SH03_Sparrowhawk: Caxton

by Edward Cline

  On the north side of the “thumb” of the greedy hand, midway up the York River, sat the town of Caxton, a few dozen houses and structures atop a rolling bluff that was enclosed by plantations and farms. Caxton had grown rapidly after the county’s founders’ petition was granted in 1711 by the House of Burgesses and the Governor’s Council to “secede” from the parent county. By 1750 the town’s population and commerce began to rival Yorktown’s some ten miles down the river. Caxton’s fortunes were in the ascendant.

  Before it was known as Caxton, it was called Caxton’s Forge, a stop in the wilderness on the way across the river or to Williamsburg. In the late seventeenth century John Caxton and his wife operated a barge ferry at the riverbank on what was now Morland property, and at the top of a gentle slope a smithy that could repair travelers’ carriage wheels and harnesses and replace horseshoes. Mrs. Caxton also served refreshments, drawn largely from an apple and pear tree orchard her husband’s father had planted years before Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. The Caxtons’ one-room dwelling and smithy were in ruins now, overgrown with weeds, bamboo, scrub pine, and poplars. The Caxtons had sold their small patent of land to Captain John Massie’s father shortly after Queen Anne County came into existence, citing the noisy influx of people as a reason to move on, and left with their few belongings for the interior of the colony. They were never heard from again. The neglected orchard was reclaimed by Jack Frake, whose small press supplied Caxton’s three taverns with much of their cider.

  “Which establishment do you think is patronized exclusively by the gentry here, Mr. Talbot?” asked Hugh Kenrick.

  The pair had found a room at Mrs. Rittles’s boarding house, had unpacked their bags, and after an exchange of money and talk with the intrigued Mrs. Rittles, decided to explore the town. Louise Rittles ran neither a tavern nor an ordinary, but a rooming house for “excursioning” travelers for ready money or tobacco notes. For an extra two pence she served a breakfast and supper. Her husband Lucas owned a store that carried sundry necessities and novelties — most of them imported — and also a farm that supplied Mrs. Rittles’s famous table with most of its fare. Mrs. Rittles had deemed Mr. Talbot a gracious gentleman, but the younger gentleman was someone extraordinary, she was certain of it. She could not pry from them their business in Caxton, though they said they would be here for two or three days. When she invited them to supper, they regretted that they had a previous engagement. And when they had left for their walk, she rushed across the street and spoke excitedly with her husband, whom she found in the back of the store supervising a servant in candle pouring. “They’re a plumb pair, let me tell you, Lucas!” she said. “From Philadelphia, no less! I’ve a good mind to nose through their kit while they’re out! Won’t do no harm!”

  “Don’t you think of it!” said Mr. Rittles. “If they notice anything amiss they’ll think we’re sharpers. No, you keep your nose out of their things. We’ll learn soon enough why they’re here.”

  Hugh Kenrick and Otis Talbot stood in the middle of Queen Anne Street. The Gramatan Inn, a large, rambling, two-story place of whitepainted wood, stood near the courthouse, across from the church. Its signboard read “Gramatan’s Inn.” Nearer to them was the King’s Arms tavern; its signboard displayed a newly painted coat of arms. Closer to the waterfront, at the top of the road leading from it, was a tavern whose signboard bore a racing horse, stretched in midstride in an unlikely and physically impossible gallop.

  Mr. Talbot shrugged. “Gramatan’s Inn, no doubt,” he answered. “There is no picture on the board over the porch. It’s a rare gentleman who can’t read.”

  Hugh smiled, and they walked on in the direction of the waterfront. “The King’s Arms there,” he gestured with his cane, “is very likely a patriotic place where one can pick up all sorts of information about the county. The racing horse there suggests a low kind of place, an overblown gin shop.”

  “Patronized by laborers and ships’ crews,” added Talbot, “but no less creditable a place for intelligence on all sorts of matters.”

  “True,” Hugh said.

  As they passed the place, a man came out and scrutinized the pair. He wore a filthy apron, dirty hose, and a shirt stained with brown and green smears. “Can I get you sirs something?” he asked. “Grenada rum? Barbados spirits? Madeira? There’s a chill in the air and come evening your blood may want some stoking.”

