Death's Bright Angel

by Death's Bright Angel (retail) (epub)

  ‘God save the King!’ cried Howard in reply, and the rest of us echoed him.

  ‘Oh, Matt,’ said Holmes, casually, ‘one thing I forgot to say. You can take our Dutch friend van Heemskerck with you. He knows the town and might be of use to you.’

  ‘Does he know it as well as he knew the channels, Sir Robert?’

  He looked at me in feigned astonishment.

  ‘God in Heaven, Matt Quinton, I never thought I’d see the day you turned cynic!’ He leaned toward me, and spoke more quietly. ‘But a word of advice, Matt. Set a few men to be with him at all times. We can’t have the King’s prized defector being captured and hanged as a traitor. And we can’t have him deciding it might be opportune to change his side back again, can we?’

  Holmes strode away to oversee the formation of his little army. I shook my head, and stood stock still. I would have to both shepherd the Dutch turncoat and contend with Philip Howard, an ally of Albemarle, my sworn enemy. But worse, much worse, I was to be the commander responsible for burning the town. I thought of Veere in Zeeland, Cornelia’s birthplace, where we had lived together contentedly before the Restoration. It was much bigger than the village before me, but containing no doubt the same kinds of people. Honest, God-fearing folk, loving parents, children, husbands and wives, all striving to make the best of their lives.

  Lives that I was about to ruin.

  But those were the orders from Sir Robert Holmes, who in turn took his orders from Prince Rupert and the Duke of Albemarle, who in turn took their orders from Charles the Second, by the Grace of God King of England, Scotland and Ireland, for whose throne my father had died, my brother had bled, and I had fought.

  I turned, and began to walk across the beach toward the head of my own troops.

  Chapter Six

  As we approached the town of Brandaris from the east, along the beach, my misgivings increased. The only buildings that lay before us were small, single-floored houses with tall roofs, along with a modest church with a lofty tower, built so high to serve as a seamark. In the distance was the great square tower of the lighthouse that gave the town the name we English preferred for it (the Dutch calling it Westerschelling, which no Englishman can pronounce). There were no warehouses, full of goods from the rich trades, or even the produce of the whaling fleets or fisheries. Instead, there were modest gardens, well-maintained and productive despite the sandy soil, and even a few apple trees. Several small boats were drawn up on the beach below the church. This was no rich port; no great target at all. And there was no sign of any defenders. I thought of the villages I knew in Bedfordshire, on Quinton land, and imagined an invader entering their streets, terrifying the people and putting the houses to the torch.

  Consumed by these thoughts, I had barely noticed that Sir Philip Howard was speaking to me. He was saying something about sending in scouts and starting to burn the nearest houses at once.

  ‘No, Sir Philip,’ I said, ‘we will wait until we reach the western end of the town. With the wind as it is, fires laid there will spread eastward, and do much of our work for us. And it will give the townsfolk more time to save what they can and evacuate into the sand-dunes.’

  To me, this seemed a common-sense stratagem: it was essentially what we had done to the shipping at the Vlie, namely using the wind to expedite our cause. But this was evidently some peculiar heresy in the world of soldiering. Sir Philip Howard seemed dumbstruck; he was evidently a man unaccustomed to being contradicted.

  ‘Time to evacuate? These are enemies, Sir Matthew! Enemies of England!’

  ‘Pensionary de Witt and his cabal are the enemies of England, Sir Philip. Admiral de Ruyter and his ships are the enemies of England. If these people were to put up armed resistance, they would be enemies of England, too. But I don’t see any resistance, Sir Philip, nor any prospect of any.’

  Howard’s face was puce.

  ‘With respect, Sir Matthew,’ he said, impatiently, ‘I have commanded His Grace of Albemarle’s personal guard. I am a captain in the Life Guards. I am a commissioner of the militia for Yorkshire.’

  I trust that I kept a straight face; but inwardly, I was groaning. Even at the age of twenty-six, I had already met far too many Sir Philip Howards.

