‘Oh do get on with it,’ muttered Stephen Maturin, watching through a hole in the wall exactly behind the unsilvered glass as the man gently, silently tried skeleton keys by the discreet light of his dark lantern. Sir Joseph, also standing in the darkened passage behind the corresponding hole to the other glass, felt the rising strength of a sneeze and to master it he contorted his purple face, pressed his upper lip and closed his eyes. When he opened them again the man had opened his dark lantern a little and from the files he drew a fat document.
At this the bear flung off its head, drew a crowned truncheon from its bosom, and in a shrill, squeaking voice said, ‘In the King’s name I arrest you.’
The room was filled with light, with people running: Dark Lantern was pinned, handcuffed, and in the struggle his foolish beard fell off.
‘I will not appear,’ said Stephen, shaking Sir Joseph’s hand. ‘May I inflict myself on you for breakfast?’
‘Do, do, my dearest fellow,’ cried Blame, laughing for joy. ‘What a coup, what a coup, oh dear Lord, what a coup!’
Chapter Eight
It was indeed the most glorious coup, the completest thing:
the other intelligence service gazed at Sir Joseph with admiration, respect, unspeakable envy, and did their very utmost to gather any scraps of credit that might be lying neglected
– a vain attempt if ever there was one, for Sir Joseph, though a mild and even a benevolent man in ordinary life, and charitable, was perfectly ruthless in the undeclared civil war that is so usually fought, with all the outward form of politeness, between agencies of this kind, and he gathered every last crumb for his own concerns, his own colleagues and advisers.
But so glorious a coup could not be exploited to the full without a grave expense of time, and it was long before Dr Maturin was called before the Committee to be told that the Chilean proposals, as they were put forward in his minute of the seventeenth, had been read with considerable interest, and the preliminary discussions and even the first material preparations could go forward so long as it was clearly understood that at this stage His Majesty’s Government was in no way committed to any agreement, that the whole undertaking was to be conducted privately, in a vessel that did not form part of the Royal Navy but only in craft hired for hydrographical purposes by the appropriate authority or authorities, and that any contribution should not exceed seventy-five per centum of the very, very considerable sum left by Dr Maturin in South America at the end of his last journey It was agreed on both sides that this was a merely tentative understanding, one that could be put in motion at the time thought proper by both sides or that could be relinquished by either on reasonable notice
During this period he was staying at the Grapes, an agreeable old-fashioned inn, a quiet place in the Liberties of the Savoy, where he had a room of his own the whole year round, and where his two god-daughters, Sarah and Emily, lived with his old friend Mrs Broad.
They were as black as black could be – he had brought them from a small Melanesian island, all of whose other inhabitants had died of the smallpox brought by a whaler – and their hair was naturally frizzled; but they gave no sign of being foreign, uneasy or ill at ease as they ran about the lane or fetched a hackney-coach from the Strand. They had picked up English with extraordinary ease and very early in their voyage from the Pacific (a long, long voyage with a long, long pause in New South Wales and Peru) they had perceived that it possessed two dialects, one of which (the racier) they spoke on the fo’c’sle and the other on the quarterdeck. Now they added variations on a third, the right Cockney as it was spoken from rather above Charing Cross down the river past Billingsgate to the Tower Hamlets, Wapping and beyond. This they picked up mostly in the streets and at their primitive little school in High Timber Street, kept by an ancient, ancient priest, a Lancashire Catholic who called them thee and thou and taught reading, writing (in a beautiful hand) and arithmetic, and attended by children of every colour, as Mrs Broad observed, except bright blue. Theirs was a busy life for they not only learned cooking
(particularly pastry), shopping in the City markets with Mrs Broad, and turning out rooms with almost naval thoroughness with Lucy, but fine sewing too, from Mrs Broad’s widowed sister Martha. Furthermore they often ran errands for the gentlemen who stayed at the Grapes, or fetched a coach; these services were rewarded, and when the rewards reached three and four-pence, the sum exactly calculated for the expedition, they treated Stephen to a pair-oared wherry from their own Savoy steps to the Tower, where they showed him the lions and the other moderately wild beasts kept there time out of mind, and then fed him raspberry tarts from a little booth outside.
‘If you had seen Emily thank the keeper for his explanations and beg him to accept this sixpence, I believe it would have touched your heart,’ said Stephen, by the hall fire at Black’s.
‘Perhaps,’ said Sir Joseph. ‘I have heard that there is good in children. But even a greater example of affectionate attention would not tempt me into the wild adventure of begetting any. I do wish, my dear Stephen, that now you are as rich as a Jew again you would take a post-chaise like a Christian, rather than this vile coach: you will be huddled in with all and sundry, bumped about in an odious promiscuity, pushed, snored upon all night, suffocated, and then put out at your destination a little before dawn, for God’s sake!’
‘It is quicker than the mail-coach. And I have paid for my ticket.’
‘I see you are set upon it. Well, God be with you. We must be away. Charles, a coach for the Doctor, if you please. How I wish these bags may all arrive at Dorchester’ – pushing one crossly with his foot – ‘At least I shall go to the Golden Cross with you, and make sure they are taken aboard.’
Through Sir Joseph’s care the bags did reach Dorchester and the King’s Arms in the thin grey light, the faintly drizzling Saturday morning. The guard put them down, thanked Stephen for his tip, and bawled into the courtyard, ‘Hey, Joe: show the gent into the coffee-room. Three small trunks and a brown-paper parcel.’
The other inside passengers had been much as Blame had described them, and one had an unfortunate way of jerking out his legs in his sleep. However, the King’s Arms gave Stephen a famous breakfast, smoked trout, eggs and bacon, a delicate small lamb chop: the coffee was more than passable, and humanity returned like a slowly rising tide. ‘I should like a chaise, if you please, to take me to Woolcombe as soon as I have finished,’
he said to the waiter. ‘And I could wish to be shaved.’
‘Directly, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘I will tell the barber to
step in. And I believe you will have a pleasant ride. The day is clearing from the east.’
So it was, and before the chaise was half-way to Woolcombe the sun heaved up his brilliant rim above Morley Down. This was very familiar country now and presently they were running along the side of Simmon’s Lea: far over he could make out three riders and a man running with them, far down towards the mere, a woman and two children, one of whom he could have sworn was his daughter if the little figure had not been riding astride: but the runner was certainly Padeen.
‘The next on your right,’ he called to the post-boy.
‘I know it, sir,’ said the post-boy, smiling back at him. ‘Our Maggie is in service there.’ He swung the chaise into the forecourt.
‘The farther wing,’ said Stephen, since that was where Diana, Clarissa and Brigid lived: he would pay his respects to Sophie later; and to Mrs Williams, in the west wing, later still.
‘Just put these inside the door,’ he said as he paid the post-boy. ‘The brown-paper parcel I shall carry myself.’
He walked up the stairs and opened the door gently. As he had expected, Diana was still in bed, pink and sleepy. ‘Oh Stephen,’ she cried, sitting up and opening her arms. ‘What joy to see you – I was thinking of you not five seconds ago.’ They embraced: she looked at him tenderly. ‘You are surprisingly well,’ she said. ‘Have you had breakfast?’ Stephen nodded. ‘Then take off your clothes and come into my bed. I have countless things to tell you.’