Spring, 1806, Carteret Islands.
More smoke drifted over the sand, more screams got to her ears. Stumbling over the threshold post, Cicely gripped the frame, and looked on as horror grew in her stomach. What was she to do? What could she do?
"Mrs Sissisy! Mrs Sissisy!" A voice came to her ears and she looked down. Not all of the children had left - to become a part of the massacre that was unfolding on the beach: Gwie, Isaac and Rebecca's son, looked up to her with wide eyes.
"Gwie!" she exclaimed. But she could not grab his hand. The boy, distracted by words being shouted about them, ran out to the beach. Cicely took a few more, stopped, let the nausea wave pass over her, and watched in horror as a man taller than her uncle, raised a weapon and cut the boy down.
But there was no time to think, other than about what to do. Some of the older children were on Grandfather Island and were due to come back the next day - the young children who had just witnessed John's baptism were there, of course, though she hoped some were in hiding as the tribal men went on the offensive, with clubs and blunt instruments. But these were no match for pistols, whose shots rang out around the island.
Cicely stumbled back to the house, calling as loudly as she could for Mary, who came, at last to the window and opened the door.
"Run! Go! Now!" she urged the woman, who was trying to close the door, and barricade herself in. She did not know about the children, her own son. But if she stayed in the villa and these raiders knew, they were likely as not to set fire to it, as they had done with the people's huts further down the beach.
"Come on!" she insisted, and took Mary's hand. But instead of running, the woman put a finger to Cicely's mouth.
"You, and you," she told Cicely, pointing to the mangrove trees towards the eastern side of the island. "You!" she insisted. And pushed Cicely away from her.
It seemed like a good place; she could at least hide there. And when she had gine about halfway there, she turned at the sound of a shout: Mary was calling the attention of two of the raiders who were running to where Cicely was headed. She had something raised in her hand. Cicely felt her heart began to race as Mary then began to torment the raiders, distract them. There was a purpose, at least, for she could now see, at the west, some of the canoes of the "new men", those young boys who had braved the seas and faced the challenges that manhood would throw at them, landed, and launched immediately into a defence of their homeland.
A ship was on the horizon, Cicely could see, as she stumbled on, boats dotted between there and the shore, and in some of them, people under guard there - the raiders were taking prisoners, taking slaves wth them, and she fancied that she could see many of the children, and some of the women. B'twi was with them, she could tell; a bundle in her arms, perhaps? John? Babies were not worth anything as slaves, being another mouth to feed, and Cicely's logic came to a horrifying conclusion when she saw a small bundle tossed into the water.
"Get down!" came a voice behind her. But Cicely was already running for the sea, determination to find the child the only thing in her mind. As she got nearer the voice called again, but she ignored it, as the realisation of the ship that was anchored filled her mind instead: It was the Liberty, Josiah Eaton's privateer, and the malevolent captain was busy taking aboard the prisoners that his crew had captured, others of the crew pulling the island's people on board. Many more lay dead and dying on the sand, several having been put to flame, their bodies burned where they had fell.
"Down, I say!" came the voice again and, as Cicely stormed into the sea, righteousness driving her on, a hand came to her shoulder. When she did not turn, a hand came to her mouth. Cicely turned, and thrashing in the water, but then stopped when she saw who had arrested her pursuit of the small boats: the hand belonged to someone she knew very well indeed: Jean Baptiste Lebec.
"Lebec!" breathed Cicely as he released his hand, but the Acheron captain was holding her close to him and was walking her out of the sea. She had watched him as he had prowled the Victory, in search of his own quarry not a year before and Cicely had thought him to be Nelson's assassin.
But she had been wrong: it had been James Fillings, her former pair on the Surprise who had taken up his estranged fathers mission. Cicely struggled again, but Lebec held her fast.
"Come with me. Do you wish to be killed as well?"
"I need my people!" she declared, self-righteously. For what would her uncle say if he thought she had just stood by and let the people be killed and captured.
