The Battle of All the Ages

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The Battle of All the Ages Page 17

by J. D. Davies


  ‘Come on, Sir Matthew! Fortune favours the bold!’

  With that, Bella let herself drop over the end of the yardarm, clinging to it with her outstretched arms. She dangled there for what seemed an eternity, but could only have been a few seconds as she judged the motion of the outboard ship. Then she planted her feet on the other spar, let go, and fell, all in one motion, wrapping herself around the smaller ship’s yardarm as though embracing a lover.

  I edged along to the end, then repeated her actions. I let myself fall away from the yardarm, keeping a tight grip of it…

  And pain seared through my entire frame. My shoulder, bruised when the Royal Sceptre struck the Galloper during the third day of the battle, erupted in agony. Nearly every instinct in my body screamed at me to let go.

  Thankfully, though, not quite every instinct. I held on, and being taller than Bella, my feet found the lower yardarm without my needing to jump. I fell, gripped the spar for dear life, and rested the aching shoulder.

  ‘Easy, isn’t it?’ said Bella, up ahead of me, standing upright against the mainmast of the smaller ship. ‘Played this game since I could walk. Come on, Sir Matthew.’

  With that, she scuttled off across the yardarm toward the outermost of the three ships. By the time I caught up with her, she was staring upwards.

  ‘Too high, even for me.’

  The third ship was higher out of the water, and the yardarm must have been some eight feet above the one to which we were clinging. Unlike the two we had already negotiated, this one had a footrope; but it also had a cursedly tidy crew, who had wrapped that rope tightly around the spar while the ship was in port.

  I edged my way along to where Bella was.

  Do not look down, Matt Quinton.

  But I did. In the darkness of the night, the deck far below looked like an inviting black carpet, tempting one to move one’s head just a little to lay down on it.

  Do not look down.

  There was but one way for us to get onto the yardarm of the next ship.

  ‘Get behind me,’ I said.

  Nimbly, Bella crawled across my back. I had a sudden, vivid memory of my long-dead twin Henrietta and I playing upside-down pick-a-back in the gardens of Ravensden Abbey when we were children.

  I pushed myself up until I was perched on the spar like a monkey, gripping it tightly with my hands and feet. I judged the movement of the outboard ship, took a deep breath, stood, and at once jumped for the third mainyard. My scabbard slapped against my thigh as my hands gripped the spar. My shoulder protested again, and for a moment I dangled there, like a prisoner of the Inquisition strung up on a dungeon wall. Then I pulled myself up and clung for dear life to the higher yardarm.

  ‘Wish I was that tall,’ said Bella, clambering back to the end of the yard below and stretching out her hand.

  I reached down and pulled her up, then turned, drew my sword, and slashed at the lashings of the footrope. It duly fell into position.

  ‘An easier passage, Mistress Mendez.’

  ‘Easier indeed, Sir Matthew.’

  We hauled ourselves across, around the mainmast, and onto the larboard half of the spar. From this new vantage point, we could see our next objective: the two ships that lay against the wharf on the opposite side of the harbour. Get across them in the same elevated fashion, then we could get back down to the ground, with only a short distance to go to the Turk’s Head and Conibear’s men still looking for us back on the other side. But there was a problem.

  ‘Bigger gap than I thought,’ said Bella. ‘They must have moved the Topsham lugger to a new berth on the last tide.’

  A good twenty feet separated us from the outboard vessel on the other side.

  ‘Perhaps we should have swum for it,’ I said.

  ‘And now he chooses to tell me he can swim,’ she said. ‘Never met a man of breeding who could swim before. But it wouldn’t have done us any good – nowhere back there to get into the water without diving, and the splash would bring them after us in an instant. So what do we do, then, Sir Matthew?’

  I looked around. There was nothing – no way at all of moving forward. All we had was the spar, the rigging, the footrope…

  I smiled.

  ‘Did your great-grandfather tell you anything about what my grandfather was like, Mistress Bella?’

  ‘A great captain, he said, and brave, but the maddest man on earth.’

