Ensign Royal
Page 1
Ensign Royal
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Historical and Author’s Notes
The Matthew Quinton Journals
About the Author
Copyright
Ensign Royal
J. D. Davies
Cromwell is dead, and risen; and dead again,
And risen the third time after he was slain
No wonder! For he’s messenger of Hell:
And now he buffets us, now posts to tell
What’s past; and for one more game new counsel takes
Of his good friend the Devil, who keeps the stakes.
Will Douglas
(Contemporary Royalist poet)
Chapter One
I never met the Antichrist; but once, I dined upon lamb chops with his son.
It was in the summer of the year 1709, I think, or ten. I was upon the road north to Ware, intending to investigate some malpractice over wharfage, when my coach was forced into Cheshunt by an unseasonal storm and an impassable road. My men scurried off and duly made arrangements for me to take a meal in one of the more prosperous-looking inns of the place, but reported back to me the landlord’s claim that he had no private room to offer. The one such room that the inn did possess was already occupied, it seemed, by a gentleman who treasured his privacy and was well known — nay, greatly respected - in those notoriously fractious parts.
I am not generally a rude man, not even in these lessened days when rudeness reigns and my great age inclines me ever more to the condition. Yet I was wet, cold, delayed, and therefore increasingly peevish. Thus I pulled myself from my coach as determinedly as my old limbs would permit, strode into the premises as best I could, and at once accosted the landlord, a bleary, rotund, unshaven creature of nearly the same age as myself. He was apologetic — mightily so, if truth be told, for my name and fame were known even in such an obstreperous fastness as Cheshunt — but he was strangely adamant, too: the one private room was occupied, and the distinguished person within was not to be disturbed upon any account, not even by such an august figure as myself. Soaked and impatient, my voice rose. The denizens of the common room wherein we stood, most of them of the lower orders, eyed us, some with bright-eyed interest in a disputation between their one of their own and one of rather higher station, most with that kind of quizzical half-stare that is unique to the wholly drunk. This was intolerable; to be denied by the increasingly urgent imprecations of this miserable excuse for a landlord, who was seemingly impervious to being threatened with the wrath of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Hertford, the Lord Lieutenant of that same county, the Privy Council of our newly united kingdom, her blessed Majesty Queen Anne — I cannot now remember all the names that I called down upon the rogue —
At last, and ignoring the landlord’s protests, I made for the door that evidently guarded this so-precious private room and its occupant; for I was convinced that no man of honour could possibly deny another of his station a comfortable table and some good conversation.
I opened the door with some force. An ancient man, much older than I — and then I must have been in, or nearing, my seventieth year — looked up, startled, from his plate of broth. The most notable thing about him was his nose, which was prodigiously long. He had a pinched mouth, tired eyes and red eyebrows, which sat incongruously beneath his few wisps of white hair. It was a face I could have sworn I had seen before, but could not place where or how —
‘Highness,’ the landlord blustered, not to me but to this other — ‘forgive me, but –’
He cut himself off, appalled by his error. The landlord looked at the ancient man, then at me, then back again.
‘Well, then,’ said the man now allotted a title fit only for royalty. The old man looked from me to the landlord, and said to the latter, ‘I think you may leave us now, Gideon.’
The landlord seemed on the verge of tears. After some moments, he nodded slightly to the ancient, turned and left us.
There was no-one to name us to each other. Yet the aged creature resolved this awkwardness readily enough. He stood, albeit slowly and with much pain, and said amiably, ‘Gideon is probably the only man alive in England still devoted enough to me to use that address. He was ever loyal to my family, and the old cause.’ His voice, a rasping and breathless whisper, was unplaceable: the slightly precise English of a man who had spent his life putting his past behind him. A man whose much younger image had once adorned placards and broadsheets from Truro to Thurso.
‘Sir,’ I said — although to this day I do not know why I permitted him that gesture of deference — ‘sir, permit me to name myself. I am — ‘
‘I know very well who you are,’ the ancient said, sitting again and gesturing to me to take the stool opposite him. ‘Gideon described the blazon of arms upon your coach. The arms of Quinton of Ravensden.’
