The Mountain of Gold

by J. D. Davies

  'Damn me,' said the scarred man, 'Quinton as well. God in his Heaven smiles on us tonight, boys.'

  'You have some damnably unpleasant acquaintances, Matt,' said Beau Harris, drawing his sword.

  'A good thing for this gentleman of the army that the navy just happened along,' said Will Berkeley, drawing his.

  Drawing my own blade, I said, 'Permit me to name Colonel Brian Doyle O'Dwyer, my intended passenger aboard the Seraph.'

  'Oh, him,' said Berkeley, dismissively.

  'The turncoat heathen?' cried Beau Harris.

  O'Dwyer bowed his head slightly in mock salutation. 'As you say, gentlemen.'

  The scarred man snorted derisively. 'Introductions, is it, by God! How very courtly. Well, as we're in the habit, gentlemen, I'll introduce myself, too. Habakkuk Leech, nobles and gentles all; late sergeant, Hewson's regiment, New Model Army. I won't bother with introducing the rest of my companions, here, for most of them either don't know their names or go by false ones.' Some of the gang—eight strong, no less—sniggered at that.

  'Well, then,' I said, 'and what would be your business with Colonel O'Dwyer, here, Sergeant Leech? The same business perhaps that you attempted upon me on the road from Newmarket?'

  Leech sneered dismissively. 'A related business, let's say, Captain Quinton. But with very different intended outcomes, I assure you. But I'd make you a proposition. Now, we both know that you have little love for the good colonel, here. So why don't you let the boys and I take him away with us, quiet like, and no more to it?' He looked about him. After all, Captain, there are nine of us here, all armed men who know our trade—learned it in the wars, most of us, unlike you fine but so young gentlemen. Nine of us, and but three of you. Four, if you count the Irish Turk. Still better than two to one for our side, Captain Quinton.'

  I glanced at Harris to my left and Berkeley to my right, but I knew I need not have done so; we were of one mind. 'Men of honour don't bargain with the likes of you, Leech,' I said. And O'Dwyer, there, might be a damnable renegade, but he holds our King's commission and wears his uniform. We are bound to defend our fellow officer.'

  'Fellow officer be damned,' snarled Leech. 'We should have chopped the heads off all you fucking Cavaliers when we had the chance.'

  With that he and six of his men advanced toward us three captains; the other two circled O'Dwyer, who was evidently to be taken alive.

  'Remind me,' said Beau Harris, 'to bring an entire regiment with me, the next time I come drinking with you.'

  At that, Leech's men rushed us, two on each, with the sergeant himself hanging back, no doubt waiting to see which of us weakened first before administering the coup degrace himself. The odds were not good, it was true. But fighting in a confined space always has a dampening effect upon even the worst of odds, and we had swords, which would keep our knife-wielding adversaries at bay for a time, at least until we tired. Harris's two went for him first, perhaps sensing from his grip and posture that he was the least able swordsman of us; one learned his mistake by means of a deep slash across his hand, the other by a snick to the cheek. I barely saw the attack on Berkeley, for my two came for me in that moment, edging forward with their bare blades held out. They were big rogues, both of forty years or more—no doubt New Model veterans like Leech. But as New Model men, I calculated, they would have been happier with pike or musket than with knives, and they might have that innate fear of a sword which so many infantrymen possess. I described a swift figure-of-eight with the point of my blade, and they both flinched as they would have done if it was a cavalryman's rapier bearing down upon them. As they regrouped, I saw Berkeley grappling with his two, who had got close to him (for, in truth, Will was the weakest swordsman of us three). He thrust them away before they could stick their knives in him, giving one a thrust in the forearm for his pains. As I prepared for the next assault from my two, I caught sight of O'Dwyer, standing stock still behind Leech. He was smiling. Sweet Jesus, the infernal scum was not even thinking of raising a finger to help us, who were fighting—and, if God willed it, dying—so that his miserable renegade life could be saved.

  My two came on again. This time, they were more subtle. The one to my left, my unarmed side, came on first, and fast, forcing me to bring my blade up to defend myself. At that, the other one rushed me, thrusting for my stomach. I pirouetted on my heel, slashing downward as I did so, and heard a yelp from one of them. But almost at once there was a cry to my left. Harris was hurt, but I could not gauge how badly. On my right, Will was wrestling with his two once more. But this time Leech had identified his man, and was moving in silently for the kill.

