The King's Chameleon (23 page)

Cautiously, Faulkner peered down the skylight. A faint coil of smoke rose through the broken glass, the interior of which was splattered by blood. What remained of Henry lay slumped below, and Faulkner could see his brains.

The house in Wapping was an unhappy place for some weeks. Hannah's welcoming smile froze on her face when she saw her mother and had learned of Henry's suicide. Judith, expressionless, made no sign of greeting Hannah or of even recognizing her, retiring to her room, while Faulkner had stood awkwardly in the parlour, whither both Hannah and Gooding attended him in the hope of understanding what had happened. He waved their questions aside to demand a surgeon, calling out that Hannah should: ‘Boil water before the rogue touches me with a knife.'

When the man arrived, Faulkner insisted the barber-surgeon washed his instruments before he laid a finger upon his person and then, the others having withdrawn, he dropped his breeches and submitted to the humiliating probing and extraction of the lead ball.

‘You are lucky, Sir Christopher,' the man remarked as he suppressed his patient's groans with professional commentary. ‘Both that your muscles are strong, preventing the ball from going deep, and that the ball does not seem to have found its mark very effectively.' It did not feel like a ricochet to Faulkner, though he thought of the route it had travelled and told the man to look for glass. After a further debasing struggle, the barber-surgeon straightened up, holding a piece of glass in his forceps. ‘But a single shard, Sir Christopher,' he said triumphantly. ‘Now, you will likely have a fever for a few days, but if you keep warm, drink regularly and pray that the Almighty will favour you, I have no doubt of your recovery.'

His wound plugged and the surgeon dismissed with yet more money, Faulkner slumped awkwardly into his chair. Hannah came in and slid a cushion under him, for which he kissed her and fondled her hair.

‘Do not cry for Henry, my dearest,' he said sadly. ‘He is in a far better place and sent there by his own hand before the King's butchers got to work upon him.' If his words were meant to comfort Henry's sister they failed, for Hannah withdrew weeping inconsolably as Faulkner waved aside her demand that he should go to bed. Instead, in defiance of his surgeon and his daughter, Faulkner sat staring into the fire. He would have done what he could for the boy, but the matter had never been certain, a matter of the King's whimsy. But that was not the King's fault: Henry had made his own bed and must, perforce, lie upon it.

Except that Judith had made that bed up for her son in every detail, of that Faulkner was now convinced. Judith was obviously caught up in the conspiracy, and whatever she had done herself or persuaded Henry to do, only Judith herself could have possibly seized the wheel-lock, which she must have accomplished when he slept aboard the
Blackamoor
, assuming she was prostrated by sea-sickness. How she passed it to Henry was as yet a mystery, but she had managed it, as the puncture in his buttocks bore painful testimony.

Thus night fell upon the unhappy house.

It was in the small hours that Faulkner, still in his chair, cold and cramped, woke to a full comprehension of the previous day's events. He was furious with Judith for betraying him and placing in Henry's hands the means to destroy her husband and, that having failed, kill himself. Despite his discomfort and pain, his mind seemed to see things with the utmost clarity. He did not recognize in this the onset of fever, the consequence of infection in his wound, but he said his farewells to Henry, regretting much – as fathers of wayward boys do – but consumed with a fiery hatred of his meddling wife. As his temperature rose, his fury kept pace, so that when an anxious Hannah came down at daylight, she found her father writhing in a delirium on the floor, mired in ash from the extinguished fire.

Henry was buried in unhallowed ground. Only Hannah and Gooding attended him as Faulkner still lay in bed, feverish and too weak to leave it. In an adjacent chamber the dead man's mother lay prostrated in a world of her own fashioning.

Of Faulkner's kin it was Hannah who came best out of the events of the month of March 1662, for she had risen to the challenge of the sudden burden of responsibility for the house. Hannah displayed that spirit of swift resolution that had made Faulkner's inactivity in the house in Delft so irksome, and that Henry possessed in perverted form. Too like his mother in his inflexible acceptance of dogma, of his insistence upon ‘right' and ‘justice', among other philosophical forms,
his
version of Faulkner's resolve had led him into a death-trap.

