Hugh Kenrick (4 page)

The death of his wife from pneumonia affected the old Earl in a strange way. It was as though her passing dissolved his self-imposed bonds of mature respectability, and he was seized by all the vices he had once inveighed against. He abruptly abandoned his dilettantish excursions into theology and moral philosophy and became as profligate and promiscuous as the late Countess. He gambled away enormous sums at the gaming tables and in the cock-fight dens in London. He became a regular patron of the
Folly
, a floating brothel on the Thames, and once bought each of its whores a new broadcloth gown, a pair of silver slippers, and a Dutch watch. He was rarely seen entering his once precious library, except on ill-concealed trysts with a servant girl or one of the more notorious local baronesses. He began to drink the wine cellar dry, and to eat more at one meal than a servant did in a week. His doctor could only attribute his embarrassing behavior to a “choleric imbalance of mental fluids caused by grief for the late Countess.” He followed his wife into the family burial vault in St. Quarrell’s church a mere three years later, having died under scandalous circumstances in a Weymouth inn. His carefree mode of living brought the family to the brink of financial ruin.

Basil Kenrick left the task of sustaining Danvers to his brother, who did not share their father’s once-chaste sense of aristocracy. Garnet Kenrick wished he had been able to lead a life independent of his older brother. But he gravitated to a career in commerce, chiefly because, on their father’s death, he was the only one capable of sorting out the financial shambles left behind. It was not a chosen career, but it consumed his time and immediate interest, and so it became his career. His late grandfather’s connections on the Board of Trade, and the still thriving merchant company from his great-grandfather’s day, gave him an edge and allowed him to compensate for his brother’s occasional extravagances. He managed the Earl’s business from Danvers and traveled frequently between there and the family company’s offices in Poole, Weymouth, Bristol, and London.

The Earl left his brother alone in business matters, but harbored a secret envy of him for being able to master them, coupled with a peevish condescension. He resented the special, peer-like relationship Garnet granted to his business associates and even sea captains. Garnet Kenrick did not think himself indefinably superior to anyone.

The Earl had another reason to distance himself from his brother:
Garnet and his wife had children, while he had none. He and his wife, the Countess, almost had one—who would have been heir to the title—but the child was stillborn, and the Countess could produce no more. This was a closely kept secret. Further, Effney, his brother’s wife, mother of a son and a daughter, was a gracious, amiable woman who also lacked airs and whose handsomeness would endure well past her child-bearing years. The Earl’s wife, on the other hand, had allowed herself to grow fat, shrewish, and tyrannical. The Earl was bitterly aware of his wife’s shortcomings, but she was the Countess of Danvers, and he would brook no insolence from anyone about her.

Once, at a ball he had thrown years ago, he overheard a young squire say to his companion, “The Lady Danvers, I know, is a painfully virtuous woman—virtuous, I dare say, from fear. She wouldn’t think of risking a son not of the Earl’s passion.” The companion had answered, “I own that this must be true, friend, but, you must credit it, her virtue is greatly assisted by her ungainly visage.” The Earl, surprising them in the midst of their laughter, had taken a cane to both men and beaten them bloody in front of the throng of horrified guests, and then had his servants toss them outside and down the mansion’s broad stone steps.

Garnet Kenrick could not say that he hated his brother, or merely disliked him. Their frequent consultations on family and business matters were informal and cordial. No love grew between the siblings, and none was lost. Each regarded the other more as a family intimate than as a brother. The only evidence of a close link between them was that they addressed each other by first name. And the only personal feelings they would tactfully reveal to each other was that Garnet thought his brother overbearing and baselessly arrogant; Basil thought his brother
déclassé
, if not outright plebeian. “My dear Basil, had you the mind of Newton, and the physique of Ganymede, perhaps we should see the world running to you, instead of you after it.” “My dear Garnet, it does not do to behave as though you preferred to be familiar with the coachman’s daughter, rather than with those of your own station.” This was the limit the brothers would permit their curious, mutual acrimony to go.

