All that was over now, that fury of shared endeavour up and down the English countryside, the forced marches, the sudden attacks, the comradeship with men seen once round a camp- fire and never again, the jokes, the lewd marching-songs, the nicknames and mad stories that had linked him with thousands of Englishmen. That was over; he had had to leave England, to fill up time in a foreign campaign that counted for nothing.
But now once again he was with his mother’s countrymen, and now once again and at long last he had got his chance to be Admiral of the British fleet, as he had been promised at sixteen, when his uncle, backed by the City of London, had proposed to give him the island of Madagascar and a fleet of twelve ships of war and thirty-six merchantmen to take out there.
What wouldn’t he give for such a fleet as that now! Short work he could then have made this autumn of his enemies the English Parliament’s fleet, which he had been able to beat only in the wild race for neutral harbour in this country. He had won it by a short neck, but with the result that his few ships had been penned up in that Dutch harbour as close as if they were in prison, for they were blockaded at its mouth by the English Parliament’s navy, more than twice their strength.
For more than two months the two enemy fleets had lain at anchor within speaking distance of each other, and the amount of bad language shouted from deck to deck had been enough, complained the peaceable Dutchmen, to stink out the harbour. The shore was made hideous by the drunken brawls that rocked to and fro between the King’s men and the Parliament men in the taverns and on the quayside, so that the Hollanders had only to hear a noise in a back street to say, ‘There are those English at it again!’
The Parliament’s crews were well paid and their ships well stocked from Rotterdam with food and stores; their agents worked on Rupert’s sailors until one after the other of the Royalist ships went over to the enemy. Rupert took the law into his own hands, defying both enemy and neutral powers, and fortified the harbour with cannon on the treeheads and on his biggest ship, which lay athwart on guard over the rest with her starboard side to the enemy’s to frighten off deserters. But his guns could not prevent the men slipping out by night overland to the Parliament’s fleet, and this they still did by the score.
‘So shaken a design’ had the Royalist fleet become, and so confident were the Parliament officers that even Rupert must recognize there was no more possible chance for it, that they actually proposed that their Admiral Moulton should come and give a friendly talk to what remained of the Royalist crews. Rupert replied ominously that he would give leave for this – but that he would stand by all the time, and that if anything were said that he did not like, he would throw the orator overboard.
After that no more was said of friendly talks, and at last the Parliament’s fleet had to sail back to England and leave the coast clear to Rupert to dispatch his frigates and capture a couple of rich prizes that were carrying coal and cash to the Parliament merchants (and therefore, said the Royalists, were legitimate prizes of war. What the Parliament men said was, ‘The Robber Prince is now the Pirate Prince’). That helped the good work – in more ways than one, for the London citizens made more outcry than since the beginning of the war. They had tolerated the Puritan army’s outrages in condemning certain small shopkeepers to be whipped and imprisoned for life for speaking against the Parliament, but now that trade itself was endangered, that was too much. They declared that peace must instantly be declared and the King released from prison.
‘Squeeze their pockets and they’ll discover their loyalty fast enough,’ Rupert said in grim triumph. But most of the Council, including Hyde, were too anxious to conciliate the London merchants to pursue this policy – while, on the other hand, the little Court of beggared exiles at The Hague plainly said that the whole duty of the Prince and his fleet was to carry on piratical expeditions in order to provide them with food and clothes. Their need was indeed so desperate, and that of Prince Charles, that much of the prize money had to go to relieve it, but even so, charges of dishonesty and misappropriation of the money were brought against Rupert’s officers.
Both ‘friend’ and foe alike seemed equally determined to wreck the remainder of his ships, and now the seamen themselves were yet again conspiring to do so – perhaps had already done so.
What would he find when he reached Helvoetsluys? Would he ever reach it? This ride was a nightmare, through an unchanging land that had no end. The short winter daylight was fading, the sky darkening over him, the clouds no longer ships but torn like the wild hair of witches across the stormy evening light. The canals gleamed paler in the dusk, running in streaks of light through the dim land. That land had shortened before him, he could see less and less distance ahead, less and less into the future.
