Hoare and the headless Captains

Chapter VI

Once back aboard Royal Duke, Hoare summoned Taylor to his cabin.

"I hope your deciphering of the Jehu texts brings us information that will justify your having summoned me back to this ship," Hoare said. Having spoken, he regretted the tone he had just employed and excused himself to her on the grounds of weariness.

She donned her spectacles. "You can tell better than I, sir," she said. "Once you told me they were probably in French, the matter was easy. I unearthed a French Bible and began with Kings…"

"Very good, Taylor," Hoare replied. "I would be interested to learn how you proceeded, but at a later date. Right now, pray tell me what the messages say."

"Here are the clear, deciphered texts, sir. You can read them at your leisure. Will that be all, sir? If so, I have other pressing business."

Hoare was unused to having his people show such marked independence. Thoday had shown it, and now Taylor had as well. Hoare was not sure this custom in his command pleased him. Certainly, like most of the rest of Royal Duke's peculiar culture, it was not Naval. But Taylor was right; he could read the decrypted texts perfectly well himself.

The decision was made for him.

"Message from Admiralty House, sir," said a voice at his cabin door. Hoare looked up from Taylor's papers before he could even begin, took the message, opened it, and cursed. He set aside the papers Taylor had left with him still without learning whether she had been correct about their urgency.

"Why the hell must Admiral Hardcastle command me to an Admiralty House reception now?" he asked of no one. "Doesn't he know I have five damned pots a-boiling?"

He chirruped his summons to Whitelaw. Once again, the silent servant had nothing to say but set out Hoare's shaving tackle. After bringing hot water from Royal Duke's galley, he took out Hoare's best coat and began to furbish it. Hoare summoned Hancock, the foul-breathed pigeon master, and while adorning himself told him of Thoday's suggestion of the day before, that Hancock create a subsidiary home for his charges in Dorchester.

Hancock stood awhile in thought, then nodded.

"It can easily be done, sir," he said, "as far as delivering messages to Royal Duke is concerned. But to send messages to Christchurch, or to Dorchester or Weymouth, for that matter, that would be another thing again. The birds must accustom themselves to any new destination-it must be home for them, you know-and that takes as long as a week."

"Very good then, Hancock," Hoare said. "For the time being, we must satisfy ourselves with one-way service from Dorchester to here. Take a half-dozen birds to Dorchester. You'll find your shipmate Thoday there, at the Mitre inn. Report to him, return, and begin working up another half-dozen to carry news the other way."

Once Hancock had left and Hoare could let himself breathe again, he tied his cravat in the simple knot he used for all occasions, stuffed Taylor's texts into a pocket, and called for his gig. Not a minute was to be lost.

The last time he had been commanded to an Admiralty House reception, one of Vantage's Marine officers had run athwart Hoare's hawse, and Hoare had been obliged to shoot him the next morning. Hoare's shot had gone where he wanted it to, however, hitting Mr. Wallace in the buttock. A few days later, the Jolly had been blown to pieces in Vantage with all but a handful of her crew. Tonight, the Admiral's Flag Lieutenant, Francis Delancey, stopped him at the head of the stairs leading to the ballroom.

"You're to be presented, sir. I'll find you when the occasion arises. Kindly do not remain hidden."

Hoare knew Delancey had no love for him, holding both his name and his muteness in disregard and envying him his recent promotion, so he simply nodded and continued into the ballroom. Fortunately, he could already see more than one friend.

The room, torrid as usual from the flame of the tapers in the massive chandeliers, held as many scarlet coats as blue, for the reception was in honor of His Majesty's only true soldier son, Lieutenant General His Royal Highness Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, commanding the Southwestern District of the British army's home forces. While a small clot of intimates in blue and scarlet surrounded the Admiral's royal guest, the other courtiers appeared none too eager to approach him very closely but surrounded him in a respectful ring.

Hoare had been presented to Cumberland's elder brother William, Admiral and Duke of Clarence, and found him kindly if stupid. It was common knowledge, in fact, that all of His Majesty's children were stupid. Most were more or less dissolute as well, some merely eccentric. Only Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, was positively vicious.

It was the first time Hoare had laid eyes on His Majesty's fifth son. He found the sight a dismaying one. To give the Duke his due, it was through bravery, not birth, that the left side of his florid Hanoverian face was fixed in a permanent snarl and his blinded left eye turned wildly outward. Those were scars of honor, Hoare knew. The Duke had received them from a shell burst at the battle of Tournai in '94, at the same time as his right arm was disabled and a mere week before the French bullet had deprived Hoare of his voice and his seagoing career.

