SH01_Jack Frake

by Edward Cline

  “As a young gentleman, yes. You’ll grow accustomed to it. Soon, you won’t even notice it up there. And for going to Covent Garden and other places I have in mind, a wig is de règle.”

  From his valise Jack Frake took a pocket pistol, which was already loaded, and a compact box that held balls, flint, powder and wadding. He put the pistol in one ample coat pocket and the box in the other. The tiny weapon had been given him by Charles Ambrose, the deserter, before Jack Frake left the caves. “London thieves and footpads are cowards, Jack. If one accosts you, just wave that powder in his face and see him run.” Redmagne also carried a brace of regular pistols in one of his valises.

  They took a coastal packet from Falmouth to Plymouth, then another to Portsmouth, then a coach to Southampton. Redmagne bought fares in the coach inn yard for a flying coach to London, which would travel part of the night and stop at fewer inns en route. At the inn they met their fellow travelers. It was a formal introduction, instigated by Mr. Spencer Neaves and his wife, Winifred. Mr. Neaves was a portly, blustering man who owned a sailcloth works near Portsmouth. He saw that ‘Mr. Trigg’ was a gentleman of means, and forced himself on the squire. “My father started the business, and I’ve expanded it,” he boasted at length. “Navy contracts, mostly for mizzenmasts and mainsails,” he confided. “They eat so much of my product that I hardly have any left over for those damned commercial ships. The Navy pays better.” Redmagne smiled vaguely at Mr. Neaves’ patter and made some ambiguous remarks which the man took for compliments. Mrs. Neaves was a dour, stern-faced woman who said little and did not like Redmagne.

  Next Redmagne was accosted by John Truxton, a farmer who was traveling to London to visit the Admiralty. There he hoped to convince their lordships that a contract for provisioning the Channel Fleet should be wrested from a rival and awarded to him. Redmagne shrugged in frosty indifference, and Truxton bothered him no more.

  But throughout these formalities, Redmagne was distracted by a graceful young woman with a comely face and rich, brownish-red hair beneath her bonnet and cap. This was Miss Millicent Morley, a governess who was accompanying her young charge, three-year-old Etain McRae. Redmagne took the liberty of introducing himself, and in an overly proper conversation, learned that the child’s parents were in London, and that the governess was taking her back home after a visit with her aunt and uncle in Southampton. Ian McRae, she said, was a new partner in a firm that supplied Virginians with the necessaries and luxuries of life. When the passengers boarded the coach, Redmagne made sure that he sat opposite the governess. John Truxton deferred to “Mr. Trigg” and made himself comfortable on the roof with the baggage. Jack Frake was squeezed in between Redmagne and Mr. Neaves, while little Etain McRae was ensconced between the governess and Winifred Neaves. As the coach rumbled out of the inn yard, Miss Morley took a small book from her bag and opened it. Redmagne saw that it was the first volume of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Redmagne opened his copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, while Jack Frake leafed through Brown’s Roman History, which he regretted bringing because he was too restless with anticipation to concentrate on the gory succession of emperors.

  After one hour on the jerking, bumping coach, Redmagne put aside his own book and addressed the woman who sat opposite him.

  “Ah! Now there’s a work that can bring a blush to any lady’s cheeks!”

  The governess looked up from her book, partly in annoyance, partly in surprise, but mostly from curiosity. “I have not yet blushed, sir, and I am half through this volume. Why would you expect me to?”

  Redmagne smiled. “You must confess that there are in it some remarkably humid passages.”

  “Humid, sir? What do you mean?”

  “I mean those passages which call for the busy flutter of a lady’s fan to cool her brow.”

  The governess looked to her left, then to her right. “As you can see, Mr. Trigg, I have misplaced my fan, but my brow is still cool. Please elucidate.”

  Redmagne cleared his throat. “I mean having the power to arouse the passions and, at least for a lady, to cause her to wish, perhaps, that she could exchange places with the heroine.”

  “I am not a lady, sir. I am, as you know, merely employed by one.” Miss Morley wrinkled her brow. “And I do not find any of the passages to which you undoubtedly refer so ‘humid’ nor would I wish to exchange places with the heroine in any situation I have so far read, ‘humid’ or not. In fact, I do not find her much of a heroine. Droll, perhaps, and at times resourceful, but not a heroine.”

