Hoare and the matter of treason cbh-3

by Wilder Perkins

  "Collis, sir. Small, nimble, used to be a sweep, still looks like a lad. Second-story man, candidate for rating as topman, Bold tells me. Unremarkable."

  "I don't remember him, certainly," Hoare said. "If that's a measure, he certainly is unremarkable." Though he took pride in having learned his crew by name despite his brief time in actual company with them, Hoare knew himself fallible in his memory of individuals.

  "Let's have a look at him."

  Summoned, Collis showed why Hoare could not recall him. He looked indeterminate, like an aged urchin, prematurely wizened. An ex-jockey, perhaps. Hoare gave him his instructions and some pocket money, showed him Floppin' Poll as she sat unwitting, sent him off to Royal Duke's slop chest to be clad in appropriate rags, and saw him into the wherry to sit beside his prey.

  The tide was flowing. Hoare's two ferryman, whom the Royal Dukes had filled with tots saved from their own precious rum ration, clambered somewhat unsteadily into their prize. The captured pair-oar still carried both sweeps while one of their own craft's sculls had floated down toward Gravesend and the sea. They objected to carrying Floppin' Poll as the only surviving architect of their perceived misfortunes, but subsided when Hoare summoned Mr. Clay, who bellowed them into submission. Matthew, as stroke oar and commander, pocketed their fare and a little over. Hoare watched over his own taffrail as the two rowed off upstream in the pair-oar, with their passengers in the stern sheets, towing the double scull close behind them. Like an old married couple, they bickered as they pulled.

  What next? Hoare asked himself. He stood at a loss for an answer.

  Chapter VIII

  The Master's boot thudded again into the ribs of the man who lay prone before him. The victim no longer had the strength to howl; he merely grunted with the force of the blow, and rolled over. Kick, kick-this time, into the man's unprotected face. The master lifted him by the front of his coat, hurled him against the wall and punched him in the pit of the stomach before letting him drop again. The man gagged and choked.

  "Damn you, you inept nincompoop. I told you to damage him, not kill him. And you let him kill Darby. And where's Jukes? Answer me that."

  "I–I-"

  "Shut up. I ought to kill you myself. You ought to know by now: I keep my enemies, and put them to use. Now give me the shiv."

  "I left it be'ind, boss," the man mumbled, "like you tole me-"

  "I never told you any such thing. You lie in your black teeth."

  "Oh, boss-"

  "Another loss like that, you shite-poke, and I'll lose you your cods and feed them to you, raw. Now get out."

  By his own mistake, Hoare's request to the Admiralty for permission to sleep out of his ship was sent through the usual channels. As usual, the usual recipient rejected the request with sardonic words about idle officers and half pay. Hoare resubmitted the request, directing it to Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie, as he should have done in the first place. Sir Hugh granted permission forthwith, and Hoare could at last put his slender kit into his saddlebags behind him when he next traveled down across Blackheath to Dirty Mill, the house that Eleanor had found for them.

  Through Greenwich town he made his way, astride the modest young cob he had procured. Since being tossed aground over and over again during childhood, he had had no use for horses and hated riding them. He admitted that they were necessary creatures, but found them disorderly, disobedient, unpredictable, and ready to tittup and fart about wherever they pleased, leaving their excrement underfoot to be trodden in by their betters. He could never understand why country gentlemen were often more enthralled by a horse than by a pretty girl. Certainly, the latter made more enjoyable mounts.

  Once out of Greenwich, he took the road over Blackheath to Dirty Mill, up Cromms Hill, past various landmarks, many the villas of royal mistresses, others the follies of men like Vanbrugh, until he reached the crest and could let the cob have its way down into the narrow valley where Dirty Mill lay.

  Dirty Mill it might be named forevermore, but Eleanor and her people had already made the house spotless yet comfortable. His wife, he thought, must have all but emptied her childhood home-decent, unspectacular furniture dating, Hoare guessed, from Queen Anne's reign, made its appearance, while familiar hangings from Weymouth windows were recut and commenced to hang, one after another, in Dirty Mill's narrower stone-mullioned windows. Brass and silver came out to cheer up mantelpieces; a suitable cook with knowledge of local markets was hired.

