by Davies, J. D
‘Which would encourage all the sectaries to rise up and send me packing,’ said the king, with equal complicity. ‘To think there are those within my realms who would revel in an English defeat.’
‘A plot defeated chiefly by the guile of that dark and mysterious creature, the Lord Percival,’ said Clarendon, smiling and nodding toward my brother, who reciprocated. ‘Let us be thankful for his unexpected and timely reappearance.’
The Earl of Ravensden smiled and bowed. It was still strange to see him as he really was, this feared and indomitable bulwark of the realm.
On our journey to Salisbury, Charles had told me something of his alternative identity. He first adopted it in Cromwell’s time, initially as a way of protecting his family and estates from the wrath of the Protector.
‘Gradually, I came to realise that the disguise was far more potent than plain Charles Quinton,’ he said, taking me fully into his confidence for the first time in our lives. ‘A man whose face is concealed and whose true identity is unknown strikes fear into the hearts of the credulous, who see in him all their nightmares of wraiths and phantoms and the like. With the playhouses closed, my theatrical friends had ample time on their hands to train me in acting a part and convincing an audience. Soon, Lord Percival had a small army of agents at his disposal, with Phineas Musk at their head.’
The idea of Musk alongside my brother at the heart of royalist intrigues – aye, as a cavalier hero, no less – was more than a little disconcerting. ‘Then why did you not recruit me, Charles, or at least confide in me?’ I demanded.
‘Come, Matt, you remember how dangerous the times were. One of us could play the spy, but for the good of the house of Quinton – and our mother’s peace of mind – it was better that the two of us did not lay our heads upon the same block. And if you were ever arrested by the Puritans and their lackeys, you could legitimately deny all knowledge of this Lord Percival.’
As we rode on, Charles explained that he believed the Restoration would be the end of his days as an intelligencer: there would a new era of peace and contentment under our rightful sovereign, and the Earl of Ravensden could devote all his efforts to the recovery of his ancestral estates. ‘But by last autumn, it was apparent that plots against the king were multiplying faster than rabbits in a warren. And if truth be told, Matt, I was most dreadfully bored by the endless ledgers, the disputes over rentals, the discussions upon wheat… Christ God, spare me from wheat… It needed only a catalyst to revive the dark spectre of Lord Percival. A catalyst that you provided.’
‘That I provided, brother?’
‘Of course – your exposure of my wife as a French agent, Matt. Oh, I was already convinced of her duplicity, and regretted my weakness in allowing myself to be persuaded to the marriage by our mother and the king. But I had thought of the marriage as a penance for my many sins – as a cross I would have to bear for as long as I lived. Your intelligence of her true nature made me realise that I had an alternative. Thanks to my unnatural marriage, I had been presented with incomparable access to one of King Louis’ most important agents in England – an opportunity that I simply could not pass over, brother.’ Almost as one, our steeds jumped a shallow gully. ‘I approached the king, Clarendon and Arlington. With the fanatics restless and a war imminent, they were more than enthusiastic to recall the most successful royalist agent of the late troubles, if I may so immodestly term myself. Thus was Lord Percival reborn.’ Charles smiled. ‘The preachers say that rebirth in Christ makes a man new again. I won’t gainsay that, but the rebirth of Lord Percival certainly remade Charles Quinton. I had been sick, weary of my old wounds, weighed down by the doubts over my marriage. I would probably have been a dead man within months.’ We rode through a stream, scattering some ponies that were drinking a little way downstream. ‘But the moment I resumed the identity of Lord Percival, I felt as though a surge of new blood had been pumped into me. I felt a thrill that I had not known since the Protector’s dragoons were in pursuit of me across the fields of Northamptonshire. This was what I was born to do, Matt.’
This, and not the part of the Earl of Ravensden? It was a question that I could not ask; nor did I feel inclined to raise the allegations of the late countess. But Charles himself must have sensed my predicament. We reined in amidst the ruins of Old Sarum, on the bleak hill above Salisbury, looking down to the lofty spire of the cathedral in the broad vale beneath.
