Gentleman Captain (3 page)

'You found the capon to your liking, I trust?'

Naturally, she had not the slightest interest in her son-in-law's opinion of the capon. Although my mother never commented on the matter, I suspected that she had regretted almost from the first moment her agreement to marry her younger son into this tedious burgher stock. The marriage contract, born of Quinton desperation and penury in the bleakest days of exile, had given the van der Eides their connection to a bloodline of English aristocracy, allowing them to strut a little more proudly to the Grote Kerk in Veere each Sunday. To be fair, I had acquired a wife so pleasant, witty, musical, supportive, and utterly unlike her parents and brother, that I sometimes contemplated the impossible proposition that Mevrouw van der Eide had cuckolded her husband with some exotic foreign mercenary who chanced to ride through Veere in the autumn of 1638, on his way to the wars. For all my contentment with Cornelia in those days, though, the Quintons had never quite received the healthy dowry that was meant to accompany her, and which would have gone far towards retrieving our family's woeful financial state. For all his bourgeois stolidity, Cornelis van der Eide de Oude was surprisingly evasive on the matter. There was always some vague talk of problems on the Amsterdam insurance bourse, or of difficulties with cargoes from Smyrna. Or, on other days, Batavia.

Presumably ignorant of his hostess's doubts, Cornelis van der Eide contemplated his remaining piece of capon dubiously for a moment, then brightened as the correct answer presented itself to him. 'Of course, my lady. As always, Ravensden Abbey provides a repast fit for a king.'

Samuel Barcock, the ancient, lanky and puritanical steward of Ravensden, permitted himself a shadow of a smile from his position behind my mother's chair. The compliment from the brave and godly Captain van der Eide would get back within the hour to the abbey's cook and housekeeper, Goodwife Barcock, and within a day it would be all around the clucking gossips in their Bedford prayer meeting. I privately applauded my block-headed brother-in-law for learning enough of the etiquette of our home in his two previous visits to lie outrageously about the tough, cold, and over-cooked meat that invariably emerged from our kitchen.

Old Barcock cleared the plates as quickly as his ancient legs and uncertain grip would permit, shrugging off the feeble attempts at assistance offered by Elias, the imbecile that Cornelis perversely chose to employ as his servant. As Barcock tottered away towards the kitchens, Cornelis's minimal patience with the social pleasantries of an English table came to its inevitably early end; after all, he was but the son of an avaricious Dutch merchant.

'So, Matthias,' he said, turning towards me. 'You have no prospect of another command?'

Cornelia grimaced, but her brother did not see her expression. I said, as amiably as I could, 'The commissions for this year's expeditions were issued long ago, Cornelis. Our ships are nearly all in the Mediterranean–Admiral Lawson's fleet against the corsairs, while my Lord Sandwich takes possession of Tangier and brings home our new queen. I cannot see how I would have had any prospect of a command this year, even if I had not lost my ship.'

My beautiful, pert Cornelia defended me against myself, as she always did, and said quickly, 'You forget, my brother, that Matthew may not need to seek further command in the navy. His heart is set on a commission in the Life Guards, which is what we all hoped for when the king was happily restored to his throne. Command at sea was the last thing Matthew desired, or sought.'

This was true, though I could still hear the words in my head, still fresh in my memory:
Teach me the sea, Mister Farrell.

'Now his brother, the earl, is using all his influence with his friend the king to secure a place for Matthew in the Guards, where he belongs,' Cornelia continued. 'It will be a fit position for a man of his breeding, away from all these rolling men with their strange talk of ropes, sails and bearings—'

My mother looked up from the last rigid remnants of her capon and said vaguely, 'Of course, my dear Cornelis, your sister means no disrespect to your calling or your kind. In your country, the son of the next burgomaster of Veere can become a captain in a great navy that is the dread and envy of all the world. In our country, though, the navy is no place for a gentleman and a Cavalier. Commands here go to captains who served under Noll Cromwell, that incarnate Satan. If the king was to make the navy solely the preserve of our kind, as he has done with the army, I would be content for my son to serve in it. But at this moment–not.'

Although they warred on almost every matter under the sun, Cornelia had learned rapidly to recognize my mother's absolutes, after which no further discussion was permissible and the subject of conversation had to be changed. Her brother, lacking both Cornelia's experience of the dowager countess and her unfailing good sense, blundered on regardless. 'Then why, my lady, does your king appoint such Satanic captains, and put over them admirals like Sandwich and Lawson, who surely also served Cromwell and your Commonwealth? And have not men of breeding, as you call them, always commanded in your navy, during those times when you have had kings or queens? What of Matthias's grandfather, for instance?'

