Hoare and the headless Captains

Chapter XII

"Are you married, Mr. Clay?" Hoare asked his Lieutenant as the two dried themselves off after their morning bout.

Until de Barsac, the emigre swordsman, had taken command of the Vendee frigate, Hoare had frequented the salon d'escrime of the Chevalier Marc-Antoine de Chatillon de Barsac. But then the Vicomte's wife had taken over as manager. As such, she was competent, but she could hardly teach swordsmanship herself. Moreover, the hirelings she had offered as opponents had been depressingly inept, and Hoare had largely abandoned the place. Now he was more than displeased at his lackluster performance as a swordsman in the recent duel, and every morning when he fastened the waistband of his breeches, he knew himself to be going flabby. So when, some days ago, he had learned that Clay prided himself on his swordsmanship, even though on his small frame the officer's sword resembled a two-handed broadsword, he had suggested they indulge themselves in a bout. The first passage at arms had taken place the next morning, the deck being clear and most of the crew at work below.

Clay had stripped well, though pale-skinned, displaying the wiry muscles of a gymnast. His performance had not belied his physique. It had been raining lightly in that gray dawning. After the two had exchanged salutes, Clay had stalked into the eyes of Royal Duke and Hoare to her taffrail. At Hoare's piercing whistle, the two ran at each other, meeting with a sharp clack of weapons to one side of the mainmast, between it and the upturned longboat.

When Clay charged, he moved in an irregular, unpredictable forward dance, his blade flickering before him, his footwork unimpeded by the slippery deck. For Hoare to predict where the Lieutenant would be at any fraction of a second was beyond him. Bewildered, he felt that he might as well never have spent those hours.

Up and down the length of Royal Duke they had ranged, leaping and parrying, up to the cat-head, back to the binnacle, first one taking the offensive and then the other. Clay bounded like a ball. In his lunges, his muscular arm seemed to double in length, as though he had borrowed it magically from the gibbon-topman, Iggleden. Coming on deck, Iggleden himself and Stone had stood agape, as idle as the rest of the gathering watch on deck, until Clay feigned a slip in a spot the watch's mops had missed, let Hoare overstretch, disarmed him with a powerful flip of his blade, and took his surrender.

Every possible morning thereafter, they had met again, whatever the weather. It saved Hoare time and money spent ashore in the de Barsac salon and was quite as effective. Now, day by day, he felt his wind improve; day by day, it took Clay longer to make his touch.

Today, for only the second time, Hoare was the first to score upon his opponent, with a crippling cut to Clay's left leg. It was this success that emboldened Hoare to pose his impertinent question.

"Married, sir? Hardly," Clay answered, rubbing the stricken leg. "I shall be black-and-blue in the morning. No, with my lack of stature, the only ladies who would have me have remained single themselves for good and generally obvious reasons. I do not consider myself overparticular, but if you were to see the kinds of antidote-even crone- that have set their caps at me on account of my fortune, you would shudder.

"Why, even that friendly, pink Susan Hackins at the Swallowed Anchor as much as told me I could have her, but only in exchange for my name. I respect her for her candor as well as her virtue, but… to be brief, what I lack in inches I fear I more than make up in pride. No, sir, I am quite unattached. May I ask why you inquire?"

"I would not wish to interfere in your personal affairs, Mr. Clay, were it not that I recently made the acquaintance of Miss Anne Gladden, daughter of Sir Ralph Gladden of Broadmead, near Frome, in the Mendips."

Hoare paused to await Clay's reaction. There was none.

"She is a charming young lady of poise and presence who impresses me as both sensible and gifted," Hoare continued.

Silence.

"However, she does not go into society as a general rule."

Silence. Clay's expression was closed.

"She is also exceedingly small."

This is hard going, Hoare thought. I would far rather be Heracles to Admiral Hardcastle's Eurystheus than Cupid, or Pandarus, between Miss Anne Gladden and this cool little officer.

"Come to my cabin when you have refreshed yourself, Mr. Clay," Hoare concluded, "and I will lay out my thought for your consideration." This would dish Miss Jane Austen, he thought viciously, and her own schemes for interfering in his pursuit of his own particular partridge.

Soon Hoare was to discover that he might well attend to the affairs of his own heart, not those of his Lieutenant. Only through the scuttlebutt did word reach him that Eleanor Graves had arrived in Portsmouth. Indeed, scuttlebutt whispered in his ear that she had put up at the Swallowed Anchor, his erstwhile quarters ashore. Why had she not let him know she was coming? Nonetheless, he would hasten ashore to find out, salving his conscience by telling it that he was simply picking up the day's post. He forbore to remember that an Admiralty wherry had already delivered it.

Besides the anticipated refusal of the Admiralty to increase Royal Duke's ink allowance, today's daily message from Dorchester came heavy today. It comprised several pages of clerkly script and a number of enclosures in the same hand.

