For King or Commonwealth (19 page)

On returning to his cell Faulkner stood for some time staring unseeing out of the narrow window. In his mind's eye he conjured up the image of Katherine and was filled with an immense regret so deep that the tears started to his eyes. And yet, circumstanced as she was, with news that he had been taken into the Tower of London and scarce a farthing to her name, how could she not have accepted the protection of the uncrowned Charles. He would cast her aside when he had had enough of her, when another pretty ankle, roguish eye, or pert bosom had taken his fancy. For all Faulkner knew, she may already have been thrown over but he also knew that for all his carelessness towards the emotions of those in his service, he would see that Katherine did not starve. Women had little choice in this world, he concluded, and with that thought he turned from the window and reached for pen, ink and paper, bawling for Fitchett's boy to bring him a light. An hour later, having sealed the missive with candle wax, he called for Fitchett himself and, for another crown – ‘the last I hope, Master Fitchett, that you will demand from my wife' – had the letter taken to Mr Fox.

Three weeks later, shortly before noon on a chilly day of mizzling rain and swirling mist which might have been either autumn or a wet spring, Fitchett brought him a note from Mainwaring which informed him that he had been released and gone to Camberwell. He regretted being unable to part properly from Faulkner but declared that, should matters fall out to his advantage, Faulkner would be most welcome at his lodgings.

The following morning, with a great jingling of his huge bunch of keys, Fitchett opened the door to admit Mr Fox who bore his satchel. Placing this on the table he withdrew a heavily sealed letter, which he opened with a penknife and, having waved it under Faulkner's nose, handed it to Fitchett.

‘Your discharge, Captain Faulkner, and –' he withdrew a second paper which he passed to Faulkner – ‘a warrant to act in the State Navy. You are to be congratulated. Captain Brenton has requested your services as pilot aboard the
Basilisk
, frigate.'

Faulkner drew his cloak closer round him, bracing himself against the heave of the frigate as she led the squadron towards the low table-land that extended itself across a wider arc of the horizon ahead with every hour that passed. It no longer bore the appearance of a blue bruise in the growing light of the new day. Increasingly he could make out differences in tone along the shore of Bouley Bay where the land dipped and rose, culminating in the western extreme of Grosnez Point. Turning, he looked abaft the starboard beam where the island of Sark was dropping reassuringly astern. This was their second attempt to reach Jersey, the first having been frustrated by a gale that had forced the squadron to lay-to and afterwards anchor off Sark.

Turning back to regard their objective, he judged they had sufficient offing to round Grosnez Point without running foul of the extensive reef three miles north of the headland known as Pierres de Lecq, even though they were hard on the wind which blew from the south-west with post-equinoctial ferocity. The bearing of the white water he could just make out breaking over the rocks was slowly opening out on the bow and the tide, he knew, was then setting to the west, also assisting them. Reassured, his own poor physical state impinged upon his senses.

God, but it was chilly! He moved reluctantly, the disturbance in his wrappings necessary to bestir the blood in his cramped limbs. The legacy of long imprisonment hampered him; the lack of exercise and the want of good food had transformed a man in the peak of condition. Faulkner felt, for the first time in his life, the impact of hard usage and advancing years. Not even the wound in his leg had confronted him with death as a reality, although – after the many months of inactive incarceration in the Tower – it had left him with a slight limp. He tossed the personal reflection aside as Brenton came on deck.

‘I give you good day, sir,' Faulkner said, doffing his hat to the
Basilisk
's commander before jamming it securely back on his head.

‘God's grace to you, Captain Faulkner,' Brenton replied with his friendly smile. It was a measure of the man that he had insisted on calling his pilot, a man under a certain subtle supervision, by his former rank. Although any mention of Faulkner's knighthood had long been buried, Brenton insisted this courtesy was extended to him by all the frigate's officers. For his own part, Faulkner had determined to keep his own council and to execute his duties with a scrupulous attention to detail. Brenton had offered him no special favours, though he was always friendly towards the man that some aboard the
Basilisk
regarded as a cuckoo in their nest while the inhabitants of the lower deck were more inclined to regard him as a Jonah. This owed more to the delay in getting the
Basilisk
refitted than to any misconduct on Faulkner's part, but his identity was well known to all on board and the failure of their frigate to join General-at-Sea Robert Blake's squadron for the taking of the Isles of Scilly from the Royalists under Sir John Grenville had to be ascribed somewhere. God-fearing men, as all who served the Commonwealth now regarded themselves, could see no other reason than that of the cavalier officer foisted upon them by some quirk of authority. Indeed, Brenton himself risked some criticism for insisting upon Faulkner's engagement as the
Basilisk
's pilot, but Faulkner began the work of self-redemption by producing some new charts of their destination.

