Rebels and Traitors (54 page)

That was not quite how the squire had described it.
I assume desperation made him peremptory. All he lacked was a demand that I myself should pay the fine for his delinquency…
What was your father’s reply to you, Orlando?’

‘Did he not tell you?’

‘Only hints.’

‘He wished no evil on me, but said he could do nothing with Parliament. He sent me only one haughty letter, telling me to compound and beg for a pardon, then to mend my life.’

‘Your sister Mary wrote more often, she told me.’

Orlando laughed briefly, suddenly himself again. Indeed! Endless sanctimonious instructions … After the first, I threw the letters in the fire unopened.’

‘You had a fire then!’ Juliana could be arch. ‘
I
would have been allowed to bring you food and comforts. Would you not have liked tidings of me and your boys?’ She struggled against a catch in her voice.

‘It would have broken my heart!’ cried Orlando, like a true cavalier. ‘The worst of being imprisoned was to be separated from you!’ They were back on their old footing by that time, so Juliana received this gallantry without excitement.

She told Orlando about meeting his land agent and her forays among his tenants. He listened with astonishment. Then he declared he had always recognised her great spirit. He called her a queen among wives. ‘Have the committee given you a certificate?’

‘They have. But in view of your escape, my effort was wasted.’

‘Oh I won’t pay a fine now, but the certificate will be of good use if ever I am captured again.’

‘You intend to go on fighting? You could still compound for your estates. Say you will live in peace. Thousands of Royalists are doing it. Comply, and you could be given all your land back.’ Juliana was testing him. She was certain that he had escaped in order to avoid swearing an oath he could not keep. He would fight for the King again until every hope was gone. ‘Did you give your parole to your captors?’

‘I may have done …’ Orlando looked vague. ‘Did you get any funds from my father? He swore he would give me nothing.’

‘And he was true to his word.’

The squire’s five pounds was hidden in a pillow. Now Juliana was, as she had boasted to Isaac Bonalleck, an honest woman with a conscience. One who was lying, bare-faced, to her husband.

They had three and a half months together. For the rest of January, February, March, and almost all of April, they lived like a real family. Since the town was under siege, it was hardly normal life. Juliana felt she was permanently waiting to begin a proper domestic regime. Still, there were few deprivations. Three thousand cattle and cartloads of other provisions had been brought in during the previous autumn to prepare for the siege.

All the careful routines she had established for bringing up her children sensibly were upset by Lovell. He had no idea that infants should keep regular mealtimes and bedtimes. He would bring them expensive presents, splurging their meagre funds, while Juliana tried to scrimp. Tom, in particular, was like an intriguing pet to Orlando, who would disrupt their quiet lives with games and dangerous excursions ‘to view the rebels over the walls’. A bad moment was when he made small firecrackers from gunpowder for Tom, throwing one in the fire unexpectedly to terrify Juliana. She could not remonstrate since Lovell used the excuse that he wanted to spend every possible moment with his sons, or at least with Tom, who was old enough to play. ‘If we are enjoying ourselves, what can be the harm?’

‘You buy Tom’s love with a hobbyhorse, while you are teaching him to see his mother as a figure of fun — or a complaining ogre, which is worse. I see harm in that, Orlando! And I shall murder you, if he is stupidly burned by a firecracker.’

‘I shall reform!’ promised Orlando. He solemnly told his son, ‘Thomas, your mother’s word is law. Follow my example and do not make her grieve. And if ever I am not here, Tom, you must obey and cherish her.’

Tom, bright-eyed with shared mischief, covered his mouth to hide his enormous grin, then ran off in fits of silly giggling.

‘He is three years old. And you are —’

‘Twenty-eight!’ admitted Lovell penitently, with that untrustworthy look in his eyes.

