The Surgeon's Mate

  Rousseau provided no information about the door; 'it was shut' he said, 'it was not open. It was a very old door; they did not make doors like that nowadays.' It might have been prudence on his part, though stupidity seemed more likely than caution or ill-will, but they dared not press him. On other subjects he was more communicative, above all on the decadence of the Temple, 'the finest prison in France, whatever the Conciergerie might say—such clients—the whole royal family at one time, to say nothing of bishops and archbishops and generals and foreign officers, very select—no complaints, though some of them were here for years—always contented—shit-holes and running water in many of the apartments, for cells they could not be called. And all this going to rack and ruin—barely a score of clients now—that was why he could spend five minutes chatting with these gentlemen—in the good old days, with five or six in a room, he and all his colleagues were run off their feet—scarcely time for so much as good day: though it was true that they more than doubled their wages in commission from the cook-shops then, whereas now it was stark misery. Rack and ruin: the whole place was topsy-turvy, arsy-versy—governor had not been seen this last month and more—said to have resigned—deputy governor out of his wits and likely to be replaced.' As for the demolitions, his muddled account was obviously falsified by his wish that they should be kept to a minimum, but it seemed that everything except the great tower and perhaps its companion was to be swept away. Much had already gone. 'And how can you be expected to keep a prison just so in such circumstances, with workmen all over the place, disobeying the regulations?' he asked. 'It is more like a bawdy-house.'

  All things being considered, the door seemed less profitable than the privy, from which free air and free-flying house-martins could actually be seen. 'Once we have shifted these stones,' said Jack, 'I shall make a rope of our sheets and reconnoitre the moat.'

  He concentrated his efforts upon the jakes, therefore; but his efforts were not what they might have been. The crayfish, or rather their effects, were still with him in spite of Stephen's doses and his rigid diet: he was drained of strength and even at times of spirit. Stephen begged him to abstain from such a very noisome atmosphere. 'I do assure you, my dear,' he said, 'that if you continue to breathe the mephitic exhalations of six hundred years of misdirected filth, your escape will be by way of a coffin rather than a rope of knotted sheets. Come, let Jagiello and me take our turn at undermining the jakes, each for a stated period of the day.'

  'Very well,' said Jack, with a pale smile. It was but fair to let them have their turn, although he knew very well how it would end. He had no opinion whatsoever of Stephen as a man of his hands and not much more of Jagiello: landsmen seemed born inept and in addition to that Stephen was given to dreaming, to building hypotheses rather than destroying the Temple, and indeed he dropped their only nail down through the slabs into the moat below; while Jagiello was too volatile to accomplish much. He would be set to scrape a particular patch of filth or to scratch the mortar of a given stone, and then at the end of his spell (often cut short by Jack's impatience at his fumbling) it would be found that he had dispersed his efforts over much of the privy, exploring new crevices, clearing irrelevant areas of antique dung, and once even inscribing Amor vincit omnia on the roof. He would do his spell cheerfully, singing much of the time, but the prospect of escape was so very, very remote that he had no sense of urgency. He quite lacked the sacred fire that had enabled Jack to eat right through one of the seven broad Roman bricks that sealed the left-hand side of the inner stone in less than five days, using one of poor Madame Lehideux's knives, ground down to a slim steel tooth: then once his spell was over he felt that his duty was done, and would return to his window-seat, there to sing in his sweet tenor or to play the flute that Jack had mended. It never occurred to him to steal hours from the night to grind away at the massive brick and stonework, and indeed neither of them ever heard Jack at his self-appointed task, a gigantic rat gnawing at its cage in the darkness with infinite patience and determination.

  In the end, as he had foreseen, Jack's turn assumed greater and greater proportions; and although Stephen and Jagiello protested that he did too much, far more than his fair share, they were obliged to confess their own comparative inefficacity. So, on a day of unusual activity among the workmen below, labouring unseen but clearly heard behind the wall on the far side of the moat, Jack was in his privy, Jagiello at his window, where their newly-washed shirts fluttered from the bars, and Stephen in the middle room, lost in thought, when the upper half of the outer wall fell with a long thunderous crash. The dust-cloud cleared, and there were the roofs and garrets of the rue des Neuf Fiancées. All the visible windows were shuttered except for one, the nearest, and from this a young woman gazed at the great line of fallen stone. 'Oohoo,' called Jagiello, smiling and waving his flute: she was the first person he had seen outside the prison for weeks.

  She looked at him, smiled back, made a slight gesture with her hand, and withdrew: but could be seen still watching him from within. After a while she emerged again, studying the sky, the perfectly clear and cloudless sky, holding out her hand to see whether perhaps rain were falling. Jagiello also held out his hand, she laughed, and they contemplated one another for some time with mutual satisfaction, making motions towards the fallen wall and putting their hands to their ears to show that it had made a noise in falling.

