The Mountain of Gold (5 page)

Teviot's attendant brought me a glass of wine, which settled me a little, and permitted me to read on.
Of course, it is all to do with the two things that have ever driven our noble house, money and our bloodline. Let us be honest here, nephew. Or let me be honest, at any rate, with this pen and this piece of paper.
Imprimis,
money. We have none. We have had none for generations. Oh, our lands produce a fair income, but we are mortgaged several times over and in debt to every tradesman in Bedfordshire
and to much of the City of London besides. The home of our forefathers, Ravensden Abbey, is a calamity. The roofs leak, and the rains stream down our walls to meet the damp rising to meet them from the floor. This much you know better than I, Matt, as you have lived there for some of the past three years, whereas I have been dry and drunk in my Master's lodgings.
This much, indeed, was perfectly true. Only the winter before, one of Steward Barcock's children had been killed when the entire north-east wall collapsed, taking two rooms with it. The Dowager Countess, my mother, had simply summoned our new vicar to utter some peremptory prayers over the rubble and then sealed off the entire wing.

I forced my pained eyes back to Tristram's text.
Your mother is convinced that only a marriage to a great fortune will remedy our situation. In that, perhaps, she is right; but methinks that sometimes a fortune can come at too great a cost. Now,
secundo,
our family line. We must be intimate and frank here, nephew. I have no wife. Many children, of course, but no wife, unlike our dear monarch, who has a wife and many children, but alas, none by her. Now, we know that I could have a wife with no difficulty.
(Modesty had never been a particular characteristic of Tristram Quinton's, especially when it came to women.)
But thanks to the perversity of my college's outmoded and byzantine statutes, that would mean surrendering my post here at Oxford, and necessarily the considerable income and perquisites that accrue from it, not least my cellar of old Bordeaux wines. So if the glorious earldom of Ravensden is not to perish, and pass into dust like old Hotspur and Mortimer, then either you or Charles must father children, as we have no collateral lines. Now, you have been married five years, Matt, and so far your Cornelia has not even managed an encouraging miscarriage.
My uncle could be brutal in his cups, but there was truth enough in this. Cornelia, the epitome of a rational, modern Dutch woman, had even begun to visit a wise-woman in the forest beyond Baldock, who convinced her that our failure to conceive was entirely my fault. As wise-women do.
Of course, it is possible that Cornelia will die, or that you will find a means to divorce her.
(My uncle could be
very
brutal in his cups.)
But your mother has calculated that you are too besotted with her to do the latter, and that our House is too unfortunate for God to facilitate the former. Thus she has convinced Charles that it is his duty to marry and endeavour to continue our line, regardless of his own inclinations (which we both understand amply enough, I think). What is more, and for reasons that I cannot fathom, the King himself is an enthusiast for the match. As we know, the noble Earl your brother can never refuse the wish of our esteemed monarch.
This, too, was true; their friendship dated back to the darkest days of the King's first exile, when he was but a penniless and titular Prince of Wales, and had been strengthened thereafter in ways of which I was then only dimly aware.

Lord Teviot asked me if I wished for more wine, and I asked for my glass to be charged, if only because I dreaded what might come next.

Our new Countess is to be Louise, Lady De Vaux. You might have heard of her, for she has a considerable name at court. Several names, indeed, of which 'harlot' is the one least likely to cause offence to the King of Spain's Inquisition if they intercept any of the copies of this letter. But she has an ample estate, it's said, thanks to two dead husbands. Now, Matt, some will say that two dead rich husbands are the will of God. Yet I have witnessed all the late troubles in this land, and have seen death come in a thousand ways or more, and I wonder—can
two
dead husbands truly be the will of God, or the will of the Lady Louise? And thus, what intentions might she harbour toward her third? You will forgive me for such thoughts, for believe me, they are as nothing to the opinion of your own dear wife, who rode here to Oxford but yesterday to regale me upon the matter.
This was typical of Cornelia, who would not have balked at the surprised stares and caustic comments of those who witnessed a lady of breeding riding hell-for-leather (as was always her wont) the fifty or so miles between Ravensden Abbey and Oxford. I could also imagine her opinion. Indeed, I did not need to imagine it for very long; it awaited me on the pages of her many letters. Even today, in these rude and permissive times, I have rarely encountered an author who possesses such a richly diverse vocabulary of the obscene. If Tristram's concerns over potential interception by the Spanish Inquisition had any justification, and even if only one of my wife's letters had fallen into their hands, then the successors of Torquemada would have significantly enhanced their comprehension of human anatomy. Such were the consequences of Cornelia's childhood, much of which was spent avoiding her dull parents and mixing happily with the foul-mouthed sailors and fishwives who thronged the quays of Veere, her home town in Zeeland.

