The Battle of All the Ages

by J. D. Davies

  ‘Not like most of our fellow gentleman captains, you mean? Come, Penbaron. We fought and bled together, remember? You can say anything to me in confidence, and it will go no further.’

  ‘But that’s the very devil of it, Sir Matthew, as I said. It has to go further, you see. It can’t do otherwise. I thought long and hard on whether I should tell you, but I knew that if I did not, one of the other officers or men would tell someone less honourable than yourself. And it’s my duty to tell you. My duty to Cornwall, to England, to the King, to all the poor souls who perished in the four-day fight.’

  I said nothing. The man was plainly in agonies of conscience, wrestling with his very being.

  ‘It was the fleet, you see, Sir Matthew. The fleet that we sighted off Lisbon. I’ve sailed the Iberian and Mediterranean seas for most of my lifetime, sir, as you well know. So I know the difference between a French man-of-war and one of the Don’s.’ Penbaron shook his head. ‘I tried to tell Captain Harris, but he would not listen to me, a mere ship’s carpenter – a dull and lumpen shipwright, as he often says when he thinks I am not within hearing. He could see the French colours, you see. I tried to tell him it was the Spanish, and that they were flying false flags to confuse us. I reckoned it was because they knew us to be allied to the Portuguese, so didn’t want us to betray their position to them. I tried to tell him all of that, but he wouldn’t listen. Why, Sir Matthew, he even said something about a talk you and he once had, where you told him some story of your grandfather.’

  ‘My grandfather –’

  And then I remembered. A drunken night of quaffing Madeira aboard Beau’s command, the Falcon, in Bantry Bay, when I had the Happy Restoration: a few weeks before that unfortunately misnamed ship was wrecked through my error on the rocks in the entrance to Kinsale Harbour, killing nearly all of her crew. I was regaling Beau with one of the many colourful tales of my grandfather, the eighth Earl of Ravensden, the piratical old sea-captain in the late Queen Elizabeth’s time. Apparently he and Drake had been arguing, as they did about nearly everything. In this case, my grandfather was of the opinion that the men-of-war he had sighted in some harbour of the Caribbee were really Spaniards, flying false French colours, and thus prime targets for plundering by that notoriously rapacious old warhorse, the eighth Earl of Ravensden.

  ‘Don’t be a fucking fool, Quinton,’ Drake is meant to have said to him, ‘the English and French fly false colours upon a whim, but the Don thinks it beneath his honour to be so underhand. A Spaniard will only fly his own ensign, no other.’

  My grandfather being the man he was, he ignored Drake’s advice, attacked the ships at anchor, and thus very nearly brought about a war with France. I recalled Beau being greatly amused by the story, and saying he would remember it.

  ‘Captain Harris was so certain in his judgement,’ Penbaron continued, ‘and so excited by what he thought he had seen. And the other officers would not contradict him, for fear that he might refuse to recommend them for promotion, even though they knew as well as I did that all of the ships we could see were Spaniards –’

  The old man’s voice trailed away, as though he was overwhelmed once again by the enormity of the charge he was bringing against his captain. But he had no need to complete his statement. I had heard more than enough.

  Oh, Beau: poor, dear Beau, was as unlikely to be able to distinguish a Spanish ship from a French one as between two peas in a pod. He had convinced himself that the fleet he saw off Lisbon was that of King Louis, and that the news of it which he bore to England was thus of the utmost importance to our kingdom’s wellbeing. To its very survival, indeed. Relying on my secondhand retelling of my grandfather’s anecdote from eighty years before, he had also convinced himself that no Spanish man-of-war would ever be so underhand as to fly French colours. Thus to his mind, the great fleet that he saw off Lisbon, flying the white fleur-de-lis banners of the Bourbons, had to be the French fleet.

  But it was not the French fleet at all.

  It was the Spanish.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Gods then let us imitate,

  Secure from carping Care and Fate;

  Wine, wit and courage both create:

  In Wine Apollo always chose

  His darkest Oracles to disclose;

  ‘Twas wine gave him his ruby nose.

  Anon., A Song of Sack (published 1687)

  ‘The Spanish? Sweet Jesu, Matt, I will dangle for this.’

