June 1806
On an island approximately half way across the Pacific, on which, not so many years ago, Captain James Cook lost his life, a man disembarked a trading ship. Above the bustling port of goods traders and smugglers, whalers and slavers, a large volcano rose, as if overlooking the people, for good or ill.
The people of the island, or rather, islands, under their queen, believed that the actions of people determined whether the volcano would erupt. At that moment, it simmered like two-day-old broth, suggesting a potent wrath, but giving away no sign of smoke or lava.
The man looked at the volcano again, wishing, sorely wishing, he had time to explore, to see whether von Humboldt was right, to look for the remnants of rocks showing particular patterns, keys to previous eruptions, as he had detailed in books of his travels down the Andes.
But Stephen Maturin was not in Owayii for pleasure, not for his commission or interest. Not far ahead of him was the figure he had been sorely pursuing, having travelled from Cumana on a whaling ship on its way to Japan, having received a letter from London. It had been a stroke of fortune, Stephen considered, though he was bitterly loathe to leave his naturalism again.
Follow he must, but just follow. Find out what it was he was doing, where he was going. Leave behind even the idea of revolution now.
A bar lay at the water's edge. Stephen Maturin edged his way nearer. Who was he meeting? Wilkinson himself? No, surely not. A few more steps and he was beside a stall dealing in luxury fabrics, silks, brocades, velvets, which must have come from many Asian countries. He nodded to the stallholder, and pretended to peruse his goods, one eye on the door of the bar.
Stephen's luck paid off. It was a mere five minutes when, wearing the same knee-high boots that his wife had seen whilst hiding in the Surprise, a large, ill-kempt man strode in, the door swinging back on its hinges.
He knew that man. He knew all about that man. Notorious smuggler, trader, some-time slaver and self-proclaimed privateer, of the ill-named "Liberty": Captain Josiah Eaton.
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The ship was a delight. It was a dream. The sun beat down into the sapphire blue atholl of the island, and Cicely felt she could be on board forever. The Mary. Her ship.
She had help, of course, from the natives who had chosen her uncle. Cicely was under no illusion now that Charles Godwin was there by mutual accord - the people into whose company he had come had felt they had benefited as much by his arrival as he had in choosing that island from which to trade, and now Adam had shown her his mettle by joining her on the Mary and telling her of her uncle's trading links. They had prospered, Adam explained, since had come to make a home here.
They tacked across the atholl and waited for uncle Godwin to board. They were going to trade at the larger ports, palm wood and taro roots for food and supplies, for medicine, for hardwood and timber.
He and Isaac began to rig up a pulley and Cicely remained aboard with three of the younger men, not yet out of their adolescence, who were able to just about reach the cargo and out it aboard. Cicely helped too, but a warning was called to her when Adam saw that she was about to touch the gnarled plant roots.
"No, Mrs. Maturin!" he told her. "They will cause you sickness, death. They need to be boiled before you can touch them!" So she watched as the cargo came aboard, wrapped on leaves, and then disembarked, looking over her vessel. The Mary. How she loved her already.
"I have your cousin's letter, I've added to it myself," her uncle told her, and Cicely turned to see Charles Godwin standing beside her on the quay. He would be with her as they sailed out of the atholl and into the Pacific, away from the Carteret Islands and west, overnight, in order to sell their produce at Papua New Guinea's man trading port of Hanahan.
She had a letter for John Howard, captain of the Marines aboard the Surprise too, and could leave it, and Mary's letter, at the post office there, where Royal Navy captains sent pursers to collect letters thast needed to go where they were going. Not all of them were collected if strategy was to be kept secret, and as such the post offices in different parts of the world were guarded by a naval officer. A post on a foreign ship, it was called, and Cicely was looking forward to talk to whoever it was whose position it was to guard the mail at Hanahan's post office, and she looked down at Marine captain's letter.
They had been friends, she had explained to her uncle, since she discovered that had married into a distant branch of Hollum. They knew similar people and he had been to the same dinners as Cicely remembered her father had graced, and sometimes forced Cicely to attend. John Howard made Cicely happy to be reminded of her home then, before Edward had been sent away and she was carefree and at liberty to explore her Gloucestershire countryside.
Cicely had written of the animals of the atholl, mainly marine, there too, and of the hunting possibilities. "The people know nothing of firearms," she had written, "But hunt with sharpened rocks. It is a rite of a boy to become a man to show his prowess with a spear."
