The Battle of All the Ages (12 page)

I noticed that the fat old Duke was moving even more awkwardly than usual.

‘You are hurt, Your Grace?’

‘Grapeshot in the arse, Quinton. God knows what the court wits will make of that.’

Perhaps in the heat of battle, Albemarle had forgotten that perhaps the most vicious of the court wits was aboard my ship. Indeed, he was standing nearby, well within earshot. That same wit duly smirked.

‘And lo,’ said the Earl of Rochester as we pulled away from the flagship, ‘in the midst of battle, a godsend to the poet.
Arse
will rhyme eminently well with either
Mars
or
farce
.’

But soon I had more serious matters to contemplate, for the
withdrawal
was a catastrophe. Our retreat on the previous day, before Rupert’s ships rejoined, was an organised, almost impressive affair, with the fleet’s strongest ships in the rear to ward off the Dutch attacks. Now, though, our dispositions during De Ruyter’s last attack meant that the weakest ships were left at the rear of our retreat, and the Dutch fell upon them like furies. The
Black Bull
was taken, and the
Clove Tree
: Dutch prizes, these, so perhaps no great loss. But I saw the colours come down on the
Essex
, a stout man-of-war not much smaller than the
Sceptre
, and thus nearly as dreadful a loss as that of Will Berkeley’s
Swiftsure
on the first day. We could do nothing but watch
from a distance: our duty was to protect the flag, and that meant we were among the stronger ships in the van of the fleet, unable to respond to the carnage astern. God knows how much more havoc the Dutch might have wreaked under their bloody flag, had not England’s unfailing guardian come to our aid: that is to say, the weather
intervened
. A little before seven in the evening, or two bells of the Last Dog, a thick fog came down. Under its cover, we ran for the King’s Channel and safety. Some tried to dress it in fine words, but there is no doubting what it was: a chaotic, headlong retreat. The Dutch did not pursue us, but they did not need to. Their work was done. England’s proud Navy Royal had been shattered and, worse, humiliated.

‘And now the real battle starts,’ said Musk, grey-faced and wheezing from his exertions during the great four-day fight.

‘The real battle, Musk?’ said Francis Gale, nursing a wound to his left hip that he had taken in our last fight with the Frisian.

‘The battle to assign blame. The Prince will blame the Duke. The Duke will blame the Prince. Parliament will blame the King. The King will blame Parliament. Minister will blame minister – Clarendon will say it was all Arlington’s fault, Arlington that it was all Clarendon’s doing. There’ll be riots in the streets as the mob blames whoever they can think of. Who ordered the fleet divided? On what intelligence? The country won’t be happy until someone swings for this.’

It was a gloomy assessment, but I knew enough of our court, and the mind of the Englishman, to know that Musk spoke nothing but the truth. And in an England where the crown had been restored barely six years before, where many still looked back nostalgically to what they called the triumphant days of Cromwell, who could say what the effects of such a catastrophe might be?

For the moment, though, I had rather more immediate concerns. We still had to get into the river, but my ship’s master, a fellow of Trinity House who knew these waters as well as any man, was dead. Although Urquhart, the erstwhile boatswain, seemed confident in his
command of the charts, he was a Scotsman, familiar with Forth and Tay but rather less so with the Thames. I had visions of us
surviving
the great Four Days’ Fight, only to perish as the
Sceptre
broke her back, ploughing onto an unseen sandbank. So although we had nearly all sail set and wetted, we sounded every fifteen minutes, and kept a careful watch on the ships ahead of us. Slowly, though, the fog thinned a little, until at last it was possible to make out a shore, a few miles to starboard.

‘The Naze seamark bears west by north, five miles, Sir Matthew!’ cried Urquhart, in his thick Scots accent.

There it was, by God! England’s dear, blessed shore. It was some moments before I realised that the sight had brought me to tears of joy and relief.

Truly, never was any Englishman happier to see Essex.

