Jack Frake Page 5

  “Gone? Well, we’ve — I’ve just come from the Trelowe road, and I didn’t see him, so I — ”

  Before Leith could finish, there was a crash of glass from the back of the house. Parmley turned and rushed to the study. The window was broken. He went to it and looked out, just in time to see Jack Frake disappear behind the rear of the stable. The globe and its cradle lay broken on the ground a few feet away from the window in a spread of shattered glass and bent panels.

  Isham Leith had followed the parson into the study, and growled over his shoulder, “You spoke too soon, Reverend.” He snorted scornfully, then began to sweep the parson out of his way with an arm, so he could jump out of the window to pursue the boy.

  But Parmley would not be budged. He put a hand on Leith’s chest and pushed him away. “No, sir!” he exclaimed in a voice he reserved for his most booming sermons. “I spoke too late, it would seem! You and your spirit friends may leave now! Your victim has fled! God save him, and God damn you!”

  Leith, shocked by both the vehement authority and the apparent revelation of his purposes, backed halfway across the study to escape them and the shaking fists of the parson. “What do you mean? What’d the tyke tell you ’bout me?”

  “He told me nothing! But I can guess why you’re so concerned about him! I know who those men are outside! Do you think that because I am childless, I cannot interpret a child’s coy questions?”

  Leith’s soul cringed under the drilling point of Parmley’s ferocious glance. His was one of the superstitious minds of which the parson had spoken; he ascribed mystical powers to moral men and felt that his soul and motives were completely bared to Parmley’s scrutiny. “Spirit friends, eh? What else’d he say —?” He shut his mouth, even though he knew that he had blundered and said too much.

  “It’s a hanging offense, Mr. Leith!” said Parmley, shaking a finger. “My advice to you is to leave St. Gwynn and never set foot in this town again, or I’ll have our constable clap you in irons!”

  Leith bridled at the admonishment, and squinted contemptuously at the parson. “I’ll step where I please, you withered, dodderin’ old fool!” He took a taunting step forward to assert his claim.

  Parmley stepped closer and raised his hand to push Leith away. Leith, stung by the defiance and also propelled by the vision of an ineluctable solution to his entrapment, exclaimed “You cockalorum!” and snatched at the first thing within his reach — a candlestick — and lashed out. The sharp metal of the base struck the parson in the neck and severed an artery. Parmley gasped, clutched at the break, and collapsed onto the bare floor.

  Leith stepped back again, and watched with horrified fascination as the parson’s blood spurted, trickled, oozed, and finally stopped. It ran from the side of his neck to form a pool that fed the neat canals of the joints of the floorboards. The parson’s eyes remained fixed on the ceiling as life drained out of him. After a while, his chest stopped heaving.

  Leith glanced out of the broken window and saw a tiny figure move rapidly across the moor, then dip over a hillock and vanish.

  He looked at the candlestick in his hand — its base was smeared with blood — and began to toss it away when he saw that it was made of silver. He grinned madly, then barked a single laugh of triumph when he surveyed the contents of the study. Brandishing the candlestick, he shouted out the window, “You ain’t cheatin’ me, you little bugger!” Then he quickly ransacked the room.

  Moments later, wide-eyed with fear but propelled by success, he emerged from the rectory carrying a valise stuffed with silver plate. In it also was a small chest — which he had found hidden behind some books — that contained paper notes and coin, including twelve golden guineas. This was the treasury of the parish of St. Gwynn. He closed the door gently behind him and looked around. No one was about but the two men in the dogcart, who had driven into the rectory yard.

  “What’s up, Leith?” asked one of them, watching him with caution. “What was all that racket?”

  Leith waved a hand and hooked the handles of the valise over the horn of his saddle. “Pack it in, gents!” he exclaimed. “The kid’s done a Turpin on us!”

  “What took you so long?” asked the other man, eyeing the valise and then the rectory with suspicion. “What’s that you got there?”

