watcher'?'
Hoare added hastily, 'Other than yourself, of course.'
Slightly chagrined, Thoday thought for a moment, then nodded.
'Collis, sir. Small, nimble, used to be a sweep, still looks like a lad. Second-story man, candidate for rating as topman, Bold tells me. Unremarkable.'
'I don't remember him, certainly,' Hoare said. 'If that's a measure, he certainly is unremarkable.' Though he took pride in having learned his crew by name despite his brief time in actual company with them, Hoare knew himself fallible in his memory of individuals.
'Let's have a look at him.'
Summoned, Collis showed why Hoare could not recall him. He looked indeterminate, like an aged urchin, prematurely wizened. An ex-jockey, perhaps. Hoare gave him his instructions and some pocket money, showed him Floppin' Poll as she sat unwitting, sent him off to Royal Duke's slop chest to be clad in appropriate rags, and saw him into the wherry to sit beside his prey.
The tide was flowing. Hoare's two ferryman, whom the Royal Dukes had filled with tots saved from their own precious rum ration, clambered somewhat unsteadily into their prize. The captured pair-oar still carried both sweeps while one of their own craft's sculls had floated down toward Gravesend and the sea. They objected to carrying Floppin' Poll as the only surviving architect of their perceived misfortunes, but subsided when Hoare summoned Mr. Clay, who bellowed them into submission. Matthew, as stroke oar and commander, pocketed their fare and a little over. Hoare watched over his own taffrail as the two rowed off upstream in the pair-oar, with their passengers in the stern sheets, towing the double scull close behind them. Like an old married couple, they bickered as they pulled.
What next? Hoare asked himself. He stood at a loss for an answer.
Chapter VIII
The Master's boot thudded again into the ribs of the man who lay prone before him. The victim no longer had the strength to howl; he merely grunted with the force of the blow, and rolled over. Kick, kick-this time, into the man's unprotected face. The master lifted him by the front of his coat, hurled him against the wall and punched him in the pit of the stomach before letting him drop again. The man gagged and choked.
'Damn you, you inept nincompoop. I told you to damage him, not kill him. And you let him kill Darby. And where's Jukes? Answer me that.'
'I–I-'
'Shut up. I ought to kill you myself. You ought to know by now: I keep my enemies, and put them to use. Now give me the shiv.'
'I left it be'ind, boss,' the man mumbled, 'like you tole me-'
'I never told you any such thing. You lie in your black teeth.'
'Oh, boss-'
'Another loss like that, you shite-poke, and I'll lose you your cods and feed them to you, raw. Now get out.'
By his own mistake, Hoare's request to the Admiralty for permission to sleep out of his ship was sent through the usual channels. As usual, the usual recipient rejected the request with sardonic words about idle officers and half pay. Hoare resubmitted the request, directing it to Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie, as he should have done in the first place. Sir Hugh granted permission forthwith, and Hoare could at last put his slender kit into his saddlebags behind him when he next traveled down across Blackheath to Dirty Mill, the house that Eleanor had found for them.
Through Greenwich town he made his way, astride the modest young cob he had procured. Since being tossed aground over and over again during childhood, he had had no use for horses and hated riding them. He admitted that they were necessary creatures, but found them disorderly, disobedient, unpredictable, and ready to tittup and fart about wherever they pleased, leaving their excrement underfoot to be trodden in by their betters. He could never understand why country gentlemen were often more enthralled by a horse than by a pretty girl. Certainly, the latter made more enjoyable mounts.
Once out of Greenwich, he took the road over Blackheath to Dirty Mill, up Cromms Hill, past various landmarks, many the villas of royal mistresses, others the follies of men like Vanbrugh, until he reached the crest and could let the cob have its way down into the narrow valley where Dirty Mill lay.
Dirty Mill it might be named forevermore, but Eleanor and her people had already made the house spotless yet comfortable. His wife, he thought, must have all but emptied her childhood home-decent, unspectacular furniture dating, Hoare guessed, from Queen Anne's reign, made its appearance, while familiar hangings from Weymouth windows were recut and commenced to hang, one after another, in Dirty Mill's narrower stone-mullioned windows. Brass and silver came out to cheer up mantelpieces; a suitable cook with knowledge of local markets was hired.
Eleanor must not be without her tuffet. The round object, resilient like her bottom, on which she so liked to nest, took its place on one side of the fireplace in the small parlor, across from an easy chair that she had bullied out from under her terror of a brother and brought with her proudly, like the cat Order bringing in an enormous mouse. Certainly, the nursery furniture that had been hers as a child found an appreciative new owner in Jenny. In no time at all, Dirty Mill had become a true home, the first home Hoare had occupied since he had left the family house in the north, never to return. His life with Antoinette in Halifax all those years ago had been that of a driven junior lieutenant and his child bride; it had been all too short.
Like the rich in the Bible, the wain went empty away, trundling back to its owner in Great Dunmow.
Aboard Royal Duke, affairs settled into a routine. After his ride over from Dirty Mill of a morning, Hoare and Mr. Clay generally engaged in their regular duel, rain or shine. By now, the other Royal Dukes would go about their day's business around the combatants, dodging and being dodged as their respective movements required. During more than one encounter, a crewman might edge past them with a 'by your leave, sir,' or even hint with an expressively cleared throat that they move their passage-at-arms away from some piece of maritime equipment that needed nursing.
Then the day's serious business began: belowdecks, the inspection and sorting of the messages received the day before, either by the irritating sea-pigeons or by the more mundane means of the daily wherry service. To augment the yacht's own boats, Mr. Clay had contracted with Matthew and Bert to take two of those trips daily, down from Whitehall Steps with the tide and back again.
On deck, Mr. Clay made certain that-at least to the extent possible while lying to a mooring-the yacht's people kept their seamanship honed. Watches were kept as if they were at sea, though each watch on deck was divided into two moieties of which one exercised on deck while the other turned to the paperwork that was the vessel's raison d'etre. The Royal Duke's appalling performance in Portsmouth some months gone had earned them the name of the Fleet's 'dustbin.' Well, then, the two officers had vowed, they would turn the jeering term on its ear and make it into a word of praise-or at least respect. The Dustbins' comportment during that little passage in the Channel had shown all hands they might even succeed.
Sergeant Leese kept his Green Marines alert and fit by frequent patrols into Greenwich and out into the surrounding countryside. Early on, a short and nasty encounter had taken place with a squad of Red Marines outside the Yacht Inn, when one of the Lobsters overheard a Green Marine explain to an interested cit that 'We marines really be much like lobsters, sir. As we sings in the service, 'a Red Marine's a dead marine; a Green Marine's a live 'un.' '
'Jenny and I have something to show you, Bartholomew,' Eleanor told him as they returned from Matins. Both she and her husband were free-thinkers, but the proprieties must be observed. With the child trotting between them, well bundled up against the raw cold, the two were striding homeward along one of the lanes on the back side of Blackheath. Last night had seen the season's first sprinkling of snow, and Jenny's cat was beside himself with excitement at this novel, evanescent white stuff. He danced about them in the fresh white powder, athwart
