The King's Chameleon (40 page)

‘Oh, to be sure there were those, even those of staunch principle, who considered them as slippery as lizards, or as able to turn their coats as a chameleon does. Such men, it is believed by many, have no principle but that of cynicism which combines with so overwhelming a lust for power that they must be resisted. Such men stand in the second rank, unfit for high-office, or the understanding of it. They place their moral judgements above the necessity of keeping the peace of the nation, confusing it with God's business – which in my eyes is best left to God. Those of us who see the virtue in these few chameleons must of necessity support them, or all will again descend into anarchy. Young men, especially young men brought up in the licentiousness of the present age, lack this knowledge … this wisdom.'

She shook her head. ‘That is all very well, and selfless and noble, but not my point. You forget my own experience of life's vicissitudes, of my years of exile …'

‘Kate, how could I forget—'

‘Be silent! Hear me out. You have no knowledge of my years of servitude,
none at all
. From the earliest days until but a few years ago when I was bound hand and foot to Rupert's mother. A tragic figure to be sure, but a tyrannical old woman, every inch of her a Stuart: demanding, unforgiving, entitled by her high station, but with not a bone of compassion or thought for others in her entire body.' She had silenced him now. ‘Oh, I was pleased enough with the billet, to be sure, for I had no other, and on the occasions we went abroad my station as a lady-in-waiting might persuade me, at least for an hour or two, that I was not a drudge. But I was like the prentice boy, bound to my mistress body and soul, night and day, year in year out. That is the price the House of Stuart levies for its protection and condescension. Rupert, though full of charm, is his mother's son.' She paused again then, catching his eye, she concluded. ‘When he summons, refuse … Refuse on grounds of ill-health, but refuse. I no longer ask you to promise me, but I shall not expect to hear otherwise.'

She glared at him for a moment and then withdrew. After she had gone, Faulkner expelled his breath. There was an undoubted attraction in what she was demanding; there was no avoiding the passage of time, or of its corroding effect upon his body. He knew, too, that Anne, Duchess of Albemarle, had berated her husband time after time for his constant return to his duty, even though the King increasingly spurned his advice. When her husband had died, she had relinquished her own hold on life, given up and died within days.

Sighing, he stared into the corners of the room for the shadow of old Sir Henry. He too had died disappointed, in penury, forgotten by those he had served. Was that the fate of all men who lived beyond their own time? But it was Judith's ghost who came to him. In the heat of his diatribe to Katherine, he had forgotten it was she who had described him as ‘the King's chameleon'.

A fortnight later, Faulkner received a letter. It was from the private secretary to the Duke of York and acknowledged the news that the East Indiaman
Duchess of Albemarle
was to be broken up. Invoking the King's name, it thanked Sir Christopher Faulkner for his loyalty, advising him that it was His Majesty's wish that, on the construction of a replacement placed in the service of the Honourable East India Company, the monies profiting the owner be remitted to His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York, Lord High Admiral, etc, etc, etc.

In consideration of this
, Faulkner read,
His Majesty wishes to confer the Honour of a Baronetcy upon Sir Christopher Faulkner, an Honour which would, His Royal Highness felt Certain, and of which His Majesty was Confident, also be Pleasing to Lady Faulkner, in Recognition of her many Services to the House of Stuart and for which His Highness Prince Rupert of the Rhine had particularly Solicited the King's Majesty.

Faulkner read the letter several times before taking it to show Katherine. They had put the incident outside Westminster Abbey behind them, but this resurrected it with uncanny precision. He handed it to her in silence and watched her face grow pale and the twin patches of colour appear again on her cheekbones. Her hands were shaking as she looked up at him.

‘I shall of course, refuse it,' he began hurriedly. ‘Besides, I have no sons. As for the profits of a new ship …'

‘Do not build one.'

‘But I
am
building one.'

‘But no longer for the East India trade,' she said defiantly. ‘Send it to the West Indies, or the Guinea coast.' He shrugged and remained silent. ‘
Not
for the Company,' she said emphatically.

