Throughout Faulkner’s near sixty years of life, plagues had paid intermittent visits to the ports of Europe, and it was known that the plague was as surely spread by ships as the news of its coming. No-one knew how, though many said that if the contagion was not spread by the seamen then it must come by that other roving population – rats. Others, particularly the Brethren of Trinity House whose business in shipping and the professional instincts engendered therein, also considered that the rapid dispersal of the disease could only be explained by the dispersal of cargo; how else – if it arrived by ship – did the plague appear in places distant from the ports of discharge? Indeed, in an outbreak some years earlier, one among their number had what he considered conclusive proof, tracing a consignment of cloth to a small town in Bedfordshire from its landing in London. Forwarded from Rotherhithe, where an outbreak of the plague followed the discharge of a ship from a plague-ridden Antwerp, a fortnight later five people were infected in Bedfordshire. Two had handled the consignment of cotton, the three others were members of their families; in all fifty people had died before the disease had run its course. Despite this conclusive proof, few heeded the warning outside the Fraternity.
Both Faulkner and Gooding took Lamont’s warning seriously, not least because he convinced them of the seriousness with which the ever-practical Dutch city-fathers of Amsterdam were taking it, and the fact that both of Lamont’s own mates were sick.
‘Buboes,’ he explained succinctly as both Faulkner and Gooding instinctively drew away from him. The case of Lamont and his bilander Mary were indeed a matter of pratique. When the old master-mariner had withdrawn, to report his case to the Custom-House officers, Faulkner undertook to notify Trinity House, responsible for the governance of the shipping in the Thames. His mind was in a turmoil, not least occasioned by his proximity to Lamont and the thought of conveying the infection to his home, and he was picking up his hat when Gooding said something indistinguishable.
‘What’s that you say?’ he asked, looking at his brother-in-law. Gooding stood transfixed, his eyes almost wild, though whether from fear, as seemed likely, or some terrible visitation it was impossible to say. ‘Come; what’s amiss? Surely you cannot have taken the contagion that quickly …’
‘It’s her,’ Gooding said, still half-talking to himself.
‘Her? What the devil do you mean, her? Whom do you mean?’ Faulkner was frowning, eager to be off and spread the word so that some sort of precaution might be taken and that herbs, tobacco and brimstone might be obtained to fumigate his house.
‘Judith,’ said Gooding, his expression one of fervent conviction. She has bewitched us all, damn her.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Nathan …’
Gooding closed the distance between them and nailed Faulkner to the spot. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he said insistently, ‘Lamont’s vessel, the Mary – Judith half-owns her; she has conjured this, summoned God-knows what demons to destroy! Now I know what she has been conniving in that chamber of hers! She wishes to destroy us all – King, Parliament, you, me, all of us …’
‘But that is impossible!’
‘Is it? Cannot you hear the arguments in her favour? The corruption of the Court, the unholy vengeance taken upon the exhumed corpses of Cromwell, Ireton and the others, the martyrdoms of the Regicides, the frustration of her divinely appointed mission and the death of her son. Why, Kit, I could find you more detail if I wished. God knows she has preached her venom at me for weeks now, but surely you must see what has been accomplished under our roof … under our very noses … or under mine, at least.’
Faulkner shook his head. Gooding was in distress; all his old Puritan instincts had been stirred up, conflated and confused. ‘No, no, Nathan, there is no logic in your argument. Vengeance is God’s, not Judith’s. She is as small a grain of sand in God’s world as are we all … This is just coincidence; another ship could have brought the same news into the river; the Mary will not be only vessel arriving from Amsterdam this week.’
‘No, no, Kit,’ Gooding said frantically, button-holing Faulkner in his eagerness to convince his partner. ‘That is true, but the Mary DID bring the news and, Almighty God help us, perhaps the plague itself. To say that the plague is sent to chastise us is no conjuration of my imagination; it will thunder from every pulpit the first Sunday the news gets abroad.’
‘Yes, yes, I know the prating priests will say that before they decant themselves into the country or lock themselves in their priest-holes, or wherever they secrete themselves, but that at least is an argument few can rebuff. Vengeance is, as I say, attributable to God …’
‘But Almighty God took possession of it. As the Lord sayeth in the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter Thirty-two, Verse Thirty-five, “To Me belongeth vengeance and recompense.” Thus did Almighty God lay his claim, but He did not wrest evil from the Devil or his agents. Why else would war, the plague, malice and all sundry evils stalk the world still? God’s words were a rebuke; an order to desist from such acts. That is why Judith is a witch! She is aware of, but defies, God’s commands. She is an active agent of Satan!’
