The Ionian Mission (27 page)

   As they sailed along Jack pointed out the various places of interest to the youngster at his side, such as St Philip's, the powder mill, the ordnance-wharf and the mast-yard; but the gangling boy, a spotted first-voyager named Willet, was too much awed by his company, too eager to be ashore, and perhaps too stupid, to absorb much information and as they drew nearer to the town Jack fell silent. 'We will have a pint of sherry at Joselito's for old times' sake,' he said to himself, 'order a handsome dinner at the Crown—a beefsteak pudding, a solomon gundy, and those triangular almond cakes to finish with—and then walk about, looking at the places we used to know, until it is ready.' And then to Bonden, 'Captain of the port's office.'

   The barge glided along under a high wall on the far side of the harbour, a wall with a discreet green door leading to the dove-house where he and Molly Harte had first made love. The wall was dotted with capers, growing wild in the interstices of the stones; they were now covered with their strange feathery flowers, as they had been on that occasion, and his mind was still ranging back with a mixture of lubricity and tenderness and indefinite regret when the barge sprang her luff and touched against-the opposing wharf at the Capitania steps. 'Jump up to the captain of the port, Mr Willet,' said Jack. 'Give him my compliments and ask where the Doctor's victualler lays. Her name is
Els Set Dolors
.'

   'Yes, sir,' said Willet, looking appalled. '
Els Set Dolors
it is, sir. What language shall I say it in, sir?'

   'Spanish or French; and if that don't answer you may try Latin. Bonden will go with you.'

   'The captain of the port's compliments, sir,' said the returning Willet, 'and the
Set Dolors
lays off la . . . la . . .'

   'Dogana,' said Bonden.

   'But Dr Maturin is gone to . . .'

   'Ciudadela, on a mule.'

   'And they do not look to see him back before Sunday evening.'

   'Asking your pardon, sir,' said Bonden, 'Saturday, I believe.'

   'He said Sabbath-oh,' cried Willet.

   'So he did, sir: but the Sabbath is on Saturdays in these parts, we find. Sunday they call Dimanche-oh, or something very like.'

   'Thank you, Mr Willet,' said Jack, deeply disappointed. 'However, I think we may as well have our dinner here, before returning to the ship.' He reflected for a moment, his eye on the unattached ladies gathering at the waterside: he had put half a guinea of the boy's allowance into his hand before leaving the
Worcester
, and although Willet was neither amiable nor intelligent Jack did not wish him to buy a pox with it. 'Eldon,' he said to the grizzled, hard-faced bow-oar, 'Mr Willet will have dinner at Bunce's, and then you will show him the sights of Mahon, the ordnance-store, the careenage, the proving-ground and the Protestant church, the slips if there is anything a-building, and the mad-house if there is time before six o'clock.' He arranged with Bonden for the bargemen's dinner, told them to draw straws for boat-keepers, and walked off unattended.

   Sentimental pilgrimages had rarely succeeded with Jack Aubrey: in the few that he had ever deliberately undertaken something had nearly always happened to spoil not only the present but much of the past as well; yet it now seemed that perhaps this might be an exception. The day itself was brilliantly clear, as it had often been when he was in Minorca as a lieutenant and a commander, and it was warm, so that climbing the steps to the upper town he unbuttoned his coat, a far finer coat than that which he wore in those days but one that did not prevent him from being recognized and welcomed at Joselito's and the other places he called at on his way to the Crown.

   Port Mahon still showed many signs of the long English connection: quite apart from the officers and men from the three Royal Navy vessels in the harbour—two sloops and a gun-brig on convoy-duty—pink faces and hair as bright yellow as Jack Aubrey's walked about the street. Tea and even buns were to be had, as well as English beer and tobacco, and at Joselito's there were copies of the London papers, not more than two or three months old. But the high days were gone, the days when the whole Mediterranean fleet lay in Port Mahon and powerful garrisons filled St Philip's and the citadel: the Royal Navy now relied much more on Malta and Gibraltar; the Spanish navy kept only a couple of brigs in Mahon, while the troops amounted to no more than a few companies of local militia; so it was understandable that the town as a whole should seem rather sleepy, while the places that catered chiefly for sailors and soldiers should have a somewhat deserted air.

