Jack Frake

by Edward Cline

  The hangman took his whip and with the handle poked the glowing cube of orange and yellow in the iron box. The cube collapsed in a brief fountain of sparks. He looked up at the sheriff. Grynsmith nodded. Redmagne was led to the cart and he stepped up into it. The hangman fixed a noose around his neck. Next came Skelly. When the two men were standing together, Grynsmith said to Skelly, “Speak, if you wish, as is your right.” He paused to raise his baton and point it with emphasis at the man. “Say nothing treasonous, or seditious, or blasphemous, or you will be gagged.”

  Skelly did not look up at the sky. He turned his head as he spoke, and seemed to address each face in the crowd. There was no anger in his voice, nor rebuke for his listeners, nor fear of his predicament, nor regret for the actions that had put him in it. He spoke in a simple but penetrating tone.

  “I haughty tyrants ne’er shall tame… All their attempts to bend me down… Will but arouse my generous flame… But work their woe and my renown… Rule, Britannia!” Skelly paused long enough for his glance to fix on Jack Frake. “This Briton will never be a slave.”

  Jack Frake felt a thrill of honor electrify his being when Skelly’s eyes lighted on him, a mixed emotion of pride and justice.

  Some spectators recognized the words, or thought they remembered them, and were struck by one or another paradox, neither of which they were able to resolve: That these were odd words for a criminal to utter, for they truly believed that Skelly was a bane of England and as evil as the court proclaimed, yet the poise of the man and the readiness of his words contradicted these assumptions, for as Skelly spoke, the aura of criminality vanished and he seemed to tower over them all, more a man than any of them; or that his words contradicted all their assumptions about their country, for the words he spoke were born of it, yet here was a man who knew them, on the gallows, and who spoke them as naturally and confidently as they now realized they themselves might have spoken them. Of those who remembered or responded to the words, the first group felt anger; the second felt shame.

  Lord Twycross sniffed in recollection of the words, which he had last heard sung by a chorus, long ago, at a masque in the garden of the Prince of Wales, near London. Patriotic pap, he thought, beneath the serious sensibilities of a practical man, fit only for fools. Edgecombe remarked to the mayor of Falmouth, “No, that Briton will never be a slave. He will shortly be dead.” Henoch Pannell muttered a curse under his breath, and gave the boy in front of him a brief look of disdain.

  Redmagne turned to Skelly and said, “My friend, you have upstaged me. My compliments.”

  Skelly grinned. “My compliments to you, my friend. And — farewell.”

  “Farewell, Augustus.” Redmagne turned to gaze at Miss Morley. In a whisper which not even Skelly could hear, he said, “Farewell, my Millicent.”

  Skelly looked down at the hangman, and nodded.

  The hangman raised his whip and tapped the horse’s shoulder. The cart moved away, and the men’s boots dragged on the boards.

  Jack Frake felt the grips on his shoulders loosening as the Revenue men on either side of him watched the two men begin to dangle, kick and twist on the ropes. He broke free and dashed to the gallows, his speed sweeping his tricorn from his head, and leapt and planted his feet on the chains that linked the men’s legs. He landed as hard as he could, gripping the cloth of the men’s nearly tangent shoulders for a hold. The three bodies swung on the gallows from the force of the boy’s action. He jerked up and down with his legs, his eyes squeezed shut. “Die quickly!” he whispered. “Please die quickly!” The crowd gasped as one and now all roared, half in support of the boy’s action, half in outrage at being cheated of the chance to see two famous criminals struggle for life. Jack Frake heard one neck snap, and then the other, before Sheriff Grynsmith struck him on the head with his baton.

  He plunged backward to fall on the stones near the hooves of the sheriff’s mount. He saw Isham Leith, cowering in terror of what he had just witnessed. As he rolled over to his hands and knees, he glimpsed Miss Morley standing in front of a dragoon, looking at him with an expression of gratitude and pity. Then a hand reached down and pulled him up by the collar of his coat. Henoch Pannell whirled him around and slapped him while clutching the boy’s coat. “You little bastard!” he howled. “I told you what would happen if you interfered!”

