For King or Commonwealth

by Richard Woodman

  ‘My word, Kit,’ Brenton said, draining his tankard, ‘you sound like Sir Henry or a General-at-Sea.’

  After Brenton had gone, Faulkner sat in thought for a while and then, impulsively, drew a blank sheet of paper towards him, found a quill and ink, re-cut the nib and began to write. It was only a short letter and he had almost forgotten he had written it the following morning. As for despatching it last thing the previous evening, the realization of that only occurred to him after he had ordered two horses from a neighbouring livery stable and was asking for the reckoning from the landlord of The Ship.

  ‘Will there be anything else, sir?’ the man had asked when Faulkner recalled that he had invited Judith to dine with him that last evening in his room. When he had given his order, he sat in his room and wondered if she would come. Surrounded by his dunnage, most of which was packed in two portmanteaux, the room already looked bare and inhospitable, and he half hoped that Judith would find her feet too cold to venture forth. He did not recall her as adventurous, but remembered a wild streak that not even the severest Puritanism could properly curb.

  ‘What have I done?’ he asked himself, looking over his effects, pulling out a folio of newly purchased charts and pretending to study them, all the while denying the fact that he had an itch to match hers – or at least hoped he had. He was not long left in doubt. Before six had struck she was at the door and came in flushed and guilty.

  ‘Judith,’ he began, but she came forward, her finger pressed against his lips, her eyes full of fire and tears. Nor did she leave until the morning when, in the first glimmer of dawn, they descended the creaking stairs and Faulkner escorted her home before her own servants were about. Returning to his own bed, his head giddy with a contrary mixture of hope and despair, he fell asleep to be woken much later to the thunder of the guns of the Tower of London.

  By the time he reached Chatham, Faulkner had caught up with the events of the day from which he had unconsciously been running. Preoccupied by his own affairs and untouched by the tumultuous political events which had been taking place only a few miles further up the River Thames, he had been aware of the Parliamentary row that had been brewing without troubling himself as to its likely outcome. Apart from the purely personal, he had other matters more closely touching his reappointment to the Union, and in determining the condition of the ship in a series of letters to and from both Whadcoat and Clarkson. Clarkson had paid him a visit from which he had returned to the ship with a purse of money and the wherewithal to raise some extra men by way of bribes, while he left Faulkner with a request for the new charts with which Faulkner had diverted himself the previous evening.

  Having long passed out of the sound of the cannon at the Tower, he was greeted by street revels in Rochester that evening. Toasts were being drunk by those disposed to consider the political upheaval that had taken place that day in Westminster as beneficial. There were some souls who wore expressions of disapproval, but they were careful not to articulate their misgivings. Only the landlord of The Griffin, with whom Faulkner intended to lodge for the night and whither he had summoned Whadcoat and Clarkson to dine, expressed an opinion contrary to that finding public expression in the street outside.

  ‘Oh, they’d all drink to a monkey if he sat on a cart and threw pennies at their feet!’ the man said, showing Faulkner to his room. ‘Lord Protector, indeed! More like King Oliver, by God! Well, damn the Parliament and good riddance to them! We’ll just have to see what a muck of it King Oliver makes of things.’

  And with that Faulkner had to be content as to the mood of the country upon the elevation of Oliver Cromwell, late general in the Parliamentary army and sitting Member for Huntingdon, to the office of Lord Protector.

  Later that evening, the conversation between Faulkner and his officers turned from the preoccupations of the ship to that of the news of the day.

  ‘They say it was like a coronation, the ceremony,’ said Whadcoat. ‘I’d never have thought that Cromwell would have thrown over the Parliament! He of all people!’

  ‘It will make little difference to us, Mr Whadcoat,’ Clarkson said. ‘It don’t change our task one whit.’

  ‘No indeed.’

  And so they went again to war.

  The Battle of the Gabbard

  June 1653

  ‘Katherine!’