Hannah had too practical a turn of mind to be ensnared so easily. Besides, her father had not only left her the house to manage, but an uncle whose sense of moral self had received a body-blow, together with a curious mission to contact her own father's lover. It was this last which had proved the true challenge. At first she had recoiled from the task, constantly postponing the decision until her sense of equivocation, and a horror of addressing a scarlet-woman, had been replaced by curiosity.

When at last she had walked to Leicester House and asked for a letter to be placed in the hands of Mistress Villiers, she had plucked up courage to inform the footman that she would await a reply. This bold initiative had aroused a reciprocal curiosity in Katherine, who had ushered Hannah into the same chamber into which she had shown her father. Alone, she had immediately seized Hannah's hands and, drawing back and smiling, had looked her up and down.

‘I am charmed, Mistress, charmed,' she had said regardless of Hannah's blushes. ‘I can see why your father speaks so highly of you. Now, tell me what news you have of him.'

A beguiled and confused Hannah had left an hour later, the taste of sweetmeats still in her mouth, mixed with the tang of Bohea tea. Her ears had rung with the delightful invitation to come again and Katherine's advice that, insofar as the future was concerned, ‘Matters may rest where they presently lie until your father is returned from foreign service.'

As Hannah had lain in bed that night, thinking over the day's excitement, the words ‘foreign service' had come back to her. They seemed extraordinarily powerful, a window on the world inhabited by such powerful figures as Katherine Villiers, whose very importance was confirmed by her position as confidential lady-in-waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia. That the legendary Prince Rupert of the Rhine also occupied Leicester House, along with its owner Lord Craven – neither of whom she had seen, but the presence of footmen clearly guaranteed – only added a frisson to the day.

Katherine had so completely won Hannah over that she saw beyond her father's occupation with his ships and the Brethren of Trinity House – all things which, though acknowledged to be men's affairs, had impinged upon Hannah's life – another, grander world, associated in Hannah's young mind with the stirring events of national upheaval to which she was heir, but in which her father had been, and still was, immersed. From her encounter with Katherine Villiers she caught again the tremendous excitement of life, an excitement that she had known when Edmund Drinkwater first declared his love for her but which, in the months since his departure, had withered and shrunk her soul.

During the absence of her father, Hannah had twice returned to Leicester House. On both occasions Katherine had received her warmly and they had retired to Katherine's own modest chamber. The affairs of the late Queen were complicated and, while much of the work was in the hands of Lord Craven, Katherine found herself involved, not least with Elizabeth's correspondence. All took time, so Hannah's occasional visits, though they interrupted Katherine's duties, proved welcome diversions for them both.

Katherine's interest in Hannah was unfeigned and swiftly grew into affection so that when she saw off her visitor at the end of her second visit, Katherine was able to ask that Hannah let her know as soon as her father returned home. ‘I know there will be difficulties with your mother,' she had said, ‘but I beg of you not to let that conceal his arrival, my dear.'

Hannah had acquiesced, though on her homeward journey she feared Katherine's charm and apparent friendship might have seduced her from her duty to her mother. In the succeeding days this troubled her but, in regarding the state in which she found her father that morning and with her mother apparently gone mad, she had little hesitation in writing to Katherine, explaining the situation, once she found the leisure to do so.

Thus it was that after Faulkner's fever had broken, he woke, weak and sweat-soaked, to find Katherine sitting beside his bed.

‘Where am I?' he asked, confused.

‘At home, my love,' she said gently, taking his hand.

‘At home..? But you … Judith … Oh, God, Henry …' The events of the recent past flooded back to him in all their horror. He moved, the pain of his wound making him wince, then he realized fully who it was who held his hand.

‘How is that
you
are here?' His voice was full of wonder; her face seemed to wash away something of his fears.

‘I am here at your daughter's invitation. Hannah and I are friends, and your wife is in the next room. I fear she has lost her reason, or is in some form of deep catalepsy, though I have not seen her. You must rest and get better.'

‘And you?'

‘I am still resident at Lord Craven's pleasure. The late Queen's affairs are taking time to conclude and His Lordship has offered me accommodation; permanently, if I wish.'

