"I failed you, sir. I regret it most sincerely."
"It's all right, Thoday," Hoare had answered. "It was I who failed her, not you who failed me.
"But I do have a bone to pick with you, sir," he had gone on. He had been too weary to feel astonished at having just addressed one of his own crew as "sir"; besides, rating or no, he knew Thoday to be a natural gentleman. He must look into this, later.
"Before I left my ship, Thoday," he had said, "I gave absolute orders to all hands that under no circumstances was anyone to follow me to London… in some misguided hope of helping me recover my family. In the event, I am happy to admit, it was most fortunate that you disobeyed those orders, but…
"I owe you, Leese, Taylor, and the others my thanks for my deliverance, but I also owe you condign punishment for disobeying the direct orders of your captain."
"By your leave, sir," Thoday had answered, "I was not aboard Royal Duke at the time you issued those orders. In fact, I knew nothing whatsoever of the distressing happenings at Dirty Mill. You will recall that I had come up to London to back up young Collis the sweep, when he sent word that he was on the trail of the man Floppin' Poll named as 'Sol.' The one, actually a mere figment, whom we had assumed must be Solomon."
The lean investigator was quite right, Hoare had realized. So Thoday, at least, must be acquitted of insubordination. The man had a gift for catching him aback and rolling him onto his beam ends. He gritted his teeth and apologized.
"I could get you a warrant, Thoday, as master's mate," he said, "or even midshipman, if you wish to make yourself a career as a naval officer."
"You forget my faith, sir," the other answered.
"I have taken care never to inquire about it, you may have noticed, though I assume you to be of the Roman persuasion." Openly avowed, they both knew, this would debar the communicant, by Act of Parliament, from responsible office of any kind under the king.
The other nodded gravely.
"But," Hoare went on, "consider the case of Mr. Terence O'Brien. Rumor has it that he has been named third in Devastation, even though rumor also has it that he is a quiet Catholic. He has simply never proclaimed his faith openly."
"It is precisely that, sir, which is a stumbling block. While I do not cry my faith before all hands, in my case my conscience would never allow me to deny it if asked, as I would be, and be damned to that recusant O'Brien.
"But there's more, sir. By upbringing, and perhaps by my inherited nature, I believe I am not a naval person but another creature entirely. As you may remember, my late father was principal aide to Sir John Fielding of Bow Street."
Hoare nodded. He remembered well.
"I believe myself," Thoday said, "to have a vocation…"
He stopped in mid-sentence and even grinned slightly at Hoare's expression of sudden alarm.
"No, no, sir; not to the priesthood, not at all. In fact… well, never mind. A vocation, I mean, to investigate, to track down, to… to detect. A career different from any other under the sun." The sunken cheeks on either side of his hawk nose almost glowed, but not quite.
"More than possible, I agree," Hoare whispered. He remembered very well the crisp deductions that Thoday had produced, one after another, during their first adventure together. Thoday's deductions, and not his own, had been largely responsible for Walter Spurrier's being laid by the heels.
"If, sir, I were-eventually, perhaps at the end of the present war with the French-to be seconded to Sir George Hardcastle's office, or perhaps even to Mr. Prickett senior's, I believe I could become of great and enduring service to my country and the Crown."
"Well, well, Thoday. We must see."
Thereupon, Hoare sent Thoday off to take up his search for Mr. Goldthwait and his followers.
But Taylor, Stone, and Leese were not off the hook yet; all had been aboard Royal Duke when he had issued his "do-not-follow" command. He had seen them with his own eyes. They had heard him. So, when they all had returned to their ship, they must be brought before him and formally charged with disobedience to orders. The notion of the consequence-the mental picture of Leese's green jacket stripped of its stripes and then stripped from his body in preparation for his being lashed to a grating and flogged-the thought was purely ridiculous. And as for Sarah Taylor-Hoare's tired mind boggled. The thought of executing the navy's raw justice on that handsome, robust body might arouse the nasty, but not, he told himself, Bartholomew Hoare. No, he would, simply and quietly, call each of them before him, tell them never, never again to disobey the direct order of their captain, thank them, shake hands, and put the whole thing behind him. Duty be damned.