He shook his head. ‘No, we cannot do that; it is not in the interest of Edmund's boys, and they are all that is left to me.'

‘Then let Edmund build her in his own name. The King has no demands upon Edmund.'

‘Except the lien every monarch has upon his subjects. He will make the demand of Edmund, and Edmund dare not refuse.'

‘That would be outrageous.'

‘Not to His Majesty, nor to his Secretary of the Treasury, Downing. The King understands that he can mulct only part of the profit otherwise the enterprise is doomed to fail. He is so impecunious and so profligate that he will not wish to kill off a goose capable of laying a golden egg. Charles is no fool … At least it is only be the
principal
owner's share. Edmund must find others … You, perhaps.'

Katherine sighed and bit her lower lip. ‘So we must do it,' she said.

‘He sayeth come and we cometh …'

In the spring of 1671 Letters Patent were issued and Faulkner became a baronet. He and Katherine were received at Court, singled out by the King and subjected to his considerable charm. The ladies and gentlemen of the Court reminded Faulkner of the bevy of young officers who had provided his escort to Sheerness that infamous day he lost a portion of his ear and when he better deserved to have lost his life. The Faulkners made their dutiful obeisance to Their Majesties, Queen Catherine, the King's Portuguese consort, receiving Lady Faulkner most graciously. Although present, Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland, paid no heed to her distant kinswoman, and the facile frivolity of the Court engendered in both Faulkner and Katherine a vague sense of distaste.

Afterwards Faulkner remarked to his wife that the experience was ‘rather like sleeping with a whore – momentary pleasure leavened with longer-term disgust'.

That summer Sir Christopher and Lady Faulkner removed their modest household into the countryside of Essex, buying a house in Walthamstow. The house in Wapping was sold, and Faulkner's appearances in London grew infrequent. He was only occasionally to be found at the Trinity House, though he attended the annual convening of the Court at Deptford, staying with Edmund in Stepney. Edmund's two boys visited their grand-father on several occasions, bringing a lively cheerfulness to the ageing couple, and they joined him when, with Charlie Hargreaves at the helm, Faulkner made several excursions down the Thames in the
Hawk
. On one occasion they doubled the buoy of the Nore, entering the Medway and venturing as far upstream as Chatham itself so that he might show his grandsons the place where England's pride was laid low in disgrace.

‘But if the fleet was all burned,' young Nathaniel had asked, ‘why are there so many ships here now?'

It was a good question, and Faulkner was heartened by the number of men-of-war lying at the trots. Much had been made good since those days of infamy.

‘Because to keep old England safe, my boy,' he had replied, ‘we have to keep our fleet strong. Some of these ships have been built in recent years.'

‘Are any of these your ships, Grandpapa?'

‘No. These are the King's.'

‘But you're a Captain … a King's Captain, aren't you? Father says you fought in the old days.'

‘Yes. In the old days,' responded Faulkner with a smile. ‘Now do you look to the sheets, boys, and stand-by the running backstays as we must go about.'

Faulkner's fading interest in the politics of the day meant that he took little notice of the talk about the King's secret conversion to Catholicism. He considered that the Duke of York might compromise himself as a Papist, but Charles was not such a fool. He heard of negotiations with the French and assumed the King was seeking to pawn something for pecuniary advantage, unaware that an alliance with Louis XIV was a preliminary manoeuvre to a new war with the Dutch, or a secret concord between two Catholic kings. When, in the spring of 1672, war again broke out, Faulkner spent a fortnight anxiously fearing a summons from Rupert, but it was James, Duke of York, who commanded the English fleet, now allied to French squadrons under D'Estrées.

Towards the end of May the allied fleets had been at anchor in Sole Bay, off Southwold, revictualling by boat from the Suffolk town. Almost caught at anchor on a lee shore, with many of his seamen ashore collecting stores, the Lord High Admiral sustained a near drubbing in another furiously contested battle. Sending his second-in-command, Banckerts, to engage and cut off D'Estrées, de Ruyter and his main body fell upon the Duke of York's men-of-war.