At the end of January Sir Thomas Fairfax began a siege of Exeter. The King’s trusty general, Sir Ralph Hopton, lured away Fairfax and most of the New Model Army by digging in at Torrington, where Fairfax winkled him out after a fierce fight. Fairfax himself had a narrow escape from an enormous explosion when a desperate soldier fired a huge magazine in the church. Offered generous terms, Hopton accepted; he disbanded the King’s army in the west and went abroad. The Prince of Wales gave up and sailed for the Scilly Isles. In March another old Royalist, Lord Astley, marched from Worcester to bring the King at Oxford three thousand men. At Stow-on-the-Wold, he ran into a joint New Model Army force under Rainborough, Fleetwood and Brereton. After a heavy exchange of fire, Astley’s force was overwhelmed and all made prisoners. This was the last remaining Royalist army in the field.

The King sought permission to go to Westminster, to negotiate in person, but was refused. A Frenchman began brokering terms for Charles secretly to join the Scottish Covenanters’ army.

In April Sir Thomas Fairfax brought up the main body of the New Model Army from the West Country. The siege of Oxford began to bite. On the 26th the last Royalist garrison guarding the area, at Woodstock, fell. Next day the town governor, Sir Thomas Glemham, waved off a certain ‘Harry’, servant to a Mr Ashburnham. Harry and three companions successfully rode out over Magdalen Bridge. It was the King, disguised in rough clothes and with shorn hair, using a counterfeit warrant to get out through the Parliamentary lines.

Fairfax must have known the King had gone. He toughened up. At the end of the month he ordered his troops to allow no one to leave Oxford, except to negotiate terms. It had become a close siege.

Eight days after he left Oxford, the King turned up outside the long-standing Royalist base at Newark-on-Trent. It was still being besieged by the Covenanters and Charles placed himself in the Scots’ control, hoping for better terms than he might expect from the English. He told Newark to surrender; three days later, the Scots took it. Immediately, they struck camp and transported themselves north to Newcastle, with the King in semi-captivity In June, letters from him were intercepted, revealing his duplicitous secret negotiations with the Scots whilst at the same time, yet again, he requested armed support from the Irish and French. Parliament regarded this as treasonous.

In Oxford, neither side wanted a damaging siege. There was anxiety, though no desperate hardship. A magazine to supply provisions opened. A pronouncement was made that there would be a penalty of death for any soldier taking food from civilians. Cannon-fire was heard. Fairfax formally summoned the city, sending a trumpeter:

There was a delay to save face. Artillery-fire was exchanged. A cannon ball hit Christ Church. A shot from Oxford killed a New Model Army colonel on Headington Hill. The Parliamentarians remained confident. On June the 15th, outside Sir Thomas Fairfax’s tented headquarters, Oliver Cromwell’s daughter Bridget was married to the dark-browed manipulator, Henry Ireton.

The outcome of the siege had never been in doubt. There were said to be six months’ supplies of food remaining, but there was no point holding out. The King sent Oxford his formal permission to give up. The governor signed articles of surrender. Negotiations dragged on, but on the 25th of June the keys of the city were formally handed to Sir Thomas Fairfax. The garrison was allowed to march out, each of the three thousand men with a safe conduct to travel home. Princes Rupert and Maurice left, also with passes to leave the country. However, James, Duke of York, was sent as Parliament’s prisoner to London.

Oxford filled up with New Model Army soldiers in their red coats. Although he was a Cambridge man, Fairfax put a special guard on the Bodleian Library. That preserved it from destruction, though the Parliamentarians found many books had already had their chains cut and been fraudulently sold.

By then, with his wife’s foreknowledge, Orlando Lovell had quietly disappeared. Juliana clung on in the house in St Aldate’s, wondering yet again when, if ever, she might next see her husband. He had promised to come back for her, once normality resumed. He said it was best if she truthfully had no idea where he was. She feared he had gone with Prince Rupert, and had left the country — not something Juliana wished for herself, though she would follow him if he asked. She missed him in the house and in her bed. She was hoping that this time he had not left her pregnant.

