Hoare and the matter of treason

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. Far 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.

"However, 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.

Hoare found boarding all but complete. Convicts and their relatives, about to be parted, lined rail and dockside, howling their last farewells back and forth. Not all the howls were tragic: "Bring us back a parrot, Jem!" or "Take good care of Peggo wile I'm gone! Know wot I mean?"

A chaise drew up to the entry port, followed by a substantial wagon. From the first, the three Frobishers and Sir Thomas's guards emerged. One of the latter hailed Sanditon, summoned a deck officer, and the transfer of Sir Thomas's traveling chattels began. His would not be a hardship case, Hoare observed.

At last, the baronet himself embraced his ugly daughter and took the hand of his ugly son. He climbed slowly aboard the vessel that would be his home for the next hundred days or more.

"Cast off forrard!"

"Pick up the tow, there!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

"Aloft there, the larboard watch, and loose sails! One hand there, stop in the tops and crosstrees to overhaul the gear. Leave the staysails fast.

"Lay out there, four or five of you, and loose the headsails!

"Here, you, lay down out of that; there's enough men out there to eat them sails!"

And so it went, that old familiar, flexible ritual of getting underway from dockside, a blend between the fighting navy's sharp commands and the casual obscenity of a merchantman. As a transport, Sanditon had a foot in each camp. Transports were slovenly ships, and convict transports worse yet. For all his cravings for duty at sea, Hoare hardly envied Sir Thomas Frobisher the months ahead.

The baronet had inveigled one of his servants into accompanying him, Hoare had noted, but not Dan'l O'Gock. Hoare could not imagine a solitary Inuit among those antipodean blackfellows.

Now that Sanditon was out of easy hail from ashore, the crowd began to wander off. Before the young Frobishers could return to their chaise, Hoare stepped up to them and doffed his hat to the lady.

"Will you take tea, sir?" he asked Martin Frobisher. The other looked at him astonished, while his sister sniffed and tossed her head.

"Sir!"

"Come on, Lyd," Martin said. "Hoare's tryin' to make amends, can't you see? Delighted, Hoare."

Blassingame, it developed from Taylor's inquiry, was more fully acquainted with the Greenwich underworld than he had revealed. The next night, he asked leave for a run ashore, to bring together a cove or two that 'mought be able to bear an 'and under the circumstances, sir.' "

Upon Blassingame's return, at four bells in the morning watch, a sprinkling of snow had begun to sift from the night sky. He was accompanied by an apparition. Or was it "apparitions"? For the moment, Hoare could not be sure.

"Bubble and Squeak, sir," Hoare understood his man to say in introducing whatever it was.

"What?" Hoare whispered.

"Bubble and Squeak, sir. This-un be Bubble, this-un be Squeak."

As if to demonstrate that two separate entities confronted Hoare, Bubble made to knuckle his forehead. There was, Hoare thought, something peculiar about his gesture. Squeak essayed a bob, and emitted an eponymous sound.

Bubble was unquestionably the most hirsute man Hoare had ever seen. In the wintry gloom, nothing could be seen from behind the wild growth on his head but the dim glow of his eyes, the protrusion of a flat nose, and the gleam of a bashful grin. More hair thrust out of his rags, and below the chopped-off sleeves that covered his arms. Now Hoare could explain the oddity of the man's salute; he was devoid of hands.

"Bubble were topman in Diligence, storeship, sir, when the Algerines took 'er in ninety-three," Blassingame explained. " 'E were ransomed, sir, 'e's tole me, but 'e's tried to escape in a skiff, an' they chopped off'is mauleys 'fore lettin' 'im loose."

"Barstids," Bubble declared in a low placid, voice.

"They put 'im up in 'ospital 'ere," Blassingame went on, "an' Squeak took up wif'im."

"Squeak," said Squeak, a heap of miscellaneous rags enclosing what was surely a female being, and was clinging so closely to the handless man that Hoare could not tell where one ended and the other began.

