Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities cbh-1

by Wilder Perkins

  Inconceivable rammed Marie Claire just aft of her starboard main shrouds. Her bowsprit thrust across the schooner below her main boom before grinding to a near-halt. Marie Claire heeled heavily away. There was a crash below-perhaps, Hoare hoped, from Morrow's best yachting china. Carried along by the schooner's momentum, Inconceivable began to swing to starboard, pressing against Marie Claire and braying the jigged man between the two hulls like an ear of Indian corn. He squalled. One arm waved briefly in the narrow gap before he was drawn down into the welcoming water.

  The blow into Marie Claire's midships must have caught another enemy wrong-footed, for he spun and went overboard on the side away from Inconceivable. The others-two were still on their feet-were nimbler. One chopped an axe into Inconceivable's forestay as it tangled in the schooner's main shrouds, and cut it apart just as Hoare clutched at the nearer of the paired shrouds. Inconceivable rebounded. Caught wrong-footed himself, Hoare felt his feet leave her. He dangled in Marie Claire's shrouds, first by one hand, then by both, when Marie Claire drifted away from his own precious pinnace, his first and only command.

  Behind him, Inconceivable's jib came down with a run over Bold and Stone. There was another grinding sound. Even where he hung, Hoare knew the two craft had parted company.

  By the time Hoare's sailors had struggled out from beneath the jib's hampering folds, Marie Claire and her involuntary stowaway were a cable or more off, steadied again on a course for Weymouth. She was as good as home free.

  He did not dangle long. Two of Morrow's men hauled him out of the schooner's shrouds and dragged him to her little quarterdeck, where their master stood waiting.

  Chapter XIII

  How did did you get onto my traces, Mr. Hoare?" Morrow asked. "Take your time in replying, and rest your voice as often as you wish. The wind is still light, and we have several hours to while away before Marie Claire makes port. As for your amusing little jury-rigged row-galley…"

  Morrow gestured toward Hoare's pinnace. Inconceivable lay motionless less than a cable away, a shadow in the dusk, her forerigging all ahoo where forestay and jib halliard had been cut, her high mainsail drooping unattended, the sweeps dangling from the raw holes Hoare and Stone had chopped into her tender sides. She looked a floating wreck. Hoare's heart went out to her. Meanwhile, Marie Claire's sails had filled, and she was under way again, ghosting toward Weymouth and leaving the smaller craft behind.

  Moreau saw Hoare's expression. "Perhaps I'll return tomorrow, tow her in, and add her to my fleet. You just used her to kill my man Lecompte, after all. You are my debtor. What you Anglo-Saxons call 'blood-geld,' eh?"

  He smiled and cracked Hoare across the face with his open hand. Instinctively Hoare struggled to strike back, but the burly men holding his arms restrained him with ease.

  "Be seated, pray," Morrow said. He gestured to his men, and Hoare found himself flung onto the deck with stunning force.

  "I repeat: How did you find out what I was doing?"

  "I put two and two together, Mr. Morrow," Hoare said.

  Morrow leaned down and cracked him across the face again. This time, he used his closed fist.

  "You mispronounce my name, Mr. Hoare," he said. "My name is Moreau-baptized Jean Philippe Edouard Saint-Esprit Moreau."

  "A long name for the metis son of a fur trader, Monsieur Moreau."

  Crack came the hand.

  "Fur trader, m'sieur? My father was no fur trader. He would not have soiled his hands with trade. No, no. My father was Jean-Francois Benoit Philippe Louis Moreau, nephew of the archbishop and seigneur of Montmagny. His seigneurie stretched from the river south to St.-Magloire and east to St.-Damase des Aulnaies-many, many arpents, m'sieur. When Monseigneur mon pere died, I inherited half that land. It is still mine.

  "And Lecompte whom you just murdered, and Dugas to whom I had to give the quietus after Madame Graves crippled him for you, and Fortier here grew up together with me," he added proudly. "Almost as brothers. I even permit them to address me as 'monsieur' instead of 'monseigneur.' Only they had-have-that honor. Now, for the third time, tell me how you sniffed me out."

  Crack.

  "I was in Weymouth in the first place," Hoare whispered when his head cleared, "because of the infernal machine the Revenue picked up inland from there. Then I could not help but note your interest in Dr. Graves' avocation of clock-making.

  "I was impressed, by the way, with the simple, clever reason you gave when you asked him to make up pieces of clockwork-'for the British secret service,' quotha!"

  He braced himself for another crack. When it did not come, he was bold enough to ask a question of his own.

  "What led you to leave your estate, then?"

  "Because I am metis, m sieur, as you know very well. The peasant folk care nothing that a man has Indian blood. Why, Bessac here is a quarter Naskapi, and as proud of it as I am of being the son of a Cree chieftainess.

  "But the grands seigneurs-ah, that is different. With them, blood's the thing! No, I was not received in the neighboring seigneurs' manors, and I must not pay court to their daughters.

