The Lion of Midnight (2 page)

‘He has not yet run out his guns, My Lord’, I said. ‘Nor has he demanded a salute.’

‘Waiting to see what you will do, then, Sir Matthew. And who you are, as you have not hoisted an ensign. So precisely what do you intend to do?’

I looked him squarely in the eye. The question had consumed me since the Danish ship was first sighted. ‘I intend to send a boat across to parley, my lord. Lieutenant Farrell, in the first instance, and Mister Jeary, who speaks a little of the Danish from his time in these seas. Thereafter, perhaps myself. If the captain is a man of honour, he will accept that we have invaded his master’s territories out of necessity, not out of malice.’

‘As the Danes claim Teddiman did at Bergen, Sir Matthew? I imagine they are now more than a little sceptical of English intentions, and of English promises, when it comes to incursions into their waters.’

There was the crux of it, of course. God knows how very different it had all seemed but eight or nine months before. Our war against the Dutch had begun so promisingly: the first battle, off Lowestoft in
June, had been a great and glorious victory. The Dutch flagship blown up, thousands of their men killed, their entire fleet put to flight… For his supposedly eminent part in that triumph, the young captain of the ancient
Merhonour
had been honoured by his king and born anew as Sir Matthew Quinton, an altogether more august being – aye, one even worthy of being immortalised in broadsheets. But the victory was soon overshadowed by recrimination and disillusion. The fleeing Dutch ships had managed to escape to fight another day, seemingly through the treachery of a craven courtier aboard the English flagship. King Charles, horrified by the slaughter that had come literally within touching
distance
of his brother and heir, our admiral the Duke of York, forbade his return to command for the remainder of the summer’s campaign. Meanwhile the plague paraded the streets of London like a confident whore, drawing more and more into her boudoir, the lime-filled grave pits. At least a hundred thousand poor souls died, and the court
withdrew
first to Salisbury, then to Oxford, trying with little success to turn deaf ears to the siren voices that proclaimed the pestilence to be nothing less than divine judgement upon the immorality of Charles Stuart.

Yet news of the arrival of a fabulously laden Dutch return-fleet from the East Indies had fired anew the king’s enthusiasm for the war. A squadron under Sir Thomas Teddiman was detached to intercept them in the harbour of Bergen, an accommodation to such effect having been made with the ruler of that neutral shore, the King of Denmark. Or so monarch, ministers and mariners erroneously believed – right up to the moment when the guns of Bergen opened fire on Teddiman’s ships. In the aftermath of the battle, King Frederik denied knowledge of any prior accommodation with his cousin King Charles. Instead, he protested against a foul and unprovoked invasion of his territory, and prepared for war against our Britannic kingdoms. He was joined in this course by a far grander potentate: the Most Christian King Louis the Fourteenth of France, no longer able to avoid the inconvenient terms of a treaty of mutual defence that he had concluded with the Dutch some years
earlier. That, then, was the most unhappy situation of England, and of those of us upon the quarterdeck of the
Cressy
, in those early months of the happy new year of 1666: as not a few pointed out, the date that contained the Number of the Beast. England was at war, or soon would be, with the entire coast of Europe from the Arctic to the Pyrenees, apart from a pitifully few miles of German and Flemish beach,

I looked away from Lord Conisbrough toward the menacing shape of the great Danish warship.

‘My orders enjoin me to avoid conflict with the Danes if it can be avoided,’ I said. ‘But if the Danish captain wishes it, I will give him battle.’

My confidence was born of calculation. The more I considered the odds, the more firmly I came to believe that we could at least hold our own. We were smaller, but that would give us the advantage in
manoeuvring
in these confined waters. I would wager my fortune (not that it was substantial) upon my gun crews being able to outshoot the Danes; the Cressys were all volunteers, veterans of the previous summer’s campaign and in some cases of the previous Dutch war too, whereas the Danes would have less experience and would all have been recruited very recently – since the debacle at Bergen – so the crew facing us was bound to be new and untried. And yet they knew these waters, and we did not. If the
Cressy
grounded upon an uncharted rock, even the least experienced gun crews on earth could batter us into matchwood at their leisure.

