The Lion of Midnight (21 page)

I looked over toward the mast-fleet, in our lee to the east of us. As usual the
Delight
was adrift of the rest and well astern of her nearest neighbour. The
Faisant
, sensing an easy prize to commence her day’s work, was bearing down on her with a will. Perhaps I had misjudged matters: she might bear the Danish flag, but the
Faisant
’s crew were all Dutchmen who might feel no great compunction to come to the
assistance
of a Dane – and perhaps even less to that of a Frenchman, their most unlikely allies in this war. If the Dutch captain preferred above honour the opportunity to win himself a healthy sum of prize money, then there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

A fresh broadside from the
Oldenborg
briefly curtailed such bleak thoughts. She was closing the distance between us, but only slowly.

‘Prevent her crossing our hawse for as long as you can, Mister Jeary!’ I shouted. The master nodded grimly and barked fresh orders to the helmsman at the whipstaff below and to the men adjusting the sails from the yards.

The
Cressy
’s double broadsides thundered out once more, the lower batteries upon the downroll, the uppermost upon the uproll. I ran from the larboard rail to the starboard. Through the smoke I caught sight once again of the mast-fleet and the
Faisant
. Thanks be to God, the Dutch ship had answered the command flag aboard the
Oldenborg
. She was changing tack in order to bear directly for the
Cressy
, as I had prayed she would. But it was clear that her captain’s change of heart was not born entirely of a belated recognition of where his duty lay. Another ship had interposed itself between the
Faisant
and the mast-fleet and was now following close in the Dutchman’s wake, darting in to fire off a few guns, then backing her sails to fall behind again before the frigate’s
far more powerful broadside could do her much damage. The little
vessel
had lowered the red-white-red flag of Poland-Lithuania that she had sported previously, and now flew an altogether more familiar ensign. As the Scots colours streamed out from the ensign staff of the
Nonsuch
of Kinghorn, I wondered briefly how, if he fell this day, Captain Andrew Wood would explain to the shade of his illustrious ancestor his decision to come to the aid of a Sassenach.

Off to larboard the bows of the
Oldenborg
crept nearer to our own, despite Jeary’s best efforts to keep the distance between us. Her
broadside
was more ragged now, ours more determined, but still Rohde kept his men massed in the bows, no doubt hoping and praying that he would shortly be able to cross our hawse – to secure onto our bows, allowing his greater weight of manpower to pour across onto the
Cressy
and overwhelm our crew.

I drew my pistols; very soon we would be within range where they could do good service. As I did so Kellett ran up from below and almost flung himself up the stair to the quarterdeck.

‘Murder below, Sir Matthew! Mister North – Mister Musk –’

Without hesitation, I followed him down.

As I reached the orlop our broadside roared out once again. It was the first time I had experienced a man-of-war’s gunfire from its lowest deck. It seemed as though the entire ship would break apart, such was the force and the noise. Frames and beams seemed to scream in protest. The sound of the demi-cannon firing and recoiling on the main deck barely inches above my head seemed like the opening of the gates of hell.

But it was not the only manifestation of hell in the low, dark stinking space of the orlop deck. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see two men struggling behind the chained shape of John Bale, who was struggling against the chains securing him to the mizzen mast.

‘North has a blade, Sir Matthew!’ the regicide cried. ‘He came down
to kill me while you were all occupied with the battle, but Musk
interposed
himself –’

I saw the glint of Lydford North’s dagger. Musk had a tight grip on him, but North was a much younger man. Tentatively I raised my pistol, but they were too close together and it was too dark.

‘North!’ I shouted. ‘Drop your blade, man! As captain of this ship, I demand it!’

North ignored me, but my sudden intervention seemed to distract Musk. North’s blade slipped downward, and Phineas Musk fell heavily to the deck.

An unspeakable feeling of sorrow and rage swept over me. Musk – dear, infuriating, loyal Phineas Musk – had been struck down –

‘Very well, Sir Matthew,’ cried Lydford North, ‘the honour can be yours! Fire your pistol, sir, despatch the regicide and avenge your king!’

