O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 09 - Treason's Harbour

Treason’s Harbour

'Smoothe runnes the Water, where the Brooke is deepe.

And in his simple shew he harbours Treason.'

2 Henry VI

CHAPTER ONE

A gentle breeze from the north-east after a night of rain, and the washed sky over Malta

had a particular quality in its light that sharpened the lines of the noble buildings, bringing

out all the virtue of the stone; the air too was a delight to breathe, and the city of Valletta

was as cheerful as though it were fortunate in love or as though it had suddenly heard

good news.

This was more than usually remarkable in a group of naval officers sitting in the bowered

court of Searle's hotel: to be sure, they looked out upon the arcaded .Upper Baracca, filled

with soldiers, sailors and civilians pacing slowly up and down in a sunlight so brilliant that

it made even the black hoods the Maltese women wore look gay, while the officers'

uniforms shone like splendid flowers ? a cosmopolitan crowd, for although most of the

colour was the scarlet and gold of the British army many of the nations engaged in the war

against Napoleon were represented and the shell-pink of Kresimir's Croats, for example,

made a charming contrast with the Neapolitan hussars' silver-laced blue. And then beyond

and below the Baracca there was the vast sweep of the Grand Harbour, pure sapphire

today, flecked with the sails of countless small craft plying between Valletta and the great

fortified headlands on the other side, St Angelo and Isola, and the men-of-war, the

troopships and the victuallers, a sight to please any sailor's heart.

Yet on the other hand all these gentlemen were captains without ships, a mumchance,

melancholy class in general and even more so at this time, when the long, long war

seemed to be working up to its climax, when competition was even stronger than before,

and when distinction and worthwhile appointments, to say nothing of prize-money and

promotion, depended on having a sea-going command. Some were absolutely shipless,

either because their vessels had sunk under them, which was the case with Edward

Long's archaic Aeolus, or because promotion had set them ashore, or because an

unfortunate court-martial had done the same. Most however were only grass-widowers;

their ships, battered by years of blockading Toulon in all weathers, had been sent in for

repair. But the dockyards were overcrowded, the repairs were often serious and far-

reaching and always very slow, and here the captains had to sit while the precious sea-

time ran by, cursing the delay. Some of the richer men had sent for their wives, who were

no doubt a great comfort to them, but most were condemned to glum celibacy or to what

local solace they could find. Captain Aubrey was one of these, for although he had

recently captured a neat little prize in the Ionian Seas it had not yet been condemned in

the Admiralty court and in any case his affairs were horribly involved at home, with legal

difficulties of every kind; besides, accommodation in Malta had grown shockingly

expensive and now that he was older he no longer dared lay out large sums that he did

not yet possess; he therefore lived as a bachelor, as modestly as a post-captain decently

could, up three pair of stairs at Searle's, his only amusement being the opera. Indeed, he

was perhaps the most unfortunate of those whose ships were in the repairers' hands, for

he had contrived to send no less than two separate vessels into dock, so that he had a

double set of slow devious stupid corrupt incompetent officials, tradesmen and artificers to

deal with: the first was the Worcester, a worn-out seventy-four-gun ship of the line that

had very nearly come apart in a long, fruitless chase of the French fleet in dirty weather,

and the second was the Surprise, a small, sweet-sailing frigate, a temporary command in

which he had been sent to the Ionian while the Worcester was repairing and in which he

had engaged two Turkish ships, the Torgud and the Katibi, in an extremely violent action

that had left the Torgud sinking, the Katibi a prisoner and the Surprise full of holes

between wind and water. The Worcester, that ill-conceived, ill-built coffinship, would have

been much better broken up and sold for firewood; but it was upon her worthless,

profitable hull that the dockyard spent all its slow creeping care, while the Surprise lay in

limbo for want of a few midship knees, the starboard knighthead and bumkin, and twenty

square yards of copper sheathing, while her crew, her once excellent crew of picked

seamen, grew idle, dissolute, debauched, drunken and unhealthy, while some of the very

best hands and even petty-officers were stolen from him by unscrupulous superiors and

even his perfect first lieutenant left the ship.

