War (16 page)

It was inevitable that Hugh would encounter Sir Henoch Pannell and Crispin Hillier on the first day of the new Parliament on November 29. He did not seek them out, but was espied by them in the Palace Yard in a light
fog among the throngs of members who milled about before leaving in groups to take their seats in the House. He stood with his father apart from most of the groups, Garnet Kenrick pointing out to his son some of the members he knew or was acquainted with.

“We meet again, sir, in the same circumstances, it seems.”

Hugh and his father turned to note Sir Henoch Pannell, member for Canovan. A mixture of genuine surprise and smug congeniality stretched the wide face. Behind his large figure stood the diminutive, somber Crispin Hillier, member for Onyxcombe. Both men were in the Earl of Danvers’s bloc in the Commons, a bloc that allied itself frequently with the court and North’s parties. Pannell smiled with pointed gregariousness. “I believe our exchange then concerned our Britannic flora, which has turned somewhat thorny of late.” Pannell nodded in greeting to the Baron.

“Very much so, Sir Henoch,” answered Hugh with cold reserve. “I recall our encounter then.”

“I have mellowed somewhat since then, sir. And you?”

“I have grown sharper thorns.”

After he, too, nodded to the Baron, Crispin Hillier spoke. “We did not know you were in town, milord Hugh,” he said, his words seeming to include a third party who was not present and which rendered Henoch Pannell’s presence coincidental. “Have you paid your respects to your uncle?”

“I have no respects to pay him, Mr. Hillier,” replied Hugh.

“I am sorry to hear it,” remarked Hillier.

“Perhaps as sorry as may be my brother,” said Garnet Kenrick, “when he learns that my son is in town to attend the Commons.”

“I wouldn’t know, milord,” replied Hillier. “I do not presume to audit his lordship’s moods.”

Feeling left out, Pannell jumped back into the conversation. “Well, milord,” he said to Hugh, “I am afraid you will be tempted to nap in the gallery today. Nothing shattering will be said or done in today’s sitting. All droll procedures and calendar business.” He grinned. “I do not expect to speak today, so there won’t be much for you to take me to task for, as you did last time. No botanical matters to prune at all. I will be spared a prickling by your thorns.”

“I don’t expect to speak either, Sir Henoch,” answered Hugh.

Abruptly, Pannell frowned in confusion. “Oh…?” Hillier took a step closer, his own expression wrinkled with knowledge of an answer he was
reluctant to believe.

“My son is the new member for Swansditch, Sir Henoch, Mr. Hillier,” the Baron said. “I have conceded that Hugh’s oratory is more biting than my own. He shall speak for me, when the time comes, and I shall hear him from the gallery.”

Pannell blinked once, then recovered quickly from his shock. He mused with a sigh, “Well, more injurious eloquence by way of Swansditch? I thought that had passed away with Sir Dogmael, rest his soul.”

Hillier’s brow furled. “Milord, are you not a burgess in your Virginia assembly? I believe there may be some legal conflict here, in your possibly representing two different governments.”

Hugh smiled wickedly. “There may be a conflict, Mr. Hillier, if you truly own that my government is of another nation, and not a handmaiden of the Crown. However, the General Assembly was dissolved, and its members will not be burgesses again until it meets again. Governor Dunmore will not likely call it back until the spring. In any event, I am not there to be reelected, if he chances to call it sooner.” He paused. “Besides, am I not a citizen of the Empire?”

This was too much for the member for Onyxcombe to answer in so short a time. He answered, rhetorically and without conviction, “That remains to be seen, milord.”

“Well, if you do speak, milord,” said Pannell, “mind what you say. Our oratory may now be reported in the newspapers through this Hansard creature. I voted against that scuttling of our privilege, you know. Its only consequence is to open our private thoughts to endless ridicule and contempt.”

“I am not surprised that you opposed it,” answered Hugh. “As for the ridicule and contempt, too often they are deserved.”

