by Edward Cline
“I knew that.” Jack shook his head. “No. You are leaving them to remind me of you.”
Etáin nodded. “Yes.” She paused. “Be sure Mrs. Giddens dusts the room once a week. And please loosen the strings on the harp, after I’ve left. It may be…years before I touch them again.”
After the dinner, in her music room, Etáin gave one last concert on her harp. “You all look as though you were wearing mourning blacks, but I will perform no sad songs,” she said to her audience, which included all the Morland Hall house staff. “Just the songs that have brought us together, and will always bring us together.”
And that afternoon she played, among other melodies, “Brian Boru’s March,” the tune she had dedicated to the town’s defiance of the stamps nine years ago, and which she had dubbed “A Meeting at Caxton Pier.” She played another melody, one she had performed at the victory celebration at Enderly the year Hugh Kenrick arrived in Caxton. She saw the questioning frowns on her listeners’ faces. “It is called ‘Hearts of Oak,’ but now someone has called it ‘The Liberty Song.’ I am sorry, but while I have heard there are new words to it, I do not know them.”
“We’ll find them,” said Jack.
Jock Fraser then asked her to play “Will Ye No’ Come Back Again,” the song he had bellowed out to Hugh Kenrick in Safford’s Arms the day he left for England, and insisted on accompanying her. Everyone laughed but applauded his performance, for he could not sing well. John Proudlocks remarked, “If it were not for the modulating influence of the rum punch, we would have thought you were practicing a speech!”
“A speech of mine you have not yet heard, laddie!” laughed Fraser. “When you do, you’ll note the difference, and beg my pardon!” And the company laughed with him.
Etáin smiled at Fraser. “I will come back, Jock, when you, and my Jack, and John there, have won us our own country.” She glanced down at her gloved hands, and the strings she knew so well. Then she looked up and said, “I shall play my last number now, as a farewell to my husband.”
Jack Frake frowned in wonder about what she meant.
Etáin played her transcription of “See, the conquering hero comes.”
When she was finished, the room was quiet for a while. Then Jack rose, came to her, and kissed her forehead in thanks. It was only then that she let the tears that had begun to blur her vision as she played roll down her cheeks. She reached up for his neck and brought his lips down to her own. Then she whispered into his ear, “My north.”
* * *
It was the same company that saw Etáin off on the Friendly the next afternoon. Her baggage had already been taken down that morning by Obedience Robbins and Mouse, the apprentice cooper and stowed, and her tiny cabin — for which Jack Frake had paid Brian Kelly extra to ensure her privacy and solitude — outfitted with the things she would need during the voyage. On the pier, she said her farewells to the Morland staff that had come down, and bussed John Proudlocks. “Take care of Jack, look after him, won’t you?”
“Like a brother,” Proudlocks replied. “I will write you about his doings, if he won’t.”
“Thank you.”
“Give Hugh my regards and my regrets, when he returns,” she said to Jack.
“Of course,” said Jack. “When he returns, he will be surprised and disappointed that you are not here.”
“I know. And you will look after him.”
Jack Frake grinned. “Like a brother.” Then he turned to Proudlocks. “John, I’m going aboard with her to see that her cabin is suitable. Wait for me, will you?”
Proudlocks nodded once, then reached out and took one of Etáin’s hands. “Adieu, milady. We will work as fast as possible to see you back in your own country.”
Etáin solemnly inclined her head. Then Proudlocks turned and strode back down the pier. Jack took her arm and led her up the gangboard.
Inside the cabin, he looked around and nodded approval of her billet, then took Etáin in his arms and kissed her passionately. They stood together for a long moment, clutched in each other’s embraces, until the captain’s steward appeared and informed them that the vessel was about to leave.
On the pier, Jack Frake watched the Friendly sidle out into the river. Etáin waved to him from the deck. Jack removed his hat and held it at his side. He stood like a statue and watched the vessel until it rounded a bend and was gone.
