‘The one-armed commander in a scratch-wig?’
‘No. At the other end of the table.’
‘The great fat yellow-haired post-captain with that sparkling thing in his hat?’
‘Just so. He is very fond of the opera.’
‘That red-faced ox of a man? You astonish me. I should have thought beer and skittles more his line. Look how he laughs. They must surely hear him in Ricasoli. He is probably drunk: the English are perpetually drunk – do not know decency.’
‘Perhaps so. At all events he is very fond of the opera. In passing, let me caution you against letting your dislike cloud your judgement, and against underestimating your enemy: the red-faced ox is Captain Aubrey, and although he may not look very wise at present he is the man who negotiated with Sciahan Bey, destroyed Mustapha, and turned us out of Marga. No fool could have done any one of those things, let alone all three. But as I was about to say, being here for some time and being fond of the opera, he decided to have Italian lessons so that he might understand what was going on.’ Giuseppe was about to make some remark on the simplicity of this notion, but seeing the look on Lesueur’s face he closed his mouth. ‘His first teacher was old Ambrogio, but as soon as Carlos heard of this he sent proper people to tell Ambrogio to fall sick and to recommend Mrs Fielding. Let us have no interruptions, I beg,’ he said, holding up his hand as Giuseppe’s mouth opened again. ‘She is already twelve minutes overdue and I wish to say all that I have to say before she comes. The whole point is this: Aubrey and Maturin are close friends; they have always sailed together; and by bringing the woman into contact with Aubrey I bring her into contact with Maturin. She is young, good-looking, quite intelligent, and of good reputation – no known lovers at all. No lovers since her marriage, that is to say. In these circumstances I have little doubt of his becoming involved with her, and I look forward to some very valuable information indeed.’
As Lesueur said these words, Maturin turned in his seat and looked straight at the Apothecary’s Tower: it was exactly as though his strange pale eyes pierced the slatted shutters to the men within and they both silently fell back a pace. ‘A nasty looking crocodile,’ said Giuseppe, in little more than a whisper.
Stephen Maturin’s general uneasiness had been increased by the sense of being stared at, but this had scarcely reached the fully conscious level: his intelligence had not caught up with his instinct and although his eyes were correctly focused his mind was considering the tower as a possible haunt of bats. He knew that since the departure of the Knights its lower part had served as a merchant’s warehouse, but the top was almost certainly unused: a more suitable place could hardly be imagined. Clusius had dealt with the island’s flora at great length, and Pozzo di Borgo with the birds; but the Maltese bats had been most pitifully neglected.
Yet although Dr Maturin was devoted to bats, and to natural philosophy in general, it was only the surface of his mind that was concerned with them at present. The healing cigar had taken off some of his more peevish discontent, but he was still deeply disturbed. As Lesueur had said, he was an intelligence-agent as well as a naval surgeon, and on his return to Malta from the Ionian he had found the already worrying situation more worrying still. Not only was confidential information bandied about in the most reckless way, so that a Sicilian wine-merchant of his acquaintance could tell him, quite correctly, that the 73rd Regiment would leave Gibraltar next week, bound for Cerigo and Santa Maura, but far more important plans were being conveyed, at least in part, to Toulon and Paris.
There had been a most unfortunate vacation of power. In Valletta itself the popular naval governor, a man who had fought with the Maltese against the French, a man who liked the people, knew their leaders intimately well, and spoke their language had, against all reason, been replaced by a soldier, and a stupid arrogant booby of a soldier at that, who publicly referred to the Maltese as a pack of Popish natives who should be made to understand who was master. The French could not have asked for better: they already had intelligence networks in the island and now they reinforced them with money and men, recruiting the dissatisfied in surprising numbers.
But even more important was the interval between the death of Admiral Sir John Thornton and the appointment of a new Commander-in-Chief. Sir John had been a good chief of intelligence as well as an outstanding diplomat, strategist and seaman, yet by far the greater part of his improvised organization was unofficial, based upon personal contact, and it had fallen to pieces in the incompetent hands of his second-in-command and temporary successor, Rear-Admiral Harte: men of substance, often important officials in governments from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, would trust themselves to Sir John or his secretary, but they had nothing to say to an ill-tempered, indiscreet, ignorant stop-gap. Maturin himself, whose services in this respect were wholly voluntary, he being moved by nothing but an intense hatred of the Napoleonic tyranny, had declined to appear in any character other than that of a surgeon while Harte held the command.
This period was now at an end, however: Sir Francis Ives, the new and respectable Commander-in-Chief, was now with the main body of the fleet, blockading Toulon, where the French, with twenty-one line-of-battle ships and seven frigates, showed signs of great activity, while at the same time he was picking up all the complex threads of his command, tactical, strategic, and political, with their necessary complement of intelligence. At the same time the Admiralty was sending an official to deal with the situation in Malta, their acting Second Secretary, no less, Mr Andrew Wray. He had a reputation for brilliant parts, and he had certainly done very well at the Treasury under his cousin Lord Pelham: there was no doubt that he was an exceptionally able man. And Maturin had no doubt that quite apart from coping with the French he would need all his abilities to overcome the ill-will of the Army and the jealousy and obstruction of the other British intelligence organizations that had made their devious way into the island. There were mysterious gentlemen from various departments, darkening counsel, hampering one another, and causing confusion; and Stephen Maturin’s only consolation when he contemplated the situation was that the French were probably worse. Despotic government tends to breed spies and informers, and there were traces of at least three different Paris ministries at work in Malta, each in ignorance of the others, with a man from a fourth keeping watch on them all. The ostensible purpose of Mr Wray’s visit was to check corruption in the dockyard, and it appeared to Maturin that he would probably be more successful in this than in counter-espionage. Intelligence was a highly specialized concern, and as far as he knew this was Wray’s first direct connection with the department. Corruption on the other hand was universal, open to all; and since Wray in his youth had kept a carriage and a considerable establishment on an official salary of a few hundred a year and no private means it was likely that he was tolerably well acquainted with the subject. Maturin had first met Wray some years ago, when Jack Aubrey was ashore, uncommonly rich in prize-money and the spoils of the Mauritius campaign: the meeting – a casual exchange of bows and how d’ye do, sirs – had taken place in a gambling club in Portsmouth, where Jack was playing with several acquaintances. The introduction amounted to nothing in itself and Maturin would never have remembered Wray but for the fact that some days later, when Maturin was in London, it seemed that Jack had accused Wray or his associates, in terms only just ambiguous enough for decency, of cheating at cards. Wray did not ask for the barbarous satisfaction usual in such cases. It is possible that he understood Jack’s words to apply to some other player – Stephen had had no first-hand account of the affair – yet there had been signs of hostile influence inside the Admiralty for some