Dismissing Titus Thoday and the rest of his rescuers from his thoughts, Hoare went off to gather strength for his next labor.
To Hoare, it made no sense for him and so many of his people to remain at the inn now, eating up Hoare's own money-or the Admiralty's, supposing he could persuade the niggards in the navy's exchequer to honor his vouchers. In fact, it would be best for almost all of them to withdraw to their own little floating casket of secrets lying at Greenwich, leaving behind only Thoday and any of the Royal Dukes the latter might need to help him track down Mr. Goldthwait and his followers.
As for his remaining in London himself, he had only the problem of Sir Thomas Frobisher. Thoday, sensible man, had left the knight-baronet in his disordered mansion under the close guard of three Green Marines summoned up from Royal Duke. Sir Thomas had committed high treason, there could be no question of that. There were ample witnesses to the fact, including Hoare himself, Eleanor, and any of Sir Thomas's men who could be gotten to peach. Dan'l O'Gock, for one, sounded like a peach that was nearly ripe.
But how much of the knight's activity had been in pursuit of his own delusion that he, and not that other Bedlamite who now occupied the throne, was its rightful occupant? How much had been in aid of John Goldthwait, Esquire, servant-as Hoare had overheard the man himself say-of Joseph Fouche?
And how much of Sir Thomas's activity had served both causes? Hoare must return to Gracechurch Street, confront him, and decide what should be done with him.
He found the place guarded only by two of his own Green Marines. Sir Thomas's servants were not to be seen. Never mind, Hoare thought, the ones from Weymouth had been a scurvy lot. He had had to knock one of them off Sir Thomas's own doorstep. He could not believe the kinds of Londoner the man could attract would be any better. He let himself in.
At the library door, he looked at the aftermath of a tornado, a typhoon, or, more surely, of a tantrum. In what must be a limbo of bitterness, Sir Thomas was tramping back and forth about the wreckage of his cozy library, muttering disconsolately to himself.
Hoare's interruption into Sir Thomas's guarded castle broke into what was evidently the closing stage of a prolonged tantrum. Still purple in the face, the knight was striding back and forth through the tumble of his library, kicking at small windows of ivory counters and fulminating heavily over his property.
"Lost, broken, and stolen," Hoare heard him say. "My Russia leather chairs, scratched beyond repair. And who's to pay for my seventeen decks of cards from Brook's, at a guinea apiece, hey?"
Upon seeing Hoare, he spun with a goggling glare and a faltering attempt to bellow and bully.
"You! How dare you show your face here?"
Suspecting the knight was ready to spring upon him, Hoare put one of the defaced Russia leather chairs between them and leaned over its high back, returning stare for stare in silence, with a hard gray basilisk eye. Gradually, Sir Thomas's snarls abated into growls, and thence into mumbles. Finally, he dropped into the opposite chair and gaped silently back at his oppressor.
"Sir Thomas," Hoare whispered, "I must inform you that you are about to be taken to Whitehall, and thence the Tower, accused of high treason against the Crown, and tried."
Here, he knew well, he was treading on air, for he had not the slightest notion of the treatment the authorities would actually accord a dubbed kn
ight and a baronet of the realm under such circumstances. Indeed, he had no idea which of the many competing authorities he should select to receive such a person. Nor had he any authority in the case.
Sir Thomas's jaw dropped, then clamped tight as he leaned forward as if ready again to spring upon his tormentor.
"Treason, you say? Treason? I, a traitor?" His voice rose again, to the point where Hoare feared the outbreak of another tantrum. "I, Thomas, rightful king of England, scion of the right line of Cerdic? You're mad!"
"'Right line of Cerdic' or no, Sir Thomas," Hoare whispered in reply. "Consider. Even assuming the validity of your claim, can you imagine Edward Plantagenet betraying his kingdom to the French? Or King Alfred? Or Queen Elizabeth? Nonsense, man… As Sir Thomas, you have already pled guilty of treason. If you were indeed rightful king of England, an could even prove your… claim before both Houses of Parliament and be crowned King Thomas the First in the Abbey, what would happen next, eh?" "I…"
"Off you'd go to the Tower, that's what. And off would go your head, just like King Charles's… and your son's head, and your daughter's, too, as far as I know."
