The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012)

by Davies, J. D

  ‘All those who have served in a ship of war before – raise your hands!’ cried Martin Lanherne, the bullet-headed coxswain of the Merhonour.

  No hands went up.

  ‘All who have served at sea, then, in merchants’ hulls or fishing craft – trows, barges – anything – raise your hands!’

  Again, no hand rose from the throng.

  ‘All right, Lanherne,’ I said, ‘you have flogged it enough, so we may conclude with some certainty that the horse is dead.’ I stepped forward, for despite everything, these men were mine, I was their captain, and they needed to identify and respect the font of authority conveyed by my commission. ‘Men!’ I cried, endeavouring to look and sound formidable. ‘Men of His Majesty’s Ship, the Merhonour! My name is Matthew Quinton, captain of this ship upon this expedition against His Majesty’s dire enemies, the Dutch! You should be proud –’

  A few of the men began to talk to each other in low, quizzical tones.

  ‘Silence!’ cried Lanherne. ‘Silence, there, for Captain Quinton!’

  ‘You should be proud,’ I continued, ‘to serve aboard such a famous ship, a ship that has seen off this land’s most implacable enemies, a ship –’

  The hubbub did not subside; instead, it grew. Lanherne beat some men with his cane, but it made no difference. My heart sank. I had not even got them aboard the ship, and yet already I had a mutiny on my hands. My boatswain was on the verge of tears, looking out impotently over this rabble that he was meant to shape into an honest crew.

  ‘Where did Pett say the draft came from?’ asked Francis Gale.

  ‘Western parts, the last places to send men in. Not Cornwall, that’s for certain – Lanherne would know his own kind – but there were meant to be men from Cumberland and Westmorland, and yet others from Wales.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Francis, ‘Wales. That will explain it, then.’

  ‘Francis?’

  ‘They can’t understand a word you’re saying, Captain. And Cumberland men being able to understand Lanherne’s Cornish lilt? Unlikely, I’d reckon.’

  ‘God’s teeth,’ I groaned, ‘and this is the King of England’s navy?’

  The chatter grew louder, and Lanherne, never usually a man lost for words nor for a means of convincing others of his authority, looked at me in desperation. I had nowhere I could look, other than upon the rabble before me. My prospects of gaining glory in battle, or even of fulfilling my mission to prevent treason in the fleet, were evaporating before my eyes.

  I glimpsed two familiar forms approaching from the direction of Commissioner Pett’s house and the dockyard gate. One was the black Virginian Julian Carvell, the other his bosom friend John Treninnick, the bent, shambling Cornishman who, like my new crewmen, could not speak a word of English. Between them was a stocky young lad of perhaps fourteen, distinguished by the reddest cheeks I ever saw upon a boy. He looked familiar, but I could not quite place him.

  Then the strangest thing occurred. Treninnick suddenly stopped and stood stock still, apparently listening to the chatter from the mob in front of me. His face suddenly broke into the broadest of smiles – a truly terrifying sight, for he was one of the ugliest men I ever knew – and he ran forward, gabbling furiously. Several of the nearest men of the draft grinned, jabbered at him, and embraced him in their arms.

  ‘Lanherne!’ I cried. ‘What in the Lord’s name is happening here?’

  The coxswain smiled. ‘The Welsh, sir! They can understand Treninnick, and he can understand them! The Welsh and Cornish tongues are but two sides of the same coin, after all. I can pick up some of the words, but it’s too fast for me – not for Treninnick, though!’

  I exchanged relieved glances with Francis Gale.

  ‘Then get him to translate, man!’

  Thus Lanherne translated my words into the rudimentary Cornish that he knew, and Treninnick converted them into a more fluent version that was evidently intelligible to the Welsh. It transpired that in turn, several of those from north Wales spoke a dialect not dissimilar to that of the men of Cumberland, and were able to translate to them. The question of who had served in a king’s ship before was asked again, this time in a tongue that the men could understand; now a score of hands were raised. Another two dozen or so had served at sea in some capacity, or else upon the river trade of the Severn. Thus half the draft used the sea, and barely fifty were entirely landsmen; it could have been worse, I reflected, albeit not by very much.