But long before Tournai, rumors had floated that Cumberland was fond of tormenting others. If he could not gratify himself by inflicting physical pain, he would make do with causing the mental variety. His servants were known to be of two kinds: accomplices and victims. Some were both. According to further rumor, which could hardly be substantiated, his behavior toward his sisters went beyond mere cruelty.

Within the ring of guests that surrounded Cumberland himself stood four others. Three of them-the Admiral, his lady, and their decent, dumpy daughter, Felicia-were familiar; the fourth was not. A woman more than tall enough to look the Admiral in the eye, she was clad in a watered Tussore silk, of the same vivid blue as the Duke's Garter ribbon. It brought out the color of her eyes. Raven-haired, ivory-skinned, she stood proud and slender in diamonds enough to buy the Navy a brig, if not a sloop-of-war. Her sapphire glance passed over Hoare casually, kindled him, left him. She shone.

Surely this was not H. R. H.'s Duchess, Hoare thought. He believed he remembered that, like his brothers, Cumberland had been laggard in marrying. If he had married, he would have surely been put out at stud to one of the blowsy beauties from Saxe-Hesse-Beanstalk or another of those toy German principalities whose principal exports were portly Princesses. This vision could be none of them.

Hoare took a glass of hock from one of the trays being passed by seamen in fancy dress and began to circulate, smiling. Since this occasion was his first appearance at a formal affair since he had put up his swab, he had to heave to frequently for a toast of congratulation.

"Ha! Captain Hoare! Fancy seeing you here! I had thought you fully occupied on my manor!" It was Captain Walter Spurrier, Sir Thomas's man in Dorchester, in his mysterious scarlet and gold.

Overlooking Hoare's obvious surprise at seeing him in this company, Spurrier grasped his arm as if they were the closest of boyhood friends.

"Hoare, let me make you known to my good friend, Frobisher. Martin, Commander Bartholomew Hoare of HMS-"

"Royal Duke, sir. Your servant, I'm sure," Hoare whispered, again caught by surprise. By his frog-shaped figure, actually stuffed into a bottle green satin uniform coat, and side-whiskered like Spurrier, the man could only be the son of his un-friend Sir Thomas, Spurrier's master. And the woman beside him would be-surely not the frog-soldier's wife… his sister. Yes. Hoare had once been left, loitering, to gather cobwebs in Sir Thomas's second-best salon while he awaited the Knight-Baronet's pleasure. He had had the time then to learn the Frobisher features from a row of male and female ancestor portraits. The men were all frogs, their womenfolk lizards. The sister's wispy emerald green faux-pucelle gown displayed her light top-hamper and pronounced tumble-home to no advantage.

"Honored, sir," the frog said. "Heard of you, of course, from the guv'nor. Lydia, me dear, this is the, er, famous Captain, er, Hoare, who interests Pater so much."

Hoare bowed over the slabsided woman's languidly extended hand. From the lines on the hand and the face above him, she looked nearly Hoare's age, though she could hardly be thirty. No wedding ring on the hand. A Frobisher and still single? There was a mystery here. Since she must be worth a good thousand a year, it would be of no consequence to any brisk young fortune hunter that she herself could very well pass for forty-three, in the dusk with the light behind her. A well-turned phrase, that, Hoare told himself, and set it down in his mental commonplace book.

"And what happy circumstance brings this invasion by the Army?" Hoare could not believe his whispered words. He could not remember ever sounding so unctuous. It was catching.

"Oh… H. R. H., of course, sir." Miss Frobisher's high-pitched voice grated down his spine like a seagull's cry. "We three are pillars of the Duke's little coterie, you must know."

"How fortunate for the Duke, and how lucky for us coarse sailors that you accompanied him." Hoare felt his face take on a civil leer that he knew must match Captain Spurrier's.

"What progress have you made in the matter of the corpses and the carriage?" Hoare asked.

"La, sir, surely you can find a topic of conversation that is better suited to the occasion!" Miss Frobisher declared.

Spurrier disregarded the lady. His response was airy. "Oh, none, sir, none. H. R. H.'s demands take precedence, don't ye know?"

"Ah. Well, then, can you enlighten me about the unseemly rites that I hear take place in the Circle where the bodies were found?" Hoare was mindful of Thoday's observation about the peculiar sacerdotal garment he had seen in the Captain's quarters.

"Unseemly, sir?" Spurrier's expression froze. "You disparage things of which you know nothing. That is unwise, sir."

"Ah," Hoare continued in his whisper. He turned to the frog. "By the by, Mr. Frobisher," he said, "I am ashamed to admit that I do not recognize your uniform. It is an unusual color."

