The Mountain of Gold

by J. D. Davies

  I looked out toward the approaching shore, and found that I could visualise the scene easily enough. 'But,' I cried, 'surely that would mean sending Stayner's ships into the most hellish crossfire?'

  'That it did. And in that east wind, it would be just as hellishly difficult for Stayner—and the rest of us, come to that—to withdraw if the plan went awry. So we watched them sail into the bay, Stayner's ships. Not a few of us thought we were waving them goodbye. Down they went, between the two lines of galleons. And then we all saw what Blake must have seen all along. By putting the inshore line of galleons where they were, the Spanish had made it impossible for their shore batteries to fire on us without hitting their own ships! But Blake made his name in siege warfare back in the war against the roya—during our land's time of troubles, sir. So he knew more than a little about the trajectory of gunfire.' I realised at that moment that a growing number of the crew had assembled on the upper deck at the foot of the quarterdeck ladders; Castle had quite a loud voice, and he now had quite an audience too. Anyhow, Stayner and his ships sailed in, calm as you like, all the way up to the head of the bay, and there just dropped anchor and began to blast away on both sides. And then it was our turn, Captain. Blake brought us down the other side of the big galleons, and truly, sir, the fury of God's wrath smote them mightily—' A raised eyebrow from Francis Gale, who was listening intently, and the erstwhile Puritanical incarnation of William Castle was rapidly locked away again in that place from which it had briefly emerged—'Well, at any rate, Captain, the Admiral and the Vice-Admiral of the flota both blew up, and by the middle of the afternoon, we had destroyed or taken the entire fleet—all sixteen galleons, by God!'

  Francis Gale clapped Castle on the shoulder. 'A pity, then, my friend, that such a mighty victory should have been for nought. For if I remember rightly, General Blake obtained not one coin of the King of Spain's Indies treasure.'

  Castle took the jibe in good part; a prouder man might have been mortified. Aye, well. We didn't know that the Spanish had taken all the bullion ashore and buried it long before we got there.' A good thing they had, perhaps, I thought to myself: for if Oliver Cromwell's bankrupt regime had gained the gold and silver of the Indies for itself, there might well have been no Restoration, Lord Protector Richard Cromwell would be ruling in Whitehall, and Matthew Quinton might still be scratching a living out of a Dutch garret. The parallel with the mission of the Seraph struck me at once, for what was I in this case if not a new and lesser Blake, pursuing an illusory dream of gold on behalf a desperate English ruler? I recalled how my grandfather in his day had chased around the Indies more than once on behalf of Great Queen Bess in search of supposedly easy pickings of Spanish bullion, and how his old rival Raleigh was executed by the less than great King James for his unsuccessful pursuit of a fabled city of gold, El Dorado, far up the Amazon river. Would kings and Lords Protector ever learn, and would poor, honour-chained fools in storm-tossed ships ever stop voyaging and dying on such lunatic quests?

  I emerged from my own thoughts to hear Castle say, 'We had the devil's own task to get back out of the bay, because of course, once we'd removed all the galleons from their path, the Spanish batteries could fire on us at will. We had to warp Stayner's squadron out under constant fire. God alone knows how the Speaker made it out. She had not a mast left standing, as Our Lord is my judge.'

  'A fine victory indeed,' I said, 'regardless of the fate of the bullion. A pity that it was General Blake's last. He would have been a mightily useful man to have on our side in the next war with the Dutch.'

  Robert Blake, the greatest English seaman since Drake (although if he had been present on our quarterdeck, my grandfather would undoubtedly have disputed this assessment)—this Blake had died on the voyage home from Santa Cruz, just as his ship was entering Plymouth Sound.

  Castle shrugged sadly. 'I think I knew the general well enough, sir, to say that he would never have served the king. He was too wedded to the republic and the good old cause of the godly. Which those who dug him up knew well enough, I think.' To the eternal shame of my more vengeful Cavalier brethren, the corpse of Robert Blake had been ejected from its tomb in Westminster Abbey, to which it had been committed in one of the greatest state funerals England ever witnessed, and thrown into a common grave pit. Sic transit gloria mundi.

