Rebels and traitors

Chapter Thirty-Seven — Oxford: 1646

Juliana knew Lovell would not present himself to his father as a refugee. She decided to return to Oxford.

The one person she was sorry to leave was the governess in the next-door cottage, whose lonely life on the estate had been brightened by Tom's antics and who loved to coo over the baby. When Juliana told her of her decision to leave, the two women shared yet another rabbit stew, sucking on the joints informally, with their bowls on their knees at the fireside.

'I confide in you, Mistress Lovell, whenever the squire is sent a carp pie it always comes from the house to me — they are very much full of fishbones so the squire will not attempt to eat them, and honestly they are not to my taste either, but I must be grateful…'

Juliana tried to lure the faded old lady into providing some picture of Orlando in his youth. 'I taught the girls; I never knew the boys…'

'Will you have a spoon for your gravy?'

Under the influence of a good rich gravy, discretion dissolved: 'Well, he was very much an inward, solitary youngster. Nobody was surprised at what he did, though it broke his mother's heart. He was a very pretty little man — much like your Tom — and she always made a great pet of him — which you, of course, have too much good sense to do with your boys — it may be why he gave himself expectations of an inheritance, despite not being the first-born. But then the squire set him straight in his delusions, telling him plainly that Ralph must have the estate, with dowries for the girls — of whom there are so many — you may think Jenny is not to have anything, but wrongly, for an allocation was set aside for her, and would be hers when she wanted, but her liking was for a young man who fights for the King; I believe he lives yet, but has married another, despairing of our squire's ever unbending — and that — (I mean, when the squire was so firm with Orlando) was when they fell to quarrelling, the squire and he. His late mother was a most kind, virtuous lady; her great passion was blackwork embroidery — if you saw Ralph in his nightshirt it is likely he wore a piece of his mother's stitchery.'

'Very fine on the high collar and in bands over the chest, patterned with meanders and carnations… Orlando caused a scandal, he told me?'

'Yes, he did. But we never talk of that.'

At the squire's house next day, news of Juliana's departure was a visible relief. Orlando's father took a small Venice glass of claret with her, to show his gratitude that she was making a quiet exit. Mary Falconer, who had been boiling sweet soap in the closet, rushed out in a long apron to give Juliana a wish for luck and a little lawn bag of rose-scented soap balls. More usefully, Lady Swayne parted with baby-clothes and cot-bedding, managing to do so like an empress condescending to a peasant. Although he had sworn against it, the squire in strict private pressed five pounds into Juliana's hand; he warned her off asking for any more ever, then advised her to keep the gift from her husband.

She had to bring it home safe first: in the time-honoured manner, that evening she sat up and she sewed her money into her petticoat.

To be rid of her faster, a travel pass had been obtained from the Hampshire Committee. She had planned to make her own way with the carriers, but the Lovells were anxious about danger from the clubmen — bands of armed countrymen who were wearied beyond endurance of being taxed and raided by soldiers. These vigilantes had declared themselves the enemies of both King and Parliament, and roamed about the counties frightening everyone. To avoid attack, Juliana was instructed that since the Reverend Isaac Bonalleck was going her way, he would take her safely to the outskirts of Oxford. 'Or indeed,' said Francis Falconer, hopefully, 'if the siege of that town has ended, he can escort you right to your house.'

Juliana feared she no longer had a house, although Edmund Treves had promised to try to intercede with the landlord.

She never met Isaac Bonalleck's wife. Orlando's sister Bridget was so determined not to be infected by Royalism, she had refused any introduction to Juliana. Bonalleck was a fervent preacher who read his Bible as he rode the dawdling pad horse. His suit was black, his linen devoid of ornament, his collar small, his mouth tight, his colour florid. He suffered hurricanes of flatulence. The surges of embarrassment which overwhelmed him after every blast from his stomach went some way towards giving him a fragile humanity.

It took them a week to forge a passage through the muddy lanes and pot-holed highways. Often the road was so impassable that carriers hacked down the hedges and crossed into neighbouring fields. Almost sanctioned in law because the landowners were supposed to maintain the roads, this was generally accepted; far-sighted travellers carried axes for the purpose. Where last week's carriers had churned up the fields too much, they moved over further and further, on one stretch travelling half a mile from the original road. During their slow progress Isaac Bonalleck never discussed meals, weather, the best routes, the state of the roads, prices, indigestion, bad carriers, good post runners, cheating wagoners, or any of the usual subjects travellers chewed over at stops by the wayside or around dining tables in inns.

