The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (19 page)

‘Perhaps not,’ I said, ‘but I think they are god-fearing, all the same – though which god is the question, of course. And I have observed that nothing calms a troubled soul more than the old words of reassurance.’

Francis Gale could not dispute that, for it was the foundation upon which his entire vocation stood.

I returned below. The scene appeared unchanged. Flames still spat from the canvas partitions of the officers’ cabins. Steam hissed as water from leather buckets was flung onto the seat of the blaze. Kit Farrell turned and raised a finger to his forehead in salute. Like the rest of him, both finger and forehead were singed and covered in grime and sweat.

‘Think we’re getting it under control, Captain,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Lieutenant Giffard has gone below to oversee the drawing of water from the pump wells and the sea. And the beams and planks aren’t catching. We’ve men below keeping the deck above them watered. Thanks be to God that none of the officers seem to have had any powder in their cabins.’

‘Thank God indeed, Lieutenant.’ I looked about me; there seemed to be a new feeling among the men, a sense of triumph supplanting that of fear. Everything was as ordered as it could be. Relays of men now passed buckets down the line to those at the front, who were being relieved every few minutes and supplied at once with generous tankards of small beer by the cook and his mates. This would have been Kit’s doing, of course; yet another debt of gratitude I owed to my friend.

‘Do we yet know how it began?’ I asked.

‘They say it was in the boatswain’s cabin,’ said Kit. ‘Pewsey left a candle burning when he went on watch. Seems it fired a bunch of rosemary he kept hanging there for luck.’

Kit gesticulated toward the hunched figure of the boatswain, who was sitting upon the deck a little way forward. Pewsey was rocking slowly back and forth against one of the timber knees, sobbing and reciting the words of the eighty-third psalm over and over to himself:
As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountain on fire, so persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek thy name, Oh Lord
. So much for his lucky rosemary, supposedly the favoured charm of seamen since Aphrodite arose from Poseidon’s lair garlanded in chains of the stuff. I decided at once that there was little point in questioning or upbraiding the man; that could wait for later in the morning. For now, it was only important to ensure that the ship was safe and her crew following orders. With the former apparently assured, it was time to address the latter.

* * *

I returned to the upper deck, and to my astonishment found myself in the midst of a rhetorical disputation.

‘Yea, the second epistle of Peter warns us against false prophets, and you are truly one such – yes, you, the bringer-in of damnable heresies, as the apostle tells us – if I but had my sword in my hand, you foul Welsh imp of Satan –’ cried Francis Gale in exasperation.

The bearded Welshman was shouting something back to him in his own tongue, a strange torrent of words in which one phrase recurred over and over:
derfel gadarn
. The other Welshmen were nodding vigorously or howling approbation of their ringleader.

I must have worn a puzzled expression, for Francis shook his head violently and cried, ‘Ah, Captain Quinton, I am as Elijah was amidst the priests of Baal, one lone prophet of the Lord shouted down by his enemies. And if we are to believe the First Book of Kings, at least Elijah knew what the priests of Baal were talking about.’

‘They resist the word of God, then, Francis?’

My chaplain nodded to Lanherne, who had evidently been translating once again for Treninnick and thus for the Welsh. ‘The bearded one, there, proclaims the fire as final proof that the ship is truly cursed, Captain,’ said the coxswain of the
Merhonour
. ‘There is this thing, this
derfel gadarn
– Treninnick calls it a wooden saint, so God knows what it was – which obviously meant much to them. The English seem to have burned it, or him. The old man cries out that the destruction of the ship by fire will avenge the fate of the
derfel gadarn
.’

‘Then what is he – the bearded man? Why does he have such power over these wretches?’

‘Treninnick has heard some of the others name him as Ieuan Goch of Myddfai, Captain,’ said Lanherne. ‘Or in English, Red John of some place that might as well be on the moon. He claims to be a seer – in his tongue, a druid.’

‘A druid,’ I sighed. ‘Of course. What else could he be? We need but the Holy Grail, a few forest nymphs and the ghost of my grandfather to give us a full measure of madness aboard this ship. But the
Merhonour
is cursed, as they say, so it must only be fitting.’