  We sailed on, into the bay, and came to an anchor close to the watering place of the town, slightly inshore of the Jersey. Holmes sent across his compliments and requested my company for dinner; pointedly, the invitation did not extend to O'Dwyer. The Irishman seemed unfazed by this, saying that he had already decided to dine with Captain Facey aboard the Prospect of Blakeney before taking a turn about the town. Castle went ashore at once, for his command of the Spanish tongue made him the obvious man to negotiate with the ironfounders and their brethren. So it was that a little after noon, I was rowed across to Jersey by Coxswain Lanherne and his boat's crew. Holmes proved to be in most excellent form. Most men shrink as the battle comes nearer; Robert Holmes was one of those who blossoms like a flower, the closer he comes to the sound of the guns. He railed against the hogen mogens, our derisory by-name for their High Mightinesses of the Dutch States-General, against their cunning leader Grand Pensionary De Witt, against all their cried-up seamen, and was beginning to embark on a discourse concerning the loose morality of Dutch women when he recalled that my wife was of that nation. Holmes apologised profusely and changed the subject to the weather.

  Our pleasant afternoon was interrupted by the arrival of William Castle, who bore dire tidings: the ironfounders and coppersmiths of Santa Cruz de Tenerife had closed ranks to deny us new rowls and esses. The cause of this affront mightily embarrassed my lieutenant. 'It was all my fault, sir,' he said. 'I should never have gone ashore—Shish should have talked to them, with one of the English merchants for an interpreter. Somehow, they knew that I was aboard Blake's fleet in the battle here. One of them even spat in my face. They all swear that they will not raise a finger to assist the heretics who destroyed their flota de Indias.'

  I returned to the Seraph in a foul humour, and called a council of my officers. There was incredulity at the perfidious actions of the founders; or as Francis Gale said, 'Great God, do they not know England is a kingdom once again? Can they not tell the difference between a royal ship of war and a rebel—begging your pardon, Mister Castle?'

  The onetime rebel lieutenant nodded graciously.

  This matter that had seemed so insignificant now consumed us all. We needed to sail in a day or two, and we could not do that without the parts. What, then, could convince these idle rogues of Spanish founders to make them for us? Money, of course, and we could undoubtedly obtain enough, drawn by bills of exchange upon local English merchants, to pay a king's ransom for these few pieces of metal; surely one particularly venal founder could be offered enough to break the embargo. But what guarantee did we have that the same founder, duly bribed, would not out of spite make esses and rowls as defective as those they were meant to replace? If we could not obtain reliable parts at Tenerife, we would have to send to England for them; and with capricious winter weather in easy alliance with dockyard sloth, who could say how many weeks or months it would be before we had them, if we ever did? Shish was unwilling to trust the pumps for a day longer upon the open sea, and was not even convinced that they would hold if we simply stayed at anchor. I could hardly dishonour myself and my country by grovelling to the Spanish for a dock (even if they were inclined to grant us such succour), but without one, there was a very real danger that the Seraph would simply sink at her moorings; and for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. A part of me insinuated that an enforced stay of several months in the pleasant climate of this island, and the consequent abandonment of the goldfinding expedition, were far from unsatisfactory outcomes. Yet my honour cried out against these weasel words. This was a royally-ordained mission, and whatever my own doubts and my growing disenchantment with the royal in question, it was my duty
to carry it through to the best of my ability. But above all, there was the pervasive suspicion that the planting of the defective parts aboard the Seraph could only have been the fulfilment of my good-brother's prophecy, and of his determination to prevent us ever reaching the Gambia river. I had thought long and hard upon his exposition of arbitrary and constitutional government, but I convinced myself that the only way of putting that to rest was to take O'Dwyer to Africa and expose his story for the great lie it had to be. If that was the outcome, both Venner and I could rest satisfied. If in a few weeks time I found myself looking across the desert at a glittering golden mountain—well, perhaps then Matthew Quinton might be forced to confront the question of whether all that wealth really should be placed in the capacious hands of Charles Stuart alone. But I wanted to confront that dreadful dilemma in my own time and on my own terms, not on those dictated by Venner Garvey and a coterie of obstreperous Spanish ironfounders.

