Book 13 - The Thirteen-Gun Salute

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Reticulatus, I suppose?'

  'I imagine so. There was neither time nor light to examine his labial scales, but I imagine so. Twenty-five feet long, perhaps, and reasonably stout for a serpent of that length.'

  'Yes. I see him from time to time. Pythons are said to be ill-tempered, but he has never proved objectionable; though perhaps it might not be wise to linger underneath his tree. Now tell me, how have matters come along?'

  'As far as the official negotiations are concerned, they began well; but now they tend to become difficult, with endless restatements of the case.'

  'Of course they will drag on for a great while; in these parts a rapid conclusion would be a loss of consequence. I put Cuvier's bones for the very small, very delicate red ants to clean, a long task for them, considering the tapir's bulk; but I am sure the bones will be perfectly white long before you carry them off to be sent to France.'

  'Oh, I should be happy to stay. I have scarcely begun on the coleoptera, and I have never caught so much as a glimpse of an orang-utang, even in the summit of a very distant tree. But what distresses me is that although with your invaluable advice and the help of the amiable Wan Da I have won the good-will of the Vizier and the greater part of the council, particularly the Sultana Hafsa's relations, every time Fox makes real headway, the Sultan imposes his veto and the Vizier is obliged to overthrow everything, sometimes on pretexts that can hardly be attempted to be believed. And both Fox and I are convinced that this is because of Abdul. The Sultan has a strong, dominant character—his council is afraid of him—but as you said yourself some time ago, never was a man so besotted. It was embarrassingly obvious at the otherwise very successful reception aboard the frigate.'

  'But what interest can Abdul have in the matter?'

  'Have you met Ledward, the negotiator on the French side?'

  'I have seen him two or three times, a fine upstanding figure of a man, though no doubt carrion.'

  'He is not only a very able, persuasive negotiator, capable of out-talking Fox before the council and making him lose his temper, but he is also Abdul's lover.'

  'Oh, oh,' said Van Buren. 'That young man is playing with fire. Hafsa hates him, and her family is powerful. She is a determined woman herself. And the Sultan is of an extremely jealous disposition.'

  'It is my belief,' said Stephen, after a pause, 'that Ledward has made Abdul suppose that if they are put to their last shifts the French will give their frigate as well as the guns, the subsidy and the shipwrights they offered in the first place—they have nothing else left. Their money is all gone. They had no great matter to begin with, and Ledward lost much of it in play. He is a furious and uniformly unfortunate gambler; so is his companion Wray. Will I tell you the reason for my belief?'

  'I should be very happy to learn it. But first let us drink a pot of coffee.'

  'Do you remember how I exulted over the rough draughts of Duplessis' journal?' asked Stephen, putting down his cup and wiping his lips. 'It was the unwisest thing I ever did. Well, almost the unwisest. After a week however I did begin to feel that this was too easy entirely, too handsome to be honest. Now I did tell you, before you left, that I intended to arrange for your gardener's half-brother to bring me the waste paper from Duplessis' house?'

  'Certainly.'

  'The arrangement took some time, and the accumulation that eventually reached me when a discreet means of delivery had been contrived made a forbidding great heap. Still, I did flatten and class it all in time; and in time I came across some rough draughts of the mission's journal. Doubt had been growing in my mind and I was not altogether astonished to find that they were not the same as my alleged rough draughts of the same date; but I will confess that it vexed me extremely. Ledward is in charge of all the mission's intelligence, and I could see him laughing with Wray at my simplicity.'

  'Galling. Oh very galling, I am sure.'

