I blushed.
‘I shall make up a bed upon the floor, Mistress. I – I am accustomed to sleeping upon decks, when there is a prospect of battle.’
‘Is there a prospect of battle tonight, Sir Matthew?’
She tilted her head, and smiled innocently. She took a step toward me.
‘I am a married man,’ I said, my throat suddenly as dry as glasspaper.
‘So is the King. Such an upstanding model of marital constancy to us all. But you, too, Sir Matthew, are an upstanding fellow, I see.’
Another step. She was close enough for me to catch the first hint of her scent.
‘I am a married man,’ I repeated, for I could not think what else to say.
‘And you have never been unfaithful to your wife? My God, Sir Matthew, for a man of your rank, you will be unique in England if that is the case.’
Part of me wanted to scream I have never been unfaithful to my wife, but the other, rather larger, part knew that for the lie it was. Admittedly, I had never been unfaithful to Cornelia in England. In all, since our marriage, I had slept with five other women, but all of them had been abroad – one, indeed, at sea – and all of them after inordinate periods of absence from the wife for whom I loved and longed. I had deluded myself by applying my satyr-like uncle Tristram’s dubious logic, namely that Protestant marriages were deemed invalid by the Papists and the Mahometans, so fornication in any land under the sway of those faiths (that is, the great majority of the known world) could not possibly be adultery. But there were no possible legal or moral grounds that could permit an extension of this principle to Essex.
She was very close now. Very close indeed.
She was utterly beautiful. And, since I had learned Cornelia was pregnant, I had not – we had not…
The likes of Robin Holmes and, God help me, the King of England, would have been shocked by my restraint and prudishness, had they known of it. But I could not suppress my memories of childhood escapes to the mill and the smithy, and overhearing what the goodwives of the local villages said to their lusty boys and their wenches: of how doing it to a wife with child damaged babies in the womb, made them soft in the head, and other such nonsense that the brother of an Earl, even one barely breeched, should have dismissed as arrant superstition and foolery.
Superstition and foolery that, twenty years later, made Sir Matthew Quinton reluctant to lay a hand on the wife who might be carrying the future Earl of Ravensden, despite that wife being eager enough. For some reason I had a sudden image of Captain Ollivier, and felt my heart chill, just as another part of me warmed unbearably.
I gripped Aphra’s shoulders. I could still have pushed her away, still proclaimed my constancy to my wife, still been faithful. If I had only shared Cornelia’s steadfast belief in predestination, I could have argued –
Argued what?
For predestination was the most elusive of masters. Perhaps it was predestined that I should reject the advances of this skirted would-be Shakespeare. Or perhaps it was predestined that I should take her bodily, there and then.
Who knew?
As it was, I looked into Astraea’s eyes, and saw dark, bottomless pools of lust. My hands slipped from her shoulders, down to her breasts.
She sighed.
‘You are brazen, Mistress Behn,’ I said, at last.
She slipped her hands inside my shirt.
‘Ours is not an age that values chastity and modesty in women, Sir Matthew,’ she said.
I kissed her, and her tongue responded enthusiastically. We moved to the bed, our hands moving urgently over each other’s bodies, pulling off clothing. And then we gave ourselves over to sin – to warm, moist, blissful, guilty, predestined sin.
I slept little, and rose before dawn. She was still asleep, her bare arms lying free above the blanket, a peaceful smile on her lips.
I walked down to the foreshore, breathing in the smells of the sea and the mud. It was starting to get light in the east, where the fleet was still at sea. A fleet I should still have been with, seeking out Dutch or French men-of-war. In the creeks within the marshes, and at the wharves within the villlage, fishermen were already at work, preparing their boats and their nets prior to setting out. A large merchant hull, a prize fly-boat by the looks of her, was newly hauled up high on the beach, so high that it would surely only be possible to float her off upon a spring tide. A sheet of canvas covering a patch of hull below the waterline suggested that she had been holed, and been run ashore for repairs. A young man, some three or four years younger than I, stood next to the ship, upon the mud of the estuary, looking up at the piece of canvas. He saw me, and nodded in silent greeting. A member of the carpenter’s crew, contemplating the day’s work ahead. Or so any observer would have assumed.
