Jack Frake (6 page)

He took the boy inside the rectory. It was divided into rooms — a novelty to Jack Frake. There was a kitchen, a bedroom, and a study. They were small rooms, but each seemed to be a separate world to him. There was furniture,
and pictures on the wall, and in the study, shelves of books rendered inaccessible by the bric-a-brac of a bachelor scholar.

And a globe. It sat on Parmley’s desk, a small blue, gold and ochre orb of metal resting in a cradle of polished teakwood. Next to it stood a tall silver candlestick. Behind the desk and a tall leather chair, was a window that looked out on St. Gwynn and the Channel beyond.

Jack Frake tore forward past the parson, recognizing the globe without ever having seen its like before. He rested his hands on its surface, each palm over a continent, and looked for England. He found the mutton leg; it was one of the smallest islands. He thought that if it were dropped into one of the oceans, it would be lost forever. Through the window, in a break in the cottages, he could see the Channel; in his mind he was imagining the distance from St. Gwynn to the Cape of Good Hope. He turned his head and flashed a grin of discovery and gratitude at the parson, then glanced back down at the globe and rolled it in the cradle.

Parmley, watching the boy from the door, was suddenly overcome with an emotion. How many men in past ages, he asked himself, had been punished, and tortured, and even put to death for having been so happily, frankly impetuous in their thinking of the world in the same manner as the boy was thinking now? The boy’s joy was natural, and unsullied by any knowledge of what transpired in the world. He did not think that such knowledge would ever spoil it. It seemed to be so normal a manner for anyone to look at anything.

This thought was followed by another, equally stunning one: he was glad that the boy had not heard very many of his sermons on piety, humility, charity and deference to the wisdom of the Almighty. God and Jack Frake seemed antithetical; the one rendered the other utterly superfluous. Parmley leaned against the doorframe, drained by the power of the contrast and by the implications of this crisis of faith. He felt shame, and also a desire to apologize to the boy for having subjected his person to absurdities.

There was a knock on the rectory door. Angry at the interruption, Parmley whirled around and strode to answer it. He opened it, ready to vent his distracted passion on the caller. He saw a tall, bony, slovenly looking man standing there, who removed his tricorn and worried its brim nervously with the fingers of both hands. A saddled horse stood tethered to a post of the fence. Just up the dirt road were two more men sitting in a dogcart, watching and waiting with too casual an interest.

“What is it?” demanded Parmley, one hand on the edge of the door, the other on the frame.

“Reverend Parmley?” asked the man with hesitancy. He had expected a more affable greeting from a man of the cloth.

“Yes?”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, and beggin’ your pardon, sir,” said the man with a slight nod and a toothy grin. “My name is Leith. Isham Leith. I own, well, some property in Trelowe.”

Parmley frowned. “And?”

“Huldah Frake — of course, you know her — she sent her son Jack here for schoolin’ a while ago, and I’m just inquirin’ if he came.”

Parmley had never before lied in his life, and he lied now, brazenly, without calculation or conscious decision. “He’s come and gone, sir.”

“Gone? Well, we’ve —
I’ve
just come from the Trelowe road, and I didn’t see him, so I — ”

Before Leith could finish, there was a crash of glass from the back of the house. Parmley turned and rushed to the study. The window was broken. He went to it and looked out, just in time to see Jack Frake disappear behind the rear of the stable. The globe and its cradle lay broken on the ground a few feet away from the window in a spread of shattered glass and bent panels.

Isham Leith had followed the parson into the study, and growled over his shoulder, “You spoke too soon, Reverend.” He snorted scornfully, then began to sweep the parson out of his way with an arm, so he could jump out of the window to pursue the boy.

But Parmley would not be budged. He put a hand on Leith’s chest and pushed him away. “No, sir!” he exclaimed in a voice he reserved for his most booming sermons. “I spoke too late, it would seem! You and your spirit friends may leave now! Your victim has fled! God save him, and God damn you!”

Leith, shocked by both the vehement authority and the apparent revelation of his purposes, backed halfway across the study to escape them and the shaking fists of the parson. “What do you mean? What’d the tyke tell you ’bout me?”

