For King or Commonwealth

by Richard Woodman

  ‘I could take the Phoenix,’ Faulkner said with such a sudden conviction that Mainwaring stared at him.

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Aye, alone but with such teeth as will bite the Puritan in the trade, where it hurts him most.’

  Mainwaring smiled. ‘Ah, me, Kit, you remind me of the man Henry Mainwaring once was.’

  ‘I was taught well, Sir Henry,’ Faulkner responded, raising his glass in an ironic salute to his senior.

  ‘D’you recall we called you Mr Rat when we found you on the quay in Bristol?’

  ‘Only too well; and a damned hungry rat.’

  The two men smiled at each other and a silence fell between them. Warmed by the wine Faulkner restrained himself from pressing Mainwaring on the subject of moving the ship. Instead he fell into a study, thinking of the most pressing tasks to bring the squadron to a state of readiness. Perhaps one ship was insufficient but if he could get three, say the Antelope and the Roebuck commissioned quickly, he might achieve something. He might save the Antelope for Prince Charles’s service if he could get her to sea and take a prize or two.

  ‘Where is Katherine?’ Mainwaring suddenly asked.

  ‘Eh?’ Faulkner was recalled to the present with a start. It was growing dark rapidly as the sky clouded over the low sun of the late winter’s afternoon and the chill made him shiver. ‘Katherine? She is without . . .’

  ‘Waiting on His Royal Highness?’

  Faulkner frowned. ‘Perhaps; I don’t know . . .’ He looked at Mainwaring and knew the expression he wore. ‘Why? What is troubling you, Sir Henry?’

  ‘Apprehension, Kit, apprehension. His Royal Highness is no more to be trusted than any other man and perhaps less than most.’

  Faulkner frowned. ‘What exactly are you insinuating?’

  ‘I think you can guess. There is talk.’

  ‘There is always talk around the Prince,’ Faulkner said tossing off his wine, but his face wore an expression of such agony as he put the empty glass down on the table before him that Mainwaring was minded to change the subject and sought to mitigate the damage he had done.

  ‘That is very true,’ he said hurriedly.

  Faulkner was of like mind. ‘What of you, Sir Henry? Are you still intent upon returning to England despite the chance to command at sea against the King’s enemies?’

  ‘Kit, Kit,’ said Mainwaring shaking his head and smiling ruefully, ‘despite her most excellent qualities the Phoenix is not the Prince Royal . . .’

  ‘Would to God that she was,’ said Faulkner sharply, recalling the puissant man-of-war which Mainwaring had once commanded and in which he himself had served as a lieutenant. He helped himself to another glass of wine from the flagon. ‘I should take all the shipping in the London River with her had I the men to man her and the powder and shot to do proper execution.’

  But both men heard the voices below and fell silent as the familiar footfall on the stairs preceded the opening of the door. Both men rose as Katherine Villiers entered the room. She was flushed, a high colour in her cheeks as she moved quickly to the fire, rubbing her hands.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, acknowledging their bows. ‘God’s death, but ’tis cold without! I pray you be seated.’

  ‘A glass of wine, Kate?’ Faulkner said moving to the door and calling for a glass.

  ‘If you please, thank you.’

  ‘How is His Highness today?’ Mainwaring asked.

  ‘Very well . . .’ Katherine broke off, perceiving too late, as he shot Faulkner a look, the trap that Mainwaring had laid for her. Recovering quickly she added, ‘And he particularly wished to commend himself to you both. “They are my most devoted followers, Mistress Villiers”, he was pleased to say, “upon whom I rely for my flag’s maintenance upon the Narrow Seas”.’

  ‘How very grand,’ Mainwaring said as the red-faced maid-servant brought in a fresh glass and a second flagon of wine.

  Katherine broke the inevitable silence that this necessary intrusion caused, not warming to Mainwaring’s tone. ‘Well, gentlemen, why look you so glum? Have you instead been plotting treason? This is passable tipple.’ This last a distraction for she was wary of too open a discourse and Mainwaring was too old a bird to wish to linger. At best a tiff was imminent and these were, after all, Faulkner’s lodgings; his own rooms were next door in this rented floor of a Dutch house and the walls thin enough to learn if matters between these younger people, whom he regarded in his straightened circumstances as his family, took a turn for the worst. Tossing off his wine he rose.

  ‘I shall take leave of you. We may discuss the plans for the, er, squadron, tomorrow, Kit. I shall give the matter thought overnight and we will draft a paper to place before Prince Rupert. Saw you the Prince, Mistress Villiers?’

  Katherine shook her head. ‘No, he was said to be at Helvoetsluys with the ships, but was expected back in a day or two.’

  ‘Very well, then I bid you goodnight, Mistress Villiers.’

  Sweeping up his worn and shiny hat with its bedraggled ostrich feather, Mainwaring made his courtly bow and left the room, leaving Katherine staring after him and her lover staring at his boots. In the wake of Mainwaring’s departure a deathly silence fell, broken at last by Katherine, who asked in a low voice, ‘What is the matter, sweetheart?’

  The endearment brought Faulkner’s head up with a jerk. His eyes were bright and he said, in a strangled voice, ‘I beg you, do not call me that.’

  ‘Why I—’

  He stood up suddenly, so that she drew back in surprise. ‘You spend,’ he said with difficulty, ‘too long in his company.’

  ‘Whose company?’

  ‘Do not fool with me, Kate. You know who I mean.’

  ‘He is a Prince, Kit, and commands me.’

  ‘Commands you to what, for Almighty God’s sake?’

  ‘Why,’ she said in a tone so reasonable that it left him speechless with a disarming mixture of anger, confusion and humiliation, ‘to attend him, of course.’

  ‘Attend him? Attend him?’ He could not bring himself to make the accusation whose confirmation he did not wish to hear.

  ‘He holds court, he is a Royal Prince,’ she repeated, as if repetition would allow the import of Prince Charles’s status to sink in.

  Sensing the argument was diverging from the truth towards which he felt irresistibly drawn he asked the question that had – he now realized – been forming in his mind for weeks. The decision once made restored his manhood and he felt an icy calm fill him, casting out the demon of weak and pitiful supplication. ‘And does attending him require you to lie with him?’

  The colour draining from her face she stepped backwards as though struck. For a moment he thought that he had it all wrong and a spark of hope threatened to tip him into a doting, slobbering apologist for entertaining the very suspicion.

  Shaking her head, she said, ‘Not lie, Kit. Not as a man does with a woman.’ She hesitated. ‘That I have denied him but he likes a little frivolous diversion.’

  ‘A play, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, nothing more . . . and . . .’

  ‘A Prince shall have his way,’ Faulkner finished the sentence for her in a snarl.

  ‘It means nothing, Kit . . .’ Perceiving the hurt the honest confession was inflicting she sought, inadequately, to find reasonable ground between them. She made a circular movement of her hand, embracing them both. ‘We . . . we are not married. We cannot be married . . .’

  The reference to Faulkner’s wife Judith caught him for a second but he had long ago reconciled himself to his own betrayal. That he would burn for it he had no doubt, but that he had found in Katherine a love worth risking damnation seemed – at least in the heat of their passion – a price worth paying. Now he was seeing that hell was not beyond this life, but of it and that other people were the devil’s agents.

  ‘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 mi
ght 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.’