The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (10 page)

‘Stop this!’ I cried. ‘In the name of the king, I order you to desist! I am Quinton, captain of the
Merhonour
, brother to the Earl of
Ravensden
,
and I command you to stop
!’

Even as we rode into the mob, I could see that my words were having no effect.

The thunder of a pistol going off very close to my right ear made my horse rear in fright, and I had the very devil of a struggle to bring him under control. As I did so, I realised that the pistol had been fired by Francis, who was now riding through the mob, berating them furiously.

‘You murdering Kentish whoresons! You apostates! You foul ignorant turd-chewers! May Satan and all his imps drag you down to Hell and boil you in blazing oil for all eternity! I excommunicate you in the name of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and all the bishops assembled in Convocation! You hapless bastards! You beshitten beggars! I call down the wrath of God upon you and all your posterity until the day of judgement!’

The sight and sound of a clergyman in his cassock, wielding one still-loaded pistol, swearing like a trooper and riding up and down amongst them – thereby, of course, breaking up the tight bonds of the mob, diminishing its collective will – confused and hushed the men and women of Rochester. On the curtain wall, those surrounding the suspected spies looked down, and at each other, and wondered what to do.

I sensed my moment, and seized it. ‘The French gentleman there,’ I cried, ‘is the most noble lord Roger, Comte d’Andelys, and what he has told you is true – he did indeed serve in our own navy, aye, and as a mere sailmaker’s mate at that!’ That drew some gasps and not a few appreciative nods from the people of that maritime town; they might have been even more appreciative had I explained to them that his presence incognito aboard my ship was not unconnected to a precipitate flight from France, thereby escaping the wrath of the very great man whose wife he had seduced. ‘He saved my life. And on another occasion, so did that other young gentleman yonder. That’s Christopher Farrell, my friends, and at this very time you can find his mother and brother up at the Slaughtered Lamb in Wapping. He’s as loyal an Englishman as any of you. His father fought for this country in the last Dutch war. And yet you seek to hang him as a spy? Shame on you, people of Rochester!’

The mob was silent now, confused and shame-faced. Those upon the rampart sheepishly withdrew the nooses from the necks of my two friends. Within a quarter-hour, we were safe within the cathedral close, beneath the shadow of England’s second oldest cathedral and making free with the house of a sympathetic prebend. Kit Farrell was restored to good cheer quickly enough, hanging or the prospect of hanging being an everyday hazard of life for any denizen of Wapping; he was soon engaged in a good-humoured conversation with his old shipmate Francis Gale. However, it took a considerable amount of the prebend’s passable Oporto wine to calm the nerves of Roger-Louis de la Gaillard-Herblay, seventeenth Comte d’Andelys.

‘English hospitality!’ he cried. ‘Aha, they cry, we have a Frenchman amongst us, ergo he must be a spy, ergo we must hang him! What a country!
Mon dieu
, why do I have such a liking for it?’

There had been rather more in the same vein. To divert my old friend, I asked, ‘But what is it that brings you to England, Roger? And to Rochester? You sent no notice of your coming.’

‘Did I not? I swear I wrote. But I expect the mail was in a hull arrested by one of your English frigates. Or perhaps I forgot to write after all.’ Greedily, he drank another glass of Oporto. ‘I came with the embassy, Matthew, which rests incognito at Canterbury as we speak. Not as one of the ambassadors, of course, but in their train. I took a fancy to serving at sea this summer. With you,
naturellement
. The former captain of the Most Christian King’s ship
Le Téméraire
might be of some use to you in the battle to come, perhaps? So if you are willing,
mon ami
, I shall sail with you in the capacity of a volunteer.’

This was truly brazen! ‘A
volunteer
? King Louis has an alliance with the Dutch, Roger. If this embassy fails, as all men expect it to, then we will almost certainly be at war with France as well as Holland.’ He shrugged. Realisation came to me at last. ‘Damnation, Roger, the good folk of Rochester were right! You
are
a spy!’

The Comte d’Andelys creased his lips in a way that only the French can manage. ‘Spy is such an uncouth word, Matthew. And besides, I think King Charles is no fool. Is there not merit in having a French observer or two in your fleet, to report directly to King Louis upon its overwhelming power and thus to convince the Most Christian not to make war upon England at any cost? You should look upon me as a peacemaker, Captain Quinton.’

