Admiral Hardcastle swatted the desk as if the blame had already arrived, a-squeaking, and he wished to put it to rest physically.
"I am truly sorry, sir," Hoare said, "to have been responsible in any way, even indirectly, for placing you in this situation. How may I make recompense?"
"You cannot. I made the mess. Like a good servant, I must clean it up.
"Today is Wednesday. I shall have Patterson post-date your receipt' of this belated order by"-he withdrew the Hunter watch from his waistcoat-"thirty hours. After all, it is already a week overdue, so one more day will not ruin any of us.
"In presenting yourself at Sir Hugh's Admiralty office," he said, "do not use the main door. Those people there will delight in misdirecting you; you would be lucky to escape with your virtue intact. Go around the building, to Minching Lane, and up the alley leading to the rear of the building. Use the privy entrance.
"Hammersmith will provide you with a pass which you will show the man at the privy gate. He'll see that you reach Sir Hugh's private offices.
"Repeat what I just said."
Hoare did so.
"From that point, Hoare, your future is in Sir Hugh's hands, not mine at all.
"Sir Hugh is not as accommodating an officer as I, so you can expect something of an inquisition. However, he knows quite well that you are necessarily a man of few words. I have suggested to him that you present him with a written narrative of the Moreau affair and the matter of the Duke of Cumberland and the Nine Stones Circle. He will have read of them before, of course, through the reports I have already forwarded to him, but he is heavily burdened with paperwork, and a new statement will refresh his memory so he can interrogate you more usefully. He may be inclined to mercy in your case; sometimes he is.
"Now fill me a glass of that port, if you'd be so kind, and have one yourself before you go."
"Thank you, sir," Hoare whispered, "but if I remember correctly, the Admiralty coach is scheduled to depart in fifteen minutes' time.
…"
"What the deuce have you to do with the Admiralty coach, pray?
"If I am to reach London with all dispatch, sir, the coach is the fastest means of doing so. Perhaps you would direct your clerk to book me a place…"
"I hardly see," the admiral said in a testy voice, "how, small though she is, you expect to fit Royal Duke into the Admiralty coach. You are to take her to Greenwich."
The startled Hoare could hardly believe the implication of what he had just heard. A month or two before, when he had read himself in-or rather, had Mr. Clay read him in-on the yacht's quarterdeck, Sir George himself had warned him that by Admiralty order, he was never, never to take her to sea, lest she be snapped up by some wandering Frenchman and give up all the secrets she bore. It had only been by the strongest persuasion that, before the Nine Stones affair culminated, he had persuaded Sir George to stretch the point and let her loose-but only within sight and sound of tidewater. Whether their lordships in Whitehall had taken official note of this warranted disobedience he did not know and had no wish to know.
"In convoy, then, sir?" That was how Royal Duke had been brought 'round to Portsmouth: not only in convoy, in fact, but in the hands of a borrowed crew. Most of her own people had then known less about seamanship than they did of the binomial theorem, or of burglary.
"Or not," Sir George said. "It makes no difference. Get her there, and without further ado."
Relenting, he added, "Whatever mission they have awaiting you, it must be one of high urgency. In the hands of the wrong people, those papers must be no less than infernal machines. Now, Hoare, if you have no more asinine remarks to make, I have much to do and little time in which to do it. Have that drop you just refused, and be off with you."
They had their parting drop. "Good. Now, be off. Good luck-you'll need it."
Then, with, "And convey my respectful duty to Sir Hugh," Sir George returned to his mound of papers.
"You're in luck, Captain Hoare," declared Hammersmith, when Hoare paused at his desk outside the admiral's sanctum to watch a clerk sand the last of the documents Hoare was to carry with him.
"Why?"
"Berrier at the Golden Cross sets the finest table in London. He don't usually receive anyone below commodore, or vice minister. Or baronet."
"A cut beyond my pocket, then," Hoare whispered. He had managed to preserve as capital the windfall of prize money he had gotten in September of '81. Nonetheless, he had just undertaken matrimony, and he had seen too many naval families fall into debt and disgrace. He had no intention of following that path. He judged that his bride was a woman of some property, but he felt unaccountably ill at ease at the notion of living off a woman. It would make him feel like a ponce.
