The Lion of Midnight, page 20
‘Do you know, Sir Matthew,’ he said finally, ‘for at least the last ten years I have asked myself that same question in almost every waking moment?’
North stepped forward and punched him hard upon the left cheek. ‘Liar!’ he screamed. ‘Do not pretend that you repent of the crime, Bale! That falsehood will never win you favour in a court –’
‘Mister North,’ I said sternly, ‘you will favour me by not striking the prisoner here in my cabin or aboard my ship!’
North shot me a furious glance but moved away reluctantly to stand by the stern windows.
‘But there you have my answer,’ said Bale. ‘The blind enthusiasm of youth. I was twenty-one when I signed the warrant, Sir Matthew. I was fourteen when the civil wars began. My eldest brother was killed at Edgehill, the next at the first Newbury fight. My home was burned by Prince Rupert’s men; the first girl I ever loved was raped and killed by one of his dragoons. I was afired by my belief in God’s righteous cause, convinced that He had made me an instrument of His divine justice, so as soon as I was old enough I went off to fight. But when I inherited my father’s title and went to the House of Lords, what did I find? The timeservers were discussing new terms to be offered to Charles Stuart! To the man who had inflicted nought but blood upon the land for long years on end!’ A furious North stepped toward the prisoner once again, but I raised a hand sharply. ‘So I listened eagerly to those who proposed another course – to General Cromwell and those like him who denounced the King as a man of blood. And when the moment came to sign, to place my name first upon the warrant – ah, the pride that I felt! I truly believed we were giving birth to a new England, a land free of tyrants, a land where the will of the people would prevail.’ He shook his head. ‘If only I had known then that I was signing my own death warrant as surely as that of the King.’
North could bear no more. ‘Lies! Damnable, impudent lies! But they will not save you, John Bale! Nothing can save you! Sir Matthew, you may persist with this travesty if you wish. I will have no more of it.’
He stormed past me and left the cabin. ‘A dangerous young man,’ said Bale. ‘He reminds me greatly of myself at that age.’
‘The regicides remained inveterate to a man,’ I said, ignoring his comparison of himself with Lydford North. ‘You were all proud of what you did. Why is it that you alone claim to have repented, John Bale?’
‘I was the most senior of them, as a peer of England, but I was also by some considerable measure the youngest, too. They were firm in their opinions, but mine were as yet barely formed. And as I grew older, I came to see things were not as I thought them to be. Oliver Cromwell, a man whom I had believed to be a vehicle of godly reformation for England, took upon himself more power than even the dead king had ever possessed. Great God, Sir Matthew, he was even offered the crown itself, and very nearly took it. So what had it all been for, if I had brought down a tyrant only to set up a far greater one? To behead King Charles only to put King Oliver in his stead? At much the same time I married Conisbrough’s daughter and my son was born. Marriage and fatherhood change a man’s perspective mightily. You have found that yourself?’
‘I am married,’ I said, ‘but we have not yet been blessed with the joy of children.’
I had no idea why I was confiding in this creature, who had committed the most heinous crime of all.
‘I trust you will come to know such joy. But that is how I come to my present condition, Sir Matthew. If I could have had my life over again, I would never have dipped my quill in the ink pot and applied it to the parchment. Four letters – my name. Four letters that damn me, my wife and my son.’
I was taken aback by his apparent honesty; I knew the devil would be equally plausible, but as he spoke, there seemed to be less and less of the diabolic about John Bale. Time, then, to ask him my second question.
‘Was that why you told my men where Montnoir was holding me? Did you seek to mitigate your crime by saving my life?’
‘Sir Matthew, nothing can mitigate my crime. In that, young North is undoubtedly correct, although I think both you and I know it’s just as well. I will die a traitor’s death, and I am prepared for it. No, I saved your life because you were a fellow Englishman in peril at the hands of a Frenchman and a papist. I have many friends in Gothenburg – men opposed to the High Chancellor, able to glean intelligence from all kinds of quarters. So I knew of your Lord Montnoir and his designs, Sir Matthew. Of what he proposed to do in Queen Christina’s name. Even if you and I disagree upon the ideal form of government for England, I think we would both agree that a Catholic Sweden is something that all true English Protestants should oppose with all their might.’