Basil Kenrick held the upper hand. He had power. His man in the Commons voted for every protective, mercantilist measure that came up for debate on the floor. The Earl himself was a peer, and journeyed to London, when it suited him, to sit at sessions of Lords.

There was, however, one matter in which the brothers were in full
agreement. The Baron saw to it that the family’s coffers were filled with the profits of smuggling into the country the very things the Earl voted to ensure were heavily taxed.

Many smuggling gangs offered shares in their enterprises, which were bought anonymously by aristocrats and gentry along the south coast of England, from Land’s End to Ramsgate. Garnet had seen to it that the Earl owned shares in half the principal gangs in each coastal county, except Dorset, where the Earl controlled one of the biggest gangs. This gang was known as the Lobster Pots for its practice of landing, hiding, and transporting illegal goods in lobster pots deposited near the shore by Dutch, English, and French partners. The chief of the Lobster Pots, once a fisherman, owned a great house and twenty acres near Lulworth Cove, the gang’s main point of operation. The Earl had never met him and refused to meet him; the task of negotiating with commoners was left to his brother and his intermediaries.

When the Skelly gang in Cornwall was crushed and its leader hanged in Falmouth, Garnet Kenrick tied a black satin ribbon around the neck of an Italian bronze statue of Hermes that loomed from a corner of his vast study desk. The Skelly gang had repeatedly rejected his careful overtures of partnership in the gang, and shown no interest in the capital he could have provided to expand their scope of activities. Still, he had admired the gang and its leader, and was sorry to see them vanish.

The ribbon remained, after almost two years. The Baron was reluctant to remove it, for he had read many newspaper accounts of what was said and done at both Marvel and the trial in Falmouth. Something unusual had happened in these places, something significant, and he felt that if he removed the ribbon, the incidents would vanish into the anonymity of his mundane affairs, and he would never know what was special about them.

When Basil Kenrick entered his brother’s study one evening, he cocked an eyebrow on sight of the black ribbon, and asked in challenging jest, “What means this eternal mourning, dear brother? Did Hermes fail to persuade Prometheus to coax Athena from Zeus’s head?” He took pleasure in needling his brother for what he considered over-sentimentality.

“No, dear brother,” answered Garnet. “A son of Hermes failed to coax reason from the skulls of cretins. He was extinguished by them and, like Prometheus, chained to a rock.”

Hermes was the Greek god of commerce, invention, cunning, and theft. The brothers, who had both excelled in classics at Eton, had years ago
fallen into the habit of discussing the Skelly gang and related matters in these allusive terms, and Garnet, on an inspired whim, removed the statue from the dining hall and placed it in his study, “So that he might bless all the unimpeachable and crafty things done here in his name,” he had explained then.

The Earl sniffed. “Prometheus was alive when he was chained. This son of Hermes is tarred and very dead.”

“Still, someone’s liver is being eaten.”

“Well, thank God for that, nevertheless. You will remember that some of the things said by these brigands at their trial were unsettling. Treasonable!”

“Revolutionary,” remarked the Baron.

“
Leveling
,” added the Earl with rancor. “This son of Hermes was shown mortal justice!”

“But someday, I fear, Hermes himself will make an appeal to his friend Apollo, and then we shall know Olympian justice.”

“What do you mean?”

“That only the gods are immortal.” Garnet studied his brother for a moment. “Suppose they all went to the colonies—these sons and daughters of Hermes—and one day refused to deal with us mortals?”

“We should teach them an awful lesson,” scoffed the Earl.

Garnet shook his head. “One does not teach gods or their offspring lessons, dear brother.”

E
IGHT-YEAR-OLD
H
UGH SAT IN SHADOW NEAR HIS FATHER’S DESK
, listening intently to their cryptic exchange, but understanding little of it. He recognized the names from his tutor’s classics instruction, but could not grasp how his father and uncle were using them. His uncle had nodded curtly to him when he came in, then ignored him.

Hugh had been summoned here to receive advice from his father on how to best conduct himself at Eton College, where he was to be sent in a few days on the stern recommendation of the vicar of St. Quarrell’s.

