Authors: Edward Cline
Empire
SPARROWHAWK
Book Four
EMPIRE
A novel by
EDWARD CLINE
ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-946-3
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Copyright © 2004 by Edward Cline
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cline, Edward.
Sparrowhawk. Book 4, Empire / by Ed Cline.
p. cm. — (Sparrowhawk series ; bk. 4)
ISBN 1-931561-87-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Virginia—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775—Fiction.
I. Title: Empire. II. Title.
PS3553.L544S627 2004
813’.54—dc22
Paperback Edition: October 2005
ISBN: 1-59692-155-2
Cover painting “A Seaport” by Claude Lorrain, 1644
Book and jacket design by Dorothy Carico Smith
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedicated to the memory of Wayne Barrett,
who was the first to discover this
“To hold an unchanging youth is to reach, at the end,
the vision with which one started.”
Ayn Rand, in
Atlas Shrugged
(1957)
Chapter 10: The Purgatory Tavern
Chapter 11: The Committee of Ways and Means
A
shallow man takes pleasure in being an enigma; an honest man finds the role unpleasant. To an honest man, foreknowledge of an expected calamity is a curse if he is naturally outspoken and wishes to give warning, but is constrained by a codicil of sworn secrecy. It puts him at a distance from others, who in turn are sensitive to his reserve. Foreknowledge turns him into an enigma. It enables him to prepare for a danger, while others are oblivious to it. Foreknowledge can lure a shallow man to feel unjustifiably superior to others, even contemptuous of them, allowing him to flaunt false wisdom in the garb of the unknown.
Jack Frake had sounded many warnings to the other planters, and this had already made him an enigma to them, and an unsettling, distasteful one. They knew what he thought, but could not understand why he thought that way. However, he did not feel superior to them, although he did feel a twinge of contempt. The contempt was involuntary, rooted in impatience rather than in foreknowledge. During the late war, he had spoken often and frankly about the likely consequences of a Crown victory. The others had chosen not to believe him.
“See, sir!” exclaimed Reece Vishonn in the gaming room at Enderly one evening early in November, when he had thrown a ball to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night. “Our fellows can give them a taste of it when they put their heads to the business!”
Several planters were present, and someone’s idle remark about Sir Jeffrey Amherst’s policies toward the Indians had sparked a lively discussion of the future of the frontier. The defeat of the Indians at Bushy Run and the relief of Fort Pitt in August were still fresh in their minds. Vishonn added, “I’ve patented some thirty thousand acres there over the mountains. Took stock of them before the French riled up the Indians. They have all the earmarks of good mining land, and contain more first-grade lumber than there is sand on the banks of the York. I’ll be able to do something with them, once the army clears out the Indians, or arranges some sort of
treaty with them.”
“If it can,” remarked Jack Frake.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt that Amherst can, sir. It will simply take time.”
“Time? Yes, it will take time,” said Jack, cocking his head in concession. “The only thing that will defeat Pontiac and his allies is the continued absence of the French, or if they fight the army on its own terms, which I think they did at Bushy Run.”
Ira Granby frowned. “I can’t decide, sir, whether you have slighted His Majesty’s forces or not.”
Jack shook his head. “I have not. The army is good at fighting other armies, on other continents. On this continent? Well, the French learned quickly enough that what might be sane tactics in Germany are suicidal here.”
Ralph Cullis drawled, “Well,
that
did the French little good, sir. They were beaten everywhere, and roundly trounced here.”
“At what price, sirs?” asked Hugh Kenrick.
Everyone but Jack glanced at him. He stood leaning back against a window bay, arms crossed leisurely. He seemed to be studying them all with a special interest. His appraisal did not include Jack.
“What price?” asked Vishonn. “What do you mean by that?”
“The Crown has accumulated probably the greatest debt in our history. How do you imagine it will be paid?”
“Indemnities from the French,” remarked one guest. “They started it all. Let them pay.”
Arthur Stannard, the British tobacco agent, volunteered, “War has always incurred debt, sir. And this was a mighty struggle. Concern for how the debt will be paid is irrelevant and a waste of time. The Crown will do what it must.”
William Granby, one of the county’s burgesses, said, “Better a formidable debt than encirclement by Papists and barbarians. You won’t convince me otherwise, Mr. Kenrick. They were ready to drive us into the sea — the French with their crucifixes and muskets, the Cherokees and such with their war clubs, all of them making the sign of the cross as they butchered our women and children and destroyed all that has been accomplished here.”