Of turtle and a type of seal that came to the islands in copious numbers. The skins of these seals were the clothing for the population, although cotton and linen, traded by her uncle on their behalf with their produce, was being worn by the men, as well as seeds and saplings of trees that thrived in humid, hot conditions, cacao, the rubber tree. Adam, discussing with the elders, had agreed that they should be tested, and were delighted when, after the use of ash at Godwin's suggestion, yield and food quality increased.
"Those other islands grow bean and gum," Isaac told Cicely, as they sailed anticlockwise around the atholl.
"What's that?" she asked, as the sails caught the easterly wind.
"Venam," Isaac replied. "They no longer live on our islands, but are still most treasured animals." He pointed to the horizon, where a pale grey patch of land sat.
"We took them to the island upon which we bury our grandfathers. They change. They help the spirit reach the world beyond."
"Would we go to Grandfather Island?" Cicely asked, as she turned the wheel. The two boys acting as skippers towed in the sheets as she commanded.
"You?" Isaac asked, incredulously. "No! Only our bravest warriors may go, and young men willing to move into warrior class. They must survive the crossing and return to us." Cicely looked north again.
And? Could I get there? For Stephen's sake, Cicely wondered to herself. Crew with someone who was not native to the atholl, for risk of offending their beliefs. To collect natural speciments, look at the geology, see if it is different to that of my Uncle's island, different flowers, different plants, different animals?
The thought pleased her, that she could suppose to still be helping Stephen in his commission as they got to the atholl gap, to the west. Stronger currents bore them on and she needed to trim the main sail in order to get enough power to get through. Cicely had practised, several times since Uncle Charles had given her "The Mary" so that she could be successful when she used it for trade. When they were in the open water, then the sheets could be opened fully, and the trade winds blow them south west into Hanahan port. Should anything be more glorious than this?
As she fixed the wheel, Cicely spoke to her uncle about Stephen's work. She could barely get a few words out without Charles Godwin taking an interest, and it was the same on this beautiful day.
"There's New Holland, the land Austalis," said her uncle, when she spoke about new ecosystems that Stephen should study to test his hypotheses. "Many French have been in to Madehas,too, their destination south. It is a wonder the governor of Port Jackson would let the French survey ship gain supplies."
"Really?" Cicely was intrigued, not least because the port was ostensibly British.
"Come now," her uncle cajoled, "Do you not think the French, having helped the Americas liberate the colonies, and now sold Louisiana to them, that they would wish to continue to bloody Britain's nose? Of course they want it." Cicely felt herself staring at him. He picked up a lot at Papua New Guinea, but such detailed information?
"How do you know, uncle?" she asked, carefully. Uncle Charles smiled.
"Because a ship, a French frigate, sailed to Papua New Guinea, and on board, it stopped at Bourgaineville. The captain was dying, but the acting captan, a Francouis Perez, could not help but brag about what he had done, all the detailed speciments he had collected bound for France. You would not do that unless you wished to capture that land for yourself." He shook his head. "Whatever is the Governor doing, I thought. He needs to be strong, and limit access to the French." Cicely smiled.
"It is strange you should mention this, uncle, as Stephen also discusses the plants and animals of New Holland, and has a desire to collect information from that land." From her pocket, Cicely unfolded the notes that her husband had kept, which she always had with her. Charles Godwin put out his hand, and she gave them to him, watching the paper as if it were her newborn child being scrutinised in the hands of a stranger.
"I have been collecting notes for him of the natural wonders I encounter," Cicely confided. "Here is what I have done for him on our islands. Anything else, I will mark on the back." She pointed to it, and Godwin turned it over to see Cicely's map, carefully inked. It showed the Pacific Ocean, the rough markings of the Galapagos island and Stephen's flightless bird, and the Carteret Islands, her home now, and the beetles and caterpillars, moths into which they turned and the species of seal which the populaton used for food and fur.
"This is my idea as to what ths might mean, as far as God is concerned," she added, as her uncle read the sentences at the bottom of the page. "Stephen thinks God is without involved in naturalism, but it could not be more obvious to me that He is right at the centre."
And from around the first page, Cicely's secret was found, the most recent information, the previous year's unpublished work from Alexander von Humbolt that Stephen had kept. It was too late now to ask him if he needed it.
