Under jib, main topsail, and spanker, Royal Duke eased past Portland Bill through the night, towing Nemesis faithfully behind her. When the ruins of Abbotsbury Abbey bore northeast, Clay brought her as close inshore as he dared and anchored. The wind had shifted to just north of west, sweeping the length of Chesil Beach.
Sergeant Leese mustered the landing party in the dark, for Hoare had ordered "darken ship." Except for Leese and Hoare himself, who wore their proper uniforms, they looked no better than a troupe of mountebanks in the varied pieces of landsmen's garb they had drawn from the yacht's capacious slop chest. As he had looked over Blackman's shoulder to watch him make his selection from among the garments, Hoare had felt he could be looking at a theatrical company's store of properties. He had even seen a hobbyhorse in it, a tawdry crown, and what could only be the scaly lower half of a mermaid. Surely no other slop chest in the Navy was so stocked.
Every member of the party bore some-sort of visible weapon in the form of a stout cudgel or staff, and Hoare was certain that other similar objects were hidden in their raiment. Green fondled her cleaver, a weapon with which, Leese warranted to Hoare, she could lop off both legs of an opponent in one wicked swipe. Once again, the sight of her made Hoare shudder. He himself carried a brace of horse pistols under his cloak and had tucked a sap into his belt.
The longboats lowered, one to a side, their passengers clambered aboard them without incident. With Royal Duke's low freeboard, it was no drop at all.
"Cast off." Stone's voice was echoed from the green boat to starboard.
"Good luck, Captain, and a happy return!" Clay called after them. Hoare waved an invisible arm. Invisible in the darkness, the gesture was no more futile, he thought, than trying to make his whisper heard over the wash.
"Ready all… row."
The red boat's oarsmen bent to their work. Astonishingly soon, Royal Duke had disappeared in the gloom, leaving the longboats to toss alone in line abreast, in what might as well be mid-Channel.
In minutes, however, Hoare could hear the slow, heavy breathing of the light three-foot surf as it ran along Chesil Beach ahead. A wave broke.
"The bar," Stone said conversationally. With these paltry seas, there would be no need, even with the green hands at the sweeps, to turn about and back the boat into the sand.
"Easy all; paddle."
Now Hoare could see the breakers curling on the beach. It would be half-tide. Once the landing party was ashore, the boats could readily withdraw.
"Now when I say, 'Row,' put yer backs inter it."
Stone waited for the surge of a seventh wave, then, "Row!"
A heave, and the longboat was under way again. Another, and it was surging forward. Another wave broke, its crest slopping over the side. Two more heavy strokes, and they were clear in the backwash; another brought them scraping onto the beach. The starboard longboat pulled up beside them.
"Off ye go, men!" Stone said. He forgot himself and slapped Hoare on the back to urge him on. Over Hoare went with his half of the party, filling his boots with salt water as he plunged ahead with the others. Once above tidewater, he paused to empty the boots before he sought out the tall figure of Leese.
"This way," Hoare said, and gestured, knowing he could not expect to be heard over the breakers, low though they were. They left the beach behind and plowed up over small dunes covered with beach grass.
There was a roar of wings from a startled flock of shore-birds-snipe, perhaps, or whimbrels, from their whining protests-driven from their rest in the lagoon to starboard. Hoare felt his boots strike a firmer surface: the road, a mere pair of ruts in hardened shell and sand, leading eastward from Abbotsford toward Langston Abbas. It would be a mile and a touch from here to Abel Dunaway's barn. The party formed two straggling lines, one in each rut, with Hoare and Leese in the lead, shoved along gently by the lightening breeze. Once or twice, the moon, all but full, broke clear and showed a desolate landscape to their left, the lagoon and then the endless beach to the right, stretching on eternally.
"There'll be fog inland tomorrow night," Leese said quietly. Their feet crunched on the shelly surface.
The barn should lie… Yes, there it was, black against black on the skyline. The building was dark, soundless, but that meant nothing. Any of Dunaway's people, if they were there, would not be men who would reveal their presence by lights, and the barn was still to leeward of Hoare's party, so that no roistering sounds would come their way. Signing the others to stop where they were, Hoare left his rut. He walked softly through the grassy sand until he was no more than forty yards from the barn. He uttered the corncrake rattle Dunaway had taught him, then stood fast to listen. Nothing was to be heard except a creak, creak, perhaps of a loose door swinging on its hinges. It was certainly neither a corncrake nor a man.
Hoare crouched to the ground and crept to the end of the building. There ought to be a door or two there. There it was, swinging idly, giving off its avian creaks, shutting darkness in and darkness out. Hoare crept within; still no sign of life. The scent of musty hay filled his nose. He smothered a sneeze. A runny nose and watering eyes were, he remembered from boyhood, two of those endless miseries of a rural life that had made him welcome the sea.
He left the barn, stood up, and walked out onto the road where his party could see him against the horizon, and gave them a beckoning signal. In no time, they surrounded him and trooped with him into the barn, where Leese struck a light.
"Take over, Sergeant," Hoare whispered.
"Aye aye, sir."
While Leese called the roll, Hoare looked about him in a more leisurely manner. The moldy hay was there for certain, in quantity. It lay loose in old stalls and in windrows along the walls. He let loose his stifled sneeze. By the flickering light of Leese's dark lantern, the barn seemed as huge as some Gothic cathedral and just as cold.
"Yer all 'ere, I'm pleased to see," Leese said as he drew Dunaway's chart from beneath his forest-green jacket. "I 'opes I'll see ye the same when we're back aboard.
"Now draw round me. You've seen thisyer map of the Captain's before, so I'll 'ave each of ye show me where yer supposed to lie up when ye make the Stones Circle. You first, Adams."