Katherine had rejoiced in her husband being ignored when the appointments were made on the fleet's commissioning, but when Faulkner received the details of the battle in Sole Bay, he was furious, glad that Honest George did not live to see the day. The action had proved long, bloody and furious. York's vice admiral, the Earl of Sandwich, was dead, drowned escaping from his blazing flag-ship. Thanks to severe damage to his own ship, York himself had been compelled to shift his flag twice during the course of the long day, first to the
St Michael
and later to the
Loyal London
.

Although the English had lost four ships and the French one, the Dutch had lost two in action and a third from an explosion in the hours of darkness after the action. Among the many dead lay Admiral van Ghent, and both fleets were almost out of powder and shot. The consequent battle-damage was enormous, while, in the aftermath, the recriminations on both sides were vicious. To the discerning, however, the result was clear: despite the bravery of the English seamen, and pyrrhic though the Dutch victory was, there had been a lack of decisive leadership, and the French squadron had played little part in the main action.

‘What did I tell you?' Faulkner said to Katherine when he read the bulletin to her as they sat in their withdrawing-room. ‘York is competent enough, but he lacks the
weight
of old Albemarle. He is one of those younger men of whom I spoke, has too much to learn and no time in which to learn it. And why? Because he was up against de Ruyter, and yet old de Ruyter must be sixty-five years of age if he is a day!'

In the weeks that followed, more news filtered through. Although de Ruyter's action had frustrated allied plans to invade Zealand, the French army had taken four of the Seven United Provinces and the Dutch had flooded the countryside surrounding their great commercial city of Amsterdam. Other cities now followed suit in inundating their hinterlands, but French success had induced a political crisis, ousting the Republicans and elevating the House of Orange. Prince William of Orange now became Stadtholder, but in a savage breakdown of civil order, a mob had soon afterwards barbarously murdered the deposed Stadtholder, Johann de Witt, and his brother Cornelis, architect and political director of the Medway raid.

At home, the Duke of York was forbidden to hoist his flag at sea on the grounds that he was henceforth debarred by the Test Act from holding public office as an openly avowed Catholic. Indifferent to public opinion, having lost his first wife, Clarendon's daughter Anne, he recklessly married a Catholic Princess, Mary of Modena.

Having garnered this news on one of his infrequent forays to London and a meeting of the Brethren of Trinity House, Faulkner had been eager to pass the information on to Katherine. It was already late, and he found her sitting alone in a darkening room. Calling for candles and a servant to help him with his boots, he flung his hat and cloak on a chair, sat and began impatiently tugging at his boots, all the while relating the news of York's folly.

‘No good will come of this,' Faulkner declared, getting the first boots off with a grunt, but she made no reply. After a moment he looked up; Katherine appeared withdrawn, unusually pale and something about her expression alarmed him. He leapt to his feet, hobbled across the room and knelt at her side. ‘What is it, Kate?'

Her breathing was laboured, she was unable to speak and there was terror in her eyes.

In the physician's opinion Faulkner's wife was suffering a malignant fever. She was bled, and an anxious Faulkner was advised that rest in a darkened room would bring on the crisis.

‘The disease must culminate, Sir Christopher,' the physician explained. ‘She is of strong constitution and will likely survive.'

‘But the onset …' Faulkner choked on the words. ‘It was so swift.'

‘These maladies afflict the body when the humours are out of balance. Was there something that may have upset her sensibilities?'

Faulkner shook his head; he could think of nothing. ‘She seemed in good health when I left for London this morning.'

‘I suspect a miasma; you lived long by the river, and an insidious infection may have laid hold of her for some time since; such things are difficult to attribute. Besides that, there may be an excess of black bile, not uncommon in women of her age. Has she complained of sharp, shooting pains?'

‘She has complained of nothing.'

‘But she has been on the river? In that yacht of yours?'

‘Not for some months.'

‘Ah! But it is proximity, Sir Christopher, proximity. She is a lady of breeding, of sensibility; such creatures possess a delicacy unimaginable to men of your condition. You have survived at sea; those that do so – and there are many that do not – most usually have bovine constitutions.'