Edmund, hearing of his father-in-law being detained at Chatham, joined him a few days later and assisted in the tedious and depressing task Albemarle had assigned Faulkner and Pett. In an attempt to win over the man with whom he must, perforce spend the next few days, Commissioner Peter Pett, son of the famous Phineas, offered Faulkner hospitality, extending this to Edmund when he, enquiring for Faulkner and being directed to the Commissioner’s house, turned up on his doorstep.
Thus the three of them dined together that evening, being joined by Mistress Pett until she withdrew, leaving the men to talk of the present calamity. They discussed the disgraceful conduct of Lord Douglas’s men and remarked upon the arrival of Lord Middleton with more troops, and the futility of their raising defensive works along the river’s bank.
‘Everything done too late,’ Faulkner growled, an oblique accusation thrown in the embarrassed Pett’s direction.
‘Believe me, Sir Christopher,’ Pett defended himself, ‘I share your sentiments but the fault does not lie with me. You will doubtless charge me for not having moved the Royal Charles as ordered, but the lack of money with which to pay the labourers has led to indiscipline among them. Without the means to pay their rents, their land-lords expel them; the same is true of many seamen who reside hereabouts. They mustered last night in great numbers once they saw with their own eyes what was afoot but, as you say, too late … too late.’ He lowered the palm of his hand on the table in a gesture of despair and shook his head. ‘Besides, the orders to fit out only half a dozen small frigates this spring, and to leave the ships above forty guns laid up in ordinary, must be the cause of their all lying here supine, must it not? The Chancellor and Lord Treasurer are said to have persuaded the King that it was unnecessary: the one said our last victory would dissuade the Dutch from further mischief; the other insisted that no matter what might be desirable, the Exchequer was devoid of funds. Ergo, the thing was impossible and there would be no Summer Guard!’ Pett paused to let the implication of his privileged information sink in. ‘As for His Grace the Duke of Albemarle …’ Pett shrugged. ‘I have heard both that he added his weight to the prevailing opinion and that he did not. I am inclined to believe he said little and abided by the conclusion. I did hear,’ he added confidentially, ‘that His Highness the Lord High Admiral dissented strongly, but his was a minority view within the Council of State, and even Rupert’s opinion, which coincided with the Duke of York’s, carried no weight. In short we were left without a naval force at sea and de Ruyter even now lies anchored off the Nore.’ He shrugged, looking directly at Faulkner. ‘Thus ends my exculpation, Sir Christopher.’
Faulkner nodded. ‘I apologize if I spoke too hastily, Mister Pett,’ he said. ‘At the root of it lies a lack of money. Indeed, only yesterday, His Grace mentioned his regret at not compelling the King to over-rule the other members of the council.’ He paused, adding, ‘Their judgement might have been worth the hazard were it not for the fact that de Ruyter is a formidable opponent. Indeed, all the Dutch admirals are able men; one does not rise to high station in The United Provinces without ability, but de Ruyter is a giant among them.’
Eventually, they turned to Edmund, who thus far had had nothing to contribute to the discussion, asking what he knew of events in the Thames.
‘All I can tell you is that de Ruyter’s second, Admiral Willem van Ghent, attempted to force the river. His ships carried the flood tide as high as they could, intending to take the Indiamen at Gravesend, but we got them shifted in time. Then the ebb came away in our favour so that van Ghent withdrew, the wind then falling light. I saw nothing of this beyond a few sails in the distance, but the King and Duke of York had made their appearance, and ordered ships down from Woolwich and Deptford to be sunk at Barking, which was all done but too late. I heard too that Prince Rupert was at Woolwich and Deptford, very active in placing artillery to cover the upper reaches and protect the Pool, which was well enough done in its way but …’ Edmund shrugged and left his sentence unfinished. These measures seemed not to have impressed the populace who dwelt by and on the River of Thames.