Only when they reached the outskirts of Oxford, did Mr Bonalleck relax. A New Model Army regiment under Colonel Thomas Rainborough had set up an informal blockade, anticipating a full siege after the winter. Rainborough's brother-in-law was a Mr Winthrop from New England, a man known to Mr Bonalleck, who also shared with Rainborough friendship with a New England preacher called Hugh Peter. So Bonalleck felt he would now be among friends and privileged, whereas Juliana still had to persuade the soldiers to let her enter Oxford. She had arrived during the curfew, an unsuccessful measure against riotous behaviour, so she waited. There was no safety for a respectable woman on the dark streets full of noisy taverns where soldiers habitually sat up in all-night drinking bouts.

When they first arrived and prepared to wait, they were able to observe that Oxford's outlying districts had suffered badly during the war. Growing fields lay fallow. Pasture meadows had lost their turf, dug out to build fortifications. Houses were either badly damaged or completely pulled down. Trees had been felled. No cattle grazed.

Mercy Tulk had fallen asleep with the children. Juliana gritted her teeth for one last meal at the inn with Bonalleck.

Now it emerged that he had spent the whole week of their journey in trepidation, believing that he was escorting a Roman Catholic. 'Oh no. I would have tried to convert you!' exclaimed Juliana heartlessly. She gave up her meal after a few grim mites of tasteless bacon and carrots. Bonalleck was munching on; she told him how, when she was pregnant with Tom and had a bad landlord, she had attended sermons in High Anglican Oxford churches and found them too autocratic.

'Maybe you are a puritan,' commented Bonalleck, without much hope of it. He wiped his mouth with a fourpenny napkin fastidiously; the innkeeper's wife hovered close by, anxious to keep tally of her now very worn table-linen. Mr Bonalleck was already beginning to worry whether the bacon, or more likely the carrots, would give him his usual gales of wind but, encouraged by Juliana, he defined the term for her: 'A puritan yearns for the pure word of God, as revealed in Scripture and in his own prayers; that is, without any additions or falsifications from man — I mean, from diocesans — the Pope and his servants, or detestable bishops. A puritan declines all that is ceremonious in worship. They seek, therefore, a plain, convincing way of preaching which must be put before them in their familiar language. Natural speech, delivered as in a conversation, keeps the attention. Just as railing-off an altar puts separation between a congregation and God, so does the use of inexplicable language, drearily read by some highflown cleric who keeps his head down over his notes. Icons and pomp, statues and surplices, all create mystery, whereas the serious man of God in meek simplicity seeks, through days and hours of scriptural study and his own sober prayer, to see through darkness to the truth.' The need to contain wind forced Mr Bonalleck to a stop.

Juliana had swallowed a tankard of small ale, along with insufficient food; it made her reckless. 'You preach — men and women also? Does your wife preach, Mr Bonalleck, or is she content merely to be an ornament to her husband?'

Bonalleck stared at her. 'My wife has offended you.'

'Absolutely the contrary. Your wife has had nothing to do with me. I am married to her brother and she hates him — yet should she hate me too, without even seeing me? Where in this cold demeanour is "testing truth according to her conscience", which I have always been told is the Protestant ideal, or examining the "pure" evidence?'

'My wife,' said Bridget's husband heavily (he had drunk little; he was studiously godly), 'spent many hours in prayer, asking the Lord to show her a way to deal with you.'

Juliana scoffed angrily. 'If, after so much strict deliberation between the two of them, our Lord informs Mrs Bridget Bonalleck that I am not fit company, then I am as damned as a cockatrice and must take the straight path to hell. Your wife's worthy disapproval makes me feel like a court lady-in-waiting I once observed, making her presence felt in the pews by wearing transparent cobweb lawn.'

In Oxford, she had once seen two such young women float into church in low-cut white gowns, with their breasts barely concealed; among male Royalists they won themselves a reputation of dressing 'like angels', though Nerissa had been outraged. 'All the morals of a rag of old rope!'

Juliana eased herself wearily to her feet. Exhaustion made her disputatious. 'Here is an awkwardness, Mr Bonalleck. For while Mrs Bridget is informed I am so dangerous that merely to greet me politely would threaten her zealous soul, then the Lord comes tiptoeing from her chamber into my own where He tells me with His enduring compassion that I am an honest woman who has many troubles, yet who leads a decent life, with a true conscience. I bid you goodnight, Mr Bonalleck!'

Next morning Juliana, Mercy and the children were permitted to enter Oxford. There was never much difficulty getting into a beleaguered city; the enemy wanted the largest numbers possible inside, using up resources, in order to cause hardship and encourage surrender.

