He addressed my captor briskly. ‘My prisoner, Cornet Tancred!’
‘Your prisoner, Cornet Wilson? And how might that be?’ Even in the depth of my despair, I realised there was no love lost between these two, the youngster on his way up, the oldster still at the same rank and thus on his way only to oblivion.
‘My troop and I had the colonel’s orders to take him!’
‘Orders which you manifestly failed to execute, Cornet Wilson, by letting him escape at the inn. Much to the colonel’s displeasure.’
‘But I still hold the colonel’s commission for his arrest –’
‘Well now, Cornet Wilson,’ said Tancred icily, ‘the colonel being just a couple of miles south and awaiting our return, why don’t we put the matter to him? And then he can resolve the matter of which of us gets the bounty for taking this reprobate traitor.’
Faced with Tancred’s intransigence, Wilson had no choice but to accept his argument. He fell in at the rear of the party, well away from Tancred at the front, as we began to walk southward upon the foreshore path at something below a marching pace.
An hour or so later I was escorted through the low brick gatehouse of Upnor Castle. The hulk of the Constant Esperance evidently lay in the mud only a little way downstream from this, the lofty artillery fort that guarded the dockyard at Chatham on the opposite bank. The great ships of Cromwell’s navy swung at anchor in the river beyond. The short forced march from the wreck, surrounded by Ironside dragoons and with Cornets Tancred and Wilson both equally intent on keeping hold of their prisoner, had given me ample time to contemplate the misery of my situation. I had failed my brother and my king. Worse, by falling so easily into the clutches of our inveterate enemies I had most certainly dishonoured the name of Quinton. And I still carried the letter to Tristram. I had little doubt that the Protector’s spymaster Thurloe would soon break the code, and then my uncle’s life, as well as my own, was in mortal danger. I did not fear death, only regretted the things I would not live to experience. I would not now see the king’s restoration to his throne, if such would ever happen; for I think it was during that march toward the grim ramparts of Upnor Castle, escorted by a file of hard-faced fanatic soldiers, that I first doubted whether the iron rule of Cromwell’s republic would ever end. Perhaps worse, I would not now know love. I thought of the cheerful girl upon the quayside at Nieuwpoort, the embodiment of every woman that Matthew Quinton would now never embrace.
Tancred and Wilson dismounted in the small courtyard of the castle and disappeared into the interior, no doubt to present their individual cases to their colonel. Roughly jostled by a dragoon, I was led down into a cellar of the castle and pushed bodily into a dark, stinking space. The iron-grilled door slammed shut behind me, and a key turned in a heavy lock. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I became aware of a man’s shape in the corner, studying me intently.
‘Well, young Matthew,’ said Tom Clarabut, his voice breaking, ‘I gave my freedom for you, and my life too, and you could not even manage to make a decent flight. Now, my friend, even I might be prepared to consider that a sin.’
As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw that Tom’s face was horribly disfigured. He had been severely beaten, that much was clear. I looked upon him with a mixture of both horror and abject apology.
‘Great God, Tom,’ I whispered, ‘what have they done – what have I done to you?’
He could barely open his swollen, blackened eyes to look upon me. ‘Not your fault. This is but the example they make of deserters, that others will be less tempted to run. And this is a token of their hate and fear and Ranters, too. So give them someone who is at once a deserter and a Ranter, Matthew, and they prove doubly vicious.’
‘Then what will become of you, Tom?’
He essayed a laugh, but it came out as a hacking cough, spluttered through broken teeth. ‘Why, I will have a trial before judge and jury, who will recognise my manifest innocence and send me on my way!’
I sat down alongside him upon the cold, damp stone floor. ‘As they will with me,’ I said with gloomy humour.
‘You even more so. What is more certain than that a captured cavalier spy will be freed, to the universal acclaim of the crowd?’
I contemplated the prospect of hanging, and did not find it a pleasant one. I had seen many men hanged in Bedford, or upon the Ravensden gibbet. I recalled the obscene sound of the snapping of the neck, the desperate twitching of the dangling body, and shuddered at the thought that such would soon be my fate.