I do not know if Conisbrough was contemplating the same
contingencies
. He certainly studied the Danish ship intently for some moments, exchanged a glance with his page boy, and then turned to me. ‘If I may, Sir Matthew, I believe I should make the visit to the Danish captain and seek to reach an accommodation with him. I speak their language well enough.’ My face must have betrayed my bemusement. Conisbrough seemed to weigh his next words with especial care: ‘My name also has a certain repute in these parts, Sir Matthew. It may not be without value.’

I weighed the issue. I had no idea of the basis for Conisbrough’s strange boast, but surely it could do no harm to send him over to the Danish ship in triple harness with Kit and Jeary? The latter could report what he and the captain said to each other, while a peer of the realm might prove a useful buttress to Kit’s authority as a commissioned officer of the King of England.

It was only much later, as the rotund and hospitable Captain
Jan-Ulrik
Rohde entertained us all in the great cabin of the
Oldenborg
, that I realised my mistake. Jeary reported that the first few sentences Rohde and Conisbrough had spoken to each other were in Danish, but
thereafter
they spoke exclusively in French. And neither my ship’s master nor my lieutenant spoke that tongue, which I myself spoke with a fluency learned at the knee of a grandmother born and bred in the Val de Loire. Even so, the upshot seemed evident enough. Rohde confirmed that King Frederik had not yet formally declared war, and thus we had good enough reason to avoid hostilities here, in our tiny corner of the
Norwegian
sea. He even offered the
Cressy
a pilot, a local man of Flackery, but both Jeary and the Trinity House that had certified him competent for the voyage were confident that our master could guide us safely through the maze of islands and onto a true course for Gothenburg. Captain Rohde made a jest of it, hinting that I was fearful he was going to fob off upon me some madman who would run us onto the rocks. Thus we parted in good humour, and I prayed that the duplicity of kings would not soon make us enemies.

I was in my seabed, rocked by the motion of the moderating deep,
trying
to sleep but recollecting the day’s events.

Consider my Lord of Conisbrough, my restless thoughts demanded. A mere passenger, bound for Sweden solely to assess the wellbeing of his estates? A mere passenger, whose very name and word seemed able to prevent a fight to the death between the
Cressy
and one of the King of
Denmark’s mightiest vessels? We, your restless thoughts, think not, Sir Matthew Quinton. And now let us consider the words of Kit Farrell, words forgotten until the tolling of the ship’s bell proclaims it to be one of the clock. ‘
A three-decker. At sea in February.
’ Aye, Kit, rare indeed. In England, to see a three-decker upon the brine before April is as rare as a sighting of the unicorn.

Upon that thought I rose, wiped sleep from my tired eyes, and walked to the great stern window. After a few moments, I became accustomed to the light and made out the hull of the
Oldenborg
, black and
brooding
upon the dark waters. The Danes were moving one of their greatest men-of-war during the depth of winter, a time when no realm ever sent its great ships to sea. One of the ships from Kristiansand, Kit had said, presumably moving down to Frederikshavn or Copenhagen to join the rest of King Frederik’s fleet. True, the fact that she was more lightly armed than an English ship of her size made her more seaworthy in such a season, but that did not materially alter the case.

I stood until our bell rang again, taking in the full knowledge of what lay in front of my eyes.

Thanks to Conisbrough, we had no war today. But as God was my judge, the very fact of the
Oldenborg
’s presence there, fully manned and fully gunned, meant that war with the Dane was coming. Add that to our war with the Dutch, and our war with the French, and as I stood upon the deck of my cabin in the
Cressy
, it seemed easy to believe that all too soon, we would be at war with all the world.

Moses tells us that the span allotted to a man is threescore years and ten.