  In one respect, the sudden emergence of a conduit for conveying my words to the Welsh and vice-versa only made matters worse. Treninnick’s enlightenment of the monoglots as to their new status, as crewmen of His Majesty’s ship the Merhonour, exacerbated the resentment that seemed to simmer in the ranks; especially, I noted, among those gathered almost as a phalanx around one short, swarthy creature with a great grey beard, such as had been fashionable at court in the late King James’s time. I sensed at once that this man, whoever he was, might bring us troubles. Treninnick would need to discover more about him and act as my conduit to and from the Welsh, in which case…

  ‘Mister Lanherne!’ I cried. ‘Tell Treninnick to thank them for me, and to tell them that I will be honoured to serve with them. And I think we will need to promote Treninnick to be a petty officer – a quartermaster’s mate, perhaps – so that he may be our interpreter to and from these brave lads!’

  The news of Treninnick’s promotion was cheered by his old and a few of his new shipmates alike, although I suspected that I had just appointed the only officer in the English navy who could not speak a word of its tongue.

  At last, I turned to Julian Carvell and the florid lad beside him. ‘Well, Carvell, what is this that you’ve found?’

  ‘He was lost in the town, sir. Claimed to be seeking the Merhonour, although his way of finding it seemed to involve searching every alehouse in Rochester.’

  I studied the lad: he had a look and a smell of the bottle about him. ‘I’ve met you somewhere, boy. Before you had the cherry cheeks, I think.’

  ‘Rushell,’ slurred the lad. ‘Edward Russell. Lord Bedford’s nephew.’

  A recollection came back to me: Christmas two winters before, and a call of duty upon the Earl of Bedford and his family at Woburn. There had been a sullen, orphaned little brat… ‘Edward Russell,’ I said. ‘I promised to take you to sea with me, when you were old enough.’

  The lad swayed a little. ‘Uncle wrote to the duke. Of York. Got permission. Should have written to you, too.’

  Carvell boxed his head. ‘Should have written to you, too, sir.’

  I sighed. ‘Very well, then, young Cherry Cheeks. Perchance you’ll have your head taken off by a cannon-shot before the month’s out, or else the drink will kill you in much the same space of time. Carvell, get him aboard and get him sober. I suppose we’ll have to find some sort of a decent berth for him. Can’t have the Earl of Bedford’s nephew in a common hammock –’

  At that moment, the dockyard bell began to ring. The men’s breakfast time was long past, and there were still some hours before the bell for dinner, which could mean but one thing. An alarm. As one, Francis and I ran toward the commissioner’s house, on the hill above the yard. Commissioner Pett stood at the centre of a frenzy of activity, despatching men hither and thither. We could see the dockyard gate being closed, turning the walled yard into a fortress.

  ‘Mister Pett!’ I cried. ‘What is the alarm, sir?’

  Peter Pett was a thin-faced, sharp-nosed man with grey bags under his eyes. ‘Spies, Captain Quinton! Spies have been arrested in Rochester! Their accomplices might already be in the dockyard. I have ordered patrols – they might intend to fire the yard.’

  Having witnessed a fire in a royal dockyard not so very long before, I knew all too well how terrible a calamity it could be. Concentrate incalculable amounts of wood, tar, pitch and gunpowder in one place and then ignite it. Old Fawkes would have thought it a very paradise.

  ‘They are Dutch spies, then?’ demanded Fra
ncis.

  ‘Undoubtedly, Reverend, though they pretend to be other.’

  ‘What other?’

  ‘One French and one English. But it’s known that the Dutchman is a devil who employs many disguises – the French are their friends and enough Englishmen still admire their accursed republic.’ This was rich coming from Pett, one of those who had served England’s version of a republic with some distinction. ‘What is more, Captain Quinton, the good men of Rochester are convinced that these are the villains who blew up the London. I fear there will be a lynching before the magistrates have an opportunity to impose order.’

  I relaxed. The Merhonour, safe in midstream, now had ample men aboard to ensure her own security, and Pett’s men ought to be able to secure the yard. What transpired in Rochester was none of my concern, even if it eventually transpired that two innocent men were hanged by a hysterical mob; such things were common enough, for after all, this was England. Thus I made my compliments to Commissioner Pett and intimated that I would return to my ship.

