Book 19 - The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Oh Lord, yes: no sort of doubt about it, after the way he has been playing Old Harry in the Adriatic.'

  'Then may I beg you to lend me a servant to show our ship's boy down to the mole? He is to carry the message to the Commodore, but this is the first time he has ever left Stow on the Wold—he sees wonders on every hand, and I fear he may utterly lose his way.'

  'Certainly. I shall send one of my guards, a discreet grey-bearded Turk,' said the consul. He rang, and when the guard answered he bade him take the boy down to the mole with the note The salute will be answered which Stephen wrote on a piece of paper.

  'Oh, good Lord,' said the consul, carefully lying back on his pillows, 'we have heard such tales here of Frenchmen joining you, of Frenchmen being sunk—Algerines shockingly battered—shipyards going up in flames by the score—the only corsairs at sea are those from very far east: all ours are penned up in the inner harbour. But to go back to the matter in hand: if you have had no recent news from here you cannot know that the situation is wholly changed and that my influence with the Dey no longer exists. He was strangled by the janissaries, and some days later they elected their current Agha, Omar Pasha, as the new Dey. I hardly know him. His mother was a Turk, and he speaks Turkish and Arabic with equal fluency and some Greek—illiterate in all three, but by reputation a man of very strong character and intelligent: and indeed he would not have been chosen otherwise.'

  'What you tell me is very disturbing. Pray, have you any news of the Allies' progress?'

  'As I understand it, the Russians and Austrians are still muddling very slowly along, still separated by great stretches of mountain, river and bog: and by strong mutual distrust.'

  'Do you think, sir, that a meeting with the new Dey could be arranged as soon as possible? Perhaps tomorrow?'

  'I am afraid not. Nor even in the near future. The Dey is hunting the lion of the Atlas, his favourite pursuit; and the Vizier, if not actually with him—for the pursuit of the lion is not to his taste—will be at the nearest oasis of comfort.'

  'Consul,' said Stephen, after a considering pause, 'does it seem to you reasonably prudent for a usurper to go gadding after lions within a few weeks of winning power and so leaving his capital open to the enemies and rivals that his usurpation must necessarily have brought into being?'

  'It seems unlikely, even absurd; but Omar is a case apart. He was brought up among the janissaries—he knows them through and through—and although he is illiterate he was a particularly successful head of what might be called the former Agha's intelligence service. I am of opinion that he has made this journey into the Atlas to learn who among the janissaries are likely to form parties in his absence. He has informants everywhere and I am persuaded that when he judges the moment right he will silently return, summon a body of those devoted to his interest and take off a score of ambitious heads.'

  Jacob had taken no part in the conversation other than by nods and smiles that showed his keen attention: but at these last words he uttered a most emphatic 'Yes, indeed.'

  'Can you tell me, sir,' said Stephen, 'how much influence the Vizier may possess?'

  'My impression is that it is very great. He was the equivalent of the present Dey's chief of staff and his main support, a highly intelligent and literate man with highly-placed connexions in Constantinople. Although, as you are aware, the deys have long since thrown off all but a purely nominal allegiance to the Sublime Porte, the Sultan's titles, orders and decorations have a very real value here, particularly to men like Omar: and quite apart from that Hashin has a wide acquaintance with the chief men in the Muslim states of Africa and the Levant. He is also, I may add, fluent in French.'

  'In that case,' said Stephen, 'it seems to me that Dr Jacob and I should make our way into the Atlas with the utmost dispatch, if not to the Dey himself . . .'

  'An approach to the Dey himself without official standing or former acquaintance would be contrary to local etiquette: may I advise a call on the Vizier?'

  'Then to the Vizier, to do what can be done to prevent this shipment, which might well be fatal to our cause. Is he incorruptible, do you think?'