I returned to my uncle's peroration.
Forgive me, nephew, for I write importunely. You cannot possibly influence or deter what is to come to pass—what might already have come to pass, perhaps, by the time that you and your ship return safe to England's shore. Perhaps these are but the rantings of an old and bitter man, and your brother and the Lady Louise will indeed provide the longed-for heir to Ravensden. God knows, they may live in married bliss hereafter, to the glory and honour of our ancient lineage. But I write this to you now, as your father's son and the bearer of my father's name, knowing that you will not betray my confidence, and that you will share at least some of my fears for Charles and our most glorious, but most vulnerable, House of Quinton. God be with you, dearest nephew.

Your most loving uncle,

T. Quinton.

T. Quinton; never Tristram. I put down the letter, and saw Teviot's eyes upon me. He asked me how I fared, or something of the sort. I cannot recall it, but I can recall my reply: '
The longed-for heir to Ravensden.
But
I
am the heir to Ravensden.' A responsibility I had shunned all my life; and yet the prospect of it being taken away by the issue of this unnatural marriage brought on a strange surge of anger. 'My poor brother. My poor family. This cannot happen.
This will not happen.'

PART TWO

Ravensden Abbey, Newmarket, and London

September to December 1663

Three

'She is a murderess, and twice over,' said my wife. 'I am convinced of it. Tristram is convinced of it.'

My anger toward the marriage had been tempered in the long weeks that it had taken the
Wessex
to make passage back to England. It survived a great storm in the Bay of Biscay, then began to abate a little as we were driven back by contrary winds in the Channel, and finally blew over as we made our way round from the Downs to Chatham, where we had finally moored but a few days before. Musk had immediately resumed his old duties as steward of our London house, relegating to ancillary duties the youthful Barcock who had substituted for him during his absence at sea. Thus I had made my way north alone, returning finally to the ancient monastic pile that now passed for our family home.

Upon my return to the crumbling ancestral walls of Ravensden Abbey, I had certain matters of the flesh in mind. But Cornelia turned away, to stand in determined, cross-armed isolation at the window of our bare old room, looking out over the ruins of the old abbey church.

And she is to be the Countess!' she continued, more sad than furious. 'Countess of Ravensden! Mistress of this house—
our home,
Matthew, until you finally have sufficient income from your pitiful naval service to get us some mean tenement in London. If you ever do, of course, and are not killed by a Turk, or drowned in a storm, leaving me a widow and at the mercy of your mother and this De Vaux
stoephoer
.' Cornelia had still not really forgiven me for turning down a commission in the Guards, and with it status, privilege, a splendid uniform, and above all a regular income. Nor had she reconciled herself to my chosen career in the navy, even though her own brother had been captain of a Dutch man-of-war for ten years or more (and had been on hand providentially to save my life during my second commission). 'Dear Lord, think on that, husband—she will be the Countess. She will have power over us, that
vuile teef
—' Cornelia's vitriol began to translate into her native Dutch. I moved toward her, opening my arms in loving greeting once more, and hoping by that means to curtail the beginnings of another colourful diatribe against the Lady De Vaux. She turned from me and said, 'It is all your mother's doing, of course. All so that there may be an heir. All because we cannot—I cannot—' The tears began, and I went to her, putting my arms around her. She turned to me and said, 'You must put me away, Matt. I will turn papist, become a nun at Brussels as your mother suggests. I will accept a divorce. You must marry another, who will give this house its heir. It will be better than forcing this unnatural marriage onto poor Charles—'

I lifted her face and looked into those dear, deep, weeping eyes. 'Never. No, never, Cornelia. We are one. Forever. I would rather forsake the King and the navy than forsake you.'

She cried much more, then laughed a little, and in but a brief time my thoughts of the flesh were made real.

