Rebels and traitors

Chapter Twenty-Three — Oxford: 1643

The rest of the first year of her marriage, and her first pregnancy, passed in similar style for Juliana. Orlando came and went, as the princes came and went. Usually he was with Prince Rupert, though once, when Rupert went to the Midlands to escort the Queen to Oxford, Lovell despised that task and stayed behind on some excuse. When Prince Maurice then dashed into Oxford desperately calling for reinforcements for General Hopton, Lovell volunteered; as a result, he fought at the battle of Roundway Down when the Royalists trounced Waller, which gave him a violently low opinion of Waller and, being Lovell, a not particularly high one of Prince Maurice. He returned to Oxford, rode to the West Country and was with Rupert at the storming of Bristol, where he received a slight shoulder wound.

Lovell gave Juliana nothing to live on. The three shillings he left when he rode with Prince Rupert in April was apparently supposed to last her through her lying-in and into the next decade. He, by contrast, seemed to have some store of chattels. On his first return he had presented his bemused wife with a curious mixture of household goods, strings of sausage, a half-wheel of cheese, together with a fashionable necklet of large pearls which he said was a gift for her birthday. 'Don't look so surprised. Mr Gadd wrote and ordered me to remember your anniversary'

'You knew when it was?' Juliana let him see her surprise.

'No. Gadd told me.' Orlando gave her a straight look. 'I shall know next year.'

'Will you remember?' Juliana asked, smiling.

'I have', Orlando Lovell said with stately self-composure, 'a very good memory' He made it sound threatening. Juliana dismissed that as his inability to be teased.

The necklace was the most valuable thing they ever had. Juliana wore it on festive occasions, though she tried not to become fond of it in case one day their fortunes deteriorated and her pearls had to be sold. Besides, she was afraid of its history. Like everything Orlando brought her it was probably stolen. You could not tell with jewellery. Lovell was unlikely to have purchased this over the counter of a goldsmith's shop at a fair price. If he did, the fact was remarkable and he could only have been spending the profits of plunder. Juliana had real fears that her gift had been violently pulled from the pale neck of a previous owner. What might have happened to that owner next was too horrible to contemplate.

Lovell would never tell her.

No, that was wrong. He would tell her truthfully and brutally, if she was ever so foolish as to ask him. Juliana could prophesy his amusement if the circumstances — and his part in them — then offended her.

During her times alone, which were many, she had plenty to read. Sometimes, on returning from military engagements, Lovell brought her books. She had to avoid thinking of him and his men bursting into some respectable puritan's home, then after the soldiers had stolen the cheese, the roasted chicken on its spit, the pewter and the bed-linen, the captain jauntily exclaiming 'Books! Damme, my wife will enjoy those…'

Life in Oxford had its stresses even when Lovell was with her. There was a bad atmosphere. People were oppressed by the constant talk of war, the never-ending fear of defeat, the loss of estates, the counting of the dead. The natural edginess between town and university had acquired an extra dimension, exacerbated by the King. After causing much dismay by his attitude to academic honours — on one occasion granting 140 of his supporters the title of Master of Arts — Charles had been forced to assure the university he would stop ordering up honorary degrees for courtiers. Oxford had to raise a garrison for its defence, due to the King's presence, and since the town was protesting at the costs of the court, at the end of July the Royalists announced that their troops were to be paid by taxing the scholars. That caused another outcry, especially as there were now so few scholars. The colleges were constantly being asked for money. All the university and college buildings were being used for official purposes, and even private houses that had once been lodgings for students or their families now had soldiers billeted on them in large numbers. People of substance were prevailed upon to give way to high officials such as Privy Counsellors. The town clerk's house in the High was occupied by Princes Rupert and Maurice. The inns were chock-a-block with military personnel, curious foreign ambassadors, even on occasion peace-keeping legations from Parliament.

