Hugh Kenrick (19 page)

“My new friend here, Mathius,” answered Swain. “He rescued me from a gang of Mohocks. Good evening.”

Mathius turned again and bestowed a smile on Hugh. Then he said to Swain, “We are ready, Muir. The meeting awaits your arrival to convene. You are this evening’s chairman.” He held out the cane, and Swain took it. “Give me a moment to bid a civil farewell to my friend,” he said. “I will join you and the others shortly.”

The stranger nodded, turned, and made his way through the crowd to the rear of the tavern.

Hugh thought it curious that the man had not introduced himself, and that Swain had not attempted to make introductions.

Swain saw the confusion on Hugh’s face. He asked, “Have you ever heard of the Society of the Pippin?”

“No,” replied Hugh. “It is something ‘new in the city’—at least it is for me.”

“Good. That means that our secret is still a secret.” Swain paused. “It is a club of intellects, of eccentrics, of men of letters. We meet twice a month to talk, to debate, to discuss, to enlighten each other. There are many such clubs in the city, as you may well know, but our society is unique. None of us knows the others’ true names or professions. We are the second generation of the Pippin. The tradition of anonymity is useful; it protects us from betrayal or discovery. In the Society, I am Muir, brother of Maia.”

“May I join?” asked Hugh eagerly. “What must I do?”

“The membership is limited to seven,” said Swain, shaking his head. “Each of us has adopted the name of one of the seven brothers of the seven daughters of Atlas. However—I shall broach the subject of your membership with the others. I believe you would be a worthy addition. But I cannot guarantee admission.” Swain rose and offered his hand.

Hugh rose also and shook it. “But—how shall we meet again?” he asked.

“I will leave a message at your residence,” said Swain. “You see, many
times I have sold a stone of tea to your house, and miscellaneous wares to your servants.” He bowed gravely. “Until next time, my friend.” Swain turned and hurried from the table.

As Hugh watched him disappear into the crowd and smoke and turn to ascend some bannistered stairs to the floor above, it occurred to him that Atlas did not have seven sons.

*  *  *

It was only when he was sitting at the window of his room that night, lost in thought, watching the moving light of a waterman’s boat glide down the Thames, that Hugh felt his hands shaking. He held them up and studied them, as though they did not belong to him. It must be
bellator tremens
, he mused, the force of yesterday’s Latin lesson surfacing in his mind: warrior’s fear.
Postmodum quod eventus
, he thought with a smile at the irony. It had waited until long after his encounter with Glorious Swain. He had not felt this reaction at all after facing and routing the bullies at school. Then, he had insisted on a duel to the death. Yet, tonight, he had put himself in mortal danger, fighting a man to a probable death—but had spared his opponent’s life. And he was not certain that if he had had to fight the bullies, he would have killed at least one of them.

What had been the difference? he asked himself. Was it the physical peril? Fighting the Marquis was an act of mere bravery. The bullies’ purpose, however, had been to subdue him, body and soul. To make his entire being submit to the fact of their wishes, to place themselves in the scheme of his concerns, like a team of runaway lorry horses that could turn in his direction at any moment and trample him to death.

Yes, thought Hugh: I would have fought them to the death. I may sometime meet a brute more skilled with the sword than I, and he may conquer my body. But the bullies’ purpose was more insidious than that of any Mohock or highwayman, and if I am to remain the man I am, I shall never allow that purpose to be accomplished.

“I
T HAS BEEN HEARD IN THIS ASSEMBLY ON A NUMBER OF OCCASIONS
that the colonials are unhappy with the means with which this coming war is to be paid for and prosecuted. Oh, how they grumble, those rustical Harries! The means, as we all know, and as they rightly fear, must in the end come out of their own rough, bucolic purses. To my mind, that is but a logical expectation. Yet you would think, to judge by some of the protestations that have reached our ears, that the Crown was proposing to engage the French over Madagascar for possession of that pirates’ nest, and obliging them to pay the costs of an adventure far removed from their concerns. But—the threat is to their own lives, their own homes and families, their fields, their shops, their seaports, their own livelihoods, and they higgle and haggle over the burden of expense! A very strange state of mind indeed!” The speaker looked around him at his listeners, and smiled. He had their attention. His subject was novel. He turned and again addressed the Speaker of the House, as the rules required him to do. “I am merely a messenger, sirs. Do not entertain thoughts of murdering me for what I have said, or am about to say.”

