Gentleman Captain (2 page)

My last sight of my first command was her bow. It reared into the air, and a great wave pushed it higher still, pushed it toward the heavens. Our new figurehead, the crown and oak laurels, was suddenly clear against the sun in the west, as the gale blew itself out and the sky began to brighten. Then the last great gusts blew the bow onto the western shore, where it shattered like so much kindling. A moment before, I saw dark shapes trying to crawl like ants up the deck, up towards our figurehead. The strike against the rock threw some into the sea, some against the teeth of the shore. The last of our men were gone. His Majesty's ship the
Happy Restoration,
formerly the
Lord Protector,
was gone.

I see that sight in my dreams, all these distant years later, as vivid now as it was that October day. I still see the sight, and I still reckon the cost. Upwards of one hundred souls, drowned or broken on the rocks. God knows how many widows made, and orphans cast onto the streets. All damned to oblivion by my ignorance, indecision, and pride.

Some hours afterwards, we were sitting on stools and swathed in blankets in front of a blazing fire. We were in a barracks room of the old James Fort, on the west side of Kinsale harbour. There were twenty-nine survivors from the wreck of the
Happy Restoration.
Kit Farrell and I were the only officers. The Governor of Kinsale had been attentive and sympathetic, sending over bowls of broth and jugs of a fiery Irish drink, both of which burned the throat in equally harsh measure. But the victuals served their purpose, and slowly, feeling returned to limbs, my cheeks began to flush, and I finally rediscovered my tongue.

I drew breath. 'Mister Farrell,' I said. 'Thank you.'

Perhaps I should have said more. This man my own age had saved my life, perhaps saved far more than he would ever know: the fate of an earldom, at the very least. But my throat and lungs were sore from the storm, the seawater, and the governor's largesse, and I had no breath for speeches. Nor in truth could I face unburdening myself to another at that moment, for God knows what depths of anguish and guilt might have spilled forth. Kit Farrell seemed to know this. He pulled himself a little higher on his stool. Struggling to speak, just as I had, he said, 'It was the sternpiece, sir. It was carried away by the same wave that swept us from the deck.' Then he smiled, the proof of a small private joke, and said, 'Brazen incompetents, Captain. Corrupt as a Roman cardinal. Old treenails, probably, so they could take the new ones bought for the job down to Southwark market and sell them. Deptford shipwrights, sir. Villains to a man. Deptford yard refitted her when the king came back, and they took down Noll Cromwell's arms and put up the king's.'

I took another measure of the increasingly attractive Irish drink. 'So they cheated when they fastened the sternpiece?'

'And much else on that curse of a ship, for it to break apart as it did, but they saved our lives by doing so. God bless them, Captain Quinton.'

'God bless you, Mister Farrell. But for you, I'd never have caught hold, and never seen this world again.' I thought of my wife and all that I had so nearly lost. I thought upon the scores of men who had perished. I felt an uncontrollable pain; not a wound, but something in my gut and throat that began to swell and tighten. I fought back my shame, forced myself to look my saviour in the eye. Then I raised my cup to him.

'My brother is an earl, and friend to the king,' I said, awkwardly. This was entirely true. 'We are a rich family, one of the richest in England.' This was entirely untrue, though once, things had been different. 'I owe you my life, Mister Farrell. We Quintons, we've always been men of honour. It's lifeblood to us. I am in your debt, and my honour demands that I repay you.'

He was probably as embarrassed at having to listen to this appalling pomposity as I was in uttering it. A man of my own rank would have called me a fool, or boxed me about the head. But a man of Kit Farrell's rank would have known nothing of gentlemanly honour, although evidently he knew enough of sympathy and discretion. He sat silently for some minutes, gazing into the fire. Then he turned his head towards me and said, 'One thing I would like, sir. One thing above all others.'

'Name it, if it's in my power.'