One after another, the members of the party stepped up and pointed out their respective hiding places. Only two had to be corrected, to Leese's audible scorn.
"Now, you an' me, sir. You show me, if you please, sir."
Hoare obliged.
"Very good, sir." So saying, Leese folded the map and returned it to his bosom.
"Now, one more thing," he said. "In the morning, ye'll drift off in yer pairs. Not all at once, and not all the same way. Take yer time, for I won't 'ave yer gettin' to the Ring afore dusk. Some of yer-you two, Green and Adams, and you, Dwight an' Cattermole-you go right past the Circle, out of sight of it, an' lay up till dusk. The Captain an' I, we'll lay up 'ere an' twiddle our thumbs till dusk, an' then we'll up an' join ye at the Circle.
"Remember, lads, there's like to be all kinds of weird doin's among the enemy as they 'eave inter sight. Maybe you'll go over that part for us, Captain, sir?"
"As I told you last night, these people will be pretending they are members of a crazy heathen religion," Hoare began. "Or perhaps not pretending; it's hard to say. In any case, they're likely to play weird instruments and sing weird chants… and I expect the leader to stand at that big stone in the center of the Circle as if he were a priest and go. It's about then that you can expect me to give the signal for attack. Remember what the signal is?"
"Mm-ooooo-ooo-uh," someone said.
"No, ye idjit." Leese's voice crawled with disgust. "That's my signal when I wants yer to rally into the Circle at dusk. No, it's the Captain's whistle. You 'eard it when 'e took command, and last night, too."
"I shan't make the noise again now; it's too loud," Hoare said. "You'll remember it when you hear it. Now, make yourselves as comfortable as you can till morning. Be sensible about your rations, for they're the last you'll get till we're back aboard Royal Duke. Smoking lamp's out, and no talking any louder than my whisper."
He lowered his natural whisper. "That's all," he breathed. "Stand down, the landing party."
Hoare had not bedded down in forage since his early boyhood, and this straw was not of the best. His sleep-what there was of it-was fitful and disturbed by feverlike dreams and shortness of breath. In one dream, he was very small, being chased through a labyrinth by a woman with no face. She metamorphosed into Titus Thoday, bearing a switch. Hoare's feet, in turn, took wings, and he could outrun his pursuer with great bounds.
Hoare was awakened by a steady cold drip onto his neck from a persistent leak in the barn roof under which he had positioned himself when finding his own nest of hay in the dark. The leak had not only explored his neck intimately but also penetrated to his ill-packed satchel of hard bread and salt beef. The morning had brought intermittent showers with it; the slow journey inland would be a soggy one. He and Leese, unlike the others of the party, must stay out of casual observation until as late as possible, for they would find it difficult to explain their presence, wandering about the South Dorset countryside, afoot, in His Majesty's uniforms. Given the sad, weeping skies outside, Hoare regretted this not at all. He shifted position and left his friendly drip behind.
He nodded at Leese.
"Off ye go, then," the Sergeant said. "Green and Butcher, you first."
Leese and Hoare waited in the doorway until the first pair had plodded out of sight in the morning mist, then called for the next, and the next. Now Leese and Hoare were left alone.
Leese's green Marines knew their business, Hoare mused. They moved with quiet confidence, unlike the rest of Hoare's rattletrap crew. He said as much to Leese.
"Well, sir," Leese said, "we been together some years, and after all, this is our job. 'Tisn't like the rest of this lot- more clerk than seaman, all of'em. An' I've had a chance to whip 'em into shape. We've done exercises out in the country, an' in town, too, thanks to your good self, sir.
"Reckon that's why I won't mind at all scraggin' 'oever 'twas cut Baker's throat," he added after a pause. " 'E were one of ours, like.
"There's plenty of time now fer a kip, sir, if ye don't mind."
"Carry on, Leese," Hoare said. "I'll stand watch and knock you up about noontime."
Leese found a dry spot, pulled an armful of hay over himself, and within minutes was audibly asleep. Hoare squatted in the doorway of the barn to watch it rain.
The sky was visibly lighter, and the rain had eased up when Hoare heard the rattle of a corncrake behind the barn. He replied with a rattle of his own.
"I thought I might find ye here, Captain," Abel Dunaway said with a grin, appearing from around the corner of the barn.
"Take a pew, Captain," Hoare whispered. "What brought you to that conclusion, pray?"
Behind him, Sergeant Leese stirred. Without looking, Hoare knew a pistol was aimed at Dunaway's middle.
In instinctive imitation of Hoare, Dunaway's reply was whispered at first.
"News from Dorchester, Captain." Then, in a normal voice, he added, "The town's half-full of madmen, I'm told. And madwomen with 'em, too. Most of 'em gentry. Even royalty, 'tis said."
Hoare remembered all too well Spurrier's warning upon leaving Royal Duke after that awful inspection.
"Stay away from the Nine Stones Circle, d'ye hear?" the hussar had told him. "If you should be found there at the wrong time, you'll get a welcome that might surprise you most unpleasantly."
The threat was dire enough. Worse still, Hoare was at a total loss to know what to do with Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, if he were to be caught tonight in the trap Hoare was about to set. As royalty himself, it would hardly do for Cumberland to be brought before some ecclesiastical court on a charge of witchcraft or Satan worship. And if a ritual murder were planned, as was Hoare's worst fear, he could not see Cumberland in the dock, charged as being at least an accomplice.
Hoare sighed and summoned up, as best he could, the pretense of good spirits.
"Oh, Leese, this gentleman is our host, Captain Abel Dunaway, of these parts."
Leese rose to his feet. "Pleased to meet ye, yer honor."
"I thought I'd bring ye along a spot of the needful," Dunaway said. "Bloaters and beer."
"Ahhhh," Hoare said. "Good."
