by Kate Forsyth
‘Hilarious,’ David replied dryly.
Dr Scott grinned at him. ‘We would be immortalised forever as the finest example of a ship of fools in history.’
‘That is not how I wish to be remembered.’
‘Nor I, most emphatically.’
‘How do you wish to be remembered?’ David looked at the other man in some amusement.
‘Discovering a cure for some dreadful disease,’ Dr Scott replied promptly. ‘And you?’
‘Discovering some unknown plant that will be of invaluable service to mankind,’ David responded as swiftly.
‘Perhaps you will discover the plant that will enable me to discover the cure.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And we shall retire rich and famous men.’
‘We have to survive the storm first.’ David looked back at the sea which seemed about to engulf the whole ship.
‘Perhaps the Lion will break in two like Candide’s ship did, and we shall have to try to float to shore on a plank,’ a boyish voice said. Turning, David saw Tom had climbed up to watch the storm too, accompanied as always by his tutor.
‘Let us pray to our Vater to spare us,’ Herr Hüttner said in his guttural German accent.
‘If we are to be shipwrecked, I do think it’s a shame that it should happen off the coast of Dorset,’ Tom went on. ‘It’d be so much more exciting to be marooned on a desert island somewhere.’
‘You speak like a dummkopf,’ his tutor replied austerely. ‘It is not exciting to be shipwrecked, it would be most wearisome. Come away below deck now, Master Staunton, I am getting my feet wet.’
‘I don’t mind getting a little damp,’ the boy answered, but his tutor frowned ferociously and said, in uncompromising tones, ‘I, however, do.’
The big man towed away his reluctant charge.
David and the doctor lingered a little longer on the deck, watching the sailors work in unison to curb the ship. The lash of the salty wind, the high-flung spume of the sea, the roll and roar of the ocean, all filled him with a kind of mad exhilaration, and he saw by the glow on the doctor’s face that he felt the same.
‘If this is what the English Channel can throw our way, imagine what it will be like rounding the Cape of Good Hope.’ Dr Scott cast David a sparkling look, and he grinned back in shared excitement.
‘Not to mention the typhoons of the South China Sea,’ he answered.
Dr Scott shook his head in disbelief. ‘I can scarcely believe that it’s true, and that we are travelling so far. To China!’
‘To China,’ David repeated under his breath. A chill crept over his skin, like a premonition.
A few days later, the Lion sailed along the west coast of Bretagne.
David stood on the deck, gazing at the sea-lashed rocks and wide scoops of pale sand, thinking, despite himself, of Viviane. He imagined her at Belisima-sur-le-lac, walking in the gardens he had designed for her, smiling up at her doting husband. She would be dressed in velvet, jewels in her hair instead of wild flowers.
Perhaps one hand would rest on the swell of a slowly growing baby within her. Perhaps the linden trees would already be a blaze of gold along the lake shore, their heart-shaped leaves falling unnoticed at her feet. Perhaps she would stand at the windows of the banqueting hall, the glow of candles haloing her dark head. She would look down at the maze, and smile a little and shrug, thinking with amusement of the poor besotted gardener who had planted it.
David felt the hurt of it in his throat, like a wedged bone.
He could not dig deep, or ride hard, or tramp across a mountain, all the things he did when trying to master his emotions. So, barefoot, he climbed the rigging to the very top of the mast, and clung there, swaying from side to side, looking out across the crawling indigo sea to the horizon, which the Greeks had called the separating circle.
I have to forget her, he told himself.
Every day, Tom Staunton sat with the Chinese priests. Father Li and Father Cho did not speak English and Tom did not speak Mandarin, but they managed to communicate quite well together in their shared language of Latin. David began to join them, fascinated by the intricate symbols the young Chinese men drew so deftly with their brushes and ink.