  'So galling that I did not trust myself to act for some little while. Fortunately Wu Han, to whom I confessed some part of my disappointment, felt himself—I will not say responsible, but to some extent concerned, or engaged. I should add that he thinks of moving to Java, a more fruitful field for his talents, and he is very willing to be well-seen by Shao Yen and of course by Raffles. He questioned his clerk, whose good faith seems entire, bought his debt on my behalf, and made him invite Lesueur that evening. Lesueur came—I am not the only simpleton in Prabang—and he was summoned to pay. Of course he could not produce the money and so he was seized as a debtor—Wu Hao has powerful porters for this kind of thing—and brought to me by night. He has no immunity of any kind. The Sultan gave safe-conduct and promise of protection to the members of the mission as it was constituted in Paris: Lesueur and other minor people were engaged in the East Indies. I represented to him that he had behaved very foolishly. He had not only ruined himself, since he would be kept in prison and scourged daily until he paid, but he had utterly wrecked the fortunes of his family and his mercantile house, all in British hands. He wept—he was exceedingly sorry—he had been forced into it by Mr Ledward who had found him abstracting papers after the first few days. I told him that his only hope of salvation was to say nothing whatsoever, to do what he had undertaken to do while at the same time sending me the false rough draughts as well: I had someone in the mission who would tell me if he did amiss, as I had already been told on this occasion. So far he has not done amiss, and I have the advantage of knowing both what they have done and what they wish me to think they have done or are about to do. And one thing that they or rather Ledward wishes me to think is that the French are prepared to throw their frigate into the scales in order to obtain their treaty.'

  'How would your thinking that profit him?'

  'I am not sure. It might be in the hope that the rumour would spread from our mission, eventually reaching the Sultan's ear from various sources and thus gaining in credibility. It might be in order to reduce Fox to despair, so that he should go away without any agreement. I do not know. But clearly it has floated into Ledward's mind and I am persuaded he has made Abdul believe it.'

  The door opened and Mevrouw van Buren came in. She was little more than five feet tall, but she contrived to be elegant, slim, intelligent and above all cheerful, a quality Stephen valued highly—most Malays tended to be morose, and many, many married women to be glum. He was very fond of her: they bowed to one another, smiling, and she said to her husband, 'My dear, supper is on the table.'

  'Supper?' cried van Buren, amazed.

  'Yes, my dear, supper: we have it every evening at this time, you know. Come, it will be getting cold.'

  'Oh,' said van Buren as they sat down, 'I was forgetting. There was some post waiting for me when we came home. Nothing very interesting. The Proceedings are filled with mathematical papers, and in the Journal that charlatan Klopff vapours away about his vital principle. But I was sorry to hear that the City of London was in such a turmoil, and that there was a run on the banks: I do hope you are not likely to be injured?'

  'Bless you, I have no money,' said Stephen. Then recollecting himself he went on, 'That is to say, for many years my life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and it would have been short if I had not continued to live; so poverty and solitude became quite habitual—the natural state. I think of myself as penniless. Yet now in fact the case is altered. I have been blessed with an inheritance, which is, I may add, looked after by a banking-house of unquestioned integrity; and what is much more to the point I am no longer solitary. I have a wife; and by the time I return I hope to have a daughter too.'

  The van Burens were touchingly pleased. They drank to Mrs Maturin and her baby, and when the subject had been thoroughly handled Mevrouw van Buren said, 'This brings in my news very happily: I have been bursting to tell you. The Sultana Hafsa is certainly with child, two months with child, and the Sultan is making a pilgrimage to Biliong to ensure that it shall be a boy. He promises to gild the dome of the mosque if he has an heir.'

  'How long will the
pilgrimage take?' asked Stephen.

  'With the journey and all the proper lustrations, eight days: perhaps nine, since half the council necessarily go with him, leaving only the Vizier and a few others to keep the peace and try current cases,' said van Buren. 'I am afraid your negotiations are at an end for at least a week.'

  'I shall go to Kumai,' said Stephen with a shining face.

  On the way back to his bawdy-house he decided that in decency he must alas ask Fox to join him in the expedition; by the time he entered the lower, coarser hall he had composed a civil but not unduly pressing message, and as he was walking through to reach the upper, quieter regions where he could write it he noticed Reade and Harper sitting with a group of middle-aged women. Their short legs were resting on other chairs; each had a cheroot in one hand and a glass, probably of arrack, in the other; Reade's pretty, smooth, round, choirboy face was bright scarlet, Harper's something between grey and green. The sight puzzled him for a moment, but then he remembered they had been sent ashore so that their morals should not be damaged when girls were allowed on board. They did not see him, their gaze being fixed on a lascivious dance in the middle of the room, and he passed through to the stairs. Having written his note he came to their table and when their eyes had at last focussed on him they started to their feet. Harper flushed red; little Reade turned deathly pale and pitched forward. Stephen caught him as he fell and said, 'Mr Harper, you are all right, are you not? Then be so good as to deliver this note into His Excellency's hands as soon as possible. Halim Shah'—to the man of the house—'pray have the other young gentleman carried to Mr Fox's residence without delay.'

