Empire (28 page)

But Jefferson merely blinked in astonishment and took a step back. The Attorney-General snorted once, then shouldered his way past the equally astonished Alphonse Croisset, his huge frame almost knocking the Frenchman over, and stepping on the shoe of John Tyler, a friend of Henry’s from Hanover.

“T
hank you, sir…for the gesture. I was not prepared to make it myself, not even at the price of expulsion.” Patrick Henry paused. “Forgive me the policy, but I never beg pardon for speaking what is on my mind.”

Hugh Kenrick shook his head. “It was a necessary gesture, sir, to save the resolves.”

They stood with Colonel Munford, George Johnston, and John Fleming in the courtyard of the Capitol. Another burgess, Paul Carrington of Charlotte, had joined them. He was one of the older members who had voted for the first four resolves, opposed the fifth, but changed his vote on the last reading.

Henry studied Hugh, and in his scrutiny was sincere admiration. “You have my profoundest gratitude, sir,” he said. “I know that you are not by nature an obsequious man. You have my apology for causing you to speak in my defense. But had I apologized in there — had I the strength to screw up the mortifying courage to mouth those words —” he added, nodding to the Capitol behind them, “it might have cost the resolves more votes. Whether my apology was genuine or an exercise in sham piety, more of our party might have seen some value in humility…and deference, and voted governed by their weaknesses.”

Hugh turned this over in his mind for a moment, then replied, “That may be true, sir. But, to be frank, I did what I did, also because I did not wish to hear you speak an untruth. Nor did I wish to see you punished for refusing to speak one. And I wished to save the resolves.”

Carrington spoke up. “Had there not been an apology, sirs,” he said to the group, “I truly believe that Mr. Robinson would have been persuaded by that devil Randolph to chuck the resolves and begin expulsion proceedings, in preparation for a trial in an extraordinary session of the General Court.” He turned to Henry with a frown. “Then you
and
the resolves would have been lost.”

Colonel Munford patted Hugh’s shoulder. “Then Virginia and every
liberty-loving soul in it owe this man their thanks, sirs! He has mine!” All the other men acknowledged the truth of this statement, and doffed their hats to Hugh.

Hugh gravely inclined his head in acknowledgment.

The group was one of many that had collected in the courtyard. Some were composed of younger burgesses talking excitedly about the resolves and their role in their adoption. Older members huddled together to express their disgust and fears. The largest, though, was made up of lingering spectators; it was obvious that the focus of their distant fascination was Henry.

Hugh glanced around the courtyard, hoping to spot Edgar Cullis. His colleague had left the chamber without a word, rushing to follow the older members in their exit. Hugh saw his friends from Caxton standing apart from the other groups near the Capitol gate, waiting for him.

Henry was saying now, “…My wife is not in her best health, sirs, and my property needs attention. I have been away for too long. I will take my leave for Hanover tonight.”

His friends were stunned. “But we need you to present the sixth and seventh resolves,” protested Fleming. He added with half-hearted amusement, “None of
us
has the ‘old guard’ showing their tails!”

Henry shook his head. “My mind is made up. And think of this: If I stayed to argue those resolves, Mr. Randolph and the others might take it into their heads to retract the whole lot. You know how vengeful and dangerous a wounded bear or mountain cat can be. The five resolves will stand. You and our friends here may present the last two. Your advocacy will not jeopardize what we have accomplished. So I shall emulate Mr. Lee, and remove my offending presence. But beware of skullduggery.” He turned to Hugh. “You were right, Mr. Kenrick. Our Assembly is a miniature of the Commons, with all the same virtues and faults. I know now from experience how such men can oppose a principle by opposing the man who proposes it, in an unattractive union of fear and spite.”

“And, of
accommodation
,” Hugh reminded Henry with a pained smile.

“The watchword of compromise and cowardice!” scoffed Colonel Munford.

Henry said to Hugh, “You can assure us that your printer friend, Mr. Barret, will run off the resolves and post them? Now that five of them have been adopted, I feel better about that scheme.”

Hugh grinned. “He is eager to return to Caxton and take up his compositor’s stick.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, with Colonel Munford and the others, Hugh saw Patrick Henry off on his journey back to Hanover, and shook his hand once more. This time it was Henry who reached down from his saddle to grasp Hugh’s hand. “We work well together, Mr. Kenrick,” he said as he clasped and shook. “You have obliged me to reassess somewhat my estimate of England. You are a late product of it. I did not believe that it could still produce men of such courage, dedication, and vitality.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Hugh after some hesitation, for he could not imagine what instance of courage he had exhibited for Henry to observe. “I look forward to working with you again, next session.”

