For King or Commonwealth

by Richard Woodman

  ‘We shall never know,’ Faulkner mused, ‘whose deaths we caused or what ship they manned.’

  ‘’Tis no matter, sir. ’Tis not our business but the Lord’s. He is our sure shield and will gather the Godly to his bosom and leave the rest to the devil.’

  ‘You take a sanguine view, Mr Whadcoat.’

  ‘I live in bloody times, Captain Faulkner, and get little liberty to worry. My time will come one day and while I am thankful it came not today, I am ready to answer for my sins before the throne of the Lord of Hosts.’

  ‘As we all must surely do but I too am glad that it was not today.’

  ‘Who has the deck?’ Faulkner asked.

  ‘Lieutenant Jefferies.’

  ‘He is unhurt?’

  ‘A scratch enough to impress his lady, but nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Good. He is a competent young man.’

  A silence fell and Faulkner had almost fallen asleep when Whadcoat asked, ‘What do you think the General will do, sir?’

  Faulkner shrugged. He could barely see Whadcoat now in the gloom of night. His face was a pale oval that seemed to swim in his tired vision. ‘Oh, we will anchor in Hollesley Bay under Orfordness, or Sole Bay off Southwold, depending upon the tide and then recruit and re-rig. Then, I wouldn’t wonder, we shall be back off the Texel and the Schelde until the Dutch realize they are beaten.’

  ‘I think they took drubbing enough today. I do not think they will look for another fight for a while.’

  ‘I hope that you are right.’

  But Whadcoat’s head had fallen forward upon his knees and a gentle snore drifted through the cabin so that Faulkner, too, let go of the day and drifted into oblivion.

  ‘Well, Kit, you are well regarded, I believe. Indeed, I heard the Lord Protector noticed you.’

  ‘You speak as though I had secured the regard of a King, Nathan.’

  ‘Well, your name was among those mentioned in Parliament.’

  Faulkner made a gesture of deprecation. He found his brother-in-law’s adulation strangely at odds with his usual sober view of the world. There were rumours of peace, it was true, and Gooding’s business would better prosper if shipping could proceed upon its lawful occasions without the intervention of hostile Dutchmen, but this was all too much. He had not yet laid up the Union and had only a few days in London before he must return to Chatham and await events. ‘That was entirely due to General Monck’s kindness,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I rendered some service to him but I was not the only one to have done so.’

  ‘And peace must surely follow after so signal a victory. They say the Dutch fleet is shattered and Tromp dead.’

  ‘So I have heard but how is it that you know . . .’ Faulkner paused, then, grasping the reason for Gooding’s euphoria, remarked, ‘I see, you have been in touch with Helvoetsluys, or Amsterdam.’

  ‘Meneer Goudschmidt, to be precise, Kit, and your money is safe.’

  ‘I was never in any doubt but that it would be. States make war while merchants make money and you, my dear Nathan, are a merchant.’ A cloud crossed Faulkner’s face and Gooding noticed it.

  ‘I am unable to glean news of . . .’ he did not finish the sentence, but both men knew of whom he spoke.

  ‘Did you try?’ asked Faulkner, his mouth suddenly dry.

  ‘I made some enquiries.’

  Faulkner gave Gooding a long, hard look. ‘And?’

  Gooding shrugged. ‘No words of comfort,’ he said hesitantly, judging Faulkner’s mood. ‘Either way, Kit. She is gone, lost to you and it would be better for us all, not least Hannah, Henry and . . . well, my sister who is your wife.’

  Faulkner felt a constriction in his throat and his voice rasped when he spoke. ‘Is there news of Charles Stuart?’

  ‘Oh, there is much of that. God knows we are spared much by the intervention of the Lord.’

  ‘Never mind the Lord, Nathan, what of the King?’

  Gooding caught at Faulkner’s unfortunate expression. ‘Is that how you think of him still?’

  ‘What the devil does it matter what I think of him?’ he snapped, anger directed at Nathan that better applied to his own slip of the tongue. ‘And what does it matter for me if I cannot speak freely in . . . in this house.’ he gestured round the room that had once been his own.

  ‘Please, Kit, this is unnecessary,’ Gooding temporized. ‘This is as difficult for me as for you but life . . .’

  ‘Must go on, I suppose you were about to say.’ Gooding nodded. ‘Well,’ Faulkner went on, ‘we used to run a sound enterprise between us. I suppose that we must do so again. Have we any investments to make?’

  ‘Are you willing to come back in?’

