The Battle of All the Ages (17 page)

I looked around. There was nothing – no way at all of moving forward. All we had was the spar, the rigging, the footrope…

I smiled.

‘Did your great-grandfather tell you anything about what my grandfather was like, Mistress Bella?’

‘A great captain, he said, and brave, but the maddest man on earth.’

‘Oh, madder than that, if even half the stories are true. Like the story of how he took the
Virgen de Guadalupe
, a great galleon twice the height of his own ship. There was no way of boarding her, his
officers
told him. Until my grandfather did this. Off the footrope, Bella, and grip the mainmast.’

With that, I pulled myself onto the spar alone, drew my sword, reached down, and severed the footrope from its fastening by the mainmast. Then I gripped the loose end, checked I was clear of all standing rigging, and launched myself into space.

The standing rigging of the vessel dead ahead seemed to fly toward me. I reached out with my right arm, grabbed for the shrouds, and missed. I swung back toward the ship where Bella was.

A child swinging from a rope tied to an oak-tree branch.

I felt the old familiar thrill. I braced my knees, struck the
oak-trunk
– rather, the mainmast – with my feet, and pushed hard. Again I soared above the black waters of the Barbican harbour, reached out for the rigging, and this time caught hold of it.

I could just make out the slight form of Bella, still standing at the junction of mainmast and yardarm. She had no need to follow me now; she was unlikely to be of concern to Conibear’s men, even if they were still searching the wharves and lanes on the far side of the harbour. But she was beckoning for the rope, and I knew nothing would stop her seeing her self-appointed mission to its end. So I took aim and hurled the erstwhile footrope back toward her. It took three failed attempts, but on the fourth, she caught hold. Bella leaped from the yardarm, swung across the water, and reached out. I caught her and pulled her in.

‘Why, Sir Matthew!’ she squealed. ‘And I thought all you men of rank were good-for-nothing sluggards.’

‘I am glad to disabuse you, Mistress Mendez! But come, we still have two yardarms to cross –’

But she climbed down instead, stepped onto the deck of the
outboard
ship, looked around, then beckoned me to follow her.

‘Would it not have been easier just to go across the decks of those on the other side of the harbour, too?’ I said, as I stepped onto the deck.

‘Easier for Conibear’s gang, too. And we might have encountered a watch-on-deck who took exception to us and raised the alarm. Besides, Sir Matthew, men usually keep their eyes to the earth, and hardly ever think to look upward. Was that not what saved the King himself, when he hid in the Royal Oak?’

She was a strange girl, this one, but astute.

‘So it did, Bella Mendez. So it did.’

We went ashore, walked down the side of a warehouse, turned a corner, and there found Francis Gale, Julian Carvell, Ali Reis and Macferran emerging from the Turk’s Head.

‘Sir Matthew!’ cried Francis. ‘Praise God, you are alive!’

‘That I am, Reverend. All thanks to this gallant girl –’

I turned, but Bella Mendez was already running off, back into the dark streets of Plymouth.

The next morning, Plymouth was in turmoil once again. I had been there only a very short time, but this was sufficient to establish that turmoil seemed to be the town’s usual condition. The people were excitable and peevish: they made the citizens of London seem like masters of serenity and self-control, which was a mightily difficult thing to do. On this particular morning, they were greatly exercised by intelligence coming into the town from west and east at once.

From the west came news that the hell-hound had been flaunting
himself
off Looe only the evening before. He had even dared to run in close and loose off a few balls at the town. Then he steered away toward the Rame, the great headland that lay between Looe and Plymouth Sound.

‘Aye, and the vast black hound was howling from the quarterdeck before it turned back into Captain Kranz!’ cried a fishwife,
authoritatively
.

‘The shame of it!’ bawled another. ‘The
Jupiter
lies idle in harbour while this cursed Dutchman parades up and down the Channel,
without
a care in the world!’

‘Damn this Captain Harris, who cares only for his wine and the whore he keeps aboard!’

This took me aback at first; I had seen no evidence of a whore
during
my time on the
Jupiter
. But knowing Beau, and upon reflection, it did not surprise me in the slightest.

From the east came the London postboy, whose arrival at the Guildhall I witnessed: I was up early to meet with De Gomme at the Citadel, and was passing by on my way to the vast building site. One particularly forward creature – a dissenting preacher, by his look and garb – grabbed eagerly at the letter proferred to him, tore it open, and began to read aloud to the fast-growing audience around him.

