A Corruptible Crown

by Gillian Bradshaw

  It was beginning to sound as though this might actually be a genuine proposal! ‘Who is this partner?’ Lucy asked suspiciously.

  ‘Mr Henry Walker.’

  ‘Of Perfect Occurrences?’ Mary Overton interjected, and Mrs Alkin nodded.

  This was reassuring. Henry Walker was one of the best established newsmen in London: Perfect Occurrences in Parliament was licensed and cautious and had been coming out every Wednesday for years. Walker had, moreover, shown a willingness to partner other publishers on new ventures, though none of these had been much of a success. It was entirely believable that he’d agreed a partnership with Mrs Alkin.

  ‘He’s offered me help in setting up a newsbook,’ Mrs Alkin confirmed, ‘and says we will divide the profits. This press he wishes to sell me was given him by a printer in payment of a debt. He wants ten pounds for it.’

  That was a bargain, but credible, for a press collected in payment of a debt and offered to a new partner. Lucy didn’t have to think whether or not she could afford it: she knew every penny of the ten pounds, two shillings and five pence in the box under her bed. She felt her face flush. ‘You’ve seen this press? What condition is it in?’

  ‘It works,’ Mrs Alkin said cautiously. ‘Mr Walker gave me leave to try it, and it seemed to me in good order, though I know little enough of such machines. It’s of interest to you, then, this proposal?’

  ‘Aye!’ agreed Lucy. Then she bit her lip, reminding herself that this could still be a trap. ‘Though I must see this press, and speak to Mr Walker, and . . . and see if the terms suit.’ Her heart was beginning to beat hard. Her own press! Her own press now!

  Mrs Alkin smiled. ‘Speak to Mr Walker, by all means, and to any other you please! They will tell you that I am an honest widow-woman, that I love our liberties and hate the malignant wretches who would rob us of them. I recently came by a little money, and hope by spending it thus to spread the truth about that wicked man Charles Stuart, and perhaps earn a small profit to support myself.’ Mrs Alkin paused, then – with a twinkle – added, ‘The press and all that’s printed on it must be properly licensed, of course.’

  It was the twinkle which made Lucy certain that the spy had not the slightest suspicion that she was talking to the much-sought-after printer of Mercurius Pragmaticus. Parliament Joan believed – as the Licensor did – that Lucy was employed on an unlicensed Leveller press. Perversely, the older woman’s trust gave Lucy a queasy stab of guilt.

  ‘I should be glad to have some order in my work,’ she said truthfully, ‘and print only what’s licensed.’

  When Elizabeth Alkin had gone, Mary Overton gave Lucy a thoughtful look. She scooped the chopped onion into the pot of peas simmering on the hearth and wiped ink-stained hands on her apron. ‘Ten pounds is a good price,’ she remarked. ‘Yet, I wish this offer had come when you had more savings in hand!’

  Lucy frowned. ‘You cannot think I should reject this!’

  ‘I think you should be careful of the details before you accept,’ said Mary. ‘Any new newsbook is a risky venture, and Mrs Alkin made it plain that she’ll pull out quickly if she doesn’t make a profit. Then you’d have a press and nothing to print on it – and with no savings to tide you over, you’d have to sell up.’

  ‘Even if I did, I’d likely make a profit!’ protested Lucy. ‘I’ll not see such a bargain again.’

  ‘If the press is sound,’ warned Mary.

  Lucy made a face. ‘I’ll be sure of that before I buy.’

  ‘Be sure of the terms, too!’ Mary insisted. ‘I’d not see you shouldered with paying rent on a shop for a year, if this newsbook fails within a month!’

  Lucy bit her lip: she hadn’t thought of that. Mary was right to urge caution, and yet . . . her own press! She could say goodbye to Nedham and his groping and his vile malignant politics; escape the nerve-racking hazards of unlicensed printing, and still earn enough money to support herself and help her friends and the Leveller cause. ‘I’ll take care,’ she promised. ‘But I pray God it’s what it seems!’

  Mary smiled. ‘Well, I hope it may be all you want, then!’

  Lucy went over to her friend and hugged her. A less generous woman than Mary might have been resentful: Mary’s experience in printing was longer and more extensive than Lucy’s. The Overtons had once had a press of their own – but it had been confiscated by the Stationers, because of the ‘scandalous and seditious’ pamphlets printed on it.

  ‘She might have offered the press to you,’ Lucy acknowledged anxiously. ‘I wonder that she did not. You’re not vexed?’

