When Musk returned, he was in exactly the same unperturbed state as before, with no sign of his having been about any business of any kind whatsoever.
‘He doesn’t know where they are, and what they’re planning. I’d stake my life on that.’ Then it had to be true. Phineas Musk rarely staked his life, even in jest. ‘But he’s seen papers of theirs that mention a ship. A Swedish ship, with one Peterson as skipper. Lying at Saint Katherine’s, he says, hard by the wharf for Corsellis’ brewhouse, the Hartshorn.’
I knew the Hartshorn; it was close by the Navy’s victualling yard, in East Smithfield, which I had often had cause to visit. But it was close by something else, too.
‘Adjacent to the Tower,’ I said. ‘Rathbone planned to seize the Tower. Anyone seeking control of London must surely possess it, or destroy it.’
‘Then, Sir Matthew,’ said Aphra, ‘surely Saint Katherine’s is where we should go?’
I mustered as good a grace, and as positive an air, as I could manage.
‘Indeed so, My Lady Astraea. That is precisely where we should go.’
Chapter Thirteen
A hunting party.
Myself, in the guise of Lord Percival, in turn in the guise of a buff-coated rogue, my face greased to darken my complexion; Phineas Musk, in the guise of Phineas Musk, clad in an extraordinarily gaudy scarlet coat; and a half-dozen of my brother’s chosen men, led by one Marker, though I doubted that was his real name. A stout, ugly fellow with stooped shoulders, he claimed to have fought at Lansdowne, Cheriton, and God knew where else, but was markedly vague when it came to which side he might have been on.
And, of course, we had Aphra Behn. Once again, though, the Lady Astraea had transformed herself. Gone was the demure Puritaness who had been in Leigh-on-Sea with her Dutch banker husband; gone, too, was the Earl of Ravensden’s nurse, and the coquettish, finely-dressed lady of the court who had supped at Ravensden House. In their stead was a gaudy harlot, rouged beyond measure, her breasts very nearly spilling out over her gaudy satin dress. A drunken whore, unwilling to let go off the arm of her latest master, the evident leader of the dangerous-looking gang, on whom she was lavishing the crudest attentions.
That being Phineas Musk.
I could not fault the lady’s logic. A tall man and a beautiful woman, walking arm in arm through some of the roughest streets in London, would be bound to attract attention. But a doxy on the arm of such an ugly villain as Phineas Musk: any observer would reason that here was a high-and-mighty gang-mastering apple-squire, some sort of Grand Turk of the dockland rogues, out upon dark business of the night with his latest strumpet and his bodyguard. In other words, the sort of scene that, in this part of London, was as common as horse dung.
Thankfully, Cornelia had not witnessed Aphra’s latest incarnation: God alone knew what she would have made of such brazen attire. We had dressed for our parts at Killigrew’s theatre, where the Lady Astraea seemed to know everyone. I avoided Ravensden House, convincing myself that my decision to do so was due entirely to shortage of time and the urgency of our mission. Instead, I sent Musk there, to communicate our scheme to my brother. He returned to say that my wife was well, but silent; and silence was not the usual mark of Cornelia Quinton.
Our party walked through East Smithfield, the great walls of the Tower looming over us. Past the victualling yard, down the narrow, curving lane that ran down to Saint Katherine’s dock. This was a pitiful affair compared to, say, the great wet dock at Deptford: just a narrow tidal channel completely overshadowed by the buildings around it, one of which was the great church of Saint Katherine’s Hospital, another the Hartshorn Brewhouse. The streets were quiet, perhaps because anyone who sighted our little army determined at once to give us as wide a berth as possible. As we approached the water’s edge, though, the bustle increased. Even at that time of night, bales were being taken off the coasters packed into the dock, men swearing and shouting as they struggled with ropes, cranes swinging cargoes onto the wharves. It was an oppressively hot night, and the twin stenches of hops and tidal ooze struggled for supremacy. There was even more of the latter than should have been expected at low tide; the long drought of that summer had turned even the mighty Thames into a shadow of its usual self.