“He’s a bright lad,” the vicar had said to his parents a week ago during an unexpected call, “but he needs the tonic of society of boys his own age. He is too, well,
imperial
for his own and others’ good. I cannot help but imagine that he leads a somewhat solitary life here, in his home, and I believe that this has had an unfortunate effect on his moral character.” The vicar paused to sip some of the sherry he had been offered, and continued his nervous pacing before the seated parents. “True, the masters of the College would better be able to impart the knowledge and mental exercise his keen mind needs and yearns for—better than a single tutor. At the same time, the rigors and demands of school life may work as an
aqua regia
on a peculiar, unattractive aspect of his character.”

“What aspect?” Hugh’s mother had asked.

“I would say rebelliousness, but then, every boy has that in him. This particular aspect defies category. I know only that if it is not restrained, it will bring him and you both a quantum of pain and unhappiness. A turn—perhaps even a career—at Eton may spare everyone concerned the nurturing of, well…an
incubus
.”

The Baroness had gasped. Garnet Kenrick had risen from his chair. “
Incubus
? That’s a drastic term, Vicar,” he said with unusual sharpness. “You are speaking of our son!”

“Indeed, I am,” replied the vicar with airy confidence. “It is the nearest thing I can think of.” Then he had lowered his voice and in menacing, embittered sympathy said, “Last Saturday, I saw him outside the vicarage, before he was to report to the curate for his Scriptures lesson, on his hands and knees on the church lawn, inviting a
hare
to eat some clover he had in
his hand. The hare came and ate it, and he let it go off without trying to kill it, as other boys would have tried. As
he
should have tried.” He turned his back on his listeners. “Subsequently, he could not recite the Thirty-nine Articles of our Church, as he had been able to just the week before.”

This was ominous news to the otherwise sane and practical parents, for in Dorset, hares were regarded as transformed witches.

The vicar need not have said more. Still fresh in all their minds were the incidents, only days apart six months ago, involving two village children. One, the son of a cobbler, had cornered a hare and was bitten by it. He had gone mad, and after a terrifying sickness, died. Another, the daughter of a seamstress, had tried to cage an injured hare for a pet, and had also been bitten. She had gone mad, too, but did not die. Instead, she lost the power of speech and the ability to control her facial expressions. The magistrate of Danvers had forbidden her to appear in public, except in the company of her mother, and then only on a leash and wearing a hood.

Obviously something inside their son enabled him to be friendly with the dreaded hare. And so, embarrassed by lending the superstition any credence, but convinced of the esteemed vicar’s reasoning and concern, the Kenricks agreed that a turn at Eton might do the boy some good.

Hugh knew nothing about the conversation. He knew nothing about Eton, except that it was a school far away, and that his tutor, Mr. Hales, spoke almost enviously of the time he would spend there.

“Why
is
he here?” asked the Earl now, indicating Hugh.

“He is going to the College next week,” explained the father. “He needs instruction on how to best deal with his instructors and fellow pupils.”

The Earl turned and wagged a finger at Hugh. “Mind your masters and get along with the other boys, except if they are sons of gentry. Those you may cuff. But I want no more business like the Hamlyn boy. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

The Earl promptly forgot Hugh. “Now, what is this about a schooner?” he asked his brother. “Why do you need to see me about it?”

“The
Ariadne
is for sale. She is in dry-dock in Weymouth. She was impounded by the Revenue some time ago and her captain and most of her crew tried for smuggling. She was sold to another captain, who took her to Boston. On her way back she was badly mauled by a Spanish pirate, but she got away and limped home without further incident. The captain does not wish to spend more time or money repairing or refitting her. His cargo was
mostly orange trees from the Floridas, and half of these either perished in the fight or died from attrition. He is short of funds.” Garnet Kenrick smiled. “She can be had for a mere eight hundred guineas.”

“What would we want with a schooner?”

