The Battle of All the Ages (23 page)

We were very nearly level with the
Sovereign
, we moving onto the starboard side of the Dutchman, the Golden Devil onto the larboard. The
Lion
and
Triumph
were similarly in parallel behind us, moving to take up position on her quarters.

‘He might as well strike his colours now,’ I said. ‘He’s done for.’

‘No,’ said Delacourt, his telescope fixed on the bows of the
Dutchman
. ‘No, he can’t be –’

‘Lieutenant?’

‘Saw it done once by a sloop in the tiderace at the Shannon’s mouth – but surely it can’t work –’

‘She’s dropping anchor!’ cried Urquhart.

In that moment, the large anchors on both the starboard and larboard bows of the Dutchman, together with her stern anchor, fell into the sea.

‘Jesus,’ I swore. ‘Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus
! Mister Burdett, there! Larboard battery to engage –’

But it was already too late. The Dutchman came to a dead stop. Carried forward inexorably by the racing ebb, and by the weight of canvas we had aloft, we were past her even before the order to fire could be given. The same was true of the
Sovereign
. The
Lion
and
Triumph
, coming up behind us, managed to fire off a desultory broadside each before they, too, swept past the stationary Dutchman.

‘Clever,’ said Musk. ‘Many-headed, and clever.’

‘Surely we can simply turn and capture him!’ cried Rochester.

‘My Lord,’ I snapped, ‘ships do not simply
turn
. We cannot sail back directly into the wind, nor into this ebb. That which stopped the Dutch coming up to rescue him now prevents us going back to take him. He has outfoxed us, whoever he is. A brave man, and a skilful one, that captain. A great seaman.’

But that, he was not. When we met at Veere, my good-brother Cornelis told me that the captain of the
Gelderland
was a landsman – a soldier named Van Ghent, a colonel of Marines. It seems that all the old seamen among his officers furrowed their brows and stroked their chins when he ordered the sudden dropping of the anchors, it being a thing beyond the compass of minds that must do things
this way
, because that is how they have always been done. Such is the way of old seamen, and probably always will be.

We had a new quarry, and this one was not going to elude us: on that, I was determined. It was now well into the evening, and we were much further to the east, where the ebb from the Thames no longer affected either fleet. But it also meant we were much closer to the Dutch coast, which was in sight: a long, low strip of land on the horizon.

‘Sixty guns, by my reckoning,’ I said, studying the Zeelander ahead. ‘A jury mast at the fore, and heeling to starboard. Must be holed beneath the waterline.’

‘Might be your wife’s brother, then,’ said Musk. ‘He’s a sour-faced killjoy at the best of times, so Christ knows what he’ll be like if he has to surrender to you for a second time in a year.’

‘While I would not approve of taking Our Lord’s name in vain, Musk,’ said Francis Gale, ‘I think you have the rights of it in this instance. I have met few men more dour than Captain van der Eide.’

‘No, wait,’ I said, studying the ship ahead intently, ‘I recognise this ship. We traded broadsides with her on the fourth day of the last battle.’

‘You’re right, Sir Matthew,’ said Urquhart. ‘The Zeeland
Vice-Admiral
’s flagship. Banckert’s ship.’

‘Not flying his flag now, though,’ I said. ‘He must have moved to a less damaged command. But it’s of no concern. Honour permits us only two courses, gentlemen – take or destroy!’

I pointed my sword at the enemy, like a cavalryman charging his foe. This one would not escape. This one would be the prize that my men deserved. This would be repayment for all that had happened in the last weeks. This would be Sir Matthew Quinton’s revenge and apotheosis, all in one.

We moved in toward the starboard quarter of the Zeelander, firing our bow chasers. Part of the quarterdeck rail, and the quarter-gallery, shattered as our iron balls impacted, sending wooden splinters into the air. The Dutchman fired a few of his upper deck guns, but it was little more than a gesture. The heel of the ship meant that he could not open his lower deck gunports, and that most of the guns on the upper deck could not gain enough elevation to bring us within range. Our angle of attack ensured that none of his guns forward of the
quarterdeck
could bear on us, and the catastrophic damage to his rigging meant that he could barely manoeuvre.

‘My French friend, the Comte d’Andelys, would call this moment the
coup de grace
,’ I said. ‘Let us apply it.’

Although there was hardly any resistance, I was feeling the same rush of blood, the same battle-crazed elation, that I had only experienced
previously in hand to hand combat, with my life at stake. I was dimly aware of the likes of Francis, Musk and Rochester speaking to me, but did not properly hear them.

