Gentleman Captain (10 page)

At the centre of all this astonishing luxury, so unexpected within half a mile of the swills of Gosport, stood a figure who would not have been out of place at the grandest of court balls. Captain Godsgift Judge–for it could be no one else–was of medium height, but puffed up to an unwarranted elevation by a monstrous wig, from which a little cloud of powder emanated at his every movement. His pinched, raised shoes could have been fashionable only at Fontainebleau, in the court of Louis le Grand. His remarkable grey-green frock coat was studded with jewels that glittered too much in the candlelight to be the paste substitutes favoured by the more impoverished rakes of the City. His perfectly white breeches were rounded off by delicate scarlet garters. Finally, and by far the worst of all, his long, harsh face was perfectly white, a fashion affected only by the most daring, or perhaps foolish, of London's wealthiest citizens.

As I took in the whole preposterous spectacle, a recollection crept into my mind. A supper–yet another rather drunken affair–at anchor in an Irish bay the year before.
Judge? Oh, he's the greatest courtier of all Noll Cromwell's old captains. Desperate to stay in employment, so he seeks every means he can to endear himself with the king and duke. Runs a good ship, but looks more ridiculous by the day.

To my utter horror, Judge opened his arms and embraced me after the French fashion, leaving traces of powder on my face and shoulders.

'My dear,
dear
Captain Quinton!' he all but sang. 'Judge, sir, Godsgift Judge. Forgive my seemingly fanatical name,' here he leant in confidentially with a hint of perfumed breath, 'but my mother was a great Puritan, don't you know, and bent my father to her will in this matter, as in so much else. Ah, but when I think of my poor sister, Diedforthysins Judge, I can but thank God for carrying her off when she was but four ... If it were possible for a man to change the name he was born with, I would be a John or a Charles in the blink of an eye.' He rolled his eyes. 'But my dearest captain, I really must begin by apologizing for the appalling treatment you received at the hands of some of my crew. I have placed the man Brent in the bilboes, and will have him flogged in the morning. Will that suffice for your honour, Captain? We can bring him to court-martial, of course. In fact we shall, we must! Though it would take quite some time to assemble, and he is at bottom a useful man on this ship, and our orders demand urgency, so we must sail once the wind changes. But your honour, sir, shall come before all ... No?' and here he paused expectantly.

Not knowing which part of this speech to attend to first, I murmured something about the mission not being held up on a matter of so little import.

'Magnanimously said, sir,' and he swept me a bow. Then straightening up, he clapped his hands and four servants appeared from behind the hangings, all of whom I would have marked for certain as canting crop-headed London apprentices, were it not for their delicate pageboys' uniforms. One took my cloak, another my sword, the third bade me sit, the fourth poured wine (the finest, as I had anticipated). Nathan Warrender sat, too, his face a mask. Presumably he was inured to his captain's ways. His silent attendants stood rigidly to attention at one side of the cabin. I did my best to ignore their presence, turning to my host, who was clasping his hands together gleefully and simpering at me over the table.

'What did I tell you, Warrender? Did I not tell you that a scion of the noble house of Quinton would be at once truly honourable and truly forgiving? A pleasure to have you aboard, Captain. And, if I may say so, it will be a pleasure to sail with you. A tragedy, of course, about poor Captain Harker–a great captain, and a valiant fighter for the king's majesty.'

We raised a glass to James Harker's memory. I began to relax a little, for I thought I now had the measure of this Godsgift Judge. During the last two years I had seen many other examples of the phenomenon that he represented, and not just in the navy. The king's Restoration mysteriously witnessed the disappearance overnight of those who had served the old Commonwealth and Oliver Cromwell so enthusiastically. In their place came forth a new breed of men, out-cavaliering us Cavaliers in their protestations of loyalty to the monarchy, slavishly aping whatever the court was wearing, trying desperately to find some patron among the king's friends to ensure that their past would be conveniently forgotten under our new royal dispensation. Such bewildering transformations of men had even been apparent in deepest Bedfordshire, which sent hundreds of its sons to fight for Parliament in the civil wars–yet now, strangely, it was a place where Roundheads were as rare as three-headed goats.

