Gentleman Captain (41 page)

But one on one, afloat or ashore, two swordsmen are only as good as their blades and their training. Godsgift Judge knew the swordsmanship of the sea. I had learned mine from Uncle Tristram, and he had learned his craft from his brother and father. I was no great swordsman, not yet, just as I was no sea officer. But I was the son, nephew and grandson of great swordsmen. Cornelis and Kit Farrell could keep their mysteries of the sea. In that instant, my ignorance and my doubts were gone. I had a sword in my hand, and did what generations of Quintons, back through the centuries, were born to do.

I cut hard at Judge's waist, and he parried but clumsily. He would be used to despatching his opponent with one swing of the blade, perhaps two. He was tiring, and we both knew it. I stabbed directly at his chest, but somehow he brought the cutlass back up to deflect me. I cut at his shoulder, but again his blade came up in time to stop me.

Switch to the left hand,
I heard Uncle Tristram cry, when I was but a boy.
No man expects that.

But Godsgift Judge did. He was tiring, but his reactions were remarkable, his anticipation unexcelled. As I switched hands, he swung at my right side, cutting me deeply across the forearm. I cried out, and saw the blood begin to flow down across my hand and fingers. I backed away to gain breath but he came on, swinging and cursing like a Barbary corsair. I blocked him with the sword in my left hand, but now I was the one weakening. The hand was less familiar and I felt, suddenly, light in the head.

I could hear voices calling out–there was Musk screaming obscenities, and Roger d'Andelys urging me to counter-thrust for Judge's groin. I parried more swinging cuts from Judge's cutlass. I was giddy, and could see the shattered mizzenmast of the
Republic
swaying alarmingly, though I knew it stood stock-still. But there was one more voice.
Best hand, boy. Ignore young Tris. Best hand, and lunge.

Judge raised the cutlass and swung for my head. In one movement I switched my sword back to my right hand, and for a moment, just that one moment, the pain in my forearm was gone. I brought the sword up into Judge's side, felt it jar on his ribs, and pass through.

We locked together, and I smelled his sweat, and his dying. His eyes were only inches from mine, staring directly into my soul. I saw them start to swim away from me, and from the world.

'She was worth it.' His voice was fading but I heard him yet. He clung on to my arm and I felt an unbearable pain. 'You know that. She, and my son.'

One moment I looked into the eyes of a living man. Then next, I looked into the eyes of the dead.

I pushed the corpse of Godsgift Judge away from me. I was dimly aware of a great cheer, Cornish and Dutch throats as one in salute to the heir of Ravensden. I tried to stay upright, felt a hand at my elbow and someone beside me gesturing upwards. I looked toward the ensign staff, where Martin Lanherne was exultantly breaking out the king's colours once more on the
Royal Martyr.

I watched the great red flag unfurl in the breeze, and merge into the red that swam across my eyes.

I awoke to Musk and Surgeon Skeen, evidently in competition to revive me. Pain screamed from my arm and my thigh. I seemed to be lying on sacks under some sort of an awning, stretched across what I dimly recognized as the quarterdeck of the
Jupiter.
Lanterns had been brought up and hung from the rigging, their flickering flames still complemented by the very last of the evening's light. Musk said something about my cabin being too shattered to lay me in, at the same time that Skeen was saying the orlop was too full of the dead and dying of the
Jupiter
and
Royal Martyr
to lay me there. I became aware of two other voices behind them, and presently saw the concerned faces of Kit Farrell, red with the blood of others, and my brother-in-law. Cornelis looked down at me impassively. I attempted a smile and tried to raise my arm, then groaned with the pain.

Cornelis's face was still as granite. He looked at me gravely, then he tilted his head. 'So, brother Matthias. The God of the Sea preserves you a second time.'

Kit bent forward, brought some water to my lips. 'It's over, sir,' he said kindly. 'The rest of Judge's crew surrendered when they saw him fall. General Campbell's army has taken possession of the castle.'

I smiled into his honest, good face. Then I tried to raise myself a little but could not do it. I looked down at the bloodied bandages and realized that Judge's cut had torn deep into my arm. Skeen leaned over me and said that if Judge's sword had been just a fraction deeper, all the fabric of the arm, all that made it live and move, would have been severed beyond repair. Where, then, had I found the strength for the thrust that despatched him? I recalled a voice, but my head swam, and I knew not whether it had been a voice of this world, or the next, or of none.