‘You have an excellent memory.’
As he settled back upon his own stool, albeit not without further evident discomfort, the ancient smiled, if a little wanly. ‘There was a time when I had to study the escutcheons of the great families of this land,’ he said. ‘Particularly the arms of those who were then called traitors, as your brother was and as your father had been. And as you, too, were named, as I recall.’ He smiled. ‘Matthew Quinton. A stripling, but a monstrous malignant. You know, I had quite forgotten that phrase for half a century? Strange how your uncalled-for presence brings it back to me.’ He took a mouthful of broth. ‘But your memory is equal to mine, I think. If I know who you are, then I am certain you are equally aware of my name. Thanks in part to Gideon, yes, but I think only in part?’
I nodded cautiously. ‘I had heard you lived privately in these parts.’
The long nose dipped. ‘Privately. Aye, that is a word. So privately that most of the world knows of it, or so it seems.’
Uncertain how to deal with the unique creature before me, I ventured a jest. ‘Perhaps, then, you should not choose to eat in inns where the keeper addresses you royally.’
The ancient shrugged, and took another spoonful of broth before he ventured a reply. ‘Ah. Well, indeed. That is the truth of it, at bottom, and God’s righteous judgement upon me for venturing forth from my own dwelling, and the atrocious cooking of my own servants, in quest of some edible meat in this place. My father would have condemned me for such ungodly weakness.’
‘Sir,’ I said cautiously, ‘I fear that on the matter of your father, you and I might differ.’
‘I do not doubt it.’ He seemed sanguine beyond measure. ‘But are not all such differences now dry as dust these fifty years? Will you not then sup with me, Matthew Quinton, erstwhile monstrous malignant? Gideon tells me he has some most excellent chops in the offing. And surely two old men can talk peaceably of the doings of the great Marlborough and those about her blessed majesty Anna Regina — aye, and whatever else consumes the conversation of those beyond the door?’
I shifted upon the stool. ‘I think, sir, that you are hardly an ordinary man for ordinary conversation.’
He laughed: an ugly, consumptive laugh that wracked his entire wasted frame with coughing. The laugh of a man soon to be clothed in the burying-shroud. ‘True. Oh Lord, that is truth beyond measure. Not an ordinary man. Yet that is what I was — the most ordinary, the most private of men! And yet fate played that darkest trick on me, to be my father�
��s son. To be his heir.’
One is afforded few opportunities to sit down and converse with History itself; and trust me in this, I have done so more times in my inordinately long life than most men ever have the chance to do. One does not refuse those opportunities when they offer themselves. Thus I, Matthew Quinton, born of one of the truest cavalier families in the land, supped upon chops with the son of the King-Killer, the very Antichrist himself, as we cavaliers termed him. Or, to be more punctilious in the matter of introductions than we were that storm-visited day at the inn of Cheshunt, with His Erstwhile Highness Richard Cromwell, once Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland; the second, and to this day the last, common man ever to rule as head of state over these nations.
* * *
Within a half hour, it was easy to understand why Tumbledown Dick’s rule over the British republic had lasted barely six months. He pontificated tediously upon Marlborough, belittling his triumph at Oudenarde, and held forth with all the confidence of a tavern bore upon the politicking of My Lord Bolingbroke and His Grace of Shrewsbury. I, who knew all three men well and was privy to many of their doings, thought it remarkable that a man who had held no public office for a half-century should sermonise so meanly, especially as almost every opinion that the sometime Lord Protector put forward was largely worthless. It was evident to me within a matter of minutes that this was a conventional, limited mind, unable to see beyond the obvious. Perhaps in another life he would have made a tolerably competent schoolmaster, albeit probably prone to merciless goading by the more impudent pupils; or perhaps, if God had been kind, a tedious burgess of some obscure market town, such as the Huntingdon from which he and his dread parent Oliver hailed. Instead, fate — or the whim of his father, which was very much the same thing — decreed that he should be supreme ruler of three nations and commander-in-chief of the mightiest army and navy that England had ever possessed.