There was no future, no fleet awaiting him at Helvoetsluys, no Maurice even. His head was spinning as it sometimes did this last year; he was deadly tired, dead sick and weary of dealing month after month, year after year, with men who would not do as he willed – sick even of dealing with his mare, now flagging under the strain, her left fore-hoof going a little tender, her breath coming heavy and loud in the wind, shutting out the sound of it in his ears, for his mare must not flag, must not fail, must understand what he was telling her with the grip of his knees and the caress of his hand, that she must get him to Helvoetsluys in time.
He had crossed the Maas, and here at last was the Botlek and the second ferry. The great flat ferry-boat took the bulk of his horse like a sail. She neighed and stamped, her hooves clattering on the wood as it spun round in mid-stream. ‘Whoa, my girl, steady!’ he said, passing his hand over the velvet ears, flattened back in terror against her head. The enormous glossy eyes, white-rimmed in their glancing fear, stared unseeing into his, unable to focus at that short range. He pulled down the beast’s head against his chest so that she should not see the whipped grey water in the gathering dusk.
Looking down at that disturbed water, his aching body suddenly at rest from the saddle, he forgot for a moment to stare urgently, imperatively into the immediate future; he was looking down into the glossy canals of his boyhood at school here in Leyden, when he had punted his boat in and out of the dark reflections of the old college walls, under the gabled houses and their bright gardens, under the substantial stone lady and her surrounding merchants carved on the Weighing House where the boats weighed out their merchandise to be sold on the quays, wealth brought by water, won on water, gliding safely now up smooth waterways after tossing in a little ship across the mighty ocean from either Indies to its destined harbour.
Even then he had day-dreamed that he would grow up to be a British Admiral. And he had done so – here he was to prove it, and prove it he would, if he found but one ship left with which to do it. That dizzy spasm of exhaustion had swept over him like a wave, drowning him for the moment, but now he had struck through it and risen to the surface. He was strong and fresh again, and Grey Day knew the difference at once as he swung into the saddle, cheering on her heavy sagging flesh with his new life and purpose. She answered him nobly, straining each muscle to the top of its power as she pounded on, knowing thankfully that she was now near the end of her journey.
He could just see the lines of masts piercing the dusk above the dark fields as if the ships stood on dry land. It was quite dark by the time he reached the little wooden jetty that thrust out into the harbour at Helvoetsluys. Leaving his horse on the upper pier, he leaped down on to the jetty. He could see the ships, dim and shapeless as shadows, rocking in the windy harbour like huge sea-monsters. Men were moving on the quayside, talking in harsh voices that strained against the wind.
The doorway of a sailors’ tavern flung a patch of smoky red light on to the quayside; dark figures came in and out against it, a man in a fur cap sat just inside the door playing the bagpipes, and every now and then jerked out his foot in joke to trip those who passed and cursed him. Voices were shouting inside, one voice louder, more insistent than the rest, arguing, complain
ing, going on and on through the interruptions of other men’s shouts, drunken laughter, the squeal and snarl of the pipes and snatches of hoarse song bawled out in derision.
A boat was waiting for him under the jetty, and two of his own ship’s officers hurried up out of the darkness as he approached it. He demanded first where was Prince Maurice, and was rowed out to him, the off-shore wind blowing back the little waves that hissed against the side of the boat, their spray streeling back in the light of the boat’s lantern. He went straight to the stateroom in his ship, the Admiral, where Maurice was holding a council of war with four or five officers who sprang up at sight of him.
He still seemed to be swaying in the saddle; the faces before him looked long and unfamiliar as though reflected in a distorting mirror. Even Maurice’s was different. But it was there – that was the chief thing.
‘Well, what is it?’ he asked.