  Redmagne smiled again. “You do not envy Pamela for being pursued by Squire Blank?”

  “Not even in her most perilous moments,” said the governess, shaking her head. “And I find Squire Blank to be uncommonly ordinary, as rogues go, and a man of little inner substance.”

  “Then why do you continue reading the work if it so displeases you?”

  “I did not say that it displeases me, sir,” answered the governess with patience. “I am reading it so that I may more intelligently converse with my mistress. She is continually assailing me with quotations and morals which she has culled from the novel, a copy of which rests on her toilette-table, next to her Bible.”

  “What devotion!” remarked Redmagne. “And a wise stratagem on your part.” He paused. “It has been some years since the novel was the rage, but they say that people still gossip about Pamela almost as much as they gossip about their real friends and enemies.”

  Miss Morley sighed and nodded in agreement. “That is much the situation in my mistress’s circle of friends — and enemies.” She paused. “There is another bothersome thing about this novel,” she added thoughtfully.

  “And what is that?”

  “The heroine, who is a servant, seems to have unlimited leave to write such long letters. Now, I did service as a maid in a large household, before I became a governess, and I can assure you, Mr. Trigg — and you may bear me out on this complaint, for you are a squire and no doubt have a servant or two — that neither I nor any other maid I came to know had so much time on her hands, not to mention all the shillings for the paper, ink and quills our Pamela expends!”

  Redmagne chuckled. “Fair observation, Miss Morley. But it is a chronicle, of sorts, and the author, according to his lights, dim as I think they must be, must needs report events and cogitations somehow.” He paused. “I know of a man who wrote a novel barely half the length of Pamela. It took him eight years to complete it, in between duties one hundred times more arduous than Pamela’s. So I can sympathize with your bother — my being a squire with a servant or two.”

  Jack Frake glanced up at Redmagne, expecting him to mention Hyperborea, and how it was written. But, strangely, his friend did not.

  “Thank you, Mr. Trigg. There is another thing,” ventured the governess. “Regardless of what one thinks of the novel, do you not believe it has a positive moral influence on people? If it had not, people would not talk about it so much. Why, there was a time, for a while, when churchmen even read passages from it from their pulpits.”

  “Positive?” said Redmagne, after a moment. “I have reservations about its positive moral influence. I would say instead that the novel is popular because it answers in many people their own penchant for the common. It is insipidness dramatized.” He paused. “Why do you say that Pamela is not a heroine?”

  “Oh, she is a heroine in the strictest sense, in that she is the subject of the story. But in all other aspects she is, as you say, quite common, and will doubtless come to a common end, irrespective of all the verbiage the author has thought expedient to cram into her otherwise inadequate head.”

  Redmagne burst out laughing. Jack Frake grinned in response to Miss Morley’s reply, while Mr. Neaves and his wife frowned.

  “What amuses you, Mr. Trigg?” asked the governess.

  “You have expressed my own summary estimate of the character — exactly!” said Redmagne. When he recovered, he asked, “What aspects would you say constitute a h
eroine, Miss Morley?”

  Miss Morley paused to compose an answer. “She should be a woman who seeks in her man the practiced virtues that he professes.”

  “Which are…?”

  “I have not compiled an inventory, Mr. Trigg, so I could not at the moment tick them off for you.”

  “But,” said Redmagne, “would you say this, at least, that if Richard Lovelace, the great Cavalier poet, ever encountered Pamela, he would not be moved to say ‘I could not love thee, Dear, so much, loved I not honor more’?”

  Miss Morley blushed, but held Redmagne’s eyes. “Yes, Mr. Trigg, I would say that, at least, since a lady also can love honor. Someone like Pamela — of whom there are more real examples than I care to think of — could not love a man who actually placed his soul above her concern.” A faint smile bent her mouth. “A lady could just as well say that to her man… A lady can be cavalier in character, if not in action.”

  Redmagne beamed at her, then said softly, “Only a lady could say that, Miss Morley.”

  A silence fell on the compartment, and seemed to make the words of the last exchange more audible. Redmagne was an arm’s length and a half distant from Miss Morley, but to Jack Frake it seemed as if he were about to kiss the governess. And Miss Morley looked as though she expected to be kissed.

