The Mountain of Gold (7 page)

My thoughts raced this way and that, although the wine progressively slowed and dulled them. I had been insufferably rude; of course I had. If my mother knew great secrets of state, well then, so be it. We are all entitled to our secrets, and besides, hers had to be of so very long ago; what possible relevance could they have, especially when the only matter of the moment was that of the unnatural marriage proposed for my brother?

I was beginning to contemplate the relative merits of a third jug of Bordeaux against riding unsteadily back to the abbey when a Barcock—Paul, I think, or it might have been Peter—entered my small, stinking world at the George Inn, and handed me a letter that had been delivered at Ravensden by a royal courier but an hour before. I thanked him in the vaguely profuse way of the drunk, and opened the letter. It was a script I knew well—clear, precise, a little pompous—and the message, too, was redolent of its author: just a little more long-winded than it needed to be.

Sir,

His Majesty having summoned me to attend him at Newmarket upon some concerns relating to the present state and occasions of the navy, His Majesty has seen fit to instruct me to inform you that he wishes your immediate
attendance upon him in order to expedite the same purpose. I therefore desire that you will see fit to attend upon His Majesty and myself at your earliest convenience.

I am, Captain Quinton, your most humble and respectful servant,

S. Pepys

Clerk of the Acts to the Honourable Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy

So I was to have my wish. True, I had mismanaged my interview with my mother. But now I would be able to see the King himself and have an opportunity to ask him why he wished to force this preposterous marriage onto my brother. That one thought drove all else before it, including the one question I should have asked; the one question that was hidden there, festering in the depths of Pepys' letter.

What purpose relating to the 'state and occasions' of the navy could possibly tear Charles Stuart away from the horse races and mistresses that took up all his time at Newmarket, and compel him to summon one of his lowliest captains to expedite it?

Four

The next morning was sunny, and despite the excesses of the previous night I rose very early, kissed my snoring Cornelia, and rode off for Newmarket; somewhat thick-headed and unsteadily at first, then with more confidence. It was a brisk, easy ride across the flat lands to the east, upon the firm roads of late summer. The harvest was being gathered in, and village folk were everywhere in the fields, singing hymns in the more devout communities and bellowing foolish songs about rude lads and wenches in the more profane. My steed was Zephyr, an old favourite who had once carried me uncomplainingly from Ravensden to Portsmouth in two days, a pace that would have done for many a lesser horse. Our passage was impeded only twice. Just before we reached Cambridge a football match between two villages degenerated into a great brawl; one player seemed to have been accused of feigning injury to gain an advantage, and was rightly kicked senseless by his opponents. And though Cambridge itself was quiet, for the university term would not begin for another month, beyond it the road gradually filled with more and more of the ruder sort of people, all bound for Newmarket to see the King and the great ones of the court. I spurred Zephyr on and bustled my way through, for unlike them, I had a summons to attend upon our sovereign lord himself.

The sovereign lord had a special enclosure on a knoll in the midst of the Newmarket heaths. This gave the best possible view of the circuit on which the horses raced; it was fenced off and guarded by soldiers in sharp red uniforms, half with pikes, the rest with muskets. It also gave the best possible view of the land all around, a flat land of green fields, windmills and church steeples, with the great octagon tower of Ely Cathedral just visible on the far horizon. Several large tents sheltered those who elected to ignore the view and the racing, or who simply preferred shade to sunshine. They contained tables that groaned with delicacies. I dismounted at the fence, showed my letter of summons to one of the guards, and was directed towards the largest tent. There I found a throng of flunkeys, several gaudily painted whores and a familiar, small, round man with a long face, perhaps thirty years old or thereabouts, sweating under an unfeasibly large wig (this being then the newest and highest of fashions; indeed, almost the only fashion of those times that has survived until this, and will doubtless remain the fashion for all eternity). The round man was looking keenly around him, and at first missed my approach.

'Mister Pepys,' I said.

'Ah, Captain Quinton,' said the Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board. 'Welcome, sir, welcome. A most prompt response to the King's summons, if I may say so. You'll take a little refreshment after your ride?'

'I thank you, Mister Pepys. Yes, a little beer, I think.'

