SH02_Hugh Kenrick

by Edward Cline

  Swain knew that he could roam the streets of London at will, without risk; and also that if he made a single move to help his friends, he would be crushed by the same machinery that had crushed them.

  “What ails thee, friend Swain?” asked a Quaker acquaintance one day when he had finished teaching a class of children at a nearby chapel. “Thou was once a sun of smiles and good cheer. Lately, thy visage is as warming as a gibbous moon.”

  “Some Titans have fallen in mortal combat with the gods,” Swain answered plaintively, “and I am unable to offer them rescue or succor.”

  He kept as close a watch on Windridge Court as his unpredictable employment allowed. He was determined that the gods would not claim the Titan most precious of all to him.

  * * *

  Hugh Kenrick returned to London on the sixth of September, in the early evening, a week earlier than he had planned. He was happily occupied for a number of days with school, business, and family matters. His family, including his uncle, would follow soon, and he had been charged with readying Windridge Court for their arrival. The house needed to be cleaned, victuals restocked, Horace Dolman promoted to major domo, and a new man hired to replace him. His parents were planning to have concerts this season, and he interviewed several troupes of musicians. His uncle would be sitting at Lords again, until Parliament recessed the next year, and so he visited Mr. Rickerby on Cutter Lane to renew the arrangements for his room there. His father wanted him to divide his time among school, Lion Key, and Formby, Pursehouse & Swire’s Bank; Hugh called on Mr. Pursehouse and began his introduction to the business of loans, interest rates, and capital investments. It had been decided that he would attend Leyden University in another year; he visited Dr. Comyn to inform him of this decision, and to learn from the instructors the new term’s schedule of instruction.

  It was only when he noticed, from the window of a hackney taking him to Lion Key, a painter atop a ladder blotting out the signboard of the Fruit Wench that he sensed something was amiss.

  At Lion Key, Benjamin Worley greeted him effusively, and during a walk along the Keys brought him up to date on the business. “Oh, everyone’s in a mad rush to fill orders for the colonies and Europe and load up the merchantmen before things get testy at sea between our navy and the French! Insurance rates have gone up, as you can imagine. Why, even the French are insuring their merchantmen against damage and capture by our own navy, right there in the Royal Exchange! The bloody cheek of it! I’ve had news that Frederick’s occupied Dresden and beaten the Saxons and Austrians in a terrific battle near Lobositz, and that Russia might side with the French just to spite us.”

  Hugh and Worley stepped out of the way of a dray carrying bales of cotton. “But,” continued Worley, “as if that weren’t enough, fate picked me to sit on a grand jury to indict some freethinkers, and that ruined me for two days, and let my sons make some blunders in the office. Couldn’t sleep much after the trial, milord! Even lost my appetite, big as it is!”

  “A trial of freethinkers?” queried Hugh.

  “Yes. Some club of them known as the Society of the Pippin, or Pippins. Charged with putting up a most scandalous poster in parts of the city that libeled His Majesty and his ninny of a grandson, and practically called the Bible the devil’s work. No small beer, wouldn’t you agree, milord? Well, I only saw the thing during the trial, not where it was said to be posted. King’s Counsel and the defense had a right good dust-up over it, one claiming that the men put the poster up, or at least were responsible for the words on it, the other, a lively fellow called Jones, claiming that the Crown hadn’t proved its charges. I would have laid a pound in Jones, and I was ready to acquit, and thought the others would, too. But in the end, it became so confusing, and I was tired, and the foreman argued that, all things considered, their mere denial of action wasn’t proof that the Pippins didn’t put it up… So, we found for blasphemous libel.” Worley sighed. “Somehow, we were flammed, and so was that advocate, Jones, but I don’t know how. The judge had the rum lay on the matter, I can tell you! Put a hex on the advocate’s case. I could tell that right from the beginning…”

  Hugh asked, “Where are they now?”