I stood dumbfounded, Kellett cowering behind me. Competing emotions raged within me. Phineas Musk lay there, wounded – and, perhaps, killed - by as loyal a cavalier as I was. And there sat John Bale, the embodiment of every anathema known to the cavalier cause, very much alive. I had but to fire in order to carry out my promise to my mother, and my duty to king and country –

‘Damn you, Quinton,
fire
!’ North screamed. He stepped forward, the blade in his hand. A blade discoloured by the blood of Phineas Musk. ‘Very well, as you prevaricate,
I
shall be the instrument!
Vivat Rex
!’

Lydford North lunged forward, his blade aimed for John Bale’s head. I pressed my trigger. The pan ignited. As the puff of smoke before me cleared, I saw that the ball had struck home. North gripped his chest with his hands, but he could not stop the blood that oozed steadily over his fingers. He looked at me wide-eyed, his expression a tangle of astonishment and pure hatred. Then he fell backward onto the deck, and Lydford North was no more.

I ran to the recumbent figure of Phineas Musk and raised his head. Blood was seeping from his side onto the deck, but was it a death wound?
In the darkness of the orlop, it was impossible to tell.

‘Said that North would make enemies,’ Musk whispered. ‘Didn’t reckon you’d be the one who’d do for him, though.’

‘Kellett!’ I cried. ‘Run and fetch two men to carry Mister Musk to the surgeon’s cockpit –’

My words were cut off by a thunderous crash that almost flung me to the other side of the deck. It was not a broadside: the sound and the way in which the hull shuddered were entirely different. So it could only be one thing. The
Oldenborg
had crossed our hawse. Her bows were entangled with ours. Her men were about to board.

I stood, for my duty now was to return to the upper deck and
marshal
our men to repel the onslaught. But as I did so, John Bale looked up at me.

‘Now you have saved my life, Sir Matthew, as I saved yours. Are we not then brothers in arms, at the last?’

I stared at him, and prayed to the Blessed Saint, Martyr and King, Charles Stuart, to forgive me for what I was about to do.

‘Kellett,’ I commanded, ‘free the prisoner. See that he has whatever weapons he desires.’ I looked down at John Bale once more. ‘Let us see if you can kill Danes as well as you can kill kings, Lord Bale.’

On the upper deck, it was as I expected it to be. Danes were swarming across onto our beakhead. Kit Farrell and the men he had massed upon our forecastle were giving them a hot reception, and thus far none of the enemy had gained a foothold upon our deck itself. Meanwhile Gunner Blackburn was maintaining our fire, although we no longer needed to worry about the roll of the ship. The ships were not side-by-side, the
Oldenborg
having come into our bow at an oblique angle, and
Blackburn
had moved some of the upper deck guns back from their ports, angling them at their maximum elevation in order to continue to fire into the rigging of the Danish ship. Meanwhile, our lower batteries
continued
to hammer the hull of the
Oldenborg
relentlessly. Indeed, it was no longer possible for the Danes to man their lower batteries, which had fallen silent. But Captain Rohde knew his trade. He had moved his men either to the boarding party in the bow, or into the tops to fire down a hail of musket and pistol shot onto our deck, or else to man his upper deck battery, which was firing murderous volleys of grape-and
chain-shot
. Fortunately, his higher hull meant that Rohde could not depress his muzzles far enough to fire properly across our deck, for just a few such broadsides would have slaughtered every man above decks on the
Cressy
within minutes. But his cannonade was playing havoc with our rigging, and the men he had in the tops were causing harm enough. All
of our sails were torn to pieces, the maintopmast was swaying
precariously
, and several of the yards were very nearly ruins.

