"You can see its steeple from here, sir," Hoare said. "It is a mere minute away."
A thought struck him; he doffed his cocked hat.
"Do I address a relative of the late Captains Getchell, sir?"
"The father of Francis, sir, and the uncle of Benjamin."
"Please accept my deepest condolences, Mr. Getchell. My name is Hoare. It is my duty to apprehend the person or persons responsible for their deaths."
The father's nostrils flared. "Count on me, sir, for any support you may require. Francis was the pride of my life, as Benjamin was that of his father."
The berlin drove off, leaving Hoare behind in the street, still bareheaded.
"Shove off, driver," he whispered, and climbed into the chaise.
Chapter VI
Once back aboard Royal Duke, Hoare summoned Taylor to his cabin.
"I hope your deciphering of the Jehu texts brings us information that will justify your having summoned me back to this ship," Hoare said. Having spoken, he regretted the tone he had just employed and excused himself to her on the grounds of weariness.
She donned her spectacles. "You can tell better than I, sir," she said. "Once you told me they were probably in French, the matter was easy. I unearthed a French Bible and began with Kings…"
"Very good, Taylor," Hoare replied. "I would be interested to learn how you proceeded, but at a later date. Right now, pray tell me what the messages say."
"Here are the clear, deciphered texts, sir. You can read them at your leisure. Will that be all, sir? If so, I have other pressing business."
Hoare was unused to having his people show such marked independence. Thoday had shown it, and now Taylor had as well. Hoare was not sure this custom in his command pleased him. Certainly, like most of the rest of Royal Duke's peculiar culture, it was not Naval. But Taylor was right; he could read the decrypted texts perfectly well himself.
The decision was made for him.
"Message from Admiralty House, sir," said a voice at his cabin door. Hoare looked up from Taylor's papers before he could even begin, took the message, opened it, and cursed. He set aside the papers Taylor had left with him still without learning whether she had been correct about their urgency.
"Why the hell must Admiral Hardcastle command me to an Admiralty House reception now?" he asked of no one. "Doesn't he know I have five damned pots a-boiling?"
He chirruped his summons to Whitelaw. Once again, the silent servant had nothing to say but set out Hoare's shaving tackle. After bringing hot water from Royal Duke's galley, he took out Hoare's best coat and began to furbish it. Hoare summoned Hancock, the foul-breathed pigeon master, and while adorning himself told him of Thoday's suggestion of the day before, that Hancock create a subsidiary home for his charges in Dorchester.
Hancock stood awhile in thought, then nodded.
"It can easily be done, sir," he said, "as far as delivering messages to Royal Duke is concerned. But to send messages to Christchurch, or to Dorchester or Weymouth, for that matter, that would be another thing again. The birds must accustom themselves to any new destination-it must be home for them, you know-and that takes as long as a week."
"Very good then, Hancock," Hoare said. "For the time being, we must satisfy ourselves with one-way service from Dorchester to here. Take a half-dozen birds to Dorchester. You'll find your shipmate Thoday there, at the Mitre inn. Report to him, return, and begin working up another half-dozen to carry news the other way."
Once Hancock had left and Hoare could let himself breathe again, he tied his cravat in the simple knot he used for all occasions, stuffed Taylor's texts into a pocket, and called for his gig. Not a minute was to be lost.
The last time he had been commanded to an Admiralty House reception, one of Vantage's Marine officers had run athwart Hoare's hawse, and Hoare had been obliged to shoot him the next morning. Hoare's shot had gone where he wanted it to, however, hitting Mr. Wallace in the buttock. A few days later, the Jolly had been blown to pieces in Vantage with all but a handful of her crew. Tonight, the Admiral's Flag Lieutenant, Francis Delancey, stopped him at the head of the stairs leading to the ballroom.
"You're to be presented, sir. I'll find you when the occasion arises. Kindly do not remain hidden."
Hoare knew Delancey had no love for him, holding both his name and his muteness in disregard and envying him his recent promotion, so he simply nodded and continued into the ballroom. Fortunately, he could already see more than one friend.
The room, torrid as usual from the flame of the tapers in the massive chandeliers, held as many scarlet coats as blue, for the reception was in honor of His Majesty's only true soldier son, Lieutenant General His Royal Highness Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, commanding the Southwestern District of the British army's home forces. While a small clot of intimates in blue and scarlet surrounded the Admiral's royal guest, the other courtiers appeared none too eager to approach him very closely but surrounded him in a respectful ring.
