorrow, but we’re not sure how he will plead. And if there is a trial, you, for legal reasons I needn’t explain to you now, will not be able to appear in person as a Crown witness. We will also leave your mother’s role in this matter out of it, as she will be punished by God better than we mortals could ever contrive.” He paused. “Have you any
objection to either point, Jack?”

The boy shook his head. “None. God won’t punish her, though,” he said. “She will punish herself by marrying another man worse than Leith.”

Again, Haslam was stunned by this frankness. “Well,” he continued, “what I wish you to do is give me an affidavit, or a written statement of everything you’ve told me. It will serve a purpose whether or not Leith claims his right to a trial. It will be examined by the jury tomorrow. Would you do that?”

The boy nodded. The barrister turned to his secretary. “Give him your things,” he said. The secretary opened his wooden case, took out quills, bottles of ink, and paper, then set the case on Jack Frake’s lap, and laid the implements on top.

Minutes later, Haslam, reading the first page of the statement as the boy worked on the second, remarked, “You have a very fine hand, Jack, almost as fine as my secretary’s. Also, you have a neat manner of composition. I have half a mind to persuade the court to indenture you to me as a clerk. Did Reverend Parmley instruct you in these arts?”

“Some,” said the boy, pausing to look up. “But it was mostly Redmagne who taught me. I helped him copy out his book,
Hyperborea
. And he made me write summaries of all of Shakespeare’s plays, and Jonson’s and Marlowe’s, too.”

“I see,” said the barrister. “Extraordinary man, this ‘Redmagne.’ He should have remained on the stage.”

Jack Frake said, “But he never left it, sir. I mean, he brought the stage down to his own life.” He paused. “Sir, would you be kind enough to tell him and Skelly that I’m all right… and that I miss them?”

Haslam turned away on the pretext of studying one of the cell walls. “No communication is permitted between you and them.”

“I don’t understand. I want to talk to them before we’re… hanged.”

Haslam faced the boy again. “Didn’t you hear me, Jack? I told you I don’t think you’ll be hanged.”

“Oh… I remember.” The boy asked, “Did they plead self-defense?”

Haslam frowned. “Yes, they did. But that plea was trounced, as it should have been.”

“I knew it would be. But I wanted to be there to hear the words.”

Haslam studied the crestfallen look on the boy’s face, then sighed. “Finish your statement, Jack,” he said, “and I’ll think about delivering a message to your friends.”

* * *

Late the next morning, Leith was brought into the courtroom, in chains, accompanied by his attorney and two bailiffs. Magistrate Ashton, a cadaverous man, glanced down at the haggard, unshaven figure below, and wondered why the man looked so pathetic. He knew that the prisoner had not been pressed for a confession, that Justice Wicker and the prosecutor had requested that Sheriff Grynsmith not resort to his customary methods of forcing one from a prisoner. There was something special about this rogue, he sensed, some connection between this prisoner and the smugglers. But he had not been invited into the intrigue, except to be urged by Prosecutor Treverlyn to expedite this man’s sentencing.

“Isham Leith, of Trelowe,” he began, “damning evidence has been examined and you are charged with the murder of Reverend Robert Parmley, on the afternoon of the 16th of April, 1744, in the rectory of the parish of St. Gwynn-by-Godolphin. How do you answer this charge?”

Leith licked his lips and looked from the magistrate to Oswald Frew, who stood nearby. Mr. Frew nodded to his client with a smile of reassurance. Leith gulped, then turned and faced the magistrate. “Guilty, milord,” he said hoarsely.

The magistrate seemed to sigh with relief. “The prisoner has entered a plea of guilty,” he said to the recording clerk. “Therefore, I sentence you, Isham Leith, to hang by the neck until dead for this reprehensible crime. The sheriff will schedule your execution. May God have mercy on your wretched soul.”

As Ashton brought down his gavel, Isham Leith fainted and fell with a crash to the floor.

Mr. Frew, disconcerted more by his client’s fainting than by the sentence, glanced briefly at Leith, whom one of the bailiffs was trying to revive with smelling salts, then up at the magistrate. “Milord,” he said, “I promised him a turn in Jamaica.”

Magistrate Ashton replied in a bored tone. “Jamaica is but a parish of Hell, Mr. Frew, and Hell is where he is going.”

Jack Frake was brought into the same courtroom not much later, escorted by Henoch Pannell and two of his men. He was informed, by Magistrate Wicker, of his
in absentia
indictment, and of his sentence. “As you were not in possession of a firearm upon your arrest,” said Wicker, “and
because of your value as a Crown witness in the matter of the murder of Reverend Parmley, this court mercifully commutes your sentence from death by hanging to another form of punishment. This court has taken the liberty of sentencing you to a term of seven years’ servitude as a felon in one of His Majesty’s colonies. Following the execution of your colleagues, you will be returned to the prison to await transportation.” Wicker paused to look at Jack Frake. “Have you anything to say to the court, Mr. Frake?”

Jack Frake, denied the chance to stand with his friends in this same courtroom, glared at the magistrate, and replied, “The court has
taken
many liberties, milord. You will have reason to remember the theft, someday.”