Musk and Kit Farrell both stooped forward and helped raise me a little on my makeshift bed. I could see beyond our shattered ship's rail, across to the shore and to Ardverran Castle, its walls lit by the fires of the Campbell host that surrounded and occupied it. The movement seemed to give me strength, and I asked for our butcher's bill.

'Forty-four men dead, sir,' said Kit, glancing away. Almost a third of the crew, then. 'Another fifty-four wounded, some dozen of those not like to live.'

Skeen nodded silently. Christ in Heaven, I thought, barely forty men left unscathed. No ship in any battle of the last Dutch war had suffered so terribly.

And my officers?' I asked at last.

There was silence from all on that quarterdeck. Even Cornelis, my bold brother-in-law, looked away.

'Reverend Gale. Penbaron, the carpenter,' said Skeen after a long moment.

'What?' I said, trying to raise myself on my left arm. 'The only ones dead?' But even as I spoke, a wave of remembrance came back to me: I recalled Malachi Landon blown apart before my eyes, and poor James Vyvyan stabbed to death by Linus Brent.

'They are the only ones left alive, sir,' said Skeen, bowing his head. 'Beyond a few of the boatswain's and carpenter's mates. Penbaron himself suffers with a great splinter between his ribs. He'll live, though, God willing.'

Cornelis took a step forward and bent over me. I took his hand, tried to press it. 'Your chaplain, Matthias. I have never seen a man of the cloth to equal him. He acts as your lieutenant even now, rallying the men and ordering repairs. Then he says his prayers over the dead and dying.'

'Boatswain Ap?' I asked.

'Gone, sir.' Farrell's eyes were downcast and he laid a hand upon my shoulder. 'One of the
Martyrs
musket balls did for him.'

And Janks?'

Musk's face loomed over me, the lantern-light making him look even more malevolent than usual. 'Tried to charge their forecastle,' he said. 'Fell over his own crutch, straight onto a blade.' He sniffed, wiped his eyes. 'I was by him, and held him as he died. He was ranting when he went, sir. Quite confused. Saying how he was happy to die alongside the Earl of Ravensden.'

I smiled, for I knew that the man who had once fought alongside my grandfather had died with the memory of those great days foremost in his mind. He had died as he had lived: loyal and brave.

'Peverell?' I asked at length. 'The purser–what of him?' The men around me shuffled their feet and looked at one another. 'Well?' I said.

'Seems he tried to hide through the battle in his own bread store, sir,' said Kit, reluctantly. 'But one of the last shots from
Royal Martyr
struck below the waterline, and holed it. The sacks of bread blocked his way to the hatch, and he drowned. His body's laid out on the orlop deck, sir. We gave him his crucifix.'

There was one face missing, then. 'The comte d'Andelys? Monsieur le Blanc?' I dreaded the reply.

Cornelis smiled. He must have heard the story of my sailmaker's ennoblement. 'He is unharmed, brother. He commands your prize, for now. We have had some difficulty dissuading him from hoisting King Louis's fleur-de-lis ensign at her staff.'

'Look, sir,' said Kit, and pointed.

I glanced away to my left. There was the
Royal Martyr,
a floating wreck. Despondent men attended to her rigging and the dire holes in her hull. And there, on the quarterdeck, I saw a smiling Roger d'Andelys, unmistakeable even in the fading light. He turned, then, and raised in salute a preposterously large brown feathered hat that he must have purloined from Godsgift Judge's wardrobe. He looked every inch a fitting captain for a man-of-war.

My memories were returning rapidly. I asked, 'Then what of Judge's men? What of Linus Brent, the murderer?'

As I spoke, I noticed that beyond my immediate attendants stood an outer ring of concerned men. I saw Martin Lanherne, George Polzeath, Julian Carvell, Ali Reis and John Treninnick. By their side was their new messmate and comrade-in-arms, young Macferran. At the mention of Brent, they looked nervously at each other, and at me.

It was Kit Farrell who broke the silence. 'Brent is dead, sir. Killed in the fight.'

Kit was ever a bad liar, as I already knew. Phineas Musk, on the other hand, was equally bad at allowing others to lie in his presence. His face twisted into a grimace and he made a scornful noise.

