Then he said: If Your Majesty pleases, you may see my Commission.
The King: That ended with my brother’s life.
Kit: If Your Majesty please, you may take my Commission and confer it on somebody you think better of.
King: I would not have you quit my employment, I will not take back your Commission, think better on it. Sleep upon it.
But he would not. Pride surged up in him like hot coals in a volcano. The next day, Kit resigned his Commission. At the same time, he resigned his lieutenancies of Devon and Essex, and he wrote to the University of Cambridge telling them that he was of no more use to them, because he was retiring from Court.
If only he had gone straight to Lyme and arrested Monmouth. If only he had led his militia over into Somersetshire and paid no heed to Lord Sunderland’s prevarications. If only . . . But his chance of glory had gone. He would never be remembered as his father is yet remembered.
How many of us can stop time’s moving finger and point to that exact instant at which our bright future shattered into a dismal past? In Kit’s case, it was when the wet Devonshire logs were sputtering on the hearth after the Mayor of Lyme had been packed off to bed. He knew that he had come to a tide that must be taken at the flood, and deep in his heart he feared to take it. And so he missed the tide. As for me, I had missed it also, even as I had missed it at the Medway fight. I wager there is no man alive who was more nearly present at the two great defences of old England, which is to say absent.
VIII
The Island
‘HE HAS RETIRED from Court and gone into the country’ – the words sound well enough. They speak of rustic tranquillity, of the fragrances of the herb garden on a summer’s evening, the barking of dogs after rabbits in the warren.
But with my master it was not so. All through that dry dusty summer at New Hall he mourned his fate, cursed the King, cursed the Devon militia, cursed his wife and her friends who were conspiring against him to make him change his will in her favour, and especially he cursed me, because I was the nearest at hand.
He slept but little, his nights were broken with bad dreams. He ate little too, nothing but crusts of bread washed down with great draughts of Lambeth ale. He suffered from headaches and often his speech lost coherence and I had to feign understanding of what he said, which inflamed his anger when I mistook him.
Listen you fool, I called for Flier to be saddled, I said nothing of the flies.
But Flier is gone to Newmarket, to run against Brown Betty.
I forgot, I had thought it was next week.
He dressed in rough country clothes who had only the year before been a magnifico in gold lace. He was much jaundiced from the bleedings which Dr Barwick prescribed, though I could not see that they did him any good.
But his prime sickness was Failure, a disease which doctors cannot cure though a loving wife might. But Elizabeth would not come to the country and stayed in Clerkenwell. She had, it seemed, no desire for her husband’s company, nor for mine. I looked back at our couplings in the linen store with wonder, as though it had all been a dream, though in my mind I could still feel her bony body against mine and hear the chaffinch squeak.
There was only one gleam in the clouds that lowered over my master, and that, I feared, was a false gleam and one that might lead us from the Slough of Despond to utter perdition.
The ships are to leave tomorrow, Jem.
Are they so?
Captain Phipps has the command and he has with him Indian divers from the pearl fisheries who have great acquaintance with the art. They have brought diving-bells, Jem, that will trap the air and double the time they may stay below water. Did you ever hear of such a thing?
If only there be something to dive for.
The seaman, John Smith, saw six ingots of silver and one of gold in the hull of the ship. Saw them, Jem, with his own eyes and has sworn it in an affidavit.
And upon this affidavit, you are venturing?
Eight hundred pounds and I shall have a quarter of the treasure. None of the other Gentlemen-Venturers would put in more than a hundred pounds.
Because they have more sense.
You’ll rue your timidity, Jem, you’ll wish you had come in with me.
His yellow eyes, so dull of late, were now ablaze with Spanish gold. He had quite forgot the Algier Rose. Now he was sending two ships, the James and Mary and the Henry, and venturing twice as much money.
You’re wrong, I tell you, you are always wrong. You were wrong about Monmouth at Lyme, and you’re wrong about Captain Phipps.
