Free The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) by J. D Davies

command, I send you to them now, at Clarendon House.’ Coventry relaxed and smiled. ‘You should feel honoured, Captain Quinton of the Merhonour . You will be one of the very first men to set foot in the new palace of King Edward.’

 
     
     
    But damn’d and treble damn’d be Clarendine,
Our seventh Edward, and his house and line!…
And that he yet may see, ere he go down,
His dear Clarinda circl’d in a crown.
    ~ Andrew Marvell, Second Advice to a Painter
     
    I rode north and then west in a waking dream. The Merhonour . Sixty-four guns, nine hundred tons burthen. Twice the size of the largest ship I had commanded thus far in my career. A crew of three hundred and eighty men. A veritable leviathan upon the ocean – aye, and one of the most famous ships of proud Albion! The Merhonour was so very old that she had been built when England was still Catholic and still possessed Calais. Her first captain was an aged bastard of King Richard the Third. She had fought against the Invincible Armada. Rebuilt and repaired many times, she had fought the corsairs of Algiers for the first King James and the Dutch for Noll Cromwell. ‘Matthew Quinton, captain of the Merhonour !’: I was in a transport of delight as I repeated that most glorious sentence over and over in my head. My satisfaction was multiplied by the knowledge that I was not the first of my name to command that great ship. For in the year 1595, she was the flagship of my grandfather, the eighth Earl of Ravensden, in Essex’s expedition against Cadiz. I even thought I could hear the old swashbuckler’s voice in my head: ‘ You take good care of my ship, lad! ’
    Thus it was an inordinately pleased young man of twenty-five who rode out of the confines of Westminster into Pickadilly, said to be increasingly the most sought-after district of the city: great new houses were going up on the north side, where they were still surrounded by fields. A small herd of deer, grazing contentedly on the edge of Saint James’s Fields to the south, watched me curiously as I rode by. It was an idyllic day. Perhaps I should have reflected that the greatest happiness often precedes the greatest horror, but I was oblivious to such dark thoughts.
    My destination loomed before me. It would be a truly vast palace, that much was clear; but it was yet newly begun, and only the tall, graceful central block was complete to its full height. Two wings stretched away on either side, but that to the left was barely above its foundations and that to the right was a mass of scaffolding. As I drew nearer, I was treated to the full chorus of hammering, sawing and swearing that attends any work of building in England. But unlike any other work of building in the land, this one was surrounded by a ring of fearsome, red-coated and heavily armed troops. These, I knew, were present day and night, regardless of whether or not the owner was within; for there were many in London who would gladly have burned down this monstrous edifice to one man’s ambition and vanity. As I rode through the cordon, I saw not a few scowls upon the faces of those who traversed Pickadilly.
    I dismounted at the foot of the half-finished grand stairway that swept up to the door. With not a little pride, I informed the lackey on duty there that this was Quinton, captain of the Merhonour , for audience with the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary. He pointed me toward the half-finished left, or west, wing. I struggled across uneven ground made even more treacherous by a clutter of broken bricks and stray timbers, entered through a great hole that would eventually become a fine south-facing window, and heard the Chancellor’s familiar, booming West Country voice long before I saw him.
    ‘– and I intend a nursery there , Bennet, for when Anne comes visiting with my grandchildren.’
    ‘A splendid prospect indeed,’ replied a voice that was deepest Suffolk; but even from a distance, I could detect that beneath the accent