  ‘Very well, Captain Quinton,’ said Pett, ‘guard the Merhonour well, sir – the last ship that my great-great-grandfather built, that she was.’ The Petts were a veritable dynasty upon the Thames and Medway; indeed, this Pett was accused at regular intervals of filling every available dockyard post with his sons, nephews, cousins, uncles and so forth. It was even said that the dockyard cats were Petts.

  As I turned to leave, Pett said, almost to himself, ‘The sheer brazenness of these French, though! The one they have arrested even pretends himself to be a count of France, and yet to have served in our navy –’

  I looked at Francis Gale. He looked at me.

  Within minutes, and overriding Pett’s despairing protests, the great gate of Chatham yard was flung open by the gang of Merhonours who had commandeered it. Through it, on two hastily requisitioned horses, galloped the captain and chaplain of that great ship, riding in fury for the gates of Rochester.

  * * *

  The hanging party was already on the high, ruinous, grey curtain wall of Rochester Castle, securing the noosed ropes to the battlements. The battered ruin of a vast square keep rose to the sky behind them. Beneath, a baying mob of several hundred cried out against the Dutch, the French, the Pope, the King of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor, and – most commonly and most violently of all – against the Earl of Clarendon. Francis and I spurred on our horses, for we now recognised the two men who were just having the nooses put round their necks atop the curtain wall.

  ‘Stop this!’ I cried. ‘In the name of the king, I order you to desist! I am Quinton, captain of the Merhonour, brother to the Earl of Ravensden, and I command you to stop!’

  Even as we rode into the mob, I could see that my words were having no effect.

  The thunder of a pistol going off very close to my right ear made my horse rear in fright, and I had the very devil of a struggle to bring him under control. As I did so, I realised that the pistol had been fired by Francis, who was now riding through the mob, berating them furiously.

  ‘You murdering Kentish whoresons! You apostates! You foul ignorant turd-chewers! May Satan and all his imps drag you down to Hell and boil you in blazing oil for all eternity! I excommunicate you in the name of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and all the bishops assembled in Convocation! You hapless bastards! You beshitten beggars! I call down the wrath of God upon you and all your posterity until the day of judgement!’

  The sight and sound of a clergyman in his cassock, wielding one still-loaded pistol, swearing like a trooper and riding up and down amongst them – thereby, of course, breaking up the tight bonds of the mob, diminishing its collective will – confused and hushed the men and women of Rochester. On the curtain wall, those surrounding the suspected spies looked down, and at each other, and wondered what to do.

  I sensed my moment, and seized it. ‘The French gentleman there,’ I cried, ‘is the most noble lord Roger, Comte d’Andelys, and what he has told you is true – he did indeed serve in our own navy, aye, and as a mere sailmaker’s mate at that!’ That drew some gasps and not a few appreciative nods from the people of that maritime town; they might have been even more appreciative had I explained to them that his presence incognito aboard my ship was not unconnected to a precipitate flight from France, thereby escaping the wrath of the very great man whose wife he had seduced. ‘He saved my life. And on another occasion, so did that other young gentleman yonder. That’s Christopher Farrell, my friends, and at this very time you can find his mother and brother up at the Slaughtered Lamb in Wapping. He’s as loyal an Englishman as any of you. His father fought for this country in the last Dutch war. And yet you seek to hang him as a spy? Shame on you, people of Rochester!’

  The mob was silent now, confused and shame-faced. Those upon the rampart sheepishly withdrew the nooses from the necks of my two friends. Within a quarter-hour, we were safe within the cathedral close, beneath the shadow of England’s second oldest cathedral and making free with the house of a sympathetic prebend. Kit Farrell was restored to good cheer quickly enough, hanging or the prospect of hanging being an everyday hazard of life for any denizen of Wapping; he was soon engaged in a good-humoured conversation with his old shipmate Francis Gale. However, it took a considerable amount of the prebend’s passable Oporto wine to calm the nerves of Roger-Louis de la Gaillard-Herblay, seventeenth Comte d’Andelys.