  “Excuse me, sir!” blurted Mr. Neaves.

  Jack Frake nearly jumped at the intrusive, demanding sound. Miss Morley’s book fell to the floor. And Redmagne’s head turned slowly, unwillingly to the source. He bent to pick up the book, and handed it to the governess.

  Mr. Neaves was saying, “In my company, I will not tolerate references to treacherous Jacobites such as this Cavalier you mention! It would seem that the axing of those two instigators at Tower Hill last summer has not axed treasonable sympathies still at large in this country!”

  Redmagne’s eyes became slits. “Excuse me, sir,” he replied, “but this country is England, where one is permitted to speak his mind, without penalty, even at the risk of offending insensitive bores.”

  The sailcloth maker turned in his seat to face Redmagne. “Humph! You are a squire, sir, and presumably a gentleman, but I think that you have room for improvement! I think you ought to be made to take a turn in the army! The experience would sweat out any willowy royalist notions that course through your veins!”

  “Have you had the experience, sir?” asked Redmagne with wicked congeniality.

  “I have done some service for the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire. I am a captain in this county’s militia.”

  “Oh, but surely that is not the same thing as regular army, sir! Occasional service, such as you may endure to demonstrate some alleged virtue of civic duty — ” Redmagne paused and turned to address Miss Morley, “— much as I think Pamela endures the attentions of Squire Blank — ” he turned again to face Mr. Neaves “— is hardly to be compared to constant service, such as our soldiers endure.”

  The passenger pursed his mouth and began to reply, but Redmagne continued. “I must correct you, sir, in the same manner in which you interrupted this lady and me. Englishman to Englishman, I have no royalist ether in my veins, not of any kind, neither Hanoverian nor Stuart. And as for having willowy notions sweated out of me, I daresay that I have been fighting your battles for nigh on fifteen years, without pension, contract, reward, or recognition, while you have wallowed in the trough of mediocrity.”

  The insult was unmistakable, and Mr. Neaves knew it. Redmagne brought up his cane and held it poised beneath the roof of the compartment. “Do you wish me to have the coach stopped, sir, so that we might argue the point in more spacious circumstances?”

  The man stared at Redmagne, his face frozen in anger, fear and indecision. Then a sharp blow on his shin caused him to glance at his wife, who shook her head once, emphatically. The look on her face told him that she did not think he could best the gentleman in any manner of fight, and that, anyway, she did not want her journey to London delayed for any reason. Mr. Neaves turned to Redmagne. “You have the advantage of me, sir. I cannot oblige you now, as I am taking my wife to London to attend to her ill father. But you do not have my apologies.”

  “I have not asked for them, as I had not asked for your opinion.” Redmagne turned to the governess. “My apologies to you, Miss Morley. One meets such cabbages on public conveyances.”

  The exchange between Redmagne and Mr. Neaves dampened conversation.

  “Redmagne?” said Jack Frake after watching the rural scenery roll by during a long stretch of silence as the coach bumped over the rutted road.

  “Yes… Jeremy,” said Redmagne, looking up from his book.

  “Do you remember when you led us in a toast to that government report? I mean, the one in which the Customs Board claimed that the Crown lost three million pounds of revenue on eight hundred thousand pounds of tea consumed by us last year?”

  Redmagne frowned. It was a dangerous topic, and he had introduced himself as John Trigg. “Yes,” he answered cautiously. “I seem to remember that. Why?”

  “Well, how could they know that it was eight hundred thousand pounds? I mean, if they really had the power to collect duty on all the tea, maybe it would have been less than a hundred thousand pounds, because no one could have afforded to buy more of it. And all the other things, too, like the tobacco and molasses and the rest of it. They could prove the figure for the tea they collected duty on, but that’s all. So it really isn’t lost revenue, is it? I mean, the smugglers and free-traders really aren’t robbing the Crown of anything, are they? And how did they get the eight hundred thousand pound figure?”

  Redmagne sighed, then blinked in astonishment. That line of reasoning had never occurred to him before. He glanced with new interest at Jack Frake, who sat waiting for an answer. “You’re right… Jeremy. It’s a good question, and the beginning of a good answer.” He grunted in astonishment again, then met the eyes of the governess, who was smiling at his astonishment. He leaned forward and said softly, “I taught him, you know.” The governess hid her amusement by turning again to her novel, but it showed in a twinkle in her eye. Etain McRae scrutinized Jack Frake, her thoughts serious but unfathomable.