For the next two days the three men took the Commissioner’s barge and went from ship to ship. Truth to tell there was little to cheer; the burnt-out hulks had most of them broken free of their moorings, some from the burning of their bitts where the mooring chains were secured, others cast adrift by their skeleton crews in order to avoid the approaching fire-ships. Those few whose crews had attempted to save them in this manner had been attacked and set ablaze by armed parties of Dutchmen in their boats, putting off from their men-of-war with combustibles. The burning ships had drifted, to run aground on the copious mud-flats which were exposed at low water. Among them were the Loyal London and the Royal James, their huge hulls reduced to a residual skeleton of massive oak futtocks that smouldered yet as they lay like decomposing whales, heeled over, dead.
‘All the pride of the state reduced to this,’ Pett remarked as their oarsmen lay on their oars and the barge glided towards the Royal Oak, the three gentlemen in her stern regarding the sad wreckage. As they pulled away over the calm waters of a river unruffled by the slightest breeze and running like molten copper over the hot sunlight of the June day, a lone herring gull landed on what was left of the great ship’s beak-head. Opening its gape it let out its cry.
‘I never heard anything more like a great laugh of derision,’ Faulkner said.
Before they left Chatham, Edmund and Faulkner mounted their horses and rode downstream, towards Sheerness, to observe what was left of the fort. Faulkner had some hopes of finding his lost telescope. It was not the long-glass presented to him by the late King, but it was a useful item and he was annoyed at having lost it in such circumstances.
On their way they passed Lord Middleton’s encampment and, in paying their respects, encountered John Evelyn in conversation with the general. Evelyn seemed keen to know what Faulkner had seen of the Dutch attack and, learning that they were proposing shortly to return to London, advised them that the roads were bad.
‘The country is in an uproar, having heard that the Dutch have landed, and there are those among the soldiery busy robbing and looting. As for the populace, many run like rats in fear of their lives, abandoning their property and clutching their chattels. They achieve little thereby except to create disorder to add to our disgrace.’
‘’Tis my Lord Douglas’s men who do the looting,’ Edmund remarked sardonically. ‘I saw some of their handiwork. I have little doubt but it is they who put the word about that it is others.’
Having passed the time of day and commiserated on the state of affairs, the two continued their ride to the fort – or what remained of it. The Dutch had done an efficient job in its demolition. Its embrasures had been destroyed, its guns tipped into the fosse and those parts of the structure made of wood burned. Faulkner thought of his madcap charge with a sense of shame; he thought better of regaling Edmund with a narration. Instead he picked at his scabby ear and began a half-hearted hunt for his lost glass. Finally, he gave up.
Edmund had walked his horse down to the shore to investigate the shipping lying in the distant channel. Reluctantly, Faulkner followed. By the time he drew rein alongside Edmund, the younger man had scanned the horizon and turned to his father-in-law.
‘Look!’ Edmund exclaimed, sweeping his right hand from left to right. ‘As far as one can see the Dutch fleet lies at anchor on our doorstep as though it were their own – which I suppose it is for the time being.’ From the faint speck of the buoy of the Nore, eastwards as far as the keen eye could see, lay a long line of men-of-war. Every one of them within sight bore the red, white and blue colours of the Seven United Provinces. ‘You did not find your glass?’
‘No.’ The two men sat for a moment side by side. ‘De Witt has had his revenge,’ said Faulkner resignedly. ‘Revenge for Downing’s outrage on his country’s integrity, revenge for de Ruyter’s late defeat and revenge for Holmes’s Bonfire. We are laid low, Edmund, as low as it is possible to be, and I recall how low we were in King James’s day, aye, and that of the first Charles. I was myself adopted, brought up and nurtured to help end that state of affairs, and now look at us: back where we began. It is as though my life has meant nothing.’ He paused, aware that Edmund was looking at him, ignorant of what he spoke. He smiled. ‘I will tell you some time, Edmund, of old Sir Henry Mainwaring, of the late King presenting me with a long-glass, of meeting and losing Katherine, of marrying Hannah’s mother, of raiding the coast of Morocco to root out the Sallee pirates from their lair, of teaching the present King how to sail, of civil war and exile and much more, but now –’ he tugged his horse’s head round a second time – ‘now we shall go home.’