Captain Aubrey should have been the gloomiest of a glum gathering, but in fact he had

been rattling away, talking loud, and even singing, with such good will that his particular

friend, the Surprise's surgeon Stephen Maturin, had withdrawn to a quieter arbour, taking

with him their temporary shipmate Professor Graham, a moral philosopher on leave from

his Scottish university, an authority on the Turkish language and Eastern affairs in

general. Captain Aubrey's high spirits were caused partly by the beautiful day acting on a

constitutionally cheerful nature, partly by the infectious merriment of his companions, but

more, very much more, by the fact that at the farthest end of the table sat Thomas

Pullings, until very recently his first lieutenant and now the most junior commander in the

Navy, the very lowest of those entitled to be called captain, and that only by courtesy. The

promotion had cost Mr Pullings some pints of blood and a surprisingly ugly wound - a

glancing blow from a Turkish sabre had sliced off most of his forehead and nose - but he

would willingly have suffered ten times the pain and disfigurement for the golden

epaulettes that he kept glancing at with a secret smile, while his hand perpetually strayed

to the one or to the other. It was a promotion that Jack Aubrey had worked for these many

years, and one that he had almost despaired of achieving, for Pollings, though an eminent

seaman, likeable and brave, had no advantages of person or birth: even on this occasion

Aubrey had had no confidence that his dispatch would have the desired effect, since the

Admiralty, always loth to promote, could take refuge in the excuse that the Torgud's

captain was a rebel and not the commander of a ship belonging to a hostile power. Yet the

beautiful commission had come straight back, travelling in the Calliope and reaching

Captain Pullings so short a time ago that he was still in his first amazed happiness,

smiling, saying very little, answering at random, and suddenly laughing out loud with no

apparent cause.

Dr Maturin too was fond of Thomas Pullings: like Captain Aubrey he had known him as

midshipman, master's mate and lieutenant; he esteemed him highly and had sewn back

his nose and forehead with even more than his usual care, sitting by his cot night after

night during his days of fever. But Dr Maturin had been baulked of his John Dory. This

was Friday; he had been promised a John Dory and he had looked forward to it; but on

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the gregale had blown with such force that no fishing-

boats had put out, and since Searle, unused to Catholic officers (rare birds in the Navy,

where every lieutenant, on receiving his first commission, was required to renounce the

Pope), had not even laid in any salt stock-fish, Maturin was obliged to dine on vegetables

cooked in the English manner, waterlogged, tasteless, depressing. He was not ordinarily a

greedy man, nor very ill-natured, but this disappointment had come on top of a series of

vexations and some very grave anxieties, and on the second day of his giving up tobacco.

'You might say that Duns Scotus stands in much the same relationship to Aquinas as

Kant to Leibnitz,' said Graham, carrying on their earlier conversation.

'Sure, I have often heard the remark in Ballinasloe,' said Maturin. 'But I have no patience

with Emmanuel Kant. Ever since I found him take such notice of that thief Rousseau, I

have had no patience with him at all -for a philosopher to countenance that false ranting

dog of a Swiss raparee shows either a criminal levity or a no less criminal gullibility.

Gushing, carefully-calculated tears ? false confidences, untrue confessions ? enthusiasm -

romantic vistas.' His hand moved of itself to his cigar-case and came away disappointed.

'How I hate enthusiasm and romantic vistas," he said.

'Davy Hume was of your opinion,' said Graham. 'I mean with regard to Monsieur

Rousseau. He found him to be little more than a crackit gaberlunzie.'

'But at least Rousseau did not make a noise,' said Maturin, looking angrily at his friends

in the farther bower. 'Jean-Jacques Rousseau may have been an apostate, a cold-hearted

prevaricating fornicator, but he did not behave like a Bashan bull when he was merry. Will

you look how they call out to those young women now, for shame?'

The young women, who nightly capered on the stage or lent their voices to the chorus,

and who often accompanied the younger officers on their boating picnics to Gozo or

Camino or their expeditions to what meagre groves the island had to offer, did not seem

outraged: they called back and laughed and waved, and one of them, coming up the

steps, poised herself for a moment on the arm of Captain Pellew's chair, drank off his

glass of wine, and told them they must all come to the opera on Saturday ? she was to

sing the part of the fifth gardener. At this Captain Aubrey made some amazingly witty

remark: it was lost to Maturin, but the roar of laughter that followed must certainly have

been heard in St Angelo.

