For King or Commonwealth (13 page)

Summoning every ounce of strength that remained to him he yelled, ‘I strike! I strike!'

He came-to some time later, uncertain of his whereabouts. Someone had tended his leg and he had a bandage about his head. A raging thirst was on him and he called feebly for water. A figure, blurred in the half darkness leaned over him.

‘You are lucky,' a vaguely familiar voice remarked.

‘Who are you?'

‘Nathaniel, Father.'

‘Nathaniel? Are you hurt?'

‘No, thanks be to God and no thanks to you.'

‘Where am I?'

‘Aboard the
Resolution
. The surgeon has attended you. You are a prisoner of Vice-Admiral Moulton and I am obliged to inform him that you have recovered your wits.'

‘Does he know . . .?'

‘Who you are and what I am to you?'

Faulkner nodded.

‘Of course,' came the response, accompanied by a short, bitter laugh.

Faulkner closed his eyes. It was the end. He would likely hang before they reached Portsmouth. Nathaniel rose and moved away. His father lay still in the gloom, listening to the groans of others, the wounded of, what, both sides? He lay thus for some while and drifted into an uneasy doze. Later he was started awake, aware of men about him. He caught the gleam of a glim reflected on half-armour, the crimson of a wide sash. Looking up he saw the filigree of fine lace above which the short, almost fashionably Caroline beard and moustache marked the otherwise heavy features of Robert Moulton, Vice-Admiral of the Commonwealth Navy.

‘Well, well, so now we have the devil's nephew in our hands. Welcome aboard, Sir Christopher, or are you Sir Kit?' Moulton's sarcasm ended in a mirthless chuckle. ‘You acted boldly, but foolishly. I am still undecided as to whether it was entirely admirable, but then you have built a reputation on stratagem and subterfuge, I am given to understand.' He paused, as if making up his mind, and turning to a younger man beside him, asked, ‘It is him, is it not?'

‘No doubt of it, sir.'

‘Good. Have you anything to say, sir?' Moulton asked and Faulkner shook his head. ‘You are not curious about your future?' Faulkner tried to shrug his shoulders. ‘Are you affecting indifference, Sir Kit? If so 'tis unwise for I surmise we have plans for you . . .'

Faulkner felt his blood run cold. It was clear they knew all about him, even down to the trumpery knighthood he had been saddled with. Whatever they charged him with, be it piracy or even treason – for if they charged the late King Charles with treason, they could most certainly nail Kit Faulkner on the same grounds – they might not merely hang him, but castrate him, draw his entrails and quarter his body before the noose had choked the life out of him.

‘I feel sorry for your son, Sir Christopher. He is a good and loyal man.'

‘It is a matter of regret that his principles are not mine,' he murmured.

‘Indeed they are not, and it will be a matter of regret for him that that is the case. Are you there, Mr Faulkner?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Faulkner shifted his eyes from Moulton to his son. ‘Your father is careless about his future. You may tell him he is an especial prisoner of the State and you may tell him that we shall find him a fine lodging – in the Tower, I'll warrant.'

Moulton and his small entourage turned away, leaving Nathaniel standing next to his father. ‘The fortune of war, father, I think you said. A mere turn of the cards.'

They put him in an enclosed carriage for the journey from Portsmouth to London. The windows were fastened and curtained, but the movement of the coach allowed him fitful and fleeting glimpses of his surroundings He had as a clip-clopping escort a troop of crop-head cavalry with their iron helmets, leather jerkins and strong bay horses that stank of sweat and leather. Straight swords were scabbarded at their left hips and they all bore wheellocks in holsters at their saddlebows. From time to time one would ride close alongside and peer in at him, shouting something to the effect that the prisoner was within and well enough. A cornet-of-horse commanded, a man of middling years whose face bore a scar that ran across his nose and formed an ugly purple notch in it. He breathed with a sibilant hiss that added menace to the creak of his heavy topboots and the faint jingle of his spurs as he opened the door to check his charge when they stopped. Otherwise he made no other noise towards Faulkner, addressing not one word to his prisoner during the long journey. These were seasoned campaigners intent on their charge and they paused only to change the horses hauling the coach and feed and water their own mounts. Both horses and dragoons seemed as tough as years of war could have wrought them. These were men of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army and, for Faulkner, used to the negligently martial elegance of cavalier officers in exile, they brought the changed state of England vividly to his notice.

