War (36 page)

Hugh said, “I wish I could sketch her for you, John. Then you could have that to keep.”

“I will not forget her face,” answered Proudlocks, nodding in thanks but not looking up. He forced himself to rise. “Will you put her with the others, where they are putting the fallen?”

“Yes.”

Proudlocks smiled sadly at Hugh Kenrick. He raised an arm and gripped one of his friend’s shoulders. “You will join us. Meum Hall is doomed, as well. There are hard years ahead of us.”

“Yes,” answered Hugh. “Hard years.”

Proudlocks glanced once again at Lydia Heathcoate, then turned and sprinted away.

Hugh stooped and lifted the body of the woman again, and walked slowly back to the empty lot. When at last he mounted his horse and rode out of Caxton, more people from the outlying parts of the county were streaming into town, to see what had happened, or to determine what had happened to relatives or friends. The last persons he noticed were Barbara Vishonn and a servant in a riding chair, arriving anxiously from Enderly.

* * *

Major Ragsdale had inspected the room assigned to him on the second floor of the Gramatan Inn, and approved of it. His battalion was being billeted in Safford’s tavern and in an empty shop across from it. He had sent for his and his officer’s baggage before the
Sparrowhawk
departed upriver, and set a lieutenant to work writing a report in the battalion’s daybook. He was coming back downstairs to the tavern below it when one of Jared Hunt’s Customs men saw him and approached. “Major, sir,” said the man, “Mr. Hunt suggests that, if you have the time and when your men are rested, you might want to visit the plantations of two of the rebel leaders. He asked me to show you the way. They are not far.”

“Whose plantations, sir?”

“One owned by Jock Fraser, who is a lieutenant in that militia. And Sachem Hall, owned by an Indian, John Proudlocks, who is a sergeant in the militia. They fired on your men.”

“Oh?” said Ragsdale. “The chap who potted the reverend? That must be him. Well, sir, my officers and I will have something to eat here first, and then we will see to it. You will join us, of course, and inform us what we are to do once we call on these places.” He smiled, looked convivial, and added with a wink, “And, you may also tell us a little about your Mr. Hunt. He is doubtless the most pushing man in service I have ever met, excepting myself.”

* * *

Buell Tragle, master of the
Sparrowhawk
, ordered both anchors dropped when the vessel was positioned in the York directly opposite Morland Hall, as close to the riverbank as he could manage. There were ten guns on the port side, but only five had crews standing by. Jared Hunt waited patiently while other crewmen secured the sails above and until Tragle was satisfied that the merchantman would not drift from her position.

It was understood between Tragle and Hunt that Hunt was the nominal captain, because the vessel was now Customs property, and that he would command the crew in this aspect of the task at hand. One of the crewmen was a deserter from the navy, a former master gunner who was hired on with a group of unemployed seamen in Norfolk. He advised Hunt of the best way to assault a stationary shore target. Below decks was the ordnance that the vessel usually carried; to it had been added ordnance from a naval depot. Hunt did not need to worry about wasting shots.

One gun was consequently loaded with ball and fired to establish range. The violence of the report made Hunt start and nearly deafened him. Nearby waterfowl rose from the water and flew off, and birds in the trees near the great house swarmed away in confusion. Until now, Hunt had never heard a gun fired before, except in London from a distance, when troops were on parade. He watched closely from the quarterdeck to see where the ball landed. He observed a little puff of dust raised a few yards from the great house and a sapling whip back and forth as the ball came to rest against it. Some figures appeared in front of the house. With a spyglass he had appropriated from Captain Geary, he saw that they were two women and a man. Morland staff, he presumed.

Hunt shouted down to the gunners, “Fire another ball, and hit the house.”

This was done. The ball struck a corner. Some bricks and masonry tumbled to the ground. The figures darted away and disappeared.

“We’ve fixed the right amount of powder to reach the house, sir,” the master gunner shouted up to Hunt.

“Good. Now, gentlemen, try a carcass.”

The carcass, or incendiary shot, took more time to prepare and load. Its components also had to be brought up by powder monkeys from below deck. In the meantime, the crews of the first two guns swabbed their weapons and prepared their own carcasses.

