SH06_War

by Edward Cline

  Carver Gramatan also rose. “I have had enough!” he said to Vishonn and Cullis. “I warned you it would be useless to come here!” He collected his hat and stormed out of the study.

  Sheriff Tippet took a tentative step forward and gestured in supplication with a hand. “Sir, we have only come here to invite you to sit on the committee. You are respected throughout the county, and your presence on the committee would serve to, well…” Tippet stood there, at a loss for words.

  Hugh grinned devilishly, and glanced at Vishonn and Cullis. “Serve as a dollop of ‘moderation,’ perhaps, Mr. Tippet?” He saw in Vishonn’s and Cullis’s expressions memory of the day, years ago, when they had called on him here to persuade him to run for burgess. “These gentlemen know too well the consequences of such an invitation. You see them all about you now. I must take some credit for them.” He smiled at Sheriff Tippet. “Invite me at your own risk, sirs.”

  Vishonn sighed and rose to stand with Cullis. “We are done here, sirs. Thank you, Mr. Kenrick, for your time.” He put on his hat and moved to the door. Cullis, Tippet, and Corbin followed. Cullis turned, however, and said, “Mr. Kenrick, you have rejected an invitation to help bring order to this county. We must now extend it to Reverend Acland.”

  Hugh scoffed. “My alternate offends me, as well, Mr. Cullis, but I am sure he will prove worthy and eager company.”

  The door closed behind the visitors. Hugh watched them through his window as they climbed onto their mounts and rode off.

  My world is unraveling, he thought, and that is my doing, as well.

  * * *

  Jared Hunt.

  He had obtained the name by drawing into idle talk the housekeeper of Morland Hall, Susanah Giddens, when he encountered her outside Lucas Rittles’s shop in Caxton. “That’s what my husband Dorsey said the devil said, Mr. Cullis. He was on the porch with my mistress, Mrs. Frake, in earshot of everything that was said then. Jared Hunt, inspector of the Customs.” That was in June of last year, a week after the Customs men had been turned away from rummaging Morland Hall for contraband. Edgar Cullis had written down the name, and had since entered into a correspondence with the man.

  Although it was not he who had initiated the correspondence. He had received a short letter from Jared Hunt some weeks after the incident, congratulating him on his loyalty to His Majesty, to Lord Dunmore, and to the Crown, and describing him as a man of “staunchly principled character, standing alone in the yammering company of misfits and miscreants otherwise nowadays called the House of Burgesses. You are to be pitied and applauded. Your servant and steadfast ally, Mr. Jared Hunt, Inspector Extraordinary of the Customs and Revenue, Hampton.”

  Cullis could neither imagine how the fellow had secured his name, nor how Hunt knew so much about his allegiances and standing in the House. He did not know that Hunt had patronized the Gramatan Inn often since last summer, and made a mercenary friend of Mary Griffin, the serving wench there, paying her genuine coin for information about the town’s business. He had not met the man, but a cordial exchange of pleasantries had led to his supplying Mr. Hunt with information about the county’s more rambunctious inhabitants. It was quite easy and safe, he thought; they were simply names he passed on to another name, one conveniently far away.

  Two evenings after the fruitless and infuriating visit to Meum Hall to enlist Hugh Kenrick on the committee of safety, an hour or so before supper, that name called on him at home. Cullis was not sure he liked it. Mr. Hunt exuded power in his tall, stocky body, and sly ruthlessness in his black marble eyes. The contrast between his own tall, lithesome figure and Hunt’s was overwhelming. His immediate impression was that Hunt could double him over with just a light punch to his stomach. The black eyes were watchful and appraising. He felt transparent and helpless in the man’s presence.

  But he welcomed the visitor into his office on the other side of Cullis Hall, away from his father’s, and ordered a pitcher of punch from the kitchen. “To what do I owe this call, sir?” he asked when they were both settled in chairs.

  “Sociability, Mr. Cullis,” answered Jared Hunt. “Mere sociability. We have written each other for so long, I thought it about time we met. Also, I wish to inform you of my activities. I will not stay long.”

