David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Cowards, like crows, he believes, consume the courageous dead.

‘This all brings to mind,’ Wren tells Talbot and the midshipmen, ‘my Mauritius campaign aboard the Swiftsure: three French frigates had the legs of us and, like a pack of baying fox-hounds…’

‘Sir,’ Hovell says quietly, ‘might I offer you my cape? The rain…’

Penhaligon chooses to bridle. ‘Am I in my dotage already, Lieutenant?’

Robert Hovell retreats into Lieutenant Hovell. ‘No offence meant, sir.’

Wetz shouts; topmen reply; ropes strain; blocks squeak; rain glistens.

A tall, thin warehouse on Dejima belatedly collapses with a shriek and clatter.

‘… so finding myself stranded on the enemy ship,’ Wren is saying, ‘in the dusk, smoke and pell-mell, I pulled down my cap, took a lantern, followed a monkey down to the powder locker – ’twas black as night – slipped into the adjacent cordage locker where I played the fire-bug…’

Waldron reappears. ‘Sir, the guns’re primed for the second round.’

Strike the pose of naval officers, Penhaligon watches de Zoet and Marinus…

… then you may die as naval officers. ‘Ten guineas, remember, Mr Waldron.’

Waldron disappears. His bedlamite’s yell orders, ‘Let ’em have it, men!’

Small cogs of time meet and mesh. The flintmen cry, ‘Clear!’

Explosions hurl the shots in beautiful, terrible, screaming arcs…

… into a warehouse roof; a wall; and one ball passes within a yard of de Zoet and Marinus. They drop to the platform, but all the other balls fly over Dejima…

Damp smoke obscures the view; the wind lifts the damp smoke.

A noise comes like a shrieking trombone, or a great tree, falling…

… it comes from behind Dejima: an appalling crash of timber and masonry.

De Zoet helps Marinus stand; his stick is gone; they look landwards.

Courage in a vilified enemy, Penhaligon thinks, is a distasteful discovery.

‘Nobody can accuse you, sir,’ says Wren, ‘of failing to give due warning.’

Power is a man’s means, thinks the Captain, of composing the future…

‘These medieval Asiatic pygmies,’ Cutlip assures him, ‘shan’t forget today.’

… but the composition, he removes his hat, has a way of composing itself.

Unearthly screaming boils up through the hatches from the gun deck.

Penhaligon guesses, Someone caught by the recoil, with nauseous certainty.

Hovell hurries to investigate, just as Waldron’s head emerges.

The Gunner’s eyes bear a hideous after-image. ‘ ’Nother round, sir?’

John Penhaligon asks, ‘Who was hit, Mr Waldron?’

‘Michael Tozer – the breech-rope snapped clean through, sir, and…’

Stabbed sobs and rasped screams sound in the background.

‘Is his leg to come off, do you suppose?’

‘It’s already off, sir, aye. Poor bastard’s bein’ taken to Mr Nash now.’

‘Sir-’

Hovell, Penhaligon knows, wants permission to go with Tozer.

‘Go, Lieutenant. Might I have the loan of your cape, after all?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Robert Hovell gives his captain his cape and goes below.

A midshipman helps him into the garment: it has Hovell’s scent.

The Captain turns to the Watchtower, drunk with venom.

The Watchtower still stands, as do the men; and the Dutch flag flies.

‘Demonstrate our carronades. Four crews, Mr Waldron.’

The midshipmen look at one another. Major Cutlip hisses with pleasure.

Malouf asks Talbot in a low voice: ‘Won’t carronades lack kick, sir?’

Penhaligon replies: ‘They are built for closer-range smashing, yes, but…’

De Zoet, he sees, is watching him through his telescope.

The Captain announces, ‘I want that damned Dutch flag torn to rags.’

A house on the hill spews oily smoke in the wet and falling air.

The Captain thinks, I want those damned Dutchmen torn to rags.

The gun-crews clamber up from below, grim-faced from Tozer’s accident. They remove panels from the quarterdeck’s bulwarks and manoeuvre the short-bore wheeled carronades into position.

Penhaligon orders, ‘Load up with chain-shot, Mr Waldron.’

‘If we’re aiming at the flag, sir, then…’ Gunner Waldron indicates the Watchtower, just five yards below the top of the flagpole.

‘Four cones of whistling, spinning, jagged, broken chains,’ Major Cutlip shines like an aroused lecher, ‘and jagged links of metal will wipe the smiles off their Netherland faces…’

‘… and their faces off their heads,’ adds Wren, ‘and their heads off their bodies.’

The powder-monkeys appear from the hatch with their bags of explosives.

The Captain recognises Moff the Penzance urchin. Moff is pale and pink.

Gunpowder is packed into the short, fat muzzle by a bung of rags.

Chain-shot rattles from rusted scuttles tipped inside the carronades’ barrels.

‘Aim at the flag, crews,’ Waldron is saying. ‘Not so high, Hal Yeovil.’

Penhaligon’s right leg is become a pole of scalding pain.

My gout is winning, Penhaligon knows. I shall be bedbound within the hour.

Dr Marinus appears to be remonstrating with his countryman.

But de Zoet, the Captain consoles himself, shall be dead within the minute.

‘Double-tie those breech ropes,’ orders Waldron. ‘You saw why below.’

Might Hovell be right? the Captain wonders. Has my pain been thinking for me these last three days?

‘Carronades ready to fire, sir,’ Waldron is saying, ‘at your word.’

The Captain fills his lungs to pass the death sentence on the two Dutchmen.

They know. Marinus grips the rail, looking away, flinching, but staying put.

De Zoet removes his hat; his hair is as copper, untameable, bedraggled…

… and Penhaligon sees Tristram, his beautiful, one-and-only red-haired son, waiting for death…

Noon on the 20th October, 1800

William Pitt snorts at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Jacob de Zoet keeps his telescope trained on the Phoebus: the frigate is a thousand yards out, tacking adroitly against the wet north-westerly on a course to bring her past the Chinese factory – some inhabitants are sitting on their roofs to watch the spectacle – and alongside Dejima.

‘So Arie Grote finally gave you his alleged Boa Constrictor hat?’

‘I ordered all hands to the Magistracy, Doctor. Even yours.’

‘Stay here, Domburger, and you’ll be needing a physician.’

The frigate opens her gun-ports, clack, clack, clack, like hammers on nails.

‘Or else,’ Marinus blows his nose, ‘a gravedigger. The rain is in for the day. Look,’ he rustles something, ‘Kobayashi sends you a raincoat.’

Jacob lowers his telescope. ‘Did its previous owner die of pox?’

‘A little kindness for a dead enemy, so your ghost won’t haunt him.’

Jacob puts the straw raincoat on his shoulders. ‘Where’s Eelattu?’

‘Where all sane men are, at our Magistracy Quarters.’

‘Was your harpsichord transported without mishap?’

‘Harpsichord and pharmacopoeia alike; come and join them.’

Filaments of rain brush Jacob’s face. ‘Dejima is my station.’

‘If you’re supposing the English shan’t fire because a jumped-up clerk-’

‘I suppose nothing of the sort, Doctor, but-’ He notices twenty or more scarlet-coated marines climbing up the shrouds. ‘They’re to repel boarders… probably. To take pot-shots, she’d have to come within… a hundred and twenty yards. There’d be too much risk of grounding the ship in waters hostile to British hulls.’