The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (5 page)

The first mystery was resolved in short order, for with the wind south-westerly and a strong ebb running, the speedy
Mary
made quite exceptional progress into the estuary of the Thames. There were more ships than usual moored before Tilbury blockhouse and thus obstructing the main channel, for this was where vessels from Amsterdam had been laid up in quarantine because of the prevalence of the plague in that city. Now, with war declared and their time served, they were duly cleared of quarantine, only to be immediately impounded as enemy hulls. With them behind us we veritably raced down Gravesend Reach, and there were still perhaps two hours of daylight remaining when, over toward the Essex shore and the isle of Canvey, an appalling spectacle began to unfold before us. At first I blinked, for in the distance I seemed to see nothing less than an aquatic Calvary: three crosses, protruding above the water. A moment later, I recognised them for the masts of the stricken
London
, still shrouded in smoke from the vast explosion that had destroyed the great ship. It was another mile or so before I could make out the remnants of upperworks beneath the farthest cross. The roundhouse and quarterdeck of the
London
still remained above the surface of the Thames, although no such evidence of the forecastle could be seen. The water around the wreck was full of debris: timber and planking, the remnants of flags and sails, the detritus of all those who had lived and died aboard her. The air reeked of gunpowder, burned wood and burned humanity. All around the remains of the
London
were craft of various sorts, wherries, yawls and the like, as well as a big Levanter. Aboard all of them, men were peering into the waters. Occasionally arms pointed excitedly, and what appeared to be large lumpen shapes were pulled from the Thames.

‘Sweet God,’ said Pepys, ‘the poor, poor creatures. God rest their souls.’

I had no words, for I was numbed by the sight and the awful, overpowering smell. We slackened sail as we came toward the throng of vessels around the wreck of the
London
. One craft stood out from the others, and now it approached us: a yawl flying an ensign far too large for it, a great red ensign which denoted the command flag of an admiral.

The yawl secured alongside, and a sturdy, long-chinned, pockmarked old man of fifty or so hauled himself up onto the deck of the yacht. One of the seamen of the yawl at once pulled down the ensign, sprang onto our deck and hoisted it anew to our masthead. That act immediately deprived me of this command so briefly held, but in the presence of the legend who stood before me, I could hardly demur.

I drew my sword and brought it up before me in salute. ‘Sir John,’ I said, ‘thank God you are spared.’

‘Aye, thank ye, Quinton,’ the newcomer said. ‘We can only reflect upon the seventy-seventh psalm, verses eighteen and nineteen. But one seeks the will of the Lord in vain in such instances, I fear.’

Sir John Lawson, Vice-Admiral of the Red Squadron and captain of the
London
(for in those times, we made do without flag captains and other such extravagances) was a dour man, but I could see the unspeakable shock and grief that lay beneath his mask of godly fatalism. A Yorkshireman who was skipper of nothing more than a Tyne collier barely twenty years before, Lawson had been a great fanatic in religion until (it was said) a timely and quite prodigious bribe bought his allegiance to the crown. It was Lawson who brought the fleet under his command into the Thames in the bitter winter of fifty-nine, thereby bringing down the detested rule of the army and setting in motion the chain of events that led to the Restoration. Thus he was a colossus of the times, and even those who now damned him as an apostate and turncoat did not doubt that John Lawson was, in truth, one of England’s very greatest seamen.

‘I give you joy of your preservation, Sir John,’ said Pepys. ‘Pray, sir, do you know what happened to cause such a disaster?’

‘I know for I witnessed it, Mister Pepys,’ said Lawson grimly. ‘We were nearing the ship, and she was firing off the salutes due to my flag, when a great blast burst through the forecastle and part of the waist. Most of the force must have gone downward, though. Reckon her bottom blew out, hence how she’s settled as she has. But why it happened, only the Father of Heaven can say, as the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm tells us.’

Pepys and I exchanged glances. In a ship firing its broadsides in salute, there are countless ways in which a spark can ignite in the wrong place; in any ship, there are a host of other accidents that can bring about its immediate, awful destruction. But Pepys and I were realists enough to see that in the fevered circumstances of the time, with men going in fear of the comet presaging the end of days and the country rife with talk of sedition and war, it would surely only be hours before very different explanations were rife in the taverns and coffeehouses of London. The
London
had been blown up by the Dutch, some would say. No, others would cry, surely by the French, the eternal scapegoat of the English! Yet others would inevitably incriminate the fanatics, that faceless horde of dissenters, republicans and the like who many of my cavalier brethren saw lurking in the shadows, waiting their moment to rise up and cut all our throats. And all of that was before one reached the outlying realms of conspiracy and sanity alike, where lurked those who would blame the loss of
London
upon the Jews, the Pope, or Satan, or if they were being especially inventive, all three of those, conjoined in unholy cabal.

Dispirited, I looked out across the scene. The light was dying now, but on the boats slowly circling the wreck of the
London
, men were firing torches to continue their search into the night. A search for –

‘Sir John,’ I asked, as gently as I could, ‘do you yet know how many perished?’

His ugly face was impassive. ‘Some dozens were upon deck or in the roundhouse and were untouched,’ he said. ‘They simply walked off the ship when the boats reached them, for mysterious are the ways of the Lord. But three hundred and more are gone. Aye, gone.’ He looked down into the hull of the yawl, still tethered against our side. Laid out upon the thwart was a tarpaulin; only now did I see the hideously burned, shoeless remnants of a man’s feet that protruded from it. ‘My sister’s son John,’ said Lawson quietly. ‘A promising youth of twenty. He was so keen to serve, to fight the Dutch alongside his uncle. So were they all. A good crew, Quinton, most of them my own Yorkshiremen, but many Scots also. Veteran seamen, for the most part.’ He looked back at me, and I thought I saw the shadow of a tear in the admiral’s eye. ‘A score or more of my own kin have perished here, Quinton.’ He was hoarse, almost inaudible. ‘Much of my family, wiped out in the blinking of an eye. “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.” Thus it is told.’

‘Amen,’ said Pepys and I as one, although whether the Clerk of the Acts felt as empty as did I, I cannot judge.

Lawson moved away, into the bow of the yacht, to be alone with his thoughts. Pepys looked sadly down upon the remains of the admiral’s nephew, then at the increasingly spectral sight of the wreck beyond, looming eerily in the gathering darkness. ‘A great loss,’ said the Clerk of the Acts. ‘All those poor souls – it will be so hard to replace so many choice volunteers. And then one must consider our other loss, of course. Seventy-six brass guns, Captain Quinton. Lord, are we thus fated to fight the Dutch without so great a ship, and so much of our very best ordnance? And the costs – the inventories that will have to be made, and the papers that will have to be written…’

A movement upon the water – ‘What is that, Mister Pepys? There? You see it?’

We both strained our eyes. To starboard of the yacht and behind the stern of the yawl, the surface of the Thames was dark, the gentle waves almost indistinguishable from the wood and debris of the
London
littering the waters. But then I saw again the little mound resembling some basking sea creature – a dolphin, perhaps, or a seal…

‘Boathooks, here!’ I cried. Three of the crew of the
Mary
responded at once, and Lawson, his interest aroused, joined us at the rail. The hooks were pushed out, and for a minute or two they splashed vainly in the water. Desperately I snatched one from its bearer, hoping that my greater reach would enable me to hook the prize. Pepys joined me, endeavouring desperately to hold the pole level as I prodded it into the water. But the ebb seemed to be carrying the object away from us. I played out my boathook once more, straining my arms, almost losing my grip upon it as I tried to hold it at its very end –

My hook caught, and both Pepys and Lawson joined me in hauling the object in to the side of the hull. The Marys reached down, pulled it aboard, turned it over upon the deck.

A torch had been brought, and its flickering flames illuminated the face of a young woman, probably no more than sixteen or seventeen. She had a certain beauty about her, hauntingly enhanced by the paleness of death. Her simple clothes were dishevelled, but there seemed to be not a mark upon her. Nor had she drowned, for her features bore no sign of that dread fate.

The colour drained from Pepys’s face as he beheld her. ‘Lord, Lord,’ he muttered, ‘the poor girl.’

‘Some man’s wife,’ I ventured charitably, ‘or daughter.’

‘Too young for the one, and too old for the other,’ said Lawson brutally. ‘But if she gave comfort to one of my men, perhaps even my nephew there, then may God bless her and keep her immortal soul.’ He stooped down and prodded the corpse. ‘Killed by the shock, most like,’ he said. ‘We have brought out another half dozen women from the water. Merely a fraction of those who would have been aboard.’

I nodded sadly. In those times, it was common for women to accompany their men aboard ship in the early days of a voyage. Nowadays, the young – that is, my entire acquaintance – goggle at me when I tell me of this custom, dead as long as Julius Caesar. But as I recall the memory of that poor girl’s corpse, I still ask myself once again – what is more natural and more likely to contribute to the common weal of the land? Forcing abrupt partings between lovers, or permitting them to say their adieus gradually, while giving the abandoned womenfolk some understanding of the wooden world that their men must inhabit? Ah, but we are so much more enlightened in this wondrous age of the eighteenth century, the young cry! We have made such progress! But still I live on, an uncomfortable reminder to the young that the notion of ‘progress’ is the greatest lie ever foisted upon mankind. And still I remember that young girl who perished in the wreck of the
London
.

 

 

 

Phineas Musk slipped like a wraith past Apothecaries Hall, then left the bustle of Black Friars Lane and stepped softly into the quiet of Saint Anne’s church.

(Words to that effect were penned by Musk, on the vellum now in my hand; but the notion of the lumpen form of Phineas Musk making any movement softly or wraith-like causes my ancient eyebrow to rise a little.)

It was well into the night, and the nave of Saint Anne’s was illuminated by only a few candles. When Musk’s eyes finally adjusted to the near-darkness, he spied the man he sought, seemingly deep in prayer in a pew away to the right, near to the newly restored rood screen.

Musk crossed the nave and sat next to the supplicant and his crutch; for where the man’s left leg should have been, there was nought but a stump.

‘Requesting forgiveness of your manifold sins, Sutcliffe?’ Musk whispered.

The unshaven one-legged man opened his eyes. ‘Merely getting a little sleep, Musk. Begging’s a tiring and unproductive trade these days. Men are worried about the war, so they’re hoarding their coin.’

‘You still beg, despite what Lord Percival pays you?’

Sutcliffe shrugged. ‘Keeping up appearances. The city expects to see Lazarus Sutcliffe begging on its streets. Men would be mightily suspicious of a Sutcliffe with coin, Musk – the doors and mouths that are open to me now would soon be closed.’

‘And have those doors and mouths disgorged anything of interest to My Lord?’

Sutcliffe, who had once fought off the king’s army at Turnham Green, albeit at the cost of his leg, looked Musk in the eye. ‘Curious business you and he are engaged upon,’ he said. ‘Or businesses, rather, for as Noll’s shade is my witness, I can’t see how the root of this supposed treachery of twenty captains will be found in the whorehouses about the Convent-Garden.’

Musk leaned closer and whispered menacingly, ‘My Lord doesn’t pay you to ask questions, Sutcliffe. He doesn’t pay you to think. And me – I don’t like men who question and think when they shouldn’t.’

The old soldier seemed unabashed. ‘So I didn’t lose my curiosity with my leg – it’s of no account, for Lazarus Sutcliffe’s curiosity is of the silent variety. My Lord should be certain of that, with all the service I’ve given him these many years.’

‘He may be, but I’m certain of nothing, Sutcliffe, least of all an old traitor who was in arms for the rebels.’

‘You’re a damnable cynic, Musk.’ Sutcliffe reached within his grimy buff jerkin and produced a folded sheet of vellum, which he handed to his companion. ‘A name and address, then – seems the people you’re interested in retired from the whoring trade when the king came back. Very grand, they are now. Must have turned a good profit –’

The west door of the church burst open. Framed within it were two tall drunken lads with the crop-heads of apprentices, bawling out some scurrilous song about Lady Castlemaine’s cunny. They looked about the church contemptuously; one spat upon the ancient stone floor of the nave. The staves in their hands suggested they were intent upon iconoclasm.

‘Out!’ cried Musk.

‘
Out?
What, by order of a fat old man and a cripple?’ slurred the taller of the youths. ‘Fuck you! And fuck your whoreson king –’

Musk shook his head sadly, lamenting the insolence of the times. Then he drew out his two concealed flintlock pistols and levelled them at the youths. Sutcliffe levered himself up with the crutch in his left hand as his right drew out a wickedly long blade.

‘Aye,’ said Musk, ‘by order of a fat old man and a cripple. Out, you fucking piss lickers! Out
now
.’ The two youths stared at the weapons in horror, then abruptly turned and fled. ‘God knows how many more of them will be out on the streets, smashing windows and cracking skulls, if our fleet happens to miscarry,’ said Musk. ‘Upon which matter, Sutcliffe –’

The veteran sheathed his weapon and settled back onto the pew. ‘Upon which matter, then, Mister Musk. As My Lord requested, I am working my way through all the conventicles from Lambeth down to Poplar, consorting with my old friends among the godly.’ Sutcliffe shuffled, evidently seeking to make his stump more comfortable. ‘The fanatics and their preachers are most talkative these days. There have been signs and wonders in the skies above Honiton, they say.’ The veteran shook his head despairingly; his change of sides had been born of disillusionment with the ever more extraordinary manifestations of supposed godliness that Parliament’s revolution dragged in its wake. ‘They’re most indiscreet in their meeting places, crying that the end of days is at hand, that Jesus will soon reign upon earth with his elect – all the wicked nonsense of Cromwell’s times. The treacherous scum even pray openly for a Dutch victory, and as you say, Musk, such an eventuality would bring many more of the malignant vermin out of their holes.’ Sutcliffe stared at Musk. ‘And yet amid all this indiscretion, and from all those whose tongues have ever been prone to loosen at the sight of coin – as yet, Musk, I can find no proof of this business of the twenty captains.’

‘My Lord will be disappointed.’

‘Well he may be, especially as the ostler, Eden, seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. The longer we go on with no evidence, Musk, the stronger the likelihood that we face only two explanations.’

Despite his annoyance at Sutcliffe’s presumption, Musk nodded. ‘Either there is no plot at all –’

‘– or ’tis so deeply laid it will only reveal itself in its flowering. And if that is so, Musk, not even Lord Percival will be able to stand against it.’

* * *

At my suggestion, Cornelia and I had decided upon a Sunday’s sabbatical from our local parish church, Saint Dunstan in the East, and had decamped instead to the Temple Church, where a new and much cried-up young man was preaching. In the event, this merely proved the folly of depending upon the opinion of the herd, for the preacher in question proved to be one of those prating coxcombs who depend overly upon the rhetorical flourish and the obscure allusion. I found it easy to let my thoughts drift away from his tedious discourse, initially to the unfairness of my lack of employment. The idle days since the loss of the
London
had made me ever more peevish, Cornelia reckoning shrewdly that my brief command of the
Mary Yacht
had made me even more keenly aware of the life I was missing. But the more I thought upon it there in the Temple Church, as the sermon meandered interminably through the denser undergrowth of the Old Testament, the more certain I became of a second explanation for my ill temper. So many good men had perished aboard the
London
: men who should have been sailing out to do battle with the kingdom’s foes. Did not Matthew Quinton have a duty to fight in their place, and on their behalf?

By degrees my mind wandered into an absorption of the history all around me, for few churches in London are as redolent of the days of knightly honour as the Temple. We sat but a few feet from the tomb of William Marshal, the greatest knight who ever lived, his effigy shown in armour, holding sword and shield. But I sensed at once that Cornelia, shuffling alongside me in the pew, was not so patient, and not so easily diverted. I also sensed that as the dire experience of this unutterable sermon had been inflicted upon her entirely at my prompting, some recompense would be necessary. Thus as soon as the service concluded, and before she could harangue me upon the iniquities of puffed-up Cambridge men in pulpits, I proposed a perambulation upon London Bridge.

It was a fine day, and much of the city seemed to have made the same decision. The bridge was as crowded as on any weekday. The shops that occupied the ground floors of the tall houses on either side of the bridge were thronged with customers, so that mere amblers like ourselves had to compete for space with the horses and riders, carts and coaches, going north and south in the barely four-
yard-wide
thoroughfare, little better than a tunnel, that connected the two sides of the Thames. But it was a lively and even joyous scene: shopkeepers bellowed out the calls of their trade, mariners jostled for space with baronets, residents of the bridge stuck their heads out of their windows to ogle the crowd below or to banter with their neighbours across the way. There were only a few dampening voices, the most notable that belonging to a wild-eyed youth who stood upon a footstool in one of the alcoves in the east side of the parapet, naked but for a loincloth, proclaiming loudly that the end of days was at end (and for his presumption, being pummelled relentlessly with rotten vegetables).

I kept my hand close to the hilt of my sword: the bridge was so crowded that it was always a prime resort for cutpurses and their kin. But Cornelia had no such inhibitions, elbowing aside all sorts and conditions with sweet smiles of apology. Such was not rudeness, but a consequence of her Dutch upbringing; for in that largely submerged land, the most crowded upon God’s earth, the people perforce survive upon the few tracts of dry ground, and life and death can depend upon one’s ability to fight one’s way through a dense throng.

‘Remember, Goodwife Quinton,’ I said, ‘our purse is sadly constrained.’

The goodwife in question was ensconced before a milliner’s, admiring headwear of a flamboyance that not even Lady Castlemaine would have dared.

‘Then may not a woman dream, husband?’ she said, smiling. Dour Calvinist parents, who had dressed the young Cornelia in the plainest and meannest cloth despite the family living in a port town which saw some of the most exotic linens in the world pass through it, had achieved an end precisely the opposite to that which they intended: their daughter had become a great lover of finery. ‘We will not always be poor, Matthew,’ she said. ‘When your merits are recognised, you will have commands galore and prize money with them. I merely indulge myself in a little planning ahead of that day.’

We will not always be poor
: I offered up a silent prayer to Neptune, Mars and the Holy Trinity alike that she would be proved right.

As we moved on toward the Southwark shore and the gatehouse upon which the heads of traitors were impaled, other shouts of the street reached my ears.

‘Chapbooks and woodcuts! News of the atrocities committed by De Ruyter upon our settlers at Guinea! Fifteen hundred men, women and children alike tied back to back and thrown into the sea! Aye, and a true and accurate list of His Majesty’s fleet, assembled at Harwich, bound to sea to avenge our martyrs! And an account of the generosity of the city of London in offering the king a new ship to replace the old, this to be named
Loyal London…
’

The shout of a woman at the next stall competed stridently with that of the news-seller.

‘Butterbur to guard against the plague, friends! Turmeric, just landed from the Indies, certain to make the childless fertile! Fennel for the eyes…’

The one cry had an ennervating effect upon Matthew Quinton; the other had an invigorating one upon his wife. Cornelia pushed her way through the crowd, making directly for the purveyor of herbs and spices. I knew her mind full well. In our time we had tried each and every supposed remedy for childlessness, and fresh turmeric was no more or less likely than many of the others. I only prayed it would have a less catastrophic impact upon my stomach than the diet of ground coriander to which Cornelia had once subjected me for a week.

Cornelia fell into talk with the spice-seller, an ancient crone with a formless bosom. Meantime I was diverted by a raging argument between a carter, demanding right of way southbound, and a coach driver, equally strident in his insistence upon precedence northbound. Then I became aware of other raised voices, rather closer at hand.

‘– to let the Dutch walk brazenly among us?’ hissed the spice-seller. ‘My husband fell at the Foreland fight, my son’s aboard the
Triumph
, and yet you dare show your face among good English folk? You, whose kind blew up the
London
and massacre our innocents at Guinea?’

Cornelia was no meek craven to be cowed by such a harangue. ‘Foolish woman!’ she cried. ‘Do you not know that this tale of Guinea has been exposed for a great lie peddled by some mean-minded Swede, who sought merely to stir trouble?’