Patrick O'Brian - The surgeon's mate

It was only when he had perceived and noted this that he found how strongly he had been moved: his knees were trembling, his breath came short against the beating of his heart, and if he had been addressed he could hardly have answered in a natural voice. He mastered these outward symptoms quickly enough, but his mind was not fully at his command before the coach wheeled in under a covered archway. He had not even taken an exact account of their turnings and he was not sure where they were, though it was probable that this building and its courtyards backed on to the rue Saint-Dominique.

Fortunately they put him into a small empty room for a two hours' wait - a traditional measure to increase anxiety and distress - and as he collected his wits his emotion died away. The place was obviously military: quite apart from the soldiers moving about in the courtyard, there was a kind of scrubbed squalor common to all armies he had ever known. Conscript hands had no doubt whitewashed the lumps of slag bordering the paths and the wooden post against the pockmarked wall, but no swab, no brush had ever been applied to the filthy chocolate-coloured paint within: nor, he reflected, would any navy, even the French navy, tolerate the unwashed glass, the fetid smell, the general seediness. At one time he heard screams, but whether they were genuine or false he could not tell: such things were not an unusual prelude to an interrogation.

The same seediness, the same contradiction, was apparent in the room to which he was led at last: some of the officers were particularly gorgeous, but they sat at rickety unpainted tables and they had remarkably dirty dog-eared files before them. These tables formed three sides of a square, and Stephen was told to sit on a bench that made the fourth: it was rather like the arrangement for a court-martial. What would have been the president's seat was filled by the colonel who was so fond of kicking civilians' arses, but he looked discontented and bored and Stephen had the intimate conviction that he was a nullity, of use partly for his rank and partly, if the army intelligence people, were half as subtle as their political colleagues, to induce a man under interrogation to underestimate his enemies and so betray himself. The man in real control was a major in a plain undress uniform, a man remarkable only for his cold deep-set eyes: he said, 'Dr Maturin, we know who and what you are. But before we deal with the matter of your colleagues in France we have a few questions to put to you.'

'I am fully prepared to answer any questions within the limits, the narrow limits, of those that may be put to an officer who is a prisoner of war,' said Stephen.

'You were not a prisoner of war when you were last in Paris, nor were you here in the character of an officer: but leaving that aside for the moment, you are nevertheless required to give an account of your movements. Let us begin when you were the surgeon of the Java, captured by the American Constitution.'

'You are mistaken, sir. A glance at the Navy List will show you that the surgeon of the Java was a gentleman by the name of Fox.'

'Then how do you explain the fact that the description of the surgeon fits you exactly, even to the marks on your hands?' asked the major, taking a paper from his file. 'Five foot six, slight build, black hair, pale eyes, muddy complexion, three nails on the right hand torn out, both hands somewhat crippled: speaks perfect French with a southern accent.'

Stephen instantly realized that this must have come from a French agent in the Brazilian port to which the Constitution had taken them, a man who had seen his coded documents and who had evidently taken him for the Java's surgeon: an understandable confusion, since he berthed with Fox and their captured dunnage had been jumbled together. The essential point was that the major's paper did not come from Boston, where Stephen was known only too well. It was perfectly possible that even with this lapse of time his doings in the States were unknown to Paris: communication was irregular - as irregular as the Royal Navy could conceivably make it - and in killing Dubreuil and Pontet-Canet he had after all destroyed the Frenchmen's chief sources of information. If the strings of their net were as tangled and out of date as this, he might hope to elude them altogether. Looking down to conceal any gleam of triumph that might show in his eyes he said that he could not be held responsible for any man's description, and that he must decline to comment.

The description was handed about, and in the interval an orderly brought a small book covered in brown paper; its size was exactly that of the Navy List. Having consulted it the major continued without any change of expression, 'You are a linguist, Dr Maturin: I dare say you also speak Spanish?'

'Catalan,' murmured his neighbour.

'The various dialects of Spanish,' pursued the major, frowning.

'You must forgive me,' said Stephen. 'I do not find the question falls within the limits I have mentioned.'

'Your reluctance to answer is significant. It amounts to a denial.'

'I neither affirm nor deny.'

'Then I think we may take it that you are fluent in Catalan.'

'On the same basis you may state that I know Basque. Or Sanskrit.'

'Let us pass to the Baltic. What have you to tell us of the murder of General Mercier at Grimsholm?'

Stephen had nothing to tell them of the murder of General Mercier at Grimsholm. He admitted that he had been in the Baltic, aboard the Ariel, but when asked what she had been doing there he said, 'Really, sir, an officer cannot be expected to betray the warlike movements of the service to which he has the honour to belong.'

'Perhaps not,' said a man on the left, 'but you can be expected to account for your presence there. Your name is not on the Ariel's muster: her surgeon was a Mr Graham.'

'You are mistaken. My name is on the supplementary list, after the Marines, as a passenger, borne for victuals but not pay or tobacco.'

'As a goddam spy,' muttered the colonel.

Asked why he should choose to take passage for the Baltic of all places, he said that he wished to visit the northern birds.

'And may we ask what birds you saw?' said the major.

'The most noteworthy were Pernis apivorus, Haliaetus albicilla, Somateria spectabilis, and Somateria mollissima, to whom we are indebted for the eider-down.'

'I will not be trifled with,' cried the colonel. 'Birds ...eider-down ... by God. He needs a lesson in respect. Send for the provost-marshal."

'There really are such birds, sir,' said a red-haired lieutenant. 'I do not believe he means disrespect.'

'Kick his arse,' muttered the colonel, moving angrily in his seat.

'Do you expect us to believe that you travelled a thousand miles to look at birds?' asked another officer.

'You will believe what you wish to believe, gentlemen,' said Stephen. 'That is the almost invariable human proceeding. I merely state the fact. I am not unknown as a natural philosopher."

'Just so," said the major. 'And this brings us to Paris. Here we are on surer ground, I am afraid; and here you must expect to be pressed for satisfactory replies, for you were not protected by the laws of war. I strongly advise you not to compel us to press you to the utmost. We know a great deal, and no equivocation will be tolerated."

'I was protected by a safe-conduct delivered by your government.'

'No safe-conduct covers spying or collusion in treasonable activities. At Beauvillier's hotel you received the visit of Delarue, Fauvet and Hersant, all of whom desired you to carry messages to England.'

'Certainly,' said Stephen, 'and I could name many more who did the same. You must know, however, that I steadily refused their requests, and that at no time did I deviate from my neutrality as a natural philosopher."