The Mountain of Gold (28 page)

Shish pointed to the links in the chain. 'Several of the esses are weakened, sirs. Weaker even than I suspected them to be when first I reported the defect at Deptford. It seems to me—'

'Several what?' I asked.

'Esses, Captain. The links. As I explained to you before.' I grimaced at this exposure of both my ignorance and my forgetfulness. 'Some seem to be of old, weak metal, pewtered or otherwise concealed. Others appear to have been sawn part way through, and the cuts crudely forged over. Worse, the same is also true of the rowls on both pumps, and they are our most serious problem, by far.'

Castle shone the lantern over the very foot of the pump well, where water was lapping towards our feet. 'There's the rowl, sir,' he said. 'Down at the bottom.' I could just make out a bar, somewhat akin to a horse's bit, at the very foot of the mechanism. The chain clattered around this at the bottom of its journey, plunging each burr in turn into the water, before proceeding upward again.

'We have spare esses,' said Shish, 'though God knows if there are enough to replace all the defective ones—and who knows if the spares have not been tampered with in the same way? But we carry no spare rowls, sir. No Fifth Rate does.'

'No spares?'
I was incredulous. 'Why not, in Jesu's name?'

Shish shrugged. 'The rowls never fail, sir. After all, there's less strain on them than on the esses, for it's the chain that does all the work.'

'Rowls never fail,' I repeated, 'except in our present case, it seems.'

'There can only be two causes, sir,' said the carpenter. 'The likeliest is those villains in Deptford yard—one of the storekeepers, most probably, selling off the good parts to merchantmen up at Blackwall or the like and passing off this poor stuff to the navy—'

Castle was dismissive. 'Not even the most venal storekeeper would take the trouble to foist a sawn-through rowl onto a king's ship, Mister Shish. Which brings us to the second cause—'

'Sabotage,' I said. 'Someone deliberately fitted defective esses and rowls to the pump, knowing they would give way during our voyage.'

Both Shish and Castle nodded, for the conclusion was inescapable. But unlike them, I also had a culprit in mind; could hear the culprit's words, still clear in my mind.

This mission will not succeed.

Sixteen

At my request, Holmes came across from
Jersey
to consult with me and my Holy Trinity of accomplished seamen, Castle, Negus and Farrell, calling in Shish to discuss the specific issue of the pumps. The entire squadron, not just the
Seraph,
needed to take on fresh water and wine for a voyage going south of twenty-seven degrees of latitude, so there was no quibble with the principle that we should make for either Funchal or Tenerife; but the latter had rather more foundries, and with the winds as they were, we would lose less time to our voyage by making for it rather than the port of Madeira. Holmes and Negus were confident that ironfounders, coppersmiths and the like could be found on Tenerife who would be able to fashion new esses and rowls for the
Seraph
within a matter of days, if not hours, but Shish seemed less sanguine on that score. Holmes was apologetic that his
Jersey
could not assist us, but she was a much larger ship, so her chain-pumps were incompatible with ours. Otherwise, Holmes was disconcertingly jolly, abruptly dismissing the suspicions of sabotage; but then, Holmes was the kind of sea-officer who held it as gospel that every single shore official of the navy, be it the meanest storekeeper or Mister Pepys, was corrupt or incompetent or both, and intent above all on putting obstacles in the way of old Robin Holmes' righteous desire to be killing Dutchmen, Spaniards, or whoever else got in the way of his sword. Tenerife it would be.

So in due course we beat up on a clear and blustery day toward Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on the east coast of the island, a town of low houses and campaniles nestling beneath a great grey mountain. It was guarded by a fort on a promontory to the south, over which flew the red-yellow-red colours of the dying, defeated Philip the Fourth, King of Castile, Aragon, Leon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, and God knows how many other titles as meaningless as my own royal master's claim to be the lawful King of France. Many of the men were on deck, even those of the off-duty watch, for like their captain they were keen to look upon this place where English arms had distinguished themselves so recently and so decisively. Rebel arms, admittedly, but English nonetheless. For here, only a little more than six years before, General-at-Sea Robert Blake and his men had destroyed the
flota,
Spain's supposedly invincible treasure fleet.

I turned to Lieutenant Castle, who had been present at that battle, and asked him to recount it to me.

'Aye, sir. Well, I was a reformado aboard General Blake's flagship, back then. The wind was a bit less southerly than it is now—more directly from the east, in truth.' Castle sniffed the air, as though hoping for a trace of the gunsmoke of that great day. 'The
flota
was moored in two lines, running north from the quay there, beneath the town—the bigger galleons further out, making themselves a great floating battery against us.' It was easy to conjure up the scene, for quite a number of ships lay in the bay of Santa Cruz, roughly where the galleons must have been. Among them was the
Jersey;
Holmes had evidently beaten us to it, which could only mean he had found no Dutchmen to annoy. 'And behind the galleons, Captain,' Castle continued, 'were all the batteries ashore—see the line of emplacements, there, all the way from Fort Saint Philip to the south of the town all the way round to the north end of the bay? I tell you, sir, not a few of us were mighty afeared to be going up against so many guns, but Blake—well, he was already a legend by then, and most of us would happily have gone to our deaths for him.'

