The Mountain of Gold Read online

  My mother had returned.

  The crooked hand extended toward me, and I leaned forward to kiss it. Mother was seated in her room in the former monks' infirmary, a little way down the corridor from the one which Cornelia and I shared. Thus she, too, had a view over to the ruins of the abbey quire, but the demolition of part of the wall by Henry VIII's agents when the monastery was dissolved meant that she had an uninterrupted view down to the grave of her husband. James Quinton, Earl of Ravensden for less than half a year, lay there, forever in her view: poet, warrior, fallen legend of the Cavalier cause, and the father who had died when I was only five. My mother's chair was carefully positioned so that she did not have to look down upon the adjacent grave of my grandfather Matthew, the previous earl, whom she had hated with a passion equal to that with which she had loved his son. Or as I thought she had loved him until I had heard the enigmatic words of a dying man, in Scotland the year before.

  'Matthew,' she said. 'You should have sent Musk or another ahead of you, to inform us of your coming.'

  'There was much to do, mother. There always is when a ship pays off.' This was invention, for the end of the Wessex's cruise was the first time I had paid off a ship in the normal way. My first command had been wrecked on the coast of Kinsale, my second almost blown apart in the Scottish isles. But there was also a truth in it, for the bombardment of paperwork which accompanied our return to Chatham had been almost as terrible as a broadside, and certainly more time-consuming. I had meant to write ahead and inform my family at Ravensden of my return, but by the end of each day I had written so many formal letters, read through so many muster books, pay books and manifests, dealt with so many officious time-servers from the dockyard and the Ordnance—after all of that, I could barely keep my eyes open for a jar of wine at the King's Head in Rochester before falling unconscious into my bed.

  The Dowager Countess frowned. 'As you say, Matthew. The ways of the navy are a mystery to me.' (This was a blessing; her hatred of her father-in-law had grown into a profound lack of interest in the service that he had graced and to which I now belonged.) 'But you are so brown! Why, they will mistake you for a Moor when next you ride into Bedford—the people there will never have seen so dark a face—'

  My mother was not adept at ordinary conversation. This was one of the chief reasons why relations were sometimes strained between her and Cornelia, who could extract a conversation out of a rock. So I came straight to the matter, and said, 'Mother, we must speak of this proposed marriage. Between Charles and the Lady De Vaux.'

  The eyes narrowed. To be fair, my mother had learned suspicion at the court of King Charles the First, amid all the fevered rumours and hysteria that had culminated in civil war; like many men and women of her age, she carried suspicion on her shoulder like a vast but invisible bird of prey. 'What of the marriage?'

  Time for diplomacy, for the King and the Lord Admiral his brother wanted their captains to be good diplomats. 'Well, it affects me, as the heir. Mother, all I seek is some explanation that will settle my mind in this matter.'

  She looked on me with sadness and—and with something else, something that I could not quite identify. 'Yes, you are the heir, Matthew. And after you? Who is the heir then? When you married Cornelia, Charles and I saw it as the salvation of the bloodline. But five years on, you have no children. The line must continue. This family must continue.'

  'But to put Charles through this—Charles of all men—and with this woman of all women—'

  'Charles is—sanguine, shall we say. You can speak to him yourself, when he returns from Alnburgh. And the King's enthusiasm for the match weighs heavily with him. As for the Lady De Vaux, it's true that she has a certain reputation. But I have lived a long time, Matthew, and I have found that reputations are often unjustified. Particularly if, as I suspect, that reputation is founded upon jealousy of the thirty thousand that she possesses.'

  ' Thirty thousand? That much?'

  'Some widows are fortunate in their inheritances, Matthew, while some are not,' she said, looking out to the grave in the ruins. 'I need not tell you what thirty thousand will mean to this house. And remember, I have met the lady several times, which you and Cornelia have not. I believe I can judge a character, and I judge hers to be—suitable.'