  Eleanor must not be without her tuffet. The round object, resilient like her bottom, on which she so liked to nest, took its place on one side of the fireplace in the small parlor, across from an easy chair that she had bullied out from under her terror of a brother and brought with her proudly, like the cat Order bringing in an enormous mouse. Certainly, the nursery furniture that had been hers as a child found an appreciative new owner in Jenny. In no time at all, Dirty Mill had become a true home, the first home Hoare had occupied since he had left the family house in the north, never to return. His life with Antoinette in Halifax all those years ago had been that of a driven junior lieutenant and his child bride; it had been all too short.

  Like the rich in the Bible, the wain went empty away, trundling back to its owner in Great Dunmow.

  Aboard Royal Duke, affairs settled into a routine. After his ride over from Dirty Mill of a morning, Hoare and Mr. Clay generally engaged in their regular duel, rain or shine. By now, the other Royal Dukes would go about their day's business around the combatants, dodging and being dodged as their respective movements required. During more than one encounter, a crewman might edge past them with a "by your leave, sir," or even hint with an expressively cleared throat that they move their passage-at-arms away from some piece of maritime equipment that needed nursing.

  Then the day's serious business began: belowdecks, the inspection and sorting of the messages received the day before, either by the irritating sea-pigeons or by the more mundane means of the daily wherry service. To augment the yacht's own boats, Mr. Clay had contracted with Matthew and Bert to take two of those trips daily, down from Whitehall Steps with the tide and back again.

  On deck, Mr. Clay made certain that-at least to the extent possible while lying to a mooring-the yacht's people kept their seamanship honed. Watches were kept as if they were at sea, though each watch on deck was divided into two moieties of which one exercised on deck while the other turned to the paperwork that was the vessel's raison d'etre. The Royal Duke's appalling performance in Portsmouth some months gone had earned them the name of the Fleet's "dustbin." Well, then, the two officers had vowed, they would turn the jeering term on its ear and make it into a word of praise-or at least respect. The Dustbins' comportment during that little passage in the Channel had shown all hands they might even succeed.

  Sergeant Leese kept his Green Marines alert and fit by frequent patrols into Greenwich and out into the surrounding countryside. Early on, a short and nasty encounter had taken place with a squad of Red Marines outside the Yacht Inn, when one of the Lobsters overheard a Green Marine explain to an interested cit that "We marines really be much like lobsters, sir. As we sings in the service, 'a Red Marine's a dead marine; a Green Marine's a live 'un.' "

  "Jenny and I have something to show you, Bartholomew," Eleanor told him as they returned from Matins. Both she and her husband were free-thinkers, but the proprieties must be observed. With the child trotting between them, well bundled up against the raw cold, the two were striding homeward along one of the lanes on the back side of Blackheath. Last night had seen the season's first sprinkling of snow, and Jenny's cat was beside himself with excitement at this novel, evanescent white stuff. He danced about them in the fresh white powder, athwart their hawse, like one of those legendary Chinese boatmen Hoare had heard about but had never seen, who made it a point to scull across another vessel's bows as closely as possible. By doing so, they believed, they cut off the devils in their wake, leaving them behind to pester the other craft. Surely, Order'
s tidy tail would be devil-free.

  "Shall I show him now, Mum?" Jenny asked eagerly.

  "Why not, my dear?" Eleanor said. "Look. See if you can knock down the bird's nest in the fork of that willow tree."

  "Won't the mother bird be upset?"

  "No, Jenny. The baby birds are long grown and gone, and the nest will be empty now."

  The trio stopped in the lane, while Jenny scrabbled under the thin snow until she found a small round pebble. Hoare watched her in perplexity, Eleanor in pride. Then she reached into her bosom and withdrew a sling-a sling! Eleanor looked up at her husband, her eyes brimming with mischief.

  "You remember, I see, Bartholomew."

  "Indeed, my dear. How could I forget?" It was with a sling that Eleanor Graves had fought off her attackers on the afternoon of their first meeting, and with the self-same sling that she had made Edouard Moreau overturn his skiff in the surf so that Bartholomew Hoare could catch up with him and drown him.

  Jenny popped her pebble into the sling, took a stance, and began to twirl her sling about her head with deft flips of her wrist. Three flips and she let the pebble fly. The pebble hit the nest squarely-it was less than ten yards away-and knocked it out of its crotch. It fell into the thin snow, where the cat Order attacked it.