  ‘Oh, madder than that, if even half the stories are true. Like the story of how he took the Virgen de Guadalupe, a great galleon twice the height of his own ship. There was no way of boarding her, his officers told him. Until my grandfather did this. Off the footrope, Bella, and grip the mainmast.’

  With that, I pulled myself onto the spar alone, drew my sword, reached down, and severed the footrope from its fastening by the mainmast. Then I gripped the loose end, checked I was clear of all standing rigging, and launched myself into space.

  The standing rigging of the vessel dead ahead seemed to fly toward me. I reached out with my right arm, grabbed for the shrouds, and missed. I swung back toward the ship where Bella was.

  A child swinging from a rope tied to an oak-tree branch.

  I felt the old familiar thrill. I braced my knees, struck the oak-trunk – rather, the mainmast – with my feet, and pushed hard. Again I soared above the black waters of the Barbican harbour, reached out for the rigging, and this time caught hold of it.

  I could just make out the slight form of Bella, still standing at the junction of mainmast and yardarm. She had no need to follow me now; she was unlikely to be of concern to Conibear’s men, even if they were still searching the wharves and lanes on the far side of the harbour. But she was beckoning for the rope, and I knew nothing would stop her seeing her self-appointed mission to its end. So I took aim and hurled the erstwhile footrope back toward her. It took three failed attempts, but on the fourth, she caught hold. Bella leaped from the yardarm, swung across the water, and reached out. I caught her and pulled her in.

  ‘Why, Sir Matthew!’ she squealed. ‘And I thought all you men of rank were good-for-nothing sluggards.’

  ‘I am glad to disabuse you, Mistress Mendez! But come, we still have two yardarms to cross –’

  But she climbed down instead, stepped onto the deck of the outboard ship, looked around, then beckoned me to follow her.

  ‘Would it not have been easier just to go across the decks of those on the other side of the harbour, too?’ I said, as I stepped onto the deck.

  ‘Easier for Conibear’s gang, too. And we might have encountered a watch-on-deck who took exception to us and raised the alarm. Besides, Sir Matthew, men usually keep their eyes to the earth, and hardly ever think to look upward. Was that not what saved the King himself, when he hid in the Royal Oak?’

  She was a strange girl, this one, but astute.

  ‘So it did, Bella Mendez. So it did.’

  We went ashore, walked down the side of a warehouse, turned a corner, and there found Francis Gale, Julian Carvell, Ali Reis and Macferran emerging from the Turk’s Head.

  ‘Sir Matthew!’ cried Francis. ‘Praise God, you are alive!’

  ‘That I am, Reverend. All thanks to this gallant girl –’

  I turned, but Bella Mendez was already running off, back into the dark streets of Plymouth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Should thou that had no water past,

  But thick same in the meer a;

  Didst zee the Zea would be agast,

  Vort did zo ztream and rore:

  Zo zalt did taste, thy tongue would think,

  The vire were in the water:

  And ‘tus so wide, no land’s espy’d,

  Look nere so long thereafter.

  From A Devonshire Song

  The next morning, Plymouth was in turmoil once again. I had been there only a very short time, but this was sufficient to establish that turmoil seemed to be the town’s usual condition. The people were excitable and peevish: they made the citizens o
f London seem like masters of serenity and self-control, which was a mightily difficult thing to do. On this particular morning, they were greatly exercised by intelligence coming into the town from west and east at once.

  From the west came news that the hell-hound had been flaunting himself off Looe only the evening before. He had even dared to run in close and loose off a few balls at the town. Then he steered away toward the Rame, the great headland that lay between Looe and Plymouth Sound.

  ‘Aye, and the vast black hound was howling from the quarterdeck before it turned back into Captain Kranz!’ cried a fishwife, authoritatively.

  ‘The shame of it!’ bawled another. ‘The Jupiter lies idle in harbour while this cursed Dutchman parades up and down the Channel, without a care in the world!’

  ‘Damn this Captain Harris, who cares only for his wine and the whore he keeps aboard!’