"Perhaps," he now asked Hammersmith, "you could suggest a less exalted lodging?" He understood that the flag secretary was a London man.
"Oh, you needn't worry as to that," the other said with a smile. Was the smile just a trifle superior? "You're under Admiralty orders, so the Admiralty foots the bill. Hence the voucher he had Patterson attach to your papers. If I know anything about Berrier, he'll tremble to serve anyone who even mentions old Abercrombie's name. If you think the gentleman you just left is a merciless man, just you wait till you come up against Sir Hugh."
Perhaps Hammersmith's smile was not so much superior as knowing-knowing, like the expressions of Eleanor's servants the other morning. That recollection reminded him. As soon as he was back aboard Royal Duke and had gotten her underway, he would have Hancock send word to Eleanor in Weymouth about the Golden Cross Inn. He was sure he remembered that the yacht's foul-smelling pigeon handler still had a Weymouth bird.
He bade a polite farewell to the man in any case.
"Sir! Sir!"
At the familiar voice, Hoare stopped and turned. As he had thought, it belonged to Lemuel Rabbett, the Admiralty clerk who had come so near to having his head lopped off at the Nine Stones Circle while in Hoare's service. Hoare was genuinely delighted to see the little man; he had grown significantly in confidence if not in stature during their association, and Hoare had found that one always loves the one he has helped at no cost to himself. Liking the thought, he tucked it into the little commonplace book he kept in a corner of his mind.
"Why, Rabbett!" he whispered. "So you are back in the… saddle?"
"Back in the hutch, rather, sir," Rabbett replied. "May I make so bold as to wish you happy?" He reached out a tentative hand, and Hoare gripped it firmly.
"Thank you, Rabbett. I hope the same for you, in due course."
"Sir… sir, I knew you would be calling on Sir George today, so I brought with me a little memento for yourself and your good lady" Shyly, Rabbett reached into his fob pocket and produced a small object, which he offered in the palm of his hand.
"From my mother and myself," he said.
Hoare must take it, or else hurt the other's feelings. He looked down to inspect it closely. About the size of his thumb to the first joint, it was a carving in mellow ivory in the shape of a crouching rabbit. Its long ears fused near their tips, forming a hole through which a loop of plum-colored braided silk was inserted.
Hoare thought he had seen a similar object in the collection of a former captain who had spent some time attempting to break into the reclusive islands of Japan. He could not remember what they were called-something that had to do with fishing, if he remembered. It was a thing of beauty.
"But this is precious, Rabbett," he whispered. "You must not give it away."
"My mother and I wish you and Mrs. Hoare to have it, sir," the clerk said in a firm voice. "While I may not be fit to go to sea with you, you will at least have one rabbit with you. Please, sir."
"Then thank you, Rabbett, with all my heart." Again, Hoare turned to leave.
"One more thing, sir. In October, when Mr. Thoday and I were serving you, you asked me if, when I returned to this office, I would investigate the source of some leaks of secret information. You said they h
ad to occur somewhere between Royal Duke, this office, and Whitehall."
"I remember," Hoare said.
"Well sir, I have made my investigation. I can assure you- and I know whereof I speak, sir-that the leaks have not emanated from here. Of that, you may have my absolute, confident assurance."
"Which I accept, Rabbett. Thank you again, and thrive until we meet once more."
He escaped at last. The tide was on the turn; if he stepped lively, Royal Duke could just catch the up-Channel flood. Rabbett's replica was welcome; his news was not. If the clerk was correct-and Hoare respected his competence in the field-the leaks had to be coming from the Admiralty, or from his own command. Neither was a palatable dish. It was a good thing, perhaps, that he was taking Royal Duke to London.
Chapter III
Squelching through the night on the oblong disks that kept him from sinking to his knees in the foul Thames ooze, the mudlark made his way toward the promising mound at the edge of tidewater. If he knew his corpses, this was a corpse. And a fresh one, too, likely. For once, he might be in luck. But he'd best make haste, for the tide had turned already.
Yes, by God and his father, he was right for once. A dead 'un it was. Fully clothed, too; too fresh to stink, yet with the death-shit already washed away. A hot bath and bottle of Blue Ruin there'd be, at the end of this night, and a willing dollymop to share 'em both. He rolled the corpse over and began to rifle its pockets. That there was a charred hole in the placket of the breeches drawn tightly over its belly troubled him not at all.