Our supper progressed. Whatever else he was, Godsgift Judge was a notably generous host, his table resplendent with duck, jellies, rice pudding, and tarts. Cornelia would have been furiously, unforgivingly jealous if she had known her husband was feasting on such fare while she endured the charred meats and sloppy puddings of Ravensden. Judge's wine, too, was impressive, and most efficacious at putting the captain of the
Jupiter
at his ease. I had never known a Commonwealths-man who could tell his Rhenish from his Bordeaux, but Judge was the exception. The wine was Gascon, and old, and very, very good. But as I drank, I remembered how Cromwell had entered into the unholiest of alliances with Cardinal Mazarin, then the ruler of France. The terms of his treaty had driven my brother out of comfortable quarters at Dieppe to a pestilential garret in Flanders, and led me to fight in a hopeless battle against Cromwell's and Mazarin's invincible united armies. Well, I thought, quaffing my wine, at least that same treaty had brought the finest of wines to sober, Puritanical England; as good a proof as one could seek that the Lord will always provide adequate compensation for human woes.

In conversation, Captain Godsgift Judge proved a fluent and utter embarrassment. I learned but little of the man himself. He was not a man of birth and honour, of course, and thus his lack of social grace was to be expected; he was the son of a Yarmouth shipowner, he said, and had skippered colliers between the Tyne and the Thames before the civil wars began and he entered the Parliament's service. By the time of the Commonwealth's Dutch war he was an able and experienced captain, and he distinguished himself in battle at Portland and the North Foreland. At the end of that war he was sent in command of one of the squadrons despatched to Scotland to harass the Earl of Glencairn's Royalist rising in the west–the service which made him virtually the only man suitable to command our current expedition to the same waters. I tentatively asked whom we would meet there, their amities and jealousies, and enquired about the lie of the land, but Judge stopped me abruptly.

'Time enough for such business when we're properly at sea, Captain. Tonight is for good conversation and society, and that alone!'

He refilled my silver goblet. Apart from this willingness to press upon me more and yet more refreshment, though, Judge's idea of 'good conversation and society' proved very different to mine. He tried so hard to be the perfect courtier, witty and urbane, that he succeeded only in being the perfect sycophant. He proclaimed the names of all the great people that he knew, one every few minutes, as though he were announcing the guests at a grand ball. Had I so wished, I could have countered his list with my own, ten times as long and composed of people twenty times as great, but that was not the Quinton way. As it was, Judge revealed himself to be too deeply interested in my family and its ways. It soon became apparent, above all, that he was especially interested in what my family could do for him.

'I have a fighting record as good as any, Matthew–if I may?–but these days, that counts for nothing. There are men at court who scorn the likes of me, and all my kind–men who were once feared on every ocean from Jamaica to Batavia.
You served a usurper,
they say.
We served our country,
say we. Take this very ship, Matthew. She's the
Royal Martyr
now, but two years ago, she was called the
Republic.
I commanded this ship in the Dutch war, and pray to God that if we ever have another, I'll command her again. Does it matter what she's called? She's just as able to fight for old England, whatever name she bears, and the same's true of the likes of me. But no. These days, it's all to do with who you know–who you know about the king, that is. Now, your brother, for instance. My lord of Ravensden is reputed to be one of the king's oldest and closest friends, I understand.'

'My brother has had the honour of serving His Majesty these fifteen years or more,' I said, 'since they first were in exile together.'

'Quite so, my dear Matthew. And no doubt your noble brother would have considerable interest with His Majesty, shall we say, when it comes to the weight of his recommendations?'

And so it went on, Judge trying with little subtlety to recruit the beneficence of the House of Quinton for the advancement of his career. He was interested in my brother-in-law Venner Garvey's connections with some of the great Parliament-men. He was fascinated by my anecdotes of the king (he roared at the story of the shitting dog) and the Duke of York. An hour or more passed in this way, as I tried to fend off Judge without insulting his sumptuous hospitality.

