"Would it trouble you, Sir Thomas, to know that I discovered you had been-er-trifling with the cards you dealt Mr. Goldthwait and me?"
The disconsolate knight shook his head, but almost as if he were inviting further questions.
"But to what end, sir?" Hoare whispered. "You held no stake; who was to be the gainer?"
"It made no difference to me, Hoare," Sir Thomas said. "I was merely weary of being left behind, impotent. It gave me a silly feeling that at least… at least…" His voice faded away.
"And pray where, sir, did you acquire the sleight of hand necessary to slip the false card into the decks from which you dealt the other night?"
"I prefer not to say, sir," was the answer, and Sir Thomas would not be moved.
Before picking up his wife at the Bow and Forest and finding passage downstream to Greenwich, he would betake himself to Whitehall with his prisoner, find Sir George Hardcastle, and dump the problem in his lap. He knew himself too weary to address it himself.
"Collect anything you may need, Sir Thomas," he whispered, "and come with me. Pray move with dispatch, sir; there is not a moment to be lost. I shall await you with transportation outside your door."
Upon seeing the knight-baronet nod his bowed head, he nodded his own and took his leave.
Chapter XIII
In the back room of a less-than-savory ordinary, the unremarkable-looking man sat among thieves, pretending to be at his ease. He needed them, desperately. By his captures of hard evidence, his enemy had put the entire movement in jeopardy, while he himself had but the one piece. A powerful piece, to be sure, and evidently a treasured one, but solitary and therefore limited in effect.
He struck once on the side of his mug of Blue Ruin, and again, more sharply than before. Around him the thieves' voices faded away.
"How would you like ten thousand pounds to be split among you, fair and square?"
"Ten thousand pounds!" echoed around the room as loud as if they had been spoken. Less clearly, of course, came the second thoughts: how to extract a second share, and a third, and…
"Well, then. I invited you here, and no lesser men, because you are all known as ready men to fight for what you want. And are right in wanting. And deserve. Now, there's a little ship lying in Greenwich, that sticks in my craw, and I want done with it- ship, crew, cargo, and all, right down to the anchor flaws."
One of the thieves smothered a laugh.
"No man laughs at your humble servant." A small, serviceable pistol had appeared in the speaker's hand; since the laughing thief was within eighteen inches of its muzzle, he blanched and sat mute.
"You have a count of five to get out of this room alive. One… two… As I was saying, gentlemen…"
Leaving his cob to be returned to Greenwich in the experienced hands of one of the insubordinate Royal Dukes, Hoare embarked with Eleanor, Taylor, and the Esquimau in a navy launch directed to take them home. There having been no occasion for an earlier craft to depart for Royal Duke, the out-lander, in obedience to his orders, had sprung nimbly aboard just as the launch was shoving off.
It was a sorry return. Between the Hoares, as they sat in the stern sheets of the launch, there was the illusion of a space, in which one small, tubular girl-child should be seated but was not. Only the Inuit bore any cheer with him, and that was an unwitting joy at being on the water.
"A waterman I be, zur, an' no gamekeeper," he declared, "niver 'appier than messin' about in boats."
Having expressed the selfsame words to himself not so long ago or so far away, Hoare could only nod.
"Zur Thomas, 'e be landsman, frog or no frog," O'Gock added. "Puddock, more like!"
"Mph," was all Hoare could say.
Sensing her husband's puzzlement at the unfamiliar word, Eleanor leaned over and whispered "He means 'toad,' my dear. Vernacular.
"But poor Sir Thomas carries no jewel in his head," she continued, in the obvious hope of cheering up her despondent husband. "A bee in his bonnet, certainly, but no jewel." She was trying very hard, Hoare knew, and she knew she was failing. He could not remember ever before having sensed uncertainty in her. Their absent Jenny sat between them. Falling silent, his wife simply took his hand in hers.
So they sat until the launch, bucking the last of the flood, had reached its destination, the cox had announced with his cry of "Royal Duke!" that her captain was aboard, and the pitiful array of side boys had mustered at the entry port to receive their skipper and his wife.
