Empire (16 page)

A man who is unsure of his own worth, or who, at least, is sure that his
worth is greater than what others choose to see in him, rankles at the sight of those who are sure of their own worth, and who are indifferent to his existence. Such a man may develop a bitterly acquired facility for memory — of the indifference, of the many intended and unintended affronts, of the rare, accidental compliments. Turley possessed such a memory.

Turley, being as unscrupulous as the Earl, was willing to perform any service his father required of him. He had no principles, no ethics, no convictions — that is, no convictions other than the one, absorbed by him over his lifetime, and demonstrated repeatedly by those with whom he usually associated, that all life was a vale of corruption, and that one must endeavor to find a profitable, comfortable place in it.

But even corruption needs an ethics, a two-headed creature by which the good for the corrupt can be measured with a commensurate, practical gain; and against its eternal companion, the incorruptible good. Jared Turley did not think of his corruption in these terms, but they were his premises. His remarkable memory and stenographic skills, for example, had allowed him to sit in the gallery of the Commons as a spy, and record, for the Earl’s edification and peace of mind, the principal speeches on the pending Stamp Act of all the main speakers.

Once he had finished that task, and transcribed his notes, the Earl read them. The Earl then dictated to his son letters of thanks to Sir Henoch, Mr. Hillier, and others whose seats were in the bloc he controlled. About Sir Dogmael’s speeches, the Earl remarked only: “Some day, Mr. Hunt, some
thing
should be done about my brother’s lackey. He is too sharp by a guinea. He is almost dangerous.”

Turley was sensitive to the ominous suggestion in his father’s appraisal of Sir Dogmael Jones. His corruption allowed him merely to note the hint and brace himself for the service of doing “some
thing
” about the man, some day.

Turley was corrupted, not only by fear for his secure employment and station, but by an unexpressed contempt for his social superiors. The contempt was likewise partnered with an envy for their station, privileges, and power. Over the years the force that drove his unfailing and unquestioning service had also been reduced from obedient gratitude to a species of obedient malice. It was like a thick, lush vine that had grown over a marble column, and whose roots ate away the strength and purity of the stone. When he sat in the gallery that overlooked the august space of the Commons, he did not think: “If only my mates in Lyme Regis could see me
now!” He did not think of them; they were forgotten. They were below him now, because he lived and moved on a higher plane. He knew that if he were to return to Lyme Regis, he would revel in the envious attention of his former friends, but be offended if one of them slapped him on the back and called him a hale fellow.

So he would never return to Lyme Regis. His former friends there conspired for shillings and pence; he was the envoy of a man who conspired with others for governments and nations. Ergo, he was superior to those ill-clothed, ill-spoken, and ill-bred men. He had been one of them, but that Jared Turley had died, and gone to a temporal heaven. The thought occurred to him that contempt was contagious, and bred its own hierarchy of swaggering disdain. The master despised the servant, the servant his master and the tradesman, the tradesman the pauper, the pauper everyone. It was the natural order of things, he supposed, and he did not reprove himself for having succumbed to the phenomenon.

On that thought, Jared Turley finished his Madeira, put the glass aside, closed his eyes, and took a nap. An hour later he awoke, rose, and pulled the bell-rope near his bed to signal the kitchen for his dinner. While he waited for it to be brought up, he read some newspapers. The Earl required him to have knowledge of affairs in the court, in the city, in the country, in the world. When he had finished his dinner, he went to the Earl’s study, sat at his desk, and completed his chore with the letter books.

One letter amused and reassured him, because it was so in character with his superior existence. In a note to Sir Henoch Pannell, the Earl discussed various strategies his bloc in the Commons could employ to defeat the opposition, including a closer cooperation and selective alliance with the king’s own bloc, which was considerably larger. Near the end, the Earl remarked:

Jared Turley was amused — almost entertained — by the Earl’s sly scheme, and reassured because such doings comprised the natural order of things. It gave him a sense of efficacy to play a role in it all. Before he was reclaimed and transformed by the Earl, he had had no political convictions. He still had none, but had since imbibed the Earl’s, and became a staunch believer in the status quo.

Done with the letter book, he closed the letters and sealed them with his father’s seal. He searched for and found Alden Curle on the terrace that overlooked the Thames. Curle was supervising some servants in the removal of the slush that had accumulated. With him was Horace Dolman, the Earl’s steward. He informed Curle that he was taking some letters to the post-office, then going to the Pantheon, and would return some time in the evening, should the Earl ask after him.