‘On the Antelope,’ Maurice told him, ‘that is, openly. There have been the usual complaints of food and lack of pay all through the fleet. This morning, early, when I sent for twenty of the Antelope’s crew to come and help rig the Admiral, they sent back word they would not come.’
‘Where are her officers?’
‘The men have barricaded them in their own quarters.’
It was more serious even than Rupert had thought. But he showed nothing of his thoughts to the little group of officers who were watching his face so anxiously. He answered almost indifferently:
‘Then we’ll go fetch ‘em out. Who’ll come with me? You, Maurice, and you, Marshall, and you, Fielding – all of you, then.’
He was unbuckling his sword and laying it on the cabin table. They exclaimed, protesting, but he said:
‘It’s more danger to me than to them. You, gentlemen, I trust, as I cannot myself, to obey my command not to draw any sword.’
Then he led the way on to the deck, where he called for a boat and a hurricane-lamp. Three more officers joined him, doubtful, murmuring that it was madness for a handful like this to go now at night and practically unarmed on to a ship that had declared open mutiny. But all of them followed him down into the boat.
The dark bulk of the Antelope hung over them as they hailed her, and a row of heads appeared over the bulwarks, black against the faint glow of a ship’s lanthorn. The men let down a ladder, were suspiciously ready to do so, thought some of those in the boat, and Rupert went up first on to the deck where the whole crew was quickly gathering, more and more men running up in the waving darkness.
He called out to them, ‘Let twenty of your best foremast men step forward. I want them to come aboard the Admiral at dawn and help rig her for action. We weigh anchor tomorrow, to catch this wind for Ireland.’
His voice rang out in triumph as he said it. It had been the order he had longed to give for so many weeks that he was confident it would be enough in itself to dispel all disaffection.
But the men were gathering about him and his officers in a close-knit, dangerous crowd, muttering together; their faces grinned and snarled in the flickering light of the lanthorn; those that showed were silent, but those behind, emboldened by the darkness, were calling out jeers and defiance. Was it better to starve in Irish seas than in Dutch? Let them see their pay first before they saw Ireland! And one voice called out, ‘The Pauper Princes!’ and another, shrill and cockney, ‘The bloody foreigners!’
A hot rage burned up in Rupert’s head as all those faces grinned and mouthed silent in the light, and shouted in the dark. They were coming nearer and nearer to him, only waiting, it seemed, for some signal or command to spring all together.
It came, in that same cockney yelp from the back of the crowd, the mutineers’ cry, ‘One and all!’
Rupert could not see who called it, but strode at once towards the sound, and on either side the men fell back, each afraid to be the first to attack. A short sturdy man fell back before him against the bulwarks, calling out again in that nasal snarl, ‘Now then you cowards – one and all!’; but in that instant, before any of them could move forward again, the Prince had seized him with both hands, pinning his arms to his sides, and lifted him, struggling and kicking as he was, clear over the side of the ship as if to drop him into the dark tossing waters below.
He yelled for mercy, and Rupert answered, ‘Order your officers’ release, or I’ll let go.’
‘Let ‘em out!’ shouted the man, but his followers were staggered by Rupert’s sudden action and the mighty strength that could swing a burly fellow over the bulwarks as though he were a puppy. They gaped at their bold ringleader dangling over that dark sea, and were too aghast at his howl for mercy to notice what he cried to them.
‘Be quick and let out your officers before I drop this carrion!’ Rupert called to them, and gave point to his warning by shaking his victim, who screamed, ‘Let ‘em out for Christ’s sake!’
They rushed then to let out their officers, they thronged round the Prince protesting their loyalty. Not till then did Rupert haul up the ringleader from his ignominious position over the bulwarks, give him a shake that rattled his teeth together like castanets, and throw him down on his feet, from which he promptly collapsed to his knees.