The audacity of it all still overwhelmed me, but the logic was not to be denied. King Louis was known to be reluctant to declare war upon his cousin at the behest of a swamp-full of heretical republican shopkeepers, and was seeking any excuse he could to avoid his treaty obligations. By choice, he would have preferred England to make peace with the Dutch; hence the great embassy to which Roger had attached himself. The total victory of one side over the other was most certainly not in the Most Christian King’s interests, as such a victor might prove a potent threat to his own ambitions. But if the war was to continue – and the hearts of king, Parliament and most true Englishmen were then set upon it – Roger’s reasoning that a show of force might give King Louis pause for thought seemed unarguable. Consequently I raised my glass, and the Comte d’Andelys, Kit Farrell and Francis Gale all toasted good success to the voyage of the
Merhonour
.

‘Now, my friends,’ said the comte, ‘I understand that our ship is not actually likely to sail for some days – not all her stores are in, and there is then the matter of towing her all the way down the river to the Nore – that is so, I think?’ I smiled and nodded:
yes, you really are a spy
, Roger
! ‘That being so, I propose that the captain of the
Merhonour
and his goodwife accompany me to the formal state reception for the ambassadors of France.’ I bowed, not only for myself but for Cornelia; she had seethed when she learned that my sailing was likely to prevent our attendance at the great event. ‘And, of course,’ said Roger, ‘I would be honoured if the lieutenant of the
Merhonour
joined us.’

‘Giffard?’ I cried. ‘But the man is an oaf –’

Kit Farrell grinned more broadly than I had ever seen him. ‘Not the first lieutenant, Captain. The second. Your recommendation bore fruit. I have been commissioned!’

These splendid tidings led to another round of toasting and backslapping, although inwardly, I felt more than a little perplexed. I had no expectation whatsoever of my solicitation on Kit’s behalf bearing fruit; it had been simply a means of getting his name entered upon the Lord High Admiral’s book of candidates for office. A bluff young tarpaulin, recommended by a relatively junior captain, surely had no prospect of gaining a commission at a time when every great man (and woman) of the court was pushing the interests of some worthless relation or protégé. If the young sot Edward Russell had been but three or four years older, there was little doubt that he would have been second lieutenant of the
Merhonour
or some other ship.

That question could wait for another day, I decided. In the meantime, there was a somewhat more urgent issue to consider. ‘Well then, Lieutenant Farrell,’ I said to him privately when Roger and Francis turned to converse with each other, ‘it seems I must be your teacher again.’

‘Sir?’ When Kit Farrell saved me from drowning some years earlier, we made a mutual pact that he would teach me the ways of the sea in return for me teaching him to read and write.

‘A lieutenant is at once an officer and a gentleman, Kit. You are now a step closer to the divine than you were in your previous posts, as a mere master and a boatswain,’ I said with mock solemnity. ‘Thus you will need to learn how to behave as a gentleman – though God knows, some of our noblest lords seem to spend a lifetime trying to do that, and failing.’ A most delicious thought occurred to me. ‘And of course, few gentlemen will ever have had to learn so much in so short a time, for few ever make their very first outing in society in such a manner as you will, Kit. After all, my friend, you don’t want to disgrace yourself before the ambassadors of France, most of our royal court, and the King and Queen of Great Britain, do you?’

* * *

‘Very well, Gloag,’ said the man known as Lord Percival from his accustomed position in the shadow where the basement’s single candle could not illuminate him, ‘let me see if I understand you. By your own admission, you traded with the gunner of the
London
for four barrels of the king’s own powder. In return, you supplied him with old powder, some of it with barely incorporated grough saltpetre.’

‘Aye,’ growled the Scot, reluctantly. It was difficult for him to say anything else with Phineas Musk standing menacingly behind him. ‘No law agin’ it.’

(I have edited Musk’s narrative even more substantially than usual at this point, excising his lengthy and particularly vitriolic discourse upon the manifest iniquities of the Scottish race during the entire course of its history from Indulf the Aggressor by way of the Bruce and the Wallace to end with the miserable figure of this Gloag.)

