Gentleman Captain Read online

  I opened the third, barely literate, letter. It was from Kit Farrell's mother, to whom I had addressed my letter inviting him to join the Jupiter, along with a copy of the royal order to Mister Pepys. In spelling so execrable that it made Cornelia's prose read like Dryden, Mistress Sarah Farrell, widow and innkeeper of Wapping, informed me that, desperate for employment and sustenance, her son Kit had taken ship for the East Indies some weeks earlier. There was a chance that his vessel had been held up in the Downs by the same strong westerlies that held us in Portsmouth, but in her opinion as the widow of a man who had served at sea for twinty ayt yers, it was unlikely. Even so, she had forwarded the letter and the warrant to Deal, and prayed that her zeal in my cause would earn her recommendation and remuneration from both her good Capt Cwinton and the most nobel Erl of Rivinsdin.

  I was even more alarmed by the contents of this third letter than by the news of my mother's behaviour. It seemed that for this most dangerous and delicate of voyages, I had exchanged the considerable nautical experience and good sense of Kit Farrell for the alternative attributes of Phineas Musk. It did not seem a good bargain.

  That evening, I selfishly shunned the company of the other ship's officers and supped both wigless and alone, apart from the baleful presence of Musk, who was at least three times older than most other servants in the navy and a thousand times more miserable than any of them. I could hear the noise of the other officers dining at their table in the steerage, just outside my door, and as the wine and ale took hold, I made out Peverell's voice, raised about the others, talking loudly and indiscreetly of this arrogant young sprig of the nobility that they now had for a captain:

  'Why, gentlemen, the first Quinton was but a saddler to William of Normandy! Not a respectable line, at all, despite all his airs and graces.'

  Landon remarked on the king's liking for gentleman captains, men ignorant of the ways of the sea and the heavens. They would soon drive out of the navy all of the honest tarpaulins–seaman officers born and bred, like himself and Godsgift Judge–who had rightly monopolized all the commands under the late republic. Then where would the country be in the coming war with the Dutch, he asked. A generation of butterfly captains going up against Lord Obdam, Evertsen, de Ruyter, and the rest, great seamen all–God help England and preserve her from conquest by strutting Dutch butterboxes!

  Penbaron, the carpenter, grunted encouragement in those rare moments when he was not bemoaning the state of the mizzen or the rudder, while Boatswain Ap's eloquent speech might have represented agreement or disagreement for all anyone could tell. Finally, they mixed the toasts for all the days of the week, toasting in turn the king, sweethearts and wives, absent friends, and adding their own particularly loud toast to the memory of James Harker. I finished my own supper in even worse temper than I had begun it, glaring at Musk if he attempted to speak.

  James Vyvyan came back aboard late that evening and reported to me on the quarterdeck, where I had gone in hopes that the breeze would blow away the recollection of my officers' conversation. My lieutenant was more than a little chastened; a more tired and humbler version of himself. He had little to show for his two days ashore, in quest of evidence of murder. He knew that on the day of his death, Captain Harker attended morning communion at St Thomas's church, and had later dined, seemingly alone, at the Red Lion in Portsmouth town (and if he had been poisoned there, Vyvyan observed, twenty others who ate the meat of the same cow, and fifty others who drank the same beer, would also have died that night). He had briefly met Stafford Peverell, who was ashore negotiating with the victualler's agent, and had exchanged a word with some of the ship's crew at the side of the camber dock. No one saw him from two in the afternoon until about five, when he returned to the ship's boat. For those three hours, Captain James Harker's whereabouts were a mystery.

  'Well, Mister Vyvyan,' I said, as tactfully as I could, 'surely there might be an innocent reason for his disappearance? Could he perhaps have had a friend to take leave of?'

  Vyvyan thought upon the point and said, very slowly, 'If you mean a woman, sir, then yes, it could be an explanation, I'll grant–but I spoke with some of those whom–well, whom he favoured, as it were–and he was with none of them. Or so they said.'

