The King's Chameleon (12 page)

‘I don't know, sir. Not many though. I heard Lamont say there wouldn't be much baggage to Mr Davey.' Davey was a clerk in the counting-house.

‘Were they for Leith, d'you know?'

Hargreaves shrugged. ‘Couldn't say for certain, sir, but Davey didn't leave any tally-chits. Usually passengers for Leith leave a dozen tally-chits; not that we see that many passengers, sir, so don't take my word for it.'

‘I won't, Charlie,' said Faulkner, unable to restrain a smile despite his preoccupations.

They pulled on in silence and, as they approached Greenwich, Hargreaves, who had been craning his neck to see ahead, exclaimed, ‘Old Toshack's got her off the mooring, sir!'

‘You'm in an 'urry then, Cap'n,' the waterman observed.

‘Just pull, if you please.'

‘Sir?'

Faulkner turned to Hargreaves.

‘May I come with you sir? To lend a hand; I've never been afloat other than in a wherry or aboard a ship at the moorings.'

‘What'd your mother say when you don't arrive home this evening?'

‘But we won't be away long, will we, sir?'

‘Very well.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

Fifteen minutes later they had clambered aboard the little
Hawk
and Faulkner was shaking the hand of the grizzled old seaman who leaned on her tiller. ‘Welcome aboard, Cap'n Faulkner. Do I understand we are a-goin' after the
Mary
?'

‘Aye. Did you see her going?'

The old seaman shook his head. ‘'Fraid I don't keep early watches nowadays, sir. Not that I mind getting this little beauty off the buoy now an' again.'

Faulkner smiled. The
Hawk
was the one indulgence he had allowed himself when she had come on the market. Built as a pinnace for a Royalist gentleman who had been killed at Naseby, she had lain in a mud-berth for several years during the dull decade of Puritan rule. Towards the end of Cromwell's Protectorship, Faulkner had heard of her, and she had been knocked down to him at a candle-sale by a penurious widow with four children to support. From time to time she had been useful as a tender to ships waiting for a wind in The Downs. Old Toshack had been engaged as her master on the recommendation of Brian Harrison. An old seaman who had seen service under Blake as a quartermaster, he was a fine skipper of the smart little craft as he proceeded to demonstrate.

‘This westerly'll pick up afore sunset, Cap'n.'

Faulkner nodded. Now he was aboard the
Hawk
with time on his hands he began to worry. He paced up and down as the pinnace – her mainsail, staysail and jib gradually filling under the influence of a strengthening breeze – gathered speed. He spared a glance for the
Duchess of
Albemarle
on the stocks at Blackwall, but the sight of the new ship, whose revised name had greatly pleased him, now seemed to mock him for his self-satisfaction. If he failed to apprehend Henry and spirit him out of harm's way, he could forget his ambitions where the Honourable East India Company was concerned.

He found himself aft, almost alongside Toshack who was teaching Hargreaves how to steer the pinnace. Faulkner remembered doing the very same thing with the young Prince Charles at his side. Then he rounded on Toshack. ‘I can't afford to miss the
Mary
in the dark, Mr Toshack,' he snapped with unnecessary harshness.

‘Don' worry, Cap'n. She can't have got far.'

He could not explain to Toshack why they were in pursuit of the
Mary
, but he did not share the old man's confidence. Indeed, now that they were embarked upon this wild goose chase he was beginning to regret starting it. Once darkness fell there was little chance of their sighting the bilander, and while they might sail directly to Flushing and lie-to off the island of Walcheren, the
Mary
could still slip past them in the dark.

Pacing up and down he began to curse the King's summons. His thoughts were in a turmoil; if the King had not sent him to Lord Craven's house only to find that he must needs travel to Oxford, he would have come directly home, confronted his wife and laid the whole matter to rest. By now Henry would have been safe aboard an outward-bound merchantman, even if he, Faulkner, had had to charter one. But then he would never have known Katherine was in London and—

And what?

