A Corruptible Crown

by Gillian Bradshaw

  The cut was a caked mess of dried blood and pus, mixed with smears of Dr White’s balsam. Molly and his father both exclaimed over it in horror – though Jamie thought that after it was cleaned it didn’t actually look all that bad; better than it had at the court martial, certainly. The family, however, seemed to regard it as potentially mortal. It was cleaned, anointed with Molly’s best remedies, and earnestly debated, Kate and Peggy both coming in to inspect the injury and give their own opinions. That Jamie should rest in bed until it was healed was a foregone conclusion. The questions of what medicine he should take, and what his diet should be, were more vexed.

  ‘It’s weeks old!’ he protested. ‘It didn’t hinder me walking all the way hither from Doncaster!’

  ‘Aye, and much good that did it!’ snapped his father. ‘We should send for Dr Sidcombe.’

  ‘It’s had two surgeons already!’

  His father glared. ‘We delayed sending for the good doctor for poor little Georgie. We’ll not delay again!’

  Jamie had forgotten that Rob’s only son had died from an infected cut. His family’s alarm suddenly made sense. Nonetheless, he was very unwilling to suffer the attentions of Dr Sidcombe: purging, bleeding and a low diet would make it impossible for him to go to London. Lucy had had his letter: she would be waiting for him.

  ‘I swear to you,’ he said, ‘it is amended from what it was a few days ago. Leave it, I pray you, at least until this evening: if it’s worse then you can send for Dr Sidcombe.’

  The family warily accepted this compromise. Now that he’d been reminded of her loss, Jamie found himself studying his sister-in-law. Georgie had been her first child; after that there’d been a stillborn daughter, and she’d been pregnant again when he left home. He’d assumed, without giving it much thought, that she had or would have more children. The laughing young mother of his memories, however, had been replaced by this slow heavy woman who moved as though her body pained her. The years had maimed her, too, and he doubted that there would be any more children.

  Rob had told him that he himself was now the likely heir to the estate, but he hadn’t taken it seriously. He’d always known that he’d never be Mr Hudson of Bourne Manor. The realization that eventually he might be turned all his world on edge.

  Kate noticed his gaze and gave him a tired smile. ‘We must cancel the dinner,’ she said, with a sigh.

  He gave her a bewildered look, and his father scowled. ‘I had bid your other sisters and their husbands to dinner tonight, to welcome you home. Clearly, though, you’ll not be fit enough for such rich fare as fatted calf. Molly, fetch him some milquetoast. Now, Jamie, you must tell us about this arrest, and how you came by that wound.’

  Sixteen

  Bourne Manor

  17th November

  My verie deere,

  I feare I must have writ confusedly before, speaking of my Arrest, for they tell me my Brother Rob is on his waye to Doncaster to help me, tho’ I needed no help and have alreadie left that Citie, as you maye see by the Super-scription. In Truthe, my Arrest was as Brief as Unlawful, and the Delaye was onlie for the Court Marshall of the Captaine that ordered it; and he has been casheered. As soone as the Sentence was given I was upon the Roade, for I wish above alle things to see you once more, yett I must tarrie here a little while. I suffered a Grayze from a Pistoll Shott in Doncaster, whych is slow to mende; for my part I cd Endure it, but my kin will not permitt me to depart until it is Whole.

  I knowe my Brother Rob went to Lundun thinking to fetch you hither to Bourne. He did so out of Love and Care, but I feare it wd have turned out very ill had you come hither without me, and I am much to Blame for giving Rob to Understand other wise. I knowe it wd greeve you to leave your Worke and Friends in Lundun onlie to sit here in Idlenesse. My deerest Lucie, what we shall do I knowe nott, for my kin alle Expect me to remain with them here, but please beleeve that I will do No Thing untill I have spoken with you. It may be we can Discover some Settlement that will satisfie alle.

  I count alle Houres wasted untill I see you againe.

  Yr Jamie

  ‘When I do see him again,’ Lucy told Mary, ‘I think I shall hand him pen and paper, and tell him he cannot kiss me until he’s learned to explain himself properly in writing!’