"And I need to get aboard that ship," he told her, "For it goes to a place where I need to go."
"And I need to kill that man for this!" Cicely told him, with even more resolve for, behind her, her uncle's house was now on fire, beams timbers of trees that grew on Carteret crashing into the sand.
"Then we go together," Lebec told her. "We have a better chance of looking after each other!"
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A boat was tied up at the trees on the eastern side of the edge, and Cicely had a vague understanding of Mary's words, that "You and you" needed to go there. Perhaps Lebec had come to her uncle's villa first. Lebec took her arm and they ran to it, Cicely stumbling over a higher dune behind which it had been pulled.
"Stay," Lebec told her, before kicking the sand away from the prow of the little vessel, pulling the oars from the centre and put them into the water. "Stay down!" he called, as they approached, for Cicely was determined still to scan the water for little John. But she had little choice than to trust Lebec, and he had never done anything that would make Cicely think he was a threat.
Nor had he been a friend - he was no ally to Cicely, and any advantage he had ever afforded her had been as a result of his own self-interest, in the manner of all of the Royalist French, those that still lived, at any rate. He had vouched for her at the hearing, however, and had told the truth to the inquest after the Battle of Trafalgar. On balance, being in Lebec's company would not do her any harm, and it was the best chance she had at that moment.
As they rowed nearer, and their appearance was getting the attention of the officers on the Liberty, Eaton included, Cicely was plunged into the ocean. Lebec had turtled the boat, and had pulled her under. They were swimming towards the hull of the ship, and to an inlet at the prow. The head bilge outlet. They were going to get aboard the "Liberty" through the ship's toilet. Cicely held onto Lebec, and let him help her up, and in.
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It had not been as bad as she had expected. Perhaps the raiders, who were in fact the crew of the Liberty, had not been in need of the ship's facilities of late, and the passage seemed very clean. Nevertheless, Cicely felt grubby and dirty as Lebec helped her into the hold, watching as she lay on her back amongst the goods, as he spluttered some water into one of the corners.
"I admire your bravery," Lebec told her, in between breaths, "But there is no time for this. You must...shall we say...clothes? Put your clothing...et toi?" He mimed throwing something down the head chute. She backed away as he made to untie her shirt.
"There are sharks in the water - did you not see? All the people that ziz captain does not require...shark food. It must be thought that you and I were victims, so to speak." He turned, and pulled his own shirt over his head, kicking off his boots and thowing them and his shirt down the hole. "There," he added, nodding to more garments. I was prepared."
Cicely's mind reeled with questions, of the attack, of how her uncle would feel thinking she how she had met her end, but the noises around her made her consider that it would be as well to listen, and ask questions later.
Lebec, for his part, turned away as she stripped to her flesh, throwing everything away, including her bindings, standing naked for a moment before slipping as quickly as she could the new shirt, the new breeches. As she turned back, she noticed Lebec dressing too, and she caught a glimpse of something that horrified her.
Lebec had seen she had noticed, and followed her gaze as she dragged her eyes away. "All away?" He nodded to the head. Cicely nodded.
"It is not just you, alas, who conceals a secret," he admitted.
"Secret?" Cicely asked, uncomprehendingly. But Lebec shrugged, and sat on a bale of silk, stolen as it had been from a Chinese barque.
"This ship goes to Owayii," Lebec told her. "There, you will be safe, at least."
A British colony, Cicely knew. And she knew, still, that she would need to remain concealed aboard the Liberty until then. Jean Baptiste Lebec had saved her life.
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"I could have left you there," Lebec told Cicely, when the Liberty had weighed anchor, and their dreadful cargo of slaves had been put aboard. "But, 'ow could I, a noble woman, who fought so valiantly, the wife of a man I much admire?"
