The Mountain of Gold (44 page)

Musk stepped forward and tightened the noose round O'Dwyer's neck. As he did so, the renegade laughed.

'Oh, the beauty of it!' he cried. 'To be hanged for a metaphor, indeed!'

Musk stepped away, but I kept my sword raised. Even now, at the end, I wished to hear more words from the mouth of this too-plausible Irishman; and after all, even our late sovereign, King Charles the Martyr, was permitted a last speech from the scaffold by the inveterate enemies who had brought him to it. 'Aye, I talked too much of a mountain of gold, that I did,' said O'Dwyer. 'The poetry of my race, Captain; a figure of speech if you prefer, and it's brought me to this. I wished for more than the mere command of a corsair galley, you see, and I wished to be away from Algier—from the enemies I had made there, my regiment of wives at their head.' Despite myself, I felt an unwelcome surge of sympathy towards the renegade. 'So I bragged of this knowledge I possessed, knowing how many great men believed in the existence of such a mountain and wished to find it. I thought I could ingratiate myself into the service of one of them—and if the mountain was never found, well, I reckoned I could satisfy my employer with the other riches of Africa. But I had forgotten how such a tale grows in the retelling, and how mighty it would be by the time it reached Malta.' He sighed. 'I had not reckoned on a man so twisted and deluded that he would follow me to the ends of the earth for my pretended knowledge—' Montnoir seemed to bite his lip at that, but perhaps after all these years I am attributing too strong an outburst of emotion to that dark figure—'or on a king so desperate for gold that he would swallow any farrago I placed before him. So be it. Your Montnoirs and King Charleses, the so-mighty rulers of this world, all they wish to know of are
literal
mountains of gold, immediate answers to their prayers for glory and power.' Montnoir scowled. 'Aye, I die for a metaphor, all right.' O'Dwyer looked out through the greatest of the gaps blasted through the north rampart of the fort that very morning. There, on the northern shore near Jilifri, another long line of forlorn, chained men was being prodded toward a slave ship. O'Dwyer laughed then, at the last. 'Of course there is a mountain of gold, Matthew Quinton.
You are looking upon it.

With that, I dropped my sword and Musk pulled the trapdoor lever.

Thus perished Omar Ibrahim, alias Brian Doyle O'Dwyer, once a slave taken from Baltimore in the County of Cork.

Epilogue

His Majesty's Ship, The Seraph

The Chops of the Channel
July 1664

I was torn between fear and admiration for the great man-of-war bearing down on us. Admiration had come readily, at the first proper sight of her, for the French have ever built beautiful ships. High sided, graceful lines, narrow and speedy, not overgunned like so many of our English slugs. And this one was a true beauty: sixty-four guns, no more, in a hull the size of one of our biggest Second Rates.
Seraph
was fast, but this great ship, approaching rapidly from the east upon the starboard tack, would be able to keep up with us if we turned and fled. For flight was the first thought in my mind. My first duty as a king's captain should have been to make this impertinent Frenchmen strike to our monarch's flag, regardless of the disparity in size. But far from steering away and avoiding an unpleasant confrontation, as he could have done easily, this magnificent leviathan had deliberately turned toward the
Seraph.
Far from preparing to strike his topsails and ensign, he had put on more sail and raised at his staff by far the largest and most flamboyant white fleur-de-lis standard of the Bourbons that I had ever seen. This Frenchman sought an encounter with us. There had been no word of a war from any of the myriad merchantmen we had encountered as we edged into the mouth of the Channel, but then, as Holmes and I had demonstrated so recently, wars were no longer commenced by the niceties of heralds in tabards reading out proclamations. Yet there was one thought more terrible than the possibility of being destroyed by this grim greyhound of the sea: the thought that induced the fear.

Francis Gale, at my left side, gave voice to it by asking, 'Is it him, do you think?'

Kit Farrell, at my right, said, 'I'd reckon there are fair odds on it, Reverend. Who else would have cause to seek us out so deliberately?'