  O'Dwyer caught my eye. He was still standing quite rigidly, and smiling. But the faintest glance to each side gave me some notion of his intent, just before he executed it. Taking my cue from him, I counterthrust ferociously toward my two assailants. The move was sufficient to distract O'Dwyer's two guards, who turned to look upon my attack. In that moment, the Irishman suddenly stooped to reach for his cloak, lying on the table by him, and pulled from it a gleaming curved Turkish scimitar. With one sweep, he decapitated the man nearest him. The other barely had time to turn before the curved blade slashed across his stomach. As he fell, his guts began to spill onto the straw-strewn floor of the Mitre.

  Even in London, the sight of a headless corpse pumping blood onto the entrails of its neighbour is sufficient to distract the most hardened killer. Leech turned from Will Berkeley to confront this unexpected assailant. The horror of the sight had worked in our favour. Despite his thigh-wound, Beau Harris now advanced like a man possessed; one of his attackers mistimed a thrust and found himself on the point of Harris's blade, which protruded obscenely from the nape of his neck. The other, sensing that the tide had turned, fled out of the back of the inn. This disheartened Will Berkeley's assailants, and sensing their indecision, Will aimed a well-chosen thrust directly into the heart of the one nearest to him.

  'Stand and fight, you worthless whoresons!' cried Leech; but he was enough of a veteran to know full well that the battle had shifted against him. My own opponents looked at each other, weighed the odds, and ran. Will Berkeley moved swiftly behind Leech, cutting off his only escape route. O'Dwyer advanced upon him with the scimitar. 'Ah, fuck, so be it,' said Leech, throwing his weapons to the ground and raising his arms—only for O'Dwyer to bring the scimitar slashing down toward his skull .

  Steel struck steel as my blade deflected O'Dwyer's blow, barely inches from Leech's head. The Irishman gave me a look of sheer hatred. 'He's surrendered!' I cried. 'The rules of warfare, Colonel O'Dwyer. The rules of Christian warfare, at any rate.'

  I turned to Beau Harris, who was wrapping a large kerchief around his thigh. 'All well, Beau?' I asked.

  'An entire regiment, Quinton. Or two. Remember that. I'll make damn certain they're with me, the next time I drink with you.'

  Will Berkeley, who had his sword-point at Leech's throat, laughed at that.

  'Well, Sergeant Leech,' I said, 'explain yourself.'

  'Christ damn you to hell, Quinton.'

  O'Dwyer intervened. Ah now, Sergeant, Captain Quinton here's a patient man. As I know full well. But Brian Doyle O'Dwyer, your humble servant, here; well, I'm not quite so patient, let's say.' He stepped in front of Leech's face and smirked. 'So the way I see it, Sergeant, is this. You have two choices. You can tell the good captain here what he wishes to know, and then we hand you over to the alderman of this ward and his constables, and you get a good honest English trial. Now who knows, you might find a jury stupid enough or corruptible enough to acquit you, but myself, I doubt that—even in England. But at least you'll get a hanging, and most of the hangmen up at Tyburn are pretty efficient these days, I'm told, so it'll be fast, and not too painful. Whereas.' He raised his scimitar, plucked a hair sharply from Leech's head and applied it to his blade, which sliced it in half almost before the hair seemed to have touched the edge. 'Fine blades, my old friends the Turks have,' O'Dwyer said quietly. 'So sharp, a man
could do all kinds of intricate things to another man's privates. If he was so inclined, let's say.'

  The colour drained from Leech's face, but the old sense of duty of a New Model sergeant died hard. In that moment, though, Will Berkeley applied his sword-point to the tie on the bag hanging from Leech's belt, and the bag scattered its contents to the floor. Gold coin. Large quantities of gold coin; many, many pounds worth, that was certain. Quite how many pounds would be difficult to fathom at first glance, for they were evidently foreign coins. Many were louis d'or and écus, the currency of the Most Christian Kingdom of France; an unexpectedly Catholic wage for a sometime godly Commonwealth's-man. Some were maravedís and escudos of Spain, but that was hardly unexpected, for Spanish bullion flowed out into every money market of Europe to pay that kingdom's inconceivably vast debts. But some of the coins were less familiar. I lifted one, turned it this way and that, and handed it to Will Berkeley, who raised an eyebrow, then nodded.

