The stench assailed us even before we stepped through the door. There must have been three hundred men in the room, all of them unwashed and wearing the clothes in which they had been captured, some weeks earlier. The single toilet seemed to be a bucket in the corner, which had overflowed some hours previously. Men were shouting and arguing in Dutch, but those nearest to us fell silent as we entered. Several dozen pairs of eyes fell upon Aphra, and the mouths beneath them broke into leers.
‘Should have drowned the lot of them when we had the chance,’ said Musk.
I could hear obscenities galore, all of them about Aphra and what they proposed to do with her, but also other remarks.
‘Not the usual time for a muster. What’s going on?’
‘Isn’t that the goddeloze staartman English captain that took us?’
‘Tighten up, lads.’
What the crew of the Tholen did not know was that I spoke Dutch with a considerable degree of fluency, thanks to my wife and the time we had spent living in her home town of Veere before the King’s Restoration. Admittedly, my fluency did not stretch to understanding why the Dutch might elect to describe an Englishman as goddeloze staartman – a godless tailed man – but I was not alone in that.
‘That group of men, in the far corner,’ I said to Aphra. ‘Let’s make towards them, then work back from there.’
‘He’s not in these front ranks,’ she said. ‘I’d swear upon it.’
The Keeper and his turnkeys formed up in front of and at the sides of us, leading us like an arrowhead into the heart of the throng. A few prisoners pressed forward menacingly, but were swiftly cudgelled back into place. All the while as we advanced, Aphra scanned faces methodically, her head moving from side to side, ignoring the obscene gestures and lewd catcalls from the prisoners. We made directly for the group that had shuffled closer to each other, and seemed to have something to hide.
‘I don’t like their mood,’ said the Keeper. ‘Don’t like it at all.’
‘Too many of them for my liking,’ said Musk, ‘and far too few of us.’
‘They wouldn’t dare attempt anything,’ said the Keeper. ‘They’ll have no prospect of an exchange if they do.’
But he did not sound as though he was convincing even himself. Ranks of prisoners were closing in behind us, growling menacingly, talking of rushing us and overpowering the turnkeys. Time to surprise them.
‘My friends!’ I shouted, in Dutch. Aphra looked at me in surprise. ‘Fellow mariners! I am Sir Matthew Quinton, a friend of your former captain, Pieter de Mauregnault!’ This news, and my fluency in their language, stopped both the advance and the murmuring. ‘We seek one man, a gunner. An old man, perhaps fifty or more. His name is de Wildt, although he may have adopted another. Double allowance for a month for the man who shows him to us!’
The murmuring began again, but quieter this time, to prevent me hearing it. No man stepped forward. And still the group straight in front of us kept tightly together, like Romans guarding a bridge.
The Keeper was increasingly nervous, and now took matters into his own hands.
‘Make way, there!’ he cried, and beckoned two of his turnkeys forward.
The phalanx stood firm. Cudgels were raised in warning. Still no movement.
‘Fuck this – begging your pardon, mistress,’ said Musk, pushing his way to the front and then throwing himself, head first, at the nearest Dutchman. Taken by surprise and winded, the fellow fell back, making a gap in the line.
And revealing the dead body on the floor, lying in a pool of blood.
‘Christ,’ said the Keeper, ‘it’s Jackson, the turnkey who lets in the slop-boy!’
‘Goodman,’ said Aphra. ‘Mene Tekel. It must have been. He’s freed de Wildt. We’re too late!’
There was a cry in the crowd. ‘Nothing to lose now, boys! Kill the English!’ The guard at the door shouted for the alarm bell to be rung. And the mob came at us.
I drew my sword and waved it from side to side in front of me, slowly clearing a path for us toward the door. This tactic kept a dozen of them at bay, but I knew it was only a matter of time before someone plucked up the courage to charge. Or they might work round behind us, but for the time being the Keeper and his turnkeys were guarding that flank, cudgelling and stabbing at any man who came close enough. Musk was in his element, punching any stomach or chin that strayed within reach of his fists. But the most astonishing sight was that of Aphra Behn. From somewhere within her skirts, she had produced a vicious pin, several inches long and nearly thick enough to be classed as a dagger. With it, she lunged expertly at any man near her, showing at once no fear and a very fine grasp of strategy. She was evidently well-versed in this kind of combat, as the Dutchman who took a vicious stab through the left shoulder swiftly discovered.
