The Mountain of Gold (33 page)

And with that, the vast mound of flesh closed its eyes and nestled down upon the mat as though asleep. The rest of us merely stood there. The heat was intolerable. Sweat ran down me; I dared not glance down, for I could have sworn I was forming a puddle upon the floor. William Castle was suffering greatly, his face growing ever redder. Montnoir was serene, that awful smile fixed upon his face. Flies and God knows what other forms of insects circled us like courtiers in search of a free banquet. There could be no talk without His Majesty's permission, so we all merely stood like dumb folk.

The wives and courtiers of the king looked upon us with greater curiosity. Some whispered to each other knowingly in their own tongue. No doubt they knew how the decision would go. The king's own summary of the situation had been succinct enough. Montnoir had might upon his side; might and gold, and those two are ever an irresistible combination.

I glanced at O'Dwyer, who was looking about at the fittings of the hut, and perhaps at the royal wives too, with a curiously detached air. Did it really matter if this devious renegade was turned over to Montnoir, who would doubtless soon expose his story for the worthless pack of lies it was? I chided myself for such an unworthy thought. Regardless of my own opinion of O'Dwyer, for him to be given over into the custody of the French by a mere native—and for myself to be detained for however long, perhaps for ever, by that same native—would be a perpetual stain upon the honour of Matthew Quinton and of England. And then what of Cornelia, and the fate of the House of Quinton?

My thoughts ran to increasingly desperate ways of remedying the situation. If a message could be got to the
Seraph
—but how? If Captain Facey and his men could march here—to do what, exactly, as a mere sixty men against the hundreds or thousands of savages that the King of Kombo could muster (and God knew how many Frenchmen at Montnoir's back)?

We were all nearly fainting in the heat. Even O'Dwyer, who had spent many years in such temperatures, was beginning to close his eyes sleepily and then blinking them open with a start. Only Montnoir seemed immune to it all, as cold as a visitor to a mausoleum. Perhaps I could draw my sword and take him hostage, forcing the king to release us .

His Majesty stirred in that moment. 'The king has judged,' he said. I stiffened. Montnoir smiled. There was a pause. The pause lengthened. At last, the king continued, And his judgment is ... His judgment is for England. Colonel—Captain—you may resume your voyage.'

I felt myself in a dream, from which I would surely awake to learn that my true fate was to be imprisoned for ever in this African hell-hole. The one thing that made me realise we had triumphed so unexpectedly was the face of the Seigneur de Montnoir. His smile had been transformed by the king's judgment into a scowl as ferocious as that seen on any church gargoyle. 'You favour England? You deny my gold, and my right, and the power of my king?'

The King of Kombo shrugged and spoke at some length through Belem. 'Yourself apart, My Lord, the power of the King of France seems very far away. And I do not know your king, nor any of your princes of France. Whereas ten years ago, I was visited by a great prince of England. Rupert, his name was, the cousin of King Charles himself. A mighty warrior.' The king bowed his head; evidently he fancied himself a great warrior too, or had been one in his younger days until the fat folded his belly. 'Prince Rupert did me great honour and paid me much respect, and in turn, I respect and honour the name of the prince. He had with him a lieutenant—one Holmes, as I recall. An ingenious and active man. Now, it seems to me that if England possesses such men as Prince Rupert and Holmes, and the two gentlemen before me now, it does not need the gold of France. What is more, the ships of every land in the world have sailed past my feeble Dog Island, yet only the English dare to seize it and raise their flag upon it. The English are evidently a bold and fearsome people, and I would have friendship with such a race.' The king shifted upon the mat and swatted away a huge fly. 'Besides, I am told that the same Holmes is upon this very coast, and could be here within a matter of days. I have seen this Holmes fight. One of my regiments fought him on the shore, and with only a dozen men at his back, he cut them to pieces. The King of Kombo fears no man, but I do not relish Holmes coming here to avenge his friends. No. England has the right of it.'

The king raised his great hand to indicate that the audience was at an end, and the tetees stepped forward to the same purpose. O'Dwyer and I bowed in unison. Before we left the tent, I stared hard into the gargoyle-face of Gaspard de Montnoir. As we passed, he hissed in French, 'This does not end here, Quinton.'