Turley and Curle had much in common in their characters, but neither man was eager to cultivate the other’s friendship. They remained strangers, too, for both had secrets they did not think it wise to share. Curle was a little afraid of Turley, for Turley was a mystery, a contradiction, and still a stranger to him. Turley was not afraid of Curle, whom he regarded as a sniveling, fawning toady with his own score of scandals to hide.

When Jared Turley left, Curle clucked his tongue and said to Dolman, “There goes a
wicked
man, Mr. Dolman. Overflowing with himself is Mr. Hunt, I should say. I swear, I don’t know what his lordship sees in him.”

“Perhaps, himself,” mused the steward, who quickly added, once he realized what he had said, “which is not to say that his lordship is himself wicked.”

But it was too late. Curle narrowed his eyes and stared at Dolman. “Of course not,” he said with mocking reassurance. “You could not have meant
that
.”

* * *

Jared Turley, alias “Mr. Hunt,” caught Sir Henoch Pannell mounting a hackney at the gate of Bucklad House, and handed that man there a letter from the Earl. Pannell was on his way to the Commons, presumed that “Mr. Hunt” had waited for him to emerge, and eyed him suspiciously. “Mr. Hunt” tipped his hat, Sir Henoch nodded in acknowledgement, and the two went their separate ways. Turley engaged a sedan chair at Charing Cross, and was conveyed to the post-office, where he deposited and paid for the rest of the letters. From there he was conveyed to the Turk’s Head Tavern in Soho. He smiled in happy contentment that he had not let on to Sir Henoch that he, too, had seen the caricature in the
London Weekly Journal
, and chuckled in instant amusement. That he had managed to conceal his contempt for and envy of the man convinced Turley that he had some power over that corpulent member for Canovan. His success in this ruse reaffirmed his conviction that he was among the right people and a part of the natural order of things.

At the Turk’s Head, he ordered port and cold meats, read some other newspapers, and planned the rest of his evening. He felt the need of female companionship, and knew that he would need to seek and perhaps satisfy it beyond the realm of Windridge Court; the Earl was likewise adamant that his son should not entertain himself within the walls of that realm. Although the staff of Windridge Court was at his beck and call, Turley did not trust them enough to honor a conspiracy of silence, should he have ever brought a willing lady back to his quarters. Well, there were plenty of taverns and inns that reserved rooms for just that purpose, and numerous idle ladies who could be persuaded to enter them for the price of a few glasses of brandy.

While he was plotting the course of his evening, Jared Turley heard a man exclaim, on the other side of the partition, that the British government “approached nearest to perfection than anything that experience has ever
shown us, or history has related!”

Jared Turley smiled again, and wrung up the impudent courage to stand on his chair and peek over the partition. There he saw a huge, ungainly man holding court over a table of other men. He saw the other men nod or exclaim in agreement. He sat down again, and silently toasted the stranger with his glass of port.

Jared Turley, factotum and servant-without-livery, did not know that the speaker was Samuel Johnson, and that the company was the regular Monday evening meeting of the Literary Club. Indeed, he did not know that such a group of men existed, and that it was a part of the country’s intellectual and literary establishment. Had he been aware of such an establishment, he would have assumed that it had little more influence over the course of history than did cricket or boxing, and that it was the diversion of men who talked and wrote. He would have scoffed at the assertion that power such as was practiced by the Earl and by men like Sir Henoch Pannell derived from or was sanctioned by men like Johnson and a host of thinkers who Turley would never discover.

Turley was one of those men who received, without reservation and without judgment, the few scraps of ideas, tossed from the tables of such lights, as happened to come his way. He saw no conflict between the stranger’s pronouncement and the tone and content of the Earl’s letter to Sir Henoch. He did not think it was possible to draw any conclusion from these phenomena but that, laying the one thing next to the other, this was the natural order of things. The pronouncement, heard and endorsed by a younger man in that company, Edmund Burke, an intellectual who was about to become the private secretary of the man who would succeed George Grenville, was to Turley but a pouncet-box that sat atop a keg of gun powder.