Over stone bottles of that brew of the White Hart that Hoare had liked so well, a round loaf, and a pair of smoked herrings, the three reviewed the implications of Dunaway's tidings.
"Would ye want reinforcements, Captain?" Dunaway asked. Hoare could swear he sounded bashful.
Hoare's first thought was that with the numbers the smuggler could surely muster, he could be assured of capturing the whole group, whether the latter consisted of sincere members of Spurrier's cult-whatever it was-his political minions, or both. But then Hoare bethought himself of the confusion that would ensue. There would certainly be random collisions between Hoare's twosomes and Dunaway's people, with results no one could control. Once the encounter at the Stones Circle took place, the confusion could only peak. Hoare thanked Dunaway but declined, explaining his reasons.
The older man nodded in understanding.
"Reasonable enough," he said. "But it might help your folk if I was to pass the word to mine to be easy-like on any pairs of strangers they might come across a-wanderin' the highways and byways hereabouts."
Hoare saw the merits of this offer and accepted it.
"I'll be off, then," Dunaway said. "Good luck to the both of ye."
Patches of ground fog drifted eastward across the moor surrounding the Nine Stones Circle, keeping station on each other as if they were a gleaming ghostly Great Armada on its way to defeat among the shoals off Zeeland. The full moon played hide-and-seek with the low clouds that paced them, now bringing the Stones Circle's nine menhirs into full dramatic view, now obscuring them in dank darkness.
Face blackened like those of the rest of his command, Sergeant Leese oozed from point to point, establishing that each pair of his party was in place. Hoare had disappeared into his own dark gorse bush at the foot of one megalith, where, at length, Leese joined him. Their wait began; time stopped.
The fog and the clouds above them continued to float down the wind, leaving the stones naked to the moonlight at one moment, shrouded in gray the next. Quite Gothick, Hoare thought; all the scene needed was the mournful shriek of an owl. And bats. The notion of the little flittering things reminded him of how easily his half-hysterical mocking had made a permanent enemy of Sir Thomas Frobisher.
Hoare's thought might have been a cue. Until now, the Circle had been quiet, the fog even muffling the faint ever-present background of animal chirps and rustling foliage. Now, the fog lifted briefly, and the animal noises ceased. Hoare realized that for some time he had been hearing, eastward toward Dorchester, the sounds of human movement.
Gradually, figures, mostly singletons but some in couples, began to appear out of the mist and slip into the ring of stones. Most appeared to be countrywomen, on the elderly side, but there was a scattering of farmerish men as well, some couples who might be petty tradesmen and their wives, a few younger pairs, and even two or three children. Most of the women carried baskets, some sheaves or garlands of late flowers.
When he was a lad, Hoare remembered, he and his family had unaccountably arrived early for the harvest festival at the village church in Cuckney, below the property Captain Joel Hoare had purchased not so long before. Seated between brother John and little Cassandra, the three of them guarded by father on the one side and mother on the other, Bartholomew had watched the Cuckney folk gather in their ones and twos, bearing their varied thank offerings. Just so were these worshipers assembling.
The sight of them disoriented Hoare. He had steeled himself for some ancient pagan rite, one that would culminate in another ritual killing; hence his having launched the landing party in the first place. The offerings of the rural folk who were gathering in the Nine Stones Circle tonight simply would not do. These people would be as misplaced at a Black Mass as so many nuns in a brothel. Had he misjudged what was to take place here tonight? Had he, then, made an utter fool of himself? From Leese's restless movement beside him, he sensed that the Sergeant, too, was uneasy.
Like those of a herd of startled deer, the heads of the scattered audience or congregation lifted and turned eastward. Hoare's own ears pricked. In the distance, he heard a strange wild, jangling rattle, then the strained bleat of a pipe and the rhythmic thump of muffled drums. As the players, still invisible, advanced, their music swelled. A reddish light flickered in the eastward distance.
The fog pounced again. One minute, Hoare could note each of his party's hiding places and see all of the attending worshipers in the Circle; the next, the surrounding Stones were again no more than hints of black against gray nothingness. The black began to take on ruddy overtones; the discordant music sounded louder and louder.
The fog lifted unevenly, as if it were the curtain of a provincial theater. The congregation drew apart; Hoare saw one anxious woman dart out and snatch her child from the path of the procession itself as it straggled into sight.
Out of the fog appeared two men carrying torches. As they approached, Hoare saw that the torches were oddly carved; they guttered in the light wind. Stripped to the waist, the bearers wore thick hairy breeches as if they were to be taken for satyrs. They, came on with slow, majestic steps and looked about them anxiously. Perhaps, Hoare thought, they were afraid their torches would blow out and leave them alone in the dark.
Six musicians, male and female, followed on their heels. The first pair of women shook lyre-shaped rattles and chanted as they came. The second pair, cheeks puffed out like those of wind cherubs on an antique chart, squalled desperately on double pipes that might have been taken off one of those Grecian vases. The last two whistled on panpipes.
Like the bearers of the ithyphallic torches, the band of musicians was also naked to the waist, the men clad in the same hairy breeches and the women in long full skirts. The figures thus exposed were far from classic and looked very chilly. Hoare shivered in sympathy. A foggy Hallowe'en night was no proper time for an orgy.
With the torchbearers, the awkward orchestra now drew up in a double inward-facing line, as if taking its positions for some macabre fancy-dress contradance, and played on. One by one, the folk in the congregation drew near the altar and deposited their modest offerings around it and returned murmurously to the outskirts of the gathering.
Four small boys now came into sight, their treble voices raised in a meaningless song as they thumped away on little drums for all they were worth. Though they, too, were naked except for hairy buskins-perhaps, Hoare thought, they were supposed to be fauns-the brave noise they made and the exercise of beating the drums must keep them, at least, warm. And possibly the mere fact that they were engaged in mischief kept them in temper. In fact, like all boys so occupied, they kept glancing at one another and stifling snickers; Hoare heard them in his lair and nearly snickered himself. Whatever the reason, the imps were the only persons in the gathering who looked to be enjoying themselves at all.
