The Lion of Midnight (18 page)

Glete barked an order, and the soldiers who had been guarding us from the quayside shuffled uncomfortably, looking at each other
nervously
. Glete’s own men moved across the hall and took up position by our guards. Glete repeated the same words, and this time keys were brought out, locks opened and chains released. We were free; and as proof of our freedom, a Swedish sergeant brought in a bundle containing our swords. Erik Glete recognised mine (the extravagant hilt of my grandfather’s weapon was unmistakeable), took it up and handed it to me.

‘Sir Matthew,’ he said in French so that Ter Horst could understand, ‘I believe this is yours. You will require it, sir, to do battle with the Dutch, those devious and implacable foes of England and Sweden alike.’

‘What has happened here, General?’ I asked in English.

Glete shrugged. ‘Let us say there has been a transition in the affairs of this city, Sir Matthew,’ he replied, still in French for Ter Horst’s benefit as well as my own. ‘From the old Landtshere of Gothenburg to the new. By royal command and commission, and with the assent of the High Chancellor of the Swedes, Goths and Wends.’

And with that, Lieutenant-General Erik Glete, Landtshere of Gothenburg, grinned fiercely.

A saker upon our forecastle fired, and our foretopsail was loosed: the signal for the fleet to get under way. A team of Cressys pushed upon our jeer capstan to bring up our bower anchor. Away to the north-east, sails were loosed upon the mast-ships: slowly and shabbily, as is ever the way aboard merchants’ hulls which bear as few men as possible to save their owners the expense of a proper crew. By contrast, the Cressys – volunteers almost to a man – were now something of a crack crew. As Jeary, Lanherne and the other officers bellowed orders through
voice-trumpets
, they responded instantly and crisply. The fall of the mainsail was immaculate, and it was sheeted home with speed and precision, the other sails and their crews not far short of that mark. The steady, cold breeze from the north-west caught the great sheets of canvas, which cracked and billowed. Slowly, the
Cressy
began to move upon the ocean once again, the mast fleet following raggedly in our wake: at its head, Gosling in the
Thomas and Mary
; bringing up the rear, the
Delight
, the most heavily laden of the mast-ships. We saluted the castle of New
Elfsborg
with eleven, and I offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving that at last Matthew Quinton was putting behind him those infernal
hell-holes
, Gothenburg and the Kingdom of the Swedes, Goths and Wends.

In truth, of course, I was doing nothing of the sort, for the most potent legacy of my time in Sweden was below decks, chained to the
mizzen on the orlop deck. After our release by Erik Glete and the
invisible
good offices of the Count Dohna, we had escorted John Bale back to the
Cressy
. North was all for incarcerating him at once in the darkest recesses of the hold, and I suspected that Arlington’s protégé was still furious at my denying him the opportunity to place a pistol ball in Bale’s skull at the King Johan Inn. At my insistence, though, our prisoner was sat down in my great cabin, his hands and feet securely tied and with the heavily armed Ali Reis and John Tremar training loaded muskets at him. I had two questions to ask the regicide, and the first was that to which every true and loyal Englishmen demanded an answer.

‘Why did you sign the King’s death warrant?’

North snorted; no doubt he anticipated the usual fanatic tirade upon Charles Stuart’s alleged misdeeds, or else upon the so-called iniquity of the institution of kingship. But Bale said nothing of the sort. He fixed me with a firm stare and took some moments to answer.

‘Do you know, Sir Matthew,’ he said finally, ‘for at least the last ten years I have asked myself that same question in almost every waking moment?’

North stepped forward and punched him hard upon the left cheek. ‘
Liar
!’ he screamed. ‘Do not pretend that you repent of the crime, Bale! That falsehood will never win you favour in a court –’

‘Mister North,’ I said sternly, ‘you will favour me by not striking the prisoner here in my cabin or aboard my ship!’

North shot me a furious glance but moved away reluctantly to stand by the stern windows.

