For King or Commonwealth (3 page)

‘Not perhaps in the eyes of the church,' he remarked coldly, ‘but I had thought that I meant something unique to you. I see that pride fooled me.'

‘No!' she cried. ‘You are my own true love.'

‘But you would handle the royal prick . . .'

‘Stop it!' She put her hands over her ears and sank to the floor. He refilled his glass, the effects of the wine stirring him as he regarded her with distaste.

‘You have all the vileness of the Villiers blood,' he said, half to himself and referring to her distant kinsman George Villiers, the late Duke of Buckingham and Lord High Admiral of England. He, it was said, had risen to greatness for acting as King James's catamite. Himself a voluptuary, Buckingham had been a contradictory character: a competent administrator and a corrupt courtier and politician.

‘I never experienced anything but kindness from your great relation,' he said to Katherine who was looking up at him, her hands still pressed to the sides of her head, ‘but I heard enough stories about him to know why the assassin Fenton dispatched him that day at Portsmouth! God, now I know why . . . you are all poisoned and stink of putrefaction!'

‘He is a Prince, Kit, and it is his right to command. Why, you do his bidding . . .'

‘Indeed, when he orders me as his lawful commander my life is pledged to his service but he knows you are my mistress and . . .'

‘He takes other men's
wives
, for God's sake,' she retorted, gathering up her skirts and scrambling to her feet, ‘and most do not complain but rise from it.'

‘They are men halfway up, who acquired their wives as they do their horses, by barter and trafficking. Besides, would you have me Sir Kit Cuckold?' He made her an ironic half bow. ‘If so,' he added half to himself, ‘I would rather I had languished Mr Rat and caught the pox from some quayside whore than from the woman I esteemed and loved above all others, even my own sons. God rot you, Katherine, for he surely will.'

She had sunk into a chair and her shoulders heaved with her sobs. For a moment the sight affected him and he was moved to crouch by her side and take her in his arms; but then pride touched him and he drained the glass of its wine.

‘I have it from London that the King is to be tried,' he said off-handedly.

She looked up frowning. ‘On what charge?' she asked, glad that the conversation had taken another turn and willing to be diverted from this unpleasantness. She was, besides, courtier enough to be intrigued, for no one to her knowledge had yet breathed a word of any such suspicion in the Prince's presence. She had, however, noticed those furtive glances among those who surrounded him that bespoke state secrets and matters not to be spoken of before the women.

‘Oh, treason I expect,' Faulkner said, aware that in some way he might wound her by threatening her royal lover.

‘How can that be? He is the King. It is only his subjects that can be traitors.'

‘I imagine the lawyers' brief will be treason against his oaths, tyranny against his people. Of one thing you can be certain,' he added ironically and enjoying the intellectual superiority he realized he had over her, for she did not understand what was happening in England, ‘God will be at the bottom of it.'

‘
God
?' Her face was scornful. ‘Why, God put Charles on the throne, he is God's anointed.'

‘Indeed. That is what he believes, but the argument so skilfully deployed is that Charles has betrayed God's sacred charge – hence he has committed treason against his people.'

‘But treason is punished by . . .' she hesitated, as though to utter the word was a kind of blasphemy.

‘Execution,' he said with helpful casualness.

‘They would not
dare
!'

Faulkner laughed. ‘Sir Henry said the self-same thing. And why should they not dare? King Charles is in their hands and is a man. His head may be struck from his shoulders as readily as yours or mine.'

‘And who will rule England?' she asked as though the question put the King's life beyond peradventure.

He laughed again. ‘Why, that which is presently ruling it: Parliament. What is so difficult for you to understand? These people think the King has misruled them and that his father was not much better. Oh, you think the son will be a paragon of kingship, do you? Well, if his present desires indicate character he will at least be different. King Charles was no fornicating adulterer! Indeed, one might charge him with taking too much notice of his French and Catholic wife.'

Katherine was silent and Faulkner went on, a pent-up anger now replacing his calm resolution. ‘Your Royal Prince could make you a queen now! Had you not better run to him and snuggle properly into the royal bed and make certain none other is there before you?'

