For King or Commonwealth (17 page)

These complexities did not prevent either party from flirting, nor from making veiled hints and suggestions, all of which were quite improper given their religion, so that Judith had no compunction in calling upon Mr Fox – by way of a messenger, of course – to provide her with an entry permit to the Tower to visit her husband. Mr Fox delivered it personally. He was a handsome man, some five years older than Judith, and the night he chose was filthy with rain. What passed between the two in the privacy of Judith's chamber must remain conjectural, for she took him there for purposes of discretion, not wishing to advertise her intentions to her daughter who lived with her. However, had one observed Mr Fox leaving the house that night, one would have remarked that he had been at least three-quarters of an hour doing a task that took no more than three or four minutes, even when accompanied by the utmost ceremony. As for Judith, she could not sleep for some hours after retiring, recollecting that she was still a comparatively young woman, still capable of bearing a child, and thankful that she was not quite in danger of carrying Mr Fox's. The encounter nevertheless sharpened her appetite to see again the only man who had lain with her and she restlessly plotted to that end.

Despite the easing of his conditions, Faulkner felt the chill of the afternoon and sat in a corner wrapped in his cloak when he heard the key turn in the lock. He looked up into the eyes of a woman he had not seen for years.

‘Judith!' he exclaimed, struggling to his feet and wiping his face with his hand, only to find the rasp of thick stubble; it had been a week since he had been allowed to shave. Seeing him in his dirty clothes, his face unshaven and careworn, almost vacuous after his weeks of mental distress and physical illness, he was not the figure she had conjured in her imagination.

‘Husband . . .' she said uncertainly.

‘Pray, er, sit down.' He drew forth a chair and, turning to the gaoler who was curiously watching this encounter between the twin components of his sideline, ordered wine and meat ‘if there was any to be had'. Whereupon Fitchett, with a lopsided grin, assured him there was a plentiful supply.

Faulkner remained standing, embarrassed by the stink of the slop bucket and the state of his appearance. ‘I am sorry that . . .' he began apologetically and then pulled himself together, suddenly aware of how far he had fallen in body and spirit since the meeting with Brenton. Clearing his throat, he asked, ‘What are you doing here?'

She caught the noisome smell of his breath that presaged scurvy. ‘I have come to see you and how you spend my money,' she said, both her words and her voice harsher than she intended, for he seemed piteous and she resolved to steel herself against any feminine weakness. In that she found the stench of his ordure vaguely helpful.

‘Your money? How so?'

‘Who do you think pays for your wine and your plentiful supply of meat?'

He disdained any explanation that meat was not, at least not until this very afternoon, in any way plentiful and leapt immediately to the right conclusion. ‘It was you who paid for my comforts. Great God, I thought it Nathaniel.'

‘He is at sea. How could he . . .?'

‘I don't know, I simply thought that it was him, that he left a sum with the gaoler. I had no idea it was you.' He hesitated. ‘Well, I suppose I must thank you.'

‘I suppose you must, though I had hoped for more grace in it.'

‘I am sorry, Judith. I did not mean it like that. I am most sincerely grateful. I know that I did you a great wrong and that you appear to have borne it with the fortitude I so admired in you.'

‘Admired. So all is in the past, husband.'

‘Where else? They want me hanged as a pirate; there is only past for me, for the present grows intolerable and the contemplation of my short and shortly to be curtailed future does not bear scrutiny.'

‘That is not what I hear. And where is that uprightness of purpose I supposed you to possess? Why, I find you . . . not to my liking.'

For a moment he stared at her uncomprehending. ‘I did not expect you to come here
liking
me, whatever charitable notion you may have entertained over the past weeks.' She remained silent, repenting that, had he chosen to see it, her words had all but betrayed her. Although he was too confused and surprised to divine the deeper meaning of her odd remark, it prompted him to repeat his first question. ‘Why are you here?' She shrugged. ‘Did you come to gloat? To see me upon the edge of ruin? To damn me and my Villiers whore.'

‘What of her? Dost thou still rut with her?'

