Gentleman Captain Read online

'Is there a boat for the ship?' I asked.

  'Aye,' said Crop-head, 'there's a boat. Down this way, my lord. You follow us.'

  I should have stated my name and rank there and then, of course, but I was young, and my senses were being assaulted by a rare combination of smell (foreshore mud, rotting fish and the contents of several hundred pisspots emptied into the street) and sound (screaming women, drunken men, crying children, and not a few screaming, drunken, crying creatures of all ages and genders). As I followed the men into an alley that led towards the shore I did not register the fact that three more slipped in behind me.

  Crop-head said, 'Now, my fine lord. Let's take a look at that cloak of yours, and your purse.'

  Odds of nine to one gave me pause, of course, but I was a gentleman, and an officer, and there were ways to behave in front of one's inferiors–even if such behaving ended in the grave. I drew my sword. 'I think not. And if you're Jupiters men, you'll pay for this with your lives.'

  Crop-head had drawn a dagger and was advancing upon me; the others, unarmed, were clearly less enthusiastic. A small crowd of bystanders was gathering at both ends of the alley, interested in spectating at this new sport. Crop-head, slurring slightly, cried, 'Come on, brave boys. This fop wants Jupiter, that floating curse. Who hates the Jupiter? We're Royal Martyrs! Come for a reckoning, then, my fine lord? Come, lads!'

  The mob advanced a little, but still reluctantly, all eyes on the sharp and clearly much-used blade of my brother's sword. Knowing now that they were navy men, if not from my ship, I knew I had one last card to play–my finest card of all.

  Keeping the sword very firmly in my right hand, I drew out my commission with my left, unfolded it quickly with the fingers of that one hand and shouted as loudly as I could, 'JAMES, DUKE OF YORK AND ALBANY, EARL OF ULSTER, LORD HIGH ADMIRAL OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND, TO CAPTAIN MATTHEW QUINTON, CAPTAIN OF HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP THE JUPITER FOR THIS EXPEDITION–WHEREAS I HAVE APPOINTED YOU TO BE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP ABOVE NAMED, THESE ARE THEREFORE TO WILL AND REQUIRE YOU TO GO ABOARD THE SAID SHIP TO TAKE CHARGE AND COMMAND OF CAPTAIN IN HER—'

  The mob stopped in confusion, and even Crop-head looked nonplussed, for the reading of a royal commission was as holy writ. There was whispering among the onlookers. Then the crowd parted, and a vast, ruddy man with a horribly pockmarked face stepped into the alley. He grinned insanely at the sight of bare blades, and in a strangled voice cried, 'Jupiters, to me, Polzeath! For our ship, and our captain!'

  A cadaverous, rake-thin man threw down a tankard and moved to the giant's side. Then a third stepped out, small, stooped and simian, making up for his stature with the two wicked curved blades that he carried. At the far end of the alley, three more men appeared. One, little older than myself, was slight and periwigged, an astonishing piece of fashion for such a neighbourhood; more appropriate for the setting was the large club that he held in his hand. The second was jet black, only a broad smile of perfect white teeth declaring his position against the black waters of Portsmouth harbour behind him. The third bore himself like a soldier. 'So, Linus Brent,' called he. Attacking a king's captain, are we? Court-martial offence that, Linus Brent. You'll swing for that. There you'll be, dangling from the main yard of the Royal Charles, the shit pouring down your pants. That'll be you, Linus Brent.'

  Brent–or Crop-head–scowled and said, 'Didn't know it was a captain. Didn't think they'd get you a captain so fast.'

  'These are the days of kings and dukes again, Brent,' mocked the soldier. 'They get things done. Not like your precious Noll Cromwell and your Rump Parliament, Linus Brent. And it's not just any captain, is it? It's the captain of our ship. What's the name of our ship, Linus Brent?'

  Crop-head had come to a decision. 'Only one ship's name counts for anything in this harbour, Lanherne, you walking piece of filth.' He screamed, 'ROYAL MARTYR!'

  Lanherne matched it with a powerful cry of 'JUPITER!', to which the giant added, 'To us, boys! For God, the king, Cornwall, and our captain!'