"Von Humbolt had not published either," Godwin told his niece. "He had not gained advantage through meeting with Bolivar." He handed back the precious pages to Cicely. "Though he will have left Bolivar with information, no doubt. It is the way of the world. Human nature seeks power, in any form, when a government has carrolled its people into watching one another it will be in a very powerful, and unimpeachable position." He watched as Cicely folded up the notes she was saving for her husband, scanning the horizon with practised seamanship.
"We nearly had this in the Civil War, with the Puritans controlling people in this way. It was not God, but man: man's power over man." He smiled at Cicely's worried face.
"Who knows why men keep such things; sometimes people don't make sense to other people. I know you wish you were with him. He is in a race, with other scientists," her uncle added. "He wishes the glory of, not the winning, but the understanding. He needs to know what men like Humbolt have found, but each time he knows it, he risks that it is the end of the game. Do you understand?" Cicely nodded.
"It one reason I am here," she told her uncle. "With you. If I were with him, I would hinder him. I feel I am honouring his work by being away from him, and I thank the Lord that I now know my Godwin family. You are so kind to allow me that."
"Oh nothing!" Her uncle waved a hand. "What else could I do for my poor sister's child? In any case, I should not be able to get my people's produce to market had you not been able to captain your ship, so I know that the deal is an even one." He turned his head. A small grey shape was appearing through the noonday heat, and soon they were being piloted into the trading harbour at Hanahan.
She was listening to her uncle talk about wood to another trader coming in from the south west as she dropped the sail and was towed into harbour. Had she instead looked around, Cicely would have seen a face she knew, and perhaps the rest of the story would have ended there.
But she didn't. Instead, her uncle's easy manner in his business of trade came to her ears and she listened, glancing over her shoulder as she watched Adam tread the wharf to the post office, precious letters in hand.
"You can see how good this is," Godwin was telling the other man. "Thick, wide-grained. Grown well."
And in a few hours, all of the wood and produce was sold, and "The Mary" was being put out into the channel. Sailing back was not as easy as it had been with the prevailing wind pushing her into port, and it wasn't until they had got into the calm of the atholl that her uncle called for Adam to take the wheel. He called for Cicely to sit beside him, as the sail above was brought tight to, to collect every scrap of breeze.
"For you, it would seem," her uncle told Cicely, as he placed a parcel into her hands. "I apologise that I unwrapped it, I thought it might have been a book from my brother and neglected to read the label."
But Cicely did not seem to hear her uncle when she caught sight of the writing on the label. It was in Sophie Aubrey's hand, and inside was a small book that had been sent to her to pass on to Stephen, from the Darwins in Shrewsbury.
"It is fine, uncle," she told him, feeling agitated and jumpy, as if she wanted to take her ship and sail it in search of Stephen. Instead, she handed Charles Godwin the book to see, a treatise from Robert Darwin's father about fossils found in Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Godwin kissed his niece's forehead and smiled.
"Let it be that your husband returns to you soon," he told her, "For you are fair bursting with things to tell him."
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But he could not pursue the course he wanted. News of a different kind had got back to Stephen, and he made his way, not westwards, to the coast of Spanish America, but south, and back to the northern countries of South America. There, Stephen made way back to Orinoco river to find Andres Bello, who had taken von Humbolt up to the mountain wherein he had written the words he had illicitly been handed, in Owayii.
"Plants at altitude," he read, "Grow similarly to Alpine varieties." And several of these varieties had been drawn in detail in the work he should not have. Because, he should not have it because it been given, for approval, to a man in the continent north of here. And he should not have it because of the intelligence he had just gained about said continent.
The Louisiana Purchase was one thing, but an independence plot by John Wilkinson? Bello seemed to know about this, for money had been sent north, to the coastal towns, to aid American slavers and privateers.
It was all so complicated, so tangled, like yarn having been played with by a cat. Where was the end? Where to start?
He had decided to start at the end, at the place he knew, which is why he was letting the rebel and freedom fighter guide him further up the river to the mountains. Stephen was not getting paid for espionage any more, but espionage seemed to be hunting him, the further and further he got into his commission.
A sudden cry of a woman in childbirth, in hut that was almost covered with mangrove came to Stephen's ears, and he turned, suddenly stopping. His mind went to Cicely as another cry came, more feeble than the last, and he thought back to the day, on Jack's cabin floor, blood soaking through close to half her clothing, their son shrouded in linen in Jack's arms...
