Gentleman Captain (35 page)

I glimpsed Glenrannoch unhorsed. He was trying to keep his sword arm up as blood oozed from his left shoulder. His opponent had a dirk in each hand and was circling, waiting for his moment, waiting for the wound to weaken him. To my left I could see Le Blanc fighting a cavalry battle in miniature, his blade swinging and his horse moving in unison. Only a man born to the saddle and the sword could fight thus.

Then my opponents attacked again, rushing at my left side. There was no room and no time to turn. I felt a dirk sink into my horse's withers, an inch from my own thigh. The second man stabbed at the beast's neck, but it avoided the blow as it reared in agony. They backed away, ready for their final attack. Then they came again.

I passed my sword into my left hand and swung down, then up.

The first man took the edge of my blade under his right armpit. I felt flesh, and bone, and muscle. I heard his scream as he grasped his half-severed arm. In the same moment, I spurred my horse forward and drove my father's sword hard into the gut of his astonished companion. He sank onto the ground, sliding from my blade, blood and guts falling over his fingers as he tried vainly to close the wound.

I transferred the sword back to my right hand and thanked God yet again that I had first been taught swordsmanship by my uncle, Doctor Tristram Quinton, a left-handed man. Then I looked around for Glenrannoch.

He was still fending off the feints of his opponent, but it was clear he was weakening. My horse was crazed from its wound and would answer the reins no more. I slid from its back and rushed the general's adversary. He turned to meet me, parried with the dirk in his right hand, and thrust with his left. So I faced an equal; another who could fight from either hand. Behind him, I saw Glenrannoch sink to his knees, drop his sword, and grip his bleeding shoulder.

My opponent kept himself between the general and me. He drew back from my every thrust, read every feint. He was good, this one, far better than the filth that I had just despatched. They were rude Scots, but this man had the bearing and the method of a soldier.

I heard hooves behind me, and cursed myself. My opponent had kept my eyes on him, absorbed all my attention. I had forgotten to look behind me where Simic, the traitor, with his sword drawn, must be spurring his horse forward to ride me down—

I dared not turn to face him, for that would put two dirks in my back—

The hooves were almost on me, I could feel the earth shake under my feet. Trampled to death or stabbed to death, only that one choice left—

The roar of the shot drove birds out of the sparse bushes. Simic's horse brushed my left arm as it carried on down the defile, riderless. My opponent stood in front of me, transfixed. He never saw General Colin Campbell of Glenrannoch rise unsteadily from his knees behind him. He would have known of it only in that brief, final moment after the general drove his sword hard into his would-be assassin's back.

I turned, and saw Zoltan Simic lying dead on the floor of the defile, no more than ten feet behind me. The pistol ball had hit him on the upper lip, flattening out as it ripped through his brain and the back of his skull.

I looked for Le Blanc, and there he was, at the rear of the defile. He sat perfectly upright on his horse, his arm raised from the recoil, the pistol still smoking in his hand. I thanked God for the contents of that blessed knapsack. Two bodies lay by him, their blood discolouring the heather, displaying the work that his blade had done.

I raised my father's sword and saluted the man who had saved my life, my fellow warrior.

Le Blanc's shot echoed around the glens and hills and brought a mounted and armed party of Campbells to us within minutes. After a few words of explanation from Glenrannoch, some dispersed to set a guard around us; the rest hovered anxiously about their general, and though they murmured in their lilting Gaelic tongue the concern in their voices was unmistakeable.

Glenrannoch himself was clearly weak, but he gave short shrift to our concerns. He had seen enough wounds, he said, to know this one was but a small matter. Once the bleeding was properly stopped it would be of no consequence beyond some days of pain and yet another scar, to add to the two dozen or so that he already bore. Before we could persuade the general to lie down and rest, he insisted on looking upon the body of Zoltan Simic. Glenrannoch seemed little surprised by the Croat's treachery. A soldier of fortune, he said, is loyal only until someone makes him a better offer, and then his loyalty moves seamlessly elsewhere. Le Blanc asked who could have suborned Simic, but Glenrannoch shrugged in the way that men do when they know the answer to a question perfectly well, but do not intend to give it.