  Mary laughed. She lifted a hand from the composing frame and pretended to write frantically, then returned to snatching the letters she needed for the next line of newsprint. She and Lucy had taken to setting type together, sitting one on either side of a table that held the day’s written text, calling out advice on spacings and line lengths.

  ‘All the worry I spent on poor Jamie shivering in prison!’ Lucy said in disgust. ‘I should have worried about poor Jamie ill from a pistol shot! How did he come to be shot? Where was he shot? In the leg? The belly? His foolish head? He could best spare the last, I think, for he makes scant use of it!’ She finished assembling a line on her composing stick, eyed it a moment, then slid in a couple of spacers to justify it. She slid the line into the forme and turned back to the composing frame. ‘I pray God he hasn’t fought another duel!’

  Mary clicked her tongue. ‘God forbid! The next line should end on ‘expecting’.’

  Lucy nodded and began to select letters, starting at the end with ‘gnitcepxe’.

  ‘Do you truly think he might have been duelling?’ asked Mary, continuing the conversation as though the reversed sentences under their fingers were no more than stitches in a seam.

  Lucy grimaced. ‘He would have challenged this Barker on my account before, had Colonel Rainsborough not obliged him to forswear it. He gave no promise about what he would do if Barker offended him again. If there was a duel, it explains why he said nought of it in his last letter – though I suppose his silence needs no more explanation than his poor skill at letter writing!’ She sighed. ‘I never thought that skill would be so needful, when I wed him!’

  ‘Indeed, it’s a very scurvy letter,’ Mary said slyly. ‘Give it here, and I’ll use it to clean type.’

  ‘Indeed you will not!’ cried Lucy, laughing. ‘This letter is a very fine one, and I shall keep it close! I make the next line end with “which”, do you?’

  The letter didn’t remove the threat of removal to Lincolnshire, and didn’t even address the question of what Jamie had promised his brother about the Leveller cause. And yet . . . it reassured her at some deeper level. I knowe it wd greeve you to leave your Worke and Friends in Lundun onlie to sit here in Idlenesse . . . He was aware of her, as his brother had not been; he understood that she had a life of her own. There might not be any arrangement that satisfied everyone, but at least he would try to find one.

  In part her more hopeful frame of mind was due to nothing more than having had time to get used to the idea of leaving London. She’d found herself remembering the pleasures of the countryside where she’d grown up, and noticing all the things she hated about London: the noise, the filth, the beggars, the stench. There was something to be said, after all, for a move. Were there any printing presses in Lincolnshire? She’d never heard of one in Leicestershire when she was growing up, but she remembered the blackletter ballads she and her friends used to buy. They’d cost a penny new, and three or four girls used to band together to pay for one, then pass the sheet back and forth among themselves until the paper was thick and the words almost illegible. She had no doubt that there was a market for print.

  She lost herself a moment in a daydream of owning the first printing press in Lincolnshire, of making regular trips down to London to see her friends and collect the latest ballads before returning to run off innumerable copies for the eager country customers . . .

  Whether she could do any such thing would depend upon where Bourne actually was, and that she didn’t know. If it lay far out in the wild fens she would . . . she would have to find something else to do. She needed to talk to Jamie. It had been so long since they had talked!

  Or perhaps it was fairer to say they had never really talked
. They had worked together on a printing press, and she had fallen in love, but he’d never been much of a talker. Probably she was a fool to have married him, a man she’d known so little about – a man she still knew so little about! She must make the best of it, and keep alive the hope that they could love one another and be happy.

  ‘Lucy!’ said Mary softly, and Lucy looked down and saw that the composing stick in her hands was full. She realized that she’d been sitting with it in her lap and staring idly at nothing for several minutes.

  ‘Sorry!’ she muttered, and went back to work.

