by Davies, J. D
The Countess Louise was before me now. She was dressed more plainly than I had ever seen her, eschewing jewellery or any colourings. She was not disguised by the scent of expensive perfumes, as she had been whenever else I had met her. She wore only a plain black smock, such as countrywomen wear; one could have taken her for a Quaker.
‘In that case, My Lady,’ I said, ‘I will not detain you…’
She reached out and touched my forearm. ‘Stay a while, Matthew, please!’ Her touch sent a shudder through my body.
‘As Your Ladyship pleases.’
‘Louise, as I have told you before, Matthew.’ She had a way of staring into a man’s eyes for just a moment longer than most people do.
‘As you say, My Lady. You are not in company with my brother, then?’ They were in company precious little these days, as I well knew, and my comment was intended to sting.
‘Charles is unwell. His wounds give him more trouble. Even now, he takes the waters at Bath. And … and he has been distant – the nature of my annuity concerns him…’ A delicate euphemism indeed for the pension paid by France to one of its agents! ‘But I will not inflict my worries upon you, Matthew. When all is said and done, you have lived with the knowledge of Charles’s infirmities for so much longer than I.’ She sighed. ‘Perhaps you will be Earl of Ravensden very soon, and then you will have no need to concern yourself with me any longer.’ She looked at me curiously. ‘Although, of course, there are precedents for a man marrying his brother’s widow. Harry the Eighth, for one.’
This was monstrous. It was unspeakable. The bitch was proposing that I wed her –
‘Not a happy precedent, madam,’ I said, struggling with great difficulty to maintain my temper, my dignity and my honour. ‘And even if my brother were to die, remember that I am married.’
‘As was I, Matthew. Twice, now thrice. Marriages are so … transitory, I find.’ Suddenly and unexpectedly, she broke into a wide grin; I had never seen her smile so. ‘I jest with you, good-brother. I know I should not, on such a serious matter, but the sight of your face – ah, it is a shame that no-one has seen fit to place a mirror in this room, that you could see your expression!’ And with that, she tapped my hand playfully.
I was discomforted beyond measure. I was unused to such subtle and dark humour in a woman: Cornelia was more direct, the women I knew about the court merely laughed reflexively at the jokes of the rakes they sought to bed, while my mother had buried whatever sense of humour she had once possessed alongside the corpse of my father.
Countess Louise stepped past me and looked up at the somewhat fanciful portrait of a man in armour: a long-forgotten Tudor artist’s imagining of what the first Earl of Ravensden might have looked like, a century before that.
‘I am studying the history of the Quintons,’ she said, apparently serious again, ‘the better to pass it on to the son that Charles and I will have.’
Which Charles? And the absence of any child after nearly eighteen months of marriage, despite the best efforts of a monarch notorious for his ability to impregnate women in about as many seconds, made the countess’s sudden interest in genealogy doubly unexpected; suspicious, even, if one had a mind that was thus inclined.
‘You spring from such a great race, Matthew! Such an unbroken record of service to the crown. You must be proud to come from such a line. To have all these’ – she gestured toward the portraits lining the gallery – ‘as your ancestors.’
‘Proud – yes. And ashamed, madam, at the dishonour you have brought to this noble house.’
She shrugged off my jibe, which in truth was entirely unmannerly and peevish on my part; her presence was unsettling me greatly. ‘Is it really dishonour to the House of Quinton to have its line revived by a dash of royal blood?’ No dissembling, then; but she knew full well that I knew of the perverse arrangement between her, my brother and the king.
The countess moved along the south wall, gazing upon the Quinton portraits. ‘Consider our proud English nobility, Matthew,’ she said. ‘How many great lords are truly the sons of footmen or stable boys, brought in to a ladyship’s bed to hatch an heir when the husband’s member would not suffice?’ She had a way of suddenly lifting her head to emphasise a point; it was not unappealing. ‘This matter touches thrones, too. Was not King James said to be the son of Davey Rizzio? Do not many still find it curious that the present King Louis was conceived after his parents’ marriage had been childless for twenty years, and at a time when there was about that court a particularly fetching captain of the guard? Legitimacy in great lineages is a moveable feast, Matthew Quinton. Very moveable indeed.’