Well, if I’m always wrong, then I should leave your service.
No, no, it doesn’t signify. I never listen to you. Come, my throat is dry, fetch me some ale. If we’re to live like bachelors, at least we need not be sober.
So we rattled about that great house like peas in a pan, two lost men on retreat from the world.
His wife wrote so mockingly of the folly, of his treasure-hunting – she called it Monck’s moonshine – that even Kit lost heart and tried to sell some part of his share, to Lord Sunderland and, I think, to Lord Dartmouth. But they were all too worldly-wise and, truth to tell, Kit now had a reputation for ill-success which clung to him as a mephitic vapour.
It was six o’clock on a June morning when the courier came knocking at our door and roused the porter who woke Kit who came running into my chamber in his nightshirt and jumped on my bed as wild as a schoolboy on holiday.
They found her, they’re back, we’re rich, they found her. The ship’s so full of gold it ran aground.
Aground?
They floated her again, she’s here anchored in the Downs. We’re rich.
And we were, or rather he was. Captain Phipps and his divers had found the galleon just where the seaman said she was, caught in a moon-shaped reef, her planks all covered with sea-feather and coral, and the bones of her seamen whitening where they lay by their brass cannon and their great chests of plate and coin. Such treasure was never brought up before – or, I fancy since, though many men have wasted their fortunes in the attempt. For three months, they had dived and dived and dived again. They could stay as long as three-quarters of an hour under water in their ingenious diving tubs. Even on a bad day’s work they brought up more than 3,000 dollars.
And who took the lion’s share, more than the King (who had his 10 per cent) and all the worldly-wise gentlemen adventurers? Why, my poor silly master who had not done another thing right since the day he was born. Whatever Lord Rochester and his wits might say, there was a God in Heaven after all.
We made speed to Tilbury where Captain Phipps was to come ashore. There were to be no dirty country clothes for this ceremony. My master put on his embroidered satin shirt that Mr Riley painted him in and his great blue velvet coat with the gold tassels and his full-bottomed wig (though that was dirty, but his tall feathered hat hid it). As he strode along the quay, you would have thought here was a man had never known an unhappy day in his life. Only his little eyes flickered from side to side like an animal that fears some hidden danger.
But there was no danger, only crowds that were cheering, for every man likes to see another bring home treasure so long as it be undeserved, for then he fancies how he too, being undeserving also, might win such a prize in fortune’s lottery.
And what was this? Who was this great lady, so pale yet so radiant, hastening along the quay from her carriage? Why it is Her Grace, hot from Clerkenwell, the first to congratulate her lord on his farsighted daring. Had she not always known that the gallant Captain Phipps would find their galleon for them? For fortune has not only a hundred fathers but a hundred wives and sweethearts also.
But Kit was in no mood to remind her of Monck’s moonshine, for he was gay and nonchalant. He embraced Captain Phipps, a weatherbeaten little nut of a man, as though they were lovers; and skipped aboard the James and Mary to view the treasure like a lamb that has lately learned the use of its legs. He chattered to every fellow and shook him by t
he hand and laughed at nothings.
The hold was so full that when the captain took off the hatches the treasure seemed to burst up on to the deck: the chests of shining dollars creaking and chinking when the seamen took them up that we might see the chests of plate beneath that shimmered like some subterranean paradise.
We were silent, awestruck by the spectacle. None of us had ever seen, oh half the like. Beside it Nan’s jewel box was a plaything for children. Captain Phipps began his recital: the first finding the ship, the waiting for a favourable breeze to bring them on her quarter, that not coming till the Lord’s Day, and they thought it trying God’s Providence to hunt for treasure then, and so on.
But we could scarcely listen, our eyes were so dazzled by the sight.
Kit embraced his wife and she kissed him back. They might have been lovebirds who had never quitted the same branch. She hugged me too and whispered, oh Jem, dear Jem. But it was the Spanish gold she loved, not me. I was no more worthy of a remembered tenderness than is a stallion who has failed to get a mare in foal.
