The King's Chameleon by Richard Woodman Page A

elation infecting him since his encounter with Katherine compelled him to suppress a smile. ‘Your uncle drunk, eh? Then things must be afoot, my darling girl, but you are not to worry about them; they do not touch you, and what does not touch you, you are best to be ignorant of. Come, now, glad as I am to see you, I had called for your mother—’ He was about to add Henry’s name but stopped himself in time.
    â€˜Mother went out last night, before Uncle Nathan began drinking.’
    â€˜And where is Uncle Nathan now, pray?’
    â€˜Why, still a-bed, I shouldn’t wonder.’
    â€˜Then I must wake him. The fellow has work to do; we are due at the ship-yard this forenoon,’ he said with a business-like air. He turned at the door. ‘Daughter, have them boil some water; I have been in the saddle for nigh on twenty hours and reek of the road.’
    Faulkner watched her a moment as she scuttled out to the kitchen, then he turned and stiffly ascended the stairs until he reached the upper landing where Gooding’s room lay. He threw open the door. Gooding lay fully clothed, though without his shoes and wig, the former having been removed and the latter occupying a place on his pillow like a decapitated wife.
    â€˜Well, well,’ Faulkner muttered, ‘you poor, benighted devil.’ He threw open the shutters and flung the casements wide before bending over the prostrate form. ‘Brother-in-law!’ He spoke directly into Gooding’s exposed ear, and the man stirred and came-to, rubbing his eyes and groaning as first the horror of the hang-over, and then the realization of the circumstances to which he woke, invaded his consciousness.
    â€˜Come, Nathan, it is not like you to be lying a-bed when work calls. We are due at the ship-yard before noon.’
    Faulkner’s reasonable tone, telling of mundane commitment, further threw the waking man, who mumbled incomprehensibly. ‘What o’clock is it?’ he finally managed to ask through a thick and foul mouth.
    â€˜Come, sir, you stink so much, I fear you have been drinking, a fact made plain by your apparel. Good God, you look like a cavalier after a night of insensible revelry, or is it a pig rolling in mud? I cannot decide which you most closely resemble.’
    Gooding focussed his eyes with difficulty then frowned. ‘Do not mock me, Kit—’ he began, but Faulkner cut him short.
    â€˜Where is your sister? And where is my son Henry?’ Not waiting for a reply, he went on, ‘And how much of their devilish and damning folly did you know about?’
    Gooding seemed to shrink from this verbal assault, putting up his hand to shield himself, as if from a blow, but in fact from the light that tormented his sore eyes.
    â€˜And all the while,’ Faulkner went on, pressing his advantage, ‘I was walking contentedly up and down Limehouse Lane to the Lea’s mouth to take tea with Sir Henry Johnson in the mistaken belief that my partner was an honest man with whom I enjoyed an honest discourse.’ Faulkner turned away as Gooding began to drag himself off the bed. He was genuinely troubled by this break-down in trust. ‘And do not accuse me of having turned upon you and making war upon you in the past,’ he added with an unfeigned vehemence. ‘You know I should not have deliberately attacked your ships had I known them to be yours. Such mischances fall out in war when men conceive their duty opposes their friends’ interests. I had thought all that faction and heat behind us, but now …’ Faulkner drove one gloved fist into the other with a noise like a carter’s whip. ‘God damn it, Nathan, I even named the one son I can trust after you!’
    â€˜Stop, Kit! Stop, I pray you. Give me water from that jug, and I shall confess what I may confess.’ After he had poured half the contents of the night-jug down his throat and the remainder down his front,