Jack Frake Page 3

  As he did so, he saw a faint light far out beyond the surf. It was a lantern on an invisible ship. It swayed in the wind and with the barely audible creaking of the vessel as it rode the waves. The water was deep enough to accommodate a merchantman or even a first-rate warship, but only to within two hundred yards of the beach. Up until a few moments ago, the cliff walls were visible in the moonlight; even the most negligent watch could not have helped but see them. Gwynnford was three miles up the coast, but no Gwynnford pilot or tidesman would ever steer a ship into port over such a wide arc, so close to the cliffs, regardless of the roughness of the seas.

  Jack Frake knew that the ship was coming on for only one of two reasons: it was lost, and would soon run aground on the shelf that rose abruptly in the water; or it was not lost, and was skirting the cliffs for a mysterious purpose. He rested his chin on his knees, and strained his eyes to discern the shape and size of the ship.

  Then there was a footfall above him, and some pebbles dropped onto the edge of the cave floor. He jerked back and looked up at the roof.

  “It’s the Sparrowhawk, all right,” said a voice. “I can smell the tobo from here.”

  “Signal her to Gwynnford,” commanded another voice. “If it is she, she’ll put in there, and then we’ll see.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be she? Who else would come to this point?”

  “A revenue sloop looking for us. Pannell’s the new customs whip now. He’d hang Ramshaw by his heels from the crow’s nest to get our lay, and I can’t say as I’d blame Ramshaw for squealing then. So signal Gwynnford, and we’ll look her over there.”

  The aura of another light appeared above the hole, then flashed on and off in a series. After a moment, the lantern in the fog answered in kind. Voices came from that direction now, clear but indistinct, and the sound of sails being tacked. The ship slowed, stopped, and began to retreat deeper into the fog.

  Jack Frake got carefully onto his hands and knees and poked his head out of the hole to look up.

  A man stood directly over him, a tall man in a greatcoat and tricorn. The toe of one boot protruded over the edge of the roof; the boy had merely to raise a hand to touch it. Near the man stood another who held the lantern, which blotted out his own face but lit that of the first. The face of the man wearing the tricorn was a stern, clean-shaven, hard face, more forbidding than the sides of the cliff. The mouth was tight and grim, the nose almost triangular, the eyes black marbles of purpose.

  The lantern light shifted a little, and Jack Frake saw the glint of inlaid silver on the grips of a pair of pistols that were jammed into the man’s wide belt. He ducked back, and the heel of one of his hands rolled on a small stone and catapulted it over the edge.

  “What’s that?” asked the other voice sharply. The lantern light was extinguished.

  Jack Frake heard the reply — the cocking of a pistol.

  Moments passed. The boy remained stock-still, knowing that the two men above were doing the same. He watched the ship’s lantern recede into the fog and finally disappear.

  “Just a rabbit,” said the other voice. “Can’t be anything else. There’s no place for anyone to hide up here.”

  After another moment, the boy heard the pistol being uncocked. “Let’s get back to the cart,” said the commanding voice. “She’ll be in Gwynnford in an hour.”

  The protruding boot jerked away and Jack Frake listened to the diminishing footsteps. But in the wind he could not hear the rattle of a cart. He waited a long moment, then hoisted himself up out of the hole. In the pitch-black distance he could see another lantern moving away on the road, and hear the clop of a pair of horses and the sound of wheels rolling over dirt.

  Only three kinds of men carried pistols along the coast, or anywhere else: King’s men, smugglers, and highwaymen. The King’s men were also called customs men, excise men, and tax collectors. He had seen them only half a dozen times, passing by the cottage or through Trelowe on horseback. No one greeted them, and they greeted no one. They were despised, but deferred to. The deference was paid grudgingly; or, what was worse, obsequiously, which, to a King’s man, was much more suspicious courtesy. They were feared, not because of the pistols they carried, but because they represented the King or Parliament, whose reach was longer than a mere ball of lead. They could ruin a man in a minute, at the height of his career, in the abyss of his desperation, or over the course of a lifetime. At this time, more than half the price of any finished good purchased in England represented a tax, indeed several taxes. Jack Frake, whose family lived chiefly on barter, did not yet understand how this contributed to his family’s and neighbors’ straits. He knew only that the King’s men had power, and that few men trifled with them.

