So the anker with the clockwork samples Dr. Graves had unknowingly made for the Continental watchmakers was on its way back inland when one of the smugglers had the notion of checking its contents. When they found that it held, not the brandy that their customers were expecting, but a confused mass of springs and gears, they must have discarded it.
“And Dr. and Mrs. Graves?” Hoare whispered.
“I needed more power over the cripple, if I were to control him as I must. I had yet to find an alternative source for my clockworks, so I still needed him alive to supply me. I sent Dugas—my good Dugas—with a local rough to take the woman while she was wandering foolish and alone along the beach at Portland Bill. I would not have harmed her, of course. I thought her an estimable lady, if fat. I would simply have sequestered her at my quarry or here aboard Marie Claire, and held her hostage against the doctor’s continued service to me.
“I misjudged her. She was not gentle, but vicious. With her damned stones she wrecked poor Dugas’ face and, with your meddling to help her, caused him to fall into the hands of the English. Even Frobisher … but there. Dugas knew too much to be left in enemy hands. He had to be silenced. I owe penance for that, and for the death of the honest doctor. He, too, was well-meaning—”
“Mais qu’est-ce que vous dîtes, monsieur?” came Fortier’s appalled voice in Hoare’s ear. Moreau fell silent for a moment.
“There,” he then said. “I’ve told you all this so you can meditate about it while you drown. Overboard with him. Now.”
Each of the men holding Hoare was well-muscled, and their grip was unbreakable for a man of Hoare’s age and condition. He found himself swinging by his arms and legs between two pairs of powerful arms. Helped along by a light, disdainful push from Moreau, they tossed Hoare over Marie Claire’s low rail. He barely had time to draw breath before he struck the water.
Chapter XIV
IRISH PENNANTS—the occasional tag ends of line left by careless crewmen to drag along over a vessel’s side—had always spelled slipshod seamanship to Hoare, and, like his fellow officers, he had suppressed them wherever found, as if they were so many signs of sodomy. Now, however, he thanked fortune that Moreau, at least, cared nothing for them. From a cleat below Marie Claire’s toy stern gallery a good three fathoms of half-inch line trailed sinuous in her wake. One of Hoare’s flailing hands found its bitter end. It might have been the painter of a poorly minded skiff, for it was frayed and not whipped. Whatever else it may have been, it was a blessing.
Hoare kicked off his shoes. As silently as he could, he hauled himself up the line in the dark, hand over hand. As silently as he could, he hoisted himself far enough out of the water to shift his grip to the rail of the stern gallery. The carven structure was a mere flourish which Moreau must have installed to make his little schooner seem bigger. It was rugged enough to carry part of Hoare’s weight, but when he tried to hoist himself as silently as he could out of the water, it creaked softly, alarmingly, out of the vessel’s own rhythm.
His gently searching feet struck against something vertical beside them. It was Marie Claire’s rudder, its gudgeons groaning gently in the pintles as the helmsman adjusted her course. There Hoare squatted, secure, but seized by occasional chills, and waited in the night to discover what fate might bring his way.
Above him, he could hear French being spoken. The voices came and went.
“I must … London as soon … close down … You must go … Jaggery in Ports … Dispose…” This voice was Moreau’s.
“… in London, sir?… Louis-…?”
This was one of Moreau’s men. To Hoare’s straining ears it had sounded as though the Frenchman was naming someone, presumably Moreau’s man—or master?—in London. “Louis.” How agonizing not to have caught the rest of the name.
“Never mind who. Tend to your own business. Get forward, you lubber, and trim the fore-staysail.…” Moreau’s words came loud and clear. Yes, the other had, indeed, been naming someone. Damn.
Silence fell on deck. Hoare resigned himself to clinging where he was while his destiny worked itself out. Marie Claire ghosted on toward Weymouth. He clung, schemed, dozed.
* * *
“HERE.” AFTER THE long silence, Moreau’s sharp command struck hard on Hoare’s ears. “No, we won’t anchor. I must get ashore, and since you, you cretin, let our skiff go adrift, you must put me onto the quay. There, beside that interfering revenue cutter. Then take her out again. I’ll send two or three men out in a skiff.
“Stand off and on offshore of the Bill until I signal you. It may be three or four days. If you don’t see my signal by Wednesday, make for Douarnenez and report to Rossignol.
