Harry looked askance at them all. ‘You have a vivid imagination, son. That would be a bit of an unlikely coincidence, now wouldn’t it?’ Aleksey could have sworn Harry gave his son a wink at this, but it could have just been the old man’s eyes getting tired.
‘So convinced was John that he was right, he decided to attend the hanging himself—not something he normally liked to do, but nothing loosens a man’s tightly held secrets than that moment when the rope is fastened around the neck, and he wanted a confession. I think he may have regretted this decision on that day, however. The execution started out a fairly routine event—it was in the Exeter Assizes as the prison was part of the old castle. All the staff of the prison were new, however, as they’d suffered through the infamous Black Assizes of 1586 only the year before—a plague, or probably more likely typhoid fever which quickly infected all the prisoners, given their squalid conditions, and then took the judges, court officials, landed gentry attending the courts and, I suspect, all the executioners. Whatever the reason, in 1587 whoever put the noose around Farrier’s neck didn’t do a very good job—the condemned are supposed to drop and have their necks broken, but Farrier just hung there after the trap opened, slowly strangling. No one seemed prepared to do anything, despite his desperate appeals for help. But then a boy ran out of the crowd and clung to his legs—attempting to pull them and end the suffering. Hawkins later discovered that this was Farrier’s fourteen-year-old son. But the boy was too light and not strong enough to save his father the agony he was enduring. But the point of relaying this rather grisly part of the story is that in the midst of this awful moment of flailing legs, screaming child and choking man, there was a moment of quiet. Frobisher—or Farrier—stopped his desperate struggles; some kind of lucidity returned to him, and he said something to the boy. Whatever it was, it didn’t appear to Hawkins to give the lad much comfort, for he began to cry so violently that he was entirely unable to help as he’d planned, and the man died an extremely long and incredibly agonising death.’
‘Murder will out.’
Harry nodded, obviously pleased with Aleksey’s interpretation of this death. ‘Yes. I believe it will. But, more to the point, Hawkins began to believe it did. He had never forgotten the sight of all those poor men, women and children floundering desperately in the Atlantic Ocean. Never forgotten it. And the Spanish priest’s words came back to him when the last few horrific moments of that execution ended. It affected him so much that he sought out the boy after they’d cut the body down and took an interest in his welfare. Later that year, he sponsored his entry into the Navy. He was fifteen by then, so high time to get him to sea if he was to make anything of himself. And, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear, within a few years, he became extremely wealthy and did indeed achieve great things.’
‘But what did his father say to him?’ Tim pushed his glasses up eagerly, and Squeezy ruffled his hair in amusement. ‘What! You were all thinking the same thing.’
‘The bystanders certainly were, Timothy. The boy was pressed to tell them, but all he could say, still seemingly a little out of his mind, as well he might be after witnessing what he did, was that he was now cursed too.’ A chorus of scoffs and laughter and a few mutters broke out, but he ploughed on, ‘Cursedand that now he had the devil riding on his back—just as his father had. So, nonsense and superstition—or possibly not…we shall see. Young Farrier had an exceptional decade at sea, and by 1601 he was captain of his own ship and knighted—Sir Fitzwilliam Farrier. He had been hugely successful as a privateer under Elizabeth but retired early to Cornwall with his fortune upon her death in 1603. He returned to the house he had inherited on his father’s death. Sometime earlier, he had married a young lady of his acquaintance, and she had borne him three sons, all of whom eventually followed him to sea.’
‘So not much of a curse then.’ Ben sounded disappointed.
‘No, not so much mention of it when he was succeeding in life, but it surfaced again during his death—which was a particularly unfortunate one. Shall we have a spot of lunch?’
Aleksey laughed as the tension between them broke suddenly, only proving just how intent they’d been on the old man’s story once more. The four occupants of the sofa had woken at the mention of food, so, crowded as it was in the cottage, he went outside to smoke, sitting on one of the old tree stumps that now allowed such a spectacular view of the ocean. A few moments later, Harry came out leading Billy and Snodgrass and indicated he was walking them back to the lighthouse.
Ben followed them out and then came and squeezed next to him on the stump. He plucked the cigarette from him, taking a slow drag before passing it back. He didn’t do this often, but occasionally he seemed to want to share the experience, smell like him, perhaps… Aleksey always loved it when Ben did this, and so blew a stream of smoke at him just to help things along. He put his free hand down to Ben’s knee and stroked slowly around, pressing the hard bone beneath his palm.
‘What do you think about it all?’
Aleksey huffed. ‘I am regretting turning fifty, because I do not think I have enough years left before my admiral of the fleet gets to the point.’
Ben glanced around, swivelled a little on the rock just to check behind them and then shook his head. ‘Nope, not one single person believes you.’
