Gentleman Captain (9 page)

The captain's cabin of the
Jupiter
was bare but for a poorly made oak table, six chairs and two demi-culverins–cannon which were mounted rather further back on this ship than they had been on the old
Restoration,
making a large cabin uncomfortably small. The panels had evidently been painted to James Harker's specification, for in those days captains could still decorate their quarters as they saw fit, not as some faceless clerk at the Admiralty dictated. My predecessor's taste had evidently comprehended an uncomfortable mixture of the classical (the ship's divine namesake casting down thunderbolts from Olympus), the martial (King Arthur slaughtering Saxons), and the erotic (provocative nudes, one of whom bore a troubling resemblance to the Duchess of Newcastle). Otherwise, all of Harker's moveable effects had apparently been taken ashore that afternoon and stored, together with his corpse, in the house of one of the town surgeons. As I'd leant my head against the closed door of my cabin I could hear one of the crew proclaiming a little too loudly that the house in question was now besieged by a regiment of wailing women, bemoaning their lost Hercules of the oceans and fighting each other in the street over the honour of being his favourite. Evidently Captain Harker's love of the fairer sex was not confined to their painted form.

As Harker's servants had already left the ship to begin their bleak search for new employers, it was Lieutenant Vyvyan's servant, Andrewartha–a slight, dark and grubby boy with an accent almost as impenetrably Cornish as his name–who served young Vyvyan and me a light repast a half-hour later. He bustled about the table as we maintained a polite but uncomfortable silence, then retired to stand sniffing loudly outside the door. I set to with an appetite: there was some cheese, a jug of small beer, a bottle of claret, and, incongruously, a cabbage, which we both ignored.

James Vyvyan–named nineteen years ago after his gallant uncle, I supposed–sat opposite me. I sensed at once that ours would not be an easy relationship. His clouded, watchful appearance underlined his manner; he wished himself far away from this travesty of a captain, pretending a right to occupy Harker's position and his cabin. Perhaps he had believed that he could and should occupy this very place himself, for the Lord Admiral was giving ships to men who were even younger than him. At length, as Andrewartha removed the untouched cabbage and replenished our wine cups, the young lieutenant roused himself, sighed, and turned thoughtfully to face me.

'Murder, sir. It can only have been murder.' Taken off guard, I experienced an unpleasant thrill at his words. How neatly they chimed with my morbid thoughts on the way down to Portsmouth. I struggled to keep my expression neutral as, without waiting for a reply, he continued.

'My uncle was the healthiest man I ever knew. He'd spent years in the Indies where men die like flies, and never had a day's sickness. He'd been in twenty-six battles by sea or land, great and small, and never suffered a scratch. Not one. Only on Monday, the very day he died, we breakfasted together. He was in the best of spirits.' Silence followed these words, and I tactfully busied myself with again refilling my glass. 'He told me how this mission would be the making of me, a sure route to the attention of the king and the duke.'

'Sir,' I said, 'the mission remains. You can still make your mark.'

'After breakfast, he went ashore,' Vyvyan said, ignoring me. 'He had a meeting in Portsmouth, he said, though he never said who it was with. I went to the commissioner and the deputy governor this morning, and it was neither of them, nor any of their staffs. It wasn't with Captain Judge, either, as they always met on
Royal Martyr,
and Judge hasn't been off his ship in five days. My uncle's servants didn't know where he went, for he took none of them with him. He came back aboard about six that afternoon and took a turn about the deck, as was his wont. He knew every man by name, and took his time to talk and jest with them. He was no flogger and no tyrant, Captain Quinton. He looked after his men, and in turn, they loved him.'

This was evidently just as much a model and a warning for me as it was a recollection of the methods of Captain James Harker. Still, I was grateful for the change in Vyvyan's conversation, and took advantage of it. I asked, 'Most of the crew are Cornish, I take it?'

'Perhaps two dozen Devon men, whom we let sail with us out of pity and sufferance, and two dozen other stragglers, like Carvell the blackamoor and Le Blanc, the French tailor. The rest, Cornish to the bone. He had a great name in our county, Captain. Men flocked to serve under him.'

