The King's Chameleon (7 page)

He shook his head and then announced: ‘I am sent to tell you that the Duke of Albemarle attended Goodwife Faulkner, sirs, and is asking for you, Cap'n Faulkner.'

‘Good heavens, what doth he want of you, Kit?' Gooding rounded on Faulkner.

‘I have no idea. Unless he comes to warn me that the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion has named me as an enemy of the state …'

‘I beg you not to jest thus!'

‘Oh, for the love of the Lord God, Nathan …' An exasperated and yet half amused Faulkner turned to the lad. ‘Have you any idea, Charlie?'

Charles Hargreaves shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. ‘No, sir. Only that I was told to tell you that his lordship ought not to be kept waiting and I should run all the way to Blackwall to fetch you as he insisted on speaking with you directly and would leave neither message nor paper.'

‘Then we had better assume the guise of Mercury,' said Faulkner. ‘Come, Charlie, clear the way for us.'

Honest George had been waiting for over an hour by the time Faulkner reached home; despite his flippancy, Faulkner was embarrassed at keeping Albemarle waiting. He had left Gooding to return to the counting-house with Charlie Hargreaves and come on alone. Now he threw his hat on a chair. ‘I am sorry to have detained you, Your Grace,' Faulkner began, but Albemarle waved away his apologies, apparently untroubled by the delay.

Albemarle indicated Hannah who sat opposite to him. ‘Your charming daughter has been telling me of a voyage to the East Indies upon which I understand her betrothed is currently embarked in the
Eagle
, East Indiaman.'

‘I see …'

‘The matter clearly preoccupies her,' Albemarle said with a smile, nodding at Hannah as she bobbed a curtsey and withdrew, her face scarlet with embarrassment and confusion.

‘We are, Your Grace, so unsympathetic to the young, even though we know the travail they are under,' remarked Faulkner, pouring two stoups of wine and handing one to Albemarle.

‘You are right, but now that I am here I had better discharge my office, which is to require you to join me tomorrow at Court.'

‘Court, your Grace? You mean the King's Court, not that of Trinity House?'

‘I mean the King's Court, Sir Kit, whither I am bidden to convey you by Clarendon.'

Faulkner felt uneasy. Such a summons followed too hard upon the morning's reverie and his recent dream not to invoke the seaman's superstitious sense that he privately carried within him. His jest about the Act that had been passed by the Parliament and received the Royal Assent had not been made entirely devoid of self-interest.

‘Are you aware of why I am thus honoured, your Grace? For I must be so honoured if you have been charged to fetch me and have condescended to—'

‘I have not condescended, Captain. I am not risen so far that I would consider you as beyond my regard.' Albemarle chuckled to himself. ‘These are curious times, Captain; we are forging a new world. Think you that in the old I should have been a duke? Ha! Never! As for you, you are probably to be preferred in some way. I understand the King and his brother are intent upon some sailing; perhaps you are summoned for this reason. You have a pinnace of your own, I understand.' Albemarle looked at Faulkner. ‘Does that satisfy you?'

Faulkner gave a half bow. ‘I am at the King's command, your Grace, and at your disposal. Shall you stay to dine with us?'

Albemarle paused to consider the matter. ‘What o'clock is it?'

‘Shortly before two, I believe. We have a saddle of mutton …'

‘I have already divined that, Captain,' said Albemarle, tapping his nose, ‘and I find it as irresistible as your daughter.'

After dinner, during which the duke was affability itself, even succeeding in winning both smiles and pleasantries out of Judith, Albemarle showed no desire to hurry away. The two men sat with their pipes and, having discussed some matter relative to the charitable disbursements of the Trinity House and the failure of the state to relieve want and penury among seamen injured in its service, Albemarle remarked upon the debate then in progress through the House of Commons.

‘You have heard of the passing of the recent Act of Indemnity and Oblivion?'

‘Indeed, Your Grace. I understand that there are many who regard it as providing indemnity for the King's enemies and oblivion for his friends.'

Albemarle chuckled. ‘Yes, I had heard that was what the wits were saying, but it restores at a stroke all crown and church lands. Pursuing private claims for recovery of what is rightfully yours will be subject to litigation, but there will be many who lack the deep pockets necessary to go to such an extreme.'