“Fire when you are ready,” shouted Hunt. The third gun was fired. The projectile, a ball to which was attached by iron rings a “sabot” or sealed shoe containing the still glowing embers of wood and fragments of metal heated in the galley, hurtled at half the speed of sound over the water, bluff, and the great lawn. It struck the house below one of the second-story windows, exploding on impact and sending burning material in a short-lived star onto the lawn.

But luck was with Jared Hunt. He did not know it yet; one of the embers shot upward and fell onto the shingled roof of the great house. He could not yet see the fragment and its wind-swept column of white smoke. “Excellent,” he said. “Let’s see how quickly we can set the place ablaze. I won’t leave here until nothing stands but the brick walls. And if we can manage it, not even those.” He stepped down from the quarterdeck and addressed the master gunner. “In the meantime, two of your guns here can lob balls over the house to see if we can bring down some of the out buildings. I want this place rendered useless, fit only for the domicile of beggars.”

“Yes, sir,” said the master gunner. It did not matter to him what the Customs man’s goals were. He volunteered, “These guns won’t reach the fields beyond the house.”

Hunt shrugged. “Major Ragsdale’s fellows will visit the fields and burn them. We will leave the rebel nothing to salvage.”

For the next two hours, the guns of the
Sparrowhawk
fired incessantly at the great house. Some of the carcasses fell short of their target to land in the lawn’s manicured shrubbery, setting it ablaze. Hunt chuckled when he saw figures rushing madly around the lawn with pails of water, then give up and disappear. But most of the shells struck the house, a few smashing
through the windows. Flames began to lick from them on both floors. With a grunt of satisfaction, Hunt saw a fire spread over the roof, and smoke rise from holes made by balls that had pierced the roof.

Hunt considered his task complete when the black rectangles of all the windows on both floors flared red with orange fire. The entire roof was on fire now, collapsing all of a sudden into the house. Hunt noticed some out buildings to the side of the inferno. The kitchen, he presumed. He was about to ask his gunners if they could perhaps land a few shells on them, when the east wall abruptly crumbled and fell onto the structures. He laughed and shouted down from the quarterdeck to the master gunner, “There’s roasting for you, sir! Fine, absolutely fine work!”

The master gunner nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment, then raised his arm and pointed in a direction beyond the conflagration. “Look, Mr. Hunt. This isn’t the only house burning.”

Hunt turned and saw two pillars of smoke over some woods, separated by a few miles. “Ah! Major Ragsdale is roasting geese, as well!”

* * *

It was a hot, humid August evening. The heat seemed to emanate from the fires.

The remnants of the Queen Anne Volunteer Company — reduced by casualties to twenty men — stood in some woods on the Otway place and, across the wide fields abandoned to scrub and weeds, watched the destruction of Morland Hall. They, too, had observed the smoke rising in the direction of Sachem Hall and Jock Fraser’s place.

Jack Frake stood alone, spyglass clutched in both hands behind his back. His men stood behind him at a distance, or rested on boulders or on trees felled by the hurricane that had ruined the Otway plantation years ago. Jock Fraser and John Proudlocks stood apart directly behind him.

Jack Frake’s sight was fixed on what he could discern of the blackened walls and the dying red glow in the shell of the great house of Morland. If he detected movement, he would raise the spyglass to identify it. About an hour before, just as the
Sparrowhawk
hoisted its anchors and drifted back downriver, he noticed another kind of red moving around the plantation. He saw that it was a company of marines. Soon after their arrival, more fires broke out, in the tenants’ quarters and in the fields.

Henry Buckle, Proudlocks’s cooper, arrived on horseback just before
dusk to inform his employer that Sachem Hall had been burned to the ground, the out buildings fired, and the crops destroyed. He added that he had seen a company of marines marching to Jock Fraser’s place. “And Mr. Maxwell the tanner said he saw Mr. Hurry and Mr. Robbins amongst the dead in town,” he said to Jack Frake.

This Jack Frake had guessed, or that they had been wounded or captured. His business agent and steward had rushed to join the Company as it marched into Caxton from the Hove Stream Bridge. He had felt a pride for them when he noticed them then.

