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The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012)

Page 31

by Davies, J. D


  I did not know then how wrong it is possible for a man to be. That thought struck me those few months ago when I saw this same Edward Russell buried; not in some obscure corner of the churchyard at Woburn, but in Westminster Abbey, replete with all the honours that our land could bestow. As Garter King of Arms recited the titles, my thoughts wandered back to that summer of sixty-five and to the snot-nosed, drink-addled boy who had grown to be the Most Noble Lord Edward, Earl of Orford, Viscount and Baron, Admiral of the Fleet, First Lord of the Admiralty no fewer than three times; the victor of Barfleur and La Hogue, the twin battle that constituted an even greatest victory than Lowestoft, a colossal naval triumph unlikely ever to be surpassed or forgotten; sometime the joint chief minister of England; aye, and one of the ‘immortal seven’, those who signed the letter inviting William of Orange to invade this realm, thus bringing about what some still call ‘the Glorious Revolution’. Or so he liked to believe.

  In the year ninety-two, the exiled King James the Second watched from a clifftop in Normandy as Admiral Edward Russell’s ships destroyed the French invasion transports that were meant to restore him in triumph to his Britannic thrones. Although I was not there, I have thought upon that beautiful irony many times. I have wondered whether, as the French ships burned in the bay of La Hogue, both the king and the admiral thought back to that day in June 1665: to that moment when they stood together upon the quarterdeck of the Royal Charles and a shot took off the heads of the men next to them, rather than their own. The chance of a moment, a stroke of luck, divine predestination, call it what you will – that is what makes history.

  As it was, to the end of his days Edward Russell could spell barely a word, ever kept a bottle close at hand, and always had to bear the embarrassment of his first captain greeting him as ‘Cherry Cheeks’.

  * * *

  There was one call of duty that had to be made before I could return to London and attempt to get to the bottom of the strange conspiracy, if so it truly was, that seemed to exist between my wife, my uncle and Phineas Musk. Once the Merhonour was safely docked at Chatham, I took horse, crossed Rochester Bridge and so rode on to Gravesend and Greenwich. There I dismounted before a goodly house of three stories, making my way up the stairs through a throng of concerned seamen (Will Berkeley at their head), tearful servants and grieving kin to the deathbed of one of England’s fallen heroes.

  ‘Matthew Quinton,’ said Sir John Lawson in a weak voice. ‘I had not expected to see you here.’

  The wound in his knee had turned gangrenous, and the stench in the room was truly dreadful. As I stood before his bed and looked upon the pale, sweating face of the recumbent Yorkshireman, I came to a sudden and discomfiting realisation: I did not have the slightest idea of what I wished to say to him. ‘I – I have come to apologise, Sir John. For ordering my ship out of its rightful place in the line.’

  He fixed me with a quizzical stare. ‘You have come to say that to me? Father of Heaven, you are indeed a curious young man.’ He coughed, then laughed the thin, bitter laugh of the dying. ‘You did the right thing, Quinton. When I saw the prince tack, I thought as you must have done – do I follow him? And when you turned, I thought once again – does that young blade have the right of it?’ An old nurse stepped forward, mopped Sir John’s brow and glowered at me for taxing him, but he waved her away. ‘But you see, Quinton, I served under the generals-at-sea, Blake, Deane, aye, and the Duke of Albemarle as now is. Army men all, and under them, obedience to the command flag was paramount. Initiative was frowned upon – unless they were the ones displaying the initiative. So when you and the prince tacked, my heart told me to go with you. But my head was still filled with the dictums of a dozen years past. No signal from the flagship, so hold your course, John Lawson. And if all had done as I did, we would surely have lost this battle and perhaps this war. So you do not need to apologise to me, Matthew Quinton.’ He coughed long and hard.

  ‘I thank you, Sir John,’ was all I could find to say.

