War

by Edward Cline

  “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.”

  Chapter 17: The Last Pippin

  When 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 hi
s 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.”

  “Perhaps it was because they had no knowledge of it. Since it will no longer matter to him, it was Sheriff Tippet, sir,” said Cullis. “A six-pounder once stood in front of his place, and was used for years to celebrate His Majesty’s birthday and such. Its theft one night a time ago inspired him to make some nocturnal observations. On two occasions he observed Mr. Frake and others journeying to the Otway place with cartloads of powder and arms. At least, that is what he thought they were. It was dark.”

  “So your fellow committeemen knew!” exclaimed Hunt.

  Cullis twisted his mouth in disgust. “Only I, sir. Sheriff Tippet told me it in confidence. Now that he is…gone…there is no confidence to honor.”

  “Well, I did not know the man so well, Mr. Cullis, but from the beginning, I suspected Mr. Tippet of frail loyalty.”

  Cullis smiled. “Frail loyalty? My compliments, sir, on an apt description of his character.”

  Hunt waved over Mary Grif
fin, the serving wench, who happened to be one of his paid informants, and ordered another round of ale for his companions. “And bring Mr. Cullis here a double measure, dearie! He is an especial friend of mine!”

  Cullis nodded thanks. “I don’t know for how long I may remain your especial friend, sir,” he said. “I will soon quit Virginia for England.”

  Hunt looked concerned. “Surely, not because of what happened here today?”

  “No. Not entirely.”

  Hunt remembered then his knowledge of the conflict between Cullis and his father, Ralph Cullis, obtained by him through his tongue-wagging, gossiping informants in the past. “I see. Filial contentions, and parental preponderance! I know something about that, sir,” remarked Hunt, thinking of his father, the Earl of Danvers. “Is there no chance of reconciliation?”

  “Not a whit. My father can be quite…oxen.”

  “Well, you have my sympathies, and good wishes in England. Will you take up the law there?”

  “That is my plan. I know some barristers there, and Mr. John Randolph, our former Attorney-General, has also departed for the mother country. I am certain I will not lack for occupation or place.”

  Hunt laughed and kept up his transparent bonhomie. “Well, they say there are too many lawyers, but I’ve always countered there are not enough, God bless them!”

  It was transparent to Cullis. He did not mind. He was hoping the conversation would turn in a certain direction.

  The talk continued in that light vein for a while. Major Ragsdale and his officers at length excused themselves and left to check on their battalion. Hunt leaned closer to Cullis. “There are two other large properties here, Mr. Cullis. Granby Hall, and Mr. Kenrick’s place. The Granby people must keep to themselves overmuch. I have not been able to obtain much information on them. If you please, how might they fit into the situation here? I ask this so that I may avoid making errors of judgment.”