Jack Frake (40 page)

A year was added to Jack Frake’s term of indenture, for striking an officer of the Crown. He was put into the prisoners’ pen of Falmouth
Prison, and leg irons fixed to his ankles. With other prisoners, he was taken each morning from the prison to the King’s Pipe to help unload contraband tobacco and burn it in the great furnace. On other days he was escorted to the yard in the rear of the customs house, where he was put to work destroying other seized contraband: French molasses, hats made in the colonies for illicit sale in England, and other proscribed wares. He would have recognized the goods taken from Skelly’s caves, but these did not pass through his hands. Wherever he went, he was closely guarded.

His soul retreated into a kind of self-imposed numbness in which he refused to let himself feel despair or pain, hope or joy. It allowed him to survive the bland cruelties and crudities of prison life. He said little, and did what he was told. He noted, from the depths of his isolation, how most of his fellow prisoners adjusted to their captivity. But neither they nor his captors bothered him much, for there was in his expression and bearing a deceptive calm which they correctly assessed as a tension that could explode for any reason. He grew thinner, and sallow. He became as inured to the prison food as he was to the things he witnessed in the place. Captains of merchantmen and agents of men who bought and sold indentured felons came to pick men and women for transportation to the colonies. On these occasions, Jack Frake stared murderously at the men, behavior which made them conclude that the boy belonged in Bedlam, and so was never chosen for a voyage.

He was waiting for Captain Ramshaw.

* * *

Early in March, the
Sparrowhawk
dropped anchor in Falmouth Harbor. The frigate-sized ship, only a few years older than Jack Frake, was built in Portsmouth as a troop and supply ship, in anticipation of another war with France or Spain. But the war did not occur, and the Naval Board ordered it sold before construction of it was completed. A group of London merchants bought it, among them John Ramshaw, who was elected to be its captain. Like most merchantmen in those times, it was armed. It was one hundred and sixty-five feet long, with a beam of forty feet. Its bowsprit was sixty feet, and its main mast was one hundred and sixty feet high. Its sail area was eighteen thousand square feet; it displaced eleven hundred tons. It had two decks, and carried twenty 18-pound guns, plus ten “Quakers,” which were painted lengths of oak fashioned to look like cannon and to give
pirates and privateers second thoughts about attacking the ship. In addition, it carried two swivel guns, one fore and one aft. These were small cannon mounted on stanchions, which could be pivoted in any direction to fire at specific targets on an attacking vessel: sharpshooters in the rigging, the pilot at the wheel, or gun crews. The
Sparrowhawk
had been attacked twice in her career by French privateers, and had repelled both assaults. Its crew numbered eighty men; it could carry one hundred passengers when the cargo holds were not full.

Captain John Ramshaw came ashore to buy extra provisions for the trip back across the Atlantic to the colonies, to pick up mail, to hire some extra hands for the crew, and to see if it was true that there was a lone survivor of the Skelly gang, as he had heard in London. His vessel was loaded with cargo, paying passengers, redemptioners, several refugee Huguenot families, and a few felons whose indentures he bought in London. He held the indentures of the redemptioners and convicts alike, and would sell them to colonials. He also carried on board some Crown appointees, tax collectors for the ports of Savannah, Newport, and Charleston. In Southampton, where he stopped to purchase extra sailcloth and various ship’s stores, a company of marines who were to join Admiral Knowles’s fleet in the Caribbean was imposed on him at the last moment, and he was obliged to lay in extra supplies for them on the voyage. This delay caused the
Sparrowhawk
to miss joining a Navy-escorted convoy of merchantmen that rendezvoused near Land’s End and departed.

Ramshaw was led into the prisoners’ pen by Mr. Binns, with whom he had dealt before. Mr. Binns pointed out the good prisoners and the bad among the convicted felons. Ramshaw espied Jack Frake in a corner of the pen just as the boy saw him. Before the boy could open his mouth or show any kind of recognition, Ramshaw winked and shook his head imperceptibly. The captain followed the jailer around, listening to his patter. At length, he asked, pointing to the boy, “Who’s that? I’ll need an extra cabin boy for all the passengers I’m carrying, and he looks nimble enough.”

“Him? He was with the Skelly gang. Would’ve been hung with Skelly and Smith, but he was mixed up in some other criminal matter, and so old Twycross gave him transportation.”

