The Lion of Midnight (5 page)

We boarded the
Thomas and Mary,
the largest ship of the fleet. Kit led Musk and I below to the master’s cabin, a low, dark space which bore only a passing resemblance to the captain’s cabin of a man-of-war. Eight men stood within. Their expressions told me at once that this would not be an easy encounter.

‘Friends,’ said Kit, who would know how to mollify these tarpaulins if any man could, ‘I name Sir Matthew Quinton, the heir to the most noble Earl of Ravensden and captain of His Majesty’s ship the
Cressy
!’

If the introduction was intended to impress, it evidently had little effect. The eight looked me up and down appraisingly, but the hostility did not leave their visages. At length, though, one stepped forward. He had a great gut but no left arm. ‘John Gosling. Master of the
Thomas and
Mary
. Here, Thomas Crafts of the
Hopewell
, Tom Simpson of the
Lastoffe
Merchant
, Dick Noble of the
Charles
, Tom Tyndall of the
John and
Abigail
, Nathaniel Adams of the
Gloucester
, Jack Tilford of the
Delight
, Joss Burlingham of the
Unity
.’

‘I greet you all,’ I said, assuming my most knightly air. ‘I commend you upon the state of your ships and the preservation of your cargoes through what must have been a trying winter.’

The one named as Tyndall, a short and beetle-browed fellow, snarled ‘Aye, only trying ’cos you wasn’t here four months ago.’

Kit glanced at me, but I ignored the disrespect. ‘His Majesty and His Royal Highness regret the exigencies of the service did not permit the earlier despatch of a ship to convoy you home –’

‘And which exigency would that be, then?’ snapped Tyndall. ‘That there was no money for a convoy, or they simply forgot about us?’

This time Kit did not wait for a signal from me. ‘You will speak with due respect to Sir Matthew!’

Gosling, evidently the spokesman and a more moderate man, scowled at Tyndall, who fell silent, but not before I thought I heard him mutter to his neighbour, Adams, some remark about ‘fucking butterfly gentleman captains’. ‘Our apologies, Sir Matthew,’ said Gosling. ‘But we have been as impatient to sail as Sir William Warren has been to receive our cargoes.’ The great timber merchant, this; a man whom I had encountered only by reputation, but who was said to have tricked our Navy Office, notably the bustling Mister Samuel Pepys, into signing a vast mast contract on terms most favourable to himself.

‘Just as the navy has been impatient to receive them from Sir
William
,’ I said, I trusted in a pleasant and reassuring tone. ‘But if you please, Master Gosling, I would have some notion of the size of your cargoes.’

Gosling shrugged. ‘The inventories are open for your inspection, Sir Matthew.’ He gestured toward a small mountain of documents and sailcloth-bound books upon the cabin’s much-repaired table.

A man-of-war captain dealt daily with a monstrous pile of paper: lists, letters, musters, inventories. I needed no more. ‘No doubt, Master Gosling. But in summary, please?’

The man looked at his fellows as if to suggest I had asked him for the moon. ‘Five hundred and twenty-six masts, Sir Matthew. The best Swedish spruce and fir. The biggest mast fleet to sail for England in many a year. The most, seventy-one, aboard the
Delight
. The tallest, one of twenty-three hands and two of twenty-two, here on the
Thomas and
Mary
. Most of the masts of sixteen and fifteen hands.’

‘And there’ll be no more,’ said the man who had been introduced as Burlingham.

‘Aye,’ said Gosling, ‘that’s likely.’ My face must have been blank, for
he continued ‘You’ll not have heard, then, Sir Matthew? But the news would have reached England after you sailed – if it’s got there at all. There’s to be an embargo on all cutting for seven years. Conserving stocks, the Swedes say. But we know different.’

‘Their Chancellor’s in the pocket of the French,’ said Noble of the
Charles
. ‘And before he announced the embargo, the French duly bought up all the remaining stocks. ’Twas a miracle Sir William got his hands on a consignment this big. But there’ll be no more, so you brave captains had best take down the Dutch ere long.’

‘Now the Danes are coming into the war too, they’ll cut off the
supplies
over in Danzig and Riga,’ said Gosling. ‘So we’d best hope the ice melts soon and you get us home safe, Sir Matthew. Without our cargo, you’ll have no navy by the end of summer – or at any rate, no ships with masts that can bear a sail.’