  Mary gave a snort of amusement and waved a hand at the print-strewn kitchen table. The pages were for the next edition of The Moderate, the Leveller newsbook to which her husband contributed and which she helped to print. ‘I have work aplenty – and Mistress Alkin took good note of it! She doesn’t want the likes of me. She wants an eager, pliable young printer, who will devote herself to her business and follow orders. Besides, she knows that if she took us from The Moderate she would anger Mr Mabbot.’ Gilbert Mabbot owned The Moderate – and, since he was Licensor, no newsbook editor liked to offend him.

  ‘But if you had your own press again . . .’

  Mary sighed and shook her head. ‘Lucy, dear, I’ve no doubt that we’d lose any press we bought soon as we bought it. Dick would print something the mighty ones of England detested, and they’d be glad of the excuse to arrest him.’ She made a face. ‘Honest John in the Tower, Major Wildman in the Fleet – for sure they’d send Dick back to Newgate!’

  Richard Overton was one of the Levellers’ most forceful pamphleteers, and had spent time in Newgate before. ‘He still writes what the mighty ones detest,’ Lucy pointed out.

  ‘Aye, but at least now the babes and I are clear of it!’ exclaimed Mary, her plain, pock-marked face losing its usual good-nature and becoming bitter. ‘God knows, I’ve no wish to revisit Bridewell.’ She had been imprisoned there for months; her children had been left to the care of neighbours and relatives – except the youngest, the baby, who’d been too young to leave his mother, and who’d died in a filthy cell, covered with lice and fleas.

  He might have died anyway, of course – babies died all the time, particularly in London – but Lucy knew that Mary still ached with guilt for that death, and for the suffering of her three older children during her imprisonment. She hugged her friend again.

  Mary hugged her back. ‘You’re welcome to Mrs Alkin’s business,’ she said, trying to smile again. ‘I’ll ask about this press, though, shall I? It may be somebody knows whose it was, and what its condition is. And, my dear, think twice and thrice before you buy! If your venture fails, you’ll be worse off than when you started.’

  The press turned out to be sound. Lucy felt uncomfortable when gossip relayed that Mrs Alkin had ‘come by’ the money for her venture as a reward for trapping John Crouch, the Royalist editor of The Man in the Moon, but the terms offered for the new newsbook were very good. When Lucy raised Mary’s caveat about having to pay rent whether or not the venture succeeded, Alkin’s partner Henry Walker offered the first month’s tenancy free in a building he happened to own. The price set for printing would cover paper, ink, and the wages of the employees Lucy would have to hire to assist her. True, there wouldn’t be much profit afterwards, but the initial order was for five hundred copies. If that number rose, so would the printing costs. If it didn’t, Lucy could find other customers. She spent several evenings rushing around London making arrangements, and at last – with more reluctance than she wanted to acknowledge – gave notice to her employer.

  Marchamont Nedham did not take the news well. ‘What?’

  ‘I have agreed to buy a press,’ Lucy repeated. ‘Mr Henry Walker will sell it me for ten pounds.’ They were in the storeroom near Convent Garden; Lucy’s assistant Wat stood by the secret press holding an inked dab in either hand and gaping.

  ‘You ungrateful wretch!’ exclaimed Nedham furiously. ‘I came and offered you
a good wage, when you were cast out of house and work . . .’

  ‘I was grateful!’ she said indignantly. ‘But I’ve earned my wages! To keep a press like this secret, and yet supplied with paper and ink; to get women to sell it, and have none betray us, to risk discovery and flogging and prison – if you find another to do that for less than ten shillings a week, I’ll be astonished!’

  ‘Very well, then!’ snapped Nedham. ‘Fifteen shillings a week. Take it, and give up this notion of your own press!’

  She blinked, startled and taken aback. Fifteen shillings a week was three times what she’d be taking home from her own venture, once she’d paid her costs. For a moment she found herself thinking, I could pay two shillings a week into the Leveller common fund, and give one to the Major, and still save . . .

  Then she asked, save for what? She’d been saving for a press, and now she would have it! Why on earth would she put it aside? She loathed Pragmaticus, loathed the King and all his works, hated Nedham’s lecherous assaults . . .

  She’d miss him, though. He was clever, and funny, and brave. He made her laugh.

  God forgive me! she thought, in dismay. It was definitely time to go.

  ‘I thank you, but no,’ she said.

  Nedham groaned angrily. ‘You think you can manage a press on your own, do you?’ he demanded, changing tack. ‘A silly girl, a Leicestershire dairymaid, you think you can outman all the knaves in London?’