'You knew Blake himself?' I asked.

'Aye, sir. I knew him well enough. Like all the fleet, I respected him hugely. An honest, bluff man of few words but a powerful faith. He loved his men—fought like a lion to get them better pay and conditions. A scholar, too—they say he only took to war after failing to get a fellowship at Oxford.' Robert Blake and Tristram Quinton, exchanging quips on some high table or other; now there was a vision to conjure with. 'No great seaman, of course—none of Cromwell's generals-at-sea were. But what a soldier! What a mind, Captain Quinton! When he first put his plan to the captains, all the knowing tarpaulins born to the sea, they shouted him down. Called him a madman. Didn't speak to him for a day.' Castle chuckled, the recollection of the event still evidently fresh in his memory. 'But Blake held his nerve, that he did. He kept the Sabbath holy—wouldn't attack on that for all the gold of the world. But on the Monday, he ordered Stayner in first with a squadron to get between the two lines of Spanish galleons. Reckoned Stayner could hold his own against both the inshore line and the shore batteries while he, the general himself, brought the main fleet down the other side of the outer line of big galleons.'

I looked out toward the approaching shore, and found that I could visualise the scene easily enough. 'But,' I cried, 'surely that would mean sending Stayner's ships into the most hellish crossfire?'

'That it did. And in that east wind, it would be just as hellishly difficult for Stayner—and the rest of us, come to that—to withdraw if the plan went awry. So we watched them sail into the bay, Stayner's ships. Not a few of us thought we were waving them goodbye. Down they went, between the two lines of galleons. And then we all saw what Blake must have seen all along. By putting the inshore line of galleons where they were, the Spanish had made it impossible for their shore batteries to fire on us without hitting their own ships! But Blake made his name in siege warfare back in the war against the roya—during our land's time of troubles, sir. So he knew more than a little about the trajectory of gunfire.' I realised at that moment that a growing number of the crew had assembled on the upper deck at the foot of the quarterdeck ladders; Castle had quite a loud voice, and he now had quite an audience too. Anyhow, Stayner and his ships sailed in, calm as you like, all the way up to the head of the bay, and there just dropped anchor and began to blast away on both sides. And then it was our turn, Captain. Blake brought us down the other side of the big galleons, and truly, sir, the fury of God's wrath smote them mightily—' A raised eyebrow from Francis Gale, who was listening intently, and the erstwhile Puritanical incarnation of William Castle was rapidly locked away again in that place from which it had briefly emerged—'Well, at any rate, Captain, the Admiral and the Vice-Admiral of the
flota
both blew up, and by the middle of the afternoon, we had destroyed or taken the entire fleet—all sixteen galleons, by God!'

Francis Gale clapped Castle on the shoulder. 'A pity, then, my friend, that such a mighty victory should have been for nought. For if I remember rightly, General Blake obtained not one coin of the King of Spain's Indies treasure.'

Castle took the jibe in good part; a prouder man might have been mortified. Aye, well. We didn't know that the Spanish had taken all the bullion ashore and buried it long before we got there.' A good thing they had, perhaps, I thought to myself: for if Oliver Cromwell's bankrupt regime had gained the gold and silver of the Indies for itself, there might well have been no Restoration, Lord Protector Richard Cromwell would be ruling in Whitehall, and Matthew Quinton might still be scratching a living out of a Dutch garret. The parallel with the mission of the
Seraph
struck me at once, for what was I in this case if not a new and lesser Blake, pursuing an illusory dream of gold on behalf a desperate English ruler? I recalled how my grandfather in his day had chased around the Indies more than once on behalf of Great Queen Bess in search of supposedly easy pickings of Spanish bullion, and how his old rival Raleigh was executed by the less than great King James for his unsuccessful pursuit of a fabled city of gold, El Dorado, far up the Amazon river. Would kings and Lords Protector ever learn, and would poor, honour-chained fools in storm-tossed ships ever stop voyaging and dying on such lunatic quests?

I emerged from my own thoughts to hear Castle say, 'We had the devil's own task to get back out of the bay, because of course, once we'd removed all the galleons from their path, the Spanish batteries could fire on us at will. We had to warp Stayner's squadron out under constant fire. God alone knows how the
Speaker
made it out. She had not a mast left standing, as Our Lord is my judge.'

'A fine victory indeed,' I said, 'regardless of the fate of the bullion. A pity that it was General Blake's last. He would have been a mightily useful man to have on our side in the next war with the Dutch.'

