Rebels and traitors

Chapter Seventy-One — Shoe Lane: Autumn 1653

When he walked into his print shop and found Juliana Lovell talking to Miles, Gideon Jukes froze. He recognised the nape of her neck first, then her voice, her figure, her determined way of speaking out even to a youth who was annoying her… Gideon might have stepped backwards and fled, but Miles had seen him. As Juliana turned, there was no escape. He had been a soldier, so he stood his ground.

Any other woman asking him to print embroidery designs would have been out of luck. Forced into conversation about her request, Gideon took refuge in his professional role. He outlined carefully what would be involved in commissioning an engraver to draw illustrations. Even to his own ears his voice sounded colourless; he could see Miles looking at him as if he thought Gideon was sickening. Since Robert's death, Miles had taken obsessive care of him. The apprentice had been shaken by the traumatic loss of his first master and was anxious that he might be left alone in the world if anything happened to the second. 'I accept there are precedents. Emblem books exist, Mistress Lovell.'

'I have one!' snapped Juliana crisply. 'It is forty years out of date. There are new fashions and I want to make them available.'

'I understand.' Ignoring the rebuke, Gideon continued to make her aware of the complications.

Juliana interrupted irritably. 'I can pay you for this printing, Captain Jukes. I am not begging for favours.'

Gideon was a good businessman, but acknowledged with a private smile to himself — and to the wide-eyed Miles — that if there was one customer who might persuade him to subsidise a commission, it would be Juliana Lovell.

He confirmed that Miles was right; this was not a way to make large sums of money. Juliana set him straight: she wanted to offer designs mainly as a means to lure customers to her shop — 'You have a shop?'

'Haberdashery. I have returned to the trade of my grandfather.' She spoke with a mixture of defiance and pride. Grand-mere Roxanne would be horrified, but Juliana was happy with the life, and even happier to be earning a living. Gideon Jukes could see the change in her.

He thought he could find an engraver, and promised to make enquiries, perhaps ordering a sample design. Since he could not say how long this enquiry would take — both Miles and Juliana herself suspected he would conveniently 'forget' to do it — he had to ask where Juliana lived so he could find her to report. Her heart took an odd lurch, but she told him.

A few weeks later, as she was close to shutting up her business for the day, she felt slightly caught out when Gideon Jukes appeared, bearing a satchel. Catherine Keevil was with her in the shop, so Juliana left her downstairs and led Gideon up to her main room. He began laying out papers on the table, though first he put down a purse of money. Like any shopkeeper, Juliana assessed the weight of the purse by eye, without seeming to do so. He explained shamefacedly, 'I have been remiss. I promised you the wench's wages — '

'There is no need,' replied Juliana coolly — though he had promised and she might have been in difficulties. So when he waved aside her mild protest, she took up the money and put it away safely. She felt glad that her first good opinion of this man was now confirmed. Before Catherine reappeared they spoke of her quickly; Juliana acknowledged that she was a pleasant, willing worker who had become an essential part of her household. 'I have grown very fond of her. Indeed I could not manage without her.'

They broke off when Catherine came upstairs, now a slim, demure girl of almost twenty. She brought with her Thomas and Valentine, just home from the local petty school with their horn books. 'I taught them their letters myself,' said Juliana, 'but I think it is good for them to go out into the world now.' Having no father, she meant.

Gideon saw how much taller and more mature the boys were, Thomas now ten, Valentine two years younger. The hazel-eyed, brown-haired duo were not yet too big for a lone mother to keep in hand, but they had turned into real boys: slovenly, slow to move when asked, forgetful, obstreperous, prone to squabbling. Tom had something of his father's self-confidence, had Gideon known it. Val was sickly and given to whining, a mother's boy. Both stalked around, eyeing up the visitor like young dogs whose pack had been invaded by a stronger male. They parked themselves like guards either side of their mother, staring at Gideon in silence, although when the adults' conversation remained fixed on sewing and printing matters, they lost interest.

They needed to be fed, so Gideon was asked to join the family. He would not have stayed, but the printing discussion was unfinished; they were working through a draft booklet and Gideon wanted to take notes on all of the pages so he could have them set. Since the table was covered with papers, Juliana and Catherine organised a modest supper in the next-door parlour, with plates on their knees.

Over the meal, Gideon outlined how he had come to be working in Holborn. He explained Robert's death. It had taken months to get the press returned; he had had to pretend to the authorities he knew nothing about Robert's publications, but was a simple-minded dupe who only wanted to produce..

'Produce what, Captain?'

'Harmless poetry, I claimed.'

'Not true?'

'Not acceptable to my dear partner Robert. He was a man of great erudition, well read and the best conversationalist. But as a man of business, he despised the printing of verse and had banned me from any encouragement of poets.'

'Why was that?'

'No profit — but they expect the earth.'

'Ah! What would Master Allibone have thought of stitch patterns?'

Gideon pulled a face. 'What anyone thinks: I am out of my mind to dabble!' It was the closest he came to a joke. Mostly he spoke in the same level, subdued tone that Juliana found so disappointing. Whatever she had imagined if they chanced to meet again, it was not this.

