SH03_Sparrowhawk: Caxton

by Edward Cline

  Samuel Johnson, lionized now as the literary giant of Augustan England, was in July of 1762 offered an annual pension of £300 by Lord Bute. Johnson had derided a pensioner in his Dictionary as “a state hireling paid by a stipend to obey his master.” After polling his friends concerning the propriety of accepting Bute’s offer, and being assured by Bute himself that no obligations would be pressed on him, he agreed to it with gushing gratitude. Later in his career, though, a master appears to have requested a favor — or two. Johnson authored a series of pamphlets for the government on Crown issues, none of them memorable. Among them was one that was a bitter, sneering attack on American revolutionaries.

  * * *

  The depth, scope, and perspicuity of Hugh Kenrick’s essays made Jack Frake inexplicably sleepless. One night, while his neighbor was journeying to Londontown, he rose, went down to his own library, found an unused ledger book, and sat down to record his own thoughts and what he could remember had been said to him by Augustus Skelly and Redmagne. For a reason he understood well enough, Hugh’s observations had evoked the spirit of those men. A vault of stored-up wisdom imparted to him by them now demanded expression. At first, he had to dredge the past for the context of those memories. But after he put the first few recollected statements on paper, they spewed forth so rapidly that he could barely keep the point of his quill wet with ink.

  Two memories in particular glowed in his mind. The first was of the lecture Skelly had given him in the caves after he was sworn into the gang. “Chains are a more honest form of slavery than the bogus liberty enjoyed by most of our countrymen…. We will submit to chains, but we will none of us submit to their paper and ink parents!” Jack wrote it all down, as much of it as he could remember. “Most of those who join me discover something about themselves, and in themselves — something roused by more than mere disobedience, but which learns to glory in its unfettered state…. I’ve not been able to say what it is. Perhaps, you will, some day….” His own reply to Skelly that day came to him effortlessly and seemed to guide the motions of his hand as he wrote it down: “Even though we are chained by our outlawry, we are free men, more free than ordinary folk.”

  The second memory was of Redmagne’s remarks in the caves after he had completed Hyperborea: “Oh! Wild imagination! Suppose our colonies in America did such a thing? Can you imagine them nullifying their numbing bondage? Revoking their oath of loyalty to the king? Not petitioning him for protection from Parliament? What an outlandish miracle that would be! Perhaps too far-fetched! The parable of the loaves and fishes is much more credible a tale!” Jack heard all the words spoken by Redmagne on that occasion, and they were put on paper. “...My Hyperboreans are something like the Houyhnhnms, only much pleasanter to know…. They live on an island in the frigid climes, but their greatness warms the earth and makes it habitable….”

  When he reread these thoughts in the chilly air of his library, Jack sighed in sadness for their inadequacy. Yet, he did not gainsay Redmagne and Skelly for anything they had said or believed. They had lived the truth of their statements as closely and honestly as they knew. In the scheme of things, that meant living in outlawry. And when they stood on the gallows in Falmouth that last day, their entire beings were embraced by the calming angel of moral certitude.

  In the scheme of things, thought Jack…meaning that they had not been willing to hold piecemeal convictions — that was what Hugh had once called the mode — as were their fellow men, not to live and watch some malign power corrupt themselves and everything about them, absorbing and dissolving their convictions one by one, until it engulfed and consumed everything — but to remove themselves completely from all contact and compromise with the phenomenon. To remain cleanly and proudly whole, in body and mind.

  John Ramshaw, on one of his visits to Morland years ago, had asked him why he thought Skelly and Redmagne had not tried to escape the night the army began to encircle the Marvel caves.

  After a moment of reflection, Jack answered, “I think there comes a time in such a man’s life when he refuses to run or hide, when he tells his pursuers, ‘Stalk me no more. You will die here, or I. I assert my right to live without you or what you represent.’” Jack paused. “I think they both had reached that apex in their lives then, when defiance is no longer profound enough an action, but transfigures into revolt, or a supreme kind of assertion…. And at that point, one must be finally satisfied with the way one has conducted one’s life, satisfied in some summary way that demands a final, summary action, and the prospect of death or imprisonment no longer frightens or taunts one.”

