The Lion of Midnight (15 page)

The Count said nothing. He did not even look at me. Instead he stood at the water’s edge, looking out to sea. It occurred to me in that moment that it simply did not matter how good Dohna was with a sword. The letter that his servant had carried away from Vasterholm might have been a summons to an entire regiment of murderers to come to this place, at this time. A deserted beach, far from the road,
surrounded
entirely by forest. I looked around, more and more convinced that behind every tree lurked a French assassin.

‘My Lord,’ I asked with some trepidation, ‘why have we come here?’

I feared the answer would come in the form of a blade to the heart. But Count Dohna continued to stare intently out to sea. It was as if he were far away.

‘Listen, Sir Matthew,’ he said, very quietly. ‘Can you not hear it? The sound that will make you trust me?’

Stranger still. I listened, but could hear only the lapping of wave upon rock, the cry of the birds, the whistling of the wind – but yes, something else, too. A familiar sound, yet one that eluded me at first.

I recognised the sound of oars swivelling in rowlocks only a moment before the bow of the
Fortuna
appeared from behind the headland.

After being ferried out in the galley’s longboat, Dohna and I stepped onto the deck of the
Fortuna
. The minute figure of General Erik Glete stood at the head of an impressive file of musketeers, all young enough to be his grandsons, all in half-armour and all stiffly at attention. He brought up his own sword to salute Dohna and myself.

‘My Lord Dohna,’ he said proudly, ‘welcome back aboard the
Fortuna
. It has been too many long years.’ The little man seemed almost in a transport of delight: tears were running down his grizzled old face. ‘Sir Matthew,’ he said by way of afterthought, bowing his head perfunctorily to me.

As the larboard bank of oars deployed to push us away from the shore, I reflected that despite Glete’s bluster, he was something of a pragmatist after all. He, who boasted that he took orders only from High Admirals, kings and God, seemed perfectly content to take them from Dohna; presumably he justified it on the grounds that Dohna represented De La Gardie, who represented the child-king Karl, but I would not have thought Glete capable of such sophisticated casuistry, especially given his contempt for the High Chancellor. On the other hand, Dohna’s presence must also have reminded him of happier times, when a true Vasa sat upon the thrones of the Three Crowns and when both the
Fortuna
and her captain were not simply disregarded relics of
a lost epoch. Now, suddenly, Sweden’s last galley and her strange little general had a purpose again, thanks entirely to Count Dohna. As we moved out into the archipelago, the oarsmen steadily increasing their pace, the two men stood by the starboard rail, talking to each other in Swedish and in low tones.

As the two Swedes reminisced, I stood by the larboard rail and contemplated our situation. Low, snow-covered isles closed ever more tightly around us. The
Fortuna
was moving south-west, directly into the breeze in a way that no ship could ever manage, and even the galley’s progress was severely slowed. Glete did not have his oarsmen rowing at anything like their maximum effort, which in any case could only be sustained for short periods. No doubt the general wished to conserve his men’s energies for a final burst in pursuit of Montnoir’s ship, if we ever got that close to it. But for a man who had commanded nimble men of war that could make ten miles or more in every hour, the
Fortuna
’s progress was funereally slow.

Glete might have sensed my impatience, for eventually he came over to stand by me.

‘He’s got a good start on us, Sir Matthew. But the old
Fortuna
still has a few tricks up her sleeve.’ We were now in a channel between two islands, rather larger bodies of land than the countless rocks and islets studied the sea like jewels. ‘That’s Donso to larboard and Styrso to starboard,’ said the old general. ‘The people out here are sturdy, but the stupidest buggers you’ll ever meet. Never marry off the islands. They’re all each other’s cousins, or closer still.’

The channel ahead seemed to be narrowing rapidly. Moreover, the strait between the two islands appeared obstructed by a cluster of rocks and islets. I would not have contemplated taking even a yawl through such a perilously small gap, but Glete seemed intent on steering the
Fortuna
, which surely had a substantial draught, directly for the tiny space.

My face must have betrayed my alarm. ‘Nothing to be concerned over, Sir Matthew. Brought her through here countless times. Probably
not in ten years, though. But I doubt the channel will have changed much.’

Glete’s pilot, up in the bows, seemed to have a different opinion. He was clearly agitated, constantly looking back at the general and ordering a man to sound every four or five minutes.