Numbers swelled to capacity in June, when Queen Henrietta Maria arrived. With peculiar symbolism, she and the King were reunited on the battlefield at Edgehill. Then Her Majesty was welcomed into Oxford with flowers strewn before her and given a purse of gold at Penniless Bench, Juliana's news-reading spot. The Queen brought four and a half thousand new troops from the north, which the Earl of Newcastle had raised and she had armed. Vibrant with her own success as a fundraiser and her courageous adventures, Henrietta was ensconced in Merton College, with a covered way built to allow her to visit the King in Christ Church — a privilege the couple presumably enjoyed since a few weeks later the Queen was known to be pregnant. A Master of the Revels provided elegant entertainments, though even festive occasions were strained. There were complaints that the cramped colleges did not provide scope for the elaborate machinery of the theatrical masques Inigo Jones had once devised. The Queen found endless conversations about the war depressing.

August, when the King and all the army were away at the siege of Gloucester, was a difficult time. There had been suggestions that the Earl of Essex might attack Oxford in the King's absence, hoping to capture the Queen. News that Essex had in fact gone to relieve Gloucester only caused more anxiety, for that had previously been thought impossible. Meanwhile there was unrest because of the new, highly unpopular town governor, Sir Arthur Aston. A short-tempered Catholic disciplinarian who had been governor of Reading until Essex took that town, he was so loathed in Oxford that on his evening inspection rounds he had to be escorted by a special bodyguard of four red-coated halberdiers — despite which he was physically assaulted and wounded in the side during a scuffle in the street.

Trouble at night was regular, generally fuelled by drink. Once two men fought over possession of a horse; Prince Rupert emerged and parted the opponents with a poleaxe, though not before one had run the disputed horse through with his sword. With Lovell away throughout August and September, Juliana lay awake at night listening to the street noises and hoping that the soldiers, whose pay was always uncertain, would not assault the glover's shop. She was frequently alarmed by cries, mysterious crashes or shattered glass. These were the common disturbances of a university town, a town filled with men, and sometimes women, who wrongly believed that they could hold their drink or who had lost the will to try. Nowadays the nightly riots had an extra edge of desperation brought on by the danger of the times. The women of the town were so busy they could be scornful and belligerent. Fights were more vicious, murmured couplings more desperate, sudden shrieks more alarming; the very silences filled with anxiety. Most streets were unlit. The darkness was ugly. Moonlight or starshine seemed incongruous.

So overcrowded was the town, and conditions everywhere so squalid, that summer inevitably brought an epidemic. It was called camp fever, and recognised as different from the regular bouts of plague that afflicted all towns. This was a new disease, which doctors insisted claimed fewer deaths than the regular plague, though as many as forty a week were recorded in July. It was known the Earl of Essex had had half his army stricken at Reading. Even Prince Maurice fell ill and was diagnosed with the fever, though he was strong and soon recovered.

Filth, excrement in the streets and college halls, unchanged clothes and bad diet all contributed. Over-population helped disease to spread. The wages of scavengers who collected rubbish from the streets were doubled, but the bad habits of courtiers and soldiery made it impossible to keep places sanitary. To be pregnant was dire. Still, Juliana somehow escaped the fever.

Orlando Lovell rode with the King to Gloucester. News of the terrible Royalist casualties at the first battle of Newbury in September reached Oxford at the same time as the King returned there. With no definite confirmation of her husband's safety, Juliana experienced her worst fears so far as she waited, by then seven months pregnant, alone at their lodgings.

It was Edmund Treves, still her admirer and still unmarried himself, who told her Orlando was safe. Lovell, Treves said, had asked him to dash to Juliana's side and comfort her. She suspected that Treves took this action on his own initiative. He was romantically devoted. Though modest, Juliana easily believed that Edmund still wrote poetry in her honour. Not that she supposed these lyrics had merit; Juliana had been brought up a reader, and possessed a clear literary judgement.

Some wives might have supposed Lovell had gone to a tavern instead of coming straight home, though Juliana did not see him as a drinker. She tried not to think of him as thoughtless, reckless, selfish and insensitive either. He was a man. Worse, he was a soldier. However, she knew there were plenty of cavaliers who were racked with anguish to be parted from their wives by war, men who would give their unborn children loving consideration. Still, Lovell had never promised her devotion. Juliana believed he was loyal and she hoped he was faithful, though if so it was in a brisk, unsentimental way. He relied on her to provide her own strength and to make her own domestic arrangements.

