The Plague Doctor Murders: A gripping 17th-century cozy historical mystery by Ellis Blackwood

Author:Ellis Blackwood [Blackwood, Ellis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vintage Mystery Press
Published: 2024-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter sixteen

Kentish Knock

Seventeen-year-old Henry Trevelyan set out from Portsmouth in 1641, fired up to fight for king and country. It was his duty, he considered, as a proud Englishman.

The reality of the political landscape had different plans for him.

Henry began his training as a gunner’s mate aboard HMS Lionheart. He quickly discovered that taking charge of a small fishing boat bore no resemblance to manning a muzzle-loading cannon on a royal warship.

The first few weeks opened his eyes. He slept in a hammock in cramped, squalid conditions below deck; ate food that was tasteless or rotting; was paid a pittance; swabbed the decks; learned how to furl and unfurl sails and to work the rigging; mastered firing a musket and handling a cutlass; and spent hour upon hour training to clean, load and fire the heavy bronze cannon. Night-watch duty meant he rested only fitfully. All that relentless routine and deprivation before he had even fired a shot in anger.

Yet he embraced the life. It gave him a true purpose and a cause to stand behind. When his thoughts drifted back to Cornwall, those early years felt diminished to him - a pointless, grinding subsistence. If only my father could see me now, he thought. And Peck. And that sanctimonious harbourmaster, Robert Penrose. He longed to sail past Mousehole and call out from high in the rigging, “Look at me now!”

The following year, King Charles’s battle for control with Parliament reached a stalemate, resulting in Civil War, pitting royalist against parliamentarian, Englishman against Englishman. Trevelyan’s visions of leaping to the defence of his monarch were swiftly shattered when the majority of the navy sided with the King’s opponents.

It was a new cause that he would grow to embrace. The King sought autonomy at the expense of his citizens’ rights; moreover, he had married a Roman Catholic, the Frenchwoman, Henrietta Maria, and many feared a return to the doctrine of the old religion.

The Lionheart helped to patrol the English coastline, protecting its trade routes and supplying parliamentarian garrisons. To Henry’s dismay, the bulk of the fighting took place inland.

Only when he was transferred to the Mary Rose did he finally experience battle, and he was itching for it.

In late April 1644, his warship was sent to aid the parliamentarian commander, Robert Blake’s forces in defending the garrison at Lyme Regis in Dorset.

The Mary Rose weighed anchor, and Henry found himself rowing ashore to take up a musket against the royalist attackers led by Prince Rupert. Fighting among his crew-mates, not much older than himself, he discovered an innate talent for leadership.

As the outer defences of the town were breached, Henry personally took charge of his small band of sailors, fortifying a strategic building and repelling a fierce royalist assault. When the gunpowder smoke had cleared, just one of his group had been killed, while the enemy forces lay dead and dying around them. Henry surprised even himself.

His quick wits and bravery were noted. Robert Blake personally sought him out afterwards to commend his decisive action and to offer support for the young man’s naval career.

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