The King's Chameleon (10 page)

Faulkner shot a look at Gooding. He was a better student of his brother-in-law's moods than his sister. His face wore an expression of deep concern; he was almost putting out a hand to restrain her over-confidence whilst simultaneously worrying about what Faulkner was going to say next.

Faulkner smiled. ‘His Majesty,' he said with a slow deliberation, ‘told me to ask my wife, The Lady Faulkner, where our son Henry is.'

Judith went a deathly pale, and she shot a hand out to steady herself against the heavy table. Gooding swallowed hard and cast his eyes down.

‘I see, without pressing for an explanation as to why, that you both know to what I refer. Thanks to the condescension of His Majesty, if I may bring my son swiftly to heel he may escape a hanging, drawing and a quartering.'

‘Oh God! No!' Judith cried, before collapsing in a faint. Gooding caught her and settled her down.

Faulkner turned his back on them, walked to the window, opened the casement and let the noise of the street penetrate the room. ‘You have five minutes,' he said over his shoulder. ‘Then I want water and victuals put in a satchel.'

After a few moments he heard Gooding behind him cough. He closed the window and turned back into the room. Gooding had seated Judith in the chair he habitually used and settled her with a glass of wine. Now he stood behind her.

‘Well?' Faulkner said.

The Prince's relay of horses served him well, and he was in Oxford by dawn, though it took him an hour to locate Lord Craven's lodgings near Christchurch College. When he was ushered into Craven's presence, his Lordship was breaking his fast. Learning of Faulkner's over-night journey, he offered his table and a bed, the first of which Faulkner accepted gratefully, the latter he declined on account of having urgent business recalling him back to London.

‘Very well, Sir Christopher, but please partake of something.' Craven waved his hand over the breakfast table before taking up a knife and breaking the royal seal.

Faulkner eased himself onto a chair. His legs ached abominably, and he took his mind off his extreme discomfort by observing, with some curiosity, Craven reading the King's letter. He had half expected Charles to have sent a blank sheet, resulting in some ridicule from the noble lord, or perhaps a witty message in which he was to tell the messenger that he had been sent on a fool's errand, though not without purpose. Neither, in fact, proved to be the case. Once, as he read, Craven looked up at Faulkner, smiled, and resumed his perusal of the letter. Then he laid it down upon the table and casually remarked: ‘I am here upon private business, Sir Christopher: the matter of recovering lands removed by the Parliament.' Craven blew out his breath, seemingly at the enormity of his task, then added with an air of abstraction, ‘I seek certain papers thought to have been left here by the late King. Spending these many last years abroad in the service of the Queen of Bohemia has wrought havoc with much of my life.' He sighed deeply, made a gesture of resignation by shrugging his shoulders and went on. ‘No matter; the King advises me of some issues that may clarify my somewhat complicated affairs. Are your affairs complicated, Sir Christopher?'

‘Somewhat, My Lord, and chiefly from these late years of strife.'

‘And is that why you must return immediately to London?'

‘In part, My Lord, though I chiefly return to expedite an affair with which I am charged by His Majesty.'

‘I am sorry to have brought you so far out of your way.' Craven picked up the King's letter and turned it over. ‘I see that you anticipated finding me at Leicester House.'

‘That is where I was directed. I believe the superscription to be in Lord Clarendon's hand.'

Craven nodded. ‘As is the letter. Ah, well, His Majesty must have thought I had not yet left for Oxford.'

‘I am sure, My Lord, that that was the case.'

After easing himself, Faulkner was again in the saddle an hour later. His legs would be red raw by the time he reached London, but leaving his horse at Leicester House meant he could speak with Katherine before walking to Wapping.

If – he thought to himself as his mount moved at a canter and joggled him in the saddle – he was capable of walking.

He was not; dismounting outside the Prince's residence he found that he could hardly stand, let alone walk. The boy who took his bridle called a servant to assist him inside. Helped to a settle in the hall, he waited for some time before Katherine appeared. On learning of his condition her face seemed half-amused, half-concerned.

‘We are not as young as once we were,' she said as he struggled to his feet. She put an arm about him and thrust her shoulder under his. ‘Come, you must lie here tonight.'