Even as Hoare declaimed, he knew he was speaking wild words into the wind. But, he knew, no rational ones he could summon would ever reach the squat man he was addressing.
"Think, Sir Thomas, think. Would you betray England- your England, if you will-to her enemies?"
Fustian, pure fustian. Stand aside, Garrick.
Sir Thomas slumped heavily into the ruined Russia leather, and began to talk. He needed no prompting from Hoare, who unobtrusively withdrew from his pocket the sheaf of paper slips he carried about with him for use with strangers, and began to take notes upon them. The head peach itself had ripened; it began to spill its juices into Hoare's ears, to the last drop. For the rest of the morning, Hoare only needed to listen to Sir Thomas gobble his indignant tale until it, too, came to its end. Long before then, Hoare had exhausted his slips; he had then gathered up a heap of foolscap from the desk, moved to the card table, and continued to write the knight-baronet's words down as they flowed.
It was the first time he had heard it from the man's own wide lipless mouth. Sir Thomas was the acknowledged senior of the ancient Frobisher clan, a clan that had, in the days of the Saxons, been acknowledged by the world as the inheritors of the right line of Cerdic, and the crown of Britain. Thereafter, for generation after generation, the usurping dynasts-Normans, Angevins, Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, and now Hanoverians- had denied his forebears England's crown, throne, and war-cry.
For mad reasons of his own, Sir Thomas vowed he would have it no more. He had commenced to assemble around him a band of true-believing, true-blooded followers sworn to his support. To a man, they were aristocrats, "or at least armiger, sir," Sir Thomas conceded, and paused to draw breath.
He now moved into territory unknown to his listener. Hoare began to pay closer attention. As the scheme unfolded, it reminded Hoare of the notorious Babington plot, in which callow young gentlemen, followers of Mary Queen of Scots, had conspired to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with their own choice of goddess. They had all been betrayed, tracked down, and beheaded. There was even a similarity on the matter of portraits, for one of the Babington plotters had arranged to have the joint forms of himself and the other key members of the scheme delineated, standing-or so, at least, Hoare had been told-before their royal victim's disembodied head.
Putting the concept into effect was a different matter entirely. It would involve assassinating Mr. Pitt; selected members of his cabinet, whom Sir Thomas named-Hoare noting that he did not include in this little list the name of the present First Lord; the poor demented king and all his sons, including, to Hoare's surprise, the malignant Ernest, Duke of Cumberland; and the highest-ranking admirals and generals of Britain's armed forces. Cumberland, Hoare thought, had behaved equivocally enough of late to deserve being held aside for possible use.
Most of the murderers, the knight declared, were to be drawn from among those young men of family who had committed themselves to the Frobisher cause. These individuals could be expected to have easy access to the most prominent persons on the list. As for the rest, Mr. Goldthwait offered his own ruffians as experienced assassins.
"How many murders were intended?" was Hoare's natural query.
"Executions, if you please, sir," Sir Thomas replied in a testy voice. "No malice was intended. But, in answer to your question, let me see…" He began to count.
"Thirty-two, more or less," he said at last. "Thirty-three, if you count Sir Hugh Abercrombie. He had to be eliminated earlier than we planned."
"Why was that?"
"Goldthwait had come to believe Sir Hugh had begun to suspect him. He was no longer being made privy to state secrets. Then, too, you had popped up again, like a hateful jack-in-the-box."
The knight now launched himself upon a discourse upon John Goldthwait, Esquire. Although the latter seldom traveled outside London, his Admiralty duties had called him into the entourage of William, Duke of Clarence and titular Admiral of the Fleet, when that authentic royal duke had chosen to attend the court-martial of Arthur Gladden on the charge of murdering Adam Hay, captain of the new frigate Vantage.
It had been then, of course, that Hoare and Goldthwait had first met. On the same occasion, the latter had also met Sir Thomas Frobisher and, as was his wont, wrung his inmost thoughts from him. Mr. Goldthwait had immediately recognized the potential the knight-baronet offered his cause.
