The Mountain of Gold

by J. D. Davies

  O'Dwyer grinned. Ah, God bless the French, Sir William. But their fort, there—well, it's just a feeble place, established not five years back. I sailed past it on a Sallee rover but the last summer. The French have no stomach to compete with the Dutch or ourselves for dominion over Africa, good sirs.'

  Pepys seemed about to say something, but one glance at Holmes' ghastly smile deterred him. Instead, we passed on to the matter of the manning, arming and victualling of our ships; the only matter in the meeting that was likely to be of interest to me, if truth be told. This was ostensibly the domain of the Comptroller, yet old Mennes made but a poor fist of it. He had muddled his papers, and confused Jersey with Seraph, even myself with Holmes. After a few minutes he stuttered to a halt, and Pepys, who had been longing to intervene since Sir John began, seized his opportunity.

  'If I might assist, Sir John?' he enquired helpfully. Batten rolled his eyes to the heavens, Holmes yawned theatrically, but Carteret, whose office of Treasurer gave him precedence at that table, nodded encouragement. Pepys began a confident peroration on the issues in hand; too confident, for no man likes to be upstaged by one who is so much their junior, and among that company of seamen (myself and the former Omar Ibrahim included), every single one of us resented sea-affairs being expounded with such masterful lucidity by a complete landsman. Holmes in particular chafed at the Clerk's account of the manning of the Jersey, which he said should be furnished with one hundred and fifty men when Holmes contended that she should have two hundred. After but a short exchange, Pepys conceded that the matter should be referred to the Lord High Admiral. Not even Holmes could openly challenge the authority of the King's brother, yet he glowered at Pepys like a child denied its favourite toy.

  'Turning now to the manning of the Seraph,' said Pepys (avoiding Holmes' eye), 'we have the sixty-two men already entered by Captain Quinton at Deptford yard. I understand there is some dispute with the constable of the town over releasing five of them from the lock-up—'

  At last, it was time for a Quinton to speak out. 'That matter has been determined satisfactorily, Mister Pepys,' I said. 'A warrant from one of the Justices of the Peace for Kent has entirely resolved it.' I did not add that the warrant had been obtained by means of a letter from the Right Honourable the Earl of Ravensden, Privy Councillor of the realm, who had used his authority unilaterally in the (correct) belief that his friend King Charles would not overrule him if and when he eventually learned of it.

  Pepys inclined his head in gratitude. 'Thank you, Captain Quinton. That is satisfactory news. Meanwhile the lieutenant of the Seraph, Mister Castle—' (to my gratification, my old lieutenant from the Wessex had agreed to sail with me again)—'Mister Castle is raising men in his home town of Bristol, but writes that despite his credit with the seamen there, he has so far raised only fifteen. However, the new boatswain of the Seraph passed his warrant here at the office but this morning, and set off directly for Wapping to beat the drum on Captain Quinton's behalf.'

  This was news indeed!

  The new boatswain of the Seraph; in other words, Kit Farrell, the bluff young tarpaulin who had once saved me from a watery death, and who had since endeavoured intermittently, and with but intermittent success, to turn me into a proper seaman. (And in return, I had taught him the mysteries of reading and writing, which he had mastered rather more swiftly.) So Kit was returned from his voyage, and had immediately set about his new task without waiting for his captain's behest. That was the man, to the very heart. I vowed to ride directly from the Navy Office to Wapping upon the conclusion of our meeting.

  Fortunately, there were few more formalities to conclude, and ere long we emerged into the light of day. The rain had stopped, but the clouds behind the tower of St Olave's were still dark and threatening. As we walked to our horses, I asked Holmes why Pepys seemed so fearful of him, and why he, in turn, seemed to take such delight in baiting the Clerk of the Acts.

  'Oh,' said the Irishman cheerily, 'well, for one thing he's a mere jumped-up quill-scraper from the Fens, and why should he presume to lecture men of honour and the sword on their business? For another, he tried to fob me off with an incompetent creature of his as Master of my Reserve in the Middle Sea—you remember I talked to you of it, when we were at Lisbon?' I nodded noncommittally, for Holmes had got me quite astonishingly fuddled on that occasion. 'And for yet another thing,' said Holmes as he mounted, 'he thinks I've had his wife.'