  “Your activities?”

  “Yes. Not long ago I paid a call on His Excellency, Governor Dunmore, in Norfolk, where he is busy assembling a fleet of vessels to police that part of the Roads. I have obtained from him what one might call a special letter of marque to better police the York River to ensure the loyalty of its denizens, and to conduct affairs to my own, to his, and the Crown’s satisfaction.”

  Cullis shook his head. “You are with the Customs, Mr. Hunt, not with the navy. I don’t understand.”

  Hunt chuckled. “You are right, sir. His Excellency has no authority over my immediate employer, but I thought it best to secure his sanction, so there would be no conflict between us in the future. After all, we pursue the same end. He was amenable to my proposed arrangement, almost to a fault. A harried person he is, with a book of grievances as thick as the Bible.”

  A servant knocked on the office door then and came in with a tray holding glasses and a pitcher. The man poured Cullis and Hunt glasses from the pitcher, then left the room.

  After they had each tasted the punch, Cullis asked, “How will you police the York, Mr. Hunt?”

  “With a vessel that must be envied by His Excellency. The Sparrowhawk.” He paused when he saw the look of surprise on his host’s face. “You should not be so astounded, sir. Thanks to your vigilance, I had an excuse to seize it as it came down the Bay from Baltimore. I intercepted it with our own Basilisk. The Sparrowhawk now flies the Customs jack.”

  “The Basilisk?” queried Cullis. “What an evil name!” For a reason he could only vaguely grasp, he thought the name suited his visitor, as well.

  “Isn’t it, though? My idea! Formerly the Nassau, a sloop seized for irregularities in commerce, some time ago, and since converted to Crown purposes. She has not sailed these parts much, so I can appreciate your ignorance of her. Eight guns, eight swivels, and wonderfully crewed. The Sparrowhawk? Twenty guns, four swivels. Old and a bit creaky, but serviceable. I understand she was to be retired by her owners in one or two years, and broken up for parts. Seen her best days, she has, but I’ll squeeze a few more from her.” Hunt took another sip of his punch and continued. “Captain Geary and half his crew were dismissed. It is now mastered by a loyal fellow from Norfolk, Buell Tragle, whose merchant sloop was appropriated by His Excellency in exchange for a promissory note.”

  “On what grounds did you seize the Sparrowhawk, Mr. Hunt?”

  Hunt shrugged. “I have sent the necessary paperwork to the Admiralty Court in Halifax, charging Captain Geary and the vessel with aiding and abetting sedition and treason against the Crown. For having transported Mr. Frake and his ‘volunteers,’ of course. Many thanks for the information! Hope he found the affair in Boston interesting. With luck, fatal. On the vessel I found not only illicit cargo laded in Baltimore, but a secret compartment containing all the instruments for forging and counterfeiting Crown documents. A pair of fellows in it were in the midst of manufacturing false documents to present to the navy here and to our Customsmen.” He laughed once and shook his head. “Quite amazing that the business was not discovered years sooner! We found false cockets some thirty years old, and even a handbook of forged official signatures of men who must have gone to their final reward some time during the last war! All hanging offenses, you know!”

  They talked more. Hunt dwelt on the adventures of Lord Dunmore. “He persuaded the captain of the Fowey some days ago to sail up to Porto Bello downriver from here to determine the disposition of his lodge. The servants still there fixed them a fine dinner, but towards the end of it an alarm was raised about approaching horsemen coming to arrest His Excellency. Throwing dignity to the winds, he and the good captain scurried to the longboat that put them ashore and were r
owed back to the safety of the Fowey. The horsemen contented themselves with the arrest of two of Captain Montague’s crew who were left behind.”

  A servant knocked on the door and came in to announce supper. Cullis was obliged to ask Hunt if he would stay for it.

  Hunt shook his head. “Thank you, sir, but it was not my intention to intrude on your repast.” He leaned closer to Cullis and confided, “Besides, I know that you and your father are at odds over many important matters. My presence at your table would create an awkwardness, once he knew my business.”