If Faulkner thought that he might be allowed a life of retired ease, he was mistaken. Although a peace treaty was signed at Breda in July, there was a growing appetite for revenge upon the Dutch. It was whispered that there were secret negotiations in train between King Charles and King Louis of France, the latter eager to extend his kingdom’s borders to the Rhine and over-run Flanders.
In the immediate wake of the Dutch raid the Duke of York, in his capacity as Lord High Admiral, ordered Faulkner to join other senior commanders as a commissioner to investigate the best way to restore the Royal Navy to its former power. Only one fleet flag-ship, the Royal Sovereign, had escaped destruction through being at Portsmouth, but it was the lack of money that doomed the commissioners’ recommendations from being carried out in the months that followed. There were also political dimensions: a Committee of Miscarriages set up by the House of Commons, in an unholy union of Royalist and Republican members, sought to discover where the two and a half million pounds sterling voted by Parliament for the war had gone.
This in turn engendered a seeking of scapegoats, though the King’s mistresses were exempt. Among those who lost their posts in the wake of de Ruyter’s final retreat from his anchorage along the coast of north Kent was Peter Pett at Chatham. Dismissed with obloquy, his dilatoriness was unjustly held to have been the chief cause of the Dutch success. Clarendon also fell from grace, dismissed as the architect of disaster and subject to impeachment. Albemarle too faded from public notice from this time, age and infirmity taking their toll.
Although Sir George Downing, sometime earlier recalled from The Hague and appointed Secretary to the Treasury, skilfully reconstructed the King’s finances, they waited upon time for the effect of taxation to pay its dividend. Nevertheless, the Admiralty and the Navy Board underwent reform, driven by the Duke of York and largely put into effect by that same Samuel Pepys who Faulkner had first noted at the Trinity House as a pushy young fellow. Meanwhile poor Evelyn toiled to ease the burden of the sick, the wounded and the unpaid seamen, supported as far as they were able, by the Trinity Brethren.
Against this background the optimism in which Faulkner and his fellow commissioners first met withered quickly and had little effect. The commission was quietly wound up and, in the end, Faulkner’s contribution to the rebuilding of the King’s navy was to answer some questions put to him at Trinity House by Master Pepys. This grew into a modest correspondence in which Faulkner gave of his experience, remarking to Katherine that he considered Master Pepys would reserve to himself any credit accruing to his suggestions.
‘That is the way of the world,’ Katherine replied, smiling. ‘The young push out the old when they can, thinking the old know little and what little they know is made better use of by the young.’
Faulkner chuckled, reaching for his spectacles. ‘He’ll learn, and one day likely suffer the indignities of old age.’ Faulkner rubbed his eyes before clamping the spectacles on the bridge of his nose. ‘Now I have Edmund’s report on the new ship to read.’
‘Oh, and a missive came for you today from Bethlem Hospital.’ Katherine rose and found the letter, passing it to him. He broke the seal and read it, Katherine watching him. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘It is to inform me that since it is not the practice of the Hospital to retain patients for longer than necessary Nathan Gooding is to be released, and I am invited to collect him.’ He laid the letter down, removed his spectacles and stared at Katherine.
‘What shall you do?’
‘I have no idea. I must speak with Judith.’
‘You may surely leave that until tomorrow.’
It took a vigorous knocking to summon Molly to the street door of the house in Wapping. She led him upstairs to where Judith lay a-bed; the air in the room was stale, the bed-sheets filthy and Molly’s air was proprietorial. Judith looked dreadful; her eyes were closed, her face was pale and waxy, her hair lank and undressed, her nightgown stained. A tray of half-eaten food lay neglected upon a bedside table and the chamber stank of fetid air.
‘She’s a-fevered,’ Molly offered, by way of explanation.
