their hawse, like one of those legendary Chinese boatmen Hoare had heard about but had never seen, who made it a point to scull across another vessel's bows as closely as possible. By doing so, they believed, they cut off the devils in their wake, leaving them behind to pester the other craft. Surely, Order's tidy tail would be devil-free.
'Shall I show him now, Mum?' Jenny asked eagerly.
'Why not, my dear?' Eleanor said. 'Look. See if you can knock down the bird's nest in the fork of that willow tree.'
'Won't the mother bird be upset?'
'No, Jenny. The baby birds are long grown and gone, and the nest will be empty now.'
The trio stopped in the lane, while Jenny scrabbled under the thin snow until she found a small round pebble. Hoare watched her in perplexity, Eleanor in pride. Then she reached into her bosom and withdrew a sling-a sling! Eleanor looked up at her husband, her eyes brimming with mischief.
'You remember, I see, Bartholomew.'
'Indeed, my dear. How could I forget?' It was with a sling that Eleanor Graves had fought off her attackers on the afternoon of their first meeting, and with the self-same sling that she had made Edouard Moreau overturn his skiff in the surf so that Bartholomew Hoare could catch up with him and drown him.
Jenny popped her pebble into the sling, took a stance, and began to twirl her sling about her head with deft flips of her wrist. Three flips and she let the pebble fly. The pebble hit the nest squarely-it was less than ten yards away-and knocked it out of its crotch. It fell into the thin snow, where the cat Order attacked it.
'A dangerous pair we have on our hands,' Hoare remarked. Her cheeks pink with excitement and her black eyes snapping, Jenny stooped and chose a second stone. Erect again, she sought about for another target.
Order flushed a rabbit. It bounded away, stopped. Twirl, twirl, release, and the rabbit went head over heels. It kicked thrice, and then lay still. A trickle of red appeared from its nose. Order scampered up to the little corpse and crouched to lick the blood.
'Oh, oh, oh… what have I done?'
On the spot, Diana became Danae. Dropping the sling, Jenny ran to her prey and squatted over it, her hand fending off the curious cat. She looked up at Eleanor and Hoare, her eyes brimming with tears.
'What have I done?' she sobbed again, and sniveled. She swept her sleeve across her nose. 'I killed it. Oh, oh, oh…'
Eleanor crouched down beside the child and swept her into her arms.
' 'Tis all right, lass, all right. There, there. We understand. You are a brave girl.' Her words faded off into mere comforting murmurs. Hoare stood above the little Pieta, his heart sore for the blooding of his charge. In an act of mercy, he had put her father to death as he lay hopelessly pinned by a beam in a burning warehouse. Some day, perhaps, she would have to know; meanwhile, her innocence had been assailed by her own doing. Now, he pocketed her victim surreptitiously, picked her up, and, cradling her against him, walked, his wife beside him, back in the direction of Dirty Mill. Behind, around, about, between his three charges, the cat Order wove his scampering way.
'Don't you think, Bartholomew,' Eleanor asked as they walked, 'that it is time we adopted our Jenny formally?'
'Past time,' Hoare replied over the child's head. She was getting heavy, he noted with approval. 'I must spend tomorrow in London. Could you find the time tomorrow to look up a solicitor and have him draw up the necessary papers?'
'Yes. I think, though, that the Church must enter into it somehow. Have you been baptized, my dear?'
'Baptized?' the child asked sleepily. 'What's that?' Curiosity had stopped her sniveling.
'I think we can assume she hasn't,' Eleanor said. 'Besides, a second baptism can do her no harm. I know that from my childhood. After all, Father is in orders. I'll see to that as well.'
'Will you be back by Sunday?'
'I hope so, my dear.'
'Then I'll see to it, and gladly,' she said. 'Jenny, would you like it if Mr. Hoare and I were to become your papa and mama?'
'But you are my papa and mama,' Jenny said into Hoare's shoulder.
'We'll tell you all about it in the morning,' Hoare whispered. 'Now, it's time for tea. There'll be sandy biscuits.'
So it was that, after Matins in the church that served Blackheath parish, jenny Jaggery was at once confirmed in her Christian name and became the youngest Hoare.
Reflecting on the music he had heard, Hoare shook his head a trifle sadly.
'You won't have known it, of course, but when I had a voice, I sang quite a fair baritone. On the Halifax station, Antoinette and I made a popular duet.'
'Oh?' Eleanor Hoare's own voice was rather cool.
'In fact, I do believe I miss the singing more than the speaking,' he added.
'To be sure,' she said. 'After all, Bartholomew, you do speak, albeit a trifle softly, perhaps. Do you think you might take up whistling?'
'Whistling?'
'Yes. You do know how to whistle, for Simon told me that when you and we first met, you showed him off your musical prowess. 'Drink to Me Only,' was it not?'
' 'Come into the Garden, Maud.' '
'The difference is immaterial. Besides, I have heard you at it, signaling to people in your employ. The pink girl Susan at the Swallowed Anchor, for example. You could develop a very nice descant to my contralto.'
'What an extraordinary idea, my love. I had not thought of making harmonies with my lips before. Let me put it to a trial.'
With that, Hoare commenced to twitter. By the time the three had reached home at Dirty Mill, he was managing brief trills, and the child Jenny was looking up at him with a face that was far more full of worship than it had been at morning prayer.
Chapter IX
I have it!'
'Eh?'
'The wife, and the child. He dotes on them, I hear.'
'Come, sir. Assault on men like one's self is a matter of course. But women… ladies in particular… and their children? Surely not.'
'We shall see. Excuse me, I have urgent business to undertake.'
'Something must be done about your pigeon shit, Hancock. I shall not abide it another minute.' Hoare was below, arguing with his foul-breathed captain of the cote, or whatever the proper title was for the post. He was tired of working in the fecal fetor that seeped continually across the partition between his truncated great cabin and the pigeons' domain, dead aft, in the most desirable spot aboard. He was in no mood to care whether or not the pigeons needed his precious wide stern window and gallery to arrive and depart on their missions.
At the knock on his door, he interrupted himself to utter the chirrup that every Royal Duke now knew meant 'Come in.' The sentry, one of the yacht's Green Marines as usual, appeared, sworded rifle at the carry. It was the Dutchman Frits Boom, a man who looked the perfect dullard but was no such thing.
'Dere's a man down from London, sir. Sayzz his name's Lestrade, sir, an' sayzz it's urgent.'
Before Hoare could tell Boom to admit Sir Hugh's pet ferret, the man himself was before him, having slipped under the guard's elbow. He had been bleeding profusely onto his dark overgarment, and his low forehead still oozed.
'It's the admiral, sir. Admiral Abercrombie. 'E's dead.'
'What?'