  Bourne Manor

  24th November

  I write this in Teares. My deere Brother Robert is hurt, perhaps dying. He had rid to Doncaster, as you knowe, and it appears that when he came there and Enquyred after me, he was told all the Tale of my Arrest, and how Lt Barker had caused it; and he heard, too, that I hadde been shott, the Hurt done being made much greater in Rumoure than it was in Fact. He sought Barker out, but Barker having Choyce of Weapons chose Pistolls, at whych he proved more Skilled than he was at Sword-Play, for he felled Rob with a shott to the Shoulder and fled Unscathed. Rob’s servant was with him, and a Seconde he hadde founde in the Rgmt, and they brought him to an Inne and sent for a surgeon, and sent also to us. My Father is much stricken, but will goe at once, and so we ride in the morning, and I will leave this at Grantham to go with the Post South.

  I beg you praye for my deere Brother, who was ever kinder to me than my deserving.

  Jamie

  Lucy had found the letter waiting when she returned from work. She had to read it twice before she could even take it in, the news was so shocking and so utterly unexpected. She remembered Rob saying wearily that he would start for the north, and her own warm approval.

  She also remembered him asking her whether the attempted abduction had really been in jest, and his scowl at her reply. She had not taken note of that at the time, and she should have done – but then, this whole business of duelling was foreign to her. She wouldn’t have understood that ‘he sought him out’ meant ‘he challenged him’, except for what followed. Why should a good man like Robert Hudson decide that he must risk his life for the sake of punishing a worthless coward? If you’d escaped the viper’s bite, why chase after it with a stick? If Rob died, it would hurt Jamie much more than any arrest or pistol graze.

  She began to cry. Mary, who’d been chopping parsnips, set down her kitchen knife in alarm and hurried over. Lucy flapped the letter in explanation. ‘He says his brother Rob’s been shot!’ she choked. ‘In a duel with that vile rogue Barker. He asks me to pray for him.’

  ‘Dear Lord Jesus!’ exclaimed Mary. She took the letter, looked at it, then caught Lucy’s hands and drew her down on to her knees. Lucy had for some years found it hard to pray – whenever she tried, she found herself paralyzed by the religious doubts she usually managed to ignore. In this extremity, though, when there was nothing else she could do, she knelt beside Mary on the kitchen floor and prayed desperately for Robert Hudson.

  For the next two weeks she lived in constant fear of another letter, announcing that Robert had died. None came. On the other hand, there was also no letter saying that Jamie and his father had arrived at Doncaster and found Rob on his way to recovery. The only news from the north was what appeared in the newsbooks: Col. Cholmley’s regiment was to be disbanded, while Colonel Rainsborough’s would return south, leaving the siege of Pontefract to Cromwell’s men. Lucy was unhappily aware that the public news might well account for the lack of the private sort; a couple of thousand men removing themselves from a battlefield undoubtedly disrupted the post.

  There was an abundance of disruption in London, too. The conflict between Parliament and Army had finally reached its long-threatened crisis. The Army had submitted General Ireton’s Remonstrance to Parliament, but Parliament first deferred consideration of it, then rejected it, pressing on instead with negotiations for a treaty with the King. At this Ireton called for Parliament to be dissolved. Lord General Fairfax, who’d backed Parliament, found himself outvoted on his own council, and the Army marched into London.

  The Army occupied London on the second of December. It kept good order and discipline, but the presence of so many armed men could not but be overwhelming. Soldiers set up camp on every green in the capital, and were quartered in every public building and many private ones; prices shot up and businesses closed their doors.

  London was shocked and subdued – but the Levellers, for once, were happy. The Army Council had also voted to hold formal discussions with them on a settlement of government. Lilburne, Wildman, and Dick Overton were all on the committee to draft a new constitution. The Leveller leaders were wary, of course, but also elated: a new constitution! Based on The Agreement of the People! Dick bubbled with hope; Lilburne burned with determination; John Wildman blazed with enthusiasm. Lucy, however, found herself full of dread. The Army had occupied London before – but instead of a settlement there’d been months of wrangling, followed by the betrayal at Ware. Everything she heard now filled her with foreboding that the same thing would happen again – and in the meantime, the Army was there, on the street, an iron-clad presence that made any pretence of Parliamentary government a sham. What sort of democracy was imposed on a frightened and hostile populace by main force? She found herself unable to believe that Cromwell and Ireton, who’d used and discarded the Levellers before, intended to be honest partners now.