  ‘I do not doubt your soldierly credentials, Sir Philip. But if memory serves me right, you have never served in a land battle, have you?’

  He blanched at that, then blustered.

  ‘You’re a damn fair few years younger than me, Quinton, so neither have you, by God!’

  Some of the men were looking at us now, and whispering among themselves. Perhaps they hoped for drawn swords, a duel, and one knight of England or the other pouring out their life’s blood into the sand of the Dutch Republic.

  ‘I regret to have to disabuse you, sir,’ I said, not a little proudly, ‘but I was an Ensign in the King’s Guard at the Battle of the Dunes in the year Fifty-Eight, on the right of the Spanish line, engaged against the Ironsides Cromwell sent to join the French army. I was badly wounded in that battle. And I hold a commission as a Major in the Lord Admiral’s Marine Regiment. Thus by right of experience, seniority, and blood spilled in the King’s cause, I rather think I outrank you, Sir Philip.’

  The shock and fury on Howard’s face were unbridled. For a moment, just one brief moment, his right hand moved leftward, toward his sword hilt. But we both knew that I was right, and there was nothing he could do about it. Admittedly, my commission in the Marines had been but a ruse to give me sufficient rank to overawe a gaggle of recalcitrants and plotters at Plymouth earlier in the year; but whatever his personal feelings toward us, the Lord General of England, the Duke of Albemarle, would support the right of a major to command above a captain. And Howard knew it.

  ‘That you do, Sir Matthew,’ he said, bad grace sweating from every pore of his body. ‘Your orders, then?’

  * * *

  We made our way through the empty streets of Brandaris, alert for any sign of resistance. I kept Lauris van Heemskerck within sight, but the Dutch renegade was silent. Was he reflecting on this, the true cost of his apostasy? Was he regretting what he had done? It was impossible to tell.

  At last we reached the western edge of the little town. We could clearly see the cloud of smoke from the burned ships in the Vlie, off to the south-west. Now it was time for Terschelling island to burn, too.

  ‘Captain Willshaw!’ I cried. The eager young tarpaulin in question looked at me intently. ‘Burn the boats and all the tackle along the shore. Sir Philip, you and your company to fire the houses on the edge of the village. Captains Guy and Butler, your men and mine to fan out, firing the buildings on either side of the road, working back toward the east! But make sure to check there are no people hiding in the houses!’

  So we began, groups of five or six men going into each house, setting fires, then moving on to the next.

  There was no resistance; no sign of a living soul. But the houses were full of hastily abandoned goods, including clothes and bedding. The inhabitants must have fled inland in great haste, into the dunes and forest, long before we arrived, so my concern for them seemed to have been unnecessary. I prayed they had done so quickly enough to avoid Holmes, whose attitude to them would be rather less sympathetic than mine.

  Despite the lack of opposition, Van Heemskerck stayed close to me. We were emerging from the church, a plain, whitewashed, Calvinist affair, when a man suddenly stepped out from behind a hay-rick, pointed at the renegade, and shouted ‘Verrader!’

  Traitor.

  The brave fellow was right, but his rightness, and his determination to proclaim it, cost him his life. One of the guards assigned to Van Heemskerck, one of Howard’s men – a mere youth, nervous, unsure of the musket in his hands – took aim and fired, before I could utter a word to prevent it.

  Others were raising their muskets, thinking the man’s sudden appearance might presage a sudden attack.

  ‘Hold your fire!’ I commanded.

  I went over to t
he fellow lying on the ground. Blood was oozing from the hole in his chest, and as I stooped down, he gave up his last breath. Thus I would never know how he was able to identify Lauris van Heemskerck. Perhaps he had served in the Dutch fleet in the previous campaign, or perhaps the traitor’s face adorned cheap broadside pamphlets that had reached even this obscure corner of the United Provinces.

  In any event, he was a young man, perhaps my age, and he was unarmed.

  ‘Unfortunate,’ said Van Heemskerck. ‘But such petty tragedies are the hallmark of war.’