The cob and its makeshift post-boy already waited Hard at the entrance of the Naval Hospital. Mr. Clay, clever and fore-sighted as always, had guessed that Captain Hoare and his lady would be wanting to return to Dirty Mill as quickly as possible. He had ordered the cob put between the shafts of a chaise.
He had guessed correctly. Hoare took no more time than he needed to bring his lieutenant up to date on events, and then had Eleanor and himself ferried ashore, where he handed her into the chaise and directed the boy to take them home to Dirty Mill.
The early dusk was finally drawing in when the cob, recognizing that it was nearing a place that was home for it as well as its passengers, broke into a spanking trot. Hoare had dreaded this moment. Although he knew that, immediately upon getting the news from Hoare, Mr. Clay had sent a detachment here, he still envisioned the place, naturally enough, as he had left it: cold, empty of all visible life save the cat Order, ransacked, inhabited by the corpses, or at least the ghosts, of the manservant Tom and the maid Agnes. ^
Instead, as the chaise drew up to the door Hoare had left ajar behind him, he found it open again indeed, but well-lit from behind. The windows on either side, too, were aglow. In the doorway stood his servant Whitelaw and the spectacled librarian McVitty.
The woman was smiling a welcome, and Hoare even thought to detect a similar smile on his silent manservant's wooden face. With a relieved sigh, he stepped to one side and let his wife precede him.
"Welcome back, ma'am, and sir!" McVitty said, speaking for both herself and Whitelaw.
In the warmth and light of the hallway, Hoare looked first at Eleanor with more than a little anxiety. Surely she would be remembering the last time she had seen this place. She would be recalling struggle, capture, being hauled away with their daughter. How would her natural feelings express themselves?
She blinked.
"Well, Bartholomew," she said, "the place is far more peaceful than it was when I left it, I must say. Good. And do I smell cinnamon? Even better. Will you give us fifteen minutes to refresh ourselves before tea, McVitty?"
With that, she preceded Hoare up the stairs and into their bedroom.
The cat Order was curled upon their bed, occupying its very middle as though entitled to the entire bed. This had been strictly forbidden the beast by Jenny; evidently it had decided to take advantage of its mistress's absence to break all bounds of propriety.
Hoare inspected the animal from a distance.
"Well, cat, you do make yourself at home," he whispered. "But this happens to be my bed, and my wife's, not yours."
He reached for Order. The cat hissed at him, and dabbed with his paw. Resisting the impulse to swat the beast across the room, Hoare withdrew his own paw and licked off the blood.
"I don't really speak Cat very well," he confessed.
"You don't speak anything very well, Bartholomew," Eleanor said with a twinkle and a grin, and kissed him.
"It's just as well," he whispered as soon as his mouth was free. "I was half-expecting a scene."
"A scene?"
"Yes. You should know, better than I, the obligatory scene in ladies' novels, in which the heroine's favorite pet pines and moans and starves when its mistress goes adrift."
"I do know, Bartholomew," she said, "even though I seldom bother with that sort of three-volume trash, but I am surprised that you should know. I would have expected something more grave."
"Like Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I suppose?"
"Or Gulliver. Fa
r more subtle, much nearer your taste, I would suppose.
"But come," she said. "Let us breathe for ourselves a bit, before we go belowdecks for tea. I want my own dear tuffet again."
She looked up into Hoare's face, and he looked down at hers.
"Never fear, Bartholomew, our Jenny will be back with us soon," she said. "She is a tough young person, and she will be wanting her Order in her arms."
"I shall have her back." Hoare's whisper was grim.
Later, she stirred in Hoare's arms.
"That was quite a mill, was it not, Bartholomew?"
"Eh?" he whispered sleepily.
"Sir Thomas and Goldthwait," she said, "just the other night. The frog and the weasel. Fibbed each other smartly, they did! No sense of style at all, of course, but after all, neither of them would have the wit to whip a top. But plenty of snuff… game chickens, both of'em."
"What?" Hoare was now wide awake, and astonished. "Where did you learn that cant, if you please, madam?"
"Bartholomew, Bartholomew," she said. "Remember, I grew up among brothers. One was a beast, another a beau sabreur. Don't you think I witnessed more mills than you could count, between them, and among their crowd?"