Frobisher's grin nearly split his face in two. "I am hardly surprised, sir. It is the uniform of the Dorsetshire Fencible Horse, sir. Our regiment is known only for having run away at Sedgemoor, its only engagement, before it was even ordered to charge Monmouth's rebels."

"Oh?" Hoare asked. The frog's candor was astonishing but engaging.

"Yes, Captain. That is one of the reasons why I chose the Fencibles-the Brown-Bottomed Bastards, I've heard us called. You see, I'm a coward."

"Ah, yes. 'The Fencibles, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well,' " was Hoare's comment. Mentally, he wrote this phrase, too, into his commonplace book.

"That's just in the first place," Frobisher said. "In the second place, there's that matter of the crown of Ethelred."

"Martin!" His sister's voice was horrified. "You must not speak of the Frobisher honor in such a connection!"

"I have heard something, Mr. Frobisher, about the royal blood of a Frobisher ancestor, but I confess that I know nothing of it. Pray enlighten me."

"Not here, Captain, if you don't mind." Frobisher's grin widened. "Don't you agree that it would be a bit of beyond to discuss my father's dubious claim to the Crown-"

"Martin!"

Martin Frobisher and his sister might be siblings; they were not friends, it seemed. The green gentleman dismissed her protest and pressed on. "… while preparing to be received by a son of the man who wears it today?"

"I suppose so," Hoare said. He was finding he could like this man. "I seem to recall your father's having told me… when he and I first met and before we so unfortunately became estranged, that you held a commission as an officer of the Foot Guards."

"Me?" Frobisher's laugh was suited to his figure; it was a peculiar batrachian croak.

"My dear man! I've already admitted to you that I'm a coward. How can you imagine the Foot Guards accepting a coward of any shape, let alone mine?"

"Your candor is refreshing, sir," Hoare said.

"Speaking of uniforms," he whispered with a spanking-new, oily smile, "I must also admit, Captain Spurrier, that the facings of your coat are also unfamiliar to me.

"Fourteenth Hussars, sir," Spurrier said coldly. "I would be happy to make you better acquainted with them."

Hoare was about to respond with a remark that might have been about turncoats and might lead to an encounter he was becoming inclined to seek from this bounding man.

But Delancey, the flag secretary, bustled up, followed almost immediately by Francis Bennett, legal counsel to the Admiralty in Portsmouth.

"Francis," Delancey said to Bennett, with a cool nod.

"Francis," Bennett replied. The two men shared not only the same Christian name but also the same ambition to be the aide closest to Admiral Hardcastle as well as-or so Hoare had heard it whispered-enjoying the favors of the same mistress. Bennett had served Hoare as second in his rencontre with the late Lieutenant Wallace of Vantage. Delancey, however, like Hoare's friend Peter Gladden of Frolic, was Miss Felicia Hardcastle's suitor. Hoare knew well whose side he was on. Delancey could go to the devil.

"I must take you away from your friends, Captain," Delancey drawled to Hoare with obvious pleasure. "I need hardly remind you of the purpose for which you were commanded here. Not invited, commanded."

None too subtly, Delancey ran his courtier's eye over Hoare, hoping, Hoare knew, to find a flaw in his dress that would make his presentation to Cumberland impossible, after all. Finding none, he let Hoare make his bows to Miss Lydia and her two attendants before he led him through the crowd, to and into the sacred circle about His Royal Highness. It made Hoare think of the Nine Stones Circle, with which he had already become all too familiar.

Perhaps the order of introduction to the royal party was dictated by Hanoverian protocol. Like everyone else, Hoare knew that Cumberland, if he failed to bounce his brothers, one after another, off the steps to the English throne, aspired to that of Hanover. Whatever the reason, fat Felicia Hardcastle, being lowest in order of precedence, was the first within the circle to whom Delancey presented his captive.

Unintentionally, perhaps, the girl put Mr. Delancey in his place by asking hopefully if Hoare had any news of "dear Mr. Gladden" and by looking sorrowful when he said he could give her none.

"But did you know, Captain Hoare," she asked him with a happy sigh, "I am invited to his family, at Broadmead, just at the edge of the New Forest? I am so excited I can hardly speak! And I hear that you, too… But la! I must not tell!" She batted her little pinkish eyes at Hoare.

"Come along, Captain," Delancey said sourly, with a reproachful look at his Admiral's daughter, and stepped past her to make his bow to the woman with the sapphire eyes. Hoare followed suit.

