by Edward Cline
Still, even with that knowledge, Jack Frake did not want to condemn his friend to death.
Something glinted in the ascending sunlight. Jack Frake raised the spyglass again, fixed it on Hugh Kenrick, and noticed a gorget suspended from around his friend’s neck. Jack Frake sighed deeply. He did not know its history, or what was engraved on it, but it seemed to belong on Hugh Kenrick’s person. Unbidden, at the same time that he recognized the object, memory shot to the forefront of his mind of a night long ago, when he had assured Hugh Kenrick that he had not betrayed himself or the Resolves, with these words: If brave men survive their risks, that is all they can do. We honor their memory, if they perish, for we are heirs to their bravery…. He remembered a part of a poem that Etáin had written out for Hugh that night: But bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds….
Jack Frake asked himself: What else had Hugh Kenrick been to him all these years, but all those things? He thought: I must grant you your last request, my friend.
He lowered the spyglass, picked up his musket, and walked back to the waiting officer. “Mr. Crofts, please inform Major Ragsdale that we will not surrender.”
The officer studied Jack Frake for a moment. What recalcitrant creatures these colonials were! He wondered what accounted for the breed. “You will not survive an assault, sir,” he said. “You are outnumbered, and out-gunned.”
“So be it, Mr. Crofts,” answered Jack Frake, “but that is not inevitable.”
After another moment, the officer raised a hand in vague salute, reined his horse around, and rode away in the direction he had come from.
Jack Frake turned and glanced at Proudlocks and Fraser, who stood at a distance. He nodded once, and they left to take up their posts. In the woods to the east and west of the Otway place, Jack Frake saw the sun flash off of cap plates and bayonets. He knew that the marines would not attack until the Sparrowhawk and Basilisk had raked the position.
He strode down to the wheeled gun near the disintegrated pier. Aymer Crompton, Henry Buckle, and Isaac Zimmerman and another Company man were on its crew. Two other volunteers from Morland, Mouse and Moses Topham, were tending the fire. Cannon balls, bowls, and metal straps lay in a row near them. Their muskets were stacked a safe distance away. Near the gun were the rammer, sponge, ladle and wad hook. Without preamble, Jack Frake asked, “Is the gun primed, Mr. Crompton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Elevated to the best advantage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Assemble and load the first round. We must strike the masts, the biggest ones their topmen haven’t furled. They all must be as dry as kindling. The fire will spread.”
While the crew prepared the first shot, Jack Frake took the linstock, lighted the slow-match wound around it with a match he struck on a rock at his feet, and waited. He fixed his sight on the Sparrowhawk and the figure on the stern. When Buckle was finished ramming the carcass down the muzzle, Crompton stepped forward and addressed Jack Frake. “Allow me the first shot, sir.” He held out a hand for the linstock.
Jack Frake shook his head. He stepped up to the right of the barrel, and said, “Brace yourself.” The crew brought up their hands to cover their ears. But he had addressed Hugh Kenrick.
He lowered the linstock, and, a second before he rested the glowing end of the slow-match on the powder-packed touchhole of the barrel, turned and shouted as loudly as he could across the water, even though he knew that Hugh Kenrick could not hear him, “Long live Lady Liberty!”
The gun roared, bucking in response to the explosion that sent the carcass on its way. No one moved until they saw where the projectile fell. Jack Frake stepped to the side away from the gun’s smoke in time to see the unfurled mizzen topsail shudder. Someone behind him cheered.
Jack Frake saw fragments of the carcass fall to the deck below, almost directly onto Hugh Kenrick. Dark lines were left behind on the rough linen, as though a cat had clawed it. “Reload!” he ordered. He heard the men prepare the gun for another round.
He raised his spyglass to examine the struck sail; he saw streaks smolder and grow up and down along its length. When he lowered the spyglass he saw the figure of Jared Hunt gesturing with his own spyglass at Hugh Kenrick. Then smoke from his own gun drifted into his line of sight and obscured the deck.
That was when the Sparrowhawk fired its first gun. The ball struck one of the standing walls of the Otway great house, bringing it down.