Garnet placed a sheaf of papers in front of his brother. “Talbot thinks, and I concur, that we should have our own conveyance, now that the war is over. He has been urging me for some time to secure a merchantman of modest size.” Otis Talbot was the family’s commercial agent in Philadelphia.

“The
Ariadne
?” interjected Hugh.

Garnet turned to his son. The Earl frowned. “Yes, Hugh. That is the schooner’s name.”

Hugh beamed. “Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos, a son of Zeus and Europa, and of Pasiphaë, a daughter of Helios and Persë. Ariadne gave Theseus a sword with which to slay her father’s Minotaur and a length of thread with which to find his way out of the beast’s labyrinth. Then she left Minos with him.”

Garnet Kenrick chuckled. “And what happened then, my proud cygnet?” he asked with affection.

“Theseus deserted her on Naxos, but she married Bacchus.” Hugh turned and addressed his uncle. “Prometheus did not coax Athena from Zeus’s head, sir. He cleaved it with an ax, and then she sprang from it. He was not a coaxing kind of hero, and she was too wise to be persuaded of the benefits of such a birth. She already knew them.”

“Anan?” replied the Earl. This flagrant contradiction of his words added another particle of dislike of the boy. But he stretched his lips in what most men would not recognize as a smile, but which was one nevertheless. “You will do well at Eton, if you can correct me. But the next time you hear me fiddle with myth, be gracious enough to allow me my amusement. Is
that
understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Earl turned in his chair and addressed his brother again. “Now that my privilege has been
cleaved
by this young Titan of yours, dear brother—have you taken into account that we should have to pay a crew?”

“Of course. However, we would be more than compensated by the erasure of many of the extraordinary arrangements we now need to make with other merchantmen, not to mention by the commensurate degree of independence we should gain. The schooner can be repaired, refitted, and
crewed in three months. I have inspected her. She does not need careening, and she is eminently seaworthy. Full cargoes both ways in two years would cover the initial outlay of her purchase and refitting. That is a modest outcome. Extraordinary cargoes should halve that time. I know of two or three captains for hire, presently idle but known to be amenable to our kind of business.”

This conversation lasted for another half hour. Hugh Kenrick had been present during many such meetings between his father and uncle, as a silent observer, and learned much about commerce and the family business. He listened with the same fascination that he experienced when he read the legends of the Greeks and Romans.

*  *  *

When the Earl was gone, Garnet Kenrick gave his son his advice. The Baron was innovative in business, but his inventiveness did not extend to questioning the received wisdom of his time. Thus, his advice was a litany of contradictory maxims, adages, and homilies.

“Above all,” he concluded, “submit to the spirit of compatriotism among your peers. If they are gentle, be gentle with them. If they are cruel, be cruel, for if you exhibit the least amount of reluctance to resort to cruelty, it will be turned against you. I made that mistake myself, you see. Fashions in manners and sentiments change, but all aim to mould the proper comportment of a gentleman. You must learn that you are not alone—did not Mr. Donne write so wisely that ‘no man is an island’?—and the best way of assuming the dignity of nobility is to learn early in what I hope will be your long life that you must defer your person and your desires to the sanctity of your present and future station. You
will
be the Earl of Danvers, someday. Observe the posture and actions of your peers and superiors, and emulate them to the best of your wits. Keep in mind that your instructors and masters at the College are not quite gentlemen, but that they have knowledge to impart to their charges, so do not tease them with inordinate curiosity, and do not bait them, as you will see other students will be wont to do. They are the only commoners in the kingdom who may with impunity birch a knight.” The Baron studied his attentive son. “You have a quick mind, Hugh, and it would be easy for you to commit that venial sin.”

The Baron paused again. He could not be sure that anything he was
saying was finding a niche in his son’s mind. “Err…Vicar Wynne informs us that on Saturday last you were not able to recite the abbreviated Articles. Yet today, you are able to regale your uncle and me with a portion of a complex pagan legend. Can you explain this, Hugh?”

The boy frowned. “I remember the legends better, Father, because they are more interesting than are the Articles.”

