Hoare and the matter of treason cbh-3 Read online

  Hoare and the matter of treason

  ( Captain Bartholomew Hoare - 3 )

  Wilder Perkins

  Wilder Perkins

  Hoare and the matter of treason

  Chapter I

  A marriage has been announced, and will shortly take place, between Mrs. Eleanor Graves (nee Swan) and Commander Bartholomew Hoare of the Navy.

  — Naval Chronicle, 18 November 1805

  Shall I lift you aboard, Miss Austen?" Bartholomew Hoare whispered with all his force into the cold, hazy morning air. Hoare had been deprived of his full voice eleven years ago when he was struck in the throat by a musket ball while defending His Majesty George Ill's plan. He saw the cloud of his breath blow away with the stiff breeze.

  Now, although some years had passed since he had faced ocean weather, Hoare was still generally brown. It was his natural color. He was long, stringy, wiry, and, for the next few minutes, still a solitary, lonely widower.

  "Thank you very kindly, sir," Miss Austen replied with some asperity, "but after all, with two brothers in the navy, I must already be quite familiar, must I not, with the process of boarding and leaving a ship upon visiting them, especially in harbor? And especially when, like this one, it is a very small ship?"

  So saying, she withdrew her mitted hands from her muff, leaving it to dangle around her neck by its ribbon harness. She reached up, took hold of the handiest of the lanyards bracing down Royal Duke's shrouds, placed one leg in the entry port and hoisted herself easily out of the wherry. With her other hand, the one with the reticule dangling on the wrist, she reached out and grasped the hand that her host, the groom, extended her. The hood of her cloak, which she had drawn over her brown hair, presumably to guard its precious curl against the wind, fell back.

  When boarding from a small boat, even Jane Austen could not wholly preserve her modesty; the stocking she revealed over her surprisingly well-turned ankle was not a blue one but a scalding cochineal red, embroidered with a seasonal clock of holly leaves.

  "Delighted to welcome you aboard," Hoare whispered with an insincere smile, "particularly on this joyful occasion." In the face of her unaccountable distaste for him and for the connection he was about to make, he found it difficult to summon up genuine warmth.

  "And delighted to come aboard, sir," she replied, "although I do think it rather thoughtless of dear Eleanor not to have summoned me aboard before, so that I could assist her in preparing for the ceremony. Pray take me to her immediately," she added in a commanding voice, without so much as a polite exclamation about Royal Duke's charming and shipshape appearance.

  Fearing that his smile was degenerating into an accommodating smirk, Hoare gave her his arm and escorted her the few feet farther aft to where the hatch leading below to his quarters lay open over a newly carpeted ladder. The lady turned, smiled coolly back at Hoare, and waited for him to precede her below, so that if she were to lose her footing despite her assurances of sure-footedness, she would fall upon him instead of the deck beneath. It was clear to Hoare that she remained less than enthusiastic about her schoolroom friend's selection of a second spouse.

  These past days, he had found himself regretting even more the contingency that had required him to hand over almost half his spacious living quarters to the brig's homing pigeons. Now, hidden behind a bulkhead of hastily painted deal, Royal Duke's graceful glazed stern ports and miniature gallery were aflutter with cooing Columbidal instead of chattering female humans; the remaining rump of a cabin was dark, airless, tainted with a faint, inappropriate odor of guano that seeped through the partition. A flutter of another kind came from behind the curtain rigged athwartships that, while it shrank Hoare's usable space still further, protected Eleanor Graves and her attendants from the prying eyes of men.

  Miss Austen disappeared behind the curtain, where her appearance was greeted with shrill, happy voices. Seeing that she was in safe hands, Hoare returned topside to deal with the next arrivals.

  Royal Duke lay cozily at a mooring less than a cable's length offshore, protected by Weymouth's exiguous mole. She was already lying low in the water with the weight of wedding guests who had come aboard. More, Hoare knew, were yet to come. He shuddered for his ship's center of gravity. Was his little brig fated to loll over at her mooring and convert the wedding into a mass drowning? "Sunk by matrimony, with all hands." The navy would never live it down.

