‘But we must!’ he said earnestly. ‘I fear that I have indeed cost you your press, which I know you had laboured long to buy – and with the press, your livelihood.’
‘I hope to find other work,’ Lucy replied. ‘There are a great many presses in London.’
‘I hope you will not consider Mr Nedham’s!’
So for all his humble words he still suspected her! ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I will not. And, Major, I do not need any more of your protection. It’s done harm enough already. I trust my own wits will serve me better than any effort of yours!’
Wildman winced and lifted a hand defensively. ‘Forgive me! I only feared lest my folly drive you into the very danger you were seeking to escape. Please, let me make amends. Since I’ve cost you your livelihood, it’s only fitting that I should offer you my support in its place.’
She stared in growing indignation. He practically accused her of adultery, got her – and Mary! – into trouble with the Licensor, refused to admit that he’d been mistaken on the spot, when it might have helped – and now he thought he could make everything all right again by offering her money? ‘I thank you, no,’ she said sharply. ‘I can support myself.’
He stared, taken aback.
‘Jamie said nothing to me about accepting your protection,’ she said, finding a justification he couldn’t argue with. ‘From what you say, it seems to me that he wanted no more than for you to be a friend I could turn to in need. If I need your help, Major, be certain that I will turn to you – but as to making myself your dependent, it would be a disgrace to my husband were I to do any such thing!’
Wildman flushed. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘Johnnie, give over!’ Dick Overton exclaimed, much amused. ‘Lord have mercy, what are you thinking of, to offer our Lucy money after you’ve offended her? You’d have as much luck offering it to Free-born John!’
Wildman looked aghast. John Lilburne’s furious scorn of anyone who tried to buy him off was legendary. Dick clapped his friend on the back. ‘Let’s go down to The Whalebone!’ he suggested. ‘Your trouble is you’ve spent too long fasting and fretting in the Fleet. You need some of Ned’s good beer.’
When the men had gone, Mary, who’d sat in silence by the kitchen fire throughout, looked up at Lucy with a sly smile. ‘And how long will it take before you forgive him properly?’
Lucy sat down beside her and arranged her half-darned stocking on her lap. ‘A long time indeed, if he keeps trying to protect me from the likes of Mr Nedham!’
Mary grinned.
‘I think he has never seen me as aught but “Jamie’s woman”,’ Lucy continued angrily, threading the needle over and under the coarse wool. ‘All those times I visited him in prison, and to him it was a debt to Jamie, which he must repay by protecting Jamie’s wayward little wife. I never figured in his mind at all.’
‘Most men are thus,’ Mary said sympathetically. ‘And, indeed, we married women are no more than our husbands’ shadows, and have no separate existence in law at all.’ Then she smiled smugly and added, ‘Dick is unusual.’
‘Aye, he is,’ Lucy said warmly. She had never seen Dick Overton treat any grown woman as a child in need of protection and guidance. ‘I hope Jamie heeds his example!’
Mary grinned again and turned over the child’s shirt she had been hemming. ‘You’ve two offers of support now,’ she observed. ‘Mr Hudson’s last night, and now the Major’s as well. I do hope you find work soon, or Dick and I will be short of rent.’
‘I’m sorry!’ exclaimed Lucy, mortified. ‘I’d not thought of you. I . . . if I don’t find work within the week I’ll . . .’
‘Oh, hush!’ Mary exclaimed equably. ‘I’m sure you will find work, as soon as you’ve sold the press.’
The following morning Gilbert Mabbot called at the Overtons’ house. Lucy had been trying to earn her keep by some house-cleaning, and when Faith called her to the door she was dishevelled and clutching a mop. Mabbot recoiled in alarm. Lucy gaped at him, then hastily set the mop aside and stammered that the Overtons were both in the printshop.
‘That I know,’ said Mabbot, relaxing, ‘for I’ve just come from there. They told me that you mean to sell your press.’
‘Aye,’ she agreed, flushing a little.
