SH01_Jack Frake

by Edward Cline

  “Well, then,” said the King’s Proctor, speaking up for the first time, “indict this witness with the rest of the accused, but neglect to include his name in the spoken, oral indictment. The accused do not receive a copy of the indictment, so neither this person, nor the accused, nor the jurors of the second trial would be the wiser. When the second trial is adjourned, put the witness in irons and read him his sentence — from the written indictment.”

  “Excellent suggestion,” said Treverlyn with a chuckle, “but too late. That’s already been done by Justice Wicker, at Mr. Pannell’s suggestion.”

  Pannell took a sip from the glass of the Madeira in his hand. “The second trial will divert attention and passion from the first. It is a perfect opportunity. It cannot fail to achieve its purpose. My question to you, milord,” he said, turning to Wicker, “is this: Will you preside over the second trial? It’s absolutely essential that a man of your known character preside over it. You’re practically one of the family in this lovely community.”

  The magistrate wavered. “I’m not entirely convinced of the necessity of my role in this ruse.” He looked around at the expectant faces, then asked Pannell. “Where is this person? In custody?”

  “Very much in custody,” said Pannell, “and in very much of a frothy snit.”

  Wicker sat for a moment, thinking. “All right. I’ll ask my associate justice, Mr. Ashton, to convene a petit grand jury for the day following Christmas. There’ll be grumbling, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour to secure an indictment, given what Mr. Pannell here has revealed.”

  “How do you think he’ll answer the charges?” asked Twycross, an elderly gentleman seated across the fireplace from him.

  Pannell’s smile was faint but discernible. “He can be persuaded to plead guilty, or not guilty, if you like — just so long as he hangs. Expect no surprises from him.”

  Wicker turned to Treverlyn. “How long do you think I should, well, remain in villegiatura?” he asked.

  Treverlyn laughed. “How Italian you are, in a venue so far removed from society as Falmouth!”

  Wicker snorted in offense. “We are not all bumpkins here, I might remind you, sir,” he said. “I am a premier member of the Silks Club of London, a most selective association of jurists.”

  “I did not mean to suggest that you were a bumpkin, milord,” said Treverlyn with deference. He thought for a moment. “How long should you be away — ill, perhaps, incapacitated by some execrable malady? Well, I should say that if you took sun in Penzance, you may be tardy in convening the second trial. Even a brief sojourn in Wales to visit family would be too long.”

  “I do not have family in Wales,” said Wicker, frowning.

  “My apologies,” said Treverlyn, startled at the justice’s resentment. “I was merely making humor.” He paused. “Now, I don’t intend to dally at this trial. It’s a pretty neat matter, all in all. The accused have no defense worth mentioning. I should think the trial would last no more than two days, at the most. And — Prestissimo! — immediately upon its conclusion, the second trial must begin, and also be brought to such a speedy conclusion that the accused of the second trial can be hanged with those of the first. I should like to speak with Justice Ashton and Mr. Haslam on the matter.” Treverlyn strode over to the Commissioner and slapped his shoulder. “We owe much thanks to Mr. Pannell. He put his finger on the nub, milords. There is a point the Crown wishes to make in this matter.”

  “Which is?” asked Wicker.

  “That there is no distinction to be made between any of the accused.”

  “Well, who makes such an unwarranted distinction now?”

  “The people, milord.”

  “Oh… ”

  Treverlyn went on. “And before I forget, milord, may I compliment you on the reasoning you employed to deal with the prisoners’ specious answer to the charges? A most unusual rebuttal to a grossly obscene plea, one which, I needn’t stress, the King’s Bench would not like to see encouraged.”

  Edgecombe leaned forward in his chair and said to Wicker with a wink, “A deftly dealt demurrer, milord, if I must say so myself!”

  “Thank you, sirs,” said Wicker. Then, unbidden, the fear he had felt that day as he tried to fathom the meaning of Redmagne’s words came back to him. He exclaimed with an abruptness and a bitter petulance that startled the others, “Those men are a threat to the Crown! They must be exterminated as ruthlessly as Mr. Pannell assaulted their lair, as ruthlessly as the Duke punished those Scots rebels!”

