The Surgeon's Mate (40 page)

For some reason he was perfectly confident that she would not go to pieces, but would bring them to land; and she behaved beautifully to the last. A final heave on the starboard sheet brought her wallowing up against the jetty at the height of the tide, with the water gurgling at her hatches. All they had to do was to step over the rail to the waiting company of soldiers and the small silent crowd.

In these twenty years of war quite a number of Royal Navy ships had been wrecked on the coast of Brittany, and some indeed had been taken; the authorities at Brest were used to the situation, and without undue triumph they installed the Ariel's officers in a disused nunnery, her men in the lower parts of the castle, deeply lined with straw.

Men so exposed to the caprices of the elements might be expected to develop a philosophical attitude, and before this Stephen had seen his shipmates accept the unkinder strokes of fate with a fine equanimity; but even so he was surprised to see how quickly they recovered their spirits on this occasion and put a good face on adversity. It is true that since their ship had not been taken they had not been pillaged; what little they had been able to save they still possessed, and this softened the blow, since they were able to round out the sparse French rations with better food and wine than ever the Ariel had afforded them. On the other hand, once they found they were not to be robbed or starved they complained bitterly about the quality of the tea; and on Jack's first visit to the men it was represented to him that this here French bread, full of holes, could not nourish a man: if a man ate holes he must necessarily blow himself out with air like a bladder, it stood to reason. They did not much care for the oatmeal either, probably harvested green and parched in the ear: nor the soup.

Among the young men in the nunnery cheerfulness returned with the sun that shone on Brest from a clear calm sky within twenty-four hours of their miserable journey from Tr6gonnec, and with it their naval sense of fun. The commissary charged with drawing up a correct official list, which included among other things their grandmothers' maiden names, dates and places of birth, received some strange answers, delivered in sober, lugubrious tones, so strange that the port-admiral summoned Captain Aubrey. 'I refuse to believe, sir,' he said, 'that all your officers but one are descended from Queen Anne.'

'I am sorry to tell you, sir, that Queen Anne is dead,' said Jack. 'Common decency, therefore, forbids me to make any comment.'

'It is my opinion,' said the Admiral, 'that they have replied with a culpable levity. Such parents as the Emperor of Morocco, Creeping Jenny, Guy of Warwick, Sir Julius Caesar... You may say that the commissary is only a mere civilian, which is profoundly true; but even so I must ask you to invite them to treat him with a proper respect. He is a servant of the Emperor!'

Jack did not seem very deeply impressed and in fact the Admiral's voice lacked full conviction. He looked at his captive for a moment and went on, 'But now I come to a far more serious matter. One of your Marines, Ludwig Himmelfahrt, has escaped. His clothes have been found in the privy.'

'Oh, a sad shatterbrained old fellow, sir: a supernumerary. We only took him aboard to play the fife when the hands were at the capstan. I doubt he is even on the ship's books - he would not appear among those that have to be accounted for. Nevertheless, sir, I must observe that even as a nominal soldier it was his duty to escape.'

'Maybe,' said the Admiral. 'But I hope you will not attempt to imitate him, Captain Aubrey. I do not care greatly about a half-witted supernumerary, particularly if he was not on the muster-roll - though he must certainly be found - but with a post-captain, an officer of your distinction, sir, the case is altered; and I warn you that at the least attempt you will find yourself incarcerated at Bitche. At Bitche, sir, and incarcerated.'

Jack felt that he was on the verge of a flashing piece of repartee, of one of the best things he had ever said in his life: 'then indeed I should be bitched', or 'that would bitch my chances, I am sure', or something more brilliant still; but the want of a true colloquial link between the English bitch and the French chienne baffled him; the anticipatory smile faded, and he only said, 'Oh, as for that, sir, I dare say I shall be your guest until the end of the war. Let us hope that it will not be so long delayed that I wear out my welcome.'

'I am sure it will not,' said the Admiral. 'The Emperor is carrying all before him in the north. The Austrians are crushed.'

