For King or Commonwealth (11 page)

‘If not?' she breathed.

‘Let us not consider that.' He paused, gathering his clothes and cramming his portmanteau. Thank heaven he travelled light from Helvoetsluys and habitually left most of his effects aboard the
Phoenix
. Having completed his preparations as far as he could, he bent over her. She was weeping.

‘Will this business of separation never end?'

‘Soon,' he said, kissing her. ‘Soon, by God, it must.'

Outside he waited in silence before trying the door of Mainwaring's chamber. From inside came the snuffling of an old man fast asleep. ‘Incredible!' he breathed to himself. Then, his boots in one hand, his portmanteau in the other, he descended the stairs.

‘Spithead,' he said to White and Lazenby. ‘We can carry the tide westwards, strike at any shipping off Portsmouth under cover of night and escape by way of the Solent.'

‘What if the wind is westerly?' White asked.

‘We drop through St Helen's Roads and double the Wight by way of St Catherine's Point. Either way we retreat west, the inference being we are one of Rupert's raiders.' Faulkner looked up at the two men. ‘Are you game? For I'll have none here that aren't.'

‘I'm game,' said Lazenby. White nodded.

‘Then roust the men out of their whores' beds, I would leave before noon.'

‘Why the hurry?'

‘Because there are spies in The Hague would betray the orders the King thinks he has given me.'

‘Do you not act at some risk, Sir Christopher,' White asked with punctilious regard for Faulkner's change of status, ‘in disobeying the King?'

Faulkner looked up at White, seeking some superciliousness in his expression. Instead he found the man's concern moving. ‘If I read the King like I read other men, and I confess that may not be possible, but, if I do, then His Majesty will be pleased with such success as we bring His majesty's arms. He would have me strike at London's trade at the Nore.'

‘What? Again, and so soon?'

‘Just so. Instead we shall strike at the heart of the enemy's naval power: at Portsmouth.'

It was a bold plan, and with Rupert active in the Irish Sea and drawing some of the Commonwealth forces to the west, stood fair to succeed. The
Phoenix
avoided Moulton's single frigate whose captain, with only a single ship to blockade but well supplied with spies' information as to when the
Phoenix
was preparing for sea, failed to take his task seriously. By winkling his men out of their beds and leaving with all haste, Faulkner compromised his endurance, having only stores for nineteen days on board, but he proposed to be no longer than ten, if he was to keep his word to Kate.

Whatever he might have neglected in his haste to be away before either the King or Mainwaring realized he had gone, he had not neglected his preparations. It was a strong tide that carried the
Phoenix
down the French coast, well clear of The Downs so that she passed through innumerable fleets of French fishermen as Faulkner followed their littoral. Not crossing the Channel until nightfall would find the tide about to ebb to the west after he had passed the Nab. Again they pitched short-fused shells into two small men-of-war lying at St Helen's but, finding nothing anchored at Spithead beyond a hoy, Faulkner's run of luck began to falter. At three in the morning the wind fell light and the
Phoenix
drifted on the tide, passing the Mother Bank and approaching Cowes with but bare steerage way.

Arguing that the three or four hoys, bilanders and ketches lying off the Wight's major port were not worth cutting out and eager not to be caught within the Solent at daylight, Faulkner held what course they could make for the western entrance, off the Needles. It was therefore almost daylight when they passed the guns at Hurst Castle without disturbing the garrison and had, by providential grace, passed the narrows off the ragged chalk stumps of the Needles themselves, out into deeper water.

With the dawn coming up astern of them they only saw the approaching ship at three miles' distance, emerging from a light mist caused by the lack of wind. She was heading for the Needles passage where, by the time she made it, the tide would be slack and then turning in her favour.

Despite the dispiriting calm, when summoned, the men ran to their stations willingly enough, encouraged by White's assertion that the strange vessel was almost certainly a merchantman. Not only that, she bore with her the bones of a breeze which, White assured all within earshot, would soon ‘fill in and they'd have the to'gallant yards on the caps afore noon'.