  'I cannot honestly speak to that. But in these parts, as you know very well, a present is rarely unwelcome. I have seen him with an aquamarine in his turban. Oh, oh . . .' The consul bent forward, his face twisted with pain. They turned him on his side, took off his clothes, felt for and found the source of the spasm. Jacob was about to open the door when Lady Clifford appeared, looking extremely anxious. Jacob asked the way to the kitchen, prepared a hot, a very hot poultice, clapped it on and hurried out into the town, returning with a phial of Thebaic tincture.

  'Thebaic tincture,' he murmured to Stephen, who nodded and called for a spoon: raising the poor consul's head he administered the dose and laid him gently back.

  In a little while the consul said, 'Thank you, thank you, gentlemen. I already feel it receding . . . oh Lord, the relief! My dear Isabel, I have never known so short a bout: do you think we might all have a cup of tea—or coffee, if these gentlemen prefer it?'

  While they were drinking their tea there came the sound of a perfectly regular series of shots fired from great guns in the inner bay, twenty-one of them: it was Commodore Aubrey saluting the castle. Hardly had the echo of the twenty-first died away along the walls, towers and batteries of Algiers than the entire series of fortifications facing the sea erupted into an enormous, enormous, thunder by way of reply, one set of rounds merging into the next and a truly prodigious bank of powder-smoke drifting out over the water.

  'Heavens!' cried Lady Clifford, taking her hands from her ears, 'I have never heard anything like that before.'

  'It was the new Agha showing his zeal. If he had left a single piece unfired, the Dey would have had him impaled.'

  'About how many guns took part, do you suppose?' asked Stephen.

  'Something between eight hundred and a thousand,' said the consul. 'I was having a count made some time ago, but my man was stopped just before the Half-Moon battery, which was just as well for him, since lions and leopards are kept there on chains which the gunners know how to work but nobody else. He had reached about eight hundred and forty, as my recollection goes. I could let you have a copy of his list, if it would interest you.'

  'Thank you, sir: you are very good, but I had rather not run the risk of being found with such a paper—an almost certain prelude to being impaled and then fed to the lions and leopards. Above all on such a journey as we contemplate, to view the lions on their native heath. If you are not too tired, sir, after that cruel bout of what resembled sciatica but which may prove to be something I shall not say benign but at least more transitory and less malignant—if you are not too tired, may we speak of means, destination, mules, even God preserve us camels, guards, equipment, and of anything else that occurs to your far greater experience?'

  'I am not at all tired now, I thank you, after your wonderful draught, your capital poultice—which is still charmingly warm—and above all your comfortable words. But I do not think you mentioned a dragoman?'

  'No. Dr Jacob has spoken Arabic and Turkish from his childhood.'

  'Oh, very good,' said the consul, bowing. 'Indeed, far better. As for means, you may certainly draw on the consulate for a thousand pounds, if you think it safe to travel with so much gold. Where destination is concerned—and of course the necessary guide—we must look at a map. Horses, pack-mules, and for some stretches I believe camels, can undoubtedly be hired: I shall speak to my head groom. Guards may not be absolutely necessary, the Dey and his escort having so recently passed that way; but I should be sorry to see you set off without them.'

  'May I put in a word for Turks?' asked Jacob, speaking for almost the first time. 'They may not shine as rulers, but your medium Turk seems to me a very fine fellow. I have often travelled with them in the Levant.'

  'I quite agree with you, sir,' said the consul. 'According to my experience the Turk is a man of his word. Most of my guards are Turks.
And now that I come to think of it, one of our people knows the nearer Atlas intimately well. When he was not working on the reports, records and correspondence here, he pursued the great wild boar, and various other creatures. And he was particularly well acquainted with the country round the Shatt el Khadna, where I believe the Dey intends to go.'

  'Do you refer to the young man who received us today?'

  'Oh Lord, no. The gentleman in question was secretary to the consulate. I am so sorry you had to see that youth: most of the Algerine clerks are absent, taking their families out of the city, and I had to put him at the desk. He is the son of an intimate friend, a late friend I am very sorry to say. He is nothing remotely like his father, he was sent away from school as a drunken, stupid, pragmatical ass—sent away although his father and grandfather had been there. So as his family intended him for a diplomatic career—his father had been ambassador in Berlin and Petersburg—they begged me to have him here for a while, so that he might at least learn the rudiments of the business: his mother, God bless her, had been given to understand that in Mahometan countries neither wine nor spirits were allowed, nor even beer. No, no: the former secretary of whom I was speaking was a scholar as well as a hunter and a botanist.'