  “The Pippins?” replied Worley. “At Newgate, I hear. But they won’t be there for long. They were ruinously fined—a hundred pounds each!—and will probably end their days trimming timber at the Deptford docks, or beating hemp at Bridewell. Were given three years apiece. It’s not a hanging offense, but once the Crown’s finished with them, I’ll wager they’ll wish it was one!”

  “How many men were charged?”

  “Five, milord.”

  “At which court?”

  “King’s Bench, in a special session at Middle Temple, which was convenient for me. Didn’t need to traipse all the way up to Westminster Hall.” Worley hailed a passing fruitseller and bought an apple from the woman. “The whole matter put a sour taste in my mouth, milord, I don’t mind saying,” he said, examining the reddish orb in his hand, “unlike these beauties. Extraordinary experience!” he remarked with a shake of his head. “Wish I hadn’t been summoned that time!” He took a bite from the apple.

  “What was the barrister’s name again, Mr. Worley?”

  “Jones, milord. Odd first name. ‘Dog meet,’ or was it ‘Dogs ale’? Or some such,” said Worley. “Oh, yes! I remember! Dogmael! Dogmael Jones!”

  Hugh turned to the merchant and said, “Forgive me, Mr. Worley, but I must look after something. I shan’t be back today.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned again and strode quickly back up Thames Street.

  On the Strand, he stopped the hackney and ordered the driver to wait. The painter had by now finished drawing the outline of a ram’s head on the signboard. Hugh went inside the tavern and asked for the proprietor, who told him that Mabel Petty’s license had been revoked, that she had sold the place to him, and moved from the quarters above. “To Bristol, sir, if I recollect. She has relatives there, I think she said.” Hugh nodded thanks to the man, and walked out. “Hope to get your custom, sir!” the proprietor called after him.

  Hugh stood, immobile, outside the tavern. His world was vanishing. Two porters carrying a sedan chair brushed by him, almost knocking him down. He barely noticed the jostling.

  His mind was bursting with questions, throbbing with building anger, more anger than he had thought himself capable of feeling, an outrage more intense than that which he felt toward his uncle. He could not decide which answer to his questions was more important: Why had he not been arrested? But Worley had given him no sign that he even suspected he was connected with the Society. Why were his friends arrested? For a poster? What poster? Only five men had been arrested, tried and convicted. Which ones, and where were the other two? Had they fled? Were they to be tried separately?

  He looked up at the waiting hackney driver. Hugh told him to take him to Windridge Court. He would recover from the shock there, collect his thoughts, and decide on a course of action.

  But Dolman met him as he came into the house, and handed him a sealed note on a salver. “A dusky gentleman called about an hour ago, milord,” he said, “and asked me to give this to you the instant you returned.”

  Swain! Hugh recognized the handwriting in the address. He snatched the note up and opened it. “See me at home,” it read. “Most urgent. G. Swain.” Hugh turned and raced back out the door and across the courtyard to hail another hackney.

  * * *

  He found Swain in his garret, sewing silk parcels of tea to a false lining inside his frock coat. The man expressed surprise and relief at seeing him. “You are safe!” they exclaimed together to each other.

  After they had exchanged greetings, Hugh asked, “What has happened?”

  Swain told him the whole story, and showed him the newspaper accounts he had saved.

  Hugh read them, and set them aside. “Who filed the suit? That is not mentioned anywhere.”

  “Our mutual friend, the Marquis of Bilbury,” answered Swain.
“The son.”

  Hugh paced back and forth for a moment, thinking. “Somehow, he learned of my association with the Society.” He shook his head. “It was me he was after, not any of you.”

  “Yes,” agreed Swain, who sat on his bed. “I know.”

  Hugh stopped pacing and faced his friend, his expression inviting an explanation.

  In the manner of a man confessing his sins, Swain told Hugh about his encounter with Brice Blissom at Windridge Court. “I killed him, my friend, I—a man who has never so much as spanked a beast of a child or cursed a man who cheated me!”

  After a long moment, Hugh said, “That was justice, sir. He was going to kill you. I do believe he would have contrived to kill me. However, I do not think you would get justice in the law courts.”