Without a word Faulkner crossed the room and laid his hand on Judith’s forehead. It was cold to the touch, and he noticed her respiration was weak. Bent over her he looked down the length of the bed at Molly, standing at its foot.
‘There’s no fever,’ he said shortly and then noticed an odd protuberance under the bed clothes. Lifting the bedding he saw her swollen belly and gently replaced the sheets and blankets. ‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked Molly. She shook her head.
‘I do, Husband.’
He turned his head and stared into Judith’s eyes. They were yellow, and her breath stank.
‘So, you have come back to me. Is your harlot taken by the French pox?’ Her voice was weak, but her thoughts were lucid.
He said nothing, unable to do so, and waved Molly from the room. She flounced out, pouting.
‘I knew nothing of this,’ he said, ‘or I should have come sooner.’ Judith stared at him. ‘Do you have a physician?’
‘No … There is no point, Husband,’ she said with difficulty. ‘You will be rid of me soon, and I will have passed to a better place.’
‘I will have a physician come,’ he said suddenly, straightening up, ‘and I will see to it that you have better care than that slut gives you.’
‘No!’ He felt her hand on his wrist; it was like a claw. ‘She is the only one to remain loyal to me. She has brought me what I wanted, and that is enough.’
‘And what was that?’
‘An attorney. I have dictated and signed a testament in defiance of your rights and wish that some portion is left to her. The rest, Husband, is yours as the Law and God require.’
He bit off an unkind remark that he cared not a fig for her money, at the same time realizing that he could not concern her for her brother. ‘Is there nothing I can do?’
‘Nothing, unless it is to see my remains properly interred.’
‘Of course.’
‘And that the loyal Molly receives her due.’
‘Yes.’
She turned her head away from him but, as he rose to leave the room, she asked, ‘Where is my brother?’ She was frowning and seemed puzzled, uncertain, as though her grasp of reality was slipping away from her.
‘He is in a safe place.’
‘He has bewitched me, you know.’ She made a pathetic gesture towards her swollen belly. ‘You saw what he had done.’
Faulkner stood a moment. He had nothing to say, but as he watched, she closed her eyes. He waited a moment then said, half to himself, ‘Goodbye, Julia.’ It was only after he had sent Molly back into his wife’s chamber that he recollected he had used the name she had been Christened with. For a moment he thought of the perversion induced by Puritan radicalism; of the invocation of God, the importance of outward forms and that troubling business of witchcraft. Not, he thought to himself as he left the house, that witchery did not trouble people other than Puritans. Had not the King’s grand-father, King James, written a book on the subject? Still, aside from the irony that Judith considered her brother the satanic agent of her disease, her condition was appalling.
He returned to Katherine a much sobered man. Explaining to her, and later to Hannah and Edmund, they all agreed that some amelioration of Judith’s plight was indispensable. The details they left until the morning, but as they got into bed that night Katherine offered a solution.
‘My dearest, I think we should remove ourselves from this house, where we are an encumbrance, and return to Wapping. We could nurse Judith until her time comes, which, if you are correct, will not be long. Moreover, there we may also comfortably accommodate her brother. We have the means to hire help, and the house is large enough.’
Faulkner looked at Katherine. ‘You would do that?’
‘If I did not do it alone – yes.’
Faulkner feared Judith’s reaction when she encountered Katherine. Molly’s insolence was quickly stifled by Faulkner threatening her loss of immediate employment. She was bright enough to see where her future lay and, after a week of peevishness, she resumed her previous station without protest. Whether or not she was aware that her mistress had made provision for her, Faulkner neither knew nor cared. As long as his wife lived, he was determined that she should not lie in filth and squalor.
Katherine worked her charm and, as a result, Molly’s appearance was considerably improved. At the end of a fortnight, with the efforts of Molly and Katherine, with some supplementary assistance from Faulkner and two men brought in from the wharf to attend to some repairs, order and cleanliness had been re-established.
