The King's Chameleon

by Richard Woodman

  Concentrating on not missing his footing as he thundered upwards in Gooding’s wake, Faulkner did not see what happened, for when he reached the attic Gooding had vanished in the gloom. Faulkner heard a cry, followed by a screech and the sound of a struggle. Instinctively, Faulkner put his shoulder to the door to his own private room. Inside it was quite dark, but it was clear two bodies were wrestling on the floor.

  The grunts, the thuds against the floor-boards and the few sticks of furniture, the flurry of clothing and the harsh drag of heavy breathing told of the violence of the encounter.

  ‘Stop it!’ he commanded, but the struggle went on until, a few seconds later, there was a yelp of pain. Faulkner heard more than saw the sword strike the floor but he slammed his boot on the sword-blade’s faint gleam, swiftly bent down and seized it. As he straightened up he was aware that Gooding had pulled back and was crouched whimpering in a corner; Judith lay at his feet, struggling to draw breath. Faulkner withdrew, shut the door and hurried down stairs. Finding flint and steel where he had left it, he struck a light, ignited a candle and reached for the sword again. There was blood on the blade, he noted as he made to return upstairs.

  On the attic landing the door remained closed. Kicking it open he stood in the doorway and held up the candle-stick. Judith had drawn herself into the opposite corner and was still recovering her breath. Her eyes were closed and her pallor hinted at extreme nausea. She appeared unlikely to pose any threat, at least for a few moments, though Faulkner did not trust her one whit. A glance at Gooding showed him nursing a wounded hand. From the dark flow of blood Faulkner guessed it was deeply gashed; he was in a deal of pain.

  ‘We must bind that up,’ Faulkner said practically, but Gooding twisted his body away in a curiously childish movement. It was as if he deliberately denied Faulkner the chance of assisting him. ‘Come, Nathan, we must staunch that bleeding.’

  Gooding looked up, his expression at once angry and anguished, pain and fury distorting his smooth features in equal measure as the candle-light danced across his twisted features. ‘No! Run that damned sword through her, for the love of God, Kit! Do it now! Now, before she casts another spell!’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Faulkner snapped, feeling a rising anger himself.

  ‘I talk no nonsense. Why else are you here now, tonight of all nights, if not by incantation?’

  ‘I am here by chance. I arrived from Chatham this afternoon. Now let us—’

  ‘No, you came here because that witch –’ Gooding spat the word in Judith’s direction with a transcendent venom – ‘enmeshed you by a spell in order that she could invoke Satan against a Godly justice.’

  ‘You came to kill her?’ Faulkner asked, abandoning his attempt to staunch Gooding’s haemorrhage. ‘You came to kill your own sister?’

  Gooding nodded. ‘Aye, I did. The Book of Exodus, Chapter Twenty-two, Verse Eighteen: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”’

  ‘Great God, Nathan, even if she were a witch she must first be condemned as one! It is not for you to take on the work of the executioner.’

  ‘I would not have the disgrace upon my name.’

  ‘Had you succeeded, the hangman would have seen to that,’ Faulkner said shortly, casting a glance at Judith. Her eyes were open and she was staring at Faulkner.

  ‘I should have followed Henry’s example,’ Gooding said, adding, ‘see, she wakes and fixes her eyes on you.’ He chuckled, an other-worldly noise that made Faulkner’s blood run cold as he looked from brother to sister and back again.

  ‘He is mad, Husband. Quite mad.’ Judith twisted round and drew her legs up, crossing her arms on her knees and putting her chin on her arms. ‘He came here to murder me.’

  ‘You are a witch,’ Gooding repeated his accusation, then turned to Faulkner. ‘Ask her whither she went on Sunday, September the second. Go on, ask her!’

  ‘You are deranged.’ Judith’s voice was cool and measured. ‘So what are you to do about this pleasant home-coming, Husband?’

  A silence fell between the three of them. It crossed Faulkner’s mind that he had formerly been close to both these people and yet he felt nothing towards them in that bleak moment.

  ‘What is the significance of September …?’