I braced myself for an imperious explosion from my mother, whose face was fast colouring to flame. Two subjects, and two only, infallibly drew such a reaction from her.

The first was the execution of King Charles the First of Blessed Memory, Saint and Martyr, in whose honour she lit an unconscionable number of candles on every anniversary of his birth, death, and certain other days of the year that she associated with his sacred memory. Towards those she held responsible for his death, she reserved depths of vitriol probably unique even for a Cavalier woman of her age and station.

The second was her father-in-law, my grandfather and namesake, Matthew Quinton, eighth Earl of Ravensden. He was there now, behind her. The vast portrait painted for the earl's eightieth birthday by Van Dyck himself was mounted on the east wall of the great hall, directly behind the countess's chair, so that she could eat without ever looking on the old man's face. There he was, arms akimbo and in a breastplate, attempting to look forty years younger and failing utterly, thanks to his own vanity in employing the greatest artist of the day, an artist who caught unerringly every line and wrinkle: this man who had sailed the seas with the likes of Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh, the darling of the London mob, who had won the heart of the great Queen Bess herself, and whose legend had been drummed in to me throughout my childhood years.

My mother, who had done none of the drumming, drew in her breath, and said, 'Matthew's grandfather was a
mere pirate
–he nearly bankrupted and destroyed the House of Quinton with his lunatic schemes—'

Cornelia interrupted bravely. 'My lady, Barcock is beckoning. The rhubarb fool, I think.'

The dowager countess recollected herself. It did not do to tell tales to the servants of their social superiors, even a long-dead one whom Samuel Barcock had served for forty years, and whom he had heartily detested as a dissolute, godless rake. As the uncomfortably liquid rhubarb fool was served, I endeavoured to deflect Cornelis onto safer ground.

'The king seeks to put behind us all the quarrels of the late unhappy times, brother. Our past differences are forgotten, and not to be brought to mind. Reconciliation is our watchword, now–Cavaliers and Roundheads, all serving together, all loyal to king and England.' My mother sniffed in disapproval, but, kings being infallible in her eyes, it was just possible that her displeasure was directed at the rhubarb fool, and not at Charles the Second. 'Of course, some of those who served under Cromwell and the rest have been condemned—'

'The regicides, may they rot in hell for signing the death warrant of the blessed royal martyr,' said my mother, straying dangerously close to bringing up her two greatest hates in the space of one dessert course.

'And justly executed, of course,' I said smoothly, bowing to my mother. 'But the king owes his throne to the likes of Montagu and General Monck, now the Duke of Albemarle. You remember how it was, brother.'

Vivid in my mind was the garret room in the van der Eide house in Veere, on an April day almost exactly two years before. Cornelia lay asleep in bed alongside me, as naked as a Rubens model, her long brown hair spilling wantonly over the pillow. There was no rush to stir. There never was, for the penniless younger brother of an exiled traitor. Then the deepest bell of the Grote Kerk in Veere had begun to toll, slowly at first, then steadily faster. Guns fired from some of the ships further down the Veerse Meer, then from some of those in the harbour. As the distant cheering started to draw nearer, along the quay beneath our window, I got up and pulled on my breeches. The crowd was running, and shouting, and dancing, English, Scots, Irish and Dutch all riotously happy together. Cornelia awoke, pulled the sheets around herself and joined me at the window. I recognized a few of our fellow exiles. There was Sir Peter Harcourt, worth two thousand a year before the wars, pouring small beer over his dirty face and the rags of his last shirt. Old Stallard, who had once been a cathedral dean and was brother to a viscount, was pulling a protesting tavern wench into an alley, lifting her skirts exultantly. I cried out for the news, but no one could hear. The mob spilled past, some towards the church, others towards the Campveer Tower at the water's edge. Then I saw Cornelis. His ship was at the quay, almost beneath our window, the outermost of three van der Eide vessels readying themselves for a voyage to the Levant. He was in the bow, seemingly attending to a problem in the rigging. He cupped his hands and called out to us.

'Your English Parliament has voted to recall your king, Matthias. General Monck has won Cromwell's old army over to it, and General Montagu brings his navy to Scheveningen to take King Charles over. You have a country and a home again, my brother.' Thus ended England's eleven-year interregnum, and we exiles who had thronged every town of the Netherlands and Spanish Flanders could rejoice at our own, very personal, restorations.

