The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (16 page)

Cornelia thought further upon her condition. ‘But if my brother Cornelis could see me… What would he think, Musk? His twin sister, a spy for England and her mysterious Lord Percival, holding a man prisoner at gunpoint!’

Musk sought to distract her from a further descent into guilty
self-doubt
. ‘You hold a pistol most expertly, Mistress,’ he said.

‘And could have fired it just as expertly, Musk!’ said Cornelia. She sighed. ‘But my brother would not be proud, I think. He would lecture me on the unsuitability of it all, as he always did even when we were but children and I wished him to teach me how men fight. The older he gets, the narrower his views become, and he can only see Dutch women as meek
mevrouwen
. Even his sister.’ She shook her head, lamenting Captain Cornelis van der Eide’s limitations. ‘Not that he would get so far as such a lecture, for he would already have disowned me for serving England in a war against our native land. My dear brother has ever seen the world in black and white, those two shades only.’

Musk was still thumbing through the ledger, scanning the endless lists of names and paying relatively little attention to Cornelia’s ruminations. Suddenly, he stabbed a stubby finger at one entry. ‘Look, mistress! I think this might be the name that we seek.’

He passed the ledger over to Cornelia. ‘Yes, Musk, you might be right. So we return to London, then, and to this address?’

‘I think we have had enough drama this day, mistress. No, I must lay this information before My Lord, to request his further orders, and he has left town for some days upon – upon the other matter that concerns us.’

‘Ah, this so-mysterious “other matter” of yours, Musk. The matter that cannot be confided to a mere woman, of course. Cornelia Quinton will serve to play the part of dear Liz and to wield a pistol if she must, but entrust her with as few secrets as possible!’

Musk shuffled uncomfortably and turned his eyes from her. His thoughts were still partly upon the information in the ledger, and not entirely upon the words he uttered. ‘That is not the case, mistress. We seek only to protect you and – well, to protect you.’

‘Protect me and – ? Who is the “and”, Musk? Who else? It is Matthew, is it not?’ She was urgent now, and reached out to grip his wrist tightly. ‘Your other matter concerns him. Does it put him in danger, Musk?’

Musk silently cursed himself for his indiscretion. ‘No greater danger than he is already in, mistress, aboard a fleet about to sail into battle.’ Musk cursed himself again, this time for sounding more callous than he had intended to be.

Cornelia began to cry, and Phineas Musk cursed himself a third time.

* * *

It is customary for flag officers to entertain the captains of their division to dinner, and thus on our last afternoon at the Gunfleet the
Bachelor’s Delight
took me across to the
Royal Oak
, Sir John Lawson’s new flagship in the stead of the exploded
London
. She was anchored close to the Cork Sand, almost directly off Harwich and Landguard. As Roberts steered me under her stern to the larboard entry port, I considered her as a potential opponent for the
Merhonour
. The odds would not be good, I decided at once, and surely cast grave doubt upon Lord Arlington’s confident assertion that the
Merhonour
could obstruct any treachery on Lawson’s part and successfully defend the Duke of York against an attack by the ship I now boarded. The
Oak
was brand new, indeed was over a century younger than the ancient
Merhonour
; she carried seventy-six guns; and she had a crack crew of volunteers from Lawson’s Yorkshire, a county vast enough swiftly to make good the appalling losses on the
London
. True, I had fought a Commonwealth turncoat in a larger ship once before, but that had been less of a mismatch than any fight between
Royal Oak
and
Merhonour would
surely be.

