The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (17 page)

I could tell no man on the
Merhonour
of my dilemma, not even my dear friends Kit Farrell, Francis Gale and Roger d’Andelys. The latter two stood with me upon the quarterdeck as we struggled to hold our station on the sleeker and better crewed
Royal Oak
; I could see Kit upon the forecastle, endeavouring through Treninnick to explain to some Welshmen the correct way of tying a bowline knot. I sensed that Francis and Roger knew not all was well with Captain Matthew Quinton. Roger probably suspected the consequences of too much Hull ale. Perhaps Francis sensed there was something deeper, but he was too tactful to pry.

The great fleet stretched away on either side, ahead and astern, in its three squadrons of Red, White and Blue: the entire ocean seemed to be carpeted with stout English oak, rising and falling majestically upon the grey swell. But I took no pleasure in the sight and returned gloomily to my cabin. I lay upon my sea-bed and thought for a long while. I reflected upon a battle I once fought against a Commonwealth captain who had ostensibly embraced the Restoration, only to plot its overthrow and cunningly conceal his true allegiance. Perhaps that example was too heavy upon my mind, too weighty an influence in my thinking about Lawson and his kind. But then, perhaps it was also being given too much weight by the likes of Clarendon and especially by the devious Arlington; and young as I was, I was already learning not always to trust the words of princes and potentates alike. Politics, I reflected; God preserve me from politics. As if such concerns were not sufficient, I fretted about what might be happening elsewhere in my absence. I strongly suspected that something of import to my family was afoot ashore, of that I was certain, but I was in no position even to scratch at its surface. The victuallers that came out daily from Harwich or Bridlington to supply the fleet brought a steady stream of letters from Cornelia, but whereas she was usually the most prolific of correspondents (
twenty-seven
pages on one occasion during my first voyage), her letters were now inexplicably terse, filling barely one side of a small sheet and revealing next to nothing of her activities. I contemplated pregnancy, miscarriage and a host of less plausible explanations, and found none of them reassuring. Most alarmingly of all, there was almost no mention of the doings of the Countess Louise, or of the fragile health of my brother. The one letter I had received from Tristram was similarly silent upon the matter of my good-sister. Add the strange evasiveness of Phineas Musk, and dark suspicions overwhelmed my thoughts. Above all, I was increasingly alarmed by the reports of plague in London, and concerned for Cornelia’s safety. She would have dismissed both my fears and the plague itself in short order, but that knowledge did nothing to lighten my spirits.

I felt the ship rise and fall in the light swell. I heard the groans of the ancient timbers, and for a moment imagined them to be the legion of dead Quintons crying out from their tombs. There even seemed to be one particular timber that creaked with the voice of my grandfather:
Believe
.

Aye, My Lord of Ravensden, but believe in what?

With heart and mind in turmoil, I took a sheet of paper, dipped my quill in the ink, and began to write.

‘In the name of God, Amen. I, Matthew Quinton, Captain of His Majesty’s ship of war
Merhonour
in the present expedition against the Dutch, being of sound body and mind but conscious of the transitory nature of life and of the manifold dangers of the service upon which I am now engaged, do make this, my last Will and Testament…’

* * *

‘The island, yonder,’ said Kit, pointing to a grey line upon the horizon, ‘is Texel. There, to the south of it, is the Helder, the north tip of Holland. Between them is the Mars Deep sea-gate – the main passage into their Zuider Sea and thence to Amsterdam.’

I studied the low shores, so like those of Essex or Suffolk. It was difficult to distinguish the two land masses from the channel that separated them. Only the occasional tower of a church or windmill broke the monotonous flatness. But as I stared more intently through my lens, I spied another sight: there, behind the Texel shore, rose the very tops of a forest of masts. ‘Then that, I take it, must be the Dutch fleet. Lord Obdam himself and his myriad of flagmen.’

Kit studied the sight. ‘Only sixty or seventy sail, I’d reckon’ – God alone knew how he could make such an estimate at such a distance – ‘which means the Zeeland and Rotterdam ships haven’t joined from Hellevoitsluis. No surprise, that. We’d have had intelligence of it if they’d put to sea.’

‘And that,’ said Roger, who stood at our side upon the quarterdeck that day after the sailing from the Gunfleet, ‘they are surely unlikely to do while your fleet sits here, between their two contingents.’

