"That first evening," he said. "In the yard. How much did you see?"
"Enough, sir," said Jory.
The captain was quiet a moment. His face did a strange thing; it seemed to go older and younger at the same time.
"On the coast," he said, "when we had them up on deck out of a prize, they'd look at us. All of them, all at once. Hundreds of eyes. I used to wonder what they could see on our faces, when we talked about them in front of them as if they weren't there." He gave a short laugh. "I suppose I'm finding out."
Then Lusty led him away to the side, and down into the boat.
X.
In the third week of November the first frost came, and the cobbles in the yard of the Three Mariners went white at dawn and stayed white until noon. Jory swept them anyway. Then he put on his coat and went down Fore Street to the quay.
The Constant still lay in the pool, but her yards were sent down now and her sails unbent, and on her mainmast, cut deep into the wood, was the King's broad arrow. A customs man sat in her waist on an upturned bucket, smoking. She would be sold at Exeter in the new year, Madoc said, and the money would go to the Crown and to the officers who had seized her, and Madoc meant to put his share toward a new roof for the chapel in Mill Lane.
Lady Ormerod was waiting on the steps by the Custom House, as she had said in her letter she would be. She wore the dark cloak, against the cold. The hood was down.
"You'll have heard," she said, when he came up, and she turned so that the low sun was on her face.
He had heard most of it. All of Brackenmouth had. Captain Calloway was in Newgate, committed for trial at the Admiralty Sessions at the Old Bailey in April under the Act of 1811. Nance had turned King's evidence and was in Exeter gaol awaiting the same court on the other side of it. The Rowse boys and old Penrose had been let go on their recognizances. Annet the cooper had sworn he thought he was making cask hoops, and perhaps he had.