The colonials were, in fact, on the minds of many of his listeners, though not in the manner that was being presented to them. The rapid train of events concerning France threatened a new war. Because of a flurry of diplomatic moves, some believed there would be no war. Others were disquieted; they were afraid that the Newcastle government was not moving quickly enough to prepare for one. The speaker was certain of war—which would not be declared until the following May—but was concerned with aspects of it which he believed were being overlooked by all.

“And, no doubt, many of these same said colonials will pay with their own skins, too. However, if the reports of officers in His Majesty’s service in the colonies in the past are to be warranted—and I don’t for a minute doubt the substance of their complaints or the truth of their anecdotes—not many colonial skins will be cut by French bayonet or bruised by Indian war club. The colonials, it is commonly said, are uniformly lazy, undisciplined, contentious, quarrelsome, niggardly, presumptuous, and cowardly, among themselves as well as among our brave officers and troops! It is
thought by many in high and middling places that if the colonial auxiliaries under General Braddock’s command had been more forthright and daring with their musketry in that fatal wood near the Ohio, that brave and enterprising officer would be sitting in this very chamber today to receive our thanks, and not buried in some ignominious patch of mud in the wilderness. But—the colonial temperament is a matter of record. Our colonials! Scullions all, the sons of convicts, whores, and malcontents! From the greedy gentry of the northern parts, to the posturing macaronis of the southern, every man Jack of them unmindful of the fact that he is a colonial, a mere plant nurtured in exotic soil for the benefit of this nation! Oh! How ungrateful, our Britannic flora!”

Many of the listeners cheered or stamped their feet in agreement. The speaker seemed to pace up and down before them, his stocky frame swaggering a little, as though he were a popular pugilist basking in the acclaim of spectators before the match had even begun.

The hall, only a little larger than a ballroom, was packed with hundreds of cramped, restless men seated on long benches. It was on the second floor of a drab, mongrel-looking building which, but for the two turrets over its roof, could have been taken for one of the warehouses directly across the Thames from it. It was known as St. Stephen’s Chapel. The hall was a stark cavern, with oak wainscoting darkened by generations of candle soot, lit by a handful of inadequate windows, several dozen sconces, and a great chandelier. There were no paintings, tapestries, or banners to mark the hall’s importance, only an ornate, elevated chair in the aisle that divided the rows of benches, on which sat a man in a black cloak, a great white whig, and a black tricorn, and a raised, covered table before him, at which sat two black-cloaked clerks and other functionaries. On the table lay a mass of paperwork. A great gilt scepter, or ceremonial mace, usually rested on that table, too, but the House had been resolved into a Committee of the Whole House; the rules required that the mace be placed under the table when the House was not sitting in a formal session.

This was the House of Commons. The man on the throne was Arthur Onslow, Speaker since 1728 and for another six years, and also member for Guildford. The orator was Sir Henoch Pannell, Baronet of Marsden, and member for the borough of Canovan.

The opposing rows of benches were of four tiers each, and above them were long balconies supported by iron Corinthian pillars. These were the public galleries, and both were today packed with spectators. Not only was
the new war to be discussed, but this was one of the first sessions of a Parliament that, thanks to the Septennial Act of 1716, would sit for the next seven years.

Among the spectators was Hugh Kenrick, who had a front-row seat. He was leaned forward, arms crossed over the wooden railing, listening intently to the speaker. Today was a school holiday, and he had decided, out of sheer curiosity, to come here to audit the event. A week had passed, and he had received no word from Glorious Swain.