‘It tormented father, you know,’ he said, suddenly and evidently regretfully. ‘Your father. He told me of it, the day he rode out before Naseby. I think he had a sense that he would not return – indeed, I have often wondered whether he did not truly care if he lived or died in the battle, whether his charge into the midst of Parliament’s army was the fulfilment of a death wish. Mother has blamed Rupert all these years, but I think that has been only a way of assuaging her own guilt.’ He looked into the distance and shook his head sadly. ‘I had to succeed to the title. You realise that? To proclaim myself both illegitimate and the king’s son would have bestowed the entire Quinton inheritance upon a five-year-old in the midst of civil war, when it urgently needed a steady hand to hold it together – and God, what would Cromwell and the Parliament-men have done with intelligence that the king had a bastard?’
‘When did the king know?’ I asked. ‘The present king.’
‘His father told him when they, too, parted for the last time. I think it had caused less anguish between the king and queen than it did between your father and our mother. After all, Matt, it is expected of men, and perhaps of kings especially – but as my late wife rightly said, in women it is called whoring.’
‘And are these, then, the deep secrets of the House of Quinton, that you once swore upon our sister’s grave to reveal to me one day?’
My brother – maybe my half-brother, for all we and our mother knew – looked at me, looked away over the ruins of Sarum and to the cathedral spire beyond, then smiled and turned back to me.
‘One of them, Matt. But only one, and perhaps not the greatest. That day of revelation is still to come.’
So we rode down into Salisbury, and despite Charles Quinton’s enigmatic prevarication, at last I knew the truth of his unlikely friendship with Charles Stuart.
Genesis Four, verse Nine.
They were each their brother’s keeper.
* * *
‘I wouldn’t have forgiven you if you’d killed Harry Brouncker,’ said King Charles the Second, a little later. ‘Damn difficult these days to find good opponents at chess. But then, if I’d suspected him of giving the order to shorten sail I’d probably have run him through myself. Wouldn’t you say so, My Lord Clarendon?’
The Chancellor, who was suspected by many (Matthew Quinton at their head) of having played a part in that perfidious order, seemed momentarily discomfited, but quickly recovered his customary arrogance. ‘As well, then, Your Majesty, that the incident seems to have been but a misunderstanding between tired men, all numbed by the shock of battle.’
So this was to be the new truth; and Clarendon’s daughter, gulled by the Lady Louise, was hardly likely to dispute it.
The king sent for wine, and we drank cheerily. Strangely to my mind, there was no mention at all of the late Countess of Ravensden. But then, Charles Stuart presumably did not wish to be reminded of the fact that he, too, had been gulled by that lady, and wished even less to be reminded of the fact that he, the king, had been wrong about her, and that I, plain Matt Quinton, had been right. In my experience, those with divine right have some difficulty admitting to their earthly wrongs.
At length Clarendon withdrew, pleading some urgent business of state; we were, after all, at war, although it was easy enough to forget that amid the cloistered serenity of Salisbury. With him gone, the three men left behind could turn at last to the matters known to them alone.
‘I still feel like a naughty child when I dissemble before My Lord of Clarendon,’ said the king. ‘But it is better that he believes your story of
Bagshawe’s guilt, Charles, rather than the truth – especially as Bagshawe lies in a damned convenient plague-pit and cannot disabuse him.’
Charles had told me the truth of the ‘twenty captains’ at Lynd-bury, but I still found difficulty in believing it. The story was indeed a canard, as Clarendon had said, but it was certainly not a canard of Sir Martin Bagshawe’s making.
‘Arlington,’ my brother had said, as we stood alone in the half-ruined chapel of Louise’s home, keeping vigil over her coffin. ‘It was of his devising, although of course he denied it to my face when I visited him and presented him with Bagshawe’s testimony – the testimony of the man whom Arlington had bribed and browbeaten into instigating his scheme. Bagshawe had too many dubious friends among the fanatics, and had incurred too many debts. Arlington could at once intimidate him into doing his bidding while also buying his silence – or at any rate, could do so until the plague condemned Bagshawe to death and thus destroyed his hold over him.’
‘Arlington?’ I was incredulous, yet perhaps not quite as incredulous as I might have been; for I recalled Arlington’s behaviour toward me at Clarendon House and his insistence upon the reality of the ‘twenty captains’ in the face of Clarendon’s scepticism. ‘In the name of dear Heaven, Charles, why would Arlington concoct such a tale – spreading suspicion and discontent in our fleet just as we were about to face the Dutch?’