But she came back fighting, disbelieving him and snarling with a measure of contempt. ‘Where did you hear all this? You have not been to England – or have you? You know a great deal about it and seem to espouse these
Parliamentary
views with relish.' She laced the word with heavy, sarcastic and accusatory emphasis.

He smiled at her. ‘Of course you would think that. You not only have a woman's brain, you have a Villiers' brain.' He put one foot on the chair and leaned forward, his right elbow on his knee, his right index finger wagging in her pale yet lovely face. ‘I learned it from some fishermen from Yarmouth . . .'

‘Fishermen,' she snarled dismissively. ‘Fishermen? What do fishermen know of these things?'

‘They knew the Word of God when it called to them from the Galilean shore,' Faulkner said sententiously, but she was the measure of him.

‘God walked on Galilee, not Yarmouth beach,' she said with a flick of her head that Faulkner did not like in the circumstances, though the evidence of spirit would have melted his loins a day ago. ‘If I have paid a Christian Prince too much attention, you have been reading Puritan tracts.'

‘Those fishermen were informed folk,' he said slowly, with measured emphasis. ‘You, and your like, mistake the common man if you consider he lacks intelligence. He might lack education, breeding, manners, money, land, titles, horses, silks, satins, slashed sleeves, gloves of morocco and boots of kid, but he breeds no more idiots than your Villiers clan and may possess the cleverness—'

‘Of a Faulkner, no doubt,' she interrupted.

‘I was not about to say that,' he rejoined coldly. ‘But there are men of intelligence in Parliament –' he gave the word the same inflection as she had done, mocking her – ‘whose claim on wisdom outshines the King – and hence they have His Majesty arraigned before them on a perfectly reasoned charge, in their eyes, of treason.'

She remained silent, her breast heaving; her world was falling about her ears and he thought her very beautiful in her distress. They had not eaten well these last months and her figure was slimmed by hunger, her face drawn with indigence and yet she seemed to shine in adversity. He could not blame the Prince for . . .

He did not wish to think more of it. His anger was quelled. He must think instead of what was to be done. As if reading his thoughts and sensing her own irresistible seductiveness she said quietly, ‘He was very charming, sweetheart . . .'

‘You were weak, then,' he said quietly, at which she nodded.

‘As you were when you left your wife having set eyes upon me.'

‘Is that what happened?' he asked, half to himself.

‘So you told me.'

‘I have forgotten.'

‘We all forget things we should remember.'

‘Aye, but my forgetfulness has time to justify it; yours has only passion.'

‘
Only
passion; which do you think the stronger?'

‘Oh, passion, to be sure, but whatever the cause, betrayal is betrayal.'

‘And you are betrayed?'

‘You have to ask me that?'

‘To be sure, just as you had to ask me whether I had lain with the Prince . . . which I have not. You could,' she said tentatively, repeating herself, ‘you could . . . forgive me.'

‘What? For you to succumb to the Prince's charm again. And if you can so relent when I am here, in The Hague, what might you not do – what might you not have been doing – when I am at sea proving myself His Highness' most loyal servant at risk and peril of my life? Huh?' He dashed his hand on his knee, upset the chair and stood straight, shaking his head. ‘I realize now he has been laughing at me for months. Those jests that I took for intimacies, for manifestations of trust and confidence, those little asides about Kit and Kat . . . God he has made a fool of me many times over. No wonder you think fishermen fools; sea officers, it would seem, are little better. Men to be gulled! Why, he might have tweaked my nose and I would have gone off to die for him. No wonder the English have come to their senses.'

Katherine was suddenly on her feet. His rant had gone too far and she stood triumphant. ‘Treason!
That
is treason!'

‘So you would run to your paramour and tell him he is mistaken in Kit Faulkner's loyalty, would you? You damnable bitch!' The blood roared in his ears as he reached out for her and she dodged away, putting the table between them. ‘God's blood, Katherine Villiers, but if you think I have exposed myself, so too have you. I would not have you back in my bed were you to crawl naked on your knees with the crown of England in your pox-rotten mouth!' He thrust the table with such violence that she was jerked off her feet and fell forward over it. He had her by the hair and twisted her face up towards his.