‘But—’
‘To argue as you do is to deny evil and, in particular, to deny witchcraft. Surely you do not deny witchcraft?’
Faulkner gently pushed Gooding’s plucking hands from his person. There was a distinct wildness in Gooding’s eyes that he had never seen before; this was not Puritan zeal, or, if it was, it was a perverse form, such as had troubled Judith and Henry. Were they all mad? The thought revived his fears for Hannah and her children, born and unborn. No, Hannah was not mad. ‘Nathan,’ he said firmly, ‘you must stop. Now. You are in danger of derangement. Judith is no witch but a deeply troubled woman who has perhaps a contagion of the mind and for that I must bear my part. Lamont has brought us news, bad news, but that is enough. We – you and I – are not fools to be gulled by superstition. Let us not take fright like those infected by the moon. This pestilence may overwhelm us all but I for one am reluctant to attribute it entirely to God or the Devil.’
Gooding shook his head, turning aside, murmuring that he was convinced of his argument and nothing could, or would, shake him from it.
Reluctantly, Faulkner left Gooding and hurried off. Later in the day he returned home, his mind made up, and at dinner that evening, having acquainted Katherine with the dreadful news, he told both her and Gooding what he had decided. ‘We will put such personal belongings as we require aboard the Hawk and take her down-Channel. We may land somewhere in the West Country, Falmouth, perhaps, or even,’ he said, turning to Katherine, ‘the Isles of Scilly.’
She responded, at his reminder of their encounter there many years earlier, ‘I can think of no lovelier place, and it would be well to take Hannah with us.’
‘Of course. We can shut the house up …’
‘You cannot,’ said Gooding with a sharp finality, as though the matter was put beyond argument.
‘Why, pray?’ asked Katherine, before Faulkner could interject.
‘Because my sister cannot be removed.’
Gooding had calmed himself since Faulkner had left him, but his present mood was unfamiliar to Faulkner – and deeply troubling. ‘Cannot or will not, brother-in-law?’ He paused, then went on, ‘If she will not come, then she must be commanded. I am still her husband.’
Gooding dropped his eyes and bit his lip. ‘But you are not mine,’ he murmured.
‘We shall go …’
‘I shall stay,’ said Gooding, his head held high, his tone accusatory. ‘Someone must look after our affairs.’
Faulkner took Katherine’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly. ‘And Judith?’ he asked Faulkner. ‘What of her?’
‘I cannot see you insisting upon taking her,’ Gooding said, looking with deliberation at Katherine.
The sudden tension in the room was utterly foreign. Katherine was now clenching her hand, and he sensed her holding her breath. This was a truly awful moment. Faulkner knew things would never again be the same between them. Picking his words carefully, he said, ‘I shall do my duty, Nathan, as you very well know.’
‘She is a witch,’ Gooding said in a low and level tone. Katherine drew her breath in sharply and in that moment, Faulkner divined his unholy purpose.
‘You cannot condemn your sister, but you wish her to remain here, to become infected and to perish.’
Gooding made no response for a moment, then he said, ‘God’s will be done,’ and rose from the table. As he withdrew he began intoning the ninety-fourth psalm: ‘O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself. Lift up thyself, thou judge of the earth …’
The door closed behind him, and Katherine turned to Faulkner. ‘He’s mad.’
‘They are all mad.’
In the weeks that followed no-one died of the plague and Gooding behaved as though nothing particularly unusual had occurred. Only once did he refer to earlier disputes between himself and Faulkner – disputes and arguments that had attended their first acquaintance when Gooding and his sister were so obviously Puritan and Faulkner, then an ingénue in such matters, had seemed to them to embrace the opposing argument. The allusion, so Faulkner supposed, went by way of excusing Gooding’s extreme behaviour. As for the conduct of their business and daily life, it fell again back into its comfortable rut; more or less.