Hoare had been presented to Cumberland's elder brother William, Admiral and Duke of Clarence, and found him kindly if stupid. It was common knowledge, in fact, that all of His Majesty's children were stupid. Most were more or less dissolute as well, some merely eccentric. Only Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was positively vicious.
It was the first time Hoare had laid eyes on His Majesty's fifth son. He found the sight a dismaying one. To give the Duke his due, it was through bravery, not birth, that the left side of his florid Hanoverian face was fixed in a permanent snarl and his blinded left eye turned wildly outward. Those were scars of honor, Hoare knew. The Duke had received them from a shell burst at the battle of Tournai in '94, at the same time as his right arm was disabled and a mere week before the French bullet had deprived Hoare of his voice and his seagoing career.
But long before Tournai, rumors had floated that Cumberland was fond of tormenting others. If he could not gratify himself by inflicting physical pain, he would make do with causing the mental variety. His servants were known to be of two kinds: accomplices and victims. Some were both. According to further rumor, which could hardly be substantiated, his behavior toward his sisters went beyond mere cruelty.
Within the ring of guests that surrounded Cumberland himself stood four others. Three of them-the Admiral, his lady, and their decent, dumpy daughter, Felicia-were familiar; the fourth was not. A woman more than tall enough to look the Admiral in the eye, she was clad in a watered Tussore silk, of the same vivid blue as the Duke's Garter ribbon. It brought out the color of her eyes. Raven-haired, ivory-skinned, she stood proud and slender in diamonds enough to buy the Navy a brig, if not a sloop-of-war. Her sapphire glance passed over Hoare casually, kindled him, left him. She shone.
Surely this was not H. R. H.'s Duchess, Hoare thought. He believed he remembered that, like his brothers, Cumberland had been laggard in marrying. If he had married, he would have surely been put out at stud to one of the blowsy beauties from Saxe-Hesse-Beanstalk or another of those toy German principalities whose principal exports were portly Princesses. This vision could be none of them.
Hoare took a glass of hock from one of the trays being passed by seamen in fancy dress and began to circulate, smiling. Since this occasion was his first appearance at a formal affair since he had put up his swab, he had to heave to frequently for a toast of congratulation.
"Ha! Captain Hoare! Fancy seeing you here! I had thought you fully occupied on my manor!" It was Captain Walter Spurrier, Sir Thomas's man in Dorchester, in his mysterious scarlet and gold.
Overlooking Hoare's obvious surprise at seeing him in this company, Spurrier grasped his arm as if they were the closest of boyhood friends.
"Hoare, let me make you known to my good friend, Frobisher. Martin, Commander Bartholomew Hoare of HMS-"
"Royal Duke, sir. Your servant, I'm sure," Hoare whispered, again caught by surprise. By his frog-shaped figure, actually stuffed into a bottle green satin uniform coat, and side-whiskered like Spurrier, the man could
only be the son of his un-friend Sir Thomas, Spurrier's master. And the woman beside him would be-surely not the frog-soldier's wife… his sister. Yes. Hoare had once been left, loitering, to gather cobwebs in Sir Thomas's second-best salon while he awaited the Knight-Baronet's pleasure. He had had the time then to learn the Frobisher features from a row of male and female ancestor portraits. The men were all frogs, their womenfolk lizards. The sister's wispy emerald green faux-pucelle gown displayed her light top-hamper and pronounced tumble-home to no advantage.
"Honored, sir," the frog said. "Heard of you, of course, from the guv'nor. Lydia, me dear, this is the, er, famous Captain, er, Hoare, who interests Pater so much."
Hoare bowed over the slabsided woman's languidly extended hand. From the lines on the hand and the face above him, she looked nearly Hoare's age, though she could hardly be thirty. No wedding ring on the hand. A Frobisher and still single? There was a mystery here. Since she must be worth a good thousand a year, it would be of no consequence to any brisk young fortune hunter that she herself could very well pass for forty-three, in the dusk with the light behind her. A well-turned phrase, that, Hoare told himself, and set it down in his mental commonplace book.