The old way of the navy is much diminished in these days, where so many men are press-ganged, or turned over from ships coming in from their voyages into ships going out, keeping them from their families for years on end. Granting shore leave and other privileges to such a crew is inconceivable, for they would desert in droves, probably slaughtering their officers in the process. But once, not long ago, the navy was a different and perhaps a kinder world. Then, it was still the case that a popular captain could draw most, if not all, of his crew from volunteers, commanding the prime seamen of his native county. Men served their captain first, their king and navy second, and God a far distant third. Loyalties were more direct and more personal. There was a profound trust and respect between such captains and such crews. Coming from an inland county like Bedfordshire, and being in their eyes but a trumped-up and ignorant young courtier, I had no hope of creating such a crew of men; men who, I could see, would have followed Captain James Harker to the grave. As they had, in one sense.

'Cornwall was the truest county to the king in all of the civil wars,' Vyvyan continued. 'Our soldiers bled and died for both Kings Charles, the elder and the younger, from Lansdowne Hill to Worcester fight–but our sailors had no one to fight under, after the navy declared for the rebel Parliament. So the Cornish took ship in merchantmen, or privateers, or fought for France or Spain or the Dutch. Then, in the year '48, the fleet mutinied against Parliament and its preference for paying only its soldiers, and the king had a navy again. He called my uncle back from King Louis's navy, and when the men of Cornwall heard that James Harker was back at sea for his king, they came from all parts to sail under him. This isn't just a crew, Captain Quinton. This is Cornwall afloat, ready to fight and die for their proud Jimmy Harker.'

It had been a long day, I was weary and saddle sore, I was still shaken by my encounter with the Royal Martyrs, and I was starting to become unconscionably irritated by the invisible, all-pervading presence of the deceased Captain James Harker. Too quickly and too peevishly, I snapped, 'As they would have done, no doubt, if he hadn't gone to his grave before all of them, Lieutenant.'

For the first time he looked directly at me. I saw then not a king's lieutenant, but a hurt, nineteen-year-old lad who had lost the uncle he worshipped barely two days before.

'As you say, Captain Quinton.' Vyvyan placed his palms on the table, as though steadying himself to rise without my permission, but his uncle had trained him well. He composed himself and continued. 'He took a walk, as I said, and spoke to perhaps twenty men from the starboard watch. None of them noticed the slightest sign of sickness in him. He was himself, they said, the same as ever he was. Then he went up to the quarterdeck, leaned on the starboard rail, put his hand to his chest and fell dead on the deck. They called me from my cabin and I was there in seconds. But he was gone.'

Knowing full well how unwarrantably harsh I had been to the boy, and recalling the deaths that I had witnessed, I said as gently as I could, 'A tragedy, Lieutenant–for a great man to be cut down like that. But to die so quickly ... well, there are many worse ways to die.' Vyvyan, staring blankly at the deck, did not respond. 'I've seen apparently healthy men drop dead in the street, or at their desks,' said I, determined to quash this morbid fancy of his. 'Such things happen, Lieutenant. We try to blame others, or we blame God, but most often there's some fault in the body, unknown for all a man's life, that brings about such deaths.' This last was pure fraud, for although I had seen enough deaths of that sort, and more than enough of every sort, I was actually parroting one of my uncle Tristram's many discourses on the human condition, delivered long before such profound wisdom (not to mention his bibulous loquacity, generosity of purse, and blood relationship to one of the king's favourites) had won him the mastership of an impecunious Oxford college. Nevertheless, conjuring up the words that Doctor Tristram Quinton might have said had a settling effect upon my own dark fears; that and Vyvyan's own description of his uncle's death, which hardly spoke of foul murder.

Of course, a nephew in the depths of grief would think otherwise, and Vyvyan looked at me with contempt. 'This was murder, Captain Quinton. Who did he meet in Portsmouth? What poisons did they give him? But above all, tell me, Captain Quinton, with all your knowledge of this world: why did my uncle have this note on him when he died?'

He took a torn and crumpled piece of paper from his sleeve and handed it to me. It read, '
Captain Harker. Fear God, sir, remember His grace. Go not ashore this day.'

I shrugged. 'Surely, Lieutenant, this is one of those notes that field-preachers and street prophets thrust into the hands of passers-by every day–the judgement of the millennium is at hand, and so forth—'

'And where would be the field-preachers and street prophets on the
Jupiter,
sir, with a crew that's good Cornish Anglicans almost to a man, and against the Ranters and Quakers and all their lunatic kin...'

