Book 17 - The Commodore

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Stephen, do not be indiscreet, I beg. French spies may see all the bustle and report it by the countless smugglers, but so long as no one ever mentions the actual date, the ministry feels quite safe. All I can say is that there is not a moment to be lost. You must attend to your medical stores directly, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.'

  'Gentlemen,' said Stephen to his assistants in their splendid new sick-berth, full of light and air, furnished with capacious dispensaries, port and starboard, 'I believe we may now cross off the antimonials, jalap and camphire, the eight yards of Welsh linen bandage, and the twelve yards of finer linen, which sets us up for the first month, barring the tourniquets, the mercury, and the small list of alexipharmics that Beale is sending over tomorrow. So much for our official supplies. But I have added a certain number of comforts—they are in the cases on the left, together with a chest of portable soup infinitely superior to the Victualling Board's second-hand carpenter's glue—and a parcel of my own particular asafetida. It is imported for me by a Turkey merchant; and as you perhaps have noticed in spite of the sturgeon's bladder in which it is enclosed it is by far the most pungent, the most truly fetid, variety known to man. For you must know, gentlemen, that when the mariner is dosed, he likes to know that he has been dosed: with fifteen grains or even less of this valuable substance scenting him and the very air about him there can be no doubt of the matter; and such is the nature of the human mind that he experiences a far greater real benefit than the drug itself would provide, were it deprived of its stench.'

  'May I ask, sir, where we are to stow it?'

  'Why, Mr Smith,' said Stephen, 'I had thought it would scarcely be noticed in the midshipmen's berth.'

  'But we live there, too,' cried Macaulay. 'We live and sleep there, sir.'

  'You will be astonished to find how quickly it becomes indifferent, how quickly you grow used to what weak minds call the offensive odour, just as you grow accustomed to the motion of the billows. Now this second parcel, colleagues, is a substance more valuable by far than the most nauseous asafetida, or even perhaps than bark, quicksilver or opium. It does not yet figure in the London or even in the Dublin pharmacopeia; but presently it will be written in both, and in that of Edinburgh, in letters of gold.'

  He opened the small, close-woven rush basket, lifted the tissue-paper and then the two layers of pale-green silk. The assistants looked attentively at the dried brown leaves within.

  'These dried brown leaves, gentlemen,' said Stephen, 'come from the Peruvian bush Erythroxylon coca. I do not present them as a panacea, but I do assert that they possess very great virtues in cases of melancholia, morbid depression of spirits whether rational or irrational, and the restless uneasiness of mind that so very often accompanies fever: it brings about a euphory, a sense of well-being far more lucid, far superior in every way to that produced by opium; and it does so without causing that unhappy addiction we are all so well acquainted with. Admittedly, it does not procure sleep as opium does—a most unhealthy sleep, I may add—but on the other hand, the patient does not require sleep: his mind rests of itself in a remarkable calm clarity.'

  'Is it in no way dangerous?' asked Smith.

  'I heard of no untoward effects in my inquiries among medical men,' said Stephen, 'though it is known, esteemed, and very generally used throughout Peru. So long as man is man, there is always the possibility of abuse, sure, just as there is with tea, coffee, tobacco, wine and of course ardent spirits among us: but I never heard of an instance in some weeks' or indeed months' residence among the Peruvians.'

  'Is it prescribed as a specific for some Peruvian disorder, as a tonic, or as an alterative?' asked Macaulay.

