Rebels and traitors

Chapter Twenty-Seven — London: autumn, 1643

When the two Jukes brothers had returned home from Gloucester and Newbury, they stood in the upstairs parlour of their parents' home, almost forlorn for a moment. Lambert was led away to be tended in private by his wife. Gideon passed a hand over his forehead as if the light hurt his eyes. Lacy took no interest. At first his parents were too polite to intervene but then as he shivered and swayed on his feet, Parthenope Jukes seized back her maternal rights. Soon she was gently washing her younger son as if he were still a small boy. Trying to shield him from her horror at his sores, she dispatched Lacy to the apothecary for stronger salves than were kept at home. Gideon, who was now clearly feverish, fretted as she touched him. He was crotchety in a way Parthenope found familiar. Just as when he caught chickenpox at the age of seven, Parthenope saw the moment when reddish-purple spots began to appear on his arms and chest.

His father came to inspect the rash. John pronounced the worst: Gideon had camp fever, probably caught at Reading. Conditions there had been crowded and lice-ridden; the lice were implicated. Essex's men had been put half out of action by this rampant sickness. 'Call it camp fever, ship fever, jail fever — it is all one. Our boy is in great danger!'

Gideon was gravely ill for weeks, sometimes with such wild delirium he could hardly be held down. Parthenope nursed him, since Lacy pleaded anxiety for her unborn child. Already weakened by hardship, Gideon was in no condition to resist the fever; headache, spasms of nausea and diarrhoea racked him. Although his mother produced broths and caudles, he could keep nothing down. He was so weak he could hardly climb out of bed to the chamberpot. He raged at his helplessness. His frustration and fear made him bad-tempered even with his mother as she cared for him.

Worse, Gideon began to relive the horrors he had experienced in the battle at Newbury. Hallucinations caused by fever danced wildly among traumatic flashbacks. He needed to rest; yet repetitions of the gunfire and visions of men being torn apart tormented him. Never a good patient, discomfort and mental anguish combined to make him a monster. Many a time his harassed mother left his room, leaned against the door-jamb and wept silently into her apron. She understood his behaviour and rarely snapped back. She was just terrified Gideon would die.

Parthenope Jukes was made of stern stuff, however. She had always been a scrupulous housewife. In her home, flies were swatted. Hands were washed before preparing food. Floors were mopped; tables scrubbed; dishcloths boiled. Cooking pots were cleaned to a sparkle with vinegar or lye. The well in the yard was kept sanitary.

A similarly strict regime was applied to her sick son. He was quarantined to a small, simply furnished room, where his bedding was changed daily. The lice were dealt with; Parthenope tenderly cut his hair short, combing out nits onto a piece of housewife-cloth which she burned. Once she realised the extent of the problem, his parents struggled to hold Gideon while a barber shaved him naked, including places where a seventeenth century man never dreamed of being shaved. His delirium was coloured by the constant smell of sulphur and lard from ointments to soothe his itching, an aroma that soon seemed to infest even his dreams.

Eventually came a worse odour: rotting flesh. When gangrenous sores appeared, a surgeon was called. Gideon lost three fingertips on his left hand and his right fourth fingertip.

Though frail, John Jukes played his part in tending his son. After close study of medical tracts, he had advanced views about airing sickrooms and even though it was winter, he insisted that a window was opened daily to allow the escape of dangerous 'miasmas'. John's more curious theories were rebuffed while Parthenope tackled the unpleasant day-today aspects of nursing. By some act of providence his parents managed not to catch the fever and slowly they restored Gideon's health. He moved from stupor into a clear mind. It took months, and even afterwards he clung to his room in a long depression.

At least he was rarely left alone with his terrors. Mostly his mother sat with him, studying her books of household management. It was years since she had had so many quiet moments and Parthenope came to enjoy the respite. Often Gideon emerged from restless sleep to find her, spectacles on nose, intent on putting her recipes in order — spreading the papers across his bed as she worked. Sometimes instead, a waft of tobacco smoke announced his father in attendance. Gideon felt bound to protect both from knowing what he had endured, but John was determined to find out. The days were long gone when John Jukes could parade with the Artillery Company, but he was full of curiosity about all that had happened to his sons. He plied Lambert with questions, unconsciously helping Lambert to unburden himself, then when Lambert lost patience John would turn to Gideon. In the early days, when Gideon was most dangerously ill, John took to dozing in a chair at the bedside overnight.