“Seven years?”

“Eight,” said Mr. Binns. “He bloodied the Revenue Commissioner’s nose at the hanging. So Milord Wicker tacked an extra year to his sentence. Strange boy. Know what he did? He jumped on his mates’ ropes and hanged
them himself. Weren’t no show to it then. Lots of folks felt put out by it. Traveled all that way to see Skelly run on air, and he dies like that!” said the jailer with a snap of his fingers. “And all ’cause of that Frake lad.”

Ramshaw studied the jailer. “Maybe the lad was being merciful,” he suggested.

Mr. Binns shook his head emphatically. “Weren’t his business being merciful. That’s the court’s business.”

“Well, I’ll take him. The colonies are screaming for apprentices.”

Jack Frake exchanged his leg-irons for jougs, a padlocked iron collar. The collar belonged to Ramshaw, and he was obliged to fasten the contraption around Jack Frake’s neck before the bailiff surrendered custody of the prisoner. And in his cabin, Ramshaw told the boy, “You will have the run of the ship, but you must wear the jougs. There are Crown officials on board, and those marines. You’re not likely to jump overboard and swim for it wearing that blasted collar. You’d drown. You’ll be assigned deck duties, repairing sails and such, and train with one of my gun crews. I won’t send you up in the rigging, of course, because of that collar. And I won’t stow you with the other convicts, though you’ll help feed the poor bastards. You’ll quarter with the other boys. I won’t need to tell them to spare you their initiation foolery. They’ll be afraid of you, for a while. You’re a piece of a legend, Jack, and they’ll respect you for that. Now, I know some decent men in the colonies, particularly in Virginia, and I’ll arrange to hand you over to one of them. It’s the best I can do for you, son.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Now, have some chocolate and bread and cheese, and tell me everything that happened. Skelly was a great friend of mine… ”

Ramshaw stood with Jack Frake on the deck as the
Sparrowhawk
got under way. When it passed Tragedy Point, passengers and crew pointed to the ruins of Clowance Castle — “Built by Sir Henry Clowance and his Royalists, but the Roundheads smashed it with artillery and slew every man-jack inside, because none of them would surrender” — and to the two indistinct black figures that seemed to cling to the cliffside near the foot of the ruin. “That’s Skelly and his henchman, O’Such,” commented one of the officials standing near them. “I heard in town that even on the gallows they cursed the king.”

“How?” asked another passenger.

“One sung Queen Mary’s birthday song, and the other sung our anthem. What brazen effrontery! They got what they deserved.”

Ramshaw turned to the official and said, “Sir, Mr. Skelly had more right to sing that anthem than you will ever have. He has my adulation, and you have my contempt.” He smiled at the offended official. “And if you don’t wish to find amusing things in your meals on this voyage, pray keep your mouth sealed on the matter of Skelly.”

“Are you saying that you were a friend of his?” asked the official with sly smugness.

“I’m saying what I’m saying, sir. Skelly added happiness to men’s lives. You and your ilk could never make that claim. Don’t pursue the subject. I am not a patient man.”

The surprised official sniffed and walked away to another part of the deck.

Jack Frake reached for his hat to remove it in a final salute, then remembered that he had no hat. He stood watching the cliffside until the black blots disappeared. He felt a great, tired sadness. He wondered if he would ever see England again, or ever want to see it again. It was the only land he knew; the colonies were an abstraction to him, an unknown realm. He knew their geography as well as had Skelly and Redmagne, but they were still an alien land to him. He was glad the ship was not close enough for him to see the features of the iron-gibbeted bodies; gibbeted criminals on posts dotted the land and it was not a pleasant sight. This was not how he wanted to remember his friends. The two figures on the receding cliffside marred his conception of what England was. His own servitude — the weight of the collar around his neck — was so personal an affront that to reflect on its injustice would be redundant.

He remembered the first time he had seen England from this vantage point, from the deck of the
Ariadne
, in the dead of night, long ago. For some reason he could not now explain, he felt a desire to shout “Huzza!” as he did then, but here in the daylight, to celebrate some bigger perspective. At the same time, he knew that he was not leaving something behind — something he had learned from the two figures on the cliffside — but taking it with him. In the next instant, he realized that he could measure the difference between what he was then, on the
Ariadne
, and what he was now. Then, he had celebrated the actual proof of the accuracy of some lines and colored shapes on a globe. Now, he could celebrate the actual proof of the shape of his own soul, a shape he was beginning to become aware of for the first time.

