by J. D. Davies
The Dowager Countess:
Up a narrow spiral staircase, to the topmost floor of the tower; to what must once have been the personal chamber of the Lords of Alnburgh. Bell walked into the room, and I followed him.
Another man was already in the room. A man dressed finely, in puffed breeches and a satin shirt. A man I knew well enough.
‘Welcome to Alnburgh, My Lady,’ said Laszlo Horvath.
The Earl of Ravensden:
Upon my command, our starboard demi-culverins opened fire at point blank rage, some three hundred paces from the carrack. As the smoke rolled away from the hull of the tall, lumbering vessel, I could see several shot holes in her sides. Only one gun returned fire, and she forlornly. The plate ships carried only a small armament, they being designed to carry as much bullion as possible, and the men in the Escorial assumed there would always be galleons to escort them and frighten off any potential assailants. But not in this case. Dons ran about her decks, screaming and pointing; but she still seemed under command and answering her helm, for still she fell away down wind, trying to draw us toward the escorting galleons that were beating up toward us. Meanwhile, the three ships astern of us – the Repulse, Defiance and Dreadnought – were coming up on our larboard quarter, bound for the next carrack of the plate fleet.
‘Merhonours!’ I cried. ‘To the forecastle!’
A pitifully small band, probably no more than two dozen, responded to my exhortation. We were so short of numbers that only these could be spared from the yards and the guns; only these were healthy enough to avoid Sinkgraven’s attentions down on the orlop. But they would have to do. After all, they were English, and that alone ought to be sufficient.
Now our beakhead was nearly at touching distance from that of the Spaniard, although the latter was much higher out of the water. The men in our bows – I could see young Ielden among them – stood poised, grappling hooks and ropes in their hands. I waited. I judged the distance. I thought of bullion, and chided myself. Nothing like avarice to make a man lower his guard, Ravensden.
Closer – closer –
There was a crash as our bowsprit struck that of the carrack. Our shrouds and hers seemed as one, an impenetrable forest of rope.
‘Now!’ I cried.
Men threw the grappling hooks, and pulled tight the ropes. In that moment I jumped from the forecastle onto the beakhead, sword in hand, and hauled myself over onto the bow of the Spaniard. My men followed suit –
The cheek of the man at my left shoulder blew apart, spattering me with flesh and blood. He fell back into the sea, but was dead long before he entered the water. I looked up, and saw half a dozen Don musketeers at the forecastle rail of the carrack. Brave fellows. Foolish fellows. For they had no time to reload before we were upon them. I carried an English short sword of the old fashion, but the first Don I stuck through the guts swiftly learned the lesson that being unfashionable does not make a blade any less adept for killing.
‘Merhonours! To the quarterdeck!’
They did not need that order; every man knew what was necessary, for every man could see silver coins before his eyes. The roughly equal number of Dons facing us on the forecastle fell back. These were not true fighting men, after all. King Philip had as much difficulty manning his ships as Queen Elizabeth did hers, and Spain’s best men would be aboard the galleons –
The galleons.
As I reached the quarterdeck of the carrack, and saw her captain’s sword extended toward me, hilt first, I could see the escorting galleons coming up from the south. Coming up too fast for my liking.
I took the proffered Toledo blade, but turned down the captain’s invitation – issued in truly execrable Latin – to take wine with him in his cabin.
Instead, I went below. Only Ielden stood alongside me, for he was the only man in the boarding party I could trust not to plunder remorselessly among what lay before us in the vast hold of the carrack.
Chests. Countless chests, filling the space between the decks. I went to the nearest one, and forced the lock with the point of my sword.
I lifted one silver piece from the very top of the countless quantity within, studied it, and handed it to Ielden.
‘See that, young Jack? That’s what it’s all for. What it’s always been for. This is what Drake and Hawkins and I strived for – aye, and all the rest of them, too. A bullion cargo. Remember it, lad. Keep that piece as a namesake, but hide it from your messmates, for every man aboard the Merhonour will kill you to lay their hands on such a coin. Then go back above and pass on my order to abandon the prize and return to the ship.’
