Treason's Harbour (32 page)

She thanked him. 'Oh, how I hope it does,' she said with a worried face. 'Mother of God, I am so anxious.'

'I am sure it will,' he said in a voice that carried conviction.

She said, 'I rely on your entirely,' and after that neither spoke until some minutes had passed, when Stephen said 'Should you like a boiled egg?'

'A boiled egg?' she cried.

'Just so. I thought we should have a small collation to see us through the coming hours; and it is common knowledge that lovers eat boiled eggs, to invigorate themselves. We must set the scene, you know.'

'I should love a boiled egg, in any case. I had no time for dinner.'

Laura Fielding was a young woman with a splendid constitution. In spite of her very real, very deep anxiety she ate two eggs; then, appetite coming with eating, she set about the loin of pork; and after a pause she ranged at large among the cakes, a glass of generous marsala in her hand- it was a pleasure to feed her.

And it was a pleasure to listen to her when she took the mandoline. She played it in the Sicilian manner, making it utter an almost continuous whining, nasal music that contrasted charmingly with her husky contralto as she sang a long, long ballad about the Paladin Orlando and his love for Angelica.

Although he had eaten an adequate dinner at the palace, Stephen had thought it was his duty as a host to share their collation, egg for egg, slice for slice; and what with the power of prayer and the effect of surfeit he found the extreme stimulus of desire fade to a perfectly bearable pitch, so that they passed the later hours of their meeting in a calm and amicable manner, though a little greasy, there being no forks. They talked away with scarcely a pause, comfortable, confidential talk, going from one subject to another and eventually reaching memories of childhood and youth; she told him that although she had been far from discreet when she was a girl (her father had a place under the Great Chamberlain, and discretion at the court of the Two Sicilies was absurd), ever since she was married she had been perfectly virtuous. It was therefore all the more wounding that Charles Fielding's solitary fault should be jealousy. He was kind, brave, generous, beautiful, everything the most exacting woman could wish, except that he was as possessive and suspicious as a Spaniard or a Moor. She described some of the unjustifiable scenes he had made, but then, feeling that she had been unfair, disloyal and even wicked, she returned to his merits at far greater length.

Stephen found his merits unutterably tedious, and at last in a pause when she sat looking down and smiling to herself, obviously thinking of merits of another kind, he said, 'Come, my dear, it is time for you to resume your disguise, or there will be nobody about to record your coming and going.'

She put on her mask and her vast hooded cloak, Stephen unlocked the door and they tiptoed along the creaking corridor and down two flights of creaking stairs to Jack's floor; but there the relative silence was broken by a howl of pain, a confused rumbling and thumping, and by cries of 'Avast - belay, there.' Two slim figures shot across the landing and leapt straight out of an open window: and there was Killick with a candlestick roaring 'All hands, all hands, all hands. Stop thief!'

He raced past them as doors opened on either side of the corridor, but in the lantern-lit hall they met him again. He had caught nobody, yet he was grinning with malignant triumph. 'There was two of the buggers,' he cried to the gathering assembly: then, catching sight of Stephen's companion, he plucked off his nightcap and said 'Beg pardon, Miss: two indiwiduals.'

'They went out of the first-floor window,' said Stephen.

'They didn't take it with them, though,' said Killick, and he explained to the company that the thieves had been after Captain Aubrey's chelengk, but that he, Preserved Killick, had been one too many for them, with his fish-hooks and double action rat-trap of extra power. One of the indiwiduals had left a finger in it and both on 'em a mort of blood: a joy to behold.

More people came scurrying from below and above. On seeing Stephen the sea-officers glanced quickly away: out of discretion they did not address him by so much as a nod, but even so Laura shrank farther back into her hood - it was one thing to be marked by French agents, quite another to be recognized by people she lived among, her own and her difficult husband's friends.

'Where is Captain Aubrey?' asked a voice.

'A-wisiting,' said Killick shortly, and he began his explanation again for the benefit of the newcomers. The thieves might have swiped some gold lace and a trifle of money in the till of the chest, which there wasn't much, the Captain having put most of it in his pocket, and maybe a little box or two, but the diamonds were safe. Killick began to vary his account, increasing the number of fingers left behind and the quantity of blood; he grew insufferably prolix; and Stephen, taking Mrs Fielding by the elbow, guided her through the throng and out into the old, waning night.

