Jack Frake

by Edward Cline

  “They’ve stown the bridle off your steed,

  And they’ve put water in your long gun!

  They’ve fixed your sword within its sheath,

  That out again it winna come!

  “Awaken ye, waken ye, Parcy Reed,

  Or by your enemies be taken!

  For yonder are the twelve Cæsars,

  And for your blood they’re achin’!”

  Skelly was about to answer with further altered stanzas from the ballad, which Redmagne once performed for the gang in the caves, when something alerted Jack Frake that he was not hearing it in his dream. He awoke with a start, rolled off the straw mattress and jumped to his feet. “Redmagne!” he called out in the darkness.

  “Next cell, Jack,” came a muted voice through the brick walls of the cell. “Use the trap door.”

  Jack Frake fell to his stomach and slid the iron plate aside. The moon was out and lit up the wall and the mire of the yard. Cold air shot through the open slit, and he could see his breath now. “Redmagne! How did you — Where are the others?”

  “I’m alone. Thought I’d get you and Richard out of here,” said Redmagne. “But they were waiting for me. And here I am.”

  “Richard died on the way here.”

  “I know.” Redmagne paused. “How’s your head, Jack? That fellow Fix said it got damaged.”

  “It still hurts a bit.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Jack Frake described the attack of the Revenue men at Penlilly. “I didn’t tell Pannell a thing, Redmagne!” he said. “I swear!”

  “I know you didn’t. Hopfius said so. Well, Richard’s gone to meet his maker, and that’s done with.”

  “What about Skelly, and the caves?”

  “Those soldiers were beginning to surround the hill when I left on this errand, Jack. I don’t know what else has happened.”

  “Pannell’s a brute!” exclaimed Jack Frake. “If Richard hadn’t gone mad first, Pannell would’ve sat on his broken leg to get answers!”

  “Nuns pray, and brutes slay.”

  They were quiet for a while. Then Jack Frake asked, “Why were you singing?”

  “I was thinking of what I want to say in court, when the time comes. I’m not finished with surprising the law. I was singing to celebrate my argument. And to let you know I was here.”

  “What can you say in court?”

  Redmagne told him.

  Jack Frake was not sure of the significance of Redmagne’s ploy. It sounded magnificent and unanswerable. But he said, “They won’t listen.”

  “Perhaps not. But you and I will hear it said. That’s all that matters, now — that the words are spoken, that we disturb the air with their sounds. Perhaps they will find a home in men’s minds.”

  “I hope Skelly will hear them,” said Jack Frake. “No! I hope he never hears them! I hope he’s escaped!”

  “I don’t think he’ll escape, Jack.”

  Jack Frake said nothing in answer. Then the power of the events of the day crushed his calm, and his head fell into the crook of his arm. He wept silently. Redmagne, who could hear an occasional groan and sob, did not need to ask what was wrong. He sat up in his cell and leaned against the damp wall, and thought about Millicent Morley.

  The day passed. Constable Skeats brought the prisoners mincemeat pies and tankards of rum-laced coffee. Jack Frake ate. He was ravenous. He and Redmagne talked about London through the traps to pass the time. The boy told Redmagne about his dream, and Redmagne laughed. Then they both dozed off.

  Jack Frake awoke again to the screech of a cell door. It was not his own. He heard many footsteps in the yard, and then Henoch Pannell say, “Good evening, Mr. O’Such. You have a visitor.”

  Jack Frake heard the clank of leg braces.

  “Augustus!” exclaimed Redmagne.

  “John,” said Skelly.

  “Your head’s bandaged!”

  “My hip might’ve been in worse shape, too, except that Drury Trantham stopped a ball. Had your book in my pocket… this morning.”

  “Which I’ve relieved him of,” said Pannell. “He’ll have to finish that novel some other time.”

  “Sorry, John, but I only had time to read up to Chapter thirty-six, where Drury is on the verge of seducing the high priestess of Apollo.”

  “Augustus,” said Redmagne, “what about… the others?”

  Jack Frake knew by the silence that Skelly answered with a shake of his head.

  “All right,” said Pannell, “that’s enough of the pleasantries! Mr. Fix, put him in the last cell. You and the others set up a watch of three men outside these cells, at all times. God help you if anything happens to these scum.”

