I was still thinking such thoughts when we walked through the dockyard gate, and I was assailed at once by a creature I recognised: one of Marker’s men. He handed me an urgent note from my brother, although the handwriting was actually that of Aphra Behn.
Matt, return to Ravensden House at once. A party of men has gone aboard the ship, and shows every sign of remaining there. Our friends, God willing. We strike tomorrow tonight.
Chapter Fifteen
This time, we approached the Milkmaid differently, not relying on the vagaries of Thames watermen. A small hoy, coming downstream from the Custom House wharf, the dark bulk of the Tower to larboard, a few lights still showing in the Dutch potters’ workshops of Horselydown to starboard, the shadow of St Mary Rotherhithe just visible far ahead, where the river bent northward; it was a scene that stretch of the Thames witnessed a hundred times every day and night. Francis Gale stood with me in the forecastle, the choice between remaining in Woolwich to deliver a sermon and joining a dangerous expedition to arrest or kill traitorous mercenaries having taken him the best part of the blinking of an eye. Like the rest of our party, we two were clad in black. A little way away stood Phineas Musk, who had been uncharacteristically silent since joining us. He was eyeing me, but it was too dark for me to judge his expression. Astern of us, Marker and his men. And up on the poop deck, for all the world like the ship’s captain, stood Aphra Behn, dressed in man’s garb.
The hoy struggled to make headway against the warm easterly breeze. Or, at least, that was how it would have seemed to the lookouts on the twenty or so hulls moored together off Saint Katherine’s Dock. The Milkmaid was now in the middle of the pack, others having secured around her since I was last here. If she had a watch-on-deck, or even if one or more of the Horsemen were on deck watching our approach, they would have seen nothing untoward in the hoy seeming to admit defeat at the hands of the wind, securing for the night to the outermost and westernmost vessel in the pack.
What they did not know, of course, was that this ship, a Sunderland collier, had been purchased by the Crown on the previous day. That its master and crew had been replaced by three more of Lord Percival’s men, whose one task was to ensure that no other vessel secured alongside the collier’s free quarter.
The hoy was significantly lower than the collier, unladen and thus riding high in the water. Thus it would have been impossible for any man on the Milkmaid to see me signal to my men to assemble in the waist.
‘Pistols only to be fired on my command,’ I said. ‘Otherwise, we use blades. The Horsemen to be taken alive if possible – the Lady Astraea, here, to call out their names as she sees them. Any other man on that ship is of no consequence, so if you have to kill any of them, don’t hesitate. In the name of the King, may God be with each of you.’
One of the stern windows of the collier opened, and a rope was thrown down to the deck of the hoy. I took hold of it, and began to haul myself up. Two of my brother’s men, part of the watch on the collier, hauled me into what had been the skipper’s cabin, and then did the same for each of our party. Francis, who had been a strong and agile man in his youth, accomplished the ascent with little difficulty; but Musk struggled, nearly losing his grip and falling on two occasions, and was wheezing markedly when he was finally pulled through the window. Mistress Behn, though, climbed the rope like a cat, her male breeches accentuating the curves of her thighs and arse. Get thee behind me, Satan.
Up, onto the deck of the collier, staying low so as to keep out of sight, beneath her wale. She was higher in the water than the next ship inboard of her, a small Danziger with grain for the Hartshorn. And beyond the Danziger, a little higher in the water than she, was the Milkmaid.
I went forward, bending as low as I could. Down onto the beakhead of the collier, each of our party following me, each keeping out of sight beneath the wale. Marker handed me a grappling hook, and I threw it. Dear God, let it not strike metal.
The hook held in the bowsprit shrouds of the Danziger. I swung myself across, then moved silently across to her larboard side, looking up at the wales of the Milkmaid. No sign of any lookout; if Peterson had posted one, he would probably be at the stern, higher up, with a better view. That was the custom of the sea. That was common sense. And, God willing, it would prove the downfall of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Marker followed me into the tangle of cordage in the bows of the Danziger, then Francis Gale, then each of our party in turn.