‘I am grateful to you for my release,’ I said, although a part of me still found it galling to make such a gesture to a king-killer.
‘And I to you for saving me from North’s pistol shot when I surrendered,’ he said.
‘Surrendered? I have two men with wounds testifying to how hard we had to fight to capture you!’
‘I did not wield the sword against them. I wished to surrender myself to you, but my men would not permit it. To them, I was a symbol – they believed I had to live and be free as a sign that Charles Stuart will never prevail, that what they call the cause of the godly will triumph once again,’ said Bale. ‘But I came to think differently. With Conisbrough dead, I knew my life here was not worth the candle. Sooner or later, a man like your Master North – or a Swede bought with Charles Stuart’s coin – was bound to put a pistol to my head or drive a knife into my ribs. In truth, I have been a dead man walking since I put my signature to that accursed piece of paper. How the hot-headed follies and enthusiasms of our extreme youth can condemn us, as surely as my act that day condemned the late king! I am tired of concealment, Sir Matthew, and above all, I have a mighty urge to see my wife and son before I die. That is all the repayment I ask of you. Intercede with the King to permit them one interview with me before the executioner does his work.’
I thought of my King, that infuriating, inconstant crowned enigma. The one cause to which he was constant – indeed, fanatically so – was the relentless pursuit and destruction of his father’s murderers. I doubted whether I could convince him to permit the indulgence that John Bale had requested; but perhaps my brother, the Earl of Ravensden, one of his most intimate friends, could succeed if I could not. I chided myself for even thinking such thoughts, for why should I pander to this regicide? But then, I undoubtedly owed this regicide my life.
‘I can guarantee nothing,’ I said, and ordered Ali Reis and Tremar to take John Bale below.
* * *
The fleet moved south-south-west through the archipelago at a painfully slow rate. The Cressy had constantly to shorten sail to accommodate the speed of the slowest mast-ship, although there seemed to be considerable competition for that dubious honour. Several, notably the Delight, tended to fall away sharply to leeward, compelling their inadequate crews to struggle to adjust sail sufficiently for them to be able to beat back up to the body of the fleet. It was soon plain to me that even with so little distance to travel, we would not make the isle of Wingo, and thus the exit from the archipelago, before nightfall; far from it. The flood tide was nearly begun, and I knew from the outward voyage how powerfully the current ran in those waters. Rather than risk losing one or more of the mast-ships by attempting to steer through shoal water and a host of islands by night, against the tide, we would need to lay up and proceed again in the morning. As this realisation grew within me, I paced ever more impatiently upon my quarterdeck. Every hour of delay increased our danger. It was already more than likely that intelligence of our sailing had been despatched across the few miles of water that separated us from Denmark, and if our enemies had ships ready for sea, which they were surely bound to do, the wind was in their favour. The westerly was nearly ideal for ships sailing from Frederikshavn or Kristiansand, whereas we would have to tack into it; and having seen such clear evidence of the ineptitude of the mast-ships in an easy beam reach, I dreaded the thought of them attempting to beat up into a steady gale.
Reluctantly, I ordered the hoisting of a blue flag at the mizzen peak, the agreed signal for the convoy to drop anchor. We did so in the lee of a small island that the charts named as Buschar, the Cressy lying to windward of the mast-fleet. As our bower anchor was loosed and the maintopsail was furled, the lookout barked a report that the Fortuna was in sight. This time Erik Glete approached at a leisurely pace, his craft approaching out of the dying light in the south-west, the Swedish pennant streaming from her ensign staff. One of his bow guns fired a salute of three; I had one of our larboard sakers return the same. The proud old galley came alongside, and both the little general and Count Dohna came aboard.
‘Had to give you a proper farewell to Sweden, Quinton,’ said the new Landtshere of Gothenburg as Kit, North and I entertained our visitors in my cabin. ‘My Lord Dohna insisted upon it.’