  Stephen watched them steadily from a discreet point well within the dark middle window. 'Stay there,' he cried as Jack came backing out from his hole. 'Do not approach Jagiello's room. You may look from this window here. See: a female form. I believe we may have the classical situation—the captive, the maiden—it is ludicrously hackneyed. But if you appear, all is lost.'

  'How do you mean, all is lost?'

  'Brother,' said Stephen, laying his hand on Jack's arm, 'I am not a romantic figure, nor—forgive me—are you.'

  'No,' said Jack. 'I suppose I ain't.' He peered through the central shaft, fingering his six-days' beard: it was bright yellow and all-invasive; Stephen's was black and sparse; Jagiello's face alone was smooth, as though the barber had passed that morning. The lady had returned: she was watering her pot-plants, unconscious of any gaze, and whistling gently to a dove in a wicker cage. 'Oh what a pretty creature,' he said. 'Lord, what a pretty creature,' and then in a strong, quarterdeck voice, 'Mr Jagiello, play a melancholy air. Then sing Stone Walls do not a Prison Make, d'ye hear me, there?'

  Jagiello was still in fine voice when their dinner appeared: the young woman was watering her plants again. 'The worst has happened,' said Rousseau. 'I was afraid of it: they have started on the outer wall. Another month, and where shall we be? The finest prison in France flung down. I dare say they will put you in the Conciergerie, my poor gentlemen. No running water, no shit-holes there pardon the expression, only pots, which are low. And what will happen to me I do not know. Rousseau will be flung aside, his long services forgotten.' He put down the basket and said, 'It is immoral: it is what I call immoral.' He stared out of the window. 'Immoral. And illogical . . . illogical, that's the word. But at least you can see Madame Lehideux now. There she is, watering her flowers.'

  'Let us hope they are aquatics,' said Stephen as he looked at the note lapped in his napkin. 'Or at least swamp-plants: nothing else will survive such assiduity. If the gentlemen have any washing, mending, or ironing,' he read aloud, 'B. Lehideux would he happy to accommodate them.'

  'Oh, we do very well,' said Jagiello. 'Captain Aubrey was so very kind as to mend my waistcoat yesterday—you cannot see the tear—and he has already shown me how to sew on buttons and darn stockings.'

  'Nonsense,' said Stephen. 'These sheets are only dabbled in cold water. I like my shirts ironed; I like them to smell of lavender. Your uniform breeches with the cherry-coloured stripe do you no credit, Mr Jagiello: they need pressing. Monsieur Rousseau, pray take these shirts, these breeches and this coat to Madame Lehideux with our compliments. Tell her it will be a great relief to be s
hot of the shirts in particular; there is something lamentably squalid about shirts flying from the bars, and I do not let on to be either a seamstress or a laundry-maid. Say we are very much obliged to her for her kindness, particularly the young gentleman here.'

  Shirts no longer flew from the window-bars, and Jagiello was in full voice, full flute, full view all day; he was excused sweeping, swabbing, scrubbing the table and chairs; he was excused all duties, and required to make himself agreeable; Jack and Stephen kept well out of sight, but as far as they could tell he seemed eminently successful. Apart from their daily letters, more and more voluminous, the two communicated by means of an alphabet held up, by singing together, and by signs. It was a laborious conversation, taking up most of their waking hours, and how the poor young lady found time to cook their meals and deal so beautifully with their clothes did not appear.

  The quiet, ordered days dropped by. The mouse brought off a creditable brood. In the Moniteur Stephen read a categorical denial of the report, busily circulated by the now-desperate Allies, that there was a coolness between France and Saxony: on the contrary, the friendship between His Imperial Majesty and the Saxon king had never been closer, and there was not the least hint of disaffection among the valorous German troops. The Emperor, by a judicious shortening of his lines of communication, was going from strength to strength. A continual stream of brick—and stone-dust fell from the privy: small pieces of masonry were hidden in their beds: and all round them the Temple slowly crumbled away.

  Rousseau grew steadily more glum and silent: it was rumoured that even the towers were not to be spared, and indeed on a Monday they saw workmen enter their part of the moat, leaving heaps of stone and even ladders by the half-demolished wall, a sight frustrating almost beyond endurance.

  'Jagiello,' said Jack, 'unless you spread more canvas they will have pulled the place to pieces before we can get out. Proper flats we shall look, if we are transferred just when I have the cross-stones almost free. I must have a cold chisel, a handspike, and some line. With the right tools I could do more in an hour than in a week of scraping. I really must have the right tools. And I must have them now.'

  'I will do my best, sir,' said Jagiello. 'But I doubt whether the moment is quite ripe.'

  'Never mind manoeuvres,' said Jack. 'Always go straight at 'em. Things are growing very urgent indeed, and there is not a moment to lose.'

  'Shall I risk everything at one throw?'