  Morrow's-Moreau s-voice took on more than a trace of a French accent. "And when the English came! Ah, M'sieur Hoare, it was you English that made life intolerable for us! You scorn Holy Church; you have stolen our trade; you have debauched our women."

  Hoare barely contained himself. He had not "debauched" his dear, dead Antoinette; he had wooed and won her as a gentleman should.

  "It was worse still," Moreau went on, "when Monseigneur mon pere decided that since the English were here to stay, one of his sons-I, the younger-should be educated as an Englishman, and sent me to the English school in Quebec. I need hardly tell you, English officer that you are, the beatings, the bullying-treatment no gentleman should have to endure. But I endured it, m'sieur! I learned to be as English as any milord! Why, even you thought me English, did you not?"

  But nobody, Hoare told himself, had thought to teach the young Moreau the rhymes and nursery tales English children learned in the nursery. Hence Moreau's perplexity when Dr. Graves had recited his harmless trope about "Jack Sprat, who could eat no fat" as he took his guests in to dinner that first evening, when Hoare first met Eleanor Graves. It had been then that Hoare had begun to suspect that Edward Morrow was other than he presented himself to be.

  And it had also been that evening, he realized, that he- Bartholomew Hoare-had already begun to fall in love with the wife of his host.

  "I should have recognized your accent as soon as I heard you speak French," Hoare said.

  For the first time, Moreau looked startled. "French? When did you hear me speak French?"

  "When you and your man-Bessac? — boarded me, thinking you had killed me, with my own rifle, at that," Hoare said bitterly, and decided to press his luck further. "As you suggest, I, too, have been an English schoolboy. I assure you, sir, that a lad with a name like mine faces unusual problems, too. And yet, hating us English the way you do, you chose to come into our midst." He paused inquiringly.

  Upon learning that Hoare could not speak, many people concluded wrongly that he could not hear and talked with each other, or with him, as if he were a useful piece of furniture-a side table, perhaps, with a compote on it. Hoare sometimes found this attribute useful, if sometimes insulting, and encouraged it. He did so now, by remaining silent and trying to look like part of Marie Claire-a fife rail, perhaps, or a mop.

  Moreau bit and, having bitten, swallowed the bait all the way down.

  The year 1794, he told Hoare, was when representatives of the new French Republic made their way covertly to Canada. They found young Moreau, feeling as he did about the English, a ready recruit. Any cause that advocated the recapture of the lost New France was a cause for which he felt himself ready to die. This, and his perfect English, suited him to the role of undercover agent in England. So Jean Philippe Edouard Saint-Esprit Moreau became Edward Morrow, and off to England he went.

  As Hoare already knew from Dr
. Graves, from his wife, and, indeed, from Moreau himself, Edward Morrow, with his manners and his money, had had no difficulty in establishing himself in Dorset society.

  Moreau stopped in middiscourse to take flint and steel from his pocket and light the binnacle. His face bore a reminiscent expression.

  "And Kingsley?" Hoare prompted.

  "Kingsley?" Moreau paused, then smiled wryly and shrugged. "Ahhh, the light-minded lieutenant." Moreau, he said, had met Peregrine Kingsley at a Portsmouth gambling house, long before that officer was seconded to Vantage and while he was still on half-pay. Moreau had seen Kingsley take certain liberties with the cards. On making inquiries of his own, Moreau had also learned that the lieutenant was intensely ambitious, unscrupulous, heavily in debt, and deeply involved with several women simultaneously, women of low degree and high. Whenever it became time to use him, Moreau knew he would have Kingsley in his pocket, ready to be used.

  At about the same time, Moreau had discovered Dr. Simon Graves's inventive gifts and put them to use, leading the doctor to believe that in doing so he was advancing the Royal Navy's ability to locate its ships and unaware that, instead, he was helping Moreau to blow them up. Because he could not always communicate with the doctor directly, he had made him privy to the cipher that he himself had been given.

  "A permutation cipher, Graves called it," Moreau went on reminiscently. "A temurah, or some such word. Out of the Jewish Cabala, as I remember. It was fortunate that he, like…" He caught himself.

  Of course. That explained to Hoare why Dr. Graves had a French Bible at hand when he was killed. Perhaps, too, it explained why Mr. Watt had failed to break the cipher; it had not been written in English but in French. But… what had Moreau stopped himself from saying?

  "He, like…," he had begun. Like whom, or what?

  But, Moreau continued, when Dr. Graves had balked at making any more identical devices for him, he had seen the danger the physician posed. To ensure himself a more reliable supply, he had diverted one of the machines, in its English anker, to France-as he thought-to be copied in larger numbers and returned to him. This perfectly natural move had, so to speak, blown up the entire affair.

  "It was an understandable mistake, Mr. Hoare, I think. As far as the smuggling gentry are concerned, barrels do not leave Britain-they and their precious contents come into your peculiar country."

  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 dites, 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 hatc
hlings. 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.