The King's Chameleon (42 page)

As the two lines of ships converged, those of the Dutch van turned to starboard, intending to pass between the intervals in D'Estrées' line and then swing again parallel to the French squadron and nailing D'Estrées against the shallows off the Dutch coast. A moment later Faulkner lost sight of D'Estrées and Banckerts as they exchanged broadsides, then clouds of dense smoke interposed.

Meanwhile the English centre edged away, necessarily drawing the Dutch offshore into deeper water, but thereby playing into de Ruyter's hands. With D'Estrées again detached from his ally, the old master tactician could bring a superiority of his inferior fleet against a now weaker portion of his enemy. The thunder of the guns now grew intense and the world once more became an anarchic chaos of death and bloodshed as the squadrons began to engage and became locked in their life-and-death struggle. Rupert's centre, vigorously attacked by de Ruyter, swung slowly to starboard, turning in the course of the following two or three hours from a southerly to a northerly heading. The Dutch men-of-war clung tenaciously to Rupert's flank as the thunderous cannonade went on for hour after relentless hour. The ships' decks trembled as the discharged gun carriages rumbled inboard, driven by recoil, and a few moments later rumbled out again after reloading.

Half-blinded by smoke, utterly deafened by the concussions, ears popping in the changes in air pressure, Faulkner tried to observe the progress of the action and keep Rupert informed as they stood upon the shot-torn deck. From time to time Faulkner went up onto the exposed poop-deck to get a better view before returning to the quarterdeck. Spars and splinters, loose ends of shot-away halliards, lifts and braces fell about them, entangling their legs and restricting their movements. The whistle of ball and bullet flew across the quarterdeck, killing in an instant Sir William Reeves, Rupert's flag-captain. In the waist men died at their guns, cut in two by bar-shot, eviscerated by round-shot, knocked off their feet by balls from the swivel-guns in the enemy tops. Yet they screamed like devils and played their own fire with equal devastation.

For some time, where possible through the dense smoke, both Rupert and Faulkner had been studying the conduct of Spragge's rear as it too became increasingly detached from Rupert's centre division. Faulkner, his long-glass to his eye, strove to determine what was happening. His eyes grew sore with the strain, and he frequently lowered the telescope to wipe them, unconscious in the confusion that he did so with a silk handkerchief that had once belonged to his late wife and which he had stuffed into his pocket as a remembrance.

‘Perceive now,' Faulkner roared into Rupert's ear, ‘the miscarriage of Spragge's plan!' He pointed with his telescope to starboard where, amid dense gun-smoke, a continuous twinkling of fire from the muzzles of two dozen men-of-war marked a ferocious engagement centred on a duel between Spragge's flag-ship, the
Royal Prince
, and Tromp's the
Gouden Leeuw
. ‘'Tis another private action!'

‘All our plans miscarry!' Rupert roared in response as a hail of shot swept the deck.

Faulkner met the first ball, which came inboard over the rail to strike his cuirass and crush his chest. He stood for a moment, unable to breath, and
saw
the second ball which carried away his head. His body fell at Rupert's feet, and only the Prince observed what happened. Later, much later, when night drew its cloak over the carnage, others found Faulkner's plumed hat and his wig – with what remained of his head inside it – lying in the scuppers on the far side of the quarterdeck. The telescope Rupert's uncle had once given Faulkner was also picked up and passed to the commander-in-chief.

In the
Royal Sovereign
's battered cabin Rupert took the old glass and turned it in his hand, reading its inscription. ‘This was the property of a most gallant officer,' he said sadly, laying it aside and picking up his quill.

Edmund Drinkwater received the package containing the telescope together with a letter in the Prince's own hand.

Sir,

This is to Inform you of the Unhappy News that your Kinsman, Captain Sir Christopher Faulkner, died at My Side during the late action against the Dutch off the Texel, one of the hardest fought actions in this present, or any previous war.

Sir Christopher was well known to me, as was also his wife, whose devotion to My Late Mother was Exemplary. I wish You to know that I held him in the Highest possible Esteem and the King's Service and the Country as a Whole in the Poorer for Your Loss. It was Necessary that his Body was committed to the Deep; he Lies in Goodly Company. Please Accept my Sincere Condolences.

Rupert P.

Edmund laid the letter aside and picked up the telescope. He was looking at it when he sensed a presence in the room. For a moment his blood ran cold, and then a small voice asked, ‘Is that Grand-father's telescope, Father?'

Edmund looked round. His son Nathaniel stood in the doorway and came closer to look at the glass which he had seen Faulkner use from time to time when embarked in the
Hawk
. The boy stared at the brass tube which his father held out to him. ‘I think that you should have it. Your Grand-father would have wanted you to, I think.'

‘Is he dead?'

Edmund nodded. ‘Yes. Like your Mother and Lady Kate.'

‘Well, they will all be together now, won't they?' the boy said with conviction.

Edmund Drinkwater ruffled his son's hair. ‘I do most certainly hope so.'

As with the previous two novels in this trilogy, many of the characters and most of the major events affecting the life of Kit Faulkner are real. I have taken liberties with the personalities of the less well-known of the people involved, but the main events, from the Restoration of King Charles II, by way of the Plague and the Great Fire of London to the Dutch attack on the Medway, are based on contemporary accounts. Other background events, such as the comings and goings of the Brethren of Trinity House, derive from my own original research. ‘Honest George' Monck, first Duke of Albemarle, a man who saved the nation as surely as Winston Churchill, deserves an occasional remembering, despite the controversies attaching to his reputation, which included accusations of murder and bigamy. I hope I have done honour to his shade here. Other men such as Sir Henry Johnson, the principal builder of East Indiamen then at Blackwall, or Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, were prominent enough figures who would have been known to Faulkner. As for Ensign John Churchill, the later Duke of Marlborough, he participated in Albemarle's funeral procession.