Two years later, at table in Ravensden Abbey, the same Cornelis van der Eide nodded slowly. I continued, 'Even if the king had enough Cavalier officers for all his ships, most of them would be men like me, young gentleman captains who barely know one end of a ship from the other. If he wants experience, he has to turn to Noll Cromwell's men, who are now Monck's and Montagu's. You know better than I how good some of them are, brother.'

Cornelis nodded gravely, but said nothing. The first of the great wars between the Dutch and the English had begun ten years before, born of the perverse refusal of the Dutch to agree that English goods (plentiful) should be carried in English ships (few and expensive) rather than in Dutch hulls (many, and quite preposterously cheap). This war proved to be a very Armageddon on the North Sea, and after a few early Dutch successes, the Commonwealth's navy smashed their vaunted fleet almost into oblivion. Cornelis van der Eide had then been lieutenant on a forty-gun Zeeland ship, but in the middle of the ferocious Battle of the Gabbard Shoal, a cannon ball took off his captain's head and gave him instant and unexpected promotion. Although Cornelis had fought his ship out of danger with skill and courage, fifty of his men had died at the hands of a fleet under the same General Monck who now strutted the corridors of Whitehall as Duke of Albemarle: the man to whom the king owed his throne and who proclaimed loudly that he desired nothing more than a new war against the Dutch, thus finishing the job he had begun.

My good-brother and I were silent for a minute or more, perhaps both thinking of the men we had commanded who were now only memories, even for the fish who had consumed them. Then my mother turned back to us from a discussion with Barcock, coughed and clapped. 'Now, Cornelis,' she said, 'what were you saying about your father becoming burgomaster?'

We were eating suspiciously green cheese, and Cornelis was once more regaling us with the town politics of Veere, when Barcock's daughter slipped into the hall and whispered something to her father. She was the youngest of the fourteen Barcock children, and with foreknowledge of her nature, her parents might have thought twice before naming her Chastity. She was about my age, and had been in love with me since we were infants. As she turned to leave she caught my eye, winked, and smiled wantonly. Her father, happily unaware of her ill-concealed lust, and of the fact that she was known to amuse herself with a steadily rising number of swarthy lads from the valley villages, patted her fondly on the head. Then he turned and began staggering slowly over to the table.

Reaching my mother's side, Barcock coughed loudly. 'The man Phineas Musk is here, my lady. He has a message from the earl for Captain Quinton. I commanded him to remain in the antechamber, but he has made his way to the library.' He gave another dry cough and muttered under his breath, 'I anticipate there will be several books fewer after he leaves.'

Barcock detested Musk, the steward of my brother's town house in London. Where Barcock was every inch the dour old Puritan, Musk was a crafty, carousing rogue with a suspiciously vague past. Cornelia was convinced he had once been a highwayman on the Canterbury road, albeit on no good evidence.

I made over-hasty apologies to my wife, my mother, and, with blessed relief, my brother-in-law, and almost sprang from my chair, such was my joy at this unexpected liberation. The library of Ravensden Abbey was a short walk away, down the corridor that had once been the east side of the cloister. The library itself had been the chapter house, just as the hall in which we dined was once the nave of the gloomy old abbey church, in which for centuries monks had prayed for the release of souls from a purgatory I imagined as only marginally less painful than a dinner with Captain Cornelis van der Eide and the Countess of Ravensden. My ancestor Harry Quinton, the fourth earl, had been granted the abbey lands and buildings by King Henry VIII when that sovereign brought down the monasteries, and how glad he had been to decamp here from the family's ruinous old castle across the valley. But we Quintons were multiply unfortunate with money, and never quite had the funds to replace the abbey with a great house after the latest fashion, or so the story ran. So the old church and its monastic offshoots survived, converted piecemeal over the years into a strange, rambling jumble of unsuitable rooms and corridors that ended inexplicably at poorly built brick walls. My mother, though, had a different theory to explain the oddity in which we lived. The Quintons had ample money, she said, before my grandfather lost it all. According to her, the house had stayed recognizably an abbey through the formidable will of Katherine, wife to the fourth earl and mother to the next three, who lived to be nearly ninety. She had been a nun early in life, and guilt at abandoning her vows for the bed of Harry Quinton made her determined to die in her very own, vast, private convent. Or so my mother said.