A second pair of torchbearers followed them, ithyphallic torches in hand.
Into the circle of dolmens, behind the urchins, came a solitary squat figure in a viridian robe, carrying a T-shaped standard as he chanted and staring up, as he marched, at several small furry carcasses that dangled from its crossbar. It was Martin Frobisher, so soon-according to his father- to receive the traditional Frobisher knighthood. He looked bored, even embarrassed.
Hoare knew the two women, bearing a covered wicker cage between them, who were the next to enter from the night outside the Circle. One, quite flat-chested and broad of hips, he had last seen at the reception in Admiralty House. But he had heard her seagull voice in the crowd outside that same house the next night, after the assault on Admiral Hardcastle. It was Sir Thomas's daughter, Lydia, Martin's sister, and her face was that of a woman on the verge of hysterics. She was not singing now, not at all.
Her companion, also half-dressed like the other women in the procession, displayed to better satisfaction. Gleaming in the torchlight, Selene Prettyman's glossy black rope of hair swayed behind her; her firm ivory breasts swayed before. She wore an archaic proud, contemptuous smile, but her eyes roamed, taking in her surroundings as if in search of something. Hoare and his party, perhaps? The two women drew to one side, with their covered cage.
The first of the two men who brought the procession to a close was Captain Walter Spurrier. A heavy cloaklike garment concealed most of his frame. Hoare was certain he had seen it before. In one hand, Spurrier carried a single-edged, wide-bladed weapon, a short sword or falchion like a huntsman's that ended in a peculiar backward hook. Hoare had seen a similar weapon being wielded by a classical bronze hero; he could not remember which one.
The white-cloaked pouting man beside Spurrier, Hoare saw with dismay, was one who must already be quite familiar with processions, if not-Hoare hoped devoutly- of this sort. His left eye glared fixedly to his larboard side. In his good hand, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, bore a footed dish. It was a krater, a bowl or chalice. It might be, Hoare thought, the very chalice Titus Thoday had included in his inventory of Spurrier's peculiar possessions. Hoare wondered what the Duke was making of this bucolic bacchanal.
Beside Hoare, Sergeant Leese startled. Yes, he, too, had been subjected to Cumberland's sneering inspection on board Royal Duke.
Spurrier and Cumberland reached the altar, Selene Prettyman and the Frobisher woman following on their heels, the wicker cage between them. With a final ragged bleat, jangle, and thump, the musicians fell silent.
So far, except for the time and the open-air venue, this could be Sunday morning service in Dorchester's Church of All Angels, and, except for the decorously exposed bosoms, the congregation could be the ton of the town.
Turning to face his flock, Spurrier raised his arms skyward.
"Let us invite and invoke our prepotent masters and mistresses," he intoned. A confused mumble followed. From it Hoare thought to hear names he was sure he had heard elsewhere: "Isis"… "Asmodeus"… "Ashtaroth." "Baal" was certainly familiar. Hadn't the Phoenicians or the Carthaginians or the Philistines sacrificed babies to Baal? For his part, Hoare hoped that Selene Prettyman and Lydia Frobisher were not lugging someone's missing child about in that covered container and that he was not about to witness a ritual infanticide.
Hoare could not doubt it. Plautus might have been written the whole ceremony into one of his broadest comedies. But from the intent expression of Captain Walter Spurrier, whatever deity he was addressing was a real one to him, and a dreadful one.
Spurrier turned to Selene Prettyman and Lydia Frobisher. From the wicker cage he withdrew-not a baby, Hoare was relieved to see, but a great black cock nearly the size of a turkey. Holding the struggling bird by the neck with one hand, Spurrier raised it in the direction of the moon in dedication, as though he were elevating the Host, intoning more gibberish as he did. He murmured an instruction to Ernest, Duke of Cumberland.
Cumberland appeared as if he devoutly wished himself elsewhere. These people, Hoare could tell already, were too simple for the Duke's tastes-and too sincere. So was the ceremony. But he was the son of a King, after all, and noblesse oblige. With his sound left hand, the Duke extended the chalice and set it on the ashlar.
Spurrier grunted, caught the cock's neck with his weapon's strange hook, twisted the bird onto the altar, and beheaded it with one clean backhand blow. The headless creature fluttered to the altar and, as any chicken will when its head is chopped off, staggered about the broad stone surface for several seconds, spattering its blood about before Spurrier caught it and held it over the chalice as firmly as he could. In the deathly silence of the Circle, the blood trickled audibly into the chalice.
Like acolytes, two of the faun-boys came up, looking pale. One bore a brass jar and the other a torch. After rendering an unseemly backward-facing obeisance with evident gusto, the lad with the jar emptied part of its contents into the chalice and part onto the headless cock. It was rum, as Hoare knew from its odor, and powerful rum at that.
Taking the torch from the second boy, Spurrier thrust it onto the rum-soaked flapping cock. A puff of bluish flame, and the pungent, acrid reek of burnt feathers drifted into Hoare's nose. He must struggle against a coughing spell. Spurrier resumed his unintelligible chant. "Gaah," said the Duke, and backed away with a disgusted look to join the two bare-breasted ladies.
Perhaps Spurrier sensed that his royal auditor was becoming discontented, for, using plain English now, he called into the darkness, "The sacrifice has been accepted. Draw nigh, ye worshipers, and receive your token of our sacrifice; then go ye hence, to foregather at the Hall of Feasting!"