The King came to see the treasure, a tenth of it being his, and the other fearful lords who had backed the venture (though Sir Richard Haddock, who had sold out his £100 share for £90 only a month before the ships came back, could not bear to come).
And the King said: Well, you must go to Jamaica now, for I see you have a nose for gold.
All on a sudden, everyone at court remembered that Kit had been appointed Governor of Jamaica during his year of disgrace, though he had made no preparation to go to the island, and indeed everyone thought the King had thrown him a worthless bauble, for who would wish to settle in an island full of snakes and fevers and pirates?
But now this previous appointment was taken for further proof of my lord’s foresight, and fresh commissions and privileges were rained down upon him. Under a royal patent, Kit was granted ‘all mines of lead and copper and other mines, all earths for the making of saltpetre and all minerals, stones and salts whatsoever, whether they be already opened or discovered or not opened or discovered in all our plantations or colonies in America or colonies of New England, Virginia and all parts northward of our colony of Carolina’.
Furthermore, he was to be Generalissimo of all forces in any of those colonies he might choose to visit. He was to keep Outsiders from engaging in the slave trade and he was to ‘protect all our Roman Catholic Subjects in our island of Jamaica’. Oh and one last thing, he, His Grace the Duke of Albemarle, was to have the monopoly for all sawmills in America for a period of fourteen years, the colonies of New England only excepted, and the patent upon all diving-bells that had been or were yet to be invented for the same period.
Thus he was to be lord of the forests through all the New World, and of the mines that lay beneath them, and of the treasures that lay in the waters round about. Was there ever such a commission given to an Englishman? Even the King of Spain in his days of greatness had scarce conferred such powers on his conquistadores.
That night Kit was foul stinking drunk, and he broke a chair of his father-in-law’s and at the same time broke half a dozen of his father-in-law’s fine Venetian glasses that had been set out for the celebration. He called his wife a barren whore. Then he turned on me.
You shan’t come, no, you bring bad luck. You’re a surly idle fellow and I’ve had enough of you. If you come to Jamaica, I’ll have you hanged.
I do not mean to come.
Oh yes you do, you’re greedy for treasure like the rest of this scurvy, canting crew.
My lord, mercy, Jem has done nothing wrong.
The Duchess was sitting the other side of the table sobbing as the insults rained down upon her. I looked at her with gratitude for her protection. But Kit would have none of it.
He has done nothing right. He is an idle drunken rogue.
Oh Kit, don’t if you love me.
I’ll wager he loves you. I’ve seen his filthy eyes follow you round the room. I’ll wager he’s had you, what’s more. I’ll . . .
Kit, Kit. She cried in distress which was the more piteous because it sounded so innocent.
All at once, he was quiet and meek again.
I don’t know what I was saying, I’ve drunk too much, I’m tired, let’s go to bed. It has been the happiest day we have known, has it not? There will be happy days to come, many happy days.
Thus he stumped off to bed, on the greatest day of his life, and even that he must spoil. I resolved that I would not go to Jamaica, I must make a worthy life for myself and not trot along for ever behind the coat-tails of this mad couple, for they were both of them sick in mind as in body and when they were together they gave each other no comfort but only scratched their sores.
On the morrow, though, he was bright as a sparrow and bustled about the house tossing out orders.
Charts, Jem, didn’t you say you were once a chart-seller? Go buy me some charts of the West Indies, that we may plot our voyage.
Out in the streets, everyone was talking of the Duke of Albemarle, how he had ventured his fortune upon the report of some Biscayan diver – already the tale was somewhat embroidered – or how his father with his dying words had told him the whereabouts of the wreck which he had seen go down with his own eyes when he was on the West Indies squadron (which he never was).