  This was a revelation; for one thing, I had not known until then that Pepys was married. And have you?' I asked as I, too, climbed into the saddle.

  Holmes shrugged. 'Do you know, Matt, I honestly can't remember? So much wine, so many women. A man forgets.'

  Holmes and I rode east, by Crutched Friars into Woodruff Lane, then alongside the north moat of the Tower and into East Smithfield: the major for an assignation with a goodwife of Bow (a matter on which he was graphically explicit) and myself in quest of the new boatswain of the Seraph. O'Dwyer went west toward Cheapside, accompanied by two burly crop-headed lads. Holmes told me that the renegade had hired these to guard him against attack or abduction by his many enemies. Holmes was dismissive, but I recalled that oven-hot day on the deck of the Wessex and the skeletal, black-cloaked figure of the Seigneur de Montnoir, with his interest in the fate of the corsair captain then known as Omar Ibrahim, and I was not quite so certain.

  We rode along the Ratcliffe Highway. The road was busy with carters, seamen and all sorts, bound hither and hither, so Holmes and I confined our talk to the doings of mutual friends and acquaintances. As we came near the turn for Wapping, where we were to part, Holmes suddenly looked all about him, searching for eyes and ears that might be able to report on us. Satisfied that we were quite far enough from any man's ken, he leaned over in his saddle and said conspiratorially, 'You know one of the best recent proofs I've had of the existence of God, Matt? The King decreeing that O'Dwyer should sail on your ship, not on mine. Damn me, if he set foot on the Jersey I'd probably skewer him inside a day.'

  'But I thought - '

  'You thought he and I were friends?' Holmes smiled. Ah, Matt my boy, never let outward appearances deceive you, especially outward smiles. I detest that renegade fuckwit and every breath he takes. But our Sovereign Lord humours him awhile, and I am ever His Majesty's faithful servant.' As I took in this startling revelation, Holmes bowed, as though to a regal version of myself. 'Besides, if his tale turns out to true, our Colonel O'Dwyer will be a quite remarkably rich and powerful man, and Robin Holmes here has a mind to be the great friend of the rich and powerful.' Holmes smiled. 'But then, if his tale turns out to be true you can call me the Caliph of Baghdad. For unlike all the rest of them, Matt, from the King down to our Mister Pepys and even your good self, I have been to the Gambia River. I've hunted for this mountain of gold before, and I know the great truth that nobody in that meeting was prepared to utter.' Holmes shook his head wearily. 'There's no such thing, Matt. You know it. I know it better than any man. We all know it, deep down. But the King wishes to believe in it, because God knows, he needs to get himself a mountain-full of gold from somewhere, so the rest of us go through the motions—and if those motions just happen to bring on a war with the Dutch, well, perhaps that's not too trifling a prize in its stead. Not least for the likes of you and me, Matt. War is always the best friend of our kind. An admiral's flag for me, I think, and a title; I have a mighty urge to be the first Lord Holmes of Mallow, you see. A great command for you, Matt Quinton, who will be an earl anyway. In any event, glory, honour and enough prize money to buy each of us a county or two. Aye, old Robin here will gladly bring on a war, if that's what His Majesty wants.' We reined in our horses, for we were at the crossroads where I was to turn right for Wapping. 'I tell you this, though, Matt. The moment O'Dwyer's mountain of gold is exposed for the giant lie it is, we'll take turns at running him through, you and old Holmes here, side by side. How does that prospect suit you, Captain Quinton?'

  Despite myself, I grinned.
'It suits me very well, Captain Holmes,' I said.

  Eight

  All sea-towns smell. About all of them, there is the inevitable stench of the sea: mud and brine, salt and fish, their natural fragrances, and usually the sweat of seamen too. But I have observed that each also has its own, distinct stink, meaning that even a blind navigator might recognise each new port by its odour. Old Cadiz always stank of pine. Port Royal seemed to have a faint whiff of gunpowder upon the wind, as if a hundred buccaneers had just discharged their muskets all at once; which, perchance, they often had. Amsterdam reeked of sheer unconcealed luxury, its thick airs sensuous with all the spices of the orient and the perfumes of very rich men and their whores. Closer to home, I always found entering Portsmouth akin to walking into an overflowing latrine, for the tides rose and fell too little, and the harbour mouth was too narrow, to wash away all the excrement from the town and the ships in the haven, especially when a great fleet was manning for the wars. And Wapping: well, Wapping's distinctive odour was that of decaying human flesh. It did not matter if there were no pirates' corpses strung up on gibbets along the river (although if truth be told, it was a rarity if there were not); it counted for naught if no dismembered torso had been washed up on its foul Thames shore for months. Wapping always seemed to stink of an open grave.

