Spring 1806, Carteret Islands

"I trust you are well, my darling," began Stephen's letter, which had arrived in Cicely's hands from her first sailing on the Mary, when she had made it with her uncle to Hanahan with fruit for the market. Cicely had stowed it safely, like a child with a Christmas confection, determined to consume it when she was alone, and enjoy every last bit of it, putting off the joy for as long as she could

Stephen had never written to her before, so Cicely did not know what to expect of his epistle. Her husband was, in writing what he was in life - blunt and to the point. But his love for her came through his ternesess and she read that he was on the Galapagos Islands:

"It was here I realised something Aime Bonpland told me," Stephen had written, in his scrawling script, his mind running so fast his hand was having trouble keeping up. "I crossed immediately to Colombia, over to Caracas and along the coast to Cumana. Von Humboldt is a man of genius and has, to my knowledge, birthed a new science, that of plant geography. I had to see the mangroves and see for myself the Gowtheria Odcrata on the La Scilla peak. I was fortunate indeed that I was able to locate the very guide who escorted Humboldt and Bonpland.

"Nature does produce analgous species at the same altitudes, and corresponding longitudes and latitudes. If the plant is not identical, or of the same genus, nature has found a way of producing a plant whose physiognomy is equivalent. Now I know that I must repeat my investigations in order to corroborate Humboldt's extraordinary hypothesis. The question still remains - should there be variations in climate over a period of time, would these plants remain as they are, disadvantaged as they would be, or would their offspring produce some kind of difference to adjust?

"As von Humboldt says, in the words you kindly drew together, Cicely, my darling, "How can the germs of life, identical in appearance and in internal structure happen at different distances from the poles? Can they migrate? And if so, what is their mechanism?"

Then, at the bottom of the page, almost as an afterthought - and Cicely thought that it most likely was, he had written, "I trust that you are with your uncle now, and that you are settling into a fulfilling life. When I see you there, you can tell me. Your husband, Stephen."

It could have been seen as terse, but Cicely's heart filled with the purest happiness just to have received it, let alone that he had written words to her, too, reminding her that he was her husband. She read it again, and then for a third time He had put down the most important thing, his commission, which was what he was doing for the both of them.

So, Cicely carried it with her as she went about her work, nursing anyone who brought themselves to her uncle Godwin's villa, teaching the children of the islands to read and the stories of the bible, and planning the next voyage on "The Mary" and what would be sold - gum, by the looks of things - Adam had explained that the wood had to be moved as whole trunks from the trees at the western end of the archipelago, in order to preserve the sap, which would become more viscous once it was hardened and could then be sold to manufacturers of furniture and bookbinding.

"I spoke to a man at Hanahan today, who had come from a frigate sailing to the west," her uncle told her, a few days later. He had taken "The Mary" on the gum venture, for Cicely had felt unwell, and had been tended to by Rebecca, Adam's wife and Henry Godwin's housekeeper. "He talks of unrest in the west coast of the Americas, that the Spanish colonies look primed to unite and form their own territory."

Cicely confirmed that Stephen had mentioned such a thing, and ventured he knew such a thing because of his espionage work. On hearing this, Henry Godwin exclaimed at the revelation, and Cicely, was amazed that he had mentioned it, for she was sure she had told her uncle.

"He did this for the money," Cicely went on to explain, "And because he is homing in on his commission, and he has my money from my father's estate, he can concentrate on it."

"Would he be happy to visit here, should you write to him?" Henry Godwin prompted. "In no small measure would I like to meet the man who is your husband, of course, and we have many islands here in the archipelago, if it is differences within species he wishes to discover." He looked out of the window of the villa, at the primrose-coloured sand, at the forget-me-not blue sky and sea. Beyond, the forested island at the north of the archipelago was virtually unexplored.

"I will write to him," Cicely told her uncle. "Although how and when it will reach him, I could not say."

Her uncle Henry then went on to discuss the islands off the northern coast of Carteret, and how rodents had been taken there by the indigeous, a different and more warlike tribe to those who had made Henry Godwin their king.

"It is different to those on their island and the neighbouring island of Buka," Cicely write in a letter she didn't really believe would reach Stephen. "They were the same rodents ten years ago as my uncle got here, but each generation had produced larger and larger offspring."

