The Mountain of Gold (34 page)

I considered clearing for action. After all, the Dutch flag flew above the fort, and following Holmes' capture of the
Brill,
who knew what intelligence might have been sent to this distant outpost of the United Provinces, and who knew how the garrison might have reacted? Moreover, we had received no word of what Holmes might have done at Gorée; what if the fort had?

***

I kept my telescope trained on the ramparts, but it was clear that a warlike reception was the last thing on the garrison's mind. A couple of sentries wandered forlornly along the wall-walk, presumably wishing that they were down below, where chimney-smoke suggested the preparation of the garrison's evening meal. Every few minutes, an officer came up to look out at us with his own telescope. Presumably his thoughts were similar to mine, and his reaction must have been the same.
If you show no sign of fighting, my friend, then neither shall we.

We drew parallel with the south shore of the fort-island, and I ordered the dropping of our best bower anchor. An hour's courtesy call on the garrison would not go amiss, I decided, as a personal relationship with its commander might be of use to me at some future time. Purser Harrington quickly assembled a suitable offering of Madeira wine, Hull ale and salt beef. A boat's crew was mustered in proper order by Julian Carvell, the new Coxswain of the
Seraph
following Lanherne's promotion to Boatswain, and I was rowed ashore in some state. O'Dwyer opted to remain on board. This surprised me, as I thought he would have shared the opinion of Morgan Facey, who did accompany me; a soldier should never neglect an opportunity to examine a position he might one day have to attack. The Irishman's decision to do precisely that should have concerned me more than it did.

A slovenly, ancient guard upon the foreshore greeted Facey and myself with a torrent of gutter-Dutch and led us up into the fort. My first impression of it was confirmed. The feeble rampart surrounded a rough parade ground. Most of the low wood and thatch buildings clustered under the east rampart; thus they would be sheltered a little from the morning heat, but open to the west wind from the sea in the afternoon and evening.

A squat, strongly-built man of perhaps fifty years, clad in a rough shirt, baldric and large hat after the Spanish fashion, stepped out and lifted his hat in salute.

'Otto Stiel, My Lords,' he said in good English, 'late captain and governor of this fort in the service of that most excellent and mighty prince, Jakob, Duke of Courland. Now the same for the Dutch West India Company.'

Captain Stiel's explanation of his status left little doubt where his true loyalties still lay. Belem had told me but the day before that there was some doubt whether the transfer of the island from Courland to the United Provinces had ever been completed in law, partly because Duke Jakob had been reluctant to admit that his small province on the east shore of the Baltic was perhaps not the best suited of all the lands of Europe to building a mighty colonial empire in Africa and the Caribbee.

I introduced Facey and myself, and Stiel led us into his quarters. Now as I have said, my intention had been that we would exchange courtesies for an hour, and then get under way for our intended night passage. I did not anticipate that I would finally by rowed out to the
Seraph
as the sun came up, with the formidable dawn chorus of the river birds nearly splitting my skull. Nor did I anticipate being manhandled ignominiously onto my own deck by my boat's crew, to be greeted by the quizzical reproof of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer and by the disapproving scowls of Valentine Negus and Kit Farrell. This was not entirely the fault of my own weak will, or so I told myself. I had previously considered Morgan Facey to be a paragon of sobriety, a veteran of the old Cavalier army and a stout man. But as is so often the way, it all turned on one sentence.

'You have a good command of our tongue, sir,' said Facey to Stiel as we exchanged gifts.

'I am glad you say so, after all these years,' said Stiel. 'I had many excellent times in your civil wars, in Sir Ralph Hopton's western army.'

That was enough. Within moments, the Madeira and the Hull ale were being uncorked, and Stiel was producing bottles of some unutterably fiery drink of his own land. Foreign mercenaries had been common enough on both sides during the civil war—after all, what other appellation could be given to Rupert, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, to name but the greatest of them?—but to come to this arse-end of the known world and find a man who had fought in the noblest and most successful of all the king's armies was surely worthy of raising a cup or two, was it not? And when he realised that I was the son of the Earl of Ravensden, the report of whose death at Naseby had made Stiel weep—well, was that not also worthy of a cup or two? Stiel reminded us that his Duke Jakob was a godson of our late sovereign King James, a connection clearly deserving of two cups. Or three. By the time Facey and Stiel discovered that they had fought in several of the same battles and had three or four mutual friends, our fates were sealed.

It was only when I woke late the following afternoon, barely in time to order the weighing of our anchor for the passage I had intended for the previous evening, that I recollected that the gifts loaded onto Facey and myself by the generous Stiel at our unsteady departure included a package of letters for our ship, delivered by a Bristol vessel that had taken a cargo of wax, hides and slaves from Jilifri a few days before. Sadly, there was but one letter addressed to Captain Quinton of the King of England's ship the
Seraph
upon the River of Gambo in Africa. That was not the actual inscription upon it, however; for the actual inscription was in French, and the grandiose wax seal was one I knew well.

I tore open Roger's letter with unseemly impatience, annoyed at myself for sleeping away almost an entire day.

My dearest, noblest friend and gallant warrior!
it began; and so it continued for no little while, this reply to the letter I had sent him just before the
Seraph
sailed from England. At length, though, I came to an utterly shocking sentence, written almost as an aside:
Ah, my friend, I envy you in your voyage in mysterious parts—the Gambo river, no less, in pursuit of the legendary mountain of gold...

Sweet Jesus! Good-brother Venner had the rights of it after all. If Roger knew of our mission, then presumably so did the entire court of the Most Christian King. And if that vast and notoriously verbose establishment knew of it, then so did the whole of the world. Strangely, after the first moment of shock had subsided I felt very little concern at this revelation. Whether the world knew of it or not mattered nought: indeed, whether the mountain really existed or not mattered nought. For good or ill, I would continue up this endless river to whatever fate awaited me. But I prayed that Roger's letter contained the solution to another, perhaps darker, secret, the question to which I had craved his answer for so long.

Now, Matthew, let us turn to the matter of the alleged daughter of the Comtesse Louise, upon which you wrote to me before your sailing. I decided to entrust the mission to Aubigny to no man other than myself, for I have observed that Mothers Superior, who consider themselves very mighty ladies indeed, are inclined to send mere messenger boys packing, whereas they are considerably more circumspect when dealing with noblemen of France. So it proved when dealing with the Mother Superior of the Poor Clares, a most formidable lady. Aubigny is almost an outpost of your own land, Matthew—the castles there belong to your king's cousin, the Duke of Richmond—and the convent is full of the flower of English virginity. Unfortunately, none of the virgins bear the name of Madeleine De Vaux, and never have. None of them could even be that child under another name. I concluded this after most extensive and, I may say, exhaustive enquiries among the sisters. I knew you would not want me to rest following this disappointment, dear friend, so on my journey back to my own territories I took the pains (and pains they were, I assure you) to call at the English convents of the Benedictines, Augustinians and Blue Nuns in Paris, and of the Benedictines again in Pontoise. Alas, my enquiries on your behalf at all the other English convents of France and Flanders had to be conducted by letter, but that has probably been in the best interests of my health. The conclusions of my researches are one and the same, whatever the means of carrying them out: a Madeleine De Vaux is not, and never has been, cloistered within one of the English convents.

Your beloved Cornelia and I have already corresponded upon this matter, as no doubt she will inform you in her own hand. It occurs to us both that
there are other enquiries that we should now pursue, calling once more upon the assistance of your esteemed uncle, the learned Doctor Quinton, and by the time you receive this, that stratagem should be well advanced.

I remain, my dear comrade-in-arms, your most humble, loyal, grateful, affectionate and undying friend,

d'Andelys

I put down the letter and stood in my stern window—or rather, the starboard half of my stern window—staring out at the receding fort-island and the brilliant red sunset taking place behind it. A flock of strange great birds flew by, across the face of the sun. I felt a powerful conflict tearing my heart: the conflict between duty to my family and to my king.

From that conflict stemmed a succession of questions, each more difficult to confront than the last. What might Roger, Tris and Cornelia have discovered in the weeks since this letter was sent from France? What if the Countess was with child by now? And, at the very last, the oldest question of them all, the one that had intruded into my nightmares and my waking thoughts for as much of my life as I could remember. What if Charles was dead—perhaps killed by the exertions of mounting his wife, or if the suspicions of Tris and Cornelia were justified, slaughtered by that same wife's malevolent hand? What if, in that dusk upon the Gambia river, I was already the Earl of Ravensden?

I heard O'Dwyer come into his half of the cabin—
my cabin, damn him
—and put such foolish thoughts aside. Nothing I could do in this fastness would remedy the matter of the Countess Louise. Even if I had the ship brought about at that moment, and ordered all sail set for England, it would be many weeks before I could be home—there to face a certain court-martial for deserting my mission, and even more certain dishonour.

No. The die was cast. For good or ill, the fate of Matthew Quinton rode with that of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer and the quest for the mountain of gold.

Twenty

Early the next morning, I stood under the awning on the quarterdeck of
Seraph,
and looked out upon the astonishing scene around me. The great blue-brown river stretched away for miles on either side of us, and although we were going only under courses, we easily had enough sea-room to have spread topsails, even when the tide was low. We were sounding every two glasses, but each time we had at least five fathoms beneath our keel. The banks were lined with impenetrable groves of trees that rose directly from the salt waters of the river: mangroves, Belem called them. Every few miles, clearings had been made in the swamp and landing places set up. Many of these were little more than rudimentary jetties, but some, especially on the south bank, were quite large wharves that could accommodate European ships. We sighted several Portuguese and Dutch vessels, most of which, Belem asserted, would be taking on cargoes of salt to carry further upstream, where that commodity was very rare. Most of the trade of those parts, though, was carried on by the Mandingo natives in their canoes. The profusion of these craft upon the river reminded me of the Thames, for like their northern brethren, the canoes darted this way and that, some going north-south from one bank to another, others travelling up or down stream, yet seemingly never colliding with each other. Even under our awning and so early in the day, the damp heat was already sapping. Those of us on the quarterdeck—Belem, Negus, Kit Farrell and myself—all ran with sweat. Taking Belem's advice, we all carried makeshift fans of wood and sailcloth with which to cool ourselves and to ward off the ever-present insects, especially the mosquitoes and the flies whose bite brings the sleeping sickness.

Musk came on deck, grumbling in his unique way. 'Never going to complain of an English winter again,' he said. 'Give me cold, I say. This heat is unnatural. Satan's breath, I reckon. If God had meant Phineas Musk to live in such a clime, he'd have made certain I was born—
sweet Jesus and all the angels, what in the name of Hell's fire is that?

He pointed at what seemed to be a red-brown rock, a few yards from our starboard quarter. But then the rock rose a little further out of the water, and two great eyes returned the stares of the quarterdeck officers of the
Seraph.

Belem smiled. 'Behold the river-horse, gentlemen,' he said.
Hippopotamus,
as the ancients called it.'

Thus for the first time in my life I looked upon this massive beast, so much larger than the ox; a creature so awesome that the Egyptians worshipped it as a god. I recalled reading about it in the works of Pliny, but to see it alive, barely a few yards from myself—!

Musk evidently did not regard the river-horse as a fit object for curiosity. 'Vicious looking beast,' he said. 'Is it likely to attack us?'

'They,' said Kit, pointing at other 'rocks' nearby, and at beasts lying in the mud at the shoreline. 'If they were minded to attack us, Mister Musk, I think they would comfortably outnumber us.'

'It will sometimes overturn a canoe or attack men ashore,' said Belem, 'but ships upon the river are safe from it. The river-horse is an evil-tempered beast, but by day, when it soaks itself to avoid the heat, it is also very lazy.'

'Bald, evil-tempered and lazy,' I said mischievously. 'Why, Musk, does it not resemble you more than a little?'