Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities (20 page)

“Please,” Hoare whispered.

“And by the bye, sir, I have an excellent emollient
linctus
for the throat, should it interest you. My own concoction.”

Hoare explained his whisper as briefly as he could, then paused expectantly to hear about Dr. Graves's autopsy.

“As you probably know,” the surgeon said, “the cause of death was not the contusion on Dr. Graves' forehead. That occurred when the impact of the bullet in his back threw him forward against his table. No, the immediate cause was that ball itself. It penetrated the wooden back of his chair, broke through his rib cage from behind, and buried itself in his heart. It carried into the wound a few splinters from the chair and some threads from the doctor's shirt. He was not wearing his coat—because of the warm weather, I suppose. The ball killed him instantly, of course. Here it is.”

He rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a distorted leaden object, still encrusted with blackish red.

Hoare took it eagerly, got the folding knife from his pocket, and scraped away carefully at the reddish deposit.

“This is no musket ball, sir,” he said at last, displaying it to the surgeon. “If you look closely, you will see it bears raised lands. It was fired from a rifle. This is the second time within three weeks that I have seen one.”

“Why, so it is. I should have noted that. It has been many a year, sir, since I have seen a ball which was fired from a rifled musket. They were not common in the Navy in my day. But you would know that, of course.”

“May I have it, sir? I think it could be very important.”

“Certainly, Mr. Hoare. You would not mind giving me a receipt, would you? Sir Thomas is a great stickler for the paperwork.”

“Not at all, Mr. Olney. And perhaps, in turn, you would write down a description for me? ‘Rifled bullet,' perhaps, ‘removed from the body of Simon Graves,' and so forth.”

“Delighted, sir.” The surgeon handed Hoare a pen.

The two set to their scratching in a companionable way and then exchanged documents. Thereupon Hoare tossed off the surgeon's awful port, pocketed the rifle ball, and said goodbye to Mr. Olney. Hoare left a half-guinea on the cluttered desk, beside the empty glass.

One more task remained to him. He wanted to learn more about the discovery at Portland Bill of the anker that had first brought him to Weymouth. Was this a unique discovery? Had anything else of interest been discovered at the same place and time?

The Weymouth station of the Coast Guard was no more than a short walk away. He had passed it upon leaving
Unimaginable
at her berth in the harbor. The cutter
Walpole
lay alongside the station. Hoare invited himself aboard, handed the anchor watch one of his self-explanatory leaflets, and while awaiting an officer inspected the cutter with a keen naval eye.

“Cutter” she might be named in the Coast Guard, but
Walpole
was a brisk-looking brigantine of about one hundred tons, armed with several popgun four-pounders. Her bewigged figurehead showed she was properly named, not for His Majesty's present prime minister, but for William Walpole the elder. Her commander, who was fortunately aboard, came on deck himself to invite Hoare below. The red-haired Mr. Popham would have been Hoare's own age, small, spare, and brisk like his command. Hoare envied him.

“We Coastguardsmen have to make do with ourselves as clerks,” Mr. Popham explained as he cleared a clutter of papers from the table and the extra chair.

“Give me your opinion of this burgundy, sir, will ye? Took it off
Rose
just last week.”

It would be one of the Coast Guard's quiet perquisites, Hoare knew, and it was worth every penny the smugglers would have gotten.

As soon as courtesy permitted, Hoare brought up the matter of the sandy “anker.” In doing so, of course, he dutifully distinguished between anker, a vessel for holding liquids, and “anchor,” for holding a vessel, and joined Mr. Popham in the obligatory laugh.

Mr. Popham remembered the anker well. He also knew well Dickon Dee, the sand-loving fisherman, and was amused at Hoare's description of their encounter.

“It did, indeed, come ashore just where he told you it did,” he said. “I would have told you that had you asked me … but then, I think you really wanted to meet Dickon Dee and test his powers.”

Hoare smiled acknowledgment.

“It was an interesting little object,” Popham said. “Did you notice what I noticed?”

Hoare looked inquiring and waited.