I went first toward the quarterdeck. Seth Jeary still stood there,
giving
orders as calmly as if he had been taking a royal yacht for a gentle cruise upon a millpond, while the Reverend Thomas Eade was reading, or rather babbling, from the Book of Psalms. His words reached very few, but then, even the loudest preacher would have struggled to make himself heard above the din being made by Purton and Drewell, the
Cressy
’s trumpeters. But as I stepped onto the stair up to the deck, a
volley
belched out from the upper deck of the
Oldenborg
. By some quirk of the waves, the gunfire swept the deck rather than the rigging. When I reached the top of the stair, the quarterdeck had been wiped out. The two warrant officers, two petty officers, two trumpeters and ten
gun-crew
who had been standing there a moment earlier were all felled. The deck was awash with blood, limbs and entrails. Over by the starboard rail the chaplain’s head was pressed up against the torn, bloodied,
headless
torso of Seth Jeary in a macabre bodily exchange. One man still lived, a good man of Wadebridge named Marrack. He looked at me imploringly and reached out his hand, but there was nought I could do for him: the whole of the left side of his body, from the waist down, had been torn off, and his blood was pumping hideously over the deck.

I turned back into the waist of the ship. There was no time to reflect that if I had climbed the stair a moment earlier – if, say, I had not stopped to order the release of John Bale – then I would have been struck down, and the parts of my body would now be lying there, apart and indiscriminate upon the deck.

‘Mister Blackburn!’ I cried. The Cressy’s gunner turned from giving orders to his gun crews and saluted perfunctorily. ‘You have the watch upon the quarterdeck, Master Gunner. But I implore you – be careful where you tread.’

As Blackburn went to take up his new post, I strode toward the
forecastle
, bellowing encouragement to my men as I passed. ‘Keep up your
fire, Cressys, for God and the King! A whore and a beef dinner to the crew that brings down a yard!’

‘And what for bringing down a mast, Sir Matthew?’ cried Turnage, a cheerful lad from Rotherhithe. ‘An entire whorehouse, perchance?’

‘Bring down a mast, Turnage, and you can have your choice of the Whitehall bawds!’

The boy nodded determinedly and set to the swabbing of his piece with a vengeance. As I turned, I was aware that someone had come up and stood next to me. I half-expected it to be Phineas Musk, who had been on my shoulder in so many fights. But of course it could not be Musk. It was John Bale.

The regicide had armed himself with a pistol in his left hand and a cutlass in his right. He brought up the latter in the time-honoured
warrior’s
salute.

‘Thank you, Sir Matthew,’ he said.

I simply inclined my head; what words could I say? How could I bring up my own sword to salute a king-killer? I could see the men in the gun crews all around me staring furiously upon the spectacle before them. Many of them were Cornish, and thus royalists to the very core. The older ones had taken wounds for the king this man had put to death, the younger ones had known their fathers fall in the same cause. But as John Bale and I made our way forward to join the battle at the forecastle, I reflected to myself that both the civil war and the
execution
of Charles Stuart were a long time ago, and no amount of bitter memories would do anything to repel the horde of Danes massing to overwhelm the
Cressy
.

I stepped onto the forecastle at much the same time that the first Danes appeared on it, from the bow-end above the beakhead. One of them raised his musket, but had no time to fire it before Julian Carvell buried the point of a half-pike deep into his belly. Fifty or sixty Cressys were
massed on the deck in front of me, but it was plain to see that coming against them was a wave of a hundred or more Danes.

Kit Farrell presented himself before me. His shirt was in ribbons and his chest and arms ran with flesh-wound blood; despite the cold, he was bathed in sweat. He looked with profound suspicion and hatred upon the form of John Bale.

‘Sir Matthew,’ he said, ‘we need to bring up men from the lower
batteries
to reinforce us. We can’t hold against them for long, sir.’

I was loath to acquiesce. The relentless bombardment from our heaviest guns was wreaking havoc on the
Oldenborg
’s hull and undoubtedly gave us the best chance of victory. Moreover I was reminded of
something
that my uncle Tristram had once told me when we were exploring the ruins of Ampthill Castle, and I asked him why such fastnesses
possessed
spiral staircases.

‘You only need one man to hold a space this narrow, young Matthew. What is the point of having more men behind, when they cannot bring their weapons to bear?’