'Jesus, Mary and Joseph,' said Maturin. 'In Ireland I have known many a numerous

gathering rejoice at little more than a genteel murmur; and it is to be supposed that the

same applies to Scotland.'

Graham could suppose no such thing, but he was benevolently inclined towards Maturin

and he said^no more than 'Heuch: ablins.'

'Some of my best friends are Englishmen,' continued Maturin. 'Yet even the most

valuable have this same vicious inclination to make a confused bellowing when they are

happy. It is harmless enough in their own country, where the diet deadens the

sensibilities, but it travels badly: it is perceived as a superabundancy of arrogance, and is

resented more than many worse crimes. The Spaniard is a vile colonist, murderous,

rapacious, cruel; but he is not heard to laugh. His arrogance is of a common, universal

kind, and his presence is not resented in the same way as the Englishman's. Take the

case of this island alone: it is scarcely a decade since the Navy rescued the people from

the horrible tyranny of the French and filled the place with wealth rather than carrying

away the treasures of the churches by the shipload, but already there is a great and

growing discontent and I believe the laughter has much to do with it. Though there is

enough plain stupid arrogance to account for much of it, for all love. Will you look at this,

now?'

Graham took the paper, held it at arm's length, and read 'The King's Civil Commissioner

observes with regret that some weak and inconsiderate persons, deceived under specious

pretexts, have suffered themselves to become the instruments of a few turbulent and

factious individuals. They have been seduced to subscribe a paper purporting to be an

application to the King for certain changes in the existing form of government of these

islands."

'There is Sir Hildebrand's style in all its shining perfection,' said Maturin. 'Ebenezer

Graham, you have his ear: could you not advise him to forget his pomp, his righteous

indignation, for a moment and reflect upon the immense importance of Maltese good will?

Could you not persuade him to address them with common civility and in their own

language, or at least in Italian? Could you not . . . what is it, child?' he said, breaking off to

attend to a little boy who had slipped through the greenery and who was standing at his

side, smiling shyly, waiting to say that his sister - fifteen years of age, no more, my lord -

was kind to English gentlemen: her fees were astonishingly moderate, and full satisfaction

was guaranteed.

It was not much of an interruption, but it broke Maturin's flow of speech, and when the

boy had gone Graham observed, 'For your part, you have Captain Aubrey's ear. Could

you not advise him to avoid Mr Holden's company, rather than hail him in that public

manner?'

Mr Holden had been dismissed the service for using his ship to protect some Greeks

fleeing from a Turkish punitive expedition: he was now acting for a small, remote,

ineffectual and premature Committee for Greek Independence, and since the English

government had to keep on terms with the Sublime Porte he was a most unwelcome

visitor to official Malta.

The advice, of course, was far too late. Holden was already sitting at his old shipmate's

table, one hand holding a glass of wine, the other stretched out, pointing at a singularly

magnificent diamond spray in Jack Aubrey's hat. 'What, what is that?' he cried.

'It is a chelengk,' said Jack with some complacency. 'Ain't I elegant?'

'Wind it up again. Wind it up for him,' said his friends, and the Captain set his hat, his

best, gold-laced, number one full-dress scraper, on the table: the splendid bauble - two

close-packed lines of small diamonds, each topped by a respectable stone and each four

or five inches long - had a round, diamond-studded base; this he twisted anti-clockwise for

several turns, and as he put on his hat again the chelengk sprang into motion, the round

turning with a gentle whirr and the sprays quivering with a life of their own, so that Captain

Aubrey sat in a small private coruscation, a confidential prismatic firework display,

astonishingly brilliant in the sun.

'Where, where did he get it?' cried Holden, turning to the others, as though Captain

Aubrey might not be addressed while the chelengk blazed and trembled.

Did Holden not know? - Why, from the Grand Signior, of course, the Sultan of Turkey -

For taking the rebellious Torgud and her consort - Where had Holden been, not to have

heard of the action between the Surprise and the Torgud, the neatest action this last age?

'I knew the Torgud, of course,' said Holden. 'She carried very heavy metal, and she was

commanded by that murderous bloody-minded dog Mustapha Bey. Pray, Jack, how did

you set about her?'

