by J. D. Davies
‘Master Secretary,’ said the tall young man in his gentle Scots lilt, ‘and My Lord of Ravensden. It is good to see you again, cousin.’
‘And you too, John.’
I stepped forward, and embraced the Earl of Gowrie.
CHAPTER NINE
My blood boils as I read how my grandfather was ensnared by that vile serpent Cecil, and forced to join in one of the most desperate conspiracies in our history. Nowadays, men only cry up the Gunpowder Treason, which happened but a few years after these events in which Earl Matthew was embroiled. This is no mystery: the fifth of November is easy to comprehend, even by the dullest-witted artisan. Blame the Catholics – an unfailing rallying cry in England, God help us – and get blind drunk, nothing more. And, of course, Fawkes and his coterie laid their plot in Westminster, ideal for those sheep-like multitudes who are convinced that nothing important can possibly happen outside the environs of London. So the Gowrie plot, infinitely complex, mysterious, and seemingly Scottish (although in truth, not), is overlooked by posterity, even though it was infinitely more dangerous to the Crown in every respect. But even I, nor, I suspect, my uncle Tristram, who first taught the story to me, had any idea how devilishly complex and dangerous it really was. No man did: no man but my grandfather and Gowrie himself.
The Dowager Countess:
The Constant Esperance, that was her name. She was the ship in which my husband had sailed against the Spanish Armada: the real one, not the invisible variety. That June, the Earl took me down to view her during her fitting out. This was in an estuary within the county of Essex, at a place called Pin Mill. Low wooded hills sloped gently down to the water’s edge. It was a remote place, reached by the narrowest of lanes. As these were impassable for the state coach of the Earl of Ravensden, all of us were on horseback: myself, the Earl, Iles, Horvath, and a half-dozen others of my husband’s retinue. Iles was concerned, protesting that I should not ride in such a condition – that is, in my sixth month – but both the Earl and I dismissed him.
‘Christ’s teeth, Iles,’ he said, ‘my grandmother gave birth to the fifth earl when riding into Bedford, got back on the horse straight afterward and rode on to the market cross to berate the mayor for an hour. Countesses of Ravensden are made of stern stuff, are they not, My Lady?’
I thought that my three prematurely deceased immediate predecessors in that rank did not seem to have been thus, but forbore from saying so. Instead, I reassured the poet, of whom I was increasingly fond: he was a good and eager friend, although, alas, his verses were unutterably execrable.
‘My Lord is quite right,’ I said. ‘You should not worry yourself for my sake, mon cher Nicholas. Like all the women of the house of Monconseil-Bragelonne, I could very nearly ride before I could walk. Why, even now the child in my womb will be learning the smell and the feel of a horse.’
But my easy words to Iles were not entirely true. My husband was riding well ahead, eager to catch sight of his precious ship, and I spurred on my horse to catch up with him.
‘My Lady?’ he said.
‘This is a remote place, Matthew,’ I said. ‘A very remote place, surely, to keep a large man-of-war.’
‘It is a convenient harbour. Easy to reach from our London house, and from Bedfordshire. Convenient in so many ways.’
I looked at the fields and woods all around. Apart from the occasional ploughman or charcoal burner, there was hardly a soul to be seen.
‘Convenient, too, because of its remoteness from authority, husband? From the Queen’s agents, and the customs men?’
The Earl grinned. ‘Why, My Lady,’ he said, ‘whoever might have expected you to start thinking like a privateering venturer?’
The Constant Esperance lay upon a mudbank, her bows drawn up onto the shore. Caulkers and occam-boys, as I now knew to call them, were at work on the lower part of her hull, below the water line. Men were pulling on ropes to raise sheerlegs alongside her. Above the high water mark, two dozen or so black, brown or green cannon lay on the shingle, waiting to be put into the ship. Not far away was a pile of muskets, and adjacent to that, a stand of halberds and another of pikes. Whatever voyage the Constant Esperance was about to embark upon – and my husband was still suspiciously vague on the matter – it was evident that peaceful trading would not be the principal objective.
