Gentleman Captain Read online

  He handed me two sheets of paper, and I saw that on the first of them he had written in his own hand next to three of the names.

  Lieutenant, James Vyvyan, Harker's nephew. A good man, but very young.

  Purser, Stafford Peverell. Haughty and ambitious. A close, cunning fellow.

  Chaplain, Francis Gale. A sot, at sea for money.

  They were all looking at me. 'Of course, Your Royal Highness. Thank you. If I may be permitted, though, I would request the appointment of one supernumerary master's mate.'

  York frowned. 'Mister Pepys will upbraid me for allowing such an irregularity,' he said.

  Even the churlish Prince Rupert laughed a little at that, and the king smiled and said, 'We all live in fear of the wrath of young Mister Pepys. The man is inexhaustible, rooting out sloth and inefficiency in everything except his own life, or so Penn and Mennes tell me. However, in the circumstances, I think we can permit you this one indulgence, Captain Quinton. Not even our esteemed Mister Pepys will quibble over one spare master's mate if it comes down to him as a command from both the Lord High Admiral and the king himself.'

  King Charles beckoned to a pageboy, who hurried over with pen, ink, and paper. He scribbled a note, on which I only had time to read the superscription: To Samuel Pepys, esquire, Clerk of the Acts to Our Principal Officers and Commissioners of the Navy, Seething Lane. The king said, 'The name of your client, Captain Quinton?'

  'Farrell, sir. Christopher Farrell.'

  The king nodded, and read aloud the last part of the note: '...to appoint the said Christopher Farrell forthwith as supernumerary master's mate aboard our ship of war the Jupiter, Captain Matthew Quinton.' He signed, with a flourish, 'Charles R'. The pageboy poured a little wax onto the paper, the king dipped his ring, and James of York countersigned the document. 'So be it, then, Matt Quinton. Scotland may be as wet as the Thames and full of canting hypocritical Presbyterians, but for us three Stuarts, it's our native country, God help us, and one of my three thrones. I wish still to be King of Scots on my birthday, Captain, so go to it.'

  Charles the Second rose to his feet, imperious, ineffably ugly, and as tall as I. He extended his hand, and I bowed to kiss it.

  As my brother and I backed out of the room, still bowing, the king said, 'The Jupiter is a damn good ship, Captain Quinton. So try not to lose this one, for God's sake.'

  Chapter Four

  I spent the night in Ravensden House, barely sleeping for the noise of the drunks rolling past the window, my excitement at the commission lodged safely in my pocket, and the thought of the princely sum of three pounds and ten shillings a month that the captaincy of a Fifth Rate frigate would bring me (and, more pertinently, Cornelia, who would immediately claim and spend a fair portion of it). Nevertheless, my pride at the trust bestowed on me by my king was tempered by disappointment that he still saw me as a sea officer, and not the commander of cavalry that I longed to be in emulation of my father.

  I rose before dawn. My brother despatched Musk back to the abbey to collect my sea chest and transport it to Portsmouth, a prospect that brought forth much audible cursing from the cantankerous and saddle-sore steward. He took with him a letter from me to Cornelia, informing her in broad terms of my commission and imploring her not to be too concerned for me, advice I knew she would entirely ignore. I also wrote a note to Kit Farrell who, as far as I knew, was still at his mother's alehouse in Wapping, where he had been since our ship sank beneath us. I found a messenger who knew how to read, hoping that the few extra pence I paid him would ensure that he read out the correct message to the correct recipient. Then, borrowing sword and cloak from the earl my brother, from whose eternally preoccupied and elusive person I took an emotionless leave, I set out for Portsmouth, and my new command.

  I knew it would be a long day's ride, even if I rode hard; most would have attempted the Portsmouth road in two, at a more leisurely pace, and Zephyr had already made a lengthy forced ride on the previous day. But he was a good, strong horse, and willing, and he had the prospect of some weeks of comfortable idleness in a Portsmouth stable ahead of him, so I felt no guilt at making the demand. Thus I rode over London Bridge and out into the barren heaths of Surrey, beyond Kingston, where I had ample enough time to think on all that had been said the night before.