"Mrs. Prettyman? May I introduce Captain Bartholomew Hoare? Captain Hoare is the-"

"Oh, I have heard of Captain Hoare. I am Selene, Captain Hoare. Selene Prettyman, wife of Colonel Ferdinand Prettyman," Mrs. Prettyman said.

Mr. Delancey took patronizing pity on Hoare. "Colonel Prettyman is one of H. R. H.'s equerries, Captain," he explained as Hoare lowered his head to her extended gloved hand. "Presently indisposed, sad to say," Delancey added.

Hoare rose from his bow to see those sapphire eyes fixing his own faded gray ones from beneath long lashes. As he had thought, they needed to look up only slightly. The lashes were black. They made the eyes enormous, searching.

"In fact, at least in part, Captain Hoare is why I am here," Selene Prettyman went on.

"Ma'am?" Hoare whispered. What had this lissome Cleopatra to do with him?

"You are surprised, sir," she said. "You are known to Mr. Goldthwait, who thinks well of you."

Then, seeing that Hoare had not twigged, she offered him a tactful reminder. "Mr. John Goldthwait, of Chancery Lane."

Now Hoare remembered. Mr. Goldthwait, a small, lean, weary-looking, unremarkable man, had interrogated him extensively at the Navy Tavern when Hoare had delivered his explanation of the Vantage murder. In some way, Hoare recalled, he must be involved with Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie. He found it hard to remember that, though he had never seen the unknown Sir Hugh, since the latter never left London, he was his master and not his host Sir George Hardcastle here in Portsmouth. That, of course, was why Royal Duke flew the White Ensign. Sir Hugh was a Vice Admiral of the White, while Sir George was a mere Rear Admiral of the Blue.

Come to think of it, it had been then, too, that Hoare had been presented to Cumberland's brother, Admiral Duke William of Clarence. In some capacity, Goldthwait had been one of Clarence's train. Was Selene Prettyman likewise part of Cumberland's? If so, why?

"This puzzles you," Selene Prettyman said. "Never mind for now. Later, we shall talk. If not tonight, sir, then certainly before I return to London. I am to be found at the Three Suns. Until then…" She turned away with a gracious smile. Delancey disappeared, returning, Hoare suspected, to his Admiral's daughter, his hopes in that quarter evidently still unquenched. "While the cat's away," would be Delancey's maxim.

Hoare himself went on up the receiving line to Lady Hardcastle and her husband. In her figure and her fittings, Lady Hardcastle showed the world what her daughter would look like in thirty years. The prospect was not a pleasant one. But as Hoare knew, she was a kindhearted woman and a good wife and mother.

The Admiral acknowledged Hoare's bow for the entire family, then said to the scarlet figure at his side, "Your Highness, it is my pleasure to present Commander Bartholomew Hoare, of, er, HMS Royal Duke."

The Duke of Cumberland put his hands on his hips and stared fixedly at Hoare with his one good eye.

" What what? You call yourself Commander of a royal Duke, sir? I'll have you know that we royal Dukes are commanded by no man-except, of course, our father, the King."

Hoare held his breath. Was Cumberland jesting, or was he really displeased? He stood transfixed, awaiting his doom. The murmured voices within hearing fell silent.

"Haw! I've been waitin' to say that to somebody ever since Abercrombie told me about that yacht of yours. Then I remembered. Me brother Billy told me he'd put a Hoare into Royal Duke. Ought to be t'other way round, of course. Wouldn't be the first time that's happened, as me brother Wales would be the first to admit! Hee hee hee!"

The silent sycophants in the circle broke into their obliging laughter, and Hoare felt his face go red. He would have happily called another man out for that kind of remark, but… challenge Lieutenant General H. R. H. the Duke of Cumberland? He summoned up a weak laugh of his own.

The weak laugh was cut short by a sharp poke in the ribs from the royal fingers, extended daggerlike.

"Hee hee hee!" said Royalty again. "Just my little joke. Seriously, my man, I've a fancy to inspect your little ship. Never had a chance while she was lyin' in… in…"

"Chatham, Your Highness," the Admiral supplied.

"Yes, of course. Chatham. Tomorrow, then, what what?" With their what-what's, His Majesty's sons had acquired at least one of their father's idiosyncrasies.

"Aye aye, sir," Hoare whispered, aghast. He himself had spent little more than twenty-four hours altogether aboard his new command. How was he to make her ready to show off to this royal villain in so short a time? He must shove off forthwith, Duke or no Duke. There was not a moment to lose.