  Mary shared her doubts. They did not talk about it much, but one evening when Dick was meeting late with the committee and they were sitting by the fire doing the mending, Mary suddenly said, ‘If this turns out ill, might I send the children to you in Lincolnshire?’

  Lucy looked at her friend’s earnest face and swallowed the facile words of reassurance which had risen to her tongue. ‘They would be welcome,’ she said instead. ‘Any or all of you would be, in any circumstances. You took me in when I had nothing, and you may call on me for anything I possess.’

  Mary looked at her keenly a moment. ‘Thank you. I pray God it never comes to that, but it eases my mind to think that if the worst happens the littles ones will be safe.’ She sighed, then added, with forced optimism, ‘Likely it will all turn out as Dick hopes, and I’m worrying over nothing. Still, I’m glad now that you’re to leave London. It may well prove a blessing in disguise.’

  Lucy could have replied that it was by no means certain that she would leave London – but she didn’t have the heart. It was painfully obvious that Mary would gladly leave London herself, if Dick were willing to go. She reached out and caught her friend’s hand. Mary squeezed it, gave her an unsteady smile, then resolutely resumed her sewing.

  It was on the fourth of December, in the middle of this city bristling with guns and swords, that Lucy went to buy ink for the press and realized that she was being followed.

  She hadn’t consciously noticed anyone – but all the time she’d spent on unlicensed presses had left her instincts finely honed, and she trusted them. Of course, now that her work was legal she didn’t need to worry, but still she stopped and pretended to check her purse while secretly glancing over the crowd. She was on Moorgate, near London Wall. The thoroughfare was bustling, even though every other man now seemed to be wearing a red coat, and it was hard to make out who . . .

  She spotted her follower, a red-coated soldier leaning against a wall about half a block away on the other side of the street. He was slouching with his hat tipped forward, so she couldn’t make out his face, but she could sense the direction of his gaze as he waited for her to walk on.

  She slipped her purse back in its pocket and started on, amused. In the two days since the Army arrived in London she’d three times found a soldier trailing after her, but only two of them had worked up the nerve to speak to her. Those two had been harmless – and even if this one wasn’t, he wouldn’t dare do anything with so many people about.

  She passed Moorgate and continued on into Moorfields: the ink
-maker’s was located outside the city wall, off the main road and at a little distance from neighbouring properties, so that their vile-smelling concoctions of soot and linseed oil would have space to simmer without suffocating anyone. The business was run by a family: old father, eldest son and wife, daughter and husband. The old man was not about today, and one of the couples was away as well, but the daughter and her husband were in the shop. They greeted her cheerfully and asked after Dick and Mary; she asked after their father. She was listening to their account of the old man’s ague when Isaiah Barker marched in with a pistol primed and cocked in his hand.

  She gaped, shocked but not seriously afraid. Surely he couldn’t mean to attack her in the middle of a shop!

  ‘Mrs Hudson,’ said Barker. ‘You will come with me. You,’ the pistol described an arc between the gaping ink-brewers, ‘will hold your peace.’

  ‘Lieutenant Barker . . .’ Lucy began – and he hit her.

  It was a solid sweeping blow with his free hand; it caught her on the side of the head and sent her staggering into the shelves that held the pots of ink. The shelves shook, sending pots crashing. The ink-brewer daughter cried out and rushed to rescue her merchandise, then recoiled when Barker swept out his sword. He pointed the pistol at the ink-brewer son-in-law; the man raised both hands and backed against the wall.

  ‘Get back!’ Barker ordered the woman, jerking the pistol and hefting the sword. ‘Be quiet!’ She crept to her husband’s side, sobbing.

  Lucy was on her knees among the smashed inkpots, cradling her face where he’d hit it. The sword swung round and came to rest on her collar bone, and she looked up into the raw malice of Barker’s eyes. ‘Get up,’ he ordered.

  Her fingers groped at the ground, searching for something she could use to defend herself. All she found was a broken inkpot. The shards of cheap earthernware were held together by the thick paste of printing ink inside them.