'I have been threatened with Bitche,' said Jack, returning to the nunnery. His meaning was instantly clear, for Verdun and Bitche had been the chief topic of conversation for the last five days, except for a certain amount of talk about the progress of the war as it could be gathered from the Moniteur and about the young woman who brought Jagiello's meals. Verdun was the town where the prisoners of war were kept; Bitche the fortress where those who tried to escape were confined. Both were well known by rumour as very disagreeable places in the far north-east of France, cold, wet, and expensive, but scarcely anyone in the service knew them at first hand, for since in principle Buonaparte refused to exchange prisoners in the traditional way, and since in fact very few were exchanged, almost all who went there never came back. Yet among those few was Hyde, who as a senior midshipman had escaped first from the one and then from the other with three companions, eventually reaching the Adriatic on foot.

They listened to his accounts with the utmost attention, which restored some small part of his shattered self-esteem - he had been the only one among them too low, too miserably unhappy, to give the commissary the usual facetious answers: his details had been plain, dull, and correct. Now Jack asked him to tell them about the fortress once again, with particular reference to the best means of escape, and once again Hyde described the towering sandstone crag, the covered ways, the bomb-proof excavations, the extraordinarily deep well: 'As for escape, sir, the great thing is money, of course, and a map and a compass; dried beef and biscuit and a warm coat for when you have to lie up by day, and very stout boots; but the great thing is money. It can do almost anything, and even a guinea goes a long way; English gold being at such a premium here..." Jack smiled: he had a fair amount in his pocket, a surprising amount, quite enough to keep the Ariel's hands in modest comfort for their journey; and he knew that Stephen concealed an inconvenient weight of guineas in his bosom, the funds taken to the Baltic in case of need and entirely untouched. 'A really good knife and a marline-spike, or at least a fid, come in very handy,' Hyde continued, 'and a - '

'A young person for Monsieur Jagiello,' said the guard, with a grin. He stood away from the door, and there was the young person, holding a cloth-covered basket, blushing and hanging her pretty head. The others walked away to the window and talked in what they meant to be a detached, natural way; but few could help stealing glances at the maiden, and none could fail to hear Jagiello cry, 'But my dear, dear Mademoiselle, I asked for black pudding and apples, no more. And here is foie gras, a gratin of lobster, a partridge, three kinds of cheese, two kinds of wine, a strawberry tart...

'I made it myself,' said the young person.

'I am sure it is wonderfully good: but it is much more than I can ever afford."

'You must keep up your strength. You can pay for it later - or in some other way - or however you like.'

'But how?' asked Jagiello, in honest amazement. 'By a note of hand, do you mean?'

'Pray step into the passage,' said she, pinker still.

'There you are again,' said Jack, drawing Stephen into another room. 'Yesterday it was a thundering great patty, with truffles; and tomorrow we shall see a wedding-cake for his pudding, no doubt. What they see in him I cannot conceive. Why Jagiello, and the others ignored? Here.is Fenton, for example, a fine upstanding fellow with side-whiskers that are the pride of the service - with a beard as thick as a coconut - has to shave twice a day - as strong as a horse, and a very fair seaman; but there are no patties for him. However, that is not what I meant to say. The Colonel is off.'

'I know it,' said Stephen, who had visited the castle with the Ariel's surgeon.

'I thought you might,' said Jack. 'You do not seem unduly concerned.'

'I am not,' said Stephen: and after a moment, 'You have not seen him at his best. At sea he is out of his element; he talks too much and you might even take him for a mere blateroon. But I do assure you, my dear, that as a guerrillero he has not his match, a true fox by land. He will glide down a hedge like a serpent, and while you are beating about the bushes, peering into the ditch, there he is beyond a haystack, a long mile before you. I have known him make his way from Tarragona to Madrid with a hundred ounces of gold on his head, and there cut a traitor's throat as the man lay asleep in his bed. No, no: he is well supplied with money; he is rich in experience; he will be over the frontier before we reach Verdun.'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Hyde at the door, 'but our dinner is on the table.'