  'Might it not be, Lieutenant, that he had found a new object for his affections–one unknown to you and to his other ... friends?'

  James Vyvyan struggled with his own thoughts for a moment longer. But he was an intelligent young man, and ultimately, his good sense triumphed over grief and rage. 'Yes, sir. It's the likeliest explanation.' Then he smiled faintly. 'My uncle was ever a man for conquests, sir. Ships, islands, women–they were all alike to him, and he took as many of each as he could. So ... no murder, then. You have the right of it, Captain. Indeed, I think I am grateful.'

  He extended his hand, and I shook it.

  By the time I retired to bed that night, Musk had made a tolerable job of transforming the Jupiter's great cabin into a floating miniature Ravensden. Old hangings from the London house adorned my walls—or bulkheads, rather–thus obscuring some of the more dubious examples of James Harker's taste in art. Silver-plated vessels that had been the servants' pewter until my grandfather sold off all the finest Quinton ware now decorated the cabinets and table, relegating Harker's pewter to the officers' table. Pride of place went to two small copies of the portraits of my father and grandfather from the great hall of the abbey, their faces picked out unerringly by the two lanterns that swung overhead, and the somewhat larger portrait of Cornelia by Lely, painted just after the Restoration. My sword hung upon a spike: the sword that had been in my father's hand when he died, which Charles had eschewed, and which I had thus inherited. Near it lay my chief inheritance from my grandfather, an odd, gold-gilt oval box which opened up into a succession of dials: God alone knew what they all meant, or did, but I had loved playing with it as a child and its presence alongside me aboard the Jupiter was strangely reassuring. Surrounded by my own things, lying in my own blankets, my head on my own pillow, and despite the half-hourly clangour of the ship's bell, I gradually fell into a more comfortable sleep than any I had known since coming aboard...

  Only to have it shattered, some time in the small hours of the morning, by a great roaring from the starboard side. Sleepily convinced that we were being boarded by corsairs, I snatched sword and pistol and ran from the cabin. As I did so I trod on Musk, who, too fat for the servants' kennel-like cabins on the poop, had decided to sleep on the deck outside my door. In truth, and although I would never have admitted as much to him, I found it a powerful reassurance that anyone who wished to reach me would have to get past Phineas Musk first; whatever else he might have been, the old rogue was one of the fiercest (and dirtiest) fighters I ever saw in my life.

  Vyvyan emerged from his tiny cabin, sleepy and unarmed, and called after me, 'Captain, there's no alarm...' But I was already running for the deck.

  I reached it to see our sentries holding their sides in an effort to suppress their laughter. Polzeath and Treninnick were trying to pull a struggling, roaring, kicking, swearing brute of a man onto the deck. When I reached the side, I saw Lanherne, Carvell, Le Blanc, Trenance, and two others manhandling the creature upwards from the boat below. Trying to gather as much of the dignity of command about me as my nightshift would allow, I said, 'What's the meaning of this, coxswain? Who is this fellow? Boatswain, administer the appropriate punishment for disturbing the quiet of the ship—'

  Le Blanc and Carvell swapped obscenities and sniggered. Lanherne looked at me, grinned, and said, 'Don't think you'll want to punish this one, sir. This is the chaplain, Reverend Gale. Today's Sunday, and he's got to preach a sermon seven hours from now, so we thought we'd better pull him out of the Dolphin and back on board.'

  By this time, the Reverend Francis Gale was approximately upright. He had several days' growth of beard, his hair was matted and he stank of drink, piss, and vomit. A man less likely to be serving our saviour, and, more immediate
ly, the Most Reverend William, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, was difficult to imagine. In the circumstances, it was also perfectly impossible to imagine anything appropriate to say to him.

  In the event, it was Gale who spoke. He fixed me with two little red eyes and said, 'The grace of our Lord Jeshush Chrisht, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Shpirit, be with you, Captain.' Then he squinted at me, swayed and reached for my shoulder. 'Hell's gates, you're tall. And your hair's going, already. Bald as a coot before you're thirty, I fear. For ever and ever, thy kingdom come.' He gave a great belch. 'Now ... where's my cabin.'