  ‘English hospitality!’ he cried. ‘Aha, they cry, we have a Frenchman amongst us, ergo he must be a spy, ergo we must hang him! What a country! Mon dieu, why do I have such a liking for it?’

  There had been rather more in the same vein. To divert my old friend, I asked, ‘But what is it that brings you to England, Roger? And to Rochester? You sent no notice of your coming.’

  ‘Did I not? I swear I wrote. But I expect the mail was in a hull arrested by one of your English frigates. Or perhaps I forgot to write after all.’ Greedily, he drank another glass of Oporto. ‘I came with the embassy, Matthew, which rests incognito at Canterbury as we speak. Not as one of the ambassadors, of course, but in their train. I took a fancy to serving at sea this summer. With you, naturellement. The former captain of the Most Christian King’s ship Le Téméraire might be of some use to you in the battle to come, perhaps? So if you are willing, mon ami, I shall sail with you in the capacity of a volunteer.’

  This was truly brazen! ‘A volunteer? King Louis has an alliance with the Dutch, Roger. If this embassy fails, as all men expect it to, then we will almost certainly be at war with France as well as Holland.’ He shrugged. Realisation came to me at last. ‘Damnation, Roger, the good folk of Rochester were right! You are a spy!’

  The Comte d’Andelys creased his lips in a way that only the French can manage. ‘Spy is such an uncouth word, Matthew. And besides, I think King Charles is no fool. Is there not merit in having a French observer or two in your fleet, to report directly to King Louis upon its overwhelming power and thus to convince the Most Christian not to make war upon England at any cost? You should look upon me as a peacemaker, Captain Quinton.’

  The audacity of it all still overwhelmed me, but the logic was not to be denied. King Louis was known to be reluctant to declare war upon his cousin at the behest of a swamp-full of heretical republican shopkeepers, and was seeking any excuse he could to avoid his treaty obligations. By choice, he would have preferred England to make peace with the Dutch; hence the great embassy to which Roger had attached himself. The total victory of one side over the other was most certainly not in the Most Christian King’s interests, as such a victor might prove a potent threat to his own ambitions. But if the war was to continue – and the hearts of king, Parliament and most true Englishmen were then set upon it – Roger’s reasoning that a show of force might give King Louis pause for thought seemed unarguable. Consequently I raised my glass, and the Comte d’Andelys, Kit Farrell and Francis Gale all toasted good success to the voyage of the Merhonour.

  ‘Now, my friends,’ said the comte, ‘I u
nderstand that our ship is not actually likely to sail for some days – not all her stores are in, and there is then the matter of towing her all the way down the river to the Nore – that is so, I think?’ I smiled and nodded: yes, you really are a spy, Roger! ‘That being so, I propose that the captain of the Merhonour and his goodwife accompany me to the formal state reception for the ambassadors of France.’ I bowed, not only for myself but for Cornelia; she had seethed when she learned that my sailing was likely to prevent our attendance at the great event. ‘And, of course,’ said Roger, ‘I would be honoured if the lieutenant of the Merhonour joined us.’

  ‘Giffard?’ I cried. ‘But the man is an oaf –’

  Kit Farrell grinned more broadly than I had ever seen him. ‘Not the first lieutenant, Captain. The second. Your recommendation bore fruit. I have been commissioned!’

  These splendid tidings led to another round of toasting and backslapping, although inwardly, I felt more than a little perplexed. I had no expectation whatsoever of my solicitation on Kit’s behalf bearing fruit; it had been simply a means of getting his name entered upon the Lord High Admiral’s book of candidates for office. A bluff young tarpaulin, recommended by a relatively junior captain, surely had no prospect of gaining a commission at a time when every great man (and woman) of the court was pushing the interests of some worthless relation or protégé. If the young sot Edward Russell had been but three or four years older, there was little doubt that he would have been second lieutenant of the Merhonour or some other ship.

  That question could wait for another day, I decided. In the meantime, there was a somewhat more urgent issue to consider. ‘Well then, Lieutenant Farrell,’ I said to him privately when Roger and Francis turned to converse with each other, ‘it seems I must be your teacher again.’