  Beau and I stood upon the crumbling parapet of Plymouth Castle. Neither the captain’s cabin of the Jupiter nor even the busy Turk’s Head offered the privacy that this conversation demanded, while the Citadel was all noise and bustle. But with a strong westerly blowing and whipping up the waters of the Cattewater, our words were carried offshore at once, with no chance of being overheard.

  ‘It need not come to that, Beau.’

  ‘Of course it will come to it. You know that full well, Sir Matthew. The King is changeable, and will readily sacrifice anything or anybody so that he may sit securely upon his throne. And the Duke of York has never liked me much. With so much at stake, and with so many having died, do you really think that either of them will lift a finger to save me?’

  There was nothing I could say to reassure him.

  ‘I will have to take you to London, Beau. Those were my orders from the King. If there seemed to be a case against you, then I was to take you before him for you to answer to His Majesty in person.’

  ‘Before I am taken to the Tower in chains, and thence to the scaffold. Yes, Matt. That is what you must do, and I do not blame you. But I would ask just one thing.’

  ‘If it is in my power, Beau.’

  ‘My plan against Kranz, the hell-hound, is very nearly ready to come to fruition. Give me time, Matt, and give me your sword. The time is very nearly right to carry out my scheme, and your presence here gives me the means to do it. I’d have needed to approach De Gomme, otherwise, and although he may be a fine engineer, he’s not a man for hand to hand fighting -’

  A slight movement seen out of the corner of my eye – a brief flurry of movement – I drew my sword – the blur of a small figure, running past me…

  Bella Mendez flung herself into Beau’s arms. She was weeping profusely.

  ‘No!’ she cried. ‘No, they will not hang you!’

  Behind her, at the head of the spiral stair up to the wall walk, stood Ali Reis, out of breath, and waving his hands in what I took to be a Moorish gesture of apology.

  ‘Sir Matthew,’ he gasped, ‘a thousand pardons, she was past us in the blink of an eye –’

  I sheathed my sword.

  ‘No matter, Ali Reis. I myself have witnessed the resourcefulness of Mistress Mendez, here. Go below, man, drink some water and recover your breath.’

  The loyal Moor saluted and went back into the castle. I turned to face my friend and his distraught young lover.

  ‘In God’s name, Beau,’ I demanded, ‘how could you take one so young?’

  ‘It was more a case of her taking me,’ said Beau, somewhat abashed. ‘There seems little that Plymouth maidens of any age do not know, or dare not venture.’

  ‘You cannot take him away, Sir Matthew! You cannot let the King kill him!’

  I had no answer for her. Beau stroked her hair tenderly, and kissed her forehead.

  ‘Now, Bella,’ he said, ‘you must not fear for me. And I have done a mighty wrong, there can be no doubt of that. All those thousands of deaths rest upon me.’

  She continued to sob plentifully. The scene touched me beyond measure, but there was nothing I could do. By his own admission, Beau was guilty at best of serious negligence and incompetence; and I had no doubt that some devious prosecuting counsel could easily twist any words of Beau’s in his own defence into proof of high treason.

  Yet even in such a desperate strait, Beau remained steadfast.

  ‘Just a day or two, Matt. That’s all I need to fight this one last battle against Kranz and his allies.�
��

  ‘You envisage such a fight?’

  ‘I do. So are you with me, Matt Quinton?’

  I thought hard upon it. My duty as a loyal subject was to return to London at once, taking Beau with me for his interrogation by the King, and perhaps ultimately for trial and execution. My duty as a sea-captain was to return to my ship as swiftly as I could. My duty as a husband was to establish the condition of my wife.

  But there was my duty as a friend, too.

  ‘If the plan seems sound, and does not delay us for very long, then yes, Beau, I am with you.’

  ‘Good. Then there are things you need to know about the hellhound, but above all about our friend, Conibear. Isn’t that so, Bella?’

  The girl looked up with damp, loving eyes. ‘That’s so, my captain,’ she said.

  ‘She told me of it, you see,’ said Beau. ‘She and her great-grandfather pieced the story together over these last few months. And it’s quite a story, Matt. Above all, the legend of the hell-hound is not what it seems to be.’

  * * *

  The next morning, I marched confidently up the Lambhay hill, Carvell, Macferran and Ali Reis at my back, Francis Gale at my side. The navy storehouses nestled under the cliff upon which stood Plymouth Castle; they looked out toward the east, where the Jupiter still lay alongside the hulk.

