by Edward Cline
Neither the late squire, nor his brothers, nor the poachers, nor the townsfolk of Marvel knew of the existence of the caves, for the hills were surrounded by thick, thorny brush, impassable except by fire or ax. The squire’s former tenant farmers, who now paid their rents to the court, had not thought it worth the effort to clear the brush to get to the hills, as there seemed to be nothing on them but rock and grass, of which they had a surfeit in their own pastures.
Before Skelly, the first men to use the caves were Roman officials and legionnaires, who hid their families in them from marauding Celts allied with the rebellious Iceni. After them, Britons hid in them from marauding Danes. Now they were the refuge of desperate Englishmen hiding from marauding Englishmen.
The caves were ideal for habitation. There were fissures and chimneys in the rock through which prevailing winds circulated air. An underground spring carried water from lower depths to pools in two of the caverns. The floors were flat and the walls almost plumb. There were three entrances to the labyrinth, protected by the brush and invisible to the undiscerning eye. Each entrance was reached by a serpentine path which forked into several others, which were dead-ends, and the entrances were camouflaged to look like dead-ends. The paths wound through a forest and eventually connected with the King’s highway south of Marvel.
The caves were divided into three sections. One housed the gang. Another contained its inventory of contraband. The third served as a stable for the gang’s mounts and as a shelter for its livestock, which consisted of chickens, pigs and goats. Gang members took turns tending to these accomplices in crime.
Commissioner Hennoch Pannell and his predecessors knew that the Skelly gang operated out of the vicinity of Marvel. Squads of dragoons drafted into Revenue service had scoured the pathways, copses and coverts around the hills but found little beyond poachers’ traps, stray sheep and cattle, and encamped paupers. Pannell had even searched the Villers house once, and for a time had a watch set on it. But there were no signs of life to be found. Pannell, a London man with some cosmopolitan pretensions, cursed the superstitions of the region and the reticence of the local inhabitants. He turned his search elsewhere.
* * *
There were twenty men in Skelly’s gang, every one of them wanted for various crimes against the Crown. None was a common criminal. Each had committed some action that defied authority: one, a former shopkeeper, had refused to pay a hearth and window tax; one, a former cattle driver, had struck a parish tithesman and stole back the cattle the churchman took from him in lieu of money; one had delivered an impromptu, slanderous tirade against Parliament and a corrupt minister and his clique; one had written and distributed scandalous verse about King George and his two sons, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and Frederick Louis, the Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall; one had knowingly sold contraband tea, silk and bread; one, a former London Customs House inspector, had shown mercy to a merchant who pleaded he’d be ruined if he paid the duties on his impounded shipment of French lace, and was charged with theft of Crown revenue; one was a former butcher’s apprentice whose employer was driven to highway robbery when the City trebled his stall fee; one was a former highwayman, famous for his wit and gallantry, who had offered to rob Skelly himself as he strode into Fowey, and was persuaded instead to join the gang.
Throughout Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, the four counties that lay between the Bristol and English Channels, it was known that the Skelly gang was not simply another band of criminals, and its reputation and esteem varied from group to group. The common people revered Skelly and his gang for their derring-do and mockery of the authorities. The middle class was divided between those who openly blessed the gang for the goods it sold to their merchants and shops sans all taxes, and those who, with surreptitious prudence, also purchased the same goods, but were nonetheless envious of the gang’s moral mettle. The landed gentry and aristocracy chuckled, over their breakfasts, at the newspaper accounts of the gang’s exploits, but in their church pews exuded concern for the gang’s example for defying order and established society. And customs and excise enforcement officials simply cursed the gang and their duty to ensnare it; there was neither glory nor profit in assured humiliation.