Sir Henoch waited for the commotion to subside, then went on. “Yes! Ungrateful, their noggins emboldened by a few leagues of water!” He placed his arms akimbo and looked thoughtful. “Now, it is thought here in this hall, and in London, and in all of England, and even in Wales and Scotland, that His Majesty’s government—we here, within these ancient walls, and they across the way, in Lords”—with these words, he raised a finger and vaguely indicated another building just south of the Chapel, pronouncing the words in a slyly mocking tone—“are the corporate lawgiver and defender of our excellent constitution. Why, the most ignoble knife-grinder and blasphemous fishwife would be able to tell you that! Yet—” here Sir Henoch raised the same finger in the air—“proposals for new laws, or for the repeal of old ones, or for changes in existing statutes from colonial legislatures—those self-important congresses of coggers, costermongers, and cork farmers—arrive by the bulging barrelful on nearly every merchant vessel that drops anchor at Custom House. These proposals are dutifully conveyed by liveried but sweaty porters to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade, to the Admiralty and the Surveyor-General and the Commissioner of Customs.”

Sir Henoch placed a hand over his heart. “I am not friend to many members of those august bodies, but they truly have my sympathies, for they have the thankless task of sorting through those mountains of malign missives to segregate the specious from the serious. Many of these pleadings and addresses are shot through with a constant harping on the rights of the colonials as Englishmen, and so on with that kind of blather, like a one-tune hurdy-gurdy, a tiresome thing to endure, as many of you can attest. Virginia and Massachusetts are particularly monotonous and noisome in this respect. The planters would like to sell their weed directly to Spain or Holland, without the benefit of our lawful brokerage, while the Boston felt factors wish to fashion their own hats for sale there—or here!—without the material ever crossing the sea to be knocked together by our
own artists. Well, sirs! We must needs remind our distant brethren that we are busy bees, too, and that the rights of Englishmen are only as good as the laws we enact allow—here, as well as there!”

These last words were accompanied by emphatic stabbings of his finger at the floor, and then vaguely at the west. Again the House exploded with cheering and stamping. Sir Henoch’s eyes swept the length of both benches, then he let his sight rise to the galleries to gauge the response from that quarter. There were no hatters in Canovan, but allies of his on the benches had arranged for several dozen of them from other parts of London to come today to hear his speechmaking. He saw many men up there shaking their fists and shouting things he could not hear for all the din. Several of the men, he presumed, must also represent the tobacco trades, and the pin-makers, and the cobblers, and other trades dependent on colonial material. Hirelings, he thought with contempt. Bought for a shilling, sold for a pound!

His sight stopped, though, on the grave face of Hugh Kenrick, who seemed to regard him as though he were some kind of unnatural phenomenon. He smiled and nodded once to the unexpected visitor. No doubt the boy would write home, and the Earl of Danvers would know that he had kept his promise to argue for more stringent trade restrictions, especially as they concerned colonial trade. He doffed his hat once, then turned to continue his harangue.

“Gentlemen,” he began, pivoting around with both hands extended in dramatic helplessness, “must I ask these questions? Does the beadle instruct the university? Does the postilion choose his employer’s destination? Does the bailiff counsel the magistrate?” He paused. “No!” he exclaimed with vehemence. “Should the colonials be permitted to advise us of our business? No! This is a custom unwisely indulged and which must be corrected! They must be reminded as civilly but as strenuously as possible that they are residents of that far land at this nation’s leisure, pleasure, expense, and tolerance! This nation’s, and His Majesty’s! They wish us to respect their rights. Well, and why not? We would not deny them those rights. But, if they wish a greater role in the public affairs of this empire, let them repatriate themselves to this fair island, and queue up at the polling places—here!—where they may exercise those native rights on the soil from which they and those rights have sprung!”