‘But there you have my answer,’ said Bale. ‘The blind enthusiasm of youth. I was twenty-one when I signed the warrant, Sir Matthew. I was fourteen when the civil wars began. My eldest brother was killed at Edgehill, the next at the first Newbury fight. My home was burned by Prince Rupert’s men; the first girl I ever loved was raped and killed by one of his dragoons. I was afired by my belief in God’s righteous cause, convinced that He had made me an instrument of His divine justice,
so as soon as I was old enough I went off to fight. But when I inherited my father’s title and went to the House of Lords, what did I find? The timeservers were discussing new terms to be offered to Charles Stuart! To the man who had inflicted nought but blood upon the land for long years on end!’ A furious North stepped toward the prisoner once again, but I raised a hand sharply. ‘So I listened eagerly to those who
proposed
another course – to General Cromwell and those like him who denounced the King as a man of blood. And when the moment came to sign, to place my name first upon the warrant – ah, the pride that I felt! I truly believed we were giving birth to a new England, a land free of tyrants, a land where the will of the people would prevail.’ He shook his head. ‘If only I had known then that I was signing my own death warrant as surely as that of the King.’

North could bear no more. ‘Lies! Damnable, impudent lies! But they will not save you, John Bale! Nothing can save you! Sir Matthew, you may persist with this travesty if you wish. I will have no more of it.’

He stormed past me and left the cabin. ‘A dangerous young man,’ said Bale. ‘He reminds me greatly of myself at that age.’

‘The regicides remained inveterate to a man,’ I said, ignoring his comparison of himself with Lydford North. ‘You were all proud of what you did. Why is it that you alone claim to have repented, John Bale?’

‘I was the most senior of them, as a peer of England, but I was also by some considerable measure the youngest, too. They were firm in their opinions, but mine were as yet barely formed. And as I grew older, I came to see things were not as I thought them to be. Oliver Cromwell, a man whom I had believed to be a vehicle of godly reformation for
England
, took upon himself more power than even the dead king had ever possessed. Great God, Sir Matthew, he was even offered the crown itself, and very nearly took it. So what had it all been for, if I had brought down a tyrant only to set up a far greater one? To behead King Charles only to put King Oliver in his stead? At much the same time I married Conisbrough’s daughter and my son was born. Marriage and fatherhood
change a man’s perspective mightily. You have found that yourself?’

‘I am married,’ I said, ‘but we have not yet been blessed with the joy of children.’

I had no idea why I was confiding in this creature, who had
committed
the most heinous crime of all.

‘I trust you will come to know such joy. But that is how I come to my present condition, Sir Matthew. If I could have had my life over again, I would never have dipped my quill in the ink pot and applied it to the parchment. Four letters – my name. Four letters that damn me, my wife and my son.’

I was taken aback by his apparent honesty; I knew the devil would be equally plausible, but as he spoke, there seemed to be less and less of the diabolic about John Bale. Time, then, to ask him my second question.

‘Was that why you told my men where Montnoir was holding me? Did you seek to mitigate your crime by saving my life?’

‘Sir Matthew, nothing can mitigate my crime. In that, young North is undoubtedly correct, although I think both you and I know it’s just as well. I will die a traitor’s death, and I am prepared for it. No, I saved your life because you were a fellow Englishman in peril at the hands of a Frenchman and a papist. I have many friends in Gothenburg – men opposed to the High Chancellor, able to glean intelligence from all kinds of quarters. So I knew of your Lord Montnoir and his designs, Sir Matthew. Of what he proposed to do in Queen Christina’s name. Even if you and I disagree upon the ideal form of government for England, I think we would both agree that a Catholic Sweden is something that all true English Protestants should oppose with all their might.’

‘I am grateful to you for my release,’ I said, although a part of me still found it galling to make such a gesture to a king-killer.

‘And I to you for saving me from North’s pistol shot when I
surrendered
,’ he said.

‘Surrendered? I have two men with wounds testifying to how hard we had to fight to capture you!’

‘I did not wield the sword against them. I wished to surrender myself to you, but my men would not permit it. To them, I was a symbol – they believed I had to live and be free as a sign that Charles Stuart will never prevail, that what they call the cause of the godly will triumph once again,’ said Bale. ‘But I came to think differently. With Conisbrough dead, I knew my life here was not worth the candle. Sooner or later, a man like your Master North – or a Swede bought with Charles Stuart’s coin – was bound to put a pistol to my head or drive a knife into my ribs. In truth, I have been a dead man walking since I put my signature to that accursed piece of paper. How the
hot-headed
follies and enthusiasms of our extreme youth can condemn us, as surely as my act that day condemned the late king! I am tired of concealment, Sir Matthew, and above all, I have a mighty urge to see my wife and son before I die. That is all the repayment I ask of you. Intercede with the King to permit them one interview with me before the executioner does his work.’