And because he did not think it necessary to project a wider grasp of men, ideas, and their roots than this, Jared Turley could not imagine that such a closure could possibly be the death of him. He could never know that Samuel Johnson would have held him in contempt, should he have contrived to engage that man in conversation, for while the “Great Cham” did not often tolerate disagreement with his pronouncements, neither did he admire servile agreement.

O
n March 8th, the House of Lords passed the Stamp Act without amendment or dissent. On the 22nd, George the Third, indisposed with illness, assented by commission the Act, which was to go into effect the following November. Two more acts, passed in May, also received his assent: the American Mutiny or Quartering Act, which required colonial legislatures to provide the army, without charge, with barracks, housing, and necessities; and the American Trade Act, which added more enumerated items to the Revenue Act of 1764, but granted the colonials leave to send iron and lumber as ballast and product to Ireland without duty. George had protested, and pressured George Grenville to revise, a stipulation in the original Quartering Act that soldiers and offices could be billeted in private homes; inns, ordinaries, taverns, and outbuildings such as barns were substituted instead, even though these, too, were private property. George sensed that such a requirement would surely rile his subjects and lead to unpleasantness. But a man who merely senses potential difficulties without further probing the cause of his uneasiness remains essentially blind to their fundamental causes. In this respect, George the Third was no more enlightened than was George Grenville.

The unpleasantness was to be caused by another thing altogether. News of the two additional acts did not reach the colonies until long after that of the Stamp Act. Beginning in April, candles of awareness sprang up in fits and starts in every North American colony, lit by men who acted as
flambeaux
: moral men, thoughtful men, well-read men, selfish men, men anxious about what loomed on the horizons of their lives; men who, like Thomas Paine, were also in search of a reasonable ethic. The
flambeaux
of any liberal society are its thinkers, its intellectuals, men who concern themselves with the causes and character of their civilization. They can transmit the received wisdom of their age, or refine it, or become independent of it and found new schools of thought. They can sustain their society, or call for its prudent alteration, or lead it to tyranny. They can revolt against
incipient tyranny, or rebel against it, or acquiesce.

To rebel and to revolt are not synonymous actions. To rebel is to protest a power, campaign to exact certain concessions from it, fail or succeed in the effort, but in the end leave the power intact with greater or reduced legitimacy. To revolt is to throw off that power and replace it with one compatible with one’s ends.

The
flambeaux
of the colonies were rebels. They did not wish to overthrow Parliament or abolish the monarchy; they could not conceive of a better polity than the one that existed. When they examined the politics of Spain, France, Germany, and even the Netherlands, they counted themselves fortunate. They merely wished to be left alone to live and prosper under the shield of Britannia. But they were not willing to become slaves. They and the candles they lit were men who were, as Colonel Barré warned insensate and indifferent minds in the Commons, “jealous of their liberties” under that shield, “ready to vindicate them if ever they were violated.” Those minds chose not to believe him. But across an ocean the
flambeaux
and the candles joined together to create a conflagration. The brightest and most fiery
flambeau
burned in the Virginia House of Burgesses, spread to the other colonies, and imparted a new color to the flames that roared up in those venues of the empire. The ferocity of the conflagration took both England and its loyalists in the colonies by surprise. Parliament counted on familiar docility in the colonials; the colonials counted on a recognition of injustice and an admission of their appeals to reason. Neither was forthcoming. The result was a test of wills.

George Grenville was dismissed from office in July, long before the Crown felt the heat of the first flames of that conflagration. He fumbled the Regency Bill by contradicting George the Third, whose bloc in the Commons altered the legislation to his own satisfaction and got it passed, much as Grenville had pushed through his Stamp Act. Even before Grenville was dismissed, wrangling had begun over who would be the next first minister. By the time Charles Watson-Wentworth, the second Marquess of Rockingham, was accepted as First Lord of the Treasury to replace Grenville — who went into opposition as the member for Buckingham borough — the Board of Trade, the Privy Council, members of Parliament, merchants, colonial agents, and correspondents were receiving the first reports of trouble in the colonies from colonial governors, Crown officers, colonial merchants, and worried friends. While Rockingham struggled to put together a ministry friendly to all parties, including the king, and to lure
William Pitt out of seclusion and into a place in the government, half a year would pass before Parliament and the government acknowledged that they faced an open and possibly disastrous rebellion.

* * *

“Do you think it will mean war?”

