The Mountain of Gold

by J. D. Davies

  It fell to me to say a prayer over the body of this good and honest man, but I could manage nothing better than 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.' I sent a man to the Seraph, and he returned with fresh men who were better able to carry the lieutenant's corpse than the exhausted party who had made the march. Our arrival back at the ship was greeted by solemn faces upon the deck. The men had respected William Castle, and I wondered how his own Bristol followers would respond to his loss. His natural authority and good humour had held in check many of the tensions between the factions in the crew, and I feared what might now happen as we made our way upstream.

  With Castle dead, the Seraph needed a new Lieutenant. I was silently thankful that Holmes was away; no doubt he would have used his seniority to foist one of his creatures upon me. As it was, no man raised any objection when I immediately appointed Valentine Negus to Castle's post. Then I summoned Kit Farrell and appointed him Master in Negus's place. Grimwade, the senior of the master's mates, might have felt aggrieved, but I learned that he was more than content to be left aboard the Prospect of Blakeney at the river's mouth, believing that his chances of returning to England alive would be considerably enhanced by that choice. There was also no demur when I elevated Martin Lanherne to the rank of Boatswain, vacated by Kit. Some of the Bristol men would grumble, I reckoned, but then, many of them would have grumbled if Saint Francis of Assisi had been set over them, especially if they believed Assisi to be in Cornwall. As I handed him the whistle and cane of his office, Lanherne was entirely lost for words—for the first and, as it proved, the only time in my acquaintance with him.

  We held the funeral rites for the late Lieutenant of the Seraph that evening; keeping a body for any time at all in that climate was simply inconceivable. There was some talk of burying him ashore on Charles Island, but the unanimous opinion of my ship's officers was that an old seaman like William Castle was entitled to the age-old ritual of farewell for dead mariners. At dusk, we placed his corpse, shrouded in a hammock, upon the starboard rail. Cannonballs were fastened at the head and the feet. Francis Gale, clad in full canonicals, intoned the words of the funeral service; and at their conclusion, a file of Facey's redcoats fired off a volley. O'Dwyer, Facey, Negus and I raised our swords in salute. The body was pushed over the side, and plunged into the dark waters of the Gambia. Lindman fired a funereal salute of muffled guns which must have impressed the warriors of the King of Kombo if they were watching from the shore, as I suspected they were. Perhaps it even impressed the Seigneur de Montnoir, if he was still nearby. At the end, we had done well by William Castle after all.

  As the congregation dispersed, Francis turned to me and said, 'You know what they'll say on the lower deck. A burial before our voyage upriver has truly started, and the burial of such a vital man at that—a bad omen, Matthew. There'll be more talk of the ship being cursed.'

  I shrugged. 'That's but the way of seamen, Francis.'

  'True,' he said. 'But ally that to the return of your friend Montnoir and even I could start believing in it.'

  The next afternoon, and with awnings rigged over all of the upper decks, the Seraph got under way. This, Belem advised, was the way to make passage up the estuary of the Gambia and avoid the excesses of the climate: make as much progress as possible with the sea breeze and cooler weather from the late afternoon through into the first part of the night, the lower river being free of the rocks, shoals and sunken trees that made night navigation impossible further upstream, then proceed again from dawn until about ten or eleven in the morning while the Harmattan blows cool, finally dropping anchor and sleeping through the worst of the heat until three. We adhered to this regime even if the helpful flood tide coincided with the hottest part of the day. Thus we partially abandoned the immutable system of watch-keeping, turn and turn again every four hours, that has sustained England's navy since time immemorial. We drew lots for those who were to keep the watch at anchor in the middle of the day, officers and men alike. There was much argument in the messes over who gained most from this arrangement. The midday-men, as they became known, were denounced as idlers who did not have to climb the masts or work the ropes by night; but not a few of the others were secretly pleased that they did not have to face the most terrible heat of the day.

  The first stage of our journey was but a short one, for I had seen from the chart that the first of the river's formidable obstacles lay barely ten miles from our anchorage. We swung out beyond the cape that sheltered Charles Island, tacked into the main stream, and at once could see ahead of us the feature that had so animated the mind of Sir William Penn during the meeting at the Navy Office.