  “Milords,” said Pannell, “can you imagine what would happen if all these smugglers and free-traders learned to use that trick in court? Or even on the floor of Parliament? Why, we would be poor in no time, and the King would need to return to Hanover for want of money. There would be anarchy, and chaos… And no Crown… ” He looked earnestly from face to face. “There would be a revolution in law, and a fatal alteration in men’s natural relationship to their sovereign. It could not be stopped… ”

  “We are all aware of the implications, Mr. Pannell,” said Edgecombe. “There’s no need for any gentleman to dwell on them. It’s too horrifying even to joke about,” he said with a shudder.

  “We have endeavored not to imagine them, for the nonce,” remarked Twycross. “Well, Walpole, God rest his soul, tried to scotch that kind of business back in ’33, but no one wanted to listen to him.” He turned to Wicker. “About your handling of that plea, Wicker. Well, it was a somewhat complex and confusing line of reasoning, I thought. It needs refinement. But, mind you, it did the job. We shouldn’t complain.”

  “This Smith, or Redmagne, or whatever he calls himself,” interjected Treverlyn, “do you think he’ll make more trouble at the trial? Do you think he has another card up his sleeve?”

  “That, I can’t tell you,” said Wicker. He waved a hand at Twycross. “That is now for Lord Twycross to worry about.”

  Pannell remarked, “Thank God he didn’t pursue the law. We’d all be in a dither today. There mightn’t be any advantage in pursuing a career!”

  Twycross grinned over his glass of claret. “I do not expect this scribbler to surprise me, Treverlyn,” he said. “Quite the contrary, I have a surprise or two in store for him.” He turned and addressed Edgecombe. “Sir, would you be good enough to explain the thing to them?”

  “My pleasure, your lordship,” said the King’s Proctor. He crossed his legs and looked at all the faces. “Have any of you ever read a book called Hyperborea; or, The Adventures of Drury Trantham?”

  * * *

  Isham Leith was accorded all the legal protection available to a man of his means, and then some. For his own protection — and for Pannell’s purposes — he was put in a separate cell, and measures were taken to ensure that other prisoners could not get to him. The murder of a man of the cloth was regarded then as a particularly revolting crime, even in the minds of other murderers.

  He smelled the muckish soup that was brought to him before he tasted it, expecting it to be doctored with poison. His ears pricked up when he thought he heard his name spoken by prisoners outside in the pen. His body jerked when he heard a footfall outside his cell door. He dreaded the return of Sheriff Grynsmith, who had promised to take him to the cellar of the prison for a “quiet interview.” The shouts of other prisoners’ children and the crying of infants played havoc with his nerves. Even the prison ordinary, a meek, almost dwarfish man with a limp and a cauterized eyelid, struck terror in him; the parson would sit across the cell from him and recite the most gruesome parts from the Old Testament, then ask Leith if he had any thoughts on remorse and vengeance.

  On Christmas day, a local attorney, Oswald Frew, arrived at the prison and solicited Leith’s custom. Leith, desperate, frightened, and still recovering from the shock of his arrest, listened intently to the man. Mr. Frew suggested that Leith plead guilty to the petit jury’s certain finding the next day, on the chance that, having saved the Crown the time and expense of trying him, Justice As
hton would commute his certain death sentence to life imprisonment or to indentured servitude in Jamaica. “Justice Ashton is a fair-minded man, Mr. Leith,” he assured his client, “and will take your circumstances into account. Why, I’ve represented other men who were found guilty of, well, far more barbarous crimes, and he sent them to Jamaica and even to the colonies, where, I have learned, they are doing quite well, and have even acquired property.”

  Leith exclaimed with exasperation, “I’m doin’ well here! I already got property!”

  “Do you, now?” remarked Mr. Frew. “Well, it’s up to you, of course, how you answer the charges, but I know that the Crown has weighty evidence against you. If you force the prosecutor to present it, you will incur not only his added enmity, but that of the jury and magistrate.”

