Gentleman Captain (31 page)

At our audience in Ardverran the child had seemed to me but a feeble wretch with no qualities above the ordinary, but I praised him as a new Achilles, Aristotle and Solomon all in one. This pleased her and she patted my arm in gratitude.

'You must dine with us, Captain. It will be good for Ian to talk with a man like you–a king's captain, and from such a bloodline of great warriors and noble earls! Yes, you must dine at Ardverran. I insist on it.' She held my gaze a fraction longer than necessary then turned away, a half-smile playing about the corners of her mouth.

We had rowed to the tip of a short headland and our oarsmen were pulling against a sharp current. The wind had dropped and the afternoon was as idyllic as any I had ever known. The sun was bright on the water, sparkling through the drops splashed up by the oars. We were close enough to shore to smell the sweetness of the heather. A tiny ruined chapel stood on the headland, and I wondered if it had stood there since Columba's time. My lady, the countess, was content beside me, her eyes closed, letting the sun warm her face, her hair. Her cloak had slipped and my eyes followed the line of her jaw down her long neck to the white skin that curved away beneath her jacket. I had thoughts that a married man should not have, to my eternal shame. Cornelia was in my heart, but my mind, my eyes, belonged only to this woman. I wondered what might happen, should she and I be alone together at Ardverran. I remember thinking,
No afternoon could be more perfect
...

Suddenly, as we cleared the headland and turned into the next bay, the helmsman gave a strange cry. Lady Macdonald opened her eyes and sat forward, startled. There, anchored in the middle of the bay, lay a great man-of-war.

I was still no seaman, but I knew enough to give a rapid judgement on this ship. Forty guns, by my reckoning, perhaps a couple more; almost as powerful as
Royal Martyr
and outmatching
Jupiter.
Not English built, for certain. Flemish or Dutch, perhaps, though they built ships for all of Northern Europe. Her hull was dark hued, almost black. She flew no ensigns that could identify her, her sails were hanging loose, and she swung at a single anchor. She was not idle, as my
Jupiter
was at that moment. She had men aloft and the lookouts had already seen us. On her upper and main decks the guns were being run out.

On her command, Lady Macdonald's helmsman brought his tiller hard to larboard and we turned to fall back behind the headland, our oarsmen doubling their strokes. The ship could not follow us, even if her captain was minded so to do; the channel was too shallow, and the winds too light in any case. It must have taken less than a minute for us to be safe and out of sight of those mighty guns.

'We will for Ardverran directly,' the lady said with grim determination. 'I'll send word along the coast to see what we can learn of that ship. It may be a Dutchman, of course, or a Dane. They often anchor and victual in these waters...'

I was silent a moment. 'My lady, do they ever anchor and victual with their main guns run out, and no ensigns flying?' She held my eye, searching my face for meaning. 'Whatever ship that is, they don't want to be known.'

I could not tell her the suspicion I had formed. Everyone from the king down to his humble captain, Matthew Quinton, had assumed that the ship carrying the arms to Campbell of Glenrannoch would be an ordinary merchantman out of Bruges or Ostend. That had been the intelligence from the merchant, Castel Nuovo. But what if Glenrannoch had raised enough money to buy not just a mighty arsenal for an army, but a man-of-war more powerful than anything in the western seas? Or at least more powerful than anything that was
usually
to be found in these waters, with the present exception only of Judge's
Royal Martyr.
Glenrannoch could not have known, when he bought such a ship, that the king would learn of his plans and send a squadron against him. All of Europe's wars were over, in that year 1662, and weapons and warships were as easy to buy as roasted chestnuts, and almost as cheap. Never had there been such a glut on the market of killing.

The birlinn swiftly won back to the
Jupiter
where the countess and I parted with chaste, courtly acknowledgements. As I watched the little craft row back towards Ardverran, I wondered how different things might have been if a strange ship had not been awaiting us, around that last headland.