  ‘Aye, well. Nor do I blame you for your part in that business of the twenty captains. After the London blew up, I made some enquiries of my own to discover whether it could have been sabotage, and learned of the rumour at that time. And of a strange, dark creature said to be involved with it in some way. A creature going under the name of Lord Percival.’ Percival? But that was the name Lady Louise had uttered when she and I were alone at Ravensden – ‘Twenty traitorous captains,’ said Lawson through a coughing fit. ‘A monstrous slander against our honour. An unfounded rumour started God knows where – perhaps by this very Percival – to discredit we who had served the Commonwealth, yet somehow it was elevated by the black arts of the king’s ministers into the grandest of conspiracies. So we all fell under suspicion, and we Englishmen nearly defeated ourselves as a result.’ He reached out and pulled me down, close to him, so that the others in the room could not hear. The smell was almost unbearable, yet his words were even heavier upon my heart. ‘I tell you this, Quinton. I have been loyal to England until this, my dying day,’ Lawson whispered. ‘I have been true to Proverbs Three, Verse Three, as have the others. We have all been loyal. But the foulest treacheries are always those that grow closest to home – the betrayal of a cheating wife, or the disdain of an unfeeling child.’ The great admiral coughed, speckling his chin with blood. ‘And there is the irony, is it not? England was not betrayed by us, the old Commonwealths-men. England was betrayed by one of your own kind, Matthew Quinton. Betrayed upon the idle whim of a great lady.’ He coughed again. When he spoke once more, his words were barely audible. ‘That is the truth of your new cavalier England. I am glad to take my leave of it.’

  I left Sir John with a heavy heart, for I knew he had only spoken the truth.

  Will Berkeley took me to one side. ‘I’m grateful to you, Matt. It was good of you to come.’

  ‘You’ll stay with him, Will?’

  ‘To the end. He was a great man – our greatest seaman of all, I think.’ My friend seemed troubled by more than the imminent death of Sir John Lawson, and I asked him the cause. ‘My conduct is condemned, in the streets and already in pamphlets that are about London. In short, my friend – I am denounced as a coward.’

  ‘A coward? But dear God, man, you did what all the rest of us in the Red did!’

  ‘Aye, and there’s the rub. What did all of us in the Red do, Matt – apart from Lawson’s division, that is? Might not those with a mind to censure contemplate the fact that we all lay apart from the battle for hours, and judge that the Red Squadron contained a pack of cowards?’

  I was stunned, and I suspect my face betrayed it. ‘But that was strategy, Will – the duke’s orders, no less! To lie to windward that the Dutch could never weather our fleet, then to deploy where and when we were most needed –’

  ‘All well and good, Matt, but tell that to the roaring boys in the alehouses who think that the only proper conduct for an Englishman in battle is to lay about the enemy furiously and constantly, even if he loses his life along the way.’ Berkeley shook his head sadly. ‘They cannot attack the Duke directly, of course, and although they whisper against Penn, he is too close to the Duke to criticise openly. Lawson, the vice-admiral, was always in the heart of the battle and will die a hero of the nation. So they censure the rear-admiral as a proxy for the apparent inactivity of those greater than myself. Accuse Will Berkeley of cowardice, and by implication you denounce His Royal Highness’ conduct of the battle. And thus, by yet further inference, you censure the entire royal government of England.’ My friend smiled wanly. ‘It is the humour of the times, Matt, and of our English propensity always to tear down those who have risen faster than the common herd think is fitting, for that is how they see my poor dead brother and I. But I think I can bear it better than the loss of the dear friend dying over yonder.’

  We embraced, and I promised I would do all in my power to clear the name of Sir William Berkeley. Thus we parted, and Will returned to the deathbed of the man who had b
een his patron and so nearly his father-in-law.

  I descended the stairs with a heavy heart. Consumed in my own thoughts, I did not pay full attention as I opened the door and stepped out into the street. Thus I collided heavily with the next visitor who had come to pay his last respects to the dying admiral.

