Gentleman Captain (23 page)

At the far end of the table, Penbaron over knocked a flagon of wine. Amid the laughter and chaos that followed, I turned to Gale and began, quietly, 'I must thank you for your timely intervention last night, Reverend.' Gale's grunt made it clear that to him the matter was closed. I tried another tack. 'We have missed you at our daily prayers since Sunday, though.'

He chewed a mouthful of mutton and washed it down with wine. 'I'll lend you Billy Sancroft's prayer book, Captain,' he said at length. 'Then you'll be legal, at least, when you lead the men's devotions. Good mutton, this.'

I knew from Janks that Gale had dined only on ship's biscuit, ale and port wine since we sailed, and marvelled at his seeming determination to make up for all the meals he had missed. He ate with silent purpose, calling frequently for Musk to replenish his cup, while the rest of us attempted to converse politely on the topics of the day. I found I wished to know this man, but could not think how to engage him in conversation. Cornelia would have known the right words instinctively: in her brief time in England I had witnessed her put down bishops, beer-sodden roaring boys and royal mistresses alike. I had no such gift for the apt phrase, however, and could resort only to the authority of my rank. Vyvyan had led the table through a particularly arduous discussion of the theatrical troupes he had encountered in Penzance before I had the chance to address the chaplain once again.

'With due respect to your divine office, Reverend Gale,' I said quietly, 'we are both paid, and honour bound, to play our parts on this ship. You and I, we are Church and state, as indivisible at sea as they are on land. The king and Lord Archbishop Juxon pay you to minister to my men's souls, and the king pays me to preserve their bodies and this ship in which we sail.'

He tasted the Canary. 'Indeed, Captain,' he said. 'Just as you did on the
Happy Restoration
.'

I was silent for a while, paying close attention to my platter. I noted with relief that the conversation of my fellows had become a little louder. Vyvyan, Boatswain Ap and Gunner Stanton, contrary to all the rules of the table, were now engaged in some argument about clewlines, whatever they might be. Skeen, the surgeon, more than a little deaf, was nodding along to the general discourse with a frown of concentration. None had heard. But such an intolerable impertinence could not be allowed to stand. I thought nothing, then, of Gale's age and calling, nor of my youth. I did not care that the man himself intrigued me, nor that his jibe was well merited. I turned on him, mastering the shame and anger he had provoked in me with an immense effort.

'Sir, I am the captain of this ship. A captain has the powers of God and King in one.' I took a breath, controlling my countenance and my voice with determination. 'I will not tolerate insolence from you, and I will not tolerate you demeaning this ship by your drunkenness, regardless of the gallant part you played over the boy Andrewartha. You may be a man of the cloth, sir, but it's as one to me whether I call you out or have the boatswain flog you at the railings.'

For the first time, then, Francis Gale turned and looked me directly in the eyes. He put down his glass. 'My God,' he said. 'I do believe you would.'

I looked into those steady grey eyes for a while. Then his gaze passed beyond me, out through the window of the gallery. He stared into the distance for a minute or more. I waited, listening idly to the conversation of my officers. Then Gale seemed to make a decision.

'Can you smell that, Captain?' he asked, once again turning to me. I could smell only Janks's meal, and shook my head questioningly. 'I can smell it, still, after thirteen years. It is there, due west of us, well over the horizon. But I can smell it. I can smell the blood on the wind, and the rotting stench of the grave-pits. I can smell it all as though it was yesterday, and I can hear the screams still, to this very day. There it lies, Captain Quinton. Drogheda.'

With that, and without my permission, Francis Gale stood, and left the cabin. The babble of argument among my officers died away and they looked at me with anxious faces, for all were aware of the dreadful incivility of our chaplain's departure. I wrestled with a dilemma: to go after him, or to act as though nothing untoward had happened? It was a minute or more before I left the table, bidding them finish the repast at their leisure. They scraped their chairs back and made hasty bows as I departed, and I heard the murmur of voices rising behind the closed door. I strode to the upper deck and went in search of Gale.