  ‘Aye,’ she replied levelly. ‘I’ve managed here.’

  ‘This is no printshop! This is . . .’

  ‘Mr Nedham, I doubt, truly, that licensed printing is harder than dodging the Stationers and managing secret deliveries to a back alley!’

  There was a silence. Nedham blinked at her resentfully. ‘Another press will be heavier than this,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll not have the strength to work it.’

  She cast a regretful look at Nedham’s press. It was, indeed, much lighter and easier to operate than the one she’d agreed to buy: it had originally been an army press, and was designed for easy transport. Her new press was an ordinary one, its sturdy bed made even heavier by the flat stone that made an unyielding rest for the formes of type. She could operate it on her own, but it was quite true that she couldn’t keep it up all day. ‘There are plenty of men in London who want work,’ she said resolutely. ‘I’ll have no difficulty hiring help.’

  Nedham grimaced. ‘Aye, and what will he think, when he sees a pretty woman set over him?’

  ‘I expect he’ll think what you do, Mr Nedham – only, being under rather than over me, he’ll be more careful in what he does about it.’

  Nedham winced. ‘I’ve never done you any harm!’

  It was true. Nedham never seemed to believe she meant no unless she backed up the word with some sort of blow – but he’d never tried to force her and he’d never hit her back. He didn’t grant her respect, let alone courtesy, but she wasn’t afraid of him.

  ‘I would sooner have my own press,’ she said resolutely, ‘and print no more defences of the King.’

  Young Wat finally set down the dabs. ‘Mistress,’ he said excitedly, ‘my Uncle Simmon needs work; he’d . . .’

  ‘God damn it!’ exclaimed Nedham. He jumped to his feet, came over and seized her by the arms. ‘God damn you, woman, you know I like you well; why must you be so obstinate?’

  She tried to pull free, but he was holding tight, and his hands were strong. ‘Let me go!’

  His only answer was to kiss her. She turned her face away, but he pushed her back against the wall, lips crushing hers against her clenched teeth. His grip on her arms was painful and the smell of him – of ink and dirt and stale wine – filled her nostrils, almost suffocating. She kicked and drew in a breath to scream.

  Nedham let her go. ‘What ails you, woman?’ he asked irritably. ‘Are you made of ice?’

  ‘You let me be!’ she gasped.

  His face creased. ‘Damn it!’ he said again. ‘God damn! Very well, then: marry me.’

  ‘What?’ she cried, aghast.

  He gave her a furious glare. ‘If that’s the only way I can have you, then that’s what I must do.’

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. ‘Mr Nedham, I am married already!’

  ‘I don’t believe in this invisible husband!’

  ‘What you believe is nothing to the point! I am married.’

  He stared in angry disbelief.

  ‘I was married at St Dunstan’s in Stepney,’ Lucy told him. ‘To Mr James Hudson, as I told you, last January. If you go there you may read our names in the register.’

  The disbelief ebbed slowly. ‘You’re truly married?’

  ‘Aye. I cannot marry you, even if I wished to.’

  ‘God damn you!’ Nedham cried, in furious exasperation. ‘Why did you not tell me sooner?’

  Wat, who’d watched all this with his mouth open, tittered. Nedham spun about and clouted him across the side of the head. The boy was knocked to the floor. He sat up, holding his ear and sobbing.

  ‘Keep a civil tongue!’ Nedham snarled. ‘Who pays your wages?’ He turned back to Lucy. ‘This husband . . .’

  ‘He’s with the Army,’ she said. ‘He serves unwillingly, but he was obliged to enlist after he was taken up at Ware. When the war is over, then we’ll be free to make our lives together.’

  ‘He has no kin who might support you?’

  She felt herself flush. ‘I support myself. There was no need to go to them and beg.’

  Nedham let out a huh! of understanding. ‘Married you without their blessing, did he? Well, I’ve no call to blame him. I would have done just the same.’ He grimaced, then shook his head. ‘God damn him to hell, the rutting son of an Egyptian whore! Likely he’s done me a favour.’ He gave Lucy a glare of resentful desire. ‘I would have wed you.’

  With astonishment, she considered the possibility that he really did love her, in his way – and felt ashamed of the way she’d treated him. ‘Sir,’ she said slowly, ‘you’ve paid me a high compliment, and I am sensible of it, and sorry that I must disappoint you.’

  ‘Huh!’ he said again, morosely, and glowered. ‘When do you leave, then?’

  ‘I told Mrs Alkin and Mr Walker I needed a fortnight to set things in order. I hope that will give you time enough to find someone to take my place.’