Admiral Sir George Hardcastle had the well-deserved reputation of being a grim and a merciless man. Hoare had already discovered, however, that with respect to Hardcastle's portly daughter, he was neither grim nor merciless. Hoare now perceived the same exception in his Admiral's attitude toward royalty. Both departures from normal were understandable, Hoare thought. In the one case, it could be attributed to love; in the other, to fear. Thus, in the agonized day that was to follow, Admiral Hardcastle gave his subordinate no vestige of support.

"So, Captain Hoare," came a familiar voice at his elbow. "You are making your mark among the mighty, I see.

It was Eleanor Graves's friend, Miss Jane Austen, whom he had last encountered in Wells after both had happened to attend the ordination of Arthur Gladden, late Lieutenant of the late Vantage frigate.

"Well met, sir," she said. "Lady Hardcastle has been telling me more of your recent good fortune, of which I had known very little."

"You and Lady Hardcastle are acquaintances, then?" he asked.

"She is a connection of my close friend, Augusta Branson. I am her guest tonight. But tell me, sir: do you remember being introduced to Miss Anne Gladden on the happy occasion of her brother's ordination?"

"Indeed, I do, Miss Austen." Miss Anne was a classic beauty, blond, blue-eyed, sunny of nature, about nineteen, and very, very small. She would be little taller than Hoare's ward, Jenny.

"A very charming person," he said noncommittally.

She nodded thoughtfully. "Infinite riches in a little room," she observed.

"Pray why do you ask?" Hoare inquired.

"The subject came up," she said, smiled graciously, and went her way.

Before the perplexed Hoare escaped from the reception, Delancey stopped him to inform him with ill-suppressed glee that he was to warp Royal Duke from her present mooring to a more convenient spot at the lesser naval pier. It would be more convenient, that is, for the boarding of an awkward, lubberly gaggle of landsmen such as Cumberland and his entourage. This movement would have been routine enough for any other of His Majesty's ships. There would be no need to set even one of the brig's beautifully harbor-furled sails.

For Royal Duke, however, her crew and her new Commander, the maneuver made for a morning of public humiliation and private pain.

The performance the day before of Joy, the boatswain, should have warned him. Clay had already warned him that but for one or two, Hoare's crew knew no more about ship handling than so many of Portsmouth's brutes, those red, stumpy women who earned their bread by servicing sailors. Now he was to learn that while Mr. Clay clearly knew what orders to give them, the ship's people, while willing enough, had not the slightest notion of how to obey them.

Not one but both boats put over the side to tow the yacht slipped from their slings as they were lowered. The coxswain of one had forgotten to insert the plug in its bottom, and it quickly filled. Once the tow lines had been passed and the red-faced coxswains had attempted to set a stroke, matters got no better. The oarsmen knew no more of their duty than a bevy of schoolgirls. First, one caught a crab, then another. An oar went adrift.

At last, the yacht began to creep across the short distance to her berth, towing in turn Hoare's own tiny craft, her new tender. If a boat could look mischievous, Neglectful did. The sight began to catch the attention of nearby vessels, and jeering remarks began to pass having to do with "washerwomen," "farmers," "whore's delights," and worse. Echoes of these appellations, Hoare assured himself bitterly, bade fair to spread throughout the fleet and never die.

Perhaps confused by the barrage of insults, the coxswain of the larboard boat ran it afoul of his mate's, breaking one oar and sending still another adrift. The contemptuous laughter grew. The hapless Hoare stood on his command's quarterdeck, watching her first public performance before the crack sailors of the Royal Navy.

By God's grace, Clay had had the foresight to station men in Royal Duke's chains and at the tip of her bowspirit with fending poles. For just as she was gathering way, it became clear to Hoare at least that she was about to run aboard a smart brig, bow to bow.

"Sheer off!" came a cry from the brig. She was Niobe, 18. "Sheer off, ye gormless lubbers!"

Without audible orders, some of the other vessel's crew began to hang rolled hammocks over her side and pick up poles of their own. The two vessels neared each other like two knights tilting in a nightmare slow-motion tournament, their bowspirits aimed at each other like lances.

But, again by God's grace, Royal Duke's meager tonnage wrought to her benefit. Between them, the two crews boomed their vessels apart. Even the larboard boat avoided being crushed between the two hulls like a walnut. Only his neglected Alecto-lately Neglectful-towing astern, rammed her bowspirit, as if resentfully, into‹ Royal Duke's, stern sheets with a crunch and a shattering of Hoare's cabin window lights.