  “No, thank you, sir,” said Talbot with a nod. “What is the name of your establishment? The Arabian Racer, perhaps?”

  The man looked offended. “No, sir! Saracen’s Wind!” He smiled. “Though you was damned close. No, sir,” he went on, nodding to the signboard. “That’s Saracen’s Wind. Used to own him. Won me a few trophies and prizes some years back. Had to enter him under Mr. Granby’s name, of course, as I aren’t a gentleman, and split the spoils with him, too. Then Saracen goes and breaks a leg while he’s out to pasture, and we had to put him down. Sad matter. Couldn’t even stud him, could’ve made some extra money studding him, you know. Oh, well….” The man paused and studied the pair again. “My name is Joshua Fern, and my establishment is better known here as Fern’s Tavern.”

  Talbot nodded again. “Otis Talbot, of Philadelphia,” he said. “And my companion, Mr. Kenrick.”

  “What brings you to Caxton, sirs?”

  “Business,” Talbot said.

  When he realized that neither of the strangers was going to state their business, Mr. Fern said, “Hope you enjoy your stay, sirs, and find the time to give me some custom. Mine’s an interesting kind of place. The county was born here, you might say, right in my Jamaica Room, when my father, Samuel, owned it. All the old gentry met here and plotted their petition. The Broughams, the Massies, the Granbys, the Vishonns, the Otways, the Cullises. The town’s grown since then, of course. Got us a regular church and a courthouse and even a jail back of it. Some of the finest houses in Virginia is to be found right here.”

  “We hope to view some of them on the morrow,” Hugh Kenrick said. “Thank you for the invitation and your information.” He and Talbot continued their stroll to the waterfront.

  Water Street, as it was informally called, ran for almost a quarter of a mile. On it was packed a collection of tobacco warehouses, warehouses for other crops and exports, cheap, crude hostelries for laborers and seamen, barracks-like structures for slaves and servants, the homes and shops of chandlers, shipwrights, and merchantmen’s stores and equipment. The visitors made the acquaintance of Richard Ivy, the county court-nominated and Governor-appointed tobacco inspector, at his office, in back of which was his home. Mr. Ivy was the third inspector to hold the post in Caxton since passage of the Tobacco Inspection Act in 1730 to ensure the quality of tobacco exported from the colony. He had the power to pass judgment on any hogshead and to destroy its contents if he judged them trash. Some yards from his office was a black patch of ground on which stirred in the wind the ashen remains of many tons of burned leaf. Mr. Ivy shrewdly guessed the purpose of his visitors’ questions.

  “I’ve been condemning more and more of Mr. Swart’s ’heads,” he volunteered. “Thinks he can blackleg me by packing trash beneath good leaf. Deposits ten ’heads here and I cut ’em down to six or even five, usually. He’s probably busy right now with another scheme. Won’t do him no good. I’ll open every lid. It’s a shame, what he’s done to Brougham Hall. Used to turn out top grade. We’ll all be glad to be rid of him.”

  His visitors neither confirmed nor denied any interest in Brougham Hall. Hugh Kenrick asked, pointing to three small, round-bottomed vessels farther down the riverbank, “Whose are those, sir?” Two lay on their sides, the third was encased in scaffolding. Men were busy on all three of them.

  “The one in stocks is Mr. Vishonn’s, for his river trade,” said Mr. Ivy. “The other two belong to Mr. Cullis and Mr. Granby. They’re having their hulls scraped of worms and barnacles and such. Mr. Vishonn is replacing his hull. Those three gentlemen carry a lot of wheat and grain to Frederic
ksburg, and even to Maryland.”

  The visitors thanked Mr. Ivy for the chat and took their leave. The buildings on Water Street all sat on an elevated line of the riverbank, far away from the water and tide lines. The river, Mr. Ivy informed them, could become as wild and violent in a storm as the surf on an ocean beach.

  Queen Anne Street ran for half a mile from just above the riverfront, through the town, to a wide wooden bridge that crossed Hove Creek. Paralleling it were two shorter streets on either side of it, Prince George and Caroline. The first was named after George the First’s son — who was now king — and the second after George the Second’s late wife. Caroline Street was originally called Sophia, after George the First’s wife, but a secretary to the Lieutenant-Governor pointed out to the mayor and the parish vestrymen that George the First had divorced her for having committed adultery and locked her in a castle in Hanover for thirty-two years.