‘Well, little Tom. Now it is just you and me again, and baby Valentine.’

Then Tom gazed up at her for a moment, as if to make sure she was not actually weeping, before he returned to playing on the floor extremely quietly. He had his father’s eyes and his mother’s swift intelligence. Tom could adapt to new situations fast. He had grasped, and amiably accepted, that times for revelry and noise were over. He had gained a hobbyhorse but knew he must take good care of it because there would not be another gift for a long while. The father he had only just come to know was gone again.

Some time in the aftermath of the battle of Naseby, a male traveller had ridden along the empty highway between Beaconsfield and Windsor. He looked well-to-do. His hat was velvet with half an ostrich plume, his cloak was scarlet, his britches had a rash of gold lacing, his boots were polished and lace cuffs dangled elegantly from his coat sleeves. His manner was jaunty and careless, despite the seriousness of the times. If he was a Royalist fugitive, he hid it well.

A mile or two before Slough, the rider came upon a young woman disconsolately leaning on a stile beside the road. In the cheerful way of any seventeenth-century gentleman who spied an unescorted female, he at once reined in his horse and bent down to offer her the courtesy of a lewd offer. As if she had been expecting this privilege, she straightened up and turned towards him. She was monumentally pregnant.

With the shameless good grace of the men of his time, he immediately apologised and — after a disappointed curse — changed the offer to one of general assistance. Clearly exhausted, the vulnerable damsel begged for a ride to the next town. He agreed. She climbed on the handy stile and mounted behind him side-saddle, surprisingly limber in her movements for one so near her time — though she groaned all too convincingly as she took her place.

They rode on. He whistled ‘Greensleeves’ to himself with the good humour any man would feel while doing a good deed for a pregnant woman. She clung to him, one slim arm around his waist rather charmingly. Since he had to presume she was a respectable wife, he refrained from conversation. She sat silent until he became used to her presence.

At a particularly deserted spot, with woods on either hand, the rider felt a sudden jarring movement behind him. As he half turned indignantly, he saw something drop behind the horse — a large cushion.

Next minute his head was pulled hard back by his flowing hair, then he was shoved off his mount sideways. His short sword flew from its scabbard and executed a spiral into a ditch. As he landed heavily on to the road, the woman jumped down after him. Practised hands slipped a noose of rope around his body, which tightened with a series of painful tugs, while his ruthless assailant pressed the hard, cold butt of a weapon meaningfully against his right ear. When he wriggled, she shoved his face in the mud with her foot, while she continued trussing him like a capon. Once he was helpless, she came rifling through his pockets, then she moved off to search his travel bags.

She obviously hoped for more than she found.

When she realised he had only threepence farthing, there was a thoughtful pause. The pauper victim risked rolling over to view her discomfiture. Any thought of escape was deterred by the carbine she brandished. ‘Don’t be a fool. I can use this. I served as a soldier in man’s clothes.’

Even if the captive suspected she had no bullets, he was not keen to test it. Besides, he felt as much curiosity about her as she displayed towards him. ‘Your bags are light, mister; are they to be filled with plunder, taken from travellers on the road?’

She was extremely thin, about seventeen. Now she had shed the false belly, her gown hung on her raggedly. Her hood had slipped back so her tangled hair showed, wound in a rough topknot.

She was fearless. The man on the ground waited to see what she would do. She flipped one of his lace cuffs with the butt of her gun, tugging away the fabric to reveal it was a sham; he had no shirt attached to it. ‘Here’s a turn-up. I came to rob you, but you would just as soon have robbed me!’

Her itchy red eyes went to his horse. She strolled across and managed to examine its long ear. ‘I wonder — shall I find an army brand? Oh yes! I see you enlarged the letters, to disguise his origin — Newport Pagnell! Too close to be riding about on him; you should gallop him away at least thirty miles, and fence him to some trustworthy dealer … A false tail might keep you safe. Or you could give him a white blaze he was not foaled with.’ She came back to her captive.