For King or Commonwealth (5 page)

The council broke up over wine and sweetmeats, and a desultory conversation from which Faulkner felt isolated. He gleaned that Rupert had sold all his jewellery – or much of his mother's, depending upon the narrator – to raise money for the Royalist cause and that his brother, Prince Maurice, would be joining them. Shortly before Captain Allen gathered them all up and swept them from the great cabin and out into the icy wind, the Prince himself came and spoke to Faulkner as he stared gloomily out through the stern-windows at the desolation on the far side of the Haringvliet that was the island of Over Flakke and the ship that lay moored in mid-stream.

‘I hope, sir, that you will be of more cheerful countenance when next we meet.'

Faulkner started. ‘Forgive me, Your Highness, these days are gloomy and dispiriting.'

‘Indeed; and it behoves us to set our shoulders to the wheel and turn events to our purpose.'

‘I assure Your Highness . . .' Faulkner began, flushing at the imputation, only to be cut short by the lightest touch of Rupert's gloved hand upon his arm.

‘I perfectly understand, my dear Captain Faulkner, but we have to hope for happier times, and your charge is a most important one.'

‘I am sensible of the fact, Your Highness,' Faulkner replied with a bow, his spirit rising to the Prince's well-intentioned condescension. ‘I would recommission
her
,' he ventured, indicating the ship moored in the Haringvliet, ‘had Your Highness not found it necessary to strip her and sell her.'

‘Ah. The
Antelope
has to be sacrificed for the welfare of the fleet. Her crew is a disgrace and there are besides insufficient loyal men to man the remainder properly.'

‘Therein lies my own anxieties for your service, Your Highness,' Faulkner said boldly, for there was little point in dissimulation at such a juncture. ‘The opportunity and the wherewithal to execute your commission is a burden I shall bear with the requisite fortitude, but one of which the outcome is not at all to be relied upon.'

‘You will do it, sir, I know it for a certainty. Tell Allen of what you are most in need. Ah, and here
is
the good Captain Allen with your papers. I wish you Godspeed.' And he was gone. Faulkner took the packet of papers from a silent Allen and sought out Mainwaring. He found him in earnest discourse with Batten. The two exiled Elder Brethren of Trinity House might have been gossiping at Deptford itself after a Trinitytide dinner for all the apparent seriousness of their present situation. Faulkner was not deceived; he had seen Sir Henry fishing for information before and sensed Batten and Jordan had been a little free with the decanters before the council had been called.

‘He does not trust either Batten or Jordan,' Mainwaring had remarked later, referring to Rupert as they walked back in the evening's darkness along the frozen quays and out, beyond the few guttering lights of Helvoetsluys, along the dyke towards the distant
Phoenix
. ‘While I should have liked to kick the frozen dog turds of this accursed place from my feet, His Highness has favoured us both with a particular charge, Kit.'

‘Then you are no longer minded to die in England,' Faulkner had riposted drily.

Mainwaring sighed, his air of resignation exhaled in the mist of his condensed breath. ‘The habit of obedience,' he had said quietly, leaving the sentence as incomplete as his explanation of having changed his mind. ‘Without it nothing can ever be accomplished.'

‘And besides,' Faulkner had added in a low voice which indicated his own sentiments were, at least for the time being, in accord with the old admiral's, ‘it is an old comfort among a sea of uncertain shallows.'

It was then that Mainwaring had determined to drag him back to Katherine in The Hague. ‘Always the lure of the
status
ante
bellum
,' he had remarked softly to himself as he followed Faulkner up the gangplank on to the
Phoenix
's deck. ‘And so infinitely preferable to the present moment.'

It was now almost dark in the room. Katherine set her darning aside and poked the dying fire. ‘I shall get some wood, if any is to be had,' she said, rising stiffly.

‘No, my dear, allow me,' said Mainwaring, turning from the window with the energy of a gallant half his age and shuffling from the room, muttering about fair recompense for Kate's attention to his stockings. She stood uncertain for a moment before cautiously approaching Faulkner. He had by now seated himself and was scribbling in a small notebook, breaking off intermittently to bestride the chart with extended dividers, or lay a brass and ivory rule alongside one of the several compass-roses that bedecked it.

