He gave up, prepared to sacrifice his dignity, and hailed one of the many dirt-encrusted, starveling barefoot boy children who infested the streets hereabouts.
"Here, boy-do you know where the Admiralty is, in Whitehall?" he whispered.
"Admiralty, mister? Calls yerself a sailor-man, and can't find yer own way orne?" The child, wizened and wise, did nothing to hide a contemptuous sneer. " 'Course I does," he said.
"Sixpence to take me there," Hoare said.
The ragamuffin tossed his head.
"Shillin'," he said.
"Sixpence now, sixpence when we get there."
"Let's see yer blunt, mister sailor-man," said the boy, and would not budge until he had bitten the coin and tucked it into his cheek for safekeeping.
"Come orn," he said, and set off.
It took Hoare's child pilot a mere fifteen minutes to lead his bewildered customer into Whitehall. Hoare knew where he was now; he could even recognize the high door of the Admiralty, from which he had been turned away two evenings before.
"I can find my own way from here," he told the boy, and handed him the other half of his fare. The other grabbed it, bit it, and disappeared.
"Mr. Hoare, Mr. Hoare! Wait for me, sir! Please!" Hoare felt himself blanch with astonishment at that clear, exclamatory, unforgettable treble, but turned all the same, however reluctantly. The owner of the voice, the visible, audible spirit of Harry Prickett, was pelting toward him. Little Prickett, he knew, late midshipman in the late frigate Vantage, had gone up with her while leaving Spithead one beautiful morning the previous summer, in smoke and flame.
"Aren't you glad to see me, sir?" the lad asked, looking up into Hoare's face with some anxiety.
"Why, yes. Yes, lad, I am." Hoare squatted to view Mr. Prickett at eye level, and grasped him by the shoulders. "But I thought I never would, short of Davy Jones's locker. How… weren't you in Vantage, then?" The question was silly, of course; of three hundred twenty-seven Vantages, only twenty-four had been hauled from the water when the frigate had blown up in Hoare's own presence. He had pulled in most of them himself, since he had been less than a cable's-length distant from her in his own beloved little sloop when the catastrophe occurred. Most of the survivors had been badly burned or mangled, and none had ranked higher than quarter-gunner. Like the very Christ, this so-helpful very young gentleman must have risen by divine miracle from his death in the explosion.
"Oh, no, sir! I caught the mumps, sir, from another boy who was staying at the inn, and they put me ashore before she went to sea, and sent me home! You've had the mumps, sir, haven't you?"
Hoare, who could barely remember himself and his brother being put out into the barn and nursed from that distance for a week while they bulged, sweated, and felt generally sorry for themselves, said "yes."
"Then you won't have to worry, sir! Will you?"
"No, boy. But… what are you doing here in London?"
"I've been taken into a ship, sir! Papa brought me up himself, all the way from Canterbury! Wasn't it sad about Vantage! She was a smacker, wasn't she? Poor Mrs. Watt! She's left with six daughters, all alone!" He meant Mr. Prickett's friend, Vantage's clerk, who had been so helpful to Hoare, and whom he had delivered back aboard his ship just in time to share in the disaster. Watt's widow would be on the town now, of course.
"But let me introduce you to Papa! Papa! Look at what I've found! Here's Mr. Hoare! Oh, sorry, sir! Commander Hoare, I mean! Captain Hoare, I mean!"
The man who came up to them, as brisk as his son but far more stately, could only be a prosperous canon lawyer in a cathedral town. There was something episcopal about him; in fact, Hoare almost expected to see a bishop's apron shrouding the region between navel and knees. His forbidding black attire clashed with a bright, clever, humorous face.
The little mid was not shy with his papa, for he took his hand and drew him toward Hoare.
"Papa, it's Mr. Hoare! Remember? He's the officer who can't talk and he had me holloa for him!"
The two men exchanged greetings as equals.
"I am delighted, as well as astonished, to see your son alive, sir," Hoare said in all sincerity. He meant it, for the boy had radiated the cheerful confidence of a well-loved puppy. He still did. He had brains, too, and would go far in the navy.
