The Lion of Midnight (4 page)

We rode through the outer lines of fortifications and came to the south gate of the city, a fine structure bearing a statue of the late King Gustavus Adolphus within a niche in the wall. Brass cannon poked out of the embrasures atop the ramparts. Guards came to attention as we passed through the gate unchallenged, much to the disgust of the long queue of ordinary citizens seeking admittance. Within the ramparts, Gothenburg was a very Amsterdam in miniature, narrow houses rising from narrow streets on either side of a frozen canal. The narrowness of our way forced us into single file, and the young major shouted back to me that we were fortunate: if the canal had been clear and the stevedores able to work upon the stranded barges, it would have taken us hours to get through the throng. As it was, the conditions had driven all but a few hardy and well-wrapped souls from the street. Yet other eyes were upon us, glimpsed occasionally looking out of windows or from
shadowy
doorways. In those eyes I saw a gamut of human emotions: utter unconcern, curiosity, suspicion. And rather too often for my comfort: hatred.

At the head of the canal, and at right angles to it, was an even broader waterway, lined by warehouses and grander houses. We rode across a wooden bridge that could be opened to allow the passage of shipping – not that any of the craft frozen within the ice had any prospect of moving until a thaw came. Some of these were quite large, and one flew an ensign that I recognised at once: a red field with a blue canton bearing the cross of Saint Andrew. A Scotsman, then, and a privateer by
the look of her, mounting some twelve guns. Her shrouds were crusted in ice, like those of every other vessel stranded in that great canal, but unlike the others, she was not entirely deserted: a stout man with no left leg stood upon the deck, gripping his crutch tightly, seemingly
impervious
to the cold and staring brazenly at us as we passed. On the far side of the waterway was the large German church that I had spied from
outside
the city. We rode beneath its walls into the broad public square that lay beyond it, dismounting before a large building that resembled many of the town halls I had seen in the Low Countries. The stairs leading up to the door were guarded by an impressive body of pikemen.

The major led us up into the heart of the building, into a large
chamber
beneath a fine wood-vaulted roof. Two great fires made it blessedly warm. Several dozen well-dressed men and a smaller smattering of women stood around, regarding us curiously: burghers and other
dignitaries
of the city, Conisbrough whispered. In the centre of the room stood a round, jowly creature in a breastplate crossed by a sash of blue and yellow. In truth he looked about as unlikely a military man as
Phineas
Musk, whom indeed he vaguely resembled.

‘Ter Horst,’ said Conisbrough in a low voice. ‘Still as self-satisfied a worm as when I last saw him.’

The major stepped forward and made an announcement in Swedish, evidently proclaiming the entry of the ‘Baron Konigsburg’ and a
creature
called the
riddare
Matthias Kven-don.

The jowly personage stepped forward, smiled, and embarked upon a long speech of welcome in a high, thin voice and bad French, remarking upon his delight at this re-acquaintance with his old and dear friend the noble Lord Conisbrough, the honour done to his city by the presence of the famous Sir Matthew Quinton, who had distinguished himself in arms so mightily, and his earnest desire to be of service to the most esteemed King Charles. As Ter Horst droned on and on, my attention wandered. I noticed that the same was true of Kit, but in his case, his attention had wandered toward the only young woman in the room, a
comely creature with fine yellow hair and a smile that revealed her at once as the daughter of the Landtshere. Moreover, she seemed to be returning Kit’s interest in her with an ample measure of her own.

I was only dimly aware of Ter Horst’s peroration. ‘… and thus, my dear English friends, I rejoice that I am in a position further your great king’s stated aim of reconciling old foes, of putting behind you the divisions and enmities of your land’s troubled past.’

There was a pause. I glanced at Conisbrough, whose expression was unreadable. Ter Horst seemed quite inordinately pleased with himself. His other guests smiled knowingly at each other in anticipation of
whatever
spectacle was to come.

A door opened at the far end of the hall, and a man stepped forward. He was perhaps of my brother’s age or a little older: a thin man with a sallow, unremarkable face and a calculating expression, clad in an
ordinary
black raiment. To me the features were unknown, but for those older than I, that was evidently not the case. I was aware of a growl from Musk, behind me. I saw Conisbrough’s eyes narrow. He said one word: ‘Bale’.

