I could have let her go without a word.
Perhaps I should have done. Indeed, even as I rode out over London Bridge, that was still what I was minded to do. True, I had an explicit order from the Lord High Admiral, directing me to return to the Royal Sceptre at Woolwich to expedite her fitting out for sea; but both the Duke of York and I knew that this was a fiction, for my ship would not be coming out of dry dock before the winter. Whether she would come out after that was a moot point, as there was already talk that the King had too little money to contemplate setting out a fleet the following year, especially with London, the great fount of money, in ruins. On the other hand, Woolwich removed me from any prospect of an encounter with the Duke of Albemarle, who had arrived in London to save it, only to find all the fires put out days before His Obesity returned to the capital. It removed, me, too, from any further obligation to Captain Ollivier, whose parole had been taken up by the Duke of York himself. And it also removed me from the risk of betraying myself to Cornelia, although I had to trust in God that Phineas Musk would not somehow give me away instead. But the Lady Astraea was aboard a ship at Gravesend, waiting for the wind, and Gravesend was not so very far from Woolwich.
At the south end of London Bridge, I halted and turned in my saddle. When I had last been at that precise spot, only some three weeks earlier – three weeks, for Jesu’s sake – I had looked out at a London that was still intact and proud. Now, I could have been looking upon a scene painted by old Brueghel. Only a few blackened remnants of church towers, walls and brick chimneys stood above a vast heap of rubble, some of it smouldering. And overlooking it all, the shattered remains of old Paul’s, its roof and large parts of the walls gone. Yet even from the south bank, I could see tiny figures of men clearing space amid the wreckage, starting to erect the timber frames of new buildings. There had been no official permission to do so; but that was the way of Londoners. Nothing was more certain than that a new London would rise from the ashes. Whether it would be the sort of London that the King and his advisers in such matters, the likes of Christopher Wren, wished to see, was quite another matter.
I rode on, down the familiar highway that led through Deptford and Greenwich toward Kent and the sea. I cut inland to avoid the sight of Woolwich yard and the masts of the Royal Sceptre; I would be there soon enough, fighting pointless battles with Identifiable Pett. Instead, I pressed on to Gravesend, where the usual mass of ships huddled beneath the protecting, comforting walls of the blockhouse, some waiting to proceed up river, others out into the open sea.
Aphra Behn’s ship was a small flyboat, bound for Antwerp. The lady in question watched my approach as I was rowed out from the shore, and was waiting for me on deck when I got aboard.
‘Sir Matthew Quinton,’ she said. ‘I had not expected you. Not expected you at all.’
Now that I was there, a few feet in front of her, overwhelmed once again by her charms, I realised I had not the slightest idea what I intended to say to her.
‘I – I could not let you go without a word.’
She smiled.
‘Ah, the famous Quinton sense of honour. I’d have thought you knew enough of the world to realise that there are times when it is better to let matters rest – to part, indeed, without a word. The firing of London and the saving of the lives of the royal brothers would have marked a fitting break between us.’
I knew that her words were true, and sensible, and right. But to hear them from her lips felt like a culverin ball hammering into my chest and blasting my heart clear of my body.
‘I wanted to say – that is, I meant to say…’
She raised a finger to my lips. The touch of her flesh, even such a tiny part of her flesh, made me shiver.
‘To you, perhaps, I am a temptress,’ said Aphra. ‘What the preachers would call a fallen woman, a brazen harlot, or words to that effect. Perhaps, though, since the King’s return, we live in a time where the more enlightened might think of me as a woman of independence, striving to make her way in the world by whatever means she can. Or at least, I hope they would.’ She looked away, but I could have sworn there was a hint of a tear in her eye. ‘Ours was but a single, strange moment in time, in this strangest of years. The year of the Great Fire. The year of the Beast.’ A hint of her smile returned. ‘You should put me behind you, Matthew. Soon, you will have a child, and your world will change. And if you become Earl of Ravensden, it will change even more. But there is no world you can inhabit that has a place in it for the Lady Astraea.’
I could think of no reply; no reply that mattered, at any rate.
‘You will be safe?’ was all I could manage.
‘Those whom I watch in Flanders, on behalf of your brother and Lord Arlington, are milksops compared with our friends the Horsemen. But don’t concern yourself for me, Matthew. Concern yourself for the things that matter in your world – that truly matter. Who knows, though, perhaps one day I shall model a character upon you.’ She was smiling broadly again. ‘A worthy knight. A man of rare honour in a dishonourable world. Yes, I think a playwright could make something of that. With embellishments, of course, and dramatic licence, for that is what we do.’ There was a curious edge to the smile now. ‘A little more roguish, perhaps. More of a rover.’
I could see the shipmaster fidgeting. I knew that stance: the eternal impatience of the captain who knows that the conditions are very nearly right to take his ship to sea. The wind was set fair for Flanders, and the wind must not be denied.
We parted, and I returned ashore. A little later, from the roof of Gravesend blockhouse, beneath the fluttering colours of the Union Flag that flew above it, I watched as the ship carrying Aphra Behn unfurled sail, picked up momentum, and began to move down Long Reach. Soon, it disappeared behind the land and the other hulls and sails thronging that stretch of the Thames. And as I watched it, I struggled with all that welled up inside me.
When I next met Aphra, some years later, both of our circumstances were different; very different indeed. For one thing, I was a father. The birth was long and difficult, the child a thing of wonder, the mother doting, and the christening, held on a freezing winter’s day in the miraculously preserved Temple Church, a splendid affair, proving that new life was returning to London. My brother, restored to as good a state of health as it was his wont to enjoy, was able to attend, as was my mother, the Dowager Countess, who managed to struggle down the icy roads from Bedfordshire. Tristram was there, resplendent in his doctoral robes, as was my sister Elizabeth and her husband Sir Venner Garvey, now a member of the Parliamentary committee enquiring into the causes of the Great Fire of London. A committee that was blissfully unaware of the existence and purpose of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which was exactly how my brother and I intended it to remain.
But all thoughts of conspiracies, and politics, and even of a return to sea, were put aside as Cornelia and I went to the font. There, we were joined by the principal godfather, grinning broadly. King Charles the Second loved children almost as much as he loved the act of begetting them.
And so Francis Gale baptised the sand-haired, keen-eyed, curious infant who from henceforward would go by the name of Madeleine Quinton.