“Yes,” echoed his father, Ira. “Better a debt than death.”
Vishonn said, “Yes! Whatever our portion of that debt may be, I for one won’t mind paying it!”
Jack and Hugh exchanged brief glances, and said nothing more. Vishonn and the others noticed the silent communication, and a question mark appeared in each of their minds. They were faced with two enigmas, one more perplexing than the other.
Jack did not feel superior to the others; he knew that he was, and that is a very different thing. He knew that he was a more complete man, better able to think and act than they, that his vision of himself and the world and what was possible to him were more secure, integrated, and potent than the haphazard, disparate, and conditional states he observed in other men.
He had never nurtured the habit of thinking of himself in relation to others. Once, however, the comparison did occur to him, during a discussion of this very kind. It flashed before his mind, unbidden by him, without an iota of vanity on his part, as a jolt of astonishing clarification, prompted by some lightning-like conclusion: He imagined himself a polished, gleaming column of marble, and the others, a sundry collection of obelisks of brick. It was a natural, inevitable, irresistible, and just comparison; he did not reproach himself for having thought it. Rather, he was amused by it, and had smiled then at the discovery; the others assumed that he was merely being cordial. But he was the marble — straight, tall, solid, with sharp corners. The others were of brick, some better mortared and more neatly troweled than their fellows, but whose parts could be removed and interchanged with parts from the others.
Bricks, even finely glazed ones, do not reflect light well; Jack saw nothing of himself in any of the others, nor sought it there. And he was too whole a man to think of the corollary: that the others could see themselves in the mirroring polish of his stature, that they saw the difference between themselves and him, and that what they saw caused them to feel humbled, afraid, resentful, and grudgingly deferential. And, somehow, unhappy with themselves. None of these things were they in the habit of acknowledging or contemplating.
Jack was too secure in the character and course of his life to dwell on the unbidden imagery. But the moment did help him gain an insight into the nature of the men who opposed or feared him. He did not often wonder about the motives and ends of others; when he did, it was only when their actions threatened to impinge on his own life. Then he was bothered by their own brand of the inexplicable. He could only suspect that beneath their refusal to credit him with a truth was a deeply buried admission that he was right. His awareness of his superiority also caused him to wonder
why certain things were not obvious to men who otherwise had the capacity to see, but did not, or would not, see them. That sublime moment aided him in understanding the inconstancy of other men and why he felt reluctant to deal with them.
A man who merely feels superior craves the company of those who, whether they despise him or fawn upon him, acknowledge his superiority. Men of genuine superior virtue naturally hunger for the knowledge or company of their equals. There were few other men with whom Jack felt comfortable, who caused in him neither a conflict nor a sense of intrusion by their presence. John Proudlocks reminded him of himself when he was a youth, struggling to learn and to shape himself, even though the man was only a few years younger than he. Ian McRae, Etáin’s father, seemed to accept him without reservation, as a man in whom he would entrust the person and happiness of his daughter. There were a handful of other men in Caxton — Thomas Reisdale, the attorney and scholar, was among them — in whom he observed shades of his own character or evidence of virtues he could admire.
The only other man who almost fully reminded him of himself — in stature of character, in a rigorous exclusivity of personal purpose, in scope of vision — was Hugh Kenrick. The phenomenon was a luxury Jack knew was possible to only a few men. He enjoyed this luxury because he knew that, regardless of the appraisals he made of other men, there was little measurable distinction between the self and what was commonly called the soul.
He recognized in that man a self that would never submit to malign authority; a self that was sensitive to the machinations of others, a self trained in the brittle, lacerating society of the aristocracy to be on guard against sly encroachments; a self that was proof against corruption, sloth, and violence; a self that recognized and cherished itself, and so was proud; a self that quietly gloried in its own unobstructed and unconquered existence.
A self very much like his own.
As Jack did not commit the error of believing that he was an ideal product of the Cornwall or Virginia poor, he did not believe that Hugh was an ideal product of the aristocracy. A man, after all, regardless of his origins, was responsible for the sculpting of his own soul. He could allow its shape to form by chance or the unprotested choices of others; or he could choose, for better or for worse, a portion of its image and content, or all of it. Poverty and privilege alike could be only temporary impediments to that task for a man determined to be independent. Wealth and comfort, poverty
and hardship — these could be but mere excuses or artful blinds for abdicating the responsibility of that life-long duty to oneself. That duty was the only one Jack acknowledged. He could not remember a day or a moment in his life when it was not a commandment, one that he gladly obeyed.
