"I'd warrant 'e's right, Captain. It makes for a good place to break up cargo, bein' out in the open as it is, where a man's not easy crept up on. Though it's been known.
" 'Appen Popham will 'a' told you 'ow 'e and his men nabbed me and mine, full fair."
"He told me he had done so, but not how."
"Well, 'twere this way. Look 'ere. These crumbs be the stones, see?"
With crumbs, forks, and a saltcellar, Dunaway took Hoare through the moonlit encounter, showing him where the excisemen had lain in wait; how, all unsuspecting, he had led a caravan of laden ponies into the Circle; how the other, smaller caravans he was to meet had arrived; and how, as the work was in full swing, Popham, who had hidden his excisemen in a fold of the down, had sprung the trap on him.
" 'E gathered in most of the goods that time, an' a good half of me boys to boot. 'E be a smart one all right, Popham be, an' he showed it that night. But he never would ha' twigged to us but for a dirty little man what got greedy an' blew the gaff."
Hoare was not certain he wanted to hear what happened to the greedy little man.
"Mislaid his bollocks, 'e did." Dunaway fixed Hoare with a meaningful eye. " 'Is dollymop, what led him astray in the first place, found 'em on 'er doorstep one mornin', stuck in his mouth.
"She weren't 'alf-surprised," he said in conclusion. "Picked up and run off to London, I 'ear."
The greasy potboy made to wipe the Nine Stones Circle away with a grubby cloth, but Hoare forestalled him. "Will you sketch that out for me?" he asked.
When Dunaway assented, Hoare had the boy bring paper and writing materials. Dunaway laboriously copied his work, his tongue writhing about as he drew, as if he were the child Jenny struggling with forming her letters.
"Tell me," Hoare asked, "do you know where I might conceal a party of my men on the way to the Circle-a dozen of them, say?"
Dunaway thought, but not for long.
"Why, yes," he said. "I've a barn-a smallish one an' poor, for I farm very little these days-t'other side of my land at Langton Herring. Yer welcome to shelter yer men there, so long as ye'll give me yer word they'll not be used against me or my lads."
"You have my word once again, Mr. Dunaway," Hoare replied. "I still care less than nothing for your men's doings, so long as they do not aid the King's enemies."
Hoare had Dunaway draw another map.
"When will ye be wantin' the place?"
"There's a difficulty there, sir, for I cannot now say. I may have no word of any doings in the Stone Circle before it's too late to pass you the word…"
Hoare took breath.
"… What then? What if your lads and mine were to find each other there the same night?"
Dunaway chuckled. "That would make a fair do, wouldn't it, now?"
Again he ruminated, long enough, this time, to empty his tankard.
"Tell ye what. We've a signal. Since yer a master of odd noises, no offense meant, sir-"
"And none taken. So I am, I trust."
"Well, here 'tis." Pursing his lips, Dunaway made a rattling sound rather like the call of a corncrake. He made it again, in a higher register. Hoare noticed that the publican's ears seemed to prick up.
"Try it yerself."
On Hoare's third try, Dunaway deemed him proficient enough.
"Mind you," he said, "we change our signal every month or so, lest it leak out to the wrong folk. So ye'll need to pass this way at least that often, as long as yer likely to need it."
"It will be my pleasure," said Bartholomew Hoare.
At last, he let the potboy bring a stirrup cup and give rein to his unwonted sense of order by erasing the Circle of crumbs. The stirrup cup drained, the two dissimilar seamen parted with a firm seamanly handshake and what Hoare felt to be a mutual esteem.
Hoare and Thoday dined together, in almost complete companionable silence, at and on the Dish of Sprats. Thoday was unique in Hoare's experience. He was obviously well educated as well as arrogant. Hoare thought him most likely a Papist, which, of course, debarred him from commissioned rank in His Majesty's service. Why had he chosen to enlist? For it was most unlikely that a man of his education, and one of Sir John Fielding's men at that, would have been pressed. Family troubles, perhaps? In any case, Thoday's manner was not one that encouraged intimacy, and besides, it was none of Hoare's business.
Their two rooms at the top of the inn adjoined. Through the thin wall, just as he was composing himself for sleep, Hoare heard the plaintive sound of a violin, expertly and tenderly played. Listening, he drifted off. Tomorrow was Sunday; he would be in Eleanor Graves's company once again.
As Hoare descended the stairs the next morning, Titus Thoday was finishing his breakfast in the inn's common room. Hoare helped himself from the sideboard and joined his colleague.
"Was I dreaming last night, Thoday, or did I hear the sound of a violin coming from your room?"
To Hoare's astonishment, the man blushed, albeit faintly.
"You did, sir. I am sorry if my improvisations disturbed you.
"Not at all. They were something of a lullaby, in fact. But where did you…"
Thoday smiled, reached into his coattails, and extracted a kit fiddle and its half-sized bow, the sort that dancing masters carried. Tucking the tiny instrument under his chin, he tuned it quickly and, tapping his foot, launched into a hornpipe. At the conclusion, Hoare heard clapping hands from across the room.
"Bravo!" cried a merchantlike man at a table on the far side of the room. His portly wife smiled at her husband.
"Makes you want to caper a bit, does it not, Sam?" she asked.
"Reminds me of happy days," her husband replied.
"I shall be attending morning prayer at St. Ninian's," Hoare told Thoday. "If you'd care…"
"Thank you, sir, but no," the gunner replied, as Hoare had known he would. "I fear I do not subscribe to all the Thirty-nine Articles."
"Nor do I. But after all, the proprieties must be observed by someone. And if not by His Majesty's officers, then by whom?" With that, Hoare donned his hat, examined himself in the mirror that stood just inside the inn door, and-satisfied that he looked as seemly as he could, given the features the Almighty had given him-walked through the brisk air up the gentle cobbled slope to the Graves residence.
Eleanor Graves awaited her escort, Agnes at her side.
"You put yourself to unnecessary trouble, Bartholomew," Eleanor said when Hoare hove into sight. "I could well have walked to church without your protection. After all, Mr. Moreau's gang is long since dispersed, and I stand in no danger."
She forbore to say, Hoare noticed, that it was the activities of her late husband that had put her in danger when they first met, that those activities had ceased with Dr. Simon Graves's death, and that the danger had therefore disappeared. Hoare forbore to remind her. As far as he was concerned, the less reason she had to remember her dead husband and the manner of his going, the better.
"And how does Order behave herself this morning?" he asked as they walked back down the slope, followed by Agnes.
"As well as can be expected," she replied, "considering that Order is male. And, to answer your next question, his dam, Chaos, is also in good spirits, though as I felt her, she was unable to decide whether to attack my knitting or rest. And Jove was nodding. And I am quite well, as are Agnes-are you not, Agnes? — and my servant Tom. And the cook."
"But you seem somewhat out of sorts this morning," Hoare said.
"I am, Bartholomew, and you are indirectly the cause."
"Please?"
"After you left my house yesterday evening," she said, "Sir Thomas Frobisher was kind enough to call, despite the lateness of the hour. He had the effrontery to accuse me of misjudgment, if not worse, for having received you in my house so soon after Simon's death, if at all. He had heard the neighbors speaking of it. He spoke, of course, he said, as one who must view himself as being in loco parentis.