Nathan was released from Bethlem Hospital a month after they returned to Wapping. He too was much altered. Thin and withdrawn, the learned doctors declared him harmless, suggesting that he be given some book-work to attend to, declaring him to be ‘an excellent clerk’. Gooding had smiled at the condescension and nodded his head slowly. Before they left the hospital, Faulkner looked Nathan straight in the face and asked if he was recognized.
‘Of course, Kit.’ Gooding’s voice was low, measured, reasonable.
‘And could you live in harmony with your sister?’ Gooding nodded. ‘She is very ill, and not expected to live long.’
‘If she could live with me,’ he said, apparently untroubled with the news of her disease.
When led into Judith’s chamber, Gooding took one look and sank to his knees beside his sister’s bed, putting his head in his hands. Katherine, who had been tending the invalid, motioned Faulkner to withdraw. Leaving brother and sister together, Katherine and Faulkner stood on the landing outside, half expecting some outburst from Judith.
Aware of his poor hearing, Faulkner asked: ‘Can you hear anything?’
Katherine put a finger to her lips, bending towards the door, which stood ajar. ‘They are talking,’ she said after a moment in a low voice, ‘or praying. I cannot quite determine.’
After several minutes Katherine knocked and, leaving Faulkner on the landing, went in.
‘You would never have known anything but a state of perfect amity had existed between them for their entire lives,’ she advised him later. ‘He was reading The Bible to her, or had been when I entered.’
‘Does one presume that this state of mind is set, or do I have to lock him up at High Water, Full and Change?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean when the moon is full and new.’
‘Oh!’ Katherine shrugged. ‘But I suppose we must watch him.’
They never discovered what influence the moon might have upon Gooding, for Judith died of her cancer eight days later and Nathan Gooding conducted her to her grave in his sober black, a Puritan gentleman to the last, and the chief mourner of his sister Julia, latterly known as Judith.
‘I am widowed,’ Faulkner remarked that night to Katherine, ‘and free to marry again, my darling Kate.’
‘After a proper interval, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps? What mean you by perhaps? Is the matter not a certainty? We have braved scandal …’
Katherine pulled a face. ‘Braved scandal? Come, sir, the times do not care for a scandal such as ours, not as they might have done in the recent past. Whatever we decide we must wait. Some propriety is called for.’
‘I suppose so,’ Faulkner grunted in response.
‘Do you not feel grief for her? She bore you children; you must have loved her once.’
‘Once, perhaps, and yes, she bore me children. I feel more remorse than grief, but life is such a trifling thing that I cannot pretend to more than that.’
Katherine frowned. ‘A trifling thing?’
‘Not to each individual,’ he said, thinking of those slaughtered about him in action. ‘But I have seen it too oft snuffed out like a candle to hold it as anything more than a small thing. Something of the instant. D’you see?’
She nodded, thinking of the vicissitudes of their two, twin, lives, of the separations and the entanglements, and of Judith’s part. ‘For you and I, knowing death and battle and exile, perhaps that is so. For Judith and her brother there were expectations. They lived their lives …’ She sought for a metaphor, and he came to her aid.
‘Less close to the abyss?’ She nodded and smiled at him. The thought contented them as they settled in bed. As they lay in each other’s arms on the verge of sleep he whispered, ‘Nevertheless, you shall be Lady Faulkner.’
The philosophical conclusions arrived at by Faulkner and Katherine were rudely shaken the following morning when Gooding came downstairs for breakfast. Faulkner was on the point of leaving the house, intending to visit Johnson at Blackwall before going aboard the Hawk, when Gooding made a remark that caused Katherine to place a restraining hand on Faulkner’s arm. Gooding’s voice had been low, and Katherine rightly guessed that Faulkner had not heard what he had said, and Faulkner turned, looking first at Katherine and then, seeing the look on her face, at Gooding.
There was nothing immediately remarkable about Gooding. They had become accustomed to his pale face, his withdrawn, almost other-worldly appearance. He seemed to move through life as if untroubled by his surroundings, a man who would wander out in the pouring rain without taking regard for the deluge. He had that vacant look about him now, and Faulkner was puzzled as to why Katherine called his attention to him.
