The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) Read Online Free PDF Page B

indeed, it was essential to do so, lest one day others seeking vengeance challenged or distorted the record of all those things, good, bad and desperate, that were done in that time. Thus, as I leaf through the yellowing, legally-attested depositions made soon afterwards by the likes of dear Cornelia, my peculiar uncle Tristram, and the rest, I realise to my discomfort that, for the sake of keeping the flow of my narrative, I must now turn author and emulate that monstrous rogue Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe seems to have been read by every preening jackanapes and idle wench in the realm. What does it say for modern, gin-sodden England that such a slight tale should make a talentless oaf a very rich man indeed? Great God, a man wiles away his time upon an island – is that not the condition of every Englishman?
    So firstly, I take up and contemplate the account of Phineas Musk: long-time retainer to the Quinton family and more recently my clerk and unlikely guardian during my first commissions at sea. The bald word ‘account’ does insufficient justice to it; beneath Musk’s laconic mask lurked an imagination far outdoing that of my talented young neighbour, the Frenchman Arouet, who scribbles poetry, prose and what he terms ‘philosophy’ at a prodigious rate. (France being France, of course, he has to write under an alias – Volteer, I believe – but even that has proved insufficient to spare him exile upon our more tolerant shore.) Let us call it Musk’s narrative, then: the atrocious spelling corrected, the grammar made intelligible, the obscenities, digressions and tirades largely excised, by an entirely objective commentator, namely myself.
    With my brother Charles absent from London for his health (no-one seemed quite certain where), and his increasingly estranged countess withdrawn to her Wiltshire estate, or so it was said, Musk had almost no domestic duties to speak of. Although of course he omits to mention this in his account, boredom was a condition welcome to Musk, for it gave him the excuse to wile away his hours in alehouses, pontificating to all and sundry.
    ‘It’s all the fault of the French, this war, just mark my words,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Think on this. England’s a Protestant nation. Holland’s a Protestant nation. Between us, we have most of the trade of the world. After all, we’re told that’s why we’re fighting the butterboxes in this new war: the trade of the world is too little for us two, so one must down. Fair enough, I say.’ He took a draught of his ale and looked at the four sturdy craftsman who sat around the table with him. ‘But then you’ve got France, a Catholic nation. And it has its eye on the trade of the world, too. So what could be better for King Louis than for us and the Dutch to blast each other to Hell and back, leaving him to step in and pick up the pieces? We fight, but France gets the prize and puts the Pope back into England and Holland to boot. That’s what I think, any road.’
    A saddler of the Ward of Saint Katherine Cree demurred. ‘You see the French behind everything, Phin. I reckon the demons in your nightmares must be French.’
    ‘Aye, well, maybe they are,’ said Musk. No doubt he was reflecting upon his nominal mistress, the Countess of Ravensden, who had been exposed as an agent of King Louis, and upon a diabolic Frenchman, a Knight of Malta named the Seigneur de Montnoir, who had so nearly brought disaster upon us during a previous voyage.
    ‘Don’t make sense to me,’ said a farrier of Cheapside. ‘They say King Louis is trying to stop the war. He’s sending a great embassy to our king.’
    ‘Flummery,’ said a scrivener of Southwark. ‘The French have a treaty with the Dutch. They’ll come into the war on their side, mark my words. And then it’ll be all up with poor old England, when a combined French and Dutch army marches over this bridge, here.’
    They sat in an alehouse upon the Southwark shore. Through the