   Jack walked into the Crown by the back way, through a courtyard full of orange-trees; and there he sat on the stone rim of the fountain in the middle to draw breath and cool himself after his walk. His cold was gone long since but he was out of form and in any case walking on the hard, unyielding land after weeks and months of having a live deck underfoot always made him gasp. From an upper window came the voice of a woman singing to herself, a long flamenco song with strange intervals and Moorish cadences, often interrupted by the beating of a pillow or the turning of a bed. The throaty contralto reminded Jack of Mercedes, a very, very pretty Minorcan girl he had known in this same inn before his promotion. What would have happened to her? Swept off by some soldier, no doubt; a mother many times over, and fat. But still jolly, he hoped.

   The song ran on, a lovely dying fall, and Jack listened more and more attentively: there were few things that moved him as deeply as music. Yet he was not all ears, all spirit, either, and in a long pause while a bolster was thrust into a case too small his brute belly gave so eager a twinge that he got up and walked into the taproom, a broad, low, cool, shadowy place with vast barrels let into its walls and a sanded floor. 'You bloody old fool,' said a parrot quietly in the silence, but without real conviction.

   Jack had known this place so thick with tobacco-smoke that you could hardly tell one uniform from another and so full of talk that orders had to be roared as though to the foretop. Now it was as though he were walking in a dream, a dream that respected the material surroundings to the last detail but emptied them of life, and to break the spell he called 'House. House, there.
La casa
, ho.'

   No reply: but he was glad to see an enormous bull-mastiff come in from the hall, making the first marks in the newly-sprinkled sand. The Crown had always had fine English mastiffs, and this one, a young brindled bitch with a back broad enough to dine on, must be a granddaughter of those he had known very well. She had never seen him in her life, of course: she sniffed his hand with distant civility and then, obviously unimpressed, paced on to the patio. Jack stepped into the hall, a square hall with two staircases and two English longcase clocks in it, the whole full of brilliant sun: he called again and when the echo of his voice had died away he heard a distant screech of 'Coming' and the patter of feet on the corridor above.

   He was contemplating one of the clocks, made by Wm Timmins of Gosport and ornamented with a creditable ship of the last age, a ship that still carried a lateen yard on the mizzen, when the pattering feet reached the staircase on his right and looking up he saw Mercedes coming down—an unchanged Mercedes. Still pigeon-plump, but no vast spreading bulk, no moustache, no coarseness.

   'Why, Mercy, my dear,' he cried. 'How happy I am to see you!' And stepping to the foot of the stairs he stood there with open arms.

   Mercedes paused a moment in her course, and then, crying '
Capitan manyac!
' flung herself into them. It was as well that he was a powerful man and well braced, for Mercedes, though slim-waisted, was a solid girl and she had the advantage of the height: he stood the shock however, the padded, scented shock, and having squeezed the breath out of her body he lifted her up and gazed at her face with great complacency. Pleasure, freshness, gaiety and peach-like bloom he saw there, and he kissed her heartily, a delighted, frankly amorous kiss, heartily returned. Kisses were not unknown at the Crown; Jack and Mercedes had exchanged them before now without the roof falling in; but these set off a very shocking hullabaloo. Both clocks struck the hour, the front door and two windows slammed with a sudden gust of wind, four or five bull-mastiffs began to bay, and at the same moment the hall filled with people coming in from the street or the courtyard or down the other flight of stairs, all with messages or questions or orders that had to be shouted over the hollow roaring of the dogs. Mercedes banged and thumped the mastiffs, dealt with the questions in English, Spanish and Catalan, and between two of them she told a boy to lead the Captain to the Mermaid, a particularly comfortable little room up one pair of stairs.