  Scattered along these three oak- and poplar-lined avenues and their nameless cross-streets were the homes of the town’s permanent residents, the “town” houses of the major planters, and various tradesmen’s establishments, each with its own garden or tobacco patch. An apothecary and a grocer’s shop shared the same wooden house, across Queen Anne from a cobbler’s, a leathersmith’s, and a dressmaker’s. The sun was beginning to set when the visitors stopped beneath the signboard of the Caxton Courier, which depicted several tomes between the jaws of a press.

  Hugh smiled up at the sign, and peered through the shop’s window. Inside he saw an apprentice arranging quarto pages on a length of twine that was suspended over him from wall to wall. A short, stocky older man and another apprentice were busy printing pages on a two-pull press. On another side of the shop were shelves laden with books, stationery, writing articles, blank ledgers, and copies of the Courier. Hugh nodded to the press that was producing the quarto pages. “See that, Mr. Talbot?” he said. “I cleared that very press in London in Mr. Worley’s office, some years ago.”

  “Do you wish to go in and introduce yourself, sir?” asked the merchant.

  “No. The older fellow is probably the publisher, and he would ask us questions.”

  The pair began walking back to Mrs. Rittles’s house. Mr. Talbot waved at the town in general. “If the property suits you, Mr. Kenrick,” he said, “are you certain you could endure living here? I myself would regard a stay here of only a month as a kind of criminal sentence, and would need to fight with myself not to succumb to the malaise of boredom.”

  “If the property suits me, Mr. Talbot, I would not have time to grow bored.” Hugh Kenrick paused. “I would be making something my own.”

  “Who is Jack Frake?” asked Talbot.

  “Perhaps a kindred spirit,” answered his companion, “if he is still anything like the man Captain Ramshaw once described to me. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Mr. Stannard pronounce his name.”

  “Judging by Mr. Stannard’s manner, he is not much more liked here than is Mr. Swart.”

  Hugh Kenrick did not reply.

  “There is the matter of the slaves,” said Talbot. “I know very well your views on the institution. How would you propose to handle that — if the property suits you?”

  “It would be a challenge, and I would resolve it.”

  They walked together in silence again, nodding in greeting to the occasional passerby. Otis Talbot had grown fond of his charge over the last two years, and with the fondness had naturally come sensitivity to the young man’s moods. He decided that the best course was to change the subject. He said, “Had you not once a tutor by the name of Rittles, Mr. Kenrick? I seem to recall a story you told me about him.”

  Hugh Kenrick smiled. “That is true, sir. I had forgotten him. I shall ask our hostess — discreetly, of course.”

  He asked Mrs. Rittles that evening if she had relations in England. She had not, nor had her husband, or, at least, none that she knew of or had been told about. Mrs. Rittles appeared to be nervous during the cordial chat with her guests. She had disobeyed her husband and poked through their belongings. She discovered nothing telling in them, except that the articles were of the very best quality.

  * * *

  Later that evening, Hugh Kenrick asked, “Why was this property not auctioned, as is the usual practice in these circumstances?”

  Arthur Stannard gestured to Ian McRae, who answered, “Because Mr. Stannard and I knew we would not raise enough in an auction to cover Mr. Swart’s debts and also recover our own costs of handling the matter. Mr. Stannard more so than myself.”

  Mr. Stannard added, “And, we would have likely been obliged to extend credit again to the purchasers of the meanest parts of the property.” He paused. “We are both under strict instructions from our respective firms in London and Glasgow to clear our books of the Brougham Hall accounts. They are quite as tired of Mr. Swart as we are.”

  “Instructions?” scoffed Mr. McRae. “Nay — say, iron orders!”

  Five men sat at a round table in the Cumberland Room of the Gramatan Inn. Supper was finished, and Mr. Stannard ordered a fresh round of port over which to discuss business. He, Mr. McRae, and Mr. Talbot lit pipes and rekindled them occasionally from pouches of tobacco. The room was spacious, large enough to accommodate twenty patrons, and insulated from the noise in the rest of the inn by plastered walls and walnut wainscoting. Two candelabra on the table and a dozen triple-mirrored sconces on the walls brightened the room with near-daylight.