  Henoch Pannell also had an appetite that night, not for food, but for thought. He was having the only stroke of genius he was to have in his life. It did not animate him; it bothered him, and kept him from sleep and rest. He thought and mumbled to himself and paced the floor of his room until dawn. He would not let go of the idea until he had worked out all its nuances.

  He gave himself credit for the notion, but was disinclined to examine it or trace its source, even though the contributing factors were fresh in his mind. He was not interested in how he arrived at the idea. He recognized it only in the image of Skelly. He had expected to encounter an ostentatious, flamboyant character whose mouth ran ahead of his discretion, the kind he had met before among smugglers and even common criminals, and on whom he placed little importance. Skelly, however, loomed large in his mind; in fact, towered over all the smugglers and criminals he had ever dealt with. Skelly, he knew, would remain unconquered even in defeat, or under torture, or on the gallows. When Major Leigh’s surgeon had revived him and treated his head wound, Skelly was immediately cuffed hand and boot, and brought to Gwynnford on a cart. Yet, thought Pannell, the man bore himself like a king in chains. Which, reflected the Commissioner, was an ironic thing to think.

  He was not just a rebel; he posed a bigger threat to the tranquillity of the Crown than had the Young Pretender, and especially to his, Henoch Pannell’s, own tranquillity and his confidence in his place in the Crown’s scheme of things. If the Pretender had succeeded in ousting King George, he thought, it would have been an easy thing to switch fealty and even one’s church, once the dust of that magnitude of upheaval had settled and the blood spilled during it had congealed in men’s memories. One king was as good as another. But Skelly represented something hideously worse, in Pannell’s mind: no necessity for fealty at all, no lords, no privileges, no perquisites, no sinecures, no deference, no established place to work for. No special rewards in recognition of service to the Crown. In fact, no Crown.

  No Crown! thought Pannell that night, as the draft of his pacing whipped the flames of his candles in the room. When he tried to imagine it, all he could conjure up was a great black hole into which he would be propelled by the erasure of everything he envied others for. The prospect was so frightening that his mind would not permit itself to give it another visual shape or form. But Skelly could exist without a Crown; he did not need to be a thread of its silken fabric, or be a strand of its velvet, or one of its jewels, to be Skelly. And though it was an impediment, he did not even bother to defy the Crown, as other rebels had. He opposed it — oh, how he had opposed it, when he could have easily escaped through the thickets surrounding those damned caves! — but the Crown meant less to him as a nemesis than did a reef or a rock on the Cornwall coast. Pannell did not need to be told this by Skelly or by anyone else. He simply fathomed the thing, without completely understanding it. Strange conception of a man, thought the Commissioner, the strangest he had ever observed! He knew that he must impress the court with the urgency of this phenomenon. You need not understand the anatomy of a shark to know that it can eat you.

  At the same time that Pannell was churning these things in his mind, he was also working on a remedy, a solution, a means of plugging that great black hole. He knew too well in what esteem the people of
Cornwall held Skelly and his gang. The affection granted these men by these people was more genuine than that granted the King in their toasts. The one affection was mere ritual and bravado; the other was heart-felt. He knew of a way to bring Skelly down in their eyes, and he had the means. All he needed to do now was to work out the details. And to be bold.

  When dawn came, and men began to appear on Jetty Street below, Pannell had written four letters, two of them to go with the royal post-rider who would be stopping at the customs house today. One was to a friend of his in the Attorney-General’s office in London. Another was to the Lord Chancellor himself, also in London. Another, to be carried by one of his own men, was to a colonel of dragoons in Saltash, who had provided him with mounted troops in the past, asking him to help secure and transport what had been found in Skelly’s caves to the customs warehouse in Gwynnford. He already had three men guarding the caves now, to protect them from looters.

  The fourth letter he set aside for personal delivery.

  Isham Leith rode into Gwynnford with some trepidation. News of Skelly’s capture near Marvel preceded the smuggler’s arrival in town shackled to the bed of a cart. He was as stunned as everyone else, but less than most, for he had seen Jack Frake being taken to Gwynnford the day before, and realized that something was up. He wondered if the boy had talked, and if he had, whether he would now talk about Robert Parmley. Pannell could not have been referring to the boy that night when he claimed to have a witness. He could have known nothing about Jack Frake’s role, unless the boy talked. But no one in the streets took notice of him. No one threw rocks at him, shouting, “There’s the parson’s murderer!” or “There’s Skelly’s informer!”