For several moments she stood motionless beside him, watching him as his strong and competent fingers manipulated the instruments and then set the dividers down to take up his quill. She knew he was aware of her proximity and was content to let him finish, to burn out the passion of their unhappiness in his professional preparations. He would, she knew, come to her when he was ready.

Finally he laid down the pen and closed the notebook. Sitting back in the rickety chair he remained staring ahead but he put out his right hand, feeling for her hand. It was thin and chilled, and he raised it to his lips. Still without turning his head he said, ‘These are terrible times to live . . .'

And she bent and kissed the crown of his head, smoothing her other hand over his long hair.

Thanks to the commercial energies of the Dutch that maintained an ice-free navigable channel in the lower Haringvliet, Prince Rupert's main squadron left Helvoetsluys on 21 January, as soon after the council of war as Mainwaring's strenuous efforts had fitted his ships for their long cruise to the coast of Ireland.

‘His Highness has only eight vessels,' Mainwaring had said. ‘The
Charles
, the
Thomas
, the
Mary
, a ketch, and the hoy
Elizabeth
. His only vessels of force are the
Swallow
,
Convertive
and
Constant
Reformation
, and constant reformation of His Highness' squadron is just about all I can achieve for His Highness' power.'

‘You have wrought mightily, Sir Henry, and have no reason to reproach yourself. It was Rupert's decision to abandon the
Antelope
after her crew mutinied.' They both recalled the Prince's suppression of the mutiny during which he had picked up one of the rebellious seamen and held him over the
Antelope
's side. ‘He carried his point,' Faulkner added, ‘though I should like to have known his thoughts at the men's disloyalty.'

‘Oh, that he carried off with his customary aplomb,' Mainwaring reported, having attended the Prince shortly after the incident. ‘“I would rather fight and die with twenty loyal men”, he said, “than triumph with two hundred turncoats.” That sort of nonsense.' Mainwaring paused, catching Faulkner's eye. Both men thought of their own intention to turn their own coats. ‘Admirable, of course, but scarcely practical,' he added with a finality that curtailed the uncomfortable recollection.

‘Indeed not,' Faulkner had said.

The departure of Faulkner's
Phoenix
was both more complicated and yet simpler than that of the Prince's squadron. Complicated because she lay further upstream, in an ice-bound creek free of the heavier tolls attracted by Rupert's ships. On the other hand, she was in better shape than many of the Prince's men-of-war and Faulkner had, thanks to considerable skill, managed to feed and more or less keep his seamen in paid employment. This was in part owing to her having a smaller crew and in part to the close loyalty that Faulkner's leadership had engendered. Though few felt passionately about the predicament of King Charles, as seamen they appreciated Faulkner's concern for them. As poor men, most of whom had neither family nor home, he was their lifeline to survival, not least because he knew what it was to go hungry, for Faulkner's origins were, though never advertised by himself, not such that they could be kept entirely secret.

Besides her commander, the
Phoenix
carried two officers: her long-time chief lieutenant, named White, and another of Faulkner's former mates, Mr Lazenby, who had turned up in Helvoetsluys a few days after the exiles in Holland learned that on January 30th King Charles had been executed, his head struck from his body on a block surmounting a scaffold erected outside a window of the splendid Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace in which the King had been tried for High Treason.

The news shook all those who adhered to the Stuart cause and the assumption of the empty title of King by Prince Charles, though it spoke of continuity, only rang hollow. The new King was a callow youth whose only talents seemed to promise a life of dissipation and excess, eroding the remnant loyalty of cuckolded husbands. Nevertheless, in the wake of the execution of the King a few men for whom the regicide made England intolerable began arriving in Helvoetsluys. Among these was Lazenby, and it was with him that Faulkner was walking the deck a week or so later as the
Phoenix
, under a press of canvas, chased a small but heavily sparred cutter to the northwards.

‘What d'you make of her?' Faulkner had asked when he had come on deck in response to Lazenby's summons.

‘She's a packet, sir,' Lazenby had remarked confidently, handing his glass to Faulkner. ‘Mark the spars . . .'