After bidding last goodbyes to his friends, Henry urged his lean mount on and rode back down Duke of Gloucester Street and into the late afternoon sun. As he passed Bruton Church, he broke into a canter.

The group stood watching his dwindling figure. George Johnston remarked, “Gentlemen, there goes a weave of the best of us.”

* * *

A celebration by the victorious burgesses was held in one of the taverns that night, with fiddlers, country dancing, and an open table of food and punch. A ball at the Governor’s Palace marked the closing of the session. Hugh was invited to both occasions, but attended neither, instead having a supper with his friends in another inn. Here he was regaled by John Ramshaw and Wendel Barret, and granted respectful deference by Jack Frake, Etáin, and Proudlocks. For a reason he could not understand, but for which he chided himself, he was glad, for once, when the time came for them to part, to leave their company.

When he returned to Mary Gandy’s house near the College late that night, he encountered Edgar Cullis, and wondered about the fickle power of oratory. His colleague meekly announced that he was returning to Caxton in the morning with his father.

Hugh felt a pang of insult — he was certain that Cullis was afraid of him now — and said, before he could check himself, “I had not intended to reproach you, Mr. Cullis. Not this afternoon, and not now.”

“You have no right to rebuke me, sir!” snapped Cullis, his eyes flashing angrily. “I voted with my conscience, and that is my business!”

“Of course,” said Hugh. “But there are two more resolves to introduce.” He paused. “And I heard some talk outside the Capitol about a motion to reconsider the fifth. We are counting on your presence.”

Cullis shook his head. “I cannot endorse it or the last resolves.” He looked away from Hugh. “Neither will I oppose them.”

“Very well,” said Hugh. “We will not discuss the matter further.”

The same speech that could convince some men of a truth and to act on it, he thought, could dissuade others. With the latter, it was not an issue of denying the truth of a thing, but of rebelling against or fearing the conditions necessary to pursue and uphold it, that could cause a man to oppose what he knew was right. He studied Cullis for a moment. The older man sat at the kitchen table, reading a pocket Bible by candlelight. He turned and left him alone, went to his own room, lit some candles, and took out his writing instruments for the task of transcribing Henry’s and his own words in the House today, as well as others spoken in that modern coliseum.

In the midst of copying what he could remember of Peyton Randolph’s speech, Hugh paused. The truth of one thing would not leave his mind; it had not left it all day. It was his apology to Robinson. It had more than dampened his elation over the victory; it nearly drowned it. He agreed with Henry that an apology by him would have somehow diluted the importance of the resolves, that an apology by Henry himself would likely have given Randolph and the others an excuse to insist on a tempering of the resolves’s language. Hugh did not hold Henry responsible for the necessity of an apology, and would not score him on his inability or refusal to make one. The man had authored the resolves and chosen to risk making himself an object of enmity to accomplish their adoption.

Hugh understood now why he had been uncomfortable when Henry had ascribed courage to him, why he had been glad to leave the company of his friends this evening. Jack, Etáin, Ramshaw, Proudlocks, and Barret had all looked at him over supper and conversation with more than admiration, with a new esteem he was unable to identify. He resented the granting of that esteem, for what he felt was shame. The nature of the apology troubled him to the core. It had required words, words employed in an expression of dishonesty to protect the honest words of the resolves. It was a lie, he thought, uttered to foster and advance a truth.

Courage
? he scoffed, throwing down his pencil, for an answer to his uneasiness was beginning to dawn on him. He pondered the many forms of courage that that virtue could take. He thought of his friend Roger Tallmadge,
picking up the King’s Colors at Minden, and in so doing attracting the enemy’s fire. He thought of Glorious Swain, rushing to protect him on the Charing Cross pillory. Of Jack Frake, on the
Sparrowhawk
, fighting a French privateer, of grappling with Indians at the Braddock disaster. He thought of Henry today, hurling defiance back at his accusers. He thought of so many instances of courage, but could not convince himself that his own action deserved a place in that family of distinction.

In time, he remembered the day he refused to apologize to the Duke of Cumberland.

