by J. D. Davies
‘A summer’s breeze, Iles my boy,’ he said. ‘No more than that. We’ll lie up under the lee of Heligoland if we need to.’
I had no more left to spew, and tried to be as cheery as I could. ‘Then we will still make Orkney in time to take the galleon, My Lord?’
‘Mm? Orkney? Aye, Orkney. Ample time, poet. Be ready to chronicle what you see when we get to – to our destination. But in the meantime, do try and stop puking on the deck, there’s a good fellow.’
The Earl of Ravensden:
Damn the gale. It was a bad one, for an English summer at any rate – black skies, ship-killing waves, an evil sea driving us toward the shore of Denmark. I pitied the poet, Iles, retching his guts up, but even some of the hardiest seamen were spewing all over the decks like lubbers. By and by, though, it subsided, and at dawn on an August day, with a watery sun rising astern of us and a gentle southerly breeze very nearly on our beam, Avent and I stood upon the quarterdeck, poring over a rutter and checking our compasses.
‘But My Lord,’ he said, ‘we can still see the cliffs of Heligoland. East-south-east twelve points, by my reckoning four leagues distant. We could not wish a better marker of our position. I can easily set a course direct for Pentland.’
‘Indeed you can, Mister Avent. But I would have you set our course for the Firth of Forth, whence we’ll sail in sight of the coast.’
‘But My Lord, that might add a day or two to the voyage, at the very least – if there was another storm, or if the wind changed, we might miss the galleon altogether!’
Fuck the galleon, there’s a much greater game afoot.
‘Those are my orders, Mister Avent. The Forth and the shore of Fife, if you please.’
I pulled myself up to my full height and strode to the starboard rail, adopting what I hoped was a pose of unchallengeable authority and warlike purpose. But I could sense Avent’s eyes boring into my back, I could see the men within earshot in the waist muttering to themselves, and I exchanged a glance with Horvath, whose expression was strange. It was almost knowing, as though he, and he alone, understood why I had issued my seemingly incomprehensible orders to Avent. That was impossible, of course. There were barely a half-dozen men in the island of Britain who knew the truth of this voyage. And as I gazed out to the northward, across the rolling grey waves of the ocean, it struck me that only two of those men knew the real truth, and were playing the others for dupes. It was a reassuring thought, although a false one: for I had yet to learn who the dupes truly were.
The Dowager Countess:
Patience, young Matthew. Perhaps you will learn the truth in due course, unless I change my mind. For it is a truth most dangerous, and I am not certain it is fit for you to know it. Do not be too eager to learn it, then, for it will change your view of everything. Everything.
For my part, I knew only a part of the truth at that time: the part which your grandfather had sought fit to entrust to me, after the persistence of my hectoring finally persuaded him to confide in me shortly before the Constant Esperance sailed for Scotland. Perhaps it was the enormity of even that amount of knowledge that led me to the next stage of my fate, there at Ravensden House, where I was meant to be resting for the two months or so that remained before the birth of the heir to the earldom.
Such was My Lord’s conceit, for rest was the very last thing I had. I could not sleep for worry. My thoughts raced. It was a hot summer, and I was sweating profusely. I prayed endlessly for my husband’s life and for the success of the dangerous mission he was about, fingering my rosary and reciting the Ave Maria, despite both actions being prohibited by the law of England. In truth, my prayers should have been directed rather closer to home. One sleepless night, in the small hours, the pain began. By dawn, it was unbearable, and four servants had to hold me down as I thrashed about on the bed. Pain beyond description, pain unrelenting, pain that made me scream for hours on end. I knew what the pain meant, and knew at once that I should not have tempted fate and the wrath of God by convincing my husband to confide the purpose of his mission in me. For I had claimed that my ignorance of this purpose was throwing my humours into a furious imbalance, thus threatening the life of our unborn son.
No, ignorance does not upset the balance of our humours. Ignorance is peace. Ignorance is calm. But knowledge, such as the knowledge of a great and terrible deed, overturns the balance, devours it, and spits it out into the flames of hell, which was where my pain now carried me.
