Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities (2 page)

“If you do not choose to continue your voyage tonight—and I hope you will not—you may wish to rest at the Dish of Sprats. Over there to the left of where you are aiming now, this side of St. Ninian's Church. That's the steeple you can see.”

Mrs. Graves might not know her nautical terms—she said “left” like a landsman, not “port” like a seaman—but her directions were clear all the same, and Hoare eased his helm to suit.

“Will you hold the tiller for a moment while I take off sail?” he whispered.

She heard the whisper. She hesitated for a moment, then grasped the tiller ahead of his hand, lightly at first, then with increasing assurance.

“So, so,” he said. He stepped forward around the captives' surly bodies and dropped
Inconceivable
's jib onto its club, lashing it in place with its own sheet. He uncleated her main halliard and brought it aft with him to the helm.

“I'll take her now, ma'am,” he said. “I'll be dropping the mainsail in a heap, so you should edge over to the rail.”

Hoare thrust the tiller smoothly to starboard. As
Inconceivable
luffed up, he waited until she had just enough way left to make the harbor's sloping shore and let her tall mainsail go with a run to drop on top of the prisoners, together with the boom. He left them there for now, one muttering in a dazed voice. The little yacht's keel grated on the shingle once again, and she came to rest, listing slightly to starboard, while Hoare gave the mainsail its own rough furl and propped it in a pair of jeers.

He locked the cabin hatch and hopped ashore to offer Mrs. Graves a hand down. She took it—more out of courtesy than of necessity, Hoare thought—and leaped nimbly down in her soggy skirts to stand behind him, looking back at
Inconceivable.

“We might turn our captives over to the port guard?” she said, half-inquiringly.

“Or the Chief Constable,” Hoare suggested. “Whichever is less likely to be their drinking companion.” While not actually acquainted with Weymouth's guardians of the law, he knew that all along Britain's beleaguered south coast the lawman and the unlawful were often as close as a virgin's thighs.

Mrs. Graves's laugh was an odd throaty gurgle. “Of course. Sir Thomas Frobisher, then. It would be … what, three o'clock?”

Hoare nodded.

“Then he will be at the Town's Club—as will Dr. Graves, in all likelihood. Come.”

She took Hoare's arm and directed him to a building facing the new esplanade below St. Ninian's. It was a large house, which Hoare thought could have belonged to a leading merchant of the town.

“The Club's house once belonged to a prominent merchant of the town,” she said as if reading his thoughts. “But he fell on hard times, and a cabal of other leading citizens clubbed together to buy it and make it their meeting place. To be away from their wives, you know.”

Hoare laughed. The breathy little noise, according to the waspish wife of a fellow officer, sounded for all the world like an angry butterfly.

The pale, leathery steward of the Town's Club must have seen Mrs. Graves coming, for he opened the massive door himself.

“Why, Mrs. Graves!” he cried. “You must have gone wading in the sea—and in this wet weather, too! Come in to the fire in the Strangers' Room, and make yourself comfortable while I call Dr. Graves!” He bustled ahead of the brown woman and Hoare, stirred up the sea-coal fire in the grate, and was about to leave them to toast in front of it when Mrs. Graves called after him to ask if Sir Thomas was in the house. He was.

“Ask him, Smith, if he would be so kind … And perhaps, too, you would send a man to Dr. Graves' home for my maid. He should tell her to bring my olive twill gown and a cape to me here at the Club.”

The fire's growing warmth was welcome.

Mrs. Graves looked up at Hoare. “If you were not present, sir, I would be hoisting these poor skirts to warm my person directly.”

“If you wish, ma'am, I shall be happy to withdraw and leave you to your privacy.”

“I wish no such thing,” she said. “That would be poor return indeed for your services.”

“What, ma'am, may I ask, took you to the beach under Portland Bill?” Hoare whispered.

“Stones, Mr. Hoare.”

“Stones, ma'am? For use as missiles?”

“Only incidentally, as needed. Ever since I was a child, I have had a fondness for the remarkable shapes and colors of sea-washed stones. They dwell in flat pans filled with water, to keep their colors bright.