  'Well, Captain,' said Belem, 'there it is, dead ahead. San Andreas, as we Portuguese call it. Jakob's Island, as the present occupants prefer.'

  Unlike Charles Island, the fort-isle of San Andreas lay more centrally within the Gambia river. The channel to the north was narrower than that to the south, but even so, it was easily a mile wide, and Belem stated that a large ship, rather larger than Seraph, could traverse it with ease. A town, named by Belem as the port of Jilifri (and which my men soon rechristened Julyfree), stood upon the north shore, opposite the fort. The island itself was small, less than a mile in length or breadth, and rose but a very few feet above the water. Herons, kingfishers and the sacred bird of the Egyptians, the ibis, waded upon its shore and in its shallows. Most of the area of the island was taken up by the fort, but from a distance this struck me as but a feeble affair, a square curtain wall with a rudimentary bastion at each corner. Of course, in my later years I visited most of the mighty works erected by Marshal Vauban across France and Flanders, but even so by then I had seen the formidable defences of Dunkirk and Breda, and a score of the other great fortifications of Europe. Thus I looked upon the low sandstone ramparts of Jakob's Island with a certain degree of contempt; taking this, even with the tiny force available to me, would surely be an easy task, and why should Holmes have all the glory? But as we came nearer on the evening sea-breeze, I saw that the fort was more formidable than it first appeared. I counted thirty, perhaps forty iron guns on the ramparts, and they were not of small calibres; at least some of them were larger than anything that Seraph bore.

  I considered clearing for action. After all, the Dutch flag flew above the fort, and following Holmes' capture of the Brill, who knew what intelligence might have been sent to this distant outpost of the United Provinces, and who knew how the garrison might have reacted? Moreover, we had received no word of what Holmes might have done at Gorée; what if the fort had?

  ***

  I kept my telescope trained on the ramparts, but it was clear that a warlike reception was the last thing on the garrison's mind. A couple of sentries wandered forlornly along the wall-walk, presumably wishing that they were down below, where chimney-smoke suggested the preparation of the garrison's evening meal. Every few minutes, an officer came up to look out at us with his own telescope. Presumably his thoughts were similar to mine, and his reaction must have been the same. If you show no sign of fighting, my friend, then neither shall we.

  We drew parallel with the south shore of the fort-island, and I ordered the dropping of our best bower anchor. An hour's courtesy call on the garrison would not go amiss, I decided, as a personal relationship with its commander might be of use to me at some future time. Purser Harrington quickly assembled a suitable offering of Madeira wine, Hull ale and salt beef. A boat's crew was mustered in proper order by Julian Carvell, the new Coxswain of the Seraph following Lanherne's promotion to Boatswain, and I was rowed ashore in some state. O'Dwyer opted to remain on board. This surprised me, as I thought he would have shared the opinion of Morgan Facey, who did accompany me; a soldier should never neglect an opportunity to examine a position he might one day have to attack. The Irishman's decision to do precisely that should have concerned me more than it did.

  A slovenly, ancient guard upon the foreshore greeted Facey and myself with a torre
nt of gutter-Dutch and led us up into the fort. My first impression of it was confirmed. The feeble rampart surrounded a rough parade ground. Most of the low wood and thatch buildings clustered under the east rampart; thus they would be sheltered a little from the morning heat, but open to the west wind from the sea in the afternoon and evening.

  A squat, strongly-built man of perhaps fifty years, clad in a rough shirt, baldric and large hat after the Spanish fashion, stepped out and lifted his hat in salute.

  'Otto Stiel, My Lords,' he said in good English, 'late captain and governor of this fort in the service of that most excellent and mighty prince, Jakob, Duke of Courland. Now the same for the Dutch West India Company.'