'Well, we were just opening the Corfu channel, do you see, with a steady topgallant

breeze at south-east,' said Jack. 'And the ships lay thus . . .'

In the quieter, more philosophic bower Dr Maturin, sitting with his legs crossed and his

breeches unbuckled at the knee, felt a slight movement upon his calf, as of an insect or

the like: instinctively he raised his hand, but years of natural philosophy ? of a desire to

know just what the creature was, and a wish to spare the honey-bee or the innocent

resting moth - delayed the stroke. He had often paid for his knowledge in the past, and

now he paid for it again: he had scarcely recognized the great twelve-spotted Maltese

horse-fly before it thrust its proboscis deep into his flesh. He struck, crushed the brute,

and sat watching the blood spread on his white silk stocking, his lips moving in silent rage.

Graham said, 'You were speaking of your freedom from tobacco: but should we not

consider a determination not to smoke as an even greater deprivation of liberty ? As an

abolition of the right of present choice, which is freedom's very essence? Should not a

wise man feel himself free to smoke tobacco or not to smoke tobacco, as the occasion

requires? We are social animals; but by ill-timed austerities, that lead to moroseness, we

may be led to forget our social duties, and so loosen the bonds of society.'

'I am sure that you mean kindly in speaking so,' said Maturin. 'Yet you must allow me to

say that I wonder at it - I wonder that a man of your parts should believe in a simple, single

cause for so complex an effect as a state of mind. Is it conceivable that mere absence of

tobacco alone could make me testy? No, no: in psychology as in history we must look for

multiple causality. I shall smoke a small cigar, or part of a small cigar, out of compliment to

you; but you will see that the difference, if it exists at all, is very slight. Indeed, the springs

of mood are wonderfully obscure, and sometimes I am astonished at what I find welling up

from them - at the thoughts and attitudes that present themselves, fully formed, before the

mental eye.'

It was quite true. The John Dory and the yearning for tobacco were not enough to

account for Maturin's ill-temper, which in any case had lasted for some days, surprising

him as he woke each morning. As he pondered it suddenly occured to him that at least

one of the many reasons was the fact that he was sexually starved and that recently his

amorous propensities had been stirred. 'The bull, confined, grows vicious,' he observed to

himself, drawing the grateful smoke deep into his lungs: but that was not a full

explanation, by any means. He moved out into the sun, to the leeward side of the arbour,

so that he should not fumigate Professor Graham; and there, blinking in the strong light,

he turned the matter over in his mind.

His move brought him into sight from the Apothecary's Tower, a tall, severe building with

an incongruous clock in its forehead. Its gaunt, unfurnished topmost room had not been

occupied since the time of the Knights; the floor was coated with soft grey dust and bat-

dung, and in the dim rafters high overhead the bats themselves could be heard moving

about, while all the time the clock ticked away the seconds in a deep, resonating tone. It

was a cheerless, inimical room, yet it provided watchers with a fine view of the Baracca, of

Searle's hotel and of its courtyard, though not, obviously, of its covered bowers. 'There is

one of them,' said the first watcher. 'He has just moved into the sun.'

'The naval surgeon, smoking a cigar?' asked the second. 'He is a naval surgeon, and a

very clever one, they say; but he is also an intelligence-agent. His name is Maturin,

Stephen Maturin: Irish father, Spanish mother - can pass for either; or for French. He has

done a great deal of damage; he has been the direct cause of many of our people's death

and he was aboard the Ocean when your cousin was poisoned.' 'I shall deal with him

tonight.'

'You will do nothing of the kind,' said the first man sharply. His Italian had a strong

southern accent, but he was in fact a French agent, one of the most important French

agents in the Mediterranean, and the Maltese with him bowed submissively. Lesueur was

the Frenchman's name and he was not unlike a somewhat older version of the Dr Maturin

whose face he was now examining so attentively with a pocket spy-glass ? a slight man of

under the middle height, sallow, stooping, bookish, with an habitually closed, reserved

expression, a man who would rarely draw attention but who having drawn it would give the

impression of more than usual self-possession and intelligence: and Lesueur also had the

easy authority of one with great sums of money at his command. He was dressed as a

fairly prosperous merchant. 'No, no, Giuseppe,' he said more kindly, 'I commend your

zeal, and I know you are an excellent hand with a knife; but this is not Naples, nor even

Rome. His abrupt, unexplained disappearance would make a great deal of noise - the

implications would be obvious, and it is absolutely essential that our existence should not

be suspected. In any event there is little to be learnt from a corpse, whereas the living Dr

Maturin may supply us with a great deal of information. I have set Mrs Fielding on him,

and you and Luigi will watch his other meetings with the greatest care.' 'Who is Mrs

Fielding?'