Out in the river, ships were tied together so tightly that they almost entirely blocked any view of the south bank, although it was just possible to see lantern-light from some of the uppermost floors of the buildings around Pickled Herring Stairs on the Horselydown bank, and the very top of Saint John’s church tower.
By the entrance to the dock, a small gaggle of watermen stood apart, puffing upon their pipes and engaging in desultory conversation. They fell silent at our approach. Bad custom we might have looked, but there was always the possibility that appearances deceived. Nine fares bound for Greenwich, or even only as far as London Bridge, might make it a very profitable night for one of these men.
‘Ho, lads,’ said Musk, revelling in his role as a dockland Archduke, ‘we’re for passage to one of the ships, yonder. Skipper’s got some special entertainment for us.’
The watermen looked at each other. At last, one of them, a fellow with a huge grey beard that might have been fashionable in the old Queen’s time, spoke up.
‘Too short a passage, this time of the night.’
Phineas Musk looked around, lazily.
‘Half a guinea for the passage,’ he said. ‘More than you’d get for rowing from here to Henley. And there’d be your bonus, of course.’
‘Bonus?’
‘We wouldn’t burn your boat, cut you up, and throw you into the river. You’d return home alive, which I’d call a bonus, myself. So is it still too short a passage, friend?’
The waterman looked at his friends, but they, in turn, were looking at the gang standing behind Musk’s back, myself included, weighing the odds. Their expressions indicated that they did not consider these to be good.
‘Which ship?’ said the waterman, conceding defeat.
‘The Milkmaid of Stockholm. You know it?’
‘Peterson’s ship. That’s it, yonder, the one closest to the Hartshorn’s wharf.’
‘Well, then, it’s your lucky night, friend. A short and easy row, half a guinea, and you continue to breathe. What could be better, eh?’
* * *
The Milkmaid was a middling-sized flyboat with a high stern, probably Dutch-built, as so many Baltic traders were. Her watch on deck, a lad of no more than fourteen, shone a lantern at us as we approached, then called out something in a tongue that must have been Swedish. As the waterman brought us alongside the hull, a sharp-faced, crop-haired fellow of forty or more appeared at the ship’s rail.
‘What’s your business?’ he demanded, in good English. ‘I had the customs aboard this noontime, the prize officers in the afternoon. The ship’s clear – a confirmed neutral. Property of the Lord Hagerstierna.’
‘We’re not the customs,’ said Musk. ‘Nor from the prize commissioners, nor the Admiralty court, and we don’t give a jot for any Lord Hags Turner. Throw down a ladder, Skipper Peterson!’
The Swede stared at us in silence. A boatful of armed men, approaching a laden merchantman at this time of the night – it was obvious what he would be thinking. But the chances were that most of his men were ashore, drunk in some riverside taphouse or other; and even if they were not, ships like this saved money by sailing with crews so small that probably not even the Milkmaid’s full complement could have put up much resistance against us. Unless, of course, the Horsemen were aboard, with an armed retinue of their own.
But if they were, they did nothing to stop Marker, who suddenly emerged from the darkness behind Peterson and put a knife to his ear. Marker, who had scuttled up the Milkmaid’s anchor cable with another of his men, the waterman having brought us in from that direction specifically for that purpose. Marker’s companion now appeared at the rail, his right hand tight across the watch on deck’s mouth to stop the lad screaming a warning.
A rope ladder came over the side, and we climbed up onto the deck.
‘Pirates,’ growled Peterson.
‘On the Thames?’ I said, mildly. ‘I think not, Skipper. Lord Percival, rather, on behalf of the King of England. With credentials from your country’s ambassador in this kingdom, the Lord Leijonbergh. Your Lord Hagerstierna should take up the matter with him, if he has objections.’ The skipper scowled. ‘You have guests aboard, Master Peterson? Passengers?’
The Swede was silent, but Marker pressed his blade against the skipper’s cheek.
‘Two passengers, below. No guests.’
