The Lion of Midnight (22 page)

The Danes attempted to form a phalanx to protect the foot of the aft ladder, but their numbers were too few. I led the onrushing Cressys directly into them, swinging my sword viciously and feeling it strike flesh and bone. At my side, John Bale was a revelation. It was as though all of his pent-up miseries and broken dreams suddenly had an outlet. He cut and thrust with unrestrained brutality. A Dane came at him with a reversed musket, intending to use it as a club, but with a great roar Bale swung his sword and cleaved the man’s head in two.

All around me my men were showing their worth, screaming their battle cries of ‘
Kernow
!’ and ‘
Cressy
!’. Treninnick was worth his weight in gold in such situations, for few could match the phenomenal strength this strange, bent creature had developed during years in the tin mines of his native land. He wielded a half-pike as lightly as most men wield a dagger, spearing one man and instantly withdrawing the pike to wind another with the blunt end before bringing the weapon sharply over the man’s head and pulling it hard against him to break his neck.

A tall, red-headed young man wearing better clothes and a sash stood before me. I recognised him from my reception aboard this very ship: Rohde’s lieutenant. He wielded a cutlass commendably well, but evidently had little idea of how to acquit himself against an opponent bearing a long, straight, thick-bladed sword of earlier times. He swung
diagonally for my shoulder, the classic cutlass move, but I was too tall and my blade was up too soon. My parry left him defenceless and
enabled
me to swing my sword sharply into his right shoulder. He dropped his weapon and stumbled away toward the stern, screaming in agony and trying to hold the nearly-severed arm to his torso.

My foot was on the bottom rung of the
Oldenborg
’s aft ladder. I looked up and saw daylight, which was blotted out in the next instant by the dark shape of a man pointing a musket downward. An old
matchlock
, by the looks of it, slow of firing. I brought up the flintlock pistol in my left hand and shot him through the heart.

Up, and out onto the upper deck, followed closely by Bale and then the rest of my men. A half-pike came at me, but I was then still young enough to step smartly aside before it could bury itself in my stomach. The point tore my shirt and scratched my flesh, but I was now
battle-hardened
enough to regard such wounds as barely worthy of the name, no more than the merest flea bites.

The situation was clear to me. As I had hoped, our unexpected
opening
of a second front had forced Rohde to divert men from his boarding attack on the
Cressy
. That, in turn, allowed Kit and his men to rally: they were already crawling over the
Oldenborg
’s beakhead, my lieutenant at their head, advancing inexorably on the Dane’s forecastle. Meanwhile, Lanherne’s men were starting to fight their way out from the fore
ladder
. Rohde had concentrated his main strength in the waist of the ship, rather than dispersing his men fore and aft to try and repel the two attacks. And as I looked away to starboard, it was clear what was in Rohde’s mind. He did not have to defeat us; did not have to force us off the ship. All he had to do was play for enough time for the
Faisant
to come up and attack the
Cressy
upon her unprotected starboard side; Blackburn still had our upper deck guns manned and was still firing high into the
Oldenborg
’s rigging, which was in as torn a condition as ours, but I knew there would be almost nobody below decks. And the Dutch ship was now very close indeed. One more tack and she would be
roughly at the edge of her range for loosing off a broadside. If we were to prevail, we had to prevail quickly.

‘Bale!’ I cried. ‘Take half the men with us – attack the Danes in the waist!’ The regicide nodded and complied immediately. Now there were no resentful looks or hateful stares from even the most royalist of the Cressys: whatever else John Bale had once been, he was a formidable fighter and a born leader. ‘The rest of you, with me!’

Onto the quarterdeck stair, with Treninnick and others clambering directly above the elaborate carvings adorning the bulkhead beneath the quarterdeck rail –

It was hot work now. Rohde had massed a formidable party on the quarterdeck, perhaps as many as fifty men. I parried, cut, slashed and thrust with all my strength. Now I experienced once again that strange feeling, peculiar to battle. The conscious mind closes down. In its place comes a heightened state, at once more aware of and more oblivious to all else around: the state of battle frenzy that the North Men of old called ‘berserk’. I took wounds – a sword’s point sliced into my arm, an unknown weapon bruised and bloodied my head – but they were as pinpricks. I gave better than I got, my grandfather’s sword cleaving a path before me. A path set directly for the motionless figure, cloaked in black, who awaited me near the stern rail: the Seigneur de Montnoir.