His eyes opened wide.
‘Abandon the prize, My Lord?’
‘Nothing else for it, Jack Ielden. If I had eight or nine galleons with me, I’d fight sixteen Dons in the blinking of an eye. But I have three. We can’t get the prize away, and if we don’t make shift, we won’t get away ourselves, either. And I don’t care for the prospect of going the way of Dick Grenville.’
‘Aye, aye, My Lord.’
Ielden went above, and for a moment, just one moment, I was alone with the treasure of the Americas, with riches beyond the imagination of mortal man. Riches that I was about to forsake.
The moment passed. I sighed. Then I hastily scooped up as much silver coin as I could and filled my pockets with it.
No, I trusted no man of the Merhonour not to plunder remorselessly: and that included her captain.
The Dowager Countess:
Yes, my husband sometimes had nightmares about suffering the same fate as Sir Richard Grenville.
You will know the story, of course: what English schoolboy does not?
Grenville’s Revenge, alone and surrounded by fifty-three great Spanish men-of-war, which slowly blasted her to pieces. Grenville’s crew dying around him in their droves, until at last, the officers surrendered the ship, contrary to the wishes of the dying captain. Oh yes, he died with honour: but then, my husband always said that he also died an idiot, to have got himself into that position in the first place. So on the day when he briefly took the great bullion carrack, he was mindful above all of not being surrounded as Grenville had been. True, my husband loved riches, and he never had more within his grasp than he did that day. But he loved being alive more; and in those days, grandson, he was determined to remain alive until he could father upon me the heir to Ravensden, the son yet unborn who would one day be the ninth Earl.
Perhaps it is as well that, at much the same time when he was making his decision to abandon the Spanish prize, he did not know that I was in immediate danger of death: or, perhaps, worse than death. For I was standing but a few feet before the most inveterate enemy that my husband and I had in the whole world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Laszlo Horvath:
She is not as shocked as I had hoped. She is not as scared. She is not on her knees, pleading for her life.
She stands there, very small, very still, but I do not doubt that she is shaking with fear. She will be imagining all the things I might do to her, now that she is entirely in my power. She will be having thoughts of chains, of racks, and of whips. But I doubt if she can even to begin to imagine what I will actually do to her.
I have dismissed Bell, so that I may be alone with her. I want no other soul to share even one small part of her fear.
I circle her. I move close to her, and touch her hair. I breathe in her ear. She does not flinch. This is good: it is better when they do not cower and scream.
I go to the table, and write these words. For I wish to have a record of exactly what I do, and exactly what I feel. But –
But there is something unsettling about her stillness. She stares at me. She even begins to smile. This is not what I expect. This is not what I want.
‘This amuses you, madame?’ I say in Latin, which we both speak better than English.
‘I know you,’ she says.
‘Of course you know me. I am Horvath.’
‘No. You are not
.’
‘No, I am not. But you do not know my name. My true name. The name that damns you, and your husband above all.’
She looks at me. There is a silence, and she maintains that cursed stillness.
I shall lay down the quill now. This is not as I wished it to be.
For I can see it now. I can see it in her eyes.
Her unafraid eyes.
She knows who I am.
The Dowager Countess:
I kept staring at him, though my heart was racing. Surely the fear I felt would betray itself at any moment? But the words had to be spoken, even if they proved to be my death warrant.
‘But I do know your name. Thanks to the memory of a very old woman, I know your name as well as I know my own, and my husband’s. For it is the same, is it not? Your name, your real name, is Quinton.’
The Hungarian stood stock still. I can still see his face, just as if a portrait of him, drawn from life, stands before my eyes. A face drained of colour. A face in shock.
‘How could you know? How could you know that? Which old woman?’
‘Your grandmother. My husband’s grandmother. The Countess Katherine.’