"Did God make them change?" Uncle Henry echoed Cicely's words, which in turn were an echo of Stephen's own, which he had asked rhetorically of William Blakeney. She had been secreted between the two decks of the Surprise, which she had done several times before she had had to admit her secret to Blakeney, and had spent many hours listening to Stephen explain things to the boy, as she slowly fell in love with him

"Maybe the Lord gave these animals the ability to change, to survive," her uncle mused, as they saw a frigte butt out on the distant horizon. Cicely turned, blinking into the comparative darkness and coolness of the villa, her eyes stinging with the contrast in brightness.

"I believe that too," Cicely confided in her uncle. "I think this is the same as Stephen's hypothesis: he is seeking evidence for such changes, attempting to conclude before Humboldt that such changes occur.

"Chamgeability, change survivalism," Godwin mused, as he handed Cicely back the information Dr. Robert Darwin had sent to her for her husband. "It is an intriguing notion." Godwin poured some cool boiled water that had had coconut water diluted into it into two glasses, before replacing the decanter onto the set. Brierley glass, he had told her, made not too far away from Shrewsbury, whence the Darwins lived.

"We took animals from South America aboard the Surprise," Cicely explained to her uncle. "Several died, however many did survive. If we put them somewhere else other than from where they had come they may not live, but if they did, and they gave offspring, those which best fitted the new environment would more likely grow to maturity, thereby passing on its qualities, and so on. Third and fourth descendants in their turn may be different from the original animals - " Cicely broke off when she realised Henry Godwin was staring at her. "Uncle?" she prompted.

"I have just witnessed the idea of my dear departed sister-in-law of female equality unfold before my very eyes," Henry Godwin told her, and stepped to Cicely, kissing her forehead. "You possess a sound intellect, my dear, and have used it to create new ideas from those, independent, new." Cicely smiled, her heart glowing at the rare praise of a man she respected. So her second letter included all of this, back to Robert Darwin, asking whether he had heard of such an idea before. Both Dr. Darwin's and Stephen's she took with her the next day, along with Adam and Isaac, both crewing as before.

"Heart of Oak is our ship, jolly tars are our men!" Cicely song, explaining that it was a stalwart verse of the Royal Navy.

"Why?" asked Isaac. "The Mary is not made of oak; she is of gum!"

And so, as well as, "Eternal Father, strong to save," the crew of the "Mary" crossed through the Carteret Straits declaring, perhap for the first time, "Heart of rubber are is our ship Heart of gum are our men, soft and pliable and strong!"

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Fruit unloaded and money changed hands at the markets, which overhung the wharf, so disembarkation was unnecessary, and Cicely left the islanders to finish loading the bread and linen cloth that Godwin had commissioned for them, to go to the bureau.

It was a building almost as ramshackle as the overhanging market stalls, but that was all that was necessay in Buka, or so it seemed, for a lot of people were using it for its position as a staging post for all mail, for its supply of paper and ephemera.

"Copper," the man behind the desk said to Cicely without looking up. He saw there were two letters, and glanced up to her. "Two," he added. Cicely nodded, and handed him two British penny pieces, King George's image looking back at the man as he inspected the coins, the bright sunshine behind him highlighting the monarch's ringlets at the base of his neck.

Stephen's would never get to him, of that Cicely was certain. He moved swiftly - he had told Cicely that before, one moment being in Arabia, the next in Constantinople. By the time it had tracked him to one location, Stephen would be at a new one.

"Bad business," Cicely heard one man say to another, in English, as she was leaving. She stopped as she overheard the words, "Pitcairn" and "Bligh".

It was the scandal of the decade, the scandal of the time, that a mutiny had occurred on a naval warship, which had left the captain and all those loyal to him set free in a leaky boat.

Claiming that they had been foully mistreated when rounded up and brought back to London, several had painted a lurid picture of maltreatment. But Cicely saw it different. Aside from the feat of William Bligh navigating his tiny, over-crowded boat hundreds of sea miles until he made it to land, the crew had been seduced by the island's relaxed attitude: Cicely could see it easily: it did seem easy just to live a relaxed, unstructured life.