  ‘Y – Your Grace,’ I stammered, rapidly bowing my head to the dark young man who stood in the doorway. ‘I am most profoundly sorry –’

  ‘Captain Quinton,’ said the Duke of Monmouth. ‘As well that you steered a truer course during the battle.’

  ‘As you say, Your Grace.’

  ‘I had been hoping to get the chance for a word with you. All men speak highly of your conduct in the battle, and although I usually avoid the common herd, on this occasion I happily concur with its opinion.’ The Duke smiled pleasantly. He was ever an easy man to like, and was very aware of the fact that he could generate such liking in almost anyone he met; a trait which proved ultimately to be his fatal weakness. ‘I will be going directly to court, and to my father. I will be certain to speak to him on your behalf, Captain Quinton.’

  To the best of my knowledge I was still anathema to His Majesty, so the prospect of an intervention on my behalf by Monmouth, the son on whom the king doted, was something to be snatched at with both hands. ‘Your Grace is most kind,’ I said. ‘And if I can ever be of service to your Grace…’

  I left the sentence unfinished, for it was intended as no more than a conventional pleasantry, but Monmouth seized upon it. ‘Yes, perhaps so. One day, perhaps you may indeed be of service to me, Matthew.’

  It is said that words return to haunt us, and I have learned the truth of that saying many times. But never was it more apposite in my life than in the case of that exchange between James, Duke of Monmouth, and myself, on a street in Greenwich in the summer of 1665.

  * * *

  ‘Cornelia!’

  I called out for the twentieth time, but still there was no answer. Our rooms in Hardiman’s Yard were deserted. The conviction that she must have gone to Ravensden Abbey to escape the plague grew upon me; and yet she had left no word, which surely she would have done. Despite the risk, I opened a window to let some air into our stiflingly hot and musty home. Outside, the streets were all but deserted; it seemed that the door of every other house was marked with a red cross. The smell of death, the same as that present in Sir John Lawson’s chamber, was upon the air, and with it a faint whiff of the lime-pits that had been dug in Aldgate and elsewhere to consume the ever-multiplying legion of plague corpses. I had to get out of London before I was infected. I had run enough of a risk by riding brazenly through the streets from London Bridge; isolated aboard the fleet, I had not realised how terrible the contagion had become. Few men were abroad, and those who did risk the streets were muffled against the poisonous air around them. Behind countless doors, I could hear muffled sobs and screams. It was a veritable city of death.

  The court had decamped long ago to the palace of Hampton Court, but finding that to be still too close to the tentacles of plague, it was now removing itself all the way to Salisbury. The navy would be safe as long as it kept at sea, but with the Merhonour too shattered to go anywhere but the dry dock at Chatham and Captain Quinton on leave pending a new command … well, then, to the abbey it would be. Musk had to be there, too: he was certainly not at Ravensden House, which bore suspiciously little sign of recent building work – and if Tris was back at Oxford, as he surely was by now, it would be an easy matter to override my mother’s objections and bring him to the Abbey. There, surely, all matters could finally be resolved.

  I was almost out of the door when I spied the letter, resting on the top of a small chest. It was addressed to me, but was not in any hand I recognised.

  My dear Matthew,

  I trust that you receive this upon your return from sea. I have despatched copies to Chatham and Harwich in the hope that these words reach you before it is too late.

  The plague being so prevalent in London, I have invited your whole family to my estate at Lyndbury, it being more removed from the likely spread of foul air than Ravensden and also more convenient for the court while this tarries at Salisbury. Thus your dear mother and Cornelia are here with me.

  I was astonished. For my mother to have travelled so far was inconceivable; for Cornelia to have done so without sending me word was, if anything still more fantastical. Something about the whole business, about this very letter, was not right.

  It is convenient that we should all be here, Matthew, and that you should join us as quickly as you are able. Poor Charles is here also, and alas, his health deteriorates daily. I fear that the end might not be far off. Thus it would only be fitting for you, the new Earl of Ravensden, to be present to say your farewells to the old.