"Not half as delighted as we were, sir," the father said. "I know, we have four more like him at home, but all of them are precious to me, and to Mrs. Prickett as well. You have children, Mr.-or should I say 'Commander' Hoare?"
"Captain Hoare, Papa!"
"Thank you, my boy," said the father easily. Hoare was pleased to see that, pompous though Mr. Prickett senior might appear, he was not too high in the instep to accept his child's correction willingly. Hoare explained that no, he was only recently married, but was hopeful. He forbore to mention his daughter by Antoinette, the daughter he had sought but never found, born in '84 and carried away by his late wife's people to dwell in the wilds of Quebec-if, indeed, she was still above-ground.
"Perhaps you'd like to serve with me in Royal Duke," Hoare whispered to Mr. Prickett. "She's small, and she doesn't go to sea often, but I can offer you a good education. We could use a handy young gentleman."
He could have bit his tongue. However appealing a safe berth of this kind might be to a master of clerical law like Prickett senior, the offer of a good education was no way to appeal to a seven-year-old boy.
For perhaps three seconds Mr. Prickett held his tongue. Then he looked up at Hoare with eyes filled with appeal.
"Oh, sir!" he said. "Must I? I mean, sir… here I am, midshipman six whole months now, but I've never been to sea! I want to go to sea so much, sir! Won't you let me go to sea? Captain Prothero's just offered me a berth in Impetuous! Papa is just now taking me to Deptford, where she lies! Can't I go with him instead? Please, sir?"
The lad had served Hoare well in the Vantage affair. He had become fond of the lad, his ebullience, his open face, his constant motion. It would have been a delight to help him mature into a seasoned sea officer. But, even in command of Royal Duke, he himself was as good as shorebound, as he had just let slip to Mr. Prickett, so how could he train the young gentleman to become a normal serving officer? Why, he would have to take his ship's latitude from the same spot every noon. And, as for longitude-that matter would be nugatory, since Royal Duke lay at Greenwich, the zero meridian. Hoare understood now how a father must feel when his favorite son leaves home to go to sea. It might be as close as he would ever get to knowing.
"Very good, Mr. Prickett. If Prothero's fool enough to want you aboard, he has a right to you."
The younger Mr. Prickett stifled a giggle.
Hoare had made his bow to the father and was about to part company, when the other forestalled him.
"Before we part, sir," he said, "may I beg you to take a dish of tea? To at least that extent, I am indebted to you. The Leaf lies just around the corner. It offers a fine Bohea."
Although he did not know Bohea from Yunnan, Hoare could hardly object. "With pleasure. But I am unaware of any debt you owe me, sir; if anything, the shoe is on the other foot. Your son was an invaluable aide. Had I had a dispatch to write on the subject of the Vantage affair, I should have mentioned him in them."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure," Mr. Prickett said. He took Hoare by the arm and, undisturbed by his son's perpetual motion about them both, escorted him to the Leaf.
When they had been seated and young Prickett's mouth stoppered with a large round sweetish bun, Hoare took the chance to ask for clarification.
"You informed me just now, sir, that me you are in my debt. As I said then, I know of no such thing. Elaborate, I pray." The attorney's stately quality appeared to prompt an equally stately mode of speech on Hoare's part.
"Had it not been for young Harry's attendance on you last summer," Mr. Prickett answered, "he would not have strayed into the inn yard and contracted the stable-boy's mumps. But for the mumps, he would have remained aboard
Vantage when she sailed to join Lord Nelson, and would have been lost with her."
" 'The house that Jack built,' it seems to me, sir, if you will forgive me. My role in Harry's mumps was only casual. Rather than making a thank offering to me, would it not be appropriate to slaughter an ox before the altar of the Fates?"
As he spoke, Hoare realized he had just abandoned his synthetic stateliness of speech. Had he erred? No; the other nodded.
"You are perfectly correct, sir. Truth to tell, the reason I gave you was no more than a thin crust on top of a much juicier pie. I ask your forgiveness for the deception."
Mr. Prickett paused to await Hoare's reaction. Hoare took advantage of his own muteness, sat back and waited for the next disclosure.
