SH03_Sparrowhawk: Caxton

by Edward Cline

  Hugh reached down and held up a three-foot length of bamboo. He turned it around so that the overlooker could see down its length. “Do you see the diaphragm, the black disk there? Holes must be bored through these, large enough to allow passage of water, but not so large that they would weaken the bamboo. These diaphragms will help keep the bamboo from collapsing. So, a special awl must be fashioned or adapted that will allow us to gouge a hole. It took me about an hour to make this one hole with one of Miss Chance’s kitchen knives.”

  Settle took the bamboo and examined it, then glanced at his employer.

  “Yes,” he said, “this idea, and the funnels, may save us much labor.” “And the crops,” Hugh said.

  “Mr. Frake’s hogsheads carry about a hundred gallons of water each, sir. With this conduit, we could have hundreds more without the effort.” The overlooker shook his head in amazement. “Yes, sir. I’ll get the men cutting the bamboo tomorrow.” Then he looked puzzled. “But, sir, why not just do what Mr. Otway has done: dig a canal from Hove Creek? It would be much simpler way to water the fields.”

  Hugh shook his head. “I have located boulders beneath the fields that are perhaps half the size of this house, Mr. Settle. They divide the fields almost precisely in half, running in a line from Hove Creek nearly to the house here. They could not be removed or broken apart, not with all the powder in the Williamsburg magazine, nor by an army of sappers. The conduit will parallel those boulders the entire length.”

  Throughout that winter, the conduit took shape, length by length, closely supervised by its confident creator. In the cooperage, Hugh experimented with sections of it, linking the ends together with pitch or tar, perfecting the stands on which the conduit would rest, making drawings of taps, designing a wooden lock valve for the well-end of the conduit. His obsession with the idea was contagious. Primus and Bristol, the two senior black tenants, began offering suggestions and making improvements,

  as did Mr. Settle. Primus, a tall bull of a man, was especially intrigued by the conduit. He asked Hugh why the lock valve was so important. “Because it must allow no leaks at that end,” Hugh said. “Also, when water is first being flushed into the conduit, the valve must be open, or otherwise the water will be stopped somewhere in the conduit by air, which would have no place to vent and could burst the bamboo. That is why I also want little holes drilled at intervals on top of the conduit, just to ensure

  there is no stoppage.”

  When not working on the conduit, Hugh was occupied with other demands of the plantation. Rye and barley were sown, and new tobacco seeds planted in seedbeds in the woods and carefully covered with straw. All the fields were ploughed and reploughed and generously manured. Into the soil also went the dust of ground quahog shells. Hugh himself took a shovel and hoe and leveled the uneven parts of the conduit’s future route, which bisected the tobacco field. The Busy called on Meum Hall that winter,

  bringing supplies he had ordered from England and Philadelphia, in addition to books and newspapers, plus letters from his father and Otis Talbot.

  And money, his first payment for the tobacco and crops he had shipped out the year before. When the Busy sailed back down the York, it carried the balance of Hugh’s tobacco hogsheads and wool from the fall shearings.

  * * *

  Hugh met once a month with Jack Frake and Thomas Reisdale to discuss actions and proposals during the current session of the House of Burgesses, together with news they read in the Caxton Courier and other colonial newspapers. He exchanged visits with Ian McRae and his family, and occasionally attended winter balls hosted by the other planters. He wrote letters to his family in England, and sent them sketches of Meum Hall. Garnet Kenrick wrote to his enterprising son: “Your uncle has secured the loyalty of Henoch Pannell and his coterie of seats in the Commons, and I fear is emerging from a life of lethargy and indolence and embarking upon the most active period of his life. I fear it, because it can mean little else but mischief.”

  Jack Frake told Hugh about his efforts to record the things said by Augustus Skelly and Redmagne, and allowed him to read the ledger book. “They were truly remarkable men,” Hugh said when he had finished. “They would have been fast friends of the Pippins. And, yet, who remembers them, but you, Mr. Frake?”

