‘You shall, my dear sir, you shall. But I must leave you now. You will not forget my tincture? I shall abandon it entirely, once I am in Lérida, but until then it is necessary to me.’
‘You shall have it. And,’ said Dr Ramis, with a veiled look, ‘it is possible that I may send you a note of the first importance at the same time: I shall not know for some hours yet. If I do, it will be in system three. But pray let me feel your pulse before you go. Reedy, intermittent, my friend, just as I thought.’
‘What did he mean by that?’ said Stephen, referring not to the pulse but to the hypothetical note, and thinking again with some regret of the simplicity of his dealings with plain mercenary agents. Their motives were so clear; their loyalties were to their persons and their purse. The complexities of the entirely honest men, their sudden reticences, the interplay of conflicting loyalties, the personal sense of humour, made him feel old and tired.
‘Why, Stephen, here you are at last,’ cried Jack, starting straight out of his sleep. ‘I sat talking with Christy-Pallière; I hope you did not wait for me.’ The subject of their conversation flooded his mind and put out its gaiety; but having gazed at the floor for a moment he looked up with at least an expression of cheerfulness and said, ‘You were very nearly taken up for a spy this morning.’
Stephen stopped in his movement towards the desk and stood motionless, unnaturally poised.
‘How I laughed when Christy-Pallière read me out your description, looking uncomfortable and prodigious grave; but I assured him on my sacred honour that you were looking for
your double-headed eagles, and he was quite satisfied. He made an odd remark, by the way: said, was he in our shoes he should push on for Spain and not go to Porquerolles.’
‘Aye, aye? Did he, so?’ said Stephen mildly. ‘Go back
to sleep now, my dear. I conceive he would not choose to traverse the street to see euphorbia praestans, let alone cross an arm of the sea. I have a few notes to write, but I shall not disturb you. Go to sleep: we have a long day head of us.’
Some hours later, in the first grey light, Jack awoke to a faint scratching on the door. His waking mind stated that this was a rat in the bread-room, but his body instantly contradicted it – sleeping or awake his body knew whether it was afloat or not; at no time was it ever unaware of the continua) shift and heave of the sea, or of the unnatural stability of the land. He opened his eyes and saw Stephen rise from his guttering candle, open the door, receive a bottle and a folded note. He went back to his table, opened the note, slowly deciphered it, burnt both scraps of paper in the candle flame; without turning round he said, ‘Jack, you are awake, I believe?’
‘Yes. These last five minutes. A good morning to you, Stephen. Is it going to be hot?’
‘It is. And a good morning to you, my dear. Listen,’ he said, sinking his voice to no more than a whisper, ‘and do not call out or agitate yourself. Do you hear me now?’
‘Yes.’
‘War will be declared tomorrow. Bonaparte is seizing all British subjects.’
In the narrow band of shade under the northern wall of Carcassonne a compassionate gendarme halted his convoy of English prisoners – seamen from detained and captured ships for the most part, a few officers who had been caught by the declaration of war, but some civilians too, travelling gentlemen, servants, grooms and tradesmen, since for the first time in civilized warfare Bonaparte had ordered the arrest of every British subject.
They were hot, disconsolate and weary; their bundles had been soaked in a thunderstorm, and at first they had not even the spirit to
spread them out in the sun, let alone to take notice of the dilapidated splendour of walls and turrets behind, the view of the new town and the river before them, or even the bear and its leader in the shadow of the next tower but one. But presently the word of the arrival of the convoy spread, and the crowd that had hurried out of the old town to stare was joined by market-women from over the bridge, bringing fruit, wine, bread, honey, sausages, pâté and goat cheeses wrapped in fresh green leaves. Most of the prisoners still had some money (this was only the beginning of their march to the far north-east) and when they had cooled a little, eaten and drunk, they put their clothes to dry and began to look about them.
‘What o, the bear,’ cried a sailor, quite happy now, with a quart of wine under his brass-buckled belt. ‘Can he dance, mate?’
The bear-leader, an ill-looking brute with a patch over one eye and a fortnight’s beard, took no notice. But the sailor was not to be put off by the sullenness of foreigners, and he was soon joined by an insistent group of friends, for he was the most popular and influential member of the crew of the pink Chastity, a merchantman that had had the unlucky idea of putting into Cette for water the day war was declared. One or two of them began shying stones at the great hairy mass to wake it up, or at least to have the pleasure of seeing it move. ‘Avast the stone-throwing,’ cried the sailor, his cheerful face clouding.
‘You don’t want to go a-teasing of bears, cully. Remember Elisha. There’s nothing so unlucky as teasing of a bear.’
‘You been a-bear-baiting, George, you know you have,’ said a shipmate, tossing his stone up and down, not to have the air of abandoning it. ‘We been to Hockley together.’
‘Bear-baiting is different,’ said George. ‘The bears at Hockley is willing. This bear ain’t. I dare say it’s hot. Bears is Greenland creatures.’
The bear certainly looked hot. It was stretched out on what little grass it could find, strangely prostrate. But the clamour had spread; crews of other ships wanted to see it dance, and after some time the bear-leader came up and gave them to understand that the animal was indisposed – could only perform at night – ‘im ave airy coat, mister; im ate up whole goat for im dinner; im belly ache.’
‘Why, shipmates, there you are. Just as I said,’ cried George. ‘How would you like dancing in a – great fur pelisse, in this – sun?’
Events had escaped from George’s control, however; an English sea-officer, wishing to impress the lady with whom he was travelling, had spoken to the sergeant of gendarmerie, and now the sergeant whistled to the master of the bear.
‘Papers,’ he said. ‘A Spanish passport, eh? A very greasy passport too, my friend; do you sleep with your bear? Joan Margall, born in – what’s this place?’
‘Lérida, monsieur le sergent,’ said the man, with the cringing humility of the poor.
‘Lérida. Profession, bear-leader. Eh, bien: a led bear knows how to dance – that is logic. I have to have proof; it is my duty to see the bear perform.’
‘Certainly, monsieur le sergent, at once. But the gentlemen will not expect too much from Flora; she is a female bear, and – ‘He whispered in the gendarme’s ear. ‘Ah, ah? Just so,’
said the gendarme. ‘Well, just a pace or two, to satisfy my sense of duty.’
Dragged up by its chain and beaten by its leader till the dust flew from its shaggy side the bear shuffled forward. The man took a little pipe from his bosom, and playing it with one hand while he held the chain with the other, he hoisted the bear on to its hind legs, where it stood, swaying, amidst a murmur of disapprobation from the sailors. ‘Crool buggers, these foringers,’ said George. ‘Look at his poor nose, with that – great ring.’
‘English gents,’ said the man, with an ingratiating leer. ‘Ornpip.’
He played a recognizable hornpipe, and the bear staggered through a few of the steps, crossing its arms, before sitting down again. Trumpets sounded from the citadel behind the walls, the guard on the Narbonne gate changed, and the sergeant began to bawl ‘En route, en route, les prisonniers.’
With avid and shamelessly persistent busyness, the bear-leader hurried up and down the line. ‘Remember the bear, gents. Remember the bear. N’oubliez pas l’ours, messieurs-dames.’
Silence. The convoy’s dust settled on the empty road. The inhabitants of Carcassonne all went to sleep; even the small boys who had been dropping mortar and clods of earth from the battlements on to the bear disappeared. Silence at last, and the chink of coins.
‘Two livres four sous,’ said the bear-leader. ‘One maravedi, two Levantine coins of whose exact provenance I am uncertain, a Scotch groat.’