Rebels and Traitors (55 page)

He produced a rueful grin. ‘I am useless to you, madam. No point dragging me to a deep thicket for a strip-search,’ he commiserated. ‘Even if you were strong enough.’

‘Leave you in a remote spot, tied to a post or tree?’ She stared quickly up and down the road. ‘Do you work alone?’

‘Do you?’ he shot back, pretending he had a crowd of lusty associates who would turn up any moment. She retorted that
she
had friends who would be along shortly. ‘Of course!’ he scoffed. ‘Else how would you get away from here?’

She laughed easily. ‘On your horse, I think. Though I shall be forced to ride him across country, in case some trooper under the Black Bible flag recognises him.’ She walked over to the beast again, talking quietly. At first the horse shied away, head down, snatching at tussocks of long grass but watching her warily with one wild eye. She kept talking. Soon she had caught its reins and led it back.

While she was engaged in that, the supine man (who had been working on her rope surreptitiously) abruptly bucked and freed himself. As he squirmed and sat up, she swung the carbine in an easy movement and fired.

The gun
was
loaded. Just in time, he ducked, so all he lost was a small piece of ear. The blood was copious. The girl laughed heartlessly. She was tough. She was hard as a blacksmith’s anvil. ‘Stay where I put you next time.’

‘Damned witch and whore!’ He was mopping unsuccessfully with one of his fake lace cuffs. She left him to it, while she reloaded the carbine.

‘Call me neither. True, I am a working woman, but I don’t swive. I merely part those who have from what they have, that I may have it in their place.’

‘How did you get your gun?’

‘The usual way. Helped myself. A fine snaphance cavalry pistol with silver engraving, in its neat holder, powder in a flask and bullets in a darling little bag.’

‘You could have sold it.’

‘But I would rather use it!’

‘Save your lead — I give you my parole.’

‘Word of a gentleman?’ scoffed the stylish gun-toter.

‘Word of an honest rogue.’

‘That’s fair! Call me Eliza,’ she offered. And what shall I call you?’

‘Jem Starling.’ He said it with some pride, waiting for her to recognise the name of a fairly well-known highway robber. Whether Eliza knew or not, she pretended his proudly born name was unfamiliar.

And what are you, Jem Starling? Simply a licentious, devious cut-purse — or do you call yourself a knight of the road?’ She pointed to his left hand, where a branded ‘T’, for ‘Theft’, at the base of his thumb showed how in the past he had been taken by the law officers. He had escaped hanging by pleading benefit of clergy; a man could be reprieved on his first offence if he showed he could read. ‘Not very successful, are we, Jem?’

‘An error when I was young and foolish,’ admitted Starling, full of free and easy charm. He was still young, though more foolish than he thought. In his late twenties or early thirties, he looked fit, as a highway robber had to be. He reckoned himself handsome with it. He had voluminous brown-gold hair, through which he ran his fingers now his bloody ear was staunched. She let him sit up, rubbing his wrists ruefully where her rope had bitten in.

‘We all make mistakes!’ replied Eliza, surprisingly serious. ‘What brought you to this life in the open air?’

‘The same as many. I was apprenticed to a weaver in Shoreditch, but he was a bullying felon and I couldn’t stick it. So being bold and courageous, I took to the road. I have followed this genteel calling now for four years, and am held in high repute. Better bid travellers to stand than to be a pickpocket, a sneak-thief creeping in windows, or a cut-purse crawling around the fairs. I know all the inns where travellers may be assessed and their luggage weighed to detect valuables. I have studied the minds of those who make journeys; I can tell you which tall, hefty men will weep like babies if they are accosted and plead to have their rings and money stolen so long as they are not hurt in the process, or which mean wiry little men of affairs will put up a fight like mastiffs, then loudly call for constables and give chase all night, even though all I had off them was tuppence and a handkerchief. I know the cross-country lanes and byways by which to flee to a safe house. I have tickled up plenty of innkeepers who will deny ever seeing me — while letting me sup their best ale in a warm parlour overhead. In case of an unfortunate arrest, I know a good perjurer too, who will be my surety and have me out of jail in a trice, with a very small outlay necessary.

The young woman pushed her carbine into her belt. She looked thoughtful again. We have both wasted an afternoon. To tell the truth, I am weary of the road alone, and it would be easier in company. I am as brave as you, and can help you gull fools — or hold them at my carbine’s end while you soothe them and lift all their treasures. What do you say Jem?’

The highwayman rocked to his feet in one long easy movement. He bowed like a courtier. ‘I say that is a handsome offer, and I accept it.’

‘I will be no man’s doxy!’ Eliza warned. ‘I will not bear a whining babe and leave it on the parish.’ Nothing gave away the fact she spoke from bitter experience. ‘We must be equal partners, and no cullyrumping.’

Word of honour, milady!’ Jem Starling assured her, with a flash of the eye and a twirl of the hand, gestures he had perfected for reassuring winsome lady travellers before he stole their necklaces, and fingered in their plackets too, if they looked ripe for it. He was thinking himself well capable of changing this one’s mind. Eliza saw the thought form, but merely left him with it gently.

She had not wanted to trust anyone, but she foresaw hard times coming. If there was to be peace, now the big battle at Naseby had been fought, the road would be crowded with ragged, cast-off, starving soldiers, struggling homeward from their various armies, all desperate to cover their arrears by amateur theft. Professionals would need to band together to compete.

They robbed the rich; they robbed the poor. They robbed anyone who came along. They preferred the rich, for economy of effort, but if the poor sauntered past them off guard and had clothing, food or the proceeds of their own thefts, they set upon the poor without a qualm. Sometimes the poor struck back. Eliza lost her heart to a silver taffeta bodice she stole from a cloak bag, but had it snatched from her by a stranger before she had possessed it two hours; she spent the rest of her life hoping to find that bodice again or see one like it. Jem Starling was once beaten up at the back of a tavern so badly that he nearly lost an eye and for several months lacked his normal braggadocio.