Chapter 2: The Gunpowder
Just before dawn on April 21, Jack Frake picked up a lamp, left his library, and crossed the breezeway to Etáin’s music room. He sat in her chair at the desk where she worked on her transcriptions. By sitting there, he imagined that he could hear her practicing her music. The house had been silent for nearly a month. Hearing her practice, he realized now, had been as much a part of his daily routine as paying his employees or sketching out on paper for William Hurry, his overlooker and steward, the next season’s plantings in the fields beyond. She was a presence, her music a fixture. Both were gone now, and the house seemed so much emptier. He felt the quietude of loneliness.
He was anxious about how she was faring on the voyage to England. Once the Friendly stopped at Liverpool, she would need to find passage up the Irish Sea to Glasgow, and then take a coach across Scotland to Edinburgh on the North Sea. The captain had assured him that he would arrange the swiftest journey possible for her to Glasgow on one of the coastal vessels or packets. Months ago Etáin had written her parents about her impending arrival, asking her father, Ian McRae, to arrange with a brother-in-law and merchant partner in Glasgow to fix her transportation from the River Clyde to Edinburgh.
In turn, Etáin was aware of his anxiety. She herself was not outwardly concerned, though the voyage itself would be fraught with risks and dangers. A sudden storm on the Atlantic could swamp the Friendly, or even sink it, or a fog could cause it to ram a sandbar, rocks or another vessel off the coast of England. She had tried to relieve his worry by saying that she missed her parents, and was happy that she would see them again after so many years. She knew, as well as he, that it was an irrelevant assurance, but it was all she could offer him.
It struck him now that he had crossed the ocean only once in his lifetime, when Captain Ramshaw brought him here as an indentured felon on the Sparrowhawk. Since then he had traveled much of the seaboard, from New York to Wilmington. But he had never been tempted to recross the ocean. He had no parents to miss, and no reason to return to England. No, he thought, he might still have a parent, his mother, Huldah, who might still be alive. He remembered the last time he saw her, when he stood at the door of the cottage in Cornwall, waiting for some sign that she had not betrayed him to kidnappers who were subsequently murdered by his assumed father, Isham Leith. He remembered her and that man with indifference, as though they were strangers. It was so long ago, in another age.
His glance happened to fall on Etáin’s bookshelf and the three spines of the Encyclopædia Britannica that her father had sent them some years ago, it having been published in Edinburgh and her father having been one of its original subscribers. The set had been intended for his library, but he had no room for the volumes. He had often come to her room to peruse it. Well, he assured himself, if that could make it safely across the ocean, Etáin could be in no danger. He smiled at his self-deception; that assurance was irrelevant, as well. He knew he would stop worrying about Etáin when he received letters from her from Liverpool, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.
He became aware of the rhythmic thumping of hooves on the ground outside, then through Etáin’s window he saw a bobbing flambeau and an indistinct figure approach the porch. He rose with the lamp and strode back down the breezeway to the front door, and opened it just as John Proudlocks was dismounting. His friend came up the steps. “Jack,” said the Indian, “there’s been an incident in Williamsburg! Last night! Or early this morning! The Governor has stolen the colony’s powder from the Powder Horn!”
The “Powder Horn” was the local nickname for the public Magazine. “Stolen
it?”
“By some marines from one of the warships. At least, they were redcoats.”
“But wasn’t the Magazine being guarded by the Williamsburg volunteers?”
“It was, until early this morning. The whole town’s riled up.”
“Did you just ride from Williamsburg?”
“No. My cooper went to town yesterday to have a wagon wheel repaired, and stayed overnight at a tavern and planned to come back later today. He heard a commotion, and then someone beating a drum alert. He woke up, went out, and learned as much as I’ve told you. He hitched up the wagon and returned just fifteen minutes ago.” Proudlocks paused. “He heard talk of storming the Palace and arresting the Governor!”