"As it happens, Captain Hoare, I am an advocate in Admiralty law as well as a canon lawyer. Expertise in canon law alone, I found long ago, is no longer in demand sufficient to support a large and hopeful family. So now, while we reside not far from Canterbury and my related duties call for my regular presence in Lambeth, I actually spend at least as much time in Whitehall.
"It is in the latter connection that I took advantage of the fortuitous meeting young Harry unwittingly arranged. In fact, I had already been requested to-ah-curry-acquaintance with you. I prefer to be forthright, however, whenever circumstances permit. I believe that to be the case now.
"To make a long story short, Captain Hoare, you are being considered for a post which might be more permanent and more to your advantage than the one you presently occupy, and I, with others, have been charged with examining you… informally, that is. May I proceed?"
"Of course, sir," Hoare whispered. "But if the interview is to be a long one, will your son be willing to sit still?"
"Long since, Mrs. Prickett and I taught all our young to be silent and invisible at table. Otherwise, neither she nor I would have retained our sanity. We are at table now, Harry, you understand?"
Mr. Prickett the younger nodded. His gob-stopper was long since gone, but the gob in question remained stopped, as if the child were the mute, and not the man.
Thereupon, the father subjected Hoare to a barrage of questions about himself, his brother in Melton Mowbray, his Hoares, and his father's politics (here, Hoare could say nothing, for Captain Joel was mumchance about his doings as a member of Parliament). This was Hoare's second such inquisition today, and it was becoming irritating. He determined to bear up.
As the advocate proceeded, he unabashedly disclosed considerable previous knowledge of Hoare's own affairs; thus, he knew of the source from which Hoare had derived his own capital: the prize money from his capture of a specie-laden American privateer in September '81, while he was the sole remaining officer in the brig Beetle. After the navy had bought in the prize and the Halifax prize agent had done his duty for a change, Hoare had become the richer by,?6,127 plus five shillings and eight pence. Shocked into good sense, the young man had promptly invested the amount in the Funds and left it at Barclays Bank to grow in peace. It had only been in '03 that he had dipped into capital in order to buy the neat little pinnace that now dawdled astern of Royal Duke.
All these things Mr. Prickett had known beforehand; about none of them had he a comment, save one, which bore upon Hoare's financial windfall.
"You, sir, profited by a legal technicality on that occasion, as I surely need not tell you. I venture to urge that the experience not lead you to seek out other technicalities by whose advantage you might hope to rise further. For you, that would be gambling. Leave that sort of thing to us lawyers."
With that cryptic caution, Mr. Prickett rose, gave his son permission to unstop his gob, brushed down his nonexistent apron, paid the reckoning, and ushered Hoare from the Leaf.
"A most enjoyable occasion," he said. "I look forward to continuing our acquaintance."
"Harry said you were taking him to join Prothero in Impetuous," Hoare responded. "If I'm not mistaken, she lies in Deptford just now. That's near Greenwich. You and he would be most welcome aboard Royal Duke at any time."
"Very kind, sir. It will be our pleasure. Come, Harry; we must be off."
"Sir Hugh will see you directly, Captain Hoare," the clerk Cratchit said. He looked amazed; evidently, his exalted master did not commonly stoop to receive mute commanders who merely "happened to be in the neighborhood and thought they would drop in for a chat."
Some half an hour later, when the admiral's scurry of messengers had ceased, his bass call summoned Hoare within. The room had not changed. Sir Hugh was still sitting, smoking, reading swiftly and dropping each page to the carpet as he finished it. A disorderly white drift of discards lay at his feet. Once, he coughed heavily. He did not look well. He stopped reading long enough to say, "Sit, sir. Well?"
In silent answer, Hoare handed him Titus Thoday's discovery. Sir Hugh leafed through the pages, just enough, Hoare suspected, to make sure they were all present or accounted for, tapped them together, and bellowed, "Cratchit!"
The mouse appeared, like a jack-in-the-box.
"Take this to Lord Manymead, to be forwarded to Lord Hovick at the Foreign Office. My compliments, and this office has no further need of these documents."
The mouse took the papers and scuttled off.
"Jumped up counter-clerk," the admiral said.