  Leith swung into his saddle, then reached into his coat and produced a pocket pistol. He cocked it and pointed it at the second man. “Never mind what anythin’! Our business is over!” He chuckled at their gaping mouths. “In case you get the scruples,” he added, “you know me, but I know you, so that makes us square! Don’t get no ideas about collectin’ a bounty!”

  “Don’t want no trouble, Leith,” said the first man, who glanced at his partner with a panicked expression. He picked up the reins and coaxed the horse through a hasty turnabout, and the two men left as quickly as the dogcart would allow them.

  Isham Leith galloped past them out of St. Gwynn. West of the town he left the road and took the same shortcut across the moor that Jack Frake had taken earlier in the day. It had begun to rain lightly, but the wind drove the drops into his face and he slowed his horse to a trot. The raindrops began to cool his face, and also his mind.

  On top of a hillock he stopped, and sat to watch the dogcart a mile away inching toward him along the road to Trelowe. The “spirits” — whose names were Oyston and Lapworth — had taken a room above his tavern, and would stop there to collect their baggage before leaving, no doubt in a hurry. An idea grew in his mind as the men in the distance approached. The murder of Parson Parmley would cause an uproar all along the coast, and would subside only when the parties responsible for it were brought to justice. Parties, he thought. One of them also carried a pocket pistol, the other a knife. He saw a way of letting two murders wipe out one. He had tasted murder, and found it troubled him not a whit.

  He opened the valise and put a hand inside to feel the candlesticks and plate. His palm lingered covetously on the cool hard metal. He sighed, then swore. Much of the loot would have to be sacrificed. But enough would be left over. More than enough.

  The boy, he was certain, could know nothing of what had happened. He could be dealt with, too, if he returned home. The little bugger knew, he thought. Chances were that he wouldn’t be back, but if he dared come back, he couldn’t prove a thing. Leith tapped the neck of the horse with his riding crop and moved on.

  There remained the task of inventing a story for Huldah Frake, and for his cousin, Jasper Dent, and for anyone else who might express curiosity, a story that would completely exonerate him from any association with Parmley, Oyston and Lapworth. It ought to be easy, he thought. More difficult would be explaining the money, once he decided to spend it.

  Chapter 6: The Sea Siren

  GWYNNFORD WAS MEASURABLY MORE COSMOPOLITAN THAN EITHER ST. Gwynn or Trelowe; it gazed outward by necessity and could not afford the luxury of insulation. It sat nestled at the mouth of the Godolphin in a broad break of the cliff line. It boasted six public houses, including two cozy inns which were better known for their amenities for traveling gentlefolk than for their stocks of liquor or raucous milieux; a Norman-style church, called St. Brea’s, which could seat ninety, but rarely did; a miscellany of neat and well-stocked shops; a rope-works; an ironmonger and smithy; a coffeehouse; a bowling green; the parish union workhouse, which occupied a former linen-works on the outskirts of town; a wholesaler’s warehouse; and a customs house. It exported rope, iron moldings, granite, slate, salt, fish, and local agricultural produce to the rest of England, and sometimes to the Continent, and imported as much of the world as its wherewithal and the customs collector would allow. Its gabled roofs were overshadowed by the square tower of the church and by the masts of ships anchored in the jetty-protected harbor, which could accommodate four merchantmen and a fleet of smaller fishing vessels. Gwynnford’s lighters were owned by rival families who competed fiercely for the right to load and unload the merchantmen. The streets during any season bustled with
activity. It was a snug, prosperous town, friendly to all who sought gainful employment and hostile to any who mistook it for beggars’ turf.

  Hiram Trott, proprietor of the Sea Siren public house on Jetty Street, the main thoroughfare, bristled on occasion when he recalled how he came upon his new scullion, but counted his lucky stars nonetheless. Also, because he was penny-particular, he counted the contents of his coin box. He could chuckle at the memory, once he disallowed the minor upheaval it had caused.

  A week ago he was intercepted, on one of his endless trips between the kitchen and the victuals pantry in the backyard of the establishment, by a hatless, rain-soaked imp who stepped out of the darkness directly into his path. Before he could reach for the butcher’s knife tucked securely between his apron and ample stomach, the imp had stared up at him and asked, “Sir, would you employ me?”