‘Perhaps, My Lady. But for these speculations to have any effect in this place, you must bear a child. A task you have not accomplished with any man in nearly twenty years, and which you have thus far failed to accomplish in eighteen months of being serviced by the most virile man on earth.’
For any lady of honour, this would have been an unbearable insult. Surely it was ample to drive any woman into a paroxysm of tears. But the Countess of Ravensden merely narrowed her eyes for a moment, then smiled. ‘Ah, well, Matthew, I know what the court and all of England says about our sovereign lord. Our wits can pun all they like about his mighty sceptre, but I can assure you that His Majesty’s performance is, shall we say … over-rated?’ She walked to the window and looked out over the parterre. ‘Of course, it is possible that by the time he reaches me he is exhausted from his bouts with Barbara Castlemaine – they say the bitch is insatiable. And I am told that he still sleeps with the queen from time to time, for the sake of form and our alliance with Portugal. As is only right and proper.’ She turned suddenly and faced me directly. ‘Why, Matthew Quinton, I do believe you are shocked! Are you not used to hearing women talk thus? Truly, sir, for all your Cavalier pedigree I think you must be a secret Puritan at heart!’
I was profoundly discomforted, both at the directness of her speech and at the growing realisation that I was being toyed with. ‘It is – it is unsuitable, madam. Inappropriate.’
‘Indeed? I’ll wager it is as nothing to the discourse you have with your friends and fellow captains in the tavern. Seamen are not known as monks or shrinking violets, are they, Matthew? And I cannot imagine your beloved and, I may say, refreshingly forthright Cornelia is reticent upon such matters.’
‘You will not mention my wife! You will not –’ I raised my hand to strike her. Rather than flinching, she presented her cheek for the blow, smiling as she did so. I stayed my open hand, closed it into a fist, and brought it back down to my side as my face burned with shame and anger.
‘I apologise, Matthew,’ she said, with apparent sincerity. ‘I have spent too long at court, where the quip and the hurtful jest are praised above decorous conversation.’
‘What is it that you do here, madam?’ I snapped.
She evidently misinterpreted my question; to this day, I do not know if she did so deliberately. ‘I have been studying the papers in your family’s muniments chest,’ she said, ignoring my rather wider meaning. ‘Fascinating, quite fascinating. The letters in French between your grandfather and grandmother – so loving, so gallant! What times they must have had.’ I glanced at the portrait of my dearly remembered grandmother and wondered what she, the grand and eccentric Countess Louise-Marie, would have made of this interloper, her near-namesake.
The current Countess of Ravensden continued her perambulation of the gallery. ‘And yet, so many unanswered questions. Take the fate of this gentleman, for instance.’ She stopped before the portrait of a hard-faced man with a short, pointed brown beard and dressed in the fashion of the old queen’s time: my great-grandfather, Edward, seventh Earl of Ravensden. ‘An inscrutable face. I am glad that you did not inherit it from him, Matthew – your face is an open book.’ She smiled playfully. ‘Such an intriguing man, the seventh earl. There are hints in his letters of a falling out between him and his mother, the formidable Countess Katherine – and what a life hers would ha
ve been! To have been a nun, and to have outlived all her children…’
Katherine had resolved the problems posed by the dissolution of her convent by taking herself to the bed of Harry, fourth Earl of Ravensden, a coarse old soldier who had warred across France and Scotland in the wake of that other Henry, the eighth English king of the name. My great-great-grandmother outlived all three of her sons, who each became earl in turn, and survived until not far short of her ninety-fifth birthday.
‘Katherine seems to have been unconscionably keen for the title to pass to your grandfather,’ said the present Countess of Ravensden. ‘Why should that have been, I wonder? Earl Edward was such a public figure – Walsingham’s rival as the great queen’s spymaster, was he not? I have seen hints that Earl Edward was somehow involved in the entrapment and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. And was there not talk that his own death might have been brought about by poison? Do you know anything of these matters, Matthew?’