'You will not forget Saturday evening?' she said when he left her at her inner door, with Ponto snuffling monstrously on the other side of it. 'And please bring Aubrey too, if he would like to come.'

'He asks nothing better, I am sure. And may I introduce another friend, the chaplain who made the voyage with us, Mr Martin?'

'I shall love any friend of yours," she said giving him her hand; and so they parted.

'Good morning, my friend,' said Lesueur with his rare smile. 'I thought you would be in time today.' 'What have you to say?' asked Wray angrily.

'All's well,' said Lesueur, 'though the boys were very nearly caught, and one of them lost a finger. Our alarm was quite unnecessary: the box held nothing but private papers. Not the slightest indiscretion: not the slightest trace.'

'Thank God, thank God,' said Wray; but there was still anger mixed with his relief and he went on, 'You might have sent me word. You must have known how anxious I was. I could not rest - I could not concentrate. Apart from anything else it made me lose a large sum of money at cards. A simple note would have saved all this.'

'The less that is put into writing the better,' said Lesueur. 'Litera scripta manet. Look at this.'

'What is it?'

'The rough draft of a coded message. Do you not recognize it?'

'Admiralty B?'

'Yes. But the writer grew confused in the second transposition, threw the draft away- or rather put it between the leaves of a book- and began again. If he had gone on a little longer it would have been of great value: even so, it is useful. Do you know the hand?'

'It is Maturin's.'

From Lesueur's animated expression it looked as though he might develop the subject at some length, but he checked whatever he had been going to say and asked, 'How did he behave at the meeting?'

'He was very discreet - spoke of himself as an occasional and voluntary adviser, no more, and virtually told the Admiral that as such he had no orders to receive from any man. I believe he trusts no one in Malta. But in effect he gave his advice, fathering it on Waterhouse. You would have laughed to hear him speaking of restricted committees, precautions with ciphers, the detection of spies by planting false information and so on.'

'If this advice came from Waterhouse, even in part, it would have been sound. He was a most exemplary, intelligent agent, wholly professional: I was present at his last interrogation. There was not the least hope of getting any sort of hold upon him. As for Maturin, I do have a certain indirect hold for the time being, but J am afraid it cannot last, and the moment it is gone he must be eliminated. The Dey of Mascara will answer the purpose, as you suggested before.'

'Certainly,' said Wray. 'And I remember I said that the Dey might be used to kill two birds with one stone. Now I might go so far as to say three.'

'So much the better,' said Lesueur. 'But in the meanwhile surely you would be well advised not to frequent him so much.'

'Officially I shall probably only see him once more: I have no wish to see a disciple of Waterhouse's looking into my proceedings here, and I do not think he wishes to interfere in any way. And unofficially I shall in all likelihood spend no more than an afternoon with him, to have my revenge for a ridiculous run of bad luck. But you will allow me to say that I do not at all relish this spying, this supervision, this advice on the choice of my companions, or these airs of superiority.'

'Let us not disagree; it must necessarily lead to the destruction of us both,' said Lesueur. 'You shall see Maturin every day of the week if you choose: I only beg you to remember that he is dangerous.'

'Very well,' said Wray, and then rather awkwardly, 'Have you heard from the rue Villars?'

'About paying your card-debts?'

'If you like to put it that way.'

'I am afraid they will not go beyond the initial grant.'

As Wray had predicted, he and Maturin met again aboard the flagship, where it was agreed that Hairabedian was certainly a French agent and that for obvious reasons his friends or colleagues in Valletta had arranged for the stealing of his papers. At the same time the Admiral put forward the suggestion that perhaps Dr Maturin might be seconded to Mr Wray's department to help look for these friends or colleagues; but the suggestion was coldly received by both sides and he did not pursue it. Unofficially they met far more frequently; not indeed every day of the week, but, since luck still ran against him, pretty often. This was not because Stephen's sudden intense desire for gambling was unsatisfied, but rather because his cabin in the Surprise was filled with pots of paint, and his peace aboard destroyed by incessant hammering and vehement cries, while his natural companions were all taken up with wholehearted, purely naval activities, and once he had made his morning rounds at the hospital, he felt obliged to give Wray what part of the afternoon he did not spend in the hills or along the shore with Martin. His evening he usually passed with Mrs Fielding, and it was at her house that he most often saw Jack Aubrey.