The sun came up, and bathed me in new-born guilt. I felt pain in my bones, in my head, in my blood. I had slept with Aphra Behn. I had betrayed Cornelia. I had sinned against my marriage vows. In England. In Essex. What, in God’s name, had I done? What if I had made her with child? She had assured me it would not be so, but women’s assurances upon that issue had been found wanting by mankind since the beginning of time. What if a bastard child lived, and the legitimate child, the heir to Ravensden that my wife might be carrying, perished? I thought of the old Mennonite woman’s curse. What sort of retribution – what might befall Cornelia, our child, if it was ever destined to be born and to live, our very world?
‘Give you joy of the morning, Meinheer Vandervoort,’ said a familiar voice behind me, in English. ‘You are about markedly early, this day.’
Lost in my thoughts, consumed by guilt, I spun around with a start, and the words of an English reply framed in my mouth –
Only to come out, by some miracle, in Dutch.
‘Your pardon, Meinheer, I do not understand you.’
He repeated his previous words, this time in Dutch.
‘As are you, my friend,’ I replied.
‘Sallows,’ said the fellow. ‘Daniel Sallows. If I know your true name and business, Meinheer, there’s no good reason for you not to know mine, now is there?’
A gesture of fellowship. But we both knew that his first addressing me in English had been one more attempt to catch me out.
‘And how goes your business, Meinheer Sallows? Will our ship be here in five tides, as you promised? The day after tomorrow?’
‘That it will. You have my word on it, Meinheer Vandervoort, and I’m ever a man true to his word. But there are other men, also true to their words, who are keen to talk with you.’
I feigned alarm.
‘That was not part of our agreement.’
‘It’s a part of it now. Oh, these men won’t delay your sailing, Meinheer. But they have propositions to put to you. It will be to your advantage to listen to them. Tonight, at eleven. At the church. And to display their bona fides, they won’t insist on you coming alone. Bring your man, if you wish, as a safeguard.’
‘I do not like it.’
Sallows stepped closer.
‘Meinheer, if you want to get out of England, you’ll be at the church tonight. Leigh is mainly true to the Old Cause, but even a place like this has its share of malignants, and not a few who’d inform on you to one of the Essex Justices if they were to receive an anonymous information. And if you were to be arrested by a constable or the militia, Meinheer, how long do you think it would be before you were taken up to London? I’d reckon Lord Arlington would be very interested in your story, especially as it concerns his wife. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Very well, Meinheer Sallows, it shall be as you say. Eleven at the church.’
We walked out later that morning, looking for all the world like ordinary travellers taking a tour of inspection of the village. Aphra looked every inch the demure Puritan maid, and Musk dawdled dutifully a couple of paces behind us. I struggled to make conversation. I feared that any words I uttered would betray to the whole world – worse, would betray to Phineas Musk – the guilt of my adultery with this woman. As it was, I could have sworn I saw a knowing, condemning look in Musk’s eyes. I tried to chide myself. That, after all, was surely nothing more than the way in which Musk always looked upon the world. Yet it also seemed as though the gulls, swooping above us while searching for rotten fish to devour, were shrieking ‘Sinner!’
We proceeded past the strand and the jumble of meanly-built, lath-and-plaster houses clustered around the street and the foreshore. Many of the mariners may have been away at sea, but there were still many fishermen at work on their nets and the hulls of upturned boats pulled up onto the shore. These were curious affairs, double ended, with pointed sterns and a wet well in the middle of the boat where the catch could be kept alive. I wished to learn more of these ‘peter boats’, as I later discovered they were called; but I was a monoglot Dutch banker, not a captain of the Navy Royal, so I had to feign ignorance of everything I saw and heard.
Finally we were well out of earshot of any bystanders, climbing the steep path that led uphill, from the main street of Leigh to its parish church. This, dedicated to Saint Clement, stood near a substantial old stone-fronted, three-bayed house, which appeared to be empty. The graveyard was full of headstones for long-dead mariners; of the living, there was no sign.
‘Good place for a secret meeting,’ growled Musk from behind us.