They ate their meals in what had been the nuns' parlour, an austere room, scarcely changed but for stouter bars at the windows, a judas-hole at each of the outer doors and a number of English inscriptions: J. B. loves P. M.; Bates is a Fool; How I wish Amanda were here; Laetitia, none prettier; J. S. master's mate, aetat. 47. And now their dinner was spread: it came from the best establishment in the town, recommended by the Admiral, whereas Jagiello had chosen the cheapest cookshop; yet it made a poor show compared with his - only a couple of bass, two pairs of fowls, a saddle of mutton, half a dozen side-dishes, and a floating island.

'The mutton was tolerable,' said Jack, making the island revolve, 'though it lacked red-currant jelly. But the French may say what they please - they have no notion of pudding, grande nation or not. This is not even a flummery: it is mere show and froth.'

Stephen raised his eyes from his plate, and behind Jack's head he saw the judas darken. A single eye appeared: it looked upon them at length, barely winking, expressionless, all-seeing. After a while it was succeeded by another, a blue-grey eye, whereas the other had been dark. These eyes watched them alternately throughout the rest of the meal, which consisted of brandy; and although he did not turn his head to make sure, Stephen was morally certain that the other judas was occupied too, since it gave a different view of the room. He was not altogether surprised therefore when Jack and he and Jagiello were called to the Admiral's office, nor at the change in the Admiral's attitude, which had been kind hitherto, if not positively friendly.

At some distance from the Admiral's desk sat a middle-aged civilian in a shabby black coat and a fairly white neckcloth; he had grizzled hair and dark eyes; his face was vaguely familiar to Stephen. He took no part in the interview but watched attentively, as though from a great way off. The Admiral himself concealed his embarrassment behind an appearance of rigour and formality, but he did not conceal it well. He asked Jack a series of obviously prepared questions about his voyage - where from, where to, course followed, date of sailing, nature of convoy and so on.

Jack's manner at once became as stiff and formal as the Admiral's, rather more so indeed; he looked coldly across the desk and said, 'Sir, I have produced my King's commission; I have stated the number of the Ariel's crew. By the laws of war no captured officer is required to do more. With the greatest personal respect for you, sir, I must decline to reply.'

'Note down that answer,' said the Admiral to his secretary, and turning to Stephen, 'Are you the gentleman who was recently invited to address the Institut?'

'I regret I cannot satisfy you, sir,' said Stephen. 'My reply must be the same as Captain Aubrey's.'

They had a moment's uneasiness about Jagiello; but the young man was no fool. He repeated their words with an equal firmness.

'I have to inform you that your replies are not satisfactory,' said the Admiral. 'You must therefore proceed to Paris at once for further enquiries.' He rang, and told the orderly to fetch their belongings.

'At once, sir?' cried Jack. 'But surely I may see my men before I go? I have not yet seen to their victualling - I appeal to you, sir, as an officer and a seaman - I must have at least a word with them, and give them something to bear their charges. I appeal to your own example, sir: a captain cannot leave his men in the lurch.'

'There is no time,' said the Admiral. 'The carriage is waiting. I have my orders: if I do not receive satisfactory replies, you are to be taken to Paris.'

'Then at least, sir,' said Jack, bringing out his purse and laying it on the Admiral's desk, 'at least you will have the kindness to order this to be delivered to them - to a responsible man named Wittgenstein, with instructions to share it out fairly in the course of their march.'

The Admiral glanced at the civilian, who shrugged. 'It shall be so, Captain,' he said. 'I wish you good day. Monsieur Duhamel will show you to the coach.'

During the days and nights of their journey Stephen turned the situation over in his mind. He had plenty of time to do so, since Duhamel's presence prevented all free conversation, while for his part the Frenchman uttered scarcely a word. It was not that he was unpleasant or authoritarian or harsh, and although he was certainly taciturn and reserved he gave no impression of hostility as he sat there in his corner, looking vaguely at the landscape or their numerous, well-mounted escort, but rather of detachment, as though he lived on another plane, contemplating them as objectively as a natural philosopher might contemplate the animalculae in his microscope. Now and then Stephen caught Duhamel's eye upon him and he thought he detected a certain secret inner amusement, an understanding as of one professional for another caught in a very difficult position indeed: but the knowing black eye would glaze over at once and return to its watching of the various provinces they traversed. Duhamel seemed immune to boredom, unwearied by their long stages, above human weakness except at meal times.