He then told how, after he did retrieve the printing press, he decided revolutionary publishing was unsafe. The Public Corranto had been quashed when Robert was arrested. Gideon did not even attempt to revive it.

During his grief for his partner, he had reviewed his own ambitions. He decided to move premises. It was what Robert had done all those years before, when he shifted from Fleet Alley for a fresh start after his wife Margery died. So Gideon reversed the process. He came back to where they had worked when he was apprenticed and now he printed commercial books, school primers, spelling books, dictionaries and whatever was brought in to him by the professional men of the area. He had a growing trade with the American colonies, which had a big demand for school books.

'I noticed in your shop you deal in wit, gout and verse grammars.'

'All good lines — but my steadiest bestseller is on angling!'

Once he had told his own story, Gideon naturally asked Juliana what coincidence had brought her to the same quarter of London. She simply mentioned her guardian's legacy. With her sons present, she would not dwell on other matters.

After their meal, discussion of the proposed pattern book resumed. Catherine took away the boys, put them to bed and retired to her own room. If any tried to eavesdrop, they would only have heard polite voices as Juliana and Gideon continued to put together the draft pages.

Their work finally done, Gideon collected the drawings and Juliana's stitchery instructions into his satchel. From it he first removed a bundle of old news-sheets.

Perhaps for a second he looked uneasy. 'Customary printer's gift. Out-of-date editions. Useful for wrapping up fish heads and marrow bones. Clean your muddy heels and soles on them. People put them in the privy. As we printers say, let the nation wipe its arse on the news…' Juliana was slightly startled; this man had certainly not come to be romantic! Even Gideon had second thoughts. 'Bringing bum-fodder to a strange house? Apologies, madam; I must be mildly deranged..'

'No gift is turned away by tradespeople, Captain!'

She should have known that there was a point. Gideon lifted his hand, which had lain palm-down on the pile, apparently accidentally. Juliana read, upside down, that the top paper was called The Moderate Intelligencer. Gideon leafed through the first pages then read out, not looking at her: 'I thought you may not have seen this. "By an express further from Holland, we hear that Prince Rupert is daily expected… he wrote letters not long since to his mother, intimating that as soon as he could hear of his brother Maurice, with those eleven ships that were carried away in the hurricano" — he would go to his mother is intended, I presume, though this journal is too poorly edited to say so — "His own letters say that he himself and one more" — one more ship, it means — "was not in it. What is become of the rest, the Lord knows" This was at the end of March. Thinking of you, I made enquiries — '

Thinking of you? Juliana had once discussed Orlando with Anne Jukes; Anne must have said her husband was at sea. 'Yes. There were other reports.' Prince Rupert continues at the Palace Royal. There is no news yet of his brother Maurice… A good mother, Juliana had kept news-sheets for her boys, if they were curious in future. 'Thank you. It was kind.' Her voice choked a little; she pressed her palm over her mouth. 'There was a rumour that Prince Maurice reappeared in the Mediterranean, but that was false… Even the two ships that survived were so worm-eaten they were quite unserviceable; I suppose in such a condition the rest were vulnerable to the storm..'

Gideon watched unexpected feelings rush upon Juliana. She had only ever discussed this with Mr Impey — a lawyer, with whom it had been neutral and professional. Otherwise, her deduction that Orlando must be lost had been borne in private, as she had always borne her troubles. Suddenly here was Gideon Jukes right at her dining table, agreeing: Lovell was gone. She was a widow. There would be no farewells, no explanations, nothing. Her married life was over.

Juliana had shed tears before, but her surging emotions now startled her. Gideon saw her face, just before she jumped up and swiftly left the room. She was trying to conceal the emergency, but her expression tore his heart.

He waited, uncertainly, then he followed and found her, in the little parlour next door, weeping uncontrollably. Gideon suppressed a curse, thinking he had made a bad mistake. He hardly dared approach, and Juliana held up a hand to stop him. He wanted to hold her, to console her, to let her cry at will onto his shoulder. Instead he could only stand silent in the doorway, offering at least his presence for comfort. This grief is all for the malignant Lovell… Yet he could not hate the man. Gradually he realised that he was witnessing more than straightforward torrents of grief. As Juliana wept herself into exhaustion, it was not just for love of her husband, for his suffering as he drowned, nor even for her sons' loss of their father. This was her release from years of introversion, struggle, loneliness and anxiety. It was necessary. It marked an end to that phase of her life.

When her sobs stopped, neither was embarrassed. Juliana turned away further, to begin the ghastly business of drying tears and nose-blowing. 'I am much to blame,' Gideon apologised, all humility. 'I bungled that. I did not know what to say for the best.'

Juliana still could not speak.

'Mistress Lovell, I will take my leave — do not disturb yourself; I will let myself out of the shop. Do not wait too long before you lock up properly'

He went — not so hurriedly that he seemed to be afraid of a woman weeping, but more swiftly than she wanted. Feeling doubly bereft, Juliana slowly completed her mopping and snuffling, then she washed her hands and face. It had grown dark, so when she made her way downstairs to secure the premises she took a candle.

The shop door remained wide open. With his back to her, Gideon Jukes was leaning against the frame, disconsolately, gazing out. The street was dark and gusty. It was absolutely sheeting down with rain.