  Huldah had succumbed to some odd hysterics after seeing her son, and for a fearful while he had expected her to ask him to do something for the boy. But she had quieted down, and did not plead with him. He was spared the necessity of having to slap her silly and remind her of their plan to sell Jack to the spirits. She remembered.

  Anxiety drove him to Gwynnford, and curiosity, and hunger for news. His mind turned over all the possibilities and implications, but was able to resolve nothing. He left his mount tied to a post outside the Saucy Maiden, and wandered about town as though in a dream.

  He found himself walking up and down Jetty Street past Constable Skeats’s house. Like a hawk hovering over a field where it knows it has seen a rabbit, Leith knew that Jack Frake was in one of the cells in the back of the house. One half of his mind would not admit what the other half was doing, which was contriving a way of getting to the boy. To silence him. But he had heard that the cells were being guarded by Pannell’s men, and that the Commissioner planned to take his prisoners to Falmouth on a coaster this afternoon.

  Leith stepped into the Saucy Maiden to order a gill of whisky to calm his nerves. And there was Mr. Fix and a younger Revenue man, sitting at a table. Fix saw him come in, nodded, then raised his eyes and jerked his chin up. Leith gulped. Pannell wanted to see him.

  Leith went back out and around to the inn stables, then stole up the stairs to Pannell’s room. The Commissioner was there with two of his men. “Ah, Mr. Leith!” greeted Pannell. “You save me the bother of sending for you. Gentlemen, will you please excuse us?” The two Revenue men left.

  “Well, Mr. Leith,” said Pannell, who took a bottle and poured himself and his visitor brandy. “I wanted to express my thanks to you,” he said, handing Leith a glass. “And to tell you that you won’t be seeing much more of me.” He walked away and sat down in his armchair. “Oh, I imagine I might return for the tedious but admittedly pleasant task of appraising the value of the contents of Skelly’s hideout. There are my men to be paid, not to mention the Treasury — but other than that, I am done with Gwynnford.” He paused and took an envelope from the side table he had been using as a desk, and fingered it as he spoke. “And you are here on what errand, Mr. Leith? More information for me, I gather?”

  “No, sir.” Leith had not touched the brandy, and did not know how to broach the subject. He said, “I stopped in downstairs for a bite to eat, and Mr. Fix said you wanted to see me. That’s all.”

  “How fortunate that you stopped downstairs,” remarked Pannell, who seemed to see through the transparent explanation. Then he sighed, put down his drink, and stood up. “Well, be that as it may, I have something for you.” He held up the envelope. “I told you that your devotion would not be without its rewards, Mr. Leith. And here you are. This is a letter of claim to fifty guineas, made out in your name, for services in connection with the capture of Augustus Skelly.” He smartly proffered the envelope.

  Leith stared at the envelope, put his glass down, and then took it. He opened it and read the document inside. His eyes went back to Pannell, half in suspicion, half in disbelief. Pannell stood watching him with an enigmatic smile. He seemed pleased.

  “Unfortunately, you must go to Falmouth to collect it from the Customs Bursar there. This is not my condition, but the Bursar’s. Also, you will not be able to collect it until next month, when the Bursar has the funds to pay you and to meet his many other expenses. Again, that is not my arrangement, but the Treasury’s. Naturally, all this will be done in close confidence. You will notice my signature, Mr. Leith. I may not be in Falmouth to assure the Bursar of the legitimacy of your claim, but that signature will allow you anything save an introduction to His Majesty.”

  “What about the… other matter?” asked Leith, not certain of his luck.

  “The other matter? Oh! That!” said Pannell with a wave of his hand. He returned to his armchair. “Let us say that it is no matter at all. The chief witness is indisposed now. He is a felon, and felons are not acceptable as witnesses in our fine judicial system. The candlesticks? Why, it seems some gremlins spirited them away from my room here, and dropped them in the Godolphin, that sorry excuse for a river on whose banks this charming little town is built.” The Commissioner finished his drink. “But, in all seriousness now, let us just say those pieces of silver have been misplaced, Mr. Leith — together with my recollection of them.” Pannell looked at Leith with an expression warning him not to raise the subject again.