‘No, I must get back …'

‘No!' she insisted. ‘You must rest. I know His Highness to have a receipt for your problem, as any cavalry officer would …'

Twenty minutes later Katherine was laughing at him as he lay face down upon a feather bed, his rump and legs bare as she worked a thick unguent into his bruised and blistered buttocks.

‘Watch what thou are about, my lovely Kate,' he said, his voice muffled by swansdown. ‘There are parts tenderer for thee than any horse can render them.'

She slapped a buttock with the palm of her hand. ‘La, sir,' she cried mockingly, ‘there is nothing remarkable here that I have not seen before, though I should not have it tender.'

‘Nor will you if you allow a man a moment's dignity …' He groaned with the soreness of her application, aware that – as things stood at that moment – he had just uttered an idle boast.

‘I would not have thee incapacitated, but am content until thy vigour is full.'

‘You will not have to wait long,' he said, attempting to roll over, but she forced him back.

‘I will not play games,' she said, her voice suddenly serious. ‘God-willing, there will be time enough for that.'

‘Time,' he grunted as she continued to knead him, ‘is something we do not have.'

‘Maybe not, but what you
do
have is a wife, and I would first determine where she and I stand in your affections.'

‘Stop, stop,' he commanded, rolling over and drawing a sheet over his privities. Taking her wrist he drew her to him, kissed her and said, ‘Kate, we parted in dreadful circumstances.'

‘That does not matter; too much time has passed to—'

‘It matters in that I have taken up with my wife,' he interrupted her. ‘I have a family and complicated affairs …' He felt her draw away from him. ‘No—' He shook his head. ‘No, you do not yet understand, I pray thee give me leave to speak without interruption.' She nodded and gave a sniff as he saw her eyes fill. ‘I promise that I shall make amends to you, that I shall both love and cherish you notwithstanding any obligation to my wife. As to my regard for her, I can only tell you that no more than an hour before I received the shock of finding you yesterday, I was informed by the King himself that my son is involved with some political matter, possibly a plot against the King's Majesty. He has given me leave to extricate my son and send him out of the country, which I may well do in one of my ships; otherwise he may risk a trial for treason, the consequences of which do not bear contemplation. As I guessed, my wife was party to some of this, though to what extent, I do not know, but I laid the matter before her shortly before leaving for Oxford. I have given her until I return to summon our son, which places both of them at my mercy. I must resolve these and their associated consequences—' He broke off swallowing hard. ‘If she gets wind of our encounter …' He faltered again, uncertain of how best to proceed, anxious to return to Wapping. He began again: ‘I can only plead that you understand that nothing may pass between us until—'

She placed a finger on his lips. ‘I understand. I understand perfectly. Nor is my own situation short of obligations. Her Majesty is demanding –' she shrugged – ‘which is perhaps understandable for a Queen who was never a queen above a year and is now both a widow and an exile as I have been. I am thus bound to her.'

‘Yes, yes,' he said miserably, ‘I left you with nothing.'

‘That was, perhaps, partly my own fault, but Charles, when he learned of your defection, quizzed me, and such was the state of my nerves that I confessed. I was not the apple of His Highness's eye – as he then was – and he found me employment in the thread-bare household of his aunt.'

‘That was considerate of him.'

Katherine shrugged. ‘Perhaps; more like the thought of feeding me filled him with horror. But ever since I have helped Lord Craven attend Her Majesty and have received every kindness both from The Queen and His Lordship.' She watched him for a moment, then added, ‘And before you ask, I have never been Lord Craven's bed-fellow, no, nor slept with any man since thee.'

‘Katherine …'

‘And that is more than I know you can say for yourself, Sir Kit of the red arse!' And smiling, she leaned forward and kissed him.

He walked towards Wapping next morning, his heart light as a bird's so that, had no consequences attached to the act, he might have blithely forgiven Judith her dissembling. Fortunately, his mood darkened, adumbrated by the chafing of his swollen legs so that he rolled worse than any sailor just ashore from a rough passage from Virginia, and he was taken for such by a brace of whores parading along the Ratcliff Highway. With The Tower and the harlots' laughter behind him, his wits had sharpened by the time he came to his own door. He was aware that he had given Judith time to compose herself and hatch a counter-plot; she may even have spirited Henry out of the country in defiance of his order, which, if so, could not be helped.

