'We both thought so, and Lawrence prepared the paper: here is a pocket inkhorn and a pen. The bank will need some little time to get everything ready; and, you know, there is not a moment to lose.'
Chapter Five
'Why am I so nervous?' asked Stephen as he rode hack towards Portsmouth. 'My mind is in a silly flutter - pursues no clear line - flies off. Why, oh why did I leave my pouch of leaves behind?' This was the perfect opportunity for them to show their powers, so very much superior to those of the poppy, which provided little more than a stupid tranquillity. 'Though there is something to be said for a stupid tranquillity at times,' he reflected, remembering that Petersfield possessed an apothecary's shop where, before now, he had purchased laudanum. 'Vade retro, Satanas,' he cried, dismissing the thought.
Clouds were piling high in the south-west; the evening was -well advanced and night would fall earlier than usual, almost certainly bringing rain. He had abandoned his lanes long since and he was now steering for the main London to Portsmouth road, which he would strike a little above Petersfield: the broad, even verges would make his journey much quicker; he could not easily miss his way; and as Sir Joseph had said, with his pale smile, there was not indeed a moment to lose.
Since mood is so freely conveyed not only from person to person but from person to dog, cat, horse and the other way about, some part of his present state of mind derived from Lalla, though her unusual and nervous volatility arose from a cause that could not possibly have been more remote. The season of the year, her temperament, and a variety of other factors had inspired her with a notion that it would be delightful to meet with a fine upstanding stallion. She skipped as she went, sometimes dancing sideways, sometimes tossing her head: her views were evident to other members of her race, and poor rueful geldings rolled their eyes, while the only stonehorse they passed raced madly round and round his paddock, neighing; while a pretentious jack-ass uttered a huge sobbing cry that followed them beyond the cultivated land to the edge of a barren common where a broad lane joined their present road, the two running on to join the highway by a gallows. Pleased with her success, Lalla whinnied, arched her neck and curvetted to such a degree that Stephen cried 'Avast, avast there. Belay. Why, Lalla, for shame,' and reined in hard to bring her to a halt at the foot of the gallows, always a point of interest for an anatomist, even one as deeply harassed as Maturin.
This ill-omened place at the junction of the lanes, with scrub on either hand, perfect for an ambush, had been chosen for the exhibition of awful examples; but they did not seem to have much deterrent effect, since they had to be renewed with such regularity that the two pairs of ravens from Selborne Hanger came over at least twice a week for fresh supplies. By now the light was too poor for Stephen to make any worthwhile observations; but at the edge of his field of vision he did catch a movement in the furze. It might have been a goat - there were several at large - but at the same moment he regretted a long, accurate revolving pistol, the gift of a French intelligence- agent, that he usually carried when he travelled by night.
He pushed Lalla forward, but she was hardly beyond the point where the two roads joined when there was a thunder of hoofs behind them. When he was riding Lalla, Stephen wore no spurs, he carried no whip: now he urged her on with knees, heels and all the moral force he could exert, yet she took shockingly little notice, barely reaching a hand-gallop. The hoofs came closer, closer: they were abreast on either side: a band of foolish unmounted ogling geldings, colts and farm horses from the common, as Lalla had obviously known from the beginning.
'Yet even so,' said Stephen, when the gateway was closed behind them and they were trotting along the Portsmouth road, 'there is a gunsmith in Petersfield, and I believe I shall buy a pair of little pocket pistols.'
They baited at the Royal Oak: here Stephen found that he had forgotten not only Duhamel's weapon but his own money too, and it was only on the chance discovery of a seven-shilling piece that he had put in a side pocket as a curiosity that he was spared an embarrassing and perhaps thoroughly disagreeable experience. 'Joseph's message carried its shadow before it,' he reflected. 'Of course it did: I have rarely let my wits go so far astray.'
Riding on through the steady rain, he let his mind return to Duhamel, an agent who, ill-used and perhaps about to be sacrificed by his government, had changed sides, providing Stephen with proof of the treachery of Wray and Ledward. From Duhamel, whom he had thoroughly liked, he moved on to other agents, dwelling on the man they called McAnon, a well-placed Norman from Vauville who used to slip across to Alderney to see an unofficial wife, and who, like others in the same fragile posture, had been turned, all the more easily because he hated Buonaparte with a strong personal hatred both as a vulgar Italian upstart and as one who had refused his scheme for an improved system of telegraphic signals. McAnon, high in the communications department, had provided them with some very fine long-range forecasts, and it was he who lay behind the secret orders that Jack Aubrey would open when he reached a stated latitude and longitude, orders telling him that a French squadron of roughly equivalent strength, but accompanied by transports, would assemble at Lorient at a given date, and that with the help of three separate diversions it wfluld sail as nearly as possible to a stated full moon. The intention of the French commander was to steer across as though for the West Indies, by way of deluding any possible observers, and then to head for the south-west coast of Ireland, there to land his troops on the shore of the Kenmare river or Bantry Bay, as time and weather and the movements of the Royal Navy served.
McAnon: a valuable man, though as Blaine had said, their hold on him was weaker now that the unofficial wife had taken to wearing hair-curlers in the daytime and to talking in a little girl's voice. Yet even so, it was probable that his loathing of the imperial r?me, his enjoyment of the perilous game and his friendship for the man who dealt with him would keep him active and reliable. But how difficult it was to tell. There were some very intelligent men on the other side, wonderfully adept at poisoning the springs of intelligence: he remembered Abel, a devoted and wholly disinterested ally in Paris whose chiefs had by accident allowed him to see Admiral Duclerc's plan of an attack on a Baltic convoy, and shortly before his death he had sent it over in all good faith. Knowing the agent so well, Blaine's deputy - Blaine was in Portugal at the time - had acted at once: but to their astonishment the additional ships sent to guard the merchantmen found themselves heavily outnumbered. The convoy was terribly mauled, a gun-brig was taken, a sloop destroyed, and HMS Melampus was only saved by the descent of a providential fog, though with very heavy casualties, including Jack's friend her captain, the loss of two topmasts and grievous damage to her hull.
Difficult situations: difficult situations. And if Jack was still aboard there would be another within the hour. Commodore Aubrey was of course much overworked, as any man ordered to sea in so short a time, with such indifferent preparation and so many sudden changes must necessarily be: yet he was better equipped than most for a situation of this kind. Like many big men he was not easily put out of temper; he did not use up much of his energy in expostulation; upon the whole he despised those who complained; and the entire course of his professional career had fitted him for his present role. On the other hand he was quite remarkably defenceless when it came to dealing with jealousy. It was an emotion he had apparently never known, at least not in its present consuming state, and it was one whose nature and development he scarcely seemed to recognize at all, so that he was unable to call upon intelligence for what help it can bring in these cases.
Stephen was well acquainted with this blindness where health was concerned - 'It is only a lump: it will soon go away' - and affections - 'She has certainly not received my letter. The posts are so slow these days, and very far from sure' - yet even so it surprised him in Jack Aubrey, a much more intelligent man than he seemed to those who did not know him well. With great concern he had watched the progress of the disease, the changes in the atmosphere at Ashgrove Cottage, where Mr Hinksey continued to call with the most unlucky regularity, often appearing a few moments before Jack left, and the beginning of a change in the Bellona. Jack was still very kind to