  "A dangerous pair we have on our hands," Hoare remarked. Her cheeks pink with excitement and her black eyes snapping, Jenny stooped and chose a second stone. Erect again, she sought about for another target.

  Order flushed a rabbit. It bounded away, stopped. Twirl, twirl, release, and the rabbit went head over heels. It kicked thrice, and then lay still. A trickle of red appeared from its nose. Order scampered up to the little corpse and crouched to lick the blood.

  "Oh, oh, oh… what have I done?"

  On the spot, Diana became Danae. Dropping the sling, Jenny ran to her prey and squatted over it, her hand fending off the curious cat. She looked up at Eleanor and Hoare, her eyes brimming with tears.

  "What have I done?" she sobbed again, and sniveled. She swept her sleeve across her nose. "I killed it. Oh, oh, oh…"

  Eleanor crouched down beside the child and swept her into her arms.

  " 'Tis all right, lass, all right. There, there. We understand. You are a brave girl." Her words faded off into mere comforting murmurs. Hoare stood above the little Pieta, his heart sore for the blooding of his charge. In an act of mercy, he had put her father to death as he lay hopelessly pinned by a beam in a burning warehouse. Some day, perhaps, she would have to know; meanwhile, her innocence had been assailed by her own doing. Now, he pocketed her victim surreptitiously, picked her up, and, cradling her against him, walked, his wife beside him, back in the direction of Dirty Mill. Behind, around, about, between his three charges, the cat Order wove his scampering way.

  "Don't you think, Bartholomew," Eleanor asked as they walked, "that it is time we adopted our Jenny formally?"

  "Past time," Hoare replied over the child's head. She was getting heavy, he noted with approval. "I must spend tomorrow in London. Could you find the time tomorrow to look up a solicitor and have him draw up the necessary papers?"

  "Yes. I think, though, that the Church must enter into it somehow. Have you been baptized, my dear?"

  "Baptized?" the child asked sleepily. "What's that?" Curiosity had stopped her sniveling.

  "I think we can assume she hasn't," Eleanor said. "Besides, a second baptism can do her no harm. I know that from my childhood. After all, Father is in orders. I'll see to that as well."

  "Will you be back by Sunday?"

  "I hope so, my dear."

  "Then I'll see to it, and gladly," she said. "Jenny, would you like it if Mr. Hoare and I were to become your papa and mama?"

  "But you are my papa and mama," Jenny said into Hoare's shoulder.

  "We'll tell you all about it in the morning," Hoare whispered. "Now, it's time for tea. There'll be sandy biscuits."

  So it was that, after Matins in the church that served Blackheath parish, jenny Jaggery was at once confirmed in her Christian name and became the youngest Hoare.

  Reflecting on the music he had heard, Hoare shook his head a trifle sadly.

  "You won't have known it, of course, but when I had a voice, I sang quite a fair baritone. On the Halifax station, Antoinette and I made a popular duet."

  "Oh?" Eleanor Hoare's own voice was rather cool.

  "In fact, I do believe I miss the singing more than the speaking," he added.

  "To be sure," she said. "After all, Bartholomew, you do speak, albeit a trifle softly, perhaps. Do you think you might take up whistling?"

  "Whistling?"

  "Yes. You do know how to whistle, for Simon told me that when you and we first met, you showed him off your musical prowess. 'Drink to Me Only,' was it not?"

  " 'Come into the Garden, Maud.' "

  "The difference is immaterial. Besides, I have heard you at it, signaling to people in your employ. The pink girl Susan at the Swallowed Anchor, for example. You could develop a very nice descant to my contralto."

  "What an extraordinary idea, my love. I had not thought of making harmonies with my lips before. Let me put it to a trial."

  With that, Hoare commenced to twitter. By the time the three had reached home at Dirty Mill, he was managing brief trills, and the child Jenny was looking up at him with a face that was far more full of worship than it had been at morning prayer.

  Chapter IX

  I have it!"

  "Eh?"

  "The wife, and the child. He dotes on them, I hear."

  "Come, sir. Assault on men like one's self is a matter of course. But women… ladies in particular… and their children? Surely not."