‘An injustice for those who have expended their fortunes in the Royalist cause,' added Faulkner.

‘There is always a price to progress,' said Albemarle, ‘but after the cries of outrage have died away, then I do sincerely hope that the business of government can look to the future. The Dutch are again encroaching upon our trade, and we shall, I'll wager, fight with them again before we are through. 'Tis a pity, for they are much to be admired, but I fear there is no room for both nations without another trial of strength.'

Faulkner nodded. ‘I am in perfect harmony with you there, Your Grace. Moreover, I apprehend we shall have difficulties toppling them. They are better financed than ourselves, pay more attention to trade than to other preoccupations, and have withal a readier fleet. I happened to be at Deptford when deciding where to build a new ship and the King's Dockyard there seemed scarcely a model for efficiency.'

‘Despite the Petts?' Albemarle asked, raising one eyebrow.

‘Perhaps because of the Petts,' Faulkner responded with a smile.

‘Wherever the hand of man turns itself to good employment, it finds itself mired in the stink of corruption. Still, matters are better regulated than in the time of the present King's father, I think, though you would know more of that than I.'

‘That is very true.'

‘Well, perhaps the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion will draw a much-needed curtain over past misdeeds so that we can move our ravaged country into happier times.'

‘If that is its intention, Your Grace; but I hear some vengeance is inevitable.'

Albemarle blew a plume of thick blue smoke at the ceiling and nodded. ‘Yes, His Majesty will seek to execute the Regicides still living. The disinterment of Cromwell and his son-in-law was but the beginning.'

‘That was a poor thing.'

‘But we must bow to the inevitable, Sir Kit, and you would do well not to express yourself with such freedom.'

‘I beg Your Grace's pardon …'

‘Think nothing of it. You are under your own roof, but I would not have so valuable a sea-officer compromise himself in the hearing of some of the toadies that infest all courts.'

‘Your Grace is most considerate.'

Albemarle knocked out his pipe and hove himself to his feet. His leather jack-boots creaked as he stretched himself. ‘I shall present you tomorrow. Make yourself known at Whitehall Palace shortly before ten of the clock.'

Faulkner bowed and saw Albemarle to the street door. Here the duke was joined by his two armed servants who had been in Faulkner's kitchen and, by the look of them, had quaffed more of Faulkner's ale than was good for them. Knowing that she would speak of their visitor later when they retired, Faulkner decided not to talk to Judith or to pursue Hannah and tease her on account of Albemarle's flirting; instead he walked down to the counting-house in anticipation of finding Gooding where he had been left on their way back from Blackwall.

He found Gooding ensconced with Captain John Lamont, a Scots master with whom Gooding had insisted they went into a partnership. Lamont owned a small bilander upon which he wished to raise a mortgage in order to marry. It was a matter of a few hundred pounds, and Faulkner had warned that with the fitting-out of the
Wapping
imminent, they ought not to over-reach themselves. The matter had raised the temperature between them and had been decided by Judith, who bought into the venture, so that in the end Faulkner had withdrawn his objection. Nevertheless, he considered Gooding owed him a favour.

‘What did My Lord Duke of Albemarle want of you?' Gooding asked with an air of mild sarcasm.

‘I am to be presented at Court.'

Gooding stared, open-mouthed.

‘You will catch flies, Nathan,' Faulkner remarked.

‘I wish that you were not,' Gooding said.

‘It is a royal command,' Faulkner said shortly, dismissing Gooding's apprehensions. ‘But I have had a further thought. I conceive it to be a good idea if we call our new ship “Albemarle” …'

Later, when Faulkner and his wife retired for the night, Judith addressed the problem of the morrow. ‘I wish you had not agreed to attend Court,' she said curtly. ‘You had said you would lie low and attend to our own affairs, not meddle with the high-born who return from exile only to pretend nothing has happened these last ten years.'

Faulkner suppressed his exasperation. ‘I am commanded by the Duke of Albemarle, Judith. He speaks for the King; what would you have me do – spit in Albemarle's eye and tell him to inform the King that I am indisposed?'