“What of Mr. Corsin?” Proudlocks had asked of his business agent. “And the others?”

“Mr. Corsin left in the riding chair for Williamsburg, sir,” said Buckle, “before the redcoats showed up. I saw him take his traveling bag. The rest of our people are making plans to see kin hereabouts, or go west away from such troubles.”

At the moment, Jack Frake looked serene and untroubled. But many in the Company knew better. Proudlocks stepped forward and said to his friend, “That is the end of it.”

Jack Frake at first said nothing. It was the most melancholy statement he had ever heard Proudlocks utter. His friend returned hours before, before Buckle appeared, and other than briefly describing what he had seen in town, remained quiet. Jack Frake knew the quality of the man’s silence. Taking Proudlocks aside, he asked him what was wrong. Proudlocks told him about Lydia Heathcoate. “Mr. Kenrick brought her to me, from her shop. I think she died instantly, when the marines fired on Mr. Vishonn’s men. Her last words to me were that they burned our ensign. And my last words to her were to go back inside the shop, where she would be safe, she would sew another.”

Jack Frake could only say, “I’m sorry, John.” It sounded hollow, but was not. Proudlocks knew the quality of his friend’s courtesies.

Now he said, “Yes, that is the end of it.” After a moment, Jack Frake asked, “Will you come with me to check on the staff and tenants? Just you and I. The rest of the Company will stay here with Jock.”

Proudlocks nodded. “Of course.”

After giving orders to Fraser, Jack Frake and Proudlocks crossed the darkened field and cautiously approached the worm fence that divided Morland from the Otway property. They saw figures milling around in the glow of the dying fire in the great house, and in front of the charred
remains of the tenants’ quarters, work sheds, and stable. The odors of burnt tobacco and corn hung in the air. There did not seem to be any marines about.

The somber welcome Jack Frake and Proudlocks received from the staff and tenants when they strode together into the open ensured them that they were not risking capture by the marines. Surrounded by the people they had known and worked with for years, all their faces lit sharply by flambeaux and fire, they told them about the fight in town, and learned what had happened at Morland.

There had been only one casualty, Henry Dakin, the cooper, who was in his shed when a ball smashed through the roof. Ruth Dakin, his wife and the housekeeping servant, asked Jack Frake for permission to bury him somewhere on the grounds. He assented. Mary Beck, the cook, and her husband Israel produced the portrait of Etáin, the crystal decanter and glasses, and some of their employer’s clothes they had managed to save from the house. “It was horrible, Mr. Frake,” said the cook. “There was no time to save anything else. Please forgive us.”

Jack Frake assured them that it was all right. When they told him they planned to go to Richmond to stay with friends, he said, “Take the portrait and the other things with you. I’ll fetch them another day.” Most of the staff and tenants said they would be leaving the county for Williamsburg and other towns.

“Mr. Kenrick came by and said some of us could stay at his place until we were ready to go,” said George Passmore, the overseer.

“What will you do now?” asked Susannah Giddens, the housekeeper.

“Fight on,” Jack Frake answered.

A few of the men said they wished to join the Company, including Mouse and some of the other black tenants. “We’ve no home now, sir, and no kin to turn to,” said Moses Topham, the carpenter. “We want to fight the Crown that did this.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” said Jack Frake. “The Company has a cache of arms it can outfit you with. And I understand that the Virginia Convention is organizing the militia here. You might consider enlisting in one of the other county militias, too. The Congress has approved an army, as well.”

“Where would we march to?” asked Aymer Crompton, the brickmaker.

“Nowhere, at the moment. The Company will stay here until we have accomplished one task.”

Surprised by this statement, John Proudlocks turned to Jack Frake and asked, “Which is what?”

Jack Frake turned and looked at the scorched walls of the great house. He nodded once, and answered, “Destroy the
Sparrowhawk
.”

“Why?” asked Proudlocks.

Jack Frake smiled. “To cut the last tie, John. To assert our independence.”