‘Indeed, and the extent of her sails,' Faulkner said, lowering the telescope and returning it to its owner. ‘She may outrun us.'

‘Aye and let every vessel on the coasts know of us.'

Faulkner chuckled with some satisfaction. ‘I doubt not that we are already well known to the under-writers and on “Change”.' In ten days they had taken three prizes, two off the Texel fresh from being nipped in the Baltic ice and full of Russian hemp and flax, Swedish iron and timber from Dantzig. Shifting his cruising ground, Faulkner had next crossed to Orfordness and, finding a large vessel anchored in Hollesley Bay, had swooped upon her flying the new cross-and-harp ensign of the English Commonwealth. Ranging up alongside with his guns run out, Faulkner was gratified in seeing half her company escape towards Harwich in the ship's longboat.

‘God's blood, Mr White!' he had called to his lieutenant commanding his small broadside in the waist. ‘They fear we are about to press them!'

Faulkner could scarce believe his luck, though it cost him a quarter of his own company to send her home to Mainwaring's care as Prince Rupert's prize-agent. Worthily named the
Hope
, in due course he was to learn that she had been commissioned as the
King's Falconer
in his honour. Drawing offshore to cover the
Hope
's passage to Helvoetsluys, the
Phoenix
recovered her prize crew without putting in to the Haringvliet, Rupert using their return to send two of his ships out to watch for the Earl of Warwick's squadron that was expected daily, intent on blockading the Royalist fleet in the Haringvliet.

Faulkner crossed to the vicinity of the Smith's Knoll, picking up intelligence from the fishermen drifting for herring. Among the news that he gleaned was that Warwick, his loyalty to the Parliamentary cause in doubt, had been replaced by Vice-Admiral Robert Moulton. As to the fishermen, he was scrupulous in making no move against them, except to ask if any wished to serve the King. He picked up three young men anxious to avoid service in the army, but, more importantly, his investment in Genever gin yielded the latest news of the King's trial which both he and Mainwaring were anxious to learn.

‘We must keep abreast of events, Kit,' the old man had insisted, casting a significant glance at Katherine by the fire. ‘Do not trouble yourself about her,' Mainwaring had added, squeezing Faulkner's arm. ‘She too has a future as dear to me as mine own life.'

It was after the recruitment of the three young fishermen that they had sighted the packet and given chase and now Faulkner, with Lazenby pacing beside him, made up his mind. Looking at the distance of their quarry, Faulkner turned his attention to the sky and ceased walking. Beside him Lazenby paused and, seeing Faulkner's attention had focused on the sky, followed his gaze.

‘No. But you are correct, Mr Lazenby. We shall have a change in the weather by tomorrow. Do you maintain the chase until darkness and then we shall haul our wind and stand to the southward. I have a mind to pursue a favourite scheme and now is the time.'

‘May I ask where you intend to strike, sir?'

‘The Nore, Lazenby, the Nore.'

It felt as though spring had deserted the mouth of the great river as, two days later, the Phoenix ghosted up the Swin in a light and freezing north-easterly breeze. She seemed like a phantom to the two Leigh bawleys fishing on the edge of the Barrow Sand, the sea-smoke rising about her and almost entirely concealing her so that they were afterwards unable to tell the two grim-visaged and pot-helmeted cavalrymen sent to enquire what ship had created such havoc through the Warps, the Oaze and the Nore itself.

Faulkner, of course, knew nothing of this, nor that questions were asked in Parliament itself as to why ‘a Malignant pirate' could, ‘in defiance of the might and majesty of the State's Naval force in the Medway, cause such harm to our trade?'

The truth was, it had been a simple matter, for the
Phoenix
had had not only a fair wind but a favourable spring tide and had passed through the outer anchorage while the seamen in the anchored merchant ships awaiting convoy had been breaking their fasts. Bringing out only one small bilander, Faulkner had determined not to take any prizes. Prince Rupert's faith in supposing they could recruit sufficient seamen to man captures and turn them into Royalist men-of-war was hopelessly optimistic and he considered he might do more damage by pure destruction.