And Tom Smith proved his eternal devotion that night, sitting with his fellows in the fo’c’sle, by drinking the health again and again of a captain that was a captain, a captain who could pick you up in his hands and hold you over the side of the ship as easy as drowning kittens. And who cared if he was half a foreigner? – for if Oliver Cromwell was English, then he was only an English louse that their Prince could have killed with one hand, if that old snuffling high-hatted lout had ever had the guts to meet the young Devil face to face.
Next day, with that easterly wind behind them, bellying out what sails they dared set, the fleet sailed out to a grey choppy sea. Just as they were warping the Admiral out into midstream, a man came riding furiously down to the side of the low wooden jetty, and Rupert said to his captain, ‘I know that fellow – the way he rides,’ but could not at once think who it was.
The man pulled in his horse close to the water’s edge, waving and shouting into the wind that he must speak with Prince Rupert. They could not wait, the sails were already being set, but the man sprang into a rowing-boat below the jetty, and two fellows who were in it started to row furiously out to the ship. He stood up as they came near, and Rupert, leaning over the ship’s side, recognized him just before he called out, ‘I am Sir John Hurry. I have a letter from my lord of Montrose.’
‘Tie it to a weight and throw it,’ Rupert called back, for they had weighed anchor and the Admiral was fast slipping out of the harbour.
Hurry instantly drew his dirk and stabbed it through the folded paper, then cried, ‘ ‘Ware the blade!’ and flung it up above his head. It fell point downwards and stuck in a plank of the deck. Rupert pulled it up; the boat lagged behind, and the big ship sailed on.
‘That’s odd,’ said the captain, ‘for I remember Hurry left our side after Marston Moor and fought for the Scots Covenanters against Montrose.’
‘He went over to him at the end, though, when Montrose had made himself master of Scotland,’ said Rupert, and the two of them chuckled unkindly as he unfolded Montrose’s letter with the gash through the centre folds.
There were few words in it, for he had evidently intended Hurry should speak of his design to Rupert, having had no idea that the fleet was sailing at this moment. A reference to the Lauderdale-Lanark group made Rupert smile grimly in agreement; ‘there is nothing of honour amongst the stuff there.’ He ended:
‘I hope to let Your Highness see all is not yet gone, but that we may have a handsome pull for it – and rather win it or be sure to lose it fairly.’
The words raised a curious echo in Rupert’s mind; he read them again; where had he heard them before, in Montrose’s own voice? but not spoken, for a wild tune was threading them together, a tune like those that his mother sang of the sad savage songs her nurse had taught her in h
er native country of Scotland. With that tune he remembered a small hot room up a rickety stair in a Yorkshire inn, a room filled with dusty sunshine and the smell of straw and sweat from outside, and the sounds of harness clanking and of hooves against cobblestones, the neighing and champing of tired horses, the tired disillusioned voices of his men calling to each other. It was the first time he had heard their voices sound like that, with all the gay confidence he had inspired gone out of them, the first time he had heard their voices after defeat, his defeat at Marston Moor.
But now he saw, looking back into that mean despairing room, the keen outline of a man’s head flung back against the dusty sunlight as he told Rupert of a desperate, an unbelievable plan to ride with two others in disguise through the armies of his enemies into his own country of Scotland and raise it for the King.
And he had done it, for that man was Montrose, and he had made and sung the gay ringing song that Rupert now remembered:
‘He either fears his late too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.’
What plan had he now for ‘a handsome pull for it’, that he would ‘win or be sure to lose it fairly’? Whatever it might be, Rupert burned to share it with him. This was the only man that he had ever envied – a man of so ‘clear a spirit’, as Hyde had put it, and so single of heart and purpose, that he could ride single-handed into a country armed against him. Within a year he won it for his King, and lost it, through the King. But the winning or losing was not what had moved Rupert – (What was it the man himself had said? – ‘That’s not our concern, once it’s done’) – it was the flinging of himself into that desperate and lonely adventure. This was what made him remember Montrose with envy.
The Bride Page 5
