The Battle of All the Ages (15 page)

The boat taking me across the harbour was a long rowing skiff manned by large, silent identical twin brothers. They looked on me warily throughout the short voyage. Perhaps they could divine my thoughts, which speculated on why such fine specimens were not in the king’s service, either voluntarily or by pressing.

The brothers rowed me across the Barbican harbour, a busy waterway thronged with coastal shipping, a few foreign-going vessels and entire fleets of fishing craft, similar to those that the
Duirel
had seized within sight of the shore. Carvell, Ali Reis and Macferran briefly watched the boat’s passage from the quayside, then turned and marched purposefully through the door of the nearest inn. I had no doubt that by the end of the night, they would be roaring drunk; all except Ali Reis, who remained true to his Mahometan faith in that regard if not in others, although strangely, he always seemed to be at the centre of any fight and the instigator of many a debauch.
Meanwhile
, Francis Gale was already bound for the Turk’s Head and his bed. He was no longer a young man, as he often said, and preferred a good sleep to a good bottle.

Once past the breakwater, the boat was out into the broad, open reach known as the Cattewater, where I looked upon a familiar sight. Ahead, over toward the shore of Mount Batten, lay the hulk, an old Spanish prize from Cromwell’s war that served as the navy’s jetty here in Plymouth; several times, I had been on ships that moored to her. Alongside her was a Fifth Rate frigate, secured fore and aft, her sails furled and her cannon hidden behind closed gunports. A very familiar frigate.

I had never thought to set foot on her deck again. For in that hull, I first met Francis Gale. In that little wooden world, I commanded the likes of Carvell and Macferran for the first time. She was the ship that I had commanded in my first battle. The ship whose deck had been stained with my blood.

The
Jupiter
.

But it was not just the ship that was familiar. Several men were upon deck, watching our approach with some curiosity, but only one of them stood on the quarterdeck. Only one of them was attired in a silk dressing gown and a large white periwig, holding a delicate glass of red wine in his hand. He was a bluff fellow, a year or two older than me but already starting to run to fat. Suddenly, recognition dawned upon his face. He disappeared below, shouting as he did so at several of the men in the
Jupiter
’s waist.

By the time my boat came alongside and secured, a side party awaited me. The boatswain’s whistle piped me aboard, and as I hauled myself up onto that so-familiar deck, my successor as the
Jupiter
’s
captain
doffed his hat in salute. He had discarded the dressing gown for a breastplate and baldric, but even so, he possessed about as much
military
bearing as a pheasant. He smiled broadly, and I could not help but grin in return. Despite what I was about to do, it was good to see him, for I had thought him dead. The whole English navy had thought him dead. My last sight of his ship had been of it being engulfed by the entire Dutch fleet during the early part of the Battle of Lowestoft, the summer before.

‘
Sir
Matthew,’ he said with emphasis, ‘I give you joy of your knighthood. Belatedly, but my joy is not diminished by time.’

‘And I give you joy of your freedom, Captain Harris. Nor is mine diminished by time.’

With that, we embraced, and the
Jupiter
’s side party cheered. Beaudesert Harris, my very good friend, whom I had thought to be sailing the lake below. But even as we clung to each other, I thought upon the irony of it. I had given Beau joy of his liberty, yet perhaps I was about to snatch it away from him once again. Indeed, perhaps I was the angel of death who would consign poor Beau Harris to a traitor’s fate.

The captain of the
Jupiter
raised the glass that he had been drinking from on the quarterdeck, and which had already been refilled several times since my arrival in the ship’s great cabin.

‘To Will,’ he said simply.

‘To Will.’

‘And may God give us the ships, the guns and the men to avenge him!’

Beau virtually threw the contents of the glass down his throat.

‘Amen,’ I said, and took a rather more measured sip from my own glass.

I had not seen Beau since before the Battle of Lowestoft, just over a year earlier. It took some weeks for the intelligence to reach England
that, finding himself surrounded by the enemy fleet, Captain Beaudesert Harris had prudently surrendered his command, the
House of Nassau
– a ship that had been mine earlier in the year. Taken prisoner, he was housed in reasonably tolerable conditions in a Dutch castle until early in the new year, 1666, when the intermediaries of the two governments agreed to an exchange. In one of those peculiar ironies that God sometimes devises, the man for whom he was exchanged was my brother-in-law, Cornelis van der Eide, a bold and skilful captain of the Zeeland Admiralty, who had surrendered to me during the
Battle
of Lowestoft; and much as I loved Beau, I could not help but feel that it was anything but an equal exchange. Nevertheless, Beau Harris was duly released. But by the time he returned to England, I was at sea in command of the
Cressy
, tasked with bringing home the mast fleet from Gothenburg. And when I came home in my turn, Beau already had the command of the
Jupiter
and was at sea, cruising the Soundings from his base here in the Cattewater. As I say, I loved Beau as a true and amiable friend; even so, I thought it perverse that a man who lost his ship due to a catastrophic error of judgement on his part, which he then compounded by surrendering to the enemy, should be granted another command immediately. But during one of our last conversations before he lost his life making an even more fatal charge into the middle of an enemy fleet, Will Berkeley explained the matter succinctly.