  'But there are so many questions about her past—she has no family-'

  The bird of prey preened itself, and pounced. 'And how do you know that? Oh, don't bother lying. Tristram, of course.' She was angry now, and my mother's anger was always cold and controlled, unlike the armwaving tempers of Cornelia. 'Tristram will never reconcile himself to this, just as he never reconciled himself to me, nor to his king in his time of need, come to that. I could have proposed the marriage of Charles to the most saintly virgin in England, if any such can be found, and still my good-brother would have opposed it—for it would not have been of his conceiving, and that irks him more than anything. But then, if he had any true sense of family duty he would abandon his miserable little college, his wine and his mistresses, get a wife, and father the future heir to Ravensden himself.' She was furious now, and my mother furious was a sight to behold. 'But Tristram will always indulge himself first, then play his little games. So like his father, in all things. Thank God that he was the younger son, and thank God that is the way of it in the next generation, too. All the responsibility and sense of duty with the elder—'

  'Enough, mother! Enough of diplomacy, too; time for the broadside. 'Responsibility? Duty? You dare talk of those things, when you tell Cornelia to enter a convent? Oh, you'll gladly set aside my responsibility and duty to my wife to suit your own purposes. You chide my uncle for playing games, when you play them with the lives of everyone in this family?'

  'You will not speak to me in this way. I have told you before, you will not—'

  I was angry now, the rage blazing inside me like a burning magazine. 'Oh yes, mother. You have told me before. You told me when I questioned you about the early days of the late king's reign, in Lord Buckingham's time, when my father was away at the French wars—' elusive hints of secrets buried deeply over thirty years before were an unexpected legacy of my voyage aboard the Jupiter— 'What else passed in those times, mother? What else?

  I saw something in her eyes...

  It was gone in an instant, and the narrow, suspicious slits returned. 'Get out,' she hissed. 'Get back to your barren wife.'

  'Better a barren wife than a whore for a countess,' I snapped as I turned away from her and strode from the room.

  It was only when I stood outside, in the dark, damp corridor, that I realised two things. First, she had insulted Cornelia, but she had done no more than speak the truth; whereas I had made the fatal mistake of not distinguishing between the once and future Countesses of Ravensden. As I heard my mother's sobbing begin, I also knew what I had seen in her eyes when I demanded the truth of all that she had known and done at the court of the first King Charles.

  It was fear.

  ***

  I sat in a small private room of the old George Inn, just up from the river bridge in Bedford. It stank. As in all towns, the common sewer flowed down the High Street just outside, but in Bedford, it met the river's own distinctive stench right outside the entrance to the George. Moreover, the stables at the back were particularly close to the main body of the inn, and the innkeeper apologised for the presence of a noxious herd of unruly Irish horses with violent diarrhoea, en route for the royal races at Newmarket. Yet by the end of a second jug of good Bordeaux, the George seemed like a very paradise on earth, especially as it did not contain either my mother (still distraught) or my wife (attempting vainly to calm my mother).

  My thoughts raced this way and that, although the wine progressively slowed and dulled them. I had been insufferably rude; of course I had. If my mother knew great secrets of state, well then, so be it. We are all entitled to our secrets, and besides, hers had to be of so very long ago; what possible relevance could they have, especially when the on
ly matter of the moment was that of the unnatural marriage proposed for my brother?

  I was beginning to contemplate the relative merits of a third jug of Bordeaux against riding unsteadily back to the abbey when a Barcock—Paul, I think, or it might have been Peter—entered my small, stinking world at the George Inn, and handed me a letter that had been delivered at Ravensden by a royal courier but an hour before. I thanked him in the vaguely profuse way of the drunk, and opened the letter. It was a script I knew well—clear, precise, a little pompous—and the message, too, was redolent of its author: just a little more long-winded than it needed to be.

  Sir,

  His Majesty having summoned me to attend him at Newmarket upon some concerns relating to the present state and occasions of the navy, His Majesty has seen fit to instruct me to inform you that he wishes your immediate attendance upon him in order to expedite the same purpose. I therefore desire that you will see fit to attend upon His Majesty and myself at your earliest convenience.