Sir Thomas and his adherents, Goldthwait was convinced, could become a powerful factor in his own rise to power as the prime English agent of Fouche. That foxy-haired trimmer Joseph Fouche, "Duke of Otranto" in Bonaparte's jury-rigged aristocracy of cut-throats and muffin-men, was now Bonaparte's master of intelligence. At least his experience was relevant to Sir Thomas's plot, for he had been among the revolutionaries who sent fat Louis and his silly wife to the guillotine.
Since Bonaparte had grabbed power, as Sir Thomas learned bit by bit, and had finally had confirmed from the man's own confident, smiling confession, Mr. Goldthwait had been in French pay. Ever since, he had been applying the growing power and the funds this gave him into achieving his self-imposed mission of becoming de facto ruler of the United Kingdom.
Upon handing his soul to Fouche, Goldthwait had become Bonaparte's principal man in London. When Bonaparte in turn raised the Tricolor over the Tower, Goldthwait knew he himself would become the secret keystone of the conqueror's regime.
King Thomas, re-establisher of the royal line of Frobisher, would become his pompous, powerless puppet, his crowned figurehead.
In combination, the plot cut straight to the objectives of both men: Sir Thomas's, to gain his family its "rightful" crown; Goldthwait's, to decapitate the present government of Britain, and replace it with one of his own selection. That, at least, was Goldthwait's own view of the situation, as Sir Thomas now understood it.
Sir Thomas, he admitted to Hoare, had been slow to realize the subordinate role he was to play in what he had deemed to be an alliance of equals and of gentlemen. His doubts had begun to reach a peak the other night, when Goldthwait's true, overweening expectation, his absolute assumption that his wish was open to challenge by neither God nor man, began to reveal itself. At last, the rift between the Goldthwait and Frobisher factions had broken out on its own, and Sir Thomas realized he was being used. From that balcony, Hoare himself had seen it happen.
"He's a madman, Hoare," the knight declared, "a Bedlamite. He believes himself superior to Bonaparte, to Jesus Christ-and, as I believe you have reason to know-to Satan."
From the recent behavior of Captain Walter Spurrier, Hoare did indeed know. Spurrier, celebrant of the black Mass in the Nine Stones Circle, had once answered to Sir Thomas but had transferred his worship to Satan's superior, and died in his cause.
"He knows himself infallible, omnipotent," Sir Thomas continued, fixing Hoare with his glittering eye. "I say again, he knows
it, utterly and absolutely. As I learned to my own sorrow only a few nights… a few nights ago… he was using me, sir, using me and my just cause, to disrupt the workings of the British government."
"In short, Sir Thomas, to commit high treason," Hoare whispered.
"Treason, sir?" Sir Thomas snarled. "If this be treason, make the most of it. As for me, return to me and mine our rightful crown, or give me death!" His peroration concluded in trumpet tones of challenge.
Somehow, the words sounded familiar to Hoare. Damn him, the man was all but a plagiarist. Tat the thought, he must suppress a laugh of contempt lest his laughter provoke a new outburst of rage.
But for Sir Thomas, Hoare saw, it was too late for rage. Instead, he looked once more about his ruined room, and his bulging eyes filled with tears.
Ah, said Bartholomew Hoare to himself. Now we bite close to the pit of the peach.
"He's a devil, Hoare, a devil," Sir Thomas spat.
"The Devil, in fact," he added, "or at least, so he deems himself."
"And, as you should have learned by now, Sir Thomas," Hoare whispered, "he who would sup with the Devil should bring a long spoon."
"Learned too late, sir," Sir Thomas answered. "My cause is just-I know it-but the means of advancing it which I chose was… vile. It was my fault, my most grievous fault." He stared morosely at his feet.
Some other penitent, somewhere, had used that phrase to Hoare. At the moment he could not remember who, or where. Besides, it was of no significance. It seemed to him, on occasions like this, as though the silence enforced upon him by that French musket ball had endowed him with a father confessor's alb. Or "tool?" No, he thought, it was some other garment with ritual significance.
In any case, it was not in Hoare's power to absolve Sir Thomas Frobisher, nor was there any seal upon his confessional. The knight must go before a lay tribunal. Meanwhile, in addition to Jenny's whereabouts, another matter nagged at him. Now that the other night's play was over, it did no harm, Hoare thought, to speak as one gentleman to another, even to a self-confessed traitor.
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