“
He
told me nothing! But I can guess why
you’re
so concerned about him! I
know
who those men are outside! Do you think that because I am childless, I cannot interpret a child’s coy questions?”

Leith’s soul cringed under the drilling point of Parmley’s ferocious
glance. His was one of the superstitious minds of which the parson had spoken; he ascribed mystical powers to moral men and felt that his soul and motives were completely bared to Parmley’s scrutiny. “
Spirit
friends, eh? What else’d he say —?” He shut his mouth, even though he knew that he had blundered and said too much.

“It’s a hanging offense, Mr. Leith!” said Parmley, shaking a finger. “My advice to you is to leave St. Gwynn and never set foot in this town again, or I’ll have our constable clap you in irons!”

Leith bridled at the admonishment, and squinted contemptuously at the parson. “I’ll step where I please, you withered, dodderin’ old fool!” He took a taunting step forward to assert his claim.

Parmley stepped closer and raised his hand to push Leith away. Leith, stung by the defiance and also propelled by the vision of an ineluctable solution to his entrapment, exclaimed “You cockalorum!” and snatched at the first thing within his reach — a candlestick — and lashed out. The sharp metal of the base struck the parson in the neck and severed an artery. Parmley gasped, clutched at the break, and collapsed onto the bare floor.

Leith stepped back again, and watched with horrified fascination as the parson’s blood spurted, trickled, oozed, and finally stopped. It ran from the side of his neck to form a pool that fed the neat canals of the joints of the floorboards. The parson’s eyes remained fixed on the ceiling as life drained out of him. After a while, his chest stopped heaving.

Leith glanced out of the broken window and saw a tiny figure move rapidly across the moor, then dip over a hillock and vanish.

He looked at the candlestick in his hand — its base was smeared with blood — and began to toss it away when he saw that it was made of silver. He grinned madly, then barked a single laugh of triumph when he surveyed the contents of the study. Brandishing the candlestick, he shouted out the window, “You ain’t cheatin’ me, you little bugger!” Then he quickly ransacked the room.

Moments later, wide-eyed with fear but propelled by success, he emerged from the rectory carrying a valise stuffed with silver plate. In it also was a small chest — which he had found hidden behind some books — that contained paper notes and coin, including twelve golden guineas. This was the treasury of the parish of St. Gwynn. He closed the door gently behind him and looked around. No one was about but the two men in the dogcart, who had driven into the rectory yard.

“What’s up, Leith?” asked one of them, watching him with caution.
“What was all that racket?”

Leith waved a hand and hooked the handles of the valise over the horn of his saddle. “Pack it in, gents!” he exclaimed. “The kid’s done a Turpin on us!”

“What took you so long?” asked the other man, eyeing the valise and then the rectory with suspicion. “What’s that you got there?”

Leith swung into his saddle, then reached into his coat and produced a pocket pistol. He cocked it and pointed it at the second man. “Never mind what anythin’! Our business is over!” He chuckled at their gaping mouths. “In case you get the scruples,” he added, “you know me, but I know you, so that makes us square! Don’t get no ideas about collectin’ a bounty!”

“Don’t want no trouble, Leith,” said the first man, who glanced at his partner with a panicked expression. He picked up the reins and coaxed the horse through a hasty turnabout, and the two men left as quickly as the dogcart would allow them.

Isham Leith galloped past them out of St. Gwynn. West of the town he left the road and took the same shortcut across the moor that Jack Frake had taken earlier in the day. It had begun to rain lightly, but the wind drove the drops into his face and he slowed his horse to a trot. The raindrops began to cool his face, and also his mind.

On top of a hillock he stopped, and sat to watch the dogcart a mile away inching toward him along the road to Trelowe. The “spirits” — whose names were Oyston and Lapworth — had taken a room above his tavern, and would stop there to collect their baggage before leaving, no doubt in a hurry. An idea grew in his mind as the men in the distance approached. The murder of Parson Parmley would cause an uproar all along the coast, and would subside only when the parties responsible for it were brought to justice. Parties, he thought. One of them also carried a pocket pistol, the other a knife. He saw a way of letting two murders wipe out one. He had tasted murder, and found it troubled him not a whit.