  'It is certainly used as a febrifuge and as a remedy for most ills,' said Stephen, 'but it is primarily taken as an enhancer of daily life, particularly by the labouring classes of men; for as well as the euphory I have spoken of, the coca also provides or perhaps I should say liberates great stores of energy, at the same time doing away with hunger for days on end. I have known thin spare men, no larger than myself, walk across mountainy country in piercing weather at a great altitude from sunrise to sunset, carrying burdens without fatigue, and without food. Yet although the uses of the coca-leaf are most evident among the poor, the field-labourers, the miners and the porters, they are even more striking among those who work with their heads. I have written all night, covering forty-three octavo pages, without mental exhaustion or even weariness, after a very hard day's journey; and I have heard wellauthenticated reports of surgeons operating for twenty-four hours on end after a very shocking battle—operating with their abilities undiminished. But from the purely medical point of view, it seems to me that the most evident and immediate application is in everyday mental disturbance. I had great hopes of proving its value in my most recent voyage, but unhappily—I should not say unhappily, of course—all our people, officers, petty officers and seamen, were resolutely cheerful. Some frostbites off the Horn, the first hints of scurvy north of the Island, but no real depression, no moping, no sadness, no peevish quarrelling, rarely a cross word. It is true that they were buoyed up with thoughts of home, and we had been very fortunate in the matter of prizes; but their memment among the ice-floes of the south, their merriment in the heaving, sticky sea of the doldrums with the sails hanging loose day after day, would have vexed a saint. Have we any case even approaching melancholia at present?'

  'Well, sir,' said Smith doubtfully, 'a good many of the pressed men are low in their spirits, of course; but as for downright, clinical melancholia . . . I am sorry to disappoint you, sir.'

  The young men, who had been bent over the leaves, sprung upright, and Stephen, turning, saw Captain Aubrey walk into the berth. 'Here's glory, upon my word,' cried he. 'Light and air in God's plenty. It would be a pleasure to be sick in such a place. But come,'—sniffing right and left—'has something died here?'

  'It has not,' said Stephen. 'The odour is that of the Smyrna asafetida, the most fetid of them all. In former times it was carried hung from the loftiest mast. Perhaps I might be indulged in some oiled silk, and a box lapped with lead, in which the bulk may be struck into the orlop, while I keep just a little small jar on this floor for our daily use.'

  'By all means, Doctor,' said Jack. 'If you will come with me we can speak to Chips directly. There is a gentleman from the Sick and Hurt Board to see you in the cabin.'

  The gentleman was not in fact from the Sick and Hurt Board, though he carried some of their official papers, but from the Admiralty itself, one of the more rarely seen officials in the department of naval intelligence, a gentleman often entrusted by its chief, Sir Joseph Blaine, with the most delicate missions. Neither acknowledged any former acquaintance even when Jack had left them alone. Mr Judd spoke firmly and authoritatively on some obscure points of medical administration, handed over the relevant documents with only the very slightest emphasis, and took his civil but distant leave.

  Stephen walked straight into the quarter-gallery, and there, poised upon the seat of ease, he opened the packet. The papers were straightforward, devoid of interest, their only function being to contain the note that asked him to be in the beetle wood that afternoon if he possibly could, or to catch the bearer, who would stay at the Cock for half an hour, and appoint a very early meeting.

  At this stage in the Bellona's preparations Stephen was virtually a free agent. He looked in at the Cock, spoke to his man, took a chaise back to Ashgrove, saddled his mare and rode some miles towards Liss before branching off into a series of lanes, one of which would have brought him to a farm belonging to Sir Joseph if, before reaching it, he had not turned along a path leading to the roughest of rough and sandy pasture to a neglected wood, one of the few in England where an entomologist had a reasonable chance of finding that brilliant creature Calosoma sycophanta, as well as no less than three of the tiger beetles.

  'I am so glad you were able to come,' cried Blaine, reaching up and shaking his hand. He led horse and rider
down to a shaded bank, where Stephen dismounted, tethered Lalla by a long symbolic cord and sat down, contemplating his friend's pale and anxious face.

  'I am so full of matter and so disturbed that I hardly know how to begin,' said Sir Joseph. 'The last time we met I told you that Habachtsthal was continuing Ledward's work in sending information to the French; that a threat of retribution was conveyed to him, a threat that checked his activity until he realized how hollow it was. I also told you that he was an exceptionally revengeful man and that I had reasons for suspecting that he saw me as the ultimate source of the threat. These suspicions were justified, and it grieves me beyond measure, Stephen, to say that he has also identified you as the destroyer of his friends Ledward and Wray, and Clarissa as the source of your information about him and therefore of mine.'

