The King's Chameleon (28 page)

‘How's that Indiaman of yours?' Albemarle asked conversationally as he took the proffered sealed packet from Faulkner, who briefly explained the fortunes of the
Duchess of Albemarle
. The admiral looked up from the packet, half un-opened in his gnarled hand. ‘I cannot comprehend why you have been left on shore so long.'

‘I did apply to serve.'

‘Huh! I cannot think you did otherwise. Still, you are here now and I am much in need of you.' Albemarle motioned to a hovering man-servant and wine was served. ‘Pray take some wine,' he said cordially to Faulkner as he riffled through the crackling pages. ‘Just give me a moment to digest the contents of these despatches.'

‘They are from the Admiralty but include one from the King,' Faulkner said, sipping his glass of wine. Albemarle, meanwhile, shuffled through the papers, occasionally clucking his tongue. Then he laid them down, picked up his wine and joined Faulkner.

‘How d'you find the
Albion
?' Albemarle asked conversationally. The two men stood side by side, each with his glass of wine, staring out through the stern windows of the
Royal Charles
. All around them Albemarle's squadron lay anchored in The Downs.

‘Knocked about somewhat, but sound enough I think, Your Grace, though I see you too have had a fair share of it.' Faulkner indicated the patched, shattered panes, and the damaged wood-work about the flagship's stern windows.

‘Indeed. It's been warm work, and there is more to do – more than I wish to contemplate.' Albemarle sighed, cast a rueful glance at his littered desk and sipped his wine for a moment. ‘Pity about young Verney,' Albemarle went on, referring to the
Albion
's late captain who had died suddenly. ‘He handled himself well off Lowestoft,' he said with a sigh. ‘That's the pity of it, and now, my dear Sir Kit, it is left to us old men to fend off these God-damned Dutchmen. They fight like the Devil, as you well know, and they are most ably commanded.'

‘As are we, Your Grace.'

Albemarle turned towards him, a wry smile crossing his face like a sword-slash. ‘Damn it, Sir Kit, you have been too long ashore and picked up courtier's ways. The truth is I am at my wit's end. The King has sent Rupert to the westwards, having heard that the French fleet is ordered into the Channel from the Mediterranean. I have scarce fifty men-o'-war, and now the wind lies in the east.' There was a note of exasperation in Albemarle's tone. ‘De Ruyter will not miss the trick, and he has van Tromp and Evertsen with him; their strength must exceed eighty sail, and the Thames lies open but for us …' He waved his wine glass in an encompassing sweep, taking in the ships lying at their anchors, their colours and flags waving gallantly in the breeze, their boats plying between them with the punts of the Deal hovellers hanging in wait, like the gulls themselves, in case anything fell to their advantage. ‘I am in want of powder, shot …'

‘I am to tell you several hoys are coming from the Medway with powder, wads and shot.'

‘Good. Will they be here before nightfall?'

‘I should hope so.'

‘What about men?'

‘Nothing, I'm afraid. At least none that I know of.'

‘Odd, is it not,' Albemarle observed with a dry resignation, ‘that when one wants men to put to sea the government is in want of them, yet when the poor devils are wounded in the state's service and put ashore to lick their wounds, that is about all that they can do, for the government complains there are too many of them and does nothing. Then, of course, it is the responsibility of the Trinity Brethren to help them, the King's ministers washing their hands of it all.'

‘I can only say that I agree with you, Your Grace.'

Albemarle sighed and looked at Faulkner with a sad smile. ‘I wish you could say otherwise.'

‘As do I.'

‘I wrote to the King,' Albemarle confided, ‘and said that if I met the Dutch, then honour bound me to fight, notwithstanding the odds against us. The point of my plight seems lost on him, pleasure boating making him an expert in these matters. Now he requires me to weigh anchor at once and cruise between the Longsand Head and the Galloper, in order that de Ruyter does not pen me here.'

‘I understand he has recalled Prince Rupert.'

‘Yes, he tells me Rupert is to reinforce me at once. I should have sent a cruiser to watch the Dutch, but I am so damnably short …' The admiral's voice tailed off. There was no doubt that he should have sent a cruiser; certainly not in Faulkner's mind. ‘You used to do the job rather well, I recall,' he added, turning to Faulkner. ‘Truth is, Kit, I am grown old …'

‘Well, Your Grace, we may still give a good account of ourselves.'

