The Reverse of The Medal - Plot

Plot

Jack Aubrey and his crew have made their way in a much knocked-about Surprise from the South Seas to the West Indies Squadron lying off Bridgetown. Here Jack meets his bastard black son, Samuel Panda, a student Catholic priest. His mother was Sally Mputa for whom Jack, as a youngster on HMS Resolution, was turned before the mast by his Captain for having stored her secretly in the cable-tiers.

Whilst returning to England, the Surprise gives chase to the Spartan, an American privateer, which manages to escape in a squall for Brest. Aubrey — whose financial circumstances remain unsatisfactorily complicated — hears a rumour from a stranger he meets in the "Ship Inn" that Britain will soon sign a peace with France. The stranger, ostensibly a diplomatic agent named Palmer, indicates to Aubrey how he can make money on the stock exchange by buying stocks sure to go up as soon as the news becomes public. Aubrey makes the transactions as advised, and also gives the advice to his father, the widely disliked Radical MP General Aubrey, who makes much larger stock transactions based on this information and spreads the rumour much farther. The rumour of a peace-treaty gets out, and the stock transactions prove highly profitable — more so to the General and his stock-jobbing friends than to Aubrey. But the peace-rumour proves false, Palmer had no government links (it later emerges that two highly placed English agents in the service of the French controlled him). The authorities arrest Aubrey, imprison him in the Marshalsea, and subject him to a Guildhall trial for fraud.

Maturin receives two pieces of unwelcome news on his return. A political coup has sidelined his chief of intelligence, Sir Joseph Blaine, thus leaving Maturin in an exposed and dangerous position; and he becomes certain that his and Blaine's suspicions about treachery in high places have concrete substance. He also discovers that his wife, Diana, has left him because of rumours of brazen infidelity with a red-head in the Mediterranean: rumours that Stephen started, and indeed encouraged, as a means of uncovering the intelligence network in Malta. The rumours are entirely unfounded as Stephen was unwilling to take advantage of the redhead, who was being cruelly used by French intelligence agents. Diana has removed to Sweden under the protection of Jagiello, a mutual friend (introduced in The Surgeon's Mate), and with all the appearance of carrying on an affair with him. Stephen realizes how deeply he has offended her, resigns himself to her loss and returns to the use of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum. On the positive side, Stephen has inherited a vast sum from his Spanish godfather and become a very wealthy man.

Maturin tries everything he can to help Aubrey, using his colleagues in the government and hiring an investigator, but cannot secure enough proof to win an acquittal — Palmer, the key figure, having been murdered and mutilated, largely due to the excessive bounty Maturin had placed on his capture. Despite Aubrey's touching belief in British justice, his is a political trial given that the Government want to attack General Aubrey and his Radical friends. The court - headed by a Judge and Cabinet Minister, Lord Quinborough, convicts him after a two-day trial, fining him £2,500 and sentencing him to one hour on the pillory. However, instead of London crowds lampooning him, hordes of Royal Navy personnel arrive to cheer Aubrey on. But the authorities also strike him off the Navy List, something he regards as a far more devastating punishment.

Maturin utilises a small part of his new-found wealth to buy the old HMS Surprise at auction, and obtains letters of marque and reprisal so she can operate as a private man-of-war. In part he does this because he remains deeply implicated in the intelligence game and would not sail with anyone other than Jack; he also understands that Aubrey's dismissal from the Navy has wounded his friend dreadfully, and that life ashore as a disgraced officer would probably destroy him. A disgruntled French agent, Duhamel, also makes contact once again with Maturin in London and asks him for assistance in escaping to Quebec. In return, he gives Stephen details of the plot against Aubrey and exposes the British traitors - Wray and Ledward - motivated by profit and by spite against Aubrey.