The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (29 page)

Perhaps, after all, the lower deck did not know quite as much as it claimed to.

I saw the flagship’s boat making for the shore. I saw Brouncker’s smug face. In my mind’s eye, I saw him escorting the Countess Louise that night at Whitehall, and recalled the boast to be bedding her that he had made at Sayes Court. I imagined the conversation that might have passed between Louise, Brouncker and the Hydes, father and daughter. I imagined what my good-sister might have said to her lover when she came to the fleet at Harwich. I was furious with rage on behalf of a thwarted fleet and nation. I thought upon Lawson, Marlborough and all the valiant dead or dying souls who seemed to cry out for an avenger. Perhaps I was also consumed by the growing suspicion that our victory had been snatched from us by the machinations of the Countess of Ravensden.

I still shudder at the recollection of what I decided to do next, in thrall to that flood of emotions. Turning to my right I said, ‘Mister Carvell, we will come about and follow the
Charles
’ boat, there. Ten shillings to each man in the crew if we can overtake her before she reaches Southwold quay.’

* * *

It would be a suitable place to die, I thought as I looked about me. I stood atop a great cliff looking down upon Southwold, or Sole, Bay. The fleet stretched away before me: there was the
Charles
, there the
Prince
, and there the
Merhonour
. The crumbling ruins of a church stood a little to the north, precariously close to the cliff edge. Inland, what had once obviously been a monastery was now a farm; hummocks and indentations in the earth marked where houses had once stood. This, then, was Dunwich, the great lost city that the relentless sea had reclaimed inch by inch over the centuries.

‘One good foot,’ said Cornelis. ‘One foot, good-brother, and yet you challenge a man to a duel. I do not relish informing my sister that her husband died in such a fashion, Matthias.’

My paroled good-brother was my second in the encounter to come, although there had been no shortage of candidates for that position. Indeed, Roger d’Andelys had offered to take my place, although he was arguably even more hurt than I was; ultimately only a direct order kept him aboard the
Merhonour
to continue his recuperation. Kit Farrell inevitably had to remain aboard ship in acting command, but Ieuan Goch accompanied me to act as surgeon, and Francis Gale attended in full canonicals to say prayers over the dead if required.

My honour demanded it, I had announced when I explained what I had done to an incredulous dinner gathering in my cabin aboard
Merhonour
: I had waited for Harry Brouncker to step ashore (my boat’s crew having amply earned their reward) before slapping the incredulous courtier with my glove. Despite Brouncker’s enraged protestations of innocence, a time and place had been fixed. Almost every man present at dinner attempted to dissuade me. There would be no dishonour in withdrawing because of my wound, Francis averred. The challenge could be put down to a temporary light-headedness brought on by the pain, Cornelis suggested. Roger made his gallant offer to take my place. Any other captain in the fleet could justifiably have called Brouncker out, he said, so why, by Saint Denis and Saint Jeanne d’Arc, did it have to be Matthew Quinton?

Only one of those present actually nodded in agreement with what I had done: ironically, the one to whom gentlemanly honour was a new and entirely alien notion. Kit Farrell had a quiet word with me before I went ashore to take the field.

‘God be with you, Captain,’ he said. ‘Your cause is just. That man betrayed us all, so I’ll pray your sword strikes home.’

‘And God be with you, Lieutenant. This might be the final lesson that I ever teach you, so heed this well, my friend – this is where honour can lead you. And if you think there must be a mighty fine distinction between honour and folly, then I think I’ll concur with you.’ I smiled, but my voice was breaking. ‘If I don’t return, Kit, see my ship safe into harbour.’

‘Aye, aye, Captain Quinton.’

We shook, and I took my leave of my good and honest friend.

As Brouncker and his party of fashionable, sneering young men approached along the cliff-top, much of my fragile confidence evaporated. My foot throbbed. I could manage without a crutch, but only barely. I moved with the grace of a carthorse. What supreme arrogance had brought me to this? What lunatic notion of honour had made me assume I should take up the sword on behalf of an entire navy? And after all, what evidence did I possess against Harry Brouncker, beyond the report of a thirteen-year-old drunk, the tittle-tattle of the lower deck and my own suspicions of an unheard conversation spied across a crowded room in Whitehall?

Francis brought the two combatants together. The courtier had been happy with my suggestion that my chaplain should act as our arbiter; despite his closeness to me, who could be more neutral than a man of the cloth? Thus we saluted each other and took our guards.