  Leith hedged on the matter of his plea. He could not think clearly. Mr. Frew, however, succeeded in having his client sign a document in which he surrendered most of the value of the letter of claim to the attorney in lieu of his fees. He tucked the document inside his folio and stood up to leave. “Think on your plea, Mr. Leith. You have all the particulars. I will see you in court tomorrow morning. Oh, and Merry Christmas to you.” Then he turned and pounded on the cell door to be let out.

  Jack Frake, on the same day, was visited in his cell in the workhouse by Simon Haslam and his secretary, and informed of his own arraignment, and also of the arrest of Leith. News of Leith took the boy’s mind off of his separation from his friends. He was told by Haslam that his certain death sentence would be commuted to a seven-year term of imprisonment or to a like period of indentured servitude if he would act as a witness at Leith’s trial. “You do want to see justice done, don’t you?” asked the barrister, sitting on a stool in the cell opposite the boy, who sat on the edge of a crude frame bed.

  “Yes,” said Jack Frake. “The parson was a good man. He taught me so much. I think I was fond of him.”

  Haslam had not expected so frank an admission from the boy. “Yes,” he said. “Well, to make certain that there is no room for error, you must tell me what happened that day.”

  The boy searched his memory and told the barrister everything, from overhearing his mother and Leith discuss the “spirits” to the moment he hurled the globe through the parson’s study window.

  “Hmm,” mused Haslam. “But you did not actually see Leith enter the rectory?”

  “No, sir,” said the boy. “But I turned around once when I was running through the field in back, and I saw them standing at the window. Reverend Parmley and Leith.”

  Haslam suppressed a whoop of joy. “Jack,” he said, “— may I call you ‘Jack’? — can you write?”

  “Of course.”

  Haslam clapped his hands together once. “This is perfect, Jack! Now, Leith will be arraigned tomorrow, but we’re not sure how he will plead. And if there is a trial, you, for legal reasons I needn’t explain to you now, will not be able to appear in person as a Crown witness. We will also leave your mother’s role in this matter out of it, as she will be punished by God better than we mortals could ever contrive.” He paused. “Have you any objection to either point, Jack?”

  The boy shook his head. “None. God won’t punish her, though,” he said. “She will punish herself by marrying another man worse than Leith.”

  Again, Haslam was stunned by this frankness. “Well,” he continued, “what I wish you to do is give me an affidavit, or a written statement of everything you’ve told me. It will serve a purpose whether or not Leith claims his right to a trial. It will be examined by the jury tomorrow. Would you do that?”

  The boy nodded. The barrister turned to his secretary. “Give him your things,” he said. The secretary opened his wooden case, took out quills, bottles of ink, and paper, then set the case on Jack Frake’s lap, and laid the implements on top.

  Minutes later, Haslam, reading the first page of the statement as the boy worked on the second, remarked, “You have a very fine hand, Jack, almost as fine as my secretary’s. Also, you have a neat manner of composition. I have half a mind to persuade the court to indenture you to me as a clerk. Did Reverend Parmley instruct you in these arts?”

  “Some,” said the boy, pausing to look up. “But it was mostly Redmagne who taught me. I helped him copy out his book, Hyperborea. And he made me write summaries of all of Shakespeare’s plays, and Jonson’s and Marlowe’s, too.”

  “I see,” said the barrister. “Extraordinary man, this ‘Redmagne.’ He should have remained on the stage.”

  Jack Frake said, “But he never left it, sir. I mean, he brought the stage down to his own life.” He paused. “Sir, would you be kind enough to tell him and Skelly that I’m all right… and that I miss them?”

  Haslam turned away on the pretext of studying one of the cell walls. “No communication is permitted between you and them.”

  “I don’t understand. I want to talk to them before we’re… hanged.”

  Haslam faced the boy again. “Didn’t you hear me, Jack? I told you I don’t think you’ll be hanged.”

  “Oh… I remember.” The boy asked, “Did they plead self-defense?”

  Haslam frowned. “Yes, they did. But that plea was trounced, as it should have been.”

  “I knew it would be. But I wanted to be there to hear the words.”

  Haslam studied the crestfallen look on the boy’s face, then sighed. “Finish your statement, Jack,” he said, “and I’ll think about delivering a message to your friends.”