‘Precisely for that reason, Matt. Create suspicion of the old Commonwealth captains and what might be the outcome, especially if our fleet did not obtain a decisive victory, thus seeming to give credence to such doubts?’
I recalled the council of war at which His Grace of Buckingham had demanded a command; and in those days, Buckingham was ever the staunch ally of My Lord Arlington. ‘A wholesale purge of the old captains,’ I said slowly, the realisation seeping into my veins, ‘and only cavaliers to be entrusted with commands.’
Charles nodded. ‘Aye, and more, I’d say. I’ll wager Arlington intended to use the tale as an excuse to attack the man who advocated commissioning those old captains in the first place.’
‘The Duke of York! And if Arlington undermines York –’
‘He undermines York’s father-in-law.’
I was incredulous. ‘He would play such games when the kingdom is at war? When so much is at stake?’
My Lord of Ravensden smiled. ‘I know Arlington better than you, Matt. Have known him for many years. I think he would say that the highest stake of all is to be the supreme authority in England, beneath the king; that the war will not be prosecuted vigorously while Clarendon holds the place; that Clarendon will never act firmly enough against the dissenters and malcontents; that Clarendon, at bottom, is simply not Arlington.’
‘Surely the king will dismiss him for this?’
‘Dismiss him? Lord, no. His Majesty has precious few clever men about him, and none are cleverer than Arlington, for all his faults. And he is hardly likely to dismiss a man for advocating the promotion of ardent royalists.’ Charles shrugged. ‘The king will rebuke him, I have no doubt, but it suits him well to keep Arlington and Clarendon in balance. Without the one, the other becomes too powerful.’
But it is better that he believes your story of Bagshawe’s guilt, Charles, rather than the truth. So it had transpired as my brother predicted. Arlington remained in office, with the truth of his conspiracy concealed from his rival Clarendon – concealed, no doubt, so that the king could dangle it like a sword of Damocles over the Secretary of State’s head, a sword to be unsheathed whenever it suited the royal purpose. But as we stood there, alongside the coffin of the Countess Louise, I began to wonder whether Arlington’s dark scheme had one other ingredient to it. Prince Rupert had recommended me for the Merhonour, I now knew, but he had no say in where that ship would be stationed in battle. Instead, I recalled the Secretary of State’s words to me at Clarendon House: we have prevailed upon His Royal Highness to place you directly behind Lawson’s new flagship, as his second. A callow young gentleman captain, promoted to command a ship far too large for him, his head filled with a great statesman’s insinuations of a plot: might not such a captain perhaps rashly open fire upon the wrong ship at the wrong moment – at such moments, say, as the Guinea’s misfired broadside, or when the Royal Oak failed to tack and follow Rupert – and thus trigger the very dissension in the fleet that Arlington wished to engender?
Thus it was that summer of 1665 in England. Plague, war and death cast their dark shadows over the land; the rulers of the kingdom made shuttlecocks of the lives of a thousand score of men, Matt Quinton among them, simply to further their own petty interests; and a witch’s daughter did all in her power to fulfil the comet’s dire prophecy, and to bring the fourth horseman to England’s fragile shore.
* * *
Charles Stuart had refilled his glass, but was contemplating the object intently. ‘Finest Venetian, this,’ he said. ‘Unexpected, in Salisbury. Better than any I have at Whitehall, I’ll wager. My Lord Chancellor does have expensive tastes, does he not?’ He turned to me suddenly. ‘Well then, Matthew Quinton,’ said the King, almost as though he were contemplating me for the first time, ‘so now you are privy to one of the deepest secrets of the state.’ I was still thinking of the machinations of My Lord Arlington, but the king evidently had another matter upon his mind. ‘The human weakness of my late father – although of course, I would be the last man on earth to condemn him for that.’ The fornicator immensus of our times smiled. ‘So, Matt, does the knowledge crush you?’
‘As you say, Majesty, they were but very human weaknesses, and a very long time ago.’