Brouncker began with a dainty little feint, accompanied by an extravagant flourish. I parried easily, but this first pass made two things immediately evident to me. First, Harry Brouncker was no swordsman. He had learned enough from the training manuals to essay the odd flamboyance that might impress a court lady or two, but of real fighting he evidently knew next to nothing. In ordinary times, Matthew Quinton might have toyed with him a little and then either placed a scratch wherever he willed or else despatched him to his maker, depending upon the seriousness of the affair of honour. But this was not an ordinary time. Even the easy step required to parry Brouncker’s first attack had sent jolts of agony from foot to brain.

Brouncker was not such an ignoramus that he could not see at once both the weakness and the strength of his position. He could not stand directly in front of me, exchanging thrust for thrust, always within easy striking distance of my blade; wound or no, that gave me all the advantage, for he would have realised at once that I was a serious swordsman. Thus he began to circle me, lunging only when I was turning or slightly off balance. He was not aiming for flesh: not yet. He did not need to. For by forcing me to turn quickly, to step forward or back to parry his attacks, he was inflicting almost as much pain upon me as any actual stab-wound.

I cursed my damnable pride. As metal struck metal, my own always defending, my head saw countless ways through his guard, endless openings to disarm or finish my opponent, and yet my body simply could not respond. My breath became shorter and faster. Sweat ran into my eyes. Oh God, for two or three pain-free steps, just two or three –

Brouncker knew I was tiring. Indeed, he was counting on it. Once again he sprang to my right, forcing me to put my weight upon the damaged foot as I turned. This time, though, he attacked at once, and vigorously, with more than his customary one or two tentative thrusts, seemingly intent on ending it there and then.

Over-confidence is always the enemy of the swordsman. I parried Brouncker’s attack with ease, observed his slowness at resuming his guard, and in the same moment shifted onto my good left foot and thrust directly at his head.

‘For the fleet you betrayed, and the honour of England!’ I cried as I lunged.

Alas, fortune favoured the rogue, who moved his head aside just before my sword could bury itself in his skull, but he cried out in anguish as my blade nicked his right cheek.

Francis stepped in. ‘Honour is satisfied –’

Brouncker reached up to the wound with his left hand, stared in amazement at the blood upon it, and looked at me in fury. ‘Honour be fucked!’ he cried. He sprang toward me, slashing furiously and without method. I backed away before him, although every step was purgatory – if I was fit, I could have exploited the frantic nature of his onslaught and easily struck a mortal blow, but all I could do was defend for grim life –

As I backed away, I tripped over a low ridge that had once been the base of a wall. I fell to the earth, brought up my sword barely in time to deflect away Brouncker’s exultant slash toward my shoulder, but knew at once that I would be able to do nothing if he followed up with a quick thrust at my legs or groin –

I heard the hooves of the Four Horsemen, felt their thunder upon Dunwich cliff, and knew that my time had come. Ridiculously, I thought upon the disgrace of dying at the hands of a fop like Harry Brouncker, and wondered what my father and grandfather would say when I met them shortly –

Cornelis’s sword came up, parrying Brouncker’s blade and then coming down to knock mine to my side. We both looked at him quizzically, and in Brouncker’s case angrily too, but as I got to my feet, Cornelis merely nodded toward the approaching party of horsemen, galloping toward us across the heath. There were rather more than four of them: perhaps twenty or more, all heavily armed, all in burgundy uniforms, and at their head was a familiar figure, the most natural and splendid horseman I ever saw in all my days, resplendent in a huge befeathered hat after the old fashion.

It was His Highness, Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

* * *

Brouncker had retired in disarray, for the prince was no friend of his, and His Highness’s reminder to us of the king’s many injunctions against duelling had been delivered with a stern ferocity that made us both exchange sheepish, ashamed glances.

Rupert’s face was no less serious when he took me a little way off from my bemused companions, into the ruins of the church upon the cliff-top.

‘So, Matthew Quinton,’ he said, ‘you considered it incumbent upon yourself to right the wrong that Brouncker committed?’

Those words, coming from the greatest cavalier of them all, made me feel pitiful, and ashamed of my folly.

‘I – I acted on the spur of the moment, Highness. For the honour of all in the fleet.’

‘Ah, yes, the honour of the fleet. And who exactly appointed you to be the guardian of the honour of the fleet, Matthew Quinton?’

I looked out, through the gaping hole where the east window had been, toward the ships at anchor in the bay beyond. ‘No man, Your Highness. I beg forgiveness for my presumption and pride.’