  “No,” answered Swain. “I was a Pippin. I resisted arrest and killed the man who wanted to arrest me. I would be hanged, as surely as the Thames tide goes out.”

  “And he was a marquis,” added Hugh. “A thousand marks are on your head. I read about that in Danvers. The man who could offer that reward could also afford to have you killed before you came to trial.” He stepped forward and gripped Swain’s shoulder. “I do not know how to thank you, Mr. Swain. You have my gratitude. You rid me of a nuisance. But you did it to save yourself. Feel no guilt about that, or I shall be angry with you.”

  Swain managed a weak smile, and nodded.

  “So,” said Hugh, pacing again, “the Society was betrayed. One of us gave him the minutes.”

  “It must have been Mathius,” sighed Swain. “As I recall, it was he who had them last, for that meeting. And he is now notably absent.”

  “He, too, bore me ill will,” remarked Hugh.

  “If, like me, he is hiding, or not going about publicly, because he fears me… Well, if I saw him, he need fear nothing from me but my pity.”

  “A dire retribution, to be sure,” said Hugh, studying his friend. “A better one would be contempt.” He smiled a smile as cold as marble in winter, and Swain knew that he had not been paid an empty, patronizing compliment.

  Swain said, “I have been communicating with the advocate, and so I know this: Elspeth and Abraham have perished. They are gone. In two weeks, Claude, Tobius, and Steven are to take their turns on the pillory, for seven days. They could not be scheduled sooner. They have been sentenced to three years of labor for the Crown, or transportation if it suits their wardens. Abraham’s watch shop was seized in lieu of his fine. Elspeth’s bookshop—he dealt mostly in law books, I learned—has been shunned by lawyers and barristers and students, and is near bankruptcy. Tobius has been banished by the College of Surgeons, and his wife impoverished. Claude’s mistress made off with all his possessions, or what was left after the Crown took its due. And poor Steven will never again play music, for his fingers were smashed almost beyond use.”

  Hugh was silent for a while. “Where are they to be pilloried?”

  “At Charing Cross,” answered Swain, “‘that place being nearest to the scene of their perfidy,’” he added, quoting Judge Grainger in a mocking impersonation of the judge’s voice. “I would not tell you that, except that you would learn of it in any case.”

  Hugh stared out the tiny rectangle of waxed paper that was Swain’s sole window. “I shall visit them in prison,” he said ominously. “I shall see them on the pillory, and ground any man who taunts them or throws a single stone. I will call on this advocate and demand to know why he lost.”

  Swain looked up at Hugh, his eyes now alert. “He would not be able to tell you why he lost. He tried to win, but the trial was foreordained to conclude as it did.” He paused. “You pass the pillory every day, sir. There are wretches there now, enduring public censure. ’tis the season to exhibit them. Why do you not feel that same anger for them?”

  Hugh shrugged, and did not turn around. “Because they are thieves, and reprobates, and larcenous scum. Why should I feel anything for them?” His hands balled into fists, and he leaned against the edges of the windowsill. “Our friends, however, are the benefactors of the men and women who censure them, and they do not deserve to suffer for their generosity!” He whipped around and shouted, brandishing a fist that punched the air with every word he spoke, “I will accost King’s Counsel and tell him who I am! I will dare—no, challenge—him to file charges against me! I will secure the release of our friends, before they perish in captivity!”

  Swain calmly studied a face animated by murderous fury, a face that would perish in the very hell its owner presumed he could destroy. He had been afraid that this would be his friend’s reaction. Now he knew it. He was determined to abort that certain tragedy. “And who are you?” he asked in a mocking tone.

  “I am Miltiades, who triumphed over the Persians!” shouted Hugh with a grim, dreadful recklessness. “I vanquished them, and I’ll vanquish the Crown!”