  “What about Trott, and Rudge, and the others?” asked Leith timidly.

  “I’m feeling generous, Mr. Leith. They may remain at liberty. When Skelly’s gone, they’ll get their just desserts. They’ll just have to give the Crown its due.” The Commissioner grinned. “That’s all, Mr. Leith. I have a busy day ahead of me. Seems the constable and a riding officer in Styles have seized a sloop belonging to Mr. Skelly. The pilot and most of the crew escaped, but they were able to nab one of the mates. I’ve got to think of a way of impounding that vessel before too much time passes. Any ideas, Mr. Leith?”

  “No, sir,” replied Leith, blinking.

  “Well, then, a very good day to you,” said Pannell. “Thank you for coming.”

  “The boy?” ventured Leith, afraid even to say good day lest Pannell take the envelope from him. “Was he injured? I heard talk in town.” He paused. “His mother might want to know.”

  “Master Frake?” chuckled Pannell. “Not permanently. But he’ll dangle with the other two when the time comes. Very unfortunate business, that, but he is of age.” He smiled pointedly.

  Leith nodded his head, then took his leave. Outside, before he descended the steps, he tucked the envelope deep in his coat pocket, afraid that someone in town might see it and know what it was. He wondered now how to hide it from his wife.

  * * *

  Falmouth, situated in the crook of the Cornwall coast as it angled sharply to the south, was a larger version of Gwynnford. A “new” town, it occupied both sides of its arguably larger river, the Fal. A century before there were only a handful of sedate villages on its site, guarded by the wedding cake mass of Pendennis Castle, which sat at the end of the peninsula overlooking Falmouth Bay. In 1688 Falmouth became a Packet Service station, the first and last port of call for mail packets on their journeys between Englan
d and the North American colonies, and it had boomed. Its chief exports were granite, china clay, copper ore, rope, and fish. It had a customs house, a courthouse, and the King’s Pipe, which was an ever-busy chimney in which seized contraband tobacco was burned.

  Vessels entering the Fal from the harbor, said to be the finest natural harbor in the land, first passed the busy quay, then a collection of warehouses and commercial buildings, next a smoky graving dock holding boats of all sizes whose bottoms were being cleansed with fire, then the Chrysalis Academy for Boys, then a convent, and finally the mayor’s palace. Across a neat square from the latter was the courthouse. On the square was a long, raised structure that looked like the frame of one side of a house under construction. This was the Falmouth gallows.

  Skelly, Redmagne and Jack Frake were no strangers to the seaport. They were obliged to walk from the dock where the coaster that brought them here put in, as there happened to be no carts for hire at the hour. They were taken to the jail behind the courthouse, a fairly new building of green-painted brick with white granite Doric columns supporting a portico. The jail itself was a separate granite structure in the rear of the courthouse surrounded by a high wall. It had individual cells and a large area enclosed by iron bars in which as many as fifty prisoners could be kept. This pen was already noisily crowded with prisoners and their families; it was the practice then to allow a man’s family to live with him while he awaited trial.

  Pannell persuaded Humphrey Grynsmith, the Sheriff of Falmouth, to prevail upon the bailiff to remove prisoners from the cells to make room for his three prisoners. This was done. The cuffs were removed from the prisoners’ wrists, but their legs remained in irons. Each was given a straw mat and a blanket. Usually a prisoner had to pay a jailer for these amenities. Pannell paid for them, as he did not want these particular prisoners to perish from the cold which swept through the iron-barred windows high above them. It was also the practice for prisoners to pay a jailer for food fit to eat. Pannell gave this man money to keep his prisoners well-fed. “I shall have these men checked regularly,” he told the obsequious functionary. “If I do not see rose in their cheeks, I’ll know that you’re shorting them of victuals. Do not cheat me, sir, if you value your job.” He asked the jailer to let him know if one of his prisoners wanted a woman, or asked for a letter to be posted, or expressed a wish for anything else. He instructed the jailer to let the prisoners stretch their limbs and partake of fresh air in the prison yard, but only under guard and without removal of their leg irons. He did not explain to the jailer or the bailiff why he wanted these things done. When he finished making these arrangements, he left with his men and took rooms in the Pennycomequick Inn three blocks away.