The Lion of Midnight (7 page)

Consumed by such miserable thoughts, I looked again at the
remaining
heap of papers upon the table. My heart emulated Drake’s leaden coffin and plummeted straight to the sea-bed of my soul. An afternoon and evening chained to the inkpot, straining my eyes by dim
candlelight
, seemed particularly unattractive when the mast-fleet might still be under threat and a vile regicide stalked the streets of Gothenburg –

Well, just so. A captain had a duty to keep his papers in order, but he also had a much higher duty. A duty that was now surely presenting itself in a most timely and convenient fashion. I brightened.

‘Musk,’ I said decisively, ‘I think I should be ashore. To ensure that the Cressys are following my orders to the letter. To set an example. To be on hand if there are any difficulties. Mister Jeary can have the ship.’

The old man smiled. ‘Had been hoping you’d say the like, Sir Matthew.’

We reached the southerly King’s Gate of Gothenburg shortly before sunset, but the guards were already making ready to close the passage for the night. They were inclined to exclude us, but my loftiest tone and some of Musk’s ripest abuse brought forth a young ensign who spoke good French and brought both his men and himself to a crisp salute for this English knight. The streets of the city were blessedly quiet: that is, there was no evidence of a battle royal between my Cressys and the citizenry, or with John Bale’s coterie, or with the Landtshere’s guards, or with the crew of the
Nonsuch
of Kinghorn, Captain Andrew Wood (that, according to Gosling, being the identity of the Scots privateer in the Great Canal, which had docked there in the autumn to repair
damage
sustained in a fight with a Dutch caper in the Great Belt).

‘Strange, the way shadows form and dance on the snow and ice,’ said Musk suddenly; an unusually contemplative comment for him. ‘If he didn’t know it was just shadows, a man could swear he was being followed.’

I said nothing, but I had the same uncomfortable feeling. More than once I glanced behind us, but none were in sight but the occasional townswoman, drunken boor or inquisitive dog. Yet the snow and ice created sounds, too, and echoing the crunching footfalls that Musk and I made, albeit further away, there seemed to be –

I endeavoured to dismiss the thought, but did not entirely succeed.

We came at last to the Sign of the Pelican, a large inn over toward the Saint Erik bastion, where Lord Conisbrough was well known and had taken rooms for the duration of his time in Gothenburg. It was owned by an Englishman of good repute and stout loyalties, he had said, and so it proved. As Musk opened the door, I could have sworn I was transported into the likes of the George in Bedford or the Swan at Biggleswade. The principal space was filled with English voices, many of them familiar and tinged with Cornish. Perhaps twenty Cressys turned, registered my presence, and saluted either conventionally or by raising their tankards. The minute but formidable John Tremar stepped forward. I had elevated him to a boatswain’s mate for this voyage, and he took the responsibility seriously. Up to a point.

‘Sir Matthew,’ he slurred, ‘Mister Musk. God blesh you both.’

‘Tremar,’ I said. ‘All is well?’

‘All well, sir. Landlord’s a good man. Of Somerset, so better at least than a Devon whoremonger, and loyal to the king.’

The good man duly presented himself. He was of middling height, a lean fellow with a few wisps of hair remaining on a head that at one time had received a mighty blow from a blunt instrument, judging by the indentation on the right side of his skull.

‘Lukins, Sir Matthew. Peter Lukins. Been in Gothenburg these twenty year, had this inn the last ten. Had the honour to know your
brother, the noble Lord Ravensden, when he was here in the company of Lord General Brentford and poor Lord Montrose. And the Lord Conisbrough as well, of course.’

I glanced at Musk, who shrugged. He evidently knew what I had not, until this very moment: that my brother had been in this land before me. Moreover, he had been here with Ruthven, Earl of Brentford, the toothless and invariably drunken Scottish general to whom King Charles the Martyr had once entrusted the supreme command of his armies, and James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, the legendary
military
genius who nearly won back Scotland for the crown before being betrayed by his own side and summarily executed. What could have brought a Marquess and two earls, including a former Lord General and perhaps the greatest hero of the Cavalier cause, to meet in this frozen northern fastness?