Osbert Augustus Magnus Skelly interviewed prospective members of his gang in the dining hall of his hideout and headquarters. It was the biggest cavity of the caverns. Its severe gray walls were decorated with some of the souvenirs of the gang’s exploits. On it were fixed a red Customs Service Revenue jack and a rowing boat’s black backboard, emblazoned with the King’s Arms, both trophies of a race between the pursuing boat and Skelly’s contraband-laden galley in a wild, high tide surf near a Dorset beach; the patrol boat smashed against some rocks, broke up, and all aboard it either drowned or were dashed against the rocks and killed. There were a dozen hats hanging from pegs, their former owners excise men who had arrested one or another of Skelly’s men, only to be arrested by Skelly, disarmed and relieved of their prisoners, and taken blindfolded to another county, stripped naked, and set free on a country road, their bare wrists handcuffed behind their bare backs. There was a collection of weapons: muskets, pistols, swords, and halberds, all taken from men who had guarded Customs warehouses raided by Skelly to recover seized contraband for which he had already paid.
And there was a pair of buckled shoes, set apart from the other mementos, on an otherwise bare wall.
The dining table, of shellacked oak, was thirty feet long, and was built from the planking of the deck of a revenue sloop that ran aground when its captain ordered it too close to the beach to better observe some suspicious men. Over it, suspended from a gilt-iron chain, was a silver chandelier of twenty candles, and down its length were silver and copper candlesticks. Mugs, glasses, tankards, plates, dice and packs of cards littered the top. There was even a book, and some newspapers.
In a corner of this hall was the kitchen, whose fireplace took advantage of a chimney-like fissure in the rock. Close by was a pool. Blair-Smith took a bucket, dipped it into the water, and gave it to Jack Frake. “Wash up, Jack. I’ll see if I can scrape some stew for you from the bottom of the pot.”
Later, still alone in the hall with Blair-Smith, Jack Frake sat at one end of the table, eating his stew and sipping a mug of ale in between glances at his surroundings. Blair-Smith sat placidly on the bench close by, reading a copy of the London Gazetteer, a Whig newspaper, and smoking a pipe.
But Jack Frake was full of questions. “Why were you pretending to be someone else at the inn?” he asked. “I mean, why were you there, when Mr. Pannell was searching for you?”
“We were keeping an eye on him, lad. We’ve been looking over his shoulder, so to speak, ever since he arrived in these parts months ago. He and his men have snared a few smugglers, but no one from our gang. He hasn’t made a move without our knowing about it. When he left on his nocturnal patrols, I slipped out through my window in your inn and was right behind him.”
“How did Mr. Skelly know you were arrested?”
“Mr. Skelly?” chuckled Smith. “That’ll tickle him. I wasn’t the only Skelly man there, young Jack. When Farbrace cuffed me, word got out to Skelly, and he planned my bail. In fact, we knew the Rover was heading for Gwynnford before the town did.”
“Why did you let them arrest you?”
“It wasn’t a matter of choice,” answered Smith, snapping the paper. “It was a matter of by whom. I was going to be arrested, there was no arguing about that. But I knew why Admiral Harle was there — we’d got word he was on the road, looking for French agents and spies, and apprising invasion points. Now I can’t speak French, but I can imitate a Scot, and you might have noticed there aren’t many Scotsmen in Gwynnford. So it was a Scot he got. The Admiral was the least grim of my possible fates. If Pannell or that lieutenant had got his hands on me, well, that would’ve been the end of my illustrious career. I’d planned to speak, but you beat me to it with your shovel.”
“Why did you pre
tend to have a dead tongue?”
“To avoid having to answer so many questions,” replied Smith, snapping his paper again. “Eat your stew, or I will turn mute.”
Jack Frake spooned a few mouthfuls. “Where are all the men I heard talking?”
“Being paid.”
“You look different.”
“In my former life, I was an actor.”
“What’s an actor?”
“An actor is a person who entertains others by being someone else. Sometimes he is paid with money; other times, with rotten fruit. He usually plies his trade in a theater.” Smith relented and explained the theater to the boy, and offered to show him the make-up kit he had retrieved from his room at the Sea Siren.
After a few more mouthfuls of stew, Jack Frake asked, “What may I call you?”