“I patrol Portland Bill quite regularly, for the local urchins who collect stones elsewhere—sometimes from under my very nose—remember the old Saxon belief that the Bill was once the druids' Isle of the Dead and shun it.

“Dr. Graves has sometimes chided me for taking up a whole room of our house for my collection. But 'tis a small room in a large house, I remind him, and he need not begrudge me the space.

“After all,” she added musingly, “we have no children of our own, and my stepchildren are long since wed and fled … or dead. In any case, the weather has been foul for a week, and I was feeling housebound. So I went for a walk. That is all there is to it.”

“You are Dr. Graves' second wife, then?”

“His third, sir. His first gave him two sons before dying of a consumption, and his second gave birth to stillborn twins before dying from loss of blood. Then he lived alone for over twenty years before we were joined together. Sir Thomas, by the by, claims to stand in lieu of uncle to me, having given me away to my husband two years ago.”

Mrs. Graves's speech was interrupted by the entry of a personage who could only be Sir Thomas Frobisher himself. Squat, bandy-legged, and puffy, Sir Thomas had a wide mouth and goggling tawny eyes. He peered suspiciously at Hoare, then turned to Mrs. Graves.

“Eleanor, my dear! What have you done to yourself now?” he cried. “And what have you brought us this time?” he went on, returning his critical glance to Bartholomew Hoare as he stood, plain in his wrinkled Navy coat, wide, loose seaman's trousers, and wet, coarse buckled shoes.

“Permit me, Sir Thomas, to introduce Lieutenant Bartholomew Hoare of the Navy, who has just rescued me from an unknown fate,” Mrs. Graves said.

“‘Hoare,' eh?” Sir Thomas said. “Well, sir, I'll have you know I am a baronet—
and
a knight. Which of us takes precedence, eh? The … er … lady of the night or the hereditary knight? Eh?”

Hoare knew from old this reaction to his name. It was predictable from old, and he had learned how to avert most of the hostilities that could otherwise follow. “You, of course, sir. Myself, I am merely Bartholomew Hoare—at your service, now, or anytime.” He accompanied his whisper with a cold, gray stare. He also made his leg to the man of superior station.

“Frobisher is a famous name in history, Sir Thomas,” Hoare continued. “Have I the honor of addressing a descendant of Sir Martin Frobisher, discoverer of the famous bay of that name?”

Sir Thomas's equivocal look showed he was now of two minds about Bartholomew Hoare. On the one hand, Sir Thomas was pleased at the implied compliment to his ancestry; on the other hand, irritated at being addressed in such a strangely confidential whisper and suspicious that
someone
—surely not Mrs. Graves—was making game of him. Was he, head of the Frobishers, risking a challenge to his standing by being asked to meet a whispering man with an obscene name? Even when, in a few words, Mrs. Graves explained Hoare's disability, the baronet's air tilted only slightly toward the affable.

“Yes, Mr.… er …
Hoare,
” he said. “While the name Frobisher goes back as far as the Conqueror and even beyond, my ancestor Sir Martin Frobisher was the first to bring it into prominence. A century later, of course, Charles II granted the baronetcy to the first Sir Charles, who was my fourth or fifth great-grandfather.

“Since then, the family which I have the honor to head has been prominent in Dorset society. Indeed, the Frobishers are received at court as a matter of course, and each of the eldest Frobisher sons is knighted upon reaching his majority, also as a matter of course. So, you see, we are twice-a-knight men.”

Hoare was about to burst into one of his silent laughs when he realized Sir Thomas was in deadly earnest, so he turned his laugh into a breath that he hoped indicated proper admiration.

“As a matter of fact,” the knight-baronet went on in a nasal, patronizing voice, “I expect to attend the investiture of my only son—young Martin, you know—the next time he accompanies His Majesty to our little city. He is a captain in the Foot Guards, of course.”

Guardee the young Frobisher might be, Hoare told himself, but he would remain undubbed for some time if his knighting must await the King's return to Weymouth. These days the poor monarch, self-isolated in Kew for months at a time, seldom even came to London; he would hardly make his way back soon to his former favorite watering place.

“Tell me … er …
Hoare,
” Sir Thomas said. “From whence does
your
family derive?”