Gideon lost some of the distance from his parents that had built up while he was apprenticed. He was already much better friends with Lambert. So they all moved into a new family cycle. Whereas for some people the civil war damaged or destroyed stability, the Jukes were more fortunate. The parents were proud of the sons; the sons were encouraged by their parents' support. One son's wife was a fervent ally. Only Lacy held herself aloof, but that was never political.

Robert Allibone was of course another supporter. As soon as the invalid was adjudged out of danger and unlikely to be contagious, Robert hurried to help keep him cheery. For him, this meant bringing paper and ink to woo reminiscences that could be reconstructed into a diary. Like other memoirs by the Trained Bands, it was polished, edited and published. So the vivid, intrigued recollections of the ordinary soldier were brought to both contemporary and future readers in an unprecedented way. Gideon complained that the fever had made his mind hazy, but Robert persisted.

Robert brought news of how the London Trained Band regiments were continuing to serve in the field. Gideon listened, at first feeling out of it, but then relieved to be so.

Sir William Waller had now been made commander of various troops but was beset with problems. Particularly fraught was persuading his allocation from the London Trained Bands to do service outside the city. Some grumpy members of the Yellow Regiment were taken to Farnham Castle, Waller's headquarters. They met their new commander: an intense West Countryman, with brows drawn anxiously down over wide-set eyes and a pursed mouth beneath a moustache that was swept up at the ends onto gaunt cheeks. He signalled his authority by hanging a clerk of his own regiment for mutiny. This failed to impress the disgruntled Londoners. Their relationship with Waller never gelled and he was frequently furious at their open cries of 'Home! Home!', which forced him to make unmilitary pleas for them to stay.

It was a bad time of year for manoeuvres. The troops marched towards Winchester but were turned back by extreme wet and snow. Waller swung them over to Basing House. This enormous Royalist stronghold dominated the area between Oxford and London, threatening both Essex's headquarters and Waller's base at Farnham. Once a staunch motte-and-bailey castle, it had been transformed by grandiose Tudor courtiers and now rivalled the Tower of London in size and strength. Over fourteen acres included the Old House, surrounded by still-viable Norman earthworks, and the palatial New House, which contained 380 rooms. Basing was garrisoned with two regiments of foot and extra cavalry, who were protected by star-shaped towers set into massive surrounding walls that were said to be eight feet thick, brick walls on an earth core that would withstand the heaviest cannon fire. The gatehouse was a stupendous four storeys high.

Its position so close to London made the capture of Basing House imperative. But when Waller's men arrived and the cold fog dispersed to reveal this bastion, their hearts sank. The London regiments were wimpish besiegers, daunted by the task. Upon finding one of the buildings in the grounds, Grange Farm, full of bread, beer, mild cheese, bacon, beef, milk and peas, the famished Trained Bands gorged themselves, while the thatched roof blazed dangerously above them and shots rained all around. Ignoring their colleagues, who were struggling bravely elsewhere on the site, they threw themselves into looting and gluttony until the day's attack failed, with many men killed. Bad weather and lack of spirit caused two retreats from Basing, which would continue to hold out for three years.

Hopton approached. He was Waller's old friend and long-term Royalist rival; Waller had a vested interest in beating him. Waller kept the Trained Bands sweet by plying them with victuals. When he reviewed them on the 12th of December, he begged them to stay for one more task. They grudgingly remained until the following Monday. They marched towards Basing again, then veered off to Alton; this important Royalist garrison was taken after a particularly vicious fight, which resulted in the Parliamentarians carrying away 875 prisoners, fifty officers, and various standards. Hopton was sore. Waller was satisfied. The Trained Bands' reputation had been saved — though they begged to be allowed to go home as promised, because it was nearly Christmas.

Gideon Jukes observed all this and convinced himself he was still a sick man.