"They jumped ship a few years back, they did," Blassingame said, "an' settled down to the hat-out lay 'ereabouts, a-beggin' off the sailors in from across river, an' a-dossin' down in the tunnels underneaf the buildin's a-runnin' back up 'ill. Between 'em, sir, they knows them tunnels up an' down, back an' forth. 'Ole warren of'em there be, ye knows, sir."

Hoare had heard.

"That barstid Ogle, what's took up with the toff from Town, 'e knows 'oles most as good as we does, sir," Bubble declared.

" 'E means Goldthwait, I'm sure, sir," Blassingame said.

"Then Goldthwait is hereabouts?"

"Sure of it, sir."

"Hmm," Hoare whispered. Like a snowman, a plan began to roll up and take shape in his mind.

"We are expecting snow tomorrow, I hear," he said.

"Or the next night, perhaps. Heavy at times, too," Mr. Clay said at his side.

"That would make for considerable inconvenience to all hands, I think." Snow and its accompanying ice, indeed, posed many extraordinary hazards for vessels under sail, as Hoare himself remembered much too well from the winters he had spent, on station in Beetle, off Cape Sable, years ago.

"No landsman, I'm sure, will be surprised if we take precautionary measures," he went on.

With this, Hoare began to prepare his battle plan. He remembered.

"You sailors use as many bells, it seems, as all the parishes of London put together," John Goldthwait had told him at that first meeting in Chancery Lane. He might consider himself not only omnipotent but omniscient as well. In fact, though, as Hoare knew from that one careless remark, beyond tidewater he was ignorant as any newborn babe. Admiralty official he might be, but he knew nothing of the sea and seamen's ways. "Keep close to my desk, and never go to sea, And I can be the ruler of the King's navee," Mr. Goldthwait might have caroled of a night. Liking the notion, Hoare promptly popped it into that little mental commonplace book of his. Its reappearance told him he had recovered from thirty-six hours on his feet.

Goldthwait's eyes might be ignorant of the sea, but they would surely be as sharp as his mind. So: to those eyes and those of any of his people, Royal Duke must appear unbuttoned, relaxed and roistering over her captain's escape, with his wife, from Gracechurch Street. From the Greenwich Port Captain, then, Hoare obtained permission to tow Royal Duke into the dock.

The memory of his first, horrible experience in command of Royal Duke in Portsmouth was vivid in Hoare's memory as he watched Mr. Clay and the seagoing clerks bring the brig handily in and make her fast, her larboard side next the pier, with doubled dock lines and springs leading forward from her quarter and aft from her bows.

It was not until deep dusk of the following day that they rigged the awning, and it was not until then that Hoare revealed his plan and made certain additional preparations.

After completing them, the party lay below for supper; they then left a few lucky comrades behind to roister noisily, took up their assigned positions on deck and overside in Hoare's pinnace and the green launch, and waited-in the knowledge that they might have to go through the whole rigmarole again, night after night, until the attack descended upon them. If that happened, Hoare had assured them, each Royal Duke would have his turn on roistering duty.

At the entry port squatted Blassingame, who had mysteriously gone missing for two days after introducing Bubble and Squeak and who, as punishment, had been deprived of his roistering watch and placed on anchor watch of nights. From his slurred voice, however, his shipmates had comforted him with more than apples, for Hoare could hear him moaning an endless, tuneless, tipsy song. Hoare lodged himself with a stout hatchet under the starboard shrouds of Royal Duke's foremast, where he settled down, adjusted his lanky form to resemble a layabout keg as much as possible, and, his breath sweeping softly upstream on a steady easterly wind, made ready for another night of alert, snowbound idleness.

It was the second night of roistering and waiting. There was silence on deck; from below came only the cheerful sound of voices and an occasional burst of song. A faint light rose from the skylight amidships. Good. The roisterers were in full swing. The roistering, incredibly, sounded a trifle forced in Hoare's ears. It went to show, he thought sleepily, that at bottom the Royal Dukes were not true roaring seamen. The moon, just past full, was late in rising, and when it rose, it was quickly quenched by a thickening cloud layer. It began to snow, more thickly by the minute. Hoare sat against the coach-house, outboard of the awning, concealed in a loose boat cloak.