The shattered fleet lay at the Buoy of the Nore. The
Royal Sceptre
was quite close to Sheppey’s shore, the squat tower of Minster Abbey clearly visible almost due south of where we swung at single anchor. The carpenter’s crew swarmed over the forecastle, removing the
remnants
of shattered timbers and hammering their replacements into position. Other men were in the waist, sewing up shot-holes in the sails or fixing patches where the holes were too large to be sewn. On every tide, barges were bringing down shipwrights and planking from the dockyard at Chatham, or barrels of powder from the ordnance store at Upnor Castle. Only the ships with the very worst damage were going up to the dockyard itself. Depending on wind and tide, it could sometimes take days to negotiate the tortuous channel of the Medway in each direction; besides, Chatham could only have four ships in its
dry docks at any one time. Better by far to bring the dockyard to the fleet, especially as time was at a premium. We had to repair the ships and put to sea once again before the Dutch could follow up the
advantage
they had gained in the Four Days’ Fight. Thus there was no shore leave, an edict that caused not a few murmurings on the lower deck. Every hand was needed for the businesses of repairing, revictualling and rearming.

I paced the deck impatiently, giving words of encouragement here and admonishing men to work faster there. I was hardly recognisable as a captain and a knight of the realm: with most of my wardrobe having been sacrificed to douse the flames during the fireship attack, I was clad in a slop shirt and breeches. Somehow, though, it seemed more appropriate gear for the urgency of our work, and it was that, rather than the inadequacy of my wardrobe, which made me turn down Captain Kit Farrell’s invitation to dine with him aboard the
Black Prince
, moored off Queenborough. I was determined that the
Sceptre
would be ready to sail with the fleet, but I also had a more personal reason to be at the Dutch again as quickly as possible. Put simply, I was determined to avenge Will Berkeley. My friend had died to redeem his honour; instead, the latest intelligence out of Holland stated that his decomposing corpse was on display in a sugar-chest in the Hague, no doubt being mocked by every mean Dutch moneylender and fishwife. Almost as bad, it was said that the captured Sir George Ayscue had been painted, had a tail stuck on him, and been paraded through the streets to suffer the derision of the rude Dutch. It was too much for any Englishman of honour to bear. Admiral Michiel De Ruyter and their High Mightinesses of the States-General would pay for their disrespect. On that, I was determined.

(As is the way with such ‘intelligence’, which is swiftly embellished by every idle rogue who frequents inns, coffee houses, brothels, and Parliament, it all proved to be so much cant, as we later learned: in
truth, Ayscue was treated with respect, while Will’s body was embalmed and laid to rest reverentially in the Great Church of the Hague before being returned later in the year for burial at Westminster Abbey. But I find that the truth accords only rarely with the mood of those
intemperate
, irrational beasts, the English. Even so, the same truth would not have mattered much to me back then, in the middle days of June, 1666. The Dutch could have canonised Will Berkeley and built a vast shrine to him, but I would still have been set on avenging my dear friend’s pointless death. I could not wreak vengeance on the man I really held responsible for his slaughter, namely George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, so the Dutch would have to do.)

A small squadron of victualling hoys was in sight, coming out of the river from London. Urquhart stood at the starboard rail of the quarterdeck, watching them intently through his telescope; a new lieutenant was to be commissioned to the
Royal Sceptre
, or so Prince Rupert had told me, but he was still to join the ship.

‘Let us pray that one of them is bringing our beef and beer, Mister Urquhart’ I said. ‘Another day of old biscuit and mouldy cheese, and I fear we shall have mutiny on our hands.’

Urquhart seemed not to hear me. ‘Strange, Sir Matthew – one of the royal yachts sails in their wake.’

‘Flying a standard?’

‘No, sir. Neither that of the King nor the Lord Admiral.’

‘Then I expect she bears despatches from Whitehall for the generals.’

‘Her course isn’t set for the
Royal Charles
, Sir Matthew. It’s set for us.’

He handed me his telescope, and I focused on the distant fleet of hoys. There, indeed, was the yacht. Her men were sheeting home her sails as she moved out from behind the victuallers, bearing down on her new course. A course that was plainly set directly for the
Royal Sceptre
.

