FROM THE OLD SWAN, where they bated to warm themselves with pints, they could have walked half a mile along Thames Street and then applied themselves to the lengthy and complicated work of burrowing through the Tower’s gates, bastions, causeways, and the micro-neighborhoods that had grown up around, and occluded, the same, as vegetation on infected heart-valves. But Roger was of a mind to see a thing on the river side, and so they walked only far enough to get round the end of the Bridge, then descended the terraced rectilinear cove of Lion Stairs, below the barnlike mass of the Church of St. Magnus Martyr, which Wren had rebuilt, but not got round to putting a tower or a steeple on yet. Another waterman consented to take them downriver from there. Swinging wide round the riotous congestion of Billingsgate and the broad Key before the Customs House, they pounced upon Tower Wharf. For the most part this presented itself to them as a quarter-mile-long wall jumping straight out of the river. But it was adorned here and there with cranes, guns, a wee crenellated castle, and other curios. Two stairs and one arched tunnel were cut into it, and the waterman kept guessing Roger would go to one of those; but the Marquis of Ravenscar kept exhorting him on, on to the downstream end, where two brigs and a ship had been made fast to the wharf. Daniel instinctively looked at the smaller and meaner vessels, until he recollected that he was in the company of Roger; then he had eyes only for what was high and gaudy. They were looking up at the bows of the three-master. Its figurehead was extraordinary. Not only because it was covered in many square yards of gold leaf—that was common enough—but because of its sculpture. It was a face carved into the front of a bulbous golden sphere that seemed to be hurtling forth with utmost impetuosity, drawing behind it a vast swirling wake of golden, silver, and copper flames. It was, Daniel realized, an anthropomorphic phant’sy of a Comet or a great fiery—
“Meteor!” Roger announced. “Or Météore, as her former owner, Monsieur le duc d’Arcachon, would have it.” Then, to the waterman, “Take us up and down the length of her, and then, when Dr. Waterhouse has finished his inspection, we shall board her by yonder ladder. Daniel, I do hope you are in the mood for some ladder-climbing.”
“I’d climb a rope to see this,” Daniel returned.
“Mmm…any sane man, given a choice between scaling a rope, and going to France on a Duke’s jacht, would choose the latter...so I shall take your remark as a commitment to be in Dunkirk in three days’ time,” said Roger.
EARLIER IN HIS LIFE DANIEL would have counted the guns of Météore, but as it was he had eyes mostly for the woodcarving and the decoration. The shipwrights had made it appear that Météore was draped and festooned from stem to stern with garlands of golden laurel. Victory spread her wings across the breadth of the sterncastle, and drew all those wreaths and festoons together in one hand like so many reins, while brandishing a sword in the other. Above the spreading wings was a row of windows. “Your cabin,” Roger explained, “where refreshment awaits us.”
They dined there on a roast quail prepared in Météore’s galley, “which had to be gutted and rebuilt,” Roger said, “to remove the taint; for the late Duke had tastes abominable even to the French.” The azure tablecloth was embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis; Daniel suspected it might have been a flag once.
“Is this ship yours now, then, Roger?”
“Please do not be vulgar by speaking of ownership, Daniel; as everyone knows, she was taken as a prize from Cherbourg the last time the Frogs got ready to invade us, and became a trifle for the King to dispose of as he wished; he had thoughts of bestowing her upon his Queen, and so had her repaired—”
“What, the Queen?”
“The ship. But when smallpox took her from this world—the Queen, that is, not the ship—Météore became a useless bauble, scarcely worth the upkeep—”
“You got this ship for free!?”
“Damn all Puritans and their base obsession with how much it costs!” Roger bellowed, shaking a tiny drumstick at Daniel’s brow as if it were the club of Hercules. “What matters is that the sentimental value of Météore to the de Lavardac family is very great. And who should be in Dunkirk just now but Eliza de Lavardac.” Roger lost focus for some moments. “I hope it is not all true, what people say about her and the pox.”