Valentine Negus, at the starboard rail of the quarterdeck, had kept his telescope on the Frenchman for at least half a glass.
Le Téméraire
,' he said at length. 'I'd stake my life on it. Saw her being built at Brest when I was on a trading voyage there a couple of years back. They said she'd be the finest ship on earth. Dutch design, French grace. That's what they said.'

Phineas Musk, standing close to Negus, said, 'How did he know where we'd be? He's a bloody warlock, that Montnoir.'

I sighed. 'We've encountered enough French craft, Musk, all the way up from Madeira. And when we made our landfall at Ushant, you can be sure the report would have been on its way back to Brest and Paris as soon as it was written down. Ample notice for our friend, there—and he's had cursedly good weather to keep station on the course we'd be bound to run from Ushant homeward.'

Negus took one last observation through the glass. Then he turned to me. 'Your orders, Captain?'

Francis, Kit, Musk and every man within earshot fixed expectant stares upon me. Of course, my duty was clear: I should compel Montnoir and his cursed
Téméraire
to strike to King Charles' flag, or sink in the attempt. Given the disparity in force, the latter outcome was considerably more probable than the former. But a king's captain, a man of honour, had no option.

'Gentlemen,' I said, attempting to affect a confidence I did not feel, 'we will clear for action.'

On my command, the familiar ritual commenced. Our drummers began their relentless beat, summoning the men to their stations. Down came the bulkheads and the cabins. Up went the yardmen and the topmen. Sails unfurled and were sheeted home. The trumpeters took up their positions at the stern and began their discordant shriek at our oncoming foe. Musk produced my sword and breastplate, insisting on buckling the latter across my body, grumbling endlessly about damned cheating Frenchies. Francis Gale disappeared below and reemerged moments later in canonicals before commencing the Church of England's designated prayers before a battle at sea. Finally, our entire starboard battery ran out in one almost simultaneous movement, for Gunner Lindman had truly transformed my men into a crack gun crew during our lengthy passage back from Africa...

But even the finest gun crew on a thirty-two gun frigate would have been daunted by the sight they then beheld. The gunports of
Le Téméraire
snapped open with a precision that would have stunned Blake and Drake alike, and they snapped open simultaneously
on both sides of the ship.
Sixty-four guns, no less, all manned and primed. Our challenge had been taken up even before it could be delivered; taken up, and contemptuously dismissed.

I looked about. The eyes of every man on the ship seemed to be upon me. I looked at the faces of my friends: Kit Farrell, determined and ready; Francis, preparing himself and everyone else for their imminent passage to eternity; Julian Carvell, cheerfully preparing to take as many Frenchmen as possible with him to Hell; Phineas Musk, complaining bitterly that he still had unfinished business to attend to ashore. The Cornish lads, and the London and Bristol boys, were to be united in death as they had not been united in life.

No. I would not be responsible for a slaughter that was truly pointless. One man, and one man alone, should and would face his maker this day. I turned to my officers and said, 'Mister Negus, Mister Farrell, we will heave to. Mister Carvell, you will prepare a boat's crew, if you please, to take me to the French ship. As soon as I am aboard, you will take command, Mister Negus, and make all sail away from her.'

There were protests at this, none louder than from Kit and Musk. I quieted them. 'He wants me, I think. Me alone. Not you, not this ship. If I am right, all of you will have your lives and your honour, for only your captain will have been dishonoured by surrendering. If I am wrong—well, you are in no worse a state than you all expect to be in but shortly.'

The protests became more muted; after all, they were not the sort of men to disobey a direct order from their captain, and most of them knew in their hearts that I was right.

A few minutes later, I said my farewells to my officers. These were brief, but a shake of the hand, for I had no inclination for tears, to which we English are ever too inclined. I made light of it all, saying that I would merely sample My Lord Montnoir's wine and return before the change of the watch. But when I looked into the eyes of each man of them, I knew I beheld the stares of men who are looking upon a dying friend for the last time. Kit gripped my hand tightly and promised we should meet again. Negus nodded grimly, for he, of all of them, was the most convinced that I was doing the right thing. Francis Gale said a quiet prayer over me. Musk simply said, 'And just what the hell do I tell your wife?'