I felt a shock as intense as any I had known in battle. It was as though the air had been sucked out of the room and the icy wind outside had hammered its way through the very walls. I felt myself sway. I looked into the eyes of the newcomer, and he into mine.

I was looking upon the face of the man who had killed my king.

I had seen the document. My brother and my uncle showed it to me in the muniment room of the Parliament house, a few days before the king’s coronation. I had read the words. By the time I came to the
warrant
’s grim peroration, I was in tears at the enormity of it, the rank injustice, the sheer affront against natural order and the law of God:

I had looked beneath those words, and seen the fifty-nine signatures that ordered the severing of the head of the Lord’s Anointed. I had read the first of the names, ahead even of the confident scrawl of ‘O Cromwell’. A single, fateful, fleeting word, the shortest of signatures.

John, Lord Bale of Baslow, was the only peer to have subscribed his name to the death warrant of King Charles the First, Saint and Martyr. By virtue of his rank, he signed first of all those hell-bound devils, the most evil
men in the entire history of the kingdom. John Bale killed a king, and by so doing he had become the foulest of traitors to my rank and kind, the nobility of England. My mother brought me up to detest the regicides; upon my tenth birthday, she made me swear that if ever I encountered one, I would imperil life and limb to avenge our slaughtered sovereign. I needed no encouragement, although I did not know then – did not know until very recently – that my mother’s wrath was born in part of having once been the slaughtered sovereign’s lover. As it was, to every one of my friends, to every cavalier in the land, the regicides were the greatest
anathema
, the most notorious murderers ever to walk the earth. Many had already met righteous justice in the courts and upon the scaffolds of the restored King Charles the Second; those like Cromwell who had avoided such retribution by inconveniently dying beforehand were exhumed from their grand tombs, given a posthumous execution and cast into common grave-pits. Others had been tracked down and despatched by loyal agents of truth and retribution. But a few were still at large, and now I, Matthew Quinton, breathed the same air as one of them.

‘What monstrosity is this, Ter Horst?’ growled Conisbrough. ‘How dare you insult His Majesty so?’

The Landtshere feigned perplexity. ‘An insult, My Lord? How can it be so, when I merely seek to implement your king’s own policy? And surely you, My Lord Conisbrough, have especial cause to embrace My Lord Bale –’

Still stunned by the dread apparition before me, so few yards away, I did not fully comprehend what Ter Horst had said to Conisbrough. I was thinking only of my oath to my mother, an oath given a new and powerful impetus by the astonishing knowledge I had acquired so few months before: that the king whom Bale had put to death was my mother’s lover, and perhaps the father of my brother Charles. My heart screamed at me to draw my sword, cross the room and bury into deep into the foul murderous heart of John Bale –

‘– but remember, My Lord, I am the Landtshere of Gothenburg, and
thus bear the full authority of the King of the Swedes, Goths and Wends in this city. There will be no disharmony, no ill words and above all no violence here, in my own quarters. Is that not so, My Lord?’

Conisbrough’s face was a mask. ‘As you say, My Lord Ter Horst.’

He bowed to the Landtshere, and reluctantly, I joined him. Ter Horst smiled and moved away to greet Bale. Conisbrough turned to me and led me to the side of the hall.

‘How Ter Horst will have enjoyed that,’ he said. ‘See how greatly amused he is by our discomfort, and what sport his people make of us. This whole occasion has been nought but one great joke at our expense.’

‘What can we do, My Lord?’ I demanded urgently. ‘This is the
gravest
dishonour imaginable, to ourselves and to our king!’

‘Think I’ll just slip outside to piss,’ said Musk. ‘Might be a long one. Long enough to still be there when that king-killing fucker comes out.’

‘A noble aspiration, Mister Musk,’ said Conisbrough, ‘but it cannot be so. You see why, Sir Matthew, do you not?’

My feelings still raged within me like a sea-storm, but I was
clearheaded
enough to perceive the truth. ‘For us to kill Bale would play into Ter Horst’s hands,’ I said. ‘It gives him an excuse to persecute all the English in Gothenburg. Perhaps even to prevent the sailing of the mast-fleet. All to the advantage of his friends, the Dutch.’