I already sensed uneasily that this matter of the imagined murder of Captain Harker would dominate much of our voyage, but we had no more time to ponder the meaning of the note, or for me to try and repair my disastrous beginning with my young and grief-stricken second-in-command. Through one of the open windows in the stern I heard our lookout's cry:
Jupiter,
ahoy!
Royal Martyr,
laying alongside!' There was a small commotion on the deck above as Boatswain Ap hastily assembled a side party and piped someone aboard us. Minutes later I heard firm steps on the deck of the steerage, the space between my cabin and the open deck, and then an equally firm rap on what even then I knew to call a bulkhead.

Three men stepped into my cabin. Two were seamen, their heads as shaven as the crop-head who had attacked me earlier that evening. The third was the very image of one of Cromwell's praetorian guard, the swordsmen of his New Model Army. He even resembled Cromwell, from the portraits I had seen of the old tyrant: squat, strong, his face disfigured by warts. His buff jacket and cavalryman's sword added to the unnerving effect.

Vyvyan was enough of a king's officer to remember his duty. He said, 'Captain Quinton, permit me to name Captain Nathan Warrender, lieutenant of his Majesty's ship the
Royal Martyr
.'

Warrender made a salute and bowed his head stiffly, as they do in Germany. 'Captain Quinton,' he said, 'Captain Judge's compliments, sir, and he requests that you sup with him aboard
Royal Martyr
.'

I was exhausted; another boat journey followed by yet another awkward encounter and a no doubt fraught discussion of the afternoon's war between our two crews, was not what I needed at that moment. But apart from a mouthful of Andrewartha's mouldy cheese, I had not eaten at all since my piece of bread at Petersfield hours before, nor had I tasted a full meal since my repast with my family at Ravensden in the middle of the previous day. It was apparent that in his grief, Vyvyan could not be relied upon to attend to my comforts aboard the
Jupiter.
Most pertinently of all, though, Godsgift Judge was my senior officer, and a request from him was as good as an order. I said, 'Very good, Mister Warrender. Lieutenant Vyvyan, resume command of the ship in my absence.'

The boat pulled away from the side of the
Jupiter,
bound for the dark bulk of the
Royal Martyr,
which loomed between us and the lights of Portsmouth. I swiftly learned that Nathan Warrender was a man of few words; or if he could have his preference, of none at all. The two men who had accompanied him to my cabin sat behind him still, not pulling on oars, but silent and forbidding. Warrender's servants, I guessed, though they seemed rather unlikely as such.

Despite his surly demeanour, I tried to engage Warrender in conversation and prepare myself a little for the encounter ahead. He was less forthcoming than a mollusc on the topic of his captain, and on his own former captain's rank, he who now served as a lieutenant. He admitted that he himself was once of Plymouth, that bastion of Parliament's cause in the civil war, but I could glean no more than this. He seemed the very archetype of the dour Puritan that we Cavaliers at once mocked and feared. We soon fell to silence, and I had time to ponder whether this captain, Godsgift Judge, of whom the king and his family spoke so ambiguously, was cut from the same cloth. I thought,
I have a crew still loyal to a dead man, a lieutenant set to be consumed by melancholy, rumours and gossip flying amongst the men–and now, here am I, off to sup with the reincarnation of Noll Cromwell and some dull, Puritanical captain who will talk endlessly of lanyards and tackles. O God, look down on thy poor servant Matthew Quinton, for he is surely at the very gates of Hell.

The side party provided by
Royal Martyr
was exemplary in its discipline and put the
Jupiter's
to shame. There was no sign of my would-be nemesis, Linus Brent. Warrender and his two ever-present attendants led me below decks, to the door of Captain Judge's great cabin. He knocked, and a high, affected voice warbled, 'Enter.'

Timorously, I walked into the cabin, and was assailed at once by an overpowering sense that I had been transported by a sorcerer's incantation to some enchanted realm. This was no ship's cabin. Rather, it resembled the salon of one of London's more degenerate hostesses. There was no trace of the stern windows, for they were masked by great curtains of extravagant purple silk, trimmed with cloth of gold. The bulkheads at each side were adorned with cherubs and the hangings patterned with crowns. The panels above our heads were decorated with paintings of the present king enthroned in splendour, while above him his martyred father ascended into heaven, attended by the archangels. The fragrance from scented candles competed vigorously with the odours of a dozen expensive perfumes, drowning out the usual shipboard smells of wood, tar and sweat. My amazed eye took all this in, then fell upon a table groaning with sweetmeats, fruit, cold meats, and cheeses. There were silver goblets, ready to be filled with what would undoubtedly be the finest of wines in the silver jugs that stood comfortably next to the candles.