He sat back and bit into a piece of fruit. Cicely recognised it, though did not know its name, as one which could be procured in Hanahan. He threw her one, and she bit into it, the sourness even more sour than she remembered, and the sweetness even more sweet.
"We must throw these away when the head is used," Lebec told her. "You will be quite safe with me. Do not leave the hold. If we need more food, I will get it," he told her.
"And how long will it take to get to Owayii?" Cicely asked.
"A week, two," Lebec shrugged, as a memory stirred in Cicely's mind. He had mentioned Stephen. What she wouldn't give to be with Stephen now. And -
Her mind broke away as Lebec reached over to her. She had been at pains to save it from being part of the trick that her clothing would play: Blakeney's brooch, which shimmered all its colours in the dim light of the hold, that she had re-pinned to her new shirt.
"It was a gift," Cicely told him, as Lebec looked upon it.
"I had a friend, a dear friend, a scientist, who had metal like that. I saw it once, in Paris." he lowered his hand and looked at Cicely. "He was put to death in the terror," he added. "Dear Antoine," Lebec mused.
"As for me, I was forced to captain the Acheron. I am against Buonaparte; however your capitan - "
" - Aubrey - "
"Just so, Aubrey," Lebec continued, "Played me a merry dance, so I made our lives interesting for a few months."
"But, you are French; why are you against the Emperor?" In the darkness, Lebec spat.
"You were held by Joseph Fouche," he told Cicely, much to her astonishment. "You were given a chance to live your life as a noble woman in Brittany. Why did you not take it?"
"And betray my country?" Cicely demanded, hissing the reply angrily.
"As it is for me," Lebec told her, point made. "There are many like me. We resisted. They looked to me to lead, and I did so. But it did no good. The Jacobins killed them anyway, I, too. They thought us dead after they had butchered us." Lebec put another fruit to his lips.
"But I was not. I buried my sister, my parents, our servants, the people of our estate. You saw me, just now," he added. Cicely nodded, and shuddered. When he had pulled on his breeches, Cicely had seen, much to her horror, a lump of scarred flesh where his penis and testes should have been."
"Fouche himself," Lebec told her. "I was humiliated before all my people, so all could see I could never father children; so they knew I could not continue my ancient line, so ancient all the way back Charles the Great. But. No more." Cicely felt her mouth fall open. Castrated? by Fouche? A Frenchman attacking another Frenchman in such a way? She had to feel grateful he had made her an offer, then, for if Fouche would do that to a fellow countryman, what would he have done to her?
"Who do you seek in Owayii?" Cicely asked, sensing the answer.
"Who I sought before."
Wickham, Cicely thought, and then her mind felt brighter. Because she had long thought that Stephen might well become distracted, and resort to his former habits. If Wickham was in Owayii, would her husband be there as well?
Stephen. Their life as husband and wife had been developing as she imagined a marriage to be. No longer unequal, he had claimed her fortune, and she had done as he had wanted and gone to her uncle.
A good marriage, but for the irritaing itch caused by the woman who also claimed Stephen.
She had tried to pray, tried to throw herself into God's mission with her uncle, tried even to take pity on the woman, as Mrs Pellew had detailed her plight. Yet, all Cicely wanted was to sail; the Mary was now gone and she would be dead had not the former captain of the Acheron, aquiline nose, black hair still stowed neatly in a blue ribbon which he had not donated to the deception of their death.
And yet, there was a French threat in the Pacific, her uncle had warned her that France had claimed the west coast of America, trading fur and attacking British naval ships. Privateers like Eaton, though a menace, were not as pernicious as the French fleet, hit and run as the Acheron had been, in order to establish trade, and the French ship that had come to the island not long after Cicely had arrived had been captained by a Jardinière, on a fur-trading venture to the north-west coast of America. Lebec sat straighter when she brought this up.
"I am a British patriot, Mrs Maturin," he told her firmly. "French born I may be, but France under Buonaparte is not in my heart."