Thus I was a somewhat troubled man when I went into Lawson’s cabin, and my mood was not improved by the sight of my fellow captains, already arrayed around the table. Without exception they were old Commonwealth-men, the likes of Jordan of the
St George
, Clarke of the
Gloucester
and Abelson of the
Guinea
, who was some sort of kinsman of Lawson’s. I would have had a more comfortable meal in the centre division with the likes of Marlborough and Beau Harris or even in the rear with the supposedly suspect Will Berkeley. They all fell silent as I entered, exactly as if I had interrupted them in the midst of some treasonous discussion about how to restore Tumbledown Dick Cromwell as Lord Protector. In truth, though, the silence might have been a consequence of my appearance. I had become accustomed to wear my finest attire upon such occasions, and Cornelia had recently insisted that I should purchase a new close-kneed suit for a campaign fought under the Duke of York and in the company of much of the nobility of the realm. Thus I must have been something of a spectacle in emerald-green with gold trim, crowned with a periwig that made my head unique among all those in the room. For in terms of fashion, at least, all of Lawson’s other captains were still true to the principles of the godly republic. They were bare headed and wore nothing more flamboyant than their day-to-day buff tunics; thus I felt, and looked, like a peacock among pigeons. It is to avoid such embarrassments, they say, that today’s sea-officers cry out, ‘ah, we must have a uniform!’ Utter nonsense, of course. In truth, it is so that they can appear equal to the grandees of the army and cut a greater dash among the ladies, who ever swoon away at the sight of a red coat. May God grant that even our idiot Hanoverian masters never concede such an effeminate and un-English frippery as a naval uniform.

As it was, my discomfort increased when I realised that Lawson had placed me next to him at table, reflecting both my rank in society and the fact that
Merhonour
was, notionally at least, his second in the mighty duel to come. He greeted me fulsomely enough, but I prepared for the sort of dinner that must be served in purgatory.

Yet the fare was good enough, when it arrived. Lawson knew how to act the part of an admiral, and his galley supplied carp, mutton, lobster, oysters, together with puddings in profusion. Inevitably, we drank Hull ale, for Lawson had once lived in that garrison city and was stout in its defence during the civil war; stout on the rebel side, that is. Perhaps as a tribute to his adopted home, Lawson seemed determined to consume a prodigious quantity of its product.

The victuals might have been substantial, but that was more than could be said for Sir John’s conversation, which rarely interrupted the steady flow of ale into his gullet. He was either one of those men who finds convivial discourse difficult or one of those godly souls who believes such levity to be beneath a Christian man, even a remarkably thirsty Christian man. Quite suddenly, though, he turned to me as I was chewing upon a tolerable piece of mutton and said, ‘Well, then, Captain Quinton. Your ship. Well manned, you think?’

I nearly choked upon the meat. Lawson was breaking one of the unspoken rules of naval tables by discussing matters of business; worse, he seemed to have led me into a trap. Of course my ally and superior officer would be interested in the fighting qualities of the
Merhonour
. But so, too, and for very different reasons, would a potential opponent.

I determined upon truth: after all, the inadequacy of my crew would be apparent to all in the division once we weighed, so there was little point in dissembling. ‘I have many good men, Sir John. But the most recent drafts are likely to be troublesome. Many landsmen, Welsh and other such dubious creatures. We have had fewer men run than some others in the fleet, but I think that is only because they are less experienced in the ways of deserting a man-of-war. I pray I will have time to mould them into a good fighting crew that can face any foe.’

‘Ah, then, let us hope that you shall prove the truth of the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, Captain. Chapter twelve, verse ten.’ My face must have borne the confused expression of a young man whose education had been disrupted by civil war and who had subsequently slept through too many ineffably dull sermons in his local parish church. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” A principle that I have ever found useful in my own life.’ Lawson finished his tankard and had it refilled at once by his attendant. ‘Consider the time when his present Majesty was about to come in. Should I not have been at my weakest, Captain Quinton? John Lawson, as firm a man for the republic as you could find in England?’

I looked about me uncomfortably, for at any dinner table in the 1660s such discourse of the old divisions was considered anathema. ‘I do not know, Sir John.’

‘Aye, I should have been.’ There was not a little Hull ale in Sir John’s speech, but there was something else, too; for some reason, this was something he felt he had to say to me. ‘But I thought upon Corinthians, Captain, and realised that in truth, I was strong. The king needed the navy. Only I could deliver him that navy without a fight. And so we came to an accommodation, the king and I. Thus here I am today, a knight of the realm and vice-admiral under the heir to England himself.’ He was slurring a little, his eyes glazing over. ‘Does my story shock you, Captain? Does it smack of selling your soul? Some would say I sold it, you see. Some of my old colleagues, that is, who still hold firm to the Old Cause, without kings or bishops. John Lawson, bought for ten thousand pounds… But now that we have had five years of kingly rule, would ten thousand pounds be enough to buy John Lawson’s soul back again?’ The corner of his lip curled a little; it was what passed for a smile upon the Yorkshireman’s grim face. ‘I tell you this, though, Matthew Quinton. Ten thousand would be nowhere near enough to buy you twenty captains.’