It was a good time to be on the road. The hope of peace made people believe they could return to normal life. Projects that had been put into abeyance were revived. Bags of hidden gold were retrieved from thatched roofs and chimneys, then carried abroad to pay off outstanding debts, to pay fines, to fulfil legacies, to relieve suffering widows and succour the war’s orphans. Delayed weddings were organised. Trade revived. All of these meant money would be on the move. Highway robbery flourished.

On the whole they were clever. Sometimes Jem Starling was accompanied by a ‘boy’ who held the horses; sometimes a woman was with him. They would dawdle around inns, never looking at each other. Since they were not lovers — or not often — Jem felt free to court serving wenches and innkeepers’ wives like a virile single man, which concealed their partnership. They could ride for hours with other people, yet nobody suspected they knew each other. This enabled surprise when they attacked, but also they wanted their success kept secret. In their plan to own wild riches they gathered their ‘earnings’ as unobtrusively as possible. They hid away their money and any other treasures they had not yet exchanged for cash in safe houses across several counties. They had to pay a premium to the owners of the safe houses, but the repute they slowly earned for doing honest business (and for intolerance of treachery) helped make friends. Their willingness to shoot and stab to protect their capital was also known; this hint of danger about them did no harm.

In their first year they worked in the countryside. They moved gradually eastwards, in a wide loop around the capital, passing from one arterial road to the next as each location became too hot for them. Their methods were special but their aims were no different from those of honest business owners. They built up a reputation, earned goodwill, ruthlessly saw off competition and cautiously planned future expansion. They had treasurers who banked their capital. They used legal associates to bribe them out of trouble. Had their little empire’s profits ever been subjected to unfair taxation, they would have fought that just as tenaciously as those tradesmen, merchants and landowners who went to war over the fiscal trickery of King Charles.

In due course Jem and Eliza gravitated closer to London. London was where all the big money was.

The year 1647 saw them reach Kent, working along the old Dover Road. During this period they found themselves at odds with the local criminals and highwaymen. Gadshill, Shooters Hill and the wilds of Blackheath were as busy with hold-ups as ever in their notorious history, but the nearby villagers believed that rich pickings from travellers were their hereditary right. The couple found that newcomers were resented and cold-shouldered. If newcomers failed to take the hint, locals turned nasty. As they took their ease at an inn, enjoying their spoils, others would barge in, bringing victims Jem and Eliza had robbed. The country bumpkins would point them out, even though Jem had by then pushed up his eye patch, while Eliza had set aside her pregnancy bump. They would have to buy off their victims, and perhaps a Justice’s clerk as well, if one had been brought along. Inn staff were threatened with reprisals for giving them a welcome; fences and pawn merchants, who needed to live unobtrusively, were deterred with warnings. If all else failed, the locals resorted to bloody violence.

‘Unfair practices are ruinous to us honest toilers. We must depart from these sheep-shagging parsnips,’ Jem decided.

So they moved in even closer to London, where they thought the sophisticated business ethos might be more to their taste. They attached themselves to a party from Canterbury from whom, when they decamped in the night, they took two fat purses and a good saddle. Then they rode in through Greenwich and past Deptford, where there was a school for young ladies which they robbed of a sheet and pillowcase, a musical instrument and a freshly baked eel-pie, together with the dish it sat in. A man who claimed to be a royal park ranger offered to sell them a haunch of the King’s venison, which he said his wife would cook for them. The King, they heard from the ranger (who presumably should know), had been sold by the Scots to the New Model Army. This news was of little interest to them, even if it meant His Majesty might be returned to London, wanting to eat his own venison. Since they had the eel-pie already, they declined the haunch politely; when dealing with other entrepreneurs, Jem Starling and Eliza were not greedy.

Their journey brought them down through the shipbuilding areas of Deptford and Rotherhithe, into the legendary stews of Southwark. The sour and seamy old rents of the bishopric of Winchester looked at their worst in the evening, when they managed to persuade guards to let them enter the Lines of Communication that enclosed even this grim old district within London’s fortifications. On Bankside the bull- and bear-baiting pits still existed, though the famous theatres where Shakespeare and his contemporaries once made their names had been closed down. Other entertainments persisted. The Long Parliament’s first wild rash of liberal acts had not just swept away censorship of printed material, but reduced prostitution from a felony to a nuisance. A felony was a hanging offence, as any professional thief had to know, but for a mere nuisance the penalty was just a whipping and a spell in a house of correction. In abolishing torture, too, Parliament had stopped whores being stripped to the waist and whipped at a cart-tail. But religious rectitude had forced the trade underground — where, as always, it flourished all the more.

Although prostitution migrated across the river to Cow Cross, Clerkenwell, Smithfield and most notoriously Turnmill Street and Pickthatch by Aldersgate, there were still blatant brothels on Bankside. Gone were the days of Holland’s Leaguer, the elegant moated mansion in Old Paris Garden on Bankside, where gentlemen from King James downwards had been entertained to dancing, fine cuisine and expert fornication in luxurious surroundings run by the grand bawd Elizabeth Holland. The Leaguer, the epitome of a luxurious brothel, had been closed down by troops in the 1630s; its pleasant gardens now lay unkempt and its exquisite troupe of sexual specialists had fled through secret exits and dispersed. Yet the lowest women of the night still shrieked and caterwauled with their customers on the dark wharves, and drabs who had made themselves look attractive despite hard lives and the pox still clustered in doorways, beckoning gentlemen to come into Southwark’s rotting houses for what passed as pleasure.