  Those who did — the smugglers — were also feared and deferred to. But the fear and deference were of another species. For Jack Frake, who could judge only on hearsay, it was difficult to determine who were the pursued and who were the pursuers, who were the law-abiders and who were the law-breakers, who were the good and who were the bad. On one hand, the King’s men were said to be agents of the law, and the law was derived from the people — according to something called the Constitution. The Constitution existed to secure men’s lives, liberty, property, and freedom to trade, and its laws punished murderers, thieves, cheats, and other miscreants.

  On the other hand, he had heard the King’s men called these very things, while the smugglers were lauded as saviors or heroes. Twice, while on errands for his father in Trelowe, he had overheard the name of Augustus Skelly spoken with fond respect. To a boy who preferred to judge men and things for himself, it was a moral conundrum.

  He stood watching the lantern as it was swallowed by the gray, chilling sheets of fog blowing in off of the sea, fighting a desire to follow it to Gwynnford. It was late, the men had pistols, and hunger had caught up with him. He glanced up at the sky. The stars had disappeared completely, and the moon had been turned into a yellow blur. He started for the path home he knew so well, a path worn by his many trips to this spot. The sole danger he might encounter now was a pack of wild dogs.

  A light was on in the cottage, and a horse stood tethered to a stone just outside the door. He recognized the horse. It belonged to Isham Leith, cousin of Jasper Dent, constable of Trelowe.

  Isham Leith was a tall, gangling man who was half-owner of the only public house in Trelowe, the other owner being his brother, Peter. He wore clothes no other villager could afford, and seemed always to have coin to lavish on his whims. He stopped by at times to pick up milk, eggs, and vegetables, in exchange for meat, coffee, tea or liquor. When he called on the cottage during Cephas Frake’s absences and Huldah shooed Jack away outside, he would bring with him a jug of rum or gin, and was always careful to take the empty vessel with him when he left.

  Cephas Frake suspected only that Leith had incited the villagers to take action against him over the fence, but could imagine no other motive other than his refusal once to loan him the use of his ax. Huldah Frake agreed with him with uncharacteristic brevity, and if her son was present when the subject came up, threw the boy a wicked look of warning. The daughter of the village tanner, she had married Frake to get away from the smell of her deceased father’s shop and the repellent attentions of her disfigured, drooling half-brother. At the age of twenty-seven, she was still regarded as a handsome woman, and had once had dreams of being a lady’s maid in London. This feeble but still practical ambition was suffocated and forgotten in the course of her marriage to Frake, during which the contempt she allowed to grow for herself eventually was extended promiscuously to all men and women. Isham Leith treated her son oddly on his surreptitious visits, sometimes giving him a penny or a farthing and a hale slap on the back, other times cursing him and swatting him with his riding crop. His mother was a neutral, bemused observer of this behavior.

  Jack Frake listened at the single lamp-lit window and heard Leith murmur something to his mother, who giggled in answer with liquor-slurred words.
He turned and went to the small stable where the cow and ewes were kept at night, buried himself in a mound of straw, and went to sleep.

  Chapter 4: The Spirits

  TWO MORNINGS LATER, LONG BEFORE SUNRISE, CEPHAS FRAKE LEFT THE cottage, as usual, without a word to either his wife or son. That afternoon a clerk from the slate quarry rode into the yard in a sulky to inform Huldah Frake that her husband had been killed in an accident. A sheet of stone had come loose and had fallen onto a group of laborers. Frake was one of four who died.

  He was buried in the Trelowe chapel cemetery, next to his father, in a grave marked with a plain headstone. His name and dates of birth and death were chiseled into the tablet by the village mason, who donated the stone. Headstones were not cheap and were beyond the means of most of the villagers. They thought this was a major sacrifice on Huldah Frake’s part, a testament of her love for her departed husband. In fact, she had blackmailed the mason, to whom she had once granted certain favors, and who lived in chronic fear of his notoriously shrewish wife.

