The King's Chameleon (3 page)

Faulkner was about to condemn this ludicrous notion, but he curbed his reaction. For the first time since he had come home to live again with this lad's mother, Henry was speaking without choler. ‘You would become a Member of Parliament?' he asked. Henry nodded. ‘But you require money, opportunity, party …'

‘That is what I am presently engaged upon.'

‘Ingratiating yourself with Disbrowe …?'

‘No, not him, but I cannot say with whom. It is a matter of confidence, of honour.'

‘And I must perforce respect this?'

Henry bit his lip. It was clear that he too knew they were in uncharted country. ‘I should be very much obliged to you, Father.'

‘And if I respect your position – I cannot at this moment say that I second your endeavours – if I respect your ambition, then …' He paused to add weight to his words. ‘Then this is a reconciliation.'

The two stared at each other across the table. Faulkner sighed, smiled and extended his hand. Henry flushed then seized it in a strong grip.

‘What on earth are we going to tell your mother?' Faulkner remarked drolly.

‘I don't know, but I must needs leave that to you.'

Faulkner nodded. ‘Yes, you must.'

‘I am prepared to make my own way in the world, Father.'

‘I am not unaware that your uncle has made an allowance for you.' Henry looked taken aback. ‘You are surprised I know of it?'

‘Well, to be candid, yes.'

Faulkner chuckled. ‘I daresay Nathan would be surprised too, but neither of us need tell him, and besides, I see your mother's hand at the bottom. Let it lie quiet between us.'

Henry nodded and rose, then paused, as if recollecting something. ‘There is one other thing, Father …'

‘Yes?'

‘Hannah wishes to marry.'

‘Good heavens! You and Hannah are closer than I had thought.'

Henry shrugged. ‘I discovered her reading a letter. It would be a love-match; Mother does not know yet the object of Hannah's affections.'

‘Do I?'

‘I think not. The matter embarrasses Hannah for some reason that I cannot determine.'

‘You know the fellow?'

‘Only by sight, but I am inclined to think –' and here a twinkle of intimacy entered Henry's expression, a hopeful mark of the changed relationship between father and son – ‘that the young man in question might make a better sea-officer than myself.'

‘Indeed. Then we had better make enquiries.'

‘Wake up, Husband, wake up!'

‘What …? What the devil is it, Judith? What o'clock is it?'

‘I don't know, but … There it is again!'

The knocking at the door was unmistakable, and Faulkner could hear the servants stirring above him. He swore, to his wife's disapproval, and reached for a robe, wrenching the night-cap from his bare head. A thin light could be seen through the chinks in the shutters, marking the approach of sunrise, as he left the bed-chamber, bumped into a squealing kitchen maid, and descended the stairs, bawling that he was coming as if the person in the street was aloft on the fore-topsail yard and a gale of wind was blowing. Drawing the bolts of the front door he beheld a tall man wrapped in a cloak against the chill, a hat upon his bewigged head and his face in the gloom of its brim. Faulkner had no idea of the man's identity but this did not arouse his suspicion; his first thought was that one of his ships was on fire in the tiers and this stranger had been sent to bring him the news. His second followed as swiftly: that the deteriorating state of public order, the misconduct of elements in the Army that went wandering about the city demanding taxes at the point of the sword, and the prevailing turbulence of the resentful citizenry had provoked some riot. But the street as far as he could see remained quiet and the man that stood before him clearly had a message only for Faulkner's abode. The first thought flared up again, the entire circular process having taken no more than a split second.

‘Cap'n Faulkner … Kit Faulkner … You don't recognize me?' The man snatched off his hat, and in the gloom Faulkner perceived a once familiar face.

‘Harrison? Brian Harrison?'

‘The same, Kit, the same.'

‘Great heavens, what brings you, but come in, sir, come in.' Faulkner called for mulled wine and drew Harrison into the parlour, shouting for wood and, picking up the poker, stirring a glow amid the embers. In a moment the two men were seated, the maids and the scullery boy fussing about them as flames licked up through the hastily revived fire.

