Gentleman Captain (13 page)

My escape satisfied Cornelia: while our tiny Royalist army disintegrated in the twin whirlpools of penury and recrimination there was no employment for my sword. I could be safely married. Yet despite being on every other count the most sensible and practical wife any husband could wish to find, Cornelia remained incorrigibly convinced that the moment I left her sight I was in mortal danger. She cried for days when I went off to command the
Happy Restoration,
believing that we were bound to encounter an Algerine corsair (which would have been preferable to our encounter with the rocks of County Cork, if truth be told). She once even pursued me all the way to a horse-fair in Royston merely because she dreamed I would be murdered there by a one-eyed Chinaman.

'
God guard and keep you dearst love,
she concluded her letter. '
Little we know of yr voyage but Charles tells there may be some dangers. You know how fearful I am, thinking yr schip shatterd once more upon a black shore. Or pounded by the guns of mighty enemy. Cornelis told me foolish, and perhaps he has rights. So be careful at once and glorious, if it is possible to be both. Remember always that here at Ravensden, you are rememberd and loved. From my heart to yours, for ever, Cornelia
.' She had written a postscript on the reverse. '
On hearing your schip was ordered for west of Skotland, your mother seemd agitate. I asked for why, but she is telling me not. She startd a letter to you, then threw it on the fire.'

This postscript perplexed me more than Cornelia's anxiety. Irascible she may have been, but my mother was rarely agitated, beyond the scope of her usual hates and an occasional oath at her inability to move as quickly and freely as once she could. As far as I knew, too, she had no particular connection with Scotland; at least, none greater than was usual for someone who had been about the Stuart court for years, and was thus bound to know many of the Scots who had come down with their king when the crowns united. I asked Musk if my mother seemed well at his going from the abbey with my belongings, and he said she seemed to him the same as she ever was. On reflection, this was little surprise. My mother was not a woman to betray such emotion before Phineas Musk, whom she had kept on at Ravensden House for years despite detesting him almost as heartily as she had Oliver Cromwell.

I opened the third, barely literate, letter. It was from Kit Farrell's mother, to whom I had addressed my letter inviting him to join the
Jupiter,
along with a copy of the royal order to Mister Pepys. In spelling so execrable that it made Cornelia's prose read like Dryden, Mistress Sarah Farrell, widow and innkeeper of Wapping, informed me that, desperate for employment and sustenance, her son Kit had taken ship for the East Indies some weeks earlier. There was a chance that his vessel had been held up in the Downs by the same strong westerlies that held us in Portsmouth, but in her opinion as the widow of a man who had served at sea for
twinty ayt yers,
it was unlikely. Even so, she had forwarded the letter and the warrant to Deal, and prayed that her zeal in my cause would earn her recommendation and remuneration from both her
good Capt Cwinton
and the
most nobel Erl of Rivinsdin.

I was even more alarmed by the contents of this third letter than by the news of my mother's behaviour. It seemed that for this most dangerous and delicate of voyages, I had exchanged the considerable nautical experience and good sense of Kit Farrell for the alternative attributes of Phineas Musk. It did not seem a good bargain.

That evening, I selfishly shunned the company of the other ship's officers and supped both wigless and alone, apart from the baleful presence of Musk, who was at least three times older than most other servants in the navy and a thousand times more miserable than any of them. I could hear the noise of the other officers dining at their table in the steerage, just outside my door, and as the wine and ale took hold, I made out Peverell's voice, raised about the others, talking loudly and indiscreetly of this arrogant young sprig of the nobility that they now had for a captain:

'Why, gentlemen, the first Quinton was but a saddler to William of Normandy! Not a respectable line, at all, despite all his airs and graces.'