  Small changes soon began to occur in the cottage. Leith called much more often, and both he and Huldah Frake became kinder to the boy. Jack Frake neither missed his father nor mourned his passing, but he almost preferred his pouting silence to the hollow, chummy friendliness of Isham Leith. His mother was strangely solicitous of the snugness of his clothing and the fullness of his belly. Twice she had even asked him what Parson Parmley had taught him; she listened attentively, but for some reason Jack Frake did not think she heard a thing he said.

  This new attention included treating him to a precious tin of tea when the parson dropped by, one afternoon a week later, to offer his condolences and help.

  “You’ve a bright lad here, Madam,” said Parmley that day. “He’s sharp and he remembers everything. He’ll make something of himself, given half a chance. I’m going to see what I can do about that. There’s a small boarding school in Falmouth, the Chrysalis Academy — what a precious name, that! — that takes in boys of… well… humble means and genealogy, mostly boys from county parishes. It is not a gentleman’s school, of course, but it has a better capacity to dress his mind than I have here. It will mean asking the bishop to advance a small sum out of charity funds, but St. Gwynn has never sent a boy to school anywhere, and I can see every reason why the bishop would approve of the idea. In my letters to him, I have praised young Jack here to heaven.”

  Huldah Frake sat forward with an angry frown. “But — I need Jack here to help me work the crops, and keep the place up.”

  Parmley shrugged. “You know that I have some influence with the workhouse staff, Madam. I can arrange to have some help sent to you.”

  Jack Frake sat forward and stared eagerly at his mother. “Please, Mum! I want to go to this school!” It was the first time he had ever pleaded for anything from his mother. He did not know what else to say.

  Huldah Frake gave her son one kind of poisonous look, and the parson another. “Huh! If he goes to this school, he’d come back with airs, thinkin’ he’s too good for me and his chores!”

  Parmley looked perplexed. This was not the reaction he had expected. “But, Madam, that is not necessarily true. Good students — and Jack here is one — rarely shirk their family obligations.” It sounded false and contrived, but he had been prepared for resistance from the boy, not from the mother, and was at a loss for words.

  “What’s in it for you?” asked Huldah Frake, after a moment. “Why are you so interested in my Jack?”

  “I must assure you, Madam, that there is nothing in this proposal for myself, except, perhaps the satisfaction of seeing a young, promising life properly launched. There is strength in this boy, and it ought to be complemented with knowledge. I have visited the Chrysalis Academy, and appraised its curriculum and its students. Its curriculum is meaty and well-rounded, and the students happy and well-behaved. As for chores, each student is assigned a task contributing to the maintenance of its building and grounds, and is severely reprimanded if he does not adequately perform it. I dare say Jack would return home after terms a much more industrious worker.”

  Huldah Frake stood up and planted her hands on her hips. “I can teach him anythin’ he needs to know, and I’ll box his ears if he don’t do his bit around here! Huh! You ain’t offerin’ him nothin’ but fancified schoolin’! I’ll raise him myself, proper like, thank you very much!”

  Something more than the violence of the mother’s protests made Parmley uneasy, and he decided it would be unwise to press her further on the matter. He rose from the table. “Then I shall take my leave, Madam. I am truly sorry that you seem so hostile to your son’s moral and mental improvement.” But he was not willing to concede defeat, and wished the woman to know that this was not the end of the matter. Her manner provoked defiance. “I shall persevere in my efforts to widen Jack’s opportunities. This may mean having to resort to extraordinary measures. I trust that your affection for him is but misguided, and I beg you to reconsider your present stand. Good day to you both.” Then, with a brief bow, he left the cottage.

  Huldah Frake waited until his dogcart was a distance down the road. “You’re not goin’ to his church tomorrow.” She turned to find the boy staring at her. “Don’t you give me no looks! Your father ain’t here to wallop you, but I am!”

  “He wasn’t my real father, was he?” asked the boy.

  “What? You little —!” Huldah Frake flew from the window and knocked the tin of tea from his grip with one hand and smacked him on the face with the other. “You mind your filthy mouth, Jack Frake, or I’ll send you packin’ like I did that parson!” She paused in sudden realization. “Did he say that about me?”