Failure to catch Judith and Henry meant that he would feel the King's displeasure. All the bright prospects that had been dangled before his eyes in recent hours would be like morning dew. As for Katherine, what possible chance was there for him now?

For one idle moment it seemed as if fate had laid all the advantage in his hand, that Judith had played him false and in doing so gave him the chance – the excuse – to take up again with Katherine as his mistress. Katherine could not leave her confidential position, but she could – damn it! She had as good as said so –
entertain
him at Leicester House.

He turned by the mast and stumped aft again. A grey bank of cloud massed above the smoke hanging over London. On either side the river banks were green, the low land falling back in marsh and creek. He could see a distant church tower, squat and square, on the northern horizon. He supposed it to be Barking, for he had been pacing the deck for some hours. The tide had turned against them, and although the freshening wind set them downstream with a great bone in their teeth, the opposing force slowed their speed over the ground.

Suddenly, Faulkner felt his age and his lack of sleep. He was a pot-bellied old fool! His legs still hurt, his arse ached, he was dog-tired and in no condition to keep the deck later without some rest. He went aft and spoke to Toshack. ‘The
Mary
is bound for Flushing,' he said. ‘That much I know. Do you go out by the Swin and perhaps we shall sight her. There's a crown to the first man who does. Now I intend to get some sleep.'

‘There's blankets below, Cap'n,' said Toshack. ‘And a bottle for some comfort,' he added.

Faulkner paused at the companionway and turned to the old man, still with an eager young Hargreaves by his side, leaning on the heavy tiller and trying to look like an old hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Toshack. Perhaps, when I come on deck next, you will advise me whether we must make a seaman of young Charlie, or whether we should keep him in the counting-house?'

Faulkner was back in Wapping by early June. After chasing the shadow of the
Mary
out of the Thames estuary and across the North Sea, the
Hawk
had bobbed for a week off the Schelde but seen nothing of her quarry. Faulkner had decided not to enter Flushing or Breskens for fear of involving himself with the Dutch authorities; he had no Jerque Note for leaving London and, even if he pleaded a voyage of pleasure, he knew from past experience that this would result in seemingly endless delay with the authorities. Besides, he knew that Judith and Henry would have landed as soon as possible, to disappear in the safe lodgings of their friends.

If the impromptu voyage yielded anything, it was clarity of mind for Faulkner, though no lessening of his anxiety. True, his wife and son had escaped him and he had failed insofar as the King had advised him; he hoped that the King's agents would know the truth of the matter, or God alone knew the consequences. He resolved to speak of it with Albemarle as soon as convenient, if only to under-write his own liberty. As to the birds which had flown, he had – at least to his own satisfaction – determined why Judith had absconded with their son. The evidence had been plain and might have been plainer had he had a previous whiff of suspicion, but he was now convinced that Judith was deeply implicated in whatever conspiracy Henry had been caught up in. Perhaps, he thought, she may have been the main-spring and inspiration for Henry and if so had played a devilishly subtle game. A woman of strong religious, moral and political opinions, she had never shrunk from expressing them. His fault was not to have taken notice of them, or recognized them for what they were: no mere female railings, but the visible sign of a deeper involvement with the Republicans, forced underground at the restoration of King Charles. The implications of this for himself and his other children made his blood run cold, for both Henry and Judith risked indictment for high treason! No wonder she had fainted at his reminder of the grisly process of execution for such a heinous crime, for she stood already condemned by her own foolish conduct.

And in the tortured conjectures of his mind there wormed an intimate, private and insidious thought that Judith had committed a betrayal that surpassed his own earlier marital infidelity and wiped it clean off the slate. Judith's treason – and whatever consequences it produced – could be construed as leaving him free to consort with Katherine.

Then he checked himself; neither he nor Katherine were young: this required a cool head. The King – while he might tolerate the stupidity of a young man who might be brought to heel by his father – would not look kindly on one of his senior sea-officers whose wife actively pursued a treasonable course intended to culminate in God knew what mischief! Indeed, if he were to maintain his own liberty and not be caught up in the meshes of his wife's outrageous action, he would need all the influence he could muster from Katherine and Craven and, God help him, both Albemarle and Rupert of the Rhine.