  I stood, angry beyond measure, drew myself to my full height, and towered over the turncoat.

  ‘Petty tragedies, Captain? Not petty for this man’s parents. Nor his wife, nor his children.’

  I glared at him, then at the soldier who had fired the fatal shot. But as I did so, I noticed something else, behind him. A movement at a window in an unburned house.

  ‘Cover up this man’s body,’ I said to the soldiers. ‘Lay it out with decency in the church, so his own people can bury him when they return.’

  The order given, I went into the house.

  It was dark inside: the shutters were closed, apart from the small gap that I had seen to widen for just a moment, and smoke from the burning houses was creeping between the slats. As my eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw simple furnishings, two books on a table, and an old woman, simply dressed in black and a white prayer cap, sitting upon a stool in the corner.

  ‘Come to kill me too, Englishman?’ she asked, in Dutch, seemingly addressing the question to herself rather than to me. ‘Make it quick, then.’

  ‘I have no quarrel with you,’ I said, in the same language.

  She was surprised at that. ‘Not many of your kind speak our tongue,’ she said.

  ‘I speak it well enough to know you are not Frisian.’

  ‘Zeeland,’ she said, ‘but not for many years now.’ Zeeland – where Cornelia hailed from, and where I had lived. ‘Would that I were still there, that I should not have seen this day.’

  ‘Why did you not leave with the others?’

  ‘They care not for me, nor I for them. I have lived here thirty years, yet still they see me as a stranger. So what do I have to live for? Shoot me, as you did Joachim the watchman. Or burn me, here in my house. It will not matter. No one will care.’

  ‘You have no family?’

  ‘None who live, or who care whether I live or die. So do it, Englishman. Take me out of this sinful world, that I may dwell eternally in the company of the Elect.’

  ‘I am not your executioner, lady.’

  ‘No? Were you and yours not so for poor Joachim, then?’

  I had no answer. Instead, I averted my eyes, and looked at the two books on her table. A Bible, naturally. But the other was unfamiliar. I picked it up and studied the frontispiece. The Martyrs’ Mirror, it was called. I knew it, or at least, I thought I had heard of it. Perhaps my uncle Tristram had spoken about it.

  An uneasy thought.

  ‘Lady,’ I said, ‘what sect do you belong to? You and the people of this place?’

  ‘We follow the teachings of Menno of Friesland. Does that mean anything to you, Englishman? Obviously not, for if it did, you would not be doing what you are doing. But perhaps, being English, with a satyr for a king and a sewer for a court, you do not care.’

  I knew two things, and two things only, about the Mennonite sect, one of the countless faiths – or heresies, depending upon one’s point of view – that proliferated across Europe. One was that they were an offshoot of the Baptists, and thus held the unaccountable belief that only adults capable of making a conscious decision to do so could be received into the church. The other was that they utterly rejected war.

  Suddenly, I felt nauseous. The room span, and I had to grip the table for support.

  We were not simply burning a Dutch town. We were destroying a God-fearing community of pacifists.

  The old woman was looking at me with utter contempt.

  ‘God will damn you,’ she said bitterly. ‘He will damn you all. You as a man whose soul is now lost, your England as a realm of the reprobate.’

  * * *

  I became aware of a commotion in the street, and stepped outside to see the familiar form of Sir Robert Holmes striding toward me, his expression thunderous. I barely had time to issue an order to the two men nearest me to take the old Mennonite woman to safety at the edge of the village.

  ‘Fuck and damnation, Matt!’ bellowed Holmes. ‘Why isn’t this town in ashes by now? We need to be off with the tide, man!’

  ‘Sir Robert – I thought it best to –’

  ‘Wait for the wind to do its work? No time for niceties! All companies, spread out through the town! Fire everything, in the shortest order! Don’t check inside – if anyone’s stupid enough to be hiding in some of the houses, let the butterbox fuckwits burn! And loot, lads! Plunder like the Vikings of yore!’