  'Would he come with us at least part of the way, do you think?'

  'He would certainly go with you in spirit, I am sure. But a huge wild boar that he had wounded so mangled and ploughed up his leg that it mortified and had to be cut off. But he will certainly tell you of a wholly reliable guide.'

  Chapter Seven

  'How homely it is, how agreeably familiar,' said Stephen Maturin. They were sitting in a row on a high, grass-covered slope overlooking the range of country they had already traversed with Stephen on the left, Jacob in the middle and then the wholly reliable guide. 'The same species of cistus, thyme, rosemary, various brooms, the same sweet-scented peonies here and there among them on the screes, the same homely rock-thrushes, wheatears and chats.'

  'Did the gentleman say homely?' asked the guide in a discontented voice. He had long frequented the consulate and his English was remarkably good; but he was so used to astonishing foreigners with the wonders of his country that a lack of amazement angered him.

  'I believe he did,' said Jacob.

  'In his home do they have those huge birds?' He pointed to a group of griffon vultures circling on an upward current.

  'Oh yes,' said Stephen. 'We have many vultures, bearded, black, fulvous and Egyptian.'

  'Eagles?'

  'Certainly: several kinds.'

  'Bears?'

  'Of course.'

  'Boars?'

  'Only too many, alas.'

  'Apes?'

  'Naturally.'

  'Scorpions?'

  'Under every flat stone.'

  'Where is the gentleman's home?' asked the indignant guide.

  'Spain.'

  'Ah, Spain! My fourth great grandfather came from Spain, from a little village just outside Cordova. He had nearly sixteen acres of watered land and several date-palms: a second paradise.'

  'Yes, indeed,' said Stephen, 'and in Cordova itself the mosque of Abd-ar-Rahman still stands, the glory of the western world.'

  'Tomorrow, sir,' said the guide, leaning forward and speaking across Jacob, 'I hope to show you a lion or a leopard—perhaps with God's blessing both: or at least their tracks by the stream Arpad that flows into the Shatt, where the Dey is sure to have his quarters.'

  'We must be getting along,' said Jacob. 'The sun is very near the mountain-tops.'

  They rejoined their company and, when the camels' reluctance to get up could be overcome, they moved on, following the now quite well beaten track up and over a cold pass and down to Khadna and its fields, the last village before the oasis, then the Shatt and the wilderness. Dusk was falling before they reached it and they hardly noticed the blue-clad figure of a little girl waiting outside the thorn-hedge; but clearly she could see them, and as they came out on to the straight she called out, 'Sara!'

  At this a tall, gaunt camel, a particularly ugly, awkward and ill-tempered creature that had carried Stephen over a broad stretch of shale and sand, broke into a lumbering run and on reaching the child lowered its great head to be embraced. These were camels that belonged to the village and they moved off to their usual place even before their trifling return-loads were unstrapped, while the guards and attendants set up tents. Stephen and Jacob were taken to the chief man's house, where they were regaled with coffee and biscuits sopped in warm honey, extremely difficult to keep from dripping on to the beautiful rugs upon which they sat.

  Jacob was perfectly at home; he spoke for the right length of time, drank the proper number of minute cups, and distributed the customary little presents, blessing the house as he left it, followed by Stephen. As they crossed the dark enclosure to their tent they heard a hyena, not without satisfaction. 'I used to imitate them when I was a boy,' said Jacob. 'And sometimes they would answer.'

  The next day was hard going, up and down, but very much more of the up, more and more stony and barren: quite often they had to lead their horses. Now there were more unfamiliar plants, a wheatear that Stephen could not certainly identify, some tortoises, and a surprising number of birds of prey, shrikes and the smaller falcons, almost one to every moderate bush or tree in an exceptionally desolate region.