I looked around me in despair. I needed a healthy dose of scepticism from a Phineas Musk or a Roger d’Andelys, but neither was to hand. I needed the erudition of Uncle Tris…

Uncle Tris
. A boy balanced upon his knee, listening to the wondrous tales of the Knights of the Round Table. Drinking it all in, memorising it all, praying that one day he could be counted among that noble brotherhood…

‘Derfel!’ I cried. ‘One of the seven warriors of Arthur who survived the battle of Camlan! He was made a saint, or so the legend tells us. Lanherne, get Treninnick to ask them if this
derfel gadarn
of theirs is something to do with the same tale.’

Before Lanherne could address himself to Treninnick in Cornish, the bearded Welshman took a step toward me. ‘A
saes
who knows of Saint Derfel,’ he said in fluent, rolling English. ‘Truly the days of miracles have not ceased.’

Francis Gale moved threateningly towards him. ‘Damn you, man, I wasted all that time and breath upon you when the ship was in dire peril,
yet you understood me perfectly all the time
?’

The Welshman smiled and waved his arms to no apparent purpose. ‘There is no listening more revealing than when a man thinks none can hear him. I think you are a Shropshire man by your voice, priest, so you should know us better than these others do. You are, after all, very nearly one of the
Cymru
yourself.’

Francis scowled: no greater insult can be directed at a borderer than an insinuation that he truly belongs on the other side of it. The druid, or whatever he was, then turned to face me directly. His eyes were black and penetrating, bearing an unsettling similarity to those of the Countess Louise. ‘You see, Captain, in the four hundred years since you conquered us, we Welsh have ever found it useful to pretend not to understand you
saes
. Whereas we understand you clearly. All too clearly, indeed. We understood you when the wooden shrine of Saint Derfel, which we had venerated for near a thousand years, was taken to London and burned by your Cromwell – Thomas, that was, not the so-called Lord Protector.’ He almost spat out the last word; evidently Ieuan Goch of Myddfai was no enthusiast for Oliver, our late king in all but name. Perhaps that was something I could turn to my advantage.

‘Great God, man,’ I protested, ‘that must have been a hundred and thirty or more years past. How could you claim this fire as vengeance for that?’

Ieuan Goch of Myddfai opened his arms toward the daylight breaking over the Dutch shore. ‘The ninetieth psalm of David:
a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night
. In other words, Englishman, we Welsh have long memories.’ His voice rose and fell in strange, song-like cadences.

‘Long memories and mightily insolent tongues,’ said Francis. ‘Show respect when you address Captain Quinton, brother and heir to the Earl of Ravensden.’

I raised a hand, for I sensed that this peculiar Welshman required a delicate approach; and if well handled, perhaps he could be the key to securing the loyalty of his countrymen.

‘I take it you have never used the trade of the sea,’ I said. ‘How, then, did you come to be taken up by the press?’

The Welshman grimaced and stroked his great beard. ‘I was in Merlin’s town of Carmarthen, tending to the sick who still favour the true old healing over these modern charlatans, your so-called physicians and surgeons, such as that creature you keep beneath decks.’ Craigen, surgeon of the
Merhonour
, was a feeble Scot whose remedies for all human conditions seemed to comprise bleeding, or sawing off a limb, or both. ‘I had the misfortune to be aboard a vessel at Carmarthen quay, tending to a ruptured sailor, when Lord Carbery’s press officers swept up the river. They were not discriminating in their choice of men, so long as they made up the number they had been given.’

‘You are a healer, then?’

‘Healer, bard, seer – all of these things. I am a
dryw
in direct descent from Rhiwallon, physician to the high and mighty lord Rhys Grug, Prince of Deheubarth, and his son Cadwgan. Surely you have heard the legend of the physicians of Myddfai, Englishman?’

This so-called druid was unduly puffed up in the pride of his unpronounceable lineage. I recalled once attending a play with my brother: some part or other of the tragic history of King Harry the Fourth. Charles’ friend Follett was cast as some fantastical Welshman called Glendower who claimed to be able to summon monsters at will. His scenes involved much rolling of eyes and emphasising the wrong parts of words, traits that drew hoots of laughter from the usual boorish London audience. It was only now that I realised how well Follett seemed to have researched his part.

‘No, I have not,’ I said slowly: I had to be careful now, for the wrong word risked marring all. ‘But I will deal plainly with you, Ieuan Goch of Myddfai. You can tell me the tales of your physicians and your princes. Indeed, I will appoint you an assistant to the surgeon so that your skills may be useful to us all. And as such, of course, you will be paid better than you are now, as a mere landsman.’ Ieuan Goch’s eyes flashed at that. I calculated that a wandering druid would depend chiefly upon alms, and the proverbial poverty of Wales would bring him precious little of those. ‘But you can also secure for me the wholehearted loyalty and effort of the Welshmen aboard this ship, beginning by assuring them the fire is almost extinguished, so their lives are safe. And do all in your power to quell this talk of a curse. In return, the Welshmen will be esteemed as our equals, and your bards in centuries to come will sing your praises.’

