For King or Commonwealth (16 page)

‘I had heard that my presence here is not well known.'

‘True, but that is so only among the populace. Those of us in the State's service at sea are aware of you and are much pleased by your confinement. You were becoming likened to another Drake, believe it or not.'

‘I had no idea.'

‘Which begs a question . . .' Brenton paused, his eyebrows raised.

‘I do not understand. What question? What is to become of me?'

‘More or less.'

‘More or less? Am I not as good as condemned by mine own actions?'

Brenton nodded. ‘Oh, aye, but these are fractious times and, between the two of us, though the King's head was struck from his shoulders, there are those who fear our new and experimental realm may not be as secure as we should like. There is trouble brewing with the Dutch. The Scots have proclaimed your young puppy King of Scotland, and King Louis sits like a patient spider in Paris pulling the strings of his web of spies that have, I am given to understand, also ensnared His Majesty the King of Scotland.'

‘And why are you telling me all this, Harry? Is it because I am shortly to be arraigned, condemned and executed, and it matters little what I know?'

‘It may well be, indeed. But it depends.'

‘Upon what?'

‘Upon you, perhaps, and as much as upon others, for the Council of State – when it has the liberty to discuss your case – is divided in its opinion as to your value. You must have realized that after you had been here some months and seen nothing of the rack or the wheel.'

‘Pray God not that. I should rather thrust mine own neck into the noose, and cheerfully too.'

‘I will be frank with you, Kit, this may yet be your fate which, for the moment at least, hangs in the balance for reasons I cannot tell you. I am allowed to see you on the grounds of sounding you out and this I refuse to do, though I shall not tell those who sent me that, for I would not see you sell your soul. What you do you must decide for yourself, for I know you to have been bewitched by Mistress Villiers and I do not know how you stand thus. What I shall tell those who sent me is that you are undecided, and crave another month to determine your future.'

‘Stop, Harry, for God's sake! What are you offering me? Amnesty? Pardon? A chance if I come over to you?'

‘Of course! Think of your future. Your skills could be put to better use and, if it consoles you, better men than you have come over to the righteous cause of a beleaguered people.'

‘And if, having been sent here for an answer, you do not take one back . . .'

‘I am dealing with men of conscience, Kit. Too hasty a decision, though welcomed by some who are, if not your friends, are not yet your enemies, would seem hasty enough to cast you in the liking of a wind vane,' Brenton said. ‘Especially to those who would rather you swung for your crimes.'

A silence fell between the two men and then Faulkner observed, quietly, ‘'Tis like to walking along a sword blade on its edge.'

‘Very like.' Brenton refilled the wine cups. ‘Do not let Mistress Villiers too much influence you. You will not survive unless . . .'

‘What must I do?' Faulkner asked abruptly.

‘Write an expiation. I shall not call it a confession.'

‘And offer my services to the Parliament?'

‘If that is what you wish.'

‘And if I do not?'

Brenton shrugged. ‘I doubt they will hang you after all this time. They will want you forgotten and are the more likely to condemn you to serve at sea in an inferior capacity which you will be compelled to bear as a humiliation.'

‘You would recommend this, as a friend?'

‘You are too inquisitive, my astute friend,' Brenton said, standing up and picking up his hat. ‘Gaoler!' He lowered his voice. ‘I return to the fleet. The General-at-Sea recalls you from the fighting in the West Country.'

‘The General . . .?'

‘At-Sea. It is what we term the senior admiral nowadays. Robert Blake – a man who wants watching, for he will do great things if he lives long.'