  ‘Small chance of that!’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m going to get a drink.’ He stamped out of the storeroom, banging the door behind him.

  Lucy went over to Wat and helped him to his feet. The boy cast a filthy look at the door and said, ‘I won’t stay here to work for him!’ He rubbed his ear and turned hopeful eyes on Lucy. ‘I’ll come with you, Lucy! I’ll ink, and Uncle Simmon will work the press, and we’ll have the merriest printshop in all London!’

  Five

  The warm evening of Jamie’s arrival at Colchester was the last good weather for a long time. He woke up next morning – on the floor of the makeshift shed that served the regiment as a forge – and found that a puddle had soaked the edge of his bedroll, while rain hung in a streaming curtain over the doorless entry. He was lucky; he had a roof over his head. In the camp beyond the doorway, damp men huddled under canvas, or crouched in makeshift shelters of brushwood, cursing the heavy skies. The fort intended to shelter them was still no more than a series of ditches, ankle-deep with mud and rapidly filling with dirty water.

  The fact that Jamie had a dry place to sleep was a sign of exceptional favour and importance. Colonel Rainsborough had been delighted to get him. ‘We have urgent need of your services, Mr Hudson,’ he’d said the evening before. ‘We need to shut up yonder city in a ring of iron – and we are short even of nails! I am obliged to General Ireton for sending you to me rather than another.’

  Jamie bowed his head and muttered, ‘I’m happy to serve, sir. My friend John Wildman esteems you above any man in this Army.’

  Rainsborough was a tall, powerful man with a lively, changeable face. At this his
eyes brightened in sudden attention. ‘You’re a friend of John Wildman? He and I were much together during the debates at Putney, and I love him dearly. He is a very honest, outspoken gentleman, of much wit and learning. His arrest was a great piece of wickedness. Have you heard aught of him since then?’

  ‘My wife visits him every week, sir, in the Fleet,’ Jamie replied. ‘When I last had word from her, early in June, she reported that he was well, and that his sufferings had not broken his spirit.’

  ‘God keep him so!’ exclaimed Rainsborough vehemently. ‘I pray he is soon free of that place! You have a wife in London, have you? She sends you news of him, and of our other friends?’

  Jamie noted that ‘other friends’: there was no doubt at all it meant ‘Levellers’. He wondered if he should have kept quiet about his friendship with Wildman – then felt ashamed. Why should he be reluctant to admit to his allegiances? ‘Aye,’ he agreed. ‘She’s a printer, and lodges with her friends, the Overtons.’

  ‘Richard Overton? Of An Arrow Against All Tyrants? That writes for The Moderate?’

  ‘Aye, and his wife Mary, that prints it.’

  Rainsborough beamed. ‘The very head and fountain of honest news! You’ll find yourself much in demand whenever you get a letter!’

  After that the colonel had introduced Jamie to all his staff as, ‘Our new blacksmith, a friend of Major John Wildman; his wife helps print The Moderate!’ Jamie was embarrassed to correct his superior, and let the error stand. Rainsborough’s men shared their colonel’s sympathies; Jamie was welcomed warmly. He accepted the treatment with as much grace as he could manage, and tried to suppress the feeling that every kindness was another bolt on his prison.

  The regiment was not the one which had fought under Rainsborough in the first war. It was new, recruited in London the summer before, to guard the Tower after Parliament and the Army fell out; it had lost its previous colonel in the initial assault on Colchester the week before. Rainsborough, ejected by the navy mutiny, was a good match for it. He was recognized as something of a specialist in siege warfare, and the Tower regiment possessed more than the usual number of engineers, gunners, and – ordinarily – blacksmiths. Of the four smiths who’d served it in London, however, two had managed to get themselves excused from leaving the city, and another had died during the same assault that killed the first colonel. The remaining smith would have struggled to deal with all the regiment’s work even if there hadn’t been the siegeworks to do as well, and he welcomed Jamie with open arms. He was a short, wiry man with a shock of dirty brown hair, Samuel Towlend by name, and he did everything he could to make the newcomer comfortable. He found Jamie a bedroll and a new coat, both from men killed in the recent assault, and gave him his pick of the dead blacksmith’s tools. That first morning, though, Towlend began heaping coal on the forge fire even before showing Jamie where to get breakfast. ‘We’ve much to do,’ he said; and when the two of them had fetched their bread and ale they went straight to the forge and set to work making nails. The men of the regiment were eager to build themselves a fort and get out of the rain.