Chapter 20: The Sparrowhawk
Jared Hunt, Blassard, and another Customs man came down the companionway steps. Before Hugh Kenrick or Hulton could rise, Blassard produced a short bludgeon and struck the valet hard on the head with it. Hulton fell backwards, unconscious. Blood oozed from his forehead.
“Finish him off?” Blassard queried.
“No,” answered Hunt. “We will take him back to Hampton. The navy might impress him into service. He looks seaworthy.” He turned to Hugh Kenrick. “Now, sir, if you please, I wish you to witness Crown justice. You will remove your coat, or my colleagues will remove it for you. We are going above. It is warmish. I wouldn’t want to discomfit you. The gate, Mr. Blassard.”
As Blassard found the key and unlocked the berth, Hugh said, “You are sailing to the Otway place.”
“You are correct. You may thank your friend Mr. Cullis for the information. He has been most helpful all this while.” Blassard opened the gate.
Hugh removed his frock coat and dropped it to the floor. Blassard and the other Customs man took out pistols and also stepped aside.
“What is that?” asked Hunt, nodding to the gorget. He leaned forward a little to read the engraving. He frowned in disapproval.
“My rank,” Hugh answered. He said nothing more.
Blassard took a step and reached up to yank the gorget from Hugh’s neck. Hunt stopped him. “No, Mr. Blassard. Leave him the emblem of his folly. It won’t interfere.” He smiled mysteriously. “Gentlemen, please secure Mr. Kenrick.” He took a pistol from under his belt.
The Customs men came inside, and while Blassard held a pistol, the other man turned Hugh around roughly, took a length of rope from his coat pocket, and bound Hugh’s wrists behind him. When he was finished, he turned Hugh around to face Hunt.
Hunt said with a chuckle, “There! The ‘Paladin for Liberty’ has lost his liberty! Now, Mr. Kenrick, up the steps, please, or my colleagues will drag you up them.”
Hugh stepped out of the berth, glanced once at Hulton, then carefully ascended the stairs. The three Customs men followed. Hunt and his colleagues took Hugh along the deck, where crews stood at the ready at their guns, and up more steps to the stern.
When his sight recovered from the brightness, Hugh saw a noosed rope hanging from a yardarm, below it a stool, and beyond the noose the Customs Jack drooping limply from its staff.
When they stood before the stool, Hunt said to Hugh, “You know what to do, Mr. Kenrick.”
“You are a yahoo, Hunt,” said Hugh. He stepped onto the stool. Brassard found a coil of deck rope to stand on, and fitted the noose tightly around Hugh’s neck.
“The term is foreign to me, sir,” replied Hunt.
“A yahoo is forever ignorant of his own identity, and of his lineage,” Hugh said.
Hunt stood on his toes and slapped Hugh across the face. “No more impudence, you damned son and heir! This bastard will triumph!”
Hugh almost lost his balance on the stool. As he struggled to regain his footing, Blassard reached up behind him and steadied him. “Not yet, son!” he laughed. “What’s your hurry?” The other Customs man joined him with a guffaw. Jared Hunt did not smile.
Hunt paced officiously before Hugh. “Now, Mr. Kenrick, here is the plan. When we drop anchor across from the Otway plantation, the good major and his marines by then will have taken up positions to attack your friend, Mr. Frake. Eighty men, sir, against a couple dozen. Hardly a fair fight, wouldn’t you agree? You will have
noticed the guns being prepared on this vessel. They can complete the leveling of the plantation. My sloop-of-war will take a position elsewhere, and contribute to the affair. Mr. Frake will be given an opportunity to surrender. The good major insists on being sporting about the matter. That, I believe, is because he has some martial regard for your friend’s warring prowess. It’s nothing to me. If Mr. Frake does not surrender, and takes a hostile action towards the major or this vessel, you will be hanged forthwith. He will know this. The situation will be communicated to him in the clearest terms. Should he surrender, you will be spared to voyage with me to England and trial.”
“And Mr. Frake and his men?”
Hunt shrugged. “They will be subject to the mercies of another kind of Crown justice. It is a military matter over which the good major has more authority than I have.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“A rhetorical question, you must admit, Mr. Kenrick. You have no reason to believe me.”
“It was rhetorical.”