  Chapter Seven

  I stood nervously on the quarterdeck of the Jupiter, staring out over an assembly of crewmen who shuffled apathetically on their heels. The more devout, like the giant Polzeath and the blackamoor, Carvell, were already mumbling prayers to themselves. There was a great deal of murmuring and gossiping, despite Boatswain Ap's barely intelligible imprecations to keep a godly silence. I thought I saw eyes on me hastily averted, and whispered conferences, and laughter. I imagined that in their eyes I merited as much respect as 'the liar'–the man chosen each week for the exquisite punishment of swabbing the bow directly beneath the four holes of the ship's heads. Some men looked about them in that distinctive way sailors have, estimating when the wind might change and our voyage might begin. The hard westerly had moderated a little, but our ensign still streamed out strongly behind the bewigged and capped head of James Vyvyan, who stood at my side.

  I could hear the church bells of Portsmouth and Gosport summoning their respectable congregations to services led by respectable, competent vicars. In contrast, the rather less respectable congregation thronging the deck of the Jupiter awaited one of two equally dreadful alternatives: in the first, the Reverend Francis Gale arrived in time to lead our devotions, assuming he could remain upright and deliver the words in something approximating to the right order; in the second, the Reverend Francis Gale did not appear, in which case the service would be led by an even less adequate substitute. The tradition of the navy demanded that in the absence of a chaplain, the spiritual well-being of the crew, and the task of leading their divine oblations, be taken upon the unwilling shoulders of her officers. Vyvyan had volunteered for the task (having a bishop in the family ensured that it held no terrors for him), but I could not surrender it to him without giving up the last vestige of my authority. Thus, and unlike virtually every other seaman in history, I prayed with all my soul for the arrival of a Gale.

  As the sand ran from the ship's glass towards the moment when the bell would be rung, I thought ever more despairingly of the services that I had attended at our local parish church; I combed them for inspiration in case the task of leading the Jupiters in prayer should devolve upon me, but the Reverend George Jermy was hardly a shining example of Anglican eloquence. Put in as vicar of Ravensden by my grandfather fifty years before, Jermy had, with equal dexterity, survived countless changes in the official religion of the state and warded off the attentions of the grim reaper. Ordained by an ancient bishop who as a young man had been one of the chaplains attendant upon King Henry the Eighth's Archbishop Cranmer–the very man who had created the entire Church of England on which our immortal fates depended–Jermy's Methuselah-like refusal to die did not prevent his falling victim to the meandering habits of old age. As a result, his services were invariably an opportunity for the good folk of Ravensden parish to snatch another hour's sleep of a Sunday morning, the pews rocking slightly as snoring men and women swayed back and forth to the accompaniment of his soothing whispers. Strangely, Sunday was the only day of the week when my passionately Anglophile Cornelia reverted unhesitatingly and very publicly to the dour Calvinism of her youth, giving her the ideal excuse to avoid attendance at church.

  I glanced at the clumsy pendant-watch that had been a coming-of-age gift from my uncle. Despite my complete failure to recollect a single sermon of Jermy's where I had stayed awake long enough to note the subject matter, I realized that the moment for action was at hand. We could wait for the sottish Gale no longer. I had a Bible in my cabin, of course, and the good old prayer book from the days of Cranmer and Queen Elizabeth. I would send Musk below to fetch them. Perhaps I could extemporize something on the first verse of Genesis...

  A flurry of black and white from the steerage heralded the timely and surprisingly sober arrival of the Reverend Francis Gale. In daylight, Gale was not an unimpressive man: stocky, ruddy, and aged perhaps in his mid-forties, he was clearly no milk-and-water cleric, donnish and lost in his books. Shaven and washed, his wild hair concealed–at least to some extent–beneath a modest wig, and clad in full canonicals, Gale looked the part of a man of God. At the very least, he looked the part far better than his putative substitute, Captain Matthew Quinton. He raised a comparatively steady hand in benediction, and his unlikely congregation shuffled into a variety of prayerful postures. Even our four known papists (including the enigmatic Frenchman Le Blanc), and our one Mahometan, a thin and ingenious Algerine renegade named Ali Reis, closed their eyes and bowed their heads in their position slightly apart from the rest at the starboard rail.