  Captain Stiel's explanation of his status left little doubt where his true loyalties still lay. Belem had told me but the day before that there was some doubt whether the transfer of the island from Courland to the United Provinces had ever been completed in law, partly because Duke Jakob had been reluctant to admit that his small province on the east shore of the Baltic was perhaps not the best suited of all the lands of Europe to building a mighty colonial empire in Africa and the Caribbee.

  I introduced Facey and myself, and Stiel led us into his quarters. Now as I have said, my intention had been that we would exchange courtesies for an hour, and then get under way for our intended night passage. I did not anticipate that I would finally by rowed out to the Seraph as the sun came up, with the formidable dawn chorus of the river birds nearly splitting my skull. Nor did I anticipate being manhandled ignominiously onto my own deck by my boat's crew, to be greeted by the quizzical reproof of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer and by the disapproving scowls of Valentine Negus and Kit Farrell. This was not entirely the fault of my own weak will, or so I told myself. I had previously considered Morgan Facey to be a paragon of sobriety, a veteran of the old Cavalier army and a stout man. But as is so often the way, it all turned on one sentence.

  'You have a good command of our tongue, sir,' said Facey to Stiel as we exchanged gifts.

  'I am glad you say so, after all these years,' said Stiel. 'I had many excellent times in your civil wars, in Sir Ralph Hopton's western army.'

  That was enough. Within moments, the Madeira and the Hull ale were being uncorked, and Stiel was producing bottles of some unutterably fiery drink of his own land. Foreign mercenaries had been common enough on both sides during the civil war—after all, what other appellation could be given to Rupert, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, to name but the greatest of them?—but to come to this arse-end of the known world and find a man who had fought in the noblest and most successful of all the king's armies was surely worthy of raising a cup or two, was it not? And when he realised that I was the son of the Earl of Ravensden, the report of whose death at Naseby had made Stiel weep—well, was that not also worthy of a cup or two? Stiel reminded us that his Duke Jakob was a godson of our late sovereign King James, a connection clearly deserving of two cups. Or three. By the time Facey and Stiel discovered that they had fought in several of the same battles and had three or four mutual friends, our fates were sealed.

  It was only when I woke late the following afternoon, barely in time to order the weighing of our anchor for the passage I had intended for the previous evening, that I recollected that the gifts loaded onto Facey and myself by the generous Stiel at our unsteady departure included a package of letters for our ship, delivered by a Bristol vessel that had taken a cargo of wax, hides and slaves from Jilifri a few days before. Sadly, there was but one letter addressed to Captain Quinton of the King of England's ship the Seraph upon the River of Gambo in Africa. That was not the actual inscription upon it, however; for the actual inscription was in French, and the grandiose wax seal was one I knew well.

  I tore open Roger's letter with unseemly impatience, annoyed at myself for sleeping away almost an entire day.

  My dearest, noblest friend and gallant warrior! it began; and so it continued for no little while, this reply to the letter I had sent him just before the Seraph sailed from England. At length, though, I came to an utterly shocking sentence, written almost as an aside: Ah, my friend, I envy you in your voyage in mysterious parts—the Gambo river, no less, in pursuit of the legendary mountain of gold...

  Sweet Jesus! Good-brother Venner had the rights of it after all. If Roger knew of our mission, then presumably so did the entire court of the Most Christian King. And if that vast and notoriously verbose establishment knew of it, then so did the whole of the world. Strangely, after the first moment of shock had subsided I felt very little concern at this revelation. Whether the world knew of it or not mattered nought: indeed, whether the mountain really existed or not mattered nought. For good or ill, I would continue up this endless river to whatever fate awaited me. But I prayed that Roger's letter contained the solution to another, perhaps darker, secret, the question to which I had craved his answer for so long.