‘Are you ready to die, Tom?’ I whispered.
‘I would have rather died at ninety in the act of deflowering a virgin,’ he said, ‘but truly I think my fate will not be so bad. They shoot deserters – a fast death. If I lived but another year, who is to say I would not succumb to plague, or sweating sickness, or the marsh fever? If I lived another fifty, might I not end senile and forgotten, another ancient corpse in the gutter? And I have had such a life, Matt!’ He smiled fondly. ‘There was a girl at Cambridge, with her arse in the air she could –’
A guard approached, his key already extended to unlock the grilled door. But for which of us did he come?
The door swung open. The guard looked from Tom to me and back again. Then he reached forward, grabbed my elbow and pulled me out of the dungeon.
‘God be with you, Tom Clarabut,’ I cried.
‘And with you, my friend,’ Tom said, ‘for I will meet Him soon enough. You will have greater need of Him, I fear. You will need Him now, for what awaits you.’
Chapter Six
I was manhandled up a flight of steps, then up the spiral staircase of one of the round drum towers that I had seen at each corner of the castle. I was pushed bodily into a room on the first floor: a dank, dimly lit place, with the stink of the Medway coming in through the solitary window. The room contained three men: two musketeers flanking a third, seated upon a stool behind a table. Evidently a senior officer, attired in buff jacket, baldric and sword, he looked me up and down impassively.
‘So Charles Stuart now employs boys as his spies,’ he said in a surprisingly soft tone, his cadences those of the eastern parts of London.
For his part, he must have been a man of at least fifty years. A veteran, then; perhaps one of those who had taken up arms against the king at the very beginning of our nation’s wars. A man unlikely to be taken in by subterfuge, but such had to be attempted –
‘If you please, captain, sir, I am but an honest seaman of Lynn, Phineas Musk by name –’
‘It is Colonel, traitor,’ said my adversary with the heavy emphasis of a man who had spent many years working his way to that rank. ‘Amos Wyeth, Colonel by the will of God and the commission of His Highness the Lord Protector. And you, boy, are no seaman. You are no Phineas Musk, whatever rogue’s name that might be.’
So this was the colonel of whom Cornets Tancred and Wilson had spoken. I should have seen the signs and kept my peace, but I had upon me all the bravado of youth. Was I not true to the cause of God and the King, and would not the righteous always prevail in such a cause? Lightheaded from lack of food and sleep, yet strangely euphoric in my predicament, I even envisioned an angel or two rending the heavens and carrying me out of this earthly prison.
‘Forgive me, your excellency,’ I said in as fawning a tone as I could manage, ‘you are mistaken, I am but an innocent tarpaulin, seeking my way back to my craft –’
‘I say otherwise,’ said Colonel Wyeth, scowling. ‘I name you as Matthew Quinton, brother to that known and sequestred malignant the Earl of Ravensden.’ But how could he know? – ‘Son to the former holder of that title, who justly fell when traitorously in arms against the righteous cause of Parliament.’
An older man than I might have been able to remain silent in response to such a goad. A braver man, or a wiser one, might even have attempted to maintain the pretence of his disguise. But then, in my eighteenth year, I was none of those things. The shock of being identified by my tr
ue name, along with such vile denigration of my brother and venerated father, brought blood to my eyes and fire to my brain. I roared an obscenity and hurled myself bodily at Wyeth, but even before I could reach the table, his attendant musketeer stepped forward and swung the butt of his weapon into my midriff. The breath exploded from me, and pain shrieked through every nerve and muscle long before I fell back onto the floor. I lay there in agony, grasping my stomach and groaning.
Wyeth stood. Slowly and deliberately, he walked around the side of the table, then circled me twice or thrice. Through my pain, I heard snatches of his relentless monologue –
‘You, Matthew Quinton, and all your kind, are but grievous revolters, walking with slanders, as the prophet Jeremiah sayeth! You are corrupt! Reprobate! You deny the righteous judgement of God upon that false idolatry of kingship – the verdict revealed against Charles Stuart, that man of blood, upon the battlefield and upon the scaffold! But look at you now, you leech who values your blood and name! You, who revels in a lineage that has enslaved honest folk for centuries! You, the son of an earl, prostrate before me, Amos Wyeth, the son of a thatcher! The world is truly turned upside down, is it not, Matthew Quinton?’