Rupert nodded. ‘
Ja
. Presumption and pride indeed. That you, a wounded man incapable of moving and wielding his sword properly, should have reached Brouncker before any of the three army officers, outstanding swordsmen all, whom I had assigned to different quarters of Southwold, with my direct – but naturally unwritten – orders to ignore my cousin’s injunctions and challenge the accursed fellow at the first opportunity… As it is, Quinton, you have deprived me of the pleasure of seeing one of my men’s blades lodged in Brouncker’s ribs, and you almost lost your own life to boot. You are a damnably impetuous young man.’

And then Rupert of the Rhine did something that I had never witnessed before; indeed, I believe there were very few who ever witnessed the sight that I now beheld.

His face broke into the most radiant, boyish grin.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘damnably impetuous. As I was, once. And then, your conduct in the late battle was outstanding – your ship’s resistance to the
Oranje
was quite glorious, Captain. You probably saved the
Charles
and thus my cousin, the Duke. But for my part, I was more impressed by the initiative you showed in turning out of the line to follow me.’ Rupert’s uncharacteristic smile broadened. ‘Which is what I had hoped for when I recommended you for this command.’

‘
You
? You recommended me, Highness?’

Rupert nodded sharply in the Teutonic fashion. ‘Who else? James was reluctant to commission a man who had so offended his brother the King, but I am beyond such sensibilities. Your conduct and loyalty during these last years made me certain you were the man to watch Lawson and the rest if they proved treacherous. You have much of your father in you, Matthew Quinton, and he was one of the best men I ever knew.’ The prince sighed. ‘I have been a warrior for thirty years, and have been responsible for the deaths of more men than I can count. Not only my enemies, but too many of my friends. And I regret no death for which I was responsible more than that of your father. You know it is twenty years, to this very day, since the Naseby fight?’ I felt a sudden shock: I had quite forgotten the anniversary of my father’s death in the battle where this prince, standing so few feet from me, had won and lost a war in the space of an afternoon. ‘Twenty years, but I still see it as though it were yesterday. Still I mourn the men who fell, and the cause that was lost. Thus to honour the memory of your father, and to acknowledge your own courage and other merits, I pledge that henceforward I will be a true friend and patron to you, Matthew Quinton.’

With that, Rupert, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, extended his hand toward me. In those days the gesture was still rare; coming from this man above all others, it was doubly unexpected.

Twenty years to the day. Time to close the chapter. I reached out and shook the royal hand.

 

 

 

When I finally got aboard the
Royal Charles
, the Duke of York made no mention of my duel with Brouncker, although he must have been fully aware of it. But Sir William Coventry, at his side, smiled broadly throughout the interview, and at its conclusion, he winked happily at me; evidently the Lord Admiral’s secretary thoroughly approved of my conduct. The duke himself was businesslike, enquiring after my wound, my casualties and the state of my ship. He listened intently, and when I had finished my account, his orders to me were brisk and categorical. The
Merhonour
to proceed at once to Chatham, there to be docked pending survey and – if repair proved uneconomical, as all expected – to be condemned as unfit for further service. Captain Quinton to be granted leave to recover from his wound, and (at Captain Quinton’s private request) to attend to his own personal affairs ashore. Captain van der Eide to be sent to the
Royal Charles
so that the duke could compliment him in person upon his outstanding conduct during the battle, and to entertain him in his retinue for a time; indeed, the heir to England spoke of my good-brother with almost reverential awe and admiration. Roger, Comte d’Andelys, to be permitted to return to France in the train of the ambassadors, there to continue his recuperation; it being an unspoken understanding that the Battle of Lowestoft had put paid to the duc de Verneuil’s embassy, and by so doing had increased that the likelihood that France would declare war on Great Britain in belated compliance with its treaty obligations to the Dutch.

Thus the week or so that we spent at anchor at the Buoy of the Nore, off Sheerness, awaiting suitable tides to take us up the Medway after sailing down from Southwold Bay, was a time of leave-taking. Roger’s departure was accompanied by drums, trumpets, and the finest choir of Cornish and Welsh voices that the
Merhonour
could provide. The Comte d’Andelys, still nursing his damaged left arm in a sling, took a final look around the upper deck and then lifted his hat to me.

‘Captain Quinton,’ he said, ‘I give you thanks, sir, for your hospitality to me upon this voyage. You know that you and your dear wife are always welcome at the chateau of Andelys, and you will always be welcome aboard any ship of mine.’