I kept the telescope fixed on the yacht. She was a trim little craft, one of the newer ones that the King had had built for his amusement.
Her captain brought her smartly under our lee and handed what appeared to be a letter to the Marine on duty at the port. The
missive
was brought to me on the quarterdeck. I recognised the seal well enough; the familiar coat of arms should have been reassuring, but in the circumstances, it was anything but. I broke the seal, unfolded the letter, and read the contents.

I was aware of Urquhart’s eyes upon me. I looked up and essayed a smile, although I suspect it might have been an unconvincing attempt.

‘I am to go to London. Immediately. In the yacht, yonder. My belongings to be sent up to town after me. Until the new lieutenant embarks, you have the ship, Mister Urquhart.’

Ravensden House, the London seat of the Quinton Earls, was a decrepit, rambling establishment. It consisted principally of a middling Tudor merchant’s house, backing on to older, ramshackle outbuildings and a gimcrack new wing thrown up some seventy years earlier by a
villainous
, incompetent builder who fleeced my grandfather mercilessly. Much of the house had been closed up since old Earl Matthew’s death in 1645; my brother, whose tastes were spartan, maintained only a few rooms for himself. But during the winter, the Jacobean wing had been opened up, cleaned, and transformed into the new quarters for Sir Matthew Quinton and his Dutch wife. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the landlord of our previous rooms near the Tower had increased the rent dramatically, reckoning that now Sir Matthew was a knight of the realm, he could afford to pay whatever ludicrous price the rogue demanded. Secondly, brother Charles, too, had meditated upon the implications of my elevation, and decided that Ravensden House was a more fitting residence for the newly-knighted heir to the earldom. Thirdly, and most importantly, my wife Cornelia was never content in one place for very long, and decided that her new status demanded a home rather closer to the court at Whitehall. Thus I had
returned from my previous command of the Cressy to find that which the French term a
fait accompli
. Cornelia was resident at Ravensden House, and therefore so was I.

The yacht had landed me at Tower Wharf, whence a waterman rowed me up to Queenhithe, a relatively short walk from our new home. I found my wife in the parlour, vomiting into a bucket.

‘Cornelia, my love!’ I cried, rushing to her side and holding her gently. ‘What ails you?’

It was less than a year since the plague had swept through
London
like a malevolent tide of death, carrying away thousands before it. Deep down, every Londoner watched every cough, every sweat, every stool, every vomit, for signs of its return. That was my first thought; I discounted the possibility that she might be with child, for after eight barren years of marriage, even the optimistic Cornelia seemed to have accepted our fate. She had even found a kindred spirit in her new friend Elizabeth, the French wife of Mister Samuel Pepys, Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, to whom all of the navy’s sea-captains reported; similarly childless after an even longer
marriage
, the worryingly outspoken Elizabeth Pepys had become a great solace to my wife.

‘Matthew!’ she cried in surprise, looking up from the bucket and wiping her mouth on her sleeve. ‘An undercooked chicken, nothing more. But how can you be here, husband? Why have you come away from the fleet?’

‘A summons from Charles, to meet him here. He said nothing of it to you?’

‘I have not seen him for three days. Besides, husband, your brother shares his business with no man, let alone with any woman.’

She stood up, looked me up and down, prodded me about the ribs, then clasped me tightly and kissed me vigorously (on the cheeks; even the enthusiastic Cornelia realised that my mouth needed to be out of bounds after her so-recent evacuation).

‘You were truly not wounded, then?’

Inevitably, that was the moment she chose to fling her arms over my shoulders. I nearly cried out in agony.

‘Bruising,’ I said, gasping for breath. ‘A fall. Nothing worse, thanks be to God.’

‘Amen, husband!’ She lowered her arms, holding me tightly around the waist instead. ‘But it must have been horrible – four days of it, Matthew? And all those good souls dead, on both sides… Poor Will Berkeley, above all!
God in hemel
, I pray that the reports from Amsterdam about the treatment of his body are not true.’