  'Do you know how he did so?'

  'The first was clear enough, from Wray's known hatred of you and Jack Aubrey and your presence in Pulo Prabang when they were killed. The second was more obscure . . . but here I must branch off and hark back to that ugly, that very ugly affair which led to Captain Aubrey's being charged with rigging the Stock Exchange. It was engineered by criminals, of course: the swell mob, as they say, the same criminals as those who at one or two removes brought about the murder and the disfigurement of the witness whose testimony would have dismissed the accusation. You might think it a far cry from the Solicitor-General and a long-established, eminently respectable firm of lawyers to a band of criminals; but the eminently respectable know the less respectable and so down to the very dregs; and where raison d'état or what can be disguised as raison d'état is concerned I believe that even you would be astonished at what can happen. And I must tell you that by the same long and dirty road Habachtsthal's attorneys had brought him into more or less direct contact with a set of the same kind of fellows, if not the very same. Pratt, who is very well acquainted with that world, asserts that at least three belonged to the former group; and that one of them, a man called Bellerophon, murdered the accomplice who killed and mutilated the unhappy Palmer, in case your wealth might induce him to peach.'

  'Pratt?' said Stephen.

  'Yes. His acumen, honesty, and very particular qualifications impressed me deeply when you and I employed him, and I have entrusted him with several other inquiries since then, always to the department's satisfaction. He has associates now, all like himself, children of the gaol and often former Bow Street runners.'

  'So he told me. He is working for me at present: or more probably two or three of his partners. It is a family investigation: I will tell you about it when we have finished with this.'

  Sir Joseph bowed and said 'He did not mention this to me, of course; but we did talk about you and Captain Aubrey. He has a great respect and liking for you: I might indeed say an affection. However . . .' He paused, gathered his anxious thoughts and went on, 'These men, perhaps with the help of some part of officialdom, together with the lowest stratum of crooked attorneys, have presented their employer with the following facts: that you have illegally brought back two unpardoned convicts from New South Wales, Patrick Colman and Clarissa Harvill, now Mrs Oakes; that you have sought, with me acting as go-between, to have them pardoned; but that since no pardon has yet been obtained you are still open to prosecution on an undeniable charge that leads not perhaps to death but at least to imprisonments and loss of all property. Furthermore they allege that the pardon we sued out for you long ago . . .'

  'I believe you must explain that, Joseph.'

  'Forgive me, Stephen. When first the department asked your advice on Catalan affairs it was told that you and some of your friends and relations had been concerned in the Irish rising of 1798, which might bring you within the catch-all "failure to denounce" and "association with malefactors" legislation. To protect you we had your name included in one of the wider pardons: I confess that it was a very great liberty; but it served our common cause. Without it I could not have shown you any confidential document without committing a crime, while at any point a malignant private prosecution might have robbed us of your invaluable help—private prosecutions are usual in these cases.'

  Stephen nodded, and presently Blaine went on, 'But most unhappily these people appear to have had access to the document, and it is said that it may not be watertight—that if new evidence is produced you may still be taken up for treason. It seems that such evidence can still be procured, even now, in Dublin, where creatures like the infamous Sirr crawl about to this day—procured at no great price.'

  In his agitation Blaine plucked a handkerchief from his pocket, a handkerchief in which there was entangled a sadly folded, crumpled envelope. 'I was forgetting,' he cried, holding out the paper. 'This should have been sent to you. It is your statement of the amount due to you for the hire of the Surprise in this recent voyage. The accountant disputes your addition on the first page as being too great by eighteen pence, and observes that in your grand total you have omitted the agreed sum of seventeen thousand pounds odd for hire, maintenance and repairs.'

  In an undertone Stephen said 'How life is diminished when you can forget or indeed even dismiss seventeen thousand pounds.'

