Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the matter of treason

"How many murders were intended?" was Hoare's natural query.

"Executions, if you please, sir," Sir Thomas replied in a testy voice. "No malice was intended. But, in answer to your question, let me see…" He began to count.

"Thirty-two, more or less," he said at last. "Thirty-three, if you count Sir Hugh Abercrombie. He had to be eliminated earlier than we planned."

"Why was that?"

"Goldthwait had come to believe Sir Hugh had begun to suspect him. He was no longer being made privy to state secrets. Then, too, you had popped up again, like a hateful jack-in-the-box."

The knight now launched himself upon a discourse upon John Goldthwait, Esquire. Although the latter seldom traveled outside London, his Admiralty duties had called him into the entourage of William, Duke of Clarence and titular Admiral of the Fleet, when that authentic royal duke had chosen to attend the court-martial of Arthur Gladden on the charge of murdering Adam Hay, captain of the new frigate Vantage.

It had been then, of course, that Hoare and Goldthwait had first met. On the same occasion, the latter had also met Sir Thomas Frobisher and, as was his wont, wrung his inmost thoughts from him. Mr. Goldthwait had immediately recognized the potential the knight-baronet offered his cause.

Sir Thomas and his adherents, Goldthwait was convinced, could become a powerful factor in his own rise to power as the prime English agent of Fouche. That foxy-haired trimmer Joseph Fouche, "Duke of Otranto" in Bonaparte's jury-rigged aristocracy of cut-throats and muffin-men, was now Bonaparte's master of intelligence. At least his experience was relevant to Sir Thomas's plot, for he had been among the revolutionaries who sent fat Louis and his silly wife to the guillotine.

Since Bonaparte had grabbed power, as Sir Thomas learned bit by bit, and had finally had confirmed from the man's own confident, smiling confession, Mr. Goldthwait had been in French pay. Ever since, he had been applying the growing power and the funds this gave him into achieving his self-imposed mission of becoming de facto ruler of the United Kingdom.

Upon handing his soul to Fouche, Goldthwait had become Bonaparte's principal man in London. When Bonaparte in turn raised the Tricolor over the Tower, Goldthwait knew he himself would become the secret keystone of the conqueror's regime.

King Thomas, re-establisher of the royal line of Frobisher, would become his pompous, powerless puppet, his crowned figurehead.

In combination, the plot cut straight to the objectives of both men: Sir Thomas's, to gain his family its "rightful" crown; Goldthwait's, to decapitate the present government of Britain, and replace it with one of his own selection. That, at least, was Goldthwait's own view of the situation, as Sir Thomas now understood it.

Sir Thomas, he admitted to Hoare, had been slow to realize the subordinate role he was to play in what he had deemed to be an alliance of equals and of gentlemen. His doubts had begun to reach a peak the other night, when Goldthwait's true, overweening expectation, his absolute assumption that his wish was open to challenge by neither God nor man, began to reveal itself. At last, the rift between the Goldthwait and Frobisher factions had broken out on its own, and Sir Thomas realized he was being used. From that balcony, Hoare himself had seen it happen.

"He's a madman, Hoare," the knight declared, "a Bedlamite. He believes himself superior to Bonaparte, to Jesus Christ-and, as I believe you have reason to know-to Satan."

From the recent behavior of Captain Walter Spurrier, Hoare did indeed know. Spurrier, celebrant of the black Mass in the Nine Stones Circle, had once answered to Sir Thomas but had transferred his worship to Satan's superior, and died in his cause.

"He knows himself infallible, omnipotent," Sir Thomas continued, fixing Hoare with his glittering eye. "I say again, he knows it, utterly and absolutely. As I learned to my own sorrow only a few nights… a few nights ago… he was using me, sir, using me and my just cause, to disrupt the workings of the British government."

"In short, Sir Thomas, to commit high treason," Hoare whispered.

"Treason, sir?" Sir Thomas snarled. "If this be treason, make the most of it. As for me, return to me and mine our rightful crown, or give me death!" His peroration concluded in trumpet tones of challenge.

Somehow, the words sounded familiar to Hoare. Damn him, the man was all but a plagiarist. Tat the thought, he must suppress a laugh of contempt lest his laughter provoke a new outburst of rage.

But for Sir Thomas, Hoare saw, it was too late for rage. Instead, he looked once more about his ruined room, and his bulging eyes filled with tears.

Ah, said Bartholomew Hoare to himself. Now we bite close to the pit of the peach.

"He's a devil, Hoare, a devil," Sir Thomas spat.

"The Devil, in fact," he added, "or at least, so he deems himself."

"And, as you should have learned by now, Sir Thomas," Hoare whispered, "he who would sup with the Devil should bring a long spoon."

"Learned too late, sir," Sir Thomas answered. "My cause is just-I know it-but the means of advancing it which I chose was… vile. It was my fault, my most grievous fault." He stared morosely at his feet.

Some other penitent, somewhere, had used that phrase to Hoare. At the moment he could not remember who, or where. Besides, it was of no significance. It seemed to him, on occasions like this, as though the silence enforced upon him by that French musket ball had endowed him with a father confessor's alb. Or "tool?" No, he thought, it was some other garment with ritual significance.

In any case, it was not in Hoare's power to absolve Sir Thomas Frobisher, nor was there any seal upon his confessional. The knight must go before a lay tribunal. Meanwhile, in addition to Jenny's whereabouts, another matter nagged at him. Now that the other night's play was over, it did no harm, Hoare thought, to speak as one gentleman to another, even to a self-confessed traitor.

"Would it trouble you, Sir Thomas, to know that I discovered you had been-er-trifling with the cards you dealt Mr. Goldthwait and me?"

The disconsolate knight shook his head, but almost as if he were inviting further questions.

"But to what end, sir?" Hoare whispered. "You held no stake; who was to be the gainer?"

"It made no difference to me, Hoare," Sir Thomas said. "I was merely weary of being left behind, impotent. It gave me a silly feeling that at least… at least…" His voice faded away.

"And pray where, sir, did you acquire the sleight of hand necessary to slip the false card into the decks from which you dealt the other night?"

"I prefer not to say, sir," was the answer, and Sir Thomas would not be moved.

Before picking up his wife at the Bow and Forest and finding passage downstream to Greenwich, he would betake himself to Whitehall with his prisoner, find Sir George Hardcastle, and dump the problem in his lap. He knew himself too weary to address it himself.

"Collect anything you may need, Sir Thomas," he whispered, "and come with me. Pray move with dispatch, sir; there is not a moment to be lost. I shall await you with transportation outside your door."

Upon seeing the knight-baronet nod his bowed head, he nodded his own and took his leave.

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.