  Cullis’s curiosity got the best of him. “How would you know that, Mr. Hunt?”

  Hunt cocked his head. “People talk, Mr. Cullis. Times, I think it’s half my business, listening and sifting through people’s twaddle! Mr. Gramatan’s, for instance. I have exchanged a few missives with him, as well. And others.” Hunt rose and snapped on his hat. “Well, I leave you now, sir. I was certain I would find a visit with you most edifying. I will spend the night at Mr. Gramatan’s hostelry.” He made to go, then stopped. “Oh, I must ask this: Did Mr. Kenrick agree to grace your committee of safety with his presence and wisdom?”

  “No, sir. He did not.”

  “I didn’t think he would make such a concession.” Hunt grinned. “But, I believe the good reverend did?”

  Cullis nodded. “With alacrity, sir.”

  “Excellent! A committee solidly patriotic, with no chance of a division lurking in its ranks! It pleases me more than you can imagine that you and the others have acted on my suggestion to form such a governing council! Well, good night to you, sir! Thank you for the punch! Please, attend to your supper. I will see myself out!”

  Edgar Cullis stood at his desk and listened to Jared Hunt let himself out of the house. He did not think he liked the man. He felt foolish and superfluous. For some reason, he felt that he had just been patted on the head. “What a presumptuous, patronizing intriguer!” he thought.

  And he could not think of a reason why Hunt had called on him, other than to pat him on the head. But he silently cursed, not his departed visitor, but Hugh Kenrick.

  Chapter 10: The Words

  There was no question in Lord Dunmore’s mind that, as in the past, his office gave him broad authority over naval vessels stationed in the Virginia waters of Chesapeake Bay. The Admiralty seemed to demur that authority, and by implication, the Crown, as well, for the Crown was not entirely pleased with the Governor’s actions. Shortly after his misadventure at Porto Bello, the Mercury, a 20-gun frigate, arrived with orders from Admiral Graves in Boston for the infamous Fowey to proceed to that town. Captain George Montague of the Fowey must have breathed relief, for he was tiring of serving as the Governor’s ferryman. So must have Captain Edward Foy, the Governor’s personal secretary, who promptly resigned his post and departed with his wife on the Fowey, first sending to a Council member an incriminating letter in which he dwelt on his former employer’s dubious character and actions.

  Dunmore almost immediately made an implacable enemy of John McCartney, captain of the Mercury, by attempting to issue orders to him as he had to Captain Montague. The Mercury’s captain made it clear that he reported to Admiral Graves alone. The Governor had had to transfer his office and staff to the Mercury, but McCartney let it be known that it was on his sufferance that the Governor resided there. The captain’s lack of deference and ostensive insubordination so infuriated Dunmore that he wrote a blistering letter of condemnation to Admiral Graves, who subsequently relieved McCartney of duty. Throughout the remainder of that summer and into the fall, Lord Dunmore made few friends and a multitude of enemies.

  Many Virginians knew the story of King Midas, who turned to gold everything he touched. They began to say of Governor Dunmore that he was a demi-king; anything he touched was rendered worthless, or destroyed. “He has declared war on his own subjects, and is resolved to rule, even if it is as sovereign of a desolate and hostile land,” commented a letter writer in a Virginia Gazette. Richard Henry Lee, a delegate for Virginia to the Continental Congress, when he read of Dunmore’s depredations in Virginia, wrote a correspondent that if George the Third’s ministers “had searched through the world for a person best fitted to ruin their cause, and procure union and success for these colonies, they could not have found a more complete agent than Lord Dunmore.”

  On July 17, the first day of the Virginia convention in Richmond, and a few days after he was visited by the county “committee of safety,” Hugh Kenrick decided that he needed to devote some time to reflection in his study, to read and to think, as a respite from the more immediate demands of Meum Hall. He wished to find an answer to why so many men refused to acknowledge the tyranny that they were willing to tolerate — indeed, become partners with — why they would accept it as a normal state of affairs. He suspected that fear alone could not account for the phenomenon.