Garnet Kenrick smiled. “It is only a matter of justice, Sir Henoch. No longer must the electorate rely solely on caricatures to gauge the character and ends of the elected.”

Again, Henoch Pannell’s eyes widened in surprise. The Baron’s remark called to him the unwelcome memory of the two caricatures that ridiculed him and the Grenville government during the Stamp Act debates a decade ago. The memory silenced him, even though he wished to reply. He had always been certain that the Baron and Sir Dogmael Jones were responsible for the caricatures.

Hugh Kenrick, after a brief study of Pannell’s expression, turned to his father. “Sir, you underestimate your skills. Shall we go in?”

The father and son nodded in parting to the members for Canovan and Onyxcombe, then turned and crossed the Yard in the direction of St. Stephen’s Chapel.

“Well, Mr. Hillier,” sighed Pannell as they watched them go, “what do you make of that?”

“His lordship will be
very
displeased,” commented Hillier ominously.

“Doubtless. But what mischief do you think they are up to?”

“Windmills, Sir Henoch,” Hillier said. “Windmills. I believe the younger Quixote has agreed to tilt at us for the older. But the younger wields a much more effective lance.”

Henoch Pannell’s brow furled at the allusion. He had never read
Don Quixote de la Mancha
, but did not want to confess it.

* * *

That evening, Crispin Hillier called at Windridge Court and asked to see the Earl of Danvers. Basil Kenrick received the attorney in his study, where he was making notes for the opening of Lords. Hillier bowed once to the Earl, then said, “I have some upsetting news, your lordship.”

“What news, Mr. Hillier?”

“Your nephew is in London.”

Basil Kenrick smiled. “Yes, I know.”

“How, your lordship?”

“I received a report from Mr. Hunt two days ago.”

“I see,” replied Hillier. “Then he could not tell you that your nephew is now the member for Swansditch. Your brother elected him. Sir Henoch and I saw them at the Commons this morning. Your nephew took a seat next to Colonel Barré.” Hillier paused and chuckled. “Swansditch and Calne. An unlikely pairing, but they will agree!”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hillier?”

“Calne, your lordship. It is Colonel Barré’s new seat. It is a market town in Wiltshire, on the Marden River.” Hillier paused. “Colonel Barré is expected to speak against the government’s colonial policy with his usual frightening mode.”

“I see. My nephew will speak against it, it is to be expected. Perhaps I shall attend the Commons when he is there. I have not seen him in years.”

Crispin Hillier did not wish to dwell on why the Earl had wished him to arrange for his son’s appointment to the Customs service and be sent to
Virginia, just as he had never dwelt, all these eight years, on the Earl’s or Mr. Hunt’s role in the death of Sir Dogmael Jones after the Stamp Act had been repealed. Nor did he dwell on the matter of why the Earl sustained such a hatred for his nephew, for the incidents that had caused the hatred were forgotten by everyone long ago. Instead, he asked, “How is Mr. Hunt?”

The Earl considered the question impertinent, but answered it anyway. “He has been drafted by Governor Dunmore there to participate in an Indian campaign. Perhaps he will acquire some martial sense from the experience. It may come in handy when we find it necessary to reconquer the colonies.”

Hillier cleared his throat. “Can we be so certain of
war
, your lordship?”

“Of course,” dismissed the Earl. “Look at my nephew. He, like his fellow traitors over there, has not nurtured a proper sense of his duty. He needs be taught it with compulsion. Or perish.” He grinned, and added, in the manner of boasting, “Just as Sir Dogmael perished.”

Crispin Hillier winced at the reference. Even though he and the Earl had never, all this time, discussed the late barrister’s murder, he wished his lordship had not said that. It gave him a feeling of complicity.

E
xcept for infrequent home leaves, he had been in North America for over ten years, and was at the peak of his military career. As a captain, he had been with the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden in 1746; as a major, he served as an aide to George Keppel in Flanders at Maastricht at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession; he was a colonel under General Braddock and survived that officer’s disastrous defeat on the Monongahela in 1755. He had commanded light infantry at Ticonderoga, and took part in the taking of Quebec under Wolfe. In 1760, Major General Jeffery Amherst, after securing Canada for the Empire, appointed him governor of Montreal.