  This took me aback at first; I had seen no evidence of a whore during my time on the Jupiter. But knowing Beau, and upon reflection, it did not surprise me in the slightest.

  From the east came the London postboy, whose arrival at the Guildhall I witnessed: I was up early to meet with De Gomme at the Citadel, and was passing by on my way to the vast building site. One particularly forward creature – a dissenting preacher, by his look and garb – grabbed eagerly at the letter proferred to him, tore it open, and began to read aloud to the fast-growing audience around him.

  ‘The Dutch fleet rides unchallenged in the mouth of the Thames! They have embarked an army, and look to invade England’s fair shore! At Amsterdam and all through Holland, they light bonfires and beacons to celebrate their great victory over us! They have burned an effigy of the king in the shape of a dog, with the crown upon his head! Aye, and so should we – only why should we be content with an effigy, good people of Plymouth?’

  The mob around him growled in approbation. Several scowled at me, for both in rank and in proximity, I was the nearest thing they had to the king at that moment. Until only a very few years before, I would have berated the idle preaching rogue, or even drawn my sword on him; but the mob around him was large, I was alone, and even for Sir Matthew Quinton, honour no longer always won out over discretion. I took the two letters addressed to me from the postboy and made my way up to the Citadel, where De Gomme and his men were already hard at work.

  ‘Well, Sir Matthew,’ said the royal engineer, ‘shall we resume our tour, and pray that this time it is not interrupted by any more corpses?’

  ‘Gladly, Sir Bernard. But I would crave your indulgence for a few minutes, while I digest my letters from London.’

  De Gomme was obliging, and put at my disposal the hut that served as his temporary headquarters while the garrison commander’s house was being erected.

  I opened Cornelia’s letter first. Her English was as unique as ever, and her garrulousness on some matters was rivalled only by her silence on others. Upon the matter that concerned me most of all, there were but four words: ‘Husbant, I am wel.’ She was more forthcoming about the letters she had received from her father, in the town of Veere in Zeeland, regaling her with news of her twin, who had apparently distinguished himself during the four-day fight. But Cornelia ended ominously:

  ‘My father says all the talk in Veere is of the humbling of the proud English. Admiraal De Ruyter looks to com into the Tames itself and to burn London. I wd rather welkom you home than entertyn him, husbant, so speed you bak to yr Cornelia.’

  This troubled me. In all our years together, and however distant I was from her, Cornelia had never before ended a letter to me with a request to hasten back to her as swiftly as possible. It was unlikely that she seriously believed Michiel De Ruyter and the Dutch Marines would come marching up the Strand; and even if she did, Cornelia was both intrepid and sensible, and would hardly have anything to fear from her own countrymen. So her ostensible reason for seeking my return could only be a pretence. In which case, why was my wife so eager for me to come home?

  Troubled in mind, I turned to the letter from my brother, which was in cipher. I took out our secret code-book, The Legend of Captain Jones (a fantastical tale, albeit one founded upon the no less fantastical life of my grandfather), and slowly translated the words. As ever, the letter from the tenth Earl of Ravensden was a masterpiece of brevity, marked more by what Charles did not say than by what he deigned to report.

  ‘Brother. The King’s ministers deny any wrongdoing, as was to be expected, and despite the most rigorous enquiries by myself and by Musk (you may imagine the nature of his particular rigour, Matt), as yet we have discovered no proof of any. It appears that the said ministers met on the thirteenth day of May to discuss the news of Beaufort’s fleet being at sea, and on its way to England, as was generally believed; but My Lords of Clarendon and Arlington do dispute what was said.’

  No surprise, this: Lord Chancellor Clarendon and secretary of state Arlington heartily detested each other, principally because the latter sought to bring down and supplant the former, and the former knew it. As Musk had presciently foreseen at the end of the battle, each would undoubtedly be seeking a way to blame the other for the calamity that had occurred.