  With no obvious solution presenting itself, my officers soon became peevish. Harrington, whose knowledge of war was less sound than his grasp of a set of accounts, proposed bombarding the town into submission, but Castle and Lindman both pointed out that the Spanish could bring dozens, if not hundreds, of cannon to bear upon us; and as Castle said, it had been difficult enough even for the immortal Blake and his great fleet, let alone for one Fifth-Rate frigate. (No man there needed to ask if Jersey would assist us; Holmes' estimate of the odds would undoubtedly be at one with Castle's and Lindman's, and besides, he was unlikely to wait for us before sailing off to begin his own private war against the hogen mogens.) Kit, who knew the politics of port towns as well as any man, suggested that we should enlist the assistance of the English merchants of the place to negotiate on our behalf. That met with grudging assent from the entire council, but none of us had any faith in a measure that depended on the mediation of mean, prevaricating tradesmen.

  Thus I was still in the blackest of moods when I retired to my half-cabin. Musk entered, placed a bottle of sack in front of me, and retired without a word. The day would probably have ended with the disillusioned captain of the Seraph slumping unconscious onto his sea bed, but the Good Lord in his mercy provided one last blessed moment of relief to lift my spirits. Perhaps half a glass had passed when I heard O'Dwyer return to the larboard side beyond the partition. He seemed to pace the deck for some moments, as though wrestling with a decision. Then he came over to my side, knocked, and did not await my reply. We exchanged what passed for pleasantries between us, he asking how the chain-pumps fared (I enlightened him but little) and I enquiring how his own day ashore had passed.

  'A pleasant enough town, and it is good to plant one's feet upon land again—I'm no longer used to such long voyages, if truth be told. And Vespers were performed most beautifully at a Dominican monastery in the upper town. It is a long time since I attended a service of the old faith—it brought back memories, such memories.' O'Dwyer blinked and looked away for a moment, as though he had something in his eye. 'A strange coincidence, though, Matthew,' he said O'Dwyer. 'Everywhere I turned, I seemed to find two or three of your men! Why, now, a man of a suspicious bent might believe that they had been deliberately ordered to watch his every movement.'

  I replied with as much innocence as I could muster. 'A strange coincidence indeed, Colonel O'Dwyer. But I'm sure that the presence of my men must have been a mighty reassurance to you—keeping you safe from any agents of Montnoir, let us say, or from the machinations of any Sallee Rovers in these parts.'

  He smiled, but it was the inscrutable smile of the tiger. 'Yes, a mighty reassurance. You are quite right, Captain Quinton. I am most grateful to you, sir.'

  With that, he left me; but before we both sank into sleep, I could have sworn that I heard him punch or kick a bulkhead.

  The next morning brought the glad sight of a boat coming across from the newly arrived Madras Merchant, outward bound from London to the East Indies. She carried packets of mail for ourselves and the other ships, and as soon as the letters were distributed, I shut myself away in my half-cabin.

  Nothing from Tristram; that was a disappointment. But there were several letters from Cornelia, and I opened them feverishly, both for what they might contain and for what they represented: the loving, witty expressions of her dear warm soul, written on papers that would have been clasped longingly to her chest before their despatch.