I found him in the forecastle, gazing out to larboard, towards the land just out of sight in the west. I knew as I looked on him that upbraiding him for his disrespect would have been folly; this was a man far beyond the niceties of civility. I had seen it but a moment ago, etched in his features; I had seen despair looking back at me through his eyes. He seemed not to have noticed my approach, but then, and without turning towards me, he began to speak, slowly and deliberately.

'You expect an apology, Captain. A gentleman and a man of honour would grant you one, or else accept your challenge, or take the flogging. A gentleman and a man of honour. I was both of those things, once. But Drogheda, there, put paid to such fine notions.'

Then Francis Gale told me his story, talking as dispassionately as if he was reading a tradesman's bill.

He had begun the Civil War comfortably, he said, as one of the chaplains to the royal court at Oxford, but he had fretted after action, and soon went off to minister to the king's armies in the field.

'I became the personal chaplain to Colonel Sir Peter Willoughby, an old friend and neighbour. An able soldier was Peter, and a just man. When the king's last English armies were defeated in the year '46, we went together into Ireland. But after they had executed King Charles, Cromwell and his time-servers in the Rump Parliament decided it was time for a final reckoning; time to deal with the Irish, and with the Cavaliers who fought on there in a cause now hopeless.' He paused, gathering his thoughts of that grim time. Above us, the foresail flapped its forlorn demand for a better breeze, but the light gusts, playing across the calm sea below, were evidently in no hurry to strengthen.

'In September 1649 they came. Peter and I were within the walls of Drogheda, where he served as deputy governor, when Lord General Cromwell and his cursed Ironsides came before the town. We had some three thousand men, a mixture of Irish and English. Cromwell summoned the town to surrender, but Aston, the governor, was determined to make a stand–God knows why, for it was madness. It was the morning of 10 September that the lord general's army began their assault on the town. That is when it all ended for me.'

All this time, I, his sole listener, stood by him in rapt attention. Of course, I knew the story of what had passed at Drogheda. During the past four or five years, I had spent enough winter days at Brussels, Veere and Ravensden with nothing else to do but read the accounts of the late wars, and I thought I knew what was to come. The lord general's men, crazed with blood lust, had annihilated not only the garrison of Drogheda, but also the men, women and children of the town, to the number of several thousands of innocent souls. 'The righteous judgement of God on these barbarous wretches,' was Cromwell's justification. The sons, grandsons and countrymen of those 'barbarous wretches' nurse this story, and their hatred of Cromwell, in their hearts to this day. That is what I had read in exile, and even now I know Irishmen who will swear to the truth of it all. That is what I expected Francis Gale, who had been there, to repeat to me. Such was my presumption.

'They will tell you that Cromwell and his men slaughtered women and children alike in Drogheda town,' he said. 'But they did not. War breeds lies, and Irish wars breed more than most. Aston had refused the terms, so Cromwell was perfectly entitled to unleash the sword of wrath against our men. That much I can accept. I saw them beat Aston's brains out with his wooden leg and then hack him to pieces, and that, too, I can accept, for it was his obstinacy and stupidity that brought calamity down upon us that day.' Gale paused and screwed up his eyes, as though hoping to see the towers of Drogheda once more, too far distant though they were.

'But I saw Peter Willoughby, my friend, walk out with his sword presented in surrender, and I saw four Ironsides cut him down. They called him Irish filth and papist dog.' Gale's voice shook though he remained perfectly still, leaning upon the rail. 'Willoughby, with not a drop of Irish blood in his body, and his family the most loyal sons of the Church of England you'd find in Shropshire. And when he had fallen, they carried on hacking at his corpse, and fed his parts to the dogs of Drogheda town, while their soldiers and officers alike stood around, and laughed. And they did this, when the battle was all but won.'

Gale stopped, struggling to compose himself. Now I thought I understood. From childhood, I had known the depth of my mother's bitterness at the death of her husband–and that was an honourable death in a fair fight. For Gale, the wretched and ignoble death of his friend must have left a wound such as I could scarce imagine.