"And what happy circumstance brings this invasion by the Army?" Hoare could not believe his whispered words. He could not remember ever sounding so unctuous. It was catching.
"Oh… H. R. H., of course, sir." Miss Frobisher's high-pitched voice grated down his spine like a seagull's cry. "We three are pillars of the Duke's little coterie, you must know."
"How fortunate for the Duke, and how lucky for us coarse sailors that you accompanied him." Hoare felt his face take on a civil leer that he knew must match Captain Spurrier's.
"What progress have you made in the matter of the corpses and the carriage?" Hoare asked.
"La, sir, surely you can find a topic of conversation that is better suited to the occasion!" Miss Frobisher declared.
Spurrier disregarded the lady. His response was airy. "Oh, none, sir, none. H. R. H.'s demands take precedence, don't ye know?"
"Ah. Well, then, can you enlighten me about the unseemly rites that I hear take place in the Circle where the bodies were found?" Hoare was mindful of Thoday's observation about the peculiar sacerdotal garment he had seen in the Captain's quarters.
"Unseemly, sir?" Spurrier's expression froze. "You disparage things of which you know nothing. That is unwise, sir."
"Ah," Hoare continued in his whisper. He turned to the frog. "By the by, Mr. Frobisher," he said, "I am ashamed to admit that I do not recognize your uniform. It is an unusual color."
Frobisher's grin nearly split his face in two. "I am hardly surprised, sir. It is the uniform of the Dorsetshire Fencible Horse, sir. Our regiment is known only for having run away at Sedgemoor, its only engagement, before it was even ordered to charge Monmouth's rebels."
"Oh?" Hoare asked. The frog's candor was astonishing but engaging.
"Yes, Captain. That is one of the reasons why I chose the Fencibles-the Brown-Bottomed Bastards, I've heard us called. You see, I'm a coward."
"Ah, yes. 'The Fencibles, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well,' " was Hoare's comment. Mentally, he wrote this phrase, too, into his commonplace book.
"That's just in the first place," Frobisher said. "In the second place, there's that matter of the crown of Ethelred."
"Martin!" His sister's voice was horrified. "You must not speak of the Frobisher honor in such a connection!"
"I have heard something, Mr. Frobisher, about the royal blood of a Frobisher ancestor, but I confess that I know nothing of it. Pray enlighten me."
"Not here, Captain, if you don't mind." Frobisher's grin widened. "Don't you agree that it would be a bit of beyond to discuss my father's dubious claim to the Crown-"
"Martin!"
Martin Frobisher and his sister might be siblings; they were not friends, it seemed. The green gentleman dismissed her protest and pressed on. "… while preparing to be received by a son of the man who wears it today?"
"I suppose so," Hoare said. He was finding he could like this man. "I seem to recall your father's having told me… when he and I first met and before we so unfortunately became estranged, that you held a commission as an officer of the Foot Guards."
"Me?" Frobisher's laugh was suited to his figure; it was a peculiar batrachian croak.
"My dear man! I've already admitted to you that I'm a coward. How can you imagine the Foot Guards accepting a coward of any shape, let alone mine?"
"Your candor is refreshing, sir," Hoare said.
"Speaking of uniforms," he whispered with a spanking-new, oily smile, "I must also admit, Captain Spurrier, that the facings of your coat are also unfamiliar to me.
"Fourteenth Hussars, sir," Spurrier said coldly. "I would be happy to make you better acquainted with them."
Hoare was about to respond with a remark that might have been about turncoats and might lead to an encounter he was becoming inclined to seek from this bounding man.
But Delancey, the flag secretary, bustled up, followed almost immediately by Francis Bennett, legal counsel to the Admiralty in Portsmouth.
"Francis," Delancey said to Bennett, with a cool nod.
"Francis," Bennett replied. The two men shared not only the same Christian name but also the same ambition to be the aide closest to Admiral Hardcastle as well as-or so Hoare had heard it whispered-enjoying the favors of the same mistress. Bennett had served Hoare as second in his rencontre with the late Lieutenant Wallace of Vantage. Delancey, however, like Hoare's friend Peter Gladden of Frolic, was Miss Felicia Hardcastle's suitor. Hoare knew well whose side he was on. Delancey could go to the devil.
"I must take you away from your friends, Captain," Delancey drawled to Hoare with obvious pleasure. "I need hardly remind you of the purpose for which you were commanded here. Not invited, commanded."