  Crop-head Linus Brent lunged at Lanherne with his blade, but my man–my man!–knocked it aside with a small Italianate dagger that he had plucked from somewhere in his clothing. Next to them, Periwig struck one of Crop-head's friends a blow so dreadful that I thought his skull must have split–though the man merely staggered forward with an aggrieved look and launched himself at Periwig in a flurry of fists. White-teeth kicked Crop-head, then grappled with an old man who was missing an ear. At the other end of the alley the giant, Polzeath, took on two more Royal Martyrs, throwing one against a wall and gripping the other in a head-lock that threatened to send him to his own imminent martyrdom. Polzeath's tall, thin friend stabbed a Royal Martyr in the hand, while beside him the monkey-like one with the two blades upended his opponent and jumped upon his stomach.

  Now a mere spectator, I became aware that, beyond the alley, the same scene was being repeated ten times over. A wave of Royal Martyrs was retreating slowly up the street, throwing stones and bottles at a crowd that advanced with rhythmic chants of 'Kernow! Kernow!' and 'Jupiter! Jupiter!' A whore shrieked as Cornish blood splashed her face. I edged past Polzeath, who respectfully muttered, 'Cap'n,' as he broke a man's nose with his vicious right jab, and got back out into the main street. Suddenly Lanherne, the soldierly leader of my men, was at my side. 'Captain Quinton, sir,' he said, with all apparent humility and deference. 'Martin Lanherne, sir, coxswain of the Jupiter. You'll be needing a boat out to the ship? Should be a few minutes, sir, just while we attend to the rest of this business, here. There'll be enough of us standing to form you a decent crew.'

  Bewildered, I glanced at the walls of Portsmouth Town and the firmly closed Point Gate. 'Surely they'll be sending troops out to deal with this riot, Lanherne?' I asked. And shouldn't we report the causes of the affray to the deputy governor?'

  Martin Lanherne grinned. 'The deputy governor and the soldiers won't want to get involved in this, Captain. This is navy business, you see. They know damn well that if they open the gates and march out here in their pretty red uniforms, this won't be Jupiter against Royal Martyr any more. We'll be together in an instant, shoulder to shoulder, Jupiters and Royal Martyrs. It'd be navy against army then, sir, and we much prefer that to fighting each other.'

  It was almost dark when an exhausted boat's crew, commanded through a racing tide with exemplary skill by Martin Lanherne, struck out through the entrance of Portsmouth harbour, passing Henry the Eighth's stout round tower on our left. Lanherne spoke quickly in a broad Cornish accent, telling me that like James Harker he was a Padstow man, and that he had first gone to sea as servant to the then Lieutenant Harker in the great Ship Money fleet of 1637. He had been ashore when the civil war began in '42, and had gone with Grenville's Cornish infantry to Lansdowne Hill and beyond, where they had earned themselves immortality as some of the most doughty fighters in the king's doomed cause.

  The men who had rescued me in the alley were among the crew, and I asked Lanherne to identify them to me. 'The big man, there, he's George Polzeath, Captain, and the skinny one who fought by his side, he's Peter Trenance. Both of them Fowey men, used to fish the Newfoundland banks before Captain Harker persuaded them to take the king's shilling. Our monkey there'–broad grins from the crew–'he's John Treninnick, sir. Speaks little English, only our old Cornish, so you can call him what you like.'

  I took advantage of this information to satisfy my curiosity. 'Was he born like that, coxswain?' I asked. 'With that stoop of his, surely he's no use on a man-of-war?'

  I could not make out Lanherne's face, but his answer suggested a patient teacher concealing his exasperation from a particularly backward pupil. 'Oh, he wasn't born like that, sir. Treninnick, he worked in the tin mines up Zennor way since he was seven or eight, sir, until he volunteered for Captain Harker on Scilly back in '49. Seams three feet high down those mines, and those are the best. Don't let his monkey looks fool you, Captain. He's the strongest man on the ship, and the best foretopman in the navy. Swings through
the rigging like an ape, and does the work of three men up aloft.'

  'And the black man?' The dark-skinned oarsman grinned; I was to learn this was his favoured expression whether seducing a woman (a frequent occurrence) or facing a flogging (even more frequent).

  'Julian Carvell, his name is, sir, though whether it's his real one, the good God alone knows. Joined Captain Harker when we were in Virginia, back in '51 or '52, I think. Before that, servant to some old planter, who saw his neighbours making their blacks into slaves, thought he could save on Julian's wages, and tried the same. Reckoned with the wrong man. Some said Julian there did him to death with a poker up the fundament, but Captain Harker needed every man he could get back then, and didn't ask too many questions. Learns fast, our Julian. Learned the ropes in months, got himself rated able seaman within the year. Good fighter, too–almost as strong as Treninnick, but a longer reach. Keep those two close by you, Captain, and you'll have no fear of Royal Martyrs. Or the Sultan's janissaries, or King Louis's serried regiments, or all the hordes of Tartary, come to that.'

