Treason’s Harbour. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ the walls of the exceptionally fine marble, lapis lazuli and malachite that covered them. Yet this was not without its advantages. The acoustics were much improved, and as they stood there among the dim, bare stone or brick arches the choir-monks might have been chanting in a far older church, a church more suited to their singing than the florid Renaissance building the French had found. Their abbot was a very aged man; he had known the last three Grand Masters, he had seen the coming of the French and then of the English, and now his frail but true old voice drifted through the half-ruined aisles pure, impersonal, quite detached from worldly things; and his monks followed him, their song rising and falling like the swell of a gentle sea.

      There were few people in the church and those few could hardly be seen except when they moved past the candles in the side-chapels, most of them being women, whose black, tent-like faldettas merged with the shadows; but when at the end of the service Stephen turned by the holy-water stoup near the door to pay his respects to the altar, he noticed a man sitting near one of the pillars, dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief. His face was lit by a shaft of light from a small high opening on to the secularized cloister, and as he turned Stephen recognized Andrew Wray.

      The doorway was filled with very slowly moving, eagerly talking women, and Stephen was obliged to stand there. Wray’s presence surprised him: the penal laws were not what they had been, but even so the acting Second Secretary of the Admiralty could not possibly be a Catholic; and although Stephen had caught sight of Wray at concerts in London from time to time it had never occurred to him that love of music rather than of fashionable company might have brought him. Yet the Secretary’s emotion was genuine enough; even when he had composed himself and was walking towards the door his face was grave and deeply moved. The women heaved the leather curtain to one side, the door opened, letting them out and a beam of sunlight in. Wray took no notice of the holy water, nor of the altar – a further proof that he was no Papist. He glanced at Stephen. His expression changed to one of urbane civility and he said, ‘Dr Maturin, is it not? How do you do, sir? My name is Wray. We met at Lady Jersey’s, and I have the honour of being acquainted with Mrs Maturin. I saw her, indeed, a little before I sailed.’

      They talked for a while, blinking in the brilliant sun and speaking of Diana – very well, when seen at the Opera in the Columptons’ box – and of common acquaintances, and then Wray suggested a pot of chocolate in an elegant pastry-cook’s on the other side of the square.

      ‘I go to St Simon’s as often as I can,’ he said as they sat down at a green table in the arbour behind the shop. ‘Do you take a delight in plainchant, sir?’

      ‘I do indeed, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘provided it be devoid of sweetness or brilliancy or striving for effect, and exactly phrased – no grace-notes, no passing-notes, no showing away.’

      ‘Exactly so,’ cried Wray, ‘and no new-fangled melismata either. Angelic simplicity – that is the heart of the matter. And these worthy monks have the secret of it.’

      They talked about modes, agreeing that in general they preferred the Ambrosian to the plagal, and Wray said, ‘I was at one of their Masses the other day, when they sang the Mixolydian Agnus; and I must confess that the old gentleman’s dona nobis pacem moved me almost to tears.’

      ‘Peace,’ said Stephen. ‘Shall we ever see it again, in our time?’

      ‘I doubt it, with the Emperor in his present form.’

      ‘It is true that I am just come from a church,’ said Stephen, ‘but even so I could wish to see that tyrant Buonaparte doubly damned to all eternity and back, the dog.’

      Wray laughed and said, ‘I remember a Frenchman who acknowledged all sorts of very grave faults in Buonaparte, including tyranny, as you so rightly say, and even worse a total ignorance of French grammar, usage and manners, but who nevertheless supported him with all his might. His argument was this: the arts alone distinguish men from the brutes and make life almost bearable – the arts flourish only in time of peace – universal rule is a prerequisite for universal peace – and here as I recall he quoted Gibbon on the happiness of living in the age of the Antonines, concluding that in effect the absolute Roman emperor, even Marcus Aurelius, was a tyrant, if only in posse, but that the pax romana was worth the potential exercise of this tyranny. As my Frenchman saw it, Napoleon was the only man or rather demi-god capable of imposing a universal empire, so on humanitarian and artistic grounds he fought in the Garde impériale.’

      A host of very passionate objections rose in Stephen’s bosom; but he had long since ceased opening himself to any but intimate friends and now he only smiled, saying ‘Sure, it is a point of view.’

      ‘But in any event,’ said Wray, ‘it is clearly our duty to hamstring the universal empire, if I may use the expression. For my own part’ – lowering his voice and leaning over the table – ‘I have a somewhat delicate task in hand at present, and I should be grateful for your advice – the Admiral said I might apply to you. As soon as he comes in there will be a general meeting, and perhaps you would be so good as to attend.’

      Stephen said that he was entirely at Mr Wray’s service: a number of clocks striking near at hand and far reminded him that he was already late for his appointment with Laura Fielding, and springing up he took his leave.

      Wray watched Stephen hurry across the square and disappear down the busy street; then he returned to the church, quite empty at this hour, looked at the arrangement of the candles in the chapel dedicated to Saint Rocco and walked round to the south aisle, where a small door, usually locked but now only latched, let him into the secularized cloister. It was filled with barrels of one kind and another, and a passage in the far corner led to a warehouse, also filled with barrels: among them stood Lesueur with a pen and a book in his hand and an inkhorn in his buttonhole.

      ‘You have been a very long time, Mr Wray,’ he said. ‘It is a wonder the candles had not gone out.’

      ‘Yes. I was talking to a man I met in the church.’

      ‘So I am told. And what did you have to say to Dr Maturin?’

      ‘We were talking about plainchant. Why do you ask?’

      ‘You know he is an agent?’

      ‘Working for whom?’

      ‘For you, of course. For the Admiralty.’

      ‘I have heard of his being consulted: I know that reports have been submitted to him because of his knowledge of the political position in Catalonia, and that he has advised the Admiral’s secretary on Spanish affairs. But as for his being an agent … no, I should certainly never think of him as an agent. His name does not appear in the list of orders for payment.’

      ‘You do not know that he is the man who killed Dubreuil and Pontet-Canet in Boston and who almost wiped out Joliot’s organization through false information planted in the ministry of war – the man who ruined our cooperation with the Americans?’

      ‘Not I, by God,’ cried Wray.

      ‘Then it is clear that Sir Blaine has not been open with you. It may be his native cunning or it may be that someone, somewhere, has smelt a rat: you must look to your lines of communication, my friend.’

      ‘I have the lists of payments almost by heart,’ said Wray, ‘and I can absolutely assert that Maturin’s name is not on any of them.’

      ‘I am sure you are right,’ said Lesueur. ‘He is an idealist, like you, and that is what makes him so dangerous. However, it is just as well that you did not know; СКАЧАТЬ