‘She lives? The old nun still lives? Isten, she must be nearly a hundred years old!’
‘She lives. Or refuses to die, whichever you prefer. But she remembers your story well enough. The story of Balthasar Quinton, her grandson.’
He swayed upon his feet.
‘And what is that story, as you have it from her?’
This was no time to dissemble. Saying it plain, the story my husband had from the ancient Countess, bought me time. Horvath – that is, cousin Balthasar – could strike me dead at any moment. But he would want to know what his own grandmother said about him. He had to want to know. For at bottom, what man or woman does not wish to learn the innermost thoughts of those closest to them in blood?
‘She told me – that is, she told my husband – she said this of your history. Henry, sixth Earl of Ravensden – her son, your father – was a troubled soul, forever seeking answers to the mysteries of life and death. He spent years travelling to far countries, abandoning his wife and mother, searching for the Philosopher’s Stone, or the Holy Grail, or other secrets of the ancients. And then, in Hungary, he met a woman who bore him a son – a son who would be Earl of Ravensden, if Henry was legally married to the mother. But his wife in England still lived, and thus any marriage to this Mistress Horvath would be bigamous—’
Horvath stepped forward suddenly, raising his hand, and I feared he was about to strike me. But for a reason I have never understood, this man, this creature, who was capable of the most terrible violence, halted himself.
‘My parents’ marriage was legal,’ he said, very quietly. ‘The wife in England was already dead. Thus in the eyes of God I, Balthasar Quinton, am the rightful Earl of Ravensden.’
‘As your mother claimed, years later, when she wrote to the Dowager Countess and the seventh Earl, my husband’s father. But there was no proof, was there? The abbey where she claimed the papers were held was destroyed in an Ottoman attack, and the sixth Earl left no record of a second wife or a son when he died here, in this castle.’
‘The proof was my mother’s word, sworn in the name of God! And I swore upon her grave, in the name of that selfsame God, that one day, I would lay claim to my rightful inheritance!’
He was angry now, but there was also a sadness about him that touched a part of my heart. Oh, I was still in mortal fear of him, but Balthasar Quinton was a real person now, standing there before me instead of the illusion that was Laszlo Horvath, the murderous man of war. And whether rightly or wrongly, Balthasar Quinton believed that he was putting to rights an injustice, and fulfilling a vow made to a dead mother.
‘One thing perplexes me,’ I said, ‘and perplexes my husband, too. You have known who you are since you were very young. Why, then, did it take you so many long years to come to England and stake your claim?’
He could still kill me. He should kill me. If I was in his position, I would have killed me. All of the men of the house of Monconseil-Bragelonne, my father, my brothers, my ancestors, would have struck me dead by now and not given it a moment’s thought. But in a strange paradox, this man, who was more brutal than any of them, seemed to need to talk, to let his story spill out at last. And I needed to keep him talking.
‘My mother was firm on that, and in time, I came to learn the wisdom of her judgement. I had to be prepared.’ He paused, perhaps thinking back to moments with a dead mother. ‘I had to know something of the law of England, and it was in the library of an abbey in Carpathia that I read of the laws of treason and attainder—’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Only the conviction of my husband on a charge of High Treason, and the nullifying of his title by an Act of Attainder, would mean that the same title could then be created anew for you. If you found allies at court influential enough to secure such an outcome, that is.’
He looked at me curiously.