  I am, Captain Quinton, your most humble and respectful servant,

  S. Pepys

  Clerk of the Acts to the Honourable Principal Officers and Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy

  So I was to have my wish. True, I had mismanaged my interview with my mother. But now I would be able to see the King himself and have an opportunity to ask him why he wished to force this preposterous marriage onto my brother. That one thought drove all else before it, including the one question I should have asked; the one question that was hidden there, festering in the depths of Pepys' letter.

  What purpose relating to the 'state and occasions' of the navy could possibly tear Charles Stuart away from the horse races and mistresses that took up all his time at Newmarket, and compel him to summon one of his lowliest captains to expedite it?

  Four

  The next morning was sunny, and despite the excesses of the previous night I rose very early, kissed my snoring Cornelia, and rode off for Newmarket; somewhat thick-headed and unsteadily at first, then with more confidence. It was a brisk, easy ride across the flat lands to the east, upon the firm roads of late summer. The harvest was being gathered in, and village folk were everywhere in the fields, singing hymns in the more devout communities and bellowing foolish songs about rude lads and wenches in the more profane. My steed was Zephyr, an old favourite who had once carried me uncomplainingly from Ravensden to Portsmouth in two days, a pace that would have done for many a lesser horse. Our passage was impeded only twice. Just before we reached Cambridge a football match between two villages degenerated into a great brawl; one player seemed to have been accused of feigning injury to gain an advantage, and was rightly kicked senseless by his opponents. And though Cambridge itself was quiet, for the university term would not begin for another month, beyond it the road gradually filled with more and more of the ruder sort of people, all bound for Newmarket to see the King and the great ones of the court. I spurred Zephyr on and bustled my way through, for unlike them, I had a summons to attend upon our sovereign lord himself.

  The sovereign lord had a special enclosure on a knoll in the midst of the Newmarket heaths. This gave the best possible view of the circuit on which the horses raced; it was fenced off and guarded by soldiers in sharp red uniforms, half with pikes, the rest with muskets. It also gave the best possible view of the land all around, a flat land of green fields, windmills and church steeples, with the great octagon tower of Ely Cathedral just visible on the far horizon. Several large tents sheltered those who elected to ignore the view and the racing, or who simply preferred shade to sunshine. They contained tables that groaned with delicacies. I dismounted at the fence, showed my letter of summons to one of the guards, and was directed towards the largest tent. There I found a throng of flunkeys, several gaudily painted whores and a familiar, small, round man with a long face, perhaps thirty years old or thereabouts, sweating under an unfeasibly large wig (this being then the newest and highest of fashions; indeed, almost the only fashion of those times that has survived until this, and will doubtless remain the fashion for all eternity). The round man was looking keenly around him, and at first missed my approach.

  'Mister Pepys,' I said.

  'Ah, Captain Quinton,' said the Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board. 'Welcome, sir, welcome. A most prompt response to the King's summons, if I may say so. You'll take a little refreshment after your ride?'

  'I thank you, Mister Pepys. Yes, a little beer, I think.'

  I had known Samuel Pepys for two years now. As Clerk of the Acts, a kind of secretary, he was the fulcrum for all the correspondence that passed between we captains and the Navy Board, and thus handled all the concerns relating to the daily management of our ships. This Pepys had only been put in to the place because he was some sort of kin to Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, then one of the greatest men in the realm; for it was Montagu, Noll Cromwell's protégé and a general-at-sea, who had persuaded a suspicious navy to support the restoration of the King, and it was aboard Montagu's flagship that Charles Stuart was brought safe home to England. Naturally, the gratitude of a restored monarch cascaded rewards upon Montagu's rather jowly head, and one of the least of them was a place in the Navy Office for Montagu's creature, Master Samuel Pepys. He was an odd little man, this Pepys, and my opinion of him was not wholly formed. True, he could be a pedant of the worst sort, with a puffed-up pomposity to boot. True, he was a little too confident of his own worth for my liking, and a little too eager to proclaim that worth to all and sundry, especially those who were in positions of some importance. But he was also an enthusiast, endlessly curious about all manner of things; a man genuinely interested in the doings of other men (and women, too—that much was obvious as his eyes roved round the royal enclosure); and when he was in drink, an inestimably good companion, as he was now. This Samuel Pepys I could like, even love. The Samuel Pepys who had chided me in a most highhanded fashion for the inadequate keeping of receipts for certain stores aboard the Wessex, and had criticised me before the Lord High Admiral for the same—well, that Samuel Pepys I regarded as highly as the aromas of Bedford's George Inn.