'Orlando will come when he can. I am glad to know he is safe, Edmund; it was so kind of you to think of me.'

She had done Lovell wrong, for Edmund then told her, 'Prince Rupert has stayed in the field, to harry Essex and his army on their homeward march. I had to return with the King and the infantry. My horse broke a leg.'

'Faddle?'

'I had to shoot her. Lord knows how I can get another.

'There is no need for you to trouble over me, Edmund.'

'I am glad to do it!' declared the redhead, flushing scarlet under his light skin. Juliana sighed. She saw Treves as no threat — and yet that made him a greater responsibility.

Her fragile truce with Wakelyn Smithers would be at risk, if another man hung around her. Smithers would not understand that Edmund was genteel, kind-hearted, chivalrous to his friend Lovell — and unlikely ever to touch Juliana. After the odd beginning of their acquaintance, she and Lovell saw Edmund as a family friend, while ignoring the nature of his regard for Juliana. She never abused that. Nor did she underestimate it. She would not entirely trust him when drunk, or if Lovell imposed on him too thoughtlessly — as Lovell almost certainly would one day…

Smithers stayed at arm's length, but he still watched her. Fortunately she was now grown so large even the glover must be put off by it.

Lovell returned eventually. A royal council of war was held at Oriel College to re-examine strategy to finish the war. Soldiers were taken from local regiments and garrisons to be with Prince Rupert in the west; Lovell was bound to go too. More than ever, Juliana suspected that when her time came, she would be giving birth alone. She was terrified. Once at dinner, she even approached Wakelyn Smithers's hostile sister, pleading with her to attend at the birth. Most women, whatever their status, reckoned it a duty to rally when a neighbour was in labour, but Smithers's sister gave a vague answer and Juliana knew she would renege.

Being inexperienced and unsure of when to expect the birth, she was caught out. One morning while Lovell was still in Oxford, held there by terrible weather which prevented fighting, Juliana's contractions began unexpectedly. When her waters broke — a fright she was not prepared for — he was out of the house. She went through the first stages of labour alone, then in the afternoon began to fear she could not manage any longer. Eventually her husband came home. Relieved, she told him the situation and persuaded him to stay with her.

In his own way, Lovell disguised any reluctance to be involved. For an hour he sat in the room reading a news-sheet. Journalism had allowed the characteristic Englishman to become himself. Now, as the master of information, it was a husband's prerogative to seize the best chair in the room — which Lovell did, taking the one with wooden arms, the better to balance his elbows and control the broadsheet. The chair was normally graced with a plump cushion that Juliana had covered with stylish stumpwork embroidery; impatient of the cushion, Lovell tossed it to the floor. He flung his boots in two different directions. Then, while his wife sweated and gasped and bit the sheet behind the bed-curtain, not three yards away, Orlando Lovell applied himself to the Englishman's conviction that he could ride out any crisis by fixed study of the news.

'How do you fare, sweetheart?'

'Tolerably…'

'I am glad of it. Would I could be of assistance, dear girl, but this is woman's work.'

Lovell deemed it would help if he read out interesting passages from the news-sheet. He knew Juliana took an interest in the progress of the war. 'I see there has been a sharp exchange of fire at Winceby. The Earl of Manchester — that old fool — with Sir Thomas Fairfax (he is the uppity one of the family), plus one Cromwell, have trounced a couple of northern cavaliers… This Cromwell is unknown to me. Have you encountered the name, my sweet?'

'No. Orlando, we have to hire a midwife… I was not sure of the timing and have not consulted her, but the licensed woman should come to us — '

'Oh I dare say we can save a shilling and manage without…'

'A shilling is in the brown crock on the mantelshelf — I have kept it particularly; there is no need to scrimp!' Writhing on the soiled sheets and drenched with sweat, Juliana could no longer silence herself. 'I shall die if this child be not taken out of me — and the child too, poor innocent thing that never asked for us two feckless souls as its parents!' As the most painful contraction yet seared through her, she let rip and screamed: 'Orlando, you must help me!'