And he went on, over the few days, as they dodged crew and stole food, to tell Cicely of the revolt in the Vendee in 1793. It was a slow story, but what has they, if not time?
"It was nothing short of genocide of our people," Lebec told her, early one morning. "Where peasants, former nobles, and refractory priests coalesced into a guerrilla army that waged a war against the republican government. We formed an alliance with Britain to restore the monarchy, to retain our own language and customs."
Cicely listened in the gloom as Lebec, who had made it up to a higher deck and had stolen meat and bread for them, paused in her hunger as he told her of the call from Paris for 300,000 "volunteers" for the republican army.
"My people, peasants, rejected the Republic's levy, and we drew together a local army to seize control of the region. We were counterrevolutionaries, Mrs. Maturin," Lebec told her, more, it seemed, for himself, than for her benefit. "We were the Breton Association - Je suis Britonnes, Dieu le Roi. We desired nothing more than to protect our Catholic church from the destruction that was being wreaked by Buonaparte." He spat, and then took a bite of meat.
"I went a Catholic church, at Christmas. In Sao Paulo," Cicely told him.
"You are a Christian?"
"Non-Conformist. To you maybe a Huguenot?" Lebec smiled.
"Then you are no Christian to Roman Catholic, I am sorry to say," he told her. "When we were surrounded, when we were on the brink of despair, the British came to our aid and broke the siege. I am "at heart" with Britain," he told her.
Around them, the ship began to come alive. Coughing began from where Cicely estimated the island people were being kept, and she remembered with horror the protests they had heard as the crew, at Eaton's loud behest, hurled yet more overboard into what must now be the middle of the Pacific, with no chance of rescue.
"They began by drowning the peasants," Lebec continued, the subject no less depressing than the cheers of the crew and the screams of the people being put to the water beyond them. "We awoke to find hundreds of people floating in the river, soldiers holding men, women and children undet the water, spearing babies on pikes. They say we maintained the idea of "Ancien Regime" yet they went for the peasants first, not the "Aristo."
He passed Cicely bread that he had recovered during the night. Clearly the Liberty must have docked somewhere that had made this, because it was fresh. Cicely took it hungrily, making sure she ate it slowly, with the weak grog Lebec had purloined, for she felt both famished and sick, and did not want to be sick, for she would not be able to disguise that sound.
"You went to Quiberon, on aboard a British navy ship?" Lebec asked Cicely.
"Yes," agreed Cicely, watching as the man began to shred the silk that lay in bundles. It would be enough, once they had left the hold, that it would look as if the cloth was still fine, but when it was picked up it would fall apart and be totally useless.
"They came to help your ship, my people," Lebec told her. "Even now, years after that massacre, Vendee is in rebellion. My people will not forget, and they will never forgive."
"You have family still?" Cicely asked. But the usual locquatiousness Lebec subdued to nothing at the question and Cicely pressed n more.
"My brother lived there, until recently," Lebec told her. "Laurent. My twin brother. He too, died. In order to punish the Vendean prisoners taken after the failure of the siege of Nantes, a man by the name of Carrier ordered them to be shot en masse. When this proved impractical, he had the prisoners rounded up and put out on the Loire river in boats equipped with trap-door bottoms; when these opened the victims were left to drown.
Women were targeted and made so they could no longer bear a child; men's lives were left to fate: men played dice to see who lived or died. I knew he lived, once. But, for all that was done to our people, he chose "La Republique" He took part in all of this, against our own people". Lebec got to his feet. It was a cramped space, but he managed to stoop, and he pushed his hands to the outer planks of the hull of the Liberty "You wonder why I tell you this."
"I wonder," Cicely told him. "But mainly, I wonder that Wickham has not yet been caught, that you have such troubles in your heart, Monseur." At this, Lebec gave her a brief nod.
"Wickham delayed the British response that could have stopped this geocide," Lebec told her.