The old man looked me up and down as though he were assessing the market value of a bull. ‘You are a strange creature, Matthew Quinton,’ he said with a curious impertinence that I permitted to pass. ‘Young, yet so much less of an oaf than most of your
saes
brethren. A man seemingly aware of history, yet so unaware of your own, I think.’ He rolled his eyes, this strange, unsettling creature, muttered some words in his own tongue, then settled his gaze back upon me. ‘There is a Welsh saying,
a fo ben, bid bont
: let him who would be a leader, be a bridge. And indeed, I think you have been a bridge to us in this dealing, so perhaps you will be a leader worthy of our trust.’ He looked out, over the ship’s rail, toward the other ships within sight and especially toward the distant hull of the
Royal Charles
, flying the royal standard at the main. ‘I have thought much upon this war, and have concluded it is meet and proper that we of the
Cymru
should serve the noble prince James, son of the martyr, of the blood of the ap Tudurs and the
mab darogan
, the son of destiny, he whom you call King Harry the Seventh.’
He
had concluded – the towering arrogance of the man! Nothing of obeying orders, or doing duty; yet I would make nothing of it, for after all, he had travelled a different road but still arrived at the place where I wished him to be. ‘Very well, then,’ said Ieuan Goch of Myddfai, bowing his head to me. ‘Let it be so, My Lord.’

‘I am addressed as Captain, Welshman – keep “My Lord” for the likes of the comte d’Andelys when he returns aboard.’

Ieuan Goch of Myddfai nodded his head, but his eyes narrowed. ‘Be not so certain of that which you cannot see and do not know, My Lord,’ he said. With that, he raised his right hand, pressed two fingers to his forehead in an immaculate gesture of salute and turned away, leaving me staring after him in perplexity.

 

 

 

Lord Percival and Phineas Musk emerged from the Lanthorn Tower and found themselves in the midst of a torrential downpour. In his deposition, Musk states that he favoured an immediate retreat back into the dryness they had just forsaken, but his master was intent on pressing on. The vast bulk of the White Tower, one of London’s most enduring landmarks, loomed over them as they made their way west through the inmost ward of the city’s fortress, passing the ruins of the old medieval palace and its great hall as they made for the Bloody Tower. Musk contemplated the thickness of the walls and wondered whether they could withstand the two terrible enemies that assailed them, the plague and the Dutch.

‘You think our friend Harvey spoke true, Musk?’ Lord Percival demanded suddenly.

‘The Tower and a treason charge can be greatly efficacious in loosing a man’s tongue, My Lord. He had the look and the smell of a man desperate to save his body, whatever he might say about his soul.’

‘Indeed. He seemed so eager to clear himself and please his audience that it would not surprise me if he subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles and turned Laudian within the week. That being so, his confession causes us some difficulty.’

‘My Lord?’

‘He knows nothing of any plot by twenty captains, Musk, and he knows nothing of the whereabouts of the ostler. That much is obvious. No doubt we could apply the Tower’s instruments of persuasion, but I doubt very much if they would extract a different tale from him.’ They passed through the gateway of the Bloody Tower into Water Lane, the Traitors’ Gate directly ahead of them. The pikemen on duty stood to attention as they passed. ‘No, Jeroboam Harvey is a puffed-up malcontent with a fondness for his own voice and a deluded belief in the godliness and invincibility of the Dutch. No more, no less. And that, Musk, creates a problem.’

‘My Lord?’

‘The fleet will engage within days, so perhaps it is already too late to expose this conspiracy. Harvey was our last hope, unless we can somehow find the missing ostler – Sutcliffe has no other names, no other hints even as to a direction we could travel.’

‘If there ever was a conspiracy, My Lord.’ Musk’s broad-brimmed leather cap disgorged ever more rainwater onto his shoulders.