Entering the house with a deliberate clatter, he summoned bread and wine. He had declined breaking his fast at Leicester House, and when the kitchen-maid brought him a loaf and some cheese he sent her in quest of Judith. The girl bobbed a curtsey and left, her face witness to unpleasantness in the house. A few moments Hannah came in to him.

‘Hannah, my dear. Come, kiss your father.'

‘Father, what is afoot? All is mystery and whispers, Mother is quite unlike herself and Uncle Nathan got drunk last night. I have never known him to touch more than a glass or two, but he was so drunk that he had to be dragged to bed.'

Faulkner was shocked by this news, but the elation infecting him since his encounter with Katherine compelled him to suppress a smile. ‘Your uncle drunk, eh? Then things must be afoot, my darling girl, but you are not to worry about them; they do not touch you, and what does not touch you, you are best to be ignorant of. Come, now, glad as I am to see you, I had called for your mother—' He was about to add Henry's name but stopped himself in time.

‘Mother went out last night, before Uncle Nathan began drinking.'

‘And where is Uncle Nathan now, pray?'

‘Why, still a-bed, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Then I must wake him. The fellow has work to do; we are due at the ship-yard this forenoon,' he said with a business-like air. He turned at the door. ‘Daughter, have them boil some water; I have been in the saddle for nigh on twenty hours and reek of the road.'

Faulkner watched her a moment as she scuttled out to the kitchen, then he turned and stiffly ascended the stairs until he reached the upper landing where Gooding's room lay. He threw open the door. Gooding lay fully clothed, though without his shoes and wig, the former having been removed and the latter occupying a place on his pillow like a decapitated wife.

‘Well, well,' Faulkner muttered, ‘you poor, benighted devil.' He threw open the shutters and flung the casements wide before bending over the prostrate form. ‘Brother-in-law!' He spoke directly into Gooding's exposed ear, and the man stirred and came-to, rubbing his eyes and groaning as first the horror of the hang-over, and then the realization of the circumstances to which he woke, invaded his consciousness.

‘Come, Nathan, it is not like you to be lying a-bed when work calls. We are due at the ship-yard before noon.'

Faulkner's reasonable tone, telling of mundane commitment, further threw the waking man, who mumbled incomprehensibly. ‘What o'clock is it?' he finally managed to ask through a thick and foul mouth.

‘Come, sir, you stink so much, I fear you have been drinking, a fact made plain by your apparel. Good God, you look like a cavalier after a night of insensible revelry, or is it a pig rolling in mud? I cannot decide which you most closely resemble.'

Gooding focussed his eyes with difficulty then frowned. ‘Do not mock me, Kit—' he began, but Faulkner cut him short.

‘Where is your sister? And where is my son Henry?' Not waiting for a reply, he went on, ‘And how much of their devilish and damning folly did you know about?'

Gooding seemed to shrink from this verbal assault, putting up his hand to shield himself, as if from a blow, but in fact from the light that tormented his sore eyes.

‘And all the while,' Faulkner went on, pressing his advantage, ‘I was walking contentedly up and down Limehouse Lane to the Lea's mouth to take tea with Sir Henry Johnson in the mistaken belief that my partner was an honest man with whom I enjoyed an honest discourse.' Faulkner turned away as Gooding began to drag himself off the bed. He was genuinely troubled by this break-down in trust. ‘And do not accuse me of having turned upon you and making war upon you in the past,' he added with an unfeigned vehemence. ‘You know I should not have deliberately attacked your ships had I known them to be yours. Such mischances fall out in war when men conceive their duty opposes their friends' interests. I had thought all that faction and heat behind us, but now …' Faulkner drove one gloved fist into the other with a noise like a carter's whip. ‘God damn it, Nathan, I even named the one son I can trust after you!'

‘Stop, Kit! Stop, I pray you. Give me water from that jug, and I shall confess what I may confess.' After he had poured half the contents of the night-jug down his throat and the remainder down his front, Gooding stood miserably before Faulkner. They made an odd pair, the one still in dusty clothes, the other looking as though he had just swum the Thames.