If he lives long. The words tumbled about Faulkner's brain long after Brenton had gone and night had fallen. Glad as he was to see a friendly face, of all his odd visitors Brenton's had been the oddest, leaving him both confused and yet certain there was, if he decided to seize it, a way out of his predicament. In contrast to the first time he had taken wine in the Tower, he was unable to sleep after imbibing several cups with Brenton. He had no reason to suppose Brenton had not been honest towards him, nor could he have been admitted to Faulkner's cell had he not come armed with the necessary papers, so he must take Brenton's words at their face value. But what was he to do? On the one hand it was blindingly obvious that to throw his lot in with the Parliament meant that he could at least come home, though what did he do about Katherine? Was she abed with Charles, or was that a fiction of Mainwaring's? And if it was not, did he care if he got her back? And if he did accept that he might serve as a common seaman, might not that at least give him an opportunity to desert, to escape and reach Kate? The longer he thought about the matter, the more confused he became. The weeks of isolation had disturbed his reasoning powers because his world had become so circumscribed that the personal was so conditional, unaffected by greater events owing to his imperfect understanding of them, such was the insulation afforded by the massive ramparts of the fortress.

And there was always that tricky subject of honour upon which he had stood so defiantly when first interrogated. What did an honourable man do in such circumstances? An honourable man, he assumed, would rather die than turn his coat. Had he not as good as said so to his son over the business of the Trinity Brethren's oath of allegiance? He spent several days and nights in this mental turmoil so that, as the last frosts of winter gave way to spring, he fell foul of a quinsy and then a fever that had him tossing, sodden in sweat and a stinking funk on his straw palliasse. Delirious for eleven days, his life was feared for by the gaoler who had discovered his prisoner to be a modest but steady source of additional income. He was visited again by his son and one of the two strangers who had first disturbed him. This last asked for a daily report to be sent to the Palace of Whitehall, addressed to Mr Fox, an assumed pseudonym. Even when he recovered from his fever, Faulkner remained weak and listless. His mind shied away from any anxiety and, when reporting on him, his gaoler described him as having descended into ‘a decline, a want of spirits and a general disinterest in life occasioned by some agony of conscience'. Keen to retain the weekly monies that arrived for Faulkner's comfort, it played into the gaoler's hands to maintain this state of inertia for as long as possible. Indifferent to death, a weakened state of life was less troublesome and more profitable to him and in this way the weeks passed, a spring became summer, and soon that too showed signs of fading.

Faulkner's mind seemed to have given way. Five times he called for pen and paper and five times he drew up the heading of ‘An Expiation'. Five times he drafted a paragraph and on each occasion it was different. Five times he contemplated a false start, taking comfort only in what appeared the solid fact that while he did nothing, nobody seemed inclined to do anything to him. This unreal conclusion was conditioned in part by his institutionalization, but also by his distant past. As a guttersnipe he had learned to lie low and take advantage of whatever offered a thin subsistence. Thus, what would have driven another man mad, simply called up reserves of experience known to few, for few rise as Faulkner had done.

And, as the time passed, it seemed that he was correct, that the authorities had forgotten him, having other, more pressing, matters to attend to. While this was only partially the case and his occupancy of a cell in the Beauchamp Tower was regularly noted by a sub-committee of the Council of State, the overtly bureaucratic minds of which it was largely made up did not question the decision to leave him there. The expense of his incarceration was small and, at least for the time being, the wisdom with which England was governed by its Parliament called for few prisoners to be sent into the Tower while the melting down of the Crown Jewels meant it was less frequented by the public than heretofore. Fortunately for Faulkner, the eyes of England were turned upon the slaughter being wrought by Cromwell and his army in Ireland, where the forces brought together under Ormonde were crumbling under the onslaught. Now Ormonde himself was on his way to join the exiled Charles. With such weighty events in train and in this wise, Faulkner had been imprisoned a year before anyone bethought themselves to ask what
was
to happen to him.

That person was his wife.

Judith Faulkner had been left substantial shares in two East Indiamen besides lesser interests in several lesser vessels when her husband deserted her. She had clung to a right to be regarded as a wronged woman, respectable by her own efforts, by becoming a force in business. Although she relied upon her husband's business partner, her own brother, Nathan Gooding, as the public face of their joint enterprise, there were few in the rather circumscribed circles of London's ship owners who did not know that, shrewd though Gooding was, his sister was the more canny.