W
hen the world and all that is familiar in it to a man begin to crash around him, and he is helpless to combat the causes or consequences, he may retreat into moroseness, or seek refuge in drink or in a trivial distraction. He cannot remain indifferent to the fate of things he has long cared about, or depended upon. A cataclysm requires an action. A more fatal action, however, than lapsing into grim sullenness, inebriated forgetfulness, or reckless diversion, is the paralysis of hopelessness.

Hugh Kenrick had rarely felt it. When he had, he resented it, fought it, and silently cursed it. He did not wish to surrender to the inevitable. He did not believe in the inevitable. Hopelessness was an unwelcome intruder in his soul.

When that gloating harpy chanced to invade his soul to find a perch in it, Hugh’s past had served as its purging antidote. This evening, he sought consolation in it, to draw strength from a time when his vision of the future did not include the things such as he had seen today in Caxton and at Morland Hall. His past had always birthed his future, and allowed him to act to reach it. “I have done this, and now I shall do that.” There was nothing to stop him but himself. When he needed that reassurance, mere recollection was usually enough. But this evening he felt a need to put his hands on the physical evidence of his past.

He had just finished advising his staff and tenants of what had happened in Caxton, and warning them not to go into town while the marines were there, when the
Sparrowhawk
began its bombardment of Morland Hall. He remembered the words of the farmer, that the vessel had gone upriver to do more mischief. He instantly remounted his horse and galloped from Meum Hall and over the path that connected the plantations. When he arrived at Morland, all he could do was watch Jack Frake’s homebeing turned into a funeral pyre.

The
Sparrowhawk
not only had set fire to the great house, but also was hurtling balls over it to fall onto many of the out buildings close to it. Many of the projectiles spat out dirt and stone as they fell and gouged out soil, and caused knots of the tenants and staff standing in the field to dart out of the way when the iron bounded a few yards more.

Hugh rode to some woods that bordered the great house and led to the bluff overlooking the river, the better to see the vessel. The smoke from the guns hung in the humid, unmoving August air alongside the
Sparrowhawk
, obscuring the deck and the figures on it before rising languidly to her masts. Every few minutes a flash would stab through the white haze, and a projectile strike the house or fly over it. He thought: That ship brought the both of us here, years apart, and now it has come to take us back. Jared Hunt was likely on that vessel. He thought: My uncle the Earl of Danvers sent that man to wreak a terrible vengeance on me. He is as determined to kill me as I am to live. Why does he wait?

Hugh wondered if he could ever resolve to destroy a man. Not just oppose him and defeat him, but eradicate him, so that he was no longer a threat or a concern to anyone. It would be necessary to extinguish that man, he thought, for he was an arm of malevolence, an envoy of hate.

Hugh shuddered at the prospect of removing Hunt from the realm of the living. He felt that it was too much like his uncle’s resolve to destroy him.

Hugh rode back to the fields past the burning great house and addressed the first person he encountered, Israel Beck, Jack Frake’s bookkeeper. He told this man, first, that Obedience Robbins and William Hurry were dead, and then that he would be happy to allow the staff to stay at Meum Hall or with his own tenants until they made further arrangements. “I cannot stay here and watch this,” he concluded. “There is nothing I can do to stop it.” Even as he spoke, a ball struck the roof of the house that Robbins, Hurry, and Beck and his wife lived in. Some fragments from the impact showered him and Beck, stinging their hands and faces.

Hugh rode back to Meum Hall along the connecting path. On his way, he encountered groups of his own tenants who had left their chores to walk to Morland to witness the spectacle or perhaps to offer assistance. He said nothing to them. They would see for themselves what might be the future of Meum Hall.

Back in his study, he paced back and forth, feeling restless but unable to find a task to occupy his mind. About an hour after his return, the sounds of the bombardment of Morland ceased. Hulton came in and discreetly enquired about his needs. Hugh could only smile. “There is nothing you can do for me,” he answered. “Go to Morland and see if you can help anyone there.”

“Why is that ship harming your friend’s place?” asked the former
sergeant and valet.

“Because my friend deserted the Crown, as well,” Hugh replied.

Hulton nodded in tentative understanding, and withdrew from the study.

