Captain Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  An hour later I was summoned to the King’s presence in the Tom quadrangle of Christ Church College. I do not flatter myself it was my reputation that won me this honour of a public reception, it was simply that any defection has a good propaganda value particularly if it is accompanied by apparently informed assertions of the enemy’s weakness and confusion. These I gave most readily – and in a good loud voice – as I knelt before His Majesty and pledged my allegiance.

  He was well satisfied and gave me his hand to kiss which I did in a manner somewhat perfunctory for my eyes had fallen on a lady of the court, a woman of some twenty-nine or thirty years, whose beauty struck me most strangely. For a desperate moment. I thought one of my visitations was upon me and I might be driven to try to board her here and now, in full view of all the court. But with relief I realized that it was not those particular trumpets which were sounding but other less strident and more bewitching instruments.

  ‘You are acquainted with my nephew, I believe, Captain Fantom,’ said the King, recalling me to myself.

  I stood up.

  ‘We met, sire, in Germany where he so early displayed that fiery courage for which he is justly renowned wherever heroic deeds are sung.’

  I caught the girl’s eye as I spoke and she raised her eyebrows and smiled slightly as though mocking my hyperbole.

  ‘Yes, Captain, I remember you.’

  Rupert himself, whom I had not observed when I arrived, stepped forward from a group of noblemen shaded in one of the arcades to my left. He spoke flatly and for a second I I wondered uneasily whether anyone had been so foolish as to whisper to him the scandal which associated his mother’s name with mine. Well, he was hardly going to bring that up here and now.

  ‘When last we met at Vlotho, sir,’ I said, ‘you said that you owed me a life and I owed you a horse. I come to pay my debt.’

  I clapped my hands and Nob Parkin, looking splendid in his new uniform, led Digby in. Groomed till his black coat shone and with his head held high as he took in this unusual scene with great interest but no nervousness, he looked a splendid beast. The lady spectators whinnied appreciatively while the gentlemen neighed and reared. Only Rupert remained unmoved.

  ‘And do you ask me to pay my debt now, Captain Fantom?’ he enquired coolly.

  I drew myself up and looked slightly affronted. It was important to get this right. I couldn’t very well say, no you stupid bastard. I just want you in reserve next time some sod gets nasty ideas about stringing me up!

  Instead: ‘What debt is that, sir?’ I cried. ‘When first you led the King’s armies to glorious victory, you cancelled all debts. How can any man be owed a life by one who has so nobly preserved all our reason for living?’

  I gestured dramatically at the King who looked well-pleased at these histrionics and a ripple of applause ran round the quad though I dared not catch the young beauty’s eye again.

  Rupert meanwhile moved forward to examine his gift, running an expert hand along his withers.

  ‘ ’Tis a fine beast,’ he said appreciatively. ‘How do you call him, Corporal?’

  Had he asked me, I would have invented some flowery and complimentary name, as Bucephalus, the steed of Alexander. But Nob saw no reason to hide the truth.

  ‘We calls him Digby, sir,’ he answered. ‘On account of he jumps over anything.’

  There was a second’s silence, then the whole quadrangle was filled with laughter. Even the King smiled and Rupert grinned from ear to ear.

  ‘Captain Fantom,’ he cried. ‘Give me your hand. I accept your service and your gift. We have need of brave men and can never have enough Digbys.’

  ‘To ride,’ he added in a low voice audible only to me as he turned away.

  I discovered later that relations between the Prince and Lord Digby were not of the best. Digby, the King’s favourite, was not a military man and when his boundless optimism and Rupert’s tactical advice coincided, all was well between them. But more and more they differed, particularly as Digby was very jealous of his position in the King’s favour and resented Rupert’s advances in that quarter. Well, Rupert had another backer now, I thought, one long experienced in supporting the great. This fellow Digby when I spotted him was laughing as much as the rest, but I did not doubt his enmity. I could have done without it, but if it were the price of Rupert’s friendship, then it was worth paying.

  But the troubles brought on me by Digby (the horse) were not yet ended.

  As I left the court to return to my troop with Rupert’s commission in my pocket, a red-faced fellow with a patchy ginger moustache and ragged beard, grasped my arm.

  ‘Sir,’ he said aggressively. ‘Olwyn Matthias, Baronet, at your service, sir. That horse you gave to the Prince, without offence, sir, may I ask where you had it?’

  ‘You may ask, sir,’ I answered. ‘But without offence, sir, I see no reason to answer.’

  ‘I’ll give you reason, sir,’ he said excitedly. ‘That horse looks much like one owned by my brother Daffyd Matthias, of most blessed memory, who was butchered at Edgehill.’

  ‘Indeed, sir? And you look much like a jackanapes I once saw at the court of Emperor Ferdinand. But I shall not chain you, sir, I shall not chain you. Good day.’

  It was foolish perhaps. I could easily have invented some story of purchase at a London horse-market which may have satisfied him. But after receiving courtesy at the hands of a King, who could tolerate unmannerliness from a Welshman?