‘Yes … if there ever was a conspiracy.’ Lord Percival seemed especially thoughtful. ‘I have been considering that possibility, Musk. Think on this. We live in fevered times. Rumour is everywhere, the drumbeat of each passing hour. The king is dead. The queen is pregnant. Cromwell is alive. The Dutch have landed. The dissenters have risen. The papists have risen. Each new tale excites the rude multitude for a day or two, then fades into the oblivion whence it sprang. So why has this one tale been so persistent, Musk, above all the rest? If it is not true, how did it come into being, and why has it gained such credence? Why have you and I spent weeks chasing shadows, when we could have been about other business entirely – notably the business to which you must return tomorrow?’

They came to the Byward Tower and the blessed dryness of the passage through it. Once more pikes clattered against breastplates as guards came to attention. Musk realised he had no answer to Lord Percival’s question; none but a tiny and dark suspicion, growing ever greater as each moment passed.

‘No, Musk,’ said Lord Percival as they stepped out onto the causeway across the moat to the Middle Tower, ‘our friend Harvey is not quite the last creature we must interrogate. There is one more.’

* * *

The navy royal of England was somewhat
en féte
. Our outlying frigates had spied a body of ships to northward and made all sail to intercept them. They proved to be a returning Dutch merchant fleet, of which we had received intelligence from Limerick a fortnight before. Hoping to sneak past the north of Ireland and Scotland, then down the Norwegian coast and so through the sea-gates, they had instead fallen directly into our path. The frigates took eight of them: mostly flyboats with prodigious cargoes of wine from Bordeaux and Lisbon, although one was a West Indiaman worth, it was said, some £30,000. How I envied Beau Harris and my former command, the
House of Nassau
, which played a part in the capture!

The triumph was followed in short order by a council of war which took a resolution to sail for England. The Dutch had not fallen into our trap by coming out to fight us while we were upon their shore, the Duke of York argued, so perhaps they would be more tempted to do so while we were back upon ours. Moreover, the one essential without which an English fleet could not keep the seas was in dire straits. Not gunpowder, for we had used almost none of our store; not sails, for we had not been battered by particularly vicious gales; not even men, although our surgeons were alert to any sign of plague or the more usual sicknesses that beset a fleet at sea. No, far worse than any of these. The fleet was almost out of beer.

This grim reality brought forth a mighty diatribe from Prince Rupert during the council of war. ‘England is a realm awash with beer,’ he cried. ‘How is it, then, that the victualler of the navy can find barely enough to keep us at sea for a month? What, pray, is all the money that Parliament voted being spent on?’

It was difficult for any man present to disagree with His Highness’s sentiments. For my part, I welcomed the prospect of our return for two reasons: it would give Thurston and his crew the time and resources to repair the fire damage more effectively than they could at sea, while the mails that hopefully awaited us at Harwich might contain news from home to ease the concerns of the captain of the
Merhonour
.

We made landfall between Southwold and Hollesley Bays, and skirted the coast of Suffolk down toward the Gunfleet. I was at the quarterdeck rail teaching Cherry Cheeks Russell how to take a bearing, not without an awareness of the irony of it all; not too many years before, I had been the pupil acquiring the same knowledge. A pupil who, though I say so myself, was undoubtedly quicker on the uptake than my sottish young companion.

‘Very well, Mister Russell, we will try again upon Orford Castle, yonder. No, this side, there is but sea on the other. The great brown tower. No, that is Hollesley Church.
That
great brown tower.’

I pointed. ‘That is a castle, then, Captain?’ asked my reluctant pupil.

‘Quite so, Mister Russell. A mighty keep of King Henry the Second, and the best seamark for miles upon this coast.’

The boy looked at it curiously. ‘One day, I want to be the lord of a castle like that,’ he said, with the sort of determination he usually applied only to the pursuit of a bottle.

I smiled, for the young Matthew Quinton had known such dreams. Indeed, Captain Quinton of the
Merhonour
was still not immune from them; after all, if Will Berkeley, only a few months older than me, could already be a knight, then why not I?

‘Well, young Cherry Cheeks,’ I said, ‘for that to be so, I think you will have to study long and hard. You can spell barely a single word correctly, and your knowledge of the sea-business seems to extend no further than knowing when the cook is about to distribute food and drink.’

The lad shrugged. ‘Thought it was going to be all battles and glory,’ he said, ‘not this tedious sailing.’

