by J. D. Davies
'Matt Quinton! Pepys! At last. Now for the serious business of the day, by God!' A functionary ran up, bowed, and informed the King that the horses and riders were ready for the next race. Charles Stuart raised his hand, announced loftily that the next race would have to await his royal pleasure, and turned back to the rest of the party. 'Your Grace. My Lady Frances.' (A long glance at that good lady's ample and, perchance, amply displayed bosom.) 'You must forgive us, for this is a most pressing matter. I trust we will not detain you long. George, entertain them with a stanza, or something of the sort.'
The King beckoned us toward a bare patch of ground, between the royal enclosure and the impatient entrants in the next race. I caught His Grace of Buckingham's expression. It was that strange mixture of arrogance, puzzlement and downright anguish that one always sees on the faces of those who are never accorded quite the importance that they think they deserve. I saw it often on the face of our late and unlamented monarch, George the First, an obscure and stupid German princeling who somehow seemed to believe that people should take him seriously just because various peculiar turns of fate had bestowed upon him the wholly inappropriate office of King of Great Britain.
When he judged that we were far enough away from curious ears, King Charles turned to me and said, 'Matthew Quinton, by all the saints. My God, sir, you've become almost as dark as me. A second Black Boy, indeed!' The King was famously swarthy, a legacy of his grandmother's Italian family. 'Now, this business of the Irish renegade that you captured. All this matter of a mountain of gold. You formed your own thoughts on that, I take it?'
There was little point in dissembling before the greatest dissembler then living. 'Your Majesty, it seemed to me but an arrant pack of lies, designed solely to save his worthless skin.' I made to change the subject, even though that was not the done thing when in the presence of royalty. 'Sire, if I may, there is also this matter of my brother's proposed marriage—'
Charles Stuart seemed not to have heard me, although of course, he had heard me perfectly well (a divine right to deafness being one of the most essential attributes of monarchy). 'An arrant pack of lies, you say. Well, yes, that does seem the most plausible interpretation, of course. And you, Mister Pepys? You have your own thoughts on this matter, too?'
Flustered, Pepys replied, 'Majesty, I—that is to say—well, my thoughts are at one with Your Majesty's—'
The King's expression was suddenly still, and when he spoke, his voice was different, and distant. 'Oh no, Mister Pepys. No man's thoughts are at one with mine. No man's. ' Charles looked far away, as though searching for something well beyond the distant tower of Ely. But in a moment, his eyes brightened—methought when his gaze fell once more upon the distant spectacle of the Lady Frances Stuart—and he said, 'Look around you, gentlemen. All these people, gathered here on this dire and blasted heath, miles from any decent lodging. Why is that, exactly?'
'Why,' said Pepys, 'because of Your Majesty's presence—'
'Oh, yes, some of them, Mister Pepys. My courtiers, those who will always be where I happen to be simply because that is what they were born to do—His Grace of Buckingham for one—just as shit always attracts flies. Then there will be those like you, Mister Pepys, who have to attend upon the royal presence because it is a condition of the salary that I pay you, albeit several months in arrears. And, of course, there are men like Captain Quinton here who attend me in the hope of preferment and honour. But there are many more here today than either of your kinds, or even His Grace's. Damn it, I've sighted at least two dozen rabid Cromwellians and Commonwealths-men who still hanker after the old republic. They'd rather eat brimstone than fawn over the man they regard as the agent of the Antichrist. Cambridgeshire men, mostly. God protect me from Cambridgeshire. But they've one weakness in common that brings them here today, a weakness that they share with myself and Buckingham and almost everyone else present on this heath.' Quite suddenly, the King turned, raised his right arm, and let it fall. The functionary who had attended him earlier waved his arms furiously, and in the distance, to a great cheer from the attendant throng, a dozen horses began to pound along the track, spurred on by jockeys in liveries that were all the colours of the rainbow. Charles said, 'Oh, the sport is one thing, gentlemen, but the gamble is quite another. You see, a loss is a loss—there are many horses in a race, so we know that loss is always the more likely outcome. We learn to live with loss, we can accept it. I lose a few guineas to His Grace of Buckingham—so be it. The poor men down there, they lose a few pennies—so be it. But oh, gentlemen, the sensation of winning! The thrill of the chase, and the thrill of the chance—the glorious, impossible chance that the outsider will win against the odds! I can live with ninety-nine defeats, if I can just have that feeling in the hundredth race! That, gentlemen, is what unites those who come here today.'