I responded in an equally formal manner. ‘Your presence aboard has honoured us, My Lord. I wish you well for your return to France, sir.’ And then, rather less formally – ‘Let us pray it’s not to be war between us, Roger.’

‘Ah, there can never be war between us, my friend. Between our kingdoms, perhaps. Between your ship and mine, quite possibly. But never between friends.’

A day later, Cherry Cheeks Russell left us. A letter had recently come to me from the Earl of Bedford suggesting that the boy’s voyage with us had not been as entirely with the concurrence of his family as he had claimed, nor of the headmaster of his school, the same one that I had attended but a few years before. No concurrence whatsoever, to be precise. Thus it was a somewhat chastened and unusually sober young man who was rowed ashore to Queenborough Quay, there to be collected by one of the retainers from Woburn Abbey. Young Russell waved from the boat, and as I returned the gesture I turned to Francis Gale, alongside me on the quarterdeck, and remarked, ‘Well, our duty is done in his regard, Francis. But I doubt that young man will ever amount to very much.’

I did not know then how wrong it is possible for a man to be. That thought struck me those few months ago when I saw this same Edward Russell buried; not in some obscure corner of the churchyard at Woburn, but in Westminster Abbey, replete with all the honours that our land could bestow. As Garter King of Arms recited the titles, my thoughts wandered back to that summer of sixty-five and to the snot-nosed, drink-addled boy who had grown to be the Most Noble Lord Edward, Earl of Orford, Viscount and Baron, Admiral of the Fleet, First Lord of the Admiralty no fewer than three times; the victor of Barfleur and La Hogue, the twin battle that constituted an even greatest victory than Lowestoft, a colossal naval triumph unlikely ever to be surpassed or forgotten; sometime the joint chief minister of England; aye, and one of the ‘immortal seven’, those who signed the letter inviting William of Orange to invade this realm, thus bringing about what some still call ‘the Glorious Revolution’. Or so he liked to believe.

In the year ninety-two, the exiled King James the Second watched from a clifftop in Normandy as Admiral Edward Russell’s ships destroyed the French invasion transports that were meant to restore him in triumph to his Britannic thrones. Although I was not there, I have thought upon that beautiful irony many times. I have wondered whether, as the French ships burned in the bay of La Hogue, both the king and the admiral thought back to that day in June 1665: to that moment when they stood together upon the quarterdeck of the
Royal Charles
and a shot took off the heads of the men next to them, rather than their own. The chance of a moment, a stroke of luck, divine predestination, call it what you will –
that
is what makes history.

As it was, to the end of his days Edward Russell could spell barely a word, ever kept a bottle close at hand, and always had to bear the embarrassment of his first captain greeting him as ‘Cherry Cheeks’.

* * *

There was one call of duty that had to be made before I could return to London and attempt to get to the bottom of the strange conspiracy, if so it truly was, that seemed to exist between my wife, my uncle and Phineas Musk. Once the
Merhonour
was safely docked at Chatham, I took horse, crossed Rochester Bridge and so rode on to Gravesend and Greenwich. There I dismounted before a goodly house of three stories, making my way up the stairs through a throng of concerned seamen (Will Berkeley at their head), tearful servants and grieving kin to the deathbed of one of England’s fallen heroes.

‘Matthew Quinton,’ said Sir John Lawson in a weak voice. ‘I had not expected to see you here.’

The wound in his knee had turned gangrenous, and the stench in the room was truly dreadful. As I stood before his bed and looked upon the pale, sweating face of the recumbent Yorkshireman, I came to a sudden and discomfiting realisation: I did not have the slightest idea of what I wished to say to him. ‘I – I have come to apologise, Sir John. For ordering my ship out of its rightful place in the line.’

He fixed me with a quizzical stare. ‘You have come to say that to me? Father of Heaven, you are indeed a curious young man.’ He coughed, then laughed the thin, bitter laugh of the dying. ‘You did the right thing, Quinton. When I saw the prince tack, I thought as you must have done – do I follow him? And when you turned, I thought once again – does that young blade have the right of it?’ An old nurse stepped forward, mopped Sir John’s brow and glowered at me for taxing him, but he waved her away. ‘But you see, Quinton, I served under the generals-at-sea, Blake, Deane, aye, and the Duke of Albemarle as now is. Army men all, and under them, obedience to the command flag was paramount. Initiative was frowned upon – unless they were the ones displaying the initiative. So when you and the prince tacked, my heart told me to go with you. But my head was still filled with the dictums of a dozen years past. No signal from the flagship, so hold your course, John Lawson. And if all had done as I did, we would surely have lost this battle and perhaps this war. So you do not need to apologise to me, Matthew Quinton.’ He coughed long and hard.