  Faulkner woke in a lather of sweat. He was sodden, feverish and terrified that he had shouted aloud. The small hour of his awakening was such that even so foolish a thing as calling out Kate’s name could frighten him. He lay back, realizing that he had only shouted in his dream, for the ship lay quiet, gently rising and falling to the seas, silent but for the creaking of her fabric as she worked in the seaway. But she was not quiet; it was just that he was insulated here, in his cabin, from the piteous groans of the wounded below in the orlop. He calmed himself with an effort and felt the burn of the wound in his upper arm and shoulder. Although the surgeon had extracted the splinter hours earlier, he felt the inflammation. Was it the first onset of blood poisoning? He made to touch his right shoulder with his left hand, then recalled Mr Surgeon Whitaker had left a hog’s bristle in the wound that it might drain properly.

  Katherine . . . The memory of her tormented him, so that in his feverish state she seemed like a succubus, real rather than imagined. Or did she? Was it not his own conscience that tortured him? He was no better, for he had betrayed her by lying with Judith. Filled with self-loathing, he was caught between two twin fires of passion, drawn inexorably towards Judith when Katherine had scorned him. That is what he told himself, until he recovered his wits, along with his integrity and realized that in effect he had himself abandoned Katherine after his capture. It was no good protesting to his inner self that he had been swept up by events beyond his control. Now she lay in the King’s arms, until he tired of her – which was a certainty, for she was older than him by some measure and only her beauty and proximity could possibly recommend her to so young and vigorous a prince as was His Majesty King Charles II.

  Faulkner threw off the blanket and tentatively set his feet on the deck, bracing himself by the deck beams above him. For a moment his head spun and then he slowly came to himself. What was he mooning over these women for? He had other, more pressing matters to attend to, for God’s sake. He groped his way to the chair behind the table that served as both desk and dining board. Swivelling the chair round he stared astern through the windows at the wake, shivering and burning at the same time, wretched in the isolation of his situation.

  The ship was barely moving, the wind no stronger now than it had been for the last two days of action, a coil of water trailing astern as the rudder bit at the flow coming under the transom.

  Heavens, but it had been hard work after weeks of beating about in response to reports. Tromp had gone north with a convoy said to be two hundred strong; Tromp was back in Helvoetsluys, or was it the Texel, or the Zuider Zee, or Enkhuizen? Now he was reported at sea again and with a fleet the like of which had never been seen before. And they had gone to meet him, sweeping up from Portsmouth under Monck and Deane, two Generals-at-Sea both in command in equal measure with eighty-eight men-of-war and over one hundred armed merchantmen. Tromp was nowhere to be found off the Dutch coast, so they sailed back across the North Sea to Great Yarmouth where they anchored, only to hear that Tromp had slipped past them and had bombarded Dover. It was incredible!

  Little fly-boats were sent off with messages. Blake, still unwell after his wounding in February, was said to be mustering more ships in the outer estuary of the Thames, summoning them to join him under the lee of the Gunfleet Sand, a few miles from the Naze of Essex. Meanwhile, Monck and Deane, having held a council of war aboard their joint flagship, the Resolution, slipped south to Sole Bay off Southwold with a fleet of over one hundred ships. They were supported by Penn in the James and Lawson in the George, both leading their respective divisions. The English fleet stood out to sea and early on the morning of the 1st June the scouting fr
igates, off the Gabbard Shoal, had briefly let fly their topsail sheets, the distant signal for an enemy fleet in sight, but there had followed a day of fruitless manoeuvring at the end of which the signal to anchor had been hoisted. The Dutch followed suit some miles away and when the misty morning of the 2nd dawned, they weighed and, following the orders of the two Generals, formed up in line, each division closed on its admiral with Lawson in the van, Monck and Deane the centre and Penn the rear. There was barely sufficient of the north-westerly wind to allow them to get into their proper stations, but the attentiveness of the commanders and their sailing masters enabled the English to work to windward of the Dutch who obligingly formed a similar ragged line with Ruyter in their vanguard, Tromp in the centre, and De With the rear.

