Surgeon Nash is asleep, down in his warm snug on the orlop deck.
Lieutenant Hovell, who has the starboard watch tonight, will be alert, but Wren, Talbot and Cutlip may sleep through to the morning.
Jacob de Zoet, the Captain imagines, is being pleasured by a courtesan: Peter Fischer swears he keeps a harem at the Company’s expense.
‘Hatred eats haters,’ Meredith told an infant Tristram, ‘like ogres eat boys.’
May Meredith be in Heaven now, embroidering cushions…
The rhythmic crank of the Phoebus’s chain-pump starts up.
Wetz must have told Hovell to keep an eye on the bilge.
Heaven is a thorny proposition, he thinks, best enjoyed at a distance.
Chaplain Wily is evasive about whether Heaven’s seas are like Earth’s.
Would Meredith not be happier, he asks, with a little cottage of her own?
Sleep kisses his eyelids. The dreamlight is dappled. He trots up his old mistress’s stairs on Brewer Street. The girl’s voice shimmers. ‘You’re in the newspaper, Johnny.’ He takes up today’s Times and reads,
‘Admiral Sir John Penhaligon, late of the HM Frigate Phoebus, told their lordships how, upon receiving the Nagasaki Magistrate’s order to surrender his gunpowder, he suspected foul play. “There being no prize to seize from Dejima,” Admiral Penhaligon avowed, “and Dutch and Japanese alike preventing us trading via Dejima, it became necessary to turn our guns on Dejima.” In the Commons, Mr Pitt praised the admiral’s bold actions for “ministering the coup de grâce on Dutch mercantilism in the Far East” ’.
Penhaligon sits up in his cabin, bangs his head and laughs aloud.
The Captain struggles on to the spar deck with Talbot’s assistance. His stick is no longer an aid but a necessity: the gout is a tight bandage of gorse and nettles. The morning is dry but damp: fat-hulled, bar-nacled clouds are overladen with rain. Three Chinese ships slip along the opposite shore, bound for the city. You’re in for a pretty spectacle, he promises the Chinamen, as like as not…
Two dozen landsmen sit along the waist under the sail-maker’s orders. They salute their captain, noticing his bandaged foot, too swollen and painful to tolerate a boot or shoe. He hobbles to the watch-officer’s station at the wheel where Wetz is balancing a bowl of coffee against the Phoebus’s gentle rocking. ‘Good morning, Mr Wetz. Anything to report?’
‘We filled ten butts with rainwater, sir, and the wind’s swung north.’
Greasy steam and a cloud of obscenities escape the galley vent.
Penhaligon peers at the guard-boats. ‘And our tireless sentinels?’
‘Circling us the whole night through, sir, as they are now.’
‘I would hear your thoughts, Mr Wetz, on a speculative manoeuvre.’
‘Oh, sir? Then perhaps Lieutenant Talbot might take the wheel.’
Wetz walks and Penhaligon limps to the quarterdeck taffrail for privacy.
‘Could you bring us in to within three hundred yards of Dejima?’
Wetz gestures towards the Chinese junks. ‘If they can, sir, we can.’
‘Could you hold us steady for three minutes without anchors?’
Wetz assesses the wind’s strength and direction. ‘Child’s play.’
‘And how soon could we beat down the bay to the open sea?’
‘Would we be…’ the Sailing Master squints at the distances in both directions ‘… fighting our way out, sir, tacking unimpaired?’
‘My pet sybil has a head-cold: I can’t prise a word from her.’
Master Wetz clicks at the panorama like a ploughman to a mare. ‘Conditions unchanged, Captain… I’d have us out in fifty minutes.’
‘Robert.’ Penhaligon speaks around his pipe. ‘I disturb your rest. Come in.’
