Rebels and Traitors (56 page)

Regulations forbade Thames wherrymen from bringing their boats by night; it was supposedly to save young gentlemen from sin. Sin had gone north. Yet men in the city knew that on any South Bank street-corner cheap fornication with a woman desperate to buy food could be had. In these dark diocesan liberties where drunkenness and disorder had always flourished, nights were noisy and days were drear. Here beneath Winchester Palace, whose hypocritical bishops had raked in rents from the brothels for centuries, stood the Clink Prison, a miserable hole which regularly flooded, where heretics, debtors and those who ruined the doubtful peace were incarcerated. In local alleys used as lavatories and refuse dumps stood many rough dockside taverns where poor whores in white aprons (to make them visible on the dark streets) mingled with thieves, confidence tricksters, dubious surgeons and false astrologers. Above many a ship’s chandlery were abortion premises. Into this slew of sad humanity slid Jem and Eliza as if it were their natural habitat.

For the greater part of a year they subsisted in Southwark. They robbed whores’ clients while they were engaged in lust, and naive sailors so fresh off merchant ships they had not even found the whores. No longer on horseback, they took to luring victims up cul-de-sacs, hoping for an intrigue with Eliza but instead being beaten up by Jem. Sometimes Eliza would pretend to faint, with Jem leaping on any bystander who was foolish enough to try to help. Their simplest trick was to shout ‘Stop, thief!’, then watch where members of the public clapped their hands to make sure they still had their money safe — after which it was quickly removed by nimble hands. Despite ample profits, Eliza learned not to dress too richly, lest she be questioned by the authorities wanting to know how she could trick herself out in such finery. Jem learned little.

There comes a moment in many business partnerships where the more talented partner begins to regret hitching up with a lesser spirit. Since Eliza still refused to be Jem Starling’s doxy, inevitably he found someone else. When he took up with a pockmarked bragging wanton called Sarah Straw, Eliza knew business would suffer.

When she was not conjugating with Jem Starling, Straw was a procurer for a bawd called Mrs Flemming; she looked out for young girls who had just come up to London on a carrier’s cart, seeking work. She befriended them, offered them somewhere to stay and lured them into prostitution. If these fresh-faced innocents were virgins, they fetched a premium at the brothel — and if they were
not
virgins, they could be ‘restored’ by a duplicitous physician called Doctor Lime for a modest fee. If they were pregnant, he would deal with that for a further shilling. If they were not pregnant, Mother Flemming’s extremely fertile doorkeeper, her hector, soon saw to the business.

Holding people up with firearms was too dangerous in London. Jem was now reliant on Eliza’s skill to rob pockets. He had gone so soft he even relied on her aggression for his own protection. In Eliza’s opinion, Jem Starling was nothing without her. His new ladyfriend was a demanding piece, and to keep Sarah sweet he began to diddle Eliza on the share-out from their work. Sarah Straw then made the mistake of attempting to recruit Eliza for Mrs Flemming’s disorderly house by Blackfriars Stairs. After you have learned the hazards of your trade, you may seek promotion to be a bawd yourself. It requires very little outlay to set up in an establishment, and the profits are extreme. You are no beauty, but with a few tricks, you should pass for saleable …’

This ploy to get Eliza out of the way was Straw’s mistake. She was left in no doubt of it, by the time Eliza finished beating her with a blackjack. Not only were Sarah Straw’s physical attractions ruined, Jem Starling was soon in no position to lavish attention upon her. Eliza had informed on him to the Justices and he was thrown into jail. ‘He works in company with a woman, one Straw, a bawd’s baggage,’ lied Eliza in her deposition. ‘She will deny it, so do not heed her pleas …’

She knew Jem and Sarah were unlikely to make retaliatory accusations against her, because they needed her to remain on the outside, in order to fetch the money she and Jem had stashed away so they could bribe their way to freedom. Vowing herself innocent of their betrayal, she promised she would collect cash for a speedy rescue. She had no intention of doing it. Away she rode on a stolen horse, and she did indeed visit several of their old safe houses, removing what she considered her fair share of her savings with Jem. Then she kept riding north.

Suitably attired and with her old name of Dorothy Groome, she made her way to Stony Stratford. There she tracked down the parish authorities and with a humble confession made enquiries about the child she had abandoned. Sadly, she was told the records showed that, like most infants found in church porches, after it was put out to a wet-nurse her baby had died. Under pressure, she made a donation to parish funds, then cursed as she was forced to ride away in disappointment.

She had tried to do right. All it brought her were bad memories and financial loss.

Knowing no other life, she determined to return to Bankside. She thought she could make things straight with Jem. But during her long absence, Jem Starling and his doxy had found their own means of securing a release, though they needed to keep out of sight of the authorities and had vanished into the stews.

The day of her arrival back in Southwark was the 3rd of August 1647. Eliza gradually became aware that this whole area south of the river had a strange atmosphere. The streets were bare of whores, drunks and shady drifters. Foreign sailors risked walking about, staring around in curiosity. Some householders stood in their doorways, looking out. Otherwise, there were soldiers in red coats absolutely everywhere.

Her heart beat. Thinking about the baby had been bad enough. Now even older memories crowded upon her. However, there was no fighting, no looting, no burning of buildings. Nobody screamed. Nobody was shot. None the less, living the life she did, Eliza preferred not to be stopped and subjected to military interrogation. She slipped into a tavern she knew, paid for a supper, ate it out of public view and discreetly bedded down.

