A Ship for The King

by Richard Woodman

  ‘I am glad to see you, Kit, and you will be wanting to know of Mistress Villiers.’

  Faulkner gazed back at him, his eyes steady. ‘Did you think I would not have come hither were it not for her?’

  ‘You have a wife and family . . .’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘It may have been necessary . . .’

  ‘To tempt me?’

  Mainwaring shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but I know that you came of your own inclination.’

  ‘Eagles informed on me?’

  ‘Of course. This is civil war; brother turns against brother, father against son. It is easy to embrace a spy and easy to turn one’s coat. Perhaps we shall all have to turn our coats, kill our fathers and maim our sons; certainly enough of it has been done already. If the Parliament wins it will itself fall foul of faction; that is why we must stand by the Prince. He is young, persistent, possesses the courage of his father without, it seems, his lamentable want of common sense. It is not a question of divine right, but legitimacy. The present King will go down in the mud like Richard at Bosworth, but no mixture of righteous brothers-in-arms will ever rule this country without legitimacy. That is what kings confer. Had Charles seen the sense of this he would have seduced Parliament with the charm he endows on so many. Were he to choose the right men, instead of the likes of Villiers, Goring and all the other self-serving wastrels who, whatever their abilities, have not the integrity and military ability of a Fairfax or a Cromwell, King Charles’s cause might have prospered, but Eagles tells me this latter has mustered a new army; that is bad news.’ Mainwaring broke off and sighed, shaking his head. ‘You and I must play a longer game, Kit. You are young enough to see the end of it, I shall not.’

  Faulkner could think of nothing to say. Mainwaring’s words had made a deep impression on him, the arguments obviously the product of serious consideration. They had driven thoughts of Katherine Villiers from his mind and, in a moment of almost Damascene revelation, he realized why he had abandoned his family at Mainwaring’s summons. It was to him that Faulkner looked, as a son might to a father. He had not yet come of age, a rum thought for a man in his mid-thirties, in the midst of a war, but it was true. The underlying security of a past, of roots, of family and tradition had never been a part of him. An English gentleman could not grow up without these essential foundations. The realization marked at once his coming of age and his despair at his failure as a father; how could he imbue his sons with any a sense of belonging, of self-worth? Now he knew why all he had found to concentrate on was his business, and simultaneously how this must have disappointed Mainwaring.

  He looked up. Mainwaring’s tired eyes gazed at him with unmistakable affection and, for a fleeting second, Faulkner thought the old man could divine his thoughts. Flushing, he turned to the locker in his cabin, drew out a bottle and two glasses.

  ‘Here’s to the long game, Sir Henry.’ He handed a glass to Mainwaring.

  ‘And to your homecoming, Kit.’

  A moment of companionable silence descended upon the two men. ‘Mistress Villiers,’ Mainwaring suddenly said, ‘is in Pendennis with the Prince. You will find her much changed from her former state. It is said the Prince, a precocious young man, has already stolen that without which a lady is . . . well, just that, though I am unsure of whether he is the only one, or even the first. She has a child . . . a bastard, naturally, and but for the charity of Lady Fanshawe, wife to the Prince’s military secretary, Sir Richard, she would, I fear, have been left in Bath and ere now become the whore of a Crophead colonel . . . It is not a pretty tale, Kit, and I tell you now only because I feel someone better provided for than myself should assume her welfare. Buckingham was a vain, rapacious, self-serving man but he was not without talent, talent which we might have harnessed to the good of the navy had we been able to curb him. Were you to feel some charity towards her, mindful of our common interest in the fortunes of the poor . . .’ Mainwaring left in the air the reference to the workings of Trinity House and the oaths of loyalty that Faulkner might feel for its twice Master. Faulkner nodded. Mainwaring finished his wine and looked about him.

  ‘See that there is a bed-place and a desk of sorts for me here, Kit. Meanwhile, with your leave and your boat, I shall ashore and to the Prince, and try and glean some intelligence of Fairfax – if anyone has had the forethought to send out a patrol.’

  ‘I shall be perfectly happy to take the lady under my protection, Sir Henry.’