  “Some remnants of our gang still work in Cornwall,” said Jack.

  Hugh sat for a while, thinking. Then he asked, “Do you still remember their appearances?”

  “Of Skelly and Redmagne? Vividly.”

  “I have an idea. As I have done portraits of my own mentors, perhaps you could have portraits of your own. You must describe them to me. I will begin with a head and all its features, and then together we will refine the features until we arrive at each of their likenesses.”

  Jack studied his guest for a moment, then asked, “Why would you be willing to do that for me?”

  “Because it is the Christmas season, and we have had little to exchange in goodwill these twelve festive days but our hospitality and some fine French liquor. Such men deserve a permanent record. And, I am curious to know what your mentors looked like.” He paused. “Perhaps, someday, when Hyperborea is free to live outside the caves, Redmagne’s likeness will appear in a new edition of that marvelous book.”

  Jack poured himself another glass of wine. “All good reasons, Mr. Kenrick. But the driving one is your curiosity.”

  Hugh merely smiled in acknowledgment.

  Two weeks later, the pencil sketches of Skelly and Redmagne were completed, and Jack instructed his cooper to make frames for them. The portraits now hung on a wall opposite his desk in his library.

  They could not help it, but the talk between the three members of Jack’s “Attic” society always returned to politics. The three men were certain that grave political crises lay ahead for all the colonies. Reisdale was certain of it because of his vast, scholarly readings in “ancient republics” and “arcadian” and modern constitutions.

  One evening he said, “The problem has always resulted in one or another political mode. Ideal republics — or republics that promoted prosperity and happiness in all realms of human endeavor — have without exception degenerated into one or the other despotism: an oligarchy, or democracy. Rule of the privileged few over the many, or rule of the privileged many over the few — which in time sired another oligarchy, one more ruthless and absolute than its predecessor. The two phenomena are intimately linked and married by their natures. The ideal republics themselves sire the ensuing and inevitable phenomena because they lack something, something that is merely implied but then neglected or even suppressed, or is overlooked. Mr. Locke I cannot but help suspect nearly identified that principle. He performed a feat of great intelligence, assembling the scattered pieces of a political puzzle and correctly putting them in their right places. But for all the love I have for his work, he leaves me hungry for an answer to that paradox. I am certain that the cycle of these troubling phenomena can be broken, but I am at a loss to say by what.”

  Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick were also aware of this lack in all their political readings, but not in themselves. Their certainty of coming crises lay in the senses they had of themselves. They were both what they assumed other men ought to be, and were aware of that species of egoism, too. For them the political crises they were certain would come would be mere consequences of another kind of crisis, one driven by a force that was more invasive and corrupting than a new law or tax.

  “Whatever that may be,” said Hugh that evening in Jack’s library in reply to Reisdale’s remarks, “that lack, once discovered and expounded, will serve to choose an empire of reason that protects a man’s life, liberty, and property. Its temporal form exists for him, not he for it.”

  Jack shook his head. “Whatever that may be,” he said, “it must aid in the dissolution of the existing empire, and we will begin anew.”

  “I say that once the empire is threatened with ruin,” countered Hugh, “the powers in London will see reason and
defer to it.”

  “I say that once the empire is threatened with ruin, they will attempt to disown reason and resort to force, fraud, and transparent chicanery. Reason is a path they dare not tread, neither the lords, nor the men in the Commons, nor the merchants. It is a straight line, reason — as straight as the conduit you are creating, Mr. Kenrick — and its logic is compelling and intolerant of expedience. Oh, they will see reason, and they may even follow it for a distance. But once they see where it is leading them, they will renounce it, as they must.”

  “Where would it lead them, Mr. Frake?” asked Reisdale.

  “Yes,” Hugh said. “What do you think they would see that would frighten them?”

  “Revolution in England. Or at least some radical reformation in her politics.” Jack paused. “Here? It would lead to independence.”

  Hugh frowned. “Why do you believe they must renounce reason?”

