Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities

by Wilder Perkins

  “As Gawd is me witness, I dunno, Yer Honor. Morrow, ’e’s the only one what knows his name.”

  “Why did Kingsley bring one of Morrow’s ankers aboard his own ship?” Hoare whispered. “He might as well have shot himself.”

  Jaggery shook his head. “Kingsley, Yer Honor? ’E didn’t take no anker aboard Vantage. I did. Like all the other times, I thought I was slippin’ brandy to ’im, for ’im to give to officers that might ’ave interest, to get ’em on ’is side.”

  The heat was beating on Hoare’s face.

  “It was only when Kingsley was dead, and Morrow weren’t comin’ into town no more, that I dared tap one of them ankers. Wouldn’t do no ’arm now, I thought, to have a bit of ’is oh-be-joyful. ’Twasn’t as though it belonged to no one anymore, bein’ as ’e was dead.

  “An’ look what I tapped into instead. Oh, well, I guess I was dis- … dis-…”

  “Dispensable?”

  “Aye. That’s the word. Oh, ’urry, sir, ’urry! I can feel the fire on me toes.” By now, Jaggery’s voice was as faint as Hoare’s own whisper.

  Hoare could not believe the man, dying though he was. At least one more layer remained in the Jaggery onion.

  “You’re lying, Jaggery. Tell me the truth, man, or I’ll leave you to burn, all by yourself.”

  Jaggery grunted, was silent. Then he sighed. A pink bubble formed at his mouth and broke. “All right. I knew first thing ’e were up to no good, and I found out what was in them ankers first off. Then I thought, well, I never thought that much of the Navy, and there’s me Jenny to be kept safe, so I went along with it. That is the truth, Yer Honor, the whole truth, and nothin’ but the truth, so help me God.”

  At last his words rang true.

  “Will ye take care of me Jenny, Yer Honor? She’s a good girl, she is, and she’ll be a double orphing tomorrer.” His eyes stared intently into Hoare’s. “We puts up with Greenleaf at ’is Bunch of Grapes.”

  “I’ll do it,” Hoare said again. “She’ll be brought up a lady.”

  “Lady, me arse. She’s Wet Meg’s get, she is, with no lines spoke between us. Just teach the lass to read an’ write, will yer? Ye promise?”

  “I promise, Jaggery.”

  “Give her a kiss from her ol’ da, then. Uh. Now, do it. Hope it won’t be so hot where I’m goin’. Oh, Jesus.” Another pink bubble formed and broke.

  Apalled at what he must do, Hoare took out his knife, tested the point against his thumb. Leaning away from Jaggery so the man’s blood would strike the advancing fire instead of him, he slipped the point between Jaggery’s ribs. Jaggery hissed, jerked like a salmon. Soon, the fire already charring his uniform, Hoare closed Jaggery’s eyes and backed out of the wreckage. Time was pressing, but his new obligation pressed more heavily.

  * * *

  JENNY JAGGERY REMEMBERED Hoare. When he told her her Da was dead, she stood thoughtful for a minute.

  “I’m a norphing, then, for truth,” she said.

  “I’m afraid so, child,” Hoare replied.

  She went to the pallet where she slept and took a small threadbare purse from under the pillow. “Ain’t enough here to pay the rent,” she said, after counting the contents. “So I might as well start doin’ it now. ’Ow do yer want to do it to me, Yer Honor? Be easy on me, will yer? I never done it before.”

  “You’ll not have to ‘do it’ for anyone till you’re grown-up, Jenny,” Hoare said, “and not then unless you really want to. I promised your Da I’d take care of you, and that I’m going to do. Get your things together now, and we’ll be off.”

  At first, Mr. Greenleaf appeared reluctant to see Hoare about to vanish with the child, but when Hoare had explained the circumstances and assured him that she would only be moving to the Swallowed Anchor, where he and his good wife could readily reassure themselves of her wellbeing, he released her into Hoare’s keeping with a smile and a ha’penny.

  Hoare turned his tubular charge and her pitiful bundle of belongings over to the pink girl Susan at the Swallowed Anchor, telling her to feed the child and find her a corner she could call her own. Jenny took Susan’s hand readily enough but looked over her shoulder at Hoare.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “I forgot. Your Da gave me a packet of kisses for you, and told me to give you one every night when you go to bed.