I breathed deeply, took hold of the grappling hook once again, and secured to the shrouds of the Milkmaid. I offered up a silent prayer, and swung myself across onto the Swedish ship.
* * *
Men talking. Low voices, impossible to make out what they were saying. Perhaps speaking in Dutch. But they were close, very close. In the waist of the ship, probably.
Carefully, slowly, I pulled myself up, and peered over the wale of the Milkmaid. Nine or ten men, one holding a lantern, looking down at a small pile on the deck. A small pile of – what? Round objects. Impossible to see. Too little light. Were the Horsemen among them? But there were only three Horsemen. Were the rest from Peterson’s crew? Goodman’s men? Disaffected and treacherous rogues, perhaps even old New Model Army troopers? If the latter, they would be able to give a good account of themselves in a fight.
The odds were too equal for comfort. More equal than I had expected.
I beckoned for Aphra to come forward. She moved up beside me, so close that I could hear her breathing, could smell her scent. Her arm brushed against mine.
‘The portly one, by the mainmast,’ she whispered, ‘is De Wildt. The one with the eyepatch is Schermer. The one bending down, Goodman.’
I dropped down beneath the cover of the wale once again. I thought quickly. My plan for a silent attack was based on the assumption that there were fewer men than this – perhaps only the three Horsemen – and that they would be below decks, as the French passengers had been. (And were they still aboard? God in Heaven, let us not kill innocent men, especially not the poor, simple watchmaker.)
A new plan of attack, then. The very opposite of my first.
I whispered my orders to Marker, who relayed them back to the other men. As I had requested, Phineas Musk came forward to crouch alongside me, hard up against the bulkhead.
‘The fat man by the mainmast, Musk.’
He raised himself slightly, so that he could peer over the top of the wale. He stooped back down again.
‘Light’s difficult, but the range is easy,’ he said. ‘And he’s a big target.’
I nodded.
‘Very well, Musk. In your own time.’
‘As you say, My Lord.’
Well, then: Phineas Musk had evidently decided which story he believed, and where his loyalties lay.
He took out a flintlock pistol, already cocked and primed. He counted silently to three, then pulled himself up with his left arm, levelled his right, and fired. In that same moment, I sprang over the wale and onto the deck, sword in hand, screaming ‘God save the King!’
De Wildt had fallen back against the mainmast, gripping his chest. Even in the dim light of the one lantern, I could see his life’s blood oozing out over his fingers.
The others were momentarily startled by the blast of the pistol, by my shout, and by the screams of Marker’s men as they sprang onto the upper deck of the Milkmaid. But at least two of them were veterans, who had fought with some of the greatest armies in the history of the world. Goodman already had a pistol levelled at Musk, but one of Marker’s men came between them as he fired. The top of the man’s skull came off, brains and gore splattering Musk, who wiped it all away as if it were a light summer’s sweat.
I wanted Schermer, the Precious Man. One fellow interposed himself, but he was no swordsman. A single thrust, and my rapier’s point sliced through flesh and between ribs.
The intervention had given Schermer time to draw his own sword, and his stance told me at once that he knew how to use it. Expert i
n ordnance he might have been, but few men survived the Thirty Years’ War unless they knew how to wield at least one kind of blade.
He backed toward the foot of the poop deck, turning slightly behind the mainmast to give himself more space. That gave me a moment to glance across. Francis Gale was clashing blades with Goodman, while Marker and his men dealt with the others. Musk was leading two men below to check if anyone else was lurking within the hull. There was no sign of Aphra, who must have obeyed my order to stay concealed, down in the beakhead.
Schermer attacked. Crude but fast. I parried, rocking back and to my left. Weight back onto the right. Counterattack. He defended well. We circled each other.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded, in guttural English. ‘You are no banker from Assen, that much is certain.’
‘I am Sir…’ No. In that time and place, that was not who I was. ‘I am Lord Percival. And you are no Precious Man, Schermer.’