 

 

 

Phineas Musk was returning to Ravensden House in good cheer. Admittedly, the matter of the twenty captains was as opaque as ever. Despite Sutcliffe’s best efforts, the members of Harvey’s conventicle at Barking remained tight-lipped on what, if anything, they knew of the conspiracy. But Lord Percival’s other matter was well in hand. Moreover, Musk had consumed a most acceptable rabbit pie at the Vulture on Cornhill, noticeably quieter than usual as the more timid clientele sought to avoid any risk of infection; he had contemplated the merits of several tankards of prime Wapping ale, and found them satisfactory; best of all,
Good-wife
Marten, cheerily unconcerned by plague and her marriage vows alike, had proved very willing to entertain him for an hour or so. True, he had seen a beggar drop dead in Portsoken and heard those who ran to attend the corpse proclaim in terror that it was the pestilence, but one less beggar was hardly a matter of much concern. Moreover, Musk had never been within twenty feet of the cadaver, so in his estimation the plague could not trouble him. Besides, it was well known that drinking prodigiously was one of the surest defences against the pestilence. Phineas Musk was doubly secure.

According to Musk’s account, he thus returned to Ravensden House refreshed and ready to embark upon an arduous round of domestic duties.
Aye, time for a slumber, more like, you mendacious old villain!

Yet the house was not right. The front door was almost never used, and Musk entered at the back, as was his wont; but there should have been no lantern burning in the pantry, and there certainly should have been no noises emanating from the eighth earl’s parlour, which had been sealed up since the old man’s death twenty years before. There should have been no noise anywhere in the house, other than the occasional familiar transit of a rat across the floorboards. Musk went to the cupboard that constituted his personal armoury, drew out a pistol and a cudgel, and moved toward the parlour.

Musk prayed that his approach would be silent, but it was the very devil to succeed in this. He was not a light man, and the floorboards of Ravensden House were known for their perverse groans and screeches. And the hall was dark. The front windows were never unshuttered, and the lanterns were unlit. He trod carefully, slowly, toward the door of the parlour.

The room was at the front of the house, to the left as Musk approached it from the rear passageway. The room in which Earl Matthew had died was a grand affair; or rather, it had been grand once, when the earl was in his pomp. Musk had been inside perhaps half-
a-dozen
times in the last two decades. As he approached the half-open door, though, he could hear furniture being moved within. Musk confesses that a sudden, irrational vision of the irate ghost of Earl Matthew came into his mind, and he shivered.

He cocked his pistol, pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

A prodigiously broad, crop-headed brute of a man spun around in surprise. He held a sheet of paper in one hand and a vicious dagger in the other. He thrust the latter toward Musk, who raised his pistol and levelled it at the other’s head. The thief stepped back, contemplating the distance between the two of them and the probability of his being able to stick Musk with the blade before Musk could put a pistol-ball between his temples.

The brute’s features seemed familiar. Musk struggled to place him, although recognition came within a few moments.

‘Sleep,’ he said. ‘You’re one of the Countess’s men.’

‘Bravo, Musk,’ said a new voice from the dark far end of the parlour; a woman’s voice. ‘You have a formidable memory.’

Louise, Countess of Ravensden, stepped into the lighter part of the room. She wore plain draperies of brown and grey, a marked contrast to her usual finery.

Musk kept the pistol levelled at Sleep. ‘My Lady,’ he said grudgingly.

‘Come now, Musk – do we really need weapons?’ she asked.

‘What is it you do here, My Lady? You and this foul ratsbane?’

The countess stared at him innocently. ‘Why, Musk, is this not my house?’

Not even Musk could resist both her logic and the law of property. After a moment’s hesitation, he lowered the pistol. ‘Aye, My Lady. It is your house, by right of your husband. But you have not ventured here before, but for that once with the Earl. You endeavoured to persuade him to demolish it, I recall.’