‘What did you say, Nathan?’ she asked quietly.
‘I said, I had defeated Satan and prayed triumphantly for my sister’s death.’
Faulkner frowned. It was clear that Katherine had divined something more serious in Gooding’s revelation, but he felt imbued with a faint sense of exasperation and was eager to be about his business. Faulkner sighed. He did not share Katherine’s concern. ‘I’m sure you did, Nathan,’ he said soothingly. ‘Judith was a very sick woman and we all wished that her end was swift and with as little pain as God in his mercy …’ Faulkner’s voice tailed off, aware that his words were deeply troubling to Gooding, whose eyes had suddenly taken on a wild look. He began to make defiant, jerky motions with his hands.
‘What do you mean, Nathan?’ Katherine asked, stepping forward and catching one gesticulating hand.
‘I tricked Satan,’ he said, his tone insistent, each word enunciated emphatically. ‘I,’ he repeated, ‘deceived Beelzebub … the Devil …’ His voice rose. ‘Now do you understand?’
‘You prayed for a swift end?’ Faulkner queried.
‘No! I prayed that she should die!’
Katherine understood. Keeping her eyes on Gooding, she explained: ‘He means, I think, that Judith’s affliction, her illness, not the coming of her end, was entirely due to his prayers and supplications.’
Gooding was nodding. ‘Yes. Yes … my supplications … I prayed constantly when I was in … in that place …’ His reference to Bethlem Hospital seemed to calm him. He closed his eyes for a moment. Opening them again he had resumed his detached air. Looking from Katherine to Faulkner he smiled. ‘She was a witch,’ he said simply, ‘and one must not suffer a witch to live.’
Gooding sat at the table and called for some eggs as Faulkner exchanged a glance with Katherine. ‘I cannot leave you alone.’
‘Do not be so foolish. He is harmless … now.’
Faulkner regarded Gooding. He did not believe for a moment that Gooding’s prayers had had the slightest influence on Judith’s cancer and saw him only as a man who did not behave rationally.
Feeling Faulkner’s eyes upon him, Gooding looked up and smiled again. ‘Do you wait upon Sir Henry Johnson, Kit?’ he asked blithely.
‘That is … was my intention.’
Gooding looked at the summer sunshine streaming through the window and nodded happily. ‘I think that I shall accompany you. Yes, I shall, if you have no objection.’
The thought of having Gooding under his supervision rather than left in the house with Katherine and the servants weighed more heavily than having to explain the presence and behaviour of a lunatic to Johnson. Fifteen minutes later they stepped out and set their faces towards Blackwall just as they had done years earlier when they had been building the Duchess of Albemarle.
The summer passed like a dream. With peace finally concluded at Breda in July, almost the entire household embarked in the Hawk and sailed for Harwich. They anchored in the Blackwater before reaching the Naze of Essex and, as they made their approach to the harbour at Harwich, Faulkner pointed out, to those interested, the fort at Landguard Point where the Dutch had landed before their descent upon the Medway. ‘You will recall you heard the guns,’ he reminded Edmund.
‘Good heavens, so I did,’ said Edmund, beaming at his boys.
As for Gooding – though it required a certain legerdemain on the part of Faulkner and Edmund – he had been allowed to think that he had resumed his old role as a partner. In fact they gave him the most complex book-keeping tasks and requested he audit the accounts for some years, checking especially how much money had been remitted to the King. Apparently contended enough, Gooding took on these tasks willingly, asking nothing more than his daily bread and the opportunity to join a dissenting congregation. For the most part, once it had been established, he was left to his routine, though he accompanied them to Harwich, along with Edmund, Hannah and her two boys.
The Hawk was crowded, especially so, it seemed, for Hannah was expecting again.
‘Hannah thinks she is carrying twins,’ Katherine confided as they lay in their cots in their tiny cabin, ‘for she is so exceedingly large.’