‘What is that to you?'

‘You told me that I was your first.'

‘What of that?'

‘You were mine.'

‘I know, I know . . . and God knows I wish we had never met for I was smitten by her long ere I set eyes on you.'

‘Then you married me without love.'

Faulkner shook his head. ‘Judith, this is old ground. We tramped it years ago and nothing is to be gained by going over it again.'

She stared at him, her fine features full of fire and indignation, yet she was intelligent enough to realize what he said was true. He watched her ample bosom heaving with repressed emotion and the sight awoke in him those longings a man cannot escape for long, no matter to what extremity fate has reduced him.

‘For Heaven's sake, Judith . . .' But she was now reacting against her own impulses, wondering what had driven her here and how she could escape. He misread her and lowered his voice. ‘Judith, you can stay here the night.'

‘No!' She stood, for looking at the state to which he had been reduced the very notion revolted her.

‘Judith, please,' he said hurriedly, ‘I meant nothing by it. I . . . I am in low spirits as anyone would be.' He stopped, hearing the bells of All Hallows. ‘What day is it? And what is the month?'

She told him and he ran his hand through his long hair, clearly unaware of the details. ‘November. God's bones!'

‘Desist from such blasphemy, if only to please me.' A thought seemed to strike her. ‘Hast thou turned papist?'

‘What?'

‘Was not your whore a papist?'

‘Not to my knowledge,' he said with an air of exasperation.

‘And you?'

‘Am I a papist?' he shook his head. ‘No, of course not, but then,' he added with a touch of irony, ‘neither am I a Puritan as you well know.'

She rose, stately and handsome, her face composed and resolute. ‘Husband,' she said pointedly, ‘I know not what you are.' Then she turned for the door, recollecting herself and swinging back to him to ask that he call Master Fitchett that she might be let out.

Faulkner did as he was bid and a moment later was again alone in the cell with only her faint aroma to say that she had been present, and that rapidly succumbed to the stench of the bucket. For a few moments he stood at the window and caught a quick glimpse of her as she passed into the outer bailey, accompanied by ‘Master Fitchett'.

‘So she knows his name as I suppose she must if she has had dealings with him.' He spoke out loud, though softly, unaware that it had become habitual. The visit, though it had left him confused, had at least caused him to reassemble his wits. Judith would never understand that her visit, profoundly unsatisfactory to her, had been the saving of her despised husband's life.

As she vanished from his sight, Faulkner felt a great relief that at first confused him. A moment's reflection, however, made him realize that he longed for the fresh air of a ship's deck. A ship's deck was greatly to be desired – at any price. He moved swiftly to the door and called through the shut grill. After a few moments the gaoler appeared.

‘You might have had her lie with you for a price,' he said.

‘No doubt,' Faulkner replied coldly, ‘but that is not in my mind at the moment.'

‘She is a comely woman. I'd not toss her out of my bed were I lucky enough to have her in my room.'

‘Likely your room does not stink of your shit and you have means to shave when you wish it, not to mention apparel of some cleanness.'

‘Captain, these things can be had, you have only to ask.'

‘I would ask you something else.'

‘Have you the means to put a farthing or two up for it?'

‘You know damned well you stripped me of every coin I possessed within a week of my arrival. Debit whatever compact you make with my wife.'

‘What is it you wish to ask for?'

‘Dost know the names of either of the two gentlemen who were the first to visit me here some twelvemonth past?'

‘What if I do? I cannot tell thee.'

‘But thou knowest?'

‘I did not say so.'

‘Mr Fitchett, I do not need to know their names, I need to know only that you will pass a message to them, either of them, it does not matter.'

‘It might matter.'

‘How so?'

Fitchett shrugged. ‘Well the one might be up for you and the other down upon you.'

‘I cannot trouble about that. Now, can you do it for me?'

‘Not for a farthing; perhaps a crown.'

‘A crown then.'

‘But I have orders to deliver only your confession and you have yet to write it.'