‘Perhaps I was over-hasty,’ said the countess. ‘Such a fascinating building. So many secrets – and it gives them up so jealously.’ She turned to her attendant. ‘Sleep, I have no further need of you for the moment. Go to the kitchens and amuse yourself.’

The rogue lowered his dagger reluctantly and scowled at Musk as he passed. With him gone, Musk looked around the room that had once been so familiar to him. The parlour had lain undisturbed since March 1645, but now signs of disturbance were everywhere. Rugs had been pulled up, chairs overturned, cabinet drawers opened. Layers of dust had been upset. The room had been searched.

‘You have a curious way of treating your rooms, My Lady,’ said Musk, whose lack of deference to his betters was a byword.

She smiled. ‘Ah, Musk, I could dissemble and find some excuse – which as a discreet servant, you would of course accept, whatever your inner thoughts. That is the way of it in your station, is it not?’ She gave him no time to answer. ‘But you are a man known both for bluntness and for your loyalty to the family of Quinton. So I don’t doubt that you would write post-haste to my poor sickly husband at Bath, and to Matthew and Tristram for good measure. After all, have you not been part of the little band that has sought to bring me down by whatever means it could?’ She stepped before him and looked directly into his eyes. ‘No surprise, Musk? What a good actor you are. But the game that you, Tris, Matthew and Cornelia tried to play against me was doomed to fail. Here I am, Countess of Ravensden and bedfellow of the King of England. Perhaps soon to be so much more – with your assistance.’ The countess smiled. ‘Ah,
now
the actor’s mask slips! Yes, Musk, your assistance. That is why I have come here now – to see you. But you kept me waiting, Phineas Musk, so I became curious to see whether this house contains what it is I seek.’

Musk had heard enough revelations for one evening, but yet he sought to recover himself. ‘And what is it that you seek, My Lady?’

She turned from him and walked to the fireplace, above which hung a dust-covered portrait of Earl Matthew’s father, the enigmatic seventh earl. ‘That, I think, is a matter we should come to later, Musk, after I have ensured that you will not betray me to my husband or any other. ’Tis said that every man has his price, so name yours, Phineas Musk.’

‘My Lady?’

‘What, did you think we would haggle? That is not my way. Note this, Musk – I ask you to name your price before I discover whether or not you have the knowledge I seek. That is how highly I value the transfer of your loyalty to me.’

‘You are brazen, My Lady.’

‘It is a brazen time,’ she said, ‘especially for women at our most brazen court. And I learned long ago that demureness and naivety are not characteristics that take a woman far in this world. In this England of ours every man’s loyalty is for sale, Musk, even the king’s. If you were a street vendor selling loyalties upon your cart, you would mark up the prices, would you not? So let us be blunt with each other. You know full well who it is that I serve, I think, and you know that he can afford to pay any price you name.’

‘Reckon the King of France might have a groat or two to his name,’ said Musk flippantly. ‘But let me give you another case, My Lady. Aye, I’d mark up the price if I had loyalty for sale. But say I was selling a horse instead. I’d not be content with fixing a price, would I, not if it was a favourite old nag. I’d want to be sure any buyer was a fit owner and would treat it well. In short, I’d want to know what that person intended to do with it. So you tell me what you want to know, My Lady, and I’ll see if I care to fix a price for it.’

It should have been stalemate, Musk thought; if she met his terms, she must be truly desperate for whatever information she thought he possessed.

She stood by the fireplace, staring up into the blank eyes of Earl Edward. Slowly she turned toward him and said, ‘Very well, Musk. On two conditions. First, my friends in France are keen to learn the identity of an agent of Arlington’s – although some say that it is actually Arlington himself, using an alias. He is an inveterate enemy of our cause, and the Most Christian’s ministers will be most generous towards whosoever exposes him and brings him down. You are said to know London better than any man alive, Musk. You know people of every rank from the court to the gutter. Thus I would have you bring me the true name of this so-called Lord Percival.’

‘Odd name, that,’ Musk said. ‘Lord Percival. Shouldn’t be difficult. And King Louis will give old Musk as much as he wants for that one name? You’re not really driving a hard bargain, My Lady.’