Late on Christmas Day 1643, Lacy Jukes went into labour. A daughter was born to her on Boxing Day. Mother and child survived. The successful outcome was reported to Gideon by his own mother, with only the slightest puff of surprise that the birth had occurred so soon. Still, judging a pregnancy was an inexact science and, as Parthenope commented, many an innocent young woman giving birth prematurely had been accused of immorality. Being called to account by some interfering crone while racked in labour was a fear that dogged all women…

Parthenope was weary when she let slip this speculation; she regretted it afterwards. Luckily her son took her remarks very quietly so there appeared to be no harm done. She knew he was sensitive. She would not have wanted to perturb him.

The baby, in its long white gown and tiny lace cap, was shown to Gideon, briefly, from the doorway of his room. Everyone sent messages of the child's lustiness and its likeness to him. His wife said it was unthinkable that she should come near a sick man while nursing her daughter. Gideon made no objection.

He had a lot of time for private thought that winter. Too much, perhaps.

Both Jukes brothers were now reconsidering what they wanted from this conflict. Both had been deeply affected by their great adventure to Gloucester. They felt entitled to political reward for their contribution. Lambert fell back into domesticity, but Gideon became ever more restless.

By winter, Gideon had to accept that his physical recovery was assured. He continued to mope by himself in the sickroom. The loss of his finger ends gave him an excuse. He was a specimen: doctors came and went, writing up notes for their memoirs. Gangrene was not unknown in camp fever patients, but it was rare, and his father enjoyed parading Gideon as a singular case. Civil war doctors and surgeons wanted specialist reputations. Who could blame them, when a surgeon's pay was only five shillings a day, and each had to equip himself with a medical chest to the value of twenty-five pounds at his own expense. Most wounded soldiers died. Most, therefore, would pay no fees.

At least being a specimen was a two-way process. Gideon made it a condition that his doctors had their learned papers printed by Robert Allibone.

His wife had continued to occupy their bedchamber, apart from him. He had barely seen Lacy since he came home. In the New Year his mother decided to restore normality, so Parthenope stripped the sickroom bed, pulled up floor mats and beat them in clouds of dust, making so much bustle that Gideon capitulated. He shambled back to his old room, where Lacy received him with a brief shrug, perhaps of welcome, or perhaps indifference.

At the foot of their bed stood the cradle with the baby. Various scents that emanate from infants and breast-feeding mothers suffused the atmosphere. Many a father has felt an outsider on the arrival of a first baby. Gideon was no exception.

The child's existence forced him to face his predicament. His lack of pride and excitement at the birth was reprehensible, and he knew it. Coming from a good home, he had been brought up to do better. At least while his daughter remained a babe-in-arms, he could assign her to his womenfolk; many men, and more women than is generally acknowledged, do not care for babies. Once this infant became mobile, Gideon knew, he would be obliged to take on the full role of a cherishing father. He must pet her, praise her, instruct her in spiritual matters, consider her education, give her a puppy or a singing-bird, have a family portrait painted — and he must uncomplainingly provide her with siblings.

His own parents were already besotted with their first grandchild. This only emphasised Gideon's awkwardness.

Lacy, sloe-eyed and now lazily voluptuous, never asked him to coo over the cradle or pick up the tiny bundle. She and Gideon stalked around one another, never acknowledging that anything was wrong. They did not yet have the bitterness that seeps through many longer marriages, but their silences were deadly.

In due course, Lacy granted her favours in bed. She gave him his rights without resistance, yet Gideon was made aware that she had condescended to do this, when she could just as easily have rebuffed him. He did not enjoy their lovemaking and quite clearly Lacy could take it or leave it. Such occasions became infrequent.

All over the country soldiers were returning from campaigns to find themselves strangers in their marriages. Everywhere fathers were missing crucial moments in their children's lives. However, real difficulties rarely happened while campaigns were as short as the Gloucester and Newbury march. The estrangement between Gideon and Lacy Jukes was reckoned by others to be caused by the war, but they both knew it had more deep-seated origins. Gideon was starting to analyse his doubts.

Elizabeth and Bevan Bevan sent the child an extravagantly expensive silver bowl as a baptism gift.