I had known Samuel Pepys for two years now. As Clerk of the Acts, a kind of secretary, he was the fulcrum for all the correspondence that passed between we captains and the Navy Board, and thus handled all the concerns relating to the daily management of our ships. This Pepys had only been put in to the place because he was some sort of kin to Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, then one of the greatest men in the realm; for it was Montagu, Noll Cromwell's protégé and a general-at-sea, who had persuaded a suspicious navy to support the restoration of the King, and it was aboard Montagu's flagship that Charles Stuart was brought safe home to England. Naturally, the gratitude of a restored monarch cascaded rewards upon Montagu's rather jowly head, and one of the least of them was a place in the Navy Office for Montagu's creature, Master Samuel Pepys. He was an odd little man, this Pepys, and my opinion of him was not wholly formed. True, he could be a pedant of the worst sort, with a puffed-up pomposity to boot. True, he was a little too confident of his own worth for my liking, and a little too eager to proclaim that worth to all and sundry, especially those who were in positions of some importance. But he was also an enthusiast, endlessly curious about all manner of things; a man genuinely interested in the doings of other men (and women, too—that much was obvious as his eyes roved round the royal enclosure); and when he was in drink, an inestimably good companion, as he was now. This Samuel Pepys I could like, even love. The Samuel Pepys who had chided me in a most highhanded fashion for the inadequate keeping of receipts for certain stores aboard the
Wessex,
and had criticised me before the Lord High Admiral for the same—well, that Samuel Pepys I regarded as highly as the aromas of Bedford's George Inn.

As we drank our beer, I asked him how he came to be with the court at Newmarket. He explained that he, too, had been summoned to attend the King, but that this was no imposition for him: 'I am from these parts, Captain Quinton. My family were of Huntingdon—also the seat of My Lord of Sandwich, of course—and I was schooled there. So I can attend both to the business of the navy and my own family during the same excursion from London. A profitable use of time, I'd say. Now, sir, we should attend upon the King.'

'No, sir, I think we should not.'

Pepys' face fell; he had an aversion to being contradicted. 'But Captain, your summons was urgent—'

I pointed behind him. Beyond the flaps of the tent, out at the edge of the track, stood the unmistakably tall and dark figure of His Majesty Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France (the last in name only, to honour his ancestors who had wasted so many years of their lives, and so many lives of their subjects, invading that fair land in vain attempts to seize its crown). Our sovereign lord was red-faced, stamping on the ground, gesticulating at a distant group of horses and berating all around him—notably his oldest friend, the Duke of Buckingham, and the delectable maid of honour to the Queen, Lady Frances Stuart, who some said was destined soon to replace the formidable Countess of Castlemaine as the King's principal mistress. It was as well that her latter ladyship was in the last days of her latest royally-induced pregnancy and thus confined to London, for otherwise her unrestrained rage would probably have been heard across several counties.

I said, 'With respect, Mister Pepys, I have known the King much longer than you. Seeking him out when his horse has just lost badly is not necessarily conducive to our business here, whatever that business might be. I suggest that we remain here, drink more beer, and watch for the moment when His Majesty backs a winning horse.
Then
he will be receptive.'

Pepys' expression changed in an instant from annoyance to puzzlement to relief to happiness. In that moment, I realised that in one essential respect Samuel Pepys was very like me: for both of us, knowledge was all. He said, 'That sounds to me like most excellent advice, Captain Quinton. I shall remember that. Thank you, sir. Now, you were suggesting that we drink more beer?'

The restoration of His Majesty's humour took three races. Pepys and I finally approached the royal presence as the King roared with laughter, extolling the virtues of his own victorious filly over His Grace of Buckingham's inept nag.

'Damn me, George,' cried the Lord's Anointed, 'that'll teach you to wager fifty guineas on a mouldy pile of bone that's good only for dog food!'

The duke laughed, but it was the forced, artificial laugh of the mortified. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (son to the great favourite of the first Kings Charles and James, the Lord High Admiral under whom my grandfather had sailed) fancied himself as a great wit, but somehow that quality of his always evaporated when the King turned the ferocious royal humour against him. They had been bosom friends since the cradle, these two, for King Charles the Martyr had brought up the orphaned heir of the first Duke with his own son. History records that after the second Charles' happy restoration, the second Buckingham sought to trade on that friendship by becoming the greatest commoner in the land, just as his father had been; but the King, who could see through most men (but curiously, not through most women, other than through their clothing at any rate), knew His Grace of Buckingham for what he was, namely a charming, indolent coxcomb, fit to entertain him in good times and bad, but suitable for about as much responsibility in the kingdom as the inhabitants of Bedlam. This made for some difficulty between my family and the great duke, because Buckingham never understood why the King preferred the quiet, serious friendship of my brother above his own, and entrusted Charles Quinton with matters of state that he would not have dreamed of confiding to George Villiers. Thus it was no surprise to me that Buckingham's eyes filled with suspicion and resentment as Pepys and I approached the royal party, bowing deeply as we did so, whereas the King's expression was happy and open.