The Earl of Ravensden:
‘Saint Rule’s tower, My Lord,’ said Avent.
‘And there’s the cathedral, and the castle. Saint Andrews, then. A decent enough landfall, Mister Avent, although some way to the north of the one I ordered. But what d’you make of that hull – there, in the estuary, beyond the castle cliff?’
Avent screwed up his eyes. ‘On the careen, whoever he is, so difficult to make out his lines. And it’s obscured by the sails they’ve hung out to dry – God knows why they’ve strung them between those poles, so close to the ship.’
‘Your guess, then?’
Avent shrugged. He had been surly and uncommunicative since our dispute off Heligoland. ‘Probably a Dutch or Hamburg flyboat, My Lord. Might have been damaged in the late storm, and laid up here to repair.’
‘A flyboat. Yes, it would seem to be so. Very good, then, Mister Avent. The rutter says there is a fair anchorage and deep water here, to the north.’ I jabbed a finger at the chart. ‘We will come to an anchor there, if you please.’
‘To an anchor, My Lord? Surely speed is of the essence, if we are to sail north to seize the treasure?’
‘We are in good time for the treasure, Mister Avent. Trust me in that. Very good time.’
Doubt was writ large on his damaged face, but loyalty ran deep with Avent. ‘Should we not at least hoist our ensign, My Lord, to tell the Scots garrison in the castle who we are?’
‘No, Mister Avent, we shall not.’
‘As you say, My Lord.’
And so the Constant Esperance, flying no ensign, jack or pennants, came to an anchor just outside the mouth of the great river of Tay.
The Dowager Countess:
‘She will not live,’ said the midwife, thinking that I could not hear.
I glared at her through my tears, but I could say nothing, for a rag was tied over my mouth. The pain racked every inch of my body. It felt as though a torrent was pouring out of me, and I could see the red-stained towels being born away in haste. I screamed and screamed again, although only I could hear each scream. I prayed desperately to every saint I could remember. In my delirium, I thought I could see angels, who transformed into all the previous Countesses of Ravensden, who transformed in turn into demons. I could hear them whispering.
‘Failure,’ they murmured.
One creature – it might have been an angel, or a demon, or a midwife – said ‘Twins, but no hope for them—’
Ah, a kerchief. Thank you, grandson, I had not realised I was crying. But yes, the fact that you are a twin comes down from my family. Two of my brothers were twins, as was our grandfather. And these were boy twins, the elder of whom would have been the Earl of Ravensden. Would have been, had not both of them been born dead. I did not even see them; their bodies were removed at once. And as the pain surged to an even more unbearable peak, my mind began to slip away. I heard the doctor asking if anyone knew of a papist priest who could be persuaded out of hiding to administer the last rites to me. I saw the countesses again, the angels and the demons, and all was dark.
Laszlo Horvath:
Two nights and one day we lie upon the shore of Scotland. The Earl’s crew grow more restive with every hour, wondering why we linger when we should be bound for the north, for the Spanish galleon and the promised treasure. He paces the deck, waiting for a message to come to him from the land. A message, or a passenger. A very particular passenger.
It is the morning of the fifth of August. I am on the quarterdeck when I hear the lookout’s shout, see
the Earl run up from his quarters below and look out to the south.
‘Fuck!’ he cries.
For there, unfurling her sails as she moves out into open water, is the ship we spied in the bay of Saint Andrews.
‘No flyboat, that’s for sure,’ says Avent.
‘Cut for twenty-eight guns,’ says the Earl. ‘He’s our equal.’
‘He, My Lord?’ I say. ‘Are not ships called “she”?’
He smiles, but it is a grim, cold smile. ‘That they are, my friend, except when one knows the identity of the captain. Behold, the ensign of Dunkirk, and the man’s personal banner, flying from the mizzen. Claims noble descent, does Meinheer van der Waecken.’
‘Our own ensigns, My Lord?’ says Avent. ‘Or false flags – those of Denmark, perhaps?’