He received one beaker of small beer on the journey; otherwise he was left to bounce around in the equipage, every jolt of which set his teeth as his wound tormented him. He was in a mild fever by the time they reached London and had no very clear notion of the time other than that the darkness proclaimed it night. It was raining and the flare of torchlight gleamed on dark wet stone walls as, after an exchange of challenges and passwords, they passed beneath the Lion Gate and entered the chief fortress of the state.

Taken out of the coach at the doorway of a grim tower he was led inside, two troopers holding his arms and the middle-aged cornet clumping along behind him as they followed a gaoler, a sober-suited man with a gleaming bundle of keys and a lantern that threw shadows hither and yon, up a staircase and into a bare room. The door was open, the gaoler stood aside, the troopers thrust him inside and one threw a bundle in after him. As he turned he saw only the disfigured face of the cornet as he held up the lantern he had taken from the gaoler, as if verifying his prisoner had been well and truly cast into durance vile. Then the officer spoke for the first and last time.

‘God have mercy on you.'

Then the door slammed shut, keys turned twice in their locks and he was left to himself. For perhaps ten minutes he stood stock still in the darkness, his beating heart slowly quieting. His leg hurt, his head ached. He was exhausted, hungry, thirsty and . . .

And what?

It came to him suddenly that he was the same starved little boy that Sir Henry Mainwaring had discovered on the quay at Bristol, trying to purloin an apple core to keep body and soul together. Nothing connected the two, no interval of time, no voyaging to the Mediterranean, no marriage to Judith, no children, no Katherine, still less a King who gave him a telescope or an idle Prince that fondled his mistress. He was not Sir Christopher at all; he was Mr Rat, just as Mainwaring had said all those years ago.

He felt the tears start to his eyes, not tears of weakness but tears of profound regret at the passing of the intervening years, of the living of his life, and with the tears came the shock of his predicament. He fell to his knees, indifferent to the pain it caused his leg, or the start of blood from the half-healed wound. Sobbing uncontrollably he wrung his hands before grinding his filthy palms into the sockets of his eyes. He remained thus for some few minutes until he calmed himself and began to think clearly. He could expect no mercy from his captors; it remained only to reconcile himself to death. But what death? The terror of that question caused his heart to flutter and his guts to churn to water. What death?

The straightforward hanging of a pirate, after which his body would be left to rot on the tideline at Wapping?

Or the formal horrors of a traitorous execution, the ritual but partial hanging, the castration, evisceration and quartering?

He found himself shuddering as much with cold as fear and became aware of a small window and the faint light from a cloudy night sky. He remembered the bundle that had been thrown into the cell and realized it was his few remaining effects, containing a cloak which he found and wrapped about him, sitting on the cold flags, in a corner of the room he judged opposite to the door. He had, in the space of just over an hour, become a feral beast, a literally cornered creature whose fate had brought him to this pass.

He must have fallen into something of a stupor for he suddenly seemed to awaken to a change of circumstances and noticed the pale parallelogram of light that revealed an emerging moon. Stiffly, he rose to his feet and stood to look out of the window. There, far above, the passing clouds were like waves which the moon, like a ship, rode; from time to time they obscured the moon's face and the light faded. Then it shone out again, lighting up the massive keep of the White Tower, pallid and yet solid, like a gigantic fist slammed down in the centre of the curtain walls and defensive towers that circumvallated it. It was William the Bastard's mark, the mark of absolute monarchy that had stood for almost six hundred years. He saw the irony of his situation. He, Kit Faulkner, who had thrown in his lot with a monarch as absolute in his conceit as The Conqueror, now found himself, Sir Christopher by act of that King's son, imprisoned in the same Tower. The irony saved him from himself; armed him a little with fortitude, for he saw himself as one among many and drew a cold comfort from the knowledge. He was, in that midnight hour, alone, alive and contemplating not merely the works of man but – and here he looked again at the sailing moon – also those of the Maker of All Things. He drew a strange consolation from the thought and held it tight against his soul, recalling a phrase from the scripture that referred to the ‘whole armour of God'.