“Now, repeat my orders.”
Mumble.
“Very good. Now come up, Bessac! D’you want to put our bowsprit through the cutter?”
The rudder swung over to port. Hoare took advantage of the Marie Claire’s concentration on setting Moreau ashore to part company. He slid silently back into the water and swam to the strand as quietly as he could, to cast himself on the mercy of Eleanor Graves. The east was red.
* * *
“WELL, MR. HOARE, what next?”
Eleanor Graves had heard enough of Hoare’s whispered story. The manservant Tom had at last assured himself that the coatless, unshod, bedraggled figure that had roused him out of his bed and to her doorstep was, indeed, Mr. Hoare. Tom had awakened his mistress and sent the maid Agnes off to help Cook prepare an early breakfast. Now he sat, a mute Jack Horner, in a corner of the drawing room lit by the early morning sun, on guard.
Eleanor Graves was seated on her tuffet. From beneath a sensible, sexless flannel nightgown ten small straight sallow toes peeped out. They made Hoare think of so many inquisitive hatchlings. He felt impelled to comfort them but answered the lady instead.
“It would be futile,” he said, “to try persuading Sir Thomas to lend me men to hunt Moreau down.”
Eleanor Graves snorted. “Rather, he would hunt you down, pop you into one of his dungeons, and torture you to death. Mr. Morrow—Moreau, I suppose I should call him now—will have spun him an enticing yarn about you by now. And Sir Thomas is sure to have been inveigled. He has taken you into a strong aversion, you know. Any posse comitatus he calls up will be on your trail, not Moreau’s. And so?”
Hoare had no handy plan to offer up in reply. He excused himself to himself by reflecting that he had, after all, been awake all night, either towing behind Marie Claire like so much shark bait or hanging from her counter like a six-foot simian. And he was, after all, forty-three years old.
“Think a bit, Mr. Hoare, while I remove my improper person from your sight and make myself as ladylike as I can. Agnes will bring you a breakfast in a moment.”
Eleanor Graves rose from her tuffet and went upstairs. She took her toes with her. Hoare was left alone with Tom.
“You could ’scape by hidin’ in the mistress’s shay,” Tom said.
Hoare started out of a doze. “I don’t drive. Can you?”
“Not me, Yer Honor. I were no plowboy afore I went into service wi’ Doctor, and no ostler. I were a sweep’s boy. Doctor saved me balls, ’e did.”
Hoare understood. He had learned during one of his snooping ventures that the tarry dust from the flues, up which their masters sent them, coated the orphan lads’ immature scrota, generally remaining there, eating away, for months or more between baths. The children generally succumbed to cancerous ulcers before puberty, dying as little eunuchs.
The silence that ensued was broken when the maid Agnes entered with steaming porridge and a plate of crisp bacon for Hoare’s breakfast. She set the tray down on her mistress’s tuffet.
“There be a man at kitchen doooor,” she announced. “Sailor man like. ’E be askin’ for Mr. ’Oare.” Maidenly, she blushed as she spoke the dirty word. “’Is name be Stone, ’e sez.”
Stone?
“Will you go and inspect him, Tom?” Hoare whispered. “Ask him w
hat Bold looks like. Then come back and tell me what he says.”
Tom nodded, preceded Agnes from the room. Too late, Hoare saw what he had just done. Whoever the man at the door was, he would know now that Hoare was within. Damn his sleepy mind.
“’E says Bold be black.” In the doorway, Tom looked puzzled.
“Bring him in then, if you please, Tom. He’s on my side, and the mistress’s.”
Stone’s face lit up when he saw his officer. He knuckled his forehead. The officer in question was quite sure that his own face lit up as well.
“What fair wind blows you here, Stone?” he asked.
“Me an’ Bold, zur, when we sees you left aboard thicky schooner, we sez to each other, we sez, ‘Mr. ’Oare’ll be off to Weymouth with ’er, and ’e’ll be in shoal waters an’ on a lee shore.’ So we stops up the sweep-ports what you an’ I jes’ finished a-carvin’ in yer yachtet, an’ gets ’er under way again. We didn’t want to go a-drivin’ into Weymouth ’arbor like we owned the place, not wi’ thicky schooner already in port, so we sets a course for Ringstead Bay instead.
“Me bein’ a native of these ’ere parts,” he added.