‘If van der Waecken’s half the man they say he his, then he’ll know us already by our lines – and even if he doesn’t, the Scots hereabouts will have told him of us, that’s for certain, because they’re friends to the Flemings and certainly no friends to the English. So beat to quarters, Mister Avent, unfurl courses, topsails and spritsail, and hoist our own colours if you please, including the arms of Ravensden at the main. Let our friend there know that he fights with true nobility.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Earl of Ravensden:
The Dunkirker held the weather gage, and was coming down upon the breeze. Perhaps the hoisting of our colours and the sight of our guns, the equal of his own, gave him pause for thought; but if so, he gave no sign of it.
‘So, Mister Avent,’ I said, ‘what do you think he will expect us to do?’
The battle-scarred old mariner studied the oncoming ship. She was a fine sight, a trim, well-founded craft with taut sails and a bow that cut the waves purposefully.
‘He’ll expect us to run for the open sea, My Lord,’ the ship-master growled. ‘Gain sea room, try to manoeuvre to take the advantage of the wind off him.’
‘Indeed. Just like any other captain would do. But I’m not any other captain, am I, Mister Avent?’
The old man had been with me long enough to know the response that was expected of him.
‘No, My Lord. You are el diablo blanco, the White Devil.’
‘As you say, Mister Avent, as you say. So let us be devilish. Helm seven points to larboard, then! Port the helm!’
Avent was dumbstruck. ‘To larboard, My Lord? But – but that will take us into the Firth of Tay itself! We’ll have no sea room, and we have no pilot who knows these waters, with knowledge of the local charts and tides!’
The others upon the quarterdeck, and within earshot down in the waist, were plainly as astonished as the ship-master.
‘Oh, but we do, Mister Avent. We have a man aboard who has studied the local charts and tides in far more detail than any illiterate sot of a Dundee pilot will have done.’
‘Then where is this man, My Lord? Why have you not brought him to the quarterdeck?’
I smiled. ‘Because he’s already here, Mister Avent. And I’d thank you to stop quibbling with his orders, else he’ll have you flogged for mutiny!’
Avent was open-mouthed, but still remembered his duty sufficiently to knuckle his forehead in salute.
‘Aye, aye, My Lord,’ he said. ‘Seven points to larboard it is.’
Nicholas Iles:
The armourer gave me two pistols, which I tucked into my belt, and a cutlass, which I held with all the confidence of a new-born. Even so, I prided myself that I at least looked the part of a pirate-warrior as I stood by the quarterdeck rail, shouting obscenities and waving my sword threateningly at the oncoming Dunkirker. This was would be a fine fight – Act Three, Scene Two, perhaps, a suitable prologue to the capture of the Spanish galleon off Orkney in Scene Three. My Lord needed a victory, after the calamities that I would have to recount in Act Two; for do not the strict laws of narrative demand that our hero should be brought low, prior to his ultimate triumph?
And yet – and yet, I could not subdue the doubts that beset me, doubts that grew stronger by the day. Why were we there, close to the Scottish coast, when we should already have been in Orkney? Why did My Lord seem to know so much about these waters?
Suddenly, the Hungarian was beside me. I had not been aware that he was even nearby.
‘Strange, is it not?’ he said –
Laszlo Horvath:
‘Strange, is it not?’ I said. ‘How we come to be here, if we are meant to be in pursuit of a Spanish treasure far to the north.’
Iles looks at me with his customary undisguised loathing. I am not entirely certain whether this represents the common English aversion to foreigners, or whether it is his personal dislike of me. I suspect it might be a large measure of both.
‘I trust in My Lord,’ he says.
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘he is a great man. But it is remarkable, is it not, how he seems to have such detailed knowledge of this particular place? A man might even think that he has meant us to be here from the very beginning, and that his story of a treasure in the isles of Orkney was but a ruse to persuade the crew to sail with him—’
The bow guns of the Dunkirker fire, and Iles turns away from me. But the look on his face has changed, which is all to the good.
The Earl of Ravensden:
‘Hold your course, Mister Avent,’ I ordered.
‘But My Lord—’
Van der Waecken fired his bowchasers for a second time. Two spouts of water rose, barely two or three cables astern. Twice as close as his first effort.
‘Hold your course, I say!’
‘Aye, aye, My Lord!’
