Jack Frake (39 page)

“Speak, if you wish,” said Grynsmith, “as is your right.”

The woman looked around at the crowd, then said, “I am Nora McGillicutty. I am Irish, from Donegal. My husband, a chandler, died, and left me to make my own way. So I made lace, and so it was Irish lace. No purchaser of my lace had any complaint about it, for it was as fine and dainty as any that comes across the Irish Sea. And what was my crime? No one will tell me, except to fill my ears with laws. This is the way of England.” She looked down then at the hangman, and nodded. “Send me to heaven, hangman.”

The hangman shrugged, turned, and tapped the horse’s neck with his whip. The horse rolled the cart away, then stopped. The woman gave a cry, choked, and her legs kicked. The body will fight for life independently of its owner’s will to live or die. After twenty seconds, the body stopped jerking. The hangman did not bother to determine whether she died of
strangulation or of a broken neck, for either was possible, and it made no difference to him.

Sheriff Grynsmith next tapped the shoulder of the old man. The hangman and his assistant hoisted him up onto the cart and affixed the noose. “Speak, if you wish,” ordered the sheriff, “as is your right.”

The old man looked around with a dazed, sorrowful expression. “I made my peace with God and my wife.” Then he looked at the hangman and shook his head in question, as though there were nothing else that could possibly be said. The hangman nodded and tapped the shoulder of his horse.

The old man died instantly; everyone present heard the snap of his neck.

Sheriff Grynsmith rode down the line and tapped Redmagne on the shoulder. As the hangman removed the chain that connected him to Skelly on his right and to Isham Leith on his left, Redmagne addressed the sheriff. “Mr. Skelly and I wish to be hanged together.”

Grynsmith frowned and glanced, not at Henoch Pannell, but at Lord Twycross. The magistrate nodded. Grynsmith took out a rolled sheet of paper from his coat and read it while the hangman made his preparations. “By order of His Majesty and the courts, the literary work authored by one John Smith — ” he paused to point his baton at Redmagne “— called
Hyperborea
, has been deemed unfit for English eyes. It is to be so stigmatized.” The sheriff rolled the paper up and put it back inside his coat. Then he nodded to the hangman.

The hangman took the jar of paraffin and poured the substance over the book and manuscript in the iron box. Then he lit a match from the tinderbox and held it against the manuscript paper.

Dirty smoke emanated from the box, then flames.

Redmagne watched the flames grow hotter and higher until the whole mass of paper was a glowing cube crowned with a flickering arabesque of fire. Anyone watching him who expected to see a look of anger, sorrow or anguish on his face was surprised to see a slight smile on his mouth. When ashes began to ascend and float in the breeze above the square, Redmagne glanced up at Grynsmith. “That is my soul burning there, sir. I will speak now, as is my right.”

Grynsmith nodded. “Say nothing treasonous, or seditious, or blasphemous, or you will be gagged.”

Redmagne closed his eyes, then raised his head and looked up at the
sky and the smoke rising in the calm, chill air. He sang, and his tenor voice silenced the rustle of the crowd and carried his words clearly to the Fal.

“Sound the trumpet till around you make the listening shores resound!

Come, come ye sons of art, come, come away!

Tune all your voices and instruments to play,

To celebrate this triumphant day!”

Redmagne lowered his head to gaze again into the fire, then shut his eyes.

A woman’s voice filled the shocked silence. “Redmagne! My cavalier! I will be with you always!” Redmagne opened his eyes in recognition of the voice. He saw Millicent Morley, her hair disheveled and her traveling suit in disarray, standing directly across the square from him. She had pushed and fought her way through the crowd and obstructing dragoons to see him.

No one recognized the melody, or the words. Most thought it a curious thing to do under the circumstances. But one very old gentleman remembered. He turned to a bystander, a stranger, and said, “The last time I heard that was when I was a tyke of ten, on Queen Mary’s birthday. I was a page boy at court, then.” Only three souls in that unholy congregation understood the intent of Redmagne’s ode: Jack Frake, Skelly, and Millicent Morley. The sheriff was too startled to protest, and in any event would not have known on what grounds to protest. Lord Twycross blinked once. Edgecombe, the King’s Proctor, searched his memory for the relevance of the lyrics. Henoch Pannell furrowed his brow in cynical confusion.

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.

H
ENOCH
P
ANNELL WAS SUMMONED TO
L
ONDON BY THE
C
USTOMS
B
OARD
, 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.