  “Here’s for tonight.” He bent over and kissed Jenny’s cool, round forehead. It was a new experience, for him at least. “Off you go, child.”

  Susan came downstairs after a while. “She’s sleepin’ peaceful, sir,” she told Hoare. “She didn’t even ’ave no dolly, so I give her the one I had when I were her age, an’ she cuddled up with it as nice as could be.”

  She paused and looked down at Hoare.

  “If it ain’t presumptive of me to ask, sir,” she said, “what are yer plans for ’er? She seems like a good little mite.”

  “To tell the truth, Susan,” he replied, “I haven’t thought it through. She’s Janus Jaggery’s child, you know.”

  “Well, Janus Jaggery may have been a bad man, but he weren’t a bad man, sir, if you catch my meaning. Now, you don’t really want to set up to be a da to her, do you? You never struck me as a marryin’ man, an’ she orter have a mam.” Susan’s look grew speculative.

  “We’ll just have to see, Susan,” Hoare said thoughtfully. “Meanwhile, take good care of her.”

  * * *

  THAT DONE, HOARE was ready to see that Edouard Moreau was brought to the King’s justice. For this, there was again not a moment to be lost—though, Hoare confessed, he himself had wasted several precious hours in dealing with the Jaggery child.

  The arrest of Moreau would be a personal pleasure, but Hoare would be exceeding his brief by thinking to command the expedition it would apparently require. Besides his disaffected French-Canadians, Moreau could well have other English renegades at his disposal as well—Irish irredentists, too, perhaps, ready to avenge Wolfe Tone. Yet, whether he would be exceeding his brief or not, Hoare wanted to be in on the kill, in person. The stink of the vanished Vantage was still fresh in his nose.

  How was he to go about it? A more tactful officer than himself—one who had kept on good terms with Sir Thomas Frobisher instead of near-hostility—could simply call on the baronet for a force of his watch, march up the long slope from Weymouth town under the eyes of Moreau, cut him out from among some sixteen men, and haul him away. In doing so, this more tactful officer would, of course, have no difficulty in persuading Moreau not to put an end to him with the Kentucky rifle he had stolen, as he had done with at least two victims—Kingsley and Dr. Graves.

  Moreover, the man behind Moreau—Fortier’s and Jaggery’s “Himself,” lurking in the shadows of the case—might still be in the offing with reinforcements for the defense of his man Moreau. Then again, maybe not.

  The Marine division headquartered in Portsmouth, Hoare remembered as he went, included—as well as nearly fifty companies of infantry and batteries of artillery—a troop of hybrid creatures. Half soldier, half sailor, half cavalrymen, they were called “Horse Marines.” These military chimeras served as outlying guards on the landward side of Portsmouth. On their rounds, they kept an eye peeled for seamen and fellow Marines seeking to disappear into the countryside. They were a despised laughingstock—military bastards—about whom ribald jigs had been circulating for years.

  Hoare had met two of their officers, including their captain, not so long ago and taken their part in a dispute with certain regular hussars. It was to their corner of the Marine barracks that he went. He hoped their captain—a John Jinks, if he remembered correctly—would be at hand and that he would respond to Hoare’s appeal for armed support.

  Captain Jinks was both present and complaisant. “It’ll give the lazy rascals a jaunt,” he said. Within minutes, Hoare was jouncing out of town on a borrowed charger beside Captain Jinks, his troop of Horse Marines jingling behind him.

  * * *

  A DAY AND a half lat
er, the troop trotted through a mizzle of chilly rain and crested the Purbeck Downs beside Morrow’s quarry. There a dozen men or more, variously armed, blocked the narrow paved roadway into Weymouth, up and down which Hoare had plodded before, to be insulted and rebuffed by Morrow and Sir Thomas Frobisher. At their head, Sir Thomas himself sat a handsome eighteen-hand horse—an Irish hunter, Hoare hazarded to himself. Another horseman flanked Sir Thomas.

  “Halt right there, you troop of sleazy imitation soldiers,” Sir Thomas Frobisher said. “How dare you trespass on Frobisher land without my say-so?”

  “I don’t know that I care for the way you describe my Marines, sir,” Captain Jinks retorted. “In any case, we bring a warrant for the arrest of one Edouard Moreau, alias Edward Morrow, on charges of treason, et cetera, et cetera. Stand aside, please.”

  “Show your warrant, sir,” Sir Thomas said. His bandy, froggy legs barely reached below his mount’s barrel.

