The Rage of Fortune Read online

  THE RAGE OF FORTUNE

  J D DAVIES

  © J D Davies 2016

  J D Davies has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2016 by Old Street Publishing

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Iwan, Efa, and Rhiannon Mullin

  The rage of fortune is less directed against the humble,

  and providence strikes more lightly on the low.

  Seneca (cAD4–65)

  *

  Champaigne: The cause, My Lord, of this intestine uproar?

  Marquis de Hauvrye: The cause is murder, misery, and death.

  Anon., Alarum for London: Or, The Siege of Antwerp (1602)

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Francis Drake. Mm, well then. Sir fucking Francis fucking Drake. Did I ever tell you about my dealings with him, grandson?’

  ‘No, My Lord. You died when I was five.’

  Beware of ghosts with too much eternity on their hands.

  ‘I did? So I did, young Matthew. But you bear my name, and you have heard my voice, have you not? You heard it through all those years that you commanded men-of-war for those worthless whoresons, the Stuarts—’

  ‘Yes, grandfather. I heard it.’

  ‘But I really never told you about Drake? That man—’

  ‘Matthieu! Pas devant l’enfant, pour la grâce de Dieu!’

  ‘As you say, my dearest. Francis Drake, then, grandson. Hero of England, my arse. That man was a liar, a villain, a coxcomb, an arrogant strutting rogue, who deluded Queen and country alike—’

  Rather, beware of old men with too much time on their hands. Very old men forced to take to their beds with a slight fever, which their doctors and servants are convinced will kill them at long last. Bored old men who know that it really is only a slight fever, so leave me alone, you damnable vultures, I may be nearly ninety years old, but I will yet outlive you all.

  Old men who know it’s not yet their time to die, but who would greatly prefer it if the fever-borne spirits of their long dead grandparents would permit them just a little sleep.

  ‘You know the story of Drake’s Drum, grandson?’

  ‘Yes, My Lord, I’m sure—’

  ‘How it’ll beat when England’s in danger, to bring back the great hero to save us all? Satan’s cock it will. Frank Drake’s ancient history now, and he’s not coming back, that much is certain. I saw him dead in his sea-bed, shrivelled and yellow from the bloody flux that did for him. I saw his lead coffin slip into the sapphire-blue Carib ocean. I heard that Christforsaken drum beat its lament for the dead admiral. I heard the thunder of the fleet’s guns echoing round the bay. God help me, I even raised my own sword to salute him. And I know damn well that at that moment I wasn’t the only man in the fleet who was thinking “good riddance, you preposterous, preening old turd-sack”.’

  ‘As you say, grandfather.’

  Oh Lord, why cannot I be granted a feverish dream of a nubile unclad wench? Why, instead, must my illness bring me a dream-visitation from my namesake, Matthew Quinton, eighth Earl of Ravensden, sometime admiral to the great Queen Elizabeth, sometime adventurer in the Carib ocean, sometime scourge of every Spaniard from Belize to Barcelona?

  ‘These journals that you scribble. Your so-called adventures. They are nothing compared to mine, of course. Tales fit only to amuse children, grandson. The Dutch as enemies? Christ’s bollocks, in my day the Dutch had barely crawled out of their bogs for the first time. I had a decent foe, at least – Spain, by God! A vast empire that stretched around the entire globe, founded upon gold and silver beyond measure! The galleons! The armadas! That’s what you should be writing about, grandson. The journals of Matthew Quinton, indeed. The journals of this Matthew Quinton, that’s what you should be writing! Now, you can start with how I fooled Drake at Cartagena – or with my part in the fight against the Invincible Armada—’

  ‘Tais-toi, husband! Pay no heed to his vanities, grandson. But he is right in one thing. You should write of our times, but of the days when your grandfather and I first knew each other. You remember, young Matthew, how you and Herry discovered the papers together, at Ravensden Abbey in 1651, when you were eleven years old? When the first gale of autumn brought down a chimney and, with it, the partition wall of the muniment room?’

  ‘I remember, grandmaman. I remember, and I promise I will write of your adventures. When I am well enough to leave this bed.’

  I woke, still mumbling as my eyes opened, my wrinkled brow drenched in sweat.

  I was in my bedroom, surrounded by the familiar oak panelling and the portraits mounted upon it. Above the fireplace, my mother and father. Between the windows, my grandfather, bold and bearded, just as he had been in my dream, and my grandmother, much younger than I remembered her. And even in waking, I could remember my first, astonished sight of grandfather’s words upon paper, all those years ago –

  ‘Francis Drake. Sir fucking—’

  In truth, the ghosts that had come to me in my fever were the ghosts of words upon a page, words read avidly for the first time nearly eighty years before. And with the words came the memory of a youthful and well-loved voice –

  ‘Maggot!’

  September 1651, then. Dearest God in Heaven, what a time. Some weeks after what had seemed to be the final defeat of the King’s cause – the Quinton family’s cause – on the battlefield of Worcester. So many long years before this day, when I sat up in bed, called for claret, insulted my doctors, and remembered what had transpired all those years before.

  Remembered the sweet face of my dear twin sister, as clearly as if she stood before me in that moment.