Robert Blake, the greatest English seaman since Drake (although if he had been present on our quarterdeck, my grandfather would undoubtedly have disputed this assessment)—this Blake had died on the voyage home from Santa Cruz, just as his ship was entering Plymouth Sound.

Castle shrugged sadly. 'I think I knew the general well enough, sir, to say that he would never have served the king. He was too wedded to the republic and the good old cause of the godly. Which those who dug him up knew well enough, I think.' To the eternal shame of my more vengeful Cavalier brethren, the corpse of Robert Blake had been ejected from its tomb in Westminster Abbey, to which it had been committed in one of the greatest state funerals England ever witnessed, and thrown into a common grave pit.
Sic transit gloria mundi.

We sailed on, into the bay, and came to an anchor close to the watering place of the town, slightly inshore of the
Jersey.
Holmes sent across his compliments and requested my company for dinner; pointedly, the invitation did not extend to O'Dwyer. The Irishman seemed unfazed by this, saying that he had already decided to dine with Captain Facey aboard the
Prospect of Blakeney
before taking a turn about the town. Castle went ashore at once, for his command of the Spanish tongue made him the obvious man to negotiate with the ironfounders and their brethren. So it was that a little after noon, I was rowed across to
Jersey
by Coxswain Lanherne and his boat's crew. Holmes proved to be in most excellent form. Most men shrink as the battle comes nearer; Robert Holmes was one of those who blossoms like a flower, the closer he comes to the sound of the guns. He railed against the
hogen mogens,
our derisory by-name for their High Mightinesses of the Dutch States-General, against their cunning leader Grand Pensionary De Witt, against all their cried-up seamen, and was beginning to embark on a discourse concerning the loose morality of Dutch women when he recalled that my wife was of that nation. Holmes apologised profusely and changed the subject to the weather.

Our pleasant afternoon was interrupted by the arrival of William Castle, who bore dire tidings: the ironfounders and coppersmiths of Santa Cruz de Tenerife had closed ranks to deny us new rowls and esses. The cause of this affront mightily embarrassed my lieutenant. 'It was all my fault, sir,' he said. 'I should never have gone ashore—Shish should have talked to them, with one of the English merchants for an interpreter. Somehow, they knew that I was aboard Blake's fleet in the battle here. One of them even spat in my face. They all swear that they will not raise a finger to assist the heretics who destroyed their
flota de Indias.'

I returned to the
Seraph
in a foul humour, and called a council of my officers. There was incredulity at the perfidious actions of the founders; or as Francis Gale said, 'Great God, do they not know England is a kingdom once again? Can they not tell the difference between a royal ship of war and a rebel—begging your pardon, Mister Castle?'

The onetime rebel lieutenant nodded graciously.

This matter that had seemed so insignificant now consumed us all. We needed to sail in a day or two, and we could not do that without the parts. What, then, could convince these idle rogues of Spanish founders to make them for us? Money, of course, and we could undoubtedly obtain enough, drawn by bills of exchange upon local English merchants, to pay a king's ransom for these few pieces of metal; surely one particularly venal founder could be offered enough to break the embargo. But what guarantee did we have that the same founder, duly bribed, would not out of spite make esses and rowls as defective as those they were meant to replace? If we could not obtain reliable parts at Tenerife, we would have to send to England for them; and with capricious winter weather in easy alliance with dockyard sloth, who could say how many weeks or months it would be before we had them, if we ever did? Shish was unwilling to trust the pumps for a day longer upon the open sea, and was not even convinced that they would hold if we simply stayed at anchor. I could hardly dishonour myself and my country by grovelling to the Spanish for a dock (even if they were inclined to grant us such succour), but without one, there was a very real danger that the
Seraph
would simply sink at her moorings;
and for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.
A part of me insinuated that an enforced stay of several months in the pleasant climate of this island, and the consequent abandonment of the goldfinding expedition, were far from unsatisfactory outcomes. Yet my honour cried out against these weasel words. This was a royally-ordained mission, and whatever my own doubts and my growing disenchantment with the royal in question, it was my duty to carry it through to the best of my ability. But above all, there was the pervasive suspicion that the planting of the defective parts aboard the
Seraph
could only have been the fulfilment of my good-brother's prophecy, and of his determination to prevent us ever reaching the Gambia river. I had thought long and hard upon his exposition of arbitrary and constitutional government, but I convinced myself that the only way of putting that to rest was to take O'Dwyer to Africa and expose his story for the great lie it had to be. If that was the outcome, both Venner and I could rest satisfied. If in a few weeks time I found myself looking across the desert at a glittering golden mountain—well, perhaps then Matthew Quinton might be forced to confront the question of whether all that wealth really should be placed in the capacious hands of Charles Stuart alone. But I wanted to confront that dreadful dilemma in my own time and on my own terms, not on those dictated by Venner Garvey and a coterie of obstreperous Spanish ironfounders.