‘And when would that have been, Lukins?’

‘Why, Sir Matthew, the year Forty-Nine. After His Late Majesty was shamefully done to death by traitors, one of whom stalks this very place to this day.’

Sixteen Forty-Nine: so much led back to that fateful year, which had begun with John Bale appending his signature to a large sheet of paper. I was but nine years old, learning my Latin grammar at school in Bedford (most reluctantly) and history, science and much else besides upon the knee of my Uncle Tristram (with unrestrained enthusiasm). My twin Henrietta and I knew that our brother, twelve years our senior, was somewhere beyond England’s shore, condemned as a reprobate, malignant and traitor by the Rump Parliament that ruled the land with an iron fist. But Earl Charles was never spoken of by the two formidable dowager countesses, my passionately Anglican English mother and devoutly Catholic French grandmother, who warred incessantly over our religion, education and most other things; our only knowledge of his doings came from the occasional scraps fed to us by our vivacious fifteen-year-old sister Lizzie. I remember her whispering that Charles
had been at the Escorial, and had seen King Philip; and on another occasion that he had been at the Louvre, and seen Cardinal Mazarin. But I could not recall her ever mentioning Sweden. If Charles had been here, it was one of the most closely guarded of my brother’s many secrets.

Musk had already scuttled off, ostensibly in search of ale, for he knew full well that I would soon be tasking him to reveal all he knew about the time in 1649 when the Earl of Ravensden and two other of the royal Stuarts’ most prominent supporters all came together here, in
Gothenburg
. But it occurred to me at once that Conisbrough, the man who knew this country and this town best of all, was likely to know much more.

‘Bale will come to his judgment, Lukins,’ I said. ‘But tell me – is my Lord Conisbrough within his rooms?’

‘No, Sir Matthew. Went out shortly after one with that page of his.’

I sighed. Nothing in this Gothenburg seemed straightforward. So there was nothing for it but to take some refreshment –

Suddenly I heard the sounds of a distant commotion. Even before I could buckle on my sword, the sound was no longer distant: raised voices, shouting urgently in a language I did not understand but which had to be Swedish, the clanking of weapons and armour, the thunder of large numbers of men running upon the hard streets.

‘Think we’ve found the rest of the crew,’ said Musk, returning with a tankard of ale in his hand and giving voice to the silent fear that was already taking hold of me. I had unleashed the Cressys upon
Gothenburg
. Even at that time, there were already prominent captains and admirals who thought it folly to grant leave at all, and nowadays their views prevail. Perhaps this was the first moment in my life when I
sympathised
with that draconian stance upon the issue. For what if I had misjudged my men, and they had committed some terrible crime?

I ran into the street, followed in short order by Musk, Tremar and the rest of our men. Soldiers bearing blazing torches were running toward us, and at first I thought my dreadful premonition had come true. But
something was not right. If these men were seeking battle with a mob of rampaging Cressys elsewhere in the city, their behaviour seemed strange. They were not moving as a body, all in the one direction: at every alley, two or three men broke away and began thrusting their brands into doorways and dark corners. These were not men looking for a fight. Rather, they were looking for something, or someone.

Behind the main body of soldiers came a smaller party of
half-a-dozen.
There was Ter Horst, talking urgently with two officers; there Lord Conisbrough’s attendant, the boy North; there Kit Farrell at the side of the shapely and not unappealing figure of Magdalena Ter Horst, who was covered by a sable-lined cloak.

‘Lieutenant!’ I cried.

‘Sir Matthew! I had not expected you to be ashore – I have sent word to the ship –’

Ter Horst nodded curtly to me and hurried on with his subordinates; whatever he was about, he had no intention of sharing it with me.

‘What is it, Kit? The crew?’