I, who have long surpassed that ideal, can testify that this is but the blinking of an eye. Yet how astonishing will it seem to future
generations
that almost entirely within my own lifetime, a great empire rose, flowered and perished? Why, even now there are young blades who find it inconceivable that barely twenty years ago, there was a glory and a legend that bore one name: Sweden. This land of rock and forest on the edge of Europe, where the sun for months on end never deigns to shine; this kingdom with few resources and less money; this realm of few
people
, and they made mad by cold and darkness – this same nation once bestrode Europe like a colossus. As a child, I learned and was enthralled by the tales of the hero-king Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of Midnight, who conquered half of Germany, terrorised the Holy Roman Emperor and petrified the Pope before falling at the moment of his greatest
victory
. As a boy, I was intrigued by the myths and scandals attached to the name of his daughter Christina, the scholar-queen who favoured men’s attire and finally gave up her throne for the love, not of a man, but of the abstract theology that some men call Popery. As a young man I
idolised
her successor Karl the Tenth, who marched an entire army across a frozen sea to crush Denmark and won vast swathes of new territory for the Three Crowns of the Swedes, Goths and Wends. And so the Swedish
empire rose, driven by the Gothic legend that they, the Swedes, were invincible, and their Lion of Midnight would return to sweep popery and ignorance into the sea, bringing a new age of enlightenment to Europe. How incredible it seems now, even so few years after that entire empire crumbled to dust. Yet then, in the winter of 1666, the Sweden into whose waters the
Cressy
sailed was at the height of her power and fame, her armies and fortresses ringing the Baltic from Bremen to Finland, her sword-won territories controlling every great river that flowed from Germany into that sea.

We made our landfall at the isle of Wingo, upon which stood the beacon marking the entrance to the road of Gothenburg. With the wind at west-by-north, Jeary took us a little to the south and then due east for the small, low islet of Grytan, whence we turned north by east through the sea-gate. Stretching away to both starboard and larboard was a myriad of islands, some large, others little more than rocks. Many were dotted with rough fishermen’s huts; here and there castles stood upon promontories, high-towered affairs with lofty pinnacles, so unlike our squat English fortresses. Every piece of land we could see was crowned with a thick covering of snow. The archipelago reminded me greatly of the western coast of Scotland, where I had finally confronted my destiny as a seaman. A few hardy fishermen were out in their little craft, and a large Lubecker passed us on the opposite tack when we were off the island of Branno, but otherwise the sea was empty. Few merchants would imperil their precious cargoes in a frozen, storm-wracked
February
, and the two principal nations who commonly plied these waters, ourselves and the Dutch, were at war with each other, multiplying the risks and thus the insurance costs. Since leaving Flackery we had sighted several small Dutch capers, optimistic privateering craft whose captains had evidently put to sea in the hope that some English skipper or other would be foolhardy enough to try and run home from Gothenburg before the spring. How their hearts must have sunk at the sight of the vast
Cressy
!

We made our way slowly through the archipelago. Here again, Jeary was confident enough in his knowledge of these waters to reckon we could dispense with the services of a pilot, although the busy throng of little craft that started to ply around us as we approached Gothenburg begged to differ. Each claimed to offer the services of the finest pilot in West Sweden, derided our folly in navigating these waters without his services, and proclaimed that we would certainly come to grief on any of the vast rocks that had mysteriously come into being since our charts were drawn.

I surveyed the scene from the quarterdeck, content to leave the
conning
of the ship entirely to Jeary. Phineas Musk and Lord Conisbrough were alongside me, looking out onto what for the noble lord was clearly a familiar spectacle: he named this island and that castle, identifying the owners of many of them. A surprising number seemed still to be the property of the former queen, Christina, whose abdication had
evidently
not condemned her to poverty. At length, I asked Conisbrough what I might expect in Gothenburg. After all, God alone knew when we would find a conjunction of wind and tide that would permit us to put to sea with an entire mast-fleet of eight ships, even if that fleet were ready to sail at a moment’s notice – and knowing the nature of our English ship-masters and seamen, I doubted if that would be the case.