  “You gave me a fright!” he bellowed at the intruder. Trott was a stocky man of six feet, and he loomed over the boy and scowled down at him. The creature was most likely a pauper — he had hired a few of that ilk in the past, much to his grief, for they had been thieves — but this one somehow did not exude their air of artful earnestness. “Employ you? What for?”

  “Because the boy you have now lets the soldiers steal your plate and cutlery. He even sees them break your candles in half and light what’s left so you don’t notice, but never tells you. Your spit isn’t turned enough, so your meats and fish are burned on one side and not done on the other. Your serving wench talks too much to your dishonest patrons and the ones who don’t buy much, and ignores the honest ones. Your floor isn’t swept clean, so rats and mice come out and eat the scraps and leave droppings — ”

  “Ho!” exclaimed Trott. “Where’s your leave to say a bit of that? I ain’t never seen you at one of my tables!”

  “I watched from the window,” said the boy.

  Everything he said was true, and more, thought Trott. The staff so accused, however, happened to be his son and daughter. Since his wife had died a year ago, there had been no one to watch over his progeny; he commanded more respect from his regulars than from his offspring. He could toss two soldiers out the door at one time and was impervious to anyone’s fist, yet his children did not fear him. He had let them work on their own terms; good help or bad was hard to find on any terms. Custom had never been better, yet his profits were inexplicably slipping. And here was someone willing to work. It was the first instance that anyone — himself included — had offered so frank a critique of his trade’s deficiencies and a desire to correct them.

  “Where’s your home, lad?”

  “Clegg,” answered the boy.

  “And your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  Trott hummed in doubt of the truth of this statement. Clegg was a mining and market town, and this boy wore farm clothes. But it was none of his concern. “And so you’ve hoofed your way to this great metropolis to make your fortune! Is that it?”

  “No, sir. I mean to go to London.”

  Trott hummed in doubt again, then scowled. “All right, you! I’ll pay you a shilling a week, and maybe a few pence more if custom is extra good. Room is the woodbin on dry nights and under the steps on wet. Board is your pick of the leftovers and sherry to warm your gizzards. Filching gets you a beating or the boot.” He paused. “What’s your name?”

  “Jack Frake.”

  “All right, Mr. Jack Frake, formerly of Clegg,” chuckled Trott, “it’s also understood you got no supervisory status here. You got observations or notions, you see me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If that’s square with you, you can start now. Get inside and put on an apron. Find a broom and sweep the floor, then come to me.”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy turned and dashed inside.

  Jack Frake launched into his job with an energy that astounded Trott, who had almost forgotten how spruce a tavern his place once was. The floor was swept, and stayed swept. The meat and fish were turned in the fireplace, and Trott began to experience again the pleasure of patrons’ compliments. The dishes were washed thoroughly, and plate and cutlery stopped disappearing, for they were collected almost the instant a patron had finished his meal. The boy had the knack of espying pilferers among the patrons, and kept a sharp eye on those most likely to clip his employer’s candles. This scrutiny deterred his suspects, and earned him threats of beatings from some of the soldiers. His efficient attention to patrons compelled Clarissa, Trott’s daughter, to become a fairer and busier waitress; he established an uneasy truce with her, even though she began accruing more farthings and pennies in gratuities than before. He helped Trott and his itinerant cook prepare the vegetables, scale and bone the fish, and slaughter the poultry. He had two fights in the backyard with Bob, the son, who was one year older; the first over the fact that Jack Frake was a stranger and Bob wanted to assert his tenure; the second because he caught Bob stealing his possessions, which he had cached under the steps that led to the tavern’s let rooms. He won both fights.

  He worked hard, harder than his parents had ever driven him to work, barely conscious of the world beyond the inn’s front door. Yet there was never a time that he thought, “Oh, Lord, give me back my yesterday.” He slept soundly at night under the steps; Trott had relented during the first week and allowed him to bed down under them on a mattress of straw and burlap. It was his task to wake at first light to start the fires in the fireplace and the stew-stove in the kitchen. At nights, on his mattress, he could feel the dying heat from the great fireplace playing on his face, and before his mind winked out, it glowed with the riot of new sights, sounds and words he encountered during the day and evening.