When the
Basilisk
joined Blake's flag in early August, news of the fiasco of the mismanaged attack on the Scillies, due largely to the failure of the pilots to land in the appointed place, became common knowledge. There were those on board who recalled Faulkner before the Civil War, who spoke of his straight dealing as both commander and ship owner and his part in the raid on the Moroccan port of Sallee. It began to occur to some among the ship's company that if, with God on their side, matters might still miscarry, as they had at Tresco in the Scillies, then perhaps harnessing the reformed spirit of a Malignant might the better manifest God's will. Thus, the chilly atmosphere that had prevailed during the passage down-Channel began to thaw and, if they thought much about it at all, both officers and men began to regard Faulkner with less hostility.

Now, as they approached their objective, the Royalist stronghold of Jersey, it became clear to many, especially the
Basilisk
's officers, that Faulkner's qualities were about to be put to the test. Few among them failed to recognize that landing on the rock-and-reef island in the face of opposition was going to be difficult. Fewer still did not know that those difficulties would be compounded by the late season of the year and the fact that the Channel Islands were not merely surrounded by rocks, but subject to exceedingly strong tides. Not only was there a large rise and fall of water, a matter making the landing of boats uncertain, but the strength and speed of the tidal streams had a profound effect on the conduct of a vessel, particularly if the wind fell light. Not that there seemed much prospect of that at the moment, with a stiff breeze coming up from the south-west. But that in itself posed problems for, while it gave the men-of-war the power of manoeuvrability, when tide and wind ran in contrary directions their opposing forces cut up a vicious hollow sea, making boat operations impossible.

‘We shall be off Grosnez Point in three hours,' Faulkner remarked to Brenton as he turned to look astern and out on the starboard quarter at the squadron spread out behind them.

‘The post of honour, Kit,' he said in a low voice, turning back to stare ahead. ‘May I have the use of your glass?'

‘Of course.' Faulkner handed Brenton his telescope. ‘You will see the white water on Les Pierres de Lecq a little to the left of the end of the land . . .'

They fell to discussing the run of the tide in the coming hours and the best way of making the approach, which they had been worrying over ever since they had received the order issued by the Council of State on 20th September, to take the Channel Islands.

After his release from the Tower of London, Faulkner had spent a week with Mainwaring in Camberwell assembling sufficient clothes, arms and instruments to resume his career at sea. Mainwaring's prudence in securing a means of accessing his money had greatly eased this task, reminding Faulkner of the older man's generosity in first equipping him for sea. Divining the Council of State's likely strategy, it had been Mainwaring who supplied Faulkner with some new charts of the Channel Islands. These had come from ‘some old friends from the Trinity House', Mainwaring told him when he enquired. But that was not all Mainwaring had done for him, for it became obvious to Faulkner that Mainwaring's coming over from the Low Countries had been largely dictated by his own situation, and that Mainwaring's objective had always been the promotion of his protégé.

It was not easy to understand all this, particularly as following the then Prince Charles into exile had been so palpably the wrong course of action. It was only later, when Faulkner had the liberty to consider these things, that he realized that for a man of Mainwaring's age, background and uncommitted and undeclared religious affiliation, the repudiation of a legitimate monarchy in the face of rebellion had been a step he felt unable to take. That he had repented at leisure, while making the matter more difficult, only made it more necessary. Despite their long intimacy, Faulkner had never fully understood the reasons for his patron's conduct, especially in respect of himself. Long ago Mainwaring had told him the country was desperately in need of good sea officers, but that was back in the reign of King James when the century was a not a quarter old. Later conversations had been less clear-cut but, on the eve of his return to London to join the
Basilisk
, Mainwaring had made a remark that Faulkner had turned over in his mind ever since, and was perhaps the best explanation he would ever have from the old man.