At some point he must have gestured to one of his attendants, who suddenly reached down and tore the jerkin from my back. I looked up through my tears, and saw the musketeer hand the precious letter to Wyeth.
It was done. I had failed, utterly and pathetically. There was nothing for it now but to end my miserable life –
‘Humphrey Tennant, Esquire, at Lincoln’s Inn,’ said Wyeth, reading the superscription. ‘An alias, that I do not doubt.’ He broke the wax seal, unfolded the letter and studied the text. ‘A cipher, or invisible ink between the lines, or whatever devilish device you malignants have chosen to employ. Master Thurloe’s godly intelligencers will expose your deceits swiftly enough, and lead us to whichever traitor this letter is truly designed for.’
Wyeth’s guards reached down abruptly and pulled me to my feet. I was nearly bent double with pain, but I determined still to face down my opponent.
‘But you, Matthew Quinton,’ said Wyeth contemplatively, ‘what am I to do with you? Upnor is not the Tower of London – we have no instruments of persuasion here, nor any skilled in such arts.’ He looked at me determinedly. ‘Thus we are forced to be more – direct, shall I say?’
He nodded to his men, who dragged me to the small barred window. Even in my dire condition, I was impressed by the sight that opened before me. The river was filled with the great ships of England, moored in a long line, a few hundred yards apart from each other. The mighty hulls had no masts, but even so, they seemed full of power and menace. Upstream was a vast conglomeration of buildings, cranes and what seemed to be the ribs of great beasts, with other ships visible in docks or alongside its wharves. That could only be the dockyard at Chatham –
A guard roughly laid his hand upon my head and forced me to look down. Beneath the window, between the main wall of the castle and the river, was a small platform which housed four cannon. Now it evidently had another purpose. Tom Clarabut walked out and stood before the wall at the river’s edge, his hands tied behind his back, bruised and bloodied but looking as though he had not a care in the world. Behind him came Cornet Tancred and a file of four musketeers.
‘Observe, Matthew Quinton,’ said Wyeth, standing close behind me. ‘Here is the Protector’s justice for those who deny his will. And this man’s crime is minor – desertion. Imagine what fate awaits you, a traitor against the Commonwealth.’
I watched in stupefaction as the scene unfolded before me. The musketeers drew up directly beneath my window, only just visible to my sight. Tancred stepped forward and offered Tom a blindfold, which he refused with a laugh. At that, he looked up and saw my face at the window. He nodded, smiled, and began to sing, softly at first.
‘Gather ye rose-buds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying...’
Tancred barked his commands: ‘Take up your match! Handle your musket! Order your musket!’ Still Tom sang on, his voice getting ever louder.
‘And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.’
‘Open your pan! Clear your pan! Prime your pan!’
And there was Wyeth at my side, insistent and relentless: ‘Behold, the righteous judgement of God upon the enemies of His cause —’
‘The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting —’
‘Open your charge! Charge with powder!’
‘— The sooner will race be run
And nearer he's to setting!’
‘Thus doth the Lord condemn those who renounce the blessed peace of his munificent Commonwealth —’
‘That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer —’
‘Port your musket! Draw forth your match!’
‘Thus perish all who deny the Protector —’
‘But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former!’
‘Open your pan! Present!’
‘Then be not —’
‘Give fire!’
Four muskets flashed and roared. Flocks of birds upon the Medway mudflats took flight in fear. And I saw Tom Clarabut’s chest ripped open by two balls, his cheek by a third. His blood painted the wall behind him. His body fell, still convulsing, his feet still kicking. Tancred stepped up without concern, levelled his pistol at Tom’s temple, and blew out his brains, which stained the clay of the gun platform.