‘More, too,’ said Conisbrough wearily, ‘but that is sufficient for now, I think.’ He looked across the room. Having made his point, Ter Horst had left Bale and moved off to join his own coterie, who were clearly highly amused at our embarrassment. Conisbrough nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I think it is time to disappoint the noble Landtshere.’

To my surprise he strode boldly across the hall, making directly for Lord Bale. The regicide watched his approach intently, a cold smile upon his villainous face. Conisbrough gestured toward a vacant space at the other side of the room, and after a moment’s hesitation Bale turned and followed him. The two noblemen of England fell into a whispered but evidently urgent conversation.

‘To be a fly upon the wall behind them,’ said Musk. ‘As if a fly could survive in this damnable city of ice.’

I looked around the room. ‘But that would not be the only wall to be a fly upon, Musk.’

Musk followed my gaze to where Kit Farrell was attempting to find some sort of
lingua franca
in common with Ter Horst’s daughter, apparently with some success. ‘Hope she’s not got her father’s sense of humour,’ said Musk, gruffly.

A sudden commotion at the other end of the room made me turn. Lord Bale was irate, but his eyes suggested more than mere anger: even from a distance, it was easy to see that he was tearful, not simply enraged. He stabbed a finger angrily at Conisbrough. ‘We will meet next in Hell, My Lord!’ cried the regicide. He pushed past the giant figure of Conisbrough and pushed brusquely through the throng toward the door directly behind me.

I know not what instinct impelled me, but I stepped directly into Bale’s path. I was aware of Ter Horst’s and Conisbrough’s eyes upon me, respectively urging and decrying the rashness upon which I must have seemed intent.

The regicide stopped barely a yard from me. Confused from his
quarrel
with Conisbrough, he looked at me blankly. Then he frowned. ‘You will be Quinton,’ he said. The voice was old beyond his years, and tired.

I knew not what to say. I could not take in the enormity of it all. I was within a sword’s length of this most vile, most unforgivable of
sinners
. Suddenly I was aware that somehow, unconsciously, my hand had come to rest upon the hilt of my blade. All I had to do was draw and strike. None of Ter Horst’s men were near enough to stop me. In one stroke I could end him, fulfil my childhood promise to my mother, and earn the undying gratitude of my king and my country.

For what seemed a very eternity, Matthew Quinton and John Bale stared each other out.

Strangely it was Conisbrough’s page, the boy North, who burst the
bubble. I had not been aware of him near my side, but like every good attendant, he knew his master’s mind well: he spoke exactly the words that Conisbrough himself would surely have spoken, were he in North’s place.

‘Not here, Sir Matthew. Not now.’

I was overwhelmed by an apprehension of the enormity of the moment. I had been perhaps a heartbeat away from dragging England into war with Sweden. What lesser outcome could there be for the cold-blooded murder of a man granted sanctuary by the Landtshere of Gothenburg, under that dignitary’s very roof? And that act of murder would surely also be suicide for he who wielded the blade. My mother might have been proud that I died so, but my wife would have been inconsolable.

John Bale sensed my condition. He looked upon North curiously, nodded, and said calmly to me, ‘No, Sir Matthew Quinton, not now. But we will talk, you and I. Count upon it.’

He brushed past me, his right arm touching mine. The arm that wielded the pen which signed the death warrant. The shock ran through me like a lightning bolt, and my hand shook.

As Bale left, I struggled to comprehend his words:
we will talk, you and
I
. Not
fight
, which was surely the only and inevitable outcome between a king-killer and a cavalier. Instead,
talk
. But what, under heaven,
Matthew
Quinton and John Bale possibly find in common to talk about?

Phineas Musk stepped up to me. In such circumstances, I was never entirely certain whether he came to see how I fared or to reprove me for not acting as he would have done.

‘Should have gone for that piss,’ Musk said. ‘I’d be out there now. With a blade.’