He had married a colonial woman, Margaret Kemble, daughter of the president of the Council of New Jersey. In 1761 he was promoted major general, and two years later succeeded Amherst in New York as commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America, which included over fifty garrisons from Newfoundland to the Caribbean.

When he returned from leave in England on the
Lively
in April 1774, he carried with him his appointment as governor of Massachusetts Bay and a copy of a draft of the Massachusetts Government Act, both documents giving him absolute power over that colony. Accompanying these was a letter from Lord Dartmouth, instructing him in the scope and importance of his new duties, the most important of which was securing the absolute and unconditional submission of Massachusetts to the Crown.

He was a tall, thin man, with a longish, angular face that was a mask of frigid patience wedded to an unimaginative and unmovable resolve to obey his instructions to the letter. He was a capable administrator, and while not sympathetic to the unrest in his appointive realm, was not entirely blind to the dire political and military situation that grew worse by the week. The few discreet recommendations he made to his superiors in London to perhaps lessen the harshness of the recent Acts, so as to alleviate a crisis he did not think could be resolved militarily, were consistently and curtly dismissed. The fault was his, for his worried, accurate and detailed reports on the colonial crisis merely served to stiffen the resolve of his superiors to exact total due deference from the colonists.

His name was Lieutenant General Thomas Gage, and he was now fifty-three years old.

It was late September. Before him at his desk in Salem, to which most of Massachusetts’s government had been removed as part of the punitive closing of the port of Boston, sat a much younger officer, Captain Roger Tallmadge, who had arrived in Boston four days ago only to be directed to the smaller port town north of the chastened city. The general had been advised months ago of the mission and imminent arrival of the captain and his aide, Lieutenant William Manners, by Lord Barrington.

The captain and Manners, riding into Salem, had immediately found a room, changed into their uniforms after a hearty meal in the tavern below, then reported to Gage’s headquarters to deliver the report on colonial military estimates. They were told by a staff aide to amuse themselves until the Governor had time to read and evaluate the report, and then they would be sent for.

Traveling together for months had not made the pair fast friends, and they were only too glad to part for a while from each other’s company and find separate diversions. They were warned not to journey alone into Boston, especially not in uniform, except in the company of at least a platoon of soldiers. Manners was absent for long periods of time; Tallmadge did not enquire about the lieutenant’s diversions. Then, three days into their wait, the lieutenant vanished.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, Gage sent for Tallmadge and complimented him on the thoroughness of the report. He smiled and patted the top of a bound sheaf of papers. “An invaluable assessment of the circumstances here, Captain. Your observations concur with my own. I shall certainly commend its value to Lord Barrington.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Your report is in two different hands, sir. I presume they are your own and Lieutenant Manners’s.”

“Yes, sir. That portion of it in Lieutenant Manners’s hand was dictated by me.”

“Of course.” After a pause, Gage cleared his throat and with almost tired reluctance brought up another matter. He reached for another short pile of papers and placed them in front of him. “Captain Tallmadge, I have here before me letters from Governor Dunmore and from a Mr. Jared Hunt of the Customs in Virginia, in addition to letters from a Reverend Acland, pastor of a church in Queen Anne County, Virginia, and a Mr. Edgar Cullis,
an attorney and burgess for that county in the assembly down there. They all report an action you took during your brief stay in those parts. The action you are accused of by them is, unfortunately, a court martial offense — you were an officer in the field at the time, not acting in any private capacity — and I am certain some attorney for the Customs could concoct an argument for a civil offense, as well.”

The general paused. “In addition to these letters, I have before me the sworn testimony of Lieutenant William Manners, your companion and aide the last several months, citing the same offense, and who further asserts, in addition to detailing your action, that you harbor a secret sympathy with the rebelliousness here. His testimony substantiates these other accusations.”