‘A speedy death,’ said Wyeth, whispering in my ear. ‘That will not be your fate, Matthew Quinton, I assure you of that.’
He nodded me to his guards, who bundled me back down the stairs, down to the cell. They flung me in, and locked the door behind me. I was alone, and as I wept, I prayed at last to God that he might not be too hard upon the soul of Tom Clarabut, who had not believed in sin.
* * *
Three days. I had no window from which to judge the fading of day into night, but the cell became damper as the tide flooded, dryer as it ebbed. Thus I knew I was alone for three days: alone but for the slop bucket and the one meal, gristle, stale bread, staler water, that was thrust through a grill in the door each day. Thus I had ample time to contemplate the fate of poor Tom and my dire condition. At first I knew nought but despair. The letter was lost, and both Tristram and its mysterious final recipient would be betrayed. The great battle in Flanders – perhaps the only chance of action and glory I might ever have in my life – could already be over, my friends might live or not, and I had not stood alongside them. Instead, my fate would be – what? What could be worse than that which had befallen Tom? Whatever it might be, it would not be sufficient punishment for such a miserable, pathetic failure as myself.
Hours passed in this way. I castigated myself, drove myself down to the deepest pits of despair. There I found the endless tears of the little boy, the child Matthew that still hid within me, and as he sobbed feebly in a corner of the cell, his thoughts turned, as a child’s always do, to the fanciful. There had to be a way out. Was I not Matthew Quinton, descendant of countless resourceful knights back to the Conquest? Had I not learned the legends of Arthur’s Round Table at my uncle’s knee? Neither my grandfather nor a Grail Knight would have given way to such girlish weakness. So I searched every inch of the damp walls of the cell, seeking the loose stone that would give me a passage to freedom. There was none, of course; such things exist only in the stories of the worst playwrights. Yet I searched again, and again, before I gave way once more to tearful despair.
But as time passed, a rather more manly mood came upon me. Wyeth had not returned for me. If I was so important a prisoner, why was he doing nothing? The more I thought upon it, the more the answer became obvious; indeed, he had told it to me, in so many words. The letter, and my fate, were above his competence. Thus he must have sent the one to Whitehall, along with a request
for orders as to the other. Upnor to Whitehall, a delay while busy men – or perhaps, just one busy man, the Lord Protector himself – contemplated what to do, then the time needed for a reply to come from Whitehall to Upnor –
Of course. In one sense, Wyeth was just as much a prisoner as I. He could take no action against me, indulge in no significant brutality against my person, in case such might prove displeasing to his masters. He had to ensure that I remained alive to await the return of Cromwell’s order: hence the one, grudging, daily meal.
That revelation calmed my spirit. Whatever was to happen to Matt Quinton, it would not be entombment alive in the bowels of Upnor Castle. The only thing to do was to wait. Placated by that thought, I settled down and made the best of my time. I regaled a curious rat with the stories of King Harry the Fifth and the fight against the Spanish Armada. I thought much upon women, and vowed that if I escaped this dire extremity with my life, I would seek one out and make her my wife before the year’s end. This was a strange turn for me: since I was eleven or twelve, my mother had insisted that it was my duty to the noble house of Quinton to marry as early as possible and then sire a succession of heirs. I grew up resenting the imperative, at least until those more recent times when I finally began to understand why it was improbable that my brother the earl would ever take the same course himself; reasons that were not solely related to the serious wounds he had sustained at the Worcester fight. But there, in the dark, dank cellars of Upnor Castle, I finally came to understand that my duty as my mother perceived it accorded very well with my own instincts. The one difficulty, alas, was that I was in the thrall of my family’s deadliest enemy, and was thus exceedingly unlikely to live long enough to achieve the aims of marriage and fatherhood.
I was in the midst of a speculation on the ideal number of sons for a man to have when the door of the cell opened. There stood Cornet Tancred. My heart raced, and all thoughts of family or future evaporated. But he merely gestured for me to precede him along the dimly lit corridor, then up the steps, beyond which I could see daylight – blessed, blessed daylight! – and the castle yard, in which stood a troop of cavalry with one spare steed -
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