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  ‘I hope, sir, that you will be of more cheerful countenance when next we meet.’

  Faulkner started. ‘Forgive me, Your Highness, these days are gloomy and dispiriting.’

  ‘Indeed; and it behoves us to set our shoulders to the wheel and turn events to our purpose.’

  ‘I assure Your Highness . . .’ Faulkner began, flushing at the imputation, only to be cut short by the lightest touch of Rupert’s gloved hand upon his arm.

  ‘I perfectly understand, my dear Captain Faulkner, but we have to hope for happier times, and your charge is a most important one.’

  ‘I am sensible of the fact, Your Highness,’ Faulkner replied with a bow, his spirit rising to the Prince’s well-intentioned condescension. ‘I would recommission her,’ he ventured, indicating the ship moored in the Haringvliet, ‘had Your Highness not found it necessary to strip her and sell her.’

  ‘Ah. The Antelope has to be sacrificed for the welfare of the fleet. Her crew is a disgrace and there are besides insufficient loyal men to man the remainder properly.’

  ‘Therein lies my own anxieties for your service, Your Highness,’ Faulkner said boldly, for there was little point in dissimulation at such a juncture. ‘The opportunity and the wherewithal to execute your commission is a burden I shall bear with the requisite fortitude, but one of which the outcome is not at all to be relied upon.’

  ‘You will do it, sir, I know it for a certainty. Tell Allen of what you are most in need. Ah, and here is the good Captain Allen with your papers. I wish you Godspeed.’ And he was gone. Faulkner took the packet of papers from a silent Allen and sought out Mainwaring. He found him in earnest discourse with Batten. The two exiled Elder Brethren of Trinity House might have been gossiping at Deptford itself after a Trinitytide dinner for all the apparent seriousness of their present situation. Faulkner was not deceived; he had seen Sir Henry fishing for information before and sensed Batten and Jordan had been a little free with the decanters before the council had been called.

  ‘He does not trust either Batten or Jordan,’ Mainwaring had remarked later, referring to Rupert as they walked back in the evening’s darkness along the frozen quays and out, beyond the few guttering lights of Helvoetsluys, along the dyke towards the distant Phoenix. ‘While I should have liked to kick the frozen dog turds of this accursed place from my feet, His Highness has favoured us both with a particular charge, Kit.’

  ‘Then you are no longer minded to die in England,’ Faulkner had riposted drily.

  Mainwaring sighed, his air of resignation exhaled in the mist of his condensed breath. ‘The habit of obedience,’ he had said quietly, leaving the sentence as incomplete as his explanation of having changed his mind. ‘Without it nothing can ever be accomplished.’

  ‘And besides,’ Faulkner had added in a low voice which indicated his own sentiments were, at least for the time being, in accord with the old admiral’s, ‘it is an old comfort among a sea of uncertain shallows.’

  It was then that Mainwaring had determined to drag him back to Katherine in The Hague. ‘Always the lure of the status ante bellum,’ he had remarked softly to himself as he followed Faulkner up the gangplank on to the Phoenix’s deck. ‘And so infinitely preferable to the present moment.’

  It was now almost dark in the room. Katherine set her darning aside and poked the dying fire. ‘I shall get some wood, if any is to be had,’ she said, rising stiffly.

  ‘No, my dear, allow me,’ said Mainwaring, turning from the window with the energy of a gallant half his age and shuffling from the room, muttering about fair recompense for Kate’s attention to his stockings. She stood uncertain for a moment before cautiously approaching Faulkner. He had by now seated himself and was scribbling in a small notebook, breaking off intermittently to bestride the chart with extended dividers, or lay a brass and ivory rule alongside one of the several compass-roses that bedecked it.

  For several moments she stood motionless beside him, watching him as his strong and competent fingers manipulated the instruments and then set the dividers down to take up his quill. She knew he was aware of her proximity and was content to let him finish, to burn out the passion of their unhappiness in his professional preparations. He would, she knew, come to her when he was ready.

  Finally he laid down the pen and closed the notebook. Sitting back in the rickety chair he remained staring ahead but he put out his right hand, feeling for her hand. It was thin and chilled, and he raised it to his lips. Still without turning his head he said, ‘These are terrible times to live . . .’

  And she bent and kissed the crown of his head, smoothing her other hand over his long hair.