  'Yes. Do.'

  'What am I to ask for?'

  'A cold chisel and five fathoms of one-inch line: that will make a capital beginning.'

  Jagiello walked slowly into his room. They heard him playing in the window-seat.

  'The soft complaining flute

  In dying notes discovers

  The woes of hopeless lovers,' observed Stephen.

  'Oh what a damned unlucky thing to say,' cried Jack. 'I have no notion of your hopeless at all. The dear creature has acquiesced in the disappearance of her cutlery: why should she baulk at a cold chisel or two and a few fathoms of line! I wish you would not say things like that, Stephen.'

  'It was only a quotation,' said Stephen.

  Quotation or not, Jagiello came back after a long hour of silence looking pale, desperate, desolate. He shook his head, and looking across the moat they saw that the window was quite blank, its shutters closed.

  'Never mind,' said Jack as they ate their supper, a supper that seemed unusually plain and sparse. 'Never mind: I shall get a purchase under the nearer stone before the week is out—never take it to heart, man; I am sure you did your best.'

  'It is not that, sir,' said Jagiello, pushing his plate away and leaning over the back of his chair to hide a tear. 'It is that I miss her so. She says she will never see me again.'

  They looked anxiously at the window: even its pot-plants and the dove had been taken in. A great many thoughts passed through Jack's mind, among them a pang of regret for his coat, which he had sent across to be freshened and which might now be gone for ever, leaving him in his shirtsleeves; but in view of Jagiello's distress he did not mention it. Nor did he mention the dismal prospect of having to say farewell to that splendid succession of meals. Stephen wondered very much what Jagiello could possibly have said to spoil so promising a situation, yet for the same reason he went to bed with the question still unresolved.

  They saw no chink of light through the shutters in the darkness; the shutters were not opened at dawn, nor yet when the sun shone full upon them. This seemed final, for they knew—she was not always quite discreet—that it was her bedroom, and so decided a removal did away with doubt, with hope, with all but a forced and unconvincing cheerfulness.

  Yet to their astonishment their breakfast came, and with it Jack's shining coat. The basket contained Jagiello's Lithuanian delight, smoked eel and slices of yellow cheese, while neatly tacked inside the coat they found a length of very strong silk cord, and a cold chisel in each pocket. Jagiello sprang from the table with a radiant face: they saw the garret window open, the lady and her pot-plants and her bird appear. She arranged the pots in the sun, and then, with a significant look and the kindest smile she took the dove from its cage, kissed it and launched it in the air.

  Chapter Eleven

  This was not Rousseau's time, but he could be heard clashing his keys some way off; and he had two soldiers with him. Their boots echoed in the long vaulted passage. Stephen made the necessary signal to Jack, who backed out of the privy, brushing the brick-dust from his hands.

  'Dr Maturin, if you please,' said Rousseau in the open door; and cocking his ear towards the farther room, 'How the young gentleman does sing, to be sure. You would say a canary-bird.'

  'Mind your step, sir,' he said at the coffin-turn.

  'Wait here a minute,' said the governor's secretary at the bottom of the stairs, and as Stephen stood there between his guards he heard voices raised in disagreement on the far side of the governor's door. Most unfortunately the soldiers and the turnkey fell to discussing the weather—fine, but perhaps too fine; perhaps the prelude to a storm; certainly the prelude to a storm—but even so he gathered that the governor was uneasy about some irregularity and that his interlocutors were trying to overcome his objections by reason, persuasion, and hectoring. They reached a compromise: 'He is to be returned before the closing of the gates, and both of you must sign for him,' said the governor's weak, anxious voice; and then, 'Come in.'

  There were not two men with him but three, all soldiers: a big burly full colonel with a red, ill-tempered face, presumably Hector; a nondescript captain; and a dark, intelligent looking lieutenant in the sombre uniform of the artillery. As he walked in Stephen said 'Gentlemen, good day.' The governor and the lieutenant replied; the captain moved his lips; the colonel merely stared.

  A clerk brought papers, the colonel and the captain signed, the lieutenant said to Stephen 'This way, if you please,' and they walked to a carriage in the courtyard.

  The workmen had made great progress since last Stephen saw the entrance to the Temple, and now tfrat the outer bailey was gone he would not have known the place, but for its position. The covered ways traversing the moat now stood open to the sky and the gate-house itself was no more than a disordered heap of stones, being carried away by a long file of carts.

  After some disobliging remarks about 'the awkward old sod—civilians always the same—they want their arses kicking, just like natives—a whiff of case-shot every three months' which seemed to be directed at the deputy-governor, the colonel and the captain talked about their private affairs with a brutal, truly military disregard for their companions. The two were evidently related, a certain Hortense being the wife of the one, sister to the other. But even if their conversation had been much more interesting Stephen was far too taken up with his thoughts and with observing their route to pay real attention.