  Now, Matthew, let us turn to the matter of the alleged daughter of the Comtesse Louise, upon which you wrote to me before your sailing. I decided to entrust the mission to Aubigny to no man other than myself, for I have observed that Mothers Superior, who consider themselves very mighty ladies indeed, are inclined to send mere messenger boys packing, whereas they are considerably more circumspect when dealing with noblemen of France. So it proved when dealing with the Mother Superior of the Poor Clares, a most formidable lady. Aubigny is almost an outpost of your own land, Matthew—the castles there belong to your king's cousin, the Duke of Richmond—and the convent is full of the flower of English virginity. Unfortunately, none of the virgins bear the name of Madeleine De Vaux, and never have. None of them could even be that child under another name. I concluded this after most extensive and, I may say, exhaustive enquiries among the sisters. I knew you would not want me to rest following this disappointment, dear friend, so on my journey back to my own territories I took the pains (and pains they were, I assure you) to call at the English convents of the Benedictines, Augustinians and Blue Nuns in Paris, and of the Benedictines again in Pontoise. Alas, my enquiries on your behalf at all the other English convents of France and Flanders had to be conducted by letter, but that has probably been in the best interests of my health. The conclusions of my researches are one and the same, whatever the means of carrying them out: a Madeleine De Vaux is not, and never has been, cloistered within one of the English convents.

  Your beloved Cornelia and I have already corresponded upon this matter, as no doubt she will inform you in her own hand. It occurs to us both that there are other enquiries that we should now pursue, calling once more upon the assistance of your esteemed uncle, the learned Doctor Quinton, and by the time you receive this, that stratagem should be well advanced.

  I remain, my dear comrade-in-arms, your most humble, loyal, grateful, affectionate and undying friend,

  d'Andelys

  I put down the letter and stood in my stern window—or rather, the starboard half of my stern window—staring out at the receding fort-island and the brilliant red sunset taking place behind it. A flock of strange great birds flew by, across the face of the sun. I felt a powerful conflict tearing my heart: the conflict between duty to my family and to my king.

  From that conflict stemmed a succession of questions, each more difficult to confront than the last. What might Roger, Tris and Cornelia have discovered in the weeks since this letter was sent from France? What if the Countess was with child by now? And, at the very last, the oldest question of them all, the one that had intruded into my nightmares and my waking thoughts for as much of my life as I could remember. What if Charles was dead—perhaps killed by the exertions of mounting his wife, or if the suspicions of Tris and Cornelia were justified, slaughtered by that same wife's malevolent hand? What if, in that dusk upon the Gambia river, I was already the Earl of Ravensden?

  I heard O'Dwyer come into his half of the cabin—my cabin, damn him—and put such foolish thoughts aside. Nothing I could do in this fastness would remedy the matter of the Countess Louis
e. Even if I had the ship brought about at that moment, and ordered all sail set for England, it would be many weeks before I could be home—there to face a certain court-martial for deserting my mission, and even more certain dishonour.

  No. The die was cast. For good or ill, the fate of Matthew Quinton rode with that of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer and the quest for the mountain of gold.

  Twenty

  Early the next morning, I stood under the awning on the quarterdeck of Seraph, and looked out upon the astonishing scene around me. The great blue-brown river stretched away for miles on either side of us, and although we were going only under courses, we easily had enough sea-room to have spread topsails, even when the tide was low. We were sounding every two glasses, but each time we had at least five fathoms beneath our keel. The banks were lined with impenetrable groves of trees that rose directly from the salt waters of the river: mangroves, Belem called them. Every few miles, clearings had been made in the swamp and landing places set up. Many of these were little more than rudimentary jetties, but some, especially on the south bank, were quite large wharves that could accommodate European ships. We sighted several Portuguese and Dutch vessels, most of which, Belem asserted, would be taking on cargoes of salt to carry further upstream, where that commodity was very rare. Most of the trade of those parts, though, was carried on by the Mandingo natives in their canoes. The profusion of these craft upon the river reminded me of the Thames, for like their northern brethren, the canoes darted this way and that, some going north-south from one bank to another, others travelling up or down stream, yet seemingly never colliding with each other. Even under our awning and so early in the day, the damp heat was already sapping. Those of us on the quarterdeck—Belem, Negus, Kit Farrell and myself—all ran with sweat. Taking Belem's advice, we all carried makeshift fans of wood and sailcloth with which to cool ourselves and to ward off the ever-present insects, especially the mosquitoes and the flies whose bite brings the sleeping sickness.