  The captain of the Sparrowhawk puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and studied his young protégé for a moment. “You have given the matter some close attention, I see.”

  “It intrigued me for some time, John, as it did you. As I grew older, I understood it better, and understood it enough that I could find the words for it. It ceased to be a paradox.”

  “A paradox? Rather, it seems a dilemma that confronts tired men.” “A dilemma? No, not a dilemma. Not for long. Any man possessed of trimmed sails and an unwormed keel is capable of it. My friends were capable of it, as was I. Yes. I have given it close attention. But I cannot predict the time when I will undertake that risk. And that risk, John, I can assure you will not come from tiredness, nor will it necessarily guarantee death or defeat.”

  Sitting alone now in his library, Jack paused again to reread what he had recorded. There were three instances when Skelly had bequeathed to him the honorable task of understanding what moved men to such heights. The third time was from the Falmouth gallows, when the man looked directly at him and paraphrased the last words of an anthem: “This Briton will never be a slave.” He understood, but had yet to find the words. That they existed and could be found, he was certain.

  And now there was another man who had glimpsed those heights, and who called them “Olympus”: Hugh Kenrick. Jack was certain, too, that his new friend was moved by the same quest. He packed and lit a pipe, and sat back to rest from his labors. He was pleased with this rivalry.

  Chapter 15: The Conduit

  Two factors beyond their control and powers of prediction governed the prosperity and happiness of the planters and farmers: the market, and the weather. The rains of 1760 seemed to portend a bright, undisturbed future for the planters of Queen Anne County. Tobacco, rye, barley, corn and even hemp were harvested that year in bounteous quantities, with little spoilage or waste. Commerce between Britain and her colonies, and between the colonies themselves, boomed and was not much affected by the war at sea. Tobacco, lumber, and raw materials for Britain’s infant industrial economy were traded for credit; lumber and foodstuffs were traded with the West Indies for sugar, molasses, and French spices. Arthur Stannard, the English agent, happily dispatched vessels groaning with hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco to London and the custody of Weddle, Umphlett and Company, and just as happily extended credit on their sales to large and small planters alike. Ian McRae, representing Sutherland and Bain of Glasgow, extended little credit, but bought most of his customers’ hogsheads outright in exchange for farm implements, cloth, and household goods from his warehouse. He did a particularly good business that year in salt, for he had made special arrangements with entrepreneurs on the Eastern Shore who boiled sea water and collected bundles of salt, which were loaded onto coastal vessels and sent to Caxton. “Salt for the cellar, sir, or salt for the cattle? Refined, or by the gross?” were questions he asked several times a day of his customers.

  In the next year, the rains would not come, except in brief, miserly showers that would moisten only leaves and the surface of topsoil. Then the sun would reappear and burn off the moisture, drying and often browning the unnourished leaves and baking the soil back to dust or dry, cracked clay. Masses of dark, heavy clouds would form over the county, only to drift away to favor other counties with steady downpours. The York River, too, taunted planters and farmers, for it never fell, fed as it was by faraway rivers
and streams and buttressed by the sea level of the great Bay into which it flowed.

  The plantations and freeholds of most property owners were too vast to water by conventional means, which was to organize brigades of slaves, tenants, and itinerant laborers to lug water bucket by bucket from the river, although some ambitious planters and farmers resorted to this inefficient expediency for lack of any other alternatives.

  At balls, suppers, and in the course of occasional visits, Hugh had listened to other planters’ tales of woe and tribulation caused by past droughts. Poor crops, late plantings and harvests, and insect pests that seemed always to accompany every dry spell and ravage especially the tobacco, all meant short credit on bad terms, postponed improvements, a tightening of budgets and spending, and ulcerous tempers.