‘Look, Mr Stronach,’ Tom cried one day, holding up the pictograph that he had so carefully copied. ‘This means “life”. It is inspired by the shape of a plant sprouting from the soil. Can you see?’ With his finger he traced the black strokes. ‘It means to be born, to give life, to grow. Is that not beautiful?’
‘You’re a quick study,’ David said. ‘I can’t make head or tail of their script yet.’
‘Do not compliment the boy, he will get a fat head,’ Herr Hüttner said. ‘As I tell him often, hares are caught with hounds, fools with praise, and women with gold.’
David set his jaw and turned away.
He had thought Viviane different.
On 9 October, the Lion and the Hindostan reached Madeira, where they stopped for supplies, and then – four days later – David saw the peak of Tenerife rise up out of the sea. It heralded the approach of the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Morocco conquered by the Spanish in the fifteenth century.
‘The Spanish used to call this place Isla del Infierno,’ Mr Hickey told David, as they stood side by side gazing at the sharp peak of the volcano. ‘It means “Island of Hell”.’
‘Is the volcano still active?’ David asked.
Mr Hickey nodded his head. He was wearing a red fez with a long black tassel which blew about wildly in the wind. ‘Last time it erupted, it buried the whole town with lava.’
‘I wonder if it’s possible to climb it.’
Mr Hickey looked at him in surprise. ‘They say El Teide is one of the tallest mountains in the world.’
‘That’s why I’d like to climb it.’
‘It’ll be cold. There’s snow on the peak.’
David looked at him with exaggerated pity. ‘I’m Welsh,’ he reminded him.
Mr Hickey laughed and conceded him the point.
As the Lion sailed into the harbour of Santa Cruz that evening, David saw a great warship with three tall masts and a battery of guns along its upper deck resting at anchor. A flag in three broad stripes of blue, white and red fluttered from its topmast.
Suddenly the warship fired at the Lion. Heavy cannonballs crashed into the water all around. Smoke billowed into the sky. Shouts of alarm and anger rang out. Sir Erasmus strode to the top deck and lifted his telescope to his eye.
‘What flag is that? Who is that firing at us?’ Lord Macartney demanded.
‘It is a provocation, no more,’ Sir Erasmus said. ‘If they had wanted to hit us, they could have. Perhaps it is just a welcome salute.’
David asked the harbourmaster about the mysterious ship when he came onboard to welcome the British to Tenerife.
The harbourmaster frowned. ‘No salute allowed,’ he answered, in heavily accented English. ‘No, it was a rudeness. That ship, it is French. It has been detained by the governor, awaiting instructions from His Majesty in Spain. In case we should join the allied powers, you see, in fighting the French. As you English will, no doubt.’
‘But the flag …’ David was puzzled. The French flag was a grandiose affair of golden fleur-de-lis against a royal blue background.
‘New flag now,’ the harbour man said briefly. ‘For the new republic.’
David stared at him, his pulse quickening. ‘Pardon?’
‘France republic now. New flag for new government.’
‘But …’ David could not manage to process the news. ‘When?’
‘We heard not long now. One or two weeks, maybe.’
‘But … what of the king? The old government?’
The harbourmaster shrugged.
20
Slimy Pollywogs
14 October – 18 November 1792
The snow-streaked peak of Mount Teide rose above fleecy clouds, like a child’s drawing of a mountain.
After David’s parents had died, nothing could keep him in the house. He would slip out at dawn and roam the hills till dusk, exploring as far as his feet could carry him. He had been twelve when he had first climbed Pen y Fan, the highest peak in South Wales, and nineteen when he conquered Snowdon. Some nights he did not come home at all, but slept under the stars, rolled in his old coat. He drank clear water from the peat pools, and cut away squares of turf with his knife to kindle a fire and cook a moorhen he had caught with a net of old string. In the morning, the fire would have sunk to ashes and he could drop back the square of turf and leave no sign that he had ever been there at all.
His grandmother had worried about him, but his grandfather had only smiled and said in his gentle way, ‘Leave the lad be, Manon. He’s grieving in his own way. On the mountain peaks, he is as close to God as he can get.’
In his sorrow and rage, the boy listening at the door had rejected his grandfather’s words violently. It was not God he was climbing to meet. David did not know how to express what it was he wanted, but it had something to do with being quick and strong and alive. To feel his hot blood thumping in his pulse, his fast breath pumping in his lungs. It was only much later that David wondered if his grandfather’s idea of God and his own longing for rapture were not, perhaps, the same thing.
The guides led them slowly along a narrow path that wound up through vineyards and orchards. Gradually the cultivated land gave way to dry barren fields, an occasional stunted tree stretching out its thin twisted branches as if shrieking for help. Steep slopes of dry black lava were rent with narrow chasms, their depths hidden in shadows. Shaggy wild goats leaped nimbly over the rocks, sending pumice stones scattering in tiny avalanches. The mules picked their way forward, heads down, ears back. David had to quell his impatience, and plod along with the rest of the party.
By late afternoon, the barometer told them they had risen six thousand feet above the town, which could be seen below them like a child’s game with sticks and stones. As the sun set behind the mountain, its shadow fell upon the wavering line of mules and men, and then stretched out to swallow the town. Conversation stalled. The men turned up the collars of their coats. Slowly the shadow stretched out across the sea, blotting out its dazzling brightness in a perfect vast triangle. David felt an uneasy vertigo, as if the mountain was teetering.
Clouds boiled up from the ravines. The path was hidden by mist. The temperature had dropped so low, David’s breath plumed white before him.
‘Better we stop now,’ said the head guide, a tall spare man in his sixties. ‘No go any further.’
‘Oh, we can’t stop,’ David said. ‘That would be most cowardly, to come so far and go no further.’
‘Dangerous,’ the man said.
‘That’s the point,’ David replied. He looked around at the others. ‘You can go back if you like, but I want to reach the top.’
‘Perhaps we should go back,’ Sir George said, with a worried eye on his son.
Tom straightened his back at once, and said, ‘I’m all right, Father. Let’s go on. Adventurers never say die!’
‘That’s the spirit!’
On they rode, peering ahead through the dusk and the rain. The mules began to baulk. Sir George was thrown from the back of his mount, and fell only inches away from a steep tumble down the cliff-face. He remounted without a word, but his face was white and strained.
The rain became sleet, and then snow. The sky was so dark it was impossible to see more than a few paces ahead. They came to a small flat shelf, protected a little from the worst of the storm by a bulge of mountain above.
‘We must stop here,’ the guide said.
‘But if we stop here, we will never be able to reach the summit tomorrow,’ David protested. ‘We must push on as far as we can.’
‘No going on.’ The guide shook his head firmly. ‘All die if go on.’
The stiff weary men began to dismount, and shake out their wet clothes, and look for somewhere dry to sit.
‘I’ll just go on a little.’ David kicked his mule forward, but he could see nothing but mist-swirled darkness. Stones dislodged by the mule’s hooves clattered down the precipitous slope.
At last, angrily, he turned back.
A rough camp had been made, with branches of Spanish broom lopped and spread to make beds and a tent made from a sail draped over a branch. A fitful fire spat.
‘It is good to have an indomitable will,’ Sir George said, as they ate a meagre supper from tin plates. ‘But it is not a sign of weakness to know when one must give in.’
David set his jaw. He could not give in. He could not bear another failure. All those months wasted, building a garden he would never see blossom, for a debauched marquis and his weak-willed daughter. David had not even earned a glowing letter of recommendation, to help him find another position. If he had not written to Sir Joseph Banks at Kew Gardens himself, and impressed the legendary botanist with his bravado, he and his family might have come close to beggary.
‘If we do not climb the peak, we cannot establish how high it is or at what temperature water will boil,’ David replied, trying to speak lightly. ‘And then we shall not have our names published in the journal of the Royal Society.’
He knew how seriously Sir George took the scientific responsibilities of the expedition.
‘I don’t think that’s worth losing our lives for,’ Sir George answered shortly, rubbing his bruised hip.
It was a most uncomfortable night. David could not stop shivering in his damp clothes, and he could not stop worrying about Viviane.
The governor of Tenerife had told them that the new French government had massacred thousands of imprisoned clergymen and aristocrats, and the royal family were prisoners in the dank medieval tower of the Temple in Paris.
She’s safe in Bretagne, David told himself. Enjoying her new life as a duchess.
But he could not convince himself.
He laid one arm over his eyes, and tried to steady his breathing. But fear clamped his chest tight.
A few hours before dawn, the clouds rolled back and David could see the peak shining above him in the moonlight. It rose out of a frozen sea of fog, pure and cold and unassailable.
David lay still, his blanket glittering with a faint rime of frost. All around him, men slept or lay in silence, breathing softly, but he felt as if he was all alone.
He had thought Viviane was the other half of his soul, the missing part for which he had always longed. Her absence was a constant ache, like the space where his finger had once been.
The night seemed very long.
In the morning, most of the men decided to turn back, Sir George dragging an unwilling Tom with him.
David was determined to press on, however. Dr Gillan, Dr Scott and Mr Barrow, the ambassador’s financial comptroller, decided to accompany him. One of the guides grudgingly agreed to accompany them, the other returning to the Lion with the rest of the party.
Beyond their makeshift camp was a dreary waste of lava and ash. The wind was so strong it almost dragged them from the back of their mules, who were sullen and intractable and had to be kicked or lashed for every slow reluctant step. It was piercingly cold.
They had climbed another two thousand feet, the barometer told them. Then Dr Gillan’s mule slipped into a chasm, and the poor doctor was only saved from a murderous fall by catching desperately at a thin bent tree. Shaken and bruised, he decided to turn back, and Mr Barrow thought it best to accompany him.
At that point, the guide refused to go on any further.
‘But we are so close,’ David cried. He could see the mouth of the crater a steep scramble above them. He looked challengingly at Dr Scott.
The doctor grinned back at him, and cried, ‘Race you!’
David made a convulsive effort to grab hold of a ledge above him, missed his mark and came tumbling down, knocking Dr Scott off his feet. They rolled down wildly, and ended up in a tangle at the foot of the slope they had begun to climb almost two hours earlier.
David rolled away and lay on his back with a groan.
‘I suppose we must admit defeat,’ Dr Scott said at last, staring up at the stormy-dark sky.
‘I hate to give up,’ David said.
‘Me too, most emphatically.’
David grunted a laugh.
Dr Scott sat up, and flexed his long limbs experimentally. ‘Nothing broken, by some miracle.’
David did the same. ‘Just a whole lot of bruises,’ he reported. ‘I must admit I’m not looking forward to riding those damned mules all the way back.’
‘They have the boniest spine of any animal I’ve ever encountered,’ Dr Scott responded. They hauled themselves to their feet, dusted themselves off, and glanced up at the mountain peak towering above them.
‘Ah well,’ David said. ‘We shall just have to return here again one day, Dr Scott.’
‘You may as well call me Scotty. I think a man who has fallen down a mountain on top of me can be admitted into terms of familiarity.’ With a grin, the doctor held out his hand.
David shook his hand heartily. ‘Yes, indeed. I’m David.’
‘And Welsh by the sound of it.’
David smiled. ‘Yes, indeed.’
‘Some grand mountains in Wales.’
‘The grandest. Climbed any?’
‘A few.’
As Scotty began to describe the hills and mountains he had climbed, they limped together back down the hill to where the guide sullenly waited with the mules.
And those blessed animals – who had plodded so begrudgingly up the mountain, impervious to kicks or slaps of the hand – took the bits between their teeth and galloped the whole way back.