‘On the contrary, Gloag,’ said the concealed Lord Percival, mildly, ‘there might be no laws against it in your country, but there are most certainly laws against it in England. Many of them.’

‘Many of them,’ Musk repeated, directly into the Scot’s ear. ‘Same king. Different laws. Different countries, Gloag.’

‘But I am not concerned with the legality or otherwise of your dealings in this instance.’ Percival pushed a paper across the table, the only piece of furniture in the cellar apart from the stools on which he and Gloag sat. ‘You have signed this deposition to the effect that you had no dealings with Dutchmen or Englishmen alike to bring about an explosion aboard the
London
. You implicate the gunner of the
London
, who undoubtedly sought to turn a private profit by substituting inferior powder for that assigned to the ship by the Master of the Ordnance, which you then resold at Gravesend to a Dutch factor masquerading as a neutral Lübecker. From this, we cannot deduce with any certainty the cause of the destruction of the
London
, but it is probable that carelessness in the mixing of powders contributed to that sad eventuality. Would that be the burden of it, Gloag?’

‘Aye,’ said the gross, nervous creature. ‘If you say so.’

‘Good. That is sufficient, I think. And of course, your admission of treasonable intercourse with the Dutch in time of war would be enough to put a rope around your neck at any time, should I be so minded.’ It was impossible to see Percival’s face, but Musk knew full well that it would be smiling. ‘Remember this, Gloag, and tell all the others of your kind who feed off the embezzlement of His Majesty’s naval stores. There will be no more trading with England’s enemies. Nothing will be done that diminishes our prospects of victory in this war. And if I hear even a whisper of you engaging again in these old tricks, I will ensure that this deposition comes before His Majesty’s Privy Council. They tell me the prisons are particularly sickly these days, Gloag.’

With that, Lord Percival raised his right hand. Gloag hastened out of the cellar, not casting a backward glance.

‘Scum,’ Musk said.

‘Just so. But his evidence is reliable, I think. Bad powder, on a ship with only a few officers aboard, thronged with women and swamped by drink, as the depositions we have taken from the survivors prove… As perfect a recipe for disaster as one could ever concoct, I fear. Thus we can conclude with some certainty that the
London
was not destroyed by some hellish conspiracy, Musk – rather, by the indiscipline of her crew and the greed of one of her officers.’

‘Both common enough failings aboard king’s ships, My Lord.’

‘You have considerably greater experience of that world than I do, Musk. Which, of course, is why I needed your assistance for this enquiry into treason in the fleet.’ Lord Percival stood, drawing his neckerchief closely around his mouth, pulling his broad-brimmed hat down upon his head and closing his old-fashioned cloak in front of him. ‘Tomorrow, Musk, I think we shall resume our enquiries into the activities of Harvey’s conventicle in Barking. A surprising number of sea-officers seem inclined to frequent it, and we have been led to believe that Eden the ostler was a member of it. Our friend Sutcliffe seems convinced that if this plot of twenty captains has any substance, the proof of it is most likely to be found there.’

‘Yes, My Lord. But if I may – upon our other matter?’

Lord Percival looked up sharply. The parallel enquiry upon which they were engaged touched both the honour of an ancient lineage and the interests of the king himself; it was a matter at once both delicate and intricate. ‘Yes, Musk?’

‘I have thought of a way of getting what we need from Anderson, if he truly does hold the records he is said to possess. But it would require the assistance of another.’

Musk mentioned a name. He heard a noncommittal grunt from his shadowy companion. ‘If you must. But in God’s name, Musk, ensure that she does not complicate matters.’

* * *

Musk and the cloaked figure of Lord Percival left by an alley, emerging finally into the warren of streets behind Saint Botolph’s, Aldgate. They turned a corner and almost fell over a miserable, shuffling creature, bent almost double as he painted upon a door. The creature grunted in alarm and fled. The light was poor, and it took Musk a moment to make out the result of the creature’s handiwork: a blood-red cross above the words
God have mercy upon us
. He could hear the faint but unmistakeable sounds of people within, several of them evidently children, all sobbing piteously.