He saw evidence that he was not alone in his estimate of Hugh Kenrick or his influence.
Early in December, John Proudlocks came one Sunday evening to the great house for supper and their usual chess game. He brought with him a heavy tome, Blackstone’s
Analysis of the Laws of England
, which Hugh had given him as a gift. “I should like to hear what you think of this,” he said to Proudlocks then. “That will be worth more than the crown and six shillings I paid for it.”
“I have read Mr. Blackstone’s book,” said Proudlocks that evening to Jack over supper. The tome sat on the table near him, and he would touch it now and then as he spoke, as though doing so helped him organize and articulate his thoughts.
“That is, I have read much of it, those parts of it that were clear and not burdened with Latin. Now, all these laws, they are, as Mr. Kenrick said, the British Constitution. This Constitution, I think, is something like the stone face I saw once on the side of a mountain in the north, when I escaped from the Mohawks. It is mighty, and unique, and awesome, like that stone face. But, this Constitution — it, too, seems carved by nature, and not by men. I mean, these laws — many of them good and just laws, many of them as intricate as a spider’s web, many of them more cruel than Algonquin law — they were made by men, but there is no —” Proudlocks paused to find a word “— there is no…direction to them. I mean, there
is
direction, but it is…chance.” He shook his head in frustration. “It is almost as though the wind and rain and snows carved them, too, making some parts fine, leaving others rough.”
Proudlocks paused again, and his face brightened. “These laws, they are unlike Mr. Kenrick’s conduit. He drew that in his mind, then fashioned it. I think he had to know much before he could do that. I remember what he said, before he left, that the Constitution here was a great mass of precedents, of findings and decisions that turned over ancient traditions and old laws, and that it was all around us, like the air. Beneath them all I see the gift of chance. I mean, there is liberty granted in much of this book,” he said, tapping the top of the tome twice with a finger, “but that was not the intention. Liberty was given life almost by chance, or accident. It was something
that came with other purposes, but it could not be corrected, or denied, or taken back, or turned over, once it was known.” The dark, handsome brow furled in judgment. “Liberty, I think, ought to be the purpose of laws, as plain and clean and straight as Mr. Kenrick’s conduit.” He shook his head. “I do not think that this Constitution is a final form of what it ought to be.”
Jack smiled. One thing he enjoyed while listening to Proudlocks was watching his face as he spoke. As his friend uttered words, his expression registered the efforts of an active mind determined to choose the correct expression of a thought. “I agree with you,” said Jack. “So will Mr. Kenrick, and Mr. Reisdale. You must tell them what you have told me, in the same words.”
Proudlocks grinned. “By then, I may find better.” Then he frowned. “They would not regard me as ignorant or presumptuous, Jack? I mean, there are many centuries of law discussed in Mr. Blackstone’s book, and much wisdom.”
Jack shook his head. “It was a fine commentary, John. Mr. Kenrick will be pleased to hear it, while I believe you will startle Mr. Reisdale. I have read some of his own commentaries on the Constitution. You have raised some issues which I believe should have occurred to him.” Jack smiled in benevolent mischief. “You will clear some cobwebs from his head.”
A few evenings later Thomas Reisdale came to Morland Hall to discuss the agenda for the next meeting of the Caxton Attic Society. Hugh Kenrick also came. Jack invited Proudlocks to repeat his perspective on the Constitution. This Proudlocks did, omitting his comparison of it with the stone face.
When he had finished, Reisdale studied the man over his bifocals for a long time. The floor clock in Jack’s library ticked away the minutes, and puffs of smoke rose from Jack’s pipe almost as regularly as the mechanical sound. Neither Jack nor Hugh had ever before seen the attorney in so quiet a state of thought; he usually had an answer or reply ready before another person had finished speaking.
Then Reisdale removed his bifocals and studied them for a moment. With a meditative grin, he said to Proudlocks, “This is true.” With a subtle change in his expression, he regarded the man with a special respect. He glanced over at Hugh and Jack. “Perhaps,” he said, “I have been too long immersed in the subject to mark the true shape of our Constitution. Like Jonah in the whale.” Then he rose and began pacing before his companions. He nodded to Proudlocks once. “And you are right, sir. If our liberties are to be preserved, they must be the singular object of laws, and not a
parcel of afterthoughts.” He paused in thought for a moment. “But, good heavens! It’s too logical, sirs! Why, if such a project were ever to be undertaken — well, the entire Constitution would need to be recast! No! There must be some accommodation for what
is
…. ”