Magistrate Wicker bent his mouth in a placid, condescending smile. “You emulate the audacity of Mr. Smith, your colleague. How do you wish the court to understand your remark?”

“However it wishes.” Jack Frake paused. “If the court is so merciful, perhaps it would permit me to see my friends.”

“No communication is permitted between you and them,” said Wicker. “If it so pleases the Commissioner, he may explain this prohibition to the prisoner.”

Pannell stepped forward. “Further association of this youth with those criminals may have a deleterious effect on the prisoner’s character, which I and others judge to be salvageable through the tonic of hard and honest labor. I have gone to great lengths to keep them separated as far as law and decency allow.”

“I see,” said the magistrate, studying Pannell with new interest. “The prisoner may be returned,” he said, nodding to the two Revenue men. “A word with you, Mr. Pannell.” When Jack Frake had been taken out of the courtroom, he asked, “Why do you wish to keep the boy parted from his friends? I ask this out of personal curiosity.”

“To accomplish what has been accomplished, milord,” answered Pannell. “This was explained to you.”

“Yes, yes, so it was,” concurred Wicker. “But there is something else to it, I’m certain.”

Pannell shrugged. “Let us say it is a form of punishment for all of them,” he said. “The boy and his friends offended me.”

“They offend everyone, it seems.” Wicker paused. “Well, when the rope is taut around their necks, and those men are kicking for their lives, we will have done a great service to the Crown, greater than His Majesty
and the Privy Council may even realize.” He smiled. “Come to my house tonight, Mr. Pannell, and join Lord Twycross and me for dinner. I heard him speak highly of you the other day, and he hinted that great things are in store for you.”

T
WELFTH
N
IGHT, THE LAST HOLIDAY BEFORE A DROUGHT OF HOLIDAYS THAT
led to Shrove Tuesday and the beginning of Lent, was celebrated the first Monday twelve days after Christmas. It was a day of building bonfires, of wearing masks to dances, of staging plays, and of playing innocent games of forfeiture. It was a kind of post-New Year’s carnival. Skelly and Redmagne, in the Falmouth prison, and Jack Frake in the workhouse, heard some of the revelry in the streets, but paid it little attention. There were more merry-makers in town than usual; great numbers of them had come to attend the trial. Someone brought Skelly and Redmagne a Twelfth Cake, an elaborately and exquisitely decorated confection in which was buried a golden guinea. Mr. Binns, when he presented the men with the cake, said that the donor did not wish his name to be known. “He said that he sends his compliments, sirs, and wishes you both well.”

Redmagne persuaded Mr. Binns to allow him into the pen to sing songs and recite speeches from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.” His enthusiasm was such that, for a while, all the prisoners, their families, and even Mr. Binns, forgot that they were in a prison. Only Skelly knew why his friend was so full of spirits; he had received a letter from Millicent Morley, in which she promised that, no matter what the consequences to herself or to her father, she would sail for Falmouth as soon as she could.

News of Skelly’s arrest and indictment had reached London long ago.
Ladies and gentlemen of leisure had begun appearing in town days before. Respectable merchants and their wives, tradesmen, doctors, lawyers and men of dubious occupation were filling up the inns. Residents let rooms at a shilling a day. The boys in the Chrysalis Academy were promised a holiday from their studies and chores on the day of the trial, so that their schoolmasters and wardens could attend. A company of dragoons rode in and were billeted in an unused warehouse near the quay.

* * *

The trial itself was an anticlimax. Treverlyn spoke and conducted himself throughout it with an arrogance moderated by boredom and pity. It was neither pose nor theater; he knew that he had a clinched conviction and he assumed that he need not employ much lawyerly art. The verdict was a foregone conclusion in the minds of the magistrate, the jury, the prisoners, and the spectators. He knew that the jury was friendly to conviction; it was packed with “fair-traders,” and in the impaneling of juries the defense then had no role. Treverlyn built his case for the Crown with proofs and sound logic. He may as well have been demonstrating the blackness of black, or the wetness of water.

He displayed samples of what had been unshipped in the Portreach run: Italian brierwood candlesticks, Prussian cobalt blue glassware, Flemish parchment and vellum paper, French West Indies sugar, sacks of Portuguese salt, and bolts of Dutch silk. “All of this is but a small portion of what was found stored in those caves, gentlemen.” He noticed that jurors and spectators looked longingly at the objects he produced, so he ordered them removed and went quickly to his next point. He produced Skelly’s account books, meticulously kept by Chester Plume, and showed that the Crown had been defrauded of at least a hundred thousand guineas in the course of the master smuggler’s career. He painted a glorious picture of how the grenadiers had braved musket fire and fierce combat to overcome Skelly and his band of criminals. “Four stalwart men lost their lives in that fracas, and a fifth lost the sight of his left eye.” He produced witnesses — Juno Waugh, a sailor who had worked on
The Hasty Hart
, now seized by the Customs Service, and an itinerant farmhand who had been hired by Skelly as an oarsman and to help unload contraband — who provided a wealth of particulars about the Portreach run. This testimony, everyone knew, was given in exchange for amnesty on all smuggling
charges against the witnesses, plus a generous bounty of ten guineas per witness.