For King or Commonwealth (27 page)

‘Confound you, Kit, you have still a quick and perceptive wit.'

‘So I am told,' Faulkner replied drily. ‘But tell me,' he said, affecting a serious expression, ‘what would Judith say were she to know that I am ordered to my ship? Would she scratch her itch for a few more months?'

‘Why can you not scratch it for her before you depart? Surely you might spend an evening with her and Hannah, even perhaps Henry might be induced to attend, though he holds you in little esteem.'

‘What manner of man is he?'

‘Clever and diligent, Puritan in his religion and devoted to his mother.'

‘And does he have the itch?' Faulkner asked, smiling.

‘He has a young woman in mind so I suppose he has.'

‘And she has your blessing?'

‘Indeed. She is both accomplished and beautiful. As for money, she has that too. With his present portion of our business, marriage would make Henry a wealthy man.'

‘Then he should proceed without further ado.'

‘Perhaps you would wish to tell him yourself.'

‘Where do you suggest?'

‘You should come home. That is the proper place for such things to be discussed.'

Faulkner's meeting with his estranged family was as awkward as it could have been and he returned to The Ship inwardly cursing Gooding for having mooted the idea. Henry had been chillingly cold and though Faulkner could not blame him, he deeply resented the young man's sense of overwhelming propriety. Hannah was sweet and conciliatory, obviously delighted at her betrothal and apt to forgive all mankind its sins as she enjoyed her time of happiness. But it was Judith who troubled him most, both during the evening and afterwards. They had had no time together and their conversation, overseen by others, had been stilted and forced. She had expressed her pleasure at seeing him in so much better condition than he had appeared in the Tower, and he had paid her a few compliments as to her health and complexion as he presented her with a bunch of violets he had, almost as an afterthought, purchased from a comely wench on Tower Hill.

‘Violets are for faithfulness, husband,' she said in a low voice, her tone full of irony.

He regretted his ignorance over such subliminal folk messages but managed to murmur, ‘Perhaps, madam, you might accept them as a compliment to your own steadfastness.'

It was the closest they came to any intimate exchange and, in retrospect, he rued the expression, thinking it went further than he meant to over this painful matter of reconciliation. His pride came like a lump between them and although he found himself looking at her enviously, remembering her passionate nature, it was always with the whisper of Katherine's name in his inner ear.

Perhaps nothing would have come of the matter had not Brenton called upon him one evening. It was a few days before Faulkner was due to depart for Chatham and he was assembling a few personal effects, his thoughts occupied with the composition of the letter he had agreed to send Judith before his departure. Brenton, also on his way to Chatham, insisted they dined together, and dined well. Although not drunk, Faulkner saw Brenton off in a mellow mood. They had enjoyed a convivially pleasant evening, righted most of the world's wrongs and discussed the new
Fighting Instructions
, a copy of which Brenton had brought with him. It was clear Brenton had no idea Faulkner was already privy to the contents, though not to the minor modifications Deane and Monck had made to his draft. Nor was he indiscreet enough to tell even a close friend such as Brenton, so the two pored over the document assiduously, discussing the effect it would have on the fighting ability of the fleet.

‘I think,' said Brenton somewhat thickly as they drew the evening to a close, ‘that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating when we next take on the
meneers
.'

Faulkner nodded gravely. ‘They will, of course, fail in their intentions if individual commanders do not fall in with them. I conceive overwhelming and mass concentration to be the objective; to make a single striking force out of the whole fleet.'

‘My word, Kit,' Brenton said, draining his tankard, ‘you sound like Sir Henry or a General-at-Sea.'

After Brenton had gone, Faulkner sat in thought for a while and then, impulsively, drew a blank sheet of paper towards him, found a quill and ink, re-cut the nib and began to write. It was only a short letter and he had almost forgotten he had written it the following morning. As for despatching it last thing the previous evening, the realization of that only occurred to him after he had ordered two horses from a neighbouring livery stable and was asking for the reckoning from the landlord of The Ship.