All this time, Nathan Warrender sat a little way apart, looking glum. During a momentary pause in Judge's endless stream of obsequiousness, I seized the chance to draw his lieutenant into the conversation. 'You were captain of a ship before this, Mister Warrender?'

I knew that the reduction in the fleet following our peace with the Dutch and Spanish had driven many good captains to take employment in lesser ranks. Some of my fellow Cavaliers, young men like me, found themselves in command of lieutenants, masters, and boatswains twice their age; bluff old Republic-men who had captained great ships in the Dutch war. One of the stories that did the rounds of the London coffee houses held it as gospel truth that the captain who had killed the mighty Admiral Van Tromp was now the cook of a Fourth Rate, and turned out the worst beef stew in the navy.

Warrender seemed uncomfortable. 'No, sir. I was a captain in the army. The New Model Army.'

Judge said, 'Warrender, here, was one of the army men brought into the navy by Generals Blake and Deane, to teach us sailors how to fire our guns straight. And to bring us good, tough army discipline, of course.'

That would explain Warrender's attendants, I thought: former troopers, probably, taken to sea as his servants by their old officer, to give them some employment and keep them out of the gutters, where so many of them had ended up.

'So you were an artillery captain, Mister Warrender?' I asked.

'No, sir, not at first. In the early days, I commanded in the cavalry.'

A chill on my neck, an instinct, call it what you will, impelled me to ask, 'Were you at Naseby field, Captain Warrender?'

For the first time, Nathan Warrender looked me in the eye. 'Aye, I was, Captain Quinton.' He paused, seemingly wondering whether to say more. Finally, he made his decision, and went on. 'I was on our left flank–on the Parliament army's left flank, that is, under General Ireton. I faced Prince Rupert's charge, sir. The finest sight I ever saw. Irresistible, they were, with great feathers in their hats all blown by the breeze. Down past Okey's dragoons they rode, ignoring the fire from that flank. When they hit us, it was like being struck by a galloping wall. We stood no chance, none at all.'

As though in a waking dream, I said, 'My father died in that charge, Captain Warrender.'

'I know he did, sir. I saw him die.'

There was a profound and awful silence. I saw Judge's face, and it was unreadable.

'He died well, your father,' said Warrender, at length. 'One of the bravest things I ever saw in my life. If the rest of Rupert's men had followed him, not their wastrel prince, your side would have won the war that day, Captain.'

It was no longer considered seemly in polite circles to mention the war, or to talk of 'your side' or 'our side'–at least, not in polite circles containing a mixture of one side and the other. It was one of many topics of conversation that was now greeted at London dinner tables with the disgust once accorded to someone who had broken wind. But Nathan Warrender was plainly a man who cared not one jot for such niceties. Years later, I read that Noll Cromwell once claimed his ideal officer was 'a plain, russet-coated captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows'. Nathan Warrender was the model of that plain man, and he spoke with plain honesty. Of course, Judge was horrified in case his lieutenant's criticism of Prince Rupert made its way back to Whitehall through me. Little did he comprehend that I was the last man living who would betray any man to that duplicitous prince–even had Warrender not paid my father one of the noblest compliments I ever heard.

Much later, as I leaned on the ship's rail to stop myself falling into
Royal Martyrs
boat, Judge said softly in my ear, 'Good night, then, my dear Captain Quinton. God speed back to your
Jupiter.'
Then, even more quietly, for Warrender was on the quarterdeck, 'I do hope my lieutenant's, ah,
indiscretion
did not spoil the evening for you?'

I replied as soberly as I could. 'Very far from it, Captain Judge. In fact, I valued Captain Warrender's honesty, and the honour that he paid to my father's memory. I would not wish to hear that he suffered for it in any way.'

Godsgift Judge looked at me curiously, as though some mental struggle was taking place behind the ghastly white face-paint. Finally, he bowed. 'You have my word on it, sir. As one king's captain to another.'