After visiting Harwich and Ipswich they sailed about the rivers Stour and Orwell, whose confluence forms the harbour, before returning to London. It proved a hard beat to windward, helped by the tide but discommoded by the short, sharp sea this induced. The young Drinkwater boys thought it a great lark; their expectant mother was less enthusiastic as the Hawk scooped buckets of sparkling spray over her weather bow. As they beat up the Thames, Gooding took it upon himself to point out to the ladies all the ships for which they were responsible, either as owners in part or in full, or for which they acted as agents. To this he added a babble of sundry details of a recondite nature attaching to the business of ship-owning and ship-broking. By the time they approached their moorings off Wapping the ladies professed themselves exhausted by the encyclopedic catalogue displayed by Gooding. Even the boys found Uncle Nathan a source of the most amazing tales, Gooding having mixed in his narrative a sufficient stock of yarns about the adventures enjoyed by the sailors they saw on the scores of ships past which they sailed.
As they stepped ashore they were met by Charlie Hargreaves, who had been left in charge and was shaping up well, entirely answering the expectations of his employers. Hargreaves bowed to the ladies, ignored the two boys and briefed Edmund and Faulkner on the latest news from Fort St David. Gravely, Gooding stood close to the other three men, for all the world a party to their deliberations.
Noting this, Katherine smiled, discreetly remarking to Hannah that, ‘One would never guess.’
‘Indeed not,’ agreed Hannah, more anxious for her two scallywags whose proximity to the water’s edge and their fascination with a filthy old man in a stinking Peter boat promised undesirable consequences.
The cold of winter brought Hannah to bed. The birth was difficult and the services of the midwife proved inadequate. A barber-surgeon was summoned and was as swiftly kicked out of the house by Edmund, desperate as his wife lay bleeding. Only one of the twins, an undersized girl, survived. Hannah lived for nine days before puerperal fever killed her; the little girl, though put to a wet-nurse, was buried with her mother. Edmund was distraught and withdrawn, raging against fate and the barber-surgeon who, he maintained, had condemned his beautiful wife to an early death. Faulkner found him inconsolable, and it was many months before Edmund could be induced to take more than a passing interest in affairs, both public and private. Oddly, Gooding filled some of the vacuum, diligently working at his books and unwilling to be distracted from what he was apt to call his ‘essential labours’. The importance of these tasks he gave as his excuse for declining an invitation to the wedding of Faulkner and Katherine the following year. The nuptials were quiet, attended by those few of the Trinity Brethren with whom he had been long acquainted.
A fortnight after the wedding a recovering Edmund brought the news that the Duchess of Albemarle was no longer fit for any service. ‘’Tis the ravages of the ship-worm,’ Edmund explained.
‘What would you have done with her?’ Faulkner asked. ‘The old order changeth, and all things must pass.’
‘That is for you to decide, for Nathan explained to me that she has some entailment.’
Faulkner smiled. ‘Nathan remembered that, eh? Well, well.’
‘To the letter. I understand the King has personally enjoyed the profits of her voyages.’
‘You knew that, surely? You commanded her.’
‘I do not recall you ever telling me.’
‘Did I not? Oh, well, perhaps tomorrow you will ask Nathan to be good enough to draft me a letter to the King explaining her condition and her end. In the circumstances it will be best that she is broken up.’
Edmund smiled. ‘That is sufficiently important for Nathan’s attention,’ he said.
‘Quite so,’ Faulkner agreed with the mild irony.
In the months that followed Gooding regarded the importance of his work undiminished, but he accomplished less and less, his intellectual grasp failing with a sharp decline in his health. For some months he lay a-bed and died five days before Christmas 1669.