  Captain Jinks turned to Hoare, as did Sir Thomas, who looked at Hoare with extreme distaste.

  “You again, fellow,” he said, his voice oozing contempt. “I told you I’d have you horsewhipped if I laid eyes on you again on my manor.”

  “I think not, sir,” Hoare whispered. “Here is the warrant. I think you will find it quite in order.” He held the document up.

  “Well, fellow? Give it to me,” Sir Thomas ordered.

  “I think not, sir,” Hoare repeated. “You may advance as far as you must in order to read it.”

  “Never mind,” Sir Thomas said. “I did not sign it, and I am the law of this land. You can go to hell, and take your fornicatin’ document with you.”

  “The warrant is signed and sealed by the Marquess of Blandford, sir, as you can plainly see. As I need not tell you, he is Lord Lieutenant of this county.” Hoare hoped that Sir Thomas would stop arguing and decide either to resist this troop of mounted Marines or to obey his Lord Lieutenant. He felt himself running out of whisper.

  Sir Thomas muttered a few words to his fellow horseman, who spurred his animal at a furious, foolhardy pace down the hill toward the town. With no good will, he gestured to his other followers to clear the road. He himself sat his horse, fuming, while the red-coated troop filed past him like a martial hunt passing in review before their Master of Fox Hounds. At the tail of the last trooper, Hoare doffed his hat and bowed silently in his saddle to the baronet. He was crotch-weary and glad to be ending his eighty-mile journey. It had rained all the way.

  Moreau was not at the offices of his quarry. At the door of the house at the top of the zigzag road that led down to the town, Moreau’s manservant shook his head.

  “You’ll not find the master here,” he said. “’E’s gorn.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Captain Jinks replied grimly. “Sergeant MacNab!”

  “Sah?”

  “Take four men. Station one at each door of the house. Search the house for our man. You’ll remember the description given you last night by Mr. Hoare.”

  “Sah!”

  One of the troopers failed to suppress a guffaw. Sergeant MacNab turned on him.

  “Silence, man! Twa days o’ muckin’ oot the stables forrr ye!”

  The rest of the troop jogged carefully on down the turnpike, behind Hoare and their captain. They spurned the outraged tollbooth keeper and proceeded into town.

  Waving frantically, the maid Agnes stood at Mrs. Graves’s front door as the troop clattered up.

  “She’s gone to keep an eye on Mr. Morrow on the shore!” Agnes cried. “‘You’ll find him at Portland Bill,’ she says I was to tell you, ‘where you and I drove off his men together’!”

  Once off the smooth blocks of the street and down on the shingle, Jinks set the troop to a canter—but not for long, as first one horse and then another went lame, victims of the treacherous cobbles.

  “It ain’t the ’untin’ that ’urts the ’orse; it’s the ’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer on the ’ard ’ighway,” Captain Jinks reminded Hoare out of the side of his mouth.

  When they rounded a small point of the cliff, the troop’s leaders could see Moreau, alone, heaving a shallop toward the surf. It might well have been the very shallop that had sheltered Eleanor Graves from her assailants that first afternoon. The wind was easterly and gusty, the clouds heavier than they had been on that first occasion. Perhaps a quarter-mile offshore, Marie Claire lay hove to, her foresail backed, tossing in the first line of breakers. Hoare handed the warrant to Captain Jinks. Let him do the shouting.

  Jinks deployed his men. A sudden rain squall hid Marie Claire, then swept across the waves toward them.

  “Edouard Moreau, alias Edward Morrow,” Jinks cried, “I have here a warrant for your arrest on charges of treason! Advance and surrender!” He gestured to his men to spread out along the stony beach and take aim.

  “I’ll be damned if I do!” Moreau shouted.

  “Surrender, or we fire!”

  Moreau continued to shove at the skiff. The curtain of rain squall struck. Marie Claire vanished behind it. It drove down on the waiting troop, bent on soaking the carbines’ priming powder.

  “Fire!” Captain Jinks cried.

  Two carbines went off. Three misfired with faint, wet sounds. Hoare dismounted and began to plod wearily toward Moreau along the shingle, turning an ankle at every third step.

  “You’ll never make it through the surf, you fool,” he whispered to the métis, knowing well that his words would be lost within inches of his mouth.