He was fond of Hulton, and glad to have him back. Some inexplicable connection caused him to glance at the shelf of juvenilia that he had put at the bottom of one of his bookcases. He saw copybooks from his tutoring days at Danvers and at Dr. Comyn’s School in London. He felt a sudden urge to retreat into his past. He took a handful of them and took them to his desk.

He found the one in which he had written, on the day that he had neglected to bow to the Duke of Cumberland, “I would die inside, and nourish a wrong.”
Hello
, he said in his mind to that boy.
I have been true to you.

In another copybook from his later education in Dr. Comyn’s School, he found an episode from one of his conflicts with an instructor there over a translation exercise from Alfred the Great’s translation of Boethius’s
De Consolatione Philosophiæ
, or
The Consolations of Philosophy
, into English from the Latin:

“True high birth is of the mind, not of the flesh; and every man that is given over to vices foresaketh his Creator, and his origin, and his birth, and loseth rank till he fall to low estate.”

The surprise written assignment by the instructor was to translate in class the Latin into English, without having seen Alfred’s translation or the contemporary translation of it from the Anglo-Saxon by a scholar from John Locke’s time. The instructor then graded the students’ translations according to how closely each matched Alfred’s. Hugh had been awarded his class’s only top mark by the instructor. This man, however, felt obliged to correct Hugh’s parenthetical substitution in a lengthy digression of “nature” for “Creator,” subjecting Hugh to a lecture that was more a disciplinary reprimand than instruction. Hugh conceded the fault, answering that since there were elements of Christian Platonism in the quotation, it all depended on one’s definition of vice, as well. “Providing that an agreed definition of it may be arrived at, a man of reason, however, will eschew vice for vastly different reasons, reasons at odds with those which would move a devout man to eschew it.”

He had written an impish comment in the margin of the copybook page on which he had narrated the episode, one that captured the instructor’s
rejection of his counter-arguments: “Certain clerisy will not tolerate heresy!” And, prompted and intrigued by the quotation in that assignment, Hugh subsequently read the translated
De Consolatione
, not caring for most of it, but finding in it little gems of insight and observation.

Hugh thought now: There were so many little truths admixed in so much wrong-headedness. Someday, a philosopher will take all those little truths and formulate a philosophy that cannot be refuted or opposed or contradicted. He smiled for the first time today. Glorious Swain thought I would be the one to accomplish that task. To fashion a golden orrery, that man had called it. To draw the map to Olympus. To conceive of a man-ennobling ethic that did not need the angel-water of any church to give it sanctity, as another Pippin had described it. Nor the leave of a sovereign.

No, he told himself. I am not the one for that task. I am more like King Alfred, the scholar, inventor, and unifier, and can only contribute notes and isolated truths and see the mere aura of a great possibility. If this new country is ever born, he thought, it will give a greater mind than my own the chance to fashion that orrery, to draw that map, to construe that ethic. It is the only instance of due deference I could ever grant, to a person I may never know.

Then his glance fell on the two volumes on his shelf of Romney Marsh’s
Hyperborea: or, the Adventures of Drury Trantham, Shipwrecked Merchant, in the Unexplored Northern Regions
. Ah! There was another wonderful chapter from his youth, his discovery of that novel! He had not read it in years. He rose instantly and eagerly retrieved the books from the shelf, took them back to his desk, and was soon lost in rereading his favorite passages in the novel. He saw himself in that epic, just as he saw himself in the present one. He felt no difference in spirit between them.

Some hours later, after it had grown dark, he felt a mere twinge of irritation when Spears came in and announced the presence of Edgar Cullis. He closed a book and frowned. He had no reason to see the man ever again, just as he presumed that Cullis had no reason to see him. “I’ll see him on the porch, Spears. Thank you.” Hugh rose a minute later and left the study.

Edgar Cullis stood under the lit lantern that was suspended from the roof of the porch. He wore a suit of clothes different from those Hugh had seen him wearing in Caxton. He did not look dazed, or lost. His face seemed older somehow, and drawn. When Hugh came out, he turned and nodded.

“Yes, Mr. Cullis?” asked Hugh. He stood on the opposite side of the
porch steps from the man.