‘Quite so,’ said Dohna. ‘But there is something I wish you to see, Sir Matthew. In private.’
We drew apart from the others and went to stand by the stern windows of my cabin. Dohna gestured to one of his young attendants, who came over and presented him with a leather case. From it the Count drew two sheets of paper. He gave them to me and said, ‘Here is the proof I promised you – the proof of what was done in this place by your brother and others so many long years ago.’
The top sheet was a receipt, and it was written in English.
Item, of cannon: twelve.
Item, of cannonballs: one thousand, two hundred.
Item, of muskets: six thousand.
Item, of swords: four thousand.
Item, of pikes: five thousand.
Item, of suits of cavalry armour: two thousand.
Item, of drums: fifty.
Received in the Crown House of Gothenburg, this nineteenth day of March in the first year of the reign of Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and France, and the sixteenth year of the reign of Christina, Queen of the Swedes, Goths and Wends, Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Nine.
Signatories of the first party: Signatories of the second party:
Montrose, Captain General Oxenstierna, High Chancellor
Brentford De La Gardie
Ravensden Conisbrough
The fact that Lord Conisbrough had signed upon the Swedish side, or the shock of seeing my brother’s familiar handwriting upon such a document in such a place, seemed less remarkable to me at the time than the information upon the second sheet, which lay beneath the receipt. It was exactly the same inventory, but this time it was written in French, dated from Uppsala eleven days before the receipt; in other words, it was the original order to issue the specified items to the Cavalier leaders. It was signed by exactly the same florid hand that had written the rest of the document. And there was the rub. It seemed simply inconceivable to me that the signatory would not have employed a clerk, or even High Chancellor Oxenstierna himself, to itemise the likes of cannonballs and drums. For the signature, alongside a wax seal bearing three crowns, read: Christina R.
I looked up and met Dohna’s gaze. ‘This is the equipage of an entire army,’ I said in amazement. ‘And the Queen made it a personal order, to the extent of writing out the entire inventory herself?’
‘So it was,’ the count replied. ‘The equipage of the army that would win back the throne for your King Charles. Remember I told you how deeply the Queen felt about it, Sir Matthew.’
As I studied the two documents, I recall how my mother had railed against the duplicity of the crowned heads of Europe, who claimed to have been outraged by the execution of one of their own yet then did not lift a finger to help his son’s cause. It was clear now with that she was mistaken: one monarch had taken up the gauntlet on behalf of the young, exiled King Charles, and that was the one monarch who was not a man.
‘Queen Christina provided the arsenal that could have defeated Cromwell and won back the kingdom,’ I said admiringly. ‘If only, My Lord Dohna.’
Dohna nodded. ‘Indeed, Sir Matthew. If only. The Queen’s generosity could have and should have won back your kingdom, but for the petty hatreds and staggering incompetence alike that then prevailed among your king’s supporters.’ The noble Swede’s features were animated now; it was though a dam had been broken, and the enigmatic Lord Dohna’s true thoughts were pouring through in a torrent. ‘Take Lord Montrose, for instance. The best, the most valiant of men. I met him, you see, along with your brother, during those fateful months in the year Forty-Nine. Sweet Mother Mary, there were legends and heroes galore stalking Europe in that year of all years, when the war of thirty years had just ended – Field Marshals, Generals, all of them with dozens of battles to their name, yet whom did they all respect? Montrose. To fight the campaigns he fought, against the odds he faced… And yet what became of him, Sir Matthew? Betrayed, executed and chopped into pieces by those who claimed, like him, to be fighting for your King Charles the Second. Christina would have done better to arm the idiots and lunatics that infest the alleys of Gamla Stan in Stockholm than to provide such an equipage to the treacherous crew of incompetents that made up your so-called Cavalier party at that time. I can still recall how the good men – the likes of your brother and Lord Conisbrough – fretted and raged against the vicious factions in your exiled court. Her Majesty told me much later that she realised the mistake she had committed in that March of 1649. You English royalists did not need weapons, Sir Matthew – you had plenty enough of your own. Instead, she should have sent you just three of our Swedish generals, fresh from thirty years of battle against the best generals in this world. They would have hit heads together, rooted out your chaff, put paid to your factions and given you victory in three months. After all, Sir Matthew, what was your Cromwell, your proud, strutting Lord Protector, other than a mere farmer but ten years before?’