I had seen the King like this before: elevated to a state of sublime bliss. Such occasions usually involved the nearby presence of a disordered woman, but that day on the heath at Newmarket, Charles Stuart seemed to be in an ecstasy that went beyond the pursuit of the female sex. He was silent for a few moments, but even the ever-garrulous Pepys knew enough of court etiquette to realise that one did not interrupt the Lord's Anointed, and I knew that I could not broach the subject of the marriage until and unless His Majesty deigned to hear me out, if he ever did. Eventually, the King said: 'Sometimes, gentlemen, kings have to gamble with the highest stakes of all. We can make war, and send good men off to their deaths—men like those down there, or indeed men like you, Matt. But sometimes, kings gain unexpected opportunities to make gambles that they cannot lose. Thus it is with this business of the mountain of gold. If you're right, Matt, and this Irishman is a brazen liar seeking to save his pitiful life, then what do I lose if I humour him awhile? Nought, for I gambled no stake. But if we are all wrong, gentlemen, and there's even a grain of truth in what he says—Think on it. A mountain of gold. The greatest prize in all the world. What would I do if I gained it? I have thought much on that. To be the richest monarch of all, able to make my country the greatest empire that the world has ever seen, able to do anything that I wished.'
He looked down towards the enclosure, towards the lithe shape of the Lady Frances. Of course, history records that the King's pursuit of her would never be fulfilled; one of his very few pursuits of that sort which failed, if truth be told. Instead he immortalised her as the model for Britannia, stamping her image on his copper coins. She is there still, and there she will probably remain until the end of time. Why, the other day I even heard the feckless son of my upholsterer, old Arne of Covent Garden, singing some idle new ditty about her.
The King's gaze returned to the distant horses, thundering around a bend in the course. 'Spur him on, Garside! Harder, man! Use your whip, for God's sake—Ah, that's more like it!' Turning back to me, he said, And O'Dwyer is not our only witness, after all. Why, I first heard rumours of this mountain of gold when I was in Paris in, what, forty-nine? Not long after my father's execution, at any rate. The late Cardinal Mazarin was quite taken by the prospect of it, despite the civil wars which then ravaged France.' The French again... 'My cousin Rupert, too, has always been particularly intrigued by the possibility. Forever whispers of it in my ear, in fact—well, what passes for whispering from His Highness, at any rate.' The Prince Palatine of the Rhine, the famous general in our civil wars, was not noted for his subtlety. 'He learned of it and searched for it when he and Holmes were in the Gambia ten years or so ago, before my little navy-in-exile was disbanded. No success, of course, but after all, gentlemen, even if the conquest of a beautiful woman fails at the first attempt, the eventual reward can ever make it worthwhile to continue the chase!' He laughed, and I joined in dutifully, Pepys rather more nervously. The King placed a hand on my shoulder and said, 'Well, Matt, now you see my game. You are my racehorse in this, by God. For who else can I entrust with this task, other than the man who brought the prospect of the mountain of gold once more before my eyes?