Lamont’s Mary was quarantined and one of his two mates died. The cause of death was attributed to the pox. The other recovered and, in due course, the Mary discharged her mixed cargo. True, occasional intermittent reports of the plague in Amsterdam reached them, but London dismissed the rumours of its arrival in England; there was simply no evidence. Faulkner laid aside his plans for an evacuation of his house in Wapping.
Then, in early December, two men, said to be French, died in a house in Long Acre. The deaths were concealed, but word got abroad. Two physicians and a surgeon were despatched by the Secretaries of State to examine the bodies and their conclusions were duly printed in the Weekly Bill of Mortality, in the usual way: two men had died of the plague. Before the month was out another death was declared to be due to the plague; it too was near Drury Lane. From then on, although the death-toll mounted, this was attributed to the season. There had been no mention of the plague as a cause of death, and in this atmosphere of increasing hope, the Duchess of Albemarle returned home. The voyage had not been as successful as Edmund had hoped. He had lost money in his private investment and was now perturbed for his own economic future.
It was not until April that deaths of the plague and spotted-fever, held to be one and the same thing, reappeared. The number of its victims thereafter rose inexorably, and once again Faulkner grew alarmed. Edmund had already expressed his anxiety for his family’s health, and Faulkner had reassured him, floating his intention to leave the city if necessary. As for the Duchess of Albemarle, Faulkner and Gooding agreed not to submit her for lading by the Company that year, for if the plague took hold there would be an embargo and more money would be lost. Gooding could find a cargo for her; there were goods enough stacked in the warehouses as trade slowed for fear of the plague and in anticipation of an embargo. In May Edmund left for Jamaica, taking up the slack left by the absence of his late brother-in-law. In such threatening and uncertain circumstances, Edmund’s departure was painful, especially for Hannah, but it was generally agreed that it was the best possible course of action. Faulkner took some comfort from the arrangement, though anxiety ate at his guts as he lay unsleeping with worry.
By mid-summer, war had again broken out with the Dutch. This last news filled Faulkner with dread, for he feared a summons to command a man-of-war which would take him away from tending his household. Nevertheless, his conscience prompted him sufficiently to make known his willingness to serve, but his offer was not taken up.
‘I think,’ he told Katherine, ‘that Mister Pepys has taken against me. He is now high in the Lord High Admiral’s favour, and I imagine he considers me among the older and duller Brethren of the Trinity House. I suppose it to be a mixed blessing.’
‘Perhaps the Duke of York considers you have done enough, or that if you were to fall into Dutch hands they might regard your person as beyond the law. You are not unknown to them,’ she added pointedly.
‘Perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘Anyway, I would not wish to be absent from your side now, for I fear we must leave London or risk our lives. I have already lost one child, I cannot countenance anything happening to Hannah, and Edmund expects me to act in his stead.’
‘Of course.’
These considerations did not stop him reading, with mixed feelings, the accounts of the defeat of Obdam van Wassenaer off Lowestoft in early June. The powder-magazine of the unfortunate Dutchman’s flagship, the Eendracht, had exploded, killing all but five of her company of eight score men. The English Commander-in-Chief, James, Duke of York, had himself had a lucky escape aboard his own flagship, the Royal Charles. A chain shot had flown inboard, killing half the officers at the Duke’s side. What troubled Faulkner was the fact that of the other flag-officers, Admiral Penn, with York in the Royal Charles, and the Earl of Sandwich, commanding the rear squadron, were Elder Brethren of the Trinity House. Besides these two, Prince Rupert had also hoisted his flag in command of the English van. Consequently, a sense of chagrin that none of these men had thought fit to include him in their line of battle was, despite his anxieties for his family, a bitter pill to swallow.
And there was the Duchess of Albemarle to fret over. He was confident that news of hostilities would be better transmitted to the West Indies than the eastern seas, but still if Edmund failed to find a convoy, guarded by a man-of-war, all was at hazard to the enemy and a hostage to fortune. Since the loss of Nathaniel, Faulkner’s confidence had ebbed, as though he sensed his star was on the wane. He shuddered; it was not a grey goose flying over his grave, but the cold consideration that behind his losses, past and future, lay Judith’s spells.
However, such fears grew most terrible at night. In daylight he derived some comfort from the fact that the war, like trade, was affected by the plague. Following the battle off Lowestoft no further reports of anything other than scuffles reached London, suggesting the war might simply fizzle out.