‘Do you wish it?'

‘I must live somewhere.'

‘You
must
live here.'

‘We shall see.'

They remained gazing at each other in silence for some time, then Katherine laughed.

‘What amuses you?'

‘I was thinking that the last time you lay in bed in my company, it was to attend your arse!'

Faulkner chuckled. ‘To be shot in one's posterior is an indignity not to be borne. I would it had not been my troubled boy, though.' The humour had drained from him, though she said nothing, allowing him time to recover. ‘He was, alas, corrupted by his mother.'

Silence fell again between them, this time less comfortable, as though the presence in the adjacent room thrust its dire influence through the very wall. ‘She is a witch,' Faulkner said, his voice low and accusatory.

Katherine leaned forward and placed a cool finger across his lips. ‘Perhaps,' she said. ‘Who knows? Though I doubt it. What is more certain is that if your surgeon had been better acquainted with his business, he would have inserted a bristle into your wound and allowed the poison to escape. Your fever would have been less malevolent too. As it was we had to reopen the wound and drain it, after which you improved quickly.'

‘
We
?'

‘Hannah and I.'

‘And how do you know these things better than my surgeon?'

‘You forget, I followed the drum.' Katherine cut short her explanation for at that moment they heard urgent footfalls upon the stair. A second later Hannah burst into the room. She was waving a letter, her face a picture of happiness.

‘Father! Oh, Father … Katherine, news of Edmund!'

‘My, my; I have not seen you so light-hearted in an age, my dearest,' Faulkner said, patting the bed beside him. As Hannah settled herself, Faulkner turned to Katherine. ‘Edmund Drinkwater is—'

‘I know, my dear. Hannah has told me all about him. Come, tell us, Hannah, what exactly is this news?'

‘This letter,' she said, almost waving it with delight, ‘is from Portsmouth. The
Eagle
will be in the Thames within the week, and it has been a most successful voyage! He will be home soon!' Her face glowed with delight as she smiled at them both.

Faulkner looked from his daughter to Katherine and said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for the three of them to discuss, ‘Then we have a wedding to arrange, banns to be called and you two had better discuss a suitable day.'

Hannah was married to Edmund Drinkwater at St Dunstan's church, Stepney, in early April when a spring breeze lifted the heads of the last of the daffodils that grew among the headstones in the church-yard as the guests assembled.

The bride's mother did not attend, a scandal augmented by the presence of the bride's father's mistress, neither of which circumstances prevented a goodly attendance of family friends, chiefly seafaring gentlemen with their wives. These were mostly Brethren of the Trinity House, but included the commander, mates, surgeon and purser of the Honourable East India Company's ship
Eagle
, and some of their professional colleagues from others of the Company's ships. Opinion was divided as to whether the condescension of His Highness Prince Rupert of the Rhine in attending as escort to Mistress Katherine Villiers excused the impropriety of her presence, or compounded it. More certainly popular among the gossips of east London was the sight of Honest George Monck and his homely duchess, whose obvious pleasure at being present made up in greater part – or so a portion of social opinion opined – for the awkwardness attaching to the bride's father's moral turpitude. Not that this troubled many, most enjoying a whiff of scandal, aware that a certain louche conduct was now licensed, particularly by the King and his Court if all that was rumoured was true. Nevertheless, it did not go unremarked that the Faulkner family had but recently buried a son – a suicide, nonetheless, and a man rumoured to have been plotting against the King – and had effectively buried the unwanted wife who was said to be chained to her bed. Such ill-informed rumours gained a certain currency, buttressed by Captain Faulkner's unconventional conduct which, it was said, had never been properly explained to the wretched groom.

Happily oblivious to all this, Faulkner, splendid in dark blue silk and a new full-bottomed wig of chestnut, gave his daughter away. He deeply regretted that neither Judith nor Henry were present but, he told himself, Henry had taken his own life and Judith might have attended her own daughter's wedding, had she not chosen otherwise. Thus his only real sorrow was the absence of Hannah's surviving brother, Nathaniel, who was at sea.