  I expected the usual prayers and intercessions from the century-old Prayer Book; but not today. Gale looked around his congregation, then directly at me, and began with the words of Psalm 51: 'I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.'

  I had heard these words, as the prelude to a short sleep, from George Jermy many times before. But from Jermy, who had committed no sin in half a century that anyone knew of, this sentence had always been a mild rebuke to his flock for the manifold inebriation, fornication, and quarrelsomeness in Ravensden village during the course of the previous week. Not so from the lips of Francis Gale. Our chaplain continued with unfamiliar words, read from a very small and very new leather-bound book that he drew out of the sleeve of his cassock.

  'O eternal Lord God, who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rulest the raging of the sea; who hast compassed the waters with bounds until day and night come to an end; be pleased to receive into thy Almighty and most gracious protection the persons of us thy servants, and the fleet in which we serve.'

  Vyvyan glanced at me, a quizzical frown on his young face. Down in the waist of the ship, Polzeath's features were beatific. Some around him seemed confused, others transfixed. Even our half-deaf surgeon Skeen seemed to listen intently to Gale's strange new prayer, and both Roger Le Blanc and Ali Reis seemed rapt.

  'Preserve us from the dangers of the sea,' continued Gale, 'and from the violence of the enemy; that we may be a safeguard unto our most gracious sovereign Lord, King Charles, and his dominions, and a security for such as pass on the seas upon their lawful occasions; that the inhabitants of our Island may in peace and quietness serve thee our God; and that we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land, with the fruits of our labours, and with a thankful remembrance of thy mercies to praise and glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.'

  The echoing 'Amen!' from the crew was thunderous, and carried across the water to the Royal Martyr, some three hundred yards away. Judge, who had no chaplain and who had thus conducted his own service punctually and concisely, was looking across at us from his quarterdeck, no doubt wondering what strange wave of evangelical zeal had swept over the Jupiter's company.

  Gale took the rest of the service forward in an equally brisk and impressive manner, leading a surprisingly responsive crew in three lusty hymns, dispensing the bread and wine at Holy Communion with exemplary efficiency, praying for our new Portuguese queen and casting a brief but incisive sermon upon Psalm 107, ever a favourite in the wooden world: 'They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.' This he turned into a paean to the memory of James Harker, passing over the dark rumours of murder that consumed both Vyvyan and the entire lower deck, where suspicion had taken as firm a hold as bindweed.

&n
bsp; Following Gale's final benediction and the dismissal of his congregation, James Vyvyan murmured to me with a new and almost conspiratorial fellowship. 'My God, sir, if he could speak like that every Sunday, he'd be a bishop.'

  This sudden confidence from my lieutenant delighted me. For a moment, I was torn between engaging Vyvyan in further discourse and seeking out the Reverend Gale. But I knew which of them would prove more elusive in the future. I went across to my chaplain to introduce myself formally.

  Gale was deep in conversation with the Frenchman, Le Blanc. I caught just a snatch of his words–'...terrible, indeed. But rumour is truly the devil's seedbed, monsieur...'–as I approached. Gale halted and turned his only faintly bleary eyes upon me with a discomforting stare that both weighed and measured.

  'Captain Quinton,' he said at length. 'Lord Ravensden's brother, then. You're very young to be taking Harker's place.'

  Inwardly, I raged at the impudence of the man. But the eyes and ears of the crew were all around, he was a man of God in full canonicals, and it was a Sunday. Thus, with difficulty, I confined myself to sarcasm, that last resort of a defeated protagonist.

  'A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Reverend. For the second time, in case you have forgot the first.' He glared at that and I felt a small satisfaction. 'A most interesting service, if I may say so. A particularly unusual prayer at the beginning.'