"And you believe Stephen was not against Wickham but with him?" The hypothesis had long been mulling in her mind, and Cicely felt that she had to ask. If not now, she reasoned, when?
"Laurent Burgoyne. That was the name of the spy who was killed instead of your husband," Lebec told her.
"But what if that was intrigue? Another plot?" Cicely asked him. Lebec said nothing for a while, then sat back down and began to work on the silk bolt again.
"I cannot imagine Stephen being anything other than than his gentle, patient self," Cicely said, half to herseld.
"Is that so?" Lebec shot back, his tone quieter than expected, for voices could be heard above. And so, as bangs and crashes came from above them, cargo being moved around, Cicely reasoened, animage of a beautiful, haughty woman who Cicely had never met, filtered into her mind, mistress of the politician George Canning, whose name had come up in the newspapers.
Yet when he had told her Stephen's mind was filled more with his commission...to have gained an advantage over Hunbolt through Aime Bonplan's admission to him. But it would be there in the back of his mind: she had told Jack as much...
...yes, you believe him to be gentle and patient, yet, is itt not equally possie your husband works Grest Britain's interests? "He is a Feinian, after all," Jack Aubrey had said to her once.
"I have a list of ships, Royal Navy ships," Lebec spoke to her again, "Can you think of anyone who may know naval strategic positions?"
"Not here," Cicely told him. "Captain Aubrey, perhaps? Or people at the Owayii? The naval office?"
"The naval office," Lebec repeated, and nodded to Cicely. "We are not many days away, and perhaps your nausea will have subsided. You know, that day on the Victory," Lebec added, "I was looking for James Fillings. So was Wickham. He knew the boy was meant to kill the Lord Admiral." Cicely looked across to him.
"He had murdered James even after Wickham had said he hadn't the guts to kill Nelson," Cicely told him. "You know that the the Nelson is now dead?"
"I am sorry for it," said Lebec.
"James's murder or Nelson's assassination?" But Lebec shook his head.
"I thought he might be with you, Stephen Maturin," Lebec told her. "I have seen you many times wiyh your uncle's native servants, and sailing a ship."
"The Mary," Cicely told him, proudly. "And she is mine. Was mine," she added. "Why did you take me from the island?" she asked, suddenly.
"Did you want to be dead?" He saw Cicely's face. "Come, ma Cherie," he said to her. "I would find your husband, for a very significant land sale has come about in the Americas. I do not know Maturin is involved, but I do know that Napoleon has gained a vast fortune in selling Louisiana, and it was funded by a London bank. I know few people with interests that lie in Britain, with Buonaparte and with the New World. And, if it were not Dr. Maturin, it must be someone. Someone had influence. Wickham, yes, but he could not do it alone."
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That thought was in Cicely's mind when she slept that night. The sea was calm, and it drifted her off gently to sleep. But her dreams were not so pleasant, and were filled with the storm that had taken William Warley overboard, when she had wanted to run to Edward and be beside him, to stop him from taking his life.
In her dream, Cicely ran to him, crying ou, "It's me, Edward! It's me! Cicely!"
She'd take his arms, his face would soften, he would look at her. He would look at her, then grab her. They would plan a new life...
Yet it hadn't happened. Edward had developed a sense of responsibility for the ill fortune on the ship ans had jumped i to the watee to his death.
The last time she has had the dream, had been as she sat, chained in the hold as Victory set sail to war. James Fillings had been aboard, and Cicely had been glad: he had been with her on the Surprise, as her pair - the man who your job at alternate shifts. Yet his treacherous father, whom Stephen had killed, had inspired James Fillings to pick up John Fotherington's mission - to assassinate the Lord Admiral, Nelson.
Cicely had been given that task too, by Joseph Fouche, Bonaparte's spymaster, on condition that Stephen, who she believed captured, would be freed. And she opened her eyes, in the dawnlight, as water lapped the sides of the Liberty, her senses telling her that it hadn't been a dream, and Edward was there with her, in the hold of a privateer that operated immorally and unethically in the Pacific Ocean.