As he turned away, Glenrannoch staggered and seemed about to fall. To a man, the Campbells moved towards him, concern softening each warrior's countenance. However it was I who stood nearest; and as I stepped forward, Glenrannoch all but fell into my arms. I helped him to the primitive couch that had been hastily prepared for him from grass, sprigs of heather and the cloaks of almost all his followers. It was not long before he began slipping in and out of consciousness. I sat down on the heather beside him and looked into his ashen face, drawn with pain and etched with something else. Regret, perhaps? The Campbells milled around, watching their leader with anxious faces. He noticed me and pulled me close, out of the hearing of the others.

'Matthew, you must know of the ship...' he began, but the effort exhausted him and he closed his eyes. Ten minutes or so passed. I loosened his clothing a little and placed my cloak under his head. When next he stirred, he rambled of secrets and of the king. Then his eyes were focused again, and fixed on me.

'The secrets your mother and I share, Matthew...'

The struggle was too much and I hastily told him to rest, to quiet, that we would talk soon, but not now. His hand reach for me and closed around my arm, the grip weak but urgent.

'I tell you, Matthew. It is important.' He drew a gasping breath, turned his head away. 'The civil war was fought for less...
for less
...' But he could say no more. His eyes glazed over and he fainted once again.

The general was finally borne away on a litter toward the Tower of Rannoch under a heavy escort of his Campbells. There, he would be attended by his personal physician, a Swede whose life he had saved, and whose loyalty was presumably more assured than that of Zoltan Simic.

As the litter disappeared from sight, I wondered what great secrets Glenrannoch could possibly have shared with my mother. I knew him only a very little, but I was already sure and certain that he was not a man to exaggerate. If he said that the secrets they shared were so dreadful, then that was exactly what they were; and I learned in the fullness of time that he had spoken only the truth. I vowed that I would talk to him of it when this business was done, and I would see to it that he and my mother met once again. Such things were for the future, though, and more immediately, there was a debt of honour to be repaid.

It was with a great sense of foreboding and a sadness I could not quite understand that I turned, at last, to the man whom I had known until recently as Roger Le Blanc: competent tailor, barely competent seaman, abiding enigma. He raised his sword in salute then swept it down and to the right in the French fashion.

I replied in kind. 'Monsieur Le Blanc,' I said, 'My friend. I think it is time to end these charades.'

He smiled. 'Well,
mon capitaine,
all things end.' He rubbed his eyes and face as though wiping away a painted mask. Then he looked at me; his shoulders straightened and his head tilted with pride. 'The name I was given at my christening, in the cathedral church of Rouen, was Roger-Louis de la Gaillard-Herblay. I am better known in my lands as the comte d'Andelys.'

I bowed deeply, both in deference and in gratitude.

We walked out of the defile and down to the water's edge, not far beyond. There, in the bleak, splendid emptiness that only a Scottish beach can provide, he told me his story.

It was true, he said, that a jealous husband forced him out of France and to his berth on the
Jupiter.
But what he had not said to James Harker, nor to his messmates, nor to me, was that the jealous husband was none other than Nicholas Fouquet, finance minister to the Most Christian King, Louis XIV of France. The gossip at Whitehall held that Monsieur Fouquet was avaricious, jealous and powerful beyond his station. It was hardly a surprise that he should have relentlessly persecuted and pursued the ardent lover of his beautiful but wanton young wife.