He did not shout “Huzza!” Instead, he placed a hand on his chest, near
his heart, in possession of the greater thing he was, in a last salute to the men he knew once possessed themselves in the same precious manner, and in dedication to what was possible to himself.

A while later, as he roamed the deck to familiarize himself with what would be his home for two months, he heard a voice behind him. “Look, Mama! It’s Jeremy Jeamer! He’s Redmagne’s friend! They saved us from the bad men!”

Jack Frake turned around and saw a man, a woman, and little Etain McRae. Too engrossed in his own thoughts, he smiled briefly at the girl, but noticed the woman looking at him with an interest that went beyond curiosity about his iron collar. She seemed to know why he was wearing it. He felt that she wanted to speak to him, but she glanced at her husband and turned away. He learned later that she was Madeline McRae, the girl’s mother, and early in the voyage she managed to take him aside and ask about her governess. He told her what he knew, or rather, what he had heard from prisoners’ talk in Falmouth Prison: that a woman’s body was found floating in the Channel in the vicinity of Tragedy Point, and that it was said to be that of the woman who called to Redmagne at the gallows.

Madeline McRae dabbed an eye with a handkerchief. “I was afraid of that,” she said in a French accent. “I knew it had to be that.” She reached into her purse and gave Jack Frake a silver coin. “This is but a token of my thanks, Mr. Frake. I cannot repay you or your friend for what you did when my daughter was on the coach last summer. But you will be welcome at my house in Caxton any time.”

* * *

But for two storms, it was an uneventful crossing. Early one morning, however, a month and a week into the voyage, the
Sparrowhawk
vanished into a vast fog bank which stretched from horizon to horizon, north to south. When it re-entered the sunlight, twenty minutes had passed when the lookout reported sails emerging from the phenomenon behind them. Ramshaw came up from his cabin and studied the distant ship with his spyglass. He exclaimed to his sailing master and the lieutenant of marines, “It’s the
L’Fléau
, blast it! Robichaux’s following our wake! Full sails, Mr. Cutter! Tell the crew to take gun stations! Get the passengers down below, and give a gun to any one of them that’s willing to fight!”

Out of the fog crept
L’Fléau
, a privateer commanded by Paul
Robichaux.
L’Fléau
was a full frigate with forty-five guns of comparable size to the
Sparrowhawk
’s, and a crew of three hundred composed of Frenchmen, Irishmen, Spanish and Dutchmen. Robichaux, who carried letters of marque from Louis, the King of France, had made a career of harrying English merchantmen, seizing their vessels and cargoes, and holding their crews for ransom. French jails were full of prisoners he had taken over a period of five years. Even though England was no longer an active belligerent in the War of the Austrian Succession, English shipping was fair game to French and Spanish privateers.

“She’s giving chase,” said Ramshaw. “She’ll catch up with us soon.” The privateer followed the merchantman for half an hour, each minute bringing it yards closer to the
Sparrowhawk
.

As
L’Fléau
’s sails came closer, Ramshaw called the Huguenots to his cabin and advised them that it was best that they stay below, and not take up arms. But the Huguenots would have none of that. “We are going to freedom,” said the spokesman for the group. “It would be folly not to want to fight for it when it is so close.”

“Consider this, sirs,” replied Ramshaw. “If you people are taken under arms, your menfolk will be executed as traitors and your families sold into slavery in the French Indies or Barbary. But if you’re taken as passengers, you’ll be imprisoned with us, and ransom demands sent to your kin in France.”

The Huguenot spokesman, a tall, balding educated-looking man, answered, “We are done with such options, Captain. We are prepared to accept the consequences of fighting our countrymen.”

“So be it, gentlemen,” said Ramshaw.

Jack Frake had trained to be a powder monkey for the aft swivel gun. It was his job to fetch powder and balls from the magazine and to help load the gun. Ramshaw’s gun crews were as well trained and disciplined as any warship’s; many of his men were Royal Navy deserters working for him for the better pay and under assumed names.