  From the moment of the announcement appearing in the Naval Chronicle, Hoare's time had not been his own. Messages of congratulation flowed in. Even Duke of Clarence, Admiral of the Fleet Prince William, sent to wish him happy. Not only, it seemed to Hoare, had he gained a number of well-wishers in the naval community; Eleanor Graves, too, was known to it. Hoare had believed he had kept his passion secret, but it was not so. Even with its body of officers expanded beyond all peacetime belief for the endless war with the French, the Royal Navy was a family, and it took care of its own.

  Hoare's wedding was to be sanctified by the Reverend Arthur Gladden, recently called to serving a flock in Maiden Bradley, some miles southwest of Warminster in Wiltshire. Before taking orders, Mr. Gladden had been third lieutenant in the ill-fated, newly commissioned frigate Vantage. And once a naval officer, always a naval officer.

  More pertinent to the occasion: rightly or wrongly, the Gladden family credited Hoare with Arthur's acquittal of the murder of Adam Hay, Vantage's first and only captain. Moreover, Hoare had assisted materially in helping Miss Anne Gladden rebuff a powerful, elderly suitor. These kindnesses, neither of which Hoare had seen as more than his duty, the Gladden family had taken as major benefactions. Indeed, Lady Caroline, mother of the family, had been heard to refer to Bartholomew Hoare as the tribe's Savior, in a reverent voice that suggested that she expected him not merely to cruise the waters of the Channel, but to walk upon them.

  Accordingly, the young rector had insisted on conducting today's ceremony Mr. Gladden had taken the further liberty of bringing his little sister with him. The Honorable Miss Anne Gladden was a beauty; she was also wee-little taller than Jenny, Hoare's girl-child ward. Since Harvey Clay, Hoare's lieutenant in Royal Duke, was likewise a minikin, Hoare had hopes of making a match between the two and had previously arranged for Clay to be invited to Broadmead for inspection. So now, when Hoare returned on deck, he was pleased to see the couple engrossed in each other. When he went over to them, Miss Gladden looked up at him with a dazzling smile.

  "My heart is quite broken today, you know, Captain," she said.

  "Desolated, I'm sure, Miss Anne," Hoare whispered in reply, "but, after all, hearts are ours to break, be broken, and heal." He could not believe what he was saying. Courtly exchanges of this kind did not become him. He must be exalted.

  Since his rescue of Miss Gladden had involved a mock betrothal between them, there were those among the ton who, upon learning that he had given the poor little thing her conge in order to make this apparently more disadvantageous connection, had looked upon him with perplexity mixed into their coolness. However, upon discovering that Miss Gladden's own relatives, and the lady herself, continued to welcome him warmly, they had quickly subsided and gone off in search of juicier scandals.

  Just then, Hoare realized that Mr. Clay, engrossed as he was with the young lady, had failed to note a barge approaching from a trim frigate newly anchored just to seaward of Royal Duke. The frigate's broad pendant was blue. The oncoming admiral, then, would be Rear Admiral Sir George Hardcastle, KB, Port Admiral in Portsmouth. Sir George was, to all intents and purposes, Hoare's master.

  Hoare flushed and barely caught himself from whistling the officer back to his duty. Instead, recollecting that he himself was no
t that far removed in time or rank from the task of welcoming boarding dignitaries, he repositioned himself at the gap in his ship's starboard rail. It was a gap, he knew, that hardly deserved the title of "boarding port," since Royal Duke measured less than sixty-five feet on the waterline.

  Sir George had made it clear that his visit was not official but entirely personal. He had agreed to give the bride away, her valetudinarian father being unable to travel from Essex all the way to Weymouth, and her resident brother being at odds with her. His flag, therefore, was not to be hoisted the moment his shoulders appeared at deck level. This was fortunate, Hoare thought as he swept off his hat in salute, since Sir George's shoulders all but topped Royal Duke's low freeboard before he had even raised his bottom from his seat in the barge's stern sheets.

  Nonetheless, Hoare had had Mr. Clay muster side boys in advance-eight of them, as was proper when receiving a flag officer aboard-and seen that they were kitted out with white gloves. The boys were clean and tidy. Since Royal Duke carried no genuine boys, none was under twenty, and two were women.

  "Congratulations on the day, Hoare," the admiral said upon replacing the hat he had doffed in salute to the Royal Duke's imaginary quarterdeck. "She looks sprightly enough-your command, I mean, of course. I suppose the bride looks the same."