‘What brings you here at this hour?' Faulkner enquired of Harrison, whom he had not seen for some years. Both men had once been Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, and both had, what seemed now to be a lifetime earlier, served together, commanding ships sent against the Sallee Rovers on the coast of Morocco. Here they had maintained a squadron on a lee shore and bombarded the port until a number of Christian slaves had either run away to swim out to the ships or been released by their captors. Not since the outbreak of the Civil War and his own escape from London with Sir Henry Mainwaring and the fugitive Prince of Wales had Faulkner been in touch with the Trinity House. He had heard that its affairs had been suspended by Parliament, the members of which considered it tainted by its loyalist leanings. In consequence its funds had been plundered and its Court replaced by Puritan Commissioners who had neglected much of its business, especially its relief of poor and indigent seamen and their dependants. He had heard of an assembly of some of the Brethren some eighteen months earlier, but their political colour, conforming too closely to the Commonwealth, had dissuaded him from attending. Thus Harrison's sudden dawn intrusion came as a complete surprise.

‘The Brethren are to reconvene. Now that Fleetwood and Lambert are discomfited, the Army has no right to raise taxes and Monck has declared that no power, not even the Army, can subordinate Parliament.'

‘Monck?' queried Faulkner. ‘Where is Monck? I had heard that he was in Scotland.' Faulkner recalled his old commander, the bluff soldier who served in the State Navy as a General-at-Sea, the Commonwealth's denomination of a senior admiral.

‘He will be in London at the head of his troops this very day. Fairfax is in accord and holds York. These forces are all loyal to the principle of Parliamentary rule of law. The southern Army is undone.'

‘That is no bad thing; it had become vastly too large for its own riding boots.'

‘Quite so.'

‘I had heard Heselrige and others of the Council of State had sent Monck a commission as Commander-in-Chief of all the forces in England and Scotland …'

‘And Lawson has declared his loyalty.'

‘He commands the fleet in The Downs, does he not?'

‘Exactly so.'

‘So Monck aims at the Protectorship?' Faulkner hazarded, adding: ‘He is in my opinion the only man of rectitude at large.'

‘Perhaps he is, but I think his intentions are otherwise.'

Faulkner looked up, meeting Harrison's eyes. ‘Then he is for the King?'

‘That is the scuttlebutt, though it is not yet certain.'

‘Ahh, Honest George is playing his cards close to his chest.'

‘So would you if you were playing for such high stakes.'

‘True. And the Brethren?'

‘Must seize the day, Kit. If Monck is for the King, so be it; if not, then we must declare for Monck – for he is the deliverance for which we have long prayed – or lose what little is left to us. Monck as Protector or Monck as midwife to the King are preferable to the present state of affairs. As for our own part, there is much want among mariners, many of whom have wrecked their constitutions in the state's service as you have yourself seen, while the shipping in the Thames is much in need of moderation – as you must surely know.'

‘True; I have not found a crew worth its pay in two quarters of the year, for jack must be as good as his master, even when he cannot patch his frock!' The two men laughed and sipped their mulled wine, staring companionably into the fire that now blazed cheerfully in the grate, a symbol of renewed hope.

‘So,' Faulkner said, after a moment's silence, ‘am I alone in your solicitations, or is the generality of the Brethren recalled?'

‘Those the whereabouts of whom we know will be summoned in the next few days,' Harrison explained. ‘As for yourself, knowing your services to both King and Commonwealth, besides my being acquainted with your good sense …'

‘Did your advocacy placate those that held me a turn-coat?' Faulkner asked.

Harrison shrugged. ‘There have been those who have sat affairs out atop the fence and thus slid down afterwards with no mishap to their breeches, more's the pity of it, but there are those who, like you, have acted out of patriotism, espousing the cause they thought best for their country, and shifted their allegiance when circumstances changed.'

‘Thank heaven Monck is among that number,' Faulkner remarked ruefully.

‘You served with him, did you not?' Harrison asked.

‘Aye, and with some approval, I am pleased to say. He is an able commander for all his lack of sea-time.' Faulkner finished his pot of wine. ‘So we – the Brethren, I mean – are summoned this morning then?'