With this, Spurrier plucked a branch of heather and dipped it into the mixture of cock's blood and rum that filled the chalice. Selene Prettyman took one of the Duke's arms and Lydia Frobisher the other and led him to the altar, where Spurrier stood ready to dash the branch across the three clenched faces.
The Duke shook himself free.
"That will be enough, Spurrier. Call this a rite?" he grated. "Why, it's the most farcical piece of fustian I've ever had to witness. You had the gall to bring me all the way from Plymouth for this? Compared to Dashwood and his crowd, you're a choirboy. And if you call this a 'pagan orgy,' you can call me an abbess. By the time I was fourteen, I'd seen more, and done more, than you could dream up in a hundred opium dreams. Be damned to you, indeed."
He spun to address Selene Prettyman.
"And as for you, madam, I shall have words with you at my later convenience."
The lady sank into the deepest of curtseys; the Frobisher woman followed suit with far less grace.
The Duke marched off into the dark in the direction from which he had come. The ladies lifted up their heavy skirts and followed. After an embarrassed pause, Spurrier resumed his summoning of the congregation.
In response, the common folk approached timidly to receive their aspersion, then drifted away as silently as they had arrived, leaving the celebrant to stand alone, facing his altar and his stinking headless bird as if rendering a closing prayer. Perhaps, Hoare thought, Spurrier would now dodge round to the entrance of the Stone Circle as if by magic, like the vicar at Sunday service, to greet his parting flock and be congratulated on his powerful sermon.
At Hoare's side, Leese stirred restlessly and gave his Commander an inquiring look. Call it off? he mouthed.
Hoare put out a hand and pressed it onto the Sergeant's shoulder. Wait, his gesture said.
Spurrier still brooded at the altar, cope and all. As Selene Prettyman returned into the ring of megaliths, he looked up, visibly hauling himself back to the mundane world from whatever bourne he had been sojourning in.
"What are you doing here now?" Spurrier asked. "You're supposed to be shepherding Cumberland back to Dorchester."
Spurrier sounded depressed, it seemed to Hoare, as well he might, considering that his ceremony had been a fiasco and that he had just lost one powerful backer.
"Don't worry, Spurrier," she said. "I gave him into the protection of the Frobisher children, who have him under their wings. I kissed him good-bye. Perhaps he'll linger at those odd quarters of yours. If so, you can make your excuses to him yourself."
"That's all very well. But you have no business here now," Spurrier said.
"You should know by now that I go where I choose to go," Selene Prettyman said briskly. "Now be about your own business, for if I'm not mistaken, your business is about to come to you." As she shrugged, her breasts bounced. Under other circumstances, Hoare thought, their motion would have been enticing.
"Very well," Spurrier said. "Keep out of my way, then, d'ye hear? Now then, let's be about it."
He bent, retrieved a torch, struck fire to it, and waved it in an unmistakable signal. There was a scuffle outside the Circle.
"Come along, you," came a hoarse voice from the dark. "Don't give us no trouble, now."
Two captives were half-hauled, half-carried into the torchlight, each gripped by a pair of hard-looking men. The prisoners were hoodwinked, their arms bound, their shoeless legs hobbled.
"Take off their hoods, you men. We'll start with the little one," Spurrier said.
Hoare suppressed a grunt of dismay. The prisoners were Hoare's own men, Rabbett and Thoday.
It must have long been obvious to Spurrier, Hoare could see now, that Hoare's two aides were on his trail. What, then, since they were lonely intruders into his territory, could have been simpler or more logical than to ensnare them and dispatch them like a brace of hares? By making them his true sacrifice, the one that the death of the cock had merely simulated, Spurrier would be accomplishing three things at once. He would clear his own trail, he would add to the Royal Navy's alarm and despondency, and, if his worship was genuine-a possibility that, after the proceedings just ended, Hoare could not dismiss- make a sacrifice to his deity or deities compared to which that of the big black cock was petty. Again Hoare pressed Leese's shoulder. He must make ready to signal the rest of the hidden landing party.
The leather gags across their mouths kept the two captives from uttering more than half-smothered mumbles. But it was obvious that they could see and they could struggle, which they did as best they could. A blow to the belly doubled Rabbett up.
"Over here," Spurrier ordered. "Stretch him over the stone, now. No, you idiots, face up. There. Now hold him. Yes, just like that."
"Are you sure you want to go through with this, Spurrier?" Selene Prettyman asked in a cool voice.
"Be silent, woman."
Spurrier took a firm hold of the odd, impractical-looking knife once again, raised it into the foggy night air, and looked fixedly at the moon. Then he leaned over Rabbett.
At Hoare's piercing whistle, he froze.
Leese at his heels, Hoare threw himself across the few feet toward the altar. The rest of his party sprang from their hiding places and grappled with the guards. Dropping their prisoner, Rabbett's guards turned to defend themselves.
Spurrier leaped for the gap between two menhirs, the cope flying behind him, the drawknife in his hand. Hoare fell headlong over the clerk, reached out for Spurrier, clutched the fleeing foot, twisted, and began clawing up the other's leg. Spurrier dropped his weapon but gripped Hoare by the hair.
In no time, Hoare had both hands on Spurrier's leg and was almost within reach of his privities. Hoare would grip them as soon as he could and crush them in his fist till Spurrier surrendered.
"Take him from behind, woman!" Spurrier shouted.
Hoare looked over his shoulder. Selene Prettyman, raven hair flying as wild as any maenad's, lunged toward him, the hook of Spurrier's blade in her hand. She flipped it deftly end for end, catching hold of the hilt. Hoare winced and awaited the blow that would finish him. Instead, flinging herself full-length across Hoare's prone body, Selene Prettyman swung the flat of the weapon squarely into Spurrier's upturned face, and the man went sprawling.
In a single series of smooth, practiced-looking motions, Selene Prettyman cut the fastenings of Spurrier's cope, pulled it from his shoulders, and modestly draped it over her own.