None too subtly, Delancey ran his courtier's eye over Hoare, hoping, Hoare knew, to find a flaw in his dress that would make his presentation to Cumberland impossible, after all. Finding none, he let Hoare make his bows to Miss Lydia and her two attendants before he led him through the crowd, to and into the sacred circle about His Royal Highness. It made Hoare think of the Nine Stones Circle, with which he had already become all too familiar.
Perhaps the order of introduction to the royal party was dictated by Hanoverian protocol. Like everyone else, Hoare knew that Cumberland, if he failed to bounce his brothers, one after another, off the steps to the English throne, aspired to that of Hanover. Whatever the reason, fat Felicia Hardcastle, being lowest in order of precedence, was the first within the circle to whom Delancey presented his captive.
Unintentionally, perhaps, the girl put Mr. Delancey in his place by asking hopefully if Hoare had any news of "dear Mr. Gladden" and by looking sorrowful when he said he could give her none.
"But did you know, Captain Hoare," she asked him with a happy sigh, "I am invited to his family, at Broadmead, just at the edge of the New Forest? I am so excited I can hardly speak! And I hear that you, too… But la! I must not tell!" She batted her little pinkish eyes at Hoare.
"Come along, Captain," Delancey said sourly, with a reproachful look at his Admiral's daughter, and stepped past her to make his bow to the woman with the sapphire eyes. Hoare followed suit.
"Mrs. Prettyman? May I introduce Captain Bartholomew Hoare? Captain Hoare is the-"
"Oh, I have heard of Captain Hoare. I am Selene, Captain Hoare. Selene Prettyman, wife of Colonel Ferdinand Prettyman," Mrs. Prettyman said.
Mr. Delancey took patronizing pity on Hoare. "Colonel Prettyman is one of H. R. H.'s equerries, Captain," he explained as Hoare lowered his head to her extended gloved hand. "Presently indisposed, sad to say," Delancey added.
Hoare rose from his bow to see those sapphire eyes fixing his own faded gray ones from beneath long lashes. As he had thought, they needed to look up only slightly. The lashes were black. They made the
eyes enormous, searching.
"In fact, at least in part, Captain Hoare is why I am here," Selene Prettyman went on.
"Ma'am?" Hoare whispered. What had this lissome Cleopatra to do with him?
"You are surprised, sir," she said. "You are known to Mr. Goldthwait, who thinks well of you."
Then, seeing that Hoare had not twigged, she offered him a tactful reminder. "Mr. John Goldthwait, of Chancery Lane."
Now Hoare remembered. Mr. Goldthwait, a small, lean, weary-looking, unremarkable man, had interrogated him extensively at the Navy Tavern when Hoare had delivered his explanation of the Vantage murder. In some way, Hoare recalled, he must be involved with Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie. He found it hard to remember that, though he had never seen the unknown Sir Hugh, since the latter never left London, he was his master and not his host Sir George Hardcastle here in Portsmouth. That, of course, was why Royal Duke flew the White Ensign. Sir Hugh was a Vice Admiral of the White, while Sir George was a mere Rear Admiral of the Blue.
Come to think of it, it had been then, too, that Hoare had been presented to Cumberland's brother, Admiral Duke William of Clarence. In some capacity, Goldthwait had been one of Clarence's train. Was Selene Prettyman likewise part of Cumberland's? If so, why?
"This puzzles you," Selene Prettyman said. "Never mind for now. Later, we shall talk. If not tonight, sir, then certainly before I return to London. I am to be found at the Three Suns. Until then…" She turned away with a gracious smile. Delancey disappeared, returning, Hoare suspected, to his Admiral's daughter, his hopes in that quarter evidently still unquenched. "While the cat's away," would be Delancey's maxim.
Hoare himself went on up the receiving line to Lady Hardcastle and her husband. In her figure and her fittings, Lady Hardcastle showed the world what her daughter would look like in thirty years. The prospect was not a pleasant one. But as Hoare knew, she was a kindhearted woman and a good wife and mother.
The Admiral acknowledged Hoare's bow for the entire family, then said to the scarlet figure at his side, "Your Highness, it is my pleasure to present Commander Bartholomew Hoare, of, er, HMS Royal Duke."
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