‘One, Beau may not know one end of a ship from the other, but he has the heart of a lion and the blood of a true Cavalier, traits valued highly by the King. Two, he makes Lady Castlemaine laugh, which endears him even more to our sovereign lord. Three, his father
controls
two parliamentary boroughs, which endears him to both our sovereign lord and Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Thus Beau’s
continuation
in the service is assured, and I’ll wager you a guinea to a groat that he’ll outrank us both one day soon. Besides, Matt, it is not as though he is being given a ship in the fleet itself, to repeat his blunder of last
summer. Your old
Jupiter
, cruising in the mouth of the Channel, far from the real action of the war – not even Beau can make a pig’s ear of that command.’

Poor Will: if the charges laid at Beau’s door in the papers given to me by the King were proven, the pig’s ear was grown so large that it had very nearly crushed the navy of England beneath its monstrous porcine weight. It was certainly more than sufficient to put paid to the life of Vice-Admiral Sir William Berkeley. Moreover, it now seemed to be intent on giving Captain Jacob Kranz, the hell-hound, free rein in the waters of south-west England.

Beau was holding forth on the iniquities of his Dutch captors during his imprisonment, although as far as I could tell, this was
principally
annoyance at their refusal to supply him with a whore or two whenever he demanded. Finally, I could hear no more and interrupted him.

‘Beau, why did you not even attempt to sail when the caper came into the Sound this afternoon? Is your ship damaged, or undermanned? The wind was favourable –’

He tapped the side of his nose. ‘All part of my plan, Matt.’

‘Your plan?’

Beau looked mightily pleased with himself. ‘I am lulling him, Sir Matthew. Making him think that the
Jupiter
will not put to sea to oppose him. Encouraging him in the belief that her captain is a craven and a fop, who prefers to stroll the deck in his dressing gown.
Tempting
him to grow bolder, and bolder still. One day soon, he will become too bold, and he will make a mistake. Then I shall have him, Matt.’

Beau was no seaman, but then, he was no fool, either, and he was certainly no coward. There was a logic to his design, although I
wondered
whether he had the skill to execute it.

‘And how many honest traders and fishermen have to suffer before you consider him sufficiently lulled?’

Beau bridled at that.

‘I command the
Jupiter
now, Sir Matthew,’ he said, stiffly. But Beau Harris could not be querulous for very long. He poured more wine into my glass and smiled. ‘You seem in ill temper, Matt. That never suits you. Come, let us celebrate the reunion of two old friends, and raise toasts to absent ones.’

Beau was evidently intent on getting fuddled as rapidly and
comprehensively
as he could. The temptation to join him in a wake to honour Will’s memory was powerful, but I resisted. If I followed him into his cups, it would only make worse what had to happen before the night was out. Best, then, to grasp the nettle as quickly as possible.

‘Beau, there is something I have to ask you. Something that I am commanded by the King to ask you.’

His face fell.

‘Commanded
by the King?
Then is this why you have come, Matt?’ I said nothing; what could I say? And, as I have just observed, Beaudesert Harris was no fool. ‘Of course. The hero Sir Matthew Quinton taken away from his great ship, to suddenly appear in distant Plymouth dressed as a soldier. I should have known you had not come here in that garb for the air or the society. Out with it, then, Matt. What has Beaudesert Harris done to offend the King’s Majesty?’

How to word it? But at bottom, there was no easy way. Best to open the mouth and pray that the correct words spilled out.

‘When you were cruising to southward, at the start of May, you spied a fleet off Lisbon, did you not? A great fleet?’

Beau was clearly confused by this. ‘Of course I did. Every man knows that! I saw the French fleet, plain as day. The Duke of Beaufort’s fleet, come out of the Mediterranean.’

‘You are sure it was the French fleet?’

‘God’s wig, Matt Quinton, I may know less of the obscurities of sea-business than you, who have made such efforts to turn yourself into something akin to the roughest Rotherhithe tar, but even I can tell a French fleet when I see it! I saw the white Bourbon colours, plain as day.’