  ‘Why,’ cried Gooding, interrupting, ‘’twas the night the fire started! She went into the city intent upon arson! She is the architect of all our troubles, the bitch of Satan!’ Gooding was panting when he finished, the sheen of sweat across his face.

  Faulkner turned to Judith. ‘You had better answer his question,’ he said.

  ‘I went for a walk. Molly and I often went for walks. The rest of you were in ignorance of the fact, but that is what we did. That fool thinks I walked at night to consult the Devil. The fact that I went for a walk on the night in question was as much a coincidence as your arrival here now, Husband – though you might have made your intervention earlier.’

  ‘Where is Molly?’ he asked, ignoring her irony.

  ‘Molly has a man. I let her go to him from time to time. Knowing Nathan would come tonight with murder in his heart …’

  ‘You see!’ Gooding screeched. ‘She confesses! How could she know when I would come, still less how I came intending to put an end to her evil ways, if not by sorcery? Eh? Eh? Tell me that, Kit!’

  ‘Because, you fool,’ Judith said coldly, ‘you said as much yourself, only this morning as you muttered and mumbled in the chamber below when you were making up your books. I heard you. ’Tis not I that am a witch but that you, brother, are losing your senses.’

  The page of the ledger marked Proceedings and Gooding’s muttering as he entered the house attested to the probability of Judith’s evidence. Faulkner sighed. ‘We had better go below and dress Nathan’s hand,’ he said flatly. ‘Can you stand up?’ Faulkner offered Gooding a hand, and Judith rose to her feet.

  ‘Don’t let her touch me!’ Gooding cried.

  ‘Be quiet, Nathan, you do your case no good.’

  ‘She shall not touch me, she shall not touch me …’ Gooding repeatedly muttered to himself as he waved aside any assistance and struggled to his feet. The bleeding on his clenched hand seemed to have eased.

  They were in the act of coming down stairs when a loud knocking was heard at the door. Gooding, who led the way, stopped abruptly, then swung round to stare at Faulkner, his eyes wild. Behind him Faulkner urged him to continue, and a moment later Faulkner opened the door to Edmund Drinkwater; behind him, wrapped in a cloak, stood Katherine.

  ‘We were concerned about you,’ he said, looking at the three of them, his mouth open, his face incredulous. It struck Faulkner that what Edmund and Katherine saw was incriminating: Gooding was injured, and he, Faulkner, held a sword. ‘Well,’ Edmund said, ‘I see you have found your wife.’ He raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  ‘It was necessary that I disarmed Nathan here,’ Faulkner explained, his voice flat, his eyes on Katherine’s. ‘He is out of his mind and attacked his sister.’

  ‘She is a witch, a witch …’ Gooding banged his wounded right hand on the table for emphasis, opening the wound with a cry and falling into the chair so lately occupied by Faulkner.

  ‘I will start a fire,’ Judith said, adding, ‘let us have more light. Perhaps Captain Drinkwater might bring some sea-coal in from the yard.’ She threw a glance at Katherine and bent to the hearth.

  ‘Don’t do it, Edmund,’ Gooding urged through clenched teeth. ‘She is bewitching you …’

  ‘Hold your tongue, Nathan. You have done enough damage for one night,’ Faulkner ordered.

  It was late by the time Gooding’s wound had been dressed and he had been put in his own bed. Molly had returned to find the house bewilderingly full and lights burning everywhere; she had made herself useful warming Gooding’s bed, but Faulkner found her appearance grubbier than ever. From the mode of her address to Judith it was clear that since his own absence and the removing of Katherine to Hannah’s house, the relationship
between the two women had changed. Molly had become more of a companion and confidante, adding credibility to Judith’s revelation that they had both gone on nocturnal walks. Such things were not easily accomplished after dark, and a degree of close complicity would have been necessary. It was entirely in character that Molly would have neglected her household duties in proportion, and he recalled the mould in the unwashed kitchen utensils, the general squalid air of the kitchen and the thick layer of dust on the upper chamber table.

  Such neglect would have annoyed and perhaps cumulatively unhinged the increasingly unstable but fastidious Gooding, Faulkner thought sadly as he left the poor man in his bed and returned to the parlour.