  All the rich scents of the place assaulted me as I rode into the street called Wapping Wall, heading east through the throng of two- and three-storey lodging houses, inns, warehouses, timber yards and roperies that lined both sides. Down some of the alleys to the right, I could spy the wharves that lined the Thames and, sometimes, the great river itself, though the tide was low. The road was filled with long trains of horses and donkeys laden with bales, and carts filled to overflowing with offloaded cargoes, all going in the direction opposite to my own, toward London and the men who would grow rich from their coming. I attracted much attention, and not only because I was one of the few travellers on that road heading away from the city. Men of quality did not generally stray into these strange, private worlds along the river, and I received my fair share of profound Thames-side wit: 'fuck off, you sodomising Frenchie!' was perhaps the politest barb flung in my direction. This was the anniversary of the accession of Her Most Illustrious Majesty Queen Elizabeth of glorious and immortal memory, the second of the great national feast-days in the month of November. It was ever an occasion when the senses of Englishness and Protestantism were at their highest among our ignorant masses, and it seemed that at least some of the denizens of Wapping shore might not have been sober since the festivities for Gunpowder Treason day, twelve days before.

  The sight of the sword at my side sufficed to keep the ruder brethren of the shore at bay. I was bound for almost the edge of Wapping, where even all those long years ago, it was already starting to merge indistinguishably into Shadwell. That was where I knew I would find Kit Farrell, saviour of my life in my first command, my teacher in sea-craft in my second, and now the new boatswain of my Seraph; his mother kept an alehouse in an alley near the Pelican Stairs.

  As it was, I heard Kit's voice long before the road twisted round and I caught site of his family home, the Slaughtered Lamb. His shouts punctuated the beating of a drum, the traditional means of attracting volunteers to the king's colours. '—aye, the son and grandson of true heroes, my lads! What better day to list for the Seraph than today, the feast-day of Queen Elizabeth, whom the first Matthew Quinton served so mightily? What better omen could you want, friends? Who better to serve under in our present times than the second Matthew Quinton? Brother to the King's closest friend, my brave boys! So come, take the king's bounty and make your way to Deptford yard! The Seraph will bear you south to glory—'

  'To the grave, more like,' cried a rough London voice. This was greeted by growls of approbation.

  'Seraph be damned,' another shouted, 'I'll take my chance on the next Levanter out of Erith Reach!'

  'Aye, that'll be a better wage than the King'll pay this side of the next century!' These cries, too, were greeted with approbation.

  'Quinton?' shouted another. 'Another of the king's cursed gentlemen captains, put in by his papist friends and his painted whores. Popinjays, the lot of them. I'd rather sail under Old Nick!'

  'Lost his first ship, too—the Protector, as was. And God knows what he did with the Jupiter, last year—they say she'd been holed twixt wind and water, and but rudely repaired before they brought her back into Woolwich—my brother's a shipwright down there—'

  The murmuring and clamour of hostility grew apace. I was torn. My heart told me to ride forward boldly to the aid of one of my officers; and more, to that of a good friend. But my head gave other counsel. My appearance among the hostile throng at that moment would surely do nothing to change the mood. If anything, it would probably worsen it, for I somehow doubted that the entrance of Captain Matthew Quinton, stage left, would have been greeted by an enthusiastic ovation. Worse, it might diminish our prospects of raising men at another time, among the better disposed (or more desperate) who thronged the tidewaters of the Thames. And worst of all, my entrance might undermine Kit; and if I knew anything of Christopher Farrell, it was that he could fight his own cause.

  My decision made, I turned my horse toward an alley on the left. There was rough, open ground at the back of the houses, and I made my way down to the rear of what was obviously an alehouse of modest proportions. I dismounted, tethered my horse and made my way towards the back door. As I did so, a formidably large and pungent woman emerged from within.