‘And you reported that – when?’

Beau brightened. ‘Ah, now that I can tell you. I may have many faults, but stinting on my correspondence is not one of them – unlike my idle oaf of a purser, who was put in solely because he’s some sort of relation to the nursemaid of Lady Castlemaine’s bastard by the King. Yes, truly.’ He went to his sea-chest, and began to rummage through it. ‘The idiot can’t tell one end of a quill from the other. So I don’t entrust any of my papers to him, Matt, nor to any of my servants. Here we are. Copies in my own hand of my out-letters from the
Jupiter
. This is the one you want –’ He handed me a sheet written out in his familiar, nearly illegible scrawl – ‘my letter to Sir William Coventry, the Lord Admiral’s secretary, dated from this very cabin on the twenty-second day of May, as soon as we came into Plymouth Sound. It was even printed in the
Gazette
! I have the copy here.’

He produced the familiar paper and waved it at me, but I ignored it; although the
London Gazette
was still a new innovation, having appeared for the first time barely a year before, it already seemed to have existed for an eternity. Then, of course, the
Gazette
stood alone. Nowadays the streets are full of these so-called ‘news-papers’, though God knows why, for they barely deserve the name; every week seems to vomit forth a new title into the world, full of the same scurrilous untruths as all the others, penned by low-life incapable of following a more respectable trade, the columns crowded out with rewards offered for lost dogs or advertisements for coffee houses that no honest man would dare frequent. Yet the gullible amongst our nation – that is, very nearly every man of it – devours them all, thus feeding the demand for more. But some of them have their uses; I find the paper the printers use for that rancid mountebank Dick Steele’s
Spectator
has a texture particularly pleasing to my ancient arse.

My younger self, though, had little time or use for the
Gazette
, which reported in detail the doings of the Pope, or the Margrave of Brandenburg, or the Khan of Samarkand, but said nothing whatsoever
about what every man and woman in England really wanted to know: namely, precise details of the fornications of the King and the great lords and ladies of the land. Besides, I was intent on reading Beau’s letter to Coventry. It was unequivocal, and tallied with the evidence of the
summary
of official correspondence that had been among the papers handed me by Chiffinch in Westminster Abbey. Beaudesert Harris, captain of His Majesty’s Ship the
Jupiter
, had seen the French fleet off Lisbon, and duly reported that fact to Whitehall. There was only one difficulty: the French fleet could not possibly have been off Lisbon. The papers I had seen contained categorical proof that when Beau wrote his letter, the French fleet was no nearer England than Toulon. That meant Beau could be one of only three things: a blockhead, a liar or a traitor. And as my brother had said, if one cannot find a genuine traitor to hang, draw and quarter, there are plenty of blockheads and liars on whom the charge can be pinned instead.

Beau could see me reading and re-reading his letter, and my
expression
must have hinted at my thoughts.

‘They think it was me, don’t they? The great men in Whitehall. They think it was my intelligence of the French fleet that brought about the division of our own. But there’s proof, Matt! The man who reported the French army at La Rochelle, ready to invade Ireland! His story corroborates mine, and he’s here, in Plymouth –’

‘Nathaniel Garrett. Yes, Beau. My men have put out word around the town requiring him to attend me. When we find him, Francis Gale will take his deposition.’ I hesitated, but there was no way of
concealing
or dissembling. ‘And in due course, he will also take yours.’

I saw the realisation dawn on Beau Harris’s face.

‘Depositions? Are you turned lawyer, then, Matt Quinton? No, I see it now. Not a lawyer, indeed. You are turned a hanging judge.’

‘It will not come to that, Beau –’

‘Really, Matt? How many Englishmen were lost in your four-day fight? Five thousand? Six thousand? Even here in Plymouth, scores of
widows and orphans weep for loved ones who are either at the bottom of the ocean or rotting in Dutch gaols. The people cry out for revenge, both upon the Dutch and upon those responsible for the division of the fleet. And in this town, they also blame me for not sallying forth and destroying the hell-hound. I hardly dare set foot ashore as it is. Besides, if I did, and laid accusations against those – ah, what does that matter? For if they come to believe that I caused our defeat in battle too… they’ll hang me from a gibbet on the Hoe, Matt, and won’t bother with the niceties of courts and juries.’ He essayed a smile, but it was grim and forced. ‘So come, Sir Matthew Quinton. Let’s drink while we can – you, who is set for glory and an earldom, and me, who is set for the gallows.’