And, omygawd, a pogue! A loaded wallet!
Off upstream, from under the bridge, the mudlark heard the same sloshing sound he himself had made in getting out to the bloater. More than one. He wasn't going to chance it, not he. He'd leave 'em the joy of turning out the bloater and taking his clothes, brass buttons, hole in the breeches an' all. It 'ud hold 'em up from chasing him through the mud, back to solid ground.
Never mind. It 'ud be two pretty judies for him, an' he'd be on the randy for a month.
Close-hauled, her weather shrouds humming with the strain in the raw January northerly, Royal Duke heeled to her task. A light wash poured into her scuppers with each leeward roll, then out again as she righted. A pair of gulls swept effortlessly across her wake, heads turning as they wheeled, in their never-ending search for nutriment. The low clouds dumped an occasional spatter to support the light spray thrown from her weather bows. There would be no need to wash down the decks this morning, Hoare told himself. Instead, the watch could continue to accustom themselves to working below while under way. In his opinion, the ordinary cipher clerks and file-matchers would have no trouble, though the two forgers-"screeners," he had learned, they were termed in thieves' cant-might find it hard to keep a steady hand.
At Hoare's side, Mr. Clay grinned ecstatically into the wind, his hair, short though it was, whipping behind him.
"Her best point of sailing, I do believe, sir," he declared. "We're overhauling that transport to windward. She bears a full point farther off the weather bow."
Hoare could hardly expect the other to hear his whisper, so he merely nodded with an answering smile. It was exhilarating travel, indeed.
"Shall I have the log cast, sir?" Clay asked. Hoare nodded assent, and Clay roared out the order.
One of Sergeant Leese's Green Marines clumped forward to handle the timing glass. Since Royal Duke carried no midshipman, Taylor undertook the heaving of the log. Newlywed Hoare might be, but the sight of Taylor's statuesque figure as she went about the task stirred his own maturing loins. It would, he thought, have stirred those of the yacht's coroneted figurehead, had it been so mutinous as to peer aft with its painted china-blue eyes.
"Mark!" Taylor cried, and tossed the log over the side. Its thin cord whipped through her horny hands until the marine, in belated echo, called, "Mark."
"Turn."
"Stop."
She nipped the line to check the log and release its chip, and brought the instrument back aboard with a thump. After reading the nearest marking on the line, coiling it as she overhauled it, she called out the result. "Ten knots and a fathom, sir!" she announced to Mr. Clay. She sounded triumphant. Another echo, Clay repeated the finding to the captain at his elbow, in his powerful voice.
"She moves along, doesn't she?" Clay said. Fleetingly, Hoare thought of responding with a question as to which "she" his lieutenant meant, but decided that this was no occasion for double entendres. Instead, he merely whispered, "And lies most amazing close to the wind."
His mouth was close enough above Clay's ear so he could be reasonably sure of being heard. And if not, what matter? It was a casual, trivial remark, one he was sure would not be missed.
He watched Taylor coil log line and chip, deftly and in Bristol fashion. Like a surprising number of her shipmates, almost all of whom were volunteers taken aboard on account of skills quite unrelated to the sea, she had made astonishing progress as a sea-"man" in a matter of weeks. All credit to Clay and the few seasoned hands-and the unusually high level of their intelligence. Already, out of the thirty-four Royal Dukes, he would not hesitate to rate a good ten of them topmen. As gunners, now… if only they could master their gunnery as well, he could rest satisfied that his peculiar command would do him credit against any other bantam brig afloat.
–
A sudden notion crystalized in his mind.
"You have the deck, Mr. Clay," he said. "Thus, thus, call me if anything untoward takes place."