Two men approached as we dismounted. Both were dressed in the shabby, careless manner of the English, especially those one encounters outside London. One was a tall, bearded fellow, grey-haired, with an ugly scar running from the top of his head, through the hideous socket where his left eye should have been, to the remains of his nose. My husband approached him at once, and my English was now tolerable enough for me to be able to understand his conversation.
‘Well, Avent? We’ll have her ready to float on the next spring?’
‘Aye, My Lord, God willing. She’s still a well found ship, after all these years.’
‘That she should be, with the amount of gold I’ve spent on her. A well found ship. Better than any infernal galley, be it Spanish or English, no matter what the Queen’s ministers and the principal officers of the navy say.’
The second man, a shorter and rounder creature than this Avent, said something, but spoke in such a rapid gabble that I found it incomprehensible.
‘Who are these men, husband, and what did this one say?’ I demanded in French, reckoning that two such unprepossessing individuals would have no understanding of the language of the angels.
‘Forgive me, my dear,’ the Earl replied, ‘this is Elias Avent, master of the Constant Esperance, while this—’
The smaller man stepped forward, bowed, and kissed my hand, after the fashion in my country.
‘My Lady,’ he said in fluent but heavily accented French, ‘it is a true honour for a humble subject of the King of Scots to express his respect for the Countess of Ravensden. I am Logan, My Lady. Robert Logan, Laird of Restalrig.’
‘Master Logan is a good friend of the Earl of Gowrie, my dear,’ said the Earl. ‘He is also the new joint owner of the Constant Esperance.’
Laszlo Horvath:
The Countess cannot conceal the surprise on her face, and it is evident that her husband has not thought fit to tell her that he has sold a half share in his ship. Nor can she conceal her distaste for this Logan. Neither can Iles, who I can hear talking with the Earl’s men. I understand their feelings. Logan is paler, and of course his dress is very different, but in appearance, he reminds me strikingly of a merchant I once knew, far away in the south of the Pannonian Plain. This trader was by far the most duplicitous man I ever encountered, a creature so unscrupulous that he sold his own daughters to the Ottoman governor of Novi Sad. So I wonder if the old legend can be true: which is to say, that somewhere in the world there is an exact twin of each and every one of us. A twin both in appearance and in character.
The Earl of Ravensden:
I laid out my new Dutch waggoner chart upon the table in the captain’s cabin of the Constant Esperance, afloat at single anchor upon the flood tide.
Avent, Logan, Iles, Horvath and the ship’s officers leaned forward and inspected it: Logan with indifference, the rest with suspicion bordering on hostility. My wife sat apart, seemingly intent on watching the flocks of birds flying low over the waters.
‘End of the world,’ said Groom, the gunner, a testy old Shadwell man.
‘Come, Master Gunner,’ I said, ‘Drake sailed round the world. Why, ships now sail to the Americas nearly every month. This is within our own islands, man!’
Groom looked upon the strange shapes, upon the jumble of islands scattered in apparently random fashion across the chart, and shook his head.
‘End of my world all the same, My Lord. Naught but witches and sea-serpents up there.’
Foulis, the lean and pungent Southampton man who served as carpenter, nodded his assent.
‘Master Logan,’ I said, ‘you have been there. Perhaps you can reassure these fainthearts.’
‘No witches or sea-serpents, My Lord,’ he said in his thick Scots brogue. ‘Just no night, this time of the year. And a strange breed of men, that speak Norwegian and still follow Viking law.’
‘There you have it,’ I said. ‘Orkney. Our destination, good sirs.’
‘To what end?’ said Avent, the only one of Esperance’s officers that had anything resembling a decent brain; which was something of a miracle, as that brain had very nearly been hacked out of his head by a Spaniard’s blade during the fight off Gravelines.
I stood up and smiled broadly.
‘Treasure, my friends. What better end could there be?’
‘Treasure?’ said Groom, brightening. ‘But in Orkney, My Lord?’