‘It’s in good working order? Where is it?’ When she stared in surprise he continued impatiently, ‘I need a second press for The Moderate.’ Then he smirked and added, ‘The one we have cannot keep pace with our sales.’
Pleased with the thought that her press might be used to increase the circulation of The Moderate, she took Mabbot to the damp shop on Thames Street. The press still squatted in the middle of the dark little room, a stack of unsold Impartial Scouts piled on the tympan. She threw them unceremoniously to the dirty floor, showed Mabbot the machine, and opened up the cases of type for his inspection. He looked everything over, tested the big handle, and finally said, ‘Eleven pounds.’
‘Twelve,’ she replied at once.
They bargained, and eventually settled on eleven and six, with Mabbot responsible for moving the press to its new home.
‘Very good!’ Mabbot said, with satisfaction. ‘There’s another matter then, Mrs Wentnor – Hudson, I mean. Though you spoke to me very insolently the other day, I am prepared to overlook it, and to offer you a place working this fine press.’
Become a hireling on her own press? For Mabbot, who’d just obliged her to sell it? She gaped, and at last managed an honest, ‘Sir, I am amazed!’
Mabbot smirked. ‘Well, well. I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones. You’re a poor woman with a husband at the wars, and times have been hard for you, I know. Major Wildman has pleaded on your behalf, and Mr and Mrs Overton have said that they’d prefer you to any other helper.’
‘I am indebted to them,’ said Lucy; then added hastily, ‘and to you, sir, of course! What would you have me do?’
Mabbot shrugged. ‘What you did before – set type, correct proofs, assemble the sheets and so forth. Mrs Overton will have overall charge of the printing, under Mr White; you will answer to her. I can offer you four and sixpence a week.’
Lucy remembered Nedham’s ten shillings with a pang – then determinedly pushed all thought of them from her mind. Four and sixpence was a good wage for a lone woman. She could pay her rent to the Overtons and still have a shilling a week over. True, it would take her a long time to accumulate any savings at that rate – but, as Mary had pointed out, she had time. ‘I should be very glad of the place, sir,’ she said humbly. ‘Sir? Have you anyone in mind to ink, or to work the press?’
‘Why?’ Mabbot asked suspiciously.
‘For The Impartial Scout I had a boy to ink, and his simple uncle to work the press. They were content with but a small wage.’
Mabbot brightened. ‘Aye? If they’ll work for four shillings a week betwixt the two of them, you may hire them again.’
Wat and his Uncle Simmon had, in fact, been happy to work for three and sixpence a week. ‘I’ll speak to them,’ Lucy said neutrally.
She went first to the printshop on Coleman Street. Mary was still setting type for the day’s instalment of news.
‘Mr Mabbot has just hired me for four and six a week!’ Lucy announced.
Mary set down the composing stick and rolled her eyes. ‘I told him he should pay you five shillings!’
Lucy burst out laughing and hugged her. ‘Why would he pay me what he pays you? Mary, dear dear Mary, I am more grateful than I can say. I know this is thanks to you and Dick.’
Mary smiled. ‘Only in part. Mr Mabbot has sufficient virtue to know that he had earned your rebukes. Now he can preen and tell himself that he is a forgiving and magnanimous man. But it’s true that I told him that I should like above all things to have my sweet friend working beside me.’
Lucy hugged her again.
She wrote Jamie with the good news, then, after some thought, penned a second letter informing Jamie’s brother.
S
ir,
You were kinde enogh to offer Help and Supporte to mee if I cd not find Worke. I am happie to saye that I have founde Worke alreadie. I am to help my goode Friends Mr and Mrs Overton to print Mr Mabbot’s newsbook The Moderate. I am well pleased with the Worke, and in Especial with the Companie, for I think trulie there are none I hadde rather keep Companie with, excepting onlie yr Brother Jamie. I thank you againe, sir, for yr Kindnesse.
Yr sister, Lucy
She sent the letters off, spending her first spare sixpence on the postage, then forgot about them, swept up in the news that had to be rushed into The Moderate’s pages.