I glanced at Kit, but he had no comfort for me. This was dire indeed. During the great fight off Lowestoft in the previous summer, I had
witnessed
at first hand the awful frequency with which masts were felled in battle. I recalled the crack of great timbers, the roar as yards, shrouds and canvas fell to the deck. Our foes, the Dutch, fired high on the uproll to achieve precisely that end. In a nutshell, then, the number of replacement masts aboard the fleet, together with those in the
dockyards
, meant that the fleet could fight perhaps another two large actions, maybe three, before all of our great ships became mere immobile hulks. The previous war had seen seven battles, and then we were fighting only one opponent, not three.

‘Well then,’ I said, aware that in such a case a king’s captain ought to show bravado rather than self-doubt, ‘we shall do just that, my friends. When the ice melts, the
Cressy
and her captain will indeed see you safe home to England. You have my word upon it.’

By the time we emerged from the cabin of the
Thomas and Mary,
night was falling fast. The cold was already as bitter as any I had ever
experienced
, but Gosling counselled that it would be yet worse within an hour or two.

‘To attempt a return to the
Cressy
before morning would be folly, Sir Matthew,’ said Kit.

‘Aye, folly,’ said Musk brusquely. ‘I have mutiny in mind if you even suggest it.’

‘Very well,’ I said heavily; the force of their argument was undeniable. To risk the unfamiliar road back to where the
Cressy
’s boat was berthed, in winter darkness and the extremity of this unimaginable cold, seemed indeed the very height of folly. ‘We shall seek out My Lord Conisbrough and his vaunted friendly inn –’

My attention was taken by a sudden glimpse of light on the far shore, less than half a mile away. I walked across to the starboard side of the
icebound
Thomas and Mary
’s poop, the better to make out the unexpected sight. Kit, Musk and Gosling joined me at the rail.

‘Three fires?’ I said, chiefly to myself. ‘They seem to be upon the ice, Mister Gosling.’

‘Strange, Sir Matthew,’ said the mast-ship master. ‘There is but little habitation on that shore. I have not seen fires in that quarter on any of the nights we have lain here.’

As we watched, dark shapes seemed to move in front of the flames. It took a few moments more for the truth to strike me. The flames were coming nearer. I could hear a distant but unmistakeable sound of hooves: the hooves of galloping horses.

I turned to Kit, but he had already divined the question I intended to ask him. ‘We are under attack,’ he said bluntly.

Gosling bawled for his men to assemble on deck at once with swords and loaded muskets. The other seven mast ship captains emerged, heard
Gosling’s hasty explanation and ran to the ladder that let them down from the side of the ship onto the ice. Orders were barked to the
nearest
ships ahead of us in the ice, the
Charles
and the
Unity
; we heard the repeating cries to the further ships in the line. As frantic English voices broke the calm of a Swedish winter night, I primed my pistols and awaited our foe.

‘Riders are taking an almighty risk, going at the gallop upon ice,’ said Musk as he snatched a musket from one of the
Thomas and Mary
’s crew and began to prime it as though he had not a care in the world.

‘There are no riders, Musk,’ I said. As I squinted my eyes against the dark and the cold, I was more and more certain of what confronted us. The flames moved at a constant forward speed behind the galloping horses, which could be glimpsed from time to time as silhouettes against the fiery light. But the flames also had a different momentum, horizontal, then upward –

‘Fuses,’ I said. ‘Barrels of powder lashed to rafts of wood, pulled by horses desperate to flee from the flames.’

A crude weapon, impossible to guide with any accuracy – but with so little distance between shore and target, and the eight mast-ships moored close together in ranks of two, the attackers did not need to
concern
themselves with precision. Our ship-masters’ natural urge to cluster together for mutual security had created a vast and surely unmissable target. The horses must have been held until they were in a frenzy, then sent off toward the mast ships with cracks of the whip. Instinct would make them seek out the gaps between the ships, but that, in turn, would swing the deadly rafts around, bringing them close enough to the hulls for even an approximately adjacent detonation of the powder barrels to wreak considerable damage.