‘I loved you to distraction.'

She spat in his face, whereupon he banged her head down on to the table then thrust her from him. He wiped away her spittle with a gesture of disgust. Gathering up his satchel, his hat, cloak, baldric and sword he made for the door. Standing in the open doorway he looked round. She had picked herself up and was rubbing her bruised cheek, her face aflame with fury.

‘Be so kind as to inform Sir Henry that I shall be aboard the
Phoenix
by tomorrow,' he said coldly. ‘And you may say the same to His Highness and tell him that Kit Faulkner shall serve him as he deserves and as he judges of my loyalty. As for you, you had best set your cap at the crown, though whether you will ever wear it in London is a matter for others to arrange. Goodbye, Katherine.'

She stared at the door as she heard his steps fade on the stairs. She could sense the presence of Mainwaring, holding his breath beyond the closed door across the landing. Gradually her thundering heart subsided. She knew, had known for months, that this moment would come in due time. She could not resist the Prince; indeed, was powerless to do so, though she knew this was incomprehensible to Faulkner to whom she was, paradoxically, devoted. The peculiarity of their circumstances, his as much as hers, made such strange and illogical consequences as inevitable as the surge of the tides.

She did not blame Faulkner for acting as he had, but she resented the fact that while she understood his reactions, he could not understand her own plight. Were they the soulmates he had fondly supposed he might have acted with more sympathy. Were he the sophisticate he thought he was, he might have deployed more worldliness but, as she – and Mainwaring – knew, the peculiarities of his impoverished background and the singular nature of Mainwaring's upbringing of his protégé had ensured that Kit Faulkner, though bright, was lopsided in his character.

As for her, she was no stranger to living on her wits. Swallowing some wine she crossed the landing and knocked upon Mainwaring's door.

Mainwaring caught up with Faulkner at Helvoetsluys the following afternoon after a hard ride. He was stiff, resented the costs of the hire of the horse and regarded Faulkner with a certain irritation. The younger man sat behind his table in the great cabin of the
Phoenix
. It was a modest space, lit by the late-afternoon sunshine flooding in through stern windows, neatly fitted out in polished wood, the home of a modestly successful master mariner. Mainwaring noted the papers, chiefly a Dutch chart of the Thames Estuary over which Faulkner was bent. He did not look up as Mainwaring eased himself down into a creaking chair and sat back, regarding his younger friend.

Faulkner was in middle life, though still short of his fortieth year, and a fine-looking man who, although he had removed his wig and wore an old and threadbare grey coat, bore himself with a confidence that Mainwaring flattered he had recognized many years earlier. But Faulkner's origins had ill prepared him for the station to which sheer ability, along with a little assistance from Mainwaring himself, had elevated him.

For some moments a palpable silence hung between them. Then Faulkner picked up his dividers, splayed them and marched them with practised ease across the chart and laid them off against the scale of latitude that ran, from north to south, up the side of the chart. Still preoccupied, with his eyes downcast, Faulkner said in a low voice, ‘If you have come as her ambassador, I shall pay you no attention.'

‘I come as your admiral,' Mainwaring responded, watching Faulkner as he finally looked up. His eyes looked tired, not those of a man who had wept, but of one who had not slept well – if at all.

‘You have orders for me?' Faulkner said, his voice tight, controlled.

‘I had hoped you would ease an old man's burden and have suggestions for me.'

‘Indeed, Sir Henry.' Faulkner paused. ‘Well, if you want my opinion and as I suggested yesterday, we might make a demonstration off the Nore and snap up a prize or two.'

‘And when could you sail?'

‘Whenever you give the word, the wind serves and the ice permits.'

‘You are eager to be gone?'

‘Oh, for God's sake, I beg you not to toy with me.'

‘I would not do that,' Mainwaring said sufficiently sharply to remind Faulkner that whatever their private relationship, he was, in name at least, Faulkner's superior in rank.