  *

  ‘Maggot! Matthew!’

  Henrietta Quinton burst through the door of the muniment room, grabbed my shoulder and shook me. I was aware of the familiar sound of armed men dismounting, of boots and spurs upon cobbles, of orders being barked in harsh artisan tones. That, and only that, served to break the spell cast by my grandfather’s words, and made me turn to look into Herry’s wide, alarmed eyes.

  ‘Soldiers, Matthew! Ironsides! An entire troop of them! They must have come—’

  ‘To search for our brother. Very well. With mother and Lizzie away, it falls to us to welcome them, Herry.’

  ‘Welcome? Soldiers of the army that killed our father? That killed our king? I would rather die, Maggot!’

  My twin was a gangling creature, almost as tall as me but with limbs that seemed to fling themselves haphazardly in several different directions at once. Yet she had a fearless heart, and a good soul.

  ‘Remember who we are, Herry,’ said my eleven-year-old self. ‘W
e are Quintons. We act with honour. Always with honour. By welcoming the enemy, we make ourselves better than them. That’s what Uncle Tris teaches, and it’s what our mother and brother would expect of us. What father and grandfather would have expected of us. But, sis, it might be wise if you didn’t call me Maggot in their presence.’

  Her response was grave. ‘Of course, brother. Matthew. I swear I will not demean the heir to Ravensden before prating rebel scum.’

  I stood to go downstairs with her, but turned for one more glance at our newly-discovered treasure trove. I could just remember him, a white-bearded, stooped, but still remarkably strong old man who delighted in lifting both Herry and me with each hand to balance us on his shoulders. I turned back again, and as I did so, my eyes fell upon another of the rat-eaten, mildewed fragments of paper that were strewn everywhere: fragments that appeared to have been written in three distinct hands, of which only my grandfather’s was familiar.

  There it was again: just a short passage this time, scribbled in his hand in the margin of his diatribe against Sir Francis Drake.

  Drake’s Drum doesn’t need to beat. England still has a hero.

  It has me.

  It has Matthew Quinton, Earl of Ravensden.

  *

  In the dining hall of the Abbey, an Ironside captain – a stocky, nearly bald man with a ferociously pimpled nose – was remonstrating with old Barcock, the loyal steward of Ravensden Abbey. Half a dozen heavily armed, buff-jacketed, turtle-helmeted troopers lounged against the ancient, insect-devoured, Flemish tapestries, looking at once bored and menacing.

  ‘…under orders of the Council of State, to search this house—’

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ said Barcock in his broad Bedfordshire accent, screwing up his eyes to study the face before him more intently. ‘Yes, it’s come back to me. Couldn’t place where I’d seen your face before. Remember now, all right. Ezekiel Fensom, that’s who you are. Miller of Willington before the war.’

  The rebel officer bridled at that. ‘Captain Fensom to you, Steward. Acting, as I say, upon the authority of the Council of State of this Commonwealth of England—’

  They both realised at once that Herry and I had entered the hall, and turned to face us.

  ‘Well, then,’ said Ezekiel Fensom, ‘what have we here?’

  I hated and feared the creature with every inch and ounce of my lanky eleven-year-old frame. But I was a Quinton and the man of the house, and I prayed that my voice would not tremble.

  ‘I am Matthew Quinton, brother and heir to the noble Lord Charles, Earl of Ravensden. This is my sister Henrietta, and this is our home. Why do you interrupt our peace, Captain?’

  The sometime miller of Willington looked down over the pimples.

  ‘I do not deal with children,’ he said, turning back to Barcock. I swore then that I would kill him one day. And, many years later, when I was a captain in the navy of the restored King Charles the Second, and Ezekiel Fensom was –

  But no, that is not an episode which I recall with any great sense of pride, and I will gainsay recording it now.

  ‘As I say,’ continued the Ironside officer, ‘I have orders to search for the notorious traitor and malignant Charles Quinton, believed to be wounded and to have fled from the Worcester battlefield after the recent glorious victory of Lord General Cromwell and God’s chosen army—’

  ‘Wounded?’ Herry gasped. ‘How badly wounded?’

  Fensom turned back toward us, and examined my sister intently.

  ‘Well, now. Perchance you are a good actress, girl, for if you have been sheltering him, you will know full well what his condition is. Standish, Gunn, Laurence, search the outbuildings! Remember we seek treasonable correspondence too, so search under floorboards and the like. The rest of you, go through this building—’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  The russet-coated captain looked at me as though I were a dog turd upon the sole of his boot.

  ‘What’s that, boy? No? To a commissioned captain of the New Model Army?’ Fensom drew his wheel-lock pistol from his belt, then turned it this way and that, as though he were studying it for the first time. ‘Perhaps I should shoot you now, to stop you growing into as monstrous a traitor as your brother and father.’

  He cocked the pistol, raised it, and levelled it at me.

  Herry’s mouth fell open and she gripped my hand, but I did not flinch, did not even sway in the slightest. In truth, I think I was paralysed with fear and anger: fear at the sight of the gun barrel pointing directly at my eyes, anger at this pretend-captain’s insult to my father, who had fallen in glory at the Naseby fight after being the ninth Earl of Ravensden for exactly one hundred and eighteen days.