  Cornelia's letters were ever characterised by her unique reinvention of written English. She spoke the language with fair fluency (indeed, she was mastering its more colloquial oaths with unsettling speed) but on paper she never paid much attention to such niceties as spellings, grammar and—all too often—legibility. So it was now. Even so, by assembling her letters into chronological order and setting aside all the talk of friends and the court, I was able to construct something of what had been happening in England since my departure. For instance, this was from her letter of 6 January:

  Ye great hore kips away from us at Ravnsdin. This is blesing tho yr mothr thinks not. As yet miladys bellie dos not swell, wch yr brothr finds strayng. I fynde it strayngr that hee thinks hee has suf—suffy—enouff manhood to mak her so. He is moor at court thn evr he has bin, she wth him. Still we seek prooff of ye great whor's crymes. Triss wrytes to his yonge men ax ye landt— ('ax' perplexed me until I realised it was her somewhat inventive rendering of 'across')—and travles much to seek ye trooth of her grate moneys. For my part, husband, I wayt for ye lettr frm ower frend tht will bare news of ye dauchter.

  This from her letter of 17 January:

  Yr brothr and ye grate hore have com, ye court beeng gon to Hampton. She now lords it ovr us hear. Iff they ar to give ye Huis of Quinton its heir, they do so most strainglie—they mak to shair ye saim chambr at nicht, but I know they do not shair ye saim bed. You know how thin ye walls arond ye earl's chmbr are. I hear all. Ye Barkoks hear all. Yet ther is nowthing to hear, husbnd. Methnks even yr mother begginns to regrt having maid ths maridg to ths gratest of harlots, ths— The two pages that followed were wholly indecipherable.

  These tidings made me mightily anxious—and as Our Saviour knows, I was already anxious enough over the fate of the infernal chain-pumps. A little later that day, I discussed the gist of my correspondence with Francis Gale and Phineas Musk, my two confidantes aboard the Seraph in the matter of the Lady Louise. We could speak with some freedom, for my neighbour O'Dwyer was ashore, once again taking the air of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. And once again, he would find shifts of my men, ever present and attentive to his wellbeing.

  'My wife's bitterness is to be expected,' I said. 'I can barely conceive of her and the Countess Louise existing together under the same roof. It was bad enough with her and my mother alone.'

  'Quite so,' said Francis. 'But what is not to be expected, I think, is your brother's willingness to spend so much time at court. From what I have observed, he detests the institution—its vanities and its great throng of people.'

  Always has done,' said Musk. 'Just like your father, Captain. Not like his father, of course.'

  'The Lady Louise's spell over my brother must be intoxicating indeed,' I said. 'But this suggestion that my mother is having second thoughts about the marriage—great God, I find that hard to believe. She would rather sup with the shade of Noll Cromwell than ever admit she could be wrong about anything.'

  Musk and Francis both nodded, for they knew my mother well enough.

  I looked at my two fellows and wondered what we could possibly achieve by our discussion of events that had taken place in England weeks before, and which we could not affect in any way. But sometimes it is good to unburden oneself. As a man of God, Francis's very presence encouraged such openness; my ancestors had confessed their sins to men like him for century after century, and it took more than a few brief generations of Protestantism to purge such sentiments entirely from an Englishman's soul (especially from that of an Englishman brought up in part by a French Catholic grandmother). As for Phineas Musk: well, his presence
was of a rather different nature. But as was so often the case, it was Musk who cut to the heart of the matter.

  'Fucking,' said Musk, quite suddenly. Francis and I both looked at him curiously, for Musk was not usually a coarse man. 'It all hinges on fucking. The Earl and the Countess at Ravensden—no fucking. The Earl and the Countess at Whitehall—fucking. Or so your brother suggests, if he doesn't understand why the bitch wasn't with child after their time there. So we need to know why they were fu—carnal with each other in the one place and not in the other.'

  This was a simple truth, but an unanswerable one. Or was it? We simply had no direct knowledge of what had transpired at Whitehall, and Cornelia was not well placed to obtain it. Ironically, I was, despite being so many hundreds of miles away. When Musk and Francis had left, I sat and began to pen a letter to Will Berkeley, captain of His Majesty's ship the Bristol, requesting his intercession with his brother, Viscount Fitzhardinge, and their father, the treasurer of the king's household. If any men on earth knew the dark secrets of the court of Charles the Second, it would be the members of the noble house of Berkeley. Would that I could call on friendship and family to solve my problem with the chain-pump parts...