Nervously, Juliana went to the St Aldate's house. The key Nerissa had given her still worked. As soon as she entered, she knew Lovell was there. On his return, he had done what she ought to have done herself: sub-let. He had filled the spare rooms with lodgers, thus enabling himself both to pay the landlord and to obtain some weekly rents. With this income, he had bought new spurs and a brown corded suit, then hired a bootboy. Juliana found him in the parlour, his stockinged feet on the fender before a roaring fire, reading a news-sheet.

She gazed at him for a second before he became aware of her. Then he dropped the paper and spun to his feet. He was a very pretty little man… Oh yes. Under the sometimes-harsh exterior his attractiveness remained. When he smiled at a woman, it was clear he knew that perfectly.

Yet Juliana was his woman. His face lit. Her expression joyfully answered his. In an instant, the two were in each other's arms, clasped hard. Orlando felt very much leaner. Six months in prison had left him thin, weak and drained. 'Oh thank God!' he exclaimed as he held her, speaking with such force that Juliana believed he meant it honestly.

Next moment Tom burst in on them, screaming with delight at the father he must have only half remembered. Tom flung himself at Orlando; Orlando roared and tossed the child up to the smoke-stained kitchen ceiling while Juliana hung back, wincing in case her husband lost his grip and dropped her boy into the fire.

Various things emerged over the next days. Orlando now styled himself major. 'I had to bump myself up a rank to gain better quarters.' Even now he was back in Oxford, no one seemed to query it. He called himself a 'reformado', an officer whose regiment had been disbanded or merged into another, with no position left for him. 'First I was dumped in a hideous prison, the Compter in Southwark. But I managed to be moved to Lambeth Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury's suites were excellent. Sir Roger Twysden's wife shared three rooms there with her husband, having a study and a fair chamber with a chimney. Not being a knight or baronet, I rated one room only — sometimes forced to share that with another prisoner,' Lovell added hastily, seeing that Juliana was wondering why she had not been allowed to come to him.

And you had only enough ink to write to your father!' she sniffed.

Lovell gazed at her. 'Now you have met all the family, you are judging me as they do!'

'I am your wife. Judging you is my special privilege. So, dear heart, how did you escape from the ecclesiastical palace? Was there a crusty one-legged jailor with a beautiful unmarried daughter?'

'Of course!' teased Lovell.

'So you quickly won her confidence and unscrupulously seduced her?'

'Well, to be truthful, the dame was built like a woolsack with three bristly chins and she smelt of piss. Even the rats were scared of her. It took six months just to get her to let me out of a postern and I drew the line at the deed.'

'But she liked you?'

'I liked her more — for having a cousin who was a waterman. He rowed me all the way from Lambeth up to Richmond.'

'Then you walked home?'

'I found a horse.'

He stole the horse, undoubtedly.

He had not been captured after Naseby. He had not even fought at Naseby.

'But Edmund said you were seen!'

Treves must have been so expecting to see me, he imagined me there

… The sad truth is, sweetheart, some of Fairfax's damned new noddlers came into the village the evening before. Ireton and his boys, I think. They captured men of ours who were playing skittles in a tavern garden, then they burst in on us officers, as we sat eating our dinner. Instead of saying grace' — Instead of what? scoffed Juliana silently at this unlikely decoration — 'we were surprised and taken, before the fight ever began.'

'Well, you escaped being hurt,' Juliana replied, feeling her equilibrium falter. Would anything about this man ever be straightforward? Later, she would be relieved when Edmund visited and seemed as loyal to Lovell as always; he confirmed that the eve-of-battle arrests at Naseby village had happened.

Changing the subject, Juliana told Orlando about his brother's fate at Bristol. She spared him no details of Ralph's disfigurement, nor the lasting effects she thought it would have on his family. Orlando listened, with more respect than she had feared. He had seen men with such devastating wounds. He sat, head bowed for a long time, looking depressed.

'So…' he asked, after a suitable pause. 'How did my loving relatives receive you?'

'Badly'

'That was hard for you.'

'You cannot blame them.' Juliana risked the tricky question: 'Was I right to go?'

Orlando flung up his hands. 'You were right to try. By heaven, you know I tried myself, truly. Anything a man could say to win them over, I threw at them as obsequiously as they could wish.'

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:

Sir, I do by these summon you to deliver up the City of Oxford into my hands for the use of the Parliament. I very much desire the preservation of that place (so famous for learning) from ruin, which inevitably is like to fall upon it, unless you concur…

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.