Amid a rather emotional eve of leave-taking, after a good dinner during which each of them had downed the better part of two bottles, Mainwaring had stoked up his pipe and lay back in his chair, wreathed in smoke, his voice thick with fine feeling and the slur of wine, musing on the nation's predicament.

‘Once the Royalists are overcome, we shall likely fight the Dutch,' he had mused. ‘That will be a tragedy for both countries, for both share a religion and neither has territorial ambitions over the other. We shall fight for trade and, I believe, the victor has the potential to become the most important maritime power in Europe.'

‘What of France?' Faulkner had asked. ‘Or Spain?'

Mainwaring had considered the question for a long while and then said, ‘Both will be dangerous, especially France as long as
Le Roi Soleil
governs her, but neither has the same predatory instinct for trade as the Dutch and they have proved that they can measure their swords against both. If they prevail at sea over us, then we shall be nothing but an offshore island with a population that will sink into barbarity watching the ships of others sail past our southern coasts, whose abler sons take to prosecuting piracy like the Irish.' He had paused again as Faulkner had seen the logic swim out of the blue clouds of tobacco smoke wreathing the old man in the form of the full sails of a score of ships. Wrapped in the fanciful illusion, Faulkner studied the swirls, watching the chimera dissolve with an almost childish delight. Suddenly Mainwaring set aside his pipe, whipped off his full-bottomed wig and flung it on the table beside him. Vigorously scratching his pate he had declared with a conviction that Faulkner was later to recall many times, ‘Kit, if the Commonwealth survives as a strong centre of power, it could achieve great things and it can only achieve great things at sea.'

Now, as he watched the coast of Jersey take on a distinct appearance, the details of its church towers, the grey flecks of cottages, the white of sheep, the autumnal green of a pasture dotted with brown cattle, the rich russets of turning trees, he wondered if they were on the eve of a great thing, or not.

Blake's operations off Jersey were not helped by the lateness of the Council of State's order, a demonstration that it was dominated by soldiers rather than men acquainted with operations at sea. True, it had been hoped that the appearance of the squadron would induce Sir George Carteret to surrender and – as they later discovered – it had so rattled the rank and file of the defenders that, in the end, with the exception of Carteret's withdrawal into Elizabeth Castle, the fortress at St Helier at the extremity of its long mole, once ashore resistance soon crumbled.

It was the landing that proved difficult, calling from the assembled squadron some minor prodigies of seamanship as the squadron anchored first in St Ouen's Bay. This extended from Le Grande Etacquerel to the south-west corner of the island, Corbière Point, which extended offshore some distance in the form of a jagged series of rocks and reefs. These were exposed at low water and lurked not far beneath the surface at the top of the tide. Rounding the point, one encountered the smaller and easily defended St Breland's Bay, beyond which was the long curved stretch of St Aubin's Bay upon the shores of which, behind the dark mass of Elizabeth Castle, lay the principal town of St Helier. But seaward of these bays, cast about the island of Jersey like the devil's necklace, was an extensive litter of rocks, reefs and shoals, within which an invading force must operate. And while the interposition of this natural barrier broke the worst of the powerful surge of the sea itself, the prevailing wind from the south-west quarter could blow with gale force, making the coast a lee shore.

As the squadron stood inside the outer shoals, passing within long cannon shot of Le Grande Etacquerel, it was immediately obvious that Carteret had fortified the shoreline of St Ouen's Bay with earthworks. A boat from the flagship, the
Happy Entrance
, was ordered by Blake to land an officer with a flag of truce, but the offer of terms was rejected by Carteret, who hoped the autumnal weather would defeat Blake. In this he seemed correct, for although the boat bearing the flag of truce got off the beach, all hope of a rapid landing evaporated as the wind increased and Blake ordered Richard Badiley in the
Paragon
and the two frigates, including the
Basilisk
, to sail up and down the bay, bombarding the shore.