Jack stood for a moment, thinking. Rumors had reached Caxton that the Governor was plotting to seize the arms and gunpowder in the Magazine in Williamsburg to forestall any militia action against him. The contents of the Magazine were the colony’s, not the Crown’s or the Governor’s, paid for by internal taxes. The Governor had no authority to touch them. And, Dunmore had prorogued the General Assembly several times since Hugh Kenrick had left for England, the last time as punishment for the Richmond convention, at which Patrick Henry had called for Virginians to take a posture of defense against the Crown.
The convention had subsequently adopted a number of measures, among them plans to manufacture gunpowder and establish foundries to fashion parts for muskets and other firearms. Jack Frake twisted his mouth in faint disgust. Henry’s resolution, expressed in a stirring speech — ending with, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” — had, like his Stamp Act Resolves nine years before, been coolly received by many of the delegates, and passed by a single vote.
Jack Frake presumed that Dunmore acted on instructions from London. He had received reports from his correspondents from other chapters of the Sons of Liberty that General Gage in Boston was making a concerted effort to seize and destroy colonial stores of arms and powder in Massachusetts.
He had always been certain of an inevitable clash with the Governor. He and many other Virginians had felt more amused than insulted when Dunmore announced with condescending gusto at a Capitol ball in January that his new daughter, born shortly before he returned from his campaign in the west, would be christened “Virginia,” as though that gesture could somehow ameliorate the growing tension between Virginians and their royal governor and his tyrannical ambitions.
He said to Proudlocks, “I want to see how serious this is. Will you ride with me to Williamsburg?”
“Of course. I can saddle you up while you get ready and let your staff know where you’re off to.”
Half an hour later they were cantering over the Hove Stream Bridge to the road that led to Williamsburg.
When they arrived in mid-morning, they found the town almost as bustling as when the General Assembly and General Court were in session. On the Palace Green milled scores of people, while the town volunteer company and a militia company from James City County were drawn up on opposite sides of the Green. They rode towards the Palace gate, and saw that marine sentries had been posted and the two otherwise symbolic and decorative 6-pounder guns taken inside to the courtyard, one of them aimed at the gate, with boxes of powder and ball at the ready on either side of the wheels. They saw a few of Dunmore’s fifty-seven slaves brandishing muskets, pistols and swords, weapons likely taken down from the armament that decorated the walls of the Palace foyer.
Jack Frake asked Captain Innes of the town’s company of volunteers about the red-coated marines. The man answered, “They’re probably from the Fowey, sir. She’s anchored just off Porto Bello and the Governor’s place there. It may be the whole company or just half of it. Their pieces are primed, for sure, and those fellows look like they’re primed for a fight, too.” The captain laughed. “Well, if that’s how they feel, we’ll give ’em one!”
Neither Governor Dunmore, nor the General Assembly, nor anyone in Virginia realized it, but by ordering the marines to expropriate the Magazine powder, the Governor had effectively abdicated his office and given Virginians the right to depose him or to petition London to have him recalled. Some now argued that, because of the nature of the Governor’s action and the presence of armed militia on the Palace Green, he was all but deposed. The last time the colonials had raised their voices and weapons against their royal governor was during Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion nearly a hundred years before.
Later in the morning, Peyton Randolph, Speaker of the House, together with Robert Carter Nicholas, the Treasurer, and the mayor, John Dixon, rode in the Speaker’s landau to the Palace and were admitted by the guards past the ornate gate. At noontime they reemerged and rode to the courthouse on the market square, the mayor first urging the crowd and militia to follow them to hear an announcement.
On the steps of the courthouse Randolph conveyed the Governor’s explanation for the gunpowder seizure: His Excellency had heard that a slave revolt was imminent in Surry County across the James River, and naturally and dutifully had taken the precaution of removing the powder to prevent its illegal seizure. Randolph also cautioned the audience that any violent action against the Governor or the Palace would doubtless precipitate anarchy and invite certain retaliation by the Crown.
Jack Frake and John Proudlocks stood in the crowd. A man close to Jack Frake remarked, “Cow pasties! I’m from Surry, and there ain’t enough slaves there to make trouble if they’d a mind to!”