"We must go if we are to make it before nightfall," Bello told Stephen in Spanish, by which he meant his camp, a camp of other revolutionaries, many of them outlaws. "Tell me," he continued, "What you know of this...Wilkinson." By that he meant whether the plot for independence of two thirds of the North American continent by a town clerk could be used for support by Bolivar.
And Stephen told him all he knew, freely and without prejudice. He was under no obligation not to, and if it helped his fellow Hispanics break ties with Portugal and Spain, so be it. They walked on, his heart gladdened when he heard the much higher pitch of a newborn further behind.
He had Cicely to thank for this, Stephen told himself, as they climbed ever higher into the mountains. He had heard her tell of her admiration of him, of his work, her bounding pride that he had his commission, and more so that Benjamin Hollum's money was now legally his. For Cicely, she wanted nothing more than to know that it conferred legitimacy in their marriage.
She had said she would never set foot into her old house, her Gloucestershire childhood home. Even if she did...
...stones began to irritate his feet now as they came higher still into the mountain range...
...even if she did, Stephen was convinced Cicely would not care that Diana now lived there, poor Diana and poor, crippled Bridget. Jack, however, disagreed, and said that he believed Cicely would indeed care a great deal.
But she was safe, his wife, she was with kin. Her abdomen wounds had barrened her and the desperate feeling that he had lived with after she had left the Darwins to, as it had turned out, to find him, was pacified.
Cicely would be safe until his commission was over. After this, he would meet Meriwether Lewis and return the papers to him. DId he know he had handed over scientific work which he had been entrusted, to a rival, so to speak? Did he know that he had a traitor in his own council? Did Jefferson know? It had been he who had encouraged von Humbolt to detail what he had discovered in the west of America. And it had been this information that had instigated John Wilkinson to liaise with the Spanish on the Pacific coast to sieze the land purchased from France.
After this, Stephen told himself, he must travel north, taking the course Humbolt had taken. But first, there was more infomation to be had from these men in hiding. All he had to do was exchange it for intelligence, intelligence that would aid in their revoltion.
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A man headed east, crossing the path that Cicely's ship had taken not three hours before. He was following the traitor. Jean Baptiste Lebec had thought to have lost him, but for one crucial destination, and for one country which was rife with gossip, some of which was true.
It seemed that William Wickham was headed to a group of islands most keenly sought by the growing American colonies to treat with pirates there, pirates in the pay of the President of the American colonies.
There was no option: the meeting had to fail. Should they succeed, Europe, by way of the colonies that supported the countries within, would suffer, and eventually perish under Bonaparte's will. If not the president, well...Wickham had to have had help. Lebec looked down. In his hand he held a list of naval ships, stolen from Wickham's person which the ex-spymaster had been using to make the protection of the East India company fail. It had cost Lebec a great deal, but it had been worth jt, to both deny Wickham of the information on Britain's trade in India and to get hold of information that told of the impending chaos in the Pacific.
Deckhands, he read, Reuben Jelfs of the Indefatigable. Midshipman Fitzstanley, Midshipman Exe of the Lion. Lieutenants Blakeney, John Mowett, Richard Barrington, Henry Cross, - the whole crew of Surprise listed on paper manufactured in Pennysvania.
He could have had them burned, Lebec supposed, but he needed the evidence. Not least to remind himself, under the blistering sun, what it was he was doing.
And Cicely Maturin.
Could she have made herself any more obvious of her whereabouts? Saint Paul wrote fewer letters. And there she was, on this paper, sold to Wickham for a high price no doubt. She had stood up to the captain of the Liberty...Josiah Eaton, a vicious man who controlled the Pacific's piracy and slaves brought from remote islands to aid America's expansion west.
...piece by piece, the image was coming together...
And now here was the ship he needed to board. He had been a captain once, the captain of the Acheron, reluctantluly in the employ of Buonaparte under Villeneuve. But Vendee was in his heart. He was a Breton noble; God and the King was his motto. For his family, for his people, for leaving them as they were wiped out one by one under Fouche's hand, with Wickham betraying them in his stead...
...for his shame...
...this is the only thing Lebec could do to begin again, foil the spymasters, and raise the Royalist cause in his beloved France.