  * * *

  Late the next morning, Leith was brought into the courtroom, in chains, accompanied by his attorney and two bailiffs. Magistrate Ashton, a cadaverous man, glanced down at the haggard, unshaven figure below, and wondered why the man looked so pathetic. He knew that the prisoner had not been pressed for a confession, that Justice Wicker and the prosecutor had requested that Sheriff Grynsmith not resort to his customary methods of forcing one from a prisoner. There was something special about this rogue, he sensed, some connection between this prisoner and the smugglers. But he had not been invited into the intrigue, except to be urged by Prosecutor Treverlyn to expedite this man’s sentencing.

  “Isham Leith, of Trelowe,” he began, “damning evidence has been examined and you are charged with the murder of Reverend Robert Parmley, on the afternoon of the 16th of April, 1744, in the rectory of the parish of St. Gwynn-by-Godolphin. How do you answer this charge?”

  Leith licked his lips and looked from the magistrate to Oswald Frew, who stood nearby. Mr. Frew nodded to his client with a smile of reassurance. Leith gulped, then turned and faced the magistrate. “Guilty, milord,” he said hoarsely.

  The magistrate seemed to sigh with relief. “The prisoner has entered a plea of guilty,” he said to the recording clerk. “Therefore, I sentence you, Isham Leith, to hang by the neck until dead for this reprehensible crime. The sheriff will schedule your execution. May God have mercy on your wretched soul.”

  As Ashton brought down his gavel, Isham Leith fainted and fell with a crash to the floor.

  Mr. Frew, disconcerted more by his client’s fainting than by the sentence, glanced briefly at Leith, whom one of the bailiffs was trying to revive with smelling salts, then up at the magistrate. “Milord,” he said, “I promised him a turn in Jamaica.”

  Magistrate Ashton replied in a bored tone. “Jamaica is but a parish of Hell, Mr. Frew, and Hell is where he is going.”

  Jack Frake was brought into the same courtroom not much later, escorted by Henoch Pannell and two of his men. He was informed, by Magistrate Wicker, of his in absentia indictment, and of his sentence. “As you were not in possession of a firearm upon your arrest,” said Wicker, “and because of your value as a Crown witness in the matter of the murder of Reverend Parmley, this court mercifully commutes your sentence from death by hanging to another form of punishment. This court has taken the liberty of sentencing you to a term of seven years’ servitude as a felon in one of His Majesty’s colonies. Following the execution
of your colleagues, you will be returned to the prison to await transportation.” Wicker paused to look at Jack Frake. “Have you anything to say to the court, Mr. Frake?”

  Jack Frake, denied the chance to stand with his friends in this same courtroom, glared at the magistrate, and replied, “The court has taken many liberties, milord. You will have reason to remember the theft, someday.”

  Magistrate Wicker bent his mouth in a placid, condescending smile. “You emulate the audacity of Mr. Smith, your colleague. How do you wish the court to understand your remark?”

  “However it wishes.” Jack Frake paused. “If the court is so merciful, perhaps it would permit me to see my friends.”

  “No communication is permitted between you and them,” said Wicker. “If it so pleases the Commissioner, he may explain this prohibition to the prisoner.”

  Pannell stepped forward. “Further association of this youth with those criminals may have a deleterious effect on the prisoner’s character, which I and others judge to be salvageable through the tonic of hard and honest labor. I have gone to great lengths to keep them separated as far as law and decency allow.”

  “I see,” said the magistrate, studying Pannell with new interest. “The prisoner may be returned,” he said, nodding to the two Revenue men. “A word with you, Mr. Pannell.” When Jack Frake had been taken out of the courtroom, he asked, “Why do you wish to keep the boy parted from his friends? I ask this out of personal curiosity.”

  “To accomplish what has been accomplished, milord,” answered Pannell. “This was explained to you.”

  “Yes, yes, so it was,” concurred Wicker. “But there is something else to it, I’m certain.”

  Pannell shrugged. “Let us say it is a form of punishment for all of them,” he said. “The boy and his friends offended me.”