He fell back in his chair with a cry of pain, struck by the justice of the memory. He sobbed once in protest. Who am
I
to be called courageous? he thought. Who am
I
to cite Socrates on virtue, to lecture anyone on words and moral certitude? Who am
I
to despise cringers and cowards? In one thoughtless moment, I rushed to speak a lie! There was no sincerity in my words, and everyone knew it, everyone knew the purpose of my lie, and I committed a fraud in my own mind and in the minds of those who heard those words! I hated every word I spoke then, and every effort to speak them, yet some maddened, desperate impulse drove me on! Was that courage? What else could Henry have meant by my courage, except that lie? And he and the others saluted me for it!

He tried to reconcile courage, honor, and his soul, and could not. The blatant fraud of the lie would not let him. I have abased myself, he concluded. Dishonored myself, besmirched my own worth, betrayed that which I once was! I have begun my own corruption, allowed its incubus to begin its work! What I did was a willful choice to bow, to submit, to offer my neck to an unseen sword! If courage was often an unpremeditated act of bravery, how can my life conform to that description?

Hugh’s mind whirled and tossed in shifting concentric circles of logic and self-reproach that would merge, then fly apart, and duel each other for supremacy over and over again. The resolves were saved, but at what price? He could not think clearly about the apology and a guilt he had never before experienced.

He stopped pacing when he heard a knock on his door, and was astonished to see that he was on his feet, and had been pacing. He frowned, went to the door, and opened it, expecting to see Cullis. Instead, standing in the diminished candlelight, he saw Jack Frake.

Jack looked at him with an odd, almost compassionate expression. Hugh heard him say, “Mr. Cullis heard you moving about, and sent me up.”
Then Hugh found himself sitting on his bed, and Jack seated opposite him, watching him with intimate concern. Hugh felt a burning sensation on his cheeks, and realized that it was tears, and that his chin and neck were moist with them. The room seemed brighter now; Jack had relit or replaced the candles that had gone out.

Hugh asked, “Why are you here?”

“I was…worried about you,” said Jack. “So was Etáin.”

“Why?”

“I suspected what it must have cost you, to make that apology to Robinson and the House. I could see it as you spoke today. So could Etáin.”

“How…could you know…before I knew…?”

“It was the way you spoke, Hugh. It was not your usual manner.” Jack paused to search for words. “You spoke with a difficulty which you disguised in a…slow, measured pace. You had spoken just before Mr. Henry. It was easy to note the difference, and to guess the cause.” Jack shrugged. “Well, they got their damned apology, but I believe that, in the end, it will be worth less to them than an unsigned tobacco note. But we both presumed that you know you were trying to save the resolves — which I believe you did — and that your apology for Henry was worth even less to you.” Jack smiled briefly. “And then, I remembered something. Your reticence tonight with us — or what Etáin calls a ‘tell-tale shyness’ — it told us that you were not happy with what you thought necessary to do. We had expected to see your wonderfully arrogant self tonight. Instead, we found ourselves toasting a man of reluctant modesty. Only we knew that it was not modesty that could explain why you were so…quiet.” He shook his head. “We knew that you were troubled, and were certain why.”

“What did you…remember?” asked Hugh.

“What you told me about you and the Duke of Cumberland.”

Hugh leaned forward, and each word he spoke was enunciated as though he wished it was a rod that whipped him. “I committed a crime worse than the treason they accused Mr. Henry of!” he exclaimed. He closed his eyes in agony. “The great thing that was accomplished today — it depended on a lie! And
I
spoke it! I cannot forgive myself…. ”

“You gave them what they wanted, pitiful thing that it was,” remarked Jack. “And I am not convinced that this great thing — and it
is
a great thing, Hugh, the first of many great things, I think — I am not convinced that it needed a lie.” Jack seemed to smile again. “I am not certain that Randolph and the others were prepared to hold the resolves hostage until an
apology was paid.” He reached over and put a reassuring hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “Here is the most important thing, my dear friend, and it concerns you and you alone: When you spoke then, you were risking, not your life to save those resolves, but your soul. I had not seen that kind of courage before, not that kind of honor, not that kind of devotion. That…makes you a kind of brother to me, you see. When you spoke the apology, I also envied you the chance to speak it. I envied you the chance, but not the pain.” Jack gripped Hugh’s shoulder and shook it. “The pain, Hugh. I suppose it is a natural thing to feel. But Randolph and Robinson and the others, they could not wound you. You wound yourself. You should not belittle or chastise or punish yourself over the matter.” He paused. “You will collect yourself again, Hugh. If brave men survive their risks, that is all they can do. We honor their memory, if they perish, for we are the heirs of their bravery. And we honor them if they do not, for then we are their beneficiaries, and we can enjoy their company.”