‘I hope so,' Albemarle said with a grim laugh. ‘I suppose one may as well die in action as in a bed.'

‘I'd prefer the bed, Your Grace,' Faulkner said drily, finishing his wine, ‘and preferably not alone.'

He made to take his leave, but Albemarle stopped him and asked: ‘How is your wife?'

Faulkner bridled at the awkward question, especially following his facetious remark. Talking of death, he had thought not of Judith, but of Katherine, glad that in his absence she had moved to live with Hannah. The poisonous intrusion of Judith, even if by way of Honest George's enquiry, was disconcerting. Something of this train of thought must have crossed his face, for the admiral added quickly, ‘I ask as a friend.'

‘Your Grace is very kind,' Faulkner said hurriedly. ‘You have likely heard she is deranged, or some such thing.'

Albemarle dodged the implied query. ‘I had merely wondered if her condition was what had prevented your coming to sea.'

‘No,' Faulkner replied shortly, then unbent. ‘To tell truth, Your Grace, she confines herself to her room, sees no-one but her brother and blames me for the loss of our son.'

‘Who took his own life …'

‘Who took his own life after she had embroiled him in a plot against the King, as you may recall.'

‘Yes, yes, I spoke to the King in your interest.'

Faulkner inclined his head. ‘For which I am most grateful.'

‘Huh,' Albemarle said ruefully. ‘I don't doubt but that our Royal Master made you pay for it.'

‘Indeed he did, your Grace,' Faulkner said, finding that he could laugh at the imposition in Honest George's company.

‘One sometimes wishes more could share the burden of service to the state,' Albemarle remarked. He was in confidential mood. ‘It seems sometimes that it falls hard upon the shoulders of a few men while others openly offer their wives and lay them before his Majesty's ever-quivering sceptre. That rogue Palmer, for example, who is to become Lord Cleveland and that whore of a wife – the Villiers woman – will be his Duchess! Pah!'

‘True,' Faulkner said, grinning, ‘but there are those poor seamen who bear a heavier load …'

‘And their families, who bear the heaviest.' Albemarle sighed again, then bestirred himself. ‘Come, Sir Kit, we had better be about our business or we shall both be hanged for treason. Who's your first lieutenant in
Albion
?'

‘Septimus Clarke, your Grace.'

‘Clarke, Clarke …? No, I do not know him. Is he a good fellow?'

‘He seems so. I have made his acquaintance before. He was with Sackler in the
Blackamoor
when we brought the Regicides out of Holland.'

‘I would ask you to dine with me but these orders …' He gestured at the papers on his desk.

‘Not at all, Your Grace, I have my own preparations.'

‘The tide turns to the north at first light; I shall give the signal to weigh then.'

Faulkner put on his cloak and picked up his hat. ‘Your servant, Your Grace.'

As if on cue there came a knock at the cabin door and the admiral's secretary peeped anxiously into the great cabin. Albemarle beckoned him inside. Albemarle and Faulkner exchanged glances. ‘You have the knack of timing, Sir Christopher,' Albemarle said grimly. ‘Until we shake hands again here, or in Hell!'

As Faulkner stepped out onto the quarterdeck, he could hear Albemarle already dictating orders. He cast a quick look aloft at the main masthead of the
Royal Charles
where Albemarle's flag rippled in the breeze.

‘It's still in the east, Sir Christopher,' the officer-of-the-watch remarked. ‘De Ruyter will be on the move by now.'

‘De Ruyter will have been on the move ere now,' Faulkner said, adding matter-of-factly, ‘would you be so kind as to call my boat.'