He opened the valise and put a hand inside to feel the candlesticks and plate. His palm lingered covetously on the cool hard metal. He sighed, then swore. Much of the loot would have to be sacrificed. But enough would be left over. More than enough.

The boy, he was certain, could know nothing of what had happened. He could be dealt with, too, if he returned home. The little bugger
knew
, he thought. Chances were that he wouldn’t be back, but if he dared come back, he couldn’t prove a thing. Leith tapped the neck of the horse with his riding
crop and moved on.

There remained the task of inventing a story for Huldah Frake, and for his cousin, Jasper Dent, and for anyone else who might express curiosity, a story that would completely exonerate him from any association with Parmley, Oyston and Lapworth. It ought to be easy, he thought. More difficult would be explaining the money, once he decided to spend it.

G
WYNNFORD WAS MEASURABLY MORE COSMOPOLITAN THAN EITHER
S
T
. Gwynn or Trelowe; it gazed outward by necessity and could not afford the luxury of insulation. It sat nestled at the mouth of the Godolphin in a broad break of the cliff line. It boasted six public houses, including two cozy inns which were better known for their amenities for traveling gentlefolk than for their stocks of liquor or raucous milieux; a Norman-style church, called St. Brea’s, which could seat ninety, but rarely did; a miscellany of neat and well-stocked shops; a rope-works; an ironmonger and smithy; a coffeehouse; a bowling green; the parish union workhouse, which occupied a former linen-works on the outskirts of town; a wholesaler’s warehouse; and a customs house. It exported rope, iron moldings, granite, slate, salt, fish, and local agricultural produce to the rest of England, and sometimes to the Continent, and imported as much of the world as its wherewithal and the customs collector would allow. Its gabled roofs were overshadowed by the square tower of the church and by the masts of ships anchored in the jetty-protected harbor, which could accommodate four merchantmen and a fleet of smaller fishing vessels. Gwynnford’s lighters were owned by rival families who competed fiercely for the right to load and unload the merchantmen. The streets during any season bustled with activity. It was a snug, prosperous town, friendly to all who sought gainful employment and hostile to any who mistook it for beggars’ turf.

Hiram Trott, proprietor of the Sea Siren public house on Jetty Street, the main thoroughfare, bristled on occasion when he recalled how he came upon his new scullion, but counted his lucky stars nonetheless. Also, because he was penny-particular, he counted the contents of his coin box. He could chuckle at the memory, once he disallowed the minor upheaval it had caused.

A week ago he was intercepted, on one of his endless trips between the kitchen and the victuals pantry in the backyard of the establishment, by a hatless, rain-soaked imp who stepped out of the darkness directly into his path. Before he could reach for the butcher’s knife tucked securely between his apron and ample stomach, the imp had stared up at him and asked, “Sir, would you employ me?”

“You gave me a fright!” he bellowed at the intruder. Trott was a stocky man of six feet, and he loomed over the boy and scowled down at him. The creature was most likely a pauper — he had hired a few of that ilk in the past, much to his grief, for they had been thieves — but this one somehow did not exude their air of artful earnestness. “Employ
you
? What for?”

“Because the boy you have now lets the soldiers steal your plate and cutlery. He even sees them break your candles in half and light what’s left so you don’t notice, but never tells you. Your spit isn’t turned enough, so your meats and fish are burned on one side and not done on the other. Your serving wench talks too much to your dishonest patrons and the ones who don’t buy much, and ignores the honest ones. Your floor isn’t swept clean, so rats and mice come out and eat the scraps and leave droppings — ”

“Ho!” exclaimed Trott. “Where’s your leave to say a bit of that? I ain’t never seen you at one of my tables!”

“I watched from the window,” said the boy.

Everything he said was true, and more, thought Trott. The staff so accused, however, happened to be his son and daughter. Since his wife had died a year ago, there had been no one to watch over his progeny; he commanded more respect from his regulars than from his offspring. He could toss two soldiers out the door at one time and was impervious to anyone’s fist, yet his children did not fear him. He had let them work on their own terms; good help or bad was hard to find on any terms. Custom had never been better, yet his profits were inexplicably slipping. And here was someone willing to work. It was the first instance that anyone — himself included — had offered so frank a critique of his trade’s deficiencies and a desire to correct them.