‘The King would be none the wiser …'

‘Indeed not,' Faulkner said, taking the wig from his head, placing it on its stand and scratching his pate. ‘He would simply summon me the instant I was on my feet again. And what do you suppose might be the consequences of his learning that only this morning I was discussing a new ship with Sir Henry Johnson? I would say that at the very least His Majesty—'

‘
His Majesty
!' Judith spat the words from her like a foul oath, letting her hair down and turning on him so that she made him think of a harpy. ‘And as for the noble Duke of Albemarle, he is a triple turncoat, unless, of course, I have lost count. It is a wonder which of you is the greater chameleon.'

‘Oh, Judith, desist and give way,' he said wearily, kicking off his shoes and fearing the direction the conversation was taking. ‘Thou knowest times have changed and we must change with them.'

‘No, the
King
does not acknowledge that; he counts his reign from the death of his father … Where are you going?'

‘Somewhere far from the owl screech that I am subject to.'

Faulkner took his candle up to the attic and unlocked his private room. Through the thin wall he could hear the low and even snore of their kitchen-maid. He sat and stared about him, much as he had done a week or so earlier when he had summoned Henry. He saw the smear of his finger where it had dragged through the rust on his corroding cuirass and encircled the dent driven in by the Dutch ball that had only partially been knocked out.

‘I should black that,' he mused to himself. ‘God knows but I might yet require it if old George is right about the Dutch. And if he is,' he added thinking of Judith, ‘
that
would not distress me too much, either.'

Then his eye fell on the portmanteau, and this time he did not resist the temptation to open it and withdraw the telescope. It was in a soft leather bag and, thanks to its origins, possibly his most cherished possession. The feel of it in his hand revived the recollection of the dream wherein the face of Katherine Villiers had so surprised him, appearing at the bow of their proposed new Indiaman. Perhaps, he thought in a moment of pure devilry, he should have the ship named ‘Villiers' and adorn her with such a figure-head. It would damn well serve Judith right!

No, that was an ungenerous thought; unfair too. He extended the telescope, noted the faint resistance from lack of use, then closed it with a snap, turning it in his hands. Those distant days when he was a lieutenant aboard the
Prince Royal
, and the exquisitely lovely Mistress Villiers had been attending her grand cousin, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, seemed to have played a part in another man's life.

‘Who am I?' he asked the chill night air, recalling the wastrel boy who stole apple-cores on the waterfront of Bristol until rescued by Sir Henry Mainwaring. He thought of Katherine and their love-making – and that also seemed too remote to have involved him. ‘Who am I?' he repeated.

The metaphysical question hung for a moment until Faulkner's practical spirit dispatched it. ‘Bah! What a damned foolish question!' he muttered to himself with some vehemence. ‘What man knows? And be he even a king, he is blown by the winds of fate so that one day he is up and the next he is down.' He thought of poor Clarkson, one of his officers aboard the
Union
when they had fought the Dutch. Faulkner had been standing next to him, deep in conversation one moment, and the next Clarkson was dead, his loins shot-out by a ball that severed his trunk from his legs. ‘And Nathan speaks of a God,' he muttered almost incredulously, suddenly angry at the dull incomprehension of all those who lived on land.

With a sigh he put the telescope back in its bag, reflecting that it bore witness to the fact that he had indeed been that young man in the
Prince Royal
all those years ago. He returned the relic to its resting place, placated by the instrument's solid existence. He rummaged idly through the rest of the box. It held some manuscript books; some loose papers, all of them long redundant; some nautical instruments and tarpaulin headgear that the seamen called a sou'-wester; and a large wheel-lock, wrapped in oiled cloth.

Faulkner pulled it out and peeled off the cloth. The pistol was of exquisite German workmanship and he recalled acquiring it during his exile. Age made him sentimental as well as forgetful. How he now wished that he had given it to Henry. He had thought of it, if the boy had gone to sea as he desired, and now it was too late. He should have done it the moment he thought of it but had hesitated for fear the boy saw it as a crude inducement. No, it was a pity, but such an obvious
douceur
might have wrecked their apparent reconciliation.