  But there, high on the wall above Ezekiel Fensom, was the vast Van Dyck portrait of my grandfather, the eighth Earl, arms akimbo and formidably bearded, looking every inch the mighty warrior who had ventured out against the Invincible Armada. Wherever I was in the room, I always felt that his eyes were looking down on me, and I never had that sense more strongly than in that moment. And I remembered his words:

  England still has a hero. It has me. It has Matthew Quinton.

  ‘No, Captain Fensom,’ I said, with all the authority that the living and distinctly unheroic Matthew Quinton could muster. ‘My brother, the Earl, is not here. There is no correspondence in this house that you would find treasonable. You have my word of honour upon it.’

  Fensom continued to aim his pistol directly at me, but after a moment, his hand began to shake. Then the rest of his frame followed suit. Finally, he lowered the pistol a fraction and began to laugh. His men joined in, uncertainly at first, then more confidently.

  ‘Honour!’ cried the erstwhile miller. ‘Great Lord, an infant seeks to fob off a godly soldier with his word of honour!’

  While the troopers continued to laugh, Fensom beckoned to them to be about their business. As ordered, three men went outside, the others made for the stairs to the upper floors of the ramshackle old mansion which had been converted from a dissolved abbey over a hundred years before.

  Finally, Fensom’s laughter began to subside. In its place came cold, unsettling contempt.

  ‘Honour that tips over into arrogance, that tips over into the monstrous lie called the Divine Right of Kings. That is why you cavaliers lost the Worcester battle, and the war before that, and the war before that one too, and why we cut off your king’s head in the end, for causing all that needless death. And I remember you Quintons, before the war, how you lorded it over this part of the county. Your grandfather there, boy—’ he nodded toward the portrait, levelling the pistol at my head once again as he did so – ‘he was the worst. Saw him riding by many a time, proud and arrogant as they come—’

  ‘You, monsieur, will not dare to speak ill of my late husband, and you will not dare to point guns at my grandson!’

  The unexpected voice came from the doorway that led from the kitchen range in what had once been the monastic refectory. Despite spending the best part of half a century in England, my grandmother’s accent was still that of a Frenchwoman who had learned English reluctantly, suspiciously, and very, very, slowly, as if each word of the language represented a threat to her very Frenchness. Louise-Marie Quinton, formerly de Monconseil-Bragelonne, Dowager Countess of Ravensden, was now over seventy years old, but she still dressed as though she were attending a ball at the court of le roi Henri le Bon. She could no longer stand, but sat in her silvery satin finery within the wheeled contraption that had been invented for her by her younger son, the strangely-garbed man with a face like a gargoyle who now pushed it forward into the hall: my uncle Tristram, scientist, alchemist, and God alone knew what else.

  Herry and I looked toward each other at exactly the same moment, as we often did, and I knew that exactly the same thought was in her mind.

  Where had they come from? They were not here an hour ago. Our grandmother should have been at her dower property, Quinton Hall, the old monastic grange farm acr
oss the valley. She and Tristram should have been attending to –

  Herry ran to grandmaman and hugged her, but I remained where I was, watching Fensom. He seemed utterly nonplussed by the new arrivals. His eyes moved from my grandmother to Tristram and back again, settling upon the silver crucifix boldly displayed at her bosom. I saw what I took to be untrammelled Calvinistic rage in his eyes. Finally, though, Ezekiel Fensom inclined his head very slightly toward the dowager Countess.

  ‘My Lady Ravensden,’ he said, decades of deference overcoming his Roundhead ardour. ‘Doctor Quinton. I had not expected you—’

  ‘Evidently,’ said Tristram.

  ‘My apologies, Doctor Quinton. But I have orders from the Council of State, to search for the malig– that is to say, for the fugitive, Charles, Earl of Ravensden.’

  ‘You will not find my nephew here, Captain. My elder nephew,’ said my uncle, neutrally. ‘And your orders from the Council of State? How small, exactly, was the quorum when whatever Councillors remain at Whitehall signed it? When every honest man in England with a landed interest is upon his estates, bringing in the last of the harvest? Let me see your orders, Captain.’

  Tristram thrust out his right hand. Fensom hesitated, then handed him the papers. I looked at my grandmother, and saw that her gaze was upon me, too. There was a pride in it – pride at my obstinate defence of our family honour, I hoped – but there was something else. Something I could not quite comprehend.

  ‘As I thought,’ said Uncle Tris. ‘Three names. Three, out of a Council of State of forty-one men. But it does not need forty-one signatures, this document, does it, Captain Fensom? It does not need even three. It needs only this one, the one that signed first. “O Cromwell”. How very modest of him. So the Lord General has returned to London after his victory at Worcester?’

  ‘He has, sir. He—’

  Two of Fensom’s men came down from upstairs, their boots clanking loudly upon the stone steps. They each bore armfuls of paper. I recognised them immediately: they were the same papers I had been reading only minutes before. The soldiers cast them down roughly upon the long oak table in the centre of the hall.