  ‘I shall seek to make the lady aware of your offer. Tongues will wag to their own conclusions, of course,’ Mainwaring added, smiling.

  ‘So be it. Some will be wagging already, but I have made my bed and must like lie upon it.’

  ‘Very well.’ Mainwaring nodded, held out his hand and Faulkner saw him to the boat. After he had gone Faulkner gave orders for the red cross of St George to be hoisted to the main-truck. ‘We are a flagship, Mr Walker,’ he said to the first mate. ‘And you are now commissioned a lieutenant in the King’s service.’

  Faulkner did not sleep well that night and was abroard early, pacing the deck long before the cook was stirred from his slumbers. The night-air was chilly and the watch were only too pleased to keep out of his way. He guessed the news that they had become a man-of-war had unsettled them and had, before going to his uneasy bed, summoned them aft to tell them that any man who wished it could go ashore in the morning. The little assembly, half-seen in the twilight, had been disturbed by the news and he had sought to retain them with a promise.

  ‘The ship is mine, my lads. She is on charter to the King and under the charter-party we are entitled to a share in any prizes. With matters so uncertain ashore, you must give due consideration to your fates. Stay with me and I give you my word that I shall do all I can for you. Ask yourselves: would I have brought you here and thrown in my lot if I thought the act foolish? Now go below and make up your minds. From tomorrow you will be ruled by articles of war, not commerce.’

  Only Mainwaring’s analysis had made that speech possible and he was glad that he had not attempted sooner to reveal to them what was afoot. How they would react, he must wait until later to learn. For the moment he had other matters to think on. He stared about him.

  The ship lay quiet on the still waters of the harbour. To the west, a cable’s length distant, lay the St George. In the stillness he could hear the starting of the pumps, and guessed the men had been called early to empty the well. Four other ships and a bilander lay at anchor, two of the former being commissioned. Beyond the furthest lay the town of Falmouth, nestling under rising land and tailing off to the southwards, where a narrow isthmus connected the mainland to the high ground that lay directly south of the Phoenix. This was crowned by the round keep and the outworks of Pendennis before falling away to the south-east, where lay the entrance to the harbour with, on the far side, the promontory named after St Anthony. Between, in mid-channel, lay the Black Rock, forcing ships through a narrow passage commanded from the north by the guns of another castle, directly east of the anchored ships, lying at the tip of another peninsula at St Mawes. In the great half circle that swept then through north round to the west and back to the town of Falmouth, lay dark wooded hills into which inlets wound, seemingly swallowed up by the land. All was sunk in a deep, fragrant tranquillity but, as he watched the gradual lightening of the cloudless sky beyond St Anthony’s Head spread slowly, the first coils of the smoke of cooking fires rose from unseen and distant cottages. The world was waking.

  Something moving caught his eye, and a small boat – a fisherman, probably – detached itself from a dark finger of land and began to pull out across the harbour from where the River Fal itself disappeared into trees. Faulkner recalled the lie of the land; the Fal ran up to Truro and the reflection brought him back to reality with a start. Was Fairfax yet in the town? There was little doubt the Parliamentary forces seemed better organized than the King’s. He abandoned the troubling thought and turned on his heel, staring up at Pendennis wherein lay K
atherine Villiers. He tried to imagine her as Sir Henry had described her, ‘much changed and with a child’. How would she seem to him now that the first heat of youth had passed? How would he seem to her? He shied away from any sentiments of gratitude. She was a Villiers, proud and haughty; perhaps he would want nothing to do with her. She was defiled, a wanton. No, worse, if Mainwaring was right: an abandoned wanton! Did ‘much changed’ mean her beauty was ravaged by time and dishonour? How did a proud spirit, such as she possessed, cope with humiliation? Would she even accept what charity he could offer? And what charity could he offer? Oh, he had means enough for his own purposes, to be sure, but he could hardly despatch her to Julia with a note for his wife to take her in like a stray cat! And yet that was exactly what she was – a stray cat!