She heard the news-sheet fall. Lovell whipped aside the bed-curtains. He was a soldier. He could assess a situation. He went white. 'Do your best to endure it — I will fetch someone!'

His shock frightened Juliana even more. In all the years she was to know him, this was the only occasion Orlando Lovell showed plain terror. Well, I have wrought a wonder! she thought, with fatalistic pride. She reached for his hand, but he jumped back nervously.

At that moment she really thought she was dying. Given the nationwide statistics for childbed mortality, any doctor would have nodded. From the desperate way he dragged on his bucket-topped boots and thundered headlong down the narrow stairs, Captain Orlando Lovell had been told about the dangers.

He went missing for ages. Juliana had heard him shout agitatedly for help from Smithers or his sister. The sister always came to the house in the late afternoon, but on this one day she had found some pressing reason to vanish. Smithers had scarpered too. Finding no one, Lovell himself must have left. Stillness fell downstairs.

Juliana sobbed. She feared that Lovell had abandoned her.

Finally through her pain came voices, one a woman's. Footsteps moved steadily upstairs. Juliana had a wild moment of horror. 'Dear heaven, he has brought me an Irishwoman!' She would come to be ashamed of that.

A large, middle-aged, unperturbed stranger in sensible black worsted swanned to her bedside. The lady assessed all, with benign disgust. Through tears of distress, Juliana saw a square face, enlivened by deep dimples and wise eyes. Lovell was nervously hanging back. 'My sweet, this is Major Mcllwaine's good wife — '

Mistress Mcllwaine cuffed him, rather hard. 'Get away, Captain Lovell! Are you a monster that this poor child has been provided with no single friend at such a time? Give me a knife; I need to pare my nails.'

Lovell looked bemused. Juliana understood. She somehow managed to laugh, then blurted out, 'Your midwife should be strong, quiet and calm, with clean hands and close-trimmed fingernails..'

'And a stranger to drink!' returned the rescuer briskly. 'Though God alone knows, that's a rarity… The licensed bawd is stuck in St Clement's, tearing twins limb from limb. She will come to you by and by with her iron hooks and her ale bottle, but we can wing it by ourselves… I generally reckon to anoint the privities with sweet almond oil and violets, but I cannot suppose we shall find anything of that sort in a house of heathens. We must make do with goose fat, if this idle lump of a husband of yours can go down to the pantry… Just a cupful, Captain, if you please, and try not to bring too many nasty bits of burned meat in it. We want lubrication; we are not making gravy.'

Juliana was friendless no longer. Nerissa Mcllwaine had arrived in her life.

'Get us some eggs, Lovell! And if you have any wine hidden about the place, surrender it now to me, if you please. I must make your lady and me a spiced caudle for relaxation.'

'Women's work,' muttered Lovell under his breath as he whisked off on these errands, grumbling and yet reassured. 'Women's rituals…'

Mistress Mcllwaine had heard him. 'Eliminate the light, the air — and the men… The last is good; the rest are old wives' tales… If you go out to buy the wine, Captain Lovell, do not linger above ten minutes! Then you may wait below until it is over. If I need a strong arm to pull one way while I haul the other, I shall call you up again.'

Amidst a continuing flow of this offhand commentary, Thomas Lovell was born. With the calming effects of caudle and the slitheriness of goose fat, there was no necessity for hauling. Mistress Mcllwaine ensured the child was gently introduced to the world. He thrived from his first yell, while his tired young mother wept but survived. Even the father recovered his spirits enough to kiss both his wife and his red wrinkled son, then gravely salute the lady who had saved the day. After that Lovell felt free to forget the traditional duty of entertaining the godparents (since as yet there were none). He went out to get drunk on Juliana's shilling, the shilling he had saved by not employing the licensed midwife.