  The answer to his note came with the morning sun, and it was as welcome: Fox was désolé, désolé, but the Sultan had invited him to join the company going to Biliong, by way of compensation for Ledward's presence during his visit to Kawang. and the envoy saw that it was his clear duty to accept, for the sake of the treaty. He would go with death in his heart; never was a pilgrimage more inopportune. Yet if Maturin would do him the great kindness of breakfasting with him, Fox could at least give a brilliantly intelligent eye some notion of the things to look for and measure in the Kumai temple: Aubrey would be breakfasting too, which might be an added inducement.

  'There you are, Stephen,' cried Jack, as he came in. 'A very good morning to you—it is days since we met. I am just going to flog those little brutes, and shall be back very soon. Here is His Excellency.'

  'For all its mortifying effects,' said Stephen as he and Fox sat down to their kedgeree, 'you must admit that this invitation to Biliong is a great diplomatic coup. None of the French mission goes, I believe?'

  'No, not one. I must draw what comfort I can from that.'

  They talked for some little while about the journey, which, though by no means the great pilgrimage to Mecca, had many of the same strict ritual observances and much of the same austerity and abstinence. Would the presence of concubines or even of Abdul be proper? 'Oh no,' said Fox. 'At the time of vows of this kind chastity is absolutely required. Abdul will certainly not go.'

  'Enter the righteous Sadducee,' said Jack, walking in. 'The trouble with flogging boys is that you may maim them for life, which is unkind, or not really hurt them at all, which is ridiculous. Bosun's mates never seem to have any trouble; they lay on as though they were threshing out a bushel of beans and then put the cat away as calm as you please. Nor did old Pagan, my schoolmaster. Plagoso Orbilio, we used to call him. But I tell you what it is, Excellency: you are no doubt a most capital diplomat, but you are a damned indifferent nursemaid.'

  'I never thought such things would enter their heads,' said Fox sulkily. 'Public women! Lewd girls! I am sure they never entered mine, at that age.'

  Jack and Stephen looked down at their plates; and after a while Fox begged Aubrey's pardon—his appointment at the palace was coming very close, and before he left he had to tell Maturin about this temple he was going to see—the particular features to be observed and if possible drawn and measured.

  They saw him off, wished him a happy pilgrimage, and went back to finish the coffee. 'I wish I could come with you,' said Jack, 'but I cannot leave the ship. Yet since van Buren says there is at least a bridle-path to the crater-wall, may I not ride with you that far? And then Seymour or Macmillan or both could be there whenever you appoint, leading a pony for you to come back on.'

  The road inland wound along the Prabang river, right across the alluvial plain, and on either hand people were working their partly-flooded enclosures with buffaloes, or setting rice-plants. Weaver-birds flew in clouds, and down by the water various kinds of duck moved in surprising quantities: storks paced gravely in the paddies. 'I believe that was a real snipe,' cried Jack, putting his hand to his carbine. 'And another, by God!' But Stephen was deeply engaged in a discussion of the sago-palms that lined the road and filled the marshier parts with his guides, two sunny Dyaks belonging to that part of the Sultan's bodyguard detached to look after the British mission. They were armed with spears and their traditional blowpipes as well as krises, and they were said to be quite fearless and deadly opponents; they were of course head-hunters; and they were full of information about sago and most of the creatures that passed. One of them, Sadong, was a remarkably good shot, and being an amiable, obliging soul he knocked down several of the more unusual birds for Stephen with his silent, accurate weapon, particularly after they had left the cultivated ground and had begun their long steady climb through the open forest, following the tracks made by the Chinese who brought down sandalwood, camphor and a number of the smaller trees used by cabinet-makers. Well before noon they sat under a spreading great camphor: Stephen skinned his birds and the Dyaks spitted them on twigs as an appetizer; then they ate a cold roast peacock, brewed a pot of coffee and set off in the hot, silent, shaded middle of the day. Nothing was moving; even the leeches were somnolent; but the Dyaks showed the recent tracks of two bears and the curious boar of those parts, and they pointed out a hollow tree in which the bears had obviously found honey, a tree with thirty-six kinds of orchid growing on it, some at a great height. The least spectacular was said to be useful in cases of female sterility.

