For King or Commonwealth by Richard Woodman Page B

breathed.
    â€˜Let us not consider that.’ He paused, gathering his clothes and cramming his portmanteau. Thank heaven he travelled light from Helvoetsluys and habitually left most of his effects aboard the
Phoenix
. Having completed his preparations as far as he could, he bent over her. She was weeping.
    â€˜Will this business of separation never end?’
    â€˜Soon,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Soon, by God, it must.’
    Outside he waited in silence before trying the door of Mainwaring’s chamber. From inside came the snuffling of an old man fast asleep. ‘Incredible!’ he breathed to himself. Then, his boots in one hand, his portmanteau in the other, he descended the stairs.
    â€˜Spithead,’ he said to White and Lazenby. ‘We can carry the tide westwards, strike at any shipping off Portsmouth under cover of night and escape by way of the Solent.’
    â€˜What if the wind is westerly?’ White asked.
    â€˜We drop through St Helen’s Roads and double the Wight by way of St Catherine’s Point. Either way we retreat west, the inference being we are one of Rupert’s raiders.’ Faulkner looked up at the two men. ‘Are you game? For I’ll have none here that aren’t.’
    â€˜I’m game,’ said Lazenby. White nodded.
    â€˜Then roust the men out of their whores’ beds, I would leave before noon.’
    â€˜Why the hurry?’
    â€˜Because there are spies in The Hague would betray the orders the King thinks he has given me.’
    â€˜Do you not act at some risk, Sir Christopher,’ White asked with punctilious regard for Faulkner’s change of status, ‘in disobeying the King?’
    Faulkner looked up at White, seeking some superciliousness in his expression. Instead he found the man’s concern moving. ‘If I read the King like I read other men, and I confess that may not be possible, but, if I do, then His Majesty will be pleased with such success as we bring His majesty’s arms. He would have me strike at London’s trade at the Nore.’
    â€˜What? Again, and so soon?’
    â€˜Just so. Instead we shall strike at the heart of the enemy’s naval power: at Portsmouth.’
    It was a bold plan, and with Rupert active in the Irish Sea and drawing some of the Commonwealth forces to the west, stood fair to succeed. The
Phoenix
avoided Moulton’s single frigate whose captain, with only a single ship to blockade but well supplied with spies’ information as to when the
Phoenix
was preparing for sea, failed to take his task seriously. By winkling his men out of their beds and leaving with all haste, Faulkner compromised his endurance, having only stores for nineteen days on board, but he proposed to be no longer than ten, if he was to keep his word to Kate.
    Whatever he might have neglected in his haste to be away before either the King or Mainwaring realized he had gone, he had not neglected his preparations. It was a strong tide that carried the
Phoenix
down the French coast, well clear of The Downs so that she passed through innumerable fleets of French fishermen as Faulkner followed their littoral. Not crossing the Channel until nightfall would find the tide about to ebb to the west after he had passed the Nab. Again they pitched short-fused shells into two small men-of-war lying at St Helen’s but, finding nothing anchored at Spithead beyond a hoy, Faulkner’s run of luck began to falter. At three in the morning the wind fell light and the
Phoenix
drifted on the tide, passing the Mother Bank and approaching Cowes with but bare steerage way.
    Arguing that the three or four hoys, bilanders and ketches lying off the Wight’s major port were not worth cutting out and eager not to be caught within the Solent at daylight, Faulkner held what course they could make for the western entrance, off the Needles. It was therefore almost daylight when they passed the guns at Hurst Castle