Gentleman Captain (33 page)

It was in a mood of bleak melancholy that I retired to my cabin to add postscripts to all my letters, informing the recipients of this new development. I did so with a heavy heart, for I was convinced that if Cornelia ever read my words I would already be long dead, feeding the fish as Nathan Warrender had done. I sealed the letters and gave them to Macferran, who was to sail them down to Dunstaffnage Castle where they would join the Mail Royal.

Not long after, James Vyvyan knocked at my cabin door. In truth, I had forgotten all about my lieutenant and his latest line of enquiry. Reluctantly, I called on him to enter. The face that he displayed when he entered my cabin was etched with fear and uncertainty. He suddenly seemed but a child, far younger than his eighteen years.

'Sir, this of Captain Warrender's death...' He came to a whispering halt, then began again, but was little better. I poured him some small beer, which he took.

'Captain Warrender was a staunch man, Mister Vyvyan,' I said. 'The manner of his dying is a shock to us all.'

'No, sir–not that–sir, it was him...' and again he faltered, fell silent.

I waited patiently, painting an encouraging expression upon my face, but in reality I was more than frustrated by this ongoing obsession. I had almost reached the end of my ability to tolerate it. Finally he took a shuddering breath and managed to describe, in coherent fashion, how he had passed his afternoon. The man he wished to examine over Pengelley's death had returned from the shore party, he said. This was one of our few Devon men, William Berry by name, a close and sly rogue unpopular on the lower deck. He had exhibited profound and uncharacteristic shock when he heard of Warrender's dire fate, and had apparently asked to speak to James Vyvyan before his lieutenant even had a chance to seek him out on his own account.

Vyvyan was shaking so much and his tale so broken and incoherent that my patience was wearing thin. I was sharp with him, telling him to speak more directly. He looked up at me, and I saw the confusion shrouding his face. Without saying anything he held out his hand. In it was a crumpled letter. I looked at him, questioningly. He nodded, still holding the letter out to me, and I took it.

Beloved son.
The words were written in a crabbed, stunted hand.

Forgive your Ma this letter, writ for me by the constable, but the terrible matter is all around the village and I could not but send you word. It concerns Goodwife Rose, as came up as a widow from Cornwall to marry old Isaac Rose that farmed Calhele, if you recall, though you were but a buye then to be sure. It is dreadful doings concerning her son, who is called Pengelley, who was apprenticed to a merchant of Truro when she came here. May God have mercy on his soul, she has heard of his most terrible end, cut up like a gelt pig upon the roadside in Hamptonshire. And she speaks too of his last master, who was your own captain Harker. Another murder, says she. I am so affeard, you must forgive your old Ma, but in our dearest saviour's name, write to me son, for these grave events do weigh mightily upon my heart and I must know you are safe. Goodwife Rose is overcome with grief and cries out in her troubles for her brother, aboard the other ship that sails with ye. An officer, she says, one Warrender by name, though mayhap she is distracted, for I had heard he was of Chudleigh's cavalry in the wars...

'Sir, it was Pengelley's mother,' said Vyvyan, unable to contain himself as I read. 'Her name at birth was Warrender.'

The secrets of men are fallible, for our names are immutable, but the secrets of women can lurk forever behind the names they assume with each new marriage. I learned that lesson twice in one day, there in the far western fastnesses of Scotland, and since have had ample cause to affirm its worth. MacDonald and O'Daragh, Pengelley, Rose, Warrender; the truths long concealed. I stood facing James Vyvyan, the names repeating themselves over and again in my head.

Then, and only then, did the scales fall at last from my eyes.

We buried Nathan Warrender very early the next morning, Good Friday, in the churchyard of an ancient, dilapidated kirk–the Scots word for church–that stood on one of the headlands overlooking our anchorage. Macferran had located its minister, a senile old man who seemed convinced that I was the Marquis of Montrose resurrected and who had no objection to the service being conducted by the Reverend Francis Gale. Indeed, it was Gale himself who offered objections. Warrender had been a rebel, he said, and no doubt a dissenter, violent against king and Church. He had fought in arms against the Lord's Anointed. True, said I. But whatever else he had been in life, Nathan Warrender died holding the King of England's commission as an officer in his navy and was entitled to the honours due his rank. Moreover, he had not fought only against his king, for he had also been present at my father's death and had done honour to his memory. Francis Gale may not wish to forgive or forget, I told him, but Matthew Quinton could.

Warrender's body, shrouded in canvas, was brought up from the beach by an honour guard of seamen headed by James Vyvyan. Martin Lanherne followed the corpse and Carvell, Le Blanc, Polzeath and Treninnick were the four pallbearers. They placed the body at the side of the grave and Gale took out his new prayer book, reading aloud from the service for the dead. He spoke the words of Psalm 90, the glorious
Domine Refugium,
with passion, but I knew he thought of his own life rather than that of Nathan Warrender.

'A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday; seeing that is past as a watch in the night. As soon as thou scatterest them, they are even as a sleep; and fade away suddenly like the grass. In the morning it is green, and groweth up; but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered. Comfort us again now after the time that thou hast plagued us: and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity...'

I stood in the pale and watery sunlight of that Good Friday and thought of other deaths, past, present and future. It was profoundly still in that quiet, ruined churchyard on the hill. The wind was gentle and carried the scent of spring inside it, and the murmur of the sea filled the air. I felt overwhelmingly alive, but full of sorrow. I turned my thoughts back to the lonely soldier we were burying so far from his home, and tried to concentrate on the words of the service.