  “Because it will not give them what they want, which is a continent of glorified factotums, made passive and submissive by chains of paper and ink, chains of a thousand links and taxes.”

  Reisdale also frowned. He studied his host, who smiled at the attorney’s scrutiny, as though daring him to question the truth. Reisdale asked, “Why are you so certain that what you say will occur, must occur?”

  “Because I am waiting for the rest of you to allow your honesty to govern your thoughts. When you do, you will think as I do, clear down to your bones. You will say, ‘Virginia is my country, and the Crown will violate her no more.’”

  “Yes,” Hugh said, who also studied Jack with new wonder. “Virginia is our country. But — the solution is to deny Parliament the power to make enslaving laws, to deny them the right and opportunity to produce so much paper and ink.” He shook his head. “Independence? I do not see any or all of the colonies severing their bonds with England. Nor can I imagine them independent of her. They are as contentious with and envious of one another as are the nations of Europe. They would neither last as sovereign nations nor tolerate each other without the foundation of English law.”

  Reisdale nodded in agreement, then said, “Mr. Frake, you speak of us as though we were a conquered people. We are not. We are Britons.”

  “No, we are not a conquered people, sir,” Jack said. “But I fear that the Crown, casting about for a monied means to keep and sustain its empire, will begin to treat us as one.”

  * * *

  By the beginning of April, the conduit was completed and assembled. This slender, artificial thing was of the earth, yet at the same time in defiance of it. Almost a mile in length, it sat empty and untested, a brownishgreen straight line that shot through the brown of the fields, no wider than the palm of a man’s hand, running from Hove Creek to the fringes of the outbuildings near the great house of Meum Hall. It rested a foot and a half off the ground in the snug grooves of a hundred flat, oaken stands that were secured with brick. Scores of taps, each carefully sealed with tar, punctuated either side of the conduit.

  In Hove Creek stood a short tower, half brick, half trimmed oak, topped by an open wooden tub, at the bottom of which was fixed the mouth of the conduit. At the other end were a wooden lock valve and an extension of the conduit that was connected to the base of the main well of the great house. What water was not used on the crops, Hugh had decided, would replenish the well.

  Hugh rode up and down the length of the conduit, searching for oversights and inspecting the workmanship. At Hove Creek he sat on his mount and looked down the whole length. He could see it curve imperceptibly until the far end disappeared from his sight. He had lived with the idea for a year and a half, and the reality of the conduit still caused a thrill of pride to stiffen his back. Questions teased his mind: Would it bear the weight of hundreds of gallons of water? Would the force of the rushing water cause leaks or breakages? He had thought of every little detail and taken every precaution. He was certain that none of these things would happen.

  On that April morning, the sky was dark with storm clouds. It had rained only the night before, and the earth was soft and smelled rich with life. The corn was planted, and the hills prepared to receive thousands of transplanted tobacco shoots from the seedbeds in May. His workers had been hoeing those hills, getting rid of the weeds that would compete for water and nourishment with the tobacco. Hugh watched them begin to drift away from their work back to the tenements and shelter from the approaching storm.

  Thunder rumbled over Hugh’s head, and rolled to the west. He glanced up at the sky as though it had expressed jealousy. He laughed once, and doffed his hat at the imagined personification. As heavy drops of rain began to fall, he rode unhurriedly back to Meum Hall the whole length of the conduit.

  In the last week of April, when it had not rained in three weeks and men’s footsteps kicked up little swirls of dust in the ground, Hugh ordered the conduit opened. Two men worked at the platform in Hove Creek, pouring bucket after five-gallon bucket into the collection tub. Mr. Beecroft, notebook and pencil in hand, stood nearby on the bank, counting the bucketsful so that, once the water reached the well-end, the exact capacity of the conduit could be known. Several men stood at points along the length of the conduit holding makeshift flags, ready to relay a signal to the tub men to stop once the conduit was full. Groups of laborers milled around the line, their buckets and funnels stacked in the field. Many kneeled at the conduit, pressing their ears to the vent holes, listening for the sound of water. Everyone at Meum Hall felt a subdued excitement, for not only were they anxious about the conduit, but they knew that its success today meant the end of a generations-old routine of caring for the tobacco, which was to carry water over great distances to coax struggling seedlings to grow. The transplanting of those young plants from the seedbeds would begin tomorrow, the first of May.

