Rebels and Traitors (115 page)

Naturally, he hated the fact Juliana preferred another man. ‘Oh dear heart! What have you done to us?’ Sighing heavily he made his voice profound with sorrow, like an ageing tragedian throwing his all into a talismanic role for which he had been famous.

Jarred out of her trance, Juliana demanded, ‘Where is Thomas?’

Lovell smiled sadly. ‘I came here to ask you the same question.’

She panicked. What have you done with him?’

‘He ran off. So, if he did not come here to you, the ungrateful brat could be anywhere.’

‘He is just a child!’ Juliana cried, as if father and son had just gone off together on a fishing trip and Lovell had lost sight of the boy accidentally. ‘How could you let him go roaming the streets? Anyone may abduct him, for terrible purposes. How did you make him run away from you?’

Lovell immediately put the blame on her. Well,
you
brought him up disobedient and reckless!’

‘Oh no! He inherited running away from you.’ Juliana’s voice hardened. They ought to have been strangers, but they fell into a quarrel like any married couple.

Lovell watched her, as she tried to gauge how to handle this situation. She was better-looking than he remembered. Her features had sharpened handsomely, while her new self-assurance made her shine. She dressed more prettily than she might have done as the wife of a Bible-scrutinising, psalm-singing, perjury-preaching puritan. Selling haberdashery demanded that she have fancies about her. Her skirt was glazed linen, over which she wore an unusual finely knitted jacket, patterned in shades of salmon and fern green; the silk came from Naples, but she had knitted the panels herself. Unadorned by jewellery — though Lovell was irritably sure he had given her plenty — she had tied up her dark hair in a neat bun, pulled straight back without a fringe nowadays, but still with bundles of side-ringlets like those she used to wear.

When he first walked in, Juliana had found that her mind cleared, the way soldiers must ignore everything except the immediate frightening emergency. She wanted to rid her premises of Lovell as quickly as possible, concentrating on that, even though she must learn what he had done with Tom and prevent his taking anything else she treasured …

What happened to the little one?’ Orlando’s eyes bored into Juliana, as he instinctively sensed her anxiety.

‘Valentine? His name is Valentine!’ Juliana reprimanded him. ‘I brought him up, as best I could, having no money or support from you. Sometimes we went hungry; often we were afraid; we were unwelcome where you had left us; and virtually homeless —’

‘Don’t dramatise. I know you lived in Lewisham.’ Lovell glanced around, his lip curling. ‘And now you have
this!
You have dwindled yourself into a seller of trifles —’

‘This’,
Juliana informed him, stiffening, ‘is what my father did, and my grandfather.
This
has put clothes on our backs and food on the table. Yesterday, for instance, we had scotch collops and tonight we shall have a chicken fricassee, which is Val’s favourite.’

Wilfully missing the point, Lovell reminisced: ‘Ah how I remember when you used to make us with your own hands a wonderful
quelquechose -A quelquechose
was a mixed pan-fried dish with many ingredients — whatever a stretched housewife could cobble together by emptying her pantry. As a bride and young mother, Juliana had certainly been stretched and she remembered it bitterly. ‘So dear little Val likes a fricassee, does he?’ Juliana regretted mentioning Valentine. Lovell, who probably still thought of his younger son as a toddler, was playing on her fear again. ‘So where is my little lordling?’

‘He goes to school’ Juliana was hiding the truth. Valentine was here. He was upstairs, kept off school with an illness, probably feigned. Val’s idea of a good life was lying in bed, wrapped in a quilt, surrounded by books and toys, with the dogs Muff and Hero snuggled alongside him, tended by sympathetic women who would bear him broths or fruit juices. Now eleven years old and a master-manipulator, Val had perfected a cough that sounded as if he had only two days left on earth. It had to be taken seriously. The one time Juliana had hardened her heart and sent him to school anyway, he had been brought home in an apple cart, semi-conscious, with the worst case of croup the doctor had ever seen … ‘He is good at his books and is to go to Oxford University with a generous legacy from poor Edmund Treves.’ She could not help a note of pride.

Lovell burst out in loud laughter. ‘Well, thank the Lord! It is a gentlemanly future! I knew there was a reason for taking up with Edmund.’ His voice dropped gravely, perhaps in memory of Treves. He and Juliana shared that moment, because Edmund had been a friend of their youth, a friend of their married life … Where else would Thomas go, if not here?’