Jack Frake glanced up at Etáin with a bemused, startled smile, wondering what had prompted her question. Then he realized that she had been studying him as he re-read the documents before him on his desk, documents loaned to him by Hugh Kenrick. In the pile were transcripts of speeches made in the Commons, together with notes and observations made by Hugh’s friend Dogmael Jones. With the documents were a copy of the Stamp Act in the form of it sent to the House of Lords, and a copy of the caricature.

It was late April. The
Tacitus
had called on Caxton the day before, bringing with it a thick parcel of correspondence for Hugh. He had come this morning to Morland and showed his friend everything in it. Jack and Hugh had talked for hours. Etáin was present for most of Hugh’s visit, but did not join in. Hugh left in mid-afternoon, and the day had passed. Jack repaired to his study to complete some plantation business. When he did not come to her for their evening stroll around the house and to the York River’s edge — a habit they had established when the evenings were pleasant — she fixed some tea and took it to the study. She recognized the documents on his desk, and, after pouring him a cup from the pot, paused to note the pensive, faraway look on her husband’s face.

Jack asked, “Why would you think it could mean war, Etáin?”

“It is the way you looked, just a moment ago.”

Jack shook his head. “No, it will not mean war. Heads may be bloodied, and men threatened, and property destroyed.” He paused, and he tried to sound reassuring. “War will come, but not for some time. Not for years.”

Etáin sat down in a chair opposite the desk. “When other men catch up with you,” she said. It was not a question.

Jack smiled. “If you wish to put it that way.”

“Then they will look as you just did.”

“How did I look?”

“Sad,” said Etáin after a moment. “Resigned. Determined.”

“Yes,” replied Jack. “Then, there will be war.”

Etáin pointed to the documents resting between her husband’s elbows. “I know what is in those papers, Jack. And I do not understand why it must take so long for other men to see what they mean. You can see it. And Hugh, and Mr. Reisdale, once he reads them. Even Mr. Proudlocks. You have convinced me that it can only end one way. In war.”

Jack cocked his head in thought. “The idea has occurred to many of those others, Etáin. However, they do not believe it will be necessary. I
hope
it will not be necessary. Hugh’s friend in the Commons, Mr. Jones,” he said, tapping one of the pages before him with a finger, “made reference to it. Nature will, in time, persuade them of the necessity. It is a larger conflict than mere politics. Mr. Jones, I believe, understands this. Other men, such as this Colonel Barré, almost understand it.”

“Hugh does not think war will be necessary. I heard him tell you so.”

“That is because he knows men in England who reason as we do. He believes they can make a difference, that they can persuade Mr. Grenville and his party to recognize a folly, or a contradiction. But, to put it as you do, those same men must also ‘catch up.’” Jack smiled, almost happily, and leaned forward to read from another page. “It is a tempting belief. Listen to what Mr. Jones said to them in the Commons, Etáin. It’s wonderful. ‘For perhaps they are not Englishmen after all, but the inhabitants of another kingdom.’” He shook his head in appreciation. “
That
is something I would like to have been there to hear.”

Etáin smiled in return, pleased with the sentiment, pleased that something in the ominous pile of papers could cause her husband to smile. “Mr. Jones, it would seem, has less distance to travel than most.”

Jack nodded. “Yes. But that short distance may be the hardest ground for him to travel. And for Hugh. I do not envy them.”

“You do not believe, though, that he can make a difference.”

“No. Not he alone, nor a regiment of men like him. If he could, then Parliament would not have passed the act at all. This
is
another kingdom,” he said. He paused to grin in memory, and to look up at the framed sketches that Hugh had drawn for him, and then down to a pair of volumes on a bookshelf beneath the pictures. “This is
Hyperborea
, Etáin. What was the world of my friend Redmagne’s imagination was becoming a reality even while he lived. I wish he and Skelly could be here to witness its birth.”

In the candlelight, Etáin saw the wistful, regretful look on her husband’s face. It was the first time she had heard him wish for anything. She said, “They
are
here, Jack.
You
are here.” She rose and went around the
desk. She stood behind him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and rested her cheek on his hair. “They gave me you.”

Jack raised a hand and clasped it over one of Etáin’s. “I loved those men,” he said quietly.

“As you should have,” said Etáin. “As you still do, my
north
. They did not die in vain. You are here. You brought their spirit with you, here. It was transported as much as you were. There is no distance to be traveled between you and them.” She paused. “Nor between us.”