  Conibear stood on the slope in front of the storehouses, arms folded. Behind him stood a dozen of his men, all carrying cudgels or knives. Quite a crowd was already gathered round about: the good people of Plymouth had a taste of violence. I spied Bella Mendez, who grinned at me. It took a considerable effort of will on my part not to respond in kind.

  ‘Mister Conibear,’ I said, ‘I would be grateful for an opportunity to inspect the storehouses, yonder.’

  ‘Can’t have that, Sir Matthew. I’m Navy Agent here at Plymouth, appointed by the Lord High Admiral through the recommendation of the Duke of Albemarle himself. My responsibility, and mine alone.’

  ‘Well, Mister Conibear, that may be so. But I think when it comes to a charge of treason, His Grace of Albemarle would be the first to insist on a full and proper enquiry.’

  ‘Treason, Sir Matthew? There is no treason here!’

  ‘That is what you say, Mister Conibear. But others say differently.’

  ‘Who, then? Heale, that old fool? He’s so ancient, even the grave has given up on him! You’ll believe his senile rambling over my word? Besides, a charge of treason requires two witnesses for proof, and you’ll never find a second man to testify against me! Not here – not in Plymouth! And if you want a traitor, look across the water, to that preening, periwigged coxcomb of a captain on the Jupiter – he who brought about the division of the fleet, and the slaughter of so many proud English lads!’

  The mob behind Conibear, and not a few of the onlookers, growled in approbation. Carvell casually unshouldered his musket, followed with equal insouciance by Ali Reis and Macferran, and the crowd fell silent.

  ‘If there is no treason, as you say,’ said Francis, ‘then surely you can have no objection to Sir Matthew inspecting the storehouses.’

  ‘You can choose to do so now,’ I added, ‘or you can choose to do so in an hour’s time, when I have all of Sir Bernard’s garrison from the Citadel at my back. Or you can do so in a day’s time, when I have a warrant from Sir Jonathan Skelton, the Lieutenant-Governor of Plymouth. Or you can do so in a week’s time, when a warrant for your arrest on the charge of high treason has come down from London, and you are conveyed there in chains. But your co-operation now, Mister Conibear, would count strongly in your favour.’

  I could see Conibear struggling with his thoughts. He was a man unaccustomed to being crossed; a man who had lorded it over this, his little private fiefdom, for long years on end. If he had managed to survive the restoration of a monarchy that he hated, he must have reckoned that he could survive anything.

  Finally, he looked me directly in the eyes.

  ‘My pleasure, Sir Matthew,’ without displaying any hint of that emotion. ‘I have nothing to hide.’

  My men shouldered their muskets again, and we went inside.

  * * *

  I had already been inside many naval storehouses, and would go into very many more, but few were as orderly as those of Plymouth. Whatever else Ludovic Conibear might have been, he was clearly a man of method. The spare yards, cables and ropes on which the King’s ships in the west depended were stacked neatly against the walls. Barrels of tar and pitch were kept well apart from those of flour, beer and cheese. Unlike in the great dockyards, though – in, say, the great storehouse in Deptford – where all of these commodities would have been kept in their own rooms, here they were crammed together in a range of low, nondescript buildings. The resulting smell was truly unique. The very remembrance seems to bring it into my nostrils once again, to bring me very nearly to the point of retching as it did all those years ago, in the hot summer of 1666.

  There was one very strange thing about the Lambhay storehouses, though: very strange indeed.

  It was Julian Carvell who articulated the thought.

  ‘Never seen so much wine in one place,’ he said. ‘Not in the warehouses in Jamestown back in old Virginia, not even in London. Every man jack on the King’s Prick could have his fill ten times over.’

  ‘Not just on the Prick, neither – begging pardon, Sir Matthew,’ said Macferran. ‘There’s enough here for an entire squadron, for an entire campaign.’

  ‘Naturally, Sir Matthew,’ said Conibear, a few paces behind us. ‘Remember, Plymouth is almost always the final port of call for the King’s ship heading to the southward, for the Mediterranean or other distant seas.’