'A lady who works for us: she reports directly to me or Carlos.' He might have added that

Laura Fielding was a Neapolitan married to a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a young man

who had been captured by the French during a cutting-out expedition and who was now

confined in the punishment-prison of Bitche for having escaped from Verdun; and as he

had killed one of the gendarmes who were pursuing him it was likely that he would be

condemned to death when his trial came on. But the trial was postponed again and again,

and by an exceedingly roundabout route Mrs Fielding was told that it might be postponed

indefinitely if she would cooperate with a person who was interested in the movements of

shipping. The matter was put to her as having to do with international insurance - with

great Venetian and Genoese firms whose French correspondents had the government's

ear. The story might not have answered with anyone thoroughly accustomed to business,

but the man who told it was a convincing speaker and he produced a perfectly authentic

letter written by Mr Fielding to his wife not three weeks before, a letter in which he spoke

of 'this exceptional opportunity to send his love and to tell his dearest Laura that the trial

had been put off again - his confinement was now much less severe, and it seemed

possible that the charges might not be pressed with the utmost rigour.1

Mrs Fielding was well placed for the gathering of intelligence: not only was she very

widely received, but to eke out her minute income she gave Italian lessons to officers'

wives and daughters and sometimes to officers themselves, and this brought her

acquainted with a good many pieces of more or less confidential information, each in itself

trifling enough, but each helping to build up a valuable picture of the situation. In spite of

her poverty she also gave musical parties, offering her guests lemonade from the prolific

tree in her own courtyard and one Naples biscuit apiece; and this added to her value from

Lesueur's point of view, for she played the piano and a beautiful mandoline, sang quite

well, and gathered all the more talented naval and military amateurs in a singularly relaxed

and unguarded atmosphere. Yet he had not made anything like full use of her

potentialities until now, preferring to let her get thoroughly used to the notion that her

husband's welfare depended on her diligence. Lesueur might have told Giuseppe all this

without any particular harm, but he was a man as close and reserved as his face, and he

liked keeping information to himself - all information. Yet on the other hand Giuseppe, who

had been away for a great while, had to have some knowledge of the present situation: he

also had to be humoured to a certain degree. 'She teaches Italian,' said Lesueur

grudgingly, and paused. 'You see the big man in the arbour on the far left?'

'The one-armed commander in a scratch-wig?'

'No. At the other end of the table.'

'The great fat vellow-haired post-captain with that sparkling thing in his hat?'

'Just so. He is very fond of the opera.'

'That red-faced ox of a man? You astonish me. I should have thought beer and skittles

more his line. Look how he laughs. They must surely hear him in Ricasoli. He is probably

drunk: the English are perpetually drunk - do not know decency.'

'Perhaps so. At all events he is very fond of the opera. In passing, let me caution you

against letting your dislike cloud your judgment, and against underestimating your enemy:

the red-faced ox is Captain Aubrey, and although he may not look very wise at present he

is the man who negotiated with Sciahan Bey, destroyed Mustapha, and turned us out of

Marga. No fool could have done any one of those things, let alone all three. But as I was

about to say, being here for some time and being fond of the opera, he decided to have

Italian lessons so that he might understand what was going on.' Giuseppe was about to

make some remark on the simplicity of this notion, but seeing the look on Lesueur's face

he closed his mouth. 'His first teacher was old Ambrogio, but as soon as Carlos heard of

this he sent proper people to tell Ambrogio to fall sick and to recommend Mrs Fielding. Let

us have no interruptions, I beg,' he said, holding up his hand as Giuseppe's mouth opened

again. 'She is already twelve minutes overdue and I wish to say all that I have to say

before she comes. The whole point is this: Aubrey and Maturin are close friends; they

have always sailed together; and by bringing the woman into contact with Aubrey I bring

her into contact with Maturin. She is young, good-looking, quite intelligent, and of good

reputation - no known lovers at all. No lovers since her marriage, that is to say. In these

circumstances I have little doubt of his becoming involved with her, and I look forward to

some very valuable information indeed.'