He had heard her, so Juliana went and stood in the doorway beside him. She stayed in the dry but let the weather cool her hot face. 'Come back in. You cannot go in that.' She knew she was glad. She hungered for more time with him.

Gideon did not stir. He seemed to be reminiscing. 'I was drenched often enough in the army — day after day, week after week, many a night lying out in the fields in filthy rain like this… You close yourself down, waiting for the misery to end — while you form dreams to take your mind away from it.' He half turned his head. His voice sharpened: 'Did you miss me?'

Convention got the better of Juliana. She fluttered uncharacteristically, 'Oh Captain Jukes, I hardly know you!'

'I believe you do.' Gideon was quieter than ever, yet no longer subdued. He had the air of a man who had reached a decision. 'I know you too,' he went on purposefully. 'Though not so well, because you hunch up in yourself. I shall have to winkle you out, when you allow me to do it. That could be good — it leaves more to discover at leisure… I missed you, I admit it. I carried your memory fast within me.'

He had lost the thin tone and careful formality he had used before. This was his normal voice, resonating as it had done in her reveries. Juliana luxuriated in its return. She asked him with her usual candour, 'What happened to the light lad who flirted?'

'Held in restraint.'

'I liked him!'

Gideon laughed quietly. 'I know you did.' They seemed able to speak together with astonishing honesty.

'And you liked being him.'

'Oh yes.' To himself, Gideon was confessing that he had never behaved before or since as he did the day of Anne Jukes's birthday and for that short time afterwards. He was not even behaving like that now; well, not yet. He could be working up to it. 'How did you like such an odd bubble of air?'

'Well, I thought him a sly-tongued rogue.' Now Juliana felt she was flirting. She had lost all her modesty, and did not care.

'Ever astute, madam! But you can trust him. Gideon Jukes: age thirty-three, height inconvenient, hair tow-coloured, eyes blue, journeyman printer, ten years fighting for liberty, some wounds but no loss of capacity' — soldiers always wanted to make that clear — 'clean and neat around the house. Favourite cake: gingerbread. Favourite pie: veal on a base of bacon. Favourite celebration dish: a salmagundi. True unto death.'

'True to what?'

'God, my cause, my city and family — the woman of my choice.'

Juliana let herself accept that the salmagundi in his manifesto was a heavy clue who that was.

The rain continued to pour incessantly. Anyone who walked outside would be soaked through at once.

'Move from the door and let me close it, Captain.'

Gideon stepped back, though he put up his hand on the edge of the door, preventing her from moving it. A gust of motion blew the candle out. It made little difference. The loss of its small light barely affected eyes that had grown used to the murk. All their senses were heightened and fixed on each other. 'Do you want me to leave you?'

'Do you want to go?'

'You know I do not.'

'Do I?'

There was a small, tense silence.

'You know my heart,' he said. Quiet people, Juliana thought, could be most single-minded. With this one, there was no vapid etiquette. Gideon Jukes came right out and declared himself, without prevarication or preamble. He shrugged. 'Let us be open with each other. You do not keep a strangers' lodging house; you never bid mere passers-by to shelter from the rain — nor do I linger on other women's doorsteps, hoping for an invitation.' He dropped his hand from the door, folding his arms tight across his chest. 'Here is the thing; I have to confess it — either I go now, and at once, or — ' Or I shall beg to stay with you.

'Or?' I will plead with you to do it.

'We both know what will happen.' There was just enough light for Gideon to see Juliana gazing at him, questioning. Questioning not his motives, but his willingness to have those motives. She glimpsed a shadow of a smile from him that she might still doubt this. He spoke a little dryly, spelling out the situation much as he had earlier explained how drawings were printed: 'There will be kissing, and various matters that lead from it…'

'I am glad that you say so.' Juliana laid a hand on the door handle. 'Indeed, sir, I hope you will not think me forward — but I shall insist upon it.'

She felt extremely calm. She closed the door and turned the key in its lock. Gideon reached up and pushed a bolt home for her.

His arm dropped and came straight around Juliana, gathering her to him. She had thought she might have to stand on tiptoe, but they fitted together naturally. Gideon kissed her, gently and deferentially, though for a long time. She kissed him, making no bones about it. These were as honest and sweet as any kisses Juliana ever gave.

Soon, she took his hand to guide Gideon safely through the darkness of the haberdashery, where she knew her way around obstacles even without a candle. They came upstairs; she led him to her room. With children and a servant in the house, there was no place for turmoil, uncontrollable passion in stairwells or festoons of discarded clothes and cast-off shoes. That was not their way in any case. They had waited a long while for one another. They walked up through the house, closing doors and dousing lights almost as if it was their long-time nightly ritual. By one dim rushlight, they undressed as neatly as if they already had behind them a companionship of decades, each folding their clothes upon a chair. Only once naked, they did clasp one another, gazing together a little in wonder at their situation. Yet they were smiling and already bonded in trust and friendship, until suddenly they kissed again, this time harder and with greater urgency, no longer at all deferential though full of tenderness.

So, without any more words spoken, they came gladly to bed.