The dockyard had indeed made a very fine job of the Surprise's inwards; in their tortuous way they had fulfilled their side of the bargain. But the private agreement had not gone beyond certain clearly-defined structural repairs, and the shipwrights had left her more visible parts in a very horrid state: nor did Jack much care for her trim, the rake of her masts, or the look of her rigging. He felt very strongly that if the ship was to die to the Navy she should do so in style, in great style; besides, there was always the possibility that he might take her into action again before the end. All hands therefore turned to and tended her as she had rarely been tended before: they shifted her massive cables end for end, they roused out her lower tier of casks and restowed the hold to bring her a little by the stern, her favourite trim, they painted her inside and out and scraped her decks; Mr Borrell and his crew cosseted the guns and their furniture, the magazines and the shot; while Mr Hollar, his mates and all the young gentlemen sped about aloft like spiders. For once they were not in a tearing hurry, since the Captain of the Fleet had assured Jack that the Surprise would not be sent to sea until she had her Marines aboard once more and at least 'a reasonable proportion' of the hands that had been taken from her; yet even so her captain and first lieutenant, who had heard a good many official promises in their time, carried the work forward at a good round pace. In principle Jack disliked much in the way of shining ornament, but he felt that this was a special case, and for once in his life he laid out a considerable sum on gold-leaf for the gingerbread work of her stern and he called in the best inn-sign painter in Valletta to attend to her figurehead, an anonymous lady with a splendid bosom. All this was fine, satisfying, seamanlike work - as he told the exhausted midshipmen, it gave them a deeper insight into the nature of a man-of-war than months or even years of simple sailing - and he was at last able to do many of the things that he had always intended to do; but it all had a cruelly bitter taste at times, and he was glad to follow his fiddle, carried by a Maltese supernumerary, to Laura Fielding's musical evenings, there to play or to listen to other playing, sometimes very well indeed.

By now he had grown quite used to the notion that Laura and Stephen were lovers; he did not mind it, though he admired them a little less, but he did think it more than usually unfair that Valletta should still suppose that he, Jack Aubrey, was the happy man. People would say 'If you happen to pass by Mrs Fielding's, pray tell her that...'or 'Who will be coming on Tuesday evening?' as though their relationship were an established thing. Of course, a great deal was owing to that vile dog Ponto, who had welcomed him with a vast and noisy demonstration of love in the crowded Strada Reale within ten minutes of his setting foot on shore; but it also had to be admitted that Stephen and Laura were extraordinarily discreet. Nobody seeing Stephen at one of her evening parties would ever suppose that he spent the rest of the night there.

Wray certainly did not. Quite early in this period he made scarcely-veiled laughing allusion to 'your friend Aubrey's good fortunes that we hear so much about.' But as the days went by he was less and less inclined to laugh about anything at all. He had not come to the end of his run of bad luck and by now he had lost so much that Stephen could not in decency deny him his continually-repeated revenge, though at present the game bored him sadly. Although Wray had had a great deal of practice he was not a very good player; he could be deceived by a sudden change from stolid defence to risky attack; and his own attempts at deceit, which went little beyond slight hesitations and faint looks of disgust, were tolerably transparent. But above all he held no cards and Stephen had such good ones that the game grew duller still. Furthermore an anxious, unlucky Wray was by no means such an amusing companion as he had been before. As they became better acquainted Stephen found that Wray was more of a rake than he had supposed, that he attached an excessive importance to money, and that he was not overburdened with principles; a clever man, to be sure, but one with little bottom. Wray did not attempt to correct fortune, however: some question of irregularity at cards had at one time attached to his name, and no man in Wray's position could afford a second accusation.