We stopped and turned, pretending to take in the view. This was impressive. It was a fine, warm morning, with the Kent coast clearly in view, and several large merchant hulls outbound upon the newly-turned tide and south-westerly breeze. What appeared to be a Second or Third Rate lay at the Buoy of the Nore, presumably just come in from the fleet, but she was too far away to make out her identity. Victualling hoys, outward bound, were coming out of the Thames mouth. Closer at hand, several fishing smacks and cockle boats of Leigh lay at anchor in the roadstead. The flyboat was still aground a little further along the beach.
‘High enough to give a good view in all directions,’ said Musk. ‘And it’s out of the town, so easy to escape north, west or east if they need to. A fair choice as a meeting place for suspicious men.’
‘It might not be them,’ I said. ‘There are disaffected creatures galore in these parts. All sorts of rebels and traitors who might want a Dutch banker to fund their conspiracies.’
‘It’s them,’ said Aphra. ‘Lesser men wouldn’t scruple to come to us at the inn. Men who were less wary of being recognised.’
‘But how can we confirm it?’ I demanded. ‘I can bring only Musk to the meeting – they’ll be mightily suspicious if Vandervoort the banker turns up with his wife. And my Dutch might be good enough to fool Sallows, but I doubt if it’ll bear more than a few seconds’ listening by a native Dutchman such as Schermer, assuming he’s there.’
Here, of course, was the difficulty: the great conundrum that no amount of thinking and talking on the parts of Charles Quinton, Aphra and myself had been able to resolve. If the Horsemen came to us at the inn, it might have been just possible to conceal Aphra, so that she could cast eyes on them and confirm their identities without them recognising her. But if we encountered them in any other way, in any other place, it was almost impossible to see how Lady Astraea could identify the Horsemen of the Apocalypse without giving away her own identity to them. If that happened, the elaborate trap that my brother had devised would come to naught.
‘I shall think of a way,’ said Aphra.
‘We have only a few hours, Mistress,’ I said.
‘Then I shall think of a way quickly,’ she said, smiling in that impudent, irresistible way of hers. ‘In the meantime, let’s go into the church. A little prayer might be efficacious.’
Musk glanced at me. I knew that look: it was his customary expression when he thought he was upon on a fool’s errand.
Leigh churchyard looked very different by night. There was little light; none from the dark mass of the adjacent house, only a few dim candles and lanterns showing in windows in the village below, or on boats in the roadstead. Table tombs and headstones that had looked innocuous in daytime now appeared infinitely sinister, as though the Last Trump had just sounded and the skeletons were stirring beneath, about to break through the prisons of earth and stone placed above them. There was a strong easterly breeze, and the rustling of the trees heightened the effect.
Sallows stepped out of the castellated porch of the church.
‘You’ve brought your wife,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t what I said, Meinheer.’
Musk and Aphra Behn stood just behind me, the latter caped and hooded.
‘If the men I am to talk to are English,’ I replied, ‘then it is likely English will be spoken by some, is it not?’ Sallows nodded. Even now, he could hardly reveal that those I was meant to be meeting might be Dutch. ‘So my wife can ensure that any translation from one tongue to the other conforms to what is actually said. A guarantee on both sides, Meinheer Sallows. A form of insurance, if you prefer.’
Even in the darkness, I could see Sallows frowning. On the one hand, I was stating all too clearly that I did not trust him to interpret correctly; but then, he could hardly have expected anything else.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I expect that is very much what a banker would demand. It is no matter. Your wife may stay, Meinheer.’
Sallows lifted something on his lips, and blew two short blasts. A sailor’s whistle.
Some moments passed; perhaps an entire minute. Then a dozen or so figures appeared from behind the west end of the church.
The ghosts of long dead monks.
The momentary thought chilled me, but passed at once. These were men, real, living men, though they were cowled as Aphra was. Men who did not want their faces seen. But why so many of them? We had been expecting one, two or three – no more.
‘Meinheer Vandervoort,’ said one of the cowled men, in Dutch; in the tones of a native speaker. ‘A banker, I’m told.’
This was the moment of truth. I prayed to God that Cornelia and her brother had taught me well enough.
‘That I am. Whom am I addressing?’
The fellow did not reply. Had even my first words betrayed me?