‘Will there be anything else, sir?' the man had asked when Faulkner recalled that he had invited Judith to dine with him that last evening in his room. When he had given his order, he sat in his room and wondered if she would come. Surrounded by his dunnage, most of which was packed in two portmanteaux, the room already looked bare and inhospitable, and he half hoped that Judith would find her feet too cold to venture forth. He did not recall her as adventurous, but remembered a wild streak that not even the severest Puritanism could properly curb.

‘What have I done?' he asked himself, looking over his effects, pulling out a folio of newly purchased charts and pretending to study them, all the while denying the fact that he had an itch to match hers – or at least hoped he had. He was not long left in doubt. Before six had struck she was at the door and came in flushed and guilty.

‘Judith,' he began, but she came forward, her finger pressed against his lips, her eyes full of fire and tears. Nor did she leave until the morning when, in the first glimmer of dawn, they descended the creaking stairs and Faulkner escorted her home before her own servants were about. Returning to his own bed, his head giddy with a contrary mixture of hope and despair, he fell asleep to be woken much later to the thunder of the guns of the Tower of London.

By the time he reached Chatham, Faulkner had caught up with the events of the day from which he had unconsciously been running. Preoccupied by his own affairs and untouched by the tumultuous political events which had been taking place only a few miles further up the River Thames, he had been aware of the Parliamentary row that had been brewing without troubling himself as to its likely outcome. Apart from the purely personal, he had other matters more closely touching his reappointment to the
Union
, and in determining the condition of the ship in a series of letters to and from both Whadcoat and Clarkson. Clarkson had paid him a visit from which he had returned to the ship with a purse of money and the wherewithal to raise some extra men by way of bribes, while he left Faulkner with a request for the new charts with which Faulkner had diverted himself the previous evening.

Having long passed out of the sound of the cannon at the Tower, he was greeted by street revels in Rochester that evening. Toasts were being drunk by those disposed to consider the political upheaval that had taken place that day in Westminster as beneficial. There were some souls who wore expressions of disapproval, but they were careful not to articulate their misgivings. Only the landlord of The Griffin, with whom Faulkner intended to lodge for the night and whither he had summoned Whadcoat and Clarkson to dine, expressed an opinion contrary to that finding public expression in the street outside.

‘Oh, they'd all drink to a monkey if he sat on a cart and threw pennies at their feet!' the man said, showing Faulkner to his room. ‘Lord Protector, indeed! More like King Oliver, by God! Well, damn the Parliament and good riddance to them! We'll just have to see what a muck of it King Oliver makes of things.'

And with that Faulkner had to be content as to the mood of the country upon the elevation of Oliver Cromwell, late general in the Parliamentary army and sitting Member for Huntingdon, to the office of Lord Protector.

Later that evening, the conversation between Faulkner and his officers turned from the preoccupations of the ship to that of the news of the day.

‘They say it was like a coronation, the ceremony,' said Whadcoat. ‘I'd never have thought that Cromwell would have thrown over the Parliament! He of all people!'

‘It will make little difference to us, Mr Whadcoat,' Clarkson said. ‘It don't change our task one whit.'

‘No indeed.'

And so they went again to war.

‘Katherine!'

Faulkner woke in a lather of sweat. He was sodden, feverish and terrified that he had shouted aloud. The small hour of his awakening was such that even so foolish a thing as calling out Kate's name could frighten him. He lay back, realizing that he had only shouted in his dream, for the ship lay quiet, gently rising and falling to the seas, silent but for the creaking of her fabric as she worked in the seaway. But she was not quiet; it was just that he was insulated here, in his cabin, from the piteous groans of the wounded below in the orlop. He calmed himself with an effort and felt the burn of the wound in his upper arm and shoulder. Although the surgeon had extracted the splinter hours earlier, he felt the inflammation. Was it the first onset of blood poisoning? He made to touch his right shoulder with his left hand, then recalled Mr Surgeon Whitaker had left a hog's bristle in the wound that it might drain properly.

Katherine . . . The memory of her tormented him, so that in his feverish state she seemed like a succubus, real rather than imagined. Or did she? Was it not his own conscience that tortured him? He was no better, for he had betrayed her by lying with Judith. Filled with self-loathing, he was caught between two twin fires of passion, drawn inexorably towards Judith when Katherine had scorned him. That is what he told himself, until he recovered his wits, along with his integrity and realized that in effect he had himself abandoned Katherine after his capture. It was no good protesting to his inner self that he had been swept up by events beyond his control. Now she lay in the King's arms, until he tired of her – which was a certainty, for she was older than him by some measure and only her beauty and proximity could possibly recommend her to so young and vigorous a prince as was His Majesty King Charles II.