Landon remarked on the king's liking for gentleman captains, men ignorant of the ways of the sea and the heavens. They would soon drive out of the navy all of the honest tarpaulins–seaman officers born and bred, like himself and Godsgift Judge–who had rightly monopolized all the commands under the late republic. Then where would the country be in the coming war with the Dutch, he asked. A generation of butterfly captains going up against Lord Obdam, Evertsen, de Ruyter, and the rest, great seamen all–God help England and preserve her from conquest by strutting Dutch butterboxes!

Penbaron, the carpenter, grunted encouragement in those rare moments when he was not bemoaning the state of the mizzen or the rudder, while Boatswain Ap's eloquent speech might have represented agreement or disagreement for all anyone could tell. Finally, they mixed the toasts for all the days of the week, toasting in turn the king, sweethearts and wives, absent friends, and adding their own particularly loud toast to the memory of James Harker. I finished my own supper in even worse temper than I had begun it, glaring at Musk if he attempted to speak.

James Vyvyan came back aboard late that evening and reported to me on the quarterdeck, where I had gone in hopes that the breeze would blow away the recollection of my officers' conversation. My lieutenant was more than a little chastened; a more tired and humbler version of himself. He had little to show for his two days ashore, in quest of evidence of murder. He knew that on the day of his death, Captain Harker attended morning communion at St Thomas's church, and had later dined, seemingly alone, at the Red Lion in Portsmouth town (and if he had been poisoned there, Vyvyan observed, twenty others who ate the meat of the same cow, and fifty others who drank the same beer, would also have died that night). He had briefly met Stafford Peverell, who was ashore negotiating with the victualler's agent, and had exchanged a word with some of the ship's crew at the side of the camber dock. No one saw him from two in the afternoon until about five, when he returned to the ship's boat. For those three hours, Captain James Harker's whereabouts were a mystery.

'Well, Mister Vyvyan,' I said, as tactfully as I could, 'surely there might be an innocent reason for his disappearance? Could he perhaps have had a friend to take leave of?'

Vyvyan thought upon the point and said, very slowly, 'If you mean a woman, sir, then yes, it could be an explanation, I'll grant–but I spoke with some of those whom–well, whom he favoured, as it were–and he was with none of them. Or so they said.'

'Might it not be, Lieutenant, that he had found a new object for his affections–one unknown to you and to his other ... friends?'

James Vyvyan struggled with his own thoughts for a moment longer. But he was an intelligent young man, and ultimately, his good sense triumphed over grief and rage. 'Yes, sir. It's the likeliest explanation.' Then he smiled faintly. 'My uncle was ever a man for conquests, sir. Ships, islands, women–they were all alike to him, and he took as many of each as he could. So ... no murder, then. You have the right of it, Captain. Indeed, I think I am grateful.'

He extended his hand, and I shook it.

By the time I retired to bed that night, Musk had made a tolerable job of transforming the
Jupiter
's great cabin into a floating miniature Ravensden. Old hangings from the London house adorned my walls—or bulkheads, rather–thus obscuring some of the more dubious examples of James Harker's taste in art. Silver-plated vessels that had been the servants' pewter until my grandfather sold off all the finest Quinton ware now decorated the cabinets and table, relegating Harker's pewter to the officers' table. Pride of place went to two small copies of the portraits of my father and grandfather from the great hall of the abbey, their faces picked out unerringly by the two lanterns that swung overhead, and the somewhat larger portrait of Cornelia by Lely, painted just after the Restoration. My sword hung upon a spike: the sword that had been in my father's hand when he died, which Charles had eschewed, and which I had thus inherited. Near it lay my chief inheritance from my grandfather, an odd, gold-gilt oval box which opened up into a succession of dials: God alone knew what they all meant, or did, but I had loved playing with it as a child and its presence alongside me aboard the
Jupiter
was strangely reassuring. Surrounded by my own things, lying in my own blankets, my head on my own pillow, and despite the half-hourly clangour of the ship's bell, I gradually fell into a more comfortable sleep than any I had known since coming aboard...