Conisbrough looked across to the distant shore of the mainland, a rocky strand of jagged cliffs and hills. For such a vast man, the eyes set within his ugly face were remarkably small, the eyebrows almost feminine. ‘Gothenburg is a viper’s nest,’ he said slowly. ‘The Dutch and English vie against each other, waging their own private war on this foreign sod. There are Dutch inns and English ones, and woe betide any man foolish – or drunk – enough – to enter the wrong door. Like most of the city elders, the
Landtshere
– that is the name for a governor in this country – namely, the noble Baron Ter Horst, favours the Dutch. He is no friend of the English. His father was a Dutchman, and the entire city was built up by the Dutch, less than half a century past.
But the Gothenburgers are shrewd. They know full well that the rest of Sweden detests the Dutch as being the age-old ally of the Dane, so they tread carefully. Sweden is neutral, so Gothenburg pretends to be neutral, but all know where the city’s true sympathies lie.’ Conisbrough turned to face me directly. He was a truly vast man; I was of a goodly height, one of the few men at his court able to look Charles Stuart in the eye, but I felt myself dwarfed by this hirsute titan before me. ‘But trust not too far among the English of Gothenburg, Sir Matthew,’ he continued, ‘for our race in its turn is divided between royalists and the old Commonwealths-men, the Cromwellians, and all kinds of
skulking
fanatics who have made the place a safe haven.’ Musk looked at him with unfeigned interest: an unexpected opportunity to crack a few round heads was suddenly opening up before him. ‘Why,’ said
Conisbrough
, ‘Gothenburg even harbours a regicide, who walks brazenly in the open here and does not even fear lest the wrath of King Charles might put a blade in his belly.’ Conisbrough’s speculation was not
outlandish
: eighteen months before, one of the fifty-nine vile traitors who signed the late king’s death warrant had been murdered at Lausanne by an Irishman shouting ‘
vive le roi
!’ as he pressed the pistol to the rogue’s head. Needless to say, our court (and my mother, who had her own very private reasons for detesting the regicides) had rejoiced heartily upon the tidings. ‘Then, of course, there are the Scots,’ Conisbrough said, ‘who endeavour to profit their own enterprises, regardless of the war and regardless of the purchasers.’

‘They sell to the Dutch?’ I protested.

Conisbrough nodded.

‘But that is treason!’

The noble baron smiled. ‘Your Scot has an elastic notion of treason, Sir Matthew, especially if a goodly supply of florins might be in the
offing
. The Scots factors in the pitch and tar trades have greatly fattened their bellies by shipping cargo after cargo to Amsterdam since this war began.’

Musk nodded in vigorous agreement; he had little love for those whom now, since the late Union, we are meant to call ‘North Britons’ and embrace as our dear neighbours.

The king would hear of this, I vowed, feeling a sense of loyal
indignation
at such behaviour. Thus distracted and irritated by the perfidiousness of the North Britons, I entirely overlooked the real import of what My Lord Conisbrough had told me.

‘Well then,’ I said, ‘I see I shall need to be on my guard in this Gothenburg of yours, My Lord. I pray our sailing with the mast-fleet is not unduly delayed, lest we become too embroiled in this northern Sodom.’

‘Doesn’t sound so bad,’ said Musk. ‘Sounds much like Colchester.’

‘I have not yet told you the half,’ said Conisbrough heavily. ‘There are also the Danes, resentful of the Swedes’ triumph over them in the late war and outraged by what they call our perfidy at Bergen. The city is full of them, for you know how close we are to their lands. They will seek an early blow against England to redeem the honour of their realms, you can be sure of it. And there are the Swedes themselves, of course. Their great victories have made them almost as arrogant as the French, but they have also become more peevish among themelves. Not a day goes by there without swords being drawn for and against the High
Chancellor
, or for and against a restoration of the late queen.’

‘The late queen? Christina?’ I said, with some surprise. ‘But she converted to Catholicism and removed herself to Rome! Can there be Swedes who favour her return?’

Conisbrough nodded. ‘She is a Vasa, of their own dynasty, unlike the German cousin to whom she resigned the crown. The child of Gustavus Adolphus, their hero king. Many will forgive her anything, even her religion, and there are even many true Lutherans who would rather see her back on the throne than the feeble dullard of a boy who occupies it now.’ As Conisbrough implied, King Karl the Tenth had died suddenly at the height of his fame but six years before, leaving a backward child
of four to succeed him. ‘Indeed, some say Christina seeks just that,’ said Conisbrough. ‘You know she returned from Rome, a few years past, to assert her right to succeed young Karl if he should die? But the visit served only to remind her of how cold Sweden is. Ever since, she has not stirred from the Roman sunshine.’