  The Affair at The Nore

  January – April 1649

  Thanks to the commercial energies of the Dutch that maintained an ice-free navigable channel in the lower Haringvliet, Prince Rupert’s main squadron left Helvoetsluys on 21 January, as soon after the council of war as Mainwaring’s strenuous efforts had fitted his ships for their long cruise to the coast of Ireland.

  ‘His Highness has only eight vessels,’ Mainwaring had said. ‘The Charles, the Thomas, the Mary, a ketch, and the hoy Elizabeth. His only vessels of force are the Swallow, Convertive and Constant Reformation, and constant reformation of His Highness’ squadron is just about all I can achieve for His Highness’ power.’

  ‘You have wrought mightily, Sir Henry, and have no reason to reproach yourself. It was Rupert’s decision to abandon the Antelope after her crew mutinied.’ They both recalled the Prince’s suppression of the mutiny during which he had picked up one of the rebellious seamen and held him over the Antelope’s side. ‘He carried his point,’ Faulkner added, ‘though I should like to have known his thoughts at the men’s disloyalty.’

  ‘Oh, that he carried off with his customary aplomb,’ Mainwaring reported, having attended the Prince shortly after the incident. ‘“I would rather fight and die with twenty loyal men”, he said, “than triumph with two hundred turncoats.” That sort of nonsense.’ Mainwaring paused, catching Faulkner’s eye. Both men thought of their own intention to turn their own coats. ‘Admirable, of course, but scarcely practical,’ he added with a finality that curtailed the uncomfortable recollection.

  ‘Indeed not,’ Faulkner had said.

  The departure of Faulkner’s Phoenix was both more complicated and yet simpler than that of the Prince’s squadron. Complicated because she lay further upstream, in an ice-bound creek free of the heavier tolls attracted by Rupert’s ships. On the other hand, she was in better shape than many of the Prince’s men-of-war and Faulkner had, thanks to considerable skill, managed to feed and more or less keep his seamen in paid employment. This was in part owing to her having a smaller crew and in part to the close loyalty that Faulkner’s leadership had engendered. Though few felt passionately about the predicament of King Charles, as seamen they appreciated Faulkner’s concern for them. As poor men, most of whom had neither family nor home, he was their lifeline to survival, not least because he knew what it was to go hungry, for Faulkner’s origins were, though never advertised by himself, not such that they could be kept entirely secret.

  Besides her commander, the Phoenix carried two officers: her long-time chief lieutenant, named White, and another of Faulkner’s former mates, Mr Lazenby, who had turned up in Helvoetsluys a few days after the exiles in Holland learned that on January 30th King Charles had been executed, his head struck from his body on a block surmounting a scaffold erected outside a window of the splendid Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace in which the King had been tried for High Treason.

  The news shook all those who adhered to the Stuart cause and the assumption of the empty title of King by Prince Charles, though it spoke of continuity, only rang hollow. The new King was a callow youth whose only talents seemed to promise a life of dissipation and excess, eroding the remnant loyalty of cuckolded husbands. Nevertheless, in the wake of the execution of the King a few men for whom the regicide made England intolerable began arriving
in Helvoetsluys. Among these was Lazenby, and it was with him that Faulkner was walking the deck a week or so later as the Phoenix, under a press of canvas, chased a small but heavily sparred cutter to the northwards.

  ‘What d’you make of her?’ Faulkner had asked when he had come on deck in response to Lazenby’s summons.

  ‘She’s a packet, sir,’ Lazenby had remarked confidently, handing his glass to Faulkner. ‘Mark the spars . . .’

  ‘Indeed, and the extent of her sails,’ Faulkner said, lowering the telescope and returning it to its owner. ‘She may outrun us.’

  ‘Aye and let every vessel on the coasts know of us.’

  Faulkner chuckled with some satisfaction. ‘I doubt not that we are already well known to the under-writers and on “Change”.’ In ten days they had taken three prizes, two off the Texel fresh from being nipped in the Baltic ice and full of Russian hemp and flax, Swedish iron and timber from Dantzig. Shifting his cruising ground, Faulkner had next crossed to Orfordness and, finding a large vessel anchored in Hollesley Bay, had swooped upon her flying the new cross-and-harp ensign of the English Commonwealth. Ranging up alongside with his guns run out, Faulkner was gratified in seeing half her company escape towards Harwich in the ship’s longboat.