  Lanherne's blood-curdling encouragement ended with a devilish chuckle and his shrewd eyes seemed to twinkle at me. I nodded, composed myself—for I felt I was looking about me too eagerly—then turned my gaze upon Periwig, a very different specimen to his fellows. He was but a few years older than me, I estimated; a long-nosed man who seemed born to wear a wig upon his head, although of course that would have been impossible for a man of his station.

  'Bonsoir,; monsieur!' he cried cheerily from his oar as he caught my eye.

  Now my French was fluent, as would only be expected from the son of an earl, but I had two additional advantages above the run of most of England's gentlemen. First, I had spent many months of exile in France, and for younger sons with virtually no money, the ability to haggle successfully with Parisian butchers and vintners became a form of lifeblood; one learns not to insist upon one's honour and the deference due to one's birth when one has had no bread for three days. Second, and above all, I had grown up at Ravensden Abbey with the imperious, elegant termagant that was my grandmother, Louise-Marie de Monconseil de Bragelonne. The piratical old eighth earl discovered this beautiful, shrill and much younger creature during a court ball at Chambord about the turn of the century. Within three months, she was the Countess of Ravensden, much to the surprise and amusement of everyone from Queen Bess downward. Thus I had both the elegant court-French of le roi Henri le Grand's day, and the gutter-French of the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris, which in translation was enough to make even a Rochester inn-keeper blush.

  I asked his name–'Roger Le Blanc, monsieur le capitaine–and his origin–'je suis un tailleur de Rouen–and why he was serving on one of the King of England's men-of-war. Then sensing Lanherne's discomfort I added, 'En Anglais, s'il vous plais, monsieur Le Blanc.'

  'As you say, mon capitaine. I had reason, let us say, to be away from Rouen, and all of France. Matters of the heart, you understand. An unsympathetic judge, and a jealous husband...'

  Lanherne snorted. 'Ten jealous husbands, more like. So he came hotfoot aboard us, last year, when we lay in the Bay of Toulon. Captain Harker, he'd left enough women and cuckolds behind him in his time to recognize a kindred spirit, so he entered him on our books as a supernumerary mate to the sailmaker, who's deaf and drunk most of the time.'

  'Mais oui, Cock Swain. So I serve contentedly aboard this ship, as Jason whiled away his years in Corinth. I repair the sails and flags, and the men's clothes. Alas, sometimes they make me pull on oars, too, trying to make a seaman out of me, for the English think it a duty to interrupt the good content of the French. But it will be an honour to serve you, Captain Quinton, as I served the late and much lamented Captain Harker.'

  I knew two things, at that moment.

  First, and above all, these men were James Harker's, as really and completely as if he still walked among them. This was his crew, virtually to a man, and no captain could possibly replace him, least of all one so young, so poorly versed in the sea and generally reputed to be so incompetent as to lose his first command with almost all hands. The Jupiters could have been forgiven for deserting en masse before such a Jonah came amongst them.

  The second thing I knew was that Roger Le Blanc spoke far more elegantly than any other tailor of my acquaintance. Perhaps one might expect this in France, where clothing is a national religion; but I doubted whether even French tailors grounded themselves in the classics, or spoke such flawless English. So flawless, in fact, that he was bound to realize the different meanings in the name that he had chosen, for I was willing to swear on the souls of all the Quintons back to Adam that he had not been born with it.

  Le Blanc, white, blank. A ghost.

  So, at last, we came alongside the Jupiter, lying at single anchor near the Gilkicker Point. She was of the same rate, burthen and complement as the poor Happy Restoration, a frigate of the Fifth Rate with most of her guns on the single covered deck. She was altogether too like the doomed Restoration to give me comfort at my boarding of her. We came under her bow, adorned with a lion figurehead, passed down the larboard side, and made for the steps secured to the hull, halfway along. As we approached, the boat's crew shipped oars, and a rope was thrown from the deck above. I took hold of a step and pulled myself off the boat. I had to swallow hard as I stepped onto the deck of this, my new command, and doffed my hat to the royal ensign at the stern. I was whistled aboard by a swarthy, one-eyed officer, the Jupiter's boatswain, whom I knew from the Duke of York's list to be a veteran of the last King Charles's navy. This was a Welshman whose family still retained their old way of patronymics, and thus went by the name of Maredudd ap Llewellyn ap Ieaun Goch ap Dafydd Brynfelin. Even all these years later, I am still not entirely certain that either the Duke of York–his late majesty King James II as he became–or I ever remembered his name correctly. I certainly never could pronounce it, and like all the rest of the crew, I was soon referring to him as Boatswain Ap.