  "We shall see. Excuse me, I have urgent business to undertake."

  "Something must be done about your pigeon shit, Hancock. I shall not abide it another minute." Hoare was below, arguing with his foul-breathed captain of the cote, or whatever the proper title was for the post. He was tired of working in the fecal fetor that seeped continually across the partition between his truncated great cabin and the pigeons' domain, dead aft, in the most desirable spot aboard. He was in no mood to care whether or not the pigeons needed his precious wide stern window and gallery to arrive and depart on their missions.

  At the knock on his door, he interrupted himself to utter the chirrup that every Royal Duke now knew meant "Come in." The sentry, one of the yacht's Green Marines as usual, appeared, sworded rifle at the carry. It was the Dutchman Frits Boom, a man who looked the perfect dullard but was no such thing.

  "Dere's a man down from London, sir. Sayzz his name's Lestrade, sir, an' sayzz it's urgent."

  Before Hoare could tell Boom to admit Sir Hugh's pet ferret, the man himself was before him, having slipped under the guard's elbow. He had been bleeding profusely onto his dark overgarment, and his low forehead still oozed.

  "It's the admiral, sir. Admiral Abercrombie. 'E's dead."

  "What?"

  Stunned at the news, Hoare still noted that Lestrade had left elsewhere his habit of mishandling his aspirates in a futile attempt at gentility.

  "Dead, sir. Stabbed, over an' over again. I tried to 'elp 'im, 'deed I did, but they was too many of 'em. Wen I saw the admiral was down, I cut an' run. You was the first I thoughta, so I come down 'ere."

  "When did this happen?" Hoare asked.

  " 'Baht two this mornin, sir."

  "And here it is four bells-ten o'clock. What kept you?"

  "Tide, sir. 'Twas against me. An' besides, Hit ain't-Hisn't- that Heasy to find a wherry at two in the morning."

  Lestrade was recovering himself, as Hoare could hear, and no longer needed to make excuses. With this returned his usual veneer of genteel accent.

  "Sit down, man. Out, Hancock. Talk to me later." Sullen, the man departed.

  Before Hoare could whistle up Whitelaw and have him bring the messenger some refreshment, the silent servant appeared. On one palm he balanced a carafe of brandy on a tray with a pair of small
glasses. In the other hand he carried a basin. A moistened cloth hung over his arm. He spoke not a word, but set right to work and began to repair his master's guest.

  "Thank you, sir," Lestrade said over his glass. "Your good Health-and my apologies for breaking in on you with such dreadful tidings."

  "Tell me what happened, Lestrade," Hoare whispered.

  "Well, sir, you know, of course, that Sir Hugh lodges- lodged, I should say-with Mrs. Pettibone behind Downing Street. No more than a ten-minute walk, even for Him."

  Hoare had not known this, but remained silent.

  "For some years past, she has kept House for Him, on her ground floor, naturally. Since Sir Hugh took me into His confidence some years ago, Hi have made it a Habit to accompany Him Home in the Hevenings, if it should be dark. Has it often His, Sir Hugh being the man of duty He His. Was.

  "Hi did so last night, it being foggy as well as late. About two o'clock, Has Hi think Hi said. Just Has we were turning the corner past Downing Street, we were assaulted, Hoverwhelmed by at least three Hassassins. Poor Sir Hugh drew His sword and attempted to defend Himself, but He was knocked over, and Hi was wrestled to the pavement. My assailant simply sat on me, Holding me by the Hair and bashing my Head against the stones. Hi fear that Hi lost my senses for a moment. When Hi recovered them and sat up, the Hattackers Had disappeared, and Sir Hugh was lying on His back. His sword lay at his side. It had been broken. He was quite dead."

  Lestrade seemed to choke, then went on.

  "Has soon as Hi could, I shouted for the watch. Some marines came running. I told them what had occurred, and they put together a party large enough to carry Him off. To the Admiralty, Hi suppose, but Hi do not know, for Hi betook myself to the Thames and roused up a wherry to be brought Here."

  Lestrade took another sip of brandy. Having patched up his patient, Whitelaw took his departure, leaving the two men alone. He returned, however, bearing Hoare's hat, sword, and boat cloak, and helped his master into them. Hoare nodded at him and led Lestrade on deck.