'Matt Quinton! Pepys! At last. Now for the serious business of the day, by God!' A functionary ran up, bowed, and informed the King that the horses and riders were ready for the next race. Charles Stuart raised his hand, announced loftily that the next race would have to await his royal pleasure, and turned back to the rest of the party. 'Your Grace. My Lady Frances.' (A long glance at that good lady's ample and, perchance, amply displayed bosom.) 'You must forgive us, for this is a most pressing matter. I trust we will not detain you long. George, entertain them with a stanza, or something of the sort.'

The King beckoned us toward a bare patch of ground, between the royal enclosure and the impatient entrants in the next race. I caught His Grace of Buckingham's expression. It was that strange mixture of arrogance, puzzlement and downright anguish that one always sees on the faces of those who are never accorded quite the importance that they think they deserve. I saw it often on the face of our late and unlamented monarch, George the First, an obscure and stupid German princeling who somehow seemed to believe that people should take him seriously just because various peculiar turns of fate had bestowed upon him the wholly inappropriate office of King of Great Britain.

When he judged that we were far enough away from curious ears, King Charles turned to me and said, 'Matthew Quinton, by all the saints. My God, sir, you've become almost as dark as me. A second Black Boy, indeed!' The King was famously swarthy, a legacy of his grandmother's Italian family. 'Now, this business of the Irish renegade that you captured. All this matter of a mountain of gold. You formed your own thoughts on that, I take it?'

There was little point in dissembling before the greatest dissembler then living. 'Your Majesty, it seemed to me but an arrant pack of lies, designed solely to save his worthless skin.' I made to change the subject, even though that was not the done thing when in the presence of royalty. 'Sire, if I may, there is also this matter of my brother's proposed marriage—'

Charles Stuart seemed not to have heard me, although of course, he had heard me perfectly well (a divine right to deafness being one of the most essential attributes of monarchy). 'An arrant pack of lies, you say. Well, yes, that does seem the most plausible interpretation, of course. And you, Mister Pepys? You have your own thoughts on this matter, too?'

Flustered, Pepys replied, 'Majesty, I—that is to say—well, my thoughts are at one with Your Majesty's—'

The King's expression was suddenly still, and when he spoke, his voice was different, and distant. 'Oh no, Mister Pepys. No man's thoughts are at one with mine. No man's. ' Charles looked far away, as though searching for something well beyond the distant tower of Ely. But in a moment, his eyes brightened—methought when his gaze fell once more upon the distant spectacle of the Lady Frances Stuart—and he said, 'Look around you, gentlemen. All these people, gathered here on this dire and blasted heath, miles from any decent lodging. Why is that, exactly?'

'Why,' said Pepys, 'because of Your Majesty's presence—'

'Oh, yes, some of them, Mister Pepys. My courtiers, those who will always be where I happen to be simply because that is what they were born to do—His Grace of Buckingham for one—just as shit always attracts flies. Then there will be those like you, Mister Pepys, who have to attend upon the royal presence because it is a condition of the salary that I pay you, albeit several months in arrears. And, of course, there are men like Captain Quinton here who attend me in the hope of preferment and honour. But there are many more here today than either of your kinds, or even His Grace's. Damn it, I've sighted at least two dozen rabid Cromwellians and Commonwealths-men who still hanker after the old republic. They'd rather eat brimstone than fawn over the man they regard as the agent of the Antichrist. Cambridgeshire men, mostly. God protect me from Cambridgeshire. But they've one weakness in common that brings them here today, a weakness that they share with myself and Buckingham and almost everyone else present on this heath.' Quite suddenly, the King turned, raised his right arm, and let it fall. The functionary who had attended him earlier waved his arms furiously, and in the distance, to a great cheer from the attendant throng, a dozen horses began to pound along the track, spurred on by jockeys in liveries that were all the colours of the rainbow. Charles said, 'Oh, the sport is one thing, gentlemen, but the gamble is quite another. You see, a loss is a loss—there are many horses in a race, so we know that loss is always the more likely outcome. We learn to live with loss, we can accept it. I lose a few guineas to His Grace of Buckingham—so be it. The poor men down there, they lose a few pennies—so be it. But oh, gentlemen, the sensation of winning! The thrill of the chase, and the thrill of the chance—the glorious, impossible chance that the outsider will win against the odds! I can live with ninety-nine defeats, if I can just have that feeling in the hundredth race! That, gentlemen, is what unites those who come here today.'