“What action, sir?” asked Roger hoarsely, knowing immediately what it was. Now he could account for the lieutenant’s absence and disappearance.

“Obstructing a Crown official in the commission of his duties. Obstructing Mr. Hunt, to be precise.” Gage paused to turn a page of the sheaf and perused the next. “At a plantation known as Morland Hall, where Mr. Hunt suspected he would find a cache of arms and powder collected by a Mr. Jack Frake, to be likely used against His Majesty’s forces. You committed this action in the company of a Mr. Hugh Kenrick, another planter there, whom Mr. Hunt also suspects of numerous offenses against the Crown. You drew your sword, together with this other gentleman, against Mr. Hunt. An
unwise
gesture, sir.” He let the page drop and sat back. “Do you deny or confess your action, sir?”

“I admit the action, sir,” Roger answered.

Gage nodded. “Why did you so act?”

Roger cast about in his mind for an explanation that would make sense. “I decided to aid the friend of a friend, sir,” he replied. “I have no fondness for Customsmen. You perhaps know, sir, that when Customsmen rummage a vessel or private abode, they cause much damage for which they are no longer accountable and for which there is no compensation to the searched party, whether or not contraband is found. Mr. Hunt, as I recollect, was obnoxious and blustery. He threatened and insulted me.

“As for his lordship Governor Dunmore, I reported to him out of courtesy in Williamsburg, before the incident at Morland Hall, and even supped at his quarters. I disliked him on sight, and he, me. He is an ambitious man and I believe he will cause the Crown more regret than I think it would wish to tolerate. Amongst his mischief, he is alienating the affections of the
inhabitants of Virginia, and is planning to campaign against the Shawnees in the proscribed territories, perhaps in opposition to Crown policy, and certainly without the concordance of the General Assembly, which he dissolved out of spite.”

Roger paused. “I do not know either Reverend Acland or Mr. Cullis, sir. And, Mr. Kenrick is also a burgess in the General Assembly.” He paused again, weighing whether or not to mention his friend’s status. “He is the nephew of the Earl of Danvers. We grew up together in Danvers, Dorset. We are brothers-in-law.”

Then he thought of something that he believed would lessen the seriousness of the charge, something that Hugh had said to Mr. Hunt that day, and something which he thought the general would appreciate. “I am certain that the stand Mr. Kenrick and I took prevented the occurrence of a violent incident, sir, one that could have had unfortunate consequences throughout the colonies. The inhabitants of the plantation were armed, as well. They vastly outnumbered Mr. Hunt’s party, which included a squad of marines, and would have traded blows with them, with tragic and ominous results.”

Gage frowned. “Governor Dunmore mentioned the marines, but Mr. Hunt did not. Curious omission.” He paused. “A friend of a friend, you say? I see,” mused Gage. After he again cleared his throat, he continued. “I would dismiss Mr. Hunt’s and Governor Dunmore’s intelligence as shallow nastiness. I myself have never met a Customsman I liked. And I have no feeling for Governor Dunmore, except some grave reservations for his mode of governance. In some quarters he is regarded as a grasping ogre, and the stories I collected while I was in New York tend to confirm that estimation. I
am
aware of his schemes in the west and have written Lord Dartmouth about them. Perhaps the Crown will call him to account for
his
actions.”

The general seemed to realize that he was musing out loud and that he had said more than he had intended to a subordinate. He sighed, and continued. “However, I cannot ignore Lieutenant Manners’s testimony concerning your actions at this plantation. Consequently, I must grant all the intelligence before me here some credence. What have you to say to it, sir?”

Roger closed his eyes for a brief moment. “Only that I admit the action, sir, and do not regret having taken it.”

Gage hummed and scrutinized his subordinate for a moment. Roger could not penetrate the opaque expression. Then the general reached into
a desk drawer and took out an object, which he placed on top of the damning letters. “Lieutenant Manners asserts that your friend gave you
this
.”