  On and steadily up; occasionally, when there was some exceptional thinning of the trees by lightning-stroke or whirlwind or bare rock outcropping, the volcano could be seen, coming closer and growing in height; and occasionally, in ravines or on open slopes, there were distinct traces of an ancient road, now reduced to a path where it was followed at all, but once broad, carefully planned and embanked. The Dyaks said that at its end there was a famous stand of durians, esteemed for their size, flavour and early ripening, and a heathen temple, just before the Thousand Steps.

  'I have lost a stone,' said Jack, leading his pony up the deep-worn track.

  'You can well afford it,' said Stephen.

  On and on, up and up. Conversation drooped and eventually died quite away, Jack fairly aswim with sweat.

  Then all at once the path ceased climbing and there was the durian grove on its fine stretch of flat ground: beyond it the grey wall of the crater soared up, the legendary steps catching the light, winding up and away like the Great Wall of China.

  They walked slowly across the little plain under the wide-spaced trees, and there at the foot of the cliff, a cliff that now shut out half the sky, stood the Dyaks' heathen temple, almost entirely ruined and buried under rampant vegetation—figs, lianas and surprisingly a dense group of tree-ferns—but with part of one tower still standing. The rows of carvings on its outward face could not easily be made out; time had obscured them of course but even more the iconoclastic zeal of Muslim converts. As far as tall ladders could reach, noses, sometimes whole heads, bosoms, hands, arms and legs had been beaten off; yet enough remained to make it clear that this had been a Hindu holy place, and Stephen was trying to remember the name of the dancing figure with six arms—the remains of six arms—when he heard 'Oohoo, mias, mias!' from one Dyak and 'Shoot, tuan, shoot!' from the oth
er.

  He whipped round, saw Jack pulling the carbine from his saddle and the Dyaks pointing their pipes into a tall leafy durian. Following their direction he caught a fragmentary sight of a very large rufous shape high up and he called out 'Do not shoot, Jack.' At the same moment Sadong launched his dart. There was a violent movement above, a waving of branches, the tearing of leaves, and a heavy spiked durian shot out of the tree, passing between the Dyaks heads. They fled, laughing, to a safe distance, and the orang-utang fled in the other direction, swinging from branch to branch, tree to tree, at a surprising pace. Stephen had two glimpses of him, reddish in the odd patches of sun, immensely broad-shouldered and long-armed, and then he was gone.

  The Dyaks went to the tree and showed Stephen the empty remnants of fruit and the mias' droppings. 'There was a female here too,' said Sadong, pointing. 'I will see whether they have left anything at all.' He climbed into the tree, called 'Very few, the fiends,' and tossed down four of the ripest.

  When the durians were done Stephen took his roll from behind the saddle, slung it over his shoulder and said, 'You must go back at once, brother, or you will be benighted in the forest. I shall have the sun much longer.'

  'God help us,' said Jack, gazing up at the steps rising and rising for ever, 'what a climb. Just now I thought I saw someone a quarter of the way up, but either I was mistaken or he has turned the corner.'

  'Goodbye, now, Jack. God bless. Dear Dyaks, goodbye.'

  One hundred steps hollowed by a hundred generations of pilgrims, each step dreadfully high. Two hundred; already the forest was one vast green sheet spread out. And somewhere there was a full-grown male orang-utang moving about beneath the leaves. 'I should have given five pounds to have had time to see him properly,' he said; and then, remembering his present wealth, 'No. Much more; very much more.' Two hundred and fifty steps, and in a niche on the cliff side of the path the image of some god had been sadly disfigured. Three hundred, where the curve, always left-handed hitherto, became somewhat irregular, turned faster and showed not only a new stretch of country with the river shining silver a great way off but also another traveller far ahead.