‘No matter about that. No, wait, I shall write that I am composing it and you will take this news, together with my desire – no, my humble supplication – that one or both of the gentlemen who favoured me with their attentions might come again and talk with me. Will thou do that for me, Mr Fitchett?'

The gaoler stood regarding Faulkner for more moments than seemed comfortable. ‘Have you considered, Captain, that by drawing attention to yourself, you may find . . .'

‘That I am hanged for my pains? Yes,' Faulkner responded with more cheerfulness than he felt, but with such a sudden liberation of his spirit that he felt careless of the consequences, so brimful was he of sudden resolution. ‘Now, will you do as I ask?' Fitchett nodded. ‘Good, then come to me in an hour and I shall have the paper ready.'

An hour later, sealed with candle wax, Faulkner placed into the hand of his gaoler a letter upon which his future depended.

Faulkner was never certain when Fox received his letter, though Fitchett protested it had been delivered the day following that in which Faulkner had put it into his hand.

‘You took no receipt for it?' Faulkner asked irritably.

The gaoler shook his head with a chuckle. ‘Is not the word of a gentleman enough?'

Faulkner desisted from an argument in which the quality of a public turn-key, even one practising his dark art in the Tower of London, was sufficient claim to gentry. And although he returned to questioning Fitchett as the days rolled into weeks and the weeks into months, the man persisted in his story, advising Faulkner from too much troubling Mr Fox by sending a second missive, he having important business of state to attend to. Faulkner received no other visitors during this time and, to his chagrin, it appeared that some at least of his comforts were withdrawn. Fitchett refused him wine and meat on several occasions, pleading a lessening of his fee from ‘that handsome wife of yours'. Moreover, he let it be known that, unless payments resumed at their maximum level by the autumn, Faulkner could forget about a fire during the next winter.

Apart from the mysterious arrival of a case of books, he was left to his solitude as winter gave way to spring and the year turned. The diversion afforded by the books, which included Sir Walter Ralegh's
History of the World
and, of greater significance, Selden's
Dominion of the Sea
, undoubtedly preserved Faulkner's sanity. There had been a snowfall at Christmas and, careless of the loss of heat, he had opened his narrow, barred window to put his hand out and catch some snowflakes. The falling snow deadened the sound of the surrounding city so that he distinctly heard the raucous cawing of the ravens and a sad, desultory roaring of a lion in what was once the Royal Menagerie. Somewhere else in the grim fortress another prisoner had opened a window and was singing a yuletide air that threatened to start tears from Faulkner's eyes. He was on the point of shutting the casement when he reflected the singer, whoever he was, had been motivated to open his window and express his own wonder at the phenomenon. Nonetheless, there were bleak moments when, for example, the church bells of All Hallows, St Olave's and diverse others within earshot of the Tower, rang in the New Year.

He was not left alone forever. Without warning, and on a propitiously sunny morning in early May of 1651, Fitchett threw open the door with a flourish and a triumphant expression that challenged Faulkner to mistrust his honesty, notwithstanding the interval of time that had passed, to admit the man Faulkner had come to regard as Mr Fox.

‘I trust I find you well, Captain Faulkner?' he asked abstractedly as he uncovered, sat at the small table and briskly removed some papers from his satchel as though he had paid a visit only recently.

Faulkner forbore replying; the question seemed ridiculous for the symptoms of scurvy were an increasing torment and Fox, if that was his real name, was pointedly avoiding the foul breath that was an indication of Faulkner's distemper. Fox drew a tobacco pipe from a pocket, called for a light from Fitchett, who was hovering in the doorway, and indicated for Faulkner to sit opposite. With the pipe alight and himself settled, Fox stared at Faulkner, tapping the papers before him. Faulkner recognised them as his ‘expiation'.

‘These are . . .' Fox pulled a face. ‘Adequate. At least the Council of State, which has had your case under constant review, has decided not to bring you to trial but to require you to serve out your adjudged sentence of five years.'

‘How can I be adjudged and sentenced without first being tried?' Faulkner asked.

Fox smiled. ‘You were tried in absentia, my dear Captain, shortly after your exploit at the Nore.'