The men aloft adjusted our sails, the helmsman brought over the whipstaff, our yardarms swung, and the
Royal Sceptre
came in astern of the Dutch ship, very nearly at right angles to her stern. I looked forward, along the deck of the King’s Prick, and saw the men crouching by the starboard guns, intent on their target. Even the greenest landmen among the pressed drafts had their blood up as much as the Cornish veterans. The gun captains had their eyes on me, and on Burdett.

There was something about the moment. Perhaps it was such a rare thing to have a Dutchman so entirely at one’s mercy. Perhaps it was my still-raw grief for Will Berkeley, or my pent-up anger at the
duplicity
of a King I had once venerated as a demi-god. Perhaps it was the tension of facing down both that King and the Duke of Albemarle. Perhaps it was my anxiety for Cornelia and my unborn child. Whatever the reason, I felt a sudden surge of rage stronger than any I had known in my life. I wanted nothing more than revenge on the Dutch, this nation of bog-born butterbox upstarts. I wanted nothing more than to give the order for our entire battery to open fire, to send in raking broadside after raking broadside, a bombardment that would slaughter every living thing on the ship lying helpless before us –

‘Luke Six, Chapter Thirty-Six,’ said Francis Gale, by my side. I was suddenly aware of the fact that it was the third or fourth time he had said this.

‘What? What do you say, priest?’

‘Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father is also merciful. You must summon him to surrender first, Matthew. It is the godly thing to do. It is the honourable thing to do.’

‘Be silent, damn you –’ But I turned, and saw the face of my friend. The face of a man of God. ‘Y-yes, Francis. You are right, of course. We must demand his surrender.’

Young Kellett brought me my voice trumpet, and I called out in Dutch.

‘Ho, captain of the Zeelander! I am Sir Matthew Quinton, captain of His Majesty’s ship the
Royal Sceptre
! You have fought bravely, but your ship is disabled beyond hope. There is no dishonour if you surrender in such circumstances. And if you do not, I will wreak upon you the full force of England’s righteous vengeance! I call upon you to strike your colours, Captain!’

There was silence. Long minutes of silence. We were nearly alone; most of our ships, and all of the Dutch, were already past us, still
running
for the east, toward the Weilings and the Dutch fleet’s harbours. I could see men scurrying about the quarterdeck of the Zeelander, and could imagine the scene. The officers would be in conference. Perhaps her captain, whoever he might be after Admiral Banckert’s departure, was a diehard patriot, holding out against sullen warrant officers who wished to surrender; or perhaps the captain was a coward and his
subordinates
were trying to force him to fight to the death…

‘Ho, Matt Quinton!’

The voice coming across the water was a very familiar one, albeit one I had not heard for three years, since the last time that Cornelia and I visited her parents and home town. The voice of a friend. The voice of a friend whom I had very nearly murdered in cold blood.

‘Pieter? Pieter de Mauregnault?’

‘That it is. Captain Pieter de Mauregnault of the
Tholen
, flag
captain
to Vice-Admiral Banckert. And you may be a knight of England now, Matt Quinton, but you still owe me a flagon of ale at the Sign of the Ostrich in Veere.’

During the two-and-a-half years when I lived in exile in Veere, before the King’s restoration, Pieter de Mauregnault had become a good friend. A big, bluff, bellowing fellow who loved life, he was a rarity in a town thronged with gloomy Calvinists, and a blessed relief from the tedious company of my wife’s parents and brother.
He reckoned that his irreverent attitude and love of drink owed much to his French ancestor, a century and a half before.

I tried to be as jovial as I could, given the imperative of the moment and the horror of realising what I had very nearly done. Of what I might yet do.

‘I cannot promise you repayment in the same surroundings, Pieter. But you can have your choice of the taverns in London or Bedford, if you will surrender your ship.’

‘Surrender my ship, Sir Matthew? Now why would I do that,
precisely
?’

‘You are sinking, man! You cannot manoeuvre. You cannot fire a broadside. You’re undermanned – how small a skeleton crew did Banckert leave you, after taking off most of his men?’

Pieter de Mauregnault shrugged.

‘We are still Dutch. We are still Zeelanders. So even if we had only one man left, we would not be undermanned. We do not surrender, Sir Matthew.’

I remembered Pieter’s stubbornness. When we were young, it had seemed an attractive trait. But now, with the rage still far from gone from my surging blood, it served only to remind me of the power I could unleash with one word of command.