'Captain, I can't read or write. I see men like yourself taking pleasure from books, and I'd like to know that world. I see that writing makes men better themselves. Reading and writing, they're the key to all. I look around me, sir, and I see men must have them these days if they're to advance in life, be it in the king's navy or any other way of this world. Knowing words gives men power, so it seems to me. But I've never found anyone willing to teach me, sir.'

I had a sudden memory of my old schoolmaster at Bedford–Mervyn, the meanest sort of little Welsh pedant–and wondered what he would have made of his worst pupil turning teacher. Then I thought of other men, of my father and grandfather, and in that moment I knew what they would have me say. 'I'll teach you reading and writing, Mister Farrell. Gladly. It's the smallest of prices for my life, so I should not ask anything else from you in return.' I retched up more Irish salt sea, and something grey and indescribable. I reached for the governor's fire-liquid and burned away the taste. 'But there's something I'd have you teach me, too.'

'Captain?'

'Teach me the sea, Mister Farrell. Tell me the names of the ropes, and the ways to steer a course. Teach me of the sun and the stars, and the currents, and the oceans. Teach me how to be a proper captain for a king's ship.'

I held out my hand to Kit Farrell. After a moment, he took it, and we shook.

'Like you, Matthias, I was captain of a ship at twenty-one,' said my brother-in-law, 'but unlike you, I did not lose her before I was twenty-two.'

From most men, this would have been an intolerable goad and insult, worthy of a blade in the ribs at dawn. From Captain Cornelis van der Eide, it was a rare proof of the existence of his tortured sense of humour, generally thought to be as mythical as the gryphon.

'Cornelis!' His sister, my wife, admonished him, her eyes flashing like the broadside of a sixty-gunner. 'You must not jest with Matthew over this. Many men died on his ship, and he feels their loss each day.'

Although Cornelia was fully ten years her brother's junior, and as slight as he was bovine, she made him flush like a child caught stealing apples from an orchard. She could always bend him to her will in an instant, this proud, square-chested captain; a man who could stand up to the hardest burgomasters of Amsterdam and trade broadsides with the best.

Cornelis mouthed an apology and raised his glass to me in supplication. It was the first time that my brother-in-law and I had met since the loss of the
Happy Restoration,
six months before. Cornelis's ship was in Erith Reach, taking on supplies while her captain consulted with our Navy Board, for some reason unspecified. He was soon to sail for the Iceland fisheries, where he was to guard the boats that gleaned their rich harvest from that perilous sea. But for all his faults, Cornelis van der Eide took his family responsibilities seriously, and even the apparently pressing nature of his expedition could not prevent him paying his respects to his sister and his in-laws in our strange old house in the depths of rural Bedfordshire, fifty or more miles north of his berth.

In his ineffably dull way, Cornelis had been holding forth for much of the meal on the merits of training captains to the sea from the age of, say, nine, which was precisely how old he had been when he was first taken out beyond the Schooneveld shoals and into the North Sea by a
schipper
uncle. Then he had treated us to a profoundly tedious discourse on the sailing qualities of his new command, a strong forty-gun ship called the
Wapen van Veere.
He seemed particularly pleased with the sheer of the wales, and I wondered momentarily why he had such blubbery sea-leviathans fastened to the side of his ship. Cornelis went on to essay an opinion on the alleged superiority of the Dutch system of government, with its seven virtually independent provinces, five mutually suspicious admiralties, and countless squabbling factions.

I had heard Cornelis' opinions many times–most memorably at interminable length at my wedding feast–and merely nodded passively from time to time. My eyes wandered instead to the decaying vaulting and beetle-eaten roof timbers of the cavernous hall in which we ate, and as I did at every meal, I contemplated the possibility of the entire structure crashing down to kill us all. My gaze moved down to Cornelia, to her clean and louse-free hair, her smooth, round face and delicate white bosom. She wore, in Cornelis's honour, a grand orange dress that I knew to be a political statement against her brother's dogged republicanism. She would have none of Cornelis's defence of their homeland. She had adopted the ways of her new country to a gratifying degree, and in any case was relishing the rare opportunity to resume her lifelong squabble with her sibling.