  ‘God’s blood, Mr White!’ he had called to his lieutenant commanding his small broadside in the waist. ‘They fear we are about to press them!’

  Faulkner could scarce believe his luck, though it cost him a quarter of his own company to send her home to Mainwaring’s care as Prince Rupert’s prize-agent. Worthily named the Hope, in due course he was to learn that she had been commissioned as the King’s Falconer in his honour. Drawing offshore to cover the Hope’s passage to Helvoetsluys, the Phoenix recovered her prize crew without putting in to the Haringvliet, Rupert using their return to send two of his ships out to watch for the Earl of Warwick’s squadron that was expected daily, intent on blockading the Royalist fleet in the Haringvliet.

  Faulkner crossed to the vicinity of the Smith’s Knoll, picking up intelligence from the fishermen drifting for herring. Among the news that he gleaned was that Warwick, his loyalty to the Parliamentary cause in doubt, had been replaced by Vice-Admiral Robert Moulton. As to the fishermen, he was scrupulous in making no move against them, except to ask if any wished to serve the King. He picked up three young men anxious to avoid service in the army, but, more importantly, his investment in Genever gin yielded the latest news of the King’s trial which both he and Mainwaring were anxious to learn.

  ‘We must keep abreast of events, Kit,’ the old man had insisted, casting a significant glance at Katherine by the fire. ‘Do not trouble yourself about her,’ Mainwaring had added, squeezing Faulkner’s arm. ‘She too has a future as dear to me as mine own life.’

  It was after the recruitment of the three young fishermen that they had sighted the packet and given chase and now Faulkner, with Lazenby pacing beside him, made up his mind. Looking at the distance of their quarry, Faulkner turned his attention to the sky and ceased walking. Beside him Lazenby paused and, seeing Faulkner’s attention had focused on the sky, followed his gaze.

  ‘No. But you are correct, Mr Lazenby. We shall have a change in the weather by tomorrow. Do you maintain the chase until darkness and then we shall haul our wind and stand to the southward. I have a mind to pursue a favourite scheme and now is the time.’

  ‘May I ask where you intend to strike, sir?’

  ‘The Nore, Lazenby, the Nore.’

  It felt as though spring had deserted the mouth of the great river as, two days later, the Phoenix ghosted up the Swin in a light and freezing north-easterly breeze. She seemed like a phantom to the two Leigh bawleys fishing on the edge of the Barrow Sand, the sea-smoke rising about her and almost entirely concealing her so that they were afterwards unable to tell the two grim-visaged and pot-helmeted cavalrymen sent to enquire what ship had created such havoc through the Warps, the Oaze and the Nore itself.

  Faulkner, of course, knew nothing of this, nor that questions were asked in Parliament itself as to why ‘a Malignant pirate’ could, ‘in defiance of the might and majesty of the State’s Naval force in the Medway, cause such harm to our trade?’

  The truth was, it had been a simple matter, for the Phoenix had had not only a fair wind but a favourable spring tide and had passed through the outer anchorage while the seamen in the anchored merchant ships awaiting convoy had been breaking their fasts. Bringing out only one small bilander, Faulkner had determined not to take any prizes. Prince Rupert’s faith in supposing they could recruit sufficient seamen to man captures and turn them into Royalist men-of-war was hopelessly optimistic and he considered he might do more damage by pure destruction.

  He made his preparations with care, briefing his officers and men with that tone of confidence and conviction that swiftly won their enthusiastic support, giving to individuals especially crucial parts to play and to which occasion they could only rise with enthusiasm.

  Having made his plan, which obliged John Matthews, a former seaman promoted to gunner, to spend some hours of meticulous preparation in the magazine and drew from Mr White the coarse observation that he hoped Matthews could properly charge a shell carcass since ‘he could not shit a sailor’s turd’, Faulkner took the con. The masts and spars of the large convoy, which, he had learned from the fishermen, lay awaiting its naval escort, showed clear above the low fog that rose like the smoke that gave it its name. From the anchored ships and vessels he hoped the Phoenix, herself similarly shrouded, would look like a late arrival, delayed by the contrary wind that had blown itself out two days ago. Closer-to he hoped to convince them she was one of the very escort for which they waited and, to this end, she wore again the new ensign of the Commonwealth. Only at the last moment would he break out the red flag at the fore masthead and substitute the King’s for the Commons’ colours.