'Women and children were not slaughtered out of hand, as I have said,' he went on. 'But enough of them fell, that day. There was one ... Catherine Slaney, her name was. Of a good Dublin family.' His eyes were bright and his mouth drawn, and though the last rays of the sun burnished his features I saw pain imprinted everywhere.

'Once they had finished their sport with Peter Willoughby, they came into the tower. I was lying there. I had been wounded as my friend was being ... mutilated. I did not even have my sword. The battle was long over, but the first man into the room, he came for me with a half-pike. I could do nothing. And she...' I saw his hands grip tight around the wooden rail. 'She threw herself in front of him. She took the point intended for me. She took it in her belly. We had been lovers for two years, and she was carrying my child.'

Nearly becalmed as we were, there still came the usual sounds of a ship at sea–the lightest of breezes in the rigging, the water lapping against the hull. Yet even these could not break the utter and complete silence that prevailed on our forecastle, as the sun finally set over Drogheda. I think I shall only know that silence again when they place me in my grave.

At last, Gale looked at me. When he spoke, he was calm once more. 'His Majesty and the archbishop tell us that we must be reconciled, Captain. We must forgive and forget what passed in the late wars. We must be good neighbours again, Roundheads and Cavaliers. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us the same thing, and I am His servant. But I defy them all, here again tonight, as I have these thirteen long years. God and the king and the archbishop and Billy Sancroft can preach at me all they want, Captain Quinton, but I will not be reconciled to the men who shared a cause with those who slaughtered Peter Willoughby, Catherine Slaney ... and my child.'

At that moment the bright stern lanterns of the
Royal Martyr
twinkled out, illuminating the dark hull of the ship. Beneath them, light poured from the windows of Godsgift Judge's great cabin. Judge, who had fought for the same man who ordered that final assault on Drogheda.

'I will not forgive,' said Gale in a low voice, 'and I will never forget. But at least, in my cups, I can find oblivion.'

I struggled to think of words that I could say to him, but there were none. Only one I knew might have found those words, but he had died on a cross long ago. Francis Gale spared me the ignominy of specious platitudes.

'Captain Quinton, you are only the second man in thirteen years who has heard that story. Telling it to Billy was one thing, but telling it to you, an utter stranger, is another.' The ship's bell tolled, and he nodded, as though agreeing with a friend's sage observation. 'You know, perhaps the papists have the right of it. Perhaps confession truly is good for the soul. I feel somewhat lighter in the heart than I have felt in some time.'

A strange thought came to me, in the way that such thoughts sometimes do, unsought and unheralded. 'The boy, Andrewartha. He'd be about the age a son of yours would have been by now, wouldn't he?'

Francis Gale looked at me curiously for a while. 'You're a man of surprises, Captain Quinton. God knows, you are too young to bear that rank, despite your name and your lineage. But there's something to you, after all.' He nodded slowly, and essayed the ghost of a smile. 'Yes, Captain. He's about the age my child would be.'

We stood for a minute, looking at the bright lights of the
Royal Martyr.
Then Gale stirred, and laid his hand upon my arm. 'Time for us to return to the table, I think, with your permission? We have a good meal to finish, and a new princess to toast, after all. And you have my apology for my unspeakable conduct, sir.'

The breeze came up again in the middle of the night. I was awake in my sea-bed as the last of my candles died, thinking on Francis Gale's story and the ruin of his life, when I felt the motion of the ship begin again. It must have lulled me to sleep, for some time beyond dawn I heard the distant tolling of our bell and woke to see from my cabin windows the coast of Antrim to larboard, that of Kintyre to starboard. Ireland and Scotland, but a few miles apart and clearly visible. Musk arrived to shave me, and said that our pilot had come aboard in the night, and had taken on his duty of advising Landon in our navigation. After narrowly avoiding having my throat slit by Musk's efforts with the razor, I dressed and climbed impatiently up on deck.