‘A woman who knows English law,’ he said. ‘And as the English would say, too, a fucking Frog who knows English law. Unheard of, in both cases. You are a curious creature, Lady Louise-Marie. Curious, and intelligent. But yes, I had to know how I could become Earl of Ravensden when no man in England believed my father had a son who could succeed him. Also, I had to be able to speak enough of the language to make my way in this realm, and there was a monk in that same Carpathian abbey who was once a seminarian at Douai, amidst all the English priests. Above all, I had to be a warrior, able to hold my own against all comers – certainly against the mighty Matthew Quinton, whose exploits in the Spanish Main were legend even in our distant hills.’ The Hungarian turned away and went to look through the window that faced north, over the cliff. ‘When I was twenty-one, the Ottomans began their great war against the princes of the east, the war that still continues. In one sense, I had to fight in any case, to defend our villages and people from the heathens. But I knew that every tactic I learned, every azap I fought, every Janissary I killed, taught me lessons that would be useful to me when the day came for me to claim my birthright. And when my mother died, three years ago, I was released from the vow I had made to her, the vow not to pursue the claim to the earldom while she lived. For she feared that if I went to England, I would be killed out of hand through the malevolence of your husband. She could not see how strong I had become, how not even the vaunted Matthew Quinton could withstand me.’
‘You could still be my husband’s friend,’ I said. ‘His ally in war. He could bestow lands upon you, honour you as his cousin—’
I saw it in his eyes at once. The wrong words, Louise-Marie. That is what would happen in the sort of books I read. But I recalled my sister’s words, spoken to me at Chambord: you read far too many romances by bad poets. And now, my taste in reading would kill me.
‘Lands that are not his to give,’ he snarled. ‘Lands that are mine. A title that is mine. And if I can have none of it, then he shall not have you.’
He drew his sword. I offered up a silent prayer to the Virgin, took a deep breath, and said the one thing left to me to say.
‘No, Balthasar Quinton, you will not kill me. You will not, for there is one question you should have asked yourself much sooner, is there not?’
‘A question? You have no questions left to ask. You are a dead woman, and your husband’s title will die with him, even if I do not succeed to it. My father will be avenged at last.’
‘Think on it. I knew who you were before I came here. And if I knew that—’
I saw the change in his expression.
‘Bell!’ he cried. ‘Bell!’
‘Look to the bay,’ I said. ‘The bay to the south.’ I saw his eyes go to the window, to the scene beyond. ‘Look at the ships at anchor. Does not one of them look very familiar, even to a man from a distant and land-locked country?’
‘Bell!’ he cried again, more urgently.
The door opened, but it wa
s not the treacherous steward of Alnburgh Castle who entered.
‘He is detained,’ said the newcomer. ‘As are you, Horvath, for I will not deign to name you Quinton.’
Nicholas Iles stood there, a pistol in each hand, two of the men of the Constant Esperance at his back.
Nicholas Iles:
It was a desperate, frantic effort, after that day at Ravensden Abbey when Bell told his lies to My Lady. As soon as he was gone, she told me her suspicions regarding this mysterious and sudden summons to Alnburgh, which she believed could only have come from the man once known as Laszlo Horvath. Old Barcock confirmed it: Bell, he said, was always known for his loyalty to the sixth Earl, but had been kept on by the seventh and eighth simply because of his efficiency and unrivalled knowledge of the estate and its people. The Countess said she would delay going north for as long as possible, to give me time to alert the crew of My Lord’s ship. For it truly was his ship again; as soon as Robert Logan realised King James had not identified him as a suspect in Gowrie’s conspiracy, he was more than willing to sell the Constant Esperance back to the Earl. What became of the treasure of Fast Castle was another matter; but the crew seemed mightily fat, drunken and well content when I went aboard her at Lynn, having ridden hell-for-leather from Ravensden (or as hell-for-leather as my wounds from the Castlehaven fight permitted). They were rather less fat after working double watches to get her ready for sea in a week, and then sailing her for Alnburgh Bay under Avent’s command. I did not adopt with them my strange and violent new persona as Captain Musk; but it was he, and not the craven actor-poet Nicholas Iles, who ordered the men of the Constant Esperance through the many breaches in the crumbling walls of Alnburgh Castle, it was he who held a pistol to the treacherous Bell’s temple, it was he who released My Lady’s servants from the dungeons.
And it was now he, Captain Nicholas Musk, who confronted the man who believed himself the rightful Earl of Ravensden.
The Dowager Countess:
Balthasar Quinton said something to himself in his own tongue, then smiled.