  The Neaveses sniffed in disgust.

  Chapter 16: The Highwaymen

  THE COACH STOPPED BRIEFLY AT THE INN YARD IN BASINGSTOKE FOR A change of horses and to allow the passengers to refresh themselves and buy a basket of cold meats for the leg to Reading. The Neaveses enquired and were told that the next coach would be by in the morning. The passengers boarded the coach again in stiff silence. Redmagne had gently reprimanded Jack Frake for his faux pas, and no one ventured conversation.

  They spent the night at the coach inn at Reading. While Jack Frake slept, Redmagne paced and smoked a pipe outside the window of the governess’s room. He did not sleep much that night.

  It was mid-morning the next day. The coach sped toward Ealing, just outside of London. In the strained silence, the passengers had grown accustomed to the rhythm of the horses’ hooves, and became alert when, in the midst of a thick birch forest, the cadence slowed and they heard the coachman swear.

  “Stand and deliver, or die!” shouted a voice.

  The coach came to an abrupt halt, its wheels sliding to a stop over the dirt together with the hooves of the team. The vehicle stopped so suddenly that Jack Frake slid off his seat to the floor. They heard the coachman reply, “Don’t shoot, mister! We’re no trouble!”

  The governess immediately clutched her charge to her, while the Neaveses began taking money and jewelry from their persons and stashing it under their seats.

  “All right, good people!” shouted a mask-muffled voice. “Out of the carriage! You won’t be harmed if you offer no resistance and do as you’re told!”

  Redmagne glanced out his window. They were on a bend in the road that was flanked on both sides by the forest. He saw a man on a horse approach the coach with a leveled long gun. Another long gun, cocked and ready, lay slung across his saddle.
The highwayman wore a long coat and a mask over his nose and mouth. Redmagne heard the coachman begin to climb down from his seat. A foot belonging to the farmer riding with the luggage appeared from above and planted itself on the sill of the window an inch from Redmagne’s nose. He glanced to his right and saw a second masked rider on that side of the coach. There would be one more to the gang, he thought, covering the rear. “Jack,” he said quietly, “take out your pistol and have it ready to hand to me.”

  “Come out, travelers!” shouted the highwayman again. “We’ll shoot if you don’t, and these ain’t fowling pieces we carry!”

  The farmer dropped to the ground, as did the coachman.

  Jack Frake, still on the floor, reached into the deep pocket of his new coat and brought out the pocket pistol. Redmagne quickly opened his satchel that lay in the well beneath his seat and took out his pair of pistols. With a turn of each barrel, he readied the weapons and held them low out of sight of the highwayman. Jack Frake did the same with his pocket pistol. The boy saw the same intent look on Redmagne’s face as he had observed when his friend answered Mr. Neaves.

  The governess made a sound of terror, and Mrs. Neaves screamed. But before either woman could implore him not to use the pistols, Redmagne kicked the coach door open, extended one arm, and fired without warning at the first highwayman. Even through the thick blue smoke of his discharge, he could see a red spot erupt on the man’s bare forehead. The man jerked back, dropped his long gun, and toppled from the saddle, one foot still caught in a stirrup. The coachman and the farmer threw themselves to the ground. Redmagne dropped the spent pistol on the seat behind him, and, clinging to the door frame, swung around to see the rear of the coach.

  Jack Frake was awed by the swiftness of Redmagne’s actions. It was when he saw him swing on the door frame to check the rear of the coach that Jack Frake thought to glance out the window above him. The Neaveses sat frozen in their seats, apparently more frightened by what Redmagne had done than of the highwaymen. He saw another masked rider with a brace of pistols peer from his saddle in and through the coach, then raise one of his pistols. With an urgency and an anger Jack could not stop to analyze, he rose from the floor, unlatched the door, and placed one foot on the footstep, blocking the outlaw’s sight of Redmagne. The man’s pistol was pointed directly at him now. Its barrel was at least five times the length of his own weapon, and gleamed ominously in the sun. The eyes between the mask and the hat glanced down at him with the same imperious arrogance he had seen in Lieutenant Farbrace a long time ago.