"That's better," she said. Her palm was bleeding where it had clutched Spurrier's blade. She ripped a length from the hem of the cope, looked at it, gave an ach! of disgust, wrapped the silk around her hand, and knotted it with the other hand and her even white teeth.
Two of the landing party made to seize her.
"Let the lady go," Hoare said. "She's a friend of the Crown."
"Good for you, Captain Hoare," she said. "This affair has gone quite far enough, I think." She drew the cope more closely about her.
Rabbett had collapsed to the ground but now propped himself against the altar. His eyes, strangely small without their accustomed spectacles, looked up at Hoare in entreaty. Hoare bent down and cut away Rabbett's gag and his bonds. He turned away from the clerk's stuttering thanks to do the same for Thoday.
"Your arrival was timely, sir," Thoday said. "This is evidently the place to which one should take recourse if one wishes to lose one's head."
Leese came up to the group. "Sorry, sir," he said. "Two of the wretches got clear away. I'll 'ave summat to say to my people when we're back aboard, that I will. Eight smart sailormen an' all that preparation, just for four no-good rascals. Not to speak of losin' them antic folk what opened the show. I'll 'ave their 'eads."
Shaking his own head, Leese took the three extinguished torches, lit them from the one Spurrier had rekindled, and jabbed them into the ground. In the light they cast, Leese inspected them with mingled disgust and respect.
"Looks like great big pricks," he said. "Beg pardon, ma'am."
"We got the only man we needed, Leese," Hoare said. "Perhaps it's for the better that the others got away."
"You speak no less than the truth," Selene Prettyman said. Her voice was low but heartfelt.
"Well, sir!" came Abel Dunaway's voice from the dark outside the Stones Circle. "I think my lads 'ave bagged ye some pretty little coneys! Come along, lads, and show the Captain what ye found!"
"Oh, my God," Hoare whispered. They had managed to see Cumberland off unscathed. Had the smuggler, thinking to help, brought him back?
One at a time, hustled along by Dunaway's men, fugitive celebrants began to appear. The smugglers' bag numbered five of the women, three of the men. The captives' ecstasy had worn off; the women clutched themselves from modesty or cold, or both, while the men simply looked hangdog. The two Frobishers, the rest of the men, and the four faun-urchins had evidently eluded the new arrivals.
So, Hoare saw with relief, had Ernest, Duke of Cumberland.
"If your men will take over our bag now, sir," Mr. Dunaway said, "we'll be. off. It's as well your men don't get too good a look at mine."
"Of course, Captain," Hoare replied. "Where the Navy failed, your people succeeded. Well done, and my thanks to you all."
He swept his eyes over as many of Dunaway's men as would meet his glance before they all drifted away into the night. Dunaway waved cheerfully as he disappeared.
"It's just as well, Hoare," said Selene Prettyman, "that the Frobishers got away and took our noble friend with them. They were off before the real mischief started, after all. And while Sir Thomas may be objectionable and more than a little mad, he is still a power in the region and in parliament. He is better disarmed than destroyed.
"And in case of need, both you and I-and your crew, of course-saw his son and daughter taking part in that silly performance. No, with a tale like that hanging over his head, we have no more need to disturb ourselves with Sir Thomas.
"Mr. Spurrier's other master now, whoever he is… that's another thing. We must interrogate the good Captain-intensively, if need be. For that, best we take him to Dorchester."
Hoare felt an unaccountable reluctance, first, to do Selene Prettyman's bidding and, second, to relinquish Spurrier to her.
"To Royal Duke, I think, ma'am," he said.
"Why?"
"Because you were among this evening's celebrants. I do not trust you with our captives."
"You forget, sir, I am 'friend of the Crown.' You yourself have said it, and it's greatly to your credit. It was I who gave you the warning and I who was responsible for his capture, Captain Hoare," she said.
Hoare preferred to divert her from that issue.
"Nonetheless, I must not habituate myself to having a lady preventing the escape of my adversary, leaving him for me to capture," Hoare said.
"What do you mean?"
"Mrs. Graves crippled the skiff in which my last villain was rowing to safety…Just now, you enabled me to catch Spurrier when you tripped him."
Hearing his name, Spurrier sat up and groaned. The side of his head was bleeding slightly where Selene Prettyman had swatted it.
"Ah, yes, Mrs. Graves," Selene Prettyman said. "And how, pray, did she 'cripple' the skiff?"
"She slung a stone. It broke one of its thole pins. He capsized in the surf. I went on from there."
"I must remember to keep out of slinging range of Eleanor Graves, then, must I not?"
Mrs. Prettyman put a slim, strong hand on Hoare's arm.
"But surely, Captain Hoare, you can do better for yourself than a globular widow. Why, she…"
Upon seeing Hoare's expression, Selene Prettyman stopped in midsentence.
"That was inexcusable of me, Captain Hoare," she said.
"Yes, madam, it was. I thank you for your intervention with Mr. Spurrier, and I wish you a good evening."
With that, Hoare left Selene Prettyman standing. He summoned the landing party, and departed for Dorchester with the captives. Mrs. Selene Prettyman could find her own damned way.
On the way to Dorchester, Hoare instructed Leese to let all the participants in the ceremony escape, except Spurrier and the hard henchmen who had brought Rabbett and Thoday to the altar in the Nine Stones Circle. In the first place, Hoare reasoned, the folk who had been present at the pagan rite could at the most be no more than Spurrier's deluded devotees-harmless, eccentric perhaps, and now very frightened. In the second place, Royal Duke, while a brig herself, had no accommodations for prisoners-no brig, so to speak, he told himself half-hysterically. He put the horrid jest in that mental commonplace book of his, against possible future need.