‘He is thirteen! Where has he to go?’ snapped Juliana.

‘Where does your printer work?’

‘In Holborn.’

‘He is there now? When will he return?’

‘I have no idea.’

Lovell scoffed with sarcasm, not believing her. Well, suppose Thomas goes to him … Will not your fellow dash straight here, to bring your darling back to you?’

Juliana thought that Gideon might very well take Thomas straight to the intelligence office.

Lovell came closer. The pain from his bullet wound was bothering him; he lurched slightly against the counter. Unaware of the reason, Juliana even wondered if he might be tipsy; his eyes glittered with enlarged pupils and his cheeks were flushed.

Lovell assumed a soft expression, calculated to remind her of old moments of tenderness and lovemaking. ‘You look as you did the day I first met you in Wallingford —’ He reached out with one hand, as if to tweak her ringlets. Juliana jerked her head back, keeping away from him. ‘… Well, what do you think, Juley — will your man bring my boy home?’

She saw the dangers and hoped not. ‘You assume Thomas can find his way to Holborn.’

‘Oh he’s bright.’ Lovell made his tone suggest he now knew Tom better than she did.

‘Tom would come to me.’ Juliana, who never doubted her child’s intelligence, desperately hoped he would work out that his father would come looking here.

Lovell fell silent. Once Thomas changed allegiance, he might successfully go into hiding. The past nine months had taught the boy about living undercover … ‘I wonder — is that what you really think? You know how to wriggle when questioned!’

‘I learned it’, Juliana retorted, lying to the Committee for Compounding about your actions, then under interrogation from Parliament about your whereabouts!’

Was it you who laid the information against me?’

The sudden question was crude. It shocked Juliana. ‘How can you suggest it? I defended you, Orlando; I did it for years and against all comers —’

He at once became contrite. ‘Oh I have been such a trouble to you! Sweetheart, I apologise —’

‘You feel nothing. You never did.’

Lovell still had choices. Soon, with this wound, those choices would run out. Although he had done his best to cleanse the bullet hole and pack it, he was starting to feel drowsy. He decided that this was the best place to rest. The house was private enough. ‘So Tom will come here … Let us not stand in your shop, my dear. You and I will go upstairs and seat ourselves politely. Then we shall wait.’

Juliana flinched. She had managed to endure him in her shop, which was a public place, but letting him into her home, the home she shared with Gideon, would be hideous.

Lovell saw it. He grew angry, with an acid growl in the guts. He urged Juliana towards the lobby where he knew the stairs were, though he himself stayed and began flinging open the drawers where she kept her stock. He tossed out whatever he found there — ribbon, tape, needles, embroidery scissors, skeins of wool, buttons, bright silks wrapped in paper …

‘If you are searching for the carbine,’ Juliana told him coldly, refusing to show her panic, ‘Gideon took it away to Holborn, to find out why it did not fire.’

‘He told you about that!’

She did not trouble to reply. Unable to bear the sight of her jumbled stock, she turned away and went quickly upstairs. Her mind whispered secretly,
If Gideon comes home, he will see the disturbance and know who is here…

Lovell followed her.

His presence was now an invasion. They were both aware of it.

Upstairs, he gazed around. He could see that this was the home Juliana had always said she wanted. She had made everywhere comfortable, in her own style. She and Jukes must have money. Their main room had had its walls painted with stencils of tendrilled flowers. Light monotone curtains hung at windows on fine brass rods, except where there were previously existing wooden shutters. Little of their furniture could be inherited; they had new sets of turned barley-twist chairs with long cane panels, small buffets, a large rectangular table that must have been a challenge for its hauliers to manipulate upstairs. Plain chimney boards stood across the grates since it was summer. There was an almanac nailed up in a corridor, with a couple of old maps. Conveniences were in good supply — hanging shelves and cupboards, joint-stools, rush-light holders, candle boxes, firedogs. Everywhere were cushions, embroidered in glorious colours.

Reconnoitring, Lovell flung open doors. Beyond the main room on the first floor he found a smart little parlour, with Juliana’s needlework on a small round gateleg table; he also saw a teetering pile of news-sheets on the floor, beside a second chair. That annoyed him. Exploring on the second floor, his mood grew worse. The first room he looked in was the master bedroom. The bed had been made earlier; its coverlet was neutrally smoothed, hiding the side-by-side pillows. But beneath a square, rush-topped stool stood a pair of man’s shoes, toes together and heels apart, tidy yet easy and casual. The householder’s nightshirt, embroidered in self-colour linen thread, hung on a double hook, along with his wife’s woollen shawl.