The
Fortuna
drew ever nearer to the strait. Had I been captain, I would have been at anchor already, sending out my boats to sound rather than doing it from my own hull, and then getting them to tow us gently through if the water proved deep enough. But Erik Glete had no time for such feeble seamen’s niceties. The galley moved relentlessly forward toward the eye of the needle.

And then the little general did something that even to this day, I still find difficult to credit. He barked orders in Swedish, and the drum that kept time for the oarsmen below shortened the interval between beats. The oars began to cut the water more rapidly. The
Fortuna
picked up speed.

There were rocks all around us now, and the islands of Donso and Styrso seemed to be closing like a vice onto our vessel. The gap ahead was narrower than ever, and if there were any rocks hidden beneath the surface, they would tear the galley’s flimsy hull to pieces at this speed. Yet still the drum kept up its relentless beat, and still the oars cut the waters. I prayed with the fervour that only a man who has already been shipwrecked once can express.

We were at the channel. It was just wide enough for the hull, but surely not for the extended oars – they would snap like matchwood upon the gleaming icy rocks on either side, and without them, at this speed, the
Fortuna
would ride up onto the shore and be shattered –

But, in the blink of an eye, we were through. The rocks and islets receded behind us, and ahead lay open sea: far ahead, a distant solitary sail.

Glete went forward to exult over his timorous pilot, and Count Dohna joined me at the larboard rail. ‘What do you think, Sir
Matthew
?
Montnoir’s fluyt, is it not? He has still to clear the southern point of Wrango, and in this wind, he will not find that easy. We shall have him.’

‘God willing, my Lord.’

‘You are pale, Sir Matthew, and shivering. I trust you are not catching a chill? Or still suffering from your detention?’

‘In truth, my Lord, I think General Glete’s notion of seamanship is the cause.’

‘Ah. Yes, I recall I felt much the same the first time he brought me this way. Pride is the general’s great weakness, Sir Matthew – pride in this craft and its crew.’

The beat of the drum remained steady: Glete was pressing his men hard. We were in more open water now, but a myriad of islands still lay all around. The fluyt was dead ahead, wearing and tacking to try and work into the wind and get out into the open sea that lay beyond the island of Wrango. In the open sea and with a following wind, even such a cumbersome vessel might hope to outrun a galley. But among the islands and with the wind against her, the fluyt had not a hope. To emphasise the point, Glete ordered a shot across her bows from one of his chase-cannon. The little general evidently drilled his gun-crews well: a small fountain of water a few dozen feet ahead of the fluyt’s bow gave due warning to her skipper that if the
Fortuna
’s captain so chose, his ship would swiftly be reduced to mere flotsam upon the brine. The fluyt’s great sail was loosed and she hove to.

Glete despatched one of his young ensigns and a dozen men to search the vessel and bring back the Seigneur de Montnoir. Time passed. No man emerged from below decks on the fluyt. Finally the ensign appeared at the rail and made a universal gesture that needed no translation by the old general. There was no sign of the quarry: the Knight of Malta was not aboard.

The skipper of the fluyt was brought over to the
Fortuna
. He was a big man, bearded and with dirty straggling brown hair, and he towered
over Erik Glete. This mattered not a jot to the general, who proceeded to berate the skipper in furious Swedish. One needed no mastery of the language to comprehend that the man was being singularly
uncooperative
; his responses consisted principally of grunts and the occasional murmured sentence.

‘A Hallander oaf,’ said Glete for my benefit. ‘Still loyal to Denmark, a full twenty years after we took it off them. Won’t say a damn word worth the hearing, but I’d say the bag of gold
Louis d’or
my men found in his cabin speaks loudly enough.’

Just then Count Dohna came back on deck, having been below to answer a call of nature. The Halland skipper frowned, then abruptly hid his face in his hands and shook his head vigorously. Dohna stepped over and spoke so quietly to him in Swedish that no others aboard the galley could hear his words. At length, the skipper lowered his hands and spoke. His reply was far more voluble than anything he had said to Glete. I could make out none of it, other than one word that I
recognised
. A place name: Uppsala.

Dohna raised a gloved hand and the skipper fell silent again. The Count spoke once more, this time receiving a lengthy and gabbled reply from a man who now seemed to be unable to get words out of his mouth quickly enough. Finally Count Dohna turned to Glete and myself: ‘It seems Montnoir employed this man and his ship as decoys. The
Frenchman
anticipated pursuit, and chose instead to cross to Denmark in a fishing craft. I do not doubt that he paid her skipper equally well. A remarkably resourceful man, our Lord Montnoir.’