‘Lord Percival? He is a myth of the night. He does not exist.’
‘He exists. You fight him. And he will kill you.’
‘Not this night. This, of all nights. Goodman! With me!’
Schermer suddenly broke his guard and ran to his right, jumping up onto the Milkmaid’s wale, then down onto the deck of the Danziger beneath. Goodman broke off his fight with Francis Gale and did the same. I followed, with Francis a few moments behind me. The two surviving Horsemen turned to face us once again.
Forward. A rapid exchange of steel on steel, Schermer trying to strike for chest, me using my height to sway back, then to counter. To my left, Francis backing Goodman ever closer to the bows, the righteous wrath of God guiding his swordarm.
Schermer attacked again, cutting hard for my left flank. Parry. Counter. Steel on steel. But the Precious Man was also a much older man; and a man with a much shorter reach. He was tiring. He was at a disadvantage, and he knew it.
And then he saw a ghost.
She dropped onto the deck behind me, and Schermer saw her face.
‘Eaffrey?’ he gasped. ‘Eaffrey Johnson?’
I lunged forward, as much weight onto my right foot as I could risk. He made to parry, but, surprised by the sudden appearance of this apparition from his past, realised too late that my attack was a feint. Instead, I went right, past his guard, straight into his chest.
There was a splash. I turned to see Francis standing in the bows of the Danziger, looking down into the dark waters of the Thames. Mene Tekel had jumped.
Aphra and I knelt down over Anton Schermer.
‘Oostelijke wind,’ he said in Dutch. ‘East wind.’
And with that, the Precious Man died.
* * *
Back on the Milkmaid, Marker and his men had the survivors chained below decks. Francis, Musk, Aphra and I stood on the deck, looking down at the pile of round objects that the Horsemen had been inspecting prior to our attack.
‘Fireballs,’ said Francis. ‘Saw enough of them in the Irish wars. Crude. Surely too crude for such experts in fire-raising?’
I thought of what my brother had said of the Horsemen’s potential targets: ‘burning all the trade in the Thames, below London Bridge, might be a different matter – vengeance like for like, as it were. Whitehall Palace, too, could be a target – or the Tower arsenal, come to that’.
There were surely not enough fireballs here to attack the Tower, the stoutest fortress in England. And if they had thought to start a blaze here, on the Milkmaid, they would burn only the twenty or so ships that were moored together off Saint Katherine’s. Hardly an impressive revenge for Holmes’s Bonfire. Hardly a fitting objective for the skills of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But Phineas Musk was staring out toward the west.
‘Look yonder, Sir Matthew,’ he said, for once remembering how to address me with propriety in public.
I followed his eyes. Not far from the north end of London Bridge, behind the familiar outline of Saint Magnus Martyr, somewhere by where Fish Street cut across Thames Street, flames were spitting into the sky.
There was a fire in London.
Chapter Sixteen
The wise will tell you that it began in the bakery of Thomas Farriner in Pudding Lane. The wise will tell you that it was caused by the carelessness of Farriner, or one of his apprentices, in not checking properly that all the fires in all the ovens were properly extinguished. That is what the wise will tell you; and perhaps they are right.
But as Phineas Musk, Francis Gale and I walked-ran, walked-ran, through the streets from the Tower wharf toward the seat of the fire, an hour or so before dawn on that fateful Sunday, I could think only of the dying words of Anton Schermer, the Precious Man.
Oostelijke wind.
Here, just west of the Tower, the narrow lanes that sloped steeply down to the river were lined with warehouses, and the workshops of those engaged in marine trades. Nearly every building was filled to the brim with canvas, pitch, tar, oil, brandy, or some such substance – all of it highly flammable. Even the ordinary houses were old, timber-built, and tinder-dry, after the long drought of the summer. In short, if an attacker spent many months selecting the ideal place in which to begin a fire that would cause as much damage as possible in London, it would be very difficult to settle upon a more perfect location than Pudding Lane. Quite apart from the contents and nature of the buildings, a blaze beginning there accommodated the vagaries of the weather, too. If the wind was westerly, a fire starting in this quarter of London would quickly blow toward the Tower itself, and the kingdom’s principal ordnance store. But in the strong, dry, summer easterly, it would blow to the west instead, toward the heart of the City, toward…
Toward Ravensden House, and Cornelia. I had to get to her. Or else I had to extinguish the fire long before it threatened her. Such was the madness of the moment – the very notion that one man, one man called Matt Quinton, could somehow make a difference!