  He scratched his head. In the cold and growing light of morning, Sir Henry’s request seemed unrealistic. He could not keep her on board. No captain could keep a woman and discipline in the same vessel. Nor would endless protestations that she was merely kept for her own safety convince the hands that he was some philosophically, altruistic gentleman. What was he to do with her? He could, of course, simply palm her off with money and let her take that and her chance, but that was not Mainwaring’s intention. Alternatively, he might pass her off as Mainwaring’s woman. That would not please Sir Henry, but it might placate the crew. What was clear was that if she was allowed on board, her status must be made clear at the outset and she must therefore assume the character of a passenger. But what as? The Prince’s mistress, perhaps?

  He took another turn up and down the deck. The boat he had noticed earlier had not stopped, as he had anticipated, to cast or tend net or pot, but came steadily onwards. He watched it for a moment before resuming his preoccupation, unable to make any conclusion beyond acquiring a growing certainty that the King’s affairs, and now presumably by extension those of the Prince of Wales, were in a disastrous muddle.

  The sun suddenly rose above the land and, in an instant the high ramparts of Pendennis shone with an ethereal splendour. He stared at the castle with a curious air of superstition and rationality. An omen? Of course not. A matutinal phenomenon? Of course. He almost shook his head to clear it, drawing in the sweet dawn air. God, how beautiful were the mornings!

  There was more activity in the harbour now. A few boats were putting out from Falmouth where the smoke from cottagers’ fires could now be clearly seen rising grey against the distant greenery. The sunshine fell upon the splendid façade of Arwenack House, home of the Killigrew family, which lay upon the isthmus connecting the mainland with the rising massif upon which Pendennis stood. The boat he had first seen setting out from the vicinity of St Mawes was no longer a silhouette, but he could quite distinctly see two oarsmen and, in the stern, the large hat of a passenger: a gentleman, no less. He stared a moment longer. The boat had emerged from the Fal on an ebb tide – had it come directly from Truro, or some place close by? He could see little more detail, but something about the man in the stern gave Faulkner the impression that he was in a hurry, and long before it proved to be the case, he knew the man brought news, and that news was not good.

  An hour later came a formal note from Mainwaring. He was to prepare for action and to pass the order to the other vessels in Mainwaring’s name. The Royalist force in Truro had surrendered to Fairfax and the Parliamentary forces had now left Truro and were marching south to seize the Prince or, if that failed, invest Pendennis. All thoughts of Mistress Villiers were again driven from Faulkner’s mind as he put the ship in a state of defence. Although she had not been laid up in London, all his endeavours prior to their departure had been in the mustering of a crew and the storing of the vessel for a short voyage. While he had sufficient stores for two months, the urgency with which Eagles had pressed him to leave the Thames and his own inclination not to tarry meant that he had little enough powder and shot on board. He discovered a small store of powder in one of the anchored merchantmen and purchased it immediately, but he was still in want of balls and sent a party ashore to pick up suitable stones. All the guns were scoured and a muster was made of small arms, reinforcement of which was sent across from the St George by a thoughtful Eagles. He was fully aware of the condition of the Phoenix and it came with a note that read:

  I am to ground this vessel at high water today, to command the approach to the castle and have little want of much of my stores. Send a boat for anything more that you need.

  Jas Eagles,

  Commander, ‘St George’

  The afternoon was thus occupied by boats from both vessels criss-crossing the harbour as the Phoenix was transformed into a man-of-war. In all this absorbing activity no one among her people sought to go ashore, or leave her. Whether or not it was the ingrained habit of obedience, which seemed on reflection to be unlikely among so hurriedly a scratched-together company, or some loyalty the men felt to the King, Faulkner was never able to decide. It never occurred to him that it might have been a sense of trust in their commander.

  At high-water, towards three of the clock, Eagles summoned all the boats to the side of the St George and, with her pumps working, had his ship towed closer inshore. Carefully sounding his way in, he succeeded in swinging her shortly before she gently took the ground so that her starboard battery could be brought to bear on Arwenack House. The falling tide and the water rising inexorably in the St George’s bilge would do the rest, and Eagles could even lighten her, for he soon afterwards sent a request that Mainwaring should sanction the use of the ships’ boats to carry ashore such of her larboard battery as could be safely removed, to be sent to augment the new defences being then dug round the lower glacis of the castle.

