"I'll change my mind," Hoare whispered. "I'll take Madeira, myself. That stuff smells like nectar."
"She orter, Mr. 'Oare," Greenleaf said as he poured the dark wine into two clean, coarse glasses. "She's been layin' there in the dark, in me back room, for nigh onto ten years, with 'er friends an' relations." He poured Jaggery's pint. "There you are, Mr. 'Oare," he said.
Hoare paid him and brought his purchases to the table where the old gunner and his daughter, Jenny, were waiting.
Ordinarily, Hoare would have described Janus Jaggery as an oily faced man as well as a two-faced one. Every time Hoare saw the man he was peering out from under his mop of greasy hair and whining through his gray-brown beard about the pain of his deformed left hand, his warped legs, and the buffets fate was forever dealing him. Here with his daughter, though, he certainly wore the better of his two faces. He now looked sly, but benign. Jenny Jaggery would be five or six years of age, Hoare guessed. In a threadbare frock that would have covered her twice, she was a wisp. But someone other than her father must have the care of her, for she and her frock were clean, though drab.
" 'Ere s to yer good health, Mr. 'Oare."Jaggery took a deep draft of his ale and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
Hoare's first sip of the Madeira told him that, like a fortunate butterfly, he was sipping nectar.
"Is the man really named 'Ore,' Pa?" Jenny asked.
"Mind yer manners, lass," her father said. He tensed visibly where he sat, but seeing that Hoare was not about to knock him down or call his daughter out, eased back again and gulped down a draft. "An' to what do we owe the pleasure of yer presence here with us, Your Honor?" he asked warily.
"The late Peregrine Kingsley. You sent him this." Hoare held out the misspelled letter, keeping it firmly in hand and watching for Jaggery's reaction.
Jaggery read it as Hoare held it before him, moving his lips as he read. Did he seem relieved?
"Aye, Yer Honor. I can't deny it, seein' as it's got me own name on it in me own 'and."
"Tell me what's behind it."
"Saw nothin' wrong with pickin' up a bit o' blunt from the fancy Mr. Kingsley. The cove's captain wouldn't 'a' been 'alf tore up to find 'is wife had been makin' free with 'is lieutenant, would 'e, now?"
"He already knew, Jaggery."
The gunner's jaw dropped.
"And," Hoare said, "you could have gotten yourself spending the rest of your life in Botany Bay for extortion. What would have happened to your wife and young Jenny then?"
"Ain't got no wife. Slicer Kate sliced Meg's gizzard two years ago, and she took sick of it and died. Got 'anged for it, too, Kate did, in Winchester, at 'Ampshire assizes. My Jenny's a norphing, she is.
"Besides," Jaggery went on, "the captain went and died on me, 'e did, the thoughtless bastard. And there ain't no one will bother me now, now that other bastard Kingsley s been put out of the way. So there, Mister Hoare."
No connoisseur, Jenny had tossed off her Madeira in one gulp. Now she giggled, gave a small belch, let her eyelids drop, and fell asleep leaning against her father's shoulder.
"There. Now see what ye've done,"Jaggery said reproachfully. He looked down at the child and laid his maimed hand on her glossy head.
"And what else was Kingsley about, Jaggery, that he should be afraid of the law as well as his lady's husband? And you referred to 'friends' that he had lost and you had kept. What were you and he engaged in together?"
Jaggery shook his head and looked at Hoare out of wide, innocent-looking eyes. "Mr. Kingsley 'ad a way about 'im,
Yer Honor. Much against me will, 'e persuaded me to take on some bits of nautical merchandise, like. Bits of ship chandlery. Scuttles, patent blocks, things like that, that might have gone adrift. Jom York's a good friend of mine. Ye know Mr. York, Yer Honor?"
Since York had found Kingsley's Marine uniform for Hoare, he could hardly deny it, nor, indeed, did he wish to. He nodded. "And Kingsley was no longer 'friends' with Jom York?"
"Never said that, Yer Honor, did I now? Mr. York's an upright man, he is…"
By calling him an "upright man," Jaggery meant, Hoare knew, that York claimed membership in the notorious Thieves' Guild, sworn to mutual confidence and trust. Hoare also knew that even though the outside world might be sure of its existence and its secret power, the Thieves' Guild was a fraud, a figment, and a fairy tale. But if Jaggery thought that he, Hoare, believed in it, let him.
"I'm not satisfied, Jaggery," Hoare said. "You're hiding something. You may be in far more shoal water than you know. Spit it out."
"As Gawd's me witness, Yer Honor, ye know all me sins," the man said. "Yer persecutin' me, and it's not right."
Hoare knew well that Jaggery had more to spill but, without any clue about what it might be, was at a loss as to how to get it out of him. Try as he would, the old boatswain hid and dodged behind a barricade of reproachful words. Hoare was missing the key to his secret fortress.
"Keep your hands off the King's property, man," Hoare said at last. He rose from the table and gave the sleeping Jenny a pat of his own. "And start combing those sly brains of yours about your friend Kingsley and what he might have been up to, beyond having at his captain's wife. I'll have my eye on you, and I never sleep."
He stopped on the way out to haggle with Greenleaf about buying his entire stock of Madeira. Hoare left the Bunch of Grapes the owner of six dozen, having promised payment in full once they should have been delivered to the Swallowed Anchor and he had tested a randomly selected bottle from the consignment.
"It's not that I don't trust you, Mr. Greenleaf," he said, "but who's to say that some land pirate might make a midnight switch?"
Back at the Swallowed Anchor, Hoare found Mr. Watt fast asleep with his face in a copy of one of the enciphered messages to Ahab from Jehu. His candle had guttered out. Hoare picked the little man up in his arms and carried him up to the garret room he had been assigned by Mr. Hackins, the landlord.
Chapter VIII
In the morning, Hoare found Mr. Watt despondent. He must have crept back into Hoare's sitting room at dawn or before, for a crust of bread and an empty teacup lay on the worktable. He had almost finished copying the last mysterious message.
"I have been unable, sir, to break the code-or rather the cipher," he said. "It may be one of those in which the key is to be found in certain pages of a book owned by all parties to the secret. The Bible is commonly used for that purpose, as I am sure you know, and if you consider the biblical names of writer and addressee, it is likely that it has been so used here.
"Often the encipherer gives in the first group or two the chapters or pages to be used in deciphering; that each of the three messages commences with two series of numbers suggests that to be the case.
"If this is the case, Mr. Hoare, we are lost without a key to what pages of what edition are used and how. However, I propose to you that I take with me the fair copies I have made and work on them during Vantages passage south. I can inform you by fleet mail of any successes I have.
"But in all fairness, I must remind you that I lay no claim to expertise in the art of the cipher. There are men in Whitehall who spend their entire lives on the subject. I believe you should present these messages there."
With this, Mr. Watt stood and prepared to take his leave. "Vantage is about to weigh anchor," he said, "and I would not commit the crime of desertion, even if only inadvertently. She is, after all, only my second ship, and I still have my name to make."