‘Papists!’ came the shout, very close by, forcing the wilder thoughts out of my mind. An ugly, florid fellow in a dirty shirt was pointing at the three of us. ‘Jesuits! Look at the three of ’em, clad all in black! What else can they be? Firestarters! At ’em, lads!’
A small group of apprentices stood at the street corner, staring at the strengthening flames just to the west. Now they turned to look at us. We had blades, but they outnumbered us nearly four to one. Frightened women were eyeing us suspiciously, and I saw several of them mouthing the word ‘Jesuits’.
The apprentices pulled out cudgels and knives, and began to advance toward us.
‘Agents of the Pope and the Antichrist, boys!’ cried their ringleader. ‘Setting fires to slaughter honest English Protestants! Frenchmen! Papists! Stick ’em, lads! Send ’em to hellfire for their crimes!’
‘Papists?’ cried Francis, stepping forward into the light of the single lantern that illuminated the street. ‘Frenchmen? Jesuits? Here stands the renowned Sir Matthew Quinton, captain of the King’s ship Royal Sceptre. Brother to the Earl of Ravensden – grandson to the famous Earl that sailed with Drake and fought the Spanish Armada! And I am Reverend Gale, his chaplain, ordained in the true Protestant Church of England! God save the King!’
‘God save the King!’
The gang’s response was thin and uncertain, but then, London apprentices were renowned for their lack of love towards monarchs. Also, of course, for their profound lack of intelligence, allied to a propensity for drunken violence.
The fat man who had accused us of Popery slipped out of sight, down an unlit alleyway.
‘Well, lads,’ I shouted over the sound of collapsing walls and screaming women, ‘why do you stand around and look on idly? Every good man should come with us to fight the fire!’
The apprentices stared at me as though I were the man in the moon. They glanced at each other, and down at their feet, but did not move.
‘Cowardly shitheads,’ snarled Phineas Musk, as we strode onward.
We cut down toward the river, working around the seat of
the blaze, which seemed to be strengthening with every moment that passed. Even though several lines of buildings still stood between them and us, we could feel the heat from the flames. Clouds of smoke billowed from alleyways, depositing flakes of flame into the lanes and, worse, onto the roofs of the buildings that lined them. There were great cracks as the timber frame of building after building gave way, and the crashes of entire roofs falling in on themselves.
Aphra had left us as soon as we got ashore. She had not indicated where she was going, but I was glad she was gone. Not only to save me from further discomfort in her presence, but also because this was most certainly not a place for any woman to be.
At Saint Magnus Martyr, we turned north into the steep and narrow Fish Street. Here, all was chaos. Carts laden with furniture, clothes, chests and children blocked the road, their drivers swearing at each other as they tried to make some headway. Those making for London Bridge were blocking the way for those who were trying to work to the north or west. The householders of Fish Street itself were frantically throwing possessions into the streets from doors and the windows of upper floors, not caring if they landed in the sewer that ran across the cobbles. Crowds of people stood around, seemingly just watching events, inadvertently blocking even more of the limited space in the road.
I recognised Sir Thomas Bloodworth, the Lord Mayor, in the midst of a throng of citizens. Men and women were shouting at him, while others were trying to draw his attention to what was happening in the streets just to the east, where fires were now blazing from rooftops. He was raising his hands to try and pacify the mob. As we came nearer, I could hear his words.
‘… under no circumstances will I permit buildings to be pulled down. I, the Lord Mayor of London, give you that assurance.’
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