Wilder Perkins: Hoare and the headless Captains

"I'll be off, then," Dunaway said. "Good luck to the both of ye."

Patches of ground fog drifted eastward across the moor surrounding the Nine Stones Circle, keeping station on each other as if they were a gleaming ghostly Great Armada on its way to defeat among the shoals off Zeeland. The full moon played hide-and-seek with the low clouds that paced them, now bringing the Stones Circle's nine menhirs into full dramatic view, now obscuring them in dank darkness.

Face blackened like those of the rest of his command, Sergeant Leese oozed from point to point, establishing that each pair of his party was in place. Hoare had disappeared into his own dark gorse bush at the foot of one megalith, where, at length, Leese joined him. Their wait began; time stopped.

The fog and the clouds above them continued to float down the wind, leaving the stones naked to the moonlight at one moment, shrouded in gray the next. Quite Gothick, Hoare thought; all the scene needed was the mournful shriek of an owl. And bats. The notion of the little flittering things reminded him of how easily his half-hysterical mocking had made a permanent enemy of Sir Thomas Frobisher.

Hoare's thought might have been a cue. Until now, the Circle had been quiet, the fog even muffling the faint ever-present background of animal chirps and rustling foliage. Now, the fog lifted briefly, and the animal noises ceased. Hoare realized that for some time he had been hearing, eastward toward Dorchester, the sounds of human movement.

Gradually, figures, mostly singletons but some in couples, began to appear out of the mist and slip into the ring of stones. Most appeared to be countrywomen, on the elderly side, but there was a scattering of farmerish men as well, some couples who might be petty tradesmen and their wives, a few younger pairs, and even two or three children. Most of the women carried baskets, some sheaves or garlands of late flowers.

When he was a lad, Hoare remembered, he and his family had unaccountably arrived early for the harvest festival at the village church in Cuckney, below the property Captain Joel Hoare had purchased not so long before. Seated between brother John and little Cassandra, the three of them guarded by father on the one side and mother on the other, Bartholomew had watched the Cuckney folk gather in their ones and twos, bearing their varied thank offerings. Just so were these worshipers assembling.

The sight of them disoriented Hoare. He had steeled himself for some ancient pagan rite, one that would culminate in another ritual killing; hence his having launched the landing party in the first place. The offerings of the rural folk who were gathering in the Nine Stones Circle tonight simply would not do. These people would be as misplaced at a Black Mass as so many nuns in a brothel. Had he misjudged what was to take place here tonight? Had he, then, made an utter fool of himself? From Leese's restless movement beside him, he sensed that the Sergeant, too, was uneasy.

Like those of a herd of startled deer, the heads of the scattered audience or congregation lifted and turned eastward. Hoare's own ears pricked. In the distance, he heard a strange wild, jangling rattle, then the strained bleat of a pipe and the rhythmic thump of muffled drums. As the players, still invisible, advanced, their music swelled. A reddish light flickered in the eastward distance.

The fog pounced again. One minute, Hoare could note each of his party's hiding places and see all of the attending worshipers in the Circle; the next, the surrounding Stones were again no more than hints of black against gray nothingness. The black began to take on ruddy overtones; the discordant music sounded louder and louder.

The fog lifted unevenly, as if it were the curtain of a provincial theater. The congregation drew apart; Hoare saw one anxious woman dart out and snatch her child from the path of the procession itself as it straggled into sight.

Out of the fog appeared two men carrying torches. As they approached, Hoare saw that the torches were oddly carved; they guttered in the light wind. Stripped to the waist, the bearers wore thick hairy breeches as if they were to be taken for satyrs. They, came on with slow, majestic steps and looked about them anxiously. Perhaps, Hoare thought, they were afraid their torches would blow out and leave them alone in the dark.

Six musicians, male and female, followed on their heels. The first pair of women shook lyre-shaped rattles and chanted as they came. The second pair, cheeks puffed out like those of wind cherubs on an antique chart, squalled desperately on double pipes that might have been taken off one of those Grecian vases. The last two whistled on panpipes.

Like the bearers of the ithyphallic torches, the band of musicians was also naked to the waist, the men clad in the same hairy breeches and the women in long full skirts. The figures thus exposed were far from classic and looked very chilly. Hoare shivered in sympathy. A foggy Hallowe'en night was no proper time for an orgy.

With the torchbearers, the awkward orchestra now drew up in a double inward-facing line, as if taking its positions for some macabre fancy-dress contradance, and played on. One by one, the folk in the congregation drew near the altar and deposited their modest offerings around it and returned murmurously to the outskirts of the gathering.

Four small boys now came into sight, their treble voices raised in a meaningless song as they thumped away on little drums for all they were worth. Though they, too, were naked except for hairy buskins-perhaps, Hoare thought, they were supposed to be fauns-the brave noise they made and the exercise of beating the drums must keep them, at least, warm. And possibly the mere fact that they were engaged in mischief kept them in temper. In fact, like all boys so occupied, they kept glancing at one another and stifling snickers; Hoare heard them in his lair and nearly snickered himself. Whatever the reason, the imps were the only persons in the gathering who looked to be enjoying themselves at all.

A second pair of torchbearers followed them, ithyphallic torches in hand.

Into the circle of dolmens, behind the urchins, came a solitary squat figure in a viridian robe, carrying a T-shaped standard as he chanted and staring up, as he marched, at several small furry carcasses that dangled from its crossbar. It was Martin Frobisher, so soon-according to his father- to receive the traditional Frobisher knighthood. He looked bored, even embarrassed.

Hoare knew the two women, bearing a covered wicker cage between them, who were the next to enter from the night outside the Circle. One, quite flat-chested and broad of hips, he had last seen at the reception in Admiralty House. But he had heard her seagull voice in the crowd outside that same house the next night, after the assault on Admiral Hardcastle. It was Sir Thomas's daughter, Lydia, Martin's sister, and her face was that of a woman on the verge of hysterics. She was not singing now, not at all.

Her companion, also half-dressed like the other women in the procession, displayed to better satisfaction. Gleaming in the torchlight, Selene Prettyman's glossy black rope of hair swayed behind her; her firm ivory breasts swayed before. She wore an archaic proud, contemptuous smile, but her eyes roamed, taking in her surroundings as if in search of something. Hoare and his party, perhaps? The two women drew to one side, with their covered cage.

The first of the two men who brought the procession to a close was Captain Walter Spurrier. A heavy cloaklike garment concealed most of his frame. Hoare was certain he had seen it before. In one hand, Spurrier carried a single-edged, wide-bladed weapon, a short sword or falchion like a huntsman's that ended in a peculiar backward hook. Hoare had seen a similar weapon being wielded by a classical bronze hero; he could not remember which one.