  “No,” said the boy. “I heard you and Leith talking the other night. But Parson Parmley married you and Father, so he must have guessed why, too.”

  “Smart little bugger, you are!” Huldah Frake folded her arms and studied her son for a moment. “We’ll talk about this later! You get to the coop and gather some eggs! Leith’ll be by soon to take ’em to town!”

  Jack Frake obeyed. But at the door he turned and delivered another surprising statement to his mother. “Don’t ever strike me again,” he said. “Or I will leave.”

  There was a gale that night when Isham Leith rode to the cottage.

  Jack Frake did not hear him arrive. He lay on his pallet, half-asleep from physical exhaustion and from the strain of the new tension between him and his mother. The exhaustion stemmed from the running fight he had all afternoon with a squatter’s son who, like a dumb animal, kept sneaking into the garden to poach beans and corn. After a series of bare-knuckles bouts and wrestling matches, Jack Frake settled the matter with a well-aimed stone that struck the other boy in the head, sending him bawling across the moor.

  His mother had not said another word to him after Parmley’s visit. Something in her brooding manner told him that a decision had been made. She had served him his day’s-end gruel too dutifully, almost as though he were one of the pigs or chickens, not caring if he ate it or not. He was thankful for the gale. The howling wind and patter of rain on the walls and roof of the cottage lulled him into a nervous sleep.

  Isham Leith shook the raindrops from his hat and coat and hung the sodden articles on a peg near the fireplace. He quickly bussed Huldah Frake, then sat down at the table. He removed a black glass flask of rum from his frock, took a swig from it, then set it on the table. “All right, what’s all this hush-and-hurry about Jack?”

  “Sssh!” cautioned Huldah Frake, putting a finger to her lips. “You’ll wake him!”

  Leith glanced at the figure on the pallet at the side of the fireplace, then took the candlestick from the table and went to study the boy more closely. He came back and sat down again. “You’re sure he’s not lyin’ doggo?” he asked in a half-whisper.

  “He’s out,” the woman assured him. “I got him to cut the wood we got yesterday, and then he had a busy day in the field.”

  “All right. What�
��s up?”

  “Leith, we got to do it soon.”

  “Do what?”

  Huldah Frake gulped and lowered her eyes. “The spirits.”

  “You mean —?”

  The woman nodded. “It’s got to be soon.”

  Leith shook his head. “I can’t push ’em, Huldy. I ’splained it all to you. We got to do it coy-like, so we can get top guinea and no one ’round here is wise to it.”

  Huldah Frake sat on a stool opposite him. “Listen. The parson came today. He’s keen to send Jack to a ragged school down in Falmouth. You’d think Jack was his own son, the way he went on! I bollixed him — don’t think he ever got the tongue I gave him! — but he swore he’d be back.”

  Leith looked disgusted. “So tell him to oomph off! You don’t need his bloody charity!”

  “I said that. I said just that.”

  “Nobody’ll look at you wrong for wantin’ to keep him. He’s your son, and you got to have extra hands for the work here. You got first claim on him, not the bloody parish!” Leith’s voice had risen from a whisper to a near-shout.

  “Keep your voice down!” exclaimed Huldah Frake. “Do I got to draw a picture for you? Parmley’s got the power, Leith. He’s threatened to take Jack, through the workhouse. He can do it. I can’t keep this place for long without a man, and they’ll take him — and me — because all our kin are dead and they’ll call us paupers!”

  Leith waved his hands. “You look, Huldy! It’s dodgy right now, and nobody’d try it! There’s revenue men and soldiers all over the place! Gwynnford’s like an ants nest with ’em, and there’re even a few in Trelowe. They’re lookin’ for Skelly, who’s supposed to be in these parts tonight, and then I hear there’s somethin’ up again with the Scots. They think the Young Pretender’ll land hereabouts with an army from France, just like he was goin’ to a while back. They’re stoppin’ everyone, askin’ questions and searchin’ ’em for papers. I got stopped twice today! No, Huldy, it’s damn dodgy!”