  Edmund had found some wine and was pouring it into four beakers. He was alone. ‘Some wine, Sir Christopher?’

  ‘Where are …? He got no further; Edmund indicated with a jerk of his head that the women were in the kitchen.

  Faulkner went to the door, moved along the short passage and peered in. Two lanterns had been lit and placed upon the large kitchen table. Their light disguised the lack of cleanliness, but it was the three women who gave the domestic scene its air of normality. They worked in complete silence. Molly was fanning a crackling fire beneath the griddle, Judith was beating eggs and Katherine was cutting and buttering bread.

  Faulkner went back and joined Edmund. They sat a moment in silence, and then Edmund asked, ‘And what will you do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nathan is, indeed, out of his mind. ’Tis a pity, for he was a good man and a solid partner. I trusted him implicitly in affairs of business.’

  ‘You have clerks of competence. Can you not bring one of them on?’

  Faulkner shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I must first look to Nathan. He may get better in time.’

  ‘I doubt it. He is an old Puritan. Their world has passed, and the present drives them to desperation.’

  ‘That is equally true of his sister.’

  ‘Yes, Hannah has told me of her mother’s creed.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘Me? Why, I have a ship to command.’

  ‘You could come ashore; you have made enough of a fortune to become a ship’s husband. I have a conceit to build another Indiaman and I should name her for Katherine.’

  ‘After your …’ Edmund lowered his voice and flushed. ‘I beg your pardon, Sir Christopher, I did not mean anything disrespectful.’

  Faulkner waved aside his son-in-law’s apology. ‘She is my mistress, but also the love of my life. I married Hannah’s mother thinking that Katherine was beyond my reach. She was a kinswoman to the ill-fated Duke of Buckingham. Before Felton’s knife robbed him of his life, no man stood higher in the King’s favour, nor wielded greater influence. She might have been a Duchess now.’

  ‘She is a remarkable woman,’ Edmund said, ‘and Hannah is very fond of her.’

  ‘That pleases me, but –’ he made a gesture of deprecation – ‘I have a wife.’

  ‘It is ironic, but had you not ventured here tonight, you might not have done.’

  Faulkner looked at his son-in-law and nodded. ‘I have enough on my conscience not to lay that speculation upon it.’

  ‘Katherine is part of your household. If your wife—’

  ‘My dear Edmund, the happiness of hundreds of thousands of men and women would be agreeably enhanced if. But, alas, if is just wishful thinking.’

  They committed Nathan Gooding to Bethlem Hospital. He remained obdurate, convinced his sister was a witch, and he might have been believed had he not constantly compromised his accusations by his own behaviour. The slow degeneration that had begun by that bout of drunkenness had created such a sense of self-loathing, engendered though it was by the wayward behaviour of his sister and the suicide of his nephew, that it nevertheless consumed him utterly. Before a month was out his ravings had him chained to the wall, and he became a popular object of curiosity to those minded to spend a leisurely hour in the company of the insane.

  On the afternoon that Faulkner had taken Gooding into the custody of the hospital, he returned home to Wapping.

  Judith was awaiting him. ‘So,’ she said, ‘he is gone.’

  ‘No, Judith, he is not gone; he is in Bethlem Hospital near Moorfields, a pathetic and broken man. You cannot dismiss him so easily, for not only was he your own brother, but your conduct made him what he became.’

  Surprisingly, Judith remained silent. After a while she said: ‘I did what I believed in. There is no sin in that.’

  ‘Not in itself, perhaps, but in its consequences much wrong was done. Oh –’ he held up his hand – ‘I take responsibility myself, do not fear. And for you. How was I to know that the tranquillity of our lives was to be disrupted by civil war and in the ensuing turmoil I should again encounter Katherine, or that the fire should be so fierce?’

  They both became lost in their own thoughts. There were tears in Judith’s eyes, and Faulkner said, ‘I shall never forget your coming to me in The Tower.’

  She nodded and cleared her throat. ‘Is that why you did not do what my brother so clumsily attempted when you had his sword in your hand? You might so easily have taken my life for …’ She began to sob and fell forward on her knees, staring up at him, the tears coursing down her face. With a tremendous effort she spat out the words, as though determined to void the thought from her system: ‘Taken my life … for Henry’s?’