Faulkner threw off the blanket and tentatively set his feet on the deck, bracing himself by the deck beams above him. For a moment his head spun and then he slowly came to himself. What was he mooning over these women for? He had other, more pressing matters to attend to, for God's sake. He groped his way to the chair behind the table that served as both desk and dining board. Swivelling the chair round he stared astern through the windows at the wake, shivering and burning at the same time, wretched in the isolation of his situation.

The ship was barely moving, the wind no stronger now than it had been for the last two days of action, a coil of water trailing astern as the rudder bit at the flow coming under the transom.

Heavens, but it had been hard work after weeks of beating about in response to reports. Tromp had gone north with a convoy said to be two hundred strong; Tromp was back in Helvoetsluys, or was it the Texel, or the Zuider Zee, or Enkhuizen? Now he was reported at sea again and with a fleet the like of which had never been seen before. And they had gone to meet him, sweeping up from Portsmouth under Monck and Deane, two Generals-at-Sea both in command in equal measure with eighty-eight men-of-war and over one hundred armed merchantmen. Tromp was nowhere to be found off the Dutch coast, so they sailed back across the North Sea to Great Yarmouth where they anchored, only to hear that Tromp had slipped past them and had bombarded Dover. It was incredible!

Little fly-boats were sent off with messages. Blake, still unwell after his wounding in February, was said to be mustering more ships in the outer estuary of the Thames, summoning them to join him under the lee of the Gunfleet Sand, a few miles from the Naze of Essex. Meanwhile, Monck and Deane, having held a council of war aboard their joint flagship, the
Resolution
, slipped south to Sole Bay off Southwold with a fleet of over one hundred ships. They were supported by Penn in the
James
and Lawson in the
George
, both leading their respective divisions. The English fleet stood out to sea and early on the morning of the 1st June the scouting frigates, off the Gabbard Shoal, had briefly let fly their topsail sheets, the distant signal for an enemy fleet in sight, but there had followed a day of fruitless manoeuvring at the end of which the signal to anchor had been hoisted. The Dutch followed suit some miles away and when the misty morning of the 2nd dawned, they weighed and, following the orders of the two Generals, formed up in line, each division closed on its admiral with Lawson in the van, Monck and Deane the centre and Penn the rear. There was barely sufficient of the north-westerly wind to allow them to get into their proper stations, but the attentiveness of the commanders and their sailing masters enabled the English to work to windward of the Dutch who obligingly formed a similar ragged line with Ruyter in their vanguard, Tromp in the centre, and De With the rear.

The two fleets drew closer, the hours of the forenoon ticking past until, at about an hour before noon, the action opened. Within half an hour it had become general, the ships locked in a bloody battle in which the English stood off, under strict orders not to board until their guns had done their savage work. No one aboard the
Union
knew it until later, but Sir Richard Deane had been killed in the first exchange of fire and De Ruyter, it later transpired, had tried to work ahead of Lawson, double his line and rake as he crossed it, but the fickle wind frustrated this bold manoeuvre and – despite launching boats to have his ships' heads pulled round – frustrated the Dutch admiral's audacity. Instead, a bloody mêlée ensued, each ship seeking out an opponent and battering her until their sides were shattered, their decks strewn with the dead and dying and blood ran red from their scuppers, staining the sea alongside the lumbering hulls. The noise and smoke were tremendous, the air seemed hellish hot from the fiery breath of the cannon, thick with smoke, shot and splinters, one of which struck Faulkner at the height of the fight. He did not notice it at first, thinking his head reeled and his ears sang from the deafening concussion of the guns, but at last he realized he had been wounded and was losing blood. He got himself below and had the splinter drawn, a savage, searing pain that tore at the muscles of his upper arm and shoulder, leaving him sick and weak. A draught of strong wine fortified him and, roughly bandaged and with Whitaker's admonition that ‘something would have to be done about that wound later, Captain,' Faulkner returned to the quarterdeck.