I took my way down Cheapside, for I resolved to visit my old master, Mr Fisher, at his shop on Tower Hill. At the back of my mind, I had a project that I might offer to become his partner and resume my old trade profiting by my association with the great treasure-seeker and being appointed map-maker to the West Indies trade. Dwelling on this pleasant fancy, I had arrived at Tower Hill before I knew it and was about to turn in at the old familiar sign when I saw that it had been freshly painted with . . . no . . . RICHARD M— . . . my own name – MOUNT – swinging from the pole.
Who could this be? What cousin or kinsman had inveigled himself into old Fisher’s favour? I flung open the door in a fever. Out of the gloom, a tall young man, very tall and black, came to greet me. When he came into the light from the windows, the apparition robbed me of my breath. I could not speak.
The young man, aetatis suae twenty-five or thirty, I should say, was me. Everything about him was the image and simulacrum of myself, the long figure, the black hair and swarthy skin like a Spaniard’s, the eagle’s nose a little bent at the knob, the resemblance to the late King, even the voice which seemed to come through the nose but was, I flatter myself, not unmelodious, even the way his head cocked a little to one side as though he were considering a fine painting – all, everything, was me.
There could be but one explanation, though my furious-beating heart could scarce admit it.
You are, you are – I stammered, the proprietor of this shop?
Yes, sir, or rather joint-proprietor (how like the voice was, or as like as I could tell, for who knows what his own voice is like, since it sounds not the same to the speaker as to the harkener and we have no way of recording a voice but on parchment), for Mr Fisher was good enough to take me into partnership two years ago, after I married his daughter Sarah. Our families were old friends and –
Your father was bound apprentice to Mr Fisher once, was he not? His name was Ralph?
Why yes, sir, that is he. But how did you know?
Careful, be careful, I said to myself.
I am a cousin of your father, and thus of yours also. Jeremiah Mount, sir, at your service.
I am pleased to meet you, sir. Alas, my father is dead these ten years past. Not a day goes by without my thinking on him and wondering what he would have done in such and such a case, for he was not only the best of fathers but the wisest of men.
Thinking on him even thus far induced a severe fit of melancholy in the young man and he took out a cambric handkerchief and put it to his nose.
Did you know the shop, sir, in my father’s day?
Ah, a little, that is –
It is much changed. Since we acquired the patent to publish Cap
tain Collins’s marine charts, we have come to engage greatly in that business, although we publish much else besides. We have taken the shop next door to accommodate our stock. Perhaps I might show you some of our choice items?
This was a cruel trick, perhaps the most cruel that fate had yet played me. How often I had wondered if I might one day have a son, never suspecting that all the while I had already sired one. That brief meeting with poor Mary Court had borne more lasting fruit than all my couplings with duchesses. It was my great revenge upon Fluffy Ralph, or so I had thought. Yet in the long run it was he who had had the revenge upon me. For he had brought the boy up to be an unctuous sycophant, the worst type of shopman, so that while his figure was the very image of mine, his character, his soul indeed, was the very image of Ralph’s.
This son-who-was-no-son droned on interminably describing the different qualities of paper they employed and how buckram was now quite out of favour and whether the future lay in binding up charts or in selling single sheets. I might have been jogging along besides Ralph thirty years before while he described the principal manufactures of Kent and the tonnages that were sent out from each of the county’s ports.
And now, sir, I have the honour to show you our very newest work. It is based upon Captain Collins’s latest sounding of Harwich Harbour. The Captain assures me that the pilots of the vicinity had never seen such precise work. But I have not yet told the summit of our fortune, which is that we received gracious permission to dedicate the plate to the Member of Parliament for Harwich who, as I am sure you are fully cognisant, is none other than our lately restored Secretary of the Admiralty, the worthy Mr Samuel Pepys.
No, I cried involuntarily.
Yes indeed, sir, for there is the inscription and there are his arms. And what is more, I had the honour myself to present the chart on behalf of the firm to Mr Secretary in person who professed himself profoundly gratified by the honour and remarked on the quality of workmanship, as well he might, for it is very fair work indeed, though I do say it myself.
Jem (and Sam) Page 32