The Mountain of Gold by J. D. Davies

isles. But there was also a truth in it, for the bombardment of paperwork which accompanied our return to Chatham had been almost as terrible as a broadside, and certainly more time-consuming. I had meant to write ahead and inform my family at Ravensden of my return, but by the end of each day I had written so many formal letters, read through so many muster books, pay books and manifests, dealt with so many officious time-servers from the dockyard and the Ordnance—after all of that, I could barely keep my eyes open for a jar of wine at the King's Head in Rochester before falling unconscious into my bed.
    The Dowager Countess frowned. 'As you say, Matthew. The ways of the navy are a mystery to me.' (This was a blessing; her hatred of her father-in-law had grown into a profound lack of interest in the service that he had graced and to which I now belonged.) 'But you are so brown ! Why, they will mistake you for a Moor when next you ride into Bedford—the people there will never have seen so dark a face—'
    My mother was not adept at ordinary conversation. This was one of the chief reasons why relations were sometimes strained between her and Cornelia, who could extract a conversation out of a rock. So I came straight to the matter, and said, 'Mother, we must speak of this proposed marriage. Between Charles and the Lady De Vaux.'
    The eyes narrowed. To be fair, my mother had learned suspicion at the court of King Charles the First, amid all the fevered rumours and hysteria that had culminated in civil war; like many men and women of her age, she carried suspicion on her shoulder like a vast but invisible bird of prey. 'What of the marriage?'
    Time for diplomacy, for the King and the Lord Admiral his brother wanted their captains to be good diplomats. 'Well, it affects me, as the heir. Mother, all I seek is some explanation that will settle my mind in this matter.'
    She looked on me with sadness and—and with something else, something that I could not quite identify. 'Yes, you are the heir, Matthew. And after you? Who is the heir then? When you married Cornelia, Charles and I saw it as the salvation of the bloodline. But five years on, you have no children. The line must continue. This family must continue.'
    'But to put Charles through this—Charles of all men—and with this woman of all women—'
    'Charles is—sanguine, shall we say. You can speak to him yourself, when he returns from Alnburgh. And the King's enthusiasm for the match weighs heavily with him. As for the Lady De Vaux, it's true that she has a certain reputation. But I have lived a long time, Matthew, and I have found that reputations are often unjustified. Particularly if, as I suspect, that reputation is founded upon jealousy of the thirty thousand that she possesses.'
    ' Thirty thousand? That much?'
    'Some widows are fortunate in their inheritances, Matthew, while some are not,' she said, looking out to the grave in the ruins. 'I need not tell you what thirty thousand will mean to this house. And remember, I have met the lady several times, which you and Cornelia have not. I believe I can judge a character, and I judge hers to be—suitable.'
    'But there are so many questions about her past—she has no family-'
    The bird of prey preened itself, and pounced. 'And how do you know that? Oh, don't bother lying. Tristram, of course.' She was angry now, and my mother's anger was always cold and controlled, unlike the armwaving tempers of Cornelia. 'Tristram will never reconcile himself to this, just as he never reconciled himself to me, nor to his king in his time of need, come to that. I could have proposed the marriage of Charles to the most saintly virgin in England, if any such can be found, and still my good-brother would have opposed it—for it would not have been of his conceiving, and that irks him more than anything. But then, if he had any true sense of family duty he would abandon his miserable little college, his wine and his mistresses, get a