Before very long, Hoare realized that he was seeing much more than he would have expected to see under these weather conditions. In fact, despite the snowfall, the brig's full length lay open to his sight, in an eerie rosy glow. He puzzled, then realized that the light derived from the huge mass of London's lamps and candles, reflected from the clouds. Well, so be it. There was nothing he could do about it; moreover, the canopy still cast a shadow.

From between two dockside buildings came the softest of rustles, from below Royal Duke's cutwater came the softest of splashes. As Hoare watched, a shadowy arm reached up, groped about, grasped Royal Duke's rail at the heads, and heaved up a shadowy figure. There was the tiny snap of someone's thumb against fingers; a second figure joined the first, a third, and then a fourth. One at a time, each shadow slipped over the coaming in the bows, beyond the rigged canopy. Hoare turned his eyes aft without budging his head; he would remain a keg until every invader was well into the bag. In ones and twos, more swarmed aboard, until Hoare counted a near dozen. Three carried glowing objects-slow match, most likely. Out of the corner of his eye, he clearly saw a figure standing below Royal Duke in the dock's trodden snow, face upraised in his direction, just as he had last seen it: Mr. Goldthwait. Just behind him stood another form. The man Ogle?

"I shall break him!" came his enemy's enraged croak, "with a rod of iron! I shall dash him in pieces like a potter's vessel!"

Crack! The first caller's feet went out from under him, and then another's. Hoare set fingers to lips and sounded his emergency whistle. Its shriek filled the air.

"Now!" Bold cried from the fore crosstrees. He cast off the awning. From her post in the main top, Taylor followed suit. As the canvas fell flopping over the intruders, the roisterers swarmed up from the fore hatch and the lurkers overside from the boats. In an orderly circle, they began to work their way over the awning, belaying pins in hand, stomping and thumping anything that moved underneath as they went. Grunts of distress came from beneath the squirming awning. The pair on the snowy pier paused, alarmed perhaps.

A cleaver appeared from below, ripped the canvas, and a familiar head broke out.

"Welcome back aboard, Green," Leese said in a savage voice. He swatted the woman's cleaver away and batted his belaying pin into the side of her head. She dropped soundlessly.

"Hammer that man!" came Mr. Clay's roar. A Royal Duke obeyed, and a boarder, escaping from under the awning, collapsed before he could scramble back overboard. The two men alongside turned now, as if to leave their beleaguered party to its fate. At Hoare's ear, a firepot sizzled, stank, and went out.

Among the combatants, marlinespike at the ready, roved Dan'l O'Gock, Anglo-Inuit. Thrice, Hoare saw him pause over a head, examine it as if to assure himself that it belonged to a boarder, and then tap it sharply with the spike. Hoare remembered that, however much the people of his fathers craved animal blood, they were chary indeed of shedding that of humans.

Having closed his trap on the boarders, Hoare found he could barely rise from his squat. He struggled, but managed only to drop his hatchet. He was forty-four, and far too stiff and chilled for battle. The pair below-Goldthwait and his underworld guide Ogle, if that were he-were on the move, and he must follow. For Goldthwait still held Hoare's Jenny. Hoare would see which man would be broken with Goldthwait's rod of iron.

Lurching to his feet at last, he drew a belaying pin from the row in the pinrail at his knees, hurled it at the retreating pair. It skidded wildly, as he knew it would; he lacked the eye his womenfolk possessed. He stuck two more pins into his belt and clambered across Royal Duke's rail, to take up the chase, while the shouts of combat aboard his command now sounded somewhat more feeble behind his back. For a stunned second, he wondered what they should do with these people, but then decided to leave the question to Mr. Clay, whose bellowed battle orders still filled the snowy air.

His quarry's double track, already filling with snow, led up the wide steps of Greenwich Palace. Knowing he was falling behind with every step, suppressing a growing sense of futility, he followed.