  The two fleets drew closer, the hours of the forenoon ticking past until, at about an hour before noon, the action opened. Within half an hour it had become general, the ships locked in a bloody battle in which the English stood off, under strict orders not to board until their guns had done their savage work. No one aboard the Union knew it until later, but Sir Richard Deane had been killed in the first exchange of fire and De Ruyter, it later transpired, had tried to work ahead of Lawson, double his line and rake as he crossed it, but the fickle wind frustrated this bold manoeuvre and – despite launching boats to have his ships’ heads pulled round – frustrated the Dutch admiral’s audacity. Instead, a bloody mêlée ensued, each ship seeking out an opponent and battering her until their sides were shattered, their decks strewn with the dead and dying and blood ran red from their scuppers, staining the sea alongside the lumbering hulls. The noise and smoke were tremendous, the air seemed hellish hot from the fiery breath of the cannon, thick with smoke, shot and splinters, one of which struck Faulkner at the height of the fight. He did not notice it at first, thinking his head reeled and his ears sang from the deafening concussion of the guns, but at last he realized he had been wounded and was losing blood. He got himself below and had the splinter drawn, a savage, searing pain that tore at the muscles of his upper arm and shoulder, leaving him sick and weak. A draught of strong wine fortified him and, roughly bandaged and with Whitaker’s admonition that ‘something would have to be done about that wound later, Captain,’ Faulkner returned to the quarterdeck.

  Here he found Clarkson had been wounded in his right hand and was sitting at the base of the mizen mast, his face the colour of cartridge linen, contemplating the bloody wreckage of three fingers.

  Faulkner relieved the indomitable and doughty Whadcoat of his temporary command, sending his lieutenant back to exhort those serving the guns to exert themselves to their utmost. Faulkner was dizzy with the fury of the battle, only vaguely aware of what he did, of ordering the helm put over and the ragged sails re-trimmed as they hauled round and avoided close contact with their enemy. They had a Dutchman on both sides at one time, the Union belching fire and iron in a relentless thunder that seemed to Faulkner to have been going on for such an immensity of time that there was neither past nor future, only this dreadful, cacophonous present, this roaring in his ears, this thumping, throbbing heartbeat that seemed to have migrated up into his shoulder.

  It ended at last, though Faulkner had no clear notion of when exactly that was. The sun seemed still high in the heavens, but Whadcoat afterwards told him that it was six hours past noon that the Dutch stood off towards their home coast under a freshening wind. This, held Whadcoat, was the clear and unequivocal judgement of God, for normally in such circumstances, the concussion of the guns killed a light wind and generated a calm. Instead, the Lord God of Hosts had sent a wind which had by this time veered into the north-east quarter, enabling the Dutch to make sail.

  The English fleet followed and that evening, as the sun set and the men were busy cutting away the damaged fore topmast and main topgallant, knotting and splicing the damaged rigging, sending down the ragged fore topsails and making some fist of a jury rig, Whitaker dressed Faulkner’s wound, inserting the bristle to allow the pus to drain from it. When at last Faulkner and Whadcoat expressed themselves satisfied with the running repairs, the watches were set, station was taken up on the lanterns hoisted in the rigging of the Resolution, the James and the George and the fleet settled down for the night as it shadowed the Dutch down the coast of Holland. The Union’s men were exhausted but Faulkner saw that they were fed and issued with beer. To a groaning acceptance of the inevitable, he passed word that they should rest from their labours which, he felt certain, would not be over for some hours yet.

  By dawn the tide and wind had carried both fleets south until they lay not far from Dunkirk. Just as Faulkner had thought, Tromp renewed the action the following morning, turning on his pursuers for a few more hours of fighting but the Dutch had lost the taste for English iron, their shallower-draughted ships outgunned by their heavier opponents as they retreated into the estuary of the Schelde. Making the best of his way into the heart of the action, Faulkner took the Union inshore, engaging two Dutch men-of-war. His gunners warmed to their work and had compelled both of the enemy’s ships to strike their ensigns to the hoarse cheers of the Union’s people.

  It was now that the Dutch suffered their heaviest losses, some twenty ships, eleven captured, six sunk and three destroyed by exploding magazines. With Blake arriving on the scene, Tromp’s fleet was blockaded between Flushing and Breskens, the action ending in a decisive victory for the English.