  Moreau did not even turn. He had the shallop afloat at last. He heaved it into the sea until the first surf foamed around his knees, drew himself aboard it, and set the oars in their tholepins. Looking over his shoulder every few strokes to see that he was on course for Marie Claire, he began to pull for her. The Canadian handled his oars as well as any Coastguardsman.

  In the offing, Hoare saw a pair of men clamber over the schooner’s side into a small boat and cast off, towing a light line behind them. They were still beyond the breakers.

  Hoare reached into one deep pocket for his first pistol. He hoped it was dry. Using his left arm as a rest, he took careful aim at the oarsman and fired. Hoare could not see where his ball went. He found his second pistol, took and held a breath, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon sputtered, hung fire, and destroyed a wave top. Taking another stroke, Moreau grinned mirthlessly at him over his oars.

  There came a whicker overhead, and a sling-stone clipped a wave top beyond Moreau’s shoulder. Turning, Hoare saw Eleanor Graves on the low cliff above him, astride a Downs pony. She was bareback, her thighs exposed to the rain, her hair mingled with the beast’s shaggy mane. She had loaded another stone into her sling.

  The second stone took off one of the shallop’s starboard thole pins. Moreau caught a crab with his starboard oar. The shallop swerved and broached to, just in time to catch a breaking sea broadside. The sea poured aboard it over the gunwales. She swamped and lurched heavily to leeward.

  Moreau went overboard into the boil. He was out of his depth, for his head disappeared. When he came to the surface again, his clutch missed the shallop’s gunwale by no more than a finger. A crosscurrent caught the boat and began to edge it away, leaving Moreau to struggle after it, losing a tantalizing inch or two with every stroke.

  In his mind’s eye Hoare could see the burnt and mangled men of Vantage, with those of Scipio and the other vessels Moreau and his minions had destroyed. The man had put paid to upward of a thousand loyal English sailors. Hoare would be damned if he would let him drown peaceably. He kicked off his shoes and waded into the surf until he was waist deep. He looped his belt knife’s lanyard over his wrist and dove forward into the surf, his hat carrying away somewhere into the windy darkness. He let the knife drag behind him so that he could put the full force of both arms into his stroke.

  As Moreau struggled seaward toward his schooner, he had turned his back to Hoare, whose sudden grip on his coat took him unaware. Hoare climbed up the other’s sunken b
ack and forced his head into the water.

  Moreau twisted in Hoare’s arms, gripped both ears, and pulled his head forward. His teeth gnashed at Hoare’s nose, clenched into it hard. Hoare let him gnash. He let go of the métis with both hands and pulled the sheath-knife into reach by its lanyard. He jabbed it forward and felt it sink into some soft part of Moreau’s midsection.

  Moreau’s mouth opened in a gasp, releasing Hoare’s nose and sucking in water. Hoare shook his head and twisted the knife in Moreau’s body, withdrew it, stabbed again at random. Moreau rolled over. His eyes opened wide, staring into Hoare’s. The métis gave a choked cry and grimaced, spewing bloody water through his teeth into Hoare’s face. Hoare let go of the knife, pulled his enemy’s head underwater by his coarse, clubbed black hair, and bore down on top of him. Moreau sank under him, bubbled, and died—whether by drowning or from his knife wounds Hoare never knew and never cared.

  Hoare could see the shallop rocking, logy and tantalizing, still just out of reach as if it were alive and viciously teasing. He took a firmer grip of Moreau’s hair, rolled over on his back, and began to tow him ashore through the surf.

  Beyond the breakers, the hands left in Marie Claire hauled their shipmates back aboard. Before Hoare had struggled ashore with his captive’s body, the schooner was under way under reefed fore- and mainsails, making seaward toward France.

  Eleanor Graves clambered off her pony and down the cliff-side path, to look down at Hoare as he gasped above his victim, bleeding from his torn nose.

  “Well done,” she said. “I would happily have crippled him and delivered him to the Navy’s mercy, but I would not have wished another man’s death on my conscience. The one—Dugas, the leader of my attackers—was enough.”

  “You didn’t kill Dugas,” Hoare whispered. “Someone smothered him to death.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Then I could have killed Morrow after all,” she said. “He came to my house in the rain after you and your man Stone left in the chaise. He stunned poor Tom with a club, forced himself into my presence, and threatened to kill both Agnes and Tom if I did not hand over Simon’s papers. So I did.