He was to think of that numinous moment many times in the succeeding weeks.

For a month he saw the gaoler twice a day when he admitted a man who brought him a wooden platter with some hard black bread, a bowl – also of wood – containing a thin soup, and a horn beaker of small beer. The man also removed the slop pail that Faulkner had first discovered by a more practical use of the moonlight during his first night of incarceration.

At first he had no desire to speak with either the gaoler or his myrmidon. It seemed that, once established, this twice-daily routine might be kept up indefinitely. They brought no news of his fate and, under the trying circumstances in which he found himself, no news was good news. Neither man gave any impression of recognizing him as a sentient being. They were neither unkind, nor gloating; neither kind nor cruel. He might have been a horse, or a patient ox. Once the gaoler gave his assistant some murmured instruction and the man went off, to return with a broom, which he silently held out to Faulkner, making a motion that he should sweep the flagstones. Faulkner took the broom and nodded.

After some ten days he felt compelled to ask whether he might shave and when the gaoler shook his head, he impulsively asked if he knew what would become of him. The man shook his head again, then raised his gloved forefinger to his lips. Faulkner realized he was under orders not to address the prisoner on any circumstances. The realization troubled him. As long as he could persuade himself that the routine would go on indefinitely he could endure the incarceration – or thought he could. But once the notion that specific orders had been given relative to his conditions, the blindfold that he had wrapped himself in was torn away.

Oddly, however, it was not so much anxiety about his own future that concerned him, though that ate relentlessly at his innards during the sleepless hours of the night, as anxiety about Katherine. Would she hear what had happened to him? And if she did – and it was difficult to think that the word would not somehow reach Helvoetsluys – what would she do? Throw herself into the ready arms of His Royal Highness? And who could blame her if she did? She must eat and he could do nothing for himself, let alone for her. He felt, in those first days of his captivity, like the cock in a game of battledore, flung first one way and then the other, between deep concern for Katherine and the sheer dread of his own, appalling death.

On the evening of the nineteenth day of his captivity he wrapped himself in his cloak as usual and lay down on a straw-filled palliasse that had been provided for him a fortnight earlier. He had drifted off into an uneasy doze when something woke him. It was black as pitch and there was no moon. The window casement rattled slightly. He was disturbed by a soughing wind and the scuttle of a rat, which made him draw his feet up so that he lay like a child. But something else had caused a noise, something unusual: the sound of men's voices. Abruptly, the noise of keys grinding in the locks was followed by a sudden blast of cold air as the door was flung open. Faulkner leapt to his feet as, partially lit by the gaoler's lantern, two cloaked and hooded figures came into the room. Scuttling round the three men came a boy that Faulkner had never seen before. He bore a candlestick and a guttering candle which he placed on the floor. As Faulkner stood stock still, staring at the intruders, his heart hammering with the certainty that his last moments had come, the boy ran out, returning seconds later with two rush-seated chairs each of which he placed either side of the door. Then the boy withdrew, followed by the gaoler. The key ground only once in the door as the two men sat down and a voice commanded Faulkner to sit before the candle where they could observe his features.

He did as he was told.

‘Now, if thou value your life any, keep thy eyes upon the candle and we shall see if the game is worth its expense.' He had no idea which of them spoke, but the voice was deep and not unkind. It was clear that even if he did involuntarily raise his eyes, the candle flame's effect upon his retina would prevent him seeing their features. Moreover, neither of his visitors threw back their hoods. He lowered his eyes as he had been commanded.

‘State your name.'

‘Christopher Faulkner.'