Once Hoare's wayward command had been laid at last alongside the pier, a gang of dockyard mateys took charge, mooring her and her disobedient tender in proper Navy fashion, and left her and her crew to sort themselves out as best they could. Hoare had to admit to himself that, cack-handed farmers though his people might be, they at least knew how to pretty their ship to a fare-thee-well. Obviously, he thought, that was all the seamanship the late Captain Oglethorpe had required of them.

Promptly at four bells of the forenoon watch, the Duke appeared at the entrance to the dock, accompanied by Admiral Sir George Hardcastle and a small glittering entourage. To his displeasure, Hoare saw that Captain Walter Spurrier was among them. In proper precedence, they crossed the brow connecting Royal Duke with the pier. That it was raining lightly would please no one in the inspecting party. Nor would the pitiful trill of the single boatswain's pipe they could summon up; Hoare could have done far better with his own instrument. The solitary side-boy was no boy at all but Lorimer, the wizened, smallest, and feeblest of Royal Duke's clerks. Hoare knew well he, Hoare, would be blamed.

Cumberland made no pretense to being a Naval person, but a martinet is a martinet, and he showed that he, like his brother Kent, knew the martinet trade backward and forward. With a gesture, Cumberland halted the thin twittering of the pipe. He barely acknowledged the salutes of Hoare and Clay but stared at the little Lieutenant as though he were a bottled fetus and began his inspection.

At the sight of the brig's complement of green-uniformed Marines, the Duke stopped short.

"Who the hell are these? Or what?" Hoare had used the identical words when he first saw them, but where he could only summon a whisper, the Duke roared.

"Our Marine detachment, sir," Hoare replied.

"Marines wear red coats, you ass! By whose orders are these men out of uniform?"

"They are trained and equipped as riflemen, sir, and have been uniformed as such."

"By whose orders, I asked you! Are you deaf as well as dumb, sir?"

"Admiralty orders, may it please Your Royal Highness," Hoare said. This would be safe, he hoped.

"It does not please My Royal Highness," the Duke snarled. "That may be the way you sailors run your service, but, by God, you'd never get away with it in the army! Lobsters should be served cooked, not raw. Isn't that so, sir? What what? Isn't it, then?"

"Sir," Hoare said.

"Bah," said the Duke. "Black buttons, indeed. My word. They look like a batch of currants in a spoiled pudding."

Hoping the worst was over, Hoare accompanied H. R. H. down the even lines of Royal Duke's crew. Cumberland halted before one trio and looked down his nose.

"And what are these?" he barked.

He was looking at three reddish gnomes. Hoare had never seen these members of his family himself. They had hidden, or been hidden, from his sight. They made him believe he was host to figures from some obscure Celtic myth.

But Cumberland was obviously waiting for an answer.

"Topmen, sir," Hoare whispered wildly. "Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior. Dutchmen, all. They also serve as sappers and miners as required."

"Hmph," the Duke said, and passed on. To Hoare's relief, the Duke did not even notice Taylor as he passed her, perhaps because she had wisely put on a smocked shirt belonging to a larger shipmate. The shirt was a loose fit and obscured her breasts. Since her thick queue was no longer than some of her male shipmates', she gave no clue to mark her sex.

Hancock, the pigeon fancier, had not yet had time to move his birds or disguise their ungainly habitat. The man himself hovered before the ramshackle construction as if trying to hide it from the inspecting party, surrounded by the miasma stench of his breath. Spurrier pretended to gag.

"Good God," the Duke said. "What have we here? Captain of the ship's shambles?"

"Pigeons, sir," Hoare whispered.

"Pigeons? What for, man, eh? For a pye?" At the idea of a feed, Cumberland's heavy-lidded eyes almost gleamed.

"Er… no, Your Highness. Messenger pigeons. But we have laid out a small collation below, sir."

Before he clambered below through the open scuttle that Hoare indicated to him with a bow, Cumberland turned, hands on hips, to look about Royal Duke's deck.

"At least you have the decency to keep your guns polished," he admitted, but then, with a glance, resurveyed the crew he had just inspected.

"This pitiful little barge demeans her title. I shall recommend to me father that he have it renamed, if not sunk. Honey-Barge might suit, what what? Or Dustbin. Ya-as. 'H.M.S. Dustbin.' Hee hee hee."

Hoare knew the people in the neighboring vessels had missed no single word of this.

While the Admiral had not opened his mouth during the Duke's inspection, he had certainly been listening, for his face was purple. Silence did not come easily to flag officers, even in the presence of royalty.

"I shall speak with you later, Mr. Hoare," the Admiral grated as he passed.

Belowdecks with a few selected cronies-including Walter Spurrier, who commenced to snoop about Hoare's belongings-the Duke apparently found matters somewhat more to his liking. Among the dishes offered him as refreshment, he sighted a platter of sherried lobster meats, gleaming in the lamplight on the great cabin table before the stern windows.