‘Look at the position of our ships, man! You know what will
happen
if you refuse. You are condemning your men to death.’

‘Come and try to board us, my friend, and then see what
condemned
men can do!’

‘I don’t intend to board you, Pieter, because I know how
Zeelanders
fight. Even my wife, by God. You’ll lose, but you’ll kill many of my men before you do. And I’ve lost enough men, these last two battles. Too many good men. So we do things the English way.’

Friend or not, my fury demanded satisfaction. Friend or not, this was a Dutch flagship, and it would pay. Friend or not, Pieter de
Mauregnault
would pay.

I raised my sword, then dropped it.

One gun in the forecastle, and one only – a demi-culverin – belched flame. Some of the glass and framing in the
Tholen
’s stern windows shattered.

‘What is this?’ I cried. ‘Who has dared to countermand my orders?
Who has done this?
’

But they all looked at me like a stony-faced bench of judges condemning a man. Francis Gale, Phineas Musk, Julian Delacourt, Urquhart, Burdett, even Lord Rochester. Not one of them gave
himself
away, nor anyone else. To this day, I do not know who modified my order so that my time-honoured command would unleash only a single warning shot, not the full force of our broadside. A final chance for Pieter de Mauregnault, a man I called my friend, to see sense. Some would call it mutiny. Perhaps some would call it saving the soul of Sir Matthew Quinton. For some reason, though, all I could think of in that moment was my unborn child. My half-Dutch child.

I looked across to the
Tholen
, and saw Pieter despatch a man below. The fellow was back within the minute, and said something to his
commander
. But Pieter de Mauregnault said nothing. He simply stared at me, across the two-hundred years or so of water that separated us.

‘The whole battery is loaded with the same ammunition, Pieter,’ I shouted, trying my hardest to recover my composure and authority. ‘Canister and grape shot to kill your men. Chain and bar to bring down your remaining rigging. We will sweep your decks relentlessly, until the blood flows from your gunports. We will rake you with impunity, all night if necessary, for your own fleet will be safe behind its sandbanks by then, and no-one will come to save you. We will slaughter every man of your crew, Pieter. We will still have your ship, and you and all of them will have died in vain.’

Still my old friend said nothing. Then, at last, he raised his voice trumpet once again.

‘Well, Matt Quinton,’ he said, ‘if I’d known that the nervous,
gangling
boy I drank with in the alehouses of Veere would turn into such a vicious, murderous, devilish bastard as you, I’d have drowned you in the harbour there and then.’

He turned, and nodded to one of his men. The fellow went to the staff, and slowly hauled down the Dutch colours.

The cheering began on the gundecks of the
Royal Sceptre
. It echoed from one end of the ship to the other. The shouting followed in short order.

‘Glory to England and Saint George!’

‘God save the King! God bless Sir Matthew!’

‘A fat prize, boys, and riches for all!’

I saw John Tremar and several others of my Cornish following down in the ship’s waist, and they were bellowing another cry.

‘Glory to Cornwall! Glory to Saint Piran!’

I could not cheer. I had no words; none at all. Countless competing emotions, but no words.

Far forward on the bowsprit, Lord Rochester’s monkey, the first lieutenant of the King’s Prick, swung upon the jackstaff, where the red, white and blue colours of the Union Flag briefly enveloped it. Then it shat into the sea.

The English are a fickle race.

In the immediate aftermath of the redeeming victory of St James’s Day, the calamity of the four-day fight suddenly seemed a distant nightmare, a temporary aberration upon England’s divinely ordained road to a victorious, imperial destiny. And very soon, an even greater calamity, one which I witnessed – indeed, one in which I hazarded my life – came upon the kingdom: namely, the destruction of the city of London by fire. No-one, from the king downward, still demanded a scapegoat for the division of the fleet, which was all but
forgotten
. There was no more talk of traitors, nor of hanging, drawing and quartering. This was a mighty relief to Beau Harris above all, who
continued
to command the
Jupiter
; and if every seaman in the kingdom mocked him behind his back for not being able to tell the French fleet from the Spanish, Beau had a skin more than thick enough to bear it, especially as he had the love of Bella Mendez to sustain him through it all.