  "Sakes,' she cried, 'it's the captain! John! Get your brother—'

  I raised my hands to quieten Mistress Farrell, Kit's mother, whose speech still betrayed traces of her native Lancashire. She was a woman of little intelligence, but when it came to the rough protocols of the foreshore, there were few to equal her, and she caught my gist at once. She led me within and deposited me in a small side room, well away from the front windows and from the other customers, who were already far advanced in their lusty and liquid commemoration of the Virgin Queen. John Farrell, one of my friend's numerous elder brothers, served me a mug of Hull ale with a surly nod and a grunt.

  I waited perhaps half an hour for Kit to abandon his unequal struggle with the recalcitrant mariners of Wapping shore and retreat back to the embrace of his family's alehouse.

  'Captain Quinton!' he cried as he came into the room. 'I had not expected you to wait upon me!'

  We shook warmly and toasted both each other and good success to the voyage of the Seraph. 'Good success indeed,' I said, 'though from what I could hear, you were having but little success in persuading men of the merits of listing with us?'

  Kit Farrell shrugged. 'It's hard enough to persuade a man to take a passage to Guinea at the best of times, sir. But with the winter coming on, and so many men already abroad or looking for a fat voyage in the spring, long before we'd be back from Africa ... And if truth be told, Captain, trying to raise men on a holiday was arrant folly on my part. My mother said as much to me, this morning. But I had a mind to be about our business, and idling away even Queen Elizabeth's day is not my way.' That was Kit, above all. I do not think I ever met a man of more purpose, for whom every hour was to be employed to best advantage. Of course, much of this derived from the Puritan faith of the Farrells, and from sermons drummed into him by the dissenting ministers who thronged Wapping and all the other Thames-side towns, fighting their endless battle to turn this least promising of congregations from drink, fornication and fist-fighting to the ways of Our Lord.

  I said, 'I think your first instinct was correct, Boatswain Farrell. Tomorrow, we shall both resume the business of the Seraph. Today, I think we should fall in with the common herd. From what I have gathered of the great Gloriana, she would have demanded nothing less of us.' I raised my tankard, and we both toasted the immortal memory of Elizabeth the Great, Queen of England.

  We were not too far gone on drink—our toasting had reached the memories of both of our
fathers, and had not yet descended to wishing damnation upon the Pope, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and all other foreigners (as it had in the larger rooms elsewhere in the alehouse)—and we were discussing our respective recent voyages, mine in the Middle Sea aboard the Wessex, Kit in the Caribbee aboard the Caroline Merchant. The sun was down, for we were on the cusp of winter, and Mistress Farrell had John bring us more candles, and sea-coals for the fire. The hubbub in the Slaughtered Lamb grew ever louder, for the burning of the Pope was imminent, and men were beginning to throng the windows and to spill out into the road to watch the procession pass. The cacophony of rough trumpets and drums heralded its approach. There were songs galore, a dozen or more sung at once, all of them tunelessly. And yet, in the midst of all that, I thought I heard a child's cry: 'The dockyard! There's a fire at Deptford!'

  Kit and I ran to the front of the Slaughtered Lamb, but it was well-nigh impossible to go any further. Both sides of the street were lined by an almost impenetrable throng of laughing, drunken spectators. Between them, a great river of people flowed triumphantly toward the east, singing and shouting as they went. Near to the head of the procession was the focus of it all, transported in mock-state upon a bier: a dummy dressed up in clerical alb and chasuble, adorned with a goldpainted wooden replica of the papal triple tiara.

  Kit and I pushed our way through the crowd, but it took a seeming eternity to reach the procession itself, and even longer to steer a crazy course through the laughing, dancing, drunken revellers within it. The crowd on the river side was smaller, and we had less difficulty shoulder-charging our way through the whores and children who had congregated there. Through, then, and down an alley to the foreshore—to see the houses along the shore of Rotherhithe illuminated by flames a mile or more to the south and east of them. The bend of the river made it impossible to see the source, but Kit and I both knew that there was nothing beyond Cuckolds Haven, at the east end of Rotherhithe; nothing until one came to the royal dockyard at Deptford.