"There. You see? Someone here knows the proper color for lobsters. Hee hee hee."

The Duke placed himself before the platter and began to feed. When he had emptied it completely, he turned to Hoare and grunted, "Well, man, at least you keep a good cook. Have him sent to me. I'll put him to use, by Jove. Ya-as."

He looked up from the empty platter through the hastily repaired stern window. Seeing Neglectful lying peacefully in the light rain behind Royal Duke, he grunted again, more forcefully.

"Like the looks of that little boat. Have her delivered to me in Plymouth. With yer cook. Ya-as."

With that, he belched and returned on deck. Spurrier lagged behind him.

"You go to sea in this little thing?" he asked. "Makes me want to spew just to think of it. Can't stand the water, y'know.

"Oh, and by the by, Hoare, stay away from the Nine Stones Circle, d'ye hear? If you should be found there at the wrong time, you'll get a welcome that might surprise you most unpleasantly."

With that, Spurrier turned and followed his master topside.

Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, departed Royal Duke without further ceremony, followed by his snickering entourage. He left her Commander alone on deck, shaken and sick at heart.

For Hoare, this first full day in command of a Naval vessel had dealt him a foul blow and one he had not anticipated. True, Royal Duke's battery was trivial. But at least, he had thought, she could go to sea if permitted and serve as a dispatch ship, if nothing else. Now he knew that he would not dare take her off soundings, if even so far. Her crew would be too seasick to go aloft. Besides, they would have no idea what to do when they got there.

He must berate someone; he needed a cat to kick. There being no cat aboard as yet, Clay would have to do. He was handy, was unable to kick back, and was smaller than Hoare, as well.

"May I ask, Mr. Clay," Hoare whispered as soon as he could get the hapless man below, "how-beginning with this morning's bungled performance… between the mooring and the dock-you contrived to disgrace your ship, your Commander, and yourself so completely?"

Clay's face reddened. "Our hands are untrained, sir," he said. "They are proficient enough at their trades and at ship's housekeeping, but they are totally ignorant of seamanship."

"And whose fault is that, may I inquire?"

Clay could look anywhere, it seemed, except at his Captain. "Only a few Royal Dukes, sir-Iggleden, Joy, the woman Taylor-have ever been to sea at all. None of the standing officers."

"What? Surely…" Hoare could summon no words.

"I could not believe it myself, sir, when I first joined her. But when I discovered that the ships's people had no notion of how to cast off, let alone make sail, and when I began to take the standing officers to task for such neglect of their duty, they assured me that it was actually required of them. In fact, I was shown a document among the ship's papers in which Admiral Abercrombie explicitly forbade her Commander to take her to sea under any circumstances.

"Even worse, sir, I was forbidden to allow any of the crew aloft, even in harbor, unless they were fitted with lubber's harnesses. Virtually every man jack and woman jill might as well have been clerks in some city office. That's what several of them had been, sir, after all," he had the courage to add.

Hoare felt his sacrificial lamb beginning to elude him.

"Instead of using your undoubted creative powers, Mr. Clay," he rasped, "to dream up reasons for having disobeyed my orders… to prepare Royal Duke for an inspection, by royalty, at that, you might better have applied it to finding ways to carry them out."

He cleared his broken throat. He knew very well he was being most unfair, but he needed a cat to kick, and Clay had to be it.

"By the evidence of this morning, your excuse must certainly be true, although you can imagine how it reflects on your own performance

… Nevertheless, it leads me to wonder how you managed to bring Royal Duke around from Chatham and down the Channel to Portsmouth."

Mr. Clay hung his head and stood mute. That was all any junior dared do.

"Well, Mr. Clay?"

"Our passengers, sir," Clay said at last.

"What?"

"Our passengers. A draft of men for Niobe, under a midshipman, with their own petty officers. The mid in charge of the draft showed me his orders."

"Which were?"

"To place himself and his men under my command, sir, for the duration of our passage to Portsmouth. I issued my orders to them, and the Niobes brought her here.

"Besides, most of our own people were incapacitated by seasickness as soon as we passed Greenwich, sir," Clay added.

"My God," Hoare said. "Do you mean to say that by ordering this poor mismanned barky to sea the Admiralty deliberately put her reputation at risk?"

"It appears so, sir," Mr. Clay said. "Of course, they could not have foreseen the Duke's contribution of this morning."

"What did Their Lordships think it would do to her- our-credibility in the fleet?"