“Thank you for the concession. Mr. Blassard will remain here to hold your hand should you totter again.” Hunt gestured to the other Customs man and started to walk away, but he paused to look up at Hugh and said, “I neglected to mention that, should the worst happen, I will return and remove the stool myself. It will give me the greatest pleasure. You may believe that.”
Hugh smiled. “I have always believed in your vileness, Mr. Hunt,” he said. “Your own, and my uncle’s.”
Hunt sniffed once, then turned and left the stern with his colleague.
* * *
Hugh watched the Otway plantation come into sight. As the crew of the Sparrowhawk prepared to drop anchor, and sailors mounted the rigging to take in sail, the Basilisk passed the merchantman and sailed farther upriver, then tacked its sails to maneuver cautiously into the inlet on the western end of the plantation. Jared Hunt seemed to be excited about the arrival. He came up to the stern and said to Hugh, waving his spyglass, “You know, Mr. Kenrick, I hope the worst happens. You will think it an odd thing to say, but after Morland, I have found a taste for the sound and smell of guns.”
Hugh shook his head as much as the noose would allow. He looked off into the distance. “You overstep your station, Mr. Hunt. That is an appreciation acquired by true soldiers.” Then he looked down on his tormentor. “You are a murderer.”
Hunt frowned, and looked pensive. “If I take the sense of being a ‘yahoo’ correctly, then I am a yahoo from Lyme Regis, but I shall have victory over the stately Kenricks.” He cocked his head once. “You are right, sir. I am vile, and a liar. But you harp on that other matter. So, I have changed my plan. I will not hang you, should they defy me. Your reward will be to watch the annihilation of your friends, if need be, then you will be hanged. If they surrender, you will wink out with the knowledge of it.” He scoffed and shook his head. “You cannot win.” Hunt imperiously turned his back on Hugh, and walked down the stern to the railing.
Hugh did not deign to reply. He looked away to the distance.
The remains of the great house and other out buildings stood in a cluster in a tiny corner of a broad rectangle of what were once productive fields, which were now taken over by weeds and other random growth. He saw men moving about the ruins, and a gun over the low embankment near the torn-up pier. He also noticed streaks of red, one in the woods south of the fields, another in the woods that separated Morland from the Otway property. To the west, the Basilisk had furled most of its sails, and stood ready.
A single patch of red detached itself from the streak in the Morland woods. It was a marine on horseback. A white flag fluttered lazily over his head. Some men moved out to meet him. Hugh supposed one of them was Jack Frake. Then they all stopped, and he supposed they were talking. After a minute, one of the figures moved away from the others and walked a distance. This figure raised an object, a spyglass.
Hugh smiled. It was indeed Jack Frake. It had to be. He was glad that he was using the Italian spyglass he had given him as a present long ago. It was only a figure; he could not make out any of the features. He could only wonder what Jack Frake was thinking. He thought to himself, in the manner of a prayer: Please do not let me down. Then he corrected himself: I know you will not let me down. You know better, perhaps better than I do. Destroy me, if you must, but destroy the Sparrowhawk. If I have ever committed a sin, perhaps it was not having caught up with you soon enough, and this will be my atonement. You are Etáin’s north, and were always mine, though I did not know it. But now we are both the north.
Hugh stared hard back at the figure observing him from afar, hoping that Jack Frake could see his face, and know what he was thinking.
The figure turned and walked slowly back to the waiting marine. After a moment, the red patch and white flag turned and moved back across the field to the woods. The figure moved, too, faster now, heading for the river. It stopped at the gun emplacement. Moments passed. Other figures at the gun seemed to be preparing it to fire. Hugh Kenrick held his breath. He imagined that the gun was aimed at him. He did not even waste hope that Hunt would be the first to die. He had forgotten Hunt. The man did not belong in the cathedral of his soul.
When he saw a tongue of flame flash from the gun, he felt joy. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. He heard the sharp slapping sound as the ball struck a sail somewhere above him, the report of the gun a moment later. The iron ball fell with some debris with a thud on the planks behind him, bounced once, and rolled heavily off the stern to the deck below. He could not see it, but one of the embers struck Blassard on a shoulder. The man yelled in panic, then cursed as he ran from the stern.