The news that a potential prize was bearing down upon them put them all on their mettle. Faulkner had had an anxious night of it and had to admit to a sense of disappointment that his stratagem, though fulfilled in one sense, had conspicuously failed in another. Although two men-of-war ketches afire was a feather in his cap, the little victory came with no money and money was the thing to please the King as much as his own creditors. The prospect of a prize was therefore welcomed by all.

Faulkner passed word for his sword and baldric. There was no time to don a cuirass; besides, he did not think he would need it.

‘They'll have seen us,' Lazenby remarked to no one in particular and stating the obvious, but those aboard the on-coming vessel seemed unafraid that the
Phoenix
might prove hostile. Unfortunately none of the growing breeze that bore her along as yet filled the
Phoenix
's sails, even though her helm was hard over and her yards braced to avoid it taking them aback. Faulkner impatiently paced the deck, pausing every so often to stare at the oncoming vessel, then stare aloft at the slack and slatting sails before crossing the deck, staring at the compass and glaring at the helmsman as though that unfortunate could remedy his plight.

The stranger came closer and closer. ‘We'll miss her by Jupiter!' he hissed furiously.

‘Sir, might I suggest . . .' White began, but Faulkner was one jump ahead of him.

‘Square the yards!' he snapped and the parrells groaned and the blocks clicked as the yards came round, making a right angle with the ship's centre-line. ‘Lie low you gunners, but all to the starboard battery and blow on your linstocks,' he called in a low voice to Lazenby at the guns in the waist. ‘And you there,' he instructed the topmen, his voice still muted, ‘keep below the rail, but stand by, ready to brace up on the larboard tack. D'you understand, bosun?'

‘Larboard tack, yar, yar, sir,' the big Dutchman replied and not for the first time Faulkner congratulated himself on engaging so fine a sailor.

Faulkner turned to White and addressed him with a quick instruction, following which the first lieutenant, who grasped exactly what Faulkner intended, went and stood by the helmsman.

‘We'll be caught aback,' whispered one of the guns' crew.

‘Aye, and that varmint'll smoke us,' one of his mates added, but Lazenby also divined his commander's stratagem.

‘Silence there,' he said in a low voice. ‘You watch us put in a stern-board and . . .'

The stranger was therefore almost abeam and Faulkner had hoisted himself in the mizzen rigging, hat in hand to hail the incoming ship in a friendly manner when first the topgallants and then the
Phoenix
's topsails were caught aback.

‘Ahoy there!' he called, and then in mock fury he swung round and shouted, ‘What the hell! We're caught aback!' The slap of the canvas against the masts made the ship shudder and Faulkner jumped down on the deck as though about to belabour someone on deck and the helmsman, convinced that he was about to be assaulted, was only steadied by White's curt orders. Faintly over the water they could hear the watch on the strange ship laughing at their discomfiture as they began to move astern.

‘Helm over now!' hissed Faulkner, watching as the
Phoenix
's head swung to starboard as White ordered the rudder put to larboard. Aloft the sails began to shiver and in the waist Lazenby took a look over the rail and passed word to his gun crews.

‘Haul all!' Faulkner ordered in a voice loud enough to suggest the most routine of orders. The stranger was no longer approaching their beam; the alteration of the ship's head had brought her round, broad on the
Phoenix
's starboard bow as she began to gather headway.

‘Stand by, Mr Lazenby,' Faulkner said with almost casual disinterest, looking across the diminishing gap of ruffled water that separated the two ships and waiting for the suspicion to dawn on the other that all was not quite what it seemed. For a moment or two nothing happened and then an officer clambered up into the other's mizzen rigging and hailed them.

‘Ahoy there! What ship?'

Faulkner waved his hat. ‘The
Nancy
of London, Captain Bavistock!' he shouted. There was a flurry of activity and, in the first of the day's sunlight coming over the Isle of Wight, he caught the flash of a telescope glass. Then, with the chuckle of water growing louder alongside as the
Phoenix
heeled to the breeze and increased her speed, he quite distinctly heard someone say: ‘That ain't the
Nancy
!
She's in the Archangel trade!'

