The Soldier, the Gaoler, the Spy and her Lover

by Simon Parke

  ‘It was just a thought,’ he said, easing back. ‘There was some resistance among the planets . . . it need not detain us.’

  ‘I don’t mind being detained. For if we are to speak of marriage, Mr Lilly, where to start?’ She seemed keen to begin.

  ‘I understand if you do not wish to speak of it,’ said Lilly kindly – and in hope. But Jane was eager, for she could speak of it nowhere else.

  ‘Matters did not begin well,’ she said, getting up off her stool. ‘My father-in-law dropped dead on the morning of my wedding. Can you believe such a thing?’

  Lilly put down his pencil. ‘Unfortunate.’

  ‘I think it was deliberate.’

  ‘An inauspicious start, I grant you.’ And, Lilly wished to add, rather selfish.

  ‘One might say so, sir.’

  ‘I did see some tension in the stars—’

  ‘My tension was much nearer home.’

  ‘His death must have dampened the gaiety of the day somewhat.’

  ‘There was an atmosphere after the news spread, which lingered a little. But life must go on, Mr Lilly, this is what I said to the priest – and Brome didn’t care a great deal. His father lacked warmth, and whatever pain there was during the service, was later drowned in wine, which sadly made many to vomit.’

  ‘An inspiring story,’ said Lilly, deploying irony to hide his shock.

  ‘Though had I known what awaited me,’ said Jane, ‘I too would have chosen death that day.’

  She returned to her stool and Lilly to his charts. Enough had been said . . . though not for Jane.

  ‘And then the authorities fined Brome – who was below consenting age – for consummating the marriage without his father’s consent.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Or indeed mine, for that matter . . . but that was not the crime, in law, at least.’ This was not territory he wished to explore. ‘A ghastly night. And the matter is still with the courts.’

  William took no pleasure in gossip, and desired a return to the stars – more wholesome company.

  ‘Then during the civil war, Mr Lilly, my dear husband left us all and fled to Holland. He felt he was safer there.’

  This man did appear to lack grace.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I stayed – with my two surviving children.’

  ‘There had been loss?’

  ‘Two others died young.’

  ‘I am sorry for your grief.’

  ‘No, they were the lucky ones, believe me.’

  Jane felt some discomfort. She had not been a good mother to her children Brome and Diana – or not in the conventional sense, not in the sense that she loved them. She couldn’t say she loved them. Her strongest feelings were always the feelings to leave the family home, and she’d done that often enough. Children might please from a distance; they played in the street beneath her now and looked charming. But she had not liked her own too close or dependent, had not warmed to responsibility – too much restraint on her life. They gave her headaches and tension in her neck. She had not liked them as people, and this didn’t help. So all in all, she’d been an appalling mother, and Lady Ursula, her mother-in-law, had removed her from the will in disgust.

  ‘You were never a mother to your children!’ she’d railed.

  ‘And unfortunately you were a mother to yours!’ screamed Jane in reply. ‘Your footprint is heavy on all your offspring – and I had the misfortune to marry one of them!’

  Lady Ursula was without obvious virtue, and she and Jane did not get on, nor pretend to. Some said Jane shouldn’t burn her bridges with the woman who held the family purse strings – but that was a bridge that would have to be built before it could be burnt.

  Jane’s husband – the hag’s son – was a waster and woman-worrier; she knew this now. He’d bullied and abused her for years. No, worse, he’d humiliated and ignored her, chasing the servant girls and catching them in the most intimate of ways – and all well known in the area. Thin wainscoting, noisy beds, wooden partitions, creaking stairs, ill-fitted planks, large keyholes and the servants’ hungry eyes and ears – these things removed the privacy of a home and trumpeted Brome’s behaviour widely. So the guilt should not be hers alone.

  ‘He should never have wed you,’ was the mother-in-law’s chant, like a dull choir in a cathedral – endless. Jane could not disagree; it would have been a fortunate escape had he not. She was nineteen when they married and Brome fifteen, with barely a bristle on his chin.

  ‘But with land enough to make up for the years,’ her grasping father told her.

  The land was his best feature, there was no doubt of that; but you do not share a bed with the land.

  William Lilly smoothed out his charts. He looked forward to returning to the stars.

  ‘So I do not know if that is a holy estate or not,’ concluded Jane.

  ‘There’s much we do not know.’

  ‘But much that we’d like to, Mr Lilly. I’m sure your marriage is quite perfect.’

  William had married rather well, in the world’s eyes. A penniless employee of Gilbert Wright, William had married his widow Ellen on the old man’s death – after she had declared herself in favour of a different way. She was quite clear that having twice married for money, she now looked for love, regardless of either status or income.

  ‘I am finished with these things, Master William!’ she said. ‘Quite finished!’

  ‘So what is it that you seek, ma’am?’ he asked. ‘It is sometimes an easier calling to declare what one does not want than what one does.’

  ‘I seek a man who will love me, Master William!’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I want love.’

  ‘And that will be no great test for any man of substance, ma’am, for you are full of kindness.’

  ‘But not in the first flush of youth.’ This was true. She was in her stately fifties and could not pretend or look other. And then suddenly it had all appeared plain to William.

  ‘Would you consider my young hand in marriage, ma’am?’

  ‘You, William?’ she said, laughing, for he was a country boy without family, prospects or income. The idea was ridiculous . . . though eventually she agreed and they were married in secret at St George’s church in Southwark, telling neither family nor friends for two years.

  ‘And I was content with her,’ he journalled, ‘content in marriage for six years, when, upon her death, she left all monies and considerable property to me – near to the value of one thousand pounds,’ which enabled this bumpkin to buy a share in thirteen houses in the Strand and to lease the Corner House for himself – which is where he now sat with Jane Whorwood and the king’s matter.