  Blaine paid no attention and continued, 'On reflexion I find that I have mis-stated the case, giving the impression that all this information is in Habachtsthal's possession. That is not so: he has the general notion but not the particulars. And from two sources I have learnt that the—what shall I call them?—the gang not only mean to make him pay very heavily for them, but then to blackmail him for having procured and used them. I am wholly indifferent to his fate, which is likely to be extremely uncomfortable: I am not to yours, and I must tell you with infinite concern that their more immediate project is to blackmail you. You are known to be wealthy, I am very sorry to say: you are known to be extremely vulnerable, if only because of Clarissa and Padeen and the thought of their forced return to New South Wales. The information reached me from two sources. It will not surprise you to learn that Pratt was one, but I think the second will astonish you—Lawrence, Jack Aubrey's counsel in the Stock Exchange case. He was as guarded and discreet as could be, but I gather that Habachtsthal has begun to find that he is far, far deeper entangled in this association with malefactors than he had expected, that they are not going to be satisfied with the fees agreed upon in the first place, and that whereas the sovereign ruler of even a very small German state can deal expeditiously with awkward customers in his own country, it will not answer here. The foolish man quarrelled with his own lawyer and now he is consulting right and left for means of protection; and that, directly or indirectly, is how Lawrence has come to understand the matter. He is perfectly aware of the position with regard to Clarissa and Padeen: he perfectly understands that the long delays in granting their otherwise, routine pardon is part of a long-drawn-out manoeuvre against me, and through me, against you. He begs you to take the utmost care.'

  'I have long had a great respect and esteem and liking for Brendan Lawrence,' said Stephen, 'and I am obliged to him for his kindness. He would not have offered any words of advice, at all?'

  'He did indeed, this very morning. They exactly coincide with Pratt's, who came to tell me that on Monday a low attorney will at last have the authenticated papers from Newgate to complete the files proving Clarissa's transportation. And with mine, for what it is worth.'

  'Pray let me know what you all think, will you, now?'

  In the silence a jay pitched in the tree above their heads, a white poplar: it peered down, and seeing what they were flew off again with a harsh chattering.

  'I hesitate to tell you,' said Blaine, looking full at Stephen. 'It sounds so wild and I might almost say romantic, excessive. However, we all agree that you should escape at once, taking your proteges with you and all the money you can lay your hands on. For once the charge against you is laid, once the Newgate records have made their way to the lawyers Habachtsthal is now employing and once he has signed the denunciation that sets the legal process
in train, your account with your banking-house is attached: you cannot touch it. We think you should hide and remain hidden at least until the Duke of Sussex returns, when my position will be much stronger, and when his kindness for you should make the pardons an ordinary matter of course: he far outweighs Habachtsthal in our Byzantium. But in the meantime it all hinges on Habachtsthal.'

  The jay returned, circled round the grazing mare, and perched in the tree once more, grumbling for a while before it flew off again.

  'It all hinges on him,' said Blaine. 'If he were eliminated he could do no favours and all this reluctance about pardon would vanish; and the moment they are granted the blackmailers have no hold on you whatsoever.' He fell silent, but his look conveyed all he meant it to convey.

  'Certainly,' said Stephen. 'He is as much the enemy as Ledward was, and Wray, and some other men I have killed or caused to be killed with a tranquil conscience. But here the case is altered; and with my commitments in this country I do not think I can consider such a course.'

  'I suppose not. But I very much regret it: for with the Garter gone, everything collapses. He is the one and only primum mobile. If he were dead all his revenge and all his influence would die with him. The case is a private prosecution: so it would die too. We should not have to wait for Sussex. I should not have to overcome your reluctance to turn to your old patient Prince William. And the department would be rid of a dangerous opponent—rid for good and all. However . . . as to money, Lawrence thinks you still have a great deal of it in gold?'

  'Just so. I consulted him when I was last in town, and after considering what he told me about stocks and shares, annuities and land, I decided to leave it in the little chests that brought it from Spain. One of the partners showed them to me, in a vaulted strong-room under their house in the City.'

  'Would you be prepared to sign a letter of attorney directed to some nominee guaranteed by Lawrence and myself so that it may be stored in a safe place?'