Next morning she woke early and braced up to her need to find another new life. With all her possessions in a sagging snapsack, Eliza stood on the bank of the Thames and gazed over at the city, which lay shrouded in coal smoke. She was below London Bridge, the only crossing point. Opposite were Billingsgate and the Custom House, and beyond them the mighty bulk of the Tower, with its forbidding walls and array of turrets, ancient towers and pinnacles. A bridge had stood here for centuries, since Roman times; this one was medieval, built on twenty small arches, with a defensive gateway and a drawbridge at the Southwark end. Along the bridge crowded houses and shops, some seven storeys high; only taverns were absent because there were no cellars for keeping liquor cool. At the centre stood the Chapel of St Thomas à Becket, grander than many parish churches, with steps at river level where fishermen and passenger boats landed. Landing was extremely difficult, as was sailing or rowing through the arches, which were so narrow they constricted the current and caused ferocious rapids. Most people preferred not to risk their lives; they disembarked at the Three Cranes, upstream, then walked along the north shore, past Nonesuch House, and took a different boat at Billingsgate. Watermills and grain mills at the northern end added to the fury of the current. Many people had drowned while ‘shooting the bridge’. If they did pass through safely, they emerged into a more tranquil area; there, below the piers, where Eliza was standing disconsolately, lay the calm waters of the Pool of London, which when it was not frozen over in winter was always packed with trading ships and busy with lighters like waterfleas. Now, in August, the warm weather meant the district was pervaded by the stink of waters so fetid they could rarely be cleansed by the tide.

As she pondered the fickleness of men and the perfidy of women, Eliza’s attention was drawn by unusual sounds and sights. Drumbeats first attracted her notice — not a sombre, funereal beat, but the brisk tattoo that helped infantry to march in step and gave them heart. Turning, she witnessed the departure from Southwark of all the red-coated soldiers who had occupied the south bank yesterday. They were now moving across into London. Their red uniforms, she knew, meant the New Model Army. Amidst a clamour from within, they were given entrance onto the bridge by their supporters, who opened up the Stone Gateway to admit them. Rank after rank, in several regiments, marched over London Bridge. The city, which had taken such measures to protect itself from the enemy, was being invaded by its own troops.

Word on the streets said those soldiers had refused to be sent on service to Ireland and would not disband until Parliament paid money they were owed. ‘Why have we fought,’ they were supposed to have asked, ‘if we are to be treated worse than slaves?’

Eliza waited until all the men had crossed the bridge, then she reached her decision. Although she had never served in such a large army, their military presence reminded her of the past at Dudley and Edgbaston, days which in a way she had enjoyed. That nostalgia emboldened her for the future. She did not need Jem Starling. She would go across and work alone in the city. Once the soldiers had passed, she quietly slipped after them. It was the first time she had set foot on London Bridge and her heart quavered as she negotiated the Stone Gateway, where sturdy poles carried the heads of long-dead traitors, dipped in tar to preserve them, though the relics were mouldering badly.

On the famous bridge, she passed between nearly two hundred tall buildings. Space was short, so houses had been built out over the river on strong wooden supports, projecting over the water as much as seven feet, and also sometimes joined to the opposite houses above the street. Eliza felt she had entered a long tunnel. Merchants lived on the upper storeys and displayed their goods in shop windows at pavement level. They signalled the nature of their businesses with signboards, and did their selling through the windows. This commerce added to the congestion in the two narrow lanes of traffic, which clogged the bridge so badly that someone could take an hour to get across its three hundred yards. But this was reckoned to be an extremely safe community, apart from the risks of fire and pickpockets. Every night there was a curfew, when the gates were closed.

At the far end, Eliza found a long gap in the houses, damage from a serious fire a decade earlier. She was able to stand at the side and gaze upon the great city she was entering. London stretched as far as she could see and would certainly enable her to vanish from Jem Starling’s sight, if he discovered she was back here. She was wise enough to know she was a stranger in the city; being an outsider carried many dangers. This was nothing like the little market town of Birmingham, where she grew up and learned to scavenge. She told herself she had been a soldier and bold highway robber, and could carry off anything. All she ever needed to start afresh was a new alias, a different personality and her native tenacity. Emboldened, she set off across the last few yards and came at last past St Magnus Church onto New Fish Street.

People were marvelling that when the New Model Army soldiers had marched through, they were quiet and disciplined, and stole not so much as an apple.

More fool them!
Eliza thought.

Since nobody had intended to start a civil war, inevitably no one knew how to finish it. Once Naseby had been fought and won, the Parliamentarians mopped up Royalist resistance. It took them ten months, through the winter of 1645-46. Conditions were dire. It was so cold the River Thames froze over in London, and in the West Country they were often battling through snow.

Gideon Jukes had found his regiment again, remaining with the dragoons as Sir Thomas Fairfax led the New Model Army through the West Country. They defeated Goring at the battle of Langport, during which picked bands of musketeers led by Lambert Jukes’s colonel, Thomas Rainborough, crucially fought their way along the hedges to dislodge the Royalists. Lambert, with his foot wound healed, was back in the regiment. Subsequently, it was Gideon’s turn for special action when a detachment under Colonel Okey left the main body of the army temporarily and captured Bath in a surprise dawn raid. They crept up so secretly, they were able to grab the barrels of the guards’ muskets that stuck out of the loopholes; the guards fled, and after firing the gatehouse Okey’s men took the town. Next the dragoons were at the siege of Bristol. Although they were facing Prince Rupert, he now had the difficulties that had beset Massey here two years before: insufficient troops, especially infantry, for the task of defending five miles of walled fortification. During Rupert’s brief but fierce resistance, plague broke out, water ran low and expected orders from the King failed to arrive. None the less, he made good use of carefully positioned artillery, while his cavalry regularly dashed out to raid and harass. During one of these raids, Colonel Okey was taken prisoner, which depressed and unsettled his regiment.