‘The Dutch fleet rides unchallenged in the mouth of the Thames! They have embarked an army, and look to invade England’s fair shore! At Amsterdam and all through Holland, they light bonfires and
beacons
to celebrate their great victory over us! They have burned an effigy of the king in the shape of a dog, with the crown upon his head! Aye, and so should we – only why should we be content with an effigy, good people of Plymouth?’

The mob around him growled in approbation. Several scowled at me, for both in rank and in proximity, I was the nearest thing they had to the king at that moment. Until only a very few years before, I would have berated the idle preaching rogue, or even drawn my sword on him; but the mob around him was large, I was alone, and even for Sir Matthew Quinton, honour no longer always won out over discretion. I took the two letters addressed to me from the postboy and made my way up to the Citadel, where De Gomme and his men were already hard at work.

‘Well, Sir Matthew,’ said the royal engineer, ‘shall we resume our tour, and pray that this time it is not interrupted by any more corpses?’

‘Gladly, Sir Bernard. But I would crave your indulgence for a few minutes, while I digest my letters from London.’

De Gomme was obliging, and put at my disposal the hut that served as his temporary headquarters while the garrison commander’s house was being erected.

I opened Cornelia’s letter first. Her English was as unique as ever, and her garrulousness on some matters was rivalled only by her silence on others. Upon the matter that concerned me most of all, there were but four words: ‘
Husbant, I am wel
.’ She was more forthcoming about the letters she had received from her father, in the town of Veere in Zeeland, regaling her with news of her twin, who had apparently distinguished himself during the four-day fight. But Cornelia ended ominously:

‘My father says all the talk in Veere is of the humbling of the proud English. Admiraal De Ruyter looks to com into the Tames itself and to burn London. I wd rather welkom you home than entertyn him, husbant, so speed you bak to yr Cornelia.’

This troubled me. In all our years together, and however distant I was from her, Cornelia had never before ended a letter to me with a request to hasten back to her as swiftly as possible. It was unlikely that she seriously believed Michiel De Ruyter and the Dutch Marines would come marching up the Strand; and even if she did, Cornelia was both intrepid and sensible, and would hardly have anything to fear from her own countrymen. So her ostensible reason for seeking my return could only be a pretence. In which case, why was my wife so eager for me to come home?

Troubled in mind, I turned to the letter from my brother, which was in cipher. I took out our secret code-book,
The Legend of Captain Jones
(a fantastical tale, albeit one founded upon the no less fantastical life of my grandfather), and slowly translated the words. As ever, the
letter from the tenth Earl of Ravensden was a masterpiece of brevity, marked more by what Charles did not say than by what he deigned to report.

No surprise, this: Lord Chancellor Clarendon and secretary of state Arlington heartily detested each other, principally because the latter sought to bring down and supplant the former, and the former knew it. As Musk had presciently foreseen at the end of the battle, each would undoubtedly be seeking a way to blame the other for the calamity that had occurred.

I put down my brother’s letter with a heavy heart. If there was no likely scapegoat in London, it could only mean, as Charles had said, that he had to be found here, in Plymouth. So as I toured the Citadel with De Gomme, my mind was very far from the ravelins, demi-bastions and salients over which the engineer enthused.

I returned to the Turk’s Head just before noon. Going in through the door and entering its principal room brought on the strangest
feeling
: it was as though I was transported four years back in time. Julian Carvell, Macferran and Francis Gale, all veterans of my own time in command of the
Jupiter
, were carousing with another very familiar face from those memorable days: Thomas Penbaron, the tiny but redoubtable ship’s carpenter, who still held the same position under Beau Harris.

‘Mister Penbaron!’ I said.

‘Sir Matthew,’ he said in his Cornish brogue; he was a man of Mevagissey, I recalled. ‘I give you belated joy of your knighthood, and of all the honour that has come to you since we served in the
Jupiter
.’

‘I did not know you were still in her, Mister Penbaron. I thought you would have had a bigger ship by this time.’

Penbaron was the only one of the ship’s warrant officers to survive the bloody battle that the
Jupiter
fought in the waters off the west of Scotland. As a standing officer who stayed in post whether the ship was in commission or not, he had gone with her into the Ordinary at Portsmouth, spending a couple of years in the relative idleness of shipkeeping.