Her original decision to pay a moiety to maintain her estranged husband in the Tower was a form of revenge. In spite of his very depredations against her – for one of the East Indiamen he had attacked at the Nore had been a ship in which Judith had an interest – she was wealthy enough not to miss a few pence a week. A woman of deep but repressed passions, a legacy of her Puritanism, she enjoyed a perverse, almost visceral pleasure in knowing Faulkner's very well-being depended upon her. However, such pleasure waned as time passed and he, it seemed, was likely to become a permanent drain upon her income. Besides, any pleasure that she might derive from the knowledge required that she confront him and made him abase himself. Only then could the investment pay off with the dividend of his humiliation. For many weeks she contemplated this event, playing versions of the fantasy in her imagination, and these ranged from the severe and heartless – in their most extreme form she plunged a righteous dagger into him – to curiously erotic imaginings wherein she took her pleasure of him while he – for darker reasons that it would be proper to relate here – was unable to similarly enjoy. These were nasty midnight excursions which, in the severe austerity of the chapel services among a congregation of the righteous, she confessed silently. Indeed, during those devout years of the Rump of the Long Parliament, there were those people among her congregation who were apt to remark that Mistress Judith – for these souls, being most sympathetic to her, avoided the use of her married surname – always bore a high colour when she came from her witness. Such, they claimed, was clear evidence of the workings of God among his chosen flock.

However, there came a late November afternoon when, the day having drawn in, but when her eldest son Henry was still assisting Nathan in the counting house, her daughter Hannah was visiting a neighbour and Nathan was back at sea in command of his old ship, Judith called for her private ledger. The household expenses rose alarmingly at this time of the year and the cost of a chauldron of sea-coal reminded her that its price was artificially high because of the risks attending its carriage from the Tyne to the Thames. It also reminded her that such a price was first caused by a certain Captain Kit Faulkner but that the said filibuster was now mewed up in the Tower of London. The thought caused her to turn to the untitled column at the rear of the ledger where a list of disbursements made to a certain John Fitchett, Gaoler, when added up, came to fifteen pounds, twelve shillings and three ha'pence.

The sum shocked her; she had not thought it amounted to more than eight or nine pounds and had been so confident that that was the case that, of all her various payments and expenses, she had neglected its addition. Somehow, she recalled, every time she had intended to, she had fallen instead into a fantasy of contemplating their eventual and, for her, delicious confrontation. Now she considered the matter with a more singular purpose, recollecting the manner in which the payment was made by application, Fitchett sending his boy with an itemised list. Of course, this usually only bore a few times which she paid promptly from her purse, but it now struck her that the boy's appearances had been more persistent than prudence dictated. True, there had been the circumstances of her husband's prolonged indisposition, relief of which mollified Judith as an act of disinterested Christian charity spiced with a righteous compassion. Even so, she chid herself, the boy's regular appearances ought to have warned her of the rising expense and she was not so stupid as to realize Fitchett must needs take his ample rake-off.

‘Well, Mr Fitchett,' she said to herself, closing the ledger resolutely, ‘you have been long about your business and, if my husband is sick I must see for myself the extent of his illness.'

Had she not been seen as something of a martyr of the late disturbances by the most charitable, she might not have been able to gain access to her husband. As it was, she had been visited several times by a man introducing himself as ‘Mr Fox' who asked for certain details of her estranged husband's character and the extent of his interests in London and Bristol. Mr Fox had paid her several subsequent visits and, Judith had convinced herself, had she not had a husband living, might have made himself more familiar with her. Happily both parties recognized the presence of the Devil when they saw it, though there was little doubt on either side that had anything happened to Faulkner, both would renew their acquaintance. Judith did not know that Mr Fox was active in promoting the view that Faulkner ought to have been called to account and the only outcome of any trial would have been death. However, he was prevented from carrying the argument to this conclusion in part by the opposition of others who put affairs of state – even minor matters as to the usefulness of an accomplished sea officer – above personal considerations, and in part by the reflection that he was already married, a fact he had carelessly concealed from Mistress Judith.