Set into the left-hand valve of the formal bronze palace gate, a smaller doorway stood ajar, leaving a crack of uninformative blackness within. Hoare entered here, to stand in the silent dark, his eyes helpless, ears and nose a-prick. From his left, a cold, dank zephyr brought him a tantalizingly familiar smell. He could swear he associated it with Sir Thomas and Goldthwait. Yes, by Jove! Russia leather! He turned and commenced a blind march along the marble pavement.

Within moments, he had no idea which way to go. He stood in the midst of blank, dank darkness. The darkness was not absolute; from some high clerestory, a faint glow of reflected city lights reached him, but he could make out nothing of his surroundings.

Yank.

Like a startled hare, Hoare leapt in place and dropped back to his feet, prepared to flee.

"Me, sir. Bubble. They gone that-a-way. Come along, if ye pleases."

A hand, certainly not Bubble's, took his. It was soft and gentle, yet surprisingly strong. He was in the clutches of the Struldbrug, Squeak.

"I'll show that barstid Ogle 'oo knows theseyear tunnels," Bubble growled, " 'im or me. 'E'll be goin' parst the beer an' then a-takin' the spy-'ole, the eejit."

The handless man's mention of "beer" left Hoare feeling more confused than ever, but, with no alternative to hand, he let himself be towed along in Squeak's wake. The "beer" question resolved itself in the next chamber, a vast one in which rested an amorphous looming construction, ebon in the cavernous space. Close to, it revealed itself a jury-rigged thing of green lath, held together by lengths of crape-the abandoned bier where the victor of Trafalgar had lain in state before being rowed upstream by Hoare's acquaintance Hornblower. Having heard of the other's struggles, Hoare knew he could never have managed the job, even if he had had the voice for it.

"Shh, now," Bubble breathed into Hoare's ear. "They might justa took 'idin' inside. There be a bolt-'ole below 'er, an' that barstid Ogle mought knowa." Hoare drew a belaying pin from his waistband and followed the leader under a projection of the bier, into utter, Stygian gloom. Within, he heard scrabbling sounds, and hoped it was only Bubble, exploring the inner fastnesses.

"They still be a'ead of us, ye know, sir," were Bubble's next words. "If yer game fer it, we can cotch up on 'em, most of the ways, any'ow, if we jes' eeeases oursel's through 'ere…"

Hoare returned the belaying pin to its place and let Squeak take him in tow again, along passage after turning passage, until, having long since lost all sense of direction, his sense of time followed it in going adrift. Twice, they emerged into comparative light, once in what appeared to be a long-abandoned bedchamber of state, and again onto a long loggia. It was still snowing, and Hoare found the dim gray light all but dazzling.

It was just as the three were about to duck into still another passageway-this one a good five feet high and cased in rusticated stone-that Squeak stumbled and fell, clutching an ankle in silent pain. Bubble, who had just opened the way for their entrance, turned, bent over the ankle, and held a muttered conversation with its owner. When he stood erect again, his concern was visible even through his wild growth of hair.

"That's it for us, sir. Squeak can't walk, not t'rough these narrer ways."

Hoare's heart dropped. Was he to be left here, then-where, he had no idea-not only blocked from recovering his Jenny, but even blocked from seeking his own selfish escape?

"Look, sir. If ye 'ave a steady 'ead an' a good memory, I think I can tell yer the rest of the way to w'ere yer friend an' that barstid Ogle are laid up, most likely. This gate, mebbe ye'll even get there a'ead of 'em.

"Are ye game for it?"

When Hoare, having no choice, chose with a terse nod, Bubble commenced to subject him to a memory drill that far outdid the torment he had experienced as a mid, of learning where every line in a three-masted vessel was made fast, and under which circumstances. In the earlier drills, the boatswain had embedded each line into Hoare's person for emphasis; Bubble simply thumped him with the club of his heavy right arm every time he missed a turning.

At last he declared himself satisfied. With a final shove, he propelled Hoare into the passage.

"Scrag that barstid Ogle for me!" he called in his hoarse voice as Hoare, taking a deep breath as if preparing to dive deep, plunged into the last labyrinth.