‘Mister Groom! Stern culverins to fire upon my command!’ The gunner, down in the ship’s waist, saluted and gave his orders. ‘As she bears, Mister Groom! Helm amidships, Mister Avent! Steady – steady – give fire!’
The quarterdeck of the Constant Esperance shuddered as the stern culverins, almost directly beneath our feet, roared out their defiance, sending eighteen-pound roundshot at the Dunkirker. Water spouted up on either side of van der Waecken’s beakhead. Another few minutes, another few yards less, and this would be a killing business.
Nicholas Iles:
I swear that the cannon ball can have passed no more than inches from my head. I heard it, I felt the movement of the air. I turned to see it cut through ropes just above me, to my left, and tear a hole through the sail the seamen call the mizzen course.
Our own guns fired once again in reply, and now the air around the two ships was thick with smoke. One of our shots struck the forecastle of the Dunkirker, splintering timber and taking the leg off a man standing close to the rail, who toppled backwards into the sea. The swivel guns mounted on our quarterdeck rail, very close to me, opened fire, although it was still at the limit of their range. But amid all the noise, heat and chaos of battle, I could still hear clearly what passed between My Lord and Avent.
‘My Lord,’ the master cried, ‘if we hold our course, we’ll be under the guns of Broughty Castle within a quarter-glass! They’re bound to fire on us! On both of us!’
I turned, and saw at once what Avent meant. There, on the north shore of the Tay, was a tall, gaunt tower, with an artillery battery at its base. Through gaps in the smoke, I could just make out the distant, tiny shapes of morrion-helmeted gunners running to man their pieces. From the castle ramparts flew the saltire of the Kingdom of Scots. A kingdom that would not take kindly to having its waters invaded by our private offshoot of the great war between England and Spain.
But then My Lord spoke, and I will remember his words to my dying day.
‘Broughty will not fire on us, Mister Avent. Trust me. On this day, of all days, Broughty Castle will not fire on us.’
The Earl of Ravensden:
Avent looked at me as though I were a madman; and perhaps I was. For the truth of it was that I had only the word of one man that Broughty Castle would aid on us on that day, and his word was founded upon that of another, whom he did not trust. But I had co
mmitted my eggs to the basket, and prayed to the god of the Quintons that my faith would be justified.
Van der Waecken’s bow chasers fired again, but this time, the shots that had found their range at their previous firing fell a few yards astern. The Dunkirker was backing his sails and beginning to fall away slightly to the south, increasing the distance between us. He could not know what the Scottish castle would do, but could surely only assume that it would fire on him if he came within its range. No doubt he hoped that it would fire on me, too, damaging the Esperance and forcing us to turn into his path, where we would fall an easy prey.
Every man’s eye was on the cannon poking out of their ramparts beneath the lofty tower. We were close enough now to see the lighted linstocks in the hands of the gun-captains. The moment of truth had come. Either the Scottish gunners would avenge their ancestors who fell at Flodden, or –
‘Helm hard a-starboard, Mister Avent!’ I cried. ‘Wear round under the guns of the castle, then bear directly for the Dunkirker, yonder!’
The old man’s face was a terrible sight at the best of times, but now he resembled one of the gaping gargoyles lining the parapets of Ravensden church. For he knew, as I did, that wearing ship directly off the castle, presenting our entire side to the Scottish guns, would be fatal if the castle’s governor gave the order to open fire. But without a word to me, he transmitted the order to the helmsman on the whipstaff in the steerage. Men scrambled up the shrouds to the yards, and hauled upon the sheets. Slowly, the bows of the Constant Esperance began to turn. To turn directly towards Broughty Castle, and the Scottish guns.
Nicholas Iles:
I swear there was a half-minute when every single man on the ship held his breath at exactly the same time. I could see men with their eyes shut, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in fear. It was a hot day, but many were sweating even more profusely than from the heat alone. I saw one of the ship’s boys piss himself, a dark stain spreading across the front of his breeches. I felt only regrets: regrets that I had not had more women, that I had no sons, that perhaps Horvath the Hungarian was right, that no play of mine would ever be performed, that my name would never be remembered.