A huge bearded Dane, naked to the waist, came at me with an axe, the very image of the Viking warrior. But an axe is a clumsy weapon, fearsome yet inflexible. He swung for my neck, seeking to decapitate me, but the very act of pulling back his arm exposed his undefended chest. I thrust my sword up, beneath his rib cage, and saw the
astonishment
in his eyes as his body slid off my blade and onto the deck.

‘Bravo, Sir Matthew,’ said Montnoir, raising his sword. ‘You are becoming a considerable inconvenience to France and to me.’

‘Not as inconvenient as I propose to be when I kill you, Montnoir.’

Our blades clashed. There was little space: Cressys and Oldenborgs were tightly packed all around us, all fighting their own battles to the
death. Thus Montnoir and I could not exercise the refined moves of the training-yard. This was not an arena for feints, sidestepping and other such niceties. Instead we made short, sharp thrusts and low cuts, making more use of wrists and elbows than shoulders. A clever slashing attack from him brought his blade nearly to my neck, but my own came up in time. We stood there for what seemed an eternity, his cold eyes barely inches from mine as he tried to press his steel past my own and into my flesh. I pushed him away and countered with a bold thrust for his heart, but he defended briskly.

‘Sir Matthew!’ I recognised Ali Reis’s unmistakeable Moorish speech; but he had been with Kit’s party – ‘The Danish captain has fallen, sir! Lord Bale has done for him!’

I felt a confusion of emotions: poor Rohde, as good and honest a fellow as one could wish to meet, felled by the sword of a foul regicide. Yet Rohde was my enemy, and Bale now my ally, and surely I ought to rejoice at my enemy’s fall?

I looked at Montnoir. The usually imperturbable Frenchman was
tiring
and breathing heavily; but so was I. ‘Surrender the ship, Montnoir!’ I ordered.

‘Surrender your own, Sir Matthew,’ said the Knight of Malta,
pointing
his sword to starboard.

The
Faisant
’s larboard battery fired. Several shots struck the
undamaged
starboard side of the
Cressy
. I saw Gunner Blackburn ordering men to move across from our larboard battery to the other side; but that was his last act on this earth. The
Faisant
fired again, and a great splinter of planking beneath the starboard rail of the
Cressy
’s quarterdeck broke away. It pierced the Master Gunner’s chest and drove his body over the other rail into the sea between
Cressy
and
Oldenborg
.

Montnoir took advantage of my distraction and attacked, thrusting directly for my head. But Ali Reis’s half-pike knocked his sword away, and the Moor and two other Cressys faced down the Knight of Malta. Montnoir stepped away to give himself space to meet his new assailants.

‘Reis,’ I said, gasping for air, ‘orders to Mister Farrell –’

‘Begging pardon, Sir Matthew, but the lieutenant is wounded, sir. A bad one. Don’t think he can give or take orders.’

Kit – oh God, Kit –

That was all the time I had for reflection. I ran to the quarterdeck stair and leapt down into the ship’s waist. The Cressys clearly had the upper hand now, John Bale marshalling their efforts –

There was a crack like the very thunder of doomsday itself. I looked up and saw the mizzen mast of the
Oldenborg
topple. Master Gunner John Blackburn’s elevated sakers and minions had paid him the finest posthumous tribute possible. Laniards and halyards snapped. The
top-yard
broke away and the sails tore, the sound of ripping outdoing and silencing the hubbub of war. Timber and canvas alike fell in a great mass onto the quarterdeck, shattering the rails and planking. A great gun, an eighteen-pounder or thereabouts, fell over the side, its tackle entangling the limbs of one poor soul who was dragged after it. Any man on the quarterdeck directly beneath the falling mast would have been crushed in an instant. And my last sight of the Seigneur de Montnoir was in that exact spot in that exact moment, with sword in hand, fighting off the assault of my two Cressys. Then the remnants of the mizzen and its sails covered the quarterdeck like a shroud, and nothing moved beneath.

I turned and continued my run to the forecastle. Kit was there, slumped against a nine-pounder, Julian Carvell crouched over him and placing a makeshift bandage over what was clearly a bad wound in his gut.

‘Sir Matthew,’ said Kit, weakly, ‘have we won the day?’