Musk blew onto his hands. ‘Can’t say I blame her,’ he said.

So this was our destination. A vipers’ nest. I thought back to how grateful I had been when the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of
England
, entrusted me with the command of the
Cressy
, one of the few ships of such size set out over the winter, as a reward for my gallant services in the previous summer’s campaign. I recalled the delight of my wife – that is, of Cornelia, Lady Quinton, a title she deployed like a First Rate – at the prospect of the pay that would accrue to me for this voyage (it being common practice for the masters of merchant ships under convoy to provide ‘gifts’ to the captain of that convoy, quite apart from the wages that His Majesty might eventually deign to pay, many months in arrears). I had envisaged an easy winter’s cruise, bringing back the mast-ships before our main fleet fitted out for the summer’s campaign. I hoped for a good command – one of the vast new Third Rates at the very least – but as a knight and the former captain of a Second Rate, albeit a small and ancient one, I might even have some expectation of hoisting my own flag. It was a notable transformation for someone who could barely have told fore from aft just five years since; but Conisbrough’s words, and our encounter with the
Oldenborg
, made much of my confident optimism fall away. Even setting aside all of the potential pitfalls that lurked ashore in Gothenburg, it was certain that by the time we sailed, England would be at war with Denmark, just as she was with the Dutch and the French. And I did not relish a second meeting the jovial Captain Rohde, this time at sea and with our
battle-ensigns
hoisted.

‘Twenty fathoms and firm ground!’ came the leadsman’s call. Seth Jeary, at my side upon the quarterdeck, nodded in quiet satisfaction; that was the depth assigned to the main channel in our waggoners, so there seemed no danger of the ship being cast upon the exposed rocks that seemed to be encroaching ever nearer on either side. If the current were more leewardly, as it seemed it often was, we could not have got in; but the great seas that had struck us off Norway had abated. Jeary had his course set upon the tower of a distant church which the chart named as Arsdalen. Meanwhile I had my telescope trained upon an island a little way to the south of the church, upon which stood a large and very
modern
fortress. The batteries of very large cannon were clearly visible upon the ravelins and ramparts; batteries just as clearly manned and ready. From the great square tower in the fort’s midst streamed the
swallow-tailed
yellow cross upon blue banner of the Three Crowns.

‘The castle of New Elfsborg,’ said Lord Conisbrough, who was also upon deck; still resembling a Viking chieftain in his great wolfskin
covering
. ‘The principal seaward defence of Gothenburg.’

‘Then we shall have to exchange salutes with it,’ I said. ‘I propose giving them eleven guns. Will they accept and return that, My Lord?’ The matter of proper form in salutes was always of intense concern to a king’s captain; to give more guns in salute than were merited, and to receive too few (or, most heinously, none) in return, would be a grave dishonour to the sovereign and nation that I served. A dishonour that could be answered only with a broadside and, if necessary, a war.

Conisbrough nodded. ‘Eleven will suffice for New Elfsborg, in my experience, and they ought to return you three. That is the protocol I have witnessed before. But it is by no means certain to be observed. Ter Horst is a prickly fellow and no friend to the High Chancellor, so even if he has had orders to receive us properly, there is no guarantee he will do so. Much will depend on whether the captain of the garrison panders to him or fulfils his higher duty. If you so wish, Sir Matthew, I could go across and attempt to adjust matters.’

I pondered the courses available to me. I could send a boat across as Conisbrough suggested and negotiate an agreement over the number of guns to be given and returned; but in the Mediterranean three years before, when commanding the
Wessex
, I had witnessed just such a
situation
develop into a three-week stalemate with neither side able to agree, a farce that ended only when I sailed away shamefacedly and without my convoy. Moreover, was it not a diminution of both the person and the honour of his nation honour for a nobleman of England to demean himself and haggle with some low-born Swedish soldier? Better, I decided, to sail boldly toward this castle of New Elfsborg, give the Three Crowns the eleven guns, and place the onus entirely upon the captain of the fort. And if that became the onus for starting a war between England and a fourth great nation, then so be it.