'Return it,' snapped Gideon. 'We shall not dowse her in a font. I believe in adult baptism.'

His mother looked up over her spectacles at this revelation.

'What are you my son?' enquired John Jukes mildly. 'An Anabaptist, a General or a Particular Baptist? Do we harbour a Browneist? A Dutch Mennonite? Are you for full baptismal immersion, for sprinkling — or merely for careful pouring from a neat Delft jug?' Gideon looked truculent.

While Lacy sat at the dinner table deciding whether to put up a fight, Gideon stiffened into his new role as a domestic autocrat. Lacy gave way, surprisingly. 'As you wish.' She shot him one tart look, then cast down her eyes like a model of patience.

'I am sure my uncle and his good wife Elizabeth meant well,' murmured Parthenope, though playing the peacemaker went against her feelings. Everyone present knew she thought poorly of Elizabeth.

'They are hoping to be godparents,' sneered John.

'We shall have no papistical godparents!' thundered Gideon. They are buying me off, he thought bitterly, as he too brooded on the Bevans' motives.

He knew that other members of his own family were judging him, in the dark way families have. Lacy herself fell silent. Among the Jukes she had a sullen reserve, as if she was trapped — and knew they all understood exactly how she had been trapped.

Lacy had named her daughter. Without consulting Gideon, she had chosen her own mother's name, one of the only signs ever that Lacy cared for somebody other than herself. The tiny scrap was Harriet Jukes.

'She is an innocent,' Parthenope consoled herself. 'Her sweet soul is unblemished in the eyes of the Lord.'

'She is an innocent!' Gideon agreed tartly.

As Harriet lay in her cradle with her eyes tight shut, she emitted a softly bubbling burp as if practising to charm apocalyptic judges. Her mother went to her. Her father would not look her way.

Gideon grasped the monstrous bowl by its rim and strode with it from the house. It was almost the first time he had ventured out since his fever; anger gave his long legs strength, despite the enormous weight of silver he was carrying. He did not, in fact, return it to the Bevans, but carried the loathed object to the Guildhall where he handed it in ceremonially to be melted down for the Parliamentary war effort.

In this way he did for the first time exert himself to play the father, deciding his child's political allegiance and disposing of her property. It struck him guiltily that baby Harriet might grow into a spirited young lady who would take him to task. The bowl had been handsome and she would be a City girl who could correctly assess the value of ornamental metalware. Gideon supposed he might teach her his ways of thinking, but he would have to desire the task. So far, he saw the child in the cradle as little to do with him. Some men thought they were fighting the war for their children, but not he — or not yet.

The silver bowl discussion was the closest he ever came to confronting Lacy. She must see his growing suspicion that she and her infant had been foisted on him. He started looking for an escape, rather than to plunge them into discord. Divorce only existed for monarchs and the aristocracy. Even kings and earls were forced to cite reasons such as non-consummation of the marriage. For Gideon it was an impossibility. He was the wrong class. In any case, he felt squeamish about suggesting that Harriet might be a bastard. Whether she was his flesh and blood or not, his kind heart failed at the thought of condemning her.

When Gideon recovered his strength he rejoined his Trained Band regiment, though what he had heard about recent manoeuvres still demoralised him. He did not want to find himself among reluctant comrades under a general they all resented. Sooner or later, on rotation, the main Green Regiment would be deployed with Waller.

He was struggling physically. The loss of his fingertips hampered loading and firing his musket. His captain suspended him from active duty. Gideon went back to work full-time at the print shop. Having to relearn hand movements made him far from dexterous there too. There were worse disabilities, but he resented his fate.

The Public Corranto was still being turned out every week, so when Gideon was particularly grumpy Robert sent him out transporting copies. A system had been developed where bundles of pamphlets or news-sheets were taken beyond London, along the road to Oxford in particular, in order to satirise the enemy and depress them with their godly opponents' good spirits. Royalist publications were imported on the way back. Nobody was supposed to travel either way without a pass; realistically travellers needed two passes, one from each army although to be in possession of two was in itself dangerous. Troops saw it as proof of treachery. In the previous November one of the King's messengers had been hanged as a spy.