“We're accustomed to seeing French cooperage, of course—ankers, demi-kegs, kegs, barrels, even a tun now and then. They come ashore as well as being brought ashore, if you take my meaning. But you could tell from the scarfing and rabbeting that this was a good, stout English anker, not French. The French coopers contrive it differently, Mr. Hoare.”

“I had not known, sir,” Hoare said.

“Now, sir,” Popham went on, “what puzzles me is why an
English
anker would be cast adrift in such a fashion, with the contents that puzzled you.

“What did you make of the message?”

“What message?” Hoare asked.

“The message in the anker, with the clockwork, of course.”

“There was no message in the anker … at least, not when it passed through my hands. What was it like?”

“A cipher, or I'm a lizard. On gray waterproof paper.…”

Mr. Popham might be describing either the message Mrs. Graves had described or the ones Hoare had seen with his own eyes. Here was another piece in the puzzle, but where did it fit?

“I'll be damned, Popham,” Hoare said. “This is
most
interesting information. I'm greatly obliged to you for it—as well as the burgundy.

“But now, I must be under way, or I'll miss my tide.”

Popham rose to usher his guest from the cutter. “You'll have ten minutes to get out into the Channel and catch it. It's been a pleasure, sir. Come visit
Walpole
again, next time you're this way.”

“And let me offer you a glass of Madeira, Mr. Popham, when you call in Portsmouth. The Swallowed Anchor will find me.”

*   *   *

U
NIMAGINABLE
IDLED ALONG
under the slowly circling summer stars on a broad reach, her high mainsail and full clubbed jib drawing her gently toward Portsmouth at no more than a knot. The flowing tide, Hoare reckoned, would give her perhaps four knots over the ground. At this rate, she would reach home by noon tomorrow. He sighed, leaned back against her taffrail, and mused about Dr. Graves's clockwork. Had the doctor possessed enough leisure and enough talent to keep not just one but two inquiries in the air at a time—the clockwork project and his undertaking with Morrow? More distressing: Dr. Graves could have built his clockwork devices for an English agent, as he had told his wife. But Hoare could not understand why an Englishman would have been so havey-cavey about the arrangement. Unwittingly—or wittingly—Dr. Graves could have undertaken the work for a man in French pay. If so, had he done so unwittingly? Had he known? Had he himself, perhaps, been the agent?

These thoughts interwove themselves in Hoare's brain with thoughts about the ciphered messages. Now, he was sure. There must be a link between the anker full of clockwork, Dr. Graves, and the late Mr. Kingsley of
Vantage.
What was it? And why had the two men—so different in ability and calling—been killed?

The fog's sudden onset caught Hoare by complete surprise. A slightly heavier breath of breeze, a brief gurgle under
Unimaginable
's bows, and the stars vanished. With them went the wind. The pinnace slowed perceptibly. Hoare's view forward shortened, was gone. Within a minute, he could barely make out
Unimaginable
's own mast, and she lay idle, sails slatting in a low, greasy leftover swell. Only the faint red and green glows of her running lights reached him now.

He went below to get out the conch shell he used as a fog horn. Back on deck again, he returning to his niche against the taffrail and blew a long, mournful hoot into the featureless gray-black. He repeated the blast about every minute, counting by his regular pulse. Between hoots, he listened.

There were no other hoots, though once he thought to hear a faint echo of his own.

Aft, a faint blur in the darkness. He aimed the conch toward it and hooted.

“Ahoy,” came a quiet call.

Not being able to reply, he set down the conch, drew out his boatswain's pipe, and twittered.

A blaze, a
crack,
and a stunning blow across the back of his head, and the stars returned, flickering across his vision like so many fireworks. He slumped sideways. So this was death, he thought.

He could not have been unconscious for more than a minute. He could not understand, he could not see, he could not move … but he could feel, for he felt a soft thump against
Unimaginable
's larboard side. He could hear. He heard a man say something. He could not understand. As far as he could tell, he was sprawled against the tiller, looking upward and seeing only the fog … or nothing.

He felt
Unimaginable
lurch to larboard with the weight of someone coming aboard. Whoever it was—he could
see!
—leaned over him, picked him up by the shoulders, and shook him. His jaw lolled. Pain lanced through his head, and he heard the steady, slow drip of his blood on
Unimaginable
's quarterdeck. Damn him, he thought, and laughed at himself. I'll make the bloody bastard pay for bloodying my bloody quarterdeck with my own bloody blood.