I nodded to Musk. He and two more of Marker’s men led the way forward to the forecastle, and then below, Aphra and I following behind.
The Milkmaid’s cabin for passengers was a tiny, stinking, damp space, so far forward that it must have been intolerable in a heavy sea. It was lit by one lantern, swinging from a hook on a beam. Directly beneath it, a fellow of about my age, fat-cheeked with matted, greasy black hair, was sitting on a stool, staring intently at something in his left hand, poking it with the thin metal object in his right, humming a tune I did not recognise. A second man, much older, was behind him, stretched out on a pallet on the deck, snoring loudly.
I turned to look at Aphra. She studied the two faces intently, then shook her head.
At that moment, the man on the stool finally registered our presence. He let out a cry that was more animal than human, dropped what had been in his left hand, and retreated, limping a little as he did so, against the bulkhead, to cower there. The object he had been holding broke as it struck the deck: a watch, but one that would not tell the time again. Some of its workings spilled out onto the timber planking. The noises woke the man on the pallet, who sprang up, pulling out a blade from his breeches.
But he did not attack us. He seemed to weigh the odds, then turned at once to go to his companion, who was crying like an infant.
‘It’s all right, Robert,’ he said, in French. ‘C’est bon.’
‘L’horloge est casseé,’ said Robert, over and over, between sobs. ‘It’s broken.’
‘Don’t worry, mon cher ami, you’ll make better ones. That one was never going to work properly.’
‘Qui sont-ils?’ demanded Robert, pointing at us. ‘Who are they? I don’t like them.’
There was no threat here, that much was clear. I beckoned to Aphra and Marker’s men to return above deck, leaving Musk and I alone with the simple-minded watchmaker and his friend.
‘We are searching for other men,’ I said in French. ‘You are the only passengers on this ship?’
‘We are,’ said the older man. ‘Bound from Stockholm for Rouen, whence we both hail. The ship was stopped at sea by your English fleet and sent in here for examination, in case it was running contraband to France.’
A common story: my own commands during this war had sent in supposedly neutral hulls galore, some of which were genuine, most of which were Frenchmen or Dutchmen pretending to be neutrals.
‘Why are you still aboard the ship?’ I asked. ‘Surely you would be more comfortable ashore?’
‘London is an expensive city,’ said the older Frenchman, shrugging. ‘Who knows how long we might be here before your Admiralty judges finally decide we can continue our voyage? Besides, my poor friend here… it is easier if he does not encounter too many people.’
‘A simpleton, and yet a watchmaker?’
‘A very fine watchmaker. N’est-ce pas, Robert? Isn’t that so?’ The poor fellow nodded, but continued to sob. ‘Not so very strange, sir. Doesn’t the Lord God often take away one faculty from a man, but compensate by giving him an extra measure of another? Poor Robert’s wits may be feeble, but he is an outstanding craftsman. Trained by his father, one of the best watchmakers in Rouen. All of his family follow the trade, monsieur. They are a quite renowned dynasty in Normandy.’
There was clearly little point in remaining there, frightening the harmless watchmaker. Perhaps the Horsemen had not yet come to the Milkmaid; perhaps they were long gone; perhaps the information Musk had extracted from Sallows was false.
‘You have papers?’ I said.
Lord Percival, the representative of King Charles himself, had to maintain appearances, after all. We would search the ship to see if there was any trace of the men we sought. We would question Captain Peterson and his crew. But somehow, I already knew that our mission had failed.
‘Of course,’ said the Frenchman. ‘We are Huguenots, sir, vouched for by the French Protestant churches in both Stockholm and Rouen, and by the noble Lord Hagerstierna himself.’
I barely heard him. I wanted nothing more than to be off this ship, and well out of my brother’s damnable world of intelligencing. A world where nothing was what it seemed, where duplicity and deceit reigned supreme. A world which brought with it the temptations of Mistress Aphra Behn, and a flood tide of unbearable guilt. I prayed to be back at sea. There, at least, I knew exactly who the enemy was; and there, Sir Matthew Quinton did not need to be responsible for frightening poor, soft-headed innocents.