Aleksey squeezed hard, crushing Ben’s knee in just the right place to make him kick out reflexively. Ben retaliated, and they were wrestling and fooling around, considering getting into something a great deal more fun when the moron summoned them for food. Ben shot back inside with an alacrity that Aleksey reckoned answered his question about Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen’s priorities.
He finished his cigarette slowly, with great relish, and was about to join the others when he spotted Harry returning, so walked over to intercept him. Harry looked oddly bereft without his usual canine companion, and Aleksey took the opportunity to say, ‘You must miss him.’ It seemed a good opener for the conversation that needed to be had.
Harry glanced up at the sky as if checking the weather, something, being a sailor, Aleksey suspected he did unconsciously. ‘It’s not about me, son.’ Having assured himself they weren’t in for a dreadful blow, he asked, ‘Did I ever tell you how that little chap and I met?’ Without waiting for a reply, he continued, ‘You see, he’s a lad that knows the meaning of need. I was pottering up the Yealm one day and spotted this man standing on the bank. Just as I pulled around the bend, he threw something in the water. I thought I’d give him a piece of my mind—churlish thing to do, littering. But as I got closer, I saw what he’d done—he’d tied the little mite’s paws together. Didn’t even stand a chance. Well, by the time we’d got ourselves sorted out over that little business, the man was gone, and good riddance to him, I say.’ He smiled. ‘I was going to call him Sneeze because that’s what he’d looked like—a bit of discarded tissue.’
‘Or snot?’
Harry clapped him on the back. ‘Snotty. I like it, son, I like it. He was only a few weeks old, so I had a time with him for a while, but when that was done and he became the bold-hearted little chap you see now, I reckoned I’d got it all wrong. I’d been thinking he needed me, but one day I was feeling particularly chipper—pottering in my garden at the abbey—and I realised it was entirely the other way around. So, as I say, Snodders is a chap who understands need. He’s where he’s needed now, but he fears that it won’t be for much longer.’
Aleksey toed the ground. ‘I do not know what to do for the best to help him.’
Suddenly, Harry laughed, a deep belly guffaw which took Aleksey completely by surprise given the sad subject of their conversation. Harry clapped him on the back once more and exclaimed delightedly, ‘You’ve already done it. My God, Aleksey, you’ve already done it, and there is nothing more now to be done.’ More astonished to hear his name used by anyone in the family—a first as far as he could recall—than by Harry’s assessment of the Billy situation, he could think of no reply, so followed thoughtfully in the older man’s wake as Harry ploughed on towards Kittiwake, clapping his hands when he got there to summon his recruits from wherever the young scallywags had scampered.
* * *
Chapter EIGHT
Chewing, Ben waved his sandwich at Harry. ‘Grisly death?’ Aleksey smiled at Ben’s enthusiasm and suspected he was hoping for zombies—cannibals at the very least.
Harry, working his way through a similarly thick offering of bread and cheese, replied cheerfully, ‘Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.’ He waited until they were all settled before adding, ‘We’ve reached 1605 now, young Benjamin, so I think you can work it out for yourself.’
Aleksey’s snort was so loud and so pointed that he feared for one moment Ben might puthimin a headlock for cheek, so he quickly bailed Ben out by admitting seriously and truthfully, ‘My history education…Russia…’ and left this vague enough to be entirely meaningless and yet apparently understood by everyone.
‘Ah. Quite so.’ Harry straightened a little. ‘You see, Fitzwilliam Farrier’s wife, Mary, was Catholic. And her brother was Robert Catesby.’ He sat back having delivered this little bombshell, shaking his head ruefully at the sad connection he had just revealed. Then he appeared to hear the silence his information had elicited and added with some noticeable impatience, ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November? Gunpowder, treason and plot? Michael, donottell me the Navy wasted all that money on your education.’
Much to Aleksey’s delight, the moron appeared to shrivel a little and for a moment, more resemble a schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework than the adult idiot he was. He felt it best to keep his gaze firmly on the fuckwit anyway, as he didn’t want to catch Ben’s eye. Lots of grisly deaths were associated with bonfire night. And other things.
‘Robert Catesby was the leader of the plot against James VI. His whole family was arrested and questioned, and through this sister, Mary, Sir Fitzwilliam Farrier ended up in the Tower of London. Now, according to Sir William Wade, who was the Lieutenant of the Tower at the time, an irreproachable witness, Farrier was entirely mad throughout his captivity. He began babbling about—’
‘—being cursed and the devil?’
Harry chuckled at Ben’s excitement. ‘Being cursed and the devil. However, before we get too carried away believing him, it’s wise to remember what they were doing to him at the time. Both he and poor Guy Fawkes had a rather unpleasant time of it—and that was before they even got to the execution part.’ He suddenly gave a quick glance around and added a little lamely, ‘But we’ll skip that part and get to the actual—’