The unshaven First Lieutenant rolled from his bunk seconds ago. ‘Sir.’ Hovell closes the cabin door against the din of a hundred and fifty sailors eating ship’s biscuit dipped in ghee. ‘They do say, “A well-rested first officer is a neglectful first officer. May I enquire after your…’ He looks at Penhaligon’s bandaged foot.
‘Swollen as a puffball, but Mr Nash has filled me to my gills with his remedy, so I shall stay afloat for today, which may well be time enough.’
‘Oh, sir? How so?’
‘I authored a couple of missives overnight. Might you peruse them for me? The letters are weighty, for all their brevity. I’d not want them marred by misspellings, and you are the closest to a man of letters the Phoebus can offer.’
‘Honoured to oblige, sir, though the chaplain is a better-read-’
‘Read them aloud, please, so I may hear how they carry.’
Hovell begins: ‘ “To Jacob de Zoet, Esquire: Firstly, Dejima is not a ‘Provisional Republic’ but a remote factory whose former owner, the Dutch East Indies Company, is defunct. Secondly, you are not a president but a shopkeeper who, by promoting himself over Deputy-Chief Peter Fischer, during his brief absence violates the constitution of the said Company.” A strong point, Captain. “Thirdly, whilst my orders are to occupy Dejima by diplomatic or military means, should these prove impossible, I am obliged to place the trading post beyond use.” ’ Hovell looks up in surprise.
‘We are almost finished, Lieutenant Hovell.’
‘ “Strike your flag upon receipt of this letter and have yourself transferred to the Phoebus by noon, where you shall enjoy the privileges of a gentleman prisoner-of-war. Ignore this demand, however and you sentence Dejima to…” ’ Hovell pauses ‘ “… to total demolition. Faithfully, et cetera…” ’
Sailors with swabs pound dry the quarterdeck over the Captain’s cabin.
Hovell returns the letter. ‘There are no errors of grammar or diction, sir.’
‘We are alone, Robert, so you need not be coy.’
‘Some may consider such a bluff to be a touch too… bold?’
‘There is no bluff. If Dejima is not to be British, it is to be nobody’s.’
‘Were these our original orders from the Governor in Bengal, sir?’
‘ “Plunder or trade as circumstances permit and your initiative advises.” Circumstances conspire against both plunder and trade. Beating a retreat with our tail between our legs is not an agreeable prospect, so I fall back on my initiative.’
Somewhere nearby a dog barks and a monkey screeches.
‘Captain – you will have considered the repercussions?’
‘It is a day for Jacob de Zoet to learn about repercussions.’
‘Sir, as I am invited to speak my mind, I must say that an unprovoked attack on Dejima shall taint Japan’s view of Great Britain for two generations.’
‘Taint’ and ‘unprovoked’, notes Penhaligon, are incautious words. ‘Were you insensible to the deliberate offence in the Magistrate’s letter yesterday?’
‘It fell short of our hopes, but the Japanese did not invite us to Nagasaki.’
One must be wary of understanding one’s enemy, Penhaligon thinks, lest that one becomes him.
‘The second letter, sir, is to Magistrate Shiroyama, I presume.’
‘You presume right.’ The Captain hands over the page.
‘ “To Magistrate Shiroyama. Sir: Mr Fischer extended to you the hand of friendship from the Crown and Government of Great Britain. This hand was slapped away. No British captain surrenders his gunpowder, nor tolerates foreign inspectors in his holds. Your proposed quarantine for HMS Phoebus violates common practice between civilised nations. I am, however, willing to overlook the offence, provided that Your Honour meets the following conditions: deliver, by noon, the Dutchman Jacob de Zoet to the Phoebus; install Envoy Fischer as the Chief Resident of Dejima; retract your unacceptable demands regarding our gunpowder and inspections. Without all three conditions are met, the Dutch shall be punished for their intransigence, as the rules of war permit, and incidental damage to property or persons shall be to Your Honour’s account. Regretfully, et cetera, Captain Penhaligon of the Royal Navy of the British Crown.” Well, sir, this is…’