So he merely had Rabbett take down their particulars before releasing them in the town. As Hoare had expected, the clerk already knew most of them. One, for example, was the wife of the town grocer, another a ne'er-do-well ditcher.
"Remind me, Rabbett," Hoare said, "to give their names to the vicar at the Church of All Angels. They committed their sins in his parish, I think. He can do as he will with them."
"Yes, sir," Rabbett said. "If you wish, I'll give 'em to Vicar myself as soon as possible."
"I think not, Rabbett. Tomorrow, you must be aboard Royal Duke. I need you there."
He heard the clerk's gasp. Was it with pleasure or fear?
"If I may, then, sir, I would like to bid my old mam and da farewell. And pick up my other shoes. For 'tis a long walk to Weymouth."
"Do you ride, Rabbett?"
Rabbett could not, nor, as Hoare found when he inquired, did the otherwise omnicompetent Thoday. So Hoare silenced his conscience and ordered Rabbett to roust out a chaise for himself, Hoare, Thoday, and their prisoner and a wagon to carry Leese, the landing party, and the other prisoners. Spurrier he would keep to himself and interrogate him in the chaise as they rolled south to Weymouth.
While weary, Thoday could still summon up advice for his Commander.
"We might, sir, visit Mr. Spurrier's place of business while en route to Weymouth," he said. "A more leisurely inspection than I had time to conduct during my clandestine intrusion could produce interesting results."
Spurrier must have overheard, for he started. "You will find nothing of interest, Hoare, I assure you," he said.
"Pipe down, you," Leese said.
Hoare followed Thoday's advice. Joined eventually by the weary Rabbett, they searched Spurrier's quarters by candlelight, from stem to gudgeon, not neglecting his bedroom. Thoday set out to test every panel and every floorboard for secret hiding places.
He found one at last and crawled into it, carrying a dark lantern. On emerging, he shook his head.
"Nothing except this old missal," he said disgustedly, holding out the dusty book. "The place is merely an old priest's hole."
It was past dawn when they were through with the turning out of Spurrier's quarters. Thoday sighed.
"I think we have it all here, sir," he said, displaying a small heap of papers. "I fear there is nothing of interest beyond what I found on my last visit, but we can put our discoveries before the-your crew and see what they make of them."
"A very good performance, Thoday," Hoare said.
"Elementary," Thoday replied.
"Did you check the dovecote, Thoday?" Rabbett asked.
"What dovecote? Where?"
"In back of the house, of course. I thought you knew about it."
Thoday vanished downstairs; the other two followed him. Shortly he returned, feathers sticking to his shoulders, holding a pigeon awkwardly away from his face to avoid the bird's bill. The bird looked disconcerted, as well it might. A tiny silvery cartridge was attached to one of its ruby red legs.
"Here, Rabbett. Hold the bird while I take off the message tube," Thoday said.
"I'll take care of it, Thoday," Rabbett said. "When it comes to pigeons, you obviously don't know what you're doing. We Rabbetts have lived among pigeons all our days."
Holding the pigeon gently, Rabbett slipped off the cartridge and handed it to Hoare.
"Here, sir," Rabbett said. "I'll just go and give the creature its reward."
The message was en clair.
" 'Levi,' " Hoare read, " 'Stop. Stop. Stop. Saul.' "
Saul?
"You were very clever, Spurrier," Hoare whispered to the bound man facing him as they jolted toward Weymouth in the chaise. Thoday sat beside Spurrier, Rabbett beside Hoare.
"You juggled two balls at once, very neatly-killing officers of the Royal Navy on the one hand, and disguising the work with Black Masses to beguile-"
"Not Black Masses, man," Spurrier said with a grin of contempt. "What you chanced upon was to be no more than a rite of initiation. If I had been celebrating a genuine mass, as I should have done, it seems, His Royal Highness would not have been so disappointed. And neither you nor your helots would have survived your spying. There I was fatally foolish."
"That is as may be," Thoday said in a flat voice. "What intrigued me is that you built further on the edifice of superstition you first designed. But you made another mistake. I became aware of it just as I saw you about to sacrifice my little friend here. There you and your bullies went, crushing under your feet the fruits and flowers that the neighborhood's innocent nature worshipers had brought to the harvest festival with which you opened that obscene rite of yours."
"That was a dreadful waste, of course," Spurrier replied with a cynical smile. "But what was mistaken about it?"
"It made it obvious that on the first occasion, when you chose the Nine Stones Circle as the place to put the two Captains to death, you had no idea of involving the paganism, or Satanism, or whatever you choose to call the creed that you follow. That notion came to you only when you returned to your quarters after your double murder. It was then that you took garlands of flowers and produce back to the Nine Stones Circle and scattered them about, as if they were left by a cult."
"I don't follow you, Mr. Thoday," Rabbett said. "The whole thing was bad, but what was the mistake?"
"He forgot to tread them down the first time. That was when I all but knew he had revisited the Stones Circle after killing the two late Captains."
Spurrier's lips thinned. Then he shrugged and looked carelessly out the window of the chaise.
"You wrote a two-act play, Spurrier," Hoare said. "One in which you cast the Duke of Cumberland as the protagonist… and, I suppose, those poor deluded folk in your congregation as the chorus. In Act I, you tried to show off to the Duke with your silly pagan ritual. Perhaps… you knew beforehand that it wouldn't be enough to take him in."
For a fleeting instant, Hoare thought of suggesting that, for some peculiar reason of his own, Spurrier had planned from the beginning to drive him off. That would have made no sense at all.
"In any case," he went on instead, "it was only after he marched off that you commenced Act II, which was to be the climax of the play-the murder of my two… Naval investigators.
"What gave you the idea of using that means of covering up your part in the killings?" Hoare went on. "It cannot have been the Duke of Cumberland. Unpleasant… he may be, but he was obviously a mere observer of your performance and not an informed participant."