  The only planter who did not complain of past droughts and had no tales of woe to tell, was Jack Frake. He showed Hugh how he dealt with such weather. He had had built by his coopers several oversize hogsheads — four of them — and on the top of each was a hole in which to pour water. At the side of each was a tap. These four enormous barrels were each filled with about a hundred of gallons of river water as they sat in a wagon, which was then hauled up to and through his fields by a team of oxen. Jack’s tenants would then fill buckets from the taps and water each tobacco or cornstalk, usually twice. Hugh marveled at the idea, and was also astonished that no other planter emulated his neighbor’s practice.

  Jack told him the winter before the drought, “Otway’s place is crowded by a little inlet, from which he’s built a narrow, shallow canal. It’s about a quarter mile long and comes right up to his main field. His people get their water that way, when necessary, and also fish in it.”

  “And Mr. Vishonn, and the others?”

  Jack shrugged. “They wait out the weather.” He paused, then asked, “What will you do, come a drought?”

  “I have an idea.” Hugh smiled, then asked, “How often do you water your hills that way?”

  “During a drought? Twice a week. We haven’t had to take water to the fields for two years now. But we’re due for another dry season. They happen regularly.”

  The idea was born in Hugh’s mind the day he first toured the plantation. His first crops of tobacco, rye, and barley — his own crops, not those of Amos Swart, not those sown, tended and harvested by slaves — were large, almost as large as Jack Frake’s, even though he had set aside over fifty acres of exhausted soil to lie fallow. He had donned the rough shirt and trousers of his black tenants and sweated alongside them in all the stages of field work. His hands became calloused from wielding shovels and hoes, and grimy with dirt and oily with the remains of countless destructive hornworms he plucked from underneath tobacco leaves. And at the end of each day in the fields, the spaces beneath his fingernails were caked with green from suckering hundreds of tobacco hills, when he would need to pinch off young bottom shoots on each stalk so that they did not deprive the broader, more mature leaves above of water and nourishment. The tips of his fingers grew brown, and when he held them to his nose, he could smell the tobacco. This made him happy.

  And at the end of each day that first summer and fall, he would discard his shirt and shoes and plunge from Meum Hall’s pier into the cool river water. He would rest against one of the posts, close his eyes, and let the current cleanse him of the dirt and sweat. He knew that Primus, Dilch, Bristol and the other former slaves talked

  about his presence among them in the fields, but he never learned what was said. William Settle, his overlooker and steward, expressed his objection to it in the guise of curiosity. “One hand more or less, sir, won’t make a difference. Besides, that is work you are paying them to do.”

  Hugh knew the purpose of Settle’s query. He answered, “They are my fields, Mr. Settle, and I shall work in them when I please. And I know of no better means to grasp the nature of the work and what is demanded of the fields and the men and women who tend them. More planters should taste the labor. Perhaps they would appreciate what they get for free.” That winter, for weeks on end, Hugh embarked on the first stage of his idea to combat drought. He could be found in the bare tobacco and cornfields, digging small holes and examining handfuls of soil — and making notes with a pencil in a little ledger book. He could be seen riding into the bamboo forest near Hove Creek on the south end of the property, measuring the height and breadth of the plants — and making notes. For a week he traversed the whole length of the arable fields with a plumb bob and an adjustable tripod, stopping every few yards — to make notes. Mr. Beecroft and Mrs. Vere, when they came into his library on errands, would see his desk covered with papers containing strange drawings and multitudes of odd numbers. Mr. Settle could hold his genuine curiosity no longer, and one afternoon, as he and his employer were discussing how much lumber would be needed to build extra tenements for the men, he remarked, “Mrs. Vere seems to believe that you are practicing witchcraft, sir. She can make no sense of the drawings she has seen on your desk.” Hugh laughed. “Witchcraft? If she could read as well as she keeps house, she would know I do not practice witchcraft. Come into the library and I’ll show you. I’ve about finished with the plans.”