I despatched Martin Lanherne and Julian Carvell to find
Royal Martyr
and warn Captain Judge of the dark ship. Macferran, eager to be of service, offered to take them in his boat, which could cut through channels that the
Jupiter
could never navigate, and I gladly accepted. We spent the next few hours ensuring the ship was ready to sail or fight if necessary, even against such mighty odds. Several balls of roundshot were laid alongside each of our cannon, and the ship's corporal broke out the small arms, distributing a ferocious array of halberds, half-pikes, muskets and swords to each mess. The full naval discipline of our ship, somewhat half-hearted of late, was sternly reinstated by James Vyvyan and Boatswain Ap. Feeling as ever that I served no purpose on deck but to impede the hurrying sailors, I took myself to my cabin. There I studied the charts, trying to conjure the depths, shoals, tides and winds into some kind of strategy; a strategy to overcome I knew not what.

As evening came on, a strange calm settled upon me. In my presence, the Countess had ordered Macdonalds to all the summits around the bay in which we lay at anchor, including the old fort I had visited; at least, such was her translation of the orders she had issued in Gaelic to her clansmen at the oars. I knew that these lookouts would see an approaching ship long before it could come within any distance of us, and that we would thus have ample time to prepare for battle or to run out to sea. And then, Landon and Ruthven were both of the opinion that no ship, no matter how knowledgeable of these seas, would dare try to approach us by night, for the channels were narrow and the rocks that lined them forbidding. The mainland was Glenrannoch's territory and therefore hostile, it was true, but no phantom man-of-war was going to attack from that direction. I posted additional lookouts lest any attempt be made overland or in small craft, but the consensus of my officers was that we could not be more secure if we lay in the heart of Chatham Dockyard.

James Vyvyan was more inclined to make an attack on the mysterious ship, but the consensus of my officers was that she was too large and, indeed, that we had no conclusive proof she was hostile–God forbid that I should be responsible for a war with Sweden, perhaps, or worse, the Dutch, by making an unprovoked attack on a ship of theirs! Even if she was truly Glenrannoch's ship, simple common sense dictated that we should remain where we were, lying at anchor between it and the general's lands, its likely destination; and, after all, remaining in this anchorage was what my senior officer had explicitly ordered me to do. Vyvyan conceded the point with reasonably good grace, the seaman in him winning out over the glory-hunting youth.

We dined together, later than was our custom, with my cabin lit by lanterns and candles. As ever, Janks had wrought a comforting miracle: excellent beef from a cow bought from a Macdonald and slaughtered on the shore, with ample fish and cheese. We were merry and, for once, we were almost as one. Only the dark silence coupled with the unpleasantly noisy eating habits of Stafford Peverell marred the table's spirits. James Vyvyan soon became more than a little drunk. I was relieved his talk did not turn to his murdered uncle. He sang happily of a girl in Truro that he loved, and I reminded him that some days before, he had sung the same song, and that of a girl in Bodmin. Even Malachi Landon was amiability itself, his tarpaulin rage at gentleman captains briefly forgotten. Perhaps his spirits were perversely elevated by the prospect of all the dire foretelling contained in his heavenly charts finally coming to pass. I looked around the assembly and thought that, truly, there is nothing so good at uniting men who live by the sword as the prospect of battle.

Yet through it all, as we caroused and laughed, I thought of our gun drill, and I thought of the broadside of that mysterious ship, and of what it would do to us if it ever came within range.

The officers had all gone and I had removed my boots, yet still Musk lingered on, shuffling round the cabin in the performance of some imagined task. Unaffected by the war-fever of my officers, he was, it seemed, much more interested in discovering whether or not I had seduced the countess. 'Or she you,' he cackled. I suspected that he shared my mother's concerns about my lack of an heir and had weighed up the widowed lady of Ardverran as good breeding stock. No doubt a grand Irish title would also befit the heir to Ravensden. I could well imagine the pestilential old rogue devising several ways of disposing of Cornelia, some of which doubtless entailed absconding with her himself (for I never doubted that he lusted after her mightily). Musk had many strange traits, but perhaps the most unexpected was the extent of the unswerving loyalty he had always demonstrated, albeit in the most complaining way, to the noble house of Quinton.