  At the top of this barren rise, while the Turks made a fire for their coffee, Stephen watched a brown-necked African raven fly right across the vast pure expanse of sky, talking in its harsh deep voice all the way, addressing his mate at least a mile ahead. 'That is a bird I have always wished to see,' he said to the guide, 'a bird that does not exist in Spain.' This pleased the guide more than Stephen had expected, and he led his charges fifty yards or so along the track to a point where the rock tell precipitously and the path wound down and down to a dry valley with one green spot in it—an oasis with a solitary spring that never spread beyond those limits. Beyond the dry valley the ground rose again, yet beyond it and to the left there shone a fine great sheet of water, the Shatt el Khadna, fed by a stream that could just be made out on the right, before the mountain hid it.

  'Right down at the bottom, before the flat, do you see a horseman?' asked Stephen, reaching for his little telescope. 'Is he not riding for a fall?'

  'It is Hafiz, on his sure-footed mare,' said Jacob. 'I sent him forward to give the Vizier word of our coming, while you were gazing at your raven. It is a usual civility in these parts.'

  'Well, God speed him,' said Stephen. 'I would not go down that slope at such a pace, unless I were riding Pegasus.'

  'I have been thinking,' said Jacob, about a furlong later, when the going was not quite so anxious and the oasis was perceptibly nearer, 'I have been thinking . . .'

  '. . . that we are on limestone now, with a change in vegetation—the thyme, the entirely different cistus?'

  'Certainly. But it also occurred to me that it might be better if I appeared as a mere dragoman. Since the Vizier is perfectly fluent in French, there is no need for my presence; and you would more readily reach an understanding, the two of you alone. As I am sure you have noticed, a man facing two interlocutors is at something of a disadvantage: he feels he must assert himself. I am dressed in such a manner that I could be anyone or anything. You will do better on your own, particularly if you conciliate his good will with the lapis lazuli turban-brooch—a very striking cabochon with golden flecks that a Cainite cousin let me have, a merchant in Algiers, almost next to the pharmacy. He told me that there was another Cainite, one of the Beni Mzab, a calligrapher in the Vizier's suite; and that is another reason why I suggest being a dragoman, no more, on this occasion.'

  'May I see it?'

  'I will show it you before we are received, when I pass over the consul's letter of presentation: you will be able to look at it discreetly, since it is in a little European box that opens and closes, click.'

  'You wrote the letter, I believe?'

  'Yes:
it is in Turkish and it states that your mission is of a private and confidential nature, undertaken at the request of the Ministry. There are the usual compliments at the beginning and at the end: they take up most of the paper.'

  'Very well. This is a rather more public form of intelligence service than I have ever experienced, and it will disqualify me for many other duties of the same nature: but to be sure, a very great deal is at stake.'

  'A very, very great deal.'

  They had reached the level ground, and now they rode in silence until a Barbary partridge took noisily to the air almost under their noses, causing the horses to caper, but without much conviction after so wearing a day. 'And surely those are palm-doves?' said Stephen.

  Dr Jacob had nothing to offer apart from 'I am sure you are right.' But turning ih his saddle, he added, 'Perhaps we should let the others catch up, so that we may make our entrance in a reasonably stylish manner.'

  Reasonably stylish it was, the Turkish guards and their horses having a sense of occasion, and they rode through the intensively cultivated fields of the oasis, all brilliant green beneath the towering date-palms, round the central pool (with the inevitable moorhen) to a low, spreading house with barns and stables scattered about. 'The Dey's hunting lodge,' said Jacob. 'I was here once as a boy.'

  An official and some grooms came out of the gateway, the official calling what Stephen took to be greetings: he also noticed a particular glance exchanged between Jacob and him—slight and fleeting, evident to no one who did not know Jacob very well and who did not happen to be looking in that direction—and then the grooms led horses and pack-mules into the stable-yard while Stephen and Jacob walked into the fore-court.