"Aye, aye, sir." Bare-headed at the moment, Clay touched his forelock, gamekeeper-style. Hoare, with his notion in mind, slipped below to make a certain inquiry of Stone, Royal Duke's acting gunner, and Titus Thoday, official holder of the gunner's. At this speed and with this wind, Royal Duke would easily reach the Straits of Dover by nightfall and, if the wind were to back, might even break into the Thames estuary by dawn. But however handy the crew might be, it lacked practical sea time, and the brig's course through these crowded waters, in darkness and with no vessel showing running lights, would be fraught with danger. An awkward encounter with some wayward Englishman was the most likely hazard, but one had to bear in mind as well that Trafalgar had not swept the Channel clean of every mischievous predatory Froggy bottom.
The orders of Sir Hugh Abercrombie himself had forbidden Hoare ever, ever, to put to sea in Royal Duke, yet here they both were, by that same admiral's command, hard on the wind in mid-Channel, in the gathering darkness of a raw January night, a weakling at the mercy of all comers.
Having made his inquiry of Stone and issued certain corrective instructions, Hoare now removed to his truncated cabin and called for his silent servant Whitelaw. Unlike his master, Whitelaw had a perfectly healthy man's voice; he simply forbore to use it except in extreme need, a trait that Hoare found quite desirable in a captain's servant. Within two minutes and without orders, Whitelaw brought him a supper of soft bread, a chunk of hard cheese, and a few slices of ham, with a carafon of adequate Burgundy to wash it down. While consuming these, Hoare jotted down his rough log for the day. He read a scene or two of As You Like It in the selection of Shakespeare's works, which- with the chess set whose mysteries she had not yet had time to unlock for him-had been Eleanor's wedding gift. At last he disrobed, blew out the lamp, and turned in to his swinging cot.
On the larboard, windward side of the cabin, the enormous special chair that had been kept for Sir Hugh Abercrombie swayed gently in unison with the cot. To the sound of Royal Duke's quiet working and the occasional mutter of her sea-pigeons in their quarters of unearned privilege aft of the bulkhead, he fell asleep.
It seemed no more than a minute before the brig's change of course awakened him. For another minute he lay confused. He had been awakened at the climax of a highly erotic dream in which the body he embraced mingled Eleanor's firm roundness with the muscular limbs of Sarah Taylor. This must cease, he ordered himself as he swung his feet to the deck. The sound of Mr. Clay's roaring voice told him that
his lieutenant was simply tacking ship; he supposed Clay had chosen to tack rather than wear, so as to give the watch the challenge of groping its way through the more difficult maneuver in the dark. The brig did not fall into irons but eased to an even keel and, with a slatting of canvas and a banging of blocks and Mr. Clay's great bellows, came 'round nimbly enough, falling off onto the larboard tack.
So far, so good. If he could put Royal Duke about in the dark with her half-trained crew, Clay was as good a seaman as himself. If not better, Hoare admitted. He should be as good, heaven knew. Clay had been at sea since boyhood without interruption, while Hoare had been shore-bound for eleven years. He feared he had lost the exquisite timing it took to execute even the basic maneuver Clay had just made. But the handling of small fore-and-aft-rigged craft, slooplings like his beloved pinnace Nemesis, now towing obediently behind Royal Duke, Hoare knew he still had no master.
Hoare thoughtfully dressed himself in the dark. He took down the superb set of French foul weather gear that he had brought aboard from the pinnace, donned it, and went on deck into the spitting midnight gloom.
"I was on the point of calling you, sir," Mr. Clay said into his ear. "The lookout in the fore crosstrees is sure he glimpsed the loom of some vessel to windward, off the larboard bow."
"Hail him for details."
"Deck there!" came the reply. "She be about a cable's length to windward, steerin' the same course as we be! We be closing' on 'er fast!"
"Order silence aboard, Mr. Clay," Hoare directed. "Ease the spanker sheet and slack the main topsail braces. I don't want to run aboard of her until we know more about her, and I'd rather not call her attention to us."
"Aye, aye, sir," came Mr. Clay's acknowledgment; in a quiet voice, he gave the requisite commands. In response, Royal Duke's passage through the water slowed noticeably.
"How does she bear now?" This time, Clay's bellow was muted.
"Oldin' 'er own, sir!"
Hoare made a decision. He might have no voice, but his eyes were as keen as those of anyone aboard. He swung himself into the larboard main shrouds and swarmed up the ratlines as nimbly as Miss Austen would have. At least, he thought as he climbed, his cruises in Nemesis had left him hard-handed enough.
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