A Ship for The King Read Free Page B

gratitude that I warn you to be careful when you attend the King.’
    â€˜You are in serious vein,’ Mainwaring said staring hard at Strange and smiling at the concerned expression of his face.
    â€˜Well then, why else would His Majesty trouble himself further on your account?’
    â€˜Because, my dear Gideon, I have written a work upon the suppression of piracy and His Majesty has graciously consented to accept a copy from my hand. His Majesty, being himself an author, has a great love of books. On that account I am to wait upon His Majesty.’
    â€˜His Majesty would do better to commission some vessels of his own to cruise upon the coast as a guard to frighten and deter these villainous Moors from our shores . . .’
    â€˜Ah! You have the rudiments of a verse there, Gideon, damned if you haven’t . . .’
    â€˜Hal, ’tis a serious matter. These descents upon our people and the carrying of them off into slavery in Barbary are now a matter of regular occurrence. Why, whole parishes have been abducted!’
    â€˜I know very well what has been happening and do not need to be told, though I comprehend your bitterness . . .’
    â€˜I lost five years of my life to them . . .’
    â€˜And I risked all by placing my existence on account, Gideon . . .’
    â€˜But I was forced into slavery, Hal. You chose to go on account , as you put it, and I have never understood why. Were you not in a fair way to becoming a man of parts without so desperate a measure?’
    Strange paused, sensing he had been importunate, trespassing on Mainwaring’s feelings, though the conundrum had long fascinated him. Mainwaring he knew to have been of good family and, at the age of thirteen, or thereabouts, attended Brasenose College before being admitted to the Inner Temple. Some years later, conceiving himself a military rather than a legal man, he had been granted the Captaincy of St Andrew’s Castle in Hampshire. Mainwaring had bought an armed ship, the Resistance , from the King’s own master shipwright, Phineas Pett. He had also solicited and then been granted a commission from the Lord Admiral to cruise against pirates. Here was the great irony: having been entrusted with this task by the Lord Admiral, the Earl of Nottingham, Mainwaring had gone to sea and, in company with another ship, the Nightingale , had turned his coat. Instead of attacking pirates, of which there were numerous groups – both native-born and Moorish – off the coasts, many of which used remote bays in Ireland for their recruitment, Mainwaring had revived the sentiments of El Draco , Sir Francis Drake. Declaring his hatred of the Spanish and of Popery he thereby suborned his entire crew, announcing he intended to attack Spanish trade for the purpose of enrichment. Thus turning pirate himself he embarked on an indiscriminate and private war of which dark tales were told of his consorting with the King of Morocco and selling into slavery those of his captives who would not join him. It was in one such foray that he had discovered Strange, chained to the oar of a Moorish galley, and, trading Catholics for Protestants, obtained his release. In three years Mainwaring had acquired a squadron of five armed ships with which, in 1615, he appeared among the cod-fishing fleets on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland. His name had been linked with that of Peter Easton, the self-declared Admiral of a loose confederation of seamen, who, dispossessed of their living by King James’s indifference to his Navy Royal, had found themselves driven to this extremity.
    Easton had subsequently made himself useful to the Duke of Savoy; had been ennobled and, taking a wealthy Catholic lady to his wife, retired a Savoyard Marquess, luxuriating in wealth and status. After Easton’s departure Henry Mainwaring succeeded him as the pirates’ ‘admiral’.
    By this time, however,