The rendition of the three Regicides from Delft is a fact, and the parts played by Abraham Kick, Major Miles and the mysterious Armerer are based upon what little is known of the detail of a secret state abduction. One wonders if this last-named was perhaps the Nick Armourer mentioned by John Evelyn as a familiar of the Queen of Bohemia. At any rate, it was he who spirited John Okey, John Barkstead and Miles Corbett from Delft. It was said that he engineered the getting of a boat into the ‘little canal' near the Rathaus and then conveying the prisoners to Helvoetsluys where Captain Tobias Sackler awaited them in the
Blackamoor
. Though usually referred to as ‘a frigate', the
Blackamoor
was in fact a small, pink-built man-of-war.

The architect of the act of rendition itself, Sir George Downing, is worthy of mention in detail, not least for the fact that he was a product of the age and his personal moral ambivalence mirrors that of the society in which he functioned. Born in 1623 he was the son of a Puritan attorney who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1638. George Downing was among the very first to graduate from Harvard University whither he had been sent thanks to the sponsorship of John Okey. Downing afterwards returned to England. Here he was caught up in the Civil War, becoming chaplain to Okey's Regiment in the New Model Army then being raised by Cromwell. (Okey himself had a chequered career; a Baptist Puritan turned colonel of dragoons, he had opposed Cromwell as Protector, been cashiered several times and was dismissed by Monck before fleeing abroad.)

After the execution of King Charles I in 1649 and the establishment of the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell appointed Downing scoutmaster-general. This was a highly confidential post, actually the director of intelligence for the nascent English Republic. In 1657 Cromwell, now Lord Protector, sent Downing to The Hague as ‘resident', the Protectorate's ambassador. He also served as a Member of Parliament, surviving the Restoration of King Charles II, who confirmed his appointment to The Hague. It was during this period that he bungled an attempt to abduct the Regicide Edward Dendy in Rotterdam, but in early March 1662 successfully seized Okey, Corbett and Barkstead.

In 1667 Downing was appointed to the Treasury Commissioners and was equally active in financial reforms and modernization of the state's borrowing, with mixed success. He later held an appointment on the Board of Customs and if not remembered today, is regularly if inadvertently commemorated by references to Downing Street. It is an inescapable irony that our present Prime Minister's residence stands on land developed by a man involved in many things, of which rendition was but one.

On the scaffold John Okey said of Downing: ‘There was one, who formerly was my chaplain, that did pursue me to the very death. But both him, and all others, I forgive.' Pepys, who owed some of his own advancement to Downing, said of his part in the seizure of the Regicides that he was like ‘a perfidious rogue, though the action is good and of service to the King, yet he cannot with good conscience do it'. Later, in 1667, on Downing's appointment to the Treasury Commission, Pepys remarked that it was: ‘A great thing … for he is a business active man, and values himself upon having of things do well under his hand, so that I am mightily pleased in … [the] choice.'

With regard to other details of the background, the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, though generally accepted by the greater part of the population, was not universally welcome and some wished it otherwise. Plots against the King were hatched not least because there were those who held to their Puritan principles, regarding them as sacred. Several groups comprised these ‘Irreconcilables', among them the Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterians and Fifth Monarchy men, even a wing of those people of peace, the Quakers. History records only the deeds of men in such affairs, but the Puritan age conceded considerable licence to the views of women, mixing this with an ancient prejudice against any they considered witches. The presence of Elizabeth, the ‘Winter Queen' of Bohemia, under Lord Craven's roof at Leicester House, is a matter of record, while her son, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, cannot pass ignored in this turbulent period of English history. Although the plague killed a terrifying fifth of London's population, it was possible to survive it – even be unaffected by it (Pepys was, though he moved his household to Woolwich and his office to Greenwich), while the Great Fire which followed burned fiercely to the west of the Tower, but did little damage down-river.

As for Faulkner's part in these events, I have used some freedom in my yarn. However, someone must have co-ordinated Armerer's rendezvous with Sackler, just as someone carried the King's letter to Albemarle, anchored in The Downs prior to the Four Day's Battle of the first to the fourth of June 1666 – ‘the greatest naval battle in the Age of Sail,' as Nicholas Rodger has called it. I saw no reason why it should not have been Faulkner, though the
Albion
is my own invention.

Daniel Defoe's
A Journal of the Plague Year
proved useful while the
Diaries
of Pepys and Evelyn have naturally proved valuable sources for details. Among other snippets Pepys records the sound of Dutch gunfire off Harwich being heard in Bethnal Green, and Evelyn the defection of seamen to the Dutch, thanks to their lack of pay prior to the attack on the Medway. Evelyn also lays charges of incompetence and lack of money causing the catastrophic failure to commission the fleet in the spring of 1667, while Albemarle's biographers, Thomas Gumble and Sir Julian Corbett, state he was sent to Chatham by the King during the Dutch raid. Details of the Dutch attack are confusing and, at times, conflicting, particularly in terms of culpability, but the consequences are not. One third of the naval fleet in the Medway was destroyed or taken by the Dutch.

What is of passing interest is that so much that went on in these years mirrors our own time: corruption in high places, natural and unnatural disaster, economic meltdown, a run on the banks and the consequential panicky movement of people. Besides such examples, one finds in these years other parallels: religious intolerance and fundamentalism, neglect of the navy and a failure to invest in essential infrastructure, to say nothing of unlawful rendition and draconian punishment.

In an uncertain world it is some comfort to realize that a past period of similar mighty upheaval was eventually stabilized and ordered – at least to some degree.

Finally, to avoid complication and for purposes of chronology with reference to the years in which the story takes place, I have used the modern Julian calendar.