At last, two prisoners charged me, one with fists alone, one with a rough, bloodied blade that he must have somehow concealed from his gaolers – perhaps the very weapon that had killed Jackson. I lunged at the bladesman, forcing him back, then cut sharply into the side of the other fellow, slicing open his flesh below the ribs. He screamed and fell away, just as the bladesman came at me again, his grip reversed, stabbing high and hard for my head. I had the advantage of reach, though, and thrust straight for the heart. I felt my sword enter the body, saw the blood spill out over his shirt, saw the look of death-horror in his eyes, withdrew the bloodied blade, and took guard again, menacing any other man who thought to be so brave.
The Dutch were still shouting defiance and obscenities, but now there were new sounds: the familiar sounds of soldierly boots running on flagstones, and cries of ‘For God and the King!’ The first red-coated soldier ran into the room, followed by a crowd of his fellows, brandishing muskets and halberds. The prisoners fell back, and the soldiers made a path for us through to the door.
Later, in the Keeper’s quarters in the gate tower, we took wine and recovered ourselves.
‘Don’t usually take on so many at once with the other Lord Percival,’ said Musk. ‘Hope that’s not going to be your way, Sir Matthew – taking on the sort of odds that Phineas Musk finds daunting. Can’t be doing with that, at my age.’
‘I’ll try to bear it in mind, Musk,’ I said. ‘But Mistress Behn, if I may venture such an enquiry – when did you learn to fight in such a manner?’
She did not hear me at first, being distracted by a tear in her sleeve that she seemed to find particularly distressing.
‘Mm? Oh, your brother gave me some lessons, in Flanders before the Restoration. And in Surinam, well, a woman had to be resourceful.’ She looked up, and gave me her full attention once again. ‘But I did not realise you spoke Dutch, Sir Matthew – and like a Dutchman, too.’
‘My wife and her brother would disagree with you, Mistress.’
Indeed they would. Captain Cornelis van der Eide of the Zeeland Admiralty took a particular delight in correcting me on minor points of Dutch grammar and pronunciation.
‘No matter. It puts me in mind of a way in which we might pursue Goodman into his lair. It will involve some play-acting, Sir Matthew, and a little script of my devising. Your brother, the Earl, is always willing to play such roles. Is the new Lord Percival, I wonder?’
* * *
We parted at Ravensden House, Mistress Behn to work on her ‘little script’, I to report to my brother. But I very nearly failed to make it alive to his room. In the entrance hall, I was assailed by a furious Cornelia, her face scarlet and sodden from copious tears.
‘Schurk!’ she cried. ‘Villain!’
‘My love…’
She struck me hard on the left cheek. Reeling from the shock, I managed to grab hold of her hands before she could strike again.
‘Moordenaar! Leugenaar! Murderer! Liar!’
‘Cornelia, in hemelsnaam! For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter, woman?’
She struggled to escape my grip, but I held her firmly. She looked around wildly, as though seeking an exit or a weapon, but finally
held my gaze. Her eyes were blazing with anger.
‘Terschelling,’ she said, almost spitting out the word. ‘You lied to me about Terschelling.’
I could think of no reply, because, in truth, she was right. I had kept my explanation to her of ‘Holmes’ Bonfire’ as brief and general as I possibly could. It was hardly a story to recount with pride or honour, even if one’s wife was not Dutch.
‘People died, Matthew. People were killed. Innocent people. Peaceful people.’
‘We are at war,’ I said, without conviction, for her words simply echoed my own doubts about what we had done.
