Gentleman Captain (36 page)

Back aboard there was much talk and not a little amusement at the sudden transformation of our French sailmaker's mate into a fully-fledged nobleman. Lanherne, Polzeath and the rest of his friends made much of carrying his sea chest and knapsack in some state from his mess on the main deck to Purser Peverell's cabin, now that of the comte d'Andelys. Whatever he thought in private of his enforced move–and I have no doubt that it was murderous–Peverell could hardly challenge the will of a captain who had ample evidence to bring him to a court-martial, should he choose; nor could he quite refrain from an unseemly obsequiousness when dealing with the suddenly ennobled sailmaker. With bad grace and peremptory rudeness, he ejected his mates from their pestilential cabin on the orlop deck and retreated in silent indignation into his new abode.

Le Blanc was greeted by a marked new deference from my officers. It is strange how this putting on of a title changes the way men see other men. Malachi Landon bowed and scraped as though he was in the presence of royalty; James Vyvyan was positively in awe, and even Phineas Musk became ten times more deferential than I had ever seen him before, despite the fact that
le comte
was actually my brother's equal in rank. Only the Reverend Gale treated him the same, but perhaps this should have been expected from a man who referred to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury as Old Bill Juxon.

I summoned a council of my officers to discuss the death of Nathan Warrender, the attack on Campbell of Glenrannoch, the whereabouts of the mystery man-of-war and the continued absence of Captain Judge and the
Royal Martyr.
I had suspicions and theories of my own to put to them, and although I valued the judgement of some of them not a jot, I hoped to hear something worthwhile from Vyvyan, Gale, Farrell and the comte d'Andelys, who would now automatically join our council by virtue of his honour and rank.

An hour before we were due to convene, there was a knock at my cabin door. I had been staring out the window, watching the gulls in the distance and thinking over the events of the day, but at the knock I turned swiftly to my chart table, took up a quill, and only then called 'enter'. Kit Farrell had brought young Macferran to me. There was a ship, he said, lying off Ardverran Castle, unloading a great cargo. I asked him if this was a man-of-war, slightly larger than the
Jupiter,
built high at the stern after the Dutch fashion and painted a dark colour. No, he said. He had seen enough ships of different sorts pass through these seas, or take shelter in these roadsteads. The ship off Ardverran was but an ordinary fly-boat, the common sort of vessel used by the Dutch in the northern seas: wide, full in the hull, and carrying as small a crew as possible to undercut their rivals' costs and elevate the owners' profits. I wished to see for myself, so Kit and I climbed down into Macferran's boat, pulled over to the beach, and climbed up to the old Pictish fort.

There it was, at double anchor off the jetty at Ardverran. The young Scot had made no mistake. It was not the ship I had seen from Lady Macdonald's birlinn. I squinted my eyes against the sun, which was already well to the west, and scanned the waters and the islands for as far as I could see. Of
Royal Martyr
and the mystery ship, there was no sign at all.

But at Ardverran Castle, all was bustle. Three birlinns kept up a continuous ferry to and from the jetty, where a chain of men unloaded large sacks and bundles, passing them from man to man up to the castle gate. There could be no doubt. These were the arms bought in Flanders, supposedly for the cause of Campbell of Glenrannoch. A false intelligence–one fit to bring about a war. For my eyes told me what my heart had known for the past day. The arms were bound for Macdonald, and my lady of Connaught.

Yet I did not want it to be true.

'Macferran,' I said, 'did not the countess order a Macdonald guard up here, and on all the other heights round about?'

He looked puzzled and shook his tousled head. 'No, sir, Captain. All day I have sat here, and in that time I've seen nor hide nor hair of any dampnit Macdonald.' He spat. 'Begging your pardon, sir, Captain.'

'But the other heights, Macferran. What of them?' I asked.

'Well, sir, Captain, I can't speak for them all, seeing as I was sat here. My cousin was up Ben Britheamh this morning, though,' and he pointed away to the greater hill to the north, 'and it was bare.'

As it would be. Protecting the
Jupiter
was hardly what the countess was about.

Kit Farrell said, 'If we stay at anchor where we are, Captain, we're in a killing ground. If your mystery ship comes down that channel with the wind in her favour, the
Jupiter
will be good only for stoking Satan's fires.'