  Adorning one of the walls was a crude reproduction of a painting depicting Cumberland’s rout of the Jacobite Scots at Cullenden Moor, the Duke astride a rearing, fierce-looking stallion, brandishing a sword, his background a confused rendering of the battle. Hugh was amused by the painting, for the Duke he remembered did not look anything like the person in the picture. He remarked privately to Mr. Talbot, “Cullenden, say wags in London, compensated for Fontenoy.”

  The fifth gentleman at the table was Mr. Thomas Reisdale, an older man who sat on the county court, maintained a private law practice in Caxton, and was the only justice in Queen Anne County versed in law. Born in Fredericksburg, he was sent to London for his education by his planter father, attended Cambridge University, and studied at the Inns of Court, where he obtained a law degree before returning to Virginia. He owned ten thousand acres of land in the Piedmont and a profitable plantation in Queen Anne. Having been edged out of inheriting his father’s vaster holdings by an elder brother, he settled in Queen Anne and assembled his own little empire. He corresponded frequently with Richard Bland, burgess for Prince George County and a recognized authority on English and Continental law. Mr. Reisdale was the attorney representing Stannard and McRae, and the one who had persuaded his fellow justices to declare Amos Swart bankrupt. He did not say much during the meal, or after it.

  Hugh Kenrick was also amused by the British and Scottish agents’ behavior. They had both greeted him effusively, but there was an element of hesitation in the courtesies they paid him, as though they were not certain they were being courteous enough. He suspected that they had discovered his true identity, but he did not care enough about the matter to inquire how.

  Arthur Stannard had been visited hours before the supper by Reverend Acland, who informed him in hushed whispers that, to judge by what he could glean from his correspondents’ letters, Hugh Kenrick was indeed the son of a baron and the nephew of an earl. “It seems he once snubbed the Duke of Cumberland, and got into some trouble in London, and even spent time in the Tower for his association with some Leveller rascals!” the minister said, who was beside himself with excitement and disapproval. “Why, it is suspected even that he slew a marquis in a nocturnal duel!”

  “Well! What do you think of that!” exclaimed Mr. Stannard. “It’s no wonder to me at all that he was sent away!”

  “I shall write my friends in Devon and London and ask for more particular information,” confided the minister.

  “But I beg you not to speak to anyone else of this,” said M
r. Stannard. “Not until my business is concluded one way or another.”

  Mr. Stannard in turn informed Mr. McRae, but cautioned, “He seems to prefer the address of a commoner, and so I strongly advise that we humor him in that respect, and not let on that we know.”

  “Iron orders, indeed,” remarked Mr. Talbot. He smiled. “I am fully sympathetic to your dilemma, sirs. Mr. Spicer and I are no strangers to the need to dun a spendthrift and recalcitrant patron. We have resorted to the courts a number of times to recover our due.”

  Hugh Kenrick leaned forward and said, “We would have expected the sterling value of such a considerable property to be much higher, sirs, than the eleven hundred quoted by you, which must reflect a drastically reduced appraisal of Brougham Hall.” He paused. “The property must be in a very sorry state.”

  “That is true, sir,” acknowledged Stannard. “Although it is not the largest plantation in these parts, under Mr. Swart’s management it has lost more than twice the value of a property three times its size. The late Covington Brougham was a crop master, and the envy and mentor of even the bashaws here.”

  Mr. Talbot asked, “Have you the particulars of the property, sirs?”

  Mr. Stannard opened a portfolio and took out a sheet of paper, from which he read: “The property known as Brougham Hall consists of one thousand and six acres, of which fewer than half have been cleared for cultivation. Of the cultivated acres, between one hundred and one hundred and fifty are devoted to tobacco, although,” added the agent parenthetically, “that number has steadily risen over the years as the quality of Mr. Swart’s leaf has declined and attempts were made by him to make up with bulk. The balance of the acreage is set aside for wheat, corn, and other staples. There are some orchards on the property — peach, apple, pippin, and others — but Mr. Swart has neglected these and allowed them to be overcome by scrub pine, elms, and hackberries.”