I looked at the throng of Cressys ahead of me, and realised that
simply
piling up more men behind them would have little effect. I looked to starboard and saw that the
Faisant
had finally shrugged off the
attentions
of the
Nonsuch
, now reduced to but a shattered and drifting hulk, and was beating up into the wind; she would be up with us within half a glass, and then it would be impossible for us to fight both sides of the ship. Finally I looked across to the
Oldenborg
, and to the great holes that our shot had already blasted open in her hull, exposing the naked frames from which the planking had been torn away –

A thought came to me. Whether it was the thought of a genius, a lunatic or a dead man would only be established in the outcome.

‘No, Mister Farrell,’ I said, ‘hold here for as long as you can with the men that you have. And when the Danes retreat, pursue them back across
their
hawse.’

‘When they retreat, Sir Matthew?’

‘Indeed, I pray that will be so. But if I am mistaken, Kit, then for God’s sake, do not yield the ship to those fellows!’ He nodded. ‘Kellett, there!’ I cried. ‘Orders for Mister Blackburn and the helm, then for Mister Lanherne and the armourer!’

I barked my commands, then turned and made to go below. ‘Sir Matthew,’ said John Bale, ‘I do not know what is in your mind, but I desire to fight alongside you, if you will permit it.’

There was no time to deliberate. ‘I will permit it,’ I said.

On the main deck, our great guns had fallen silent. Under Martin Lanherne’s direction, cutlasses, pistols and half-pikes were being massed on the deck, ready for issue to the gun crews. Lanherne, a veteran of war on both sea and land, saluted at my approach, despite a resentful sneer at the regicide beside me.

‘Reinforcing the forecastle, Sir Matthew?’ Lanherne asked.

‘Not so, Mister Lanherne,’ I said. ‘Draw the larboard guns inboard, as far as we can bring them. Then assign the men by their quarters to mass behind the third and sixth gunports.’

The boatswain of the
Cressy
nodded and barked his orders, which were repeated along the deck. Men hauled on tackle and pulled the great culverins inboard. They were well practised in the manoeuvre, and performed him both expertly and swiftly. And as they undertook their task, the ship’s movement revealed to all the notion that was in their captain’s mind. Having endeavoured for so long to adjust the helm to prevent us coming side-by-side with the
Oldenborg
, the helmsman and the others who would be assisting him to bring the whipstaff across were now striving for precisely the opposite end. The distance between the two hulls was closing.

Lanherne ordered men to their places. Bale and I took up positions by the sixth port, almost amidships, although I had to crouch beneath one of the timber knees that supported the upper deck. Treninnick, MacFerran and half a dozen others stood by us, waiting for the moment.

Closer…closer…the two hulls struck, and in that moment I raised my
sword, bellowed ‘Cressys, forward!’ and pulled myself through the port hole, leaping from our hull across the few feet of icy sea-water far below and landing on the main gun deck of the
Oldenborg
. I thanked God that she was slender-built and not a great English slug with tumblehome, else the hulls would never have come close enough for me to make the leap. John Bale landed behind me, and through the other great hole in the side of the Danish ship came Martin Lanherne. We advanced, picking our way past deserted guns and tackle and over the remains of slaughtered Danes. Behind us came an ever-increasing wave of Cressys. For a few moments the deck before us was deserted, but Montnoir and Captain Rohde must have recognised the danger at once. Shots rang out from the fore and aft hatchways and ladders as the defenders of the
Oldenborg
rushed downward, attempting to retake the deck before we could get enough men onto it.

‘Lanherne,’ I cried, ‘the fore ladder! The rest of you, with me!’

The Cressys divided according to the ports by which we had left our own ship. Lanherne and his men rushed forward, immediately
exchanging
fire and crossing swords with the Danes before them. I ran for the aft ladder. That was the most direct way to the enemy’s quarterdeck: to the colours which I wished to see hauled down, to Captain Rohde, and above all to the Seigneur de Montnoir.