"You'll have to ask someone else that, Hoare," Spurrier drawled. "You are insolent, just as Sir Thomas said you were, as well as stupid."
That he was still naked to the waist and no longer even had the blasphemous cope to keep him warm in the November dawn had evidently not dampened his superb self-confidence.
"Your master, Sir Thomas, has much to answer for," Hoare replied, "and answer for it he will. It's a pity for you that you did not receive his last message before you, er, raised the curtain on your two-act melodrama."
"You are absurd as well as impudent," Spurrier said. "The frog-the man you call my master-he's no more than a useful puppet, an o ver-the-hill jackanapes with mad pretensions of being the rightful occupant of the throne. It was bad enough that his tadpoles had to be present. D'ye think that if the frog himself had anything to do with it, I could have got…"
"Got what?"
Spurrier shook his head.
"A different frog, then, Spurrier? A Frog from over the water, perhaps?"
"I have nothing further to tell you," Spurrier declared. "In the first place, you are my enemy. More important, you interrupted a holy sacrifice. So did the Prettyman woman. She will live to regret it, as will you, but not for long. Both of you will regret last night's doings, I promise you on behalf of my masters. My word, yes."
Rabbett's face went white in the dawning, while Thoday's remained impassive.
"So you serve two masters, Spurrier," Hoare whispered. "One on earth, I suppose, and one… elsewhere. You will forgive me, I'm sure, if I confess myself a devout skeptic concerning the Deity's existence; that being the case, I must logically doubt the existence of the Enemy as well.
"It is your earthly master that interests me. His purpose I think we know; it is to throw a spoke in the wheel of the Royal Navy whenever he can. The infernal machines your colleague Kingsley caused to be planted in Vantage and her sister ships out of Portsmouth were one such spoke; your attempt to decapitate the Navy by decapitating its senior officers was another."
Here Thoday intervened. "I must confess, sir, that the purpose of Mr. Spurrier's essay at gathering in the Duke of Cumberland eludes me. Perhaps he will enlighten me."
When Spurrier had nothing to say, Hoare decided to put up a possible motive to see if he could bounce the prisoner into telling more.
"I rather suppose, Thoday," Hoare said, "that the notion stemmed from Sir Thomas… by example, perhaps, or by direction. The bee in Sir Thomas's bonnet, about his being the rightful occupant of the throne now beneath King George-"
"God bless him!" Rabbett declared.
"— yes, Rabbett-is well known. And it is also well known that the Prince's younger brothers, Cumberland in particular, have ambitions of their own in that direction.
"If Spurrier here could stir up the Duke, turn him into a fellow Satanist-if he needed turning, that is-and promise him support from over the Channel, that would be a spoke in the wheel, not only of the Navy… but of the entire kingdom, would it not?"
Although Thoday made no observation, his look told Hoare that his point had merit. Spurrier's expression told Hoare he had struck home.
But the chaise was approaching Weymouth, and time was running out.
"Pray tell me about your master," Hoare whispered. "The earthly one, I mean. His name, his whereabouts."
Spurrier uttered an imprecation from between thinned lips. "I have nothing to say to you," he said. "You and your crew are dead men."
That might be the case, Hoare admitted to himself, for it was obvious that Spurrier himself was in deadly fear.
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.
"Roll him over a barrel, someone," Hoare said. "Maybe he's choking on his own vomit. And call Tracy."
Samuel Tracy, failed apothecary, was Royal Duke's nearest approach to a surgeon. He took one look at the prisoner and rose to his feet.
"He's dead, sir," he said.
"No one ever died of seasickness, man," Hoare was about to say, but Tracy forestalled him.
"Someone has now, sir," Tracy said firmly. "Choked on his own vomit, I suppose. Look. He was hitched to a cleat, lying on his back, and couldn't move his head."
"›"Damn," Hoare whispered. It had been his doing, then. It had been he, Bartholomew Hoare, who had directed that Spurrier be confined up here. He, Bartholomew Hoare, had hoped that the agony of seasickness would compel Spurrier to name his master, despite his fear. That master might have been Sir Thomas Frobisher, but Hoare was far from sure. There had been a Byzantine, corrupt quality about the whole affair that did not suit the Knight-Baronet's blunt, deluded nature. In any case, here was another death to lay on the altar of his conscience, and this time a useless one. He had blundered again. He had let Spurrier spill his innards to death, indeed, but his voice had spilled nothing.
"Untie him, someone, and clean him up," Hoare whispered sadly. "We must take him back to the authorities."
In Weymouth, Hoare knew, "the authorities" were Sir Thomas Frobisher. He dreaded the thought. He would not do it; he would return to Weymouth, but he would keep his prisoners and his corpse aboard until he could get them to Portsmouth.
"Make for Weymouth, Mr. Clay," he whispered. "I'll be in my cabin, preparing my report to London."
Hoare almost felt sorry for Spurrier. The man had gained standing of a sort in Dorset, as Sir Thomas Frobisher's tame bully. But then hubris had got the better of him. Using that as a platform, he had put himself in the hands of the master agent of the French, the man whose puppets knew him only as "Himself," and set out to spread alarm and despondency among the Royal Navy by beheading its senior officers. And he had striven to enlist Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, in his unsavory cult, only to discover that the jaded royal had, as he had told Spurrier, "by the time I was fourteen, seen more, and done more, than you could dream up in a hundred opium dreams."
Somewhere, an unidentified puppet master was making his marionettes play out a vast malign joke, a joke that would soon be on England if the strings were not cut.
With that thought, Hoare drew himself up at the desk in front of his cabin window, dipped pen in Standish, and began to write his report to Sir George Hardcastle, for him to read and forward to Sir Hugh Abercrombie at the Admiralty.