Inwardly, I gasped at the breadth and depth of this unsettling woman’s knowledge. These were some of the most closely guarded of our many family secrets, and yet her knowledge of them seemed superior to mine. Troublingly superior. For I had read and re-read the same letters when I was a boy of twelve and thirteen, searching for answers to the mysteries alluded to within them; but lads of that age want the whole story, and are impatient if confronted only by fragments which present a puzzle that cannot be solved. Yet my memories of those fading documents were still vivid in my memory, and I knew full well that they contained no reference at all to the legend that my great-grandfather had been poisoned. It seemed a singularly unlikely matter to have been aired in conversation between the Lady Louise and her sickly husband, my brother: so when and how, precisely, had she learned of this?
‘No, madam,’ I said defensively. ‘I know nothing beyond what the letters contain.’
‘Louise. A pity, that. I have a mind to enquire further into these matters. I must visit Tristram, at Oxford.’ My uncle would welcome such a visitation as warmly as the pestilence, I thought. ‘And when I am next at court, I must ask Arlington if the state papers of that time are extant, so that I might learn more.’ Arlington? Was my good-sister somehow connected to him? The coffee houses were full of talk that the Secretary was in the pay of France, but then, it is the business of those who frequent coffee houses and inns to denounce the patriotism, competence and manliness of every minister of the crown. ‘But there is so much of interest among the more recent documents, too,’ said the Countess Louise. She walked to the little writing desk and picked up a small bundle of stained, fading letters; the muniment room was in a part of the building particularly prone to damp. ‘Equally interesting are the letters from your mother to your father, and vice-versa, in the early years of the late king’s reign. Particularly those from the years twenty-seven and twenty-eight, not long after that king married the present Queen Mother and before the murder of His Grace of Buckingham. How I have enjoyed the account of your parents’ wedding, the King and Duke themselves in attendance! Why, it is so strange to think of your poor, bent mother as a vivacious young girl – and the court must have been so glittering in those days, so carefree without the memories of civil war that haunt all those of our unhappy generation!’ The countess beamed radiantly at me. When she was in this delightful temper, it was easy to see why men fell under her spell – too easy. ‘There are so many other letters. Some from your mother to a young Scottish courtier – a certain Campbell of Glenrannoch. Was he not later a great general during the wars upon the Continent? I think I know the name, my second husband would have spoken of him. Major-General Gulliver was ever eager for reports of the deeds of his own kind. Perhaps you have heard of this Campbell, too?’
‘No, My Lady,’ I lied, praying that my face did not betray me. A vivid memory of a Scottish castle being ripped apart by a vast explosion, and of the man who perished within it – General Colin Campbell of Glenrannoch: a man who had alluded to some secret knowledge that he shared with my mother, at exactly the time of which the countess spoke. That had been not the least of the mysteries revealed to me during my second command, aboard the frigate Jupiter in the waters of Scotland, but it had been the most abiding, for it was the only one that still defied explanation.
‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘I did not expect it. An older generation, after all.’ She looked up at me. ‘It is so difficult to get to the bottom of your Quinton history, Matthew – your brother is strangely lacking in curiosity about his ancestors, I find.’ Despite myself, I nodded; that had ever been a marked difference between Charles and I. ‘But I have talked to the old Barcocks, and one day soon, I must speak to Musk. So often, it is the ancient retainers who have all the knowledge of their betters’ foibles!’
‘I wish you well, My Lady,’ I said. ‘Musk is less forthcoming than most rocks.’
I do not know why I made such a jest. Nor do I know why I was suddenly noticing things about the Countess Louise that I had not noticed before: the delicacy of her hands, the innocent way in which she used them to stroke her hair, the clarity of her skin, the elegance of her movements.
I had to turn my eyes away, to look upon anything other than the alluring creature before me. By chance, the first portrait that my eyes settled upon was that of my father. A poet forced to be a warrior, James Quinton, Earl of Ravensden for one hundred and eighteen days before he perished in glory (and utter futility) on Naseby field, looked down upon me. His face was set in that strangely pained half-smile that I just remembered from my early childhood; an expression that my family said I had inherited from him.