  ‘I know that amply well, Mister Conibear,’ I said. ‘My own ships have called here in the past. You would have dealt with my pursers aboard the Wessex and the Seraph.’

  ‘Well, then, Sir Matthew, you’ll know that the victualling allowance prescribes that below the latitude of thirty-nine degrees north, the King’s ships should give men an allocation of a quart of wine instead of their daily eight pints of beer. Thus we have to keep a large store of wine here at Plymouth, to satisfy that demand.’

  ‘Aye,’ growled Carvell, ‘but the victuallers’ wine’s always piss – begging pardon, Sir Matthew.’

  I had seen the English seaman shot at. I had seen him go unpaid for years on end. I had seen him flogged mercilessly by brutish officers. But the single thing most certain to move him to mutiny was bad drink.

  I looked around the storehouses once again. Nothing was out of place; everything that should be there, was there. No doubt Conibear and his men embezzled on an undetectable scale, selling naval stores to merchant ships or local merchants; but that was the hallmark of every man involved in the administration of the navy, and I had even heard the King declare it a just perquisite to compensate for the inadequate wages he was able to pay them. But there was rather more to Conibear’s corruption, and thanks to Beau Harris and Bella Mendez, I knew exactly what form it took.

  ‘Sceptres,’ I said to Carvell, Macferran and Ali Reis, ‘you’ve all served enough time in the King’s Navy, and drunk enough of his wine – excepting yourself, Ali Reis.’ The Mahometan inclined his head in thanks. ‘Look around you. Compare these barrels, here at the front, with all of the others stacked behind them.’

  My men stepped forward and studied the evidence before them with the gravitas of eminent physicians inspecting a particularly interesting corpse. Even Ali Reis, who had never sampled the contents, had helped haul enough barrels of wine over the side of a ship and down into the hold to be something of an authority upon them.

  ‘These here, Sir Matthew,’ said Carvell, ‘these are the victualler’s, all right.’ He scraped his finger along the seepage from one of the barrels, then licked it. He grimaced. ‘And this is the victualler’s wine. No mistaking it.’

  Macferran was in among the barrels further back toward the wall. He, too, had spotted a barrel with a slight leak, and w
as dipping his finger into the wine seeping from it.

  ‘But this isn’t,’ he said, in his rough Highland brogue – this isnae. ‘Try it for yourself, Sir Matthew.’

  I went over to the barrel and tasted the wine.

  ‘This is very good,’ I said. ‘Very good indeed, albeit new, not vintage. Gascon, without doubt.’

  I turned to look at Conibear. He was staring at me, but the confidence had drained from his expression.

  ‘New Gascon wine?’ said Francis Gale. ‘How might that be, Sir Matthew, when we have been at war with France these six months? When not a drop of French wine has come into England – not legally, at any rate?’

  ‘A good question, Reverend Gale. A very good question indeed. Perhaps it’s a question that Mister Conibear would care to answer?’

  My men unshouldered their muskets. I drew my sword. Conibear still had the numbers, but his men knew full well that if they charged us, up to half of them would be dead before the next five minutes were up. And even if the other half reached us, a large number of townspeople were crowded around the outer doors of the storehouses, able to see and hear everything. To witness everything. Bella Mendez stood in the very front of the crowd, and she knew, just as Conibear’s men did, that if they rushed us, that crowd contained more than enough enemies of Ludovic Conibear to ensure that every one of his men would hang.

  First one, then two, then all of Conibear’s men dropped their weapons.

  ‘Now, Mister Conibear,’ I said, ‘we are going to talk, you and I. You are going to tell me about this most excellent wine, and how quite so much of it comes to be in the navy’s storehouse. Is that not so, Mister Conibear?’

  The navy agent of Plymouth stared at the floor, no doubt hoping some magical passageway would open beneath his feet and allow him to escape. But none did.

  * * *

  I stood upon the Hoe, watching the Jupiter put to sea. A captain always feels a special bond to his old ships, and I felt a particularly strong one to the Fifth Rate edging out of the Cattewater under courses alone. The Jupiter was a fine, trim ship, and as she moved into the Sound, I reflected on how little I had known when I first set foot aboard her, and on how much I had learned during my command. Learned at the cost of spilling some of my own blood, it was true; but I had learned that for a sea-officer of the King, those were the best lessons of all.