  Was the king really planning to escape?

  ‘I am pleased to say my marriage has been a fortunate affair,’ he said, with tightness in his throat. He did not like to speak of himself on these occasions; while Jane decided not to mention Sir Thomas Bendish, her recent lover. She didn’t wish to confuse the stars with her lovers, though they probably already knew. And if they didn’t know, where was the value in telling them?

  *

  William Lilly, who had other matters to attend to this morning, offered Jane a planetary reflection. It concerned the movement of Mercury ‘lately separated from the sextile of Jupiter and the Moon by a quadrate’. She heard the words but not the meaning. And then suddenly, from the claptrap and gobbledygook, Jane discerned a line of significance.

  ‘Twenty miles from London there is a place of safety.’

  ‘For the king?’ she asked and he nodded. ‘Twenty miles from London?’

  ‘Twenty miles, or thereabouts. This is what the planets suggest by their leanings.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘This place of safety lies in Essex.’

  ‘Essex?!’ She could not help
the exclamation; almost a squeal. The county of Essex was already in her plans; before she had stepped through his door, she had thought of Essex – and now it was confirmed by the stars. Perhaps she could have saved her gold pieces; she did think this. But then again, the bigger picture had been revealed: the stars and Jane agreed, and she knew what she must do. She knew a house there, about twenty miles from London, and suitable for the king and his hiding, while other plans were made. He could sail to France from Harwich . . . there was no need for her to stay now.

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said, gathering her effects and crossing the room. She placed the bag of coins on the table. ‘It is a matter of some urgency.’ She then turned to him with her darting eyes. ‘I can assume your confidence in these endeavours? I would not wish this news to spill.’

  Lilly’s smile said that such instructions were quite unnecessary as he guided her down the dark stairs and out into the street. Brief goodbyes followed, the door closed and Jane was back in the bustling Strand, from where she made her way down to the river. Her boatman would take her to Hampton Court, for both she and the stars knew what the king must do.

  He would be safe in Essex; and then it started to rain.

  Earlier in the year

  ‘There’s no light,’ Elizabeth had said the first day after their move that summer from airy Ely to cramping London and their house on dark and dubious Drury Lane.

  ‘We shall bring light,’ said Oliver cheerily. But the shadows remained and the ceilings were low.

  Cromwell loved his wife, but didn’t know her. How could he after so much absence, first in parliament, then at war? He’d always written to her from the battlefields, from one tent or another, and she had written still more in reply. He told her of military advances and exploding throats; she told him of the housekeeping, the boiled beef and the children. But the merchant’s daughter he’d married all those years ago – marrying money from the fur trade – was still, more than he cared to admit, a stranger to him.

  And he to her, of course; Oliver had been of solid stock when they wed, a gentleman farmer, and few progressed from there. Elizabeth had never dreamt he was destined for eminence. Yet now their home was visited by every officer and sectary in the land, all with a cause and a prayer to lay before their victorious general.

  Listen. There was another of them, rapping at the door. Brisk. Impatient – this was an impatient time, when God was on everyone’s side.

  ‘It will be Cornet Joyce,’ he said, rising from his chair. ‘I’ll greet him.’

  But Elizabeth was quicker. This was her home; she would not be usurped.

  ‘Cornet Joyce?’ she said, opening the door.

  ‘Ma’am,’ replied the soldier, bowing, ‘and here to see the lieutenant-general.’

  He felt uncomfortable on the doorstep and a little judged by the lady . . . no, much judged. He knew who faced him, of course, Elizabeth Cromwell, and he’d heard talk of her. She wished for the king to be restored to the throne, they said; which was not the view of the soldiers. Whether the rumour was true was not for him to say. Nor did it matter, for it would not alter his course. He was a man under authority and would pursue his cause with due order.

  ‘You had better come inside,’ said Mrs Cromwell. ‘The lieutenant-general is expecting you – though the hour is late and perhaps your boots could do with some cleaning.’

  ‘Why, thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘I shall not be doing it,’ she said sharply. ‘I simply observe.’

  Joyce almost blushed.

  Drury Lane smelt worse than Ely . . . rotting fowl and fish in the kitchen, excrement everywhere else – horse, rat and human. The cesspit had shocked her even more than the absence of light; a solid stench unredeemed by fresh air. And forty shillings for the night men to empty it! Forty shillings!

  ‘They took away eighteen barrels,’ said Oliver when they left – an attempt to placate her. The men had worked hard, if noisily, throughout the night, with only a little spillage. But she was a trader’s daughter, with a disapproving nose for cost – especially the cost of shit. The house was convenient for power, of course, closer to the clamour of Westminster, where Oliver could go, shout and still be back for tea. But it was only four doors down from The Cockpit, Drury Lane’s finest stew-house – a brothel so busy that their alehouse never closed.

  ‘It does not much scent the moral air,’ Elizabeth had said, shocked at the periwigs and lipstick that daily sauntered past her window. And then, of course, there were people like Joyce, knocking endlessly at their door in their grubby London boots. Some said they should be more finely housed; after all, Oliver was now an eminent figure, a leader among men. But where was the money for such a move?

  Mrs Cromwell closed the door and pointed Joyce towards the parlour, where the lieutenant-general waited. The new arrival had not seen his commander since Naseby, the battle that had sealed the king’s demise and proved again what prayer – and a disciplined cavalry – can achieve. Cromwell had created a wonderful army, but had he also created a political monster? The thought troubled him more and more these days. He would need to harness them, bring them into line.

  Joyce remembered Naseby and his general before the battle . . . that quiet time of mist and wondering that precedes the thud and groan of engagement. There had been drizzle that morning. He could feel it still, inