The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (14 page)

‘Good evening, Doctor Quinton,’ he said. ‘Interesting lecture, but I’d laid a bet with old Digby that the dog would die. Damnably disappointing.’

‘Good evening, Sir William,’ said Tris. ‘Ah well, sir, I condole you upon your loss. But I’d wager my outcome was less disappointing than the fate of your own
Experiment
!’ The Master of Mauleverer laughed heartily and clapped his friend on the back.

Petty took that in good spirit, although between anyone other than friends, the jest would have been mortifying. Sir William’s several weeks of seagoing experience as a fourteen-year-old cabin boy had unaccountably convinced him that he was the ideal man to design an entirely new kind of ship, especially at a time when a war was approaching and commissions for any kind of new secret weapon were likely to prove exceptionally lucrative. Regrettably Petty’s double-hulled ship, the
Experiment
, had capsized in Dublin Bay; but like Tristram Quinton, he was not a man to be abashed by such trivial setbacks.

The two old friends took to talking, and as is ever the way between men of a certain age and older, they soon fell to discussing the illnesses and deaths of those they knew, and then of those whom they did not.

‘The mortality rates are troubling so early in the year, particularly in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields,’ said Petty gloomily.

‘Mortality rates!’ Tristram scoffed. ‘Not worth the paper they’re printed on, Will. Meaningless numbers. Every man knows that half or more of plague cases never get recorded as such – who wants their houses shut up for all those weeks? And the constables and the aldermen connive in it, of course, so that their wards and parishes don’t lose trade.’

‘Quite, Tristram,’ said Petty. ‘But therefore, and by your own logic, the
true
incidence of plague must be especially troubling, it being still so early in the season. Yet here we are, the Royal Society, allegedly the finest minds in all of England, and are we putting all our efforts into finding a remedy for the plague? No, we are not! We are –’

‘Killing cats and getting hens drunk, Will?’

‘Ah … umm … well, perhaps it might have been more revealing if you had tried the Florentine poison upon some poor soul afflicted with the plague.’ Petty shrugged. ‘But I suppose that would have meant bringing him among us, and we could hardly risk infecting this august body with the pestilence…’

The two friends were passing on to consider the possibility of dining together at a tavern in Wormwood Street when Tristram noticed a rude urchin enter the hall, look around him, settle his gaze upon Doctor Quinton, and evidently decide that the Master of Mauleverer’s unique features matched a description that he had been given. He strode up, essayed a perfunctory nod of the head that might or not have been a gesture of respect and deference, and thrust a small, stained, yellow-brown piece of vellum towards Tris.

‘A letter for you, Doctor Quinton,’ said the boy. ‘Directed here from Oxford, according to your instructions.’

With Petty and the boy watching him curiously, Tristram Quinton snatched the letter. It had been so long, and he had lost almost all hope of ever receiving a reply. And with the war, there was every chance that such a reply might have been intercepted by one of the Dutch capers, the small private men-of-war that were already infesting the mouth of the Channel.

Yet here it was; crumpled yet apparently unopened, it was in his hand, safe after its journey from the wilds of Hampshire County in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, wherever or whatever that might be. The reply to a letter sent many months before in the slim hope that it would find its way to a man who did not wish to be found: one of those many men of God who, deprived of their parishes at the Restoration, had turned their backs on an England they believed to be irredeemably degenerate, instead seeking out distant wildernesses in which to plant the true word.

Tristram broke the seal and studied the words of the Reverend Tobias Moon, sometime vicar of Billringham in the county of Lincoln, who at the height of the civil war had married the local lord of the manor to a younger wife. A very much younger wife. A marriage which seemed to have been literally excised from the parish records.

Tristram read the missive twice over, and frowned.

‘Bad news, Tris?’ Petty enquired.

‘Good or bad, I cannot yet say. But I think you may yet help me discover which, Will.’

‘I? How so?’

‘You are of Romsey in the county of Southampton, are you not?’ Petty nodded. ‘And Romsey is no great distance from Dorset, if I recall correctly from Blaeu’s maps?’ Another nod. ‘Then tell me, Will, how I might learn more of the birth of a child in that county. The birth of a female child, in the year twenty-eight or twenty-nine.’

* * *

The afternoon grew murky as the
Merhonour
ploughed inelegantly through the seas, making her uncertain way east from the Buoy of the Nore, then north-east into the Swin. My officers grumbled that we were too leewardly, that if the wind strengthened we were in danger of being pushed onto the West Barrow or one of the other vast and perilous sandbanks that obstructed the broad mouth of the Thames. We were a great slug upon the oceans, complained Giffard; too old, too heavily gunned, too crank, too clumsily girdled, with masts that were too weak and ballast that was inadequately trenched. All that before one considered the not insignificant matter of our diverse crew. I nodded gravely, for even I was aware that we could hardly be described as a greyhound of the seas. My first command, the ill-fated
Happy 
Restoration
, had been an ill-sailing brute, but I was then too ignorant of the sea to be very aware of her failings. My subsequent commands had been quite new Fourth- and Fifth-Rate frigates, relatively nimble and speedy. Standing upon the deck of the poor
Merhonour
was akin to being accustomed to riding Arabian stallions and suddenly being asked to mount a carthorse.

As we moved slowly up the Swin, we spied a vast collier fleet coming down the Middle Ground, the widest of all the passages into the Thames. Two or three hundred broad-hulled, deeply-laden craft, bearing the coals from Tyne, Tees and Wear that would keep London warm; perhaps more importantly with spring finally at hand, they would keep the capital’s brewhouses at work, too. Escorting them was just one tiny ketch, all that the navy of England could spare for convoy. She saluted us, and her commander reported that the east coast was infested with enemy capers. They had been attacked off Flamborough, losing a half-dozen colliers, and again off the Spurn, losing four more. God be with you,
Merhonour
, he cried as he sailed on. And God be with you, too, I thought: God and the king, who has issued a blanket protection to the crews of the colliers, thereby preventing me doing what I very much desired, namely pressing there and then a cohort of veteran seamen to replace the rabble that presently comprised my crew. The vast fleet passed to starboard of us on the opposite tack, the collier-men’s grins being reciprocated by scowls from the Merhonours at our starboard rail. They knew, just as the men on the colliers knew, that the latter would be earning at least twice as much as the king paid, for the manning of the navy meant that the colliers were desperate for men. Conversely, of course, the men of the navy were desperate to get out of it in order to join the colliers, and were deserting in their droves. Supply and demand, I believe it is called.

Once the last of the colliers had cleared us, I raised my telescope and swept it from east to west. We were well into the King’s Channel now, with Maldon’s river and the Essex shore to larboard. The low cloud and murk had parted a little, and at last I saw the sight I longed to see.

I sent a message below, requesting the comte d’Andelys and the Reverend Gale to join me. When they were present upon the quarterdeck, I pointed dead ahead.

‘Behold, the navy of England,’ I said to Roger. ‘Tremble, Frenchman!’

My friend laughed with me, but the sight ahead of us was more than sufficient to make any foe tremble. Beyond the West Rocks and within the buoy of the Gunfleet, a great wooden town seemed to rise from the midst of the sea. Or rather three towns, each distinguished by the colours of the ensigns at their sterns: blue, nearest to us; white, furthest away; red, in the centre. At the very heart of the fleet lay a great ship, a vast three-deck First Rate, flying at the mizzen a plain red flag, at the fore the red flag with three golden anchors that signified the presence of the Lord High Admiral of England, and at the main the royal standard that signified the presence of a prince of the blood.

‘The
Royal Charles
,’ I said to Roger. ‘The Duke of York’s flagship. And see there, the blue ensign at the main? The mighty
Prince
, the colour signifying that she is Lord Sandwich’s flagship. To the north, the
Royal James
and Prince Rupert’s white squadron. One hundred ships, more or less. Twenty-five thousand men. The most terrible sight upon God’s earth, My Lord.’

The comte d’Andelys whistled, and stared in silence at the
ever-nearing
multitude of ships. Roger was impressed, as I had intended. Although the King of France was building a great new navy as rapidly as he could cut down trees and shape them into hulls, he still had barely half of what lay ahead of us in the Gunfleet anchorage. God willing, this was the instrument that would shortly hammer the Dutch from the seas, bringing victory, eternal peace and an end to dissension in Charles the Second’s England. Or else, if the dark tale related by Clarendon and Arlington was true, twenty of these ships would soon be the means by which Charles was swept from his throne, cavaliers like the Quintons would be condemned once more to exile or to death, and England would become yet again a mean, hypocritical, puritan republic, ruled by those who hate the very notion of joy.

As the
Merhonour
entered the serried ranks of the fleet, we fired off our salutes to the flags and were saluted in our turn. Timid souls ashore might have been forgiven for thinking that the great battle had begun; and in one sense, for Captain Matthew Quinton it had.

 

 

 

The great cabin of the
Royal Charles
was great indeed. A broad and lofty space was made light by a row of stern windows far larger than any I had seen, comfortably dwarfing those of the
Merhonour
. Through the glass, the navy of England lay at anchor, only the occasional ketch or victualler’s hoy moving between the recumbent hulls riding the slight swell. Above our heads, the deck was adorned with a work of art almost as lavish as that upon the ceiling of the Banqueting House. Nereides, myrmidons, cherubim and the like surrounded a portrait of our sovereign lord the king, yet curiously His Majesty was shown standing upon what was unmistakeably the quarterdeck of this very vessel, a few feet above our heads. The artist was commemorating one memorable day, five years before. I remembered that day well, for Cornelia and I had witnessed it from the shore, having rushed from Veere to Scheveningen. The restored king being rowed out to a navy that was royal once again; the huzzahs of the sailors; the salute booming out from the guns of this very ship, then named
Naseby
after Cromwell’s greatest victory – aye, and the battle in which my father had fallen – but which within the hour was rechristened
Royal Charles
. Cornelia and I had hugged for joy upon the beach, for the return of the king meant that England, with all its boundless possibilities for everlasting felicity, was open to us again.

The turning tide meant that the scene within the great cabin was warmed by a rising April sun. A council of war had been summoned, and as was the method in those times, this was confined to the flagmen and captains of the great ships, albeit with certain notable exceptions. Indeed, it was the first council of war I had attended in my life, and would prove to be by far the most memorable. The broad and sturdy oak table at which we sat was crowded with charts, ship-lists and the like. I sat next to Sir Will Berkeley, Rear-Admiral of the Red, whom I still counted a dear friend, despite the gnawing doubt that the words of Clarendon and Arlington had planted in my mind. The dour Earl of Marlborough sat on my other side and Sir John Lawson next to him; all in all, a line of titled dignity that I envied not a little. Further down the table the well-fed Earl of Sandwich, Admiral of the Blue (our rear squadron), was engaged in a lively discussion about the late comet with his subordinate flagmen, the sad-eyed Ayscue and the jovial Teddiman, who sported an inordinately wide
moustachio
after the Dutch fashion. Across from them sat Myngs and Sansum,
Vice-and
Rear-Admiral of the White, arguing on some point to do with the ordnance favoured by the Dutch. I cast more than an occasional glance in their direction. Like all the flagmen of the Blue, Myngs and Sansum had been Commonwealth’s men, promoted by Cromwell; indeed, the aquiline Myngs was something of a legend for all the havoc he had wreaked upon the Spaniards in the Carribee. But as I contemplated them, and considered the number of erstwhile servants of the late Lord Protector in that cabin, I felt myself shudder. For if some or all of these men really were about to transfer their allegiance once more, what hope did my few cavalier friends and I have of preventing the outcome?

My Lord of Marlborough, captain of the venerable
Old James
, said, ‘Good to see you here, Quinton. Knew your father, of course – fought with him briefly in the west in forty-three. Good man. Great loss.’ He was something of an oddity among our nobility, this earl; impoverished in lands but serious, mathematical and inclined to the sea from an early age, he had travelled more widely than most of his kind and had but lately commanded the expedition sent east to take possession of Bombay, part of the dowry that accompanied our barren Queen Catherine. History has forgotten him, unlike that self-promoting mountebank Churchill who later took his title, but I know which of the two Marlboroughs I preferred. ‘An auspicious assembly,’ he said. ‘Men with a proven record of thrashing the Dutch allied to some of the noblest blood in these isles. Royal blood, come to that. The hogen-mogens should be shitting themselves, Quinton, for the seas have never seen the like before.’

I nodded, and studied the royal blood that was already among us. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Admiral of the White, sat at the starboard head of the table, reading over some papers. The incongruous little spectacles perched upon his ugly hook nose gave him the appearance of an eccentric professor, but this belied his ferocious reputation. I was told once that there were still people in Bolton who believed Rupert to be the devil incarnate following the depredations he wreaked upon that miserable place during the civil war, when he had been the most successful but also the most vicious general for the royal cause. I had reason to share their opinion, for my family blamed the prince’s vainglorious manoeuvres at Naseby for the loss of my father’s life. It was telling that Rupert had acknowledged every other officer in that room with at least a courteous nod, but he studiously avoided my eyes.

That left one member of the council only: by far the youngest, and also the only one who was not a flag officer or a captain. It was quite impossible to mistake the paternity of this handsome sixteen-year-old youth. The thick black eyebrows, the cleft chin, the sparkling eyes were all the same, but the lad had a straighter nose and altogether a more pleasing face than his father. He was evidently not overawed by being in the presence of all these august seamen and mighty admirals; far from it. He looked about him with an air of magisterial superiority fit for a future king. And perhaps, deep in his heart, that was already how James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, saw himself.

‘Well, Matt,’ said Will Berkeley, ‘who would have thought it, eh? You and me, the new Drake and – well, the new Matthew Quinton, I suppose. I expect your grandfather must have attended countless of these occasions.’

‘I cannot imagine he would have had much patience with them,’ I said. ‘And at least you and I agree better than he and Drake ever did.’

My friend smiled. I looked upon that bluff, open face, so much older than its years (for he was only a few months older than I), and inwardly, I prayed yet again that Arlington’s suspicions were misplaced. I had known Rear-Admiral Sir William Berkeley for so long. If he was a traitor, then the very foundations of what I took to be true were shaken.

The door of the cabin opened, and we all stood as one, bowing to the man who strode purposefully to the table and took his place at the head of it. James, Duke of York, was then thirty-two years old. As tall as his brother and with an equally prominent nose, albeit somewhat thinner and straighter than the kingly snout, the duke undoubtedly had the physical presence appropriate to a royal prince. He was the only man in the cabin already clad in a breastplate. He walked in a measured, stately way. His every expression, his every gesture, conveyed gravity. Consciously or unconsciously, he had become very different to his witty, cynical elder brother; and in those early days of the restored Stuarts, many preferred this prince, who seemed more open, more predictable, more straightforward. How different things would be twenty years later, when the long, stern face of James Stuart was imprinted on the coins of the realm.

Behind him hobbled Sir William Penn, the Great Captain Commander. This was a new creation in our navy’s history; indeed, to this day Penn remains the only man ever to have held the rank. His appointment to it solved an impossible mathematical conundrum. In 1665, there were five great men qualified to command the fleet or individual squadrons, and expecting to do so; yet there could be only three squadrons. Rupert and Sandwich were given two of them. The fact that the senior squadron, the Red, was given to the heir to the throne at once rendered the equation workable; the Duke of Albemarle could be ensconced in London as acting head of the Admiralty, and thus with no loss of status or honour, while Penn could be appointed to this new-fangled rank and placed in the Duke of York’s own ship, for no matter how proud our seamen were that the heir presumptive to England was commanding them, none could deny the troubling truth that the duke had never previously commanded anything more than a yacht, let alone a fleet of a hundred ships. Thus Penn would be the power behind the floating throne, the aquatic
eminence grise
, call him what you will. The fact that this unpopular, unprepossessing,
gout-crippled
creature would be the true overlord of the fleet concerned not a few, but I had my own very private cause for disquiet at the presence of the Great Captain Commander. For was not he, too, a sometime Commonwealth’s-man, formerly one of Cromwell’s generals-at-sea?

The duke took his place and bade us to sit. Penn slumped down beside him in relief, and at once elevated his swollen foot. ‘Your Highness, Your Grace, My Lords and gentlemen,’ said the duke, ‘I greet you all.’ He looked around the table and acknowledged each man in turn; Matthew Quinton was greeted with a perfunctory nod. ‘What we are upon,’ he said, in his measured, formal way, ‘is the business of England. Our country’s honour and glory lie in our hands. God willing, the issue of this summer’s campaign will be a complete victory for His Majesty’s arms over the perfidious Dutch. And God willing, we will show to the world the full power of His Majesty’s navy royal –’

There seemed to be some sort of commotion beyond the bulkhead. Raised voices could be heard. The cabin door opened. Framed within it was a stocky figure of a man, weak-chinned and tired-eyed, lavishly dressed and sporting a vast periwig that stretched down to his chest.

‘Your Grace,’ said York. ‘You are, perchance, a little lost?’

George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, bowed. ‘Your Royal Highness. No, sir. I merely seek admission to this esteemed council, as is my undoubted right. I presume that my invitation to join your deliberations was – misplaced, perhaps?’

There was a murmur around the table, but the Duke of York ignored it: he continued to stare directly at Buckingham. ‘You are mistaken, Your Grace. There was no invitation. Membership of this council is confined to the flagmen of the fleet and the captains of the great ships.’

This was a barb. All of us present in the cabin knew that
Bucking-ham
had demanded the command of a great ship; like Beau Harris, he argued that commands should be given to cavaliers regardless of whether they knew the sea or not. But the king had dismissed his boon companion’s pretensions, and Buckingham’s resentment had continued to smoulder beneath the surface. Until now.

‘With respect, Your Royal Highness,’ said Buckingham, with more restraint than he was usually wont to display, ‘it has always been the case that the greatest nobility of England are entitled to a place in such councils. It is our role, sir. Consider our very title, you and I – duke,
dux
, a leader in war.’

York was unperturbed, although we all knew how much he detested Buckingham, a close ally of Lord Arlington and thus an inveterate opponent of York’s father-in-law Clarendon. ‘That may be true of armies, Your Grace, but it is not the custom of the navy. I defer to those with rather longer experience of the sea than my own – My Lord of Marlborough, for instance.’

Marlborough nodded in concurrence; he, too, had no time for the Duke of Buckingham, whom he later described to me as merely the spoilt runt of a king’s catamite. ‘If that be true, Your Royal Highness,’ said Buckingham, whose cheeks were reddening, ‘then may I ask why His Grace of Monmouth, who has no flag and commands no ship, is present at this council?’

Before York could answer, Monmouth himself intervened, albeit at the price of a reproving frown from his uncle. ‘Why, Your Grace,’ said the young man in his pleasant voice, ‘I sit here by special dispensation, that I may better learn the arts of war prior to making them my trade. A special dispensation provided by my father, the king.’

Buckingham scowled; no doubt he was thinking that the eldest of Charles Stuart’s bastards was unduly indulged by his doting father. ‘But I can offer much to these counsels, Your Royal Highness!’ he protested. ‘My father was Lord High Admiral of England – my father commanded great fleets –’

‘Your Grace,’ said York levelly, ‘you are not your father.’

Buckingham bridled, and the temper that he had barely held in check for so long finally exploded. ‘In the name of God, sir!’ he cried. ‘I am the Duke of Buckingham! Buckingham, do you hear? I demand my right!’