Her uncle would now think her dead; Stephen, if he had got to the Carteret Islands, would be told that too. And Captain Aubrey, if ever he came back that way.
"Do you have anything to say to what you know?" Lebec, whose voice was low, came from one side of the hold again. In the gloom of the morning, Cicely said nothing, assuming the man was talking in his sleep.
"Ma Cherie?" Lebec prompted. He wasn't asleep, and Cicely ran the question through her head again.
"What I know?"
"Your husband," Lebec told her. "In his effects. Simply tell me what he was carrying."
And Cicely did so, if it was any use to the man, papers, letters, printed pamphlets, she tod him. "The Indefatigable had newspapers that spoke of the defeat at Austerlitz; Stephen had papers of Bondplan and Humbolt, of New Spain..."
"Anything else?" Lebec asked her, and it was beginning to occur to Cicely that she had not been rescued from her uncle's island after all. If Lebec suspected Stephen of betraying the nobles of France, could her position, holed up in the very bottom of the ship, not equally be construed as improsonment.
"No, nothing that I can think," Cicely told him. Then the image of a newspaper, out of date, crystallised in her mind.
"I read another, it was in Stephen's things," she told Lebec. "It told of things that I did think it curious. The news was reported but had only just been made. Yet how could it have appeared in a London Times? How could the messages have got back to London, be typeset and printed, and be on a ship in the South Pacific within days? It takes 6 weeks to cross the Atlantic."
"A spy may do that, create a false trail," Lebec told her.
"But why? Cicely asked. "To report news? What news? Defeat in Austerlitz defeat at Jena? She got to her feet, and moved over to where Lebec was sitting. "What are you suggesting?" she asked him. "You think he is a spy against Britain?"
"He is not loyal to you, ma Chere," Lebec told her. "I have made arrangements for Stephen Maturin to be with his mistress. Before he wed you, of course."
"Diana Villiers," Cicely murmured.
"Living contentedly with their daughter at Foxton Hall. Your family's home in Gloucestershire?" Cicely said nothing, for a moment, allowing her mind to think. Diana Villiers? Their daughter?
But yes, of course. Foxton Hall belonged to Stephen now, of course. And she realised she didn't care. Because the house was Stephen's, the marriage was theirs. And Diana would know it.
"She should stay," Cicely said, aloud. "There will be a good reason why he has done this."
"I do not believe many women would be as loyal as you," Lebec told her, and reached a hand out to her own. Nearly a fortnight in close quarters and this was the first time they had touched one another. It always seemed to Cicely that the man disdained not only "Le Republique" but human contact as well. "You would do well to ensure that your loyalty is not misplaced."
"He is all I have now," Cicely told Lebec. "And he has clearly honoured prior commitments. I am glad a child and its mother could be housed in a place that I will never go back to."
And she told Lebec of Venezuela,and Stephen's remark that he had something that von Humboldt didn't.
"Do you know of von Humboldt's work?" Cicely asked Lebec.
"I had the pleasure of meeting him in Paris, before the Terror. A most accomplished man
I read his work, on behalf of my husband. From Venezuela, he travelled north, to New Spain, to Louisiana. He met other naturalists, a man called Lewis…he met Jefferson."
In the gloom, Cicely turned and looked directly at Lebec, all he had told her since their acquaintance coming together in her mind.
"Do you suppose…" she began. But Lebec let go of her hands and put one up between them.
"Acquire money, Mrs. Maturin. Steal it if you must. Get to San Angelo, and be in no doubt for yourself. Above all, be true to yourself. But I would be sure of myself before you believe Stephen Maturin is loyal to Great Britain."
And that was all that was said on the matter, for within a few hours the privateer "Liberty" had docked in Owayii. And that left Cicely and Jean-Baptiste Lebec with the puzzle of escaping the ship unseen.