'Man that is born of a woman,' Gale was intoning, 'hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death...'

Though the words were altered, I remembered suddenly the first time I had heard them read from the old and now abandoned prayer book of Queen Elizabeth. It was at the burial of my grandfather in Ravensden Abbey. Even as a child of five I had thought how false it sounded:
but a short time to live, and is full of misery,
when it seemed to me that my grandfather had lived for ever, and been full of careless joy until his dying day. But when I heard those words again just a few weeks later at the funeral of my father, I thought upon them differently. Perhaps I grew up more in the course of those two burial services, so short a time apart, than most children of five years are wont to do.

James Vyvyan, Warrender's fellow lieutenant, cast earth onto the canvas, and as it was lowered into the hard Scottish earth Gale continued to deliver the order of service. 'Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust...'

I looked out over the waters beyond the churchyard, and thought of those whom I had loved who were now of that dust, my grandparents, my father and my sister.
Soon they shall be saying those words over me, for I shall not be leaving these waters alive.

The service was over. Lanherne brought his honour guard to attention. Muskets ever sit uneasily in the hands of seamen, but several of the guard were veterans of Grenville's Cornish infantry. There had been none finer, and they knew their drill. On the coxswain's command, they fired a smart volley in salute as the mortal remains of Nathan Warrender disappeared forever beneath the ground. Down in the roadstead, the
Jupiter
fired a mourning-salute of five guns, the muffled cannonade echoing off the Scottish hills.

It was James Vyvyan who pointed out the small party of horsemen riding towards the church. There were six of them, with two spare mounts running behind. One rider was taller than the rest, sitting easy and confident on a horse that seemed far too small for him; I recognized him as Simic the Croat. He rode behind a horse that, conversely, seemed unduly large for the little man that it bore. Glenrannoch.

The party reined in at the kirk's boundary wall. The general dismounted, walked over to us and paid his respects at the graveside, saluting sombrely with his sword.

'I heard of the death,' he said quietly to me. 'I presumed you would be loath to stray too far from your ship, so I suggest we ride hereabouts. I have something I would show you, but a few miles hence.'

I was reluctant. The dark vessel might still be lurking nearby, Judge and the
Royal Martyr
had vanished and the nature of Warrender's death had sounded an alarum through my ship. What business had the
Jupiter's
captain ashore in the company of a man like Glenrannoch? And yet ... I found it was impossible to deny the force of this man's presence. I hesitated but a moment, then called James Vyvyan to me, and told him in a low voice that if there appeared any threat to the ship, he was to fire one gun. Glenrannoch, standing close by and overhearing my words and Vyvyan's surprised reply, said that one of his riders would lead me quickly back to the ship on such a signal. The winds were light, we would not go far, and with the warning that our lookouts would give us, no attack could come against the
Jupiter
before I was back on board.

Then Glenrannoch asked who I wished to accompany me on the second horse. I considered this. Vyvyan could not be spared from the ship. Musk and Kit Farrell were still aboard, and it would take too long to send for them; besides, it was unlikely that Kit could ride well–certainly not on such rough terrain as this–and Musk was but an indifferent horseman for all his bluster. Of all my men at the old kirk, only one could ride for certain: Francis Gale, a gentleman's son and a soldierly priest.

But perhaps there was one other there who could ride. In fact, I was certain of it.

I called out, 'Monsieur Le Blanc!' He looked around, a little startled. 'You can ride, I take it?'

'Mais non, monsieur le capitaine.
A tailor of Rouen, what would I have to do with riding?'

'I would have you accompany me on this expedition with the general, Monsieur Le Blanc. As my personal attendant, if you will.'

Le Blanc's face fell. 'But, Captain—'

Matters were truly serious for Roger Le Blanc to give my rank in English. It amused me even as I ignored his objections, saying airily, 'It is an order, Monsieur Le Blanc. I would have you ride with me.'

'Very well,
mon capitaine.
But I will bring my
knapsack
.' He gave the word a preposterous English ring. 'I do not trust any of these Cornish.'

Lanherne and Polzeath laughed at that and slapped him rudely on the back. The Frenchman picked up the largest knapsack I had ever seen, and moved reluctantly towards one of the general's spare horses. As I had suspected, he mounted with the easy movements of a man born to horseback, and reined in his steed with assurance. I smiled at him but he merely shrugged, as the French do. Thus mounted we moved off, and I rode up to the shoulder of Colin Campbell of Glenrannoch.

We rode across a wild, bleak land of rough hills and moorland. Glenrannoch was a good horseman, as I might have expected from one who had ridden the length and breadth of war-torn Europe. Le Blanc, too, rode exceedingly well, despite his protestations to the contrary. For my part, I could not help but revel in the freedom of being on horseback once again. My mount was an excellent one, albeit not the equal of my Zephyr, and as we cantered along I felt the accumulated hours of anxiety and sea-discipline slough away. Indeed I almost felt, for a moment, like any young man of twenty and two, out for an exhilarating ride on a spring day. I urged my horse faster and gave myself up to the vigorous pleasure of being alive.

We reached the top of a steep slope and I reined in my mount, pausing to admire the sweeping bleakness and beauty of the land. Glenrannoch stopped beside me. 'So, Captain Quinton,' he said easily, 'I gather that the lieutenant of
Royal Martyr
was murdered?'

It was hardly a surprise that he knew. This was his land, as far as the eye could see, and little would happen here without him knowing of it. Perhaps young Macferran reported to him. I told him how Warrender's body had been found. He asked if I had any suspects for the murder, and I answered neutrally. It would not do to share my suspicions with this man.