‘Up helm, starboard two points, braces there . . .'

White and the bosun acknowledged their orders and the
Phoenix
turned further to starboard. It was clear now that her intention was to cross the stern of the stranger, clear that this was a hostile act and the reaction on the other vessel was courageous but too late. Unbeknownst to them until later, two men ran down into the cabin and, dashing the glass out of the stern windows, poked two loaded matchlocks out of them.

‘Now, Lazenby! Fire!' Faulkner bellowed.

Both of the men died before they could aim their weapons. The rest of the stern glass was smashed in as the
Phoenix
's starboard guns, emerging from their suddenly opened ports as their crews strained at the breechings, opened fire. The strange ship was viciously raked as they passed across her stern.

‘Up helm! Lay us alongside!' Faulkner roared, lugging out his sword, as the
Phoenix
resumed her starboard swing and, in a moment or two, ranged up alongside her shattered quarry. In the waist, Lazenby's gunners were furiously reloading. ‘D'you strike?' Faulkner bawled the summons. There was no reply and he was conscious that, as the tide turned, it and the wind would carry them on to either the Shingles Bank to the north-east, or the Needles rocks to the south-east. And if they passed safely between them without the present matter being settled, they would soon come under the guns of Hurst Castle a few miles further on. It was inconceivable that the gunfire had not been noticed from the castle's low ramparts.

‘There'll be no quarter unless you strike at once!' he shouted. Then turning to his own men he shouted, ‘Boarders make ready! Stand by, Mr Lazenby!'

‘All ready, sir!' Lazenby replied.

‘To whom do I strike?' a voice called.

‘To Captain Faulkner of the King's Navy!'

‘Captain Christopher Faulkner? Of the
Phoenix
?'

‘The very same!' Faulkner suppressed the half-smile that appeared on his face, flattered by the realization that his name was known among his enemies.

‘And what ship are you and who commands?'

‘You are my father!' came the unexpected response. ‘This is the
Judith
of London, Nathan Gooding, owner, and Nathaniel Faulkner commanding!'

Faulkner stood as though stunned, his entire crew staring at him.

‘Lay off to starboard, Captain, and steer south,' bellowed White after a tremulous moment. ‘You are our prize and I will board you when we lie two miles south of the Needles. Now haul your yards and mind you do as I say!' White turned to Faulkner. ‘Are you all right, Sir Christopher?'

Faulkner had steadied himself at the rail and looked at White as a man come out of a fever. ‘The
Judith
. . .' he murmured.

‘Aye, of London. Your son is in command, I take it?'

‘Apparently so.'

Father and son stood staring at each other in silence. The cabin seemed to Faulkner full of ghosts as well as the living presence of his offspring. The name of the captured ship –
Judith
– had struck him like a matchlock ball as much as the revelation that his son, young Nathaniel, named after his uncle and looking like his handsome, opinionated and headstrong mother, was in command of a ship. The whole thing seemed surreal, impossible, a coincidence of such gross proportions as to be unworthy of even Shakespeare, or Marlowe, and yet . . . and yet it was quite possible. He had left Gooding a thriving business, the possession of several ships and what made more sense than Nathaniel should be bred to them, command one for a few years before taking over the principal's place as Gooding grew long in years. And what more natural that they should be successful, and invest in new ships, and name one for Nathaniel's mother and Gooding's sister? Why, it may have been a consolation, to make her part-owner as she had been before, to put money in her purse as he – her husband – should have done, had it not been for the beguiling Mistress Villiers. And there was not much remarkable about their encounter, when one came to think of it: a successful shipping enterprise, a state of civil war at sea, and he a licensed pirate.

It was Nathaniel who broke the awful silence, precipitating Faulkner to fill two glasses and hand one to his son.

‘My mother said you had been bewitched,' the young man said, shaking his head and refusing the proffered glass. ‘Is it true?'

Faulkner swallowed a large draught and stared at his son as the two ships stood steadily over towards the French coast, the
Judith
under command of Lazenby and a prize-crew. Beneath their feet the
Phoenix
's rudder stock groaned. He shook his head.