“Mort. Bon.” He understood this, well enough. “Aidesmoi, louche. Mettons-le en bas.”

Another man came aboard. Between the two of them, they hauled Hoare to
Unimaginable
's hatchway and dropped him below. He landed on his face and felt his nose crunch against the cabin table. He heard at least one of the men follow him, using the more civilized ladder. A light flared. A fist took him by the hair, picked his head up, and dropped it onto the floorboards.

“Vous devez lui couper la gorge, monsieur, pour la sûreté,” said the second man. (“You'd better cut his throat, sir, to be sure.)

“Non. Il a été officer et gentilhomme. Viens; prends-toi les pieds. Vite, alors!” (No. He was an officer and a gentleman. Come on, take his feet. Quickly.)

Both men's French had an odd, eerily familiar accent. But Hoare was very tired. He decided to go away again.

*   *   *

H
OARE'S RIGHT SIDE
lay in water. The other side was cold and wet. The back of his head throbbed, and he could not breathe through his swollen nose, so he could smell nothing. But he could see again. A square of fog showed him the open hatchway through which the boarders had dropped him. And he could hear—the heavy slosh of seawater about him and the regular
bump, bump, bump
of some pot or other swanning about in
Unimaginable
's bilges.

And he could move. He reached painfully up with one arm, gripped the edge of the table, and heaved enough so as to bring the other arm up in aid of its friend.

Had the boarders stove
Unimaginable
in, then? If they had, he thought wildly, he'd have their balls for breakfast. But she could not have taken on much water yet. If he knew where he was … He was sitting in water, not on the combined floorboards and trail boards that bore
Unimaginable
's aliases, but directly in her bilges. The hard object intent on grinding him a new arsehole was her open seacock. Being a small, tight vessel, she only needed one cock. By being lightly impaled on it, he was keeping
Unimaginable
afloat by keeping it from doing its proper work of letting in the Channel. He apologized to the seacock, turned it off, vomited an ounce of bitter bile, rolled over, and fainted again in the bilges.

*   *   *

H
OARE RETURNED TO
his senses to see gray daylight outlined in the hatchway.
Unimaginable
still lay hove-to, swaying heavily in a slow, greasy swell. He summoned the strength to clamber up the ladder onto her deck, where he crawled forward and manned her pump. Stopping to rest after every few feeble heaves, he was able to summon a thin, intermittent stream of seawater from below to pour over the side.

Twice he had to make his way back below to clear floating debris from the intake. On the second of these trips, he thought to get a piece of soft tack from the waterproof cupboard over his stove. He picked up a soggy stocking, wrung it out, and returned topside. He wrapped the stocking around his throbbing head and sat himself beside
Unimaginable
's idly swinging tiller while he devoured the bread. When he was through, he felt stable enough on his pins to get to his feet and look about him, holding onto her larboard shrouds.

Though the sky was still a dull gray, the fog had lifted, and he could see several fisherman in the middle distance, between
Unimaginable
and Anvil Point. Through the haze on the horizon ahead, he could see the Needles.
Unimaginable,
praise God, had carried him quietly with the flowing tide past the eddies of St. Alban's Ledge during the night, without his help. She had brought him more than halfway home.

Hoare found the strength to trim the two standing sails and set
Unimaginable
on an easterly course under the faint southerly breeze. Still too full of ocean for comfort, she wallowed but complied.

Hoare felt weary, dizzy, and languid. He went below and sloshed about among the flotsam until he laid hold of a half-empty bottle of
vin ordinaire
and a slab of braxy ham, which he brought back on deck. Since this soaked him to the crotch once more, he resolved not to return below until
Unimaginable
was home and dry. The trip had been worth it, however, for the meat and wine brought a bit of energy to his body. He went forward and worked the barge's pump in a desultory way, while she idled on toward the Solent, helped along by the last of the flood. As the tide went slack, the breeze picked up, as often happens in these waters, until
Unimaginable
began to leave a gurgling wake. Hoare's deadened mind began to function again.