‘No, Sir Matthew. Lord Conisbrough is missing. Mister North, here, reported it to the Landtshere barely a half-hour ago. I happened to be present –’ he glanced coyly at the maiden Ter Horst, who could not understand a word he was saying – ‘and joined the search. I
encountered
Carvell and some others of the larboard watch and have sent them around the city to give the word to the rest of the ticket-of-leave men. It is not a large place, sir. With the Landtshere’s men and our own scouring the streets, it is only a matter of time before he is found.’

‘Dead or alive,’ said Musk bluntly, ‘that is the question.’

North was shivering, but whether from cold or fear was impossible to tell. ‘Mister North,’ I said, ‘how did My Lord come to be missing?’

‘He left me shortly after two, Sir Matthew,’ he said, avoiding my eyes. ‘We were to meet at four, beneath the statue of King Gustavus in the main square. But he did not appear. I waited an hour, though I knew My Lord is never late.’

‘Did he tell you where he had gone?’

‘No, Sir Matthew. And that was unusual.’ The miserable North was almost whispering and nearly in tears, seemingly overwhelmed by the enormity of what was happening. ‘My Lord Conisbrough took me
everywhere
with him. He confided entirely in me.’

‘He knows the city,’ said Kit. ‘He knows many people here. It is
possible
he could be with one of them – that for some reason he has been detained and could not meet with Mister North at the allotted time –’

Magdalena Ter Horst looked at Kit admiringly, but in entire
ignorance
of his speech. He was right, of course: Conisbrough knew the city well, better than any of us and perhaps even better than Ter Horst. But I also thought upon Conisbrough’s own account of the dangerous enmities that lurked in Gothenburg. He was a vast man, an
unmistakeable
and immediately recognisable figure. Such a man, alone in such a place…

Then I recalled the regicide Bale’s words. ‘
We will meet next in Hell,
My Lord!
’

A man ran toward us from one of the side alleys, and both Kit and I put our hands to our sword-hilts. But the figure was unmistakeable, even if only as the shadow we saw for a moment before the man himself emerged before us: John Treninnick, the ape-like monoglot
Cornishman
who had the strength of five men. He could not speak his message in words we would comprehend, but his gestures were clear enough. He pointed urgently back down the alley whence he had come, toward one of the small canals that ran at right angles to the Great Canal.

It was only a matter of yards away. As I ran out of the alley I saw a small group upon the canal wall, holding blazing torches out over the frozen expanse. There were two or three Swedish soldiers and a
half-dozen
of my men, Julian Carvell and George Polzeath at their head. Carvell nodded downward, toward the ice.

I looked down, onto the frozen surface of the canal.

In one place, close to the bank, the ice had evidently been broken,
and that recently. But the bitter cold had already frozen the surface water once more into a thin film of ice. Polzeath thrust forward his
blazing
torch to enable me the better to see into the hole.

I shivered uncontrollably. Perhaps it was the cold; perhaps it was the spectacle I beheld. There, framed beneath the ice, pressed against it like a child making faces in a window, was the unmoving head and the unblinking eyes of Peregrine, Lord Conisbrough.

‘This interview is concluded, Sir Matthew,’ said the Landtshere of Gothenburg.

‘But My Lord –’

Ter Horst bowed his head very slightly, turned upon his heel and left me staring at his departing arse. Being rumped by kings was intolerable enough, but to be rumped by this mere functionary, this jumped-up jackanapes, this
Dutchman
–

I turned and glared at Kit Farrell. ‘You still tolerate the man? You can abide being in his house?’

My friend scowled. ‘Are the sins of the father visited upon the
daughter
, then, Sir Matthew? And is he not right, that it is just as likely My Lord Conisbrough was killed by a Dane, a Dutchman or some other fanatic of our country’s own making?’