  As much of the duty watch as could be gathered was assembled on the deck on either side of the mainmast. Perhaps fifty men stood before me, less than half of the ship's complement of one hundred and thirty. All were garbed in a more or less uniform set of slopseller's wares, with blue cotton waistcoats, blue neckcloths and red Monmouth caps. Unlike the unhappy Happy Restorations, almost a year before, they were at least properly at attention, their expressions neutral and unreadable. A few broke ranks and eyed me as suspiciously as I must have eyed them. Despite myself, I could not suppress the insidious thought that accompanied the sight of each new face: Did you kill Harker? Or you? And will you do the like to me? Inwardly, I chided myself for such unwarranted suspicions. In truth, it would have been more justified if the sight of their new captain prompted in my men one terrible thought: Will you kill us, Captain Matthew Quinton, as you did the men of the Happy Restoration?

  At their head was a man, even younger than me, wearing a splendid green tunic-coat and a broad-brimmed hat that was the height of fashion in London, with a great feather that reached almost to his shoulder. He was a tall lad, though not approaching my height. His face was wide and freckled but unsmiling. I marked the strength of his hostility with a sinking heart.

  He doffed his hat, bowed low, and said, 'Lieutenant James Vyvyan, sir. Welcome aboard his Majesty's ship the Jupiter. If you'll follow me to the quarterdeck, Captain, you can read your commission from there.'

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

  'Lieutenant Vyvyan. My sympathies on the death of your uncle. By repute, he was an outstanding officer.'

  The young man's brow darkened. 'He was outstanding, sir.' He stern face worked with some intense emotion. 'He was also murdered.'

  Chapter Five

  The captain's cabin of the Jupiter was bare but for a poorly made oak table, six chairs and two demi-culverins–cannon which were mounted rather further back on this ship than they had been on the old Restoration, making a large cabin uncomfortably small. The pa
nels had evidently been painted to James Harker's specification, for in those days captains could still decorate their quarters as they saw fit, not as some faceless clerk at the Admiralty dictated. My predecessor's taste had evidently comprehended an uncomfortable mixture of the classical (the ship's divine namesake casting down thunderbolts from Olympus), the martial (King Arthur slaughtering Saxons), and the erotic (provocative nudes, one of whom bore a troubling resemblance to the Duchess of Newcastle). Otherwise, all of Harker's moveable effects had apparently been taken ashore that afternoon and stored, together with his corpse, in the house of one of the town surgeons. As I'd leant my head against the closed door of my cabin I could hear one of the crew proclaiming a little too loudly that the house in question was now besieged by a regiment of wailing women, bemoaning their lost Hercules of the oceans and fighting each other in the street over the honour of being his favourite. Evidently Captain Harker's love of the fairer sex was not confined to their painted form.

  As Harker's servants had already left the ship to begin their bleak search for new employers, it was Lieutenant Vyvyan's servant, Andrewartha–a slight, dark and grubby boy with an accent almost as impenetrably Cornish as his name–who served young Vyvyan and me a light repast a half-hour later. He bustled about the table as we maintained a polite but uncomfortable silence, then retired to stand sniffing loudly outside the door. I set to with an appetite: there was some cheese, a jug of small beer, a bottle of claret, and, incongruously, a cabbage, which we both ignored.

  James Vyvyan–named nineteen years ago after his gallant uncle, I supposed–sat opposite me. I sensed at once that ours would not be an easy relationship. His clouded, watchful appearance underlined his manner; he wished himself far away from this travesty of a captain, pretending a right to occupy Harker's position and his cabin. Perhaps he had believed that he could and should occupy this very place himself, for the Lord Admiral was giving ships to men who were even younger than him. At length, as Andrewartha removed the untouched cabbage and replenished our wine cups, the young lieutenant roused himself, sighed, and turned thoughtfully to face me.