I detested the memory of Cromwell: in one sense he, like Bale, was but one of the fifty-nine king-killers, but he was so much more than that, for his rule as Lord Protector of England had both denied the rightful king his inheritance and very nearly brought the House of Quinton to ruin. But Cromwell was yet an Englishman, from the same soil as myself (give or take the very few miles that lay between Ravensden Abbey and Huntingdon), and for all the Cavalier spirit that lurked within me, I secretly cheered the chilling dread of old England that his success in arms had driven like a dagger into the heart of every foreigner. Every foreigner, it seemed, except the Count Dohna.
My honour prevented me from defending Noll Cromwell; thus I blustered, and endeavoured to change the subject.
‘A mere farmer, as you say. But tell me, my Lord – do you think there might be at least some prospect of the High Chancellor reconsidering his position over the treaty that was proposed?’
‘I think England should not be sanguine,’ said Dohna. ‘I know de la Gardie. He will be outraged against Montnoir for the crimes he has committed in this kingdom, but he is intelligent enough to see that Montnoir is not France. And as I said to you at Lacko, Sir Matthew, the inducements offered by your king are feeble – hardly enough to make the three crowns abandon the rare state of peace it now enjoys.’
‘And the cutting of trees, my Lord?’
Dohna smiled. ‘Ah, your precious wood again. In truth, I cannot see the High Chancellor abandoning an embargo he imposed so very recently. And no man can deny that forests need to recover from the despoiling of recent times. But Sweden is a large country, Sir Matthew. There are few troops to patrol it. Most of the army is garrisoned across the Baltic, holding down our new empire. And I shall be returning to Rome within a few days.’ The enigmatic Count shrugged. ‘In my absence, it is not unlikely that evil men will seek to circumvent the embargo by cutting down trees on the Queen’s estates and then, let us say, shipping them to England from one of the Queen’s more secluded harbours, where they are unlikely to trouble the High Chancellor’s customs officers. Perhaps in ships flying false neutral colours – those of Spain are said to be particularly immune to searches. Why, it would not surprise me if those evil men were even now seeking out some of your English merchants in Gothenburg to seal contracts to that effect.’
I nodded as the true meaning of Dohna’s words dawned on me. ‘England would be eternally grateful for such a blessing, my Lord.’
‘A blessing, Sir Matthew? A manifest crime against Sweden? The high Chancellor would be appalled to hear you speak so, as would her Majesty Queen Christina.’
I bowed my head slightly. ‘As you say, my Lord Dohna.’
Glete turned away from his conversation with Kit Farrell and Lydford North. ‘My Lord,’ he said, ‘we had best be away to make best use of the flood tide.’
Dohna nodded, and we escorted our guests back to the entry ladder on the starboard side of the Cressy.
Dohna turned to me one last time. He signalled to his serving-boy, who ran forward with what seemed to be a small package. The lad handed it to his master, who in turn held it out toward me in his gloved hand. ‘A token of my respect, Sir Matthew,’ said Count Dohna, ‘and thanks for the service you have rendered Sweden.’
He pressed the object into my hand. It was evidently a book; I could feel the worn leather binding, and my thumb traced the outline of an ingrained armorial. But the curious, long face and large penetrating eyes of Count Dohna still held my attention, and I did not look in detail at the imprint.
‘Service to Sweden, My Lord?’ I said. ‘I fear I have rendered precious little.’
‘Do not be so certain of that.’ Dohna smiled. ‘The mysteries of the world are manifold, Sir Matthew. And yet for every mystery, there is an answer. So it is. So it has always been. Adieu, my friend, and may God guide and defend you in your perilous voyage to come.’