  William Settle stood with Primus and Bristol at the end of the conduit. Bristol held a signal flag. The lock valve at the well was open. Hugh’s original idea of a screw valve proved to be beyond the capabilities of the materials available to the cooperage. He redesigned the valve, incorporating an iron disk that could be turned on an iron ring and locked into place with a wood pin behind the external turning wheel. The valve could be opened or closed in stages by means of carved cogs. When he had to abandon the screw valve, Hugh spent three days working out the problem of a new valve; it had taken nearly two weeks of patient labor at the forge to perfect it.

  Hugh remained apart from the others, hands locked behind his back, watching and waiting.

  Aquarter of an hour later, Primus exclaimed, “Look!”

  But Hugh had already seen some laborers in the distance gesturing excitedly at the conduit and laughing. The water was flowing. It reached the well-end fifteen minutes later with a muffled gurgle and gushed into the well. Hugh nodded to Bristol, who instantly signaled the command to the tub men to stop. Hugh went to the well and peered into it to watch the water exploding from the bamboo, then a few minutes later knelt before the valve to close it.

  This was a more crucial test for the conduit than its ability to carry water; it must endure the gradual stoppage of the water and stand without bursting or springing leaks from the new pressure. Hugh grasped the handles of the wheel and closed the valve slowly, cog by cog, his hearing focused on the rush of water into the well. When he heard only a trickle, he gave the wheel one last turn. The trickle diminished to an erratic drip. He waited a moment. The dripping ceased. Then he let the lock pin fall into a ring and tapped it securely into place with a hammer. He glanced up to see Settle and Primus watching him. Both men smiled at him in congratulations. Hugh nodded once, then rose and strode to where he could look up the length of the conduit. Laborers stood near it, waiting. Hugh said, “Mr. Bristol, signal them to open the taps.”

  Bristol obeyed and waved his flag in another prearranged signal. Men knelt down all along the conduit and positioned their buckets directly beneath the taps. Hugh could see the man closest to him, over a hundred yards away, jerk the lever of
the converted ale keg tap forward. After a moment, the man rose, brandished the bucket, and with a broad grin tilted the bucket over. Water splashed to the ground.

  Only then did Hugh permit himself to smile.

  With Settle and Primus, he walked up the line, stopping now and then to demonstrate to laborers how to use the funnels properly to water the hills of the young corn stalks. He met Mr. Beecroft halfway. The business agent reported that the men had poured four hundred and sixty gallons into the tub before they were signaled to stop. “Very good, Mr. Beecroft,” said Hugh. “That is over my calculations by fourteen gallons.”

  “Well done, sir,” said Beecroft, gesturing to the conduit. “It is an oddity, this conduit, but it will do the work. We won’t lack for water ever again, I would venture.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Beecroft,” Hugh said. “You are right. But we are merely emulating the aqueducts of the Romans.”

  Later in the day, just before the light began to slide into dusk, and when the laborers had finished their work and returned to their quarters, Hugh, driven by restlessness, wandered out of the great house and past the outbuildings to the well-end. He stopped when he saw the sun’s last rays shine on the whole length of the conduit. For a brief moment, the brownish-green of the bamboo was turned into an almost incandescent white. An inner glow lit up inside him then, one that did not change the set of his mouth. At that moment, he felt prouder of what he had accomplished today than of anything he had ever done in the past. The glowing streak that vanished into the darkening trees beyond was fused with the living, headlong impetus of his soul, mind, and being. He raised a hand in the air and closed his fingers around the vision. Mine, he thought, and through it, all the earth.

  The sunset’s rays faded then. The vision flickered away, first to silver, then to brownish-green. But the vision never faded in the man who was Hugh Kenrick.