'orphing' of Portsmouth town.
'Oh, my dear child…' His whisper was broken.
'Da!' Jenny cried triumphantly into Hoare's chest. He looked down at her jubilant face.
'It worked!'
'What worked, child?' he asked.
'Why, the crumbs, of course, silly! The crumbs I kep a-droppin' as them coves drug me along through Lunnon an' down the tunnels!' In her brief return to the underworld, Jenny had let her gentility lapse, Hoare could not help noticing. Ah well, she had kept her life, and her spirit. The gentility would be back; perhaps the cat Order had it in his possession.
'Yes, my dear, your stratagem worked,' he lied, and set her down with an extra squeeze.
'But how did you bloody your face?' he asked.
'Why, I bit 'im, that's what! 'E din't understand 'ow young 'uns can wiggle about an' around, an' get loose o' most every-thin', so w'en I begun to get peckishlike, I wiggled loose and filled up on their vittles. 'Orful, they was, too!'
Saved by my womenfolk again, Hoare told himself ruefully. First, there had been Eleanor and her upsetting of Moreau's stolen skiff; now it was Jennie and her sharp little teeth. He took the child in another hug, took her by the hand, and led her out of bondage through the low farther door. He knew his way now, and he always would. Bubble and Squeak had embedded it in his innermost soul.
Hoare was secretly overjoyed when he and his Jenny appeared in Dirty Mill's lowest wine cellar just as Whitelaw was turning the last few bottles of Hoare's second-best port. After accepting Hoare's hand and holding the child to his chest for a revealing second, the silent servant led him up from the cellars of Dirty Mill, and thence into the astonished arms of Eleanor Hoare.
Chapter XIV
To my knowledge, our previous candidate for the post held until recently by the late lamented Admiral Abercrombie, who was so summarily dismissed from consideration, has Sir Thomas Frobisher's interest at heart, ha ha ha, and-as is well known to all at this table, Frobisher has… oh.'
At his own gaffe, the First Lord fell silent. For that very night, Sir Thomas Frobisher's knighthood was about to be stripped from him. The man himself, his baronetcy still inalienable and in effect, would be on his way by ship, to Hell or Halifax.
Seeing that he had already carried the day, Mr. Prickett leaped to pursue his beaten foe. 'In my professional capacity, I must add, my lords, a reminder to this Board of the Act of Parliament of 1768, the Commissions Act, in which it is explicitly stated that the rank of commander is a temporary one, to be held only… Er.
'You are required, my lords,' he went on sternly, 'by the 1768 act of Parliament, to make a decision. Figuratively speaking, of course, a case under that Act stands before you this afternoon. Either you retire Commander Hoare on half pay, or you advance him to post rank. The rank of 'commander' is one that is purely temporary, created for the convenience of… but never mind. Make him, sir, or break him. Make up your mind.'
The pride of Sir Thomas Frobisher in his knighthood was inordinate. It was exceeded only by his pride in the baronetcy which had been conferred on his ancestor upon the restoration of Charles I. It was not within the power of the Crown to dissolve the baronetcy; that title inured, not to the individual who might bear it at any particular time, but to the Frobishers as a line.
Sir Thomas's knighthood, however, like that of any other knight, was revocable. While such a thing happened less frequently than a coronation, it happened. A caitiff knight could be degraded. It had, in fact, been the necessary precursor of a man's execution for high treason, in the days when that crime called for drawing and quartering. Since a true knight, it was held, could not commit treason, no knightly traitor could have been a true knight in the first place. Logically, then, the ceremony of knighthood must be reversed before the butchery began.
Sir Thomas Frobisher was not to be dismembered. Once condemned, he was merely to hang. Innocent or guilty, nonetheless, he was to be degraded.
The ceremony took place in the chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey. Only members of the order itself should be present. Nonetheless, though he was no knight and never expected to be dubbed one, Hoare managed to steal into a distant, chilly corner. Since it had been he who disclosed Sir Thomas's treason, he thought it only proper that he witness the result. Moreover, he held the man in great distaste. Throughout the hour before midnight, Knights of the Bath felt their way silently into the choir stalls assigned them, below their knightly banners. Many of the knights in attendance, elderly knights for the most part, were less than agile in the dark. Accordingly, the natural rustle of robes and shuffling of shod feet were punctuated occasionally by a knightly oath and, once, by the crash of a superannuated, night-blind knight into the lectern.
At last, however, the silence in the chapel was complete except for a soft susurrus of breathing. Above, the bells of midnight tolled. At the twelfth stroke, footsteps sounded outside the chapel, and a youth entered, bearing a taper that he used to light the candles-first those at the altar, and then those set at the corner of each row of stalls. As Hoare could now see, the choir was less than half full, it being a time of war and many of the knights, as serving officers, were out of the country. The young man spoke not a word, but finished his task, saluted the gathering with a bow, turned on his heel, and returned to the place whence he had come. The participants waited in their stalls, restless in the dim golden candlelight.
After an eternity, steps sounded again, this time those of a number of men, and the celebrants entered-a short column, led by a heavy, obviously corseted man of middle age, in an ornate cloak. The leader, whom Hoare assumed must be the Master of the order or his representative, had a familiar look. He could be one of several brothers, and Hoare was quite sure he knew the man's family. He carried a velvet cushion, on which rested a pair of gilded spurs. He was followed by several other cloaked figures walking silently in twos, and then by a helmeted man carrying a broadsword at the 'carry' as if he were a marine with his musket. Hoare had seen another midnight procession not so long ago, one that, like this one if he was not mistaken, had also included a Royal. But the atmosphere here, instead of being unintentionally comedic, was solemn.
A party of three closed out the procession: two men in back-and-breasts that might have been borrowed from the Horse Guards, dragging a hooded man in gyves with a hood over his head. No, Hoare told himself; whoever the hooded man is, he is not Sir Thomas. He was much thinner, and his garments were shabby. He might be a homeless vagrant, pressed into duty for this occasion.
Silently, the guards came to a halt, facing inwards, while their leader stepped in equal silence to the altar before making an about turn. The guards and their charge proceeded on until they stood at the altar's foot.
The Master now walked around the three waiting men, knelt with a grunt, and fastened the spurs onto the captive's heels. Rising and returning to the altar, he nodded at the man with the sword.
Was this to be another sacrifice, Hoare wondered, like the one he had thwarted at the Nine Stones Circle? No. The swordsman bent over and, with sharp chops of his blade, hacked off first one, then the other of the spurs the Master had only just attached to the hooded man's heels. He hurled the cut-off spurs, one after the other, down the length of the chapel, where they clattered against the door.
At another silent signal, the swordsman now made his way up one of the cross aisles of the choir and thrust his way brusquely past three seated knights before halting at a vacant stall. Here, he reached up with the sword and, with an overhead swing, chopped away the staff from which a banner overhung the stall. This, too, he hurled down the aisle; staff and banner slid only half as far as the spurs before coming to a halt.
Finally, at a nod from the Master, the two guards picked up their prisoner, gripping him at the armpits, and thrust him down the aisle. The man uttered a muffled yelp, and yelped again when, one after the other, the guards pushed and shoved him with their booted feet the rest of the way down the aisle and, with the spur and the dishonored banner, out the chapel door.
The Master gave one last nod, and paced down the aisle, followed again by his paired attendants. The entire party vanished. Throughout the ceremony, no single word had been spoken.
Hoare waited in a corner until the last of the somber column had passed out of sight. He made his bow to the