There was light at the end of the tunnel, a dull reddish light, partly obscured, once and then again, by what Hoare was certain from its motion could only be a stooped human figure. If he was right, it could only be an enemy-Goldthwait, or that barstid Ogle. Hoare remembered the last time he had been faced with the challenge of creeping up on an enemy to do him in; it had involved the hapless upstairs watch in Gracechurch Street. This situation differed, though, for his target was not so thoughtful as to be leaning over a rail, ready to be tipped overboard. Hoare debated, pulled off his soggy shoes, drew the clasp knife he had last drawn to release his Eleanor from bondage, unclasped it- softly, softly-tucked it between his teeth like a pirate in a melodrama, crawled up behind the target, leapt, drew, and sliced firmly across the other man's throat. He collapsed against Hoare with a hiss of escaping life blood, and a burst of foulness accompanied his death. It was not Goldthwait, so it must be Ogle.

Beyond, the tunnel widened into a small dim grotto lit only by a glow of charcoal, easily large enough to accommodate several men. A pile of rags occupied one corner, a pile that might have hidden Squeak. Some ten feet off, an arched door opened at the grotto's farther end. Between Hoare and the doorway, John Goldthwait was just turning-in response, perhaps, to some small sound of Hoare's. He was in the act of drawing a small, serviceable pistol. Hoare squatted, sprang, and in springing, remembered that his precious clasp knife lay behind him, abandoned in Ogle's blood. Hoare prepared to die.

As Hoare was still in mid-air, Goldthwait yelped with pain, kicked up one leg as if beginning some macabre pas seul, and fired the pistol into the grotto's ceiling. Hoare fell upon him amid a sprinkle of stone from above, and grappled.

Goldthwait might be doughty, but he was smaller than Hoare, and he was quickly the underdog. Somehow, besides, Hoare found himself gripping a long shard of porcelain; it was just long enough, he discovered, to grip and thrust under and up into Goldthwait's vitals.

Beneath him, Goldthwait went limp. His mouth opened, and a thin trail of blood trickled across his cheek.

"Maman?" he whispered, and again, "maman? Me voici, dans le jardin… Tu m'as laisse tout soul!

"Maman? Maman? Que j'ai peur… Ma…" His jaw dropped with a sigh, and his head fell to one side.

Utterly weary, Hoare rose, but could no more than crouch beside John Goldthwait. Absently, he reached out for the serviceable pistol. Why not? After all, it was his property.

Into his vacant stare swam a small, blood-smeared face, the face of Jennifer Hoare, formerly Jenny Jaggery, "orphing" of Portsmouth town.

"Oh, my dear child…" His whisper was broken.

"Da!" Jenny cried triumphantly into Hoare's chest. He looked down at her jubilant face.

"It worked!"

"What worked, child?" he asked.

"Why, the crumbs, of course, silly! The crumbs I kep a-droppin' as them coves drug me along through Lunnon an' down the tunnels!" In her brief return to the underworld, Jenny had let her gentility lapse, Hoare could not help noticing. Ah well, she had kept her life, and her spirit. The gentility would be back; perhaps the cat Order had it in his possession.

"Yes, my dear, your stratagem worked," he lied, and set her down with an extra squeeze.

"But how did you bloody your face?" he asked.

"Why, I bit 'im, that's what! 'E din't understand 'ow young 'uns can wiggle about an' around, an' get loose o' most every-thin', so w'en I begun to get peckishlike, I wiggled loose and filled up on their vittles. 'Orful, they was, too!"

Saved by my womenfolk again, Hoare told himself ruefully. First, there had been Eleanor and her upsetting of Moreau's stolen skiff; now it was Jennie and her sharp little teeth. He took the child in another hug, took her by the hand, and led her out of bondage through the low farther door. He knew his way now, and he always would. Bubble and Squeak had embedded it in his innermost soul.

Hoare was secretly overjoyed when he and his Jenny appeared in Dirty Mill's lowest wine cellar just as Whitelaw was turning the last few bottles of Hoare's second-best port. After accepting Hoare's hand and holding the child to his chest for a revealing second, the silent servant led him up from the cellars of Dirty Mill, and thence into the astonished arms of Eleanor Hoare.