  Anyway, I had other things to think of. I discovered that the face of the woman who had caught my attention at court would not leave me. I have generally been reckoned a better judge of equine than female beauty; when the trumpets sound, the object of my charge has always seemed the apex of desirability, but once the notes have died away I have often discovered that what I imagined a thoroughbred is after all a nag. But this one was different, or so I had convinced myself by the time I returned to my troop.

  I made haste to settle the men in quarters. Lauder had already made some enquiries and though we were the latest arrivals in what was already an overcrowded town, yet a combination of his expertise and our comparative wealth soon saw us comfortably settled in St John’s College, to the surprise and chagrin of some of our new allies. I always tried to keep my men as close as possible, for an early quelling of their riots before any of our secrets could be revealed. For though many among the common soldiery of both armies, and some among the officers also, undertook to plunder and ravish whenever opportunity arose, yet they did it but intermittently and extempore. Only my troop of all I ever heard of was properly organized and trained in these most basic of the soldier’s arts. Lauder kept a record of each man’s share which was given to him week by week except for one shilling in ten which was set aside till a man received an honourable discharge from me. This system the men approved for it meant that even if they squandered all their wealth in riotous living, still something would remain – and if a man should commit a misdemeanour meriting a fine, the money could come out of this store without being felt immediately in his pocket. Looking after their money was each man’s own problem, though if it were proved that any of my men had robbed or cozened one of his fellows, then he was straightaway punished with death – which was simply to apply the common law of the army, though in the Fantom troop we proceeded without the publicity of open trial.

  My own wealth which was now considerable I had concealed in small parcels at various points across the country. Thus if some were discovered by accident, yet would enough remain to make me comfortable, while to keep it all in a lump sum would invite theft or even, were I disgraced (as indeed I was by now in the eyes of Parliament), confiscation. My excellent memory which enabled me to be so skilled in tongues found it no hardship to keep precise details of each hiding spot so that nothing appeared on paper for the curious eye to read.

  But I was not concerned with material matters at the moment. Once my men and my horses were settled, I returned to Christ Church with hasty gait
at first, but gradually slowing as I was suddenly beset by doubts, fast burgeoning into certainties, that on closer examination the woman would have a face scarred by small pox, black teeth, one leg shorter than the other, a squint, and certainly stink to high heaven. I had early discovered that the English gentry though elegant and gay in their dress, were less nice about their persons and their manners than almost any other nation in Europe. In Oxford I have observed ladies of the court rise from their meat, go into a neighbour room, or perhaps into an alcove, shit on the floor, and return to their table. Soldiers who live often in close and uncomfortable conditions are less beastly than this, nor would the most of them even in their cups offer such offence to tavern wenches as I have seen gentlemen of the court offer to their ladies. No, it is certain that manners were not known in England except as they were brought, like silks and wine, from abroad.

  For myself, I had all my clothes steamed in an oven after each campaign and I bathed myself all over in fresh water twice or even three times during a summer. And to a lady I would offer only the courtesy I had learned of the Spaniards and Italians, except in those few cases I have told you of, where politeness bowed to necessity. So when on passing through the great portico which leads into Tom quad the first thing I saw was the lady of my thoughts suffering the horseplay of a pair of gilded poltroons, I forgot my concern about her possible defects and straightway grew angry.

  She was trying to walk across the quad which, having been so recently used as a cattle market, was spotted with heaps of cow-dung into which these two gallants were attempting to steer her, the whiles making comments on her person and attempting to thrust their hands into her bodice. She seemed unmoved by their foolishness but I could not be so philosophical. I boxed the ears of the nearer fellow so violently that his eyeballs rolled and he tumbled to the ground. The other looked at me in such amazement and terror that I did not strike him but instead approached him slowly, then with great suddenness snapped my fingers in his face and cried, ‘Boo!’

  Startled, he cried out loud and sat in a cow-pat. The lady seemed far more amused by this than impressed by the chivalry of my intervention. But at least her laughter gave me the chance to check that her teeth were sound, nor were any of my suspected deficiencies manifest to a close inspection. She was truly beautiful and with a beauty which for some reason twined itself around my sensual being.

  ‘Your servant, madam,’ I said, essaying a bow.

  ‘No servant of mine,’ she answered in a melodious, soft voice with something of Spain or France in it. ‘This work is none of my instructing. I had heard you were a sudden man, Captain Fantom, but did not appreciate what this meant.’

  ‘They are not hurt,’ I said defensively.

  ‘You only score blood, do you?’ she mocked. I fell into step beside her as she continued her progress, leaving the uninjured man to tend his fellow.

  ‘You have heard of me, madam?’ I enquired, feeling flattered and perturbed.

  ‘I saw you presented to the King earlier,’ she said. ‘After-wards I heard people talking of you, as they do of all turn-coats.’

  It is to the professional soldier the commonest of gibes, but today it hurt me.

  ‘I turned no coat,’ I said angrily. ‘Any man who says so is a liar.’

  ‘And woman too? Forgive me, Captain Fantom. Was it on the road to Damascus that you were converted to the King’s cause?’

  Said I, ‘I care not for your cause. ’Tis the King’s money I fight for; and perhaps some of his lovely ladies.’