Back aboard the
Jupiter
I gave my orders in swift succession, with as confident a demeanour as I could muster. It was not a confidence that I felt within, however. Indeed my stomach seemed to be playing leap-frog with my heart. The pieces were falling into place, but too late; I had not been prepared for this and I was angry with myself.

I beckoned to James Vyvyan. 'Mister Vyvyan, you will please go down to Ardverran Castle in Lanherne's boat, flying a flag of truce. You will present my compliments to the Countess of Connaught and inform her that Captain Quinton of the
Jupiter
is pleased to accept her invitation to sup at Ardverran. Immediately.'

The ship's boat delivered me to the jetty at Ardverran just as the sun began to sink toward the islands to the west. All was quiet. I could hear the gulls, and the splash of the oars. Nothing more. Where I had observed fevered activity when I looked from the old fort, now there was none. The fly-boat lay at double anchor a few hundred yards away, but there was no man to be seen on her. The jetty itself was deserted, as was the path up to the castle. I left my boat crew there, giving Lanherne orders that they should shift for themselves at the slightest sign of danger.

I felt a strange mixture of fear and determination. Several on the
Jupiter
had felt compelled to remonstrate with me. Francis Gale and James Vyvyan described my scheme as madness. Kit Farrell begged me to think again. Phineas Musk bemoaned the fact that the imminent slaughter of Captain Quinton would leave him unemployed and prey to the whims of the dreadful Scots. Even the comte d'Andelys urged me to take a stout party of armed seamen for protection.

I will have protection enough, I told them, and hoped in my heart that I was right.

I strode into the courtyard of Ardverran Castle and once again took the steps up to the hall. In contrast to my previous visit it was silent and empty. Empty, but for the great table, laid for two; empty, but for the Lady Niamh, Countess of Connaught, who sat at one end.

I bowed. 'My lady.'

She wore a gown of imperial purple, cut low in the bosom, with a gold crucifix on a long chain around her white neck. She seemed regal and yet incredibly delicate–as though at one careless gesture she might vanish. She was even more splendid than at my first sight of her, here in the hall of Ardverran. I thought to myself then that perhaps the greatest beauty is always the handmaiden of the greatest danger.

Even as I looked at her she studied me with her green eyes; eyes as cold now as they had been bright, penetrating and playful during our last afternoon together. After a long, silent moment she bade me sit, and two attendants emerged from the curtains at the end of the hall to serve us.

'Captain Quinton. Your belated acceptance of my invitation was unexpected, if I may say so. And on Good Friday. I would have expected you to be busy with the offices of the cross, sir.'

'A thousand pardons. I trust that I have not torn you from your devotions?' She smiled coldly at that but said nothing. Her servant laid the choicest morsels on her plate with tortuous circumspection, then retired, bowing.

I looked around the hall, at the old armour, swords and pikes that adorned the wall. My attendant laid a dish of rabbit before me and filled my glass with wine. If she wanted me dead, I thought, this was the moment for poison. But I had come too far to baulk now, and I still believed my reading of this woman.

'A fine display of arms, my lady. But I see your latest weapons are not for public display.'

I drank, took a mouthful of meat. The rabbit was well cooked and in no way lethal, the wine tolerable and not fatal.

'You are speaking in riddles, Captain,' she said, guardedly, 'and I have no time—'

'Enough, my lady.'

To interrupt was an unforgivable rudeness back then, though it is common enough these days. The countess did not betray the slightest discomfort, however. She merely drank from her goblet then laid it back upon the table, watching me.

'It is time for plain-speaking between us, and you have deluded me long enough, I think. I shall be your fool no more, my Lady Niamh.' It was the first time I had used her true name, and she startled. I pressed on. 'I know about the cargo that ship at your jetty has brought you. Five thousand muskets, two thousand pikes, swords and cannon. Enough for an army. For your Macdonald army, my lady. Paid for by your uncle, Cardinal O'Daragh, and his close friend, the pope.'

She seemed to look at me anew, then. Her radiant face was impassive and calculating. 'You are better informed than I had expected, Matthew.'