  Hugh opened a large leather portfolio and revealed those plans. “We no longer wait on the weather, Mr. Settle. I refuse to be at the mercy of insentient nature.” He waited a moment to allow the overlooker to flip through the many pages of notes and drawings, then said, “At London Bridge there is a great machine that can collect, pump, and raise nearly one hundred thirty thousand gallons of water an hour. This water is transported by conduit to a water tower, and raised to a height of one hundred and twenty feet. From the tower the water flows into mains beneath the streets and into the lead pipes of any house on that side of the Thames that pays a fifteen-pound or more rate. Windridge Court, my family’s London home, has running water. Houses paying a lower rate avail themselves of neighbor hood pumps from the mains.”

  Mr. Settle did not know what the drawings before him had to do with this astonishing information. His expression said so.

  Hugh went on to explain his idea of creating a conduit of bamboo to carry water to the fields. “From Hove Creek, to the well of this house. The gradual elevation of this property from the river to the creek lends itself perfectly. There are countless bamboo stems of the right diameter and length, many two inches by five feet. We would have enough for three conduits, but I first wish to demonstrate the efficacy of just one. The ends can be connected and sealed with tar and rest on stands on the ground. Each

  stand must be carefully tailored to accommodate the height of the ground it sits on in order to create a straight and trim line in the conduit. At intervals we will put plugs and tap holes from which to draw water into buckets.

  The end of the conduit near the house will be fitted with another tap, and when we wish to empty the conduit, it will be either near the house well or into the well itself.”

  The overlooker studied the drawings again and blinked. “But, sir: What will pull the water?”

  “Gravity, of course, Mr. Settle.”

  “And how will water enter the conduit?”

  Hugh hunted through the papers for and found another drawing. “In Hove Creek we will build a platform, and on top of that, a collection tub that will empty into the conduit. I have studied the possibility of putting a dam at that point that could work with a water wheel with buckets, but the creek is too small and would not produce enough force to turn a wheel. But two men working with buckets for an hour or so would be able to fill the conduit.”

  Hugh grinned when he saw comprehension, then appreciation, change his overlooker’s expression. “That is not all,” he added. “Allow me a question: Why do we welcome long rains? Because they sink deeply enough in the soil to be drawn up by the roots. Watering the hills during a drought accomplishes little. Here is what I have in mind.” He found another drawing, of a funnel from whose spout protruded the stem of a plug.

  “Henceforth, ev
ery tobacco plant, when necessary, must be watered with a funnel, which can be pressed into the bottom of a hill as far as its rim. The plug here will prevent soil from blocking the nose. After removing the plug, a bucket of water is poured into the funnel. The water will be absorbed by the soil around and beneath the roots. It will take more time, this method, but fewer stalks will be lost by it. We will want about a dozen of these funnels, made of tin or lead. Mr. Rittles and Mr. McRae both carry them in their stores. The plugs can be fashioned by Primus or Bristol.” Hugh searched for and found a larger drawing, one that was a complete plan of the conduit. “And here is a wonderful aspect, Mr. Settle. Come winter, all its sections can be marked, together with the stands, and the conduit taken apart and stored away from the fields to allow for spring ploughing, and also to prevent water from freezing in the bamboo and cracking it. If in the next year we conclude that another drought is upon us, the conduit can be speedily reassembled.” He moved a caressing hand in the air over the drawing. “Iron pipe would be ideal, of course, and easier to

  work with, but I would need to order it from England and I fear the cost would be prohibitive.”

  “We could not hope to see it for a year,” remarked Settle. “Mr. Vishonn has iron to sell, “ he suggested.

  Hugh shook his head. “Mr. Vishonn would charge me nearly as much as I would pay to have the pipe imported. And, you are right, imported pipe would arrive too late.” He paused. “Well, now that we have entered an idle period, time and effort must be invested in making the parts of the conduit and platform. I have marked the bamboo we need from the forest. Have some men go in and cut it. Have it stacked at the cooperage. Here is a plan for the creek platform. Anchor its posts with brick. It must be sturdy enough to tolerate a busy man standing on one of its cross beams. The second man will hand him buckets to pour into the collection tub. As for the conduit, it presents another tricky task.”