But time passes. Events move from the feverish tempests of the present into the calmer waters of the past. Men have an opportunity to reflect, and that reflection is shaped by the prognostications of the most idle, malicious peddlers of mendacity: that is to say, historians. And the historians, denied the truths that my brother and I discovered
in the summer of that fateful year Sixty-Six – the
annus mirabilis
, as that fawning scribbler Dryden called it – these same historians concoct elaborate fantasies to prove how very clever they are. So it has been with the division of the fleet. It is now holy writ that, because of the report of one ignorant gentleman captain, the fleet was fatally divided and Prince Rupert was sent west to attack a non-existent French fleet reputed to be approaching the Channel. Thus George of Albemarle, that pure and virtuous old English hero, was forced to fight against impossible odds. And, of course, this was all the fault of that devious, fornicating mountebank, King Charles the Second.

I could refute the historians. I could write my own history of those events, the true history, in which Albemarle’s own arrogance and duplicity would be proved, the Prince’s ambition exposed, and the gullibility and bungling of the king’s ministers brought into the light. Above all, I would damn the historians for depending on the evidence in the
Gazette
, and warn my fellow Englishmen that whatever they do, they should not believe what they read in those infernal outpourings of rancid untruth, the so-called news-papers.

But I will not write such a history.

For one thing, I doubt if anyone would believe it – ‘ah, but he is so very old, his brains must be addled’.

For another, I doubt if anyone would care. It was a very long time ago, and an England ruled by turds like Robert Walpole and George Wettin, while being eaten away from within by gin and Jacobinism alike, is not a place where historical truth is greatly prized.

And for one final thing, to write such a history would force me, at last, to confront that same truth.

I denied that self-same truth when I told young Ned Hawke about the four-day fight. I denied it in the days after I came back from
Plymouth
, when my thoughts were filled with the prospect of fatherhood. I have denied it to myself for sixty years and more. But this truth niggled away at me over the years, whispering in my ear when I was
in a dark mood, sometimes giving me disturbed nights and strange dreams.

For according to this strange, unwelcome truth, I was responsible for the division of the fleet.

Of course, my rational self has no truck with such a perverse notion. How could the young Sir Matthew Quinton, a mere captain who played no direct part in the promulgation or acceptance of the false intelligence, bear such a responsibility? How could he, who was at sea when the orders were given, have played any part at all in
bringing
on the calamity that followed?

But my less rational self sees it thus.

In the first instance, I told Beau Harris the story of my grandfather and the false ensigns. I planted in his mind the notion that the fleet he saw off Lisbon could only be that of France. True, Beau’s intelligence reached Whitehall only after the order to divide our forces had already been given; but his letter reinforced the sense that the approach of the French fleet had to be true, and thus fatally delayed an order to recall Rupert.

That, in itself, would be an insignificant matter.

In one sense, so, too, is the responsibility I must bear for the death of Nathaniel Garrett, the poor creature whom I assumed to have been slaughtered for his knowledge of the French army at La Rochelle. Upon my arrival in Plymouth, I put out the word that I wished to interview him. As he revealed during his interrogation by Francis Gale and myself, Ludovic Conibear convinced himself that I had come to Plymouth, not to investigate the division of the fleet – which, of course, he could not know – but had instead come down from London to investigate
him
. Conibear feared that my public appeal for Garrett to come forward meant that I somehow knew of his dealings with Kranz, and that Garrett might testify to their alliance, and illegal and treacherous partnership in the illicit trade in smuggled French wine. So Garrett had to be killed; and inadvertently, I caused that murder.

Of themselves, these matters would not have been sufficient to give me sleepless nights many times, these last sixty years.

But there is another.

The fact is that I can recall exactly what I said to Prince Rupert of the Rhine, when we were alone in his laboratory at Whitehall on that fateful spring day in 1666, long before the fleet was divided.

‘…nought but madness. Englishmen do not like a double-headed
monster
leading them. I am minded to resign my commission. Let them send out George Monck on his own and see how the fat old turncoat fares. Yes, I am certain I will resign. Now, tell me of your uncle Tristram’s experiment with feeding mercury to a monkey –’

‘But Your Highness – you must not do that! You must not resign, sir.’

‘Quinton? You seem strangely animated in this matter. But no,
whatever
you say, I am set upon it. If I cannot have the sole command, then I will not go to sea at all. Monck can go alone. He brags constantly of how he beat the Dutch the last time, of how he will do so again. Very well, then, let him go and try to prove it.’