My father’s countenance gave me the strength to turn once more to the Countess. ‘I shall leave you to your enquiries, My Lady,’ I said. ‘I wish you well of them.’
‘Matthew,’ she said urgently, ‘be not so hasty. I would ask you much else of your family’s history. For instance, the muniments contain some mentions of an intriguing character named the Lord Percival, but I can find no other reference to him. There are hints that he was a friend of your brother, but Charles denies knowing any such person. Perhaps you have heard the name?’
Swiftly and truthfully I responded, ‘No, My Lady. The name means nothing to me.’
She studied me closely, as though weighing my answer. This of the mysterious ‘Lord Percival’ seemed to matter much to her. ‘A pity. So many mysteries, Matthew. So few answers.’ She lifted her eyes to meet mine. ‘But must you leave so urgently, good-brother? Surely you should stay one last night here in your home, the home of your ancestors, before you go off to war? One last night beneath this roof, where so many Quinton heirs have been begotten.’
Before my eyes, the gallery seemed to break apart into a thousand jagged pieces. I felt myself sway. I had never felt so much a stranger in my own thoughts; for somewhere within them, in the darkest place of all, was a voice insinuating that for the Quinton heir to be fathered by a Quinton would set all to rights.
Somehow, I know not how, I uttered the words, ‘No, Louise. I must for the road, my wife and my ship.’
I am not entirely certain whether my leave-taking was dignified or not. During the next passage of which I was consciously aware, I was already riding at a gallop for London. By Hatfield my poor horse was all but finished, and I exchanged him for a fresh steed.
I rode into Hardiman’s Yard as the dawn was breaking, the light of the sun glinting upon the glass of every east-facing window. I burst into our bedroom, and as Cornelia awoke, sleepy and surprised, I took her more roughly than I had ever done before.
Our ships are bravely rigged, and manned with seamen stout,
Our soldiers good will spend their blood to bang their foes about:
They long to be a dealing blows, delay doth vex them sore,
With delight, they will fight, when the cannons loud do roar.
~ Anon., England’s Valour, and Holland’s Terrour (1665)
‘Merciful Father in Heaven,’ I said to Francis Gale, ‘have you ever seen suc
h a sorry spectacle?’
We stood upon the wharf at Chatham yard, between the double dry dock and the boat yard. The cacophony of a royal dockyard in wartime surrounded us: above all, shipwrights were hammering timbers into place on the skeletal hull of the Victory in the nearby dry dock, for the huge old ship was being rebuilt at vast expense. The stench of tar, newly forged iron, wet rope and freshly sawn wood lay upon the air. For many used to country living, it would have been a vision of hell; but for Captain Matthew Quinton that day, it was as good a place as any to forget his twin nightmares of a scheming, seductive countess and a battle in which he might have to turn his guns upon friends and fellow Englishmen. I should have known better, even in those days of youthful innocence. A nightmare vanishes with the dawn, but nothing is more certain than that dusk will fall again and the nightmare will return, perhaps bringing its fellows along with it for company.
In front of Francis and I stood a hundred or so creatures who could be described as men only by stretching the bounds of the English tongue. Several were evidently boys; seven had limbs missing; one seemed to be quite blind. A good dozen were clearly well past their fiftieth birthdays, and one appeared to be at least eighty. Some scowled at me, for resentment of their situation and hatred of their chief captor must have boiled within them. Others looked about them in blind terror, and it was clear that they never seen a dockyard before – nor, perhaps, ships, nor even tidewater. Several were praying, though to what deity was unclear. Boatswain Pewsey ran his hands through his white hair and shook his head. My men, the likes of Lanherne, Macferran and Polzeath, walked up and down the ranks, frowning. Within a matter of a few weeks, perhaps even days, we were to face the most formidable opponents upon the oceans of the world, and we were to do so with a crew who would not even qualify as sturdy beggars. Still, it could have been worse, I reflected: the complements of many of the great ships had been made up with soldiers. At least this motley crew before me ought to contain at least a smattering of capable seamen.