Again the benches cheered, but Sir Henoch waved his hands to silence his supporters. “Yes! For that is the nub of the matter! Here—” again the
finger stabbed downward—“they will find no special circumstances, no calculated abridgment of their rights! There—” again the finger stabbed west—“in New York, and in Boston, in Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, and Charleston, they find themselves in special circumstances that necessitate abridgment, and like it not! But—they elect to be there, and not here! And if they cannot purchase this simple reasoning, if they persist in pelting us with petitions, memorials, and remonstrances, I say it must be the time to forget civility, and chastise the colonials as good parents would wisely chastise wayward and misbehaved children!”

In the midst of another round of cheering, one man rose in the benches opposite Sir Henoch. The Speaker, from his raised throne over the busy clerks, noticed him and nodded to him. He recognized the individual as Mr. Herbert, member for Ruxton.

Mr. Herbert waited until all eyes were on him, then said, addressing the Speaker, “May I remind the gentleman over there that we are here to debate, I hope in time in this committee, what portion of the likely war debt we may decently assign the North American colonies, and how this House may help them assume that responsibility? The gentleman’s sulfurous outrage seems out of proportion to the modest proposal to which he replies. We are, after all, at war with the French—or will be—and not with the colonies! Or has Sir Henoch been privileged to see an Admiralty plan for the blockading of Boston and New York harbors?”

The House laughed, and Sir Henoch’s laugh was the heartiest. In a gesture of exaggerated humility, he bowed to Mr. Herbert and doffed his hat. “You are so right, sir! Will the House please forgive me my enthusiasm, my passion, and my misfired patriotism? I leave the floor so that the debate on the particulars of finance may continue.” He then bowed in thanks to the Speaker.

Sir Henoch plumped down on his seat. He had accomplished his purpose, which was to put many members of the Commons in a certain rigid frame of mind in regard to the colonies; the particulars, for the moment, did not interest him. He leaned closer to Mr. Kemp, the member for Harbin, another pocket borough, and muttered, “Not yet, I don’t doubt!”

Mr. Kemp frowned and shook his head. “Not yet? What don’t you doubt, sir?”

Sir Henoch managed to look sagely melancholy. “Someday,” he answered, gesturing to the austere hall at large, “this great wapentake may need to sanction an extended bit of westering to prune and trim our Britannic
flora.”

Kemp scowled with impatience. “Oh? So we’re scratching our backs on that post again, are we?” He sighed. “You make too much of the matter, sir. I’ll hear no more of it, thank you. ’tis but idle card game chatter.”

Sir Henoch shrugged, and turned to listen to the next speaker. “For the nonce, sir,” he said to himself. “For the nonce.”

*  *  *

The debates droned on past noon. Sir Henoch’s calculated outburst, which was in answer to another member’s proposed bill for relaxing restrictions on some imported manufactured items of colonial origin—among them, hats—was followed by verbal exchanges on a series of minor bills. These ranged in subject from an increase in the number of officers in the Scottish customs machinery, to an extraordinary levy on imported peacock feathers, to the appointment of a committee to study whether or not the ground powder of Abyssinian oryx horns, said by many physicians to possess remarkable purgative qualities, ought to be admitted duty-free. The Commons wished to dispose of these petit matters before turning in earnest to the subject of William Pitt’s speech of the day before attacking Newcastle’s proposed Hessian treaty.

Many of the nearly six hundred members took an impromptu recess from the proceedings and from the airless hall to repair to nearby taverns for tea, ale, and dinner. Others milled about outside in the Palace Yard. The day was gray and damp, and the House’s servants had set up burning barrels in the Yard for members to warm themselves over.

Sir Henoch Pannell and Mr. Kemp emerged from St. Stephen’s Chapel and took a turn around the Yard to warm their limbs. “I’ll say it again,” said the member for Harbin, “you make too much of it. And at a bad time. They’re all still dazzled by Mr. Pitt’s declaiming against those subsidies. Your words were forceful, though not, I’m afraid, as memorable as his will be. I must agree with Mr. Herbert that your ardor was disproportionate. The subject was a mole, and you advocated eliminating it with a howitzer!”