“I came here to tell you that I am leaving Caxton, and the county. My father has…disowned me, and asked me to vacate his home at my earliest convenience. He holds me responsible for what happened today. I will leave tomorrow for Williamsburg, to stay with my cousin there, and arrange for my things to be sent there, as well. Then I shall make my way to Hampton, and, after I have settled some business and divested my clients, depart for England. I do not wish to be present when Virginia is subdued by the Crown.” Cullis paused to take a deep breath, then added, “I tell you this now because you will learn of it soon enough.”

Hugh cocked his head in indifference. “You could have sent me a note, sir, and saved yourself the trouble of coming here.”

Cullis shook his head. “No, that would not have been to my pleasure. I want you to know that I hold
you
responsible for what happened here. You have always astounded me with the hubris of your convictions, with your immoderate pride in them, and with the betrayal of your natural station. I would say that the insufferable confidence that you put on the rightness of your ideas and actions has never failed to rankle me and many others. But it does not merely rankle. It offends. Perhaps it would profit you if you returned to England to rediscover your origins and your heritage. The colonies are not for you.” He scoffed. “They are certainly no longer for me.”

“I must agree with you, Mr. Cullis. You no longer belong here. This is a new country. However, I have not betrayed my natural station, which is here. As for the rest, I respectfully disagree, and offer no apology for having offended you or anyone else.” But Hugh was puzzled by the man’s presence. “Why did you come here to tell me this, sir? That you have, smacks of a certain feather of hubris itself.”

“To prove to you that I have courage, as well.”

Hugh shook his head. “Granted, that took courage. Would that you had found it when you pondered desertion of the Resolves ten years ago.”

“You will never forgive me for that, will you?”

Hugh shook his head. “Never.”

“Then I am finished here. Good night to you, sir.” Edgar Cullis stepped off the porch onto the path and approached his horse tethered to the post in front.

When he had mounted it, Hugh asked Cullis before he could ride away, “Do you remember the day I first addressed the House, Mr. Cullis, over the wording of the memorial, and how excited you were over the row I raised?
We met outside the Capitol, in a chill evening.”

Cullis scowled. What he was then, he did not care to contemplate. “I remember it. What of it?”

Hugh said, in the manner of a quotation, “Surely, sir, you know that as bees are lured by the pollen of flowers, bullies are drawn by the funk of the timid.” He smiled. “The man to whom I offered that fillip of advice, is the man I wish to remember. Thank you for all your assistance, in those days.”

Cullis looked wounded. He sniffed once, and remarked, “
Your
feather of hubris, sir, will be the death of you, some day.” He muttered an inaudible imprecation beneath his breath, angrily yanked the reins of his mount around, and rode away at a canter.

* * *

Jared Hunt was sitting at a large round table in the Gramatan Inn with his Customs men, and also with Major Ragsdale and his officers, when Edgar Cullis entered the establishment.

“Well, look who has arrived!” announced Hunt to his companions, nodding to the door. “Seems that someone administered him an ordinate dose of smelling salts!” Hunt had been drinking, more than any of his companions. He was about to stand and signal to the lawyer, but Cullis saw him first and came over. At Hunt’s invitation, he found a chair and sat down at the table.

“I know where you can find Mr. Frake and his renegades, sir,” he said without preamble. “They are at the Otway place. You might also find a veritable arsenal there, as well, if I am to believe my informant.”

Hunt raised his eyebrows in pleased surprise. “Do you refer to that mess of ruins by the little inlet, farther up the York?”

Cullis nodded. “That is the place. It was a fine plantation, once. A hurricane swamped it.”

Ragsdale laughed, and said to Hunt in mock accusation, “Then you destroyed the chap’s place for naught, Mr. Hunt.”

Hunt shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no, sir! Not for naught! I meant to destroy it in any event, as an object lesson!” Then he paused to study Cullis with some curiosity. “You say your informant told you about this place, sir. May I ask who?” He leaned closer to the lawyer. “You see, I have my own choir of them here, and they did not tell me about this sanctuary of Mr. Frake’s.”