'
The race ended at that moment. There was a great cheer from the concourse, and it was clear that the horse bearing yellow, the King's colour, had won. Charles Stuart smiled with satisfaction, waved triumphantly to the downcast Duke of Buckingham, and said, 'Another gamble won. You know, Matt, I think my luck has turned at last?' He stepped closer to me and whispered in my ear. 'And so has that of your noble house, with this marriage to the Lady De Vaux. Trust me upon that, for I can say no more.' The King turned and beckoned to Pepys, who handed him a leather pouch. Charles took it without a word, handed it to me and said cheerfully, 'So, Matt. In that pouch, you'll find a commission from my brother the Lord Admiral appointing you Captain of the Seraph, Fifth Rate frigate, thirty-two guns, currently lying at Deptford. Not as large as your Wessex, it's true, and thus not as much pay for her captain. But she's new, fresh out of a private yard at Blackwall. The builder assures me that all his ships are blessed by Merlin and the fairies of the dawn, who tell him where to position the futtocks. He may be as mad as the Duke of Norfolk, but he builds damnably good frigates. She can outsail anything on the world's oceans, Captain, and I'll vouch for her because I took her whipstaff in a brisk northerly on passage from the Hope to the Nore and back again. She answers the helm better than any of my yachts, Matt.' This king was ever a frustrated sailor, who lived vicariously through every moment of every one of his captains' voyages. 'You'll fly to Africa and find my mountain of gold. Your sailing orders and your less public instructions are in the pouch also. You will see that you are to be part of a larger expedition, with larger aims, but you will detach from that at the Gambia. I have also provided you with some additional, confidential instructions concerning your passenger, to be opened if the need arises.' I had a sudden dread—'I don't doubt that you, like every one of my ministers, will damn me behind my back for a trusting fool who puts too much faith in leniency. Perhaps you will all be proved right, in which case these additional instructions should amply cover the case. But I have found that if we place our faith in scoundrels, then at least we are never disappointed when they revert to their nature, unlike the case when men who assume the pretence of goodness later show themselves to be even fouler villains.' That was how it was with this king: in the blink of an eye, he could both assume the overweening, unanswerable royal 'we' and become the arch-cynic that history records. Of course, I did not know then that this king would even forgive the man who stole his crown jewels, but I do not think that such knowledge would have shocked my young self. So when the King's peroration came, it was no longer a surprise. 'Your passenger, Matt, will be the newest Lieutenant-Colonel of my Irish army. That is to say, Colonel Brian Doyle O'Dwyer of Baltimore in the County of Cork.'
I began my journey back to Ravensden in the foulest temper imaginable. I scowled at smiling country lads as they returned from the harvest. I almost had Zephyr trample the bride as I rode angrily through a cheerful wedding party. The sun continued to shine, but my heart was the deepest, darkest place on God's earth, and I became fatally unaware of my surroundings and of the pairs of eyes that might have been viewing my progress. I had learned nothing of my brother's marriage, other than not to question it. True, I had been granted a new command. But a voyage to the coast of West Africa, a shore notoriously fetid and the killer of many a good captain and his crew? Moreover, a voyage that was bound to be the wildest goose-chase in the history of England, promoted by a devious time-serving renegade who would probably jump ship to rejoin his murderous corsair friends the moment we touched our first African landfall? A renegade whom His Majesty had seen fit to promote to a rank far above my own. The more I thought upon the words and actions of Charles Stuart, this man whom I had been brought up to revere almost as a god, the anger swelled inside me. I gambled no stake—true, Your Majesty, none beyond the lives of several hundred men, Matthew Quinton among them.
As I rode, I began to harbour increasingly wild thoughts. Perhaps I could decamp to the French service; I was certain my friend the Comte d'Andelys could arrange it. Or I could abscond to the Americas and go off into their wild, empty hills to escape the world. Or else I could become a boucaneer of the Caribbee, or whatever they called themselves. What was left for me in England, if I was to be displaced as the heir of Ravensden and entrusted by the King, not with his reasons for thus displacing me, but with a voyage born of his avarice and his fatal determination to place faith in those that the rest of the world rightly condemned as faithless? Cornelia would soon find another, one who could provide the children she craved...
My temper was so vile that I finally mistook my road and found myself on a poor track. I cared but little when I realised my error; the sun in the sky told me I was still riding west, I knew I was close to the Bedfordshire border, and I would hardly go astray when I reached the great road from London to the north. All too quickly, I sank back into my dark reflections, ruminating on the injustice of it all, casting silent curses down upon the heads of a duplicitous king, an arrogant mother...