Cromwell might have sensed a little of my boredom, for at length he changed the subject unexpectedly.
‘— and God will judge between the Pretender and the Elector of Hanover, mark my words, rather than the whim of Robert Harley alone.’ He chewed upon a piece of chop and washed it down with a mouthful of ale, which brought on another dreadful fit of coughing. ‘But tell me,’ he said through his convulsions, ‘for my memory fails me in one thing. You were too young to be in actual arms against my father or myself, were you not? Too young for the wars, at any rate.’
I had long learned from many men of Cromwell’s vintage, my brother among them, that when they spoke of ‘the wars’, no clarification was necessary. For all the slaughter that had bloodied the soil of Europe for the past twenty years, ‘the wars’ meant England’s civil war, which had culminated in this man’s father cutting off the lawful king’s head and usurping his throne in all but name.
At any rate, Cromwell’s question triggered a strange response in me. I knew of many men of my age whose senses had long deserted them, and who instead inhabited a contented half-world, living amidst the strangely vivid memories of their youth while being incapable of recalling their own names or where they chanced to be in that moment. Every waking hour, I gave thanks to God that my faculties were as keen as ever they were; or so I wished to believe. But at that moment, in a storm-lashed inn of Cheshunt and in the presence of Noll Cromwell’s son, a scene flashed vividly in front of me: so vivid that I could feel warm sand under my feet, smell the gunsmoke, and reel from the splashes of blood striking my face as good men were slaughtered all around me. The present day was gone, and there I stood once again, young Matt Quinton, barely eighteen years of age, breathing like a galloping horse and running with sweat, frantically waving a sword above my head in the hope that somehow, that vain action would keep me alive against the ferocious onslaught of the foe in front of me –
The startling recollection of a June day over half a century before faded as rapidly as it had formed, but the last image was of the cavalrymen charging at me, their swords and half-pikes pointing directly at my breast, their familiar turtle-backed helmets glinting in the warm summer sun of Flanders. Soldiers who, barely ten weeks later, would swear an oath of allegiance to the man who now sat directly opposite me, asking repeatedly whether I was well.
‘I – I thank you, sir,’ I said hesitantly, ‘I am quite well. Yes, quite well.’ A mouthful of the best wine that Cheshunt could offer permitted me to recover myself. ‘You asked me if I was ever in arms against the House of Cromwell. Well, ‘tis true I was far too young for the wars. But I fought against you, nonetheless. Against your father’s Ironsides. My first battle - the Battle of the Dunes.’
Richard Cromwell nodded gravely. ‘And you would tell of it?’ he asked.
I considered the question, but the rain lashing against the window decided the matter for me.
I smiled. ‘Yes, Your Highness,’ I said, whether sarcastically or not I still cannot tell: ‘yes, I would tell of it.’
Chapter Two
If pride comes before a fall, then Ensign Matthew Quinton was truly tempting fate when he stepped out to review his first command, that warm day at the end of May in the year 1658. I was attired in a great plumed hat with an unconscionably vast feather, which the Flanders breeze contrived to blow into my eyes every few seconds or so, somewhat detracting from the martial image I wished to convey. I wore my father’s breastplate, in which he had perished upon Naseby field, and my grandfather’s sword, which he had wielded to almost mythical effect against those who, to my mild embarrassment, were now our allies in the present campaign. The sword’s hilt clanked against the breastplate, despite my best efforts to adjust my baldric so that it did not. With the whole picture completed by knee-length leather boots, I fancied myself the very epitome of the gallant cavalier venturing to the wars. I suspect, though, that what my soldiers thought of me as I approached was very different. A tall, gangling boy, pretending to be a soldier, clanking incongruously as he walked — aye, and that would have been a truer estimation of their new commander than my own.
The sergeant stepped forward and saluted: a tired, perfunctory raising of his hand to the brow of his helmet. ‘Ensign Quinton,’ he said, with appropriate deference. ‘Company ready for inspection, sir.’