  As the Phoenix crept up on the flood tide, her longboat was hoisted out and, after three men – all volunteers – had climbed down into her, several packages were carefully passed to them by those on deck. The boat was then streamed astern on a long painter and the remaining men were sent to their battle stations.

  ‘Time, Mr Lazenby, to see what sort of an artilleryman you might make with that coehorn.’

  Acknowledging Faulkner’s order, Lazenby bent to his task over the small mortar which was secured in the larboard waist, behind the main guns which, ready loaded, lay behind closed ports. Lazenby had tried several shots on their way along the edge of the Gunfleet Sand and judged he had the amount of powder exactly correct for the purpose Faulkner had briefed him.

  ‘I hope you don’t foul yourself with these bombs of yours,’ the taciturn White remarked as he readied his gunners and sharpshooters, himself hefting a matchlock. ‘I should hate you to be hoisted by your own petard!’

  To preserve his deception, Faulkner sailed serenely past the first three ships, hailing each through his speaking trumpet and, standing beneath the listlessly flaunting cross-and-harp, affecting the tone of naval command, called out to each, ‘Pray tell your master to prepare to weigh; the signal will be a red flag and three guns!’ No one aboard any of the three vessels noticed the boat towing far astern of the passing ‘frigate’ – as they supposed – lost as it was in the sea-smoke.

  Faulkner was again imbued with that strange quasi-religious exaltation that he had experienced when conning the Phoenix through the reefs west of Guernsey, months earlier. Under its influence his agonizing over Katherine had faded entirely from his mind which, or so it seemed to him through the long hours of that intense forenoon, was serenely calculating, as though elevated beyond the plateau of fearful anticipation that he guessed many of his men were enduring as they held their fire, as instructed. He had first experienced the sensation earlier that morning, when he first realized the extent to which the conditions favoured him. The north-easterly breeze he had foretold without much trouble from the omens in the sky off the Smith’s Knoll, but its temper
ature he could not have guessed, nor the dense sea-smoke that was its consequence.

  As he lowered his speaking trumpet after hailing the third merchantman he called softly down to White and Lazenby in the waist, ‘Make ready, gentlemen. The next is ours to gull.’ And then, walking quickly aft to the taffrail he simply called out to the coxswain in the boat hidden astern in the low sea-smoke, ‘What sounding?’

  The coxswain responded as he had been coached. ‘By the mark five, sir.’

  ‘Cast well to starboard!’ Faulkner called, maintaining the fiction of sounding to test the depth of water, but instead of taking a cast with the lead, the man put the boat’s tiller to port and the longboat sheered out on the Phoenix’s starboard quarter while her crew blew on their slow-matches.

  Faulkner nodded to the man at the wheel, and he too did as he was told without an order that might have carried the deceit to their quarry now only yards away, downwind. The Phoenix veered in her course, as though sloppily handled and prompting a hail from the merchantman next in line.

  ‘Mind your helm there!’ Faulkner roared in the mock admonition that was the signal for the boy to prepare the ensign halliards. Faulkner watched the lad until he was ready, with the King’s ensign bent on the same line that held the cross-and-harp aloft. Satisfied, he watched the anchored merchant ship that was suddenly very close as the light breeze and the strong tide swept them past.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, now!’

  From the waist rose a rolling concussion as each gun was fired into its hapless victim. The noise was punctuated by the heavier thud of the charge in the coehorn as the smoke of the guns’ discharges hung almost motionless above them, partly obscuring Faulkner’s view of the merchantman. Only her upper masts and yards rose clear into the bright blue sky and then the shell, lifted by no more than a few pinches of black powder, burst in a vivid, blinding flash. The crash of the detonation was followed by a series of unidentifiable noises as shell fragments indiscriminately struck rope, wood, iron and human flesh, not all of it aboard their quarry. Faulkner himself felt the sharp, searing slash of an iron splinter as it scythed across his cheek so that he felt the heat of it as it gashed him, followed by the warm trickle of blood. Of this he took little notice, eager to see whether their last stratagem had taken effect.