  This piece of gallantry seemed only to amuse her the more and I continued angrily, ‘Those are fools who fight for their politics or religion. My father was a Roman Catholic, and his father too, but I have fought for the Turks against the Christians as well as the Christians against the Turks. It is not seemly to mock a man for practising of his profession.’

  ‘Strange,’ she said. ‘I see you are an honest man. Yet a fellow much like you within these two past hours swore allegiance to the King, whom he called his “reason for living”, and said nothing of his wages.’

  We had now it appeared reached her destination, a tall overhanging building near St Aldate’s Church. All the advantages of my usual method of wooing had been made manifest to me in the time we had walked together. Abuse and outrage after the event I could understand (and in any case it was always fading away behind me) but this unprovoked mockery before any advance had been made was barely tolerable. I wondered what she would do if I now pushed her against the door of the house and ravished her on the threshold. But such a project required more than annoyance to make it feasible and I was in no wise properly inclined at the moment.

  She smiled as though recognizing my thoughts.

  ‘Good-day, Captain Fantom,’ she said. ‘If your wages keep you in Oxford long enough, we may meet again.’

  ‘Madam,’ I said, preventing her from closing the door, ‘I do not know your name. Nor yet if you are wedded wife or free maid.’

  She looked at me thoughtfully.

  ‘Neither sir,’ she answered. ‘I am a poor widow, made so by this awful war in which you earn your salary. I exist here by the charity of my dead husband’s brother, who loved my spouse enough to want to keep his memory warm at whatever cost. So I have neither wealth nor youth nor virginity to recommend me.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ I said. ‘And your name?’

  ‘Mistress Annette Matthias,’ she said.

  But I had somehow guessed it before she spoke.

  1645

  Oxford

  Life in Oxford proved much to my taste, except insofar as Mistress Annette Matthias seemed unwilling (or, I hoped, simply unready) to rub flesh with me. Yet strangely I found this complicated dance which they call wooing began to commend itself to my liking. Just as in matters military I have ever felt it behoved a soldier to make himself expert in all the proper arts, so now I began to realize that there may be more to taking a woman’s citadel than a simple charge. And the element of danger was not lacking for Sir Olwyn Matthias, offended by my personal affront to him and suspicious still that I had slain his brother, put himself in the way of my courtship at all turns.

  Annette, seeing this, most mischievously swore that she would never lie with a man who had hurt her brother-in-law. It was not that she had any great fondness for the man – indeed she disliked him heartily – but it amused her to see me sitting beneath his insults unable to reply. Sir Olwyn had naturally slandered me to her in terms general and particular, but she took little heed of this save to repeat the slanders to me in mockery.

  ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘I have it on authority that you are brutal, vicious, grasping, licentious, and a very great ravisher.’

  ‘Madam,’ I said, ‘what do you need of authority when you may test these qualities for yourself?’

  Of her husband she spoke but once.

  ‘Did you kill my husband?’ she asked.

  I resolved on honesty, having already sold the ring.

  ‘Who knows? I slew many good men at Edgehill. As for the horse, as I have since told Sir Olwyn, I had it of a gentleman of Sir Robert Pye’s regiment at Bedford.’

  Nothing but the truth there. She seemed satisfied and spoke no more of the matter. When we talked of matters military, Edgehill was never mentioned. Indeed she showed much more interest in my European campaigns than in the English wars, but this was understandable when I discovered her family were French.

  Militarily speaking, my troop took its turn at all the duties of a garrison town. We stood guard, manned outposts, rode on vedette patrols, foraged, even appeared in court on ceremonial duty which honour was accorded us by Rupert in the face of much opposition by Lord Digby. As Rupert’s enemy, he was my enemy also, but I could not dislike the man. To hear him talk, victory was always just round the corner; the Irish were coming, the French were coming, even the Dutch were coming (though God knows why anyone should believe that; I had lived in The Hague long enough to understand that cautious, mercenar
y, Protestant race). But Digby cheered even my spirits when he talked, though I knew that he spoke very stupidly.

  News of the reformation of the Parliamentary armies was greeted with amused interest and regarded as a sign of weakness. But I felt uneasily that all of what I had foreseen was coming true. Essex had resigned the day before the House of Lords finally passed the Self-Denying Ordinance early in April, so my decision to withdraw my labour had been well timed. But Cromwell somehow survived the Ordinance as General of Horse under Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief. And with leaders like these, not even the story that at nearby Abingdon, Colonel Pickering had provoked a mutiny among his troops by preaching to them, could make me agree with the Cavaliers’ contemptuous dismissal of this ‘new, raw army’ as one of them called it. To me it sounded like an efficient and well-ordered machine of war.

  Still, I had great respect for Rupert and, were the direction of the King’s tactics left in his hands, there was still a good chance of a Royalist victory. But I doubted much if he had the political strength to win his way. And another factor was the sheer wanton stupidity of so many of these Cavalier commanders. Even when courage and tactical sense were not wanting, often these qualities were negated by purely personal considerations, quarrels over precedence, a readiness to feel slighted, a desire to behave in the ‘right’ way. It is no wonder that democracy flourished first in England!