I intended to return the salute by nonchalantly raising my hat, but in my nervousness I brought up my arm too briskly and knocked the cursed thing from my head. I stooped down to retrieve it, wiped off the dust that pervaded the entire camp site, and prayed to highest Heaven that I was not blushing. The burning sensation in my cheeks suggested that my prayer went unheeded.
To his credit, Sergeant Aymer Vasey did not laugh; he did not even smile. The same could not be said of some of the lads behind him, whose stifled chuckles were all too apparent. But Vasey was an ancient soldier, a tough old veteran from Durham who had fought in Lord Newcastle’s Whitecoats at Marston Moor and somehow survived the slaughter that day. Men like him were all too few in this, the pathetic remnant that called itself the royal army of England, Scotland and Ireland. Barely two thousand men on a wind-blown slope east of Ypres, many of them, like me, young and untried. Vasey led me past my company of barely sixty pikemen and musketeers: greatly under-strength, as was the case with every company and regiment in our miniature army. But the same was true also of our ally, the Spanish army that lay upon the plain between ourselves and Ypres town, dominated by the twin bulks of its cathedral and cloth-hall: God and mammon conveniently adjacent to each other.
By rights, a company should have been commanded by a captain; especially, surely, a company in a regiment that went by the grandiose name of the King’s Guard. Failing that, they should have been led into battle by a lieutenant. Yet all the poor souls before me had been given was a mere ensign, the youngest and newest in the royal army. In a proper army, indeed, my function would have been to carry the company’s standard; an honourable but menial role, and, given the natural tendency of an enemy to seek out and appropriate their opponent’s co
lours, frequently a high road to a premature and bloody death. But as we had no captain (absconded a week earlier), nor lieutenant (dying of the flux at Bruges), nor indeed a standard, I found myself thrust into a most improper command. Doubly improper, one might say, for this was a company of infantry, and Ensign Matthew Quinton wished for nothing more than to be an officer of cavalry, as his fallen father had been. Thus I felt my boundless optimism in the rightness of our cause and the inevitability of our victory drain away with every step I took.
I stopped before one young man, no older than me but two heads or more shorter. His remarkably round head lacked a left ear.
‘How came you to lose it, Private?’ I demanded, gesturing at the ugly stump which remained.
‘Cut off, sir,’ he grinned.
‘At which fight?’
The man turned right and left to look at his fellows in the line, who were laughing. ‘No fight, sir. The magistrates of Rothwell didn’t take right kindly to what they called my impious blasphemies during divine service.’
‘You suffered, then, for denouncing the manifest heresies of the so-called godly, the enemies of king and church?’
‘They called it denouncing, or long words like that,’ grinned the impudent rogue. ‘I called it taking Jenny Gough’s maidenhead in the vestry.’
The serried lines of Ensign Quinton’s company dissolved into laughter. An older incarnation of myself would have laughed with them, but my eighteen-year-old self was still too consumed with his dignity as the brother and heir of an earl. I looked furiously at Vasey, who merely shrugged.
‘This man’s name, Sergeant?’ I demanded.
‘Mercer, sir. Ned Mercer.’
‘I will remember it,’ I said, endeavouring vainly to regain some authority.
I passed on, scrutinising faces. There were many Ned Mercers in the ranks; that I knew from a reading of our muster books and conversations with my fellow officers since my arrival at the camp barely two days before. Francis, Lord Kilvern — even younger than myself, but a baron and thus entrusted with command of an entire troop of cavalry — had opined but the evening before that too much of the army consisted of runaways from the tender justice of the Lord Protector and his New Model legion of godly magistrates, preachers and killjoys. Those who believed, as we did, that we were upon a divinely-ordained crusade to restore the Lord’s Anointed to the throne of his fathers, were as few as the Spartans at Thermopylae. I commanded perhaps a dozen men who had fought in proper battle, but apart from Vasey, all of those had fought in the army of our present enemy, France, against that of our present ally, Spain. The rest were raw. And within weeks, we would have to fight —