  I could see Philip Howard’s smug face, and the arrogant, disdainful smile on his lips. I went up to Holmes, murmuring so that Albemarle’s stooge would not hear what was said.

  ‘Robin – the people here – they’re Mennonites, man. Pacifists.’

  He looked at me as though I had pissed into his ale.

  ‘Excuse me, Sir Matthew – when, precisely, did a scion of the warrior Quintons become a simpering woman?’ He looked down at his feet, rolling his eyes as he did so, and affected the Irish brogue that he would have spoken in childhood. ‘Am I not on Dutch soil, Robin? Why, yes I am, Robin. Is this not a Dutch town, inhabited by Dutch people, Robin? Why, yes it is, Robin. And are we not at war with the Dutch, Robin? Why, indeed we are, Robin. All the better if the Dutch in question are from some fucking fanatical sect that believes all kinds of shit-headed heretical nonsense. Pacifism? Sweet Jesu, Matt, if man was meant to be peaceful, why the fuck did God give us swords and guns?’

  There was no reasoning with Holmes in this mood. Worse, I knew he was right. Or at least, that the King and Prince Rupert would agree with him, which was very much the same thing.

  So the burning of Brandaris was accelerated, the smoke rising from its blazing buildings to mix with that from the still-smouldering wrecks in the Vlie. The men needed no second bidding to obey the order to loot, thieving wine, beer, meat and clothing. A few lucky would-be Vikings found bags of coin, hastily but inadequately hidden by their owners, but such discoveries prompted several fist-fights in the streets and on the beach.

  I watched it all with a heavy heart, but the worst was yet to come. The men I had detailed to take the old woman to safety returned after an unconscionable time, looking penitent. Had they ravaged her?

  But the men’s story seemed sincere enough. They had got her to the edge of the village and sat her down, but she promptly fell backward into the salt grass and died.

  Fright?

  Delayed shock?

  A simple unwillingness to live any longer in a world that could perpetrate such horrors?

  As we re-embarked into our boats on the beach and pushed off with the ebb, I could think only of the pointless deaths of the watchman and the old Mennonite woman, and of her last words to me.

  God will damn you.

  Chapter Seven

  As the squadron returned to the fleet, every ship rejoiced even more fulsomely than it had done for my capture of the Jeanne d’Arc, the Royal Charles leading the way in firing off a salute that would not have disgraced the King’s birthday. This time, though, as I stood at the quarterdeck rail of the Black Prince with Kit Farrell, I watched the celebration with mixed emotions, for I could not get the old Mennonite woman’s words out of my head. Firing the merchant fleet in the Vlie was one matter: sea-trade was the life blood of the Dutch, and destroying it was a legitimate act of war. As Prince Rupert had said, the loss to the avaricious merchants of Amsterdam might be so great that ‘Sir Robert Holmes, his bonfire’, as it was already being called by the men at the foremast, would bring an end to the war itself. B
ut burning a defenceless town, inhabited by people who would not fight for their homes out of religious principle – that was quite another thing, and where was the honour in it? I wished that Francis Gale was still with me, so that he could either confirm me in my misgivings or assure me that God truly would have wanted us to destroy Brandaris. Or, at least, to assure me that I was not damned as the old Mennonite woman said. But by now Francis would be ashore, perhaps paying his respects to my wife and brother, perhaps returning to the pastoral duties of his parish at Ravensden.

  And there was another thought that came to me. Oh, people will say that it is ever the vanity of the old to claim such prescience – in other words, to claim that they somehow foresaw what was to come. London is full of knowing old sages who claim they knew the South Sea Bubble was going to happen: strange to say, they are always the ones who, by complete chance, had happened to invest in other stock, the fortunes of which they complained about loudly until the very moment that the bubble burst. But I can remember standing there, feeling the deck of the Black Prince sway beneath my feet, watching the smoke from the muzzles of the saluting guns of the flagship, and thinking: will not England’s enemies retaliate for this? Might they not inflict on us an even greater horror? What if they burned Dover, or Yarmouth?