‘Musk,’ I said, turning on my heel, ‘inspect their papers.’
With that, I returned to the upper deck, knowing that I would have to report our failure to my brother.
* * *
‘There is nothing for it,’ said Charles Quinton, sitting up in bed and seemingly a little better. The first rays of a late August dawn were piercing the gaps between the shutters. ‘I’ll set Musk to interrogate Sallows once again, of course. We’ll have Marker and his men watch the ship and the adjacent quays. But unless the Horsemen make a mistake, or we obtain some other intelligence of them, there’s precious little we can do. If they’re in London, they’ll just disappear into the throng – war or no war, there are Dutch enough in London.’ I nodded. One of them, my own wife, was under the same roof at that very moment; another shared the bed of the King’s secretary of state. ‘At bottom, all we can do is pray that all the talk of a great apocalypse on the third of September is as much a fiction as all the fanatics’ other wild plots and fierce talk.’
‘There is no more to be done?’ I said.
‘None. You are a free man, Matt – you can relinquish the role of Lord Percival. I can give orders easily enough from this bed, and it is as good a place as any in which to worry.’
My feelings battled each other like Levantine galleys. Yes, there was relief that I could extricate myself from my brother’s dark and secret world. But I felt that I had failed him; and if I had failed Charles Quinton, I had failed Charles Stuart, too. Nothing pains a Quinton more than a sense that he has failed his King and his country.
‘What will you do, Sir Matthew?’
Aphra’s question seemed innocent, but the expression in her eyes was not. It was very apparent what she would have had me do – there and then, too, if only my brother was not present.
And there, of course, was the other half of the Levantine galley battle, the other set of emotions battling their bloody way through my head and heart. If I remained in London, I would surely succumb to Mistress Behn’s charms yet again. For there was a part of me that wanted nothing more than to succumb, to feel her warm, naked flesh against mine. But if I succumbed again, the odds of my fathering a child on Astraea would multiply. And if I succumbed again, in London, Cornelia would find out, by some means or other. Since my return from Leigh, she had been cold and distant, still embittered by the supposed ruin of her father and my part in it. I knew she would be cold and distant again, when I went down to her after Lord Percival’s conference concluded. But if she found out my adultery, God alone knew how matters would go.
I imagined her face, red and livid once again, her lips framing words of justified abuse – but it melted into the face of Aphra, beckoning upon a pillow – and back to Cornelia again, then the worst thought of all. What if the baby is lost?
No way out.
But there was, and the realisation of it came to me like a thunde
rclap from Heaven itself.
‘I am a King’s captain,’ I said, as calmly as I could manage. ‘My duty is to return to my ship. At Woolwich.’
Chapter Fourteen
No captain takes delight in riding into a royal dockyard. For his ship to be there means, naturally, that it is not at sea; and in a war, not being at sea means no glory, no honour, no prize money. Then, too, having a ship in a dockyard means that its captain has to deal with the officials and workmen of the yard on a daily, perhaps an hourly, basis. Any seaman will tell you that God created dockyard-men on the same day that he created foxes, rats, slugs, tortoises, and all the other sly, idle or slow creatures of the world. But that day in late August, even though the gates of Woolwich yard were a few yards ahead of me and a torrential downpour was soaking me to the very bone, I felt nothing but joy. I was returning to the Royal Sceptre, to a world I knew, to a world where I was safe.
I was not running, and I was not hiding from Cornelia and Aphra. Not in the least.
I was doing my duty by my King, and my crew.
Although it must be said, whatever the former might have thought if he had known of my movements and the reasons for them, the latter was uniformly astonished.
‘Sir Matthew!’ exclaimed Lieutenant Julian Delacourt, who was standing at the head of the double dry dock, beneath the beakhead of the Royal Sceptre.
Heads peaked over rails, and out of gunports. Ali Reis, who seemed to be fitting new foremast shrouds, grinned and salaamed, despite the precariousness of his perch.
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