At first the war took up most of the newsprint: Cromwell’s campaign; the siege of Colchester; the depredations of the Scots; the manoeuvres of the Royalist fleet and the loyal one. The Prince’s ships sailed up the Thames as far as the Medway, and London feared an immediate attack – but the wind and the tide prevented a battle, and the Royalists were forced by lack of supplies to return to the Dutch coast.
Then came the news of the battle of Preston. The war was not yet ended, but from that moment the way it would end was inevitable. All the London newsbooks reported the outcome of the siege of Colchester. Mercurius Pragmaticus – which Lucy still read when she could, though it enraged her – was full of outrage for the ‘martyrs’, the Royalist commanders who were summarily executed the evening after the gates were opened.
Against the custom of War they caused within 4 houres after the surrender that incomperable Paire of gallant soules (Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle) to be shot to death; an act so unsouldierlike, unworthy and barbarous, that it will heap eternal Infamy on the heads of their brutish Executioners.
That ‘imcomperable Paire’ were the only two actually shot; the noblemen were sent to London to await the judgement of Parliament, while junior officers were given quarter. Even one of the men who had actually been sentenced to death, a Colonel Farre, was found to have escaped before the city fell. The two who were shot – Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle – had both previously given their parole not to fight against Parliament, and broken it.
Many members of the Commons, and nearly all the Lords, had been in doubt whether the Army or the Scots was the worst evil. Their faction – fervently Presbyterian and fiercely oligarchic – was now determined to settle the new government before the Army was free to impose something more democratic. Eleven members who’d been impeached by the Army the previous summer were allowed to return and take their seats. They pressed forward with an ordinance establishing a Presbyterian state church; the resolution that no more addresses should be made to the King was repealed, and commissioners were appointed to negotiate.
Everyone knew the form of government the commissioners desired: King Charles restored to the throne with a Presbyterian state church replacing the old episcopacy, and Presbyterian ministers of state replacing the old aristocracy. And it was nightmarishly clear – to Lucy, if not to the negotiators – that any such agreement would be struck down in blood. The Army – independent in religion and Republican in politics – would never accept it.
Sometimes, as her fingers arranged the letters for The Moderate’s latest instalment of news, she felt physically sick at what she was reporting. Did those idiots really think that men who’d fought for seven years in the name of freedom and common right, men who were in the process of cementing their victory in a second bloody war, would, if confronted by a treaty between Parliament and the King, simply lay down their weapons and go home?
No. The Army was not going to disband itself and surrender its power to Parliament. Lucy was not surprised when Jamie wrote to say that he had applied for a discharge, but had been denied.
Thirteen
Rainsborough’s regiment was posted north, to the siege of Pontefract.
The castle had been seized for the King on the first of June, and for most of the summer the Parliamentary forces in the north had been too hard-pressed to take it back. By September, however, Pontefract and Scarborough were the only Royalist strongholds still holding out. A Sir Henry Cholmley had been put in charge of the siege earlier in the summer. First he was sent reinforcements; then, as the month wore on and nothing was achieved, Rainsborough was sent to replace him.
Rainsborough’s men did not have the least desire to go. They were deeply aggrieved at being sent off to another siege, particularly with the autumn now drawing on. They also had an eye on political developments in London, and suspected that their own radical regiment was being got out of the way. The colonel, however, was firm. A settlement of the government of England must wait until the war was over, and the sooner they took Pontefract, the sooner that would be. Late in September they set off along the Great North Road.
The wet weather which had added so much to the misery of Colchester had improved, but there had been no repairs to the road since then, and it was a mass of mud, potholes, and deep wheel-ruts; the passage of the regiment’s gun wagons did not improve it. Jamie, travelling with the regimental forge among the supply wagons, spent a great deal of time pushing wagons out of holes.