“Me? Why, Smith, of course.” Smith noted the look of disappointment on his auditor’s face. “It is my real name. You may consult the parish register of St. John’s in Wapping, if you doubt it.”
“May I call you Redmagne?”
“Even though I haven’t a single lock of red hair?”
“Yes. I think that ought to be your real name. Mesula Redmagne.”
“Methuselah,” corrected Smith. “All right. Redmagne I am.” The newly named smuggler turned his attention back to the Gazetteer, now not entirely displeased with the boy’s incessant curiosity.
“Did the Sparrowhawk go to Gwynnford?”
Redmagne frowned and dropped the paper. “What do you know about that?” he asked sharply.
Jack Frake explained.
“She hove to a mile or so west of Gwynnford,” said Redmagne, looking at the boy with new interest. “And there we unshipped her.”
* * *
Skelly stood before the boy, his arms folded, much as Parson Parmley had in his classroom. His two pistols winked flashes under the chandelier, and now Jack Frake saw that he had buckled on a sword. There was an earnestness in the man’s face which Jack Frake could not identify. He felt ennobled by the expression, though, for he knew that the man was regarding him as a man, as Redmagne-Smith had earlier.
“I invite you to enlist in my gang,” said Skelly. “I say gang, for that is what we are. I don’t trouble myself with sophisticated nomenclature. This is a gang. Not a club. Not a society. Not an association. We are outside the law, however wrong that law may be. So, know this: If we are caught and tried and convicted, we shall pay the law’s price.
“I am the leader of this gang. I founded it. I direct it. I set its rules. You may not stay unless you subscribe to every one of them. And the rules are these: We don’t steal, and we don’t accept or trade in stolen goods. We don’t trade with our country’s enemies, whoever they might be at any given time. We don’t employ, use or help murderers, burglars, highwaymen, footpads, or their like. We don’t give them a grin or a nod or a wink. To me the cut-throats and robbers are no different from the ones who take the King’s coin and carry the King’s warrant to do the same things to people. They just do it quicker than the King’s men, that’s all. We make no distinction among them. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Folks cook up legends about me and my men, but they also make heroes of the thieves and their ilk, like Dick Turpin or Edward Bonner. That’s because they see folks being robbed whom they don’t like. They’d sing a different ballad if they were the ones being chivvied or held-up. It’s as if their rags gave them a right to hate anyone who didn’t wear rags. Me? I’d dress like the King if I didn’t think it would attract attention.
“Next rule: We don’t associate with secret societies or other gangs or aid them in any way. There’s plenty of them around. That’s not made us popular with the other gangs, but it’s saved us the bother of betrayal and being mixed up in the bad sort’s troubles. There are a lot of decent men who smuggle, and a lot who aren’t. We don’t have the time to read letters of reference.
“Next rule: If you enlist in my gang, you’ll work. This is a business I run here. I make money selling to townsfolk the goods I buy from merchantmen. You’re to see yourself as my employee. You’ll get prize rates, the same as a Navy or privateer crew when it captures an enemy ship. The difference here is that you won’t have to wait to collect your due. If you enlist, you’ll start as our scullion. We need one. Smith here highly recommends you. You’ll get a share of whatever profit we make on our goods. When I think you’re ready for outside work, you’ll get a bonus rate commensurate with your task. What you do with your earnings is your affair. You’ll have a billet here, your own bedding and all that.
“Last rule: We’re all wanted men here. Every one of us has banns posted announcing our engagement to Rebecca Rope, and no one has objected. So we live here, mostly. We don’t live normal lives. Some of us have sweethearts out there, and friends and family, but none of them are to be brought to this place for any reason. There’s too much chance of betrayal or slips of tongue. So if you have family, don’t expect to see them for a while.”
Skelly paused, then pointed to the buckled shoes on the wall. “See those?”
Jack Frake nodded.