   And in this little room, the Crown grown calm again, they sat very companionably together, eating their dinner at a small round table, the dishes coming up hot and hot from the kitchen by a plate-hoist let into the wall. Mercedes ate much less than Jack, but she talked much more, very much more: her English had never been accurate; it had slipped with the years, and now her rather wild remarks were interrupted by bubbling laughter and cries of 'Cat's English,
manyac
; kitchen-cat's English.' Nevertheless Jack perfectly understood the essence: Mercedes had married the Crown, a man much older than herself, a poor, thin, pitiful, weak-hammed cat as avaricious as a badger who had only made the offer to spite his family and save her wages. He had never made her a single present and even her ring was found to be brass and therefore neither valid nor binding: whereas the present Jack had given her long ago yet not so very long ago neither was close to her heart at this very moment: she had put on a new pinner for the occasion, and now undoing it she leant over the table, showing him the diamond pendant he had bought for her in the year two, one of the many charming fruits of a valuable prize, nestling low in her bosom. The Crown, that sordid creature, was away for some days, in Barcelona. Jack would have his old room, no doubt: it had been new-hung with crimson curtains!

   'Oh damme, Mercy dear,' he cried, 'I am a captain now, you know, and must not sleep out of my ship.'

   'Would you not even be allowed a little siesta after all that duck pie, and the day so hot?' asked Mercy, gazing at him with wide innocent eyes.

   Jack's face, somewhat more florid than usual with fish soup, lobster, lamp chops, duck pie, Minorcan cheese and three bottles of wine, spread in a rosy smile so wide that his bright blue eyes vanished and Mercedes knew that he was about to say something droll. So he would have done too, as soon as he had hit just the right balance between 'not
sleeping
' and indelicacy, if Stephen had not made the most unwelcome entrance of his life. They had heard his harsh, disagreeable voice on the stairs and Mercedes had had time to spring up and adopt the attitude of one waiting at table when he walked rapidly in, smelling of hot mule. 'Good day to you, young gentlewoman,' he said in Catalan and then without the slightest pause 'Come, brother, drink up your coffee. There is not a moment to lose. We must run to the boat.' He seized the water-jug, drained it, recognized Mercedes and said, 'Why, Mother of God, it is you, child, I am happy to see you. Pray run for the reckoning, my dear; the Captain must leave this minute. Is it a guest you have?' he asked Jack, observing the two places laid.

   'No,' said Jack. 'That is to say, yes; most certainly—of course. Stephen, let us meet at the boat in a couple of hours' time—it is no good before then—I have given a youngster leave: he cannot be left behind.'

   'Jack, I have run my poor mule nearly to death: you may certainly maroon a midshipman. Ten midshipmen.'

   'Then again, I have some important communications to make to a friend here.'

   'Are these communications of the very first importance to the service, tell?'

   'They are more of a personal nature, but—'

   'Then let us hear no more of them, I beg. Would I have rid the cruel long road from Ciudadela in the heat of the day—would I drag you from your coffee and your company and drink none myself, if there were no imperative haste? If it were not more important than amiable communications or even than spouse-breach for all love? Come, child, the Captain's hat and coat and sword, if you please: duty calls him away.'

   Duty was obeyed, but with a sullen and a reluctant step; and it was clear to the coxswain and crew of the barge, hurriedly called from Florio's skittle-alley, that they had better watch out for squalls. A glance at their Captain's closed, forbidding face, a glance at one another, with an almost imperceptible jerk of the head or movement of an eyelid, and all was understood: the bargemen sat in their places, prim, mute, and correct as a Sunday-school while Bonden took the boat right down the harbour with a strong favourable breeze and the officers sat silent in the stern-sheets.

   Jack's silence was that of extreme disappointment-and frustration: Stephen's that of a mind busy far away, preoccupied with motives and probabilities in the first place and then with questions of the distances to be covered by various men and the time required for their journeys. That morning he had received word of the meeting he and his colleagues had been working for, a meeting with men high in the service of the French and their allies that might lead to very great things: the meeting itself was confirmed, but to enable an important officer from Rochefort to attend it had been put forward three days. All the factors that Stephen could check agreed that the appointment could be kept by those on land, but there remained the
Worcester's
ability to carry him to that obscure marshy rendezvous and as soon as they were in the fore-cabin he said to Jack, 'Pray, Jack, could you set me down at the mouth of the Aigouille by Tuesday evening?'

   'Where is the Aigouille?' asked Jack coldly.

   Stephen turned to the chart-table and ran his finger along the low flat coastline of Languedoc with its salt lagoons and brackish marshes, canals and small unnavigable rivers choked by sandbars, meandering through malarial fens, and said 'Here.'