  ‘Some time thereafter, it seems, word was received from your friend Harris that he had seen the French fleet off Lisbon. Arlington also had firm intelligence from Holland that the Dutch fleet was not at sea. So His Grace of Albemarle was strongly in favour of sending His Highness the Prince away to look for Beaufort before he could join with De Ruyter, and the Prince, for his part, was equally keen to go.’ Of course he would be, as I – ‘Then word also came from your man Garrett at Plymouth that he had seen a French army massing at La Rochelle, and that this was intended to invade Ireland. This seems to have convinced the doubters: how could so much intelligence, from different and disinterested quarters, possibly be wrong? Thus it stood, brother, when order was given to divide the fleet, that being upon the twenty-second day of the month. It seems, though, that from that day onward for a week, no intelligence at all was received from Holland, the west wind preventing the sailing of the packet boats. Thus the fact that your fleet got no word of De Ruyter being out was no dark conspiracy of evil men, and no failure by our spies in Holland either; it was simply a consequence of the weather, Matt, and God knows how often that has played a part in the history of our kingdom. When word finally came on the thirtieth that the Dutch had sailed, orders were sent at once to recall Rupert. So in short, brother, I cannot yet see anything that smacks of treason here in London. If there was such, it must lie where you are, with Garrett or with Harris. God be with you, Sir Matthew.’

  I put down my brother’s letter with a heavy heart. If there was no likely scapegoat in London, it could only mean, as Charles had said, that he had to be found here, in Plymouth. So as I toured the Citadel with De Gomme, my mind was very far from the ravelins, demi-bastions and salients over which the engineer enthused.

  * * *

  I returned to the Turk’s Head just before noon. Going in through the door and entering its principal room brought on the strangest feeling: it was as though I was transported four years back in time. Julian Carvell, Macferran and Francis Gale, all veterans of my own time in command of the Jupiter, were carousing with another very familiar face from those memorable days: Thomas Penbaron, the tiny but redoubtable ship’s carpenter, who still held the same position under Beau Harris.

  ‘Mister Penbaron!’ I said.

  ‘Sir Matthew,’ he said in his Cornish brogue; he was a man of Mevagissey, I recalled. ‘I give you belated joy of your knighthood, and of all the honour that has come to you since we served in the Jupiter.’

  ‘I did not know you were still in her, Mister Penbaron. I thought you would have had a bigger ship by this time.’

  Penbaron was the only one of the ship’s warrant officers to survive the bloody battle that the Jupiter fought in the waters off the west of Scotland. As a standing officer who stayed in post whether the ship was in commission or not, he had gone with
her into the Ordinary at Portsmouth, spending a couple of years in the relative idleness of shipkeeping.

  ‘Solicited for many a post when the war began, Sir Matthew, but there were few vacancies in the bigger ships. Expect there’ll be plenty more now, though, after the four-day fight.’

  ‘You can rely on my recommendation. And it is good to see you, man –’

  But the urgency in Penbaron’s eyes told me that this was not a social call to catch up with old shipmates.

  ‘A word with you in private, Sir Matthew, if you will permit it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I raised an eyebrow at Francis Gale, but he shook his head. Whatever the carpenter’s business was, he had not confided in any of the others. I took him aside, to one of the small private rooms at the back of the inn.

  ‘Speak, then, Mister Penbaron.’

  ‘It is a matter most delicate, sir. It concerns –’ The little carpenter averted his eyes, as though he were having second thoughts about the words he had meant to utter.

  ‘Out with it, man!’

  He looked up and fixed me with his rheumy eye.

  ‘Very well, Sir Matthew. Your talk with Captain Harris aboard the Jupiter – well, sir, you remember what the old ship’s like. Any conversation below decks can be overheard easily enough.’

  ‘Especially if men are listening out for it?’

  ‘That’s as maybe, Sir Matthew. But the truth is, what you said to Captain Harris is common knowledge aboard the Jupiter, as is what he said to you. And that is the devil of it, you see.’

  ‘The devil, Penbaron? How so?’

  The carpenter shuffled his feet, and looked away.

  ‘It is a terrible thing to have to do this, Sir Matthew. I like Captain Harris. He’s no seaman, it’s true, but he’s kind to the men, and a fair man, not like –’

 

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