  By the evening of the 3rd June, Monck had ordered the worst-damaged ships back into home waters. Among them lumbered the crippled Union, under what sail that could be set upon her shattered masts, her captain retreating to his cabin with a note from Monck ordering him home, but bearing the compliment that ‘no captain has done more this day than you’.

  Faulkner stiffly rose from his contemplation of the sea astern. Somewhere over the horizon, Monck and Blake were anchored, bottling up the flower of the Dutch fleet. A pale square caught his eye, lying upon the dark planking. He picked it up and, in the faint light, recognized it as the order to withdraw.

  Weak and feverish, Faulkner submitted to further ministrations from Whitaker once they had anchored in the Medway, off Blackstakes. The surgeon shook his head over the wound, drew out the bristle and sniffed at it with a grunt.

  ‘Lie down, sir, this will not take a moment. Have you some fortified wine?’ The servant Jackson brought a bottle and Whitaker decanted half a pint into a dish, dipped his scalpel in the wine then began his excoriating curetting of the wound. Faulkner writhed with the painful intrusion, unable to stifle the cry of agony it produced, but Whitaker was skilled in his butchery, quick and sure. Having withdrawn the knife, he poured the remainder of the wine into the wound and drew the flesh together with adeptly made sutures.

  ‘Consider yourself fortunate, Captain Faulkner, to have wine to hand. I believe it maketh all the difference.’

  ‘Why so?’ asked Faulkner through gritted teeth as Whitaker applied a pledget and bound up his shoulder.

  ‘I have observed it deters putrefaction, sir. One cannot guarantee it, of course, but the advantage lies with you for submitting to it.’

  ‘I think,’ Faulkner gasped as he recovered himself, ‘I should rather drink the stuff . . . Steward, two glasses, if you please.’

  One was passed to Whitaker who acknowledged his commander’s generosity with an appreciative nod. ‘One glass will do you no harm, sir, but more will, I have observed, stimulate bleeding.’

  ‘I shall heed your advice, Mr Whitaker.’

  The following morning Faulkner felt much better but the ascent of his spirits was short-lived. At noon he received some papers from the dockyard, brought downstream from the Commissioner at Chatham. As the dockyard officer accepted the list of requirements to put the Union back into fighting order, Faulkner noticed a personal letter to himself among those dropped on his desk. He did not at first recognize the hand, though he afterwards found out it was from his son, Henry, but the news, already some weeks old, was all too clea
r: in May Sir Henry Mainwaring had died.

  For a moment Faulkner felt nothing. It took him time to realize what this meant: that Sir Henry, who had, as it were, brought him forth into the world in which he now functioned with such confidence, no longer existed. Death was commonplace, but specific deaths such as so closely touched his very being, emptied him of life. He sat, carefully, lowering himself like a man prematurely aged as the import of this news sank in and it struck him that, for all the swaggering self-conceit, for all the ready wit and the smooth phrase, the grasp of his profession and his ability to handle a ship and command the respect of his fellow men, his future was somehow imperilled by the lack of Sir Henry. Sir Henry had been more than a father to him, for fathers have a habit of casting out their young to fend for themselves, if they do not bind them in to some family enterprise. He himself had done it rather differently by abandoning his sons, but the result had been the same, as young Nathaniel had demonstrated. But Sir Henry had been so much more, so very much more than a mere paternal figure, more than a mentor. He had been an intellectual companion, a sounding board, a man against whom Faulkner could measure himself. He had once heard Brenton describe the man who taught him sword play: ‘He made me fight as if I, too, was as brilliant at the feint, the deception, the lunge and parry as was he.’ And he remembered thinking, in one of those quick, intuitive flashes of knowledge that fix in the brain as certainties, that that was exactly what Sir Henry was then to him. And now he was no more, already laid to rest alongside the body of his short-lived wife whom Faulkner had seen but twice before she died.

  He sighed deeply, re-read the letter and then put it away. It had been good of Henry, who had himself been named after his father’s patron, to let him know. Faulkner rose. Sir Henry would have not approved of moping when there was work to do and a ship to refit.

  It was only as he passed out on deck that Faulkner had the odd fancy that, in that recollection, Sir Henry still walked with him. It also occurred to him that his wound ached much less this morning.