'rightful' crown; Goldthwait's, to decapitate the present government of Britain, and replace it with one of his own selection. That, at least, was Goldthwait's own view of the situation, as Sir Thomas now understood it.
Sir Thomas, he admitted to Hoare, had been slow to realize the subordinate role he was to play in what he had deemed to be an alliance of equals and of gentlemen. His doubts had begun to reach a peak the other night, when Goldthwait's true, overweening expectation, his absolute assumption that his wish was open to challenge by neither God nor man, began to reveal itself. At last, the rift between the Goldthwait and Frobisher factions had broken out on its own, and Sir Thomas realized he was being used. From that balcony, Hoare himself had seen it happen.
'He's a madman, Hoare,' the knight declared, 'a Bedlamite. He believes himself superior to Bonaparte, to Jesus Christ-and, as I believe you have reason to know-to Satan.'
From the recent behavior of Captain Walter Spurrier, Hoare did indeed know. Spurrier, celebrant of the black Mass in the Nine Stones Circle, had once answered to Sir Thomas but had transferred his worship to Satan's superior, and died in his cause.
'He knows himself infallible, omnipotent,' Sir Thomas continued, fixing Hoare with his glittering eye. 'I say again, he knows it, utterly and absolutely. As I learned to my own sorrow only a few nights… a few nights ago… he was using me, sir, using me and my just cause, to disrupt the workings of the British government.'
'In short, Sir Thomas, to commit high treason,' Hoare whispered.
'Treason, sir?' Sir Thomas snarled. 'If this be treason, make the most of it. As for me, return to me and mine our rightful crown, or give me death!' His peroration concluded in trumpet tones of challenge.
Somehow, the words sounded familiar to Hoare. Damn him, the man was all but a plagiarist. Tat the thought, he must suppress a laugh of contempt lest his laughter provoke a new outburst of rage.
But for Sir Thomas, Hoare saw, it was too late for rage. Instead, he looked once more about his ruined room, and his bulging eyes filled with tears.
Ah, said Bartholomew Hoare to himself. Now we bite close to the pit of the peach.
'He's a devil, Hoare, a devil,' Sir Thomas spat.
'The Devil, in fact,' he added, 'or at least, so he deems himself.'
'And, as you should have learned by now, Sir Thomas,' Hoare whispered, 'he who would sup with the Devil should bring a long spoon.'
'Learned too late, sir,' Sir Thomas answered. 'My cause is just-I know it-but the means of advancing it which I chose was… vile. It was my fault, my most grievous fault.' He stared morosely at his feet.
Some other penitent, somewhere, had used that phrase to Hoare. At the moment he could not remember who, or where. Besides, it was of no significance. It seemed to him, on occasions like this, as though the silence enforced upon him by that French musket ball had endowed him with a father confessor's alb. Or 'tool?' No, he thought, it was some other garment with ritual significance.
In any case, it was not in Hoare's power to absolve Sir Thomas Frobisher, nor was there any seal upon his confessional. The knight must go before a lay tribunal. Meanwhile, in addition to Jenny's whereabouts, another matter nagged at him. Now that the other night's play was over, it did no harm, Hoare thought, to speak as one gentleman to another, even to a self-confessed traitor.
'Would it trouble you, Sir Thomas, to know that I discovered you had been-er-trifling with the cards you dealt Mr. Goldthwait and me?'
The disconsolate knight shook his head, but almost as if he were inviting further questions.
'But to what end, sir?' Hoare whispered. 'You held no stake; who was to be the gainer?'
'It made no difference to me, Hoare,' Sir Thomas said. 'I was merely weary of being left behind, impotent. It gave me a silly feeling that at least… at least…' His voice faded away.
'And pray where, sir, did you acquire the sleight of hand necessary to slip the false card into the decks from which you dealt the other night?'
'I prefer not to say, sir,' was the answer, and Sir Thomas would not be moved.
Before picking up his wife at the Bow and Forest and finding passage downstream to Greenwich, he would betake himself to Whitehall with his prisoner, find Sir George Hardcastle, and dump the problem in his lap. He knew himself too weary to address it himself.
'Collect anything you may need, Sir Thomas,' he whispered, 'and come with me. Pray move with dispatch, sir; there is not a moment to be lost. I shall await you with transportation outside your door.'
Upon seeing the knight-baronet nod his bowed head, he nodded his own and took his leave.
Chapter XIII
In the back room of a less-than-savory ordinary, the unremarkable-looking man sat among thieves, pretending to be at his ease. He needed them, desperately. By his captures of hard evidence, his enemy had put the entire movement in jeopardy, while he himself had but the one piece. A powerful piece, to be sure, and evidently a treasured one, but solitary and therefore limited in effect.
He struck once on the side of his mug of Blue Ruin, and again, more sharply than before. Around him the thieves' voices faded away.
'How would you like ten thousand pounds to be split among you, fair and square?'
'Ten thousand pounds!' echoed around the room as loud as if they had been spoken. Less clearly, of course, came the second thoughts: how to extract a second share, and a third, and…
'Well, then. I invited you here, and no lesser men, because you are all known as ready men to fight for what you want. And are right in wanting. And deserve. Now, there's a little ship lying in Greenwich, that sticks in my craw, and I want done with it- ship, crew, cargo, and all, right down to the anchor flaws.'
One of the thieves smothered a laugh.
'No man laughs at your humble servant.' A small, serviceable pistol had appeared in the speaker's hand; since the laughing thief was within eighteen inches of its muzzle, he blanched and sat mute.
'You have a count of five to get out of this room alive. One… two… As I was saying, gentlemen…'
Leaving his cob to be returned to Greenwich in the experienced hands of one of the insubordinate Royal Dukes, Hoare embarked with Eleanor, Taylor, and the Esquimau in a navy launch directed to take them home. There having been no occasion for an earlier craft to depart for Royal Duke, the out-lander, in obedience to his orders, had sprung nimbly aboard just as the launch was shoving off.
It was a sorry return. Between the Hoares, as they sat in the stern sheets of the launch, there was the illusion of a space, in which one small, tubular girl-child should be seated but was not. Only the Inuit bore any cheer with him, and that was an unwitting joy at being on the water.
'A waterman I be, zur, an' no gamekeeper,' he declared, 'niver 'appier than messin' about in boats.'
Having expressed the selfsame words to himself not so long ago or so far away, Hoare could only nod.
'Zur Thomas, 'e be landsman, frog or no frog,' O'Gock added. 'Puddock, more like!'
'Mph,' was all Hoare could say.
Sensing her husband's puzzlement at the unfamiliar word, Eleanor leaned over and whispered 'He means 'toad,' my dear. Vernacular.
'But poor Sir Thomas carries no jewel in his head,' she continued, in the obvious hope of cheering up her despondent husband. 'A bee in his bonnet, certainly, but no jewel.' She was trying very hard, Hoare knew, and she knew she was failing. He could not remember ever before having sensed uncertainty in her. Their absent Jenny sat between them. Falling silent, his wife simply took his hand in hers.
So they sat until the launch, bucking the last of the flood, had reached its destination, the cox had announced with his cry of 'Royal Duke!' that her captain was aboard, and the pitiful array of side boys had mustered at the entry port to receive their skipper and his wife.
The cob and its makeshift post-boy already waited Hard at the entrance of the Naval Hospital. Mr. Clay, clever and fore-sighted as always, had guessed that Captain Hoare and his lady would be wanting to return to Dirty Mill as quickly as possible. He had ordered the cob put between the shafts of a chaise.
He had guessed correctly. Hoare took no more time than he needed to bring his lieutenant up to date on