  Of course, it was obvious why they had given me the command: as Prince Rupert had so bluntly put it, if they wanted a Cavalier, there was simply no one else, not at such short notice. So the navy's youngest, least experienced, and least successful captain had been given a mission almost as much political as naval, and in waters barely known to most Englishmen. To prevent a mighty arsenal falling into the hands of this mysterious general, Campbell of Glenrabble, or whatever he was called, and forestall the rebellion that would otherwise ensue.

  That much was unsurprising matter, for rebellions had been the fashion in our land for a quarter-century, and in that year 1662, when the king was but newly restored to his thrones, black rumours of new plots and rebellions were as much a part of everyday fare as bread, beer and the pisspot. But I shivered a little as I thought upon my task. It was Scotland, after all–then still an independent and a foreign land, albeit one with the same king as dear, sensible England. Even the Scots who spoke English could scarce be understood by those with the refined tones of Bedfordshire, and God knows, we saw enough of them on our county's roads, off to try their fortunes in London town. The region for which we were bound was many times more barbarous–full of men who still spoke the old tongues and wore skirts about their thighs. And it was said that the seas there contained whirlpools that could suck a hundred-gun ship to its doom, and sea caves the size of cathedrals. A captain with forty years more experience than I could own might well baulk at such a task.

  Indeed, I recollected suddenly, the Jupiter had been given to just such a captain–and now he lay dead! At the moment Zephyr stumbled on the slippery mud. Jolted from my reflections, I looked about. It was the moment before dawn when the night seems darkest, and I shivered in my borrowed cloak. What if this was no natural death, but, as the Duke of York had so ominously implied with his talk of poisoning, a dark and foul murder–perhaps at the hands of those who plotted to raise the rebellion in Scotland? Again I looked about me, and saw the pale glimmer of dawn away to my left. God's blood, Matthew, I said to myself, enough of these womanish fancies. It was a jealous husband, or–and here I felt my equanimity return as the obvious answer laid itself before me–the apoplexy, or griping of the guts. Men die. Many men die suddenly and unexpectedly, for that can be the way of death, the thief in the night. Thus it was with my grandfather. Because some men die, other men succeed to the command of ships of war, and others succeed to crowns. Or to earldoms—

  Zephyr whinnied, as if to say, 'Nay, Master Matthew, neither go thee down that road!'

  I bent my thoughts next upon the mysterious Captain Judge, my senior officer. I thought back to a conversation at dinner with Harris of the Falcon, when our ships had lain together in Bantry Bay the summer before. Judge's name was mentioned, and there was much laughter from Harris and his lieutenant, but now I could barely remember the evening, let alone the conversation. I dimly recalled falling into our boat and being rowed back to my ship as dawn broke, vomiting several times into the bay as I did so. Harris always kept a good table, and a particularly good stock of old Madeira.

  Even without all of this, I faced for the second time in my life the prospect of taking command of a ship. I remembered with a shudder those moments on the quarterdeck of the doomed Happy Restoration at Chatham the previous summer, when my commission had been read and I could feel one hundred and thirty pairs of eyes scanning me, assessing me quite accurately as an ignorant and wildly overdressed popinjay, made captain of a ship of war on no better grounds than having the king's friend for a brother. All of them, from Aldred down to the ten-year-old cook's servant, knew full well that I had been the most junior officer in the minute Royalist army-in-exile, and had fought in p
recisely one battle, on the beach before Dunkirk, at which that army had been routed in no time by a lethal combination of the French and Cromwell's Ironsides. A land battle. They also knew full well that before taking command of their ship, I had served but one voyage at sea on a man-of-war, and that as a virtual passenger. To the crew of the Happy Restoration, I was as little qualified to command at sea as Damaris Page, the great bawd of Drury Lane, and dear Christ in Heaven, how right they had been. And how they had suffered for it, the poor wretches.