  ‘I have my pay and such prize money as you have been able to secure.’

  ‘And money in Amsterdam.’

  ‘And money in Amsterdam.’

  ‘You should make reparation for those ships of ours that you damaged at The Nore.’

  ‘You are a wry dog and as close a negotiator as any Israelite,’ Faulkner said with a half smile. ‘And you are right; I should make reparation.’

  ‘And,’ Gooding dropped his voice, embarrassed, ‘what about Judith?’

  Faulkner laughed. ‘Has she not told you? We have slept together. It is only natural, Nathan, she is my wife and the mother of three of my children.’

  ‘Are there others?’ Gooding asked quickly before he perceived Faulkner was having fun with him. ‘Oh . . . I see, yes of course.’

  ‘And how does Judith feel about all this consideration which, if I divine matters correctly, has more to do with how much Nathan Gooding can make out of the fortunate and well-regarded Captain Faulkner?’

  ‘Come, Kit, that is not fair!’ Gooding protested.

  ‘Life is seldom fair, Nathan, as Judith will testify.’

  Gooding threw up his hands. ‘Oh, I cannot play this with you, you must make your own peace with my sister.’

  ‘I never had any intention of doing otherwise, Brother-in-law. Now, perhaps a wealthy man like yourself could offer some hospitality. A glass of wine, perhaps, even a bite if the house possesses anything other than the meal pie and dried beef which maketh thee a dull fellow.’

  ‘Wine, yes, but tobacco, no. As for victuals, my good Captain, I believe that your wife has something prepared in anticipation.’

  ‘Then you may cease your prattle, call for some wine and tell me where I shall find this paragon of the vestal virtues.’

  ‘She waits upstairs.’

  ‘Ahh. Then I think we should take wine first.’

  They dined together that first night, Nathan and the two children, Hannah and Henry. Nathaniel was absent at sea, unfortunately, otherwise the appearance would have been one of complete and happy reconciliation. It was, Faulkner was aware, not quite what it seemed, though Puritan manners and constraint made it seem so to the servants, who prattled late into the evening about ‘how the master had come home after his heroic adventures’. That, of course, resulted from the accounts of the late fights that were circulating in pamphlets in which Faulkner, among others, was singled out for praise.

  For Faulkner, the regard was an embarrassment, for he kept seeing the astonished look upon Clarkson’s face as his life leached out of his entrails upon the Union’s white deck and covered the boots of his commander. It was not an easy thing to forget, an epitome of all the horrors of the late and savage sea war.

  ‘You know,’ he said, breaking an awkward silence as the servants cleared the first course and brought in the second, ‘in the heat of the late action of Scheveningen,’ and here he said the word with the most accurate Dutch intonation he could muster, so much so that Judith, sitting quietly opposite, winced at this reminder of his time in Holland, and Hannah winced at the guttural sound, ‘in the very heat of the battle, a Dutch captain raised his hat to me in salute.’

  No one knew quite what to say. Henry thought his father to be attempting some crude claim on their admiration, Hanna
h was still wondering over the strange Dutch name, and Gooding considered the scene was far beyond his imagination. But Faulkner was looking at Judith as he spoke and his steady stare seemed to demand some response.

  She returned his gaze and he felt her whole character struggling with the task of responding. She had fine eyes and full lips, he thought to himself, and while he could never love her as he had loved Katherine, they had three children and had survived civil war and separation. As for Katherine, there was no news of her other than that her name was no longer associated with – and here, in the privacy of his thoughts, he considered the matter carefully – the King. Whatever power ruled in London was England’s business, but there was a legitimate King over the water, a King in waiting, perhaps, for who would follow Oliver?

  Unable to find the words her husband expected, Judith had flushed at his over-long scrutiny.

  ‘Who will follow Cromwell as Protector, d’you think, Henry?’ he asked his son by way of stimulating conversation.

  The young man shrugged. ‘Perhaps we shall have a Parliament again,’ he said.

  ‘Hannah?’ She coloured up and Faulkner flicked a look from her to her mother and bit off a remark that they flushed much the same when caught for something to say.

  ‘Nathan?’

  ‘Perhaps one of your Generals-at-Sea, for even with a Parliament we shall need a head of state and the House does not much like the Army. What would you say to Blake . . . or Monck?’

  ‘Both are soldiers at heart,’ Faulkner remarked, ‘and either would be competent enough, but surely Parliament’s mood might change if it were a new Parliament.’

  ‘True, but I think perhaps the Lord Protector has his own plans.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘His son, Richard, I hear.’