Deliberately offending Juliana, Orlando Lovell stretched out on her marital bed, in his boots. ‘Comfortable!’

Too comforting: so tempting, he risked giving way to pain and losing his control. With a charmless invitation, he held open his arms to her. Sickened, Juliana turned away, on the verge of weeping.

Lovell swung upright. Sulkily, he sat on the edge of the bed. He looked around. Forcing himself to activity, he pulled open the door on the little pot-cupboard. He looked under the bed. The house was swept and spotless, so he was not surprised he found nothing; a man with an item to hide would know the maid would discover it there. Lovell stood, knocked chairs aside, filled the room with his violence.

‘What do you want?’ Juliana begged, trying to make him leave her bedroom.

‘His other carbine.’

‘Children live in the house — for heaven’s sake! It is safe in its box, up on the top of the press cupboard.’ This was a tall item for storing clothes, with deep drawers below an upper section that had doors.

‘Get it for me.’

‘Get it yourself!’

‘Do as I say’ Lovell strode to Juliana, dragging her by one arm. Impatiently she pulled free, fetched a chair to climb on and lifted down the box.

Lovell snatched it. One-handed, he removed the gun, tucking it under his elbow as he took bullets and powder and charged it. Juliana was not altogether alarmed. Men regularly had weapons at home. She watched Lovell select spare bullets and powder. He shoved the gun through his belt.

There was no suggestion he would use the weapon to terrorise her. Why should he? To him, they still had their natural married relationship. He was giving orders which she obeyed. He expected her to be dutiful. She tried not to anger him. Only Juliana knew how much she was silently defying him.

He stared around the room once more, then stormed out, jerking his head for her to follow. He stomped back downstairs to the first floor. Juliana moved at his heels, pausing only to glance back tremulously in case Lovell had disturbed the other occupants of the house. No sound came from Valentine in his sickroom, or Catherine who was sitting with him. No sound came from the baby either, though that could never last.

In the main room on the first floor, Lovell eased himself into a large, ancient armchair with a carved scallop-shell back that stood beside the empty hearth. From the doorway, Juliana exclaimed faintly. ‘You are in my father’s chair!’

‘It’s damnably hard.’

‘I should warn you, Father died in it.’

‘When was that?’

‘During the siege of Colchester.’

‘He lived so long! You kept that from me. You kept a lot from me, I now suspect.’

‘Nothing important,’ replied Juliana matter-of-factly. ‘I was true.’

‘So true that you rushed into bigamy!’ Obsessed, Lovell demanded in a low voice, ‘Did you know this man Jukes while you knew me?’

‘I met him long afterwards.’

‘You were my wife, but he propositioned you?’

Tired of this, Juliana exclaimed, ‘Oh be reasonable! You were long gone. I could see Gideon Jukes might love me. I could see I might love him.
You
were supposed to be in the ship lost with Prince Maurice —’

‘That would have been convenient!’

A faint sheen on the forehead, combined with Lovell’s hectic colour, now began to warn her he might be unwell. It made him unpredictable. Deeper unease overcame her when he began abstractedly unbuttoning his coat so he could rub at his shoulder.

Lovell waved a hand around what he recognised was the most used room in the house. Shelves held books; he had seen books everywhere and he flattered himself some had been given to his wife by him. This is what you want? Your Commonwealth love-nest?’ Juliana noticed warily that his tone became cajoling. ‘Well, I see no objection to living this way. Come back to me, as you are meant to do. You shall have this in a house of ours, and I shall enjoy it with you.’

The request was so unreasonable, Juliana felt exhausted. ‘This was what I always wanted. You and I
never
had it.’

‘I gave you love.’

‘And I to you — or so I tried, but I could not love the perpetually absent.’ Juliana hated to engage with Lovell, but suddenly her anger came out strongly. ‘You left me, Orlando, for year after year after year. You never told me your plans. You abandoned me and your children. You might never have come back to us at all, were it not for these plots I know you are tangled in. So now it is a convenience for you to say, “I am in England for my wife”. But being a convenience is not enough for me. It is not marriage.’