I thought of my King, that infuriating, inconstant crowned enigma. The one cause to which he was constant – indeed, fanatically so – was the relentless pursuit and destruction of his father’s murderers. I doubted whether I could convince him to permit the indulgence that John Bale had requested; but perhaps my brother, the Earl of Ravensden, one of his most intimate friends, could succeed if I could not. I chided myself for even thinking such thoughts, for why should I pander to this
regicide
? But then, I undoubtedly owed this regicide my life.

‘I can guarantee nothing,’ I said, and ordered Ali Reis and Tremar to take John Bale below.

The fleet moved south-south-west through the archipelago at a painfully slow rate. The
Cressy
had constantly to shorten sail to
accommodate
the speed of the slowest mast-ship, although there seemed to
be considerable competition for that dubious honour. Several, notably the
Delight
, tended to fall away sharply to leeward, compelling their inadequate crews to struggle to adjust sail sufficiently for them to be able to beat back up to the body of the fleet. It was soon plain to me that even with so little distance to travel, we would not make the isle of Wingo, and thus the exit from the archipelago, before nightfall; far from it. The flood tide was nearly begun, and I knew from the
outward
voyage how powerfully the current ran in those waters. Rather than risk losing one or more of the mast-ships by attempting to steer through shoal water and a host of islands by night, against the tide, we would need to lay up and proceed again in the morning. As this realisation grew within me, I paced ever more impatiently upon my quarterdeck. Every hour of delay increased our danger. It was already more than likely that intelligence of our sailing had been despatched across the few miles of water that separated us from Denmark, and if our enemies had ships ready for sea, which they were surely bound to do, the wind was in their favour. The westerly was nearly ideal for ships sailing from Frederikshavn or Kristiansand, whereas we would have to tack into it; and having seen such clear evidence of the
ineptitude
of the mast-ships in an easy beam reach, I dreaded the thought of them attempting to beat up into a steady gale.

Reluctantly, I ordered the hoisting of a blue flag at the mizzen peak, the agreed signal for the convoy to drop anchor. We did so in the lee of a small island that the charts named as Buschar, the
Cressy
lying to windward of the mast-fleet. As our bower anchor was loosed and the maintopsail was furled, the lookout barked a report that the
Fortuna
was in sight. This time Erik Glete approached at a leisurely pace, his craft approaching out of the dying light in the south-west, the Swedish pennant streaming from her ensign staff. One of his bow guns fired a salute of three; I had one of our larboard sakers return the same. The proud old galley came alongside, and both the little general and Count Dohna came aboard.

‘Had to give you a proper farewell to Sweden, Quinton,’ said the new Landtshere of Gothenburg as Kit, North and I entertained our visitors in my cabin. ‘My Lord Dohna insisted upon it.’

‘Quite so,’ said Dohna. ‘But there is something I wish you to see, Sir Matthew. In private.’

We drew apart from the others and went to stand by the stern
windows
of my cabin. Dohna gestured to one of his young attendants, who came over and presented him with a leather case. From it the Count drew two sheets of paper. He gave them to me and said, ‘Here is the proof I promised you – the proof of what was done in this place by your brother and others so many long years ago.’

The top sheet was a receipt, and it was written in English.

The fact that Lord Conisbrough had signed upon the Swedish side, or the shock of seeing my brother’s familiar handwriting upon such a
document in such a place, seemed less remarkable to me at the time than the information upon the second sheet, which lay beneath the receipt. It was exactly the same inventory, but this time it was written in French, dated from Uppsala eleven days before the receipt; in other words, it was the original order to issue the specified items to the Cavalier leaders. It was signed by exactly the same florid hand that had written the rest of the document. And there was the rub. It seemed simply inconceivable to me that the signatory would not have employed a clerk, or even High Chancellor Oxenstierna himself, to itemise the likes of cannonballs and drums. For the signature, alongside a wax seal bearing three crowns, read:
Christina R
.