“They were a man’s by the name of Jack Strype. He was a member of this gang. He was wanted for smuggling and breaking into bonded warehouses and beating a particularly vicious customs man to death. He was with us for three years. He took the pledge. One day he disappeared, and the next week Revenue men raided my hideout near Fowey. There was a fight and men were killed on both sides. That hide-out was as perfect as this one, the Revenue men knew nothing about it, so the raid meant only one thing: an informer. We learned that Jack Strype had been arrested. We bailed him out, that is, one night we relieved the sheriff of his prisoner. We learned that he’d made a bargain with the Crown, as is allowed by law: my neck in exchange for a waiver of all outstanding charges against him, except for the murder. He was bargaining with the authorities on even that, in exchange for information about this place.
“Well, the authorities found him the next day, swinging from an oak outside of Fowey. We hanged him. Those were his shoes.” Skelly paused. “We’d like to grow fond again of the name ‘Jack,’ my boy. It’s a good name.”
Skelly bent to lean on the table with both arms. His face looked as ruthless and cold as Jack Frake remembered seeing it that night on the cliff. “Do you wish to enlist in my gang?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is not a game, my boy. Or a lark. There’ll be damned few sunny days in these caves or out of them.”
“I know.”
“Now, lad, you will answer a question, and on your answer will depend whether or not I decide to let you enlist. Is this clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Given all my rules, why would I allow you to enlist in my gang?” Skelly chuckled in mischief. “Think hard, now. Remember what I said about whom I employ.”
“I struck a sailor, and challenged an officer of the Navy.”
Skelly stood to his full height. “And you don’t think that makes you a criminal?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not, if you please?”
“A man’s life is his own, and the officer wanted to take his,” answered Jack Frake. He glanced at Redmagne, who sat at the other end of the table.
“It’s done by custom and the authority of law and His Majesty,” said Skelly. “So it must be right.”
Through the implacable stoniness of Skelly’s expression, there twinkled a glint of humor. Jack Frake noted it but did not understand it. The boy’s brow hardened. “No,” he answered. It was all he could say. He did not know the law or the King’s authority. But he was certain of his own rightness.
Skelly grinned a little, then turned and faced Redmagne. “You rehearsed him, did you not?”
Redmagne shook his head. “No, my friend. I didn’t think I would need to.”
Skelly turned to Jack Frake again. Someone coughed. The boy looked and saw some of the gang standing at the portal of the cavern, w
atching.
Skelly took hold of the scabbard and unsheathed his sword with a flourish. He lay the steel down on the table in front of the boy. “This belonged to a man I killed many years ago. He was a customs man, a man who seduced my wife, bribed my brothers to betray me, and stole my property in the King’s name and his own. We dueled the day he came to arrest me in my own home. He had this fine sword — see? it bears the King’s Arms on the guard — and I had but a paring knife. That I left in his gut.” Skelly paused to scrutinize the boy’s face. “Having second thoughts, my boy?”
“No, sir. You’re not a murderer.”
“No? I told you: This is not a lark! I killed a man! In fact, I’ve killed a few. If I’m caught, I’ll be surely hanged. And if you’re caught with me, but without a weapon, you’ll be whipped, and transported, and sold to a plantation man in the colonies to work beside slaves and other convicts! And if you’re caught with a weapon, you’ll be hanged, too, or sentenced to a workhouse for the rest of your life! You’ll be swaddled in chains from your neck to your ankles, and if you’re lucky you’ll die of iron fever before you grow a crooked back! But long before that, boy, you’ll beg to be hanged!”
Skelly leaned on the table again, studying the boy’s face, searching for a reaction. He saw no fear, no recoil, no diminution of interest in either him or what he had said. He saw nothing but an unswerving attentiveness. He concluded that nothing he could say would extinguish the flame of innocence he saw in the boy, nor move the rock of defiance he saw in that flame. He wondered what Jack Frake might have witnessed in his few years of life that could make him so impervious to his oft-repeated epistle of outlawry.
And — he saw a suggestion of admiration, which Skelly did not contest, mixed with a dash of hero-worship, which made him uncomfortable. Osbert Augustus Skelly was a proud man, but not vain.