While death in battle was the seaman’s lot off the Suffolk shore, the plague raged unabated in London. By late-July, with only the briefest of discussions and an assumption of Gooding’s earlier declaration on the matter being his final word, Faulkner announced himself satisfied that Gooding should manage the business as he had done during his, Faulkner’s, exile. On news of the King and the Court leaving London for Salisbury, Faulkner gave orders that his household should embark in the Hawk. Faulkner ordered Hargreaves to join them, adding his mother to the little vessel’s company on the lad’s pleading. By August they had taken up lodgings in Falmouth from where Faulkner made an occasional long and tedious journey up to London, meeting Gooding at the counting-house. He was careful of his person and, on Katherine’s insistence, with whom he came in contact.
It was not now difficult to keep Gooding at arm’s length when they met, for their relationship had become strained. Besides, Faulkner had convinced himself that the disturbed Gooding wanted himself infected in order that he might carry the disease home to his sister and in so doing dispose of her and martyr himself.
The business of travelling, a matter of indiscriminate propinquity, was another matter. Claiming some knowledge of avoiding contagion thanks to her indigent existence as a camp-follower, Katherine insisted that his small clothes were removed immediately upon his home-coming and he himself took a hot bath.
However, Faulkner eventually gave up these ventures. The plague had such a strong grip upon London that all trade was suspended, as he had predicted. Still unrequired by the Admiralty, he bent his energies elsewhere, purchasing a small vessel by the candle, putting Toshack in command and sending Hargreaves aboard by way of supercargo. Despatching her across the Channel, he was soon doing a lively trade with the Channel Islands and the Breton coast, better, in fact, than Gooding languishing in London.
Hannah delighted in her son, whose every achievement she considered quite remarkable. As for Katherine, she became adopted aunt to little Edmund, while Mistress Hargreaves insisted on cooking for the household. In retrospect Faulkner regarded the months they spent in Falmouth an idyll, despite his worries. Privately, he continued to be torn by mixed feelings regarding the war. Disappointment at not being given a command competed with the delight he felt amid the beautiful countryside and the society of Katherine, Hannah and the boy. From time to time he took the Hawk to sea, or up the lovely Helford River, discovering in the lazier occupation of yacht-cruising something infinitely more pleasurable than the charged and competitive racing he had been obliged to under-go on the Thames in order that the King or his brother might have the opportunity to win.
Even the autumnal gales – worse in Cornwall than in London – followed by the icy blasts of winter – which were less so – failed to disturb the idyll. At Christmas Faulkner and Katherine duly attended the parish church of St Charles The Martyr; Faulkner reflected that he never expected to have spoken to a saint, recalling to Katherine their own first meeting aboard the Prince Royal on her voyage to Spain to embark the young Charles I – then himself Prince of Wales – and Katherine’s infamous if distant kinsman George, Duke of Buckingham. On the way home they recalled the unhappy events of the voyage, which had precipitated the first of their long separations.
In January came the news that the plague had abated, and that the better-off were returning to London where the shops were reopening. At the same time they learned that France had joined the Dutch in their war against the English, curtailing Faulkner’s new venture of trading with Brittany. Selling his ship by the candle, as he had bought her, he paid his bills and, leaving the Hawk in the charge of Hargreaves until the weather improved, Faulkner, Katherine, Hannah and young Edmund began the long trip home.
Though less people were abroad than was usual they found Wapping unaltered. Gooding was absent, but the maid Molly greeted them with delight. ‘How is the mistress?’ Faulkner asked her, almost dreading the reply, but the girl bobbed cheerfully enough and declared all was as it had been when the master left.
Before the others settled in, Faulkner decided to see for himself, ascended the familiar staircase and paused before the door to Judith’s chamber. He had not ventured into the room for many months but now he did so, abruptly pushing the door open, stepping inside and closing it behind him. He had not known what to expect but it was certainly not what he found. Her brother’s long mental decline combined with his wild declarations about Judith’s intentions, her madness and her witchery had led him to expect a wildly deranged creature, unkempt, her hair in disorder, raving, even chained to her bed. Instead he found her cool, elegant, groomed to perfection, a figure in perfect possession of both her person and her mind. Faulkner suddenly understood why her brother had been convinced of her being a witch; certainly she seemed possessed of some supernatural qualities.
She had been sitting beside the window when he entered, and she turned, apparently unsurprised at his intrusion.