Another man answered, “But there’ve been rumors of trouble in Surry for weeks, sir.”
“Yeah?” answered the man from Surry. “And I heard tell for years angels can dance on pins, but I ain’t seen that yet, neither! I’m sayin’ there ain’t nothing to it, and the Governor’s a liar!”
“I must agree with this gentleman,” said another man, a member of the town volunteers. “I believe the Governor is playing hot cockles with Mr. Randolph and all of us.”
Although the crowd and militia were skeptical of the official explanation, they dispersed on Randolph’s continued urging.
Jack Frake and Proudlocks decided to return to Caxton. “Nothing else will happen here, unless the Governor commits another blunder,” said Jack.
Proudlocks studied the crowd and armed men drifting away from the courthouse. “Things are a musket shot shy of war,” he observed. He chuckled. “I am confident that the Governor will think of another blunder to commit.”
“He has a talent for it,” remarked Jack. “We must see Mr. Vishonn and persuade him to call out the county militia.”
“He has turned Tory,” Proudlocks said. “He is afraid of his little man.” As they rode past the College of William and Mary for the road back to Caxton, he asked, “What will you do if Mr. Vishonn refuses?”
Jack Frake shrugged. “Form an independent company and be at the ready.”
“That may well reduce the county militia by half its numbers. Many of the men are Sons of Liberty.”
“So be it.”
Reece Vishonn, master of Enderly, was colonel of the Queen Anne militia, which in the past had been mustered and drilled on a bare, unused portion of Enderly about twice a year since the French and Indian War. Since last June, Vishonn had steadfastly refused to muster the militia, claiming that it would offend the Governor and even the General Assembly.
He still maintained this position. “I won’t, Mr. Frake,” said the planter in his library when Jack and Proudlocks called and were admitted. “And if I did, it would be to protect this county from the kind of rioters you described that laid siege to the Governor in Williamsburg.”
“There was no rioting,” Jack Frake corrected. “The Palace was not threatened.”
“It may as well have been,” sniffed Vishonn. “Dozens of armed men appear outside the Palace gates and His Excellency isn’t supposed to arm his staff and borrow a few marines? What foolishness that would have been if he hadn’t!” The planter looked petulant. “He has a family
to protect, and his office to uphold. And I will not have this county accused of fostering the kind of hellish mischief they take for granted up north!”
Jack Frake sipped some of the cider his host had provided. “Do you remember John Connolly?”
“Vaguely,” answered Vishonn. “He was some quack who was supposed to have claimed Fort Pitt and thereabouts for Virginia, but he was arrested by the government up there. I think the Governor sent him — for entirely legitimate reasons. You can’t fault him for trying to resolve the Ohio Valley question.”
Jack Frake nodded. “Yesterday I received information from my correspondents in Pennsylvania that Mr. Connolly is free again and will negotiate the final terms of the treaty the Governor arranged with the Shawnees last winter. The suspicion is that by those terms he is to enlist the Shawnees and other tribes on the Crown’s side to invade Virginia if there is war. Now, if there is any truth to that, and any about a slave rebellion in the works, Virginia would go up in flames, from the Tidewater to the mountains.” He paused. “You may not want to frighten the Governor, sir, but he would not scruple to frighten you and all Virginians into submission.” He added, as the planter stared at him furiously, “I cannot imagine any act of betrayal that the Governor would hesitate to take if it would keep him in office and Virginia isolated from her sister colonies.”
A measureless moment passed, and then the older man’s face reddened in anger. At first his callers could not determine if it was because he was offended by the implication that he could be frightened, or was alarmed by the information. He rose abruptly and pointed to his library door. “Damn your correspondents and your suspicions and your Sons of Liberty! I know what you’re conspiring, Mr. Frake! You have spent your welcome here, sir! I will not tolerate my character or the Governor’s being so brazenly…slandered! Good day to you!”