But, island life was hard, food and water, clothing, everything that needed to be obtained for a community to live had to be procured, and that meant trade. For trade, there needed to be goods wanted by those with whom one was trading; law and order among the community had to be established, maintained and nurtured for the long term; justice needed to be done.

The navy had done a good job collecting most of the mutineers. Yet, some lived and evaded justice, Fletcher Christian being one; John Adams another. DId it mean Bligh was back in the Pacific, then? And, if so, was he back to capture those who were still at large?

Cicely waited as the two men, both indigenous, stepped out and onto the pier's planks, having obtained what looked like newspapers. She knew they were old issues, bought from as many passing ships as the bureau could manage, for the Sarawak islands were impoverished of news: every newspaper, no matter how old, was news that they would not have otherwise.

"He applied the law, but did not apply thought to the men, or so my brother - your uncle - told me," Uncle Godwin told Cicely when she had returned late that evening. She was clutching a letter that had been given to her in exchange, as well as one for her uncle, which turned out to be from William Godwin. "Well, if they've found them, so be it. I can understand the idea of mutiny, however, their base desires satisfied and getting a taste or a life with no rules. How are they surviving, that is what I wish to know."

"You don't think theier bounties have been provided for divinely?" A lurch to her stomach came as Cicely looked back at her uncle. The faintness came as quickly as it had come.

"They took one Bounty and got more?"

They both laughed at the pun, and her uncle, having noticed that something was amiss, made Cicely promise she would not go out for a little while, and they sat together, talking.

"There are all sorts of interests are in the Pacific - it is a vast ocean. Piracy and privateering are but one menace." Cicely thought of Captain Josiah Eaton at that moment, of the arrogant rake who had attacked "Surprise", bold, and arrogant enough to try it on with a Royal Navy ship of the line. She felt to her loose cloth shirt and the letter back from Blakeney.

"Ha!" Henry Godwin exclaimed, as he was examining his own letter. When Cicely looked across, her uncle explained that the family had had all gone to a natural philosophy demonstrion at the Royal Institution. "And what a wonder," William Godwin had explained, "To see that young man, Michael Faraday, Davy's assistant, so adept at the craft reanimate a frog's leg with the use of a voltaic pile, carrying electrical current. "Mary was awed," his brother had concluded.

Cicely watched her uncle put down the letter, and slip the spectacles from his nose. "I suspect you have something you wish to tell me?" he asked of his niece. And Cicely told Henry Godwin of the conversation in the bureau, about the HMS Bounty mutiny.

"Bligh, yes," Godwin nodded, his head dipping as he acknowledged Cicely's words. "It is likely a topic of conversation in these parts: the former captain is being sent to New Holland - Australia, as it is now called, to be the governor there." He leaned towards Cicely, as if imparting words that were for select ears only, "I suspect the Admiralty wish for him to find the rest of the mutineers himself - Pitcairn is within this new colony's jurisdiction. Some want to keep it as a penal colony; some wish to have it established as a colony - no money is used there and trade is done through goods, although the most popular is rum," he added, tapping his quill to the side of his brother's letter. "They trade on rum more and more, and the New South Wales regiment is corrupt. So Pitt consented to Bligh - if ever there was a man less corruptible, I have yet to meet him. He will come down hard on it all."

"You've met him?" CIcely asked, wondering why she felt so surprised. Perhaps because the incident was infamous, and the criminals had yet to be brought to justice.

"Oh yes," Henry Godwin told Cicely, "The boat which he had been put out in landed not far from here. I gave my hospitality to the captain and those loyal crew whom he had with him. It was from Sarawak that a frigate took hin back to Britain."

And it was thus that Cicely spent her days: when she was not sailing, she was teaching, and in the evenings she conversed with her uncle over matters philosphic and intellectual.

"I wish I were musical; that was Edward's gift," Cicely told him, when she had come back up from the chapel after teaching the chldren, about a week after her trip to Hanahan and the bureau. The hot weather was getting to her and she had decided to come back to the house to rest in the shade.

"But I have not done anything strenuous," Cicely insisted, when her usually unflappable uncle had come over from the north side of the island where a new batch of wood was being felled and made her sit in the withdrawing room.