'Oh, come, brother!' she cried mockingly. 'Surely even you can see that the present government of Nederland is a calamity? Holland against Zeeland, the other six provinces against Holland, Orangists versus Republicans, Amsterdam versus the world! And what of religion, Cornelis? A state that publicly preaches the dourest version of Calvinism imaginable, yet gladly tolerates Catholics, Jews, Devil-worshippers and God knows what as long as they make enough money to swell the coffers of that same state! If this is De Witt's "True Freedom", brother, then God preserve us from it!'

Cornelis looked on her indulgently, as he always did, for in that, at least, we were agreed: we both loved this bright, impetuous, and forthright creature, and would defend her with every breath in our bodies.

Cornelis said, mildly, 'Then what would you put in its place, sister?' Of course, he knew the answer perfectly well: the orange dress was eloquent enough.

'Why, monarchy, what else? Look at England, now happy again under her rightful sovereign after all those long, miserable years of emulating our foolish Dutch republic!' Knowing rather more than my wife of the discontents that swirled around the court, of the murmurings of the London mob and the emptiness of the royal exchequer, I raised an eyebrow. Cornelia continued, 'The Prince of Orange should be made king, brother, and De Witt and all his acolytes in the States-General sent packing back to the Amsterdam brothels whence they sprang!'

Not even Cornelis could tolerate such a slander from his sister, who seemed thus to accuse Johan De Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland and the man who held the entire shambolic Dutch state together, of being a whoremaster. Captain van der Eide drew himself up in his chair. 'The prince is a lad of twelve, sister!' he said. 'Make him king, and we will have a civil war to equal the one that tore England apart...'

Thus they continued, and I returned my gaze to the ceiling. As I did so, I contemplated the mystery of how this impenetrable pottage of rude, avaricious merchants, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, could dare to contend with England for dominion over the trade of the world. We had already fought one war, in the Commonwealth's time, and sometimes on the quarterdeck of the
Happy Restoration
I considered the likelihood of another, and the prospect of sailing into battle against my good-brother Cornelis. It was a thought that ever filled me with dread, for I knew full well that behind Cornelis's dull face and speech lay the heart and mind of a consummate seaman and ferocious warrior.

My mother, attired as always in black mourning weeds, stirred from her meditation of the fireplace. Perhaps she had experienced Cornelia's sharp mockery herself often enough to know that it was time to lead the warring van der Eide siblings onto safer ground. 'Tell me, Cornelis. Your parents. They are well?'

Cornelia fixed her lively brown eyes on a particularly alarming piece of capon on her plate, then took up her knife and set about it mercilessly. Despite being, somehow, their child, my wife cared even less for Meinheer en Mevrouw van der Eide, of Veere in Zeeland, than did my mother. Cornelis van der Eide de Jonge contemplated the question as though it was a complex navigational problem.
Ja,
my Lady Ravensden, they are well. Our father expects to become burgomaster of Veere this year, or the next. My mother is a little troubled by the rheum and the gout, but otherwise—'

'So are we all, Cornelis, at our age,' said my mother with as much kindness as she could muster, cutting off any further discussion of Mevrouw van der Eide's symptoms. Mother had never been a patient woman, and the arthritic stoop and stiffened fingers of she who had once been the tallest and most striking of court beauties made her intolerant of the frailties of others. She looked at her son-in-law with her head cocked slightly to one side, an expression that she usually reserved for the dullest of our tenants, or for Cornelia; it was a rare and welcome occasion, I thought drily, when the two of them could turn their fire onto a guest, rather than training their barbs against each other. My mother was silent for a moment, then glanced at her plate and evidently decided that the conversation had only one refuge left to it, if it was not to stray back to navies, politics or the van der Eide family.