‘Oh, and do I not know that? Do I not know it every time I venture out of the door, and see the hostile looks on faces, and hear the catcalls of children? England is at war with the Dutch, I am Dutch, ergo I am an enemy of England. I know that. I live in England’s capital, so I accept that. I accept that you must fight the navy in which my brother fights. You are both warriors, it is what warriors do – I am no cloistered nun, husband, shut away from such worldly affairs, and I know it is what you both must do. But to kill and burn on the soil of my country – to bring my own father – the father of your own wife – to the brink of ruin…’
‘Your father?’
She blinked away more tears. ‘A letter came from him today. He had five cargoes at the Vlie. Five. All burned by you and your friends, husband. His credit is ruined. He does not know you helped to command the attack, but he tells of the fate of the poor Mennonites, and demands God’s righteous judgement upon the devils who perpetrated such a crime.’
I was struck dumb. I had never been close to my father-in-law, Cornelis van der Eide the elder, a dour Calvinistic merchant of Veere. But he had taken me in when I was a penniless, wounded exile, and he had consented to my marrying his daughter, whom he might have bestowed on any sea-captain of the Zeeland Admiralty, or any rich burgher of Rotterdam. The beautiful, spirited daughter with whom I had fallen passionately in love, and who had loved me passionately in return, without really believing that my King would ever return to his throne, that she might one day be Lady Quinton, perhaps set fair to be Countess of Ravensden. He had given her the Calvinist faith, and thus the fatalistic acceptance of predestination, that enabled her to accept – in truth, to accept far better than I – all the long years when we tried, and failed, to have a child, a boy, the heir who would allow my family’s inheritance to continue.
‘I could not have known,’ I said.
But even as I spoke them, I knew the words were utterly hollow, and Cornelia’s cold, staring eyes showed that she knew it, too. It is what warriors do. We both knew it would not have mattered a jot if I had known that my father-in-law’s ships were in the Vlie anchorage. I had my orders, I had my duty to my King and country, and I would have burned them all the same. After all, the ruining of merchants like Cornelis van der Eide the elder had been one of the explicit purposes that Prince Rupert and Robert Holmes had ordained for our expedition.
If anything, Cornelia’s Calvinist faith should have told her all this. In her mind, what I did at Terschelling could only have been predestined by God; and if that was the case, she took out her anger on me chiefly because she could not take it out on He who was truly responsible.
‘We are at war,’ I repeated, the words coming out as barely a whisper.
Chapter Ten
A rare summer storm was darkening the late afternoon skies over Essex, as well it might. This, after all, was a county notorious as one of the principal seed-beds of rebellion during the late unhappy civil wars, and one that still contained countless ignorant souls disaffected with the rule of His Majesty the King. Admittedly, the same was true of my native Bedfordshire, but that was smaller, the people more placid. And Bedfordshire, for all its faults, contained rather fewer witches than Essex, despite the best efforts of the self-styled Witchfinder-General to exterminate them all during the late civil wars. A ruined castle lay just off to the south of the road we were taking, its tall, ivy-covered towers standing sentinel over the salt marshes below and the broad estuary of the Thames beyond. It was easy to imagine a coven within its dark walls, casting evil spells and incantations, benighting the prospects of the strange little party that now rode past.
We were on horseback, Musk, Aphra and I, and we were soaked to the skin despite the heavy cloaks we wore. But a coach would have been unsuitable for the play we were now acting out.
The port of Leigh appeared before us. For such a den of sin and treason, it seemed unremarkable enough: a village largely of timber-built, weather-boarded houses, nestling beneath a hill that fell down to the sea, with a fine old church standing amid trees, high above the main street below. Fishing craft and a number of coastal traders, including the broad hulls of several Newcastle colliers, sat on the mud of the tidal flats that flanked the creek. Therein lay the one obvious danger to our mission. Leigh was a port of some eminence, despite its small size and unprepossessing appearance. It had produced many Brethren, even Masters, of Trinity House, and many stout officers and men for the Navy, the Captain Dick Haddock who had taken part in Holmes’ bonfire amongst them. So it was just possible that there might be a man in the town who knew me by sight: a pressed seaman, perhaps, who had served under me in the Merhonour, the Cressy, or the Royal Sceptre, during the two sea-campaigns of the war. But it was deeply unlikely, sufficiently so for it to be worth the risk. Until the fleet paid off in a month or thereabouts, all of the eligible mariners of Leigh were nearly certain to be at sea; and if there were any deserters in these parts, they were unlikely to linger long in a port which could be visited by a pressing tender at any time.