“Why, you’d be Jonathan Stone’s boy Jacob!” Agnes exclaimed. “I be Agnes Dillow. Remember me? Yer ma and mine was gossip!”
“Why, so ye be, miss.” Stone knuckled his forehead again. Agnes simpered.
“What then?” Hoare asked. This was no time for courtship on the part of either Hoare’s man or Hoare himself.
“Well, zur, we ’auls ’er up on Ringstead shingle, safe as can be, an’ then we argies summat about ’oo were to come into Weymouth. I sez I should be the one as coom in, but ’e wants to coom tu, ’e does. But when I tells ’im a black man ’ud stand out in Weymouth town like a negg in a coal’ole, ’e agrees to stand watch by yer yatchet for a day. Then, if nor you nor me shows oop, ’e’ll ’aul ’er off, make for Portsmouth, an’ make a report to the Admiral. So ’ere I be, zur. I ’opes we done right.”
“You have indeed, Stone. God bless you. Tell me, can you drive a carriage by any chance?”
“None better, zur. An’ thread a four-in-hand through a needle, fine as any Corinthian up in London.”
By the time Eleanor Graves returned below, the three men—Hoare, Stone, and Tom—had devised a plan for the first two to elude Sir Thomas’s men, whom Stone had reported were already buzzing about Weymouth like so many bees. No one, it seemed, had been ready to believe that Hoare had obligingly drowned. Hoare wondered why until he thought to inspect his raw, bleeding hands. As soon as the crew saw the scarlet evidence of his secret ride in tow of Marie Claire, they would have gotten word ashore to their master, and Moreau would have run to his crony Sir Thomas.
Mrs. Graves completed the charade for them.
“Stone shall be a messenger from my friend Mrs. Haddaway in Dorchester, with an urgent request for me to come to her aid. He shall drive us in the chaise, and a spare horse can follow us on a lead. It will be the animal on which Stone came to Weymouth. You, Mr. Hoare, shall hide beneath me. There is ample space for you under the seat. Outside town, we will divert to Ringstead, leave Mr. Hoare and Stone, and find a local lad to take us on to Dorchester.”
“Then ye’d best name yer friend to me again, ma’am,” Stone said. “An’ gi’ me ’er likeness, tu. If I’m to be ridin’ postilion, some’un might be askin’ me questions.”
Mrs. Graves nodded. “Of course. Haddaway. Mrs. Timothy Haddaway. Emily Haddaway. She’s a real person, Stone, my age, twice my size all ’round … two children, little Timothy, the babe, and Arethusa.”
Outside the town, the unwelcome batrachian voice of the knight-baronet brought the chaise to a halt. Hoare—reasonably comfortable, though coiled like an adder beneath the woman he had come to love—held his breath.
“Why, Sir Thomas!” Mrs. Graves cried. “What are you and your men about, pray? It looks like a posse comitatus, sir, indeed it does.”
“About that, Eleanor, my dear. Mr. Morrow brings news that your acquaintance Hoare is a wanted man, a fugitive from the King’s justice for the forcible drowning of one of Mr. Morrow’s Channel Islanders, seen hereabouts just last night. We’re out to take him up. Have you seen him, Eleanor?” Sir Thomas’s voice was stern.
“Not for this age, Sir Thomas. Not since we encountered each other after poor Simon—”
“Best take my advice, Eleanor. Should you catch sight of him on your way to—”
“Dorchester, Sir Thomas. Emily Haddaway—you know Emily, of course—sent word that her poor little babe Timothy has the croup, and she wants my advice. I’m sure I don’t know why,” Eleanor Graves gushed.
“You are a wise, wise woman, Eleanor,” Sir Thomas said. “After a proper interval of time, I hope I may wish—”
The listening Hoare never had a chance to learn what Sir Thomas wished for Mrs. Graves, for Stone broke in: “Pardon me, ma’am, but we must get under way if we are to make Dorchester by dark.”
“‘Under way,’ my man? Why, you sound like a seaman and no postboy.”
“Seaman I was, zur, before I swallowed the anchor and took service wi’ Mr. Haddaway. But, excuse me, zur.…”
Hoare was jarred as the chaise started forward on its delayed way to the pinnace. He gloated quietly at the picture of the chaise, with Stone at its helm, leaving Sir Thomas Frobisher at the post.