As Lesueur said these words, Maturin turned in his seat and looked straight at the

Apothecary's Tower: it was exactly as though his strange pale eyes pierced the slatted

shutters to the men within and they both silently fell back a pace. 'A nasty looking

crocodile,' said Giuseppe, in little more than a whisper.

Stephen Maturin's general uneasiness had been increased by the sense of being stared

at, but this had scarcely reached the fully conscious level: his intelligence had not caught

up with his instinct and although his eyes were correctly focused his mind was considering

the tower as a possible haunt of bats. He knew that since the departure of the Knights its

lower part had served as a merchant's warehouse, but the top was almost certainly

unused: a more suitable place could hardly be imagined. Clusius had dealt with the

island's flora at great length, and Pozzo di Borgo with the birds; but the Maltese bats had

been most pitifully neglected.

Yet although Dr Maturin was devoted to bats, and to natural philosophy in general, it was

only the surface, of his mind that was concerned with them at present. The healing cigar

had taken off some of his more peevish discontent, but he was still deeply disturbed. As

Lesueur had said, he was an intelligence-agent as well as a naval surgeon, and on his

return to Malta from the Ionian he had found the already worrying situation more worrying

still. Not only was confidential information bandied about in the most reckless way, so that

a Sicilian wine-merchant of his acquaintance could tell him, quite correctly, that the 73rd

Regiment would leave Gibraltar next week, bound for Cerigo and Santa Maura, but far

more important plans were being conveyed, at least in part, to Toulon and Paris.

There had been a most unfortunate vacation of power. In Valletta itself the popular naval

governor, a man who had fought with the Maltese against the French, a man who liked the

people, knew their leaders intimately well, and spoke their language had, against all

reason, been replaced by a soldier, and a stupid arrogant booby of a soldier at that, who

publicly referred to the Maltese as a pack of Popish natives who should be made to

understand who was master. The French could not have asked for better: they already

had intelligence networks in the island and now they reinforced them with money and

men, recruiting the dissatisfied in surprising numbers.

But even more important was the interval between the death of Admiral Sir John

Thornton and the appointment of a new Commander-in-Chief. Sir John had been a good

chief of intelligence as well as an outstanding diplomat, strategist and seaman, yet by far

the greater part of his improvised organization was unofficial, based upon personal

contact, and it had fallen to pieces in the incompetent hands of his second-in-command

and temporary successor, Rear-Admiral Harte: men of substance, often important officials

in governments from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, would trust themselves to

Sir John or his secretary, but they had nothing to say to an ill-tempered, indiscreet,

ignorant stop-gap. Maturin himself, whose services in this respect were wholly voluntary,

he being moved by nothing but an intense hatred of the Napoleonic tyranny, had declined

to appear in any character other than that of a surgeon while Harte held the command.

This period was now at an end, however: Sir Francis Ives, the new and respectable

Commander-in-Chief, was now with the main body of the fleet, blockading Toulon, where

the French, with twenty-one line-of-battle ships and seven frigates, showed signs of great

activity, while at the same time he was picking up all the complex threads of his command,

tactical, strategic, and political, with their necessary complement of intelligence. At the

same time the Admiralty was sending an official to deal with the situation in Malta, their

acting Second Secretary, no less, Mr Andrew Wray. He had a reputation for brilliant parts,

and he had certainly done very well at the Treasury under his cousin Lord Pelham: there

was no doubt that he was an exceptionally able man. And Maturin had no doubt that quite

apart from coping with the French he would need all his abilities to overcome the ill-will of

the Army and the jealousy and obstruction of the other British intelligence organizations

that had made their devious way into the island. There were mysterious gentlemen from

various departments, darkening counsel, hampering one another, and causing confusion;

and Stephen Maturin's only consolation when he contemplated the situation was that the

French were probably worse. Despotic government tends to breed spies and informers,

O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 09 - Treason's Harbour

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