Only to have it shattered, some time in the small hours of the morning, by a great roaring from the starboard side. Sleepily convinced that we were being boarded by corsairs, I snatched sword and pistol and ran from the cabin. As I did so I trod on Musk, who, too fat for the servants' kennel-like cabins on the poop, had decided to sleep on the deck outside my door. In truth, and although I would never have admitted as much to him, I found it a powerful reassurance that anyone who wished to reach me would have to get past Phineas Musk first; whatever else he might have been, the old rogue was one of the fiercest (and dirtiest) fighters I ever saw in my life.

Vyvyan emerged from his tiny cabin, sleepy and unarmed, and called after me, 'Captain, there's no alarm...' But I was already running for the deck.

I reached it to see our sentries holding their sides in an effort to suppress their laughter. Polzeath and Treninnick were trying to pull a struggling, roaring, kicking, swearing brute of a man onto the deck. When I reached the side, I saw Lanherne, Carvell, Le Blanc, Trenance, and two others manhandling the creature upwards from the boat below. Trying to gather as much of the dignity of command about me as my nightshift would allow, I said, 'What's the meaning of this, coxswain? Who is this fellow? Boatswain, administer the appropriate punishment for disturbing the quiet of the ship—'

Le Blanc and Carvell swapped obscenities and sniggered. Lanherne looked at me, grinned, and said, 'Don't think you'll want to punish this one, sir. This is the chaplain, Reverend Gale. Today's Sunday, and he's got to preach a sermon seven hours from now, so we thought we'd better pull him out of the Dolphin and back on board.'

By this time, the Reverend Francis Gale was approximately upright. He had several days' growth of beard, his hair was matted and he stank of drink, piss, and vomit. A man less likely to be serving our saviour, and, more immediately, the Most Reverend William, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, was difficult to imagine. In the circumstances, it was also perfectly impossible to imagine anything appropriate to say to him.

In the event, it was Gale who spoke. He fixed me with two little red eyes and said, 'The grace of our Lord Jeshush Chrisht, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Shpirit, be with you, Captain.' Then he squinted at me, swayed and reached for my shoulder. 'Hell's gates, you're tall. And your hair's going, already. Bald as a coot before you're thirty, I fear. For ever and ever, thy kingdom come.' He gave a great belch. 'Now ... where's my cabin.'

I stood nervously on the quarterdeck of the
Jupiter,
staring out over an assembly of crewmen who shuffled apathetically on their heels. The more devout, like the giant Polzeath and the blackamoor, Carvell, were already mumbling prayers to themselves. There was a great deal of murmuring and gossiping, despite Boatswain Ap's barely intelligible imprecations to keep a godly silence. I thought I saw eyes on me hastily averted, and whispered conferences, and laughter. I imagined that in their eyes I merited as much respect as 'the liar'–the man chosen each week for the exquisite punishment of swabbing the bow directly beneath the four holes of the ship's heads. Some men looked about them in that distinctive way sailors have, estimating when the wind might change and our voyage might begin. The hard westerly had moderated a little, but our ensign still streamed out strongly behind the bewigged and capped head of James Vyvyan, who stood at my side.

I could hear the church bells of Portsmouth and Gosport summoning their respectable congregations to services led by respectable, competent vicars. In contrast, the rather less respectable congregation thronging the deck of the
Jupiter
awaited one of two equally dreadful alternatives: in the first, the Reverend Francis Gale arrived in time to lead our devotions, assuming he could remain upright and deliver the words in something approximating to the right order; in the second, the Reverend Francis Gale did not appear, in which case the service would be led by an even less adequate substitute. The tradition of the navy demanded that in the absence of a chaplain, the spiritual well-being of the crew, and the task of leading their divine oblations, be taken upon the unwilling shoulders of her officers. Vyvyan had volunteered for the task (having a bishop in the family ensured that it held no terrors for him), but I could not surrender it to him without giving up the last vestige of my authority. Thus, and unlike virtually every other seaman in history, I prayed with all my soul for the arrival of a Gale.