The thunder of hooves upon the compacted ice grew louder. The beasts neighed frantically, desperate to escape the terror they drew behind them. Gosling’s men lined the rail, levelling muskets and attempting clumsily to load and aim a couple of six-pounders, but these were clearly
men unused to their weapons. Kit ran to instruct the gun crews, but I cursed my decision to leave my men aboard my ship. If only I had brought a leavening of the Cressys with me –

A great flash of light, a thunderous roar, and the rightmost fire-raft blew itself apart, perhaps three hundred yards short of the ships. I heard the terrible death-agony of the horses pulling it, but thankfully was spared the sight by the vast cloud of smoke that rolled toward us.

‘A poorly set fuse,’ said Kit. ‘God be thanked –’

His words were cut off. Nervous and afraid, a few of Gosling’s men reacted to the blast by opening fire at once. Their fire was crude and aimless.

‘No man fires but upon my order!’ I cried. Gosling glared at me, but neither he nor his men dared usurp the authority of a Quinton warrior knight. ‘All of you – take aim upon the nearer horses! The horses, not the raft!’

Obeying my own command, I levelled my own pistols toward the nearer threat. The other raft and its horses had pulled away well to our left, heading for the middle of the mast fleet. The men there would have to shift for themselves.

‘Steady, lads!’ I cried. ‘Check you’re truly primed, check you’re not firing your ramrods! Hold your fire – hold – hold –
give fire!
’

The guns of the
Thomas and Mary
belched out. I fired my two pistols at once, feeling the pain in my shoulders as the weapons kicked back. The smoke stung my eyes and filled my nostrils. Our fire had been
ragged
; these were no musketeers of the Duke’s Regiment, that much was certain. And as my eyes cleared, that impression was confirmed. The horses had been hit, had slowed and were stumbling, but still they were coming on toward the ships. The fuse behind them showed no sign of joining its fellow in detonating early. And now the deadly cargo was perhaps no more than a few dozen yards away –

‘Give fire!’

I turned to see Kit Farrell play the part of gun captain and apply a
lighted match to the linstock of the nearest six-pounder. The gun spat a great tongue of fire and recoiled viciously across the deck, trapping the leg of a man who was too slow or stupid to get out of the way. The fellow’s cry of agony was echoed in an instant by an almighty explosion as the oncoming raft of powder barrels was struck by Kit’s shot and blew to kingdom come. The blast was close enough to send wood and horse flesh alike crashing into the hull of the
Thomas and Mary
and the men upon her deck. Something struck me and span me round. Off balance, I fell heavily to the deck. I must have been stunned for some moments, for I was suddenly aware of Musk shaking me. As I opened my eyes, I saw barely a foot away upon the deck that which must have struck me: the left half of a horse’s head, its single eye staring unblinkingly at me.

I climbed unsteadily to my feet in time to witness the explosion of the other raft. Without a captain and lieutenant of the navy royal to direct their fire, the other ships had never stood a chance of repelling the assault upon them. I could not see the full impact of the blast; the ships immediately ahead, the
Charles
and
Unity
, were intact, so the raft must have struck the vessels ahead of them. The fireball carried aloft ships’ timbers and human limbs alike. I had seen ships blow up at the Lowestoft fight the year before, and knew that although damage had been done, the stricken mast-ship had not been destroyed. But this was still the crisis; if the fire was not controlled upon the damaged ship, or if it reached its powder magazine, it might start a reaction that could destroy the entire fleet. We could not cut cables and move the ships apart: we were all embedded in the ice as firmly as well-founded houses in good honest earth.

‘It’ll be the
John and Abigail,
’ said Gosling. ‘Tyndall’s borne the brunt.’

I recalled the rude fellow who had taken issue with me so recently in Gosling’s cabin. ‘Keep a half-dozen men with you in case of another attack, Captain Gosling,’ I ordered. ‘The rest, with me to the
John and Abigail
!’

Kit, Musk, Gosling’s men and I climbed down onto the ice and ran forward, past the inert hulls of the
Charles
and the
Unity
. As we passed the latter we could see the damage to the
John and Abigail
, and I gave thanks to God that it was not as bad as it could have been. Much of her starboard midships planking had been staved in by the blast, but her frames seemed intact. Tyndall might have been an insolent scoundrel but he evidently knew his business: he already had chains of men
bringing
up leathern buckets from his hold to douse the small fires that had broken out upon his deck and precious masts, and was giving brisk orders to the parties of fresh men arriving from the other ships. The
John and Abigail
, and more importantly the entire mast-fleet, would be spared.