As he probed and pried, Musk finished off the half-empty flagons of ale and wine around the table, grumbling about how poorly he ate and drank in the king's navy compared to Ravensden House. The good captain would not feel the same, he observed sourly, because the good captain was being entertained so liberally ashore and afloat, by everyone from countesses downwards.

'Do these Scots do anything but eat, and drink, and hunt?' he asked, indignantly, gulping from a flagon and wiping his mouth upon his sleeve. 'Reminds me. You've got yet another invitation, for tomorrow afternoon. A country ride, it seems. You'll have some of those running men of theirs laden down with hams and whisky, I don't doubt. Pah. And me, I'll be on hard cheese and ship's biscuit. Again.'

I could hardly accept an invitation to a hunt with a strange and probably hostile ship in the same waters, and told Musk so.

'Can't turn this one down, Captain,' he said slyly. 'Not as it's by way of an order.'

An order?
Who could give me orders, other than Captain Judge? With him gone, I stood there in my cabin as the supreme authority in that sea, under God and the king. With the king hundreds of miles away in Whitehall, and God presumably engaged elsewhere, I was safe from any order.

Musk struck an attitude of recollection. 'Now, what did that huge old Turk say? Or is he a Pole? That Simic, anyway, ugly ferocious brute.' His beady eye upon me as I waited. Ah yes.
The Vice-Admiral of the coast of Argyll, Kintyre and Moidart,
that's what he said. General Campbell of Glenrannoch, in other words.'

I could easily have rejected this so-called order had I seen fit; indeed I told Musk so in terms that set him scuttling around in some dudgeon. Vice-admirals of the coast had vague powers over wreck in their counties, but no authority over the captains of the king's ships. Glenrannoch could not give me an order, and he knew it. But he was evidently a master of strategy, in all senses, and he would have known that inviting me in such a peremptory way would give me pause. I dismissed Musk and, alone, I sat in my chair, looking out over the waters, considering the matter at some length. Finally I decided that if by noon there was no report of the mysterious ship, then I would take up Glenrannoch's invitation. For, as he must have guessed, I was full of curiosity to learn what lay between Colin Campbell and the Dowager Countess of Ravensden, my mother.

It was very early in the morning, not far past seven bells of the middle watch, as I was now learning to call half-past three o'clock. I was already about in my cabin, though, for my dreams had been too full of battle and countesses on cushions for my sleep to be entirely serene. I heard a lookout's cry, and went up on deck. James Vyvyan had the watch. He was standing at the starboard rail, looking out towards the mainland, at a small fishing boat that was making its way out to us. To my delight his boyish face broke into an easy smile at my approach, and he saluted me before launching into a laughing explanation.

'Well, sir, I do believe I'm witnessing a minor miracle. I didn't think we'd see the Reverend Gale again this side of the king's birthday.'

We stood in companionable silence, watching the boat tack out towards us. In due course it came alongside and Francis Gale climbed aboard with young Andrewartha. To my surprise he was perfectly sober. He asked to see me alone in my cabin, and I immediately invited him to breakfast with me. Gale was unusually clerical, even saying grace over Janks's crisp bacon. He talked equably of the weather, and the empty beauty of the land. Then, quite suddenly, he turned the conversation to the very thing that had been preoccupying my thoughts all morning.

'Your countess, Captain,' he began. 'You don't know her name before she married, I suppose?'

This was unexpected. As equably as I could, I confessed that I did not, and Gale chewed on more bacon before continuing. 'When I heard who'd been entertaining you, that first time at her castle, I thought upon the title Countess of Connaught, and I thought, I have heard that before.' He paused, helped himself to more food and went on. 'But y'see, Captain Quinton, I don't trust my memory after all these years of port wine and bad dreams. I needed a book of pedigrees, and from the lad Macferran I'd heard of a decent library hereabouts, although that prospect seemed as likely as Moses finding a banquet in Sinai.'