During the night the wind changed, and at dawn on the last day of May it was blowing fresh from the south-west. Albemarle's fleet weighed from The Downs, avoiding the trap the King feared, coming in sight of the Dutch the next morning, the first of June, when off the Longsand Head, some ten miles south-east of Harwich. It seemed to Faulkner, in the days of furious fighting and manoeuvring that followed, that if he ever met Albemarle again, it would undoubtedly be in Hell. For, apart from the brief hours of darkness of the summer nights, the two fleets were embattled upon its very threshold. In after years, Faulkner's recollection of those subsequent days were confused, far less distinct than his memories of any other action in which he had fought. This was due in part to exhaustion, to the effect of the deafening noise; of the need to assess the constantly shifting situation, interpret Albemarle's signals and handle the
Albion
, all of which taxed him mentally and physically. But it was also because of the confusion inherent in a battle that went on for four days, so that one recollection ran into another and the conflation of memories served no purpose other than to confuse a mind already disturbed by the relentless thunder of the guns, the shrieks of the wounded and the imperative necessity of
thinking
, of dealing with the present moment with no capacity for past or future. Younger men, unwounded, and for whom this was their first fleet action, emerged claiming they had never felt so
alive
, such was the potency and excitement of the instant. If they too escaped wounds, older and experienced men were more likely to find the prolonged noise and strain simply wore them out. Irrespective of age, however, at the end of each day's action, as the fleets broke away and moved out of range of each other, no-one left standing on deck could escape the deafness accompanied by tinnitus, the hunger, the thirst or the bone-weariness that engendered an overwhelming desire to sink down where they stood and seek the arms of Morpheus.

What no man forgot was the smell: the stink that gradually overcame the tang of sea-air as each day advanced and left behind the luminous innocence of the dawn. Yet both bore the hint of salt; the morning breeze carried it as did the reek of blood which, compounded with its ferrous smell and the choking salts of sulphur and potassium emanating from the muzzles of the hundreds of belching cannon, filled the lungs of all. Thousands died in the action and, in later life, it was only necessary to discharge a shotgun after game, or pass a butchers' shambles, for the olfactory nerve to produce the most poignant recollection.

Despite the nightmarish amalgamation of Faulkner's memories, one or two moments stood out, imprinting themselves vividly on his mind's eye, though he was afterwards confused as to their chronological order. When first sighted, the Dutch fleet had been at anchor off the Galloper shoal and Albemarle threw out the signal to attack. Led by the van squadron under Vice Admiral Sir William Berkeley, the English fleet bore down upon the enemy, which was swiftly got under way and fell into line, heading south-east led by Tromp. Ayscue led round to run parallel with the Dutch, the entire English fleet following, battering Tromp's squadron before de Ruyter could come up to his assistance about mid-day. However, although Albemarle's ships held the weather gauge, such was the strength of the wind and the heeling of his ships that many could not open their lower gun-ports, adding another disadvantage to being out-numbered.

In the years that had passed since the First Dutch War, Johann de Witt, the Dutch Stadtholder, had permitted the building of larger Dutch men-of-war, able to compete with the English ships in weight of metal. These bore more ballast than their opponents, making them stiffer, and thus they fought from leeward to advantage over the English, throwing their shot from all their gun-ports. Among these was de Ruyter's magnificent new flagship,
De Seven Provinciën
, mounting eighty guns. During the day the two fleets hammered away at one another relentlessly, each seeking a weakness in their opponent so that some confusion broke the regularity of the twin lines of battle. From time to time, the English found themselves working both broadsides as the rear Dutch squadron under Cornelius Evertsen bore up and crossed to take the windward position. During the long afternoon, Albemarle's centre squadron – in which lay Faulkner in the
Albion
– followed by Allin's rear squadron, was heavily engaged by de Ruyter and Evertsen. As the hours passed, they drew ever closer to the banks of shoals that lay parallel to the Flanders shore, and Albemarle, whose ships were in general of deeper draught than the Dutch, was forced to bear up.

De Ruyter and Evertsen fell upon the turning English men-of-war with deadly effect, particularly the van under Berkeley. Sir William Berkeley was killed, and his flagship, the sixty-four-gun
Swiftsure
, surrendered, while Berkeley's rear admiral, Sir John Harman in the
Henry
, fought his way through Evertsen's squadron and evaded three fireships sent towards him. Such was the ferocity of his action that with the
Henry
on fire, Evertsen ranged up alongside and called upon Harman to surrender. Harman refused, his next broadside killing Evertsen and others about him.

Faulkner recalled seeing the
Henry
on fire and being astonished later that she was still afloat and still fighting. The
Loyal George
was not so lucky, for she was also lost. As darkness fell and the two fleets drew apart, Faulkner called for the butcher's bill; he had lost eighteen men, and of the forty-one wounded upwards of a dozen were mortally so. To this number he could, with confidence, add another twenty who would not survive their surgery, though they might languish some weeks yet.