Of course, it was equally possible that Schermer, Goodman and de Wildt might spot and recognise Aphra before we had a chance to put our plan into effect. But she and Charles reasoned that they were unlikely to venture out too brazenly in public in the aftermath of the Rathbone plot and the recent escape of de Wildt from Chelsea College. Besides, the Aphra riding alongside me was a very different creature to the one who had been at Ravensden House – presumably different, too, to the young woman the Horsemen had known in Surinam. The long brown tresses had been cut off, and the remaining unfashionably short and straight hair dyed jet black. In high-necked, grey Puritanical garb and old-fashioned coif, riding sidesaddle, she looked every inch a demure, godly, and above all insignificant, goodwife.
We entered a middling-sized inn at the west end of the High Street. Musk took the landlord to one side and had a whispered conversation with him, during which a purse of coin exchanged hands. Of course, Musk was not playing a part: the role of the slightly dishonest rogue, engaged upon some marginally illegal scheme, had been his since birth.
He returned to where Aphra and I sat, close to the unseasonable coal fire that dried our sodden clothes.
‘The best room in the house for you,’ he said, so quietly that no others in the room could hear. ‘The best room in the entire town, he says. A mattress in the garret for me. No doubt with fleas.’
‘Excellent, Musk,’ said Aphra. ‘And our business?’
‘He’s sent word to a likely man. Says he’ll be here by nightfall.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then let’s dine, and while away the hours.’
We ate an acceptable ham broth, washed down by some Maldon ale. Musk and Mistress Behn talked of the wonders of the Americas, and of the relative merits of the inns of Antwerp. I remained entirely silent throughout. That, after all, was my part in this business, at least at this stage of it. Musk and Aphra Behn were both expert at this game; both had taken part in countless secret missions on behalf of my brother and others, and knew what they were about. But it was new to me, and I was utterly convinced that at any moment, one of the drinkers would point at me and shout, ‘Ha! There’s Sir Matthew Quinton, that notorious cavalier and malignant, pretending to be…’
A man walked up to our table and sat down upon the settle opposite us without introduction or ceremony. He was a rough-shaven, hard-face
d fellow with warts on his hands, perhaps sixty or so. He had a cast in his right eye.
‘Jack Crane, yonder, says you’re interested in a passage.’ His voice was a rasp, and although he spoke with the accent of those parts, there was a trace of something else, too: a touch of New England, perhaps, where many of the dissenting kind had once sought to establish the new Zion. ‘A passage into Holland. That’s a dangerous voyage to take in time of war.’
‘We are prepared to pay well for it,’ said Aphra.
‘Reckon you would be, for what you’re asking. So I’ve got to be asking myself, what business is afoot for such a fair lady as yourself to want something that might get us all hanged?’
‘It concerns my husband, here.’ She nodded toward me, and lowered her voice. ‘He is a Dutchman. It is now – well, it has become difficult for him to remain in England.’
‘And why might that be, then?’
‘No need for you to know,’ said Musk, playing the part of the ruffian bodyguard to perfection. ‘Are you interested in the purse you’ve been offered or not?’
‘If I’m risking my life, even for a weighty purse, I want to know what I’m risking it for.’ He turned toward me. ‘So what’s your story, friend?’
‘No English,’ I said, in what I hoped was a passable imitation of my father-in-law uttering the only phrase of my language that he knew.
My father-in-law. The father of Cornelia, from whom I had parted in such bad grace.
‘That right?’ said the fellow. ‘No English. Well, then.’ He was silent for a moment, then looked up at me again, and began to speak in fluent and very rapid Dutch. ‘So let’s try the Netherlandish way shall we, if you’re more comfortable with that? What’s your story, friend? Why do you need to get out of England so damn fast, eh?’
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