Only this last, the bluntest farewell of all, almost broke through the emotionless mask that I had donned. With that, I stepped off the
Seraph,
in my mind for the last time. Trying to avoid the eyes of my men, who lined the rail, I climbed down into the boat.

Carvell's crew contained other old friends, all normally happy to chatter to their captain for hours upon end. Now they rowed silently, Polzeath, Tremar, Macferran and the others, though all kept their stares intently upon me. I swore I saw a tear in Macferran's eye, though it might have been the spray.

The only talk came as we were almost in the shadow of the towering hull of
Le Téméraire.
Tremar pointed back toward
Seraph
and said, 'That's odd, Captain. Old Treninnick, up there on the main top. He's jumping up and down, and pointing at the Frenchie. I—I'd swear he was laughing, sir.'

Polzeath grunted. 'Touched in the 'ead. Always said his days down the mines would take their toll on him one day.'

'Silence, there!' snapped Carvell, relishing the authority that came with a petty officer's rank.

We came alongside the mighty French ship. She had a proper entrance port, elaborately gilded all around, and I was greeted at this by a junior officer who bowed stiffly in salute. He led me through the main deck, past ranks of gun crews at their weapons, all gazing blankly at this English officer as if I was the Man in the Moon. I was surprised by the lack of stench; the French sailor was notorious for his habit of relieving himself between decks. The captain of
Le Téméraire
evidently enforced a higher standard, but then, I should have expected that from the fastidious Seigneur de Montnoir.

Up a ladder, onto the main deck, every step taking me closer to my fate, back into the sunlight—where I was greeted at once by one of the most almighty cacophonies I have ever heard. The ship's trumpeters—seemingly a dozen of them, as against
Seraph's
two—blared out a tune that seemed to provide the treble line to the bass of the ship's batteries on both sides as they began a terrible simultaneous double broadside. I feared for my ship .

Feared for it in that brief moment before the entire ship's company of
Le Téméraire
burst into song.
'Te deum laudamus!
they sang. '
Te dominum confitemur!'

The captain of
Le Téméraire
stepped forward and doffed his elaborate broad-brimmed hat in salute. 'Well, Captain Quinton,' he said, 'we meet again.'

'You bastard,' I hissed. 'You utter bastard, Roger.'

The captain's cabin aboard
Le Téméraire
bore more than a passing resemblance to the public salon in the Chateau d'Andelys, where the seventeenth Comte of that name held court. The deck was even adorned with an Indian rug. Amid these splendours, my old friend and I took wine, laughed (in due course) about the jest that he had played upon me, and looked out of his vast stern windows toward the
Seraph.
Relays of men were going between the two ships to exchange respects, officer to officer or mess to mess; John Treninnick was being feted with particular vigour for spotting that the proud captain strutting the quarterdeck of
Le Téméraire
was none other than the former messmate he had known as Roger Le Blanc. The proud captain himself was evidently relishing the opportunity to entertain his old friend aboard the great ship that he had commanded for some three months; but once the initial sense of shock subsided, I was consumed by an overwhelming feeling of jealousy.

'You have this great ship,' I said, 'one of the greatest in the world. I have but a Fifth Rate frigate. And yet even you,
mon ami,
must confess that my experience at sea is rather greater than yours.'

'True,
mon ami
,' replied the comte, quite equably. 'But then, France has far fewer candidates for command than England, and with respect, you had less time at sea than I when you were given your first ship.'

'But
Le Téméraire
is rather greater than my first ship, Roger!'

My friend smiled. 'I do possess a certain influence, Matthew. And they have given me veteran officers beneath me, to ensure that I do not endanger our Most Christian King's investment. The sailing master, for one—a surly Huguenot of Dieppe, but most useful at keeping us off—what is the term, a lee shore? Now, let us take a turn about the deck. I have much to show you. And much to tell you.'

I trod the decks of
Le Téméraire
as though in a waking dream. Roger pointed out his batteries of gleaming twenty-four and eighteen pounder guns; much lighter than the weapons that would be found on English ships of similar size, but the French cherished speed and grace above all. Speed and grace would be of precious little use in a broadside-to-broadside battle with the
Sovereign,
I thought, but I did not share this insight with my friend.