Roger gasped. It was the tin gorget that Hugh Kenrick had given him as a parting gift. He remembered removing it when he and Manners had changed into their uniforms in the tavern room, and then forgetting it. The beast! thought Roger. The two-faced, thieving, tattling coward!

Gage hummed again. “‘A Paladin for Liberty.’ A quaintly dangerous sentiment. A present from your friend, Mr. Kenrick? Lieutenant Manners asserts in his affidavit that you wore this throughout the rest of your journey. Do you deny it?”

“No, sir,” answered Roger. He added, “I judged it a prudent ruse to stave off over-curiosity about Mr. Manners and myself. Indeed, it saved us a number of scrapes, sir, as we passed through several counties under the government of committees. Intrusive and somewhat belligerent colonials took it for the accoutrement of a colonial officer. When asked, I claimed that we were in the militia of South Carolina and were on a mission to see some rebels in Boston. That seemed to allay their hostility.”

“I see.” Gage dropped the gorget and reached for a carafe and a glass to pour himself some wine. Silently he gestured to the carafe to Roger, who shook his head. After he took a sip, the general said, “Tell me a little about yourself, sir.”

With some shyness, Roger recited details of his life. He concluded, “In my father’s last letter to me, which I collected in New York, he assured me that he would arrange for my reelection as the member for Bromhead.”

“Minden? Artillery? Politics?” Gage had studied the young man while the latter spoke. He sighed, then said, “Now, I know that you are eager to return home, to your wife, to the comforts of England, and to your seat in the Commons. God knows, you have roughed it for the last six months and are deserving of some relief. But you are in a bad patch in this affair. Governor Dunmore and Mr. Hunt, you see, had the foresight to send copies of these letters to the War Office, to Lord North, and to Lord Barrington, as well. Reverend Acland noted that he sent a copy of his letter to me to the Bishop of London.” The general shrugged in unsmiling amusement. “So, if you returned to England now, a court martial would await you there, or at least a demand for your resignation, which would amount to dismissal from the service and a disgrace. Very likely you would need to surrender your seat in the Commons, as well, or even be expelled from that body. If
you were asked to resign, I would not recommend that you demand a court martial to exonerate yourself. It would not go well for you.

“As for me, I would be expected to take some action. If I did not, I would never hear the end of it.” Gage looked stern and strangely compassionate. “I propose that you remain here on my staff for another year, until next October, as an aide or in some other useful capacity. You were an instructor at Woolwich, you say, and so you must have some pedagogical talent. I have among the ranks here some stragglers and regimental orphans who should be trained properly in discipline and fighting. You could perhaps assume command of them. I will write London about this…punishment.”

Gage noted the crestfallen expression on the officer’s face. “Come next October, you will be free to return to England, carrying a letter from me exonerating you of the charge of sedition and whatever other charges could be laid on you. I have that discretion.” Gage raised his eyebrows. “However, if that is not to your liking and you do not agree to this proposal, I will have no other choice but to call for a court martial. You are an able officer, and that would be unfortunate. It would be a shame to lose you.” The general sat back and waited for the captain to reply.

After a long moment, Roger forced himself to say, “I accept your proposal, sir.”

“Good,” replied Gage with some relief. “A
wise
decision.” He picked up the gorget, studied it once more, then held it out to the captain. “You may have this, but do not wear it in public. It was a gift, and is irrelevant to the matter at hand.” He attempted some levity. “Perhaps when you return to London and take your seat, you could wear it to the debates in the Commons, to better flaunt your…sympathies.”

Roger rose, took the gorget, and dropped it into one of his tunic pockets. Gage folded his hands over the letters. “That is all, Captain Tallmadge. I will not respond to Governor Dunmore’s and Mr. Hunt’s letters, nor will I communicate this matter to any of the other officers here. You should acquaint yourself with them, in the meantime, to better assess the troops and the situation here. I will send for you when I have made some arrangements. Good day to you, sir.”