‘Perhaps more so for the second condition, Musk.’ She approached him and stood unsettlingly close to him. ‘I would have you swear upon oath, upon the Bible and before Sleep as a witness, that if I take you into my confidence and tell you what it is that I seek, you will not then betray my trust to any of the Quintons.’

‘An oath is an oath,’ Musk said. ‘Immutable. Unbreakable. Phineas Musk doesn’t break oaths, and he keeps his word.’

Thus it was that Phineas Musk swore not to betray the confidence of what the Countess Louise would tell him to any man or woman of Quinton blood or name, nor to any greater or lesser than a Quinton.

With that resolved to her satisfaction, the countess told Musk what she wished to know. Of the whereabouts of Tristram Quinton, a matter that seemed to be of particular concern to her, he could not enlighten her. But upon her chief matter of substance, Musk was surprised that she should be so concerned with what to him seemed but ancient history. Thus with very little hesitation, he named an outrageously inflated price for what seemed to him a most inconsequential answer.

* * *

A gun fired aboard the
Royal Charles
, and her sails were loosed. Upon that, every ship in the fleet emulated her, the
Merhonour
included, and moved out into the broad channel of the Sledway.

A fleet putting to sea is one of the most wonderful and dreadful sights upon God’s earth. Great swathes of canvas billow, ensigns unfurl proudly, mighty hulls turn to seek the best conjunction of breeze and tide. Yet all these years later, it is the sounds that return to me most readily: capstans turning, the groan of protesting anchor cables at the hawses, the creaks of timber straining in water, the strange shriek of wind amid rigging, the thunderous cracking of the sails, the cacophony of ancient sea-songs aboard a hundred ships as crews went about their business. But one ship, and one alone, had no song of its own. My loyal men were dispersed to watch stations all over the hull to leaven the ranks of the lubbers and the recalcitrant; thus no song of Cornwall could issue from the deck of the
Merhonour
, for there were too few Cornishmen in any given quarter. The Welsh could sing, I had always been told, but these Welshmen of ours showed no inclination toward song, and precious little toward work either. I caught a glimpse of my bearded foe, just behind the forecastle and beneath the ship’s bell. An observer might have thought him an officer, for men evidently did his bidding and took upon themselves any task allocated to him. I vowed that I would have to come to a reckoning with this creature, and sooner rather than later.

It was a hot April day, with a steady wind from the south-southwest. The
Bachelor’s Delight
was to windward, trim and easy upon the breeze. It took us an eternity to take up the station specified in our sailing orders, upon the starboard quarter of Lawson’s
Royal Oak
, and to achieve a feeble approximation of close-hauled. We were near enough for me to be able to see the vice-admiral, there upon his quarterdeck, without the aid of my telescope. I was still shaken by his words to me on the previous day, and had spent a sleepless night in my sea-bed, pondering what to do. Lawson knew of the suspected conspiracy, and had made sure that I knew it; which surely meant he had to know of the part that had been assigned to me, to guard against his defection during the battle to come. It was my duty to go at once to the Duke of York to warn him of this terrible new truth. Yet as I tossed and turned, there was a part of me that still urged caution. Lawson had been far into his cups, and after speaking to me of the vast bribe that had won his loyalty, he had turned away from me to talk with Jordan, to his left. When he and I spoke again, it was as though the previous conversation had never happened: instead, he wished to know my opinion of Will Berkeley as a prospective son-in-law. I could hardly offend against the hospitality of his table and the respect due to him as my senior officer by raising the subject again. So had Lawson’s mention of twenty captains been merely a strange coincidence, an accountable chance remark by a man in his cups? Or was it a subtle way of telling me that although twenty captains had been offered inducements to desert their loyalty, they had refused them? The admiral’s strange remark had no clear meaning, and thus it presented me with no clear course to follow. God alone knew what damage it would do to the fleet’s prospects in the imminent battle if the Vice-Admiral of the Red and nearly two dozen other veteran officers were to be summarily dismissed upon the unfounded suspicions of Matthew Quinton. I had a peculiar vision of His Grace of Buckingham installed in Lawson’s place, and shuddered at the thought.