* * *
AT PORTSMOUTH, THE sighting of Inconceivable, creeping cautiously across Spit Sand with her sliding keel fully retracted, was instantly reported to Sir George Hardcastle. The Admiral showed himself as merciless as ever. Hoare was to betake himself forthwith to the Admiralty offices, where he was to report his progress—if any—to Sir George. Wrinkled and unkempt though they were, the second-best uniform and hat he carried on Inconceivable would have to do, if he was to persuade the Admiral that he was not habitually slow to obey orders. In that, he failed.
“Late again, Hoare. And filthy, too,” Sir George said. “I am quite out of patience with you, I declare.”
Hoare quickly summarized for his Admiral his glacial chase of Marie Claire, his brief capture by her owner, his escape from Weymouth. Moment by moment, the Admiral’s face grew grimmer.
“No more now, sir,” he growled at last. You shall bring that man back here, to justice, dead or alive. Lose not a minute.”
“May I enlist reinforcements to bring him in, sir?”
“I have sent my secretary Talthybius to you a number of times, young Hercules,” Sir George said, “with one task or another. You are given those tasks because I am confident you will carry them out to my satisfaction. I do not expect you to turn to me with whimpers about how you are to execute each task. I have neither the time nor the inclination to hover over you like a mother hen. I have other tasks of my own to perform, which is why I give yours to you in the first place. Take yourself off, sir and do your duty.”
The Admiral’s verbal lash notwithstanding, Hoare had another lash to inflict on himself before he was ready to obey his instructions—to take Jaggery. With Jaggery in hand, he was sure, he could complete the investigation with which Sir George Hardcastle had charged him.
Jaggery was not at the Bunch of Grapes. Mr. Greenleaf believed he might be at work in Arrowsmith’s warehouse. He gave Hoare directions. To reach the warehouse, Hoare had to pass his own quarters on the way.
The warehouse was nothing more than a series of interconnected sheds that reached from Eastney High Street to the shore. Hoare found no one in the first two sheds and squeezed through a narrow passage into the third. He pulled out his boatswain’s call and piped “All Hands!” in the hope that Jaggery, if he was there, would respond by instinct.
The man himself appeared in a crooked doorway at the far end of the enclosure. He looked bewildered.
Anything he might have been saying to Hoare was drowned by a thunderclap behind him, a blast that threw Jaggery forward and Hoare backward. A cloud of fire followed the burst. Behind Jaggery, the shed roof
collapsed, and the flames began to get a grip on it. Jaggery lay still, face up on the floor, half-buried in debris.
The choking battle reek of burnt powder filled the place. Hoare coughed, wheezed, and wept as he struggled over the fallen beams in the smoke toward the other man.
Jaggery lay supine, facing what had been the ceiling. From his waist down he was hidden under a massive joist that lay almost level with the bricks of the room’s floor. He was breathing hard. From the ruins of the shed Hoare could hear the soft roar of flames as the fire tightened its grip.
“Help me up, Yer Honor. Somethin’s holdin’ me poor weak legs down an’ I can’t move ’em. Get it orf me, can’t yer?”
Hoare freed a lighter beam and began to search for a spot that offered him leverage room. He found one, set the beam’s end under the joist, and heaved down on the beam with all his weight. For all his frantic prying, the joist would not budge. Outside, he heard the jangling of a fire bell. The engine’s feeble streams and bucket brigade would do as much good here as two old men in a pissing contest.
Another, smaller explosion sounded in the ruins. A flickering of fire reflected itself in Jaggery’s wide eyes, and those eyes filled with fear.
“Smartly, man, can’t yer? ’Eave!” he gasped. “’Eave!”
He choked and grabbed Hoare’s shoulder with his free hand. It was the mangled one, but it could still cling to Hoare like a cargo hook.
Five minutes later, the heat of the fire was scorching Hoare’s hair. Jaggery blew a pink bubble. It burst in Hoare’s face as he stooped, chest heaving.
Jaggery was breathing hard. “I’m a dead man,” he said. Hoare could not bring himself to deny it. He rested his hand on the other’s shoulder.
“Yer a decent cove, Yer Honor,” Jaggery said at last. “I’ve no … no mind to be roasted alive. Will yer put me down?”
“If you tell me who ‘Himself’ is. Morrow’s boss.”
Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities Page 18