Our splendid afternoon sojourn was short lived. It was not curtailed by my mother, who was unaware of my early return from the Straits and had thus decamped to nearby Buckden, the palace of the Lord Bishop of Lincoln, to lecture that unfortunate prelate on the manifest evils of the increasing number of dissenting congregations in Bedfordshire. Instead, it was one of the many sons of our ancient steward, Barcock, who knocked delicately on our door, informing us that the Vicar of Ravensden had learned of my return from sea and wished to present his compliments. Cornelia sighed, something she had done often enough in the last hour, but in this case it expressed her discontent rather than her pleasure. Until but six months before, my own reaction would have been even more vocal. Our previous incumbent, the Reverend George Jermy, had been so old and so dull that his continued presence on this earth was almost as much a mystery as the continued presence of his congregation. Faced with the tedium of his sermons, it was a miracle that the entire village had not decamped to the woods to join the dissenters who so alarmed my mother. But finally, and in the presence of myself, the Earl, and the Dowager Countess of Ravensden, Jermy had simply halted in the middle of the first verse of Chapter Twenty-Three of Deuteronomy, fallen gently forward in his pulpit, and given up the ghost to a maker who presumably had forgotten to reclaim him several decades before.

I dressed, descended the stairs, entered the grand porch of Ravensden Abbey, lined with the swords and armour of my ancestors, and greeted our new rector, a broad, strong man of close to fifty years.

'Captain Quinton,' he said. 'I rejoice at your return from the Straits, sir. In approximately equal measure, Matt, I regret that I could not accompany you and cleave my sword into the hordes of heathen Turks.'

At that he grinned, and we both embraced; for at my behest, on Jermy's death my brother had exercised his right of patronage over the parish of Ravensden by installing my former chaplain aboard the
Jupiter,
the Reverend Francis Gale.

I led my dear friend to the library, the octagonal room that had been the chapter house of the original abbey. It was one of the few large rooms still in a state fit enough to receive visitors, although a suspicious odour of damp was beginning to cling to many of the books. Francis Gale was no longer the bitter and hopeless sot that I had first encountered on the
Jupiter,
a man consumed by the dreadful death of the woman he loved and their unborn child amidst the horror of Cromwell's onslaught at Drogheda. But nor was Francis Gale made to be an entirely abstemious paragon of sobriety. He still relished a bottle, though now he imbibed for good cheer and fellowship, not to drive away his tormenting demons. Thus he had rapidly become firm friends with my uncle; they spent many long hours in this very library, debating everything from the nature of the Trinity to the peculiar shape of Lady Castlemaine's bosom, with every discourse washed down by generous measures of old sack and some of the more ancient wines that my grandfather had brought back from France.

Another young Barcock brought us some flagons of good local ale, and we settled to discourse. Francis wanted every detail of my journey to the Straits, of my meeting with the corsair and the knight of Malta, and of the renegade Irishman O'Dwyer, who now sat in a cell of the Tower, awaiting the King's pleasure. He, too, was convinced that the man was a fraud, one of the many imposters and cunning men who had crawled out from under stones since the King's restoration, hoping to take advantage of a generous-hearted monarch and an inexperienced government. A mountain of gold? No, it was preposterous, Francis thought: a myth, or a mere story to divert young children.

We turned to other matters, and I asked how he was enjoying his new living. 'Ah, there's much to do, Matt. As you'll know better than I, my predecessor had not really been the most active servant of the Lord for many years. Decades, if truth be told. There are grown men yet unbaptised, and I have yet to find one villager who knows his Creed. Then there's the fabric of the church itself—apparently the choir boys have wagered on whether the bells will fall before the tower collapses, or vice-versa. And the parish registers are chaos.' Francis sighed and took a long draught of ale. 'Pieces of paper everywhere, some chewed by rats, some years not written up at all. Yesterday I found the page with the marriage record of your great-grandfather, the seventh earl, from the year 1557. It was in the vicarage's privy, ready for use, along with a whole set of transcripts that should have been sent off to the bishop in King James' time. But thankfully I have the lad, Andrewartha. He's a good worker, and his appetite for putting records in order is rather greater than mine. He shows a true vocation, and I hope shortly to secure a place for him at Emmanuel in Cambridge, my old college. He'll be a fine candidate for the Church.'