I thought I heard a cry—'Ride hard, boy!—and my horse seemed to begin its gallop the faintest fraction of a moment before I gave it the spur. Thus I rode fast and hard into the thicket ahead, where the lane narrowed almost to a path. As well that I did, for if I had still been going at a canter I would have been easy prey for the gang that sprang out from the trees on both sides. Eight or ten of them, I reckoned, although I passed them in a blur. They had clubs, and one of them managed to strike my horse's haunch. The blow did no real hurt and only emboldened my mount to find yet more speed. Two of them called out, including the last one that I passed. Then I was beyond them, back out into open country.
I rode until I was almost within sight of Ravensden. As I slowed, I could finally reflect on the attack. Of course, the land was full of broken men and sturdy beggars, waiting in thickets to attack unwary travellers who foolishly strayed from the main roads. Such was life, and I had been a fool to come so close to falling into their clutches.
But the more I thought upon it, the more I wondered whether this was truly just another wayside robbery. I was not so concerned with the voice that might or might not have called out to hasten me; the same inner voice had spoken to me before, when I stood in mortal danger on the deck of my enemy's ship, and I had no reason to fear it. But I could still see that last man of the robber band. I could see the great scar on his face, and the left eye that was no longer there. I could see that he bore a sword, hardly the weapon of a beggarly roadside thief. And I could still hear what I thought was the shout from one of his lackeys, as well as what might have been the scarred man's reply. 'Quinton's escaped us, sergeant!' 'Aye, but he'll not run from us forever, boys!'
Five
My mother was a misanthropic old vixen. She disliked the common herd of humanity with a venom that in my younger days I reserved solely for lawyers and the Welsh. She was also unpredictable in many things, but in some, she could be as set in her ways as Stonehenge. One of these, and to my mind one of her more creditable traits, was that she had a powerful regard for tradition, especially the traditions of the Quintons. Thus she decreed that the new countess should be introduced to the broader family, our neighbours and our tenantry at a grand reception in the grounds of Ravensden Abbey, for that was how Quintons had behaved since our chain-mailed ancestors sat within their wooden walls on the mound across the valley. Legend had it that the first earl's betrothal was celebrated by a crowd of five thousand, including his good friend King Henry the Fifth of blessed and immortal memory, with whom he had fought at Agincourt. Not quite so many attended my mother's induction into our family forty years before, but at least she abided by the family custom. Indeed, one of her grievances against my long-dead grandfather was that he had been the only Quinton to neglect such niceties, choosing instead to marry his much younger French bride in a hasty ceremony on his estate in the Val-de-Loire (long sold) and not actually bringing her back to Ravensden until she had borne him three children. The fact that Earl Matthew's marriage occurred
before she was born, and thus could not have been of the slightest concern to her, did not prevent my mother adding it to her endless litany of grievances against him.
Much as I resented the occasion for the grand entertainment, I secretly approved of my mother's reverence for our old traditions. (My approval had to be secret, not because my mother and I were still not on speaking terms—we were, in a strained and formal fashion—but because inevitably, Cornelia's disapproval was vehement and prolonged, and I sought a quiet life.) No, my objections to the great Quinton reception were more immediate and distinctly more practical. First, we could not afford it. True, I had no detailed knowledge of our balance sheet, but one does not need to be near a sewer to know that sewers stink. Second, my mother proposed to hold the grand event outdoors, so as to accommodate more people. In October. In Bedfordshire. Now, one of the few joys of my fatherless childhood had been to study atlases; it was better to think of faraway lands than of my own, which was still ravaged by civil war. I think it was on a December day, perhaps in that winter when they killed the king and the snow lay four feet deep on the fields of Ravensden, that I looked at a map of Europe and realised that no mountain range, no obstruction of any sort, lay between us and the wastes of Muscovy. So when the east winds howled, as they often do in October in our parts, the Russian snows frequently came with them.