The forge had two wagons, one for the forge itself and the tools, another for the supplies of coal and iron. Each had four horses to pull it, with a soldier assigned to drive and look after the animals. Philibert Bailey managed to get himself put in charge of the little convoy, hoping it would be easier than marching, but was soon cursing himself for his stupidity. In theory the two drivers and the smiths could have sat on the wagons and watched the world go by; in practice they were constantly unloading the wagons to lighten them, helping to double up the horses, heaving and hauling with the rest, then loading up the wagons again. Whenever they arrived at the end of a day’s march, they had to set up the forge and get the fire going to shoe horses and do the most urgent repairs of wagons and harness so that the march could continue in the morning. When it grew dark, Jamie would collapse on to his bedroll, tired beyond feeling, which was about the only advantage he could see in his position.
No one had said a word to him about Farre’s escape. Nobody had even come to ask him about a nameless deserter who’d slipped his shackles during the last night of the siege. All the elation he’d felt at his act of mercy, however, had vanished, crushed under the disappointment of his denied discharge and the prospect of another siege to come. As the days passed along the road he thought more and more often of deserting, of running, and finding a ship that was going somewhere far away, and sending for Lucy once he was safely abroad. He was so utterly worn out, though, in mind and body, that the effort required was beyond him.
In the event, Rainsborough didn’t make it to Pontefract. When they reached Doncaster, a day’s march away, the colonel sent to Sir Henry Cholmley announcing that he would arrive the following day. Cholmley sent back saying that he had been given charge of the siege by Colonel Lambert, and that to step away from that charge before the castle fell would be dishonour to him and to the man who appointed him – particularly if he was to be replaced by Rainsborough, whose enmity to the ancient government of the land was notorious. Rainsborough’s cannon and engineers would be welcome, but only if they were to be under Cholmley’s command.
Rainsborough was by no means a meek and diffident man, but he could not take over a siege without the cooperation of the people maintaining it. The regiment stopped in Doncaster while he and Cholmley fired off letters, to one another, the high command, and even to Parliament. The town already had a full garrison of Cholmley’s men and many of Cholmley’s sick and injured; Rainsborough’s regiment was obliged to squeeze in where it could. The colonel and his staff, refused accommodation in the existing army headquarters, took over Doncaster’s largest inn; some of the men were quartered in the town, and the rest distributed among the neighbouring villages.
Yorkshire was groaning under the burden of the armies there. Cromwell himself, with his own forces, was only a few miles away at Knottingley. The supplies to feed all these men had to be extracted from a region which
had suffered badly in the first war, and Rainsborough’s regiment was not welcome.
For the first couple of days in Doncaster Jamie worked steadily alongside Sam Towlend, dealing with the backlog of repairs that had accumulated during the journey north. On the afternoon of the third day, however, they’d completed all the urgent jobs. Jamie picked up one of the less urgent jobs – a dented helmet – but Towlend caught his arm, stopping him.
‘Leave it!’ ordered Towlend sharply.
Jamie stared at him stupidly. The shorter man frowned up into his face, then took the helmet away. ‘You need your rest more than Ned Wilkins needs that pot.’
Jamie blinked, baffled.
‘You’re worn to bone and rags, man!’ Towlend said impatiently. ‘You’ve scarce said three words since we came to Doncaster. The first breath of sickness that strikes us will carry you away. Go on, be off! Have yourself a mug of ale and a dish of meat, if you can find any, and if you can’t, have a walk along the river. For my part, I’ll put the fire to bed and seek out a friend with a newsbook.’
Jamie bowed his head numbly, then put away his tools and walked out of the forge. He, Towlend and the two wagon-drivers had not been billeted on any of the townsmen. In the cramped and insecure quarters of the town they were obliged to stay with the forge and keep it safe from thieves. This was not really a hardship: the two forge wagons carried panels of wicker and canvas which could be placed between them to form a shed, and the fire kept them dry and warm. This makeshift smithy had been set up behind Doncaster’s main church, near the river. When he emerged from it, Jamie found himself looking out at the stream of the Don, sparkling in the sunshine, and trees shedding the last of their russet leaves. The air was cold after the heat of the forge, with that peculiar October brightness that leaves each detail soft-edged and glowing.
A Corruptible Crown Page 19