He remembered the day when the
Sparrowhawk
sailed from Falmouth, and he wore an iron collar around his neck, and he stood on the deck, watching England drift away. He gripped Etáin’s hand in gratitude and acknowledgment.

They remained like that for a while.

Etáin asked, after a moment, “What are you thinking?”

Jack said, “When I was with Colonel Massie and General Braddock in Pennsylvania, there was a British officer who rode back into that carnage after the army had fled across the river. He was brave, and rode back for a very strange reason. It was not to rescue any of his fellows; that was beyond hope, for they were all dead or dying, or the wounded among them were being dispatched by the Indians by then. He rode back among the looting, scalping, screaming savages, over all the mounds of redcoats, through all the abandoned baggage wagons and artillery, to retrieve a single thing.”

“What?”

“His regiment’s day book. That was all. And he came back with it, without a scratch.”

“That was a brave act. What made you think of that?”

Jack shook his head slightly. “It’s a measure of the determination of what may be our future enemies. Of what we may need to face, now, and in the future. And they will want to salvage an empire.” He paused, and changed the subject. “Hugh will speak in the House next month. He will give Barret at the
Courier
a copy of the act to publish in the next issue.” He picked up the caricature and studied it. “That, and this. Also, he met a man during the last session who plans to run for burgess. He’s planning something with that person. He would not tell me what. You heard him. He will not even confide with Mr. Cullis.”

“He will speak against the act?”

Jack chuckled. “Most assuredly, he will speak against it. He asked that we be there to hear him and to witness what they have planned together.”

“Who is this other man?”

“I know only that he is from Hanover, or Louisa County. Hugh mentioned his name: Patrick Henry. I think he was the one who was mixed up in that parson’s suit some years ago.” Jack turned, put his hands on Etáin’s waist, and sat her on his lap. “In the meantime, I will send for Mr. Reisdale, and Mr. Vishonn, and the others, and make my own speeches. Explain to them in my own words what this act means, and what they must think of doing.”

“What must they think of doing?”

“As a beginning, teach our ‘mother country’ that she needs us more than we need her.” Jack paused, then added, “If that lesson is accomplished, the next one will be to enlighten our friends here, to move them to examine more closely those needs, and to spurn them.”

Etáin ran a lingering hand over her husband’s face. Gone from his eyes now were the sadness and resignation; only the determination remained. She thought that she would like Hugh to make a sketch of Jack’s face as it looked now.

Jack was almost oblivious to his wife’s loving scrutiny. He said, more to himself than to her, “Even should we successfully defy this act, we would remain captives of the Crown.” He reached over again for the caricature and waved it once in the air. “You were right about Mr. Jones, Etáin. He has less distance to travel. He captured our predicament precisely. He
knows
.”

Etáin took the caricature from his hand and studied it. “Yes, he did. But who is the sleeping man here?” she asked. “I heard you and Hugh laughing about him.”

“He is a mutual enemy of our mutual acquaintance,” replied Jack. “That is Henoch Pannell, the man who sent my friends to the gallows. Mr. Jones copied his speech in the Commons, and made some observations about him. He is in service to Hugh’s uncle.” He chuckled with irony. “It would seem that I am still his captive, too.”

“When will you make your own speeches?”

“When Hugh returns. He has gone to Hanover to see his friend there.” Jack patted his wife’s back. “Well, enough talk about this, Etáin. Let us take our walk to the river.”

* * *

It had taken him two days to ride to Hanover County, and another half
day of following planters’ and farmers’ direction to find Piney Slash in the lower part of the county. It was pouring rain when he spotted the modest, clapboard cottage that stood among some trees near a muddy road. Smoke rose lazily from the wooden chimney. There were lights shining in the wax windows, and he notice two horses locked into an adjoining stable. A battered but serviceable wagon stood next to it. He must be here, thought Hugh, and not abroad elsewhere in the county. He rode up to the front door, dismounted, and tethered his mount to a post. He removed a pair of saddlebags and a traveling valise, walked up to the door, and knocked on it. The rain clouds had turned the afternoon into an artificial dusk. He was tired and sopping wet. Whether or not this was the home of Patrick Henry, he resolved to pay the occupant for some hospitality, if only to rest and dry himself out in it.