‘But Your Highness, think of the greater honour to your name if you were at sea! What if His Grace of Albemarle really were to trounce the Dutch once and for all, and you to have no part of it –’

‘Monck will not beat the Dutch, Quinton. Trust me in that. And when he does not, the King will not send his brother – his heir – to sea again, at least for as long as his barren Queen gives him no child. So he will have no choice. Once Monck fails, he will have to turn to me.’

‘Perhaps, Highness. But if I may do so with respect, sir, I would repeat the case. What if Albemarle, and Albemarle alone, destroys the Dutch? We nearly did so last year, as Your Highness will recall. And this year, we have more and better ships, while the Dutch letters say that they are even more divided and fractious than ever, with province set against province. Sir, how bitterly would you regret it if you were not there when we ended their pretensions at sea once and for all?’

‘You argue a good case, Quinton. You should have been a lawyer. But
then, perhaps your uncle Tristram taught you well.’

‘That he did, Highness. And who knows, sir – once the fleets are
actually
at sea, all sorts of unexpected exigencies may occur. There may be an opportunity for you to revise the King’s instructions, and to reorganise the fleet to your own liking – to fly your own flag in your own ship, and to have your own command.’

‘Yes, a good case indeed. Very well, Quinton, I will think on it. Yes, indeed. I will think well upon it.’

That he did. So it was I, and I alone, who persuaded Prince Rupert not to resign his commission. In part, this was self-interest of the worst kind: I feared how I might fare under the sole command of the Duke of Albemarle, that ardent opponent of gentleman captains. But at the time, I convinced myself that it was also for the honour of England that the fleet should be at least jointly commanded by a prince of the blood, not solely by a former Commonwealths-man. I did not trust George Monck, who had turned from Royalist to Roundhead, then back again, and obtained a dukedom for himself in the process. I did not trust a man who had effectively ruled England during those frenzied months before the Restoration: who was to say that in the aftermath of a great and final victory over the Dutch, Monck would not use his popularity to seize power, oust the King and make himself Lord Protector? Perhaps thinking such thoughts was a kind of
temporary
madness on my part. But whatever the cause, it meant I was determined that Rupert should go to sea.

But I also persuaded Prince Rupert to snatch at any opportunity for an independent command of his own – that is, at any opportunity to divide the fleet. When that opportunity came, founded on the false intelligence of the French fleet and the army at La Rochelle, Rupert did indeed snatch at it; for if the prospect of defeating the Dutch was attractive to him, how much more glorious was that of
defeating
the French, and humbling the mighty Sun King himself! And, of course, the Duke of Albemarle, confident of defeating the Dutch on
his own even with a depleted fleet, was only too keen to acquiesce. So by persuading Rupert not to resign, and to go to sea instead, I
virtually
guaranteed that the fleet would be divided; whereas if Albemarle had gone out alone, who knows what he might have done with an undivided fleet?

As I look into the flames flickering in my fireplace, I see the ghosts of all those who perished in the Four Days’ Fight: Sir Christopher Myngs, for instance, that most modest and unlikely of legends, and above all, my poor friend Will Berkeley. I see the men who died aboard the
Royal Sceptre
: Hollister, whose brains Kit Farrell blew out; Lancelot Parks, going mad and jumping over the ship’s side; Philemon Hardy, that worthy seaman, his head split open by the whipstaff; young
Denton
and Scobey, whose hopeful futures were snuffed out by a single cannon ball. I see them all, and when I am in the worst of my cups, or the blackest of moods, I blame myself for their deaths. Yes, others took dubious intelligence at face value, and others made the decisions.
Certainly
, Albemarle was duplicitous. Rupert was ambitious. The king’s ministers were incompetent; although, when are they not?

But I was the one who committed the original sin. I brought about the division of the fleet, the Four Days’ Battle, and the slaughter that ensued.

The very few in whom I have confided these thoughts tell me that I am being foolish, that my chance remarks cannot possibly have led directly to all that followed. But I know differently. An oak has to grow from an acorn. When a murder is committed, which is the greater cause: the ready presence to hand of the fatal weapon, or the fact that the murderer was ever born in the first place?

From my desk, I take out a fading yellow paper.
A Satyr Against Mankind
¸ it says upon the title page: a poem by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. The noble lord has been dead for nearly half a century now, killed by the pox that was already eating into his flesh when we fought together in the Four Days’ Fight. I read his words again, and I wonder
if Rochester somehow managed to look into both my soul and my future, during those days when we stood together on the quarterdeck of the
Royal Sceptre
. For his words describe exactly the nagging doubts that have troubled me for sixty years and more.

T
HE
E
ND