  "I cannot say, sir," Hoare whispered. "I am not permitted, you know, to see her today until the ceremony takes place."

  Sir George withdrew his watch and inspected it.

  "Lacks only a minute of seven bells. She had better clap on sail, or she'll be late. Hate a dilatory officer."

  It being the occasion it was, Hoare dared a jest.

  "Ah, Sir George," he whispered, "but you are superseded in command for the time."

  "What?"

  A-ha. The fish had struck.

  "The bride, sir. At this moment, the bride is queen. She commands us all, even yourself."

  Below his fashionable Brutus crop, the admiral's face reddened. He had arrived unrigged and unpowdered, and without his wife or daughter. He disapproved, Hoare knew, of officers who traveled with their women aboard. In fact, it seemed, he disapproved of women entirely, if they attempted to exercise the least authority. Then Sir George smiled, and Hoare felt his heart beat once more.

  "Why, of course," he said. "Ungentlemanly of me. I must-" He was interrupted by the prolonged twittering of massed calls from a body of boatswains posted beside the after hatch. Hoare had hastily trained several of his unusual crew in a special call of his own composition; this was to serve as the wedding fanfare. Just in time, the Reverend Arthur Gladden assumed his place with his back to Royal Duke's mainmast, fully vested and as blue as the admiral's pendant, prayer book in hand. Upon his clearing his throat meaningfully, Hoare and his admiral parted. Hoare took post to one side of the clergyman; Admiral Hardcastle darted to the hatch head, ready to accept the hand of the woman he was about to give away the moment she appeared in the hatch.

  The bride was preceded on deck by two other females: Miss Austen and a skinny little girl-child, her ash-blond hair skinned back, two-blocked so that her huge black eyes bulged under their heavy brows. Both bore posies.

  The pair took their places on either side of the companionway, just beyond the waiting admiral. A pause ensued.

  Not by chance, the two disparate bridesmaids had chosen- or had had chosen for them-simple gowns of an identical soft peach hue, cut in the oddly seductive Directoire style, with the waist positioned just below the breasts-or, in the case of little Jenny Jaggery, whose nose was running a bit in the cold- where her breasts would make their appearance in Nature's good time. Breasts or no breasts, Hoare always found the fashion quite appealing.

  The pipes rose to a crescendo as the bride rose from the depths, Persephone personified. Within its cage of ribs, Hoare's heart gave a convulsive leap. The twittering of the pipes ceased, to be replaced by the music of a trio-hand-harp, violin, and kit-fiddle. The sound was sweet, lilting, and somehow Celtic.

  As a widow and still a recent one, Eleanor Graves had chosen for once to conform to custom. Her small, sturdy form was clad in a froth of black lace, without the least decolletage. Her cap and veil, however, were white, formed from the most diaphanous Mechlin. Behind the veil, she had drawn her thick black hair into a firmly disciplined knot. All told, the bride could have been charged with appearing severe, were it not for the warmth of the brown eyes and the soft smiling lips that greeted Hoare from behind the veil.

  Up the deck of Royal Duke she marched on the arm of George Hardcastle, Knight of the Bath, Rear Admiral of the Blue, Port Admiral at Portsmouth. Composed as always, she and her escort came to a halt before Mr. Gladden. The latter cleared his throat once again.

  "Dearly beloved…," he began.

  Despite himself, Hoare could not help remembering. The words of the Roman priest in Halifax as he united Hoare with Antoinette Laplace, a full score of years ago, had been spoken in French and in Latin, and had been openly grudging. But they had been essentially the same as those that Arthur Gladden was speaking now, as were Hoare's own whispered responses and those of the woman at his side. Hoare did not mind-nor did he care-that, for Eleanor, too, this was a second marriage. He had known and respected Dr. Simon Graves. As far as he was concerned, their previous respective marriages only went to show that each of them was capable of faithful love. When he looked down at her, and she met his eyes, his heart leapt again.

  At Mr. Gladden's final words, "man and wife," the music broke out once again, jubilant. Now, the trio that had marched Eleanor Graves to the altar marched Eleanor Hoare and her husband back, supplemented now by the sound of pipes. Not the martial great pipes, but the softer, more melodious Irish version. At the sound, the bride burst forth in a gurgle of laughter, took the arm of her groom, and commenced to march back toward Royal Duke's taffrail. But Hoare forestalled her and broke ranks. He seized the bride's waist in one arm, took her right hand in his left, and commenced to twirl her, laughing down the deck.