"Cratchit, sir?"
"No, you ass, Manymead. Went to India as a junior clerk under Clive, shook the pagoda tree, came home with his stolen millions. Now, just because he's seen fit to buy his way into government, he thinks he owns the whole of Whitehall and all that pertains thereunto. Including you, sir, and me."
Hoare believed he remembered Lord Manymead as being the father of one of the four midshipmen he had gathered up a year or so ago and returned to their ship, the light frigate Hebe. They had been kidnapped by a ramshackle gaggle of would-be Irish rebels. If it was the same portly peer-and there would hardly be two of them-he agreed with his admiral's opinion.
"Find Ambler?" the admiral asked.
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"I think he's dead, sir. Thoday is visiting the city's dead-houses, and… I believe, some of the underworld haunts he seems to know so well."
"Hmph. What did Goldthwait have to say?"
"Nothing, sir."
"Nothing, Captain Hoare? Goldthwait never says 'nothing.'"
"I have yet to meet with Mr. Goldthwait, sir. When I called on him an hour or so ago, he was not in… nor were any of his servants."
"Nonsense, Hoare. Goldthwait never goes out-when he's in Town, that is-except to come here. And he's not here. What have you to say about that, sir?"
Did the admiral look worried? Did he fear that John Goldthwait, Esquire, had followed Octavius Ambler into the… Ewigkeit? Besides "gnadiges Fraulein," Ewigkeit was one of the few German words Hoare knew. He was not quite sure where he had learned it or what it meant, but for him it carried connotations of a wan, empty nothingness in which lost souls wandered. A special word for which he had never found an English equivalent, it seemed appropriate to this occasion.
To Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie, however, there was nothing Hoare could say, so he doused sail, hove to, and sat mute while the admiral hissed at him in a soft, spiteful roar. Sir Hugh must have had an unpleasant morning, and Hoare was there to receive the backlash. For Sir Hugh, Hoare knew, it would be like kicking the cat or breaking up poor Ambler's dinnerware; futile, yet strangely satisfying.
His ire assuaged at last, Sir Hugh bade Hoare go and try again for Goldthwait.
"And if you are unsuccessful in this simple task, I have been overestimating your modest competence. In that case, you are to return to your command and await further orders."
"Aye, aye, sir," Hoare replied.
This time, Mr. Goldthwait's manservant was within, informed Hoare that his master was at home to him, and admitted him to the apartments. The place was larger than it appeared from the outside. On seeing his host, Hoare recalled him instantly, for his intimate
knowledge of Hoare himself, displayed at their only previous meeting, in Portsmouth's Navy Tavern, had engraved itself in his memory. Mr Goldthwait was a small, rust-colored, lean, undistinguished-looking man; his world-weary face reminded Hoare strongly of an engraved portrait he had once seen of one Francois Marie Arouet, Frederick the Great's pet philosophe, alias Voltaire. Come to think of it, there was something Frederician about him as well.
The gentleman must have a substantial income, above and beyond the emoluments due an Admiralty official of medium rank such as Mr. Goldthwait. The easy chairs on either side of the glowing grate were covered in the finest Russia leather, as were many of the books lined tidily upon the high shelves. Where there were no books, the walls displayed an occasional piece of art, of a mildly pornographic nature. Other than these, there was no sign that humankind comprised more than one sex. Altogether, the place glowed with walnut, mahogany, polished brass, and unobtrusive prosperity.
Over the mantelpiece was a long vacant space that must have borne an object of importance to Hoare's host-a painting, presumably, a panoramic landscape of some sort.
Mr. Goldthwait's sharp eye must have detected Hoare's casual interest.
"A cluster of muses hangs there," he explained. "I have had the thing carried off for a cleaning and for the opinion of an impartial connoisseur as to the artist. It leaves an ugly gap, I must confess."
Mr. Goldthwait now made himself most agreeable. Having shown Hoare to the chair on the other side of the grate from the one he obviously used himself, he offered port and biscuits with his own hand.
"Your very good health, Captain," he said with an affable smile, raising his own glass, "and my felicitations on your promotion and your marriage. "
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