I bowed, as one should to an ambassador of the Most Christian King, but I could not restrain a grin of triumph as I did so. Yet as I left the hut, stepping out into the even warmer furnace outside, my thoughts turned to the bitter irony of our survival. My freedom, and perhaps my life, had been bought solely by the reputation of that old villain Robert Holmes, and by the name and memory of Prince Rupert of the Rhine. For nearly twenty years, my family had looked upon Rupert as the man responsible for the death of my father, Earl James, at the battle of Naseby; yet now, in some way, Rupert had saved me. Such are the tricks that history, or God, plays upon us.

Nineteen

The march back to the ship was ten times worse than that to the village. We were past the worst time of all, that between ten and noon, but the sea wind was weak that day, and the palms barely moved, the vultures circling them like sentries. I felt like a man walking through hell-fire. The soldiers, commendably smart and military on their march to the royal enclosure, were all stripped to their shirts or the skin, thus emulating my seamen, who from the outset had no uniforms to concern them. Even Ali Reis and Carvell seemed uncomfortable. We stopped every few minutes to gulp greedily at our leathern bottles of water. O'Dwyer told me of his alleged journey beyond the great desert that had taken him to the mountain of gold, and of other overland journeys that he made, south from Algier. They had been hotter than this, he contended, and he explained how one could find water even amidst the oceans of sand, but I barely listened to him. My concern was with Castle, who was turning redder by the minute; I seemed to be watching the man fry before my eyes. He was still cheerful, dismissing my concerns with a wave of his solitary hand, but each answer seemed to take a few more breaths, and shorter ones at that. I was minded to rest until the evening and resume the march then, and discussed this strategy with Captain Facey. He argued plausibly that darkness might increase the risk of ambush by Montnoir and whatever Frenchmen he had with him. Besides, there might be lions in these parts (Belem nodded at that), and God alone knew what other sorts of beasts that roamed only by night. So we went on.

We were almost on to the beach itself, with Charles Island and the masts of the
Seraph
in sight, when Castle simply sat down on the ground, opened his mouth wide, and dropped down dead.

I ran to him and felt for a pulse, as Tristram had taught me to do, but the man was gone. I looked upon his face in stupefaction and with a mounting sense of horror. William Castle, this valiant old tarpaulin who had sailed with Myngs and fought with Blake, lay dead at my feet. He had been a good friend to me in two commissions, a steadying influence and a trustworthy mentor. Such a man should have died with honour in battle, or else full of years and surrounded by his family. Instead, Castle had perished in this damnable place and upon a contemptible fool's errand of a mission. I choked back tears and swore that I would see justice done to his widow in Bristol and their four sons.

It fell to me to say a prayer over the body of this good and honest man, but I could manage nothing better than 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.' I sent a man to the
Seraph,
and he returned with fresh men who were better able to carry the lieutenant's corpse than the exhausted party who had made the march. Our arrival back at the ship was greeted by solemn faces upon the deck. The men had respected William Castle, and I wondered how his own Bristol followers would respond to his loss. His natural authority and good humour had held in check many of the tensions between the factions in the crew, and I feared what might now happen as we made our way upstream.

With Castle dead, the
Seraph
needed a new Lieutenant. I was silently thankful that Holmes was away; no doubt he would have used his seniority to foist one of his creatures upon me. As it was, no man raised any objection when I immediately appointed Valentine Negus to Castle's post. Then I summoned Kit Farrell and appointed him Master in Negus's place. Grimwade, the senior of the master's mates, might have felt aggrieved, but I learned that he was more than content to be left aboard the
Prospect of Blakeney
at the river's mouth, believing that his chances of returning to England alive would be considerably enhanced by that choice. There was also no demur when I elevated Martin Lanherne to the rank of Boatswain, vacated by Kit. Some of the Bristol men would grumble, I reckoned, but then, many of them would have grumbled if Saint Francis of Assisi had been set over them, especially if they believed Assisi to be in Cornwall. As I handed him the whistle and cane of his office, Lanherne was entirely lost for words—for the first and, as it proved, the only time in my acquaintance with him.