I took a deep breath and looked my old retainer in the eye. ‘And I have no doubt, Musk, that it would have been the last piss you ever took. Bale will have his own bodyguard, of that you can be certain, even before one reckons upon Ter Horst’s soldiers.’

I remembered what Conisbrough had told me of the rival gangs that stalked the streets of Gothenburg. In such a hell-hole, a man like John Bale would only be able to walk abroad with a small army at his back; and if the place was as full of malcontents as Conisbrough said it was, Bale would find footsoldiers enough. As the tumult of my thoughts subsided I gave thanks for my prescience in denying immediate shore leave to the Cressys, although I knew I could not long delay the moment when my stout lads poured ashore to add to the heady brew that was Gothenburg. It was easy to make Phineas Musk see reason and not bring on the diplomatic crisis that I myself had very nearly precipitated; I doubted if I would have the same success with drink-filled Cornish seamen whose fathers and brothers died loyally and heroically in the service of the king whom Bale had murdered.

Conisbrough and Kit Farrell joined me, the former intimating that we should withdraw and thus deny Ter Horst the pleasure of further sport at our expense. Kit seemed downcast at that, and it was not
difficult
to divine the cause of his displeasure. He stole a long backwards glance at the maiden Ter Horst, who returned his farewell with a wistful smile.

My intention had been to summon the mast-ship masters to attend me on the
Cressy
on the following day, but the unanticipated brevity of our reception by the Landtshere meant that even a winter’s day in Sweden still had several hours of daylight left to it. Moreover, following my febrile encounter with Lord Bale I felt a deep need for the reassuring certainties of the sea-business; even a gentleman captain of King Charles could feel a sudden and overwhelming need to feel a deck beneath his feet. I had been unsettled more than I could say by my encounter with the regicide, and there was still a part of me that felt I had betrayed my mother and my king by not executing the villain there and then. Thus I determined to visit the mast-fleet immediately, and sent Kit ahead
to forewarn the masters. Conisbrough and his page left us, apparently intending to secure rooms at an inn known to be favourable to English king’s men. Musk and I pressed on, passing the stranded Scots privateer and following the directions Conisbrough had given us to the west gate, close to the boom that by night sealed the entrance to the Great Canal. Uncharacteristically Musk said nothing throughout our journey,
seemingly
intent on keeping his footing upon the treacherously icy roadway; but he had known me since I was a child, and no doubt sensed the strange conflict that was raging within me.

We emerged through the walls of Gothenburg, past the export
warehouses
filled with pitch and tar and the import sheds brimming with Spanish leather, Cadiz salt, Syrian textiles and Scottish wool. As we walked out onto the narrow strip of land that fronted the river, a grand paradox presented itself. What should have been a wide and busy
waterway
was transformed instead into a great white field, a grand carpet of ice. Men walked upon it as though strolling in a pasture. Stalls had been set up near the clusters of stranded ships, selling wares that seemed to range from roasting chestnuts and fish to aquavit and wolf-furs.

‘A veritable frost fair,’ said Musk. ‘Remind me, Sir Matthew. Just when did you say we would be back in England?’

‘You are impudent, Musk,’ I said, without conviction.

‘So your grandfather told me. And your father. And your brother. Your mother too, while we’re about it. But it seems to me that pointing out your mast fleet is stuck fast in the ice can’t be impudence, Sir
Matthew
, not when we can walk all the way to it, which seems to me to be that which learned men call a
fact
. Might that not be so, Sir Matthew?’

I did not answer Musk, but it was impossible to deny the force of his argument. The ice was as solid as the paved floor of Westminster Abbey.

We approached the mast ships and could now clearly see the
principal
difference between them and ordinary merchantmen, which loaded their holds through hatches in the upper deck: instead, the mast ships had two large ports cut in their sterns, immediately below the windows
of their masters’ cabins, through which the vast wooden pinnacles could be loaded horizontally.

Kit came out to meet us. He was attended by a small guard of men, each bearing a musket and looking upon me suspiciously. My lieutenant saluted and said ‘The masters await you aboard the
Thomas and Mary,
Sir Matthew.’

‘And their temper, Mister Farrell?’

Kit smiled. ‘Akin to the weather, Sir Matthew. Inclement.’