‘True, but with very urgent consequences in our own time, I think.’ The king’s face clouded, masking in an instant his previous good humour. ‘For instance, Captain Quinton, have you considered how it was that the late countess suddenly discovered that her new family might be harbouring some great secret that could be of considerable embarrassment, or worse, to the crown of this realm?’
The directness of the king’s question took me aback. I had never given it a thought. ‘No, Sire. The chatter of servants, perhaps?’
‘Not so, Matthew Quinton. It was you.’
Me? I could say nothing: the king’s simple words, and his stern, dreadful face, stunned me into silence and despair.
My brother looked at me dispassionately and said, ‘It seems you have an enemy, Matt. A most influential and inveterate enemy, who has lately been taking a particular interest in the history and connections of the House of Quinton. An enemy who, shall we say, rather took my wife under his wing and introduced her to his close ally, Ambassador Courtin. He passed on to her various tales about our family that are mentioned within the King of France’s secret archives. Rumours about the fate of Earl Edward, for instance – so she could feign an interest in that story, the better to conceal her sponsor’s true target, the liaison between our mother and the king.’
‘Montnoir,’ I said in horrified realisation. ‘Gaspard de Montnoir would go to such lengths to wreak revenge upon me, and upon England?’ The memory of the black-cloaked Knight of Malta and envoy of the French king, who had clashed with me during a previous voyage, still came to me in nightmares. I had defeated and humiliated Montnoir, but I had known full well that he was the sort of man who would one day seek vengeance.
‘Quite so,’ said Charles Stuart. ‘All kings are troubled by factions in their realms, trying to pull them this way or that, and my cousin Louis is no exception. I am vexed principally by fanatics, dissenters, republicans and all their strange kin. His chief burden comes from extreme Papists, those who believe even the present Pope to be too liberal and daily endeavour to persuade Louis to herd all his Protestant subjects onto bonfires. For such men, even a King of England who is remarkably tolerant to Catholics and seeks to be a good friend to France is considered a damnable heretic. It seems that your foe is one of the principal voices within this camp – that is, when he is not scouring the Mediterranean in his galley, l
ooking for Mahometans to kill.’ The king sniffed. ‘So it seems, Matt, that I have you to thank for interesting this Seigneur de Montnoir in my affairs.’
‘Majesty,’ said my brother, ‘I feel certain that both Captain Quinton and Lord Percival will do their utmost to protect both you and the House of Quinton from Montnoir’s infernal machinations.’
‘I will hold you to that,’ said Charles Stuart. It was impossible to tell whether he was jesting or in earnest. ‘But, gentlemen, perhaps the Frenchman and the late countess have actually done us a great service. When all is said and done, they have brought us finally to confront a great issue that should have been resolved many years ago.’ The king looked at me with what for him approximated an expression of kindness. ‘By the admission of your mother, Matt, it is entirely possible that the Earl of Ravensden, here present, is the son of my father, not yours. He certainly bears no resemblance to your father Earl James, nor to your grandfather. I remember them both well.’ The king stepped very close to me, that vast, bulbous nose only inches from my own. ‘So we have to consider the possibility that a grave injustice has been done to you all these years, Matthew Quinton – that since the age of five, you have been the rightful and legitimate Earl of Ravensden. You would be entirely justified if you sought to assert your rights. So, gentlemen, what to do?’
I had thought long and hard upon this during the ride from Lynd-bury from Salisbury, for I knew full well that the question was bound to be asked. My brother looked keenly at me, and then at the king; the man who was, perhaps, his other brother.
‘Majesty,’ I said slowly, ‘there is no certainty that Charles and I did not share the same father. My mother’s opinion is but that – it is not fact.’ The thought of my ancient, crabbed, righteous mother as a nubile young courtier, betraying her husband with no less a lover than the King of England, was still truly shocking to me. ‘And faces can disappear in families for generations, then suddenly reappear in a newborn. So we also have no certainty that Charles does not resemble some long-dead Quinton whose portrait was never made.’ Charles Stuart, whose entire lack of resemblance to both his parents was a byword, nodded thoughtfully. ‘This being so, it seems to me that Charles is as likely to be the rightful Earl of Ravensden as I am. And this being so, then Earl of Ravensden he should remain, for to take any other course would be to do the work of Montnoir and Lady Louise for them.’