We held the funeral rites for the late Lieutenant of the
Seraph
that evening; keeping a body for any time at all in that climate was simply inconceivable. There was some talk of burying him ashore on Charles Island, but the unanimous opinion of my ship's officers was that an old seaman like William Castle was entitled to the age-old ritual of farewell for dead mariners. At dusk, we placed his corpse, shrouded in a hammock, upon the starboard rail. Cannonballs were fastened at the head and the feet. Francis Gale, clad in full canonicals, intoned the words of the funeral service; and at their conclusion, a file of Facey's redcoats fired off a volley. O'Dwyer, Facey, Negus and I raised our swords in salute. The body was pushed over the side, and plunged into the dark waters of the Gambia. Lindman fired a funereal salute of muffled guns which must have impressed the warriors of the King of Kombo if they were watching from the shore, as I suspected they were. Perhaps it even impressed the Seigneur de Montnoir, if he was still nearby. At the end, we had done well by William Castle after all.

As the congregation dispersed, Francis turned to me and said, 'You know what they'll say on the lower deck. A burial before our voyage upriver has truly started, and the burial of such a vital man at that—a bad omen, Matthew. There'll be more talk of the ship being cursed.'

I shrugged. 'That's but the way of seamen, Francis.'

'True,' he said. 'But ally that to the return of your friend Montnoir and even I could start believing in it.'

The next afternoon, and with awnings rigged over all of the upper decks, the
Seraph
got under way. This, Belem advised, was the way to make passage up the estuary of the Gambia and avoid the excesses of the climate: make as much progress as possible with the sea breeze and cooler weather from the late afternoon through into the first part of the night, the lower river being free of the rocks, shoals and sunken trees that made night navigation impossible further upstream, then proceed again from dawn until about ten or eleven in the morning while the
Harmattan
blows cool, finally dropping anchor and sleeping through the worst of the heat until three. We adhered to this regime even if the helpful flood tide coincided with the hottest part of the day. Thus we partially abandoned the immutable system of watch-keeping, turn and turn again every four hours, that has sustained England's navy since time immemorial. We drew lots for those who were to keep the watch at anchor in the middle of the day, officers and men alike. There was much argument in the messes over who gained most from this arrangement. The midday-men, as they became known, were denounced as idlers who did not have to climb the masts or work the ropes by night; but not a few of the others were secretly pleased that they did not have to face the most terrible heat of the day.

The first stage of our journey was but a short one, for I had seen from the chart that the first of the river's formidable obstacles lay barely ten miles from our anchorage. We swung out beyond the cape that sheltered Charles Island, tacked into the main stream, and at once could see ahead of us the feature that had so animated the mind of Sir William Penn during the meeting at the Navy Office.

'Well, Captain,' said Belem, 'there it is, dead ahead. San Andreas, as we Portuguese call it. Jakob's Island, as the present occupants prefer.'

Unlike Charles Island, the fort-isle of San Andreas lay more centrally within the Gambia river. The channel to the north was narrower than that to the south, but even so, it was easily a mile wide, and Belem stated that a large ship, rather larger than
Seraph,
could traverse it with ease. A town, named by Belem as the port of Jilifri (and which my men soon rechristened Julyfree), stood upon the north shore, opposite the fort. The island itself was small, less than a mile in length or breadth, and rose but a very few feet above the water. Herons, kingfishers and the sacred bird of the Egyptians, the ibis, waded upon its shore and in its shallows. Most of the area of the island was taken up by the fort, but from a distance this struck me as but a feeble affair, a square curtain wall with a rudimentary bastion at each corner. Of course, in my later years I visited most of the mighty works erected by Marshal Vauban across France and Flanders, but even so by then I had seen the formidable defences of Dunkirk and Breda, and a score of the other great fortifications of Europe. Thus I looked upon the low sandstone ramparts of Jakob's Island with a certain degree of contempt; taking this, even with the tiny force available to me, would surely be an easy task, and why should Holmes have all the glory? But as we came nearer on the evening sea-breeze, I saw that the fort was more formidable than it first appeared. I counted thirty, perhaps forty iron guns on the ramparts, and they were not of small calibres; at least some of them were larger than anything that
Seraph
bore.