‘I thank you, Sir John,’ was all I could find to say.

‘Aye, well. Nor do I blame you for your part in that business of the twenty captains. After the
London
blew up, I made some enquiries of my own to discover whether it could have been sabotage, and learned of the rumour at that time. And of a strange, dark creature said to be involved with it in some way. A creature going under the name of Lord Percival.’
Percival
? But that was the name Lady Louise had uttered when she and I were alone at Ravensden – ‘Twenty traitorous captains,’ said Lawson through a coughing fit. ‘A monstrous slander against our honour. An unfounded rumour started God knows where – perhaps by this very Percival – to discredit we who had served the Commonwealth, yet somehow it was elevated by the black arts of the king’s ministers into the grandest of conspiracies. So we all fell under suspicion, and we Englishmen nearly defeated ourselves as a result.’ He reached out and pulled me down, close to him, so that the others in the room could not hear. The smell was almost unbearable, yet his words were even heavier upon my heart. ‘I tell you this, Quinton. I have been loyal to England until this, my dying day,’ Lawson whispered. ‘I have been true to Proverbs Three, Verse Three, as have the others. We have all been loyal. But the foulest treacheries are always those that grow closest to home – the betrayal of a cheating wife, or the disdain of an unfeeling child.’ The great admiral coughed, speckling his chin with blood. ‘And there is the irony, is it not? England was not betrayed by us, the old Commonwealths-men. England was betrayed by one of your own kind, Matthew Quinton. Betrayed upon the idle whim of a great lady.’ He coughed again. When he spoke once more, his words were barely audible. ‘That is the truth of your new cavalier England. I am glad to take my leave of it.’

I left Sir John with a heavy heart, for I knew he had only spoken the truth.

Will Berkeley took me to one side. ‘I’m grateful to you, Matt. It was good of you to come.’

‘You’ll stay with him, Will?’

‘To the end. He was a great man – our greatest seaman of all, I think.’ My friend seemed troubled by more than the imminent death of Sir John Lawson, and I asked him the cause. ‘My conduct is condemned, in the streets and already in pamphlets that are about London. In short, my friend – I am denounced as a coward.’

‘A coward? But dear God, man, you did what all the rest of us in the Red did!’

‘Aye, and there’s the rub. What
did
all of us in the Red do, Matt – apart from Lawson’s division, that is? Might not those with a mind to censure contemplate the fact that we all lay apart from the battle for hours, and judge that the Red Squadron contained a pack of cowards?’

I was stunned, and I suspect my face betrayed it. ‘But that was
strategy
, Will – the duke’s orders, no less! To lie to windward that the Dutch could never weather our fleet, then to deploy where and when we were most needed –’

‘All well and good, Matt, but tell that to the roaring boys in the alehouses who think that the only proper conduct for an Englishman in battle is to lay about the enemy furiously and constantly, even if he loses his life along the way.’ Berkeley shook his head sadly. ‘They cannot attack the Duke directly, of course, and although they whisper against Penn, he is too close to the Duke to criticise openly. Lawson, the vice-admiral, was always in the heart of the battle and will die a hero of the nation. So they censure the rear-admiral as a proxy for the apparent inactivity of those greater than myself. Accuse Will Berkeley of cowardice, and by implication you denounce His Royal Highness’ conduct of the battle. And thus, by yet further inference, you censure the entire royal government of England.’ My friend smiled wanly. ‘It is the humour of the times, Matt, and of our English propensity always to tear down those who have risen faster than the common herd think is fitting, for that is how they see my poor dead brother and I. But I think I can bear it better than the loss of the dear friend dying over yonder.’

We embraced, and I promised I would do all in my power to clear the name of Sir William Berkeley. Thus we parted, and Will returned to the deathbed of the man who had been his patron and so nearly his father-in-law.

I descended the stairs with a heavy heart. Consumed in my own thoughts, I did not pay full attention as I opened the door and stepped out into the street. Thus I collided heavily with the next visitor who had come to pay his last respects to the dying admiral.

‘Y – Your Grace,’ I stammered, rapidly bowing my head to the dark young man who stood in the doorway. ‘I am most profoundly sorry –’