"I can hardly say, sir."

Hoare lay long awake that night, lying snug in the swinging bed Captain Oglethorpe had left behind him and reviewing the painful course of the day and the blunders that had preceded it. How he himself had blundered again and again: swanning about that Channel gale in the then-named Neglectful-"Neglectful," indeed! — instead of standing ready to board Royal Duke immediately upon her being sighted off Spithead; paying court to Eleanor Graves when he should have been questioning the Weymouth watch; playing games with Abel Dunaway when he should have been pressing him for facts about his smuggling trade.

Above all, he should have fended off, somehow, Cumberland's ill-starred inspection. If he had kept at his duty and stayed in Dorchester himself to track down the Captains' killers, he would never have been commanded to the reception. Instead, he had let Taylor's message entice him back to Portsmouth, where Cumberland had his chance to torment him. Damn Taylor; damn Cumberland.

Come what might, he would never turn his own beloved little Alecto over to Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. Never. He would scuttle her first.

Admiral Abercrombie in London may have been justified in commanding that Royal Duke should never go to sea. Having had the courage to break all precedence in the Service and recruit her crew for its members' qualifications, regardless of age, seamanship, sex, or previous condition of servitude, he must surely have sought to ensure that the yacht, her peculiar people, and her treasury of secrets would remain safe, at least from the perils of the sea. Capture by the French, in particular. It would be a far, far better thing for Sir Hugh to scuttle her first, and himself with her. So, in the safe headquarters haven of Deptford, this constraint might have been acceptable. But now Royal Duke lay off Spithead, surrounded by fighting ships and fighting men. She was no toothless lighter; she was visibly designed to take the sea. She carried sail. Moreover, she carried guns, albeit tiny ones, which made her a fighting ship as well and not a mere handmaiden to wait upon her betters.

The effect this would have on the credibility of her secret work would be catastrophic. Judging from the jeers of the ships she had crawled past, and nearly into, this morning and the avidity with which their crews had overheard Cumberland's broadcast remarks, Royal Duke's mission of supplying the fleet with believable information about the French might already have failed. Unless Abercrombie let her loose to learn her maritime duty, she and her people would remain the laughingstock of the Navy and any information emanating from her would leave the Naval world a-sneer.

Hoare's stomach churned. He must speak with Admiral Sir George Hardcastle, since Sir George was his Administrative Commander as long as Royal Duke lay in Portsmouth. Thereafter, he must prepare a report to his true superior, Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie, in London. Hoare did not know which he dreaded the more: the Port Admiral's predictable outrage or the task of convincing the unknown Sir Hugh that he must reverse a mistaken command. And with permission or without it, he must somehow find a way to whip into shape an unfamiliar, untrained crew. Still viewing these dismal prospects, Hoare finally began to doze off.

God, he had forgotten the bloody ciphers. He had been intending to read them, and he had not. Instead, he had stuffed them casually into his uniform coat before he rushed off to last night's disastrous reception. Please, Lord, let them still be there. Wearily, he climbed out of bed, struck a light, lit a candle, recovered the decipherment with a relieved sigh, and ensconced himself in his night robe in Sir Hugh Abercrombie's enormous chair.

They might be en clair now, but they were still gibberish, written in imitation of James from one Old Testament character to another: Jehu, Ahab, Asa, Levi. Someone named Saul. Someone else named Jael, another named Sisera. Hoare wished he had paid more attention, of Sundays, to the ministering clergyman, back when father had hauled his Hoares off to be sanctified.

He must do some writing. He sighed again, decided he must make a night of it, and sat down again, this time at his writing table. He pulled out a little-used Bible and a sheet of foolscap and began to scribble.

By the time the gray of dawn began to light Royal Duke's beautiful broad stern window and the miniature gallery behind it, he had assigned some of the names, somewhat uncertainly, to some of the persons who were-or might be-involved in a possible plot against the Crown. It was all very vague and quite unsatisfactory for a direct-minded sailor.

"Levi," he was quite sure, was Spurrier. "Jehu," the furious driver according to the handy concordance he had found in Holy Writ at about four bells, was probably the late Lieutenant Kingsley, hanged for the murder of Adam Hay, his Captain in Vantage. "Asa" was certainly a person of importance, the man whom Jenny Jagger's da had described as "Himself' and the Francophone Moreau as "lui"-Sir Thomas Frobisher leaped into his mind. And how about the Duke of Cumberland? How did he happen to turn up in his thinking?

Oh, dear, he told himself; this was getting him nowhere. He locked the packet of messages in his strongbox with the orders placing him in command of Royal Duke and turned in.