As the chaise drew up to the low scarp overlooking Weymouth, Hoare could see Royal Duke hove to outside the harbor, breasting the easy seas that rolled gently in from the Channel. He also heard the sound of bells. It was a confused cacophony, a compound of merry, even jubilant rounds, underlain by a solemn tolling, as if for a great person's death. The ringing must come from every church in Weymouth town.
Once down in the town itself, Hoare thrust his head out of the chaise window.
'What is happening?' he croaked at a passerby, but must needs repeat himself before the other raised his head. His face was beslobbered with tears.
'It's Nelson,' the man said. 'Dead, dead. Struck, he was, at the instant of victory.'
The party was silent amid the bells until they had hoisted their prisoner into a wherry and were being rowed out to Royal Duke.
'I shall never forget this moment,' Thoday said in a voice pregnant with feeling. 'The morning of November the sixth, 1805. This is the place, and the time, where I was when I learned of Nelson's death.'
Spurrier's two hard men were not so hard after all, Hoare found. Questioned separately, both admitted having been present when Spurrier butchered the two Captains Getchell and to having been among the gang that assaulted Admiral Hardcastle and Delancey in Admiralty House. They denied knowledge of the dead Marine, Baker, and knew nothing of his head's whereabouts. When it came to disclosing the names of the person or persons behind Spurrier, their claims of ignorance were persuasive.
'I never seen the Capting talkin' business with no one but Sir Thomas,' one said. ' 'E'd ride off for parts unknown every few weeks an' come back wi' some new bit o' mischief.'
When Leese had convinced Hoare that Spurrier's men had been milked of all the information they had, he had the pair stowed in the brig's bilges. He would not risk setting them ashore here in Weymouth; Sir Thomas Frobisher ruled here. He would take them to Portsmouth as soon as he could; there he would feel safe in sending them ashore under guard for trial and disposition.
Spurrier himself, bound into Admiral Oglethorpe's huge hanging chair in Hoare's cabin, resisted Hoare's most persuasive questioning. As the chair swung with Royal Duke's gentle motion, however, Hoare saw Spurrier's discomfort increasing. Hoare remembered, now, Spurrier's passing remark when he was previously in this very cabin on the occasion of Cumberland's disastrous inspection.
'You go to sea in this little thing?' he had asked. 'Makes me want to spew just to think of it.'
'Your men have laid two murders at your door, Spurrier,' Hoare said now. 'There can be no question; you killed the two Captains in the Nine Stones Circle. I'm sure we'll find evidence that you killed my Marine, too, and your own followers, the ones my men took captive the other night. You've lost your interest with Cumberland now. You'll hang.
'But if you name your master, the agent of the French, I will try to arrange for you to be shot instead of hanged. It would certainly be less dishonorable, and I understand it is far quicker. Now. We know you go by the code name of'Levi.' Who, pray, is 'Saul'?'
There was no reply.
He remembered overhearing Morrow/Moreau, the Canadian turncoat, refer to a 'Louis' in London. Hoare knew there was a connection between Spurrier and Moreau and that it was almost certainly Sir Thomas Frobisher.
'Who is 'Louis'?' he asked, on the spur of the moment.
'Louis?' the prisoner echoed. 'Never heard of him. King of France, I suppose.' He clamped his jaw again.
'And where did you go so suddenly after our first encounter in Dorchester?'
Royal Duke gave an extra lurch just then, and Spurrier's color grew even unhealthier. For a moment, Hoare thought the prisoner would tell him, but his lips hardened, and he shook his head.
'I have nothing to say to you, Hoare. I have already said-and done-too much. Now bugger off.'
Hoare watched Spurrier carefully for a few more moments. He might be doing his best to behave like an iron man. Nevertheless, he was sweating and his color worsening.
'Put the prisoner in the forepeak, Leese,' Hoare said at last. 'Right up in the eyes of the ship.'
Going on deck, he beckoned to his lieutenant.
'Get under way, Mr. Clay.'
'What course, sir?'
'Brightstone, I think. Yes, set a course for Brightstone. We'll heave to there, and then we'll see what we shall see.'
'Aye aye, sir,' Clay said.
Off Brightstone, the seas were heavier. Royal Duke bucked lightly against them during her approach. When Clay hove her to as Hoare had ordered, the slight roll she added made for a gentle corkscrew motion. There were a few moans from the watch on deck. Two or three of the watch below came topside as well, to join their shipmates at the leeward rail under their petty officers' watchful eyes.
'What now, sir?' Clay asked.
'Remain hove to until further orders, Mr. Clay,' Hoare whispered.
'Aye aye, sir. May I exercise the watch on deck?'
'Of course. And you might include those of the watch below who have found business on deck.'
With this, Hoare made himself comfortable on the new hatch leading to the pigeons' quarters and settled down to wait. Clay looked his Commander askance for a moment, then began issuing orders.
Three times, the Marine on deck went forward to strike the bell. At eight bells, the watch changed. Still Royal Duke lay hove to. Her Commander went below once, just long enough for a solitary dinner in his truncated cabin.
Before he returned to his seat on the pigeons' hatch, Hoare made his way into the forepeak. He had not yet quite regained his sea legs himself and must clap onto anything he could reach as the brig tossed in the chop off Brighthead.
By now, he thought, Spurrier should be more than ready to cough up the answer to any question he was asked, if he could only be left free to die of nausea in peace. Hoare was averse to torture, but seasickness, unpleasant though it might be for its victims, could hardly be classified as torture. After all, it was well known that Admiral Nelson himself suffered from chronic seasickness. 'Had suffered,' Hoare told himself sadly.
When Hoare opened the little hatch through which his Marines had thrust the prisoner, the stench that poured out nearly left him, too, retching. Spurrier must have puked himself dry by now; he had evidently also lost control of bladder and bowels.
Hoare reached in and gingerly lifted his prisoner's head by its lank yellow hair. The man's face was slack, a ghastly, beslobbered greenish yellow. A dreadful mess washed about his feet, compounded of vomit, excrement, and sea-water.
'Come now, Mr. Spurrier,' Hoare said, suppressing his own nausea and dodging the other's breath as best he could. 'I do not wish you to suffer. Are you prepared to name your master? If so, I shall gladly have Mr. Clay ease my ship's motion and have you brought on deck, into the fresh sea air.'
So speaking, he felt himself the worst of hypocrites.
Spurrier's answer was a gurgling cough.
'Well, sir?'
Silence.
Hoare closed the hatch, returned to his perch on deck to wait until Spurrier had finally had his fill of Royal Duke's tossing. The breeze picked up, then died down.
Midway through the first dogwatch, Hoare bestirred himself again and summoned Leese.
'The prisoner has been confined in the forepeak long enough to have become really seasick,' he said. 'Let's see if he is prepared to talk now. Bring him back on deck. If he isn't ready, we'll masthead him.'
A few minutes passed; then Leese reappeared. He was alone.
'Where's the prisoner?' Hoare asked.
'Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but 'e's dead.'
' What?' Hoare croaked. Then, in his normal whisper, 'Get him on deck, man.'
Summoning one of his men, Leese scrambled below. The two came on deck at last, bearing Spurrier between them. Spurrier's face, yellow-green when Hoare had left him, was now gray-green. His limp body was covered with stinking vomit. He was not breathing.
