HMS Surprise. Patrick O’Brian
any case, I should like to walk there again; and I shall leave him a private sign.’ ‘Run her in, Bonden,’ he said. ‘Handsomely, handsomely. No noise at all.’
The boat slipped over the black, starlit water, pausing twice again to listen: once they heard the snort of a seal breaking surface, then nothing until the sand grated under her bows.
Up and down the water-line of the half-moon beach, with his hands behind his back, turning over various private marks that might make Stephen smile if he missed this first rendezvous: some degree of tension, to be sure, but none of the devouring anxiety of that first night long ago, south of Palamós, when he had had no idea of his friend’s capabilities.
Saturn came up behind the Pleiades; up and up, nearly ten degrees from the edge of the sea. He heard stones rattle on the cliff-path above. With a lift of his heart he looked up, picked out the form moving there, and whistled low Deh vieni, non tardar.
No reply for a moment, then a voice from half-way up, ‘Captain Melbury?’
Jack stood behind a rock, took a pistol from his belt and cocked it. ‘Come down,’ he said pleasantly; and directing his voice into the cave, ‘Bonden, pull out.’
‘Where are you?’ whispered the voice at the foot of the cliff.
When Jack was certain that there was no movement on the path above he stepped from the rock, walked over the sand, and shone his light on a man in a brown cloak, an olive-faced man with a fixed, wary expression, exaggerated in this sudden light against the darkness. He came forward, showing his open hands, and said again, ‘Captain Melbury?’
‘Who are you, sir?’ asked Jack.
‘Joan Maragall, sir,’ he whispered in the clipped English of the Minorcans, very like that of Gibraltar. ‘I come from Esteban Domanova. He says, Sophia, Mapes, Guarnerius.’
Melbury Lodge was the house they had shared; Stephen’s full name was Maturin y Domanova; no one else on earth knew that Jack had once nearly bought a Guarnerius. He un-cocked the pistol and thrust it back.
‘Where is he?’
‘Taken.’
‘Taken?’
‘Taken. He gave me this for you.’
In the beam of the lantern the paper showed a straggle of disconnected lines: Dear J – some words, lines of figures – the signature S, tailing away off the corner, a wavering curve.
‘This is not his writing,’ whispering still in the darkness, caution rising still over this certainty of complete disaster. ‘This is not his hand.’
‘He has been tortured.’
Under the swinging lamp in the cabin, he looked intently into Maragall’s face. It was a tough, youngish, lined face, pock-marked and with bad teeth; an ill-looking cast in one eye, but the other large and as it were gentle. What to make of him? The fluent Minorcan English, perfectly comprehensible but foreign, was difficult to judge for integrity: the open sheet of paper under the lamp had been written with a piece of charcoal; almost the whole message had crumbled away or smudged. Do not – perhaps wait; then several words underlined with only the line remaining – send this – a name: St Joseph? – not to trust. Then the traces of figures, five painful rows of them, and the trailing S.
The whole thing might be an elaborate trap: it might also be intended to incriminate Stephen. He listened to the run of words, examined the paper, weighed the possibilities, with his mind working fast. There were times when there was something very young and slightly ridiculous about Jack; it was a side of him that Sophie loved beyond measure; but no one looking at him now, or in action, would have believed in its existence.
He led Maragall through his narrative again – the first trouble following a denunciation to the Spanish authorities, quickly settled by the production of an American passport and the intervention of the vicar-general: Señor Domanova was an American of Spanish origin. Then the interference of the French, their removal of the suspect to their own headquarters in spite of violent protests. The jealousy between the French and Spanish allies at all levels, administration, army, navy, civilian population – the French way of behaving as though they were in conquered territory, which was bringing even Catalans and Castilians together. Particular hatred for this alleged French purchasing commission, which was in fact an intelligence unit, small but very active, recently joined by a Colonel Auger (a fool) and Captain Dutourd (brilliant) straight from Paris, busily recruiting informers, as bad as the Inquisition. Growing detestation of the French, almost universal apart from some opportunists and the leaders of the Fraternitat, an organisation that hoped to use them rather than the English against the Castilians – to win Catalan independence from Napoleon rather than George III.
‘And you belong to a different organisation, sir?’ said Jack.
‘Yes, sir. I am the head of the Confederacio on the island; that is why I know Esteban so well. That is why I have been able to get messages in and out of his cell. We are the only organisation that has wide support, the only one that really does anything apart from to make speeches and denunciations. We have two men in their place in the day-time, and my brother, which is a priest, has been in several times: myself was able to take him the laudanum he asked for and speak him a few minutes through the bars, when he told me the words I was to say.’
‘How is he?’
‘Weak. They are quite pitiless.’
‘Where is he? Where is their headquarters?’
‘Do you know Port Mahon?’
‘Yes. Very well.’
‘Do you know where the English commandant used to live?’
‘Martinez’s place?’
‘Is right. They have taken it over. The little house at the back of the garden they use for questioning – farther from the street. But you can hear the shrieks from St Anna’s. Sometimes, at three or four in the morning, they carry bodies down and throw them into the harbour behind the tanneries.’
‘How many are there?’
‘Five officers now, and a guard quartered in the Alfonso barracks. A dozen men on duty at a time – the guard changes at seven. No sentries outside, no show, all very quiet and retired. Then there are a few civilians, interpreters, servants, cleaners; two of them belong to us, as I have say – said.’
Eight bells struck; the watch changed overhead. Jack glanced at the barometer – sinking, sinking.
‘Listen, Mr Maragall,’ he said. ‘I shall tell you my general course of action: be so good as to make any observations that occur to you. I have a French gunboat here, captured yesterday: I shall run her into Port Mahon, land a party say at Johnson’s Steps or Boca Chica, march up in detached groups behind St Anna’s to the garden wall, take the house as silently as possible and either return to the gunboat or behind the town to Cala Garau. The weak points are, entrance into the port, guides, alternative lines of retreat. In the first place, can you tell me whether there is any French ship in? How are French vessels received, what are the formalities, visits, moorings?’
‘This is far from my line. I am a lawyer, an advocate,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘No, there is no French ship in at present. When they come, they exchange signals off Cape Mola – but what signals? Then there is the pratique boat, for plague and health; if they have a clean bill of health it leads them to their moorings, otherwise to the quarantine reach. I believe the French moor above the customs house. The captain waits on the port-admiral – but when? I could tell you this, all this, if I had time. My cousin is the doctor.’
‘There is no time.’
‘Yes, sir, there is time,’ said Maragall slowly. ‘But can you indeed enter the port? You rely on their not firing on French colours, on confusing signals?’