A secret network of couriers had grown up. Women disguised as beggars did much of the work. Printed papers were dumped at a series of drops, to be picked up and discreetly passed along the network. Within the area close to London, controlled by the Trained Bands who knew him, Gideon could safely take copies to the first hideout. There were a few butchers and chandlers in the ranks who would always give a printer backchat, but in general his colleagues saw this as God's work. They would wave him through checkpoints without bothering to ask questions. He was rarely stopped.

Then one day early in 1644, instead of his normal trip west out of Hammersmith, Gideon happened to go with a carter north towards St Albans. As they were returning via Bushey, they were suddenly surrounded by a small group of armed men. At first Gideon feared this troop were cavaliers. They had a high-handed, aggressive demeanour and they meant business. They were light-armed dragoons, speedy horsemen who trotted under black banners which, when the heavy fringed cloth flapped open in the spring breeze, revealed emblems of Bibles. This was a banner of righteousness, yet even after Gideon ascertained that the troops came from a Parliamentary garrison, the situation remained tricky. The dragoons were so very completely righteous they were keen to arrest anyone, never mind if he claimed to be from their own side.

The carter behaved as if none of this concerned him. He was a lean Londoner from a family in Wapping, a wiry old worker with a dogged, equable mentality, often silent although Gideon had gained his confidence. He kept to decades-old routines, bringing his lunch with him in a battered basket, where every item had its place. The food was always in a threadbare square of housewife-cloth, well laundered. Every day he ate cheese with shallots and a thick wad of dark bread. Using a short-bladed, bone-handled penknife, he trimmed off the cheese in equal-sized pieces. The shallots were neatly topped, tailed and halved. He carried a beer bottle, from which he drank half before he ate and the rest once he finished. Since his ancient horse was placid, he generally drove along while doing this.

The cavalry had appeared while the daily routine was in progress. Benjamin Lucock remained placidly on his seat and carried on eating. The haughty men in buff coats barely noticed him. Crunching half a shallot was clearly a sign of innocence. That his occupation was innocent seemed to be confirmed by a load of winter vegetables from a market garden and a brace of trussed-together geese he was taking home to his daughter.

More sinister was the tall young man clad in a brown suit and jaunty beaver hat, unarmed, and apparently without trade or other decent excuse to be wandering. Gideon Jukes was ordered to descend from the cart in order to be pushed around.

Gideon now suffered because of his quiet demeanour, learned over the years from Robert Allibone. Anyone from the country areas, as these Eastern Association dragoons all were, knew that Londoners were mouthy. Gideon submitted far too demurely. His answers made things worse: he claimed he belonged to the Trained Bands and had been on the march to Gloucester. 'Which regiment?'

'The Greens.'

'Colonel Pennington's?'

It was a trap, Gideon reckoned. Isaac Pennington commanded the White Regiment. With his heart pounding, he answered as levelly as he could. 'Our colonel is Alderman John Warner.'

'In the Greens?' The soldiers were wary. 'The Reds and the Blues relieved Gloucester, that's well known.'

'I took a man's place — '

'Who? — Zebediah Nobody!'

Gideon could only smile weakly. It seemed a long time since he had offered himself as a replacement for the draper in the Red Regiment, and he really could not remember what the man had been called.

Gideon explained that today he had been delivering Parliamentary news-sheets. He had taken the precaution of keeping one in the cart. The man questioning him accepted this copy of the Public Corranto, glanced at it, then rolled it and slapped it dismissively against his thigh. The dragoons were anxious to go back to their quarters with some prize — any prize. They condemned all news-sheets as seditious and suggested that Gideon was a spy.

The usual way to extract information from spies was to hang them up over a barrel of gunpowder, before applying lighted match to their fingers. Only the bravest held out.

The dragoons produced lit matchcord to terrorise Gideon, but when they seized his fists to tie him up, they came upon his missing fingertips. To them, this implied he had already been given the burn-treatment in some previous arrest. Now they had an excuse to treat him as an escaped prisoner. They threw him across the back of a spare horse, tied his arms and feet under its belly, and began taking him across country for interrogation. They had let the carter go.

Gideon had told the truth about his mission. That would leave him nothing to confess once they began to torture him.