Death now seemed Faulkner’s constant companion. He long mourned the loss of Brian Harrison, his old friend and neighbour at Wapping. They had served together on the raid on Sallee. Then, less than a fortnight after Gooding’s death, on a freezing January day, Honest George Monck, First Duke of Albemarle, died sitting in a chair at his lodgings in Whitehall Palace. He had been unwell for many months and had a year earlier retired to his country seat at New Hall, in Essex. Afflicted by the dropsy, breathing with difficulty, he had been expected to die. The country braced itself, for Honest George was regarded as a prop without which Charles’s throne would topple. Taking some pills made for him by an old companion-in-arms turned quack, Albemarle’s oedema lessened and he was again to be seen in London. Men and women breathed easily again. But this remission did not last for long. Allowed privileged access at any time to the King’s chamber, the old man who had saved the throne, who had remained in London throughout the plague and there nipped in the bud a conspiracy against the king, whose ruthlessness had made enemies and whose courage compelled admiration, gasped his last surrounded by officers from the army as though on the field of battle.
Anne, his home-spun duchess, died within days of her husband, but while his widow was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, Albemarle’s funeral was delayed. Although laid in state caparisoned for war, he was unburied for lack of sufficient money to provide his obsequies with sufficient pomp. Eventually, four months after his death, he followed his wife to his grave in the great Abbey, attended by the King in a procession of almost regal grandeur.
Accompanied by Katherine, Faulkner attended the crowded funeral. As they emerged from the Abbey, Faulkner found himself close to Prince Rupert, who immediately paid his respects to Katherine, congratulating the pair on their marriage. He discreetly drew the couple to one side and asked, ‘Sir Christopher, if I had need of advice could I rely upon you?’
Faulkner was non-plussed. ‘You can rely upon me, Your Highness, but as to what advice I might—’
Rupert cut him off. ‘Albemarle thought highly of you, mentioned you several times and commended you to me. I know enough of you myself to heed the old fellow’s words and there may come a time …’ Rupert smiled and cast his gaze over the milling congregation debouching from the Abbey in the wake of the King. ‘This is not it, however.’ He took Katherine’s hand and raised it to his lips. ‘Your devoted servant, Lady Faulkner. Your services and devotion to my mother can never be requited.’
She dropped her elegant curtsey, and beside her Faulkner footed a bow as Rupert, surrounded by a group of ladies and gentlemen, withdrew to his coach and escort. Faulkner turned to his wife, only to see her face flushed.
‘You are angry?’
‘What does he mean by that?’ she asked shortly. ‘Surely he does not wish you to go to sea again at your age!’
‘I have no idea what he means,’ he temporized. ‘He mentioned advice, not a seagoing post; I have served on a commission before; perhaps he means something similar.’
Katherine bit her lip, thought for a moment and then said in a low voice as she took his arm and led them to where their own hired carriage awaited them, ‘There is talk again of war, and I know these Stuarts, they take no consideration of those they command.’
‘Kate, you of all people know that if he commands, I must obey.’ He spoke in a low voice, embarrassed by Katherine’s uncharacteristic and public outburst, aware that they were within a few feet of a company of guards drawn up after escorting Albemarle’s body from Whitehall. Their officers were taking post to move them off, and an order was barked close to them. But Katherine had not yet finished with him.
She stopped, disengaged his arm and confronted him for all the world to see. ‘I would ask you to promise that you will refuse to serve at sea; others have done the same, even Albemarle – but I know that you do not keep your promises.’ As she cast the last words at him she nodded at his ear. She had never previously mentioned the minor blemish to his looks. Faulkner stood stock-still, his face flushed, lost for words. Katherine was about to turn and resume her walk when a voice spoke close behind Faulkner.
‘Milady, you seem to have dropped your handkerchief.’ They turned to find a handsome young officer of the guards who, removing his plumed hat and making a most elegant bow, offered Katherine the embroidered silk with a flourish.
‘You are most kind, sir,’ Katherine took the handkerchief with a ravishing smile and twinkling eyes that Faulkner knew was intended to incite jealousy in himself. ‘May I ask your name, sir?’ Katherine went on.
‘Churchill, Milady, Ensign John Churchill of His Majesty’s Guards.’
‘Thank you, Mister Churchill.’
They went home in silence.