  “No, you will not.” Swain rose and approached Hugh. He towered menacingly over his friend. “You may thank me by not doing anything foolish!” he commanded. “You will not attempt to see our friends, or even rescue them. You will not try to help them. The Crown does not wish them to be helped. You will make no move that would identify you as one of them, young sir!”

  Hugh’s brow furled in surprise at these words and their manner of utterance. He began to reply, but Swain wagged a finger in his face.

  “You will do nothing,” said Swain. “For if the Crown learns your name, and the name you were known to us by, it will know who made the statements on the poster it most objected to—and then a greater conspiracy would be imagined by it than the mere gluing of inane posters to columns and doors! I observed the entire trial, sir, and saw how men wedded to the Crown would flout reason and mislead honest men! The Crown would go mad, and unleash the dogs of war on everyone, and begin arresting men without cause, reason, or protest! Your family would not escape examination, and your teachers, because they are mere commoners, would be interrogated with the same kindness and respect as were Elspeth and Steven! Men of your own rank would be suspected, and friends to our cause in all the strata of our strange society abused with general warrants, only to disappear after hurried trials and be consumed as our friends are fated to be!” Swain paused. “You credit me with having a fresh mind, sir. Then honor me by owning to that harrowing scenario!”

  “So be it!!” shouted Hugh up at Swain’s face. “But I will not stand idle and watch them be degraded and lawfully murdered! I could not live, knowing that they—”

  Swain raised an arm and shoved Hugh roughly against the wall. “But you will stand idle, sir! That will be your pillory! And mine! See this: Your sword cannot help them, and neither can your rank! You would not have enough money to purchase all the places owned by the Attorney-General and the Secretary of State, and even if you had, would it guarantee you justice? Do you believe that the men who wield that kind of power would relinquish it by admitting their error, and defer to your reason? No? Then you will be silent, and settle for saluting our friends at the pillory, to let them know that you are free, and will someday avenge them! You will live, my young Baron of Danvers, and enjoy living, and know when it is the right time to vanquish the supreme Mohocks who ambushed them!”

  Hugh’s eyes narrowed and he steeled himself. “I’ll avenge them now!!” he growled. “And you are in my way!” He raised an arm and made to push Swain aside.

  Swain’s hand rose and his palm slapped Hugh roundly across the face. “Be silent, younker!” he commanded. “Be still, and obey me!”

  Hugh fell back against the wall, shocked by the act and by the violence of Swain’s words.

  Swain moved his face closer to Hugh’s. “You wonder why I oppose you? This is why, sir: You are something I struggle to be. All of us in the Society have had a glimpse of it. Before you joined us, we merely tinkered with the trappings of what you are, groped futilely in its shadow with the weak candles of our minds, danced to music we could hear only faintly beneath the commotion of our own confusion
! We are all drawn to it, except Mathius, whose fear of it caused him to turn Macbeth on us! You could not have had that effect on us, were you not what you are. Yet you do not know what you are. You have had no reason to think on it. The name for you has not yet been devised. The answer lies in you, and only you can put it into the right words. Someday, you will. I may not witness the moment, nor ever hear the words, but I will live happily knowing that they will be discovered and spoken! Somehow, they will justify our own cruel pillory and demolish it at the same time! And I will not allow you to jeopardize that moment!” Swain now saw in Hugh’s eyes the thing he could not identify, together with a knowledge of itself, and rebellion against his words.

  Swain bit his lip, then clasped Hugh to him and held him tightly. “You are the future, my friend! And I forbid you to die until you have lived it!” He held Hugh away from him, gripping his shoulders with a strength he had never tested before. “Promise me, as a Pippin, and as my dearest friend, that you will heed my wisdom! Swear to me!”

  Hugh did not understand the conviction that took hold of him. It compelled him, after a long moment, to whisper with solemn honesty, “I swear it.” He did not think his words had anything to do with the intensity of Swain’s eyes, nor with the tears that glistened in them. All he could understand, at that moment, was that Swain had touched some part of his soul, and that he felt an unquestioned duty to acknowledge the act with a commensurate promise.