Jack Frake (14 page)

Skelly himself was a former London merchant, the only enfranchised voter in a “rotten” borough, which, even though it had little or no population — depending on the migratory work season — was entitled to representation in Parliament. His father, who once sold miscellaneous wares from a pushcart, eventually established one of London’s first in-door “emporiums,” called Skelly’s Select Sundries and Merchandise. The hovel in which the senior Skelly lived with his family was demolished and replaced with a mansion. Aside from a small staff of servants, the Skellys were the borough’s only permanent inhabitants.

The senior Skelly elected and paid the borough’s representative, a dull-witted but complaisant man named Roscoe, to sit at all Parliamentary sessions and oppose all new tax and licensing bills. He even hired a hack to write the man’s speeches, which were delivered by Roscoe from the Whig benches in the House of Commons. London newspapers, prohibited at that time from auditing Parliamentary sessions, nevertheless obtained copies of Roscoe’s speeches. One reported that his words “answer in kind the sonorous peals for Liberty from the steeples of minds such as Sidney and Locke. Would that our august body of talkers on the Thames echo Mr.
Roscoe’s mellifluous orations with action — or perhaps with Liberty-minded lassitude — for then our ears would not be offended by the noise which regularly emanates from the Commons.”

The senior Skelly died, leaving three sons; Osbert Augustus was the oldest. The two younger sons were gamblers and rakes. They were jealous of their brother’s business acumen, ambition and paternal favoritism, and unhappy with the annuity their father’s will provided them and which their brother would not supplement. Out of sheer malice, they made a deal with Roscoe to supply him with tea, chocolate and tobacco if he would support a Tory bill before Parliament that would add another surcharge to the importation of those very commodities. Roscoe’s vote was crucial, and he wavered. The brothers contrived to borrow money from the family banker, and subsequently succeeded in bribing the representative. In the meantime, Skelly’s wife of two years met a customs official at a party, and proceeded to have an affair with the man. Skelly caught them together one spring afternoon; he thrashed the customs man and disowned his wife. The customs man threatened Skelly with an investigation of the source of his emporium’s stocks, many of which were contraband. Armed with evidence bought from Skelly’s brothers — who were now hoping to pressure their brother into making them silent partners in the business — the customs man arrived at Skelly’s mansion with the demand that he take back his wife and allow the affair to continue.

Thus the duel, and the death. Skelly also fled. Roscoe made no speeches against the new tax, and voted for it with the majority. The bank seized the mansion and the emporium. The wife committed suicide. And the brothers went to France, became involved with Jacobite intrigues in the expatriate English community in Paris, and were hired as couriers by agents of the Comte de Chavigny, French ambassador to the Hanoverian court, and English Viscount Cornbury, in a plot to overthrow Walpole and the Hanover dynasty during the Excise Crisis of 1733. When the plot was vetoed by the French and knowledge of it uncovered by agents of George II, the brothers were implicated, arrested when they tried to flee back to France, and hanged.

The name of Skelly became synonymous with treason.

Like all gangs that enjoyed self-imposed isolation, the Skelly gang relied for the necessities and luxuries of life on its members’ skills and trades. From Elmo Tuck, Jack Frake learned
how to cook. From Charles Ambrose, a deserter and formerly a sergeant in the Coldstream Guards, he learned how to load and fire a musket and a pistol, something of swordplay, and the basics of boxing. From Chester Plume, he learned bookkeeping and accounts. From John Finch, he learned tailoring and fashions. From Tobie Robins, he learned carpentry.

Jack Frake learned that many past members of the gang had made enough money with Skelly to buy passage on a merchantman and a new beginning in the colonies. Redmagne and Skelly were tied to England; they sought a new beginning on their own island. But they did not begrudge others their desire to depart for the colonies. These men, he learned, inevitably became part of Skelly’s intricate commercial and intelligence network.

From Skelly he learned the rewards and vicissitudes of trade and business. Occasionally he was asked by the man to help him inventory the contents of the contraband cave. Every length of rope, every hogshead of tobacco, every ounce of tea and coffee, every inch of lace was measured and accounted for. Skelly allowed no discrepancies in his business. He would lecture the boy on trade and commerce, and from him the boy learned the source of wealth he saw in the towns around him.