  I am yours, good-brother, in love and in sadness,

  Louise Ravensden

  I was on the road to the south-west within an hour, my head filled with terrors and anxieties. Thus, at last, the man who might already be Earl of Ravensden set out to confront his destiny.

  Nothing, thou elder brother even to Shade,

  Thou had’st a being ere the world was made,

  And (well-fixed) art alone of ending not afraid…

  The great man’s gratitude to his best friend,

  Kings’ promises, whores’ vows, towards thee they bend,

  Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee ever end.

  ~ John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, Upon Nothing (published 1679)

  It was already the middle of the afternoon when I galloped out of London upon a good steed from my brother’s stable. My road took me past the incomplete shell of Clarendon House, and I reflected briefly upon all that had passed since I was summoned within its walls. At first I was determined to ride through the night, but I knew within an hour that to attempt it would be folly; my foot, which I had foolishly believed to be largely healed, was in agony as every equine movement pushed it hard against the stirrup, and to attempt to change horses at two or three in the morning would have risked bringing upon my head the righteous wrath of some disgruntled ostler, torn unwillingly from his bed. Moreover, Charles might already be dead; if he still lived, he would either survive until after my arrival or not. (The fatalism of my wife’s Calvinist faith was somewhat infectious, and perhaps it had been reinforced by my recent experience of the senseless, random nature of human dying.) Above all, I suspected that I would need all my faculties about me on the following day. Thus as dusk fell, I halted at a mean inn in the shadow of the ruins of Basing House, the mighty palace blasted to pieces by the rebels during the late wars, and there snatched a few troubled hours of sleep.

  I pressed on at dawn upon a new steed hired from the inn’s stable, and reached Lyndbury late in the afternoon. The countess’s deceased second husband, Major-General Gulliver, had evidently been something of a favourite of the Lord Protector, for he had been granted a truly lavish property. The seat for four hundred years of a once-mighty dynasty that had been impoverished and then extinguished by the civil wars, Lyndbury was a lofty castle after the Gothic manner, partly rebuilt with larger windows and more capacious rooms in Queen Elizabeth’s day, but dreadfully shattered when Gulliver’s own men had besieged it. Most of the north side lay in ruins, as was evident to me even as I approached from the east.

  I rode into the cobbled courtyard and dismounted. There were no servants anywhere in sight, but I had the unsettling feeling that several pairs of eyes were fixed upon me. I made my way to the obvious entry into the main building, a grand arched doorway at the top of a sweeping flight of stairs, pushed the door, and found myself at the bottom of a dimly lit stairwell. I ascended. The room on the first floor must have been the great hall of the original castle; it was a cavernous, vaulted chamber, but it was completely empty. Upward, then. Through the half-open door onto the next floor, I glimpsed lush tapestries and the movement of a woman’s skirts. I pushed open the door and entered.

  The tableau b
efore me was astonishing. Cornelia sat opposite the doorway, and although she raised her eyes at sight of me, she did not spring up and embrace me passionately, as was her wont. Instead she appeared dejected, and did not even manage a smile. Off to the right, near the fireplace, sat my mother, who gave the merest nod to acknowledge me. Further right again, beneath a fine Tudor window that looked out over the parkland beyond, sat my brother, Charles, Earl of Ravensden, his head resting upon his hand, looking deathly pale. And beside him, proud and exultant, clad in an extravagant scarlet gown, stood the Countess Louise.

  ‘Matthew!’ she cried. ‘You have made excellent time. Splendid. Now, at last, we can all conclude our business here.’

  ‘Business, My Lady? What business is this?’

  ‘We are prisoners,’ said Cornelia bitterly.

  ‘Oh, guests, Cornelia, not prisoners!’ said the countess, airily. ‘A pleasant family gathering, is it not? Nought but a summer sojourn away from the plague-ridden city. What a thoughtful hostess, to offer such hospitality!’

 

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