  As we drank our beer, I asked him how he came to be with the court at Newmarket. He explained that he, too, had been summoned to attend the King, but that this was no imposition for him: 'I am from these parts, Captain Quinton. My family were of Huntingdon—also the seat of My Lord of Sandwich, of course—and I was schooled there. So I can attend both to the business of the navy and my own family during the same excursion from London. A profitable use of time, I'd say. Now, sir, we should attend upon the King.'

  'No, sir, I think we should not.'

  Pepys' face fell; he had an aversion to being contradicted. 'But Captain, your summons was urgent—'

  I pointed behind him. Beyond the flaps of the tent, out at the edge of the track, stood the unmistakably tall and dark figure of His Majesty Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France (the last in name only, to honour his ancestors who had wasted so many years of their lives, and so many lives of their subjects, invading that fair land in vain attempts to seize its crown). Our sovereign lord was red-faced, stamping on the ground, gesticulating at a distant group of horses and berating all around him—notably his oldest friend, the Duke of Buckingham, and the delectable maid of honour to the Queen, Lady Frances Stuart, who some said was destined soon to replace the formidable Countess of Castlemaine as the King's principal mistress. It was as well that her latter ladyship was in the last days of her latest royally-induced pregnancy and thus confined to London, for otherwise her unrestrained rage would probably have been heard across several counties.

  I said, 'With respect, Mister Pepys, I have known the King much longer than you. Seeking him out when his horse has just lost badly is not necessarily conducive to our business here, whatever that business might be. I suggest that we remain here, drink more beer, and watch for the moment when His Majesty backs a winning horse. Then he will be receptive.'

  Pepys' expressi
on changed in an instant from annoyance to puzzlement to relief to happiness. In that moment, I realised that in one essential respect Samuel Pepys was very like me: for both of us, knowledge was all. He said, 'That sounds to me like most excellent advice, Captain Quinton. I shall remember that. Thank you, sir. Now, you were suggesting that we drink more beer?'

  The restoration of His Majesty's humour took three races. Pepys and I finally approached the royal presence as the King roared with laughter, extolling the virtues of his own victorious filly over His Grace of Buckingham's inept nag.

  'Damn me, George,' cried the Lord's Anointed, 'that'll teach you to wager fifty guineas on a mouldy pile of bone that's good only for dog food!'

  The duke laughed, but it was the forced, artificial laugh of the mortified. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (son to the great favourite of the first Kings Charles and James, the Lord High Admiral under whom my grandfather had sailed) fancied himself as a great wit, but somehow that quality of his always evaporated when the King turned the ferocious royal humour against him. They had been bosom friends since the cradle, these two, for King Charles the Martyr had brought up the orphaned heir of the first Duke with his own son. History records that after the second Charles' happy restoration, the second Buckingham sought to trade on that friendship by becoming the greatest commoner in the land, just as his father had been; but the King, who could see through most men (but curiously, not through most women, other than through their clothing at any rate), knew His Grace of Buckingham for what he was, namely a charming, indolent coxcomb, fit to entertain him in good times and bad, but suitable for about as much responsibility in the kingdom as the inhabitants of Bedlam. This made for some difficulty between my family and the great duke, because Buckingham never understood why the King preferred the quiet, serious friendship of my brother above his own, and entrusted Charles Quinton with matters of state that he would not have dreamed of confiding to George Villiers. Thus it was no surprise to me that Buckingham's eyes filled with suspicion and resentment as Pepys and I approached the royal party, bowing deeply as we did so, whereas the King's expression was happy and open.