Patrick O'Brian: Post captain

‘This is more like it, Stephen,’ he said, five minutes later. ‘Mr Savile ’s hounds will meet at ten o’clock on Wednesday, the sixth of November 1802, at Champflower Cross. I had such a run with them when I was a boy: my father’s regiment was in camp at Rainsford. A seven-​mile point - prodigious fine country if you have a horse that can really go. Or listen to this: a neat gentleman’s residence, standing upon gravel, is to be let by the year, at moderate terms. Stabling for ten, it says.’

‘Are there any rooms?’

‘Why, of course there are. It couldn’t be called a neat gentleman’s residence, without there were rooms. What a fellow you are, Stephen. Ten bedrooms. By God, there’s a lot to be said for a house, not too far from the sea, in that sort of country.’

‘Had you not thought of going to Woolhampton - of going to your father’s house?’

‘Yes . . . yes. I mean to give him a visit, of course. But there’s my new mother-​in-​law, you know. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think it would exactly answer.’ He paused, trying to remember the name of the person, the classical person, who had had such a trying time with his father’s second wife; for General Aubrey had recently married his dairy-​maid, a fine black-​eyed young woman with a moist palm whom Jack knew very well. Actaeon, Ajax, Aristides? He felt that their cases were much alike and that by naming him he would give a subtle hint of the position: but the name would not come, and after a while he reverted to the advertisements. ‘There’s a great deal to be said for somewhere in the neighbourhood of Rainsford - three or four packs within reach, London only a day’s ride away, and neat gentlemen’s residences by the dozen, all standing upon gravel. You’ll go snacks with me, Stephen? We’ll take Bonden, Killick, Lewis and perhaps one or two other old Sophies, and ask some of the youngsters to come and stay. We’ll lay in beer and skittles - it will be Fiddler’s Green!’

‘I should like it of all things,’ said Stephen. ‘Whatever the advertisements may say, it is a chalk soil, and there are some very curious plants and beetles on the downs. I am with child to see a dew-​pond.’

Polcary Down and the cold sky over it; a searching air from the north breathing over the water-​meadows, up across the plough, up and up to this great sweep of open turf, the down, with the covert called Rumbold’s Gorse sprawling on the lower edge of it. A score of red-​coated figures dotted round the Gorse, and far away below them on the middle slope a ploughman standing at the end of his furrow, motionless behind his team of Sussex oxen, gazing up as Mr Savile’s hounds worked their way through the furze and the brown remnants of the bracken. Slow work; uncertain, patchy scent; and the foxhunters had plenty of time to drink from their flasks, blow on their hands, and look out over the landscape below them -the river winding through its patchwork of fields, the towers or steeples of Hither, Middle, Nether and Savile Champflower, the six or seven big houses scattered along the valley, the whale-​backed downs one behind the other, and far away the lead-​coloured sea.

It was a small field, and almost everyone there knew everyone else: half a dozen farmers, some private gentlemen from the Champflowers and the outlying parishes, two militia officers from the dwindling camp at Rainsford, Mr Burton, who had come out in spite of his streaming cold in the hope of catching a glimpse of Mrs St John, and Dr

Vining, with his hat pinned to his wig and both tied under his chin with a handkerchief. He had been led astray early in his rounds - he could not resist the sound of the horn - and his conscience had been troubling him ever since the scent had faded and died. From time to time he looked over the miles of frigid air between the covert and Mapes Court, where Mrs Williams was waiting for him. ‘There is nothing wrong with her,’ he observed. ‘My physic will do no good; but in Christian decency I should call. And indeed I shall, unless they find again before I can tell a hundred.’ He put his finger upon his pulse and began to count. At ninety he paused, looking about for some reprieve, and on the far side of the covert he saw a figure he did not know. ‘That is the medical man they have been telling me about, no doubt,’ he said. ‘It would be the civil thing to go over and say a word to him. A rum-​looking cove. Dear me, a very rum-​looking cove.’

The rum-​looking cove was sprawling upon a mule, an unusual sight in an English hunting-​field; and quite apart from the mule there was a strange air about him

his slate-​coloured small-​clothes, his pale face, his pale eyes and even paler close-​cropped skull (his hat and wig were tied to his saddle), and the way he bit into a hunk of bread rubbed with garlic. He was calling out in a loud tone to his companion, in whom Dr Vining recognized the new tenant of Melbury Lodge. ‘I tell you what it is, Jack,’ he was saying, ‘I tell you what it is. .

‘You sir - you on the mule,’ cried old Mr Savile’s furious voice. ‘Will you let the God-​damned dogs get on with their work? Hey? Hey? Is this a God-​damned coffee-​house? I appeal to you, is this an infernal debating society?’

Captain Aubrey pursed his lips demurely and pushed his horse over the twenty yards that separated them. ‘Tell me later, Stephen,’ he said in a low voice, leading his friend round the covert out of the master’s sight. ‘Tell me later, when they have found their fox.’

The demure look did not sit naturally upon Jack Aubrey’s face, which in this weather was as red as his coat, and as soon as they were round the corner, under the lee of a wind-​blown thorn, his usual expectant cheerfulness returned, and he looked eagerly up into the furze, where an occasional heave and rustle showed the pack in motion.

‘Looking for a fox, are they?’ said Stephen Maturin, as though hippogriffs were the more usual quarry in England, and he relapsed into a brown study, munching slowly upon his bread.

The wind breathed up the long hillside; remote clouds passed evenly across the sky. Now and then Jack’s big hunter brought his ears to bear; this was a recent purchase, a strongly-​built bay, quite up to Jack’s sixteen stone. But it did not much care for hunting, and then like so many geldings it spent much of its time mourning for its lost stones: a discontented horse. If the moods that succeeded one another in its head had taken the form of words they would have run, ‘Too heavy - sits too far forward when we go over a fence - have carried him far enough for one day - shall have him off presently, see if I don’t. I smell a mare! A mare! Oh!’ Its flaring nostrils quivered, and it stamped.

Looking round Jack saw that there were newcomers in the field. A young woman and a groom came hurrying up the side of the plough, the groom mounted on a cob and the young woman on a pretty little high-​bred chestnut mare. When they reached the post and rail dividing the field from the down the groom cantered on to open a gate, but the girl set her horse at the rail and skipped neatly over it, just as a whimpering and then a bellowing roar inside the covert gave promise of great things.

The noise died away: a young hound came out and started into the open. Stephen Maturin moved from behind the close-​woven thorn to follow the flight of a falcon overhead, and at the sight of the mule the chestnut mare began to caper, flashing her white stockings and tossing her head.

‘Get over, you - ,’ said the girl, in her pure clear young voice. Jack had never heard a girl say - before, and he turned to look at her with a particular interest. She was busy coping with the mare’s excitement, but after a moment she caught his eye and frowned. He looked away, smiling, for she was the prettiest thing - indeed, beautiful, with her heightened colour and her fine straight back, sitting her horse with the unconscious grace of a midshipman at the tiller in a lively sea. She had black hair and blue eyes; a certain ram-​you-​damn-​you air that was slightly comic and more than a little touching in so slim a creature. She was wearing a shabby blue habit with white cuffs and lapels, like a naval lieutenant’s coat, and on top of it all a dashing tricorne with a tight curl of ostrich-​feather. In some ingenious way, probably by the use of combs, she had drawn up her hair under this hat so as to leave one ear exposed; and this perfect ear, as Jack observed when the mare came crabwise towards him, was as pink as.. .