  He had fled when he heard Leith’s insinuating voice at the door of the rectory; he did not think that the parson was a match for the man. Also, he feared, not the parson, but his loyalty to the law. So he had run more from the parson than from Leith, even though he felt a fondness for the man. He had never before felt an attachment to anyone, and it bothered him that he had not been able to say good-bye. As he went about his chores in the inn, questions buzzed in his restless mind. Were Leith and his mother searching for him? How would Parson Parmley have replied to his assertion that he did not believe in any spirits, including the one around whom the rector’s life revolved? How long was a voyage from Falmouth to London? Where were the colonies?

  Two things marred Jack Frake’s perception of Gwynnford: the presence of the soldiers, and the workhouse.

  At any time when its doors were open, at least one fourth of the Sea Siren’s patrons were redcoats at leisure from their duties. Their meager and often late pay did not allow them much relief from the regimental kitchen, so they drank endless tankards of gin, rum, and ale. When not accompanied by a sergeant, they became rowdy; if officers were present, only sergeants and corporals on good behavior ventured in. Jack Frake learned that the butcher’s knife Hiram Trott carried but never seemed to use was supplemented by a cudgel hidden in the other side of his apron. He saw it employed once on a half-drunk merchant seaman who refused to pay his bill, claiming that the fricassee he had consumed was mostly “Channel chicken” — sea gull. Trott grew livid at the charge; he was a better chef than an innkeeper, and his bill of fare attracted gentlemen and ladies staying at other inns. He felled the sailor with a practiced tap of the cudgel, and deposited him outside. He was bigger and sturdier than any of the soldiers, and none of them risked his wrath.

  The soldiers were there because Gwynnford was one of several possible landing sites on the south coast for an invasion by a French army loaned by Louis XV to Charles Edward Phillip Casmir Stuart, the Young Pretender to the throne of England. An invasion fleet had actually been assembled in March near Brest, and the Channel fleet under Admiral Norris was about to give its warships battle, when a two-day gale dispersed the French and smashed Marshall Maurice de Saxe’s army transports in Dunkirk. Following this episode, in fact, the French king had had about enough of trying to unsettle British polit
ics by using the Stuarts to unseat the Hanovers and establish a sovereign amenable to French policies, and his support of Charles Edward’s further schemes was lukewarm to the point of discouragement. But some powers in London were taking chances neither on the rumored exhaustion of Louis XV’s resources nor on the Young Pretender’s frustrated ambitions, and ordered the army to invest selected Channel ports as a precaution. Gwynnford was one of these ports.

  Jack Frake concluded, on the strength of chat among officers overheard in the Sea Siren, that the soldiers were necessary, and so he grudgingly accepted their presence. The regiment was from the Midlands; its privates and corporals were homesick, lonely, and perhaps even apprehensive of the invasion. Their occasionally arrogant, besotted behavior was a small price to pay for the country’s protection. He did not yet grasp that the army was composed largely of the swarf and dross of his country’s society — of wanted criminals and sentenced ones, of the unemployed and the unemployables, of the dispossessed and the uprooted.

  Hiram Trott, and other tradesmen in Gwynnford, he observed, perhaps felt the same way, but it was clear to him also that they regarded the money spent by the soldiers as one way of getting back some of their excise money. The redcoats, he noted, were charged a little more for their liquid and solid fare than were Gwynnford regulars.

  The parish union workhouse intrigued him in an unsettling way. Late in the afternoon on his fourth day with Trott, he accompanied his employer on a cart to the wholesaler’s depot to collect firewood and coal. They passed the workhouse, a long, two-story brick building enclosed by a high brick wall. Through the iron bars of its gates, which were guarded by a man in a blue coat carrying a polished black cudgel, Jack Frake saw children of various ages and a few adults loitering in a flagstoned yard. Many of them wore iron neck collars beneath their sallow faces; others were chained together in pairs, threes and fours.