Mr. Clay hung his head and stood mute. That was all any junior dared do.
"Well, Mr. Clay?"
"Our passengers, sir," Clay said at last.
"What?"
"Our passengers. A draft of men for Niobe, under a midshipman, with their own petty officers. The mid in charge of the draft showed me his orders."
"Which were?"
"To place himself and his men under my command, sir, for the duration of our passage to Portsmouth. I issued my orders to them, and the Niobes brought her here.
"Besides, most of our own people were incapacitated by seasickness as soon as we passed Greenwich, sir," Clay added.
"My God," Hoare said. "Do you mean to say that by ordering this poor mismanned barky to sea the Admiralty deliberately put her reputation at risk?"
"It appears so, sir," Mr. Clay said. "Of course, they could not have foreseen the Duke's contribution of this morning."
"What did Their Lordships think it would do to her- our-credibility in the fleet?"
"I can hardly say, sir."
Hoare lay long awake that night, lying snug in the swinging bed Captain Oglethorpe had left behind him and reviewing the painful course of the day and the blunders that had preceded it. How he himself had blundered again and again: swanning about that Channel gale in the then-named Neglectful-"Neglectful," indeed! — instead of standing ready to board Royal Duke immediately upon her being sighted off Spithead; paying court to Eleanor Graves when he should have been questioning the Weymouth watch; playing games with Abel Dunaway when he should have been pressing him for facts about his smuggling trade.
Above all, he should have fended off, somehow, Cumberland's ill-starred inspection. If he had kept at his duty and stayed in Dorchester himself to track down the Captains' killers, he would never have been commanded to the reception. Instead, he had let Taylor's message entice him back to Portsmouth, where Cumberland had his chance to torment him. Damn Taylor; damn Cumberland.
Come what might, he would never turn his own beloved little Alecto over to Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. Never. He would scuttle her first.
Admiral Abercrombie in London may have been justified in commanding that Royal Duke should never go to sea. Having had the courage to break all precedence in the Service and recruit her crew for its members' qualifications, regardless of age, seamanship, sex, or previous condition of servitude, he must surely have sought to ensure that the yacht, her peculiar people, and her treasury of secrets would remain safe, at least from the perils of the sea. Capture by the French, in particular. It would be a far, far better thing for Sir Hugh to scuttle her first, and himself with her. So, in the safe headquarters haven of Deptford, this constraint might have been acceptable. But now Royal Duke lay off Spithead, surrounded by fighting ships and fighting men. She was no toothless lighter; she was visibly designed to take the sea. She carried sail. Moreover, she carried guns, albeit tiny ones, which made her a fighting ship as well and not a mere handmaiden to wait upon her betters.
The effect this would have on the credibility of her secret work would be catastrophic. Judging from the jeers of the ships she had crawled past, and nearly into, this morning and the avidity with which their crews had overheard Cumberland's broadcast remarks, Royal Duke's mission of supplying the fleet with believable information about the French might already have failed. Unless Abercrombie let her loose to learn her maritime duty, she and her people would remain the laughingstock of the Navy and any information emanating from her would leave the Naval world a-sneer.
Hoare's stomach churned. He must speak with Admiral Sir George Hardcastle, since Sir George was his Administrative Commander as long as Royal Duke lay in Portsmouth. Thereafter, he must prepare a report to his true superior, Admiral Sir Hugh Abercrombie, in London. Hoare did not know which he dreaded the more: the Port Admiral's predictable outrage or the task of convincing the unknown Sir Hugh that he must reverse a mistaken command. And with permission or without it, he must somehow find a way to whip into shape an unfamiliar, untrained crew. Still viewing these dismal prospects, Hoare finally began to doze off.
God, he had forgotten the bloody ciphers. He had been intending to read them, and he had not. Instead, he had stuffed them casually into his uniform coat before he rushed off to last night's disastrous reception. Please, Lord, let them still be there. Wearily, he climbed out of bed, struck a light, lit a candle, recovered the decipherment with a relieved sigh, and ensconced himself in his night robe in Sir Hugh Abercrombie's enormous chair.
They might be en clair now, but they were still gibberish, written in imitation of James from one Old Testament character to another: Jehu, Ahab, Asa, Levi. Someone named Saul. Someone else named Jael, another named Sisera. Hoare wished he had paid more attention, of Sundays, to the ministering clergyman, back when father had hauled his Hoares off to be sanctified.
He must do some writing. He sighed again, decided he must make a night of it, and sat down again, this time at his writing table. He pulled out a little-used Bible and a sheet of foolscap and began to scribble.
By the time the gray of dawn began to light Royal Duke's beautiful broad stern window and the miniature gallery behind it, he had assigned some of the names, somewhat uncertainly, to some of the persons who were-or might be-involved in a possible plot against the Crown. It was all very vague and quite unsatisfactory for a direct-minded sailor.
"Levi," he was quite sure, was Spurrier. "Jehu," the furious driver according to the handy concordance he had found in Holy Writ at about four bells, was probably the late Lieutenant Kingsley, hanged for the murder of Adam Hay, his Captain in Vantage. "Asa" was certainly a person of importance, the man whom Jenny Jagger's da had described as "Himself' and the Francophone Moreau as "lui"-Sir Thomas Frobisher leaped into his mind. And how about the Duke of Cumberland? How did he happen to turn up in his thinking?
Oh, dear, he told himself; this was getting him nowhere. He locked the packet of messages in his strongbox with the orders placing him in command of Royal Duke and turned in.
Chapter VII
"Sir. Sir."Hoare was awake instantly, although it took him a noticeable time to recall that he was neither in his bedroom in the Swallowed Anchor nor aboard Alecto. Once he remembered he was in Royal Duke, he swung his feet to the deck.
"I'm awake," he whispered. "What is it? What's the time?"
"Just past four bells, sir," said the watch. "They're calling for you to come to Admiralty House. There's word Admiral Hardcastle's been shot."
His Admiral? Shot? Hoare whistled for Whitelaw. He would not wait to shave or be shaved. He threw on his uniform and in minutes was across the brow and ashore, ahead of the messenger, going at a near trot over the cobbles, through the sparsely lit sleeping port, to Admiralty House.
Admiralty House was lit as if for a second performance of last night's reception, its entrance full of comings and goings.
Hoare arrived panting. Outside the door, despite the lateness of the hour, a mixed crowd had gathered in the feeble lamplight. He had no breath to waste on apologies but simply elbowed his way through the hubbub and upstairs until he reached the Admiral's anteroom. This was crowded, murmurous. At the little desk normally occupied by the clerk Rabbett sat Patterson, the Admiral's secretary, fending off as best he could the questions and demands being fired at him by all and sundry. Beside Patterson stood the swarthy lantern-jawed figure of Oliver Leese, Royal Duke's own Marine sergeant. Behind Leese stood another of her Marines. In their incorrect but practical Rifleman's green, the two were as different from the red-coated sentry at the Admiral's office door as Franciscans were from a cardinal. To one side of that sentry lay another, dumped in a heap like a pile of dirty clothes; whether this man was alive or dead, Hoare must wait to discover.