‘Aye, at Whitehorse Lane, where we shall determine whether to render taxes as demanded, or join those in the City who refuse until a full Parliament, including the excluded members, has ousted the Rump.'

‘Well then, I must repair upstairs and don some apparel while you enjoy another bumper.' Faulkner summoned the maid, instructed her to refill Captain Harrison's pot and removed himself. Ten minutes later, as a red and wintry sun rose above the mist lying along the Thames to strike the myriad of masts-trucks of the scores of merchantmen lying at the tiers, the two men left for Whitehorse Lane, Stepney.

It was four days before Faulkner returned home, and the first thing that he did was call for Henry, only to find, as he had half-expected, the young man was absent. Those four days were followed by a fortnight in which tumultuous events followed one upon the other. The Rump Parliament, governed by a clique, held Monck to his principles of submitting to the civil power, insisting his soldiers tear down the gates of the City of London and seize eleven prominent aldermen as a punishment for the citizens' refusal to pay the taxes demanded. As Monck's soldiers, named Coldstreamers for the place from which they had marched, bent to their task of demolition, the assembled populace confronted Monck, shouting that they would rather let their houses be pulled down round their ears than submit to the tyranny of the Rump. Realizing the Rump was wholly unrepresentative of the country at large, Monck wrote to Westminster, demanding the Rump dissolve itself and admit the excluded members. This alone would restore some semblance of legitimacy and authority to that discredited body. The Rump responded by removing Monck's commission as Commander-in-Chief and making him one of four Commissioners, the other three being creatures of the ruling clique. The move was unpopular throughout the army, both with Monck's forces and the remainder beyond his immediate control. Monck summoned the excluded members of Parliament and secured their agreement to paying the army. Having done this he next withdrew the guard on the Palace of Westminster. The consequence was that, on the twenty-first of February, all the members of Parliament removed earlier by Pride's Purge resumed their seats.

News of this event reached Faulkner within an hour, brought by Henry, who reappeared unshaven, begrimed and exhausted. Faulkner had no idea where in this tangle of loyalties, ambitions and blighted hopes his younger son had placed himself, but judging from appearances Henry had learned that matters rarely fell out with the simple elegance the young so often thought inevitable.

That night London blazed with bonfires and the bells of the churches rang peal upon peal late into the hours of darkness.

‘The day of the saints is over,' Faulkner said, ordering wine as, despite the night's wintry chill, he leaned from an open casement, watching the scene in the street and listening to the wild tocsin ringing out over the city. Behind him in the upstairs room the family used for all important assemblies and otherwise served Faulkner and Gooding as an office – the lower floor being given over to the kitchen, parlour and a small servant's hall – the other members of his household were less cheerful. The Goodings were Puritan through-and-through, and marriage had not softened Judith's politics.

‘Do close the window, Husband. 'Tis more than the night's chill that affects me.'

Faulkner did as he was bid, closing both casement and shutters before turning to confront the gloomy faces in the room. ‘Come, come,' he said, ‘these will be more cheerful times, you mark my words. Whatever the outcome, Monck's influence will guarantee a sensible line of government.'

‘Will we have a King?' said Hannah suddenly, voicing the thoughts of all of them.

‘Who knows, my pretty one, but, let me see, what sayest thee to having a husband?'

‘Husband?' Judith was astonished. Then she began to remonstrate until, seeing Hannah flush and Faulkner roar with laughter, she divined something afoot. ‘Husband? Hannah?' she queried, turning from one to the other. ‘What is all this?'

‘My pretty daughter has a gallant, Goodwife. A handsome and comely lad I trow, and I am minded to give her away as soon as she likes. We have had too much of sensible and saintly misery under this roof. Let us celebrate – modestly, of course – and give some thought to the future beyond despatching ships to Jamaica and buying our way again into the interest of the East India Company. Surely you'll drink to that … Eh, Nathan? Henry?'

But no-one was listening; they had all gathered round Hannah, who was berating Henry for his indiscretion in telling Faulkner and fending off the questions of her mother who feared above all some indiscretion on her daughter's part.