‘You are returned, Husband.’ She inclined her head as he bowed.
‘You look well, Madam,’ he said with icy formality, on his guard.
‘I do not have the plague, if that is what you mean. I hope that does not disappoint you,’ she added wryly.
‘It was always my hope that you would not catch the contagion.’
‘Was it?’ she arched an eyebrow. ‘It was not your brother-in-law’s.’
‘Whatever his motives, Madam, your brother was always assiduous in your welfare.’
‘The welfare of my soul, perhaps; otherwise …’
‘Madam,’ Faulkner interrupted, unwilling to drag the conversation down its present road, ‘do you not think it is time for you to forsake this mode of life? We have lost a son, we have acquired a grandson …’
‘But we live in a corrupt land, under a corrupt King and I find myself shackled – that is, I think, the word you mariners use – to a corrupt husband.’
‘Madam, the world’s corruption is much as it always has been.’
‘It was not so under the Commonwealth.’
‘Pah! Was the court of Cromwell less corrupt than that of King Charles? Folly and prejudice stalked about in solemn apparel. True, Charles flaunts his coxcomb, but it is arguable as to whether this is less pleasing to God than the sanctified cant and sober vice that put the money of the poor into the pockets of the indifferent gentlemen that held their military commands as tight as their purses.’
‘You become quite eloquent in your old age, Husband, but nothing will dissuade me from the righteousness of my cause.’
‘Not even Henry’s death?’
‘No, only that I failed him and, thank God, he had the courage to give his life to God’s cause, rather than allow the Great Malignant’s spawn to order his body be butchered.’
‘But, Judith, he lies in unhallowed ground, a mortal sinner.’
‘He lies in the Lord’s good earth. That it is unsanctified by the Established Church does not mean it is unhallowed by Almighty God; did not God look upon the earth as His creation and call it good?’
‘Enough. I have had enough of this endless cant! I would have done all in my power to save Henry—’
‘But you could not guarantee it, and you knew in your heart that not all of your pleadings, no, nor the abject grovelling that you Royalists seem not to find demeaning, would have saved Henry. The King was determined to root out all opposition, and Henry would have faced execution – you know that, and do not try and persuade me otherwise.’
‘Then you had set him on the path of assassination.’
‘Inexorably.’
‘God, you are evil. Nathan is right.’
‘What? That I am a witch?’ She was smiling. ‘Is that woman with whom you share your bed – our bed – not a witch? Certainly she is a whore and you, my precious husband, are a whore-master; you have corrupted my daughter by association …’
‘Damn you! ’Twas you abandoned Hannah! Kate has shown her nothing but kindness!’
‘Hah! Kate, eh! Kit and Kate again! I’ll lay money that pleases your licentious King and his covey of poxy whores. Why, they shall yet burn in Hell-fire, devil take them all!’
‘Why, Madam, you swear with the ease of a cavalier trooper.’ Faulkner was incredulous. He stared at her for a moment and, realizing there was nothing more to be said, withdrew. Outside, on the landing, the door closed behind him, he sighed. He was almost convinced that she was a witch.
Once again an uneasy peace settled on Faulkner’s household. Slowly, trade picked up, and Edmund returned from the West Indies, having employed the Duchess of Albemarle in some local trading between Jamaica and the American colonies. He was much pleased with their profits and with his son. Only Faulkner rued the sum he remitted to Clarendon with a letter of explanation as to why the Duchess of Albemarle had been taken out of the East India Company’s service. Fortunately, no-one blamed Faulkner for doing so; indeed, there were those who marvelled at his shrewdness. Although the East India Company now considered her too old for further eastern voyages, the Company’s Court of Directors intimated that were Sir Christopher Faulkner to build a new ship, they would be happy to consider her for their service.
‘I shall,’ he told Katherine, ‘realize an old ambition and name a new vessel after you.’
‘Before you make such a declaration,’ she riposted, ‘you had better ensure you have sufficient funds. These last months cannot have been easy.’
‘No, indeed, they have not.’
Nevertheless, Faulkner resolved to consult Gooding on the matter until, a week later, all such thoughts were driven out of his head when he received a private letter. It was followed the following day by one bearing the Admiralty seal.
‘What is it?’ Katherine asked.
‘I am called to take command of the Albion,’ he said.