  ‘Is that not very like kingly succession?’

  ‘Not if it required the ratification of Parliament.’

  ‘That is not what I understand Oliver submitted to.’

  ‘No, perhaps, but it was then different.’

  ‘I suppose you want the King back,’ said Judith, breaking into the conversation monopolized by the older men.

  Faulkner suppressed a smile and shook his head. ‘I do not have any preference. I would, however, see this country Godly and quietly governed.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ said Gooding.

  ‘My anxiety arises from the uncertainty that would follow the death of Oliver Cromwell.’

  ‘Do you intend to kill him?’ asked Henry with such asperity that they all turned to stare at him so that he too flushed.

  ‘Henry!’ exclaimed his mother at the impropriety of the remark.

  My, my, thought Faulkner sardonically, we are fast becoming a table full of beetroots.

  ‘Are you suggesting that I might?’ Faulkner asked, his mouth in a lop-sided smile.

  ‘I am not certain, sir,’ Henry replied coldly, recovering himself.

  Faulkner smiled at the boy. ‘Do you know, Henry, I was not certain about my father. Indeed I have no recollection of him at all, for he was lost at sea when I was small. But I think you may rest assured that it is not my intention to end my days on the gallows, or enjoy the evisceration that precedes it.’

  ‘Oh, father!’ Hannah protested disgustedly at the reference to disembowelling.

  ‘I know, my dear,’ Faulkner said, still smiling, ‘but Henry needs to consider the import of his remarks. One would have expected something a little less tactless on our first night together again.’

  With a raw scraping of his chair on the boards and the flash of his napkin as he threw it down on the table, Henry rose, glaring at his father. Now he was the perfect beetroot, Faulkner thought before commanding him to sit. Henry remained on his feet but did not leave the room and Judith quietly said, ‘Be seated, Henry, please.’

  The young man subsided into his chair.

  ‘I think,’ Judith said slowly in her measured tone, ‘that that was the point of your father telling us of the Dutch captain who saluted him.’

  Faulkner looked the length of the table and smiled broadly at his wife. ‘Quite right, Goodwife Faulkner. And as for you, Henry, do not flare up so fast; a man must turn many things in his mind as your uncle here will testify, before he comes to a decision, whatever he does in life.’

  Henry was staring into his lap. Faulkner would have to make amends there, for Henry resented his homecoming. But if the Lord willed the war at an end, there would be time enough for that.

  ‘You were hard on Henry,’ Judith said later as they prepared for bed.

  ‘Yes, I know, but the lad must understand . . .’

  ‘You cannot expect obedience immediately. They have their own memories.’

  ‘Of course they have and I would not demand obedience, but I shall have respect.’

  He heard her sigh and turned to her, drawing her face up so that she looked directly at him. ‘I know the sense of the reprehensible he has towards me and I understand if he hates me, but I shall not have a lack of respect between us. Did I not ask him his opinion first, before I consulted you or Nathan? Whatever he may think of me as a father and a husband, I have some small claim on his respect for it was not entirely without my help that he has been able to grow to manhood in some comfort.’

  Judith sighed again. ‘Very well. In justice I could not claim that you left us paupers and I always knew that your heart lay elsewhere.’

  ‘Did you? How so when you had lived so constrained a life when we met?’

  ‘Something told me that you had encountered a passion before me. I did not know she would reappear.’

  ‘And yet you . . .’

  ‘I loved you,’ she said simply. ‘I could not help that any more than I now know you could help yourself with . . . with her.’

  ‘She has a name.’

  ‘I know she has a name and that she lives still.’

  ‘Then you know more than me, for I am uncertain of her whereabouts.’

  ‘And what if she should reappear and make some claim upon you? I could not tolerate the humiliation again for we no longer live in so topsy-turvy a world.’

  ‘I should not see her starve, Judith, that I must tell you in all honesty, but I would not desert you for her, nor subject my children to any further distress.’

  ‘And what of me, Kit?’

  ‘You are my wife. Let us lay the matter there and lie our bodies together as the Lord wills it.’

  ‘You speak less like a Malignant, I must admit,’ she responded as their hands met across the bed and he drew her towards him. ‘I have sailed too long with your damned Puritans,’ he said, smiling. Whadcoat’s face swam briefly before his mind’s eye, but then Clarkson’s followed, unbidden. Faulkner lowered his face to his wife’s.

  Life had changed them both, he thought, blotting out the horror as he met Judith’s body with his own.