‘Solicited for many a post when the war began, Sir Matthew, but there were few vacancies in the bigger ships. Expect there’ll be plenty more now, though, after the four-day fight.’

‘You can rely on my recommendation. And it is good to see you, man –’

But the urgency in Penbaron’s eyes told me that this was not a social call to catch up with old shipmates.

‘A word with you in private, Sir Matthew, if you will permit it?’

‘Of course.’

I raised an eyebrow at Francis Gale, but he shook his head.
Whatever
the carpenter’s business was, he had not confided in any of the others. I took him aside, to one of the small private rooms at the back of the inn.

‘Speak, then, Mister Penbaron.’

‘It is a matter most delicate, sir. It concerns –’ The little carpenter averted his eyes, as though he were having second thoughts about the words he had meant to utter.

‘Out with it, man!’

He looked up and fixed me with his rheumy eye.

‘Very well, Sir Matthew. Your talk with Captain Harris aboard the
Jupiter
– well, sir, you remember what the old ship’s like. Any
conversation
below decks can be overheard easily enough.’

‘Especially if men are listening out for it?’

‘That’s as maybe, Sir Matthew. But the truth is, what you said to
Captain Harris is common knowledge aboard the
Jupiter
, as is what he said to you. And that is the devil of it, you see.’

‘The devil, Penbaron? How so?’

The carpenter shuffled his feet, and looked away.

‘It is a terrible thing to have to do this, Sir Matthew. I like Captain Harris. He’s no seaman, it’s true, but he’s kind to the men, and a fair man, not like –’

‘Not like most of our fellow gentleman captains, you mean? Come, Penbaron. We fought and bled together, remember? You can say
anything
to me in confidence, and it will go no further.’

‘But that’s the very devil of it, Sir Matthew, as I said. It has to go further, you see. It can’t do otherwise. I thought long and hard on whether I should tell you, but I knew that if I did not, one of the other officers or men would tell someone less honourable than yourself. And it’s my duty to tell you. My duty to Cornwall, to England, to the King, to all the poor souls who perished in the four-day fight.’

I said nothing. The man was plainly in agonies of conscience,
wrestling
with his very being.

‘It was the fleet, you see, Sir Matthew. The fleet that we sighted off Lisbon. I’ve sailed the Iberian and Mediterranean seas for most of my lifetime, sir, as you well know. So I know the difference between a French man-of-war and one of the Don’s.’ Penbaron shook his head. ‘I tried to tell Captain Harris, but he would not listen to me, a mere ship’s carpenter – a dull and lumpen shipwright, as he often says when he thinks I am not within hearing. He could see the French colours, you see. I tried to tell him it was the Spanish, and that they were flying false flags to confuse us. I reckoned it was because they knew us to be allied to the Portuguese, so didn’t want us to betray their position to them. I tried to tell him all of that, but he wouldn’t listen. Why, Sir Matthew, he even said something about a talk you and he once had, where you told him some story of your grandfather.’

‘My
grandfather
–’

And then I remembered. A drunken night of quaffing Madeira aboard Beau’s command, the
Falcon
, in Bantry Bay, when I had the
Happy Restoration
: a few weeks before that unfortunately misnamed ship was wrecked through my error on the rocks in the entrance to Kinsale Harbour, killing nearly all of her crew. I was regaling Beau with one of the many colourful tales of my grandfather, the eighth Earl of Ravensden, the piratical old sea-captain in the late Queen Elizabeth’s time. Apparently he and Drake had been arguing, as they did about nearly everything. In this case, my grandfather was of the opinion that the men-of-war he had sighted in some harbour of the Caribbee were really Spaniards, flying false French colours, and thus prime targets for plundering by that notoriously rapacious old warhorse, the eighth Earl of Ravensden.

‘Don’t be a fucking fool, Quinton,’ Drake is meant to have said to him, ‘the English and French fly false colours upon a whim, but the Don thinks it beneath his honour to be so underhand. A Spaniard will only fly his own ensign, no other.’

My grandfather being the man he was, he ignored Drake’s advice, attacked the ships at anchor, and thus very nearly brought about a war with France. I recalled Beau being greatly amused by the story, and saying he would remember it.

‘Captain Harris was so certain in his judgement,’ Penbaron
continued
, ‘and so excited by what he thought he had seen. And the other officers would not contradict him, for fear that he might refuse to recommend them for promotion, even though they knew as well as I did that all of the ships we could see were Spaniards –’