Hugh opened his eyes and saw Jared Hunt staring up worriedly at the sail above. Then Hunt, too, cursed and turned to shout down to the master gunner, “Fire when you please! Destroy that gun by the pier!” He strode up to Hugh. Shaking his spyglass at his captive, he said, “Does he think he’s paying me back with fire, Mr. Kenrick? Watch as he is destroyed! Huh” he ended with a snap of his fingers. He returned to his place at the railing to watch the bombardment, oblivious to the little shower of sparks that began to rain down.
The guns of the Sparrowhawk began to fire, one after the other.
The ear-splitting crescendos reached the consciousness of a sleeping soldier and awoke him. Below deck, Thomas Hulton heard the sound of the guns. He opened his eyes, sat up, saw the empty berth, and jumped to his feet. He was about to run up the companionway stairs when Blassard came rushing down. The Customs man paused in surprise, but Hulton reached up, took a fistful of the man’s shirt, and pulled him the rest of the way. He had seen from which pocket Blassard had taken the bludgeon before it was used on him. Pushing the confused man up against the door of the captain’s cabin, he found the weapon and struck Blassard’s skull with it. The man collapsed. Hulton dropped the bludgeon and removed the man’s pistol from his belt, then turned and raced up the stairs.
No one noticed him or the side of his face that was covered in blood. The gun crews were too busy. He glanced around and espied Hugh Kenrick. He also saw things wafting in the air. Looking up, he saw that a sail had burst into flame. Further down the length of the vessel, a powder monkey had emerged from the hatch there, and a carcass landed and exploded a few feet away from him, strewing embers and hot metal. A crewman shouted and another found a bucket of water and poured it on the cartridge carried by the powder monkey.
But Hulton’s attention quickly turned back to Hugh Kenrick. Now he saw Jared Hunt on the stern, as well. Hulton bolted along the deck, shoving crewmen aside, and shot up the steps. “No, you won’t!” he yelled, and fired the pistol at Hunt. He did not see where he had hit the man, but Hunt barked once and fell to the planks. Without acknowledging the look of astonishment on his friend’s face, Hulton found the same coil of rope that Blassard had used, pulled it over, stepped on it, and took out the razor. He dropped the pistol, opened the razor, and quickly sawed through the hemp. When he was down to
the last few threads, he heard Hunt yell, “No, you won’t, lackey!” He turned his head in time to see Hunt, still down, but leaning on an elbow, fire his own pistol.
The ball struck Hulton in the chest. His legs became weak and he fell against Hugh Kenrick. The last threads broke and they both collapsed to the planks. Hulton pulled himself away and sawed frantically through the ropes binding his friend’s wrists. When he was done, he bent forward and gasped into Hugh’s ear, “There, milord, you are free!” He rolled over and lay still on the planks next to Hugh, still grasping the razor.
Hugh rose to one knee and looked down on Hulton. Hunt’s bullet had hit the former sergeant just below the heart. The man’s eyes stared unseeing up at the burning sail. “Brave, true Hulton!” Hugh whispered. He reached over and closed his friend’s eyes.
Hugh rose and glanced at Hunt. The man looked as though he were in agony. Hugh bent and took the razor from Hulton’s hand, then ran to the railing. He saw quickly that the Basilisk was firing on the Otway place. The red streaks of the marines had moved from the woods to the edges of the field, but had stopped to wait until the bombardment ceased. He could hear Jack Frake’s men firing back, and a babble of urgency near him.
He thought that was odd, until he realized that the Sparrowhawk had stopped firing. The babble was made by crewmen rushing to put out the fire that had burned half the mizzen topsail and was spreading to other sails near it. He saw men climbing the rigging with axes and cutlasses to try and sever the burning linen. Other men had formed a relay on another web of rigging to pass up buckets of water. Even as he watched, another carcass struck a studdingsail over the bow on the other end of the vessel.
Hugh stood over Hunt. The man looked up at him with a curious mixture of hatred and hope. Hugh said, “They shall not save the Sparrowhawk.” He said it quietly, without emphasis, without care that the man believed him. Without waiting for a reply, he leapt over Hunt and ran to the stern steps and went down them against a stream of crewmen working to contain the fires set by Jack Frake’s carcasses. Hugh knew the ship well. He knew how to get to the magazine deep in the bowels of the Sparrowhawk.