I replied with a heavy heart: my old friend, the saviour of my life, seemed not long for the world. ‘Against the Dane – aye, Kit, we have, although his colours still fly. But unless we can man the
Cressy
again, I fear the Dutchman will assail an empty ship.’

‘Then they must not face an empty ship, Sir Matthew.’

‘No, Lieutenant. They must not.’ I turned. ‘Lanherne, there!
Withdraw
our men back to the
Cressy
, over the hawse! But as you do so, fire the
Oldenborg
!’ The bluff Cornishman nodded and set about his duty. ‘Carvell, get Lieutenant Farrell back to the
Cressy
and to the surgeon. Reis! MacFerran! You men, hereabouts! With me, to defend our
withdrawal
!’

With a dozen or so men, I stood at the head of a phalanx covering the retreat of the Cressys. The remaining Danes were too exhausted and too cowed to offer much resistance; and when the first wisps of smoke emerged from below, where my men were firing pitch-and tar-barrels, most of the enemy became concerned only with saving their own lives by getting into the long-boats that the
Oldenborg
towed behind her. Nevertheless a few brave or foolhardy souls were still fighting, and I
realised
that several of them were defending against the ferocious onslaught of one man: John Bale.

‘Bale!’ I cried. ‘Enough! Evacuate the ship! We need to man the
Cressy
!’

He seemed not to hear me, consumed as he was with redemptive blood-lust. But at last he withdrew and joined us as we steadily backed toward the beakhead of the
Oldenborg
, then made our way across the web of cables and shrouds onto our own ship.

The
Faisant
was up with us now, and fired off another broadside which principally mauled what remained of our sails and rigging. The main mast was riddled with shot, and I prayed that it did not fall as the
Oldenborg
’s mizzen had. But with men ordered aloft and struggling to adjust our yards and canvas, Lanherne, the senior officer remaining after myself, was already doing his utmost to con our damaged hull away from the
Oldenborg
, where the flames were now licking out of the lower gunports. Although a proof of our victory, this created a new danger for the
Cressy
: if the Danish ship’s magazine blew up before we had put enough water between us, we might be devastated by the same blast. Having witnessed the Dutch flagship
Eendracht
blow up at the Battle of Lowestoft a few months before, I had no wish to be at the centre of such a dreadful apocalypse.

I ran down to the main gun deck of the
Cressy
. My men knew their business, and without orders from any officer, they were already running out the starboard guns. ‘Gun captains!’ I cried. ‘The Dutchman, there, thinks that we are weakened – that we can give him no welcome! Let’s show him the hospitality of the
Cressy
!’ There was a cheer at that.

The lad Kellett appeared at my side: I was relieved that he had
survived
the battle with the
Oldenborg
. ‘To the after ladder, boy – you will have to relay my orders to the lower deck. Get down there and tell the gun captains that when they hear your command to give fire, they are to unleash hell’s own wrath against the Dutch!’

‘My command, Sir Matthew?’

‘Aye, lad. Your command. For the next five minutes, you are the Master Gunner of the
Cressy
, Mister Kellett.’

The lad smiled brilliantly and saluted. ‘Aye, aye, Sir Matthew!’ He ran off and scuttled down the after ladder as fast as his legs would carry him.

The
Faisant
fired again, but her broadside was already ragged. No doubt the States-General of the United Provinces had not loaned one of their best ships and crews to the King of Denmark; probably quite the reverse. Therein lay my hope for the survival of my shattered ship and exhausted crew.

My gun captains had adjusted their angles of elevation. The barrels were swabbed, the canvas-covered charges and balls rammed home, the linstocks readied over the touch holes. ‘Steady, lads,’ I shouted, ‘await the downroll…wait…wait…’ I saw Kellett’s face at the after hatch. He raised an impudent thumbs up. ‘Wait –
give fire
!’

The starboard broadside of the
Cressy
fired. Standing in the midst of a cannonade is at once one of the most thrilling and frightening experiences a man can ever have. The fuses and then the mouths of the muzzles belch flame and smoke. The air becomes acrid, and for seconds on end it is impossible to see at all. The nearly unbearable noise of the firing is succeeded at once by the thunderous sound of the guns
recoiling and the tackle pulling taut. And at once the gun crews set to the task of reloading, of preparing to run out the guns to fire again.