'Not informed enough, my lady. You sought to kill me, along with Campbell of Glenrannoch, this morning—'

'That was not done by my order!' and she brought her fist down hard, striking a platter which skittered loudly across the table. Her retainer stepped forward nervously at that, but she waved him away without turning her head.

'And to what purpose? To bring down Clan Campbell, and take back all the lands they once took from you? Do you really think the king will allow you to do that? Oh, it will take him time, my lady. But he will call up the militia, and send a far greater fleet than just these two ships. You will be brought low—'

She laughed in scorn, shook that flame-red hair of hers, and cried mockingly, 'No, not informed at all, Matthew Quinton! Mary, Mother of Heaven, forgive me! Do you truly believe I would risk so much just to overthrow the Campbells? Do you truly believe I would risk so much if I thought that Charles Stuart could snap his fingers and bring us low as you say?' She stood up and grasped the edge of the table, then leaned towards me, knuckles whitening. 'There are far greater things afoot here than Macdonald against Campbell, Captain. Far greater things than Charles Stuart knows, or can prevent.'

Then she began to walk slowly down the hall towards me. I watched her, trying hard not to be touched by her beauty. That calm face, the proud bearing, the hair touched by gold in the firelight. It was a bewitching sight.

'The Lordship of the Isles will be restored, Captain. My son's inheritance, confirmed as an independent state by the pope, under the protection of the Dutch.'

I stared at her. The Lordship of the Isles? The pope and the Dutch? This was impossible. Her words had no meaning. She was mad, or I was mad, or else I had dreamt the entire voyage of the
Jupiter.
Yes. I would awake in my bed in Ravensden Abbey, with the rain leaking through the ceiling as it always did, and Cornelia lying by my side as she always did, and all would be well again.

I shook my head. Thoughts raced against others, thoughts that proclaimed me awake, and sane. The pope and the Dutch, Catholic and Protestant, would never combine to put a new state here, on the edge of Europe, I thought. I tried to comprehend the enormity of her words, her ambition. The Lordship of the Isles was long dead, a corpse in its grave, far beyond resurrection, and for most of the last one hundred years the Dutch had fought for their very survival against Catholic armies that sought to annihilate them; armies sanctioned, and sometimes paid for, by the pope. No.
No,
my sense argued, looking at the impassive, beautiful face drawing closer and closer, this was not merely impossible, it was an affront to everything I knew to be true:
the pope and the Dutch.

Then I recalled my own years as a guest of Holland. I thought about what I had learned from the van der Eide family and their neighbours. The Dutch saw no dilemma in tolerating Catholics within their borders, or in forming an alliance with the pope himself, as long as those actions brought them profit. For with the Dutch, business was all; and with all its wealth, the Church of Rome was an attractive business partner. His Holiness Pope Alexander the Seventh, of the great banking house of Chigi, would be doubly so, perhaps. That being the case...

'The Dutch would gain havens for their trade and fisheries, safe harbours in the event of another war with England,' I said slowly, thinking aloud. 'A base from which to attack deep into the king's lands in any future war between us. And if they gain all that, the Dutch will not care a jot whether their puppet Lords of the Isles are Catholic, Protestant, or Mahometan.'

My lady nodded and smiled, as a teacher does when a particularly backward pupil has finally grasped a fundamental notion.

The Lords of the Isles restored.
It seemed madness–but then, that truly was an age where madness was in vogue and where new states were being born every day. I thought of Portugal, the newest kingdom in Europe, a folly that would nevertheless shortly give England its new queen. Back then, I remember now, Brandenburg was a mere swamp amid the dank forests in the east of Germany; today they call it the Kingdom of Prussia, and our present fat King George fears its armies more than he fears the horsemen of the Apocalypse. Even then, as a young man, the map of Europe had been drawn and redrawn several times over in my short lifetime, in treaty after treaty. New kings had risen up, old lands had vanished, and new states had been born–all because the likes of the pope and the Dutch willed it so. Just as they now willed a kingdom for the Lady Niamh's son, it seemed. No ... it was not total madness.

'But the king will not stand for such an affront,' I said, for I had to speak, to say something. 'You could hardly give him better cause to start the war against the Dutch that he seeks—'