Cornelia and I held each other for some little time, during which her new lady’s maid, a simpering girl named Lettice, entered, blushed, curtsied, and then discreetly removed the sick-bucket.

‘You are sure you are well?’ I asked.

‘I have told you so,’ said Cornelia with a flash of indignation. ‘Chicken. No more.’

But she did not meet my eyes, and I wondered if she was keeping something from me. Any thought I might have had of pressing her on the matter was extinguished by the arrival of my brother. As was Charles’s way, there was no ceremony or noise about his entry; one moment he was not there, the next he was, his slight, stooped figure standing silently by my side.

‘You have been an unconscionable time getting here, brother,’ he said in his familiar, quiet and slightly breathless way.

‘My apologies, My Lord. The yacht came upstream as quickly as it could, given the state of wind and tide.’

Charles Quinton, tenth Earl of Ravensden, shook his head. He was an exceptionally intelligent man, but he had some kind of void in his mind when it came to anything relating to the sea. The fact that a ship simply could not move when or where it willed, after the fashion of a man upon a horse, was to him at best a damnable inconvenience, at worst a significant flaw in God’s creation.

‘We must ride to the King,’ Charles said. ‘At once. My apologies, Cornelia.’

My brother took his good-sister’s hand and kissed it. In such niceties, at least, he was always the perfect gentleman.

The stable-boy of Ravensden House had already saddled two horses, mine being a lively grey that I had ridden twice or thrice before. We made our way out onto the Strand, negotiating a path through the endless stream of carts and coaches, riding west toward the Charing Cross.

All the way, Charles said not a word; no hint at all of why the King required our presence. I knew better than to raise the subject. My brother was a quiet soul, guarded in his words and actions: a man who lived with the bodily pain of the musket-balls that had smashed into him at the Worcester fight, and the mental pain of knowing that he was, perhaps, not the rightful Earl of Ravensden at all, but rather the bastard son of Charles the First, King and Martyr. Yet there was another side to him, too, one known only to very few. Using the alias of Lord Percival, Charles had been one of the most feared and
successful
Royalist agents during the usurpations of Cromwell and the Rump Parliament. The war against the Dutch, along with the myriad plots of disaffected men and betrayal by the woman he had been persuaded to marry by his friend and putative brother, the King, brought Charles’s mysterious other self back to life. Thus I wondered who it was who rode beside me as we made our way down through the Holbein Gate of Whitehall Palace: the elusive sibling twelve years my senior, or the ruthless and secretive Lord Percival?

We rode down the length of White Hall, the public thoroughfare that bisected the sprawling, irregular palace of the same name. It was soon apparent that we were not going to turn off into one of the yards of the palace, to make for any of the rooms where the King was invariably to be found. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked my brother where we were bound.

‘The Abbey,’ he said, nodding toward the great shape that loomed above the south-west corner of the palace, the stonework of its
multitude
of buttresses lit brilliantly by the setting sun. ‘His Majesty is at prayer.’

We rode on, out through the gate and into King Street, but I could not prevent one persistent and disloyal thought from lodging in my mind.

If King Charles the Second, England’s crowned libertine, felt the need to be at prayer in Westminster Abbey, then things were desperate indeed.

We entered the great Abbey church by the north door. This was guarded by two pikemen, who stood to attention as we approached. Within, one man stood in the transept: a red-cheeked old man with large, penetrating eyes, wearing an expensive brown periwig designed for a man thirty years younger. Will Chiffinch, keeper of His Majesty’s private closet and page of the backstairs, had only recently succeeded his dead elder brother in the role, but it was as though there had been no change at all. Both brothers were utterly discreet and devoted to their master. This was just as well. The Chiffinches shepherded new royal mistresses to the King’s bed, carefully ushering out the old in due time by another stair. The Chiffinches controlled the King’s most secret incomes and expenditures. The Chiffinches literally held the keys to the kingdom’s best kept secrets.