  He regarded her with suspicion. She still possessed the power to attract, and in this posture of submissive helplessness he perceived the dangers of misplaced sympathy. He shook his head in denial, embarrassed at her abasement. Gesturing Judith to get up, he handed her a handkerchief which he pulled from his sleeve. ‘Come, Judith, this is no answer. What is done is done, you know that.’

  Again silence fell between them. Faulkner’s patience was running thin. He felt the awkwardness of his own position acutely and wished himself for the solution suggested by those speculative ifs. She must have divined something of this, for she asked: ‘We are none of us any longer young. What shall become of us?’

  ‘What would you have become of us?’ Faulkner asked. He hesitated a moment and then threw caution to the winds. ‘You are not without means,’ he went on before she could prevent him embarking on the logic of separation, ‘for I have never argued, as the law does, that you should not have property. Your shares in Lorimer’s Mary and the other vessels would make you a woman of independence. I would see that you lived free of encumbrance …’

  ‘By putting me in your alms-houses in Deptford?’

  ‘Of course not! Why would I do a thing like that? Besides, the Brethren would determine you had no need of such charity. No, we could find you somewhere pleasant enough to live with Molly, after which we could arrange an estrangement.’

  ‘Or I could turn a blind eye like the cuckolded fools that surrender their wives to the Royal bed and accept a title in return. What would my title be, Husband? You cannot make me Duchess of anything – but you could give up your whore!’

  ‘She must live somewhere too,’ he said quietly, ignoring Judith’s outburst.

  ‘But not here! Not under my roof!’

  Faulkner regarded Judith for some time. She met his gaze with steady eyes, as determined as ever. The brief hope that had kindled in his foolish heart when he had seen her and Katherine working in such apparent amity in the kitchen that night had been, he now realized, nothing more than an illusion. Judith might have been affected by the events of that night, but she had had no Damascene moment and was, as he supposed he was himself, still herself.

  They were, as Judith had pointed out, none of them any longer young. Whatever motive Judith had had for reminding him that he might forsake Katherine’s bed, it had no effect upon Faulkner. In the weeks that followed he strove to recover his business and introduce Edmund into its complexities. They received generous and enthusiastic help from a surprising quarter. Under their noses Charlie Hargreaves had matured and grown in intellectual and phy
sical stature. When Faulkner summoned his head-clerk and offered him a rise in pay and the prospect of an offer of partnership if all went well, the old man shook his head.

  ‘Ten years ago, I would have thanked you for it, sir, but my eyes are failing. While I can sit at my desk in your interest, Sir Christopher, I shall do so and that as diligently as I may be capable of so doing. As for a new partner, for that is what you need in the …’ The old man coughed with a deferential distaste. ‘In the, er, absence of Master Gooding, I should recommend young Hargreaves. He will need a year, to be sure, but I can see to that, for an increase in my emolument, of course. I do not think that you will be disappointed. He is an active and able young fellow, though his elevation will doubtless annoy others in the counting-house. But I should not trouble myself over them, Sir Christopher; not if I were you, that is.’

  By the spring, with the change of the year, the shipping enterprise established by Faulkner and Gooding entered a new phase. Captain Edmund Drinkwater became the new ship’s husband and with his father-in-law negotiated a new contract at Blackwall. By May 1667 a new East Indiaman had been laid down, and while Faulkner left the ship’s supervision to Edmund, he took particular interest in the carving of her figurehead, for it was soon known that the ship was to be called the Katherine Villiers.

  ‘I would it were Lady Katherine and that you were my lawful wedded wife,’ he said to Katherine one evening as they sat in Hannah’s new withdrawing room. She looked up from her needle-work, her eyes still lustrous, her face as beautiful as ever to his old eyes.

  ‘La, sir,’ she said mockingly, ‘I hear marriage is vastly over-rated at the Court and held to be of little account. I should not trouble yourself on the matter.’

  ‘But I do. I am being serious Kate. I am grown old and increasingly helpless.’