  He had before him copies of Samuel Johnson’s two latest political tracts, The Patriot and Taxation No Tyranny, given to him by his father when he was in England. His father had added his own disparaging remarks in them as marginalia. One concerned the matter of Johnson having been paid by the government to write the pamphlets. “It would seem that the pension that Dr. Johnson has collected for so many years must now be earned. Perhaps, instead, repaid? I never quite believed that his Dictionary, worthy enterprise that is was, alone had raised him in official esteem.”

  In rereading the pamphlets, Hugh marveled at what he deemed the “mental gymnastics” that Johnson performed to assert that Americans had no grounds for opposing Parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies. Or sophistry, he thought, recalling the day long ago when he inadvertently discovered it in a defense of reason against subterfuge. His tutor then had congratulated him on that discovery. Johnson opposed slavery; this he knew. But he could not understand how the man could not likewise oppose colonial slavery. Was the scale of its cunning yet outlandish subtlety beyond his grasp? Or did he condone it, but clothe it in the rubrical sackcloth of “due deference”?

  On impulse, he penned a note to Edgar Cullis, whom he knew also owned a copy of the Taxation pamphlet, and quoted Johnson from it against that other Virginian’s preference for tyranny.

  “If you would do me the courtesy of perusing your copy of his tract, you will see that Dr. Johnson employs in it an observation by Fontenelle, that if twenty philosophers shall resolutely deny that the presence of the sun makes the day, he will not despair but whole nations may adopt the opinion. Perhaps, sir,” Hugh wrote, “you and your fellows on the committee labor at the same set of oars, and move on the same premise, that many submitting to the same opinion creates an impregnable truth. I can imagine that in some faraway day, an embittered Machiavellian writer will compose a fable in which your descendents in mind may also allow themselves to be convinced that tyranny is freedom, that subjugation to a sovereign’s will is the natural, preferred, and happiest condition of men, and persuaded that a trained and forcibly educated purblind rejection of the truth is a distinguishing mark of eternal wisdom and practical sagacity.

  “But, be warned, sir: The reality of things will inevitably and inexorably intrude, regardless of the heat and sincerity of one’s submission, and painfully lance such tumorous fantasies, leaving their expedient subscribers in a rueful state worse than that known by the truly ignorant. Tyrants, you must own, are oblivious or indifferent to the consequences of their actions; to them force is the universal corrective. One’s submission to it can only be rewarded by them with the arrogant, audacious salve of allowing one to continue one’s own life, a thing that was never theirs to grant or give, covet, own, or expend. When those truths are set in men’s minds as indisputably eternal, then the revolution we are witnessing today will be deemed by future chroniclers as but a prelude or overture to a greater one.”

  A thought sped through Hugh’s mind then, too swift for him to arrest and consider. For a reason he could only at first suspect, he glanced up at the collective portrait of the Pippins
on the wall across from his desk, his sight resting on the figure of Glorious Swain. Then he remembered the task that wonderful man had assigned him, of knowing what he was, and finding its name.

  He reread the note, signed it, and asked Rupert Beecroft to copy it to the letter book, then have a servant take the note to Cullis Hall.

  He thought there was a clue to Johnson’s rejection of the truth of the crisis to be found in other of the man’s works. Hugh took down his copy of Johnson’s Shakespeare, and reread the Preface to it.

  “In the writings of other poets, a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species…. The theater, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind…. ” Shakespeare, wrote Johnson, created characters recognizable by the people, “with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common conversation and common occurrences…. Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion; even where the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most frequent of incidents so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world…. ”

  What a dreary perspective on men and the world! thought Hugh. It allowed no place for moral ambition, neither in life, nor in art, only a humble, itinerate acceptance of things and men as they are! What tragic nonsense! What cowardice! What a litany of accommodation! He thought of Hyperborea. I have always known the characters in that novel, and in the world! They converse in a language I have always heard, on topics more familiar to me than food, and are moved by passions to create occurrences that ought to be the common level of life! They are a measure of what one should have spoken or done on so many occasions, and have been spoken, and have been done! They are in the world, speaking and acting today!