  'Malta,' I said. 'The gold of the Knights. So, Sergeant Leech, tell me this—how does a New Model veteran, an old Puritan no doubt, come to serve that undoubted papist, Gaspard of Montnoir? And why, pray, has Montnoir sent you after Colonel O'Dwyer and myself?'

  Leech was silent for a minute or so longer, as though weighing my questions and the alternatives that O'Dwyer had put to him. Perhaps he considered playing dumb, and claiming that he had never heard of any Montnoir; but O'Dwyer's scimitar was very, very close to his groin. At length his shoulders slumped, and the battle was done. 'Times are hard. Since your whoreson king disbanded the New Model, we've had to seek a wage wherever we can. And I've observed that papists are notably better supplied with gold than those of the true reformed religion. As for you, Captain Quinton—' a sneer in my direction—'why, you were but a sideshow,' he said. 'You were to be scared, or at best beaten until bloody. The Frenchman, Montnoir—well, he told me you had humiliated him in some way.' I thought back to the meeting on the deck of the Wessex, and of how pleased I had been with myself in the face of Montnoir's arrogance. The Seigneur de Montnoir evidently bore grudges, and was a man to avenge even the least slight against him. 'And as for the renegade, here,' Leech continued, but was interrupted...

  'I was to be taken off to France, or to Malta, or to wherever the good seigneur happens to be at this moment,' said O'Dwyer. 'Montnoir wants me alive. Has always wanted me alive, since first he learned of a corsair captain of Oran who claimed to know the location of the mountain of gold.' Leech nodded at that. 'That, Quinton, is why he was in pursuit of me when you took my galley. And now Montnoir will be doubly determined to find it, through me,' O'Dwyer continued. He looked at Leech. 'Five attempts, sergeant. Five attempts you have made to seize me, each more inept than the last, as I have told the King. Methinks Montnoir could have spent his money better.'

  Five attempts? As I have told the King? Of course; for what a service Montnoir had done Brian O'Dwyer! If there were still doubts about the veracity of the Irishman and his story (and God knows, Matt Quinton alone had more than a sufficiency of them!), then what could be a more efficacious way of allaying them than five attempts to kidnap him? Yes, Gaspard de Montnoir and Habakkuk Leech had done O'Dwyer's work for him, far more effectively than the man himself could ever have managed.

  The constables arrived at that moment; quite probably they had been waiting outside for some time, listening to make quite sure that the fracas within had concluded. With them came the alderman for that ward, a fat, short creature who mentioned something about us all being under arrest. O'Dwyer was the first of us to react.

  'Arrest, you say? I think not, Alderman. You see, before you stands your most humble servant, Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Doyle O'Dwyer of His Majesty's Irish army, shortly to set sail at the King's express behest. To sail, in fact, on the ship commanded by the tall young gentleman yonder, Captain Matthew Quinton of His Majesty's navy royal. Is the name Quinton familiar to you, alderman? Brother to the Earl of Ravensden. One of the King's closest friends.'

  Although it galled me to do so, I colluded with O'Dwyer, for I did not relish the prospect of incarceration. 'Indeed so, Alderman. And please allow me to present Captains Beaudesert Harris and William Berkeley, both also of His Majesty's navy. Captain Berkeley, here, is brother to the Lord Viscount Fitzhardinge. Another of the King's closest friends.'

  'So you see, Alderman,' said Beau, taking up the refrain, 'arresting us would be likely to bring down His Majesty's most severe displeasure upon you and your constables here.'

  The constables looked at each other, and at the Alderman. Their common will was entirely clear, and they had their way.

  A little later, after Habakkuk Leech had been taken away to the tender mercies of the Newgate Prison, the rest of us parted company outside the Mitre: Beau to have his wound tended most attentively by his sweetheart, a Miss Grainger ('demure as a nun until I get her into bed,' Beau said); Will and I to return to the palace; O'Dwyer to ride God knew where.