I said nothing, for I could hardly admit that I largely shared his assessment of our situation. Indeed, in one sense I envied young Russell. He did not bear the responsibilities of command, and he did not spend many a waking moment wondering what those whom he loved or hated might be doing in his absence. The evasiveness of Musk, the curious silence of Cornelia, the mysterious decamping of Tristram to Dorset: either those closest to me were engaged in some sort of conspiracy of which I knew nothing, or else distance, the loneliness of command and the imminence of battle had overwhelmed my thoughts, blowing up a few disconnected, innocent facts into a giant web of irrational fears. Was that, perhaps, in itself a manifestation of the curse of the
Merhonour
?

‘Twenty-two degrees,’ said Russell, interrupting my grave-black thoughts.

‘What?’

‘The keep of Orford Castle lies twenty-two degrees of relative bearing to starboard, Captain Quinton.’

I, too, lined up the ancient keep. ‘Dear God, Cherry Cheeks, you are quite right – you have fixed a bearing correctly for the first time! Perhaps we will make a seaman of you yet.’

The lad grinned. A thought suddenly struck me: I had been so consumed by my own concerns, and overtaken by such events as our failure to join the line-of-battle and the fire aboard, that I had quite forgotten to implement the liar’s punishment upon young Russell. Pewsey had never raised the matter again; and besides, since the fire he had been relieved of his duties and confined to his hastily reconstructed cabin, pending an eventual court-martial. Perhaps Cherry Cheeks Russell would make a seaman after all, for he seemed to have perhaps the most essential attribute for success in the seaman’s ever-uncertain art: luck.

* * *

Hoc loco quo mori miserum esse
… So wrote my uncle in his infuriating Latin script. Once more I bring up the ancient vellum to no more than a few inches from my eyes, and attempt to decipher my original pencil translation of more than sixty years past:

This will be a miserable place in which to die, thought Tristram Quinton as he backed slowly up the main street of Chaldon Worgret. In truth, calling this squalid lane a ‘main street’ was akin to calling our American plantations a nation, just as to call the dozen or so inbreds advancing toward him ‘men’ seemed to be stretching a point beyond its limits. They had been cowed briefly by the unexpected sight of the two swords he drew when they surrounded him in the one inn of the village – that is, the stinking thatched hovel a few hundred yards away – but ultimately, not even finest Toledo steel could overcome such adverse odds and deter so many lumpen opponents.

‘Now, my good people,’ said Tristram, ‘I am a man of peace. I am a man of science. I am the Master of Mauleverer College in the University of Oxford.’

‘Warlock,’ hissed a foul, unshaven creature at the front of the pack.

‘Warlock!’ echoed two or three of the others.

‘Not so, my friends,’ cried Tristram. ‘As I said at the inn, I have merely come to your fine town to learn the truth of an incident that occurred in these parts –’

‘Aye, the old Lugg business!’ cried the foul one, who seemed to be both a ringleader and to have a better grasp of the English language than the rest. ‘Ye’ve no concern with that, stranger, other than ye’ll share her fate! Burning!’

‘Burning!’ cried the man’s chorus.

‘My dear friends,’ said Tris soothingly, still endeavouring to placate but still keeping his swords extended and occasionally twirling the points menacingly, ‘I have no interest in reopening old wounds –’

‘And they say ye’re a friend of the vicar at Hardingford, that’s a Papist!’

‘Roger Falcondale is a former student of mine. It may be true that he is a little too inclined to the persuasion of Arminius –’

‘And ye talks with a warlock’s long words, that we may not understand thee!’ snarled the ringleader. ‘And ye dress strange, and offer money to tell ye how the Lugg bitch came to burn! And ye tried to get under Jen Cooper’s skirts at the inn!’

The mob surged forward menacingly at that. ‘That,’ said Tris uncertainly while glancing quickly behind him, ‘was a mere misunderstanding, my dear friends! I am, as I say, a man of peace, and I shall prove it to you.’

With that, he raised his two swords, plunged them into the soft earth before him, and stepped back, bracing himself against the barn wall behind. With his right hand, he reached within his frock coat – an item of clothing unknown in that part of Dorset until that day – and made much of locating and producing a kerchief, with which he proceeded loudly to blow his nose.

‘Warlock!’ screamed the ringleader, raising a billhook above his head as he ran directly for Tristram.

In the blink of an eye (or so my ever-immodest uncle proclaims), Tristram reached back into the frock-coat with his left hand, produced a flintlock pistol, aimed it at the ringleader’s ribcage and fired. Tristram put the kerchief fastidiously to his lips as the man was blown backwards, a great fountain of blood spouting from his torso as the lead ball flattened and exited.