  This time would be very different, I vowed to myself, and with the empty road stretching before me I began to rehearse out loud the reading of my commission, that essential and mysterious sacrament during which the command of a king's ship is assumed by her new captain. This led to embarrassment just south of Guildford when some farmhands, resting unseen behind a hedge, overheard my recitation and hooted at me as a madman, but adopting greater discretion thereafter, I quickly discovered the necessary tone. This time, I would be assured, and commanding. I would project my voice to the front of the ship, which was what I still called the bow, and I would be dressed modestly but impressively, the Earl of Ravensden's borrowed black cloak flowing at my back.

  By the time I stopped to rest and water my horse, I was confident in my peroration, and confident too in the task that the king had entrusted to me. This time, I vowed, I would know my sea-trade. Aboard the Happy Restoration, I had believed it was beneath the honour of a ship's captain, and an earl's son to boot, to demean himself with such mechanic concerns as navigation, and a hundred men had died for it. This time, I would complete my mission, no matter how difficult it proved, and I would bring the Jupiter and her men safely home. There was honour and redemption in such success, but there was more, too. Succeeding in a task that the king himself regarded with such importance–preserving one of his kingdoms, no less–was bound to deserve reward, and what reward could be more appropriate, or more desirable, than a commission in the Life Guards?

  The sun came out as I rode out of the bad inn at Petersfield where I had taken some bread and ale, and my soaring hopes lifted higher still. Saving the throne of Scotland was worth more than a commission; it was worth a knighthood, surely? As I had done several times a day for as long as I could recall, I could almost feel the touch of the royal sword on my shoulder, and I mouthed to myself the magical words of my lifelong dream: Arise, Sir Matthew Quinton'. I remembered sitting on my uncle Tristram's knee as he tried to mend the heart of a child broken by the death of its father with tales of gallant knights, of Hotspur and the Black Prince and Sir Philip Sidney. He told me the stories of the Round Table, of Lancelot, and Galahad, and his own Tristram, his name-knight. Before I was ten, I could recite much of old Mallory by heart, and my uncle encouraged me to think of my fallen father as a knight like those of older times, sans peur et sans reproche, riding to glory and immortality on Naseby field. When my twin sister lay dying of the sweating sickness at Ravensden Abbey, that bitter winter of '53, I blamed Cromwell and his New Model soldiers, who had ransacked our home days before as they searched for correspondence from my brother, thus frightening the wits out of my poor, pale, dying Henrietta. Even as we buried her beside our father and grandfather, I imagined myself a grim, armoured knight, cutting down the search party like straw, riding through the galleries of Whitehall itself, and impaling the Lord Protector on my lance like a stuck pig. To be a knight ...

  A sudden sharp shower put paid to my reverie. I was in the low hills that rise steadily toward the summit of the Downs. On either side of the road the stumps of fallen trees stretched away across the land, mute witnesses to the destruction of the English oaks that had built Cromwell's navy and held off his creditors. Such a landscape, and the hard spring rain stinging my face, brought home the miserable truth that knighthood now was something that fat city merchants paid for. King Charles's grandfather, James the First, had even introduced baronets–hereditary knighthoods, in essence, that could be sold to the highest bidder. Their scabrous sons and grandsons now strutted about court like peacocks, calling themselves Sir Vermin or Sir Arse-head. Worse, to make doubly certain that he never went on his travels again, our King Charles distributed titles like chaff to those who had so recently been his sworn enemies: men like my other brother-in-law, Sir Venner Garvey, Member of Parliament for some foul Yorkshire borough under the Rump, a regular attender at Cromwell's mock-Parliaments and a trusted advisor of the Lord Protector himself. Now he was a stalwart in the so-called Cavalier Parliament that was meant to be so loyal to its restored king, but somehow was not. Venner Garvey: an obsequious rogue who denounced the king behind his back as an atheist and a libertine while accepting largesse from the royal hand. Poor Elizabeth, for not even the title of Lady Garvey and the three thousand a year which had so attracted our mother to the match could make up for sharing her bed and body with such a loathsome travesty of knightly honour.