The concrete sign of Judith's commitment was the buying into Lamont's bilander, which Faulkner had taken for nothing more than a shrewd piece of business on her part. She had invested on her own account before and he had no objection to the liberty this gave her, but now matters lay under a different light. It was clear that she was, at the very least, a party to all of Henry's clandestine comings and goings; at the very worst their very root and foundation. It called into question his supposed reconciliation with his son, but by now he was prepared to add this to the catalogue of their deception. Perhaps Henry had meant something in it, perhaps not. Either way the pair of them had fooled him.

Of course, Judith had lost control of herself when confronted by Faulkner. Having gulled him for so long, his sudden appearance apparently armed with all the facts
must
have shocked her. He knew that, for all her strength of character, she was afraid of him, and this had overwhelmed her when combined with the stark and awful facts of the process of hanging, drawing and quartering, the stench of which had most recently begun again to drift over London with the execution of Thomas Harrison.

It was not something easily forgotten. On Saturday the thirteenth of October last, Thomas Harrison had been lashed to a hurdle and drawn from Newgate to Charing Cross. He had been hanged by his neck and while dancing the dido of death had been cut down, gasping for breath. Hardly had he gained this than his breeches were cut away prior to his being castrated and disembowelled. While the shock of this ran through what remained of his body, his mind contemplated the outrage perpetrated upon his person as his genitals and intestines had been burned before his very eyes, the stink of it filling his nostrils as his eyes watched the blood pour from his mutilations. Harrison had then been beheaded and his body quartered, his several parts carried away for display in prominent places as a warning to others.

Perhaps it was the prospect of this happening to her darling son that had, quite simply, turned Judith's reason and made her desperate. Whatever her motive, whether in support of Henry or at the root of his involvement, Judith had left her husband in a serious predicament.

She was, Faulkner concluded, so deeply implicated that escape out of the country was her only option. And where else to go, but The Seven United Provinces of The Netherlands? Just as they had been when the Royalists were in exile, the Dutch were prepared to play host to the men whose lives were endangered by Charles II's Restoration. Common gossip told of several of the Regicides threatened by the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion being in The United Provinces, and Faulkner had heard that Sir George Downing, His Majesty's envoy to the States General at The Hague, had caused a near-scandal when he botched an attempt to seize Edward Dendy in Rotterdam. Dendy was one of those exempt from the amnesty granted to most supporters of the Parliament during the late war – the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion. It was Downing's conspicuous bungling that confirmed Faulkner in his decision not to make a landing from the
Hawk
. Given the nervous state of affairs between the two countries, he was reluctantly obliged to abandon his chase and concede defeat.

Unhappily, Faulkner ordered Toshack set the
Hawk
's head to the west, waving aside the old man's pleadings to allow him to lie off the coast for another few days.

‘I thank you, but that will serve no useful purpose. You may land me at Harwich and return to the Thames, where I shall see you and your men well-paid for your diligence.'

At Harwich, Toshack took in much-needed victuals while Faulkner, disembarking with Hargreaves, took a coach for London. He was in a lather, and eager to be at Deptford on the tenth, when the Brethren of Trinity House elected Edward Montague, Earl of Sandwich, as their new Master. As they assembled for dinner on that occasion, Faulkner made a point of speaking with Albemarle who, in standing down after the customary year in office, retained his easy manner and spoke warmly to Faulkner. ‘How is your new ship, Sir Christopher?'

‘I have not seen her for a week or two, Your Grace,' Faulkner confessed, ‘though my partner will have been a model of attentiveness. When I saw her last she was coming on splendidly. With your permission, she will be launched as the “Duchess of Albemarle” and I shall of course invite Your Grace and Her Ladyship to the rout.'

Albemarle smiled. ‘My thanks. Let us hope you can profit from your investment before the Dutch come interfering in our affairs – or we in theirs, as I fear must happen by-and-by.'