‘I have it upon excellent authority that a great galleon will attempt to run the Pentland Firth, here, between Orkney and the mainland, some time between the tenth and twentieth of next month, August, the Dons not being willing to risk sending it through the Channel. It’s carrying enough bullion to settle all the arrears of pay of Spain’s Army of Flanders. You know how large that army is, my boys, and its pay is anything up to ten years behind. So imagine just how much gold that will be, eh? And it can all be ours – all of it, that is, but for the share designed for Master Logan, here.’ The Scot nodded with appropriate modesty. ‘Think on it, my lads. No other investors to rob us of the spoils! And easy pickings, for the Dons won’t be expecting a ship as nimble or as heavily armed as the Esperance in those parts. The King of Scots has no ships of his own, either, so there’s nothing to stop us. We sit here—’ I jabbed my finger at the chart – ‘behind this island, Hoy, wait for word of the galleon, then fall on it. Exits galore from the great anchorage which lies in the midst of those islands, honest fellows, so whatever the wind, we can sail out and have our fill of Spanish treasure!’
I stood back, grinning broadly. Inwardly, though, I was praying that Avent – and it would only be Avent – did not ask awkward questions, such as where the so-precise intelligence I possessed about the galleon happened to come from, or why the Spanish should take such a great risk while peace talks were taking place at Boulogne, or why the Dons would even consider sailing through the northern seas, where so many of their brethren from the Invincible Armada came to grief. But Avent said nothing, merely staring at the chart in wonderment. I congratulated myself; but then, I have always prided myself on being an excellent liar.
The Dowager Countess:
My husband was a terrible liar.
He could never conceal the truth from me; except, at that time, in one matter, and one alone, of which as yet I had but very little inkling. I might have divined it had there been an opportunity for me to question him about this Logan, as dislikeable a rogue as I ever encountered. What in the name of the dear Virgin was my husband doing consorting with such a man at all, let alone selling him a half share in his pride and joy, the Constant Esperance? Did he really need money that badly? And what did Logan have to do with the Earl of Gowrie? My husband had told me of his meeting with his distant kinsman at Theobalds, but was then unconscionably vague about the upshot of their encounter, despite my best efforts to wring the truth from him. Perhaps Gowrie gave My Lord intelligence of this galleon, I thought for the briefest of moments before I looked at my husband again. His expression told me all, for as I have said, he was a terrible liar.
There was no Spanish galleon.
As I looked around the faces of the men in the cabin, though, I knew that the Earl’s lies were more than enough to sway his officers, as lumpen a crew as one was likely to find. The prospect of Spanish treasure had them gazing at the chart in admiration, their avarice apparent in every inch of their miserable frames. Truly, the English lust after gold like no other people on earth –
What is that you say under your breath, grandson? That I was attracted to your grandfather partly by the belief that he had a great treasure of gold?
That was not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.
Laszlo Horvath:
The Earl is a terrible liar. Of course, his craven underlings believe every false word that spills from his lips. I put on a show of enthusiasm, of delight at the prospect of the untold riches we are supposedly sailing to seize. For I have two advantages over these others within the cabin.
Firstly, unlike My Lord of Ravensden, I am an excellent liar.
Secondly, I know the true purpose of this voyage.
Nicholas Iles:
My Lord was a terrible liar. But as I watched his performance there in the cabin of the Constant Esperance, I realised something more: that he was a terrible actor, too. And that thought brought about the strangest sensation. It was as though a great curtain lifted in my mind, allowing me at last to see clearly what was before me.
This was a stage. My Lord was the principal actor, and a dreadful one. But as I looked around the cabin with my new-found understanding, I realised that he was not the only one in that theatre, truly Shakespeare’s ‘wooden O’ afloat. Certes, Avent and the officers were playing their parts from life: they did not realise what was being played out before them. But Logan of Restalrig was acting, of that I was sure. He knew that this story of Orkney was a mere fiction, a tale as tall as those of Robin Hood. So, too, did the Hungarian; but with him, I had felt from the very first time I met him that everything he did and said was an act. I looked over to the dear Countess, in the corner of the cabin, her hands resting demurely upon her swelling belly.
I felt myself flush, the heat so intense that it threatened to burst through my very skin.