One autumn evening Jack Frake entered Skelly’s chamber to report the change in the watch on the hill above, which he usually reported to Redmagne. But Redmagne had left early that morning on business in Falmouth. The boy saw the man, pipe in mouth, sitting in front of a painting, a palette of colors in one hand and a brush in another. The painting was the covered rectangle he had noticed months ago and had only seen glimpses of before. It depicted the vista of a mass of ships anchored on a wide, busy river, in the midst of a city of domes, spires and smokestacks. Skelly added some shadow to one of the innumerable masts, then turned to the boy. “Yes, Mr. Frake?”

“I’ve just come to report that the midnight watch has taken his place on the hill. Redmagne is in Falmouth to meet the mail-packet from New York.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Skelly. He gestured to the painting with his brush. “What do you think?”

“I’d like to see it someday, whatever it is.”

“That’s
London
,” said Skelly. He rested the tip of the brush on one of the masts. “And that’s the
Pegasus
. I once owned a twenty-percent share in her. All that I left behind. Two years’ work, this.” He put down the pallet and brush and stood back to survey his work. He gestured again to the
painting with one hand. “There is
romance
in commerce, Jack. Someday you’ll see London, and on the Thames below London Bridge the masts of ships as far as the eye can see, all the way to Little Rogue Lane. I go back now and then, just to be where I ought to be, and to get my colors and perspective right for this masterpiece. If I had Mr. Hogarth’s talents, I wouldn’t bother with pictures of plain folk and their vices. I’d do pictures of those ships, and here’s my first. It’s a fine, thrilling thing to fill a house with riches, from a breeze and a hank of hemp.” His face brightened. “The Bible tells us that God made the world from nothing in seven days. Well, men are gods! We make things from nothing, too! It just takes us a little while longer, that’s all. We haven’t his
science
, you see,” he added with a satirical lift of his eyebrows. Then he frowned with concern, and said, “I fear I may have just blasphemed and offended your ears, Mr. Frake. I never bothered to ask you about your faith. Are you an Anglican, or a Dissenter, like your devout straw-mate, Mr. Claxon?”

“Neither, sir.”

“Well, that certainly puts you beyond the pale, doesn’t it? But if it’s no matter to you, then it’s none to me.” Skelly paused. “You’d like to go to London some day, wouldn’t you?”

“Very much, sir,” said Jack Frake, looking at the painting.

“Well, the next time ‘Redmagne’ or I have business there, I’ll see what I can do.” Skelly picked up his pallet and brush again. “Now, away with you, Mr. Frake! I have some final subtleties to work into the Tower there.”

Jack Frake grinned to himself as he made his way back through the tunnels to his billet for the night. He felt honored that Skelly had paused in his work to talk about it. The rest of the gang knew about their leader’s pastime, but did not discuss it. Many of them thought it a useless diversion, when he could be in Falmouth courting a wealthy widow. They also knew that he still carried a cameo of the wife he had disowned. It was not a subject any of his men cared to broach.

Nor did any of them comment on Redmagne’s obsession, which was a book he had been writing for years, even though they knew he was a sport with many of the ladies in Marvel and elsewhere. It was something called a novel, and its title was
Hyperborea
. Jack Frake knew little else about it. During one of his first tutorials, he noticed a great mass of papers on the man’s desk and had asked about it. “It’s not quite a satire,” remarked Redmagne then. “Mr. Swift, in his late sanity, would not understand it. It’s not quite a chronicle; Mr. Defoe would have been confounded by it. It is… a
novel. I haven’t quite defined it myself,” he sighed with a pensive glance at the manuscript. But then his mind snapped back to his immediate task. “Enough of that, Jack. Let us return to the history of the Cinque Ports from the time of Edward Longshanks to the present, and train our thoughts on the role of
wool
. An interesting item. By the Burial in Woollen Act of 1666, it was made a felony to be laid to final rest in anything but a
wool
shroud.” Redmagne paused with a mischievous grin. “A delicious premise, Jack. The subject is pregnant with comedic possibilities. That being said… ”

That was all he said then about
Hyperborea
. Jack Frake was certain that he had not heard the last of it.