  By the time the sun westered that spring evening, the first signs of the enemy disturbed their labours. The sharp crackle of dragoons’ wheel-locks could be heard from the woods north of the town on the road to Penrhyn, itself just obscured from the Phoenix’s anchorage by a bend in the creek. Then, through his glass, Faulkner could see the first of several laden farm-carts moving across that exposed ground and, swinging his glass south of west and laying it on the town itself, he could see a number of people milling with apparent aimlessness about the custom house. Before dark, the crack of small arms was interrupted by the heavy boom of a gun or two, and dense smoke was seen rising among the trees. More smoke appeared and the first stirrings of a westerly wind, accompanied by banks of cloud from the west that rolled up in the last of the daylight, bore the smell of it out to the anchored ships. In contrast to the fragrance of the morning it was, thought Faulkner, poor evidence of the work of man during the hours of daylight.

  That evening, just after the dying of the light, Sir Henry Mainwaring came aboard.

  ‘Tomorrow we shall be tested for our mettle,’ he said, before going below, rolling himself in his cloak and falling asleep. Exhausted after his own sleepless night and day of labour, Faulkner followed him below and was, within minutes, oblivious to the world.

  The breeze that had brought the smell of burning off to the ships the previous evening rose during the hours of darkness. It had begun to rain during the night and the morning began with a heavy downpour which sent sheets of water, driven by a freshening westerly wind, across the harbour and all but obscuring the visibility. A low scud tore across the sky and Falmouth lay a grey, indistinct feature, emerging from time to time in some detail, only to vanish again under the squall-driven sleet. The ships sheered somewhat in the gale and snubbed at their cables, so that it was necessary to slap canvas and grease in the hawse to prevent heavy chafe.

  Faulkner stood the men down from their quarters, keeping only a few sentinels on deck with strict orders as to vigilance in case the enemy attempted to board under the cover of the weather in requisitioned boats. During the afternoon, however, the rain ceased, the sky cleared and the wind chopped round to the north-west. The clearing of the air was dramatic and it revealed a change of circumstances that, although anticipated, was no less disturbing. Arwenack House wa
s in flames, burnt by the Royalist forces as they abandoned Falmouth and the little village of Pennycomequick, retiring into the fastness of the castle.

  With the clearing of the air the men were stood to and both Faulkner and Mainwaring scanned the shoreline. ‘Are the enemy in Pennycomequick?’ Mainwaring asked, uncertainly. ‘Eagles cannot command the village or Arwenack House from where he has taken the ground . . .’

  ‘No, but I can see movement north of the town, where the road runs towards Penrhyn . . . Yes, see there now: mounted troops, dragoons I suppose, and there! Pikemen!’

  Mainwaring brought his own glass to bear where Faulkner indicated. ‘And see there, a man on a white horse . . . that is Black Tom himself . . .’

  Faulkner swivelled and caught the image in the lens of the telescope: Fairfax, quite clear in black armour on his famous white steed, surrounded by his staff and standard bearer, rode south across the exposed ground towards Pennycomequick. But they were not the only people to spot the Parliamentary commander. Even as both men watched, a rumble from the St George, followed by the clouds of white smoke from her broadside, told its own tale. Mainwaring and Faulkner could see the sudden gobbets of earth thrown up by the shot as it ploughed at the end of its range through the sodden grass and mud. The horses of Fairfax’s suite plunged wildly, rearing and kicking for a moment before their riders had them under control again and were heading off at a gallop, the standard streaming in gallantly as they made for the shelter of Penrhyn. A cheer from the St George was carried on the wind as the gunfire died away, echoing faintly into the distance. ‘Not a single casualty,’ Mainwaring remarked, lowering his telescope and turning towards Faulkner. ‘That is hardly a victory.’ He screwed up his eyes and seemed to be looking over Faulkner’s shoulder. ‘Hello, what have we here?’