  Jack Frake tasted salt in his mouth from the blow. He balled his fists and struck up at the furious face with all his might, as well as the handcuffs on his wrists would allow. The blow connected and blood spurted from the Commissioner’s nose, and the cuffs left a gash on one of his cheeks. The man’s huge hands wrapped themselves around the boy’s neck as the boy continued to pummel the man.

  It took four men to pry the Commissioner from the boy, and two men to subdue Jack Frake.

  Jack Frake was led away from the gallows to the prison. Sheriff Grynsmith continued with the hangings, selecting Isham Leith next. But the spectators were too excited and too talkative to watch his execution with more than idle interest. Few remembered what he had said, as was his right, or whether he said anything at all. A carpenter bet his apprentice a free day from his chores that it would take Leith ten minutes to die. He lost. It took him fifteen, and as he swung and kicked and choked, spectators pelted him with rocks and horse dung. A student from the Chrysalis Academy dashed past the dragoons and snatched up Jack Frake’s tricorn.

  * * *

  Three bodies hung from the gallows, and by order of Sheriff Grynsmith were not to be removed until noon the next day. There was no one to claim them. Huldah Leith, drunk and on the arm of a tanner, came to the square after the crowds had dispersed, and spat up at the body of her husband. She had no money left to return to Trelowe; there was no longer a home for her to go to. She became the common law wife of the tanner, and an occasional prostitute when money was needed.

  At noon the next day, the three bodies were cut down. Leith’s was put on a cart and taken to the potter’s field. The bodies of Skelly and Redmagne were stripped of all clothing, tarred entirely but for the heads, and put on another cart. Sheriff Grynsmith, on his bay, led a macabre procession of workmen, tipstaffs and carts across the Fal Bridge and south to Tragedy Point along the coast road.

  Late in the afternoon, in a cold, driving rain, his workmen labored hurriedly to hammer spikes into an almost sheer rock of the cliff on the small tableland beneath Clowance Castle. Other workmen unloaded lumber from a cart and hastily erected a guard’s shelter. And other workmen struggled to fit the bodies into iron gibbets that encased them from head to toe. With great difficulty, these were suspended on chains from the spikes. Ships entering and leaving Falmouth would pass the bodies, which were also visible for miles out at sea as black blots on the bare grey rock.

  On their way back to Falmouth, the soaked procession passed a solitary figure walking in the direction of Tragedy Point. In the rain and growing darkness, no one wished to raise his head from his collar to see who the lone traveler might be.

  In the guard’s leaky shelter, the tipstaff, left behind to ensure that the bodies were not stolen or tampered with, was too concerned with keeping himself wrapped and warm in his cloak to investigate a sound he heard outside. It sounded like a footstep, but he dismissed it as rain patter.

  It was in the brief moment between dusk and darkness that Millicent Morley, by lying on her stomach, was able to recognize Redmagne below, then reach down and touch his hair. “Because of you,” she said softly, “I am more than I was, my love, and to try to live without you would mean being less than I am. That I could not endure.” She allowed herself a serene smile. “My honor demands it. A lady can be cavalier in action, too.” She brought up her hand and kissed it, because it had touched him.

  When the moment had passed, and it was pitch black, she rose to look out over the cliff into the void that was the Channel beyond. She could see a single, tiny pinpoint of light in the invisible rain, the lantern of a faraway ship. She stepped over the edge to meet it, and,
with a brief whisper of her skirts, the void swallowed her.

  Epilogue: The Sparrowhawk

  HENOCH PANNELL WAS SUMMONED TO LONDON BY THE CUSTOMS BOARD, congratulated on his fine work in Cornwall, and offered the Surveyor-General’s post in Harwich, Suffolk. Quite to his surprise, he was made a gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber, an office which demanded nothing of him except to appear at state functions and which came with an income of five thousand guineas per annum. He was presented to King George, who asked for his story of the capture and execution of Augustus Skelly. He was also awarded the baronetcy of a collection of villages near the Pannell home, and was given a warm welcome by the Pumphrett family, one of whose daughters he married. With the daughter came a great house in Suffolk and an estate of one thousand acres, complete with human chattel to work them. Eventually he was asked by a committee of election officials to stand for Parliament as the only candidate of a rotten borough — Skelly’s former borough, as it transpired — and he accepted with indecently vengeful alacrity. It was the beginning of an illustrious political career. In Parliament, he voted for every measure that added to or strengthened the Crown’s hold on England and its colonies. And over the fireplace in the dining hall of his Suffolk mansion, he placed the Skelly gang’s Revenue jack. Everything was as it should have been, he reflected.