The Mitre, Dorchester Wednesday

Sir:

Last night I succeeded in making use (primo) of Mr. Spurrier's absence from the town and (secundo) of the skills taught me by our shipmate, James Bly, to go a-burgling. I picked the lock of Mr. S.'s office door with ease and conducted an extensive search of the place.

This search disclosed the following items of interest:

A. In a carved blackwood cabinet:

1. The cope which I called to your attention after our first encounter with Mr. S. Its decorations were as obscene and sacrilegious as I had thought to observe at that time.

2. A book, in which what appeared to be several rituals were set forth in fine calligraphy. The book was bound in a fine soft leather, which my oversensible imagination suggested was human skin.

3. A chalice of bronze, into which human and animal figures had been chased. Their activities are best left to the imagination.

4. Several black candles.

B. In the right-hand lower drawer of the escritoire:

1. Two sets of Admiralty orders, one addressed to Captain Francis Getchell and the other to Captain Benjamin Getchell.

2. Two gold watches, identical in appearance except for the monograms engraved into their covers. I did not take the time to decipher the monograms, but one might assume they belonged to the Captains Getchell.

3. Two empty purses.

C. On the top of the escritoire:

1. Numerous items of correspondence, of a personal nature.

2. Several ribbons and similar gewgaws.

3. The usual writing paraphernalia.

D. In a readily detected secret drawer behind the middle drawer of the escritoire:

1. A folder bound in red tape, containing at least a dozen pairs of documents. Of each pair, one bore the distinctive appearance of the "Ahab" ciphers already in our possession, while the other, in pencil, heavily crossed out and corrected, bore casual marginal graffiti, mostly erotic in nature.

2. A Bible, in French, between two leaves of which S. had left three papers. The left-hand leaf commenced with 1 Isaiah, v. 4, while the right-hand leaf ended with 2 Isaiah, v. 21.

S. had evidently been interrupted just after translating, and beginning to encipher, a message of his own. He had completed only two lines. Although I deem S. unlikely to be of a character who would keep count of his papers, I did not dare to abstract any of these, lest my judgment be in error. I considered it essential that he remain ignorant of my surreptitious intrusion onto his premises. I used my remaining time-which I could sense was growing short-to make a hasty but complete copy of the original English-language message and the first lines of his French translation. (S., I could not help but observe in passing, may pride himself on his ability to speak French, but his mastery of the written language is negligible.) Even more hastily, I scribbled down the first lines of the enciphered message.

I enclose the copies I made of these three documents. I trust that these fragments will enable Taylor to master the "Ahab-Jehu" code even more completely than she already has.

Before I had finished copying the Captain's scrawls, Mr. Rabbett, who was standing watch outside the window, alerted me to the unwelcome sound of horsemen coming down the High Street from the direction of Plymouth. It being close on dawning, I concluded that the arrivals were Mr. Spurrier and some of his men, so I placed the papers back as I had found them and decamped.

I was fortunate to have done so, for my suspicion was well founded. S. had arrived betimes.

To conclude: S. makes a poor agent in my opinion, being far too careless about the security of his private papers and overinclined to intermix his personal sins with his official ones. (We are fortunate in that respect, at least.)

Despite its apparent strength, the evidence we now have against S. is only circumstantial, and, besides, I have had to leave it where I found it. He may, in fact, be merely a deluded believer in some religion related to Satanism, paganism, or witchcraft and not an agent at all. A way must be found of catching him in flagrante.

The courier from Plymouth should arrive momentarily, so Rabbett must carry it, in all haste, to his mother's house. The courier must snatch it up en passant.

Your humble and ob't sv't,

T Thoday

Master's Mate

Spurrier's plaintext message, which Thoday had copied, was brief.

Ahab:

Now Asa wisheth the priest his servant to sacrifice at the altar of Baal. This will further make the reins of the Philistines to tremble. I shall send unto thee a bird of the air as harbinger.

The greater and the lesser servants of the Captain of the Philistines drink wine in our vineyard and, pray, and are idle.

Levi

"Levi," Hoare concluded, was probably Spurrier himself. Hoare had thought so. Spurrier's efforts to write in the style of the King James Bible might make his translation and encryption tasks easier, Hoare thought, but they sounded puerile. Someone unknown, bearing the code name "Asa," intended to make some sort of sacrifice. As Hoare had also thought, "Asa" was certainly a person of importance. "The altar of Baal" might be the Nine Stones Circle and the Philistines the Royal Navy.

Since "the greater and the lesser servants" almost certainly referred to Thoday and Rabbett, Spurrier might have promoted Hoare to Captain. In this, of course, Hoare hoped Spurrier was a reliable "harbinger," though if so, he was surely premature in his prophecy, since Hoare's swab had yet to dry from its first wetting.

Or the entire cast of characters might be quite different. The whole business was obscure, like so much of the Bible, suggestive, ominous.

One thing was certain: further mischief appeared to be cooking at the Nine Stones Circle, and it behooved Hoare to make ready to foil it.

More seriously still: Spurrier was evidently aware that Hoare and his hounds were on his traces.