‘Aye,’ said Kit, ‘they’ll have learned their lesson from the year
fifty-three,
when Monck was upon this very shore and yet they came out separately. They took the devil’s own hammering that day.’

Roger lowered his telescope. ‘So if the Dutch will not come out while your fleet lies off their shore, gentlemen, what in the name of the
bon dieu
are we doing? Surely we are in stalemate, with no battle in prospect.’

‘It is called blockade, My Lord,’ I said. ‘The Dutch will not come out, nor, while we hold this latitude, can they go in. And the Dutch live by their trade. Their return-fleet from the East Indies is due within weeks, carrying spices almost beyond value. If we take those ships, and cut off the rest of Holland’s trade, the Amsterdam bourse will eventually collapse. Then De Witt and his cabal will have to send Obdam to sea, to attempt to break our stranglehold. Instead, of course, we will destroy him. Either way, the Dutch republic is finished.’

I said the words with a confidence I did not feel in my heart; but who was Matthew Quinton to quibble with the expressed opinion of the Duke of York, Prince Rupert, Sir William Penn and all the rest of the great seamen?

‘It does not seem an honourable course,’ said the Comte d’Andelys. ‘The great ships of England, all her mighty princes and her proud lords, content to prevent the passage of some mean merchant hulls – not fit work,
mes amis
. If this was a French fleet, now, we would force the sea-gate, there, sail into their anchorage and burn Obdam’s fleet at anchor. Now
that
is an honourable course.’

‘Also a desperately dangerous course, My Lord,’ Kit said. ‘No more than one ship at a time can pass through the sea-gate – I have sailed through it enough times, on hulls bound over the Pampus to or from Amsterdam. It has grown worse of late, and you’ll not find more than three fathoms at the best of a spring tide. You have two miles to run in such conditions, My Lord. The Dutch have forts on both shores, too, and the channels shift constantly, like ours in the Thames, so even our newest charts are probably worthless. And of course it is a lee shore, with all the dangers of coming off it safely again.’

Roger, the former captain of the Most Christian King’s great ship
Le Téméraire
, looked at Kit in some puzzlement. ‘My sailing master used to make much of that term, especially when we were coming between Bertheaume and Camaret into the Road of Brest. Remind me again, gentlemen: what is this “lee shore” of which you speak?’

Kit and I exchanged an amused glance, tinged with the knowledge that only a few short years before, it would have been Matthew Quinton asking that self-same question.

The grand fleet of England duly commenced its blockade of the Dutch coast. During the next days, we stood out to sea or came closer inshore, depending upon the winds and our frequent soundings, for the shoals in those waters were notoriously treacherous. Our scouts, like Harris’s
House of Nassau
, would sometimes dart up almost to the mouth of the sea-gate and fire a few guns in defiance before coming off again. Then we made a grand promenade down the featureless coast as far as Scheveningen, watching the alarm bonfires spring up upon the dunes and listening to the distant noise of church bells proclaiming that the English were coming. Such was our purpose, of course: to spread panic among the honest burghers of The Hague, perhaps inducing them to force De Witt’s government into a humiliating surrender. We fired the
Merhonour
’s guns for the first time, albeit unshotted, off the shore near Zandvoort, again to intimidate the local citizenry. Having seen the performance of my truly motley crew upon the yards and sails, I was quite prepared for a fiasco. Yet the battery of the
Merhonour
more than held its own; not quite up to the mark of the truly crack ships like my old colleague Robert Holmes’s
Revenge
or Val Pyne’s
St
Andrew
, but respectable enough. Despite being ancient and deaf, Webb our gunner clearly knew his business. He had decent quarter-gunners under him, and even the most lubberly Welsh generally knew how to fire an artillery-piece: many had fought during the civil wars, or else had served aboard colliers or other craft that carried a gun or two. Some, Treninnick had learned, seemed to have served on ships that might or might not have had formal letters of marque permitting them to wage war upon the trade of other nations. Kit Farrell was too discreet a soul to employ the word ‘pirate’, but nonetheless, his opinion on the matter was clear enough.

My Lord of Andelys fulminated against the dishonour of all these activities, too. He was all for landing on the broad, tempting beaches of North Holland, marching in triumph into the Binnenhof itself and stringing up the Grand Pensionary of Holland from the nearest tree.