Le Blanc–or, as I had now to call him, the comte d'Andelys–slashed at a clump of seaweed with the sword he still held. 'I had Fouquet's paid killers in hot pursuit, so I rode hard for the south, the longest route away from my lands, and the one that they might think me least likely to take. I hoped to find a ship for Sicily or Malta. To reach some remote hold where the very name of France was but a dim rumour. But when I reached Toulon, what should I see at anchor but a ship bearing the King of England's flag? And I thought, how perfect! I always had a conceit to see something more of the world than the valley of the Seine, and my king and Monsieur Fouquet would never imagine that a nobleman of France would take to the sea as a common sailor.' He laughed. And on an English ship at that. I don't doubt Captain Harker suspected my motives and my rank, but he was a close man, and forgiving. Once I proved that I could be of use repairing flags, sails and clothes, he questioned me no more.'

His talent struck me as extraordinary, and I asked how a great lord of France could possibly have become skilful in such menial work–the work of a woman, if truth be told. The comte replied that his father, too, had been forced into exile, for opposing the mighty Cardinal Richelieu. He had been scratching a living out of a garret in Luxemburg when his eye had fallen on a seamstress in the street below. She proved to be delightful, strong, plain-spoken and astonishingly fertile, and soon she was comtesse d'Andelys. Five years later Richelieu was dead; the old king followed him to the tomb soon afterwards, a general pardon was issued and that poor seamstress of Luxemburg was suddenly installed in the vast, crumbling chateau of Andelys. No part of her good fortune turned her head one whit. For there, she proceeded to teach all of her children, including her husband's heir, how to sew and mend; for as she always said, it would take but a turn of fate to send her progeny back whence she came.

I had enough knowledge of exile, and the extremities to which it forces men of good birth, to sympathize with his tale. But my exile had ended, and I wondered why that of Le Blanc–
le comte
–had not. I asked him whether he had heard the news that came out of France the previous autumn. Fouquet, puffed up in his vanity, had invited the young King Louis to his glorious new chateau of Vaux-le-Viscomte. Louis XIV had looked around the magnificent gardens, marvelled at the splendours of the house–and wondered where, exactly, his finance minister had found the money to create such a paradise. Within weeks, Fouquet was cast into the first of a series of dreary prisons; and twenty years later–long after that day when the comte d'Andelys and I walked along that bleak Scottish beach–King Louis was finally to complete a chateau to surpass Fouquet's. It stands to this day, and remains a wonder of royal magnificence. It is called Versailles.

'Oh, indeed, I knew of Fouquet's disgrace, and raised more than several tankards of your excellent Hull ale to toast it,' said my new friend. 'I know also that his successor is a certain Monsieur Colbert, who was always a good friend to my father. But the court of France is a viper's nest, Captain, and I am still unsure of the reception I would receive there.' He looked out to sea, toward the mastheads of the
Jupiter,
just visible over a low peninsula. 'And, if truth be told, I have been reluctant to part with my new life. There are no comforts, no servants to tend my every whim; but there is something beyond all that. I have come to know a bond with my fellow men that few of our rank ever experience, I think. These last months, I have borne no responsibilities, had no troubles with tenants and harvests, felt no concern for the doings of kings or courts or great ladies. I have sung and laughed, worked hard and got drunk. I have played dice with the bastard sons of farmhands. What is more, I have come to love the sea. I have taken something of a fancy to the notion of captaining a man-of-war, in fact.' Then he turned, clapped me on the back and laughed. 'So who knows? One day we may sail together,
mon ami
.'

I laughed too, but was mindful of the long and torturous history between England and France. 'Or, of course, we may fight against each other too, my lord.'

'Let us pray not, Matthew Quinton,' said Roger, comte d'Andelys. 'Let us pray not.' We walked on, and were both silent for a minute or more. Then Roger, comte d'Andelys, turned to me, and said gravely, 'We are men of lineage and honour, Captain Quinton. But there is something beyond those things, powerful though they are. There is contentment. Here, on the
Jupiter,
I have been content.' He looked out, beyond the beach, to the islands and the distant ocean. 'But I think that contentment is ended now, Matthew.'