"Oh dear, oh dear," whispered Hoare.
Later still, perhaps because of his assertive partridge of a wife, his next step came clear to Hoare. "Goldthwait won't lie doggo for long," he whispered to her. "It isn't in him to do anything but attack. Remember, he knows himself to be all-powerful. God, if you will. And whenever did God need to defend Himself?
"Besides, his masters across the Channel will be pressing him to act. The loss of Frobisher will have hurt him with Fouche. He cannot afford that-not now."
He looked down at his wife. She was asleep, curled into him like a solid brown cat, snoring ever so faintly. He would not awaken her when McVitty brought their tea.
The next morning, Hoare hoisted himself stiffly aboard the cob and took his thinking with him north across Blackheath and through Greenwich, to Royal Duke. There, he repeated to Mr. Clay, Taylor, and Leese the conclusion he had given Eleanor the night before.
"First, though," he asked, "could any of the ship's remaining people still be Goldthwait's?"
Clay shook his head. He looked almost insulted. Thoday's kind of people would be the most likely residual traitors, and Thoday, of course, was still upriver, hoping to put himself on Goldthwait's trace, so Hoare's question was useless in that informal division of Royal Dukes.
Sergeant Leese shook his lantern-jawed head. "My lads be too countrified for that sort of work, sir. Goldthwait 'ud deem 'em too stupid for 'im.
"More fule 'e, sir. 'Oo was it put the idee in Thoday's 'ead about that there bollock knife? Gideon Yeovil, private, that's 'oo."
Hoare had heard nothing of this. "Tell me about it," he said.
"Simple enough, sir, when you comes down to it. You know the knife I means, sir?"
Hoare nodded.
"Well, sir, Yeovil recognized it right off fer wot it was. 'E'd been by way of bein' a shepherd 'imself oncet, before 'e 'listed.
" ' 'T'ain't tellin' truth,' 'e sez. ' 'Tis old bollock-knife, it be, all rusty. Ain't no live shepherd's bollock-knife. We-uns keep 'em razor sharp, Sarge, or the cut goes bad an' beast dies. Been buried in sod fer years,' 'e says.
" 'E told Mr. Thoday out it musta belonged to one-a them shepherds what died in the big snow on Dartmoor in eighty-eight."
"Makes sense, I suppose, Leese," Hoare said, suspecting that the sergeant was quite ready to keep on praising his private's sharpness until it wore down.
"How about you, Taylor?" The big woman, quite unabashed by the scolding her captain had poured upon her only moments before, looked thoughtfully into space for a minute before replying.
"Once in a while, sir, I have had my doubts about Blassingame. Of course, he is not a familiar; Mr. Thoday should be speaking of him, and not I."
Blassingame was Royal Duke's master prestidigitator, juggler, knife-thrower, and lock picker. As a known thief, then, he would be a natural suspect. But Taylor did not appear to have finished her remarks. Hoare waited.
"However, I learn from others that Blassingame has no love for Mr. Goldthwait, or indeed for any of the secretarial persons in Whitehall. It seems that he believes himself to have been inveigled by a group of the less savory young men of the Admiralty into burglarizing a house of ill fame. He was caught, gaoled, and nearly lost his right hand to a prison bully. I would deem him as safe as…" She paused.
"As Private Gideon Yeovil," Hoare said at random.
"That example will serve, sir," she said, and shut her mouth with a snap.
"Do you think, Taylor," he asked, "that Mr. Goldthwait would know of Blassingame's experience?"
"I can hardly say, sir. Let me inquire."
Sir Thomas Frobisher's trial took place as Hoare had warned the knight it would, in an obscure corner of the White Tower. Truth to tell, Hoare was surprised; he had made the prediction up out of whole cloth, feeling it romantically appropriate. He was requested and required to attend the trial, and must obey, but he did so unwillingly. After all, one way or another, the knight-baronet was sure to be put away somewhere where he could do no more harm.
Throughout his trial, Sir Thomas sat in the dock, dispirited, contributing little or nothing to his defense, and appearing, indeed, to pay little attention to counsel's struggles on his behalf. Indeed, though the knight's children came faithfully to sit in the chilly gallery of the tapestried chamber, to offer their father whatever moral support they could, he acknowledged their presence only upon being escorted into the chamber and out of it.
