Wilder Perkins - Hoare and the matter of treason

At the end of the corridor, he saw more candlelight, a banister, and a figure leaning over it, looking downward. So: the watch had let himself be distracted by the goings-on belowdecks.

Softly, softly, Hoare crept on, past the open door. Thinking to hear movement within, he risked a peep but could see nothing more than part of a dimly lit bedchamber. He must not tarry.

Sir Thomas's bullfrog roar sounded from below. On its heels came a screech of rage-Goldthwait's, Hoare hoped, as he crept, crept. And knelt, and grabbed the leaning watch by the heels, and tipped him over the banister into emptiness. He went with a little shriek of horror, crashed into the next flight below, and, as Hoare leaned over the rail in his turn to watch, tumbled onto the painted landing with a crack and lay still. Broke his bloody neck, Hoare hoped.

But again, he must not tarry. The men below might have overheard the watch's stifled cry; if they had, they would be upon him any second. He retraced his steps to the lighted door, knelt down and crawled into the room. As he expected, his wife was within.

The chair into which Eleanor Hoare had been bound might be comfortable, but whoever had done the binding was a professional, and she was unable to welcome him with head and eyes. Her mouth, like Jenny's, had been bound, though in her case the silken gag was a proper widowy black. She smelled like a very small child who had been neglected.

Hoare whipped out of his pocket the keen clasp knife he had procured in Halifax and kept on his person ever since, and cut his wife out of bondage.

"Excuse me," she said in a whisper of outrage no louder than Hoare's. "I seem to have beshit myself."

She rose stiffly from the chair, dropped her befouled undergarments, petticoats and all, and hastened to the washstand by the adjacent bed. She reached under it, pulled out the usual receptacle, and squatted over it, splashing audibly as she scrubbed.

"Ahh," she said. She rose stiffly to kiss her rescuer.

"There," she said with a mischievous smile. "Let Mary Green and Floppin' Poll wring' 'em out and put 'em on if they wish. I hope they do; that way, I get to shit on 'em both." Her language was not usually so earthy. She must be quite angry.

"We must gather Jenny and be off," Hoare whispered as they left Sir Thomas's best guest bedroom and bore to starboard for the front stairs.

At the sound of voices raised still higher, in the hallway below them, they paused on the landing and peered over the banister, just as if they were the guard at the head of the back stairs. Or the occupants of a loge at the Haymarket. They could see clearly down into the well-lighted space. Like a riot between Montagues and Capulets, the civil war had burst out from behind the baize doors into the Frobisher family apartments, and the way to the front door, through which Mr. Goldthwait had passed him so many long hours ago, was blocked now by fighting figures.

"Hoare!" came an enraged squall. "Goddamn you, Frobisher, you blundering frog-faced fool, where is the man? How could you have let him out of the room? What will Fouche have to say to you when he comes?"

If only Hoare had thought to open the front door before slipping up here, to simulate his flight. The shouter below them, he could see, was Mr. John Goldthwait, who had left his eternal smile elsewhere and was shouting at the knight-baronet from eighteen inches' distance. Sir Thomas was holding his own. Each man was backed by several followers, who appeared to have called a truce to their own mutual mangling so as to watch the masters slang each other.

"Oh, for my sling," Eleanor breathed.

Goldthwait's next outcry was drowned in another of Sir Thomas's croaking roars and a smack. The knight had had enough, and had landed a wisty caster on the smaller man's cheek. Goldthwait went down. Round one to the gentry, Hoare said to himself, wildly. He almost imagined a voice offering five to three on the frog. Well and good, but the crowd still blocked the way downstairs and out. Goldthwait was on his feet again. Desperately, Hoare looked at Eleanor as if, in her eyes, he could find a way to freedom; calmly, she returned his look.

Behind them, a tiny clink sounded, and they spun toward the dark window in time to see Collis, Royal Duke's sweep and sneak, slide up the sash in dead silence and pocket a little jemmy. Lorimer the burglar has taught him well, Hoare told himself. He slipped within, an expert eel, and moved aside to permit the entry, one at a time, of Titus Thoday, Sergeant Leese, Sarah Taylor, and Jacob Stone, gunner's mate. Stone, Hoare could not help noticing, was wearing shoes-the first time Hoare had known him to do so.

"Parm me, sir," Collis breathed, "wile I shets thisyer winder. We daresn't want them folk belowdecks a-wakin' up from no draft blowin' down their necks, now does we?"

"Never mind that now, Collis," Thoday whispered. And, to Hoare, "Well met, sir."

"Well met, indeed, Mr. Thoday," Hoare whispered. "You come just in time."

"A deus ex machina, in fact," his wife added.

"Now, let us collect Jenny and be off," Hoare said.

"With respect, sir, there's no time for that. Look yonder."

Below, the supine Goldthwait was staring up at them. Gloom or no gloom, their figures must be clearly visible.

"Get out of it, sir!" Leese cried, drawing his sword-bayonet with a hiss of steel. "You an' yer lady can't 'elp 'ere. We'll hold 'em off!" Hoare knew the marine was right; it was Leese, not he, who was the hand-to-hand fighter. Besides, he was unaccountably weary. Below, the two factions had recombined and were clustering at the foot of the stairs. Hoare saw Goldthwait raise that handy little pistol, saw the black of its muzzle pointing at his eye, heard its "pop," felt the ball tear at his left ear.

Hoare gripped Thoday by the sleeve. "Cut Jenny out, then, and bring her with you," he whispered. "She'll be hiding somewhere in the library downstairs. The room to larboard of the main door. Meet us at the Bow and Forest in Gracechurch Street."

He took a vital second to shake each rescuer's hand, climbed out the still-open window, and drew Eleanor after him. As the two Hoares swarmed down the line up which the Royal Dukes had just swarmed, they heard above them the sound of battle rejoined.

I'll not have it," the leathery man snarled at his companion. "The man's mine. Mine, I tell you, marked for my use and Joseph Fouche's, to help me bring the emperor to London and haul his triumphant chariot down to the Abbey. And I'll have the woman, too, before I'm through. Over and over again, before the dumb bastard's very eyes. Come along, you." He yanked at the hand of the child dragging beside him.

"I want twenty men, twenty, d'ye hear? Hard men, men of their hands. Go find them. I'll be at the warehouse.

"Find them by noontime, or I'll cut out your gut and run you into the river at the end of it. Come on, you misbegotten wench, and you, too, you draggle-tailed drab, you. Bring the child with you, and don't let her out of your grips. If she escapes, you'll wish you'd never been born."

Hoare set his empty plate and mug aside and sat back on the settle he had commandeered in the common room of the Bow and Forest. It was still early in the morning.

"O'Gock, zur," the Esquimau said. "Dan'l O'Gock, if it please yer worship. I be in Zur Tammas's service, or I were. Gamekeepers an' de like, mostly."

Hoare looked questioningly into the friendly, swarthy, leathery, heavy-boned countenance of the man. He could be an elderly juvenile Grognard from across the Channel, or perhaps a misplaced muzhik from the Siberian steppes. Hoare knew him to be neither, of course.

"Very good, Dan'l O'Gock. But you asked to speak to me. Speak on, then, man."

"I wants to say, zur, 'tis time we O'Gocks brook away from dem Frobishers and stood oop on our own."