  As he pranced, Hoare overheard Miss Austen murmur an aside to Miss Anne Gladden. The latter was not listening; with fondly jealous eyes, she was watching her beloved Mr. Clay spinning-or perhaps being spun-along behind the bridal couple, partnered by the powerful figure of Sarah Taylor, master's mate and cryptographer. Mr. Clay's spin was brief, for he was quickly cut out by the slightly large, navy and gold form of Sir George Hardcastle, KB, Rear Admiral of the Blue. For Sir George, as was well known, was mad for dancing.

  "I do believe," Hoare had heard Miss Austen say, "that I have never before seen the happy bridegroom anything but dour. Why commonly, he could 'tak' a cup o' dourness yet' to the covenanting kilted Scots in Dumfries."

  Nobody but the dour one appeared to have heard her, for thereupon decorum went overboard for the day Without regard for rank, age, or precedence, the entire wedding party formed into as many sets as were needed to accommodate them, and set to a-dancing. Only a few, the grinning clergyman and former naval officer among them, must stand aside to watch the merriment. Even little Jenny Jaggery, squealing with excitement, found herself being half-partnered, half-carried through the figures by Leese, the yacht's lantern-jawed sergeant of marines. Long before the spirit left the crew, breath left first one and then another, and they collapsed, red, sweating in the cold damp breeze, panting and laughing. Seeing that only the most durable members of the lower deck still stood up, the musicians shifted the music into a hornpipe. In a cleared space before the yacht's wheel, four of the youngest, hardest durable hands now paired off and skipped through their proudest paces-cuts, the shuffle-and-half, buck-and-wing, the lot.

  "Never saw such a show in all me days at sea," puffed Admiral Hardcastle. He had long since relinquished Taylor into the black hands of his own former coxswain, Loveable Bold. Some months ago, the admiral had lent him and Stone, now the yacht's acting gunner, to Hoare as support in the latter's assault upon the renegade Edward Morrow; somehow, Hoare had kept them from their rightful master's clut
ches. And he intended to do so as long as he could.

  "Well done, sir, well done!" the admiral added to Royal Duke's breathless commander beside him.

  "I hadn't a thing to do with it, sir," Hoare replied. "'Twas all impromptu, I do assure you."

  Without orders, the invisible, stiff marine on duty at the yacht's bell gave it the eight paired rings that brought in the new day for each ship in the Royal Navy. As if on that signal, Eleanor Hoare, commanding, gave her first, last, and only order of the day.

  "Splice the main brace," she said in a low but carrying voice. Cheers and grog followed, and toasts to bride, groom, and yacht. That done, Sir George plucked his hat from the scupper, where he had deposited it for the ceremony just past, and put it on his head-apparently for the express purpose of removing it again in farewell to Eleanor Hoare, the yacht, and the ship's company.

  "I regret it most exceedingly, Hoare," the admiral declared over the tweeting pipes of ceremony, before he stepped from Royal Duke into his waiting barge, "but the service requires that you report to me at Admiralty House on Wednesday morning, for orders. At eight bells of the morning watch, shall we say? You are to proceed to London immediately thereafter. Tonight, however, I give you permission to sleep away from your ship."

  "Aye, aye, sir," was all the surprised, crestfallen Hoare could say. He was both ashamed to have forgotten the requirement, set down in standing orders, that no ship's commanding officer could sleep away from his ship without his admiral's permission, and dismayed to learn that he must leave his marriage bed on the very morning after its first use.

  Hat in hand, he stood at Royal Duke's entry port until the barge disappeared astern. Already, obedient to some signal Hoare had failed to observe during the excitement aboard Royal Duke, the frigate that had conveyed Sir George to Weymouth was weighing anchor. Hoare could hear the faint scratching of the fiddler on her capstan head, and the steady stamp and go of horny feet as, inch by inch, her crew won home the single anchor she had dropped on arrival. He watched, arm about his bride's waist, while, as if by clockwork, fore topsail, jibs and spanker appeared just as the admiral swarmed up her tumble-home. And watched, too, to see her 'round the breakwater, tack nimbly, and set a course for her day's journey home.