Sir Thomas's three judges-authority had determined that the trial should not be by jury-must be exalted men of the law, Hoare was certain, for they sat heavily on high, red-robed and wigged colossally. He neither knew nor cared, but stood up when ordered to do so, gave his evidence, and reseated himself. So, too, did others: the limner Pickering, for example, and two of Sir Thomas's servants, one from Gracechurch Street and a pimpled man whom Hoare recognized as the lackey he had once pushed down Sir Thomas's steps in Weymouth.
The two were followed by a string of the knight-baronet's confederates, the sorry well-connected imitators of the Babington plot. Their trial would follow in due course. Their contributions were as mixed as their demeanor, ranging as they did from cringing contriteness on the part of one youthful weed to the belligerent posturing of a curly-headed, red-faced blond man who could only have been a champion bully at Eton. The latter, to Hoare's quiet glee, was ordered suppressed by the presiding justice, and gagged.
Concluding arguments took place close to midday on the third day of the trial, and were followed by no recess. Instead, the three justices conferred in undertones, right there on the bench, before God and everyone. Within less than half an hour, they nodded agreement among themselves, three great toy mandarins from Tartary. The flanking mandarins composed themselves and turned to their senior. Would he reach for a black cap, Hoare wondered, to cover the snowy curls of his great peruke?
He would not. Instead, he simply leaned forward, unadorned. Hoare thought he heard a sigh from where the young Frobishers sat.
"The prisoner will rise," he said. Sir Thomas obeyed, and stood as straight as he could to await sentencing.
"Thomas Frobisher," the justice said, "this court finds you guilty as charged, of high treason against the realm, in that…" Here he embarked on a recital of as many treasonous deeds, as it seemed to the listening Hoare, as there were Articles of War.
Concluding this array, the justice refreshed himself with a sniff from the scented sphere he bore in one hand, took a sip from a glass at his other elbow, and continued.
"Until well within the memory of living men," he said, "the penalty for high treason has been harsh; attainder and a cruel, protracted death. The latter has commonly consisted of drawing, quartering, exposure of the severed parts in the four quarters of the realm, and the like.
"Howeve
r, prisoner, in your case this court finds mitigating circumstances. In the first place, no person has been made to suffer unduly as a result of your plotting. In the second place, evidence has been presented to the effect that you are not always of sound mind."
At this, the prisoner visibly bridled.
"Thirdly, prior generations of the Frobisher family have been consistently loyal, and have contributed to the welfare of the realm. To the best of this court's knowledge and belief, your children-whom I believe to be present in the courtroom-"
Necks craned.
"— took no part in the conspiracy.
"Accordingly, this court has mercifully concluded that your execution would serve no purpose, and that attainder of your family-the reversion to the Crown of all its lands, tenements, and hereditary rights-would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The Frobisher baronetcy, and the properties associated with it, may remain intact. However, the court sentences you to be transported for the balance of your natural life to His Majesty's penal colony in Australia, sentence to be carried out at the earliest convenience of the Crown."
In the dock, Sir Thomas grunted. Alone and anonymous in the gallery, Hoare chuckled to himself. The blackfellows of the outback in the antipathies-no, antipodes-could never dream that their odd land was about to be claimed by an aristocrat who was odder still.
"Moreover," his lordship continued, "this court shall inform Bath King at Arms of your guilt, in the confident expectation that that order of knighthood will take appropriate action of its own in your case."
"No!" With this shout, the prisoner sprang to his feet. "I am-
"The prisoner will be silent." The justice did not raise his voice, but Sir Thomas subsided nonetheless.
"I declare this court adjourned," Hoare heard the justice conclude. "I've an appointment with a brace of fine lobsters, gentlemen. Good-day."
Not many days later, realizing that he had a moment to spare before meeting with the hunters of John Goldthwait, and that the tide was about to ebb, Hoare took the short walk upstream through a thin scattering shower, to Deptford Docks. From there, he had learned, HM armed transport Sanditon was about to cast off, destination Sydney Thomas Frobisher, baronet, was to be aboard.
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