The Baron was willing to concede this. Had he not, when he was his son’s age, reveled in the adventures and epics of gods and mortals, and lost himself in the worlds of
The Iliad
and
The Odyssey
? The mighty struggles, the alliances and betrayals, the exotic lands! But he could not confess this to his son. “The gods and the Titans were lawless, Hugh. Humility and generosity could not be observed in a single one of them, good or bad.”

Hugh Kenrick’s face brightened. “That is because they were not Christians, father. They could not have tolerated the saints of our church. The gods and the Titans fought for possession of the earth, while the saints forsook it. How could the meek and the humble inherit the earth, as Vicar Wynne claims they will, when the gods and the Titans were so powerful? They would have laughed, and evicted the saints and the humble!”

The Baron raised his eyebrows in alarm. Here was a formulation he had never heard before in any sermons, and he doubted it had ever occurred in his son’s catechism. On one hand, he was intrigued; on the other, the Vicar’s evaluations and warnings seemed much more ominous. “Do you approve of the saints, Hugh?”

The boy grimaced. “They are sometimes droll, but mostly dull. I know that the Romish church makes much of the saints, while ours does not. Is it because Englishmen have martyred the most illustrious of them, such as Thomas Becket and Joan of Orleans?”

The Baron laughed involuntarily. “No,” he said, “that is not the reason—or, at least, not the whole reason. I am not an authority on the subject of our church’s history, and I would not think it wise to ever put that question to Vicar Wynne. I may assure you, however, that the schism between ourselves and the Papists had little to do with an embarrassment of such riches.”

Hugh Kenrick laughed at the jest. The Baron merely smiled. He felt a compulsion to hug his son, to laugh with him, and to encourage through these actions the spirit he was beginning to see emerge in the boy. There was something right about that spirit. After he dismissed his son, he thought, also, that there was something dangerous in it.

Children tend to explode, when set free of their parents or tutors, especially when their parents’ or tutors’ notions of character building consists of pounding into their charges’ heads a plethora of undifferentiated maxims, adages, rules, and moral concoctions that had little or no relation to the world as observed by children. Hugh Kenrick’s difficulty lay in this phenomenon, also, though what was pounded into his head was, more often than not, ejected with a violence that frightened his wardens. If something did not make sense to him, he questioned it relentlessly, and if no sensible or credible answer to it was given, he dismissed it.

Hugh Kenrick was spoiled. He had six pairs of shoes, all with silver buckles. He had riding boots to wear when he exercised his pony. He had several suits of clothes of the best cut; fine shirts and lace cravats; more toys in his room than possessed by all the middle-class children in Swanage and Danvers combined; three meals a day, none of which he ever finished; a succession of governesses and tutors before he was sent to Eton. He had a sumptuous allowance of ten guineas a year, to spend as he pleased. He had books, or rather his father and uncle had books, and if books were missing from his elders’ libraries, they could usually be found in Hugh’s room.

Therefore, Garnet Kenrick could not say that he was completely surprised when, a week after delivering his son to the College of Eton, he received an urgent letter from the headmaster requesting that he remove his son at his earliest convenience. Hugh Kenrick had seared the hands of a senior boy with a red-hot poker when the older boy attempted to make him his fag. The Earl was scandalized, for the injured boy was the son of the Marquis of Bilbury, a political ally in the House of Lords and sometime guest and companion when the Earl spent time in London.

Some days after his return, Hugh’s parents escorted him into the Earl’s study, and in their presence Basil Kenrick interrogated him. The Earl had been kept ignorant of Vicar Wynne’s revelations and speculations about the boy’s behavior. To him, his nephew was beginning to take after the king’s oldest son, Frederick Louis, the Prince of Wales: sullen, rebellious, spiteful, and frivolous. The Prince, who was hated by his father the king, was in the Earl’s eyes a witless fool who had no good reason to reciprocate his father’s detestation. Hugh stood before the Earl’s desk, while his parents sat to the side, almost in shadow. “Why did you do this cruel and cowardly thing, young sir?” asked the Earl.