I
T WAS MISERABLE WEATHER, NOT QUITE A SQUALL, NOT QUITE A CALM SEA
. Intermittent rain pelted their faces and backs. The wind was stiff enough to make the water choppy and difficult to row on. The galley dipped and bobbed, buffeted by wind and waves that opposed the boat’s progress and tried to drive it back to land. The incessant movement made some of the men dizzy and churned their insides. But the galley was rowed by determined men and it made progress. White caps were visible in the dark water, and so was the foam cut by the prow of the vessel.

Though there were rags wrapped around his hands to keep them warm, and to protect them from splinters from the oar, his palms and fingers were fiery claws of pain. He could feel the strength ebbing from them with every pull on the oar. The pain and weakness crept from his hands to his wrists, then to his forearms. His back ached until he felt that it would crack like a board at the next pull on the oar. It was cold and the wind was wet with sea spray, but sweat trickled down his forehead to burn his eyes. He wanted to rest, if only for a moment.

Yet he dare not succumb to the pain and drop his oar, for if he did, it would foul the one behind or before him and break the rhythm of motion on that side of the galley, which was perfectly synchronized with that of the other side. Then the craft would veer off course and a wave could capsize it.

“Let your legs do their full half of the work, son,” said one of the men
when they had shoved off into the surf and attacked it with the oars. “When you pull, they should push.”

Jack Frake was dressed as the other men. His hat was tied to his head with a strip of muslin. He wore a scarf around his mouth and nose to keep out the spray, which he was told could be so thick that it could drown a man intent on rowing and not on his breathing. He was soaking wet, he shivered, and he was hot. His tongue flicked in and out in involuntary answer to his labor, as though it could help him row, but he bit into it once and had to concentrate on keeping it inside. His galley was being followed by a second, commanded by Redmagne. He watched the scattered lights on the dim shore grow farther away, and would turn now and then to see the ship’s lanterns sitting placidly beyond the heaving swells of dark water around him. The lights did not seem to grow nearer. This was his first time on the water, and he was naturally anxious.

He thought that each wave breaking over the prow might engulf the boat, and he thought that the efforts of eight men could count for little against the chance. Worse, all eight of them sat with their backs to the swells, so that they could not see what was coming. But the nonchalance of the men, and especially of Skelly, reassured him that waves could be conquered. The man at the tiller gave commands to pull left, to pull right, to ease up on the oars, but never to stop. Another man knelt at the prow with a swaying lantern fixed to an upright staff, not to light the way, but to let the ship’s crew know the galley’s progress. Skelly himself sat quietly in the middle on a chest full of money. It was a wide galley, with enough space between the two sets of oarsmen to stow what was to be unshipped from the vessel that lay ahead.

Jack Frake was eleven when he was allowed to accompany Richard Claxon on his rounds to the neighboring towns to collect information and orders. They took the longest routes back and forth to avoid highwaymen, riding officers and Revenue patrols. They led blindfolded merchants to anonymous rendezvous points to meet with Skelly to discuss business. Alone, he also traversed the countryside as a messenger for gang-members who were visiting their families, to arrange the rental of wagons and horses from farmers, and to alert tubmen — itinerant laborers and villagers — to the opportunity for work, at half a guinea a night, unshipping contraband when it was expected that a load would be too much for the gang by itself. And now he had just turned twelve and was two inches taller. Skelly judged his muscles strong enough and his wits fast enough to accompany
the gang, first as a lookout on the cliffs with a pistol and a brandy-soaked bale of hay to light to warn the ships and the gang of approaching Revenue sloops at sea or patrols on land, and now as an oarsman on a galley. He had never had to ignite the hay or fire the pistol.

The ship was the merchant schooner,
Ariadne
, out of New York. They had waited a week for it to arrive at the position where it now lay, a rendezvous prearranged two months ago in a letter to its captain, Cheney, in New York, which letter was a reply to the one sent by Cheney in February, notifying Skelly of his scheduled departure. When the
Ariadne
appeared offshore this evening, Skelly signaled from the cliff that it was safe to drop anchor.