'When you fell, the men thought you were dead. Word was that Brent was the one who'd killed Captain Harker, as well as poor Lieutenant Vyvyan. So they did for him.'

Then, only then, did I notice that my Cornishmen seemed to have an unexpected amount of blood on them, and that an equally unexpected amount of it was literally on their hands. Thus were James Harker and James Vyvyan avenged.

I felt stronger by the minute. I asked for some
whisky
, and took a mouthful of the awful oat patties the Scots are so fond of With my senses regained, I ordered my surviving officers to return to their duties, sending Skeen to attend to the wounded on the orlop deck below. Reassured that I lived, and would continue to do so, my little circle of followers melted away. The deaths of so many had levelled all ranks and created a kind of democracy on my quarterdeck. Kit Farrell, Francis Gale, and Lanherne shared between them the roles of lieutenant, master, boatswain and gunner, ordering men to the most urgent repairs. Already they had cleared the remnants of the dead. Soon I heard Ali Reis's fiddle accompany the unmistakeable voice of John Treninnick in a medley to rouse the hearts of the surviving men of the
Jupiter.

Musk and Cornelis stayed by my side. My good-brother had no need to attend to his own ship. I could see her out of the corner of my eye, lying at an easy double anchor, pristine and almost undamaged.

'Brother,' I said. It was hard to know what to say to my dour relative, but I had to try. 'You saved us. You saved me.'

Cornelis smiled again and patted my arm. I tried not to wince with the pain. 'I had my orders, brother Matthias. The saving of you was incidental, though when I first met the general and I found an opportunity to talk–' he noted my surprise and nodded–'yes, Matthias. Glenrannoch was my ally. It was but a few days ago, not long after my arrival in these waters, that he gave me the name of the second king's captain. I have thought much on the will of God and the predestination of souls ever since.'

Even in victory, and even when receiving my gratitude for saving my command, Cornelis could turn it all into a dull Calvinistic sermon. Yet I thanked him again, and pressed his hand, and meant it.

'I must write to your sister,' I said, pleased with my diversion, 'but I think my writing hand will be of little use for a good while. If I dictate the words, brother, will you write them? She'll believe what we both put down.' Cornelis nodded. 'Musk,' I called, 'I'll need to write to my mother, too.'

'She won't believe a word of what you tell her, if it's in my hand,' said my faithful retainer, shuffling away.

I thought of General Glenrannoch, and of the truths at which I could hint. 'Oh, they'll be words she'll believe, Musk, have no fear. But stay,' for he was slinking off, 'I'll also need a scribe for the letters I must write to the Duke of York and to the king. Lowly work for the acting purser of a king's ship, but perhaps you'll permit the imposition just this once?'

Musk's eyes widened. As I had calculated, the old rogue was overwhelmed in equal measure at the prospect of his writings lying in the hands of the king, and his sudden and unexpected promotion to the exalted rank of an officer of the navy. But he managed a gracious nod, and then the acting purser of the
Jupiter
strutted away proudly to fetch pen, ink and paper.

I looked over to Ardverran Castle. Lady Niamh's fortress swarmed with Campbells, while the king's regiment held the jetty and guarded the bedraggled prisoners from Judge's
Republic.
I could see the general on the roof of the great tower, that same vantage point from which, so few hours before, the countess and I had watched Judge's ship bear down upon my own. He was illuminated by the firelight of the beacon that served as the castle's night-time seamark. He seemed to be looking directly at me and for a moment I was tempted to raise my hand in greeting. But then he turned to watch as the black-and-gold clan banner was raised proudly over this new Campbell fortress.

It was the last sight he saw. At that moment, a great explosion tore the tower apart. I saw, first, its walls vanish, replaced in an instant by a vast column of smoke. In the next second came the sound of a blast as loud as any of our recent broadsides. Huge stones from the castle broke the surface of the water like a hail of cannon balls, and fragments even struck our shattered hull. Flames roared up into the gap where the walls, the floors and the roof had stood.

A long, slow fuse, concealed deep in the bowels of the castle, had finally detonated. Ardverran of the ages was gone. General Colin Campbell of Glenrannoch was gone, and with him, whatever mysterious secrets of state he shared with my mother. My Lady Niamh, my beautiful, treacherous countess, had taken her revenge, and taken it in full measure.