Thus we both left the Landtshere’s residence in bad temper. Ter Horst had rejected out of hand my demand for the immediate arrest of John Bale on suspicion of the murder of Peregrine, Lord Conisbrough; as, in truth, I entirely expected him to do when I marched post-haste to his door after ensuring that my erstwhile passenger’s corpse was brought out of the canal and placed respectfully in a coffin following the removal of the all-too-apparent cause of death, a cheap dagger protruding from his back. But what I had not expected was the Landtshere’s amused disrespect
for the cause of the King of England, wrapped in silken but empty words of sympathy and reassurance. Nor had I expected Kit’s evident affection for the Ter Horst girl to effected this unwelcome independence of mind on his part. Yet as we walked back in silence toward the Sign of the Pelican, I had to admit to myself at least a little of the justice of the other case. In truth, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of suspects for the murder of Lord Conisbrough and the attack on the mast-fleet alike. Was my condemnation of John Bale based upon evidence and the balance of probabilities, or upon my revulsion at the different and rather greater crime that he undoubtedly had committed? I prayed for some of the wisdom of my uncle Tristram, who was well versed in the law, but precious little of it seemed to enter into my thoughts.

With both Kit and I lost in such thoughts, we paid too little attention to our surroundings. It was another bitterly cold night, and there were few people on the streets. Built on the Dutch grid pattern, Gothenburg had a particular foible if the wind blew hard from the north-east, as it did that night: a man could walk for yards in perfect stillness, only to be struck by a sudden blast of the harshest and iciest of gales when he came to the junction of two streets. The force of just such a blast shocked me from my sullen contemplation: shocked me from it in time to see six men, all with dirks drawn, in the shadows at the street corners, three to one side, three to the other. Kit and I drew our swords and took up the stance of true guard, our rapiers held below the waist.

Two of the villains came for me at once, two from the other side for Kit. They were ugly, dirty brutes, the sort of desperate cutpurses one finds in any alley in any land. Evidently they were practised with the dagger, and were not fazed by encountering a proper sword. They attacked at once, one for the groin and one for the head, hoping that I could not defend against both; but swiftly turning my hilt and bringing my blade down, then sharply up, I deflected both of their blades with ease. Subtle now, they moved apart, hoping to make it more difficult for me to mount a similar defence against a simultaneous thrust at my
sides. This might have succeeded against an incompetent, one of those buffoons-about-town who wear swords only for show. But Matt
Quinton
knew the principle of divide and conquer. I struck fast and hard, four quick steps forward through the icy slush, thrusting directly for the man on my right. He ducked aside and down, but my blade still struck home, albeit glancing his shoulder rather than impaling his chest. No matter. It gave me time enough to swing to my left in time to parry the rush from the other villain, who came at me most violently. The sight of my blade, extended and ready to meet him, gave him pause, and he began to circle back toward his wounded companion.

As I swivelled upon the icy street, I brushed falling snow from my eyes with my left hand and caught a glimpse of Kit, who was more than holding his own. A rapier, a gentleman’s weapon, was still a relatively new weapon for Lieutenant Farrell, yet he ducked and stabbed, parried and lunged, with the dexterity of an Italian. In those few seconds of grace that were granted me to spectate, he executed a dazzling
trompement
and stabbed one of his foes in the thigh, though not deeply enough to disable him.

My own opponents had regrouped and were now joined by the two brethren who had hung back thus far. The wounded one took his left hand from his bleeding shoulder, wiped off the blood upon his damp breeches, and came at me one-handed, his companion at his side, the two fresh men a little behind them. They had learned from their
initial
mistake. Now four blades together aimed at one point, my heart. I could hope to deflect one, or two, but four? I sprang back, but my shoes slipped upon the ice and I very nearly overbalanced – without conscious thought or gaze, I brought my sword up and heard it strike steel –

When I looked again, my assailants had backed off once more. Somehow, I know not how, I had managed to deflect their attack, but whether I could do the same with another was moot.

A sudden cry – I glanced aside, and saw one of Kit’s foes fall to the ground, clutching his stomach. Blood flowed into the ice and snow
upon the ground. Kit had his remaining opponent in an armlock and was endeavouring to slit his throat with the blade in his free hand; but his very success meant that he was in no position to aid me against the final attack that had to be imminent.