“They were Orkneymen originally, sir, and we still consider ourselves such, even though my father has bought a small property near Melton Mowbray.”

“What say? Speak up, man.”

“The Orkneys, sir.” To continue at top whisper Hoare had to strain his maimed throat. He felt himself being brought by the lee. The man must know that an attack on his handicap, unlike an attack on his name, was hard to deal with. Sir Thomas was being gratuitously offensive.

“D'ye hunt, then,… er …
Hoare?
”

“Not as a regular thing, Sir Thomas.”

“Hmph.” Sir Thomas began to look about him for something more worth his attention than a disheveled junior naval officer with an obscene name who could not speak and who did not hunt.

It was then that Hoare succumbed to temptation and reacted with a sally that was to cause him considerable subsequent grief.

“Of course, sir, my father is MB of our neighborhood's battery.”

“Battery, sir? Battery? ‘MB'? What's an MB, pray? And what has a battery to do with huntin'?”

“You know about falconry, surely, Sir Thomas?”

“Of course. Obsolete now, but a perfectly acceptable avocation for the nobility and gentry.”

“Well, sir, we Hoares and our like-minded neighbors in the Northern Islands have trained bats to hunt game and retrieve it.”

He paused, gasped, and continued.

“We find that bats, being creatures that nurse their young, are far more intelligent, and more easily trained, than falcons of any species. (Gasp.) They are, in fact, as clever and responsive as the Skye terriers our fellow islanders to the south have taken up so avidly, or the herds of Shetland ponies our neighbors to the north employ to keep down the auk population.”

Pause; gasp.

“We fly our nimble little fellows in the dusk, of course. It makes for very good sport. My father, having made himself a skilled flederman, was appointed Master of Battery for our little neighborhood hunt. Hence the ‘MB.'

“Should you find yourself in Leicestershire, sir, I believe he could promise you an excellent evening in the field.”

Hoare heard a smothered sound from Mrs. Graves. He also saw that, while he might not have gained the knight-baronet's respect, he had at least captured his interest.

“What d'ye hunt with 'em, then?” Sir Thomas asked in a reluctant croaking voice.

“Flies, sir. We feed them to our frogs.”

By good fortune, Sir Thomas's reaction was cut short; Dr. Simon Graves wheeled himself into the Strangers' Room.

Dr. Graves looked to be in his late sixties; later, Hoare was to learn he was seventy-four. At one time, he would have matched Hoare's height and build, but now he was confined to a peculiar light chair of wicker, bamboo, and ash. The toroidal supplementary wheel outboard of each primary wheel made a continuous handle by which the doctor could roll himself about with his still-powerful arms. Hoare had seen crude, heavy versions of similar invalid's chairs, but this one, light yet obviously strong, was a work of art.

The doctor's wife introduced the two and went on to describe to her husband and the knight her afternoon's affray on the beach. She belittled her own role and exaggerated Hoare's—but not too effusively—and concluded, “So that is how Lieutenant Hoare and I became acquainted and why he is here. I am most grateful to him, my dear.”

“As am I,” the doctor said in a surprisingly powerful baritone. Hoare thought he could remember what his own voice had sounded like before the Glorious First of June; he thought it had been much the same.

Sir Thomas would allow Dr. Graves to say no more. “But you mean to say there are two rascals tied up aboard your yacht … er …
Hoare?

“Why,” he added, “I must have 'em taken in charge immediately. I'll have her boarded and relieve you of 'em. Where does she lie?”

Hoare told him and granted permission for Sir Thomas's men to board
Inconceivable
and remove her cocooned cargo.

“And what's her name, sir?”

“
Inconceivable,
sir.”

“
What?
Are you attempting to gammon me, sir?” Sir Thomas's eyes opened wide.

Hoare shook his head emphatically. He had been here before and knew his lines.

“No, indeed, Sir Thomas. I also call her
Insupportable,
or
Molly J,
or
Dryad,
or
Serene,
or
Unspeakable.
I change her name according to my mood of the moment. I keep several trail boards below and face the spares into the bilges for a cabin sole.”

He paused to breathe.

“It makes no difference to
her;
she answers to none of them. She just answers her helm, and very well, too, at that.”