Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the matter of treason

"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.