My assailants were advancing abreast now, all four blades exposed against me. I backed against the wall of the house on the corner, my sword threatening each of them in turn. But these were odds that not even the great Cyrano would favour –

The roar of the musket and the explosion of my rightmost assailant’s chest came as one. The shock of the unexpected blast fazed Kit’s
opponent
, who ceased his resistance for a moment; and that moment was all Kit needed to inscribe a deep smiling gash into his throat. Pushing away the corpse, my friend charged furiously at the next rogue in the enemy line. His blade pushed deeply into the man’s side, and the creature sank to his knees, a stare of astonishment upon his face.

I breathed hard and swallowed, trying desperately to stop myself fainting. Julian Carvell, wielding a still-smouldering musket, came up with Musk, Ali Reis and three more of the Cressys. He essayed a
perfunctory
salute. ‘Sir Matthew,’ he said in his familiar Virginian drawl. ‘Mister Musk, here, reckoned you needed some assistance.’

‘You followed us, Musk?’

The old scoundrel shrugged. ‘Simply took the same road, Sir
Matthew
, a few yards behind. Seems to me this is the sort of town where a man’s back is mightily exposed, and a tempting target for those inclined to plunge a knife into it.’

‘I thank you, Musk. Once more.’

Kit was attempting to interrogate the man upon his knees, but it was clear there was little time in which to glean his secrets; the man’s blood was flowing like a flood tide down his side, forming a growing red-black puddle in the slush.

‘Who is your master?’ Kit barked in English, repeating the
question
in Dutch. The man stared at him with cold contempt. Ali Reis,
who acquired languages as easily as other men acquire warts, already knew enough Swedish to repeat the question in that tongue, but met an equally blank response. The man swayed, and it was clear his time was nearly done.

‘
Qui est votre maître?
’ I shouted in desperation. The man fixed a stare of contempt upon me. The stare turned blank, and he fell forward into the snow.

‘We had best away, Sir Matthew,’ Kit exclaimed, ‘the Landtshere’s guards are certain to be here soon.’

Half-walking, half-running, weapons at the ready, the small army of Cressys scurried along the frozen streets of Gothenburg toward the one place of safety within the city walls. The inn of the Sign of the
Pelican
already resembled a military camp. Treninnick, John Tremar and four other Cressys, armed with an astonishing collection of muskets, swords and half-pikes, patrolled in front of its door. Within, Cressys mixed with loyal Gothenburg English and Scots, talking in low tones of the ghastly slaying of the Lord Conisbrough and muttering dark threats indiscriminately against Roundheads, Dutchmen and Swedes alike. Two of the mast-ship skippers, Crafts and Tilford, sat within a corner booth; Kit made for them, seemingly finding the company of his fellow tarpaulins more appealing than that of his friend and patron. I was unconscionably hungry and could think only of eating a hearty meal before resuming the search for Lord Conisbrough’s killer. But the hour was already very late, and God alone knew how such an expedition could make progress in the light of the antipathy of the Landtshere of Gothenburg –

Conisbrough’s page, the youth North, stepped before me.

‘Sir Matthew,’ he said hesitantly, ‘I congratulate you upon your most fortuitous escape, sir.’

‘Thank you, Mister North, though fortune must give precedence to the fighting skills of my men, notably Lieutenant Farrell.’

‘As you say, Sir Matthew.’ I made to move away, but he reached out
and gripped my arm with unanticipated force and urgency. ‘A word with you, perchance?’

My reply was impatient; I had too many concerns to worry myself with those of this insignificant stripling. ‘Do not be fearful, Mister North,’ I said sharply, ‘we will not abandon you to the Swedes, though your master be dead. You may keep your berth aboard the
Cressy
for safe passage back to England.’

‘No, Sir Matthew. That is not my business.’ There was now an
unexpected
determination about North’s tone that made me scrutinise him properly. ‘I would speak to you in private and in confidence, upon a matter of the very highest import.’