  By the time I reached the crest of Portsdown hill, I was in bitter and downcast temper once more. My clothes were wet yet I felt overly warm and my stomach was tightening. I reined in and looked down over the great sweep of a view. The smoke of Portsmouth's chimneys rose in the middle distance, tucked into one corner of the low island which stretched away southwards from the old Roman walls of Portchester Castle just below me. A single bridge over a narrow creek separated this marshy, fetid island from the mainland. The square tower of St Thomas's Church, the best seamark for miles, rose above the mean buildings of the town. And away to the left I could make out the king's flag fluttering above the round, low bulk of Southsea Castle, the only other building of note on the island.

  There were forests of masts alongside the wharves of the dockyard and filling the broad harbour, the greatest of them belonging to the unmistakeably huge bulk of the Royal Charles, formerly the Naseby–the ship that had brought our king back from exile. My eyes did not linger on these. I looked further out, beyond the narrow harbour mouth and its grey-stone forts. The Solent channel stretched from the Portsmouth shore to the Isle of Wight, the great dark blur of land beyond. There, between the two shores, several dozen ships sat at anchor. I discounted what was obviously a merchant fleet, starting to move out on a westerly wind, perhaps for the Downs and the North Sea. There were a few more ships nearer the Wight, but even in those days of my deepest nautical ignorance, I knew they were too small and broad to be king's ships. That left two, anchored close to the Gosport shore, across the harbour mouth from Portsmouth. Even without an eyeglass, I could make out the large royal ensigns playing out in the stiff west breeze. The nearer ship was the larger, so presumably the Royal Martyr. And beyond her...

  I stared pessimistically for several minutes at the distant, dark hull of my new command. There she lay, His Majesty's ship the Jupiter, and on her, all my hopes, my whole destiny, and perhaps my very life itself, would depend.

  I rode into Portsmouth as dusk fell. The guard on the town gate was rude and perfunctory at first, but a glance at my commission brought him stiffly to attention. During my ride, I had considered taking a room at an inn and going out to my ship in the morning, but the king's stress on urgency decided me for immediate passage out to her. For that, I would need to find one of her boats, which meant I would need to find some of her crew. I clattered through the ordered, silent streets of Portsmouth, responding to occasional challenges from watchmen or militia, then on down the High Street towards St Thomas's and past the house where the great Duke of Buckingham died. Poor Geordie Villiers, my mother always called him, but then she and my father had known the duke well. The favourite of both King James and the first King Charles, Buckingham effectively ruled England for each of them in turn, waged war impossibly and incompetently on both France and Spain at the same time and was struck down by a cheap assassin's knife as he prepared to lead yet another invasion fleet bound hopelessly for France.

  There were no Jupiters on this street, and knowing the quality of our English seamen, I knew for certain that there would be none at evening
prayers in the church. I stabled my poor exhausted Zephyr at the Dolphin, a reliable inn, where the power of a captain's commission and the name of the Earl of Ravensden would be more than sufficient to ensure he would not be sold to some itinerant Irish horseflesh dealer if his owner did not return to reclaim him within a week. Then I walked out through the walls of Portsmouth by the Point Gate, whereupon I found myself suddenly conjured straight into a scene from hell.

  Outside the gates of Portsmouth, on a low promontory that jutted into the harbour, had fetched up every alehouse, whorehouse and worse that wished to escape the regulation of the navy and the town's authorities. Within the space of fifty yards, I saw five heads struck, two men stabbed and one virgin deflowered, assuming, that is, that a Portsmouth maidenhead could possibly have survived intact for fourteen years. Several very drunk sailors spilled out of a rude inn, waving jugs of ale vaguely in the air and singing some obscene verse about the King of France's mistress. Tentatively, I asked, 'Jupiters?', but the mob spilled away down an alley, making a poor fist of rhyming 'Valliere' with 'pubic hair'.

  A little further on, a group of six or so men stood on a corner, seemingly sober enough to stand and surprisingly uninvolved in mischief. I asked again, 'Jupiters?'

  The most forward of them, a bluff and tobacco-chewing crop-head, cried, 'Jupiters, is it? Aye, we're Jupiters.'

  My heart sank like lead. If this insolent creature–as fit a man to be a captain-killer as any I ever saw–was typical of my crew, then my voyage to come would be more fraught than that of old Odysseus.