Glete looked out to larboard, toward a distant island distinguished by an unusual double lighthouse. ‘There’s an entire fleet of them to southward, over by Nidingen,’ he said. ‘He could be anywhere amongst them, or already slipping out of the fleet and making for Danish water.’

‘Then he is gone,’ I said. ‘With such an advantage, neither
Fortuna
nor
Cressy
have a hope of catching him.’ Kit Farrell and the
Cressy
would be beating far out to the west to avoid the treacherous rocks of the
archipelago before trying to come back up into the teeth of the breeze; a tiny craft such as the one Montnoir would be aboard could sail much closer to the wind and thus outrun a Fourth Rate easily.

‘Indeed,’ said Dohna. ‘That being the case, General, we should return to land.’

‘As you say, My Lord. And the skipper? A confessed traitor? To be confined below, then turned over to the courts?’

‘I think not, General. This man might have been deluded by King Louis’ coin and a lingering loyalty to Denmark, but he is a sturdy
fellow
– formerly a merchant of Varberg, indeed, before he fell on hard times in the late war, and a representative of Halland’s fourth estate in the
Rijksdag
when it first came under the Three Crowns. I would have such a man proclaim to his fellows Sweden’s beneficence rather than be an example of its vengeful wrath.’

Glete raised urgent and loud objections to this, but Dohna’s reply was brief and all too evidently curt. The old general bowed his head stiffly in the Teutonic manner and reluctantly ordered the release of the skipper.

With the south-westerly still blowing strongly, the
Fortuna
was able to hoist sail for the voyage back to the galley dock west of Gothenburg. The rowers emerged onto the upper deck and took the air before
indulging
in the substantial victuals that Glete ordered to be broken open for them. He intended to remain on deck, he said, putting his cabin at the disposal of Count Dohna and myself. It was smaller than the space available to me as captain of the
Cressy
: smaller and much lower, which fact caused no little difficulty to an English knight who stood more than a foot taller than the tiny general who commanded the vessel. But it was decorated as fantastically as any captain’s cabin of an English first rate, the planking overhead being adorned with a gaudy portrayal of the deeds of Magog, grandson of Noah, from whom the Goths and then the Swedes descended. Or so Count Dohna claimed.

I was still hungry after my incarceration and set to the plates of salt-fish that Glete’s servants provided with some vigour. Dohna ate only sparingly, picking up only the occasional morsel with his gloved hand, and at first he said little. I still harboured doubts about the enigmatic count. He seemed to have proved his allegiance by setting the
Fortuna
to pursue Montnoir’s decoy ship; but the Frenchman’s escape made me wonder whether the whole episode might not have been a charade devised by Dohna to distract me while Montnoir fled Sweden by another means. Perhaps it was but a ruse to delude me into placing my entire confidence in him, prior to some future betrayal that he and Montnoir had hatched before the latter’s flight. It was, I decided, time finally to confront the Count Dohna.

‘So, my Lord,’ I said, finishing a glass of acceptable and most
welcome
Rhenish wine, ‘how came you to do the bidding of such a serpent as Montnoir?’

The large round eyes flashed angrily. ‘I do no man’s bidding, Sir
Matthew
. Montnoir deceived me, just as he deceived the High Chancellor.’ Dohna looked away. ‘But in one sense, perhaps you are correct. I did not realise just how dangerous a man the Seigneur de Montnoir is. I thought I had the serpent by the tail, but all the time his teeth were buried in my flesh.’

‘You will tell of it?’

He looked back at me and fixed me once again with that unsettling, penetrating stare of his. After what seemed like an eternity, he said ‘Yes, Sir Matthew, indeed I will. You see, I would not have you remember me as either a devilish villain or a foolish dupe. For you must certainly think me one or the other, do you not?’

I sensed that Dohna appreciated plain speaking. ‘One or the other, my Lord.’

He smiled. ‘As would I, were I in your place. Very well. You know that I serve Christina. I was one of those who accompanied the Queen to Rome, following her abdication. She retained sovereign rights over
her own court, so we were our own little country, invulnerable to the laws of whichever land we were in. Her abdication settlement bestowed upon her extensive estates to enable her to maintain that dignity. Of late, however, Her Majesty has become increasingly convinced that the High Chancellor is depriving her of a portion of the revenues that are rightfully hers by the terms of her instrument of abdication. As the
steward
of her castles and estates here in the west, I was sent back to find evidence of De La Gardie’s delinquency.’

‘The High Chancellor seems to look upon you as an ally rather than an enemy, My Lord.’