But she acquiesced, and went for a walk around island as the day drew to evening and the temperature dropped, and when she got back to the house her uncle was waiting for her with letters, one for himself, another for her, passed to Isaac as he loaded the timber aboard the Mary.

"We have had been escorting ships to the east coast of India, defending merchant interests," Will Blakeney - for it was he who had written to her, had put. "We had a hairy battle from a rebel group and Tom lost his ship, all crew dispersed. For the French dearly await the cheap revenue Britain enjoys, but could not match us," he continued, "And they scattered like scolded dogs. Not a day passes when Jack does not praise your uncle's chronometer, for it got us to the fight just in time." Jack, thought Cicely. Not the captain, or Captain Aubrey, she noticed.

"Praise should go to John Harrison," Cicely replied immediately on a fresh leaf. "My uncle always asserted he had merely refined on the design."

And no sooner had she sent it with her uncle, for he would not let her go out, but instead to rest, he brought back another epistle. This time it was from Mary Godwin herself, Cicely's cousin.

"A war in the Iberian peninsular would catalyse the South American independence," her uncle explained that evening, over canary wine which had been taken from a French merchant and was going for a good price in Buka, and poured them both a rare drink.

Cicely nodded, but said nothing: she knew Stephen supported such a thing wholeheartedly, for it could trigger Catalan independence too. "But one could not underestimate the difference a French invasion might do should Napoleon choose to invade Catalonia: the Catalans may choose to fight against Madrid, and side with Buonaparte," were Stephen's once-confided words to her as they held one another a few days before he had left her and walk upon the Galapagos Islands once more.

A pang of pain crept over Cicely's body, at her longing that he would be with her. Where are you now, Doctor Stephen Maturin? I hope that you are safe. She turned, instead, to the letter from her recently-discovered cousin. Clearly her uncle had written to his brother, Mary's father, about Cicely, for the girl wrote confidently and familiarly, as if she had known Cicely all her life.

Looking over the letter, Cicely noiced that her hand was neat and the letters were shaped well, but her words flowed like a wide, vast river, effusing over the natural world near her home in Yorkshire. Cicely mused that her life must be like that, with a mind overflowing with thoughts and ideas, contstrained as a child under a step-mother who confined her manners and dress, and remembered, too, that she was a daughter of Mary Wollestonecraft, the author of the book Cicely had read many times since she had been on Carteret.

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Stephen needed Cicely. His notes, hastily and awkwardly bundled together and about his person, were tangled and hard to use to formulate any conclusive evidence towards his hypothesis. There were flaws, but he was unable to spot them. He had two other theories now, for the conversation, with Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis had been riches beyond measure.

"Lamarck," Jefferson had remarked, and went on to explain that Humboldt had been interested in the "Natural Laws" that the French naturalist had postulated must exist, the framework of which living things must obey to be able to get to sexual maturity and therefore pass on traits of their own to their offspring.

However, now he had met Eaton, that slick rogue, in an insalubrious drinking establishment at the end of the trail along which Lewis had taken him, who had sold intelligence and his silence over the Wickam affair for gold, he had turned again back to his commission, and became frustrated with it all. It could be because his mind had been on other things - Jefferson's information, for example. He had already betrayed her trust once - once more and she would not know?

Yet, it would be seen, and the previous betrayal was…hidden and out of sight…it was not hurting her and it would help someone very much indeed.

Stephen stared at the ocean. Oh, how much he wanted to believe that spying was out of his system, that his travels were purely about his pursuit of knowledge and any acquisition of intelligence was incidental. But...it was not true. The chase was there, the pursuit of a traitor. Wickham was going to be getting aboard the "Liberty" thinking it was his idea, that he was using Eaton to pursue his own greedy ambition to instigate an invasion force to Britain.

But his commission was the most important thing.

No, Cicely was. And to be beside her once more could only be achieved when he had earned his place in the Royal Society, and prestige and weath came to him.

So it was decided, Stephen told himself, as he looked out over that tempestuous ocean called Pacific: abandon his work temporarily, head north, to the equator, to Sarawak.

To Cicely.

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As people on the Carteret Islands slept, bloody murder was planned. And the next day, the dawn was the same, and the sun rose. But Cicely had saved an untouchable. Which meant, what would come to pass was bound to have happened.