  As he mounted, the Irishman said cheerily, 'Well then, Captain Quinton. Until the Downs, sir, when I shall join you aboard the noble Seraph. You'll have much business meanwhile, I don't doubt.'

  Eleven

  A man should go to his brother's marriage with joy in his heart and a carefree smile. Instead, I went to the nuptials of my most noble brother Charles Quinton, tenth Earl of Ravensden, with the heart and smile of a corpse. Yet it was a bright and cheery morn as the Earl and I rode out of Ravensden House. We were both attired in fine new garb, namely deep blue tunic coats with silver buttons, scarlet breeches and stockings, and fine blue silk gloves; blue, the armorial colour of Quinton. As we were finishing dressing before the mirror, a little earlier, Charles had commented laconically that we looked like a pair of somewhat disreputable French swordsmen. Otherwise, the Earl prepared himself in silence, as though for a funeral rather than a wedding, and with a mighty heaviness already upon my own heart, I knew better than to attempt the back-slapping jollity expected of a groom's supporter. Thus prepared, we left the house to the cheers of a small gaggle of retainers and tenants, brought down from Bedfordshire for the occasion. I mounted Zephyr, who seemed inclined to bolt toward the west; Musk, already mounted and in my earshot but not my brother's, murmured: 'The glory or downfall of the House of Quinton, today, by God. Take your pick, my masters.' We rode out, along the Strand and Fleet Street, across the fetid stagnation of the Fleet River by way of the Fleet Bridge, up Ludgate Hill, through the red-brick Lud Gate itself, and onward towards our destination, Saint Paul's, its mighty tower dominating the city beneath.

  Our passage was slow, for our road was full of people: both those strange half-creatures who turn out to gawp at the ceremonials of any illustrious name, cheering hysterically as the great ones pass, and the far larger throng of hawkers, hucksters and the like, who cared only that their vulgar trades had been interrupted by our progress. Some shouted good wishes and all health; others, distinctly graphic advice for the bedding. Musk, riding before us in an ancient tabard bearing the Quinton arms, vigorously pummelled several who hooted abuse or attempted to touch Charles or myself. We had no other attendants. I have been to weddings where forty or more have ridden behind the groom, laughing lustily all the way to the church door, but Charles was not a man for such rowdy show (and besides, he had barely four friends in the world, let alone forty). At length, we came before the west front of the cathedral, and dismounted. As I stepped down onto the cobbles I winced with the pain imparted by my new shoes, upon which Cornelia had insisted. Here were many of our tenants and retainers—Barcocks, mostly—who had come to shower the steps of the cathedral with dried petals upon the bride's entrance. They were all joyous beyond measure, and I wondered why I alone felt as though I were processing to a graveside. (Or perhaps, not quite alone: but as ever, Earl Charles' expression was unreadable.) We entered the cathedral by way of Inigo Jones' great new west portico, modelled upon the Roman style, its stone fresh and young alongside the dull ancient grey of the remainder of Paul's chu
rch. I looked up at the classical columns, and wondered how on earth the architect reckoned they fitted with the soaring Gothic favoured by the original builders. All architects are frauds, of course, but time can alter a man's perspective mightily. Nowadays, I would gladly favour Jones' short-lived portico over the monstrosity since inflicted upon the world by that mountebank Wren, whose demented notion of building a cathedral has been to deposit an enormous breast atop Ludgate Hill, for the boundless ridicule of all posterity. Then, I thought only of what was to take place within.

  We passed through the west door into the long, soaring nave, known since time immemorial as Paul's Walk. Despite the rosemary and myrtle that bedecked every column, the nave still reeked a little of horse-shit. It had been employed as a stable by Noll Cromwell's cavalry, who had also smashed the windows and defaced the monuments, and the restoration of its former glories still had some way to go (indeed, a longer way to go than was left to the building itself). Ahead of us, beyond the damaged screen, we could hear a choir singing the Sixty-Seventh Psalm. On either side of us stood the lesser members of the congregation: Ravensden tenants and neighbours, the curious of court society, not a few creditors hoping to serve writs, all in the most resplendent finery they could muster. Many wore blue bridal ribbons upon their arms and gloves upon their hands, both of which had been distributed seemingly willy-nilly by our mother. I could hear the whispers of the less discreet:

  'Poor earl, looks feebler than he did—'