For My Lady was acting too. There was no doubt of it. All of them were acting parts in a play that I had not written, and to which I did not know the ending. Who the playwright was, and who was directing the action, I could not tell. But the heat of my flesh turned at once to cold. I shivered, though it was July. I knew that feeling, knew it too well. It always came upon me at that moment in a play when you know for certain that tragedy and death are about to befall the characters, and there is nothing in the world that you, the spectator, can do about it.
CHAPTER TEN
Laszlo Horvath:
We are sailing north, always within sight of the coast. It is that which the seamen call an easy sail, the wind from the south-west, strong enough to let us make good speed, not strong enough to force us off our course, not an easterly that would push us onto the treacherous rocks and shoals of England’s shore. The sea teems with hulls, and I pride myself that I can now tell a fishing boat, bound for the herring shoals, from a collier, taking coals to London. The great fleets of both would be easy pickings for Spinola’s galleys, or the ships of Dunkirk, but there is no sign of either, although the Earl has stationed additional lookouts in the ship’s tops. He takes pleasure in instructing me in the names of places. Spurn, Humber, Scarborough, Whitby, Tees, Tyne: an endless list, in which I feign interest. This one is famous for its fishery, that for its coal trade, another for its ruinous abbey. And so forth.
It is only when we reach the coast of the territory which the English call Northumberland that he says something of real note.
‘Look, Horvath, you see those towers, upon that cliff?’ I nod. The towers are plainly visible, outlined against a sky in which dark clouds are gathering. They appear to be ruinous. ‘Alnburgh Castle, that. My property. Came into the family through the wife of my uncle, the sixth earl.’
‘The sixth? Earl Henry?’
‘Ah, so have you been listening after all when I’ve told you tales of the Quintons! Yes, my uncle Henry. A strange man, Horvath. A cursedly strange man. Or strangely cursed, as many had it. I met him only a few times, but I remember his face vividly. Such a face it was! As though one of old Bosch’s monsters had stepped out of the canvas and become flesh. Henry Quinton. Not ever Harry, despite that being the by-name of every Henry since the beginning of time. Named after both the first Earl of Ravensden and the great King Harry the Eighth, of course. He spent all his life searching, although only God or the Devil k
new what he was searching for. Travelled here, there and everywhere. Alchemy, necromancy, sorcery – he dabbled in them all, and in the end, one or more of them killed him. Some experiment he was undertaking in a tower of Alnburgh Castle caught fire. They never found a body, but a coroner’s jury was convinced of his death all the same. My father, his brother, was even more convinced of the need for him to be dead.’
‘Because by that means, your father then became the Earl of Ravensden,’ I say. ‘The sixth Earl had no sons?’
‘No children at all. His poor wife died of a broken heart when he abandoned her and went abroad for years on end. The credulous mob put it out that he’d had her poisoned, and of course when his body never turned up, the same credulous mob were convinced that he’d made a pact with the devil. They say that his evil shade still rides at night, returning from the dead to plague the living. Oh, no need to look like that, my good fellow. The folly of the ignorant, nothing more. If Earl Henry’s ghost rides from Ravensden Abbey, I’d have seen it, and if it rides from Alnburgh Castle—’
‘My Lord!’ Avent’s shout interrupts him. ‘We should take in sail and put further out to sea. Reckon there’s the storm blowing in from the west!’
‘Damn,’ says the Earl.
He goes back to the poop deck to issue his orders, leaving me looking out toward the distant towers of Alnburgh Castle, and the storm rearing up behind it.
Nicholas Iles:
The storm blew us very nearly to Jutland. I stood upon the deck the whole time, admiring the force of nature in all its majesty, drawing inspiration for a play that I had in mind, a dark story of a mighty tempest –
Not here, Iles. Only the truth, here.
So be it.
I was not upon the deck at all. I was confined to my cabin, if that tiny oblong of canvas partitions and fetid timbers be thought worthy of that name, spewing into a leather bucket. Or, when I missed that target, directly onto the deck. Hence I saw My Lord barely at all. Once, though, he came below decks to see if I still lived. He pulled back the canvas flap and stood there, looking down upon me, swaying easily with each of the insane motions of the ship.