‘Not your concern,’ said the cowled man, at last. ‘A fellow countryman of yours. That is all.’
Aphra sniffed loudly, as though she was troubled by hay fever. Our agreed signal for identifying this particular one of the Horsemen. Anton Schermer – the Precious Man.
The other hooded men fanned out around the churchyard, surrounding us. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of them were the other two Horsemen. It was also impossible for us to retreat.
‘You seek passage to our country,’ said Schermer. ‘And you shall have it, on one condition. A surcharge, if you like, upon the terms you have agreed with Master Sallows, here.’
‘This is robbery!’
‘Not so. This is revenge – and as a Dutchman, it is revenge in which you should rejoice. Revenge for what the arms of the malignant reptile Charles Stuart lately inflicted at the Vlie and Terschelling. A simple charitable act on your part, Meinheer, to facilitate a suitable form of retribution, and a new dawn of freedom here in England.’
Careful, Matt –
‘Of course,’ I said, trying to say as little as possible. ‘But what revenge?’
Schermer did not answer immediately.
‘Your speech is very strange,’ he said. ‘Even for Assen. I have been to Assen, and the people I talked to did not speak like you.’
A deep breath – but before I could reply, one of the other hooded men, standing by a headstone to my left, stepped forward. I thought he was trying to get a closer look at me, or to see Aphra Behn’s face beneath her own hood.
‘Phineas Musk,’ he said. ‘You cheated me out of five guineas in Alsatia, you fucker, that time in Ram Alley. And you’re a fucking King’s man!’
‘You’re certain?’ said another cowled figure.
Aphra coughed twice. So here was Shadrach Goodman, Mene Tekel himself.
‘Works for Lord Ravensden, that’s a friend of the Stuart whoremaster!’
Here was the flaw in our grand plan. Something none of us had ever considered. We had prepared for the eventuality that someone in Leigh might know me by sight, or that one or more of the Horsemen might recognise Aphra Behn. But none of us – not even Charles, Earl of Ravensden, whose planning was normally so meticulous – had envisaged the possibility that someone might identify Phineas Musk.
What happened next was a blur. The hooded men drew weapons – daggers, swords, at least three pistols. Schermer drew a fine rapier.
‘I thought you were no Dutchman,’ he said, advancing towards me, Sallows at his side.
I drew the knife I had secreted at my belt, but otherwise, I had only one weapon; and that weapon was a single word. A single, shouted word.
‘Sceptres!’
A musket shot shattered the silence of the Essex night. The ball struck a tomb a few inches ahead of Schermer, who suddenly crouched. I made for him, but Sallows interposed himself, brandishing his blade in my face. Another two musket shots, followed by the sound of men running on hard ground. I caught a glimpse of Musk wrestling with the creature who had recognised him, and of the other hooded men retreating, trying to get out of the churchyard, but having to fight their way through the men who were now pouring into it. My men.
I wanted Schermer, but could not reach him for Sallows. The Precious Man turned and ran.
‘Bastard!’ cried Sallows. ‘Cavalier bastard!’
He lunged for me, but missed. Instead, he found himself staring down the barrel of the pistol brandished by the young man who now stood at my right flank. Ensign Lovell, the young man whose nod I had acknowledged alongside the beached flyboat that morning. The beached flyboat that had secretly held a score of the Royal Sceptre’s Marines within its hold.
‘Good work, Ensign,’ I said, as one of the Marines bound Sallows’ arms behind his back.
‘Too dark for good aiming, Sir Matthew,’ said Lovell.
I could hear shouts, and the sounds of men running. Marines were in pursuit of rebels, but they knew the ground and Lovell’s men did not. If the Horsemen alone had appeared, as we hoped they would, it would have been an easy matter for our men to surround the churchyard, or wherever else we might be able to lure them into the open, and secure all of them. But the Horsemen were no fools; the three who still lived had not survived years of ferocious war without learning how to take sensible precautions in such a situation as this.
Aphra Behn was pulling back the hoods of the prisoners, examining their faces intently.
‘None of them,’ she said. ‘We have none of them.’
‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘Ensign Lovell, search the town. Every house, every garret, every cellar.’
But I held out little hope.