North’s pale, childish face bore an unaccustomedly old look.
Impatient
as I was, something about his expression made me humour him. The innkeeper had a small room vacant toward the rear of the building; windowless and putrid, it was clearly not a favoured haunt of his
customers
. But it would suffice to despatch whatever insignificant troubles distracted this pageboy.

‘Well, then, Mister North, be brisk and direct, I beg you. What is this matter?’

‘First, Sir Matthew, I require your oath that you will not divulge what I am now going to tell you until such moment as I permit it.’ Great God, this was too much – a Quinton did not prostrate himself to the whim of a schoolboy – ‘Believe me, Sir Matthew, it is necessary.’

Still I resisted. I felt the indignation rise in me like a tide. ‘For a mere page, Mister North, you demand too much.‘

He nodded, and looked me directly in the eye. ‘Men like myself are called upon to play many parts, Sir Matthew. That of a page is merely one of them. Indeed, it was the very part that I played in life until not too many years past. Page to My Lord Arlington, before his lordship divined that I might serve him better in another capacity.’

Arlington
. That was a name well known to me; aye, and the harsh, unsmiling face accompanying it, with its hideous plaster-covered
sword-cut
upon the bridge of the nose. Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, the king’s principal secretary of state, chief intelligencer and God alone knew what else. His path and mine had crossed in the summer before, when a byzantine plot of his making had almost led me to grief.

I looked anew at Lydford North. Indeed, I now looked upon him properly and intently for the first time, and I saw that the feeble youth of our outward voyage had been something of an illusion. There were faint lines about the eyes that betrayed a man, not a boy; and those eyes were deep and penetrating. Perhaps, then, the scar upon the temple was not some school-time graze, but evidence of a more manly wound.

Somewhat unnerved, I raised my hand and swore upon my honour and that of the noble house of Quinton that I would keep Lydford North’s secrets until the day of revelation. An oath that I now break by relating it: both North’s cause and his bones have been dust these many years, and if there is to be a judgement upon me for breaking it, then I shall know it soon enough.

At my ‘amen’, North nodded. ‘I have played a part, Sir Matthew, but so did My Lord Conisbrough. He was upon a mission of the utmost importance to His Majesty and to England’s prospects in the present war.’ The words were difficult to digest, but at once, they made sense: so much about the dead Conisbrough had marked him out as a man of far greater consequence than that to which he pretended. ‘Consider our condition this new year, Sir Matthew, with an imminent triple war against the Dutch, the Danes, and the French. We would struggle to prevail against any single one of those enemies, Sir Matthew. A
combination
of two threatens us with defeat. War with all three might presage the very destruction of the kingdom –the very end of old England.’ This was a dire litany, but I knew better than to protest against it; such talk was common in London before we sailed. ‘Thus we need allies to divert our foes. Above all, Sir Matthew, we need a great power in the west as an ally, one whose very name will strike terror into our enemies. Spain will not favour us while we support Portugal’s war against her, and we
cannot forsake that as long as we have a Portuguese princess for our queen. Besides, endless decades of war have brought Spain low – De Witt and King Louis will simply laugh at the threat of Spain. Which leaves one land, and one only, where England might find the friendly power it so desperately needs. The one land with the name to afright England’s foes.’

‘Sweden,’ I said slowly. ‘You and Conisbrough were to engineer an alliance with the Swedes.’

The scheme was breathtaking in both simplicity and ambition. If Sweden, with its mighty army and navy, entered the war on England’s side, Denmark would be hamstrung. The Dutch would be forced to divert entire squadrons to defend their own vital Baltic trade and would have to move their army to their eastern border to guard against
invasion
from Sweden’s province of Bremen. Thus whatever opaque scheme King Louis of France was playing out in this war would most surely be stymied. Sweden the mighty, Sweden the invincible. The Lion of Midnight roaring alongside its cousins, the three lions of England. Of course. I looked upon Lydford North with newly found respect.