Wilder Perkins - Hoare and the matter of treason

"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?