But as the fleet made its serene way upon the North Sea, sailing hither, then thither, and so inexorably wearing or tacking back to hither, the concerns of Captain Matthew Quinton multiplied. True, with no immediate prospect of battle there was equally no immediate alarm over the intentions of Lawson and the hypothetical twenty captains. For good or ill, I had not reported his ambiguous speech at dinner to the Duke of York; thus that particular die was cast. But as that apprehension faded, others sprang forth to take its place.

Quite apart from my troubled thoughts about what might or might not be happening ashore, there was my abiding concern for the crew of the
Merhonour
. Despite their surprising competence upon the great guns, they were evidently still very far from being a fighting unit capable of putting the fear of God into the proud butterboxes. The Welsh continued to be obstreperous; more so now that word of the curse of the
Merhonour
had got amongst them, for there is only one creature more superstitious than a seaman, and that is a Welshman. Pewsey reported frequent fights between the decks; reported them, but evidently did nothing to restrain or prevent them. His sole essay at disciplining a member of my crew came one morning in my cabin when he presented me with that notorious defaulter and likely ringleader of mutiny, Cherry Cheeks Russell. Presumably even the timid Pewsey reckoned that the management of a thirteen-year-old youth was within his powers.

‘Pissing below decks, Captain,’ said Pewsey. ‘And smoking his pipe away from the tub. At the same time.’

Within the hull, smoking was permitted only in the immediate vicinity of a large tub of water, for obvious reasons; and pissing was permitted nowhere below decks, ditto, or so it evidently appeared to all but some of the more backward landsmen and to young Cherry Cheeks.

I stared at young Russell, who returned me a bleary, uncertain gaze. It was barely the forenoon watch, but it seemed clear he had already been imbibing something rather stronger than the daily issue of small beer.

‘Great God, boy,’ I said, ‘you are a disgrace to the House of Russell. A hopeless sot and addicted to your pipe before your fourteenth birthday. For the reputation of our English nobility, let us be thankful that a dozen lives or so stand between you and an earldom…’ Young Castle and Scobey, standing in attendance behind me, sniggered; they were much the same age as Russell and evidently detested this wayward sprig of a chivalric house. ‘Tell me, then, Cherry Cheeks – exactly why is it, do you think, that His Royal Highness’s instructions to his captains enjoin them to prevent pissing and defecation below deck?’

‘Smells,’ said Russell, hesitantly. ‘And I didn’t def – def – shit. Not this time, anyway.’

‘Worse than smells, Mister Russell. Disease. Foul miasmas, bringing on all manner of sicknesses. Smallpox, for one. Even the plague that already stalks the streets of London. Why do we have pissdales on deck, Mister Russell? And why do you think God gave ships heads?’

The boy said nothing, and stared down sullenly toward his feet.

‘Your orders, Captain?’ Pewsey asked.

‘Well, then. The law of the sea is entirely clear in such a case, I think. For drunkenness, the loss of a day’s pay. For smoking away from the tub, punishment at the captain’s discretion. For pissing beneath decks, up to twelve lashes. What do you have to say for yourself in mitigation, Cherry Cheeks?’

The lad shuffled. ‘Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again, sir.’

‘No, Mister Russell, it will not. But it seems to me that your youth stands in your favour and inclines me against the lash.’ Cherry Cheeks looked up with relief. ‘Nevertheless, punishment there must be, otherwise every man on the ship will do what he pleases.’ I seemed to consider the matter. ‘Tell me, Boatswain – when you asked Russell if he had done the things of which he stands accused, how did he answer you?’

Pewsey seemed nonplussed. ‘Why, he denied it, sir! Despite the word of three witnesses.’

‘Ah. Then that denial would have been a lie, would it not, Boatswain?’

‘Aye, sir. That it would.’ Pewsey caught my gist, and smiled.

‘And the navy has an ancient punishment reserved for liars, does it not, Boatswain?’

‘Aye, sir. That it does.’

Russell’s short-lived relief had turned once again to lip-nibbling anxiety. ‘Very well,’ I said, putting on what I trusted was my gravest expression and tone. ‘Mister Russell, you will be hoisted from the main stay for half an hour with a broom and shovel tied to your back and the entire crew shouting “A liar! A liar!” You will then will spend a week cleaning the ship’s hull, directly beneath the heads.’ Castle laughed out loud, and I scowled at him. ‘I pray that the experience will teach you the importance of cleanliness aboard a man of war, and that your high birth will not protect you against the custom of the sea –’