  A year was added to Jack Frake’s term of indenture, for striking an officer of the Crown. He was put into the prisoners’ pen of Falmouth Prison, and leg irons fixed to his ankles. With other prisoners, he was taken each morning from the prison to the King’s Pipe to help unload contraband tobacco and burn it in the great furnace. On other days he was escorted to the yard in the rear of the customs house, where he was put to work destroying other seized contraband: French molasses, hats made in the colonies for illicit sale in England, and other proscribed wares. He would have recognized the goods taken from Skelly’s caves, but these did not pass through his hands. Wherever he went, he was closely guarded.

  His soul retreated into a kind of self-imposed numbness in which he refused to let himself feel despair or pain, hope or joy. It allowed him to survive the bland cruelties and crudities of prison life. He said little, and did what he was told. He noted, from the depths of his isolation, how most of his fellow prisoners adjusted to their captivity. But neither they nor his captors bothered him much, for there was in his expression and bearing a deceptive calm which they correctly assessed as a tension that could explode for any reason. He grew thinner, and sallow. He became as inured to the prison food as he was to the things he witnessed in the place. Captains of merchantmen and agents of men who bought and sold indentured felons came to pick men and women for transportation to the colonies. On these occasions, Jack Frake stared murderously at the men, behavior which made them conclude that the boy belonged in Bedlam, and so was never chosen for a voyage.

  He was waiting for Captain Ramshaw.

  * * *

  Early in March, the Sparrowhawk dropped anchor in Falmouth Harbor. The frigate-sized ship, only a few years older than Jack Frake, was built in Portsmouth as a troop and supply ship, in anticipation of another war with France or Spain. But the war did not occur, and the Naval Board ordered it sold before construction of it was completed. A group of London merchants bought it, among them John Ramshaw, who was elected to be its captain. Like most merchantmen in those times, it was armed. It was one hundred and sixty-five feet long, with a beam of forty feet. Its bowsprit was sixty feet, and its main mast was one hundred and sixty feet high. Its sail area was eighteen thousand square feet; it displaced eleven hundred tons. It had two decks, and carried twenty 18-pound guns, plus ten “Quakers,” which were painted lengths of oak fashioned to look like cannon and to give pirates and privateers second thoughts about attacking the ship. In addition, it carried two swivel guns, one fore and one aft. These were small cannon mounted on stanchions, which could be pivoted in any direction to fire at specific targets on an attacking vessel: sharpshooters in the rigging, the pilot at the wheel, or gun crews. The Sparrowhawk had been attacked twice in her career by French privateers, and had repelled both assaults. Its crew numbered eighty men; it could carry one hundred passengers when the cargo holds were not full.

  Captain John Ramshaw came ashore to buy extra provisions for the trip back across the Atlantic to the colonies, to pick up mail, to hire some extra hands for the crew, and to see if it was true that there was a lone survivor of the Skelly gang, as he had heard in London. His vessel was loaded with cargo, paying passengers, redemptioners, several refugee Huguenot families, and a few felons whose indentures he bought in London. He held the indentures of the redemptioners and convicts alike, and would sell them to colonials. He also carried on board some Crown appointees, tax collectors for the ports of Savannah, Newport, and Charleston. In Southampton, where he stopped to purchase extra sailcloth and various ship’s stores, a company of marines who were to join Admiral Knowles’s fleet in the Caribbean was imposed on him at the last moment, and he was obliged to lay in extra supplies for them on the voyage. This delay caused the Sparrowhawk to miss joining a Navy-escorted convoy of merchantmen that rendezvoused near Land’s End and departed.

  Ramshaw was led into the prisoners’ pen by Mr. Binns, with whom he had dealt before. Mr. Binns pointed out the good prisoners and the bad among the convicted felons. Ramshaw espied Jack Frake in a corner of the pen just as the boy saw him. Before the boy could open his mouth or show any kind of recognition, Ramshaw winked and shook his head imperceptibly. The captain followed the jailer around, listening to his patter. At length, he asked, pointing to the boy, “Who’s that? I’ll need an extra cabin boy for all the passengers I’m carrying, and he looks nimble enough.”

  “Him? He was with the Skelly gang. Would’ve been hung with Skelly and Smith, but he was mixed up in some other criminal matter, and so old Twycross gave him transportation.”

  “Seven years?”

  “Eight,” said Mr. Binns. “He bloodied the Revenue Commissioner’s nose at the hanging. So Milord Wicker tacked an extra year to his sentence. Strange boy. Know what he did? He jumped on his mates’ ropes and hanged them himself. Weren’t no show to it then. Lots of folks felt put out by it. Traveled all that way to see Skelly run on air, and he dies like that!” said the jailer with a snap of his fingers. “And all ’cause of that Frake lad.”

  Ramshaw studied the jailer. “Maybe the lad was being merciful,” he suggested.

  Mr. Binns shook his head emphatically. “Weren’t his business being merciful. That’s the court’s business.”

  “Well, I’ll take him. The colonies are screaming for apprentices.”

  Jack Frake exchanged his leg-irons for jougs, a padlocked iron collar. The collar belonged to Ramshaw, and he was obliged to fasten the contraption around Jack Frake’s neck before the bailiff surrendered custody of the prisoner. And in his cabin, Ramshaw told the boy, “You will have the run of the ship, but you must wear the jougs. There are Crown officials on board, and those marines. You’re not likely to jump overboard and swim for it wearing that blasted collar. You’d drown. You’ll be assigned deck duties, repairing sails and such, and train with one of my gun crews. I won’t send you up in the rigging, of course, because of that collar. And I won’t stow you with the other convicts, though you’ll help feed the poor bastards. You’ll quarter with the other boys. I won’t need to tell them to spare you their initiation foolery. They’ll be afraid of you, for a while. You’re a piece of a legend, Jack, and they’ll respect you for that. Now, I know some decent men in the colonies, particularly in Virginia, and I’ll arrange to hand you over to one of them. It’s the best I can do for you, son.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Now, have some chocolate and bread and cheese, and tell me everything that happened. Skelly was a great friend of mine… ”

  Ramshaw stood with Jack Frake on the deck as the Sparrowhawk got under way. When it passed Tragedy Point, passengers and crew pointed to the ruins of Clowance Cas
tle — “Built by Sir Henry Clowance and his Royalists, but the Roundheads smashed it with artillery and slew every man-jack inside, because none of them would surrender” — and to the two indistinct black figures that seemed to cling to the cliffside near the foot of the ruin. “That’s Skelly and his henchman, O’Such,” commented one of the officials standing near them. “I heard in town that even on the gallows they cursed the king.”

  “How?” asked another passenger.

  “One sung Queen Mary’s birthday song, and the other sung our anthem. What brazen effrontery! They got what they deserved.”

  Ramshaw turned to the official and said, “Sir, Mr. Skelly had more right to sing that anthem than you will ever have. He has my adulation, and you have my contempt.” He smiled at the offended official. “And if you don’t wish to find amusing things in your meals on this voyage, pray keep your mouth sealed on the matter of Skelly.”

  “Are you saying that you were a friend of his?” asked the official with sly smugness.

  “I’m saying what I’m saying, sir. Skelly added happiness to men’s lives. You and your ilk could never make that claim. Don’t pursue the subject. I am not a patient man.”

  The surprised official sniffed and walked away to another part of the deck.

  Jack Frake reached for his hat to remove it in a final salute, then remembered that he had no hat. He stood watching the cliffside until the black blots disappeared. He felt a great, tired sadness. He wondered if he would ever see England again, or ever want to see it again. It was the only land he knew; the colonies were an abstraction to him, an unknown realm. He knew their geography as well as had Skelly and Redmagne, but they were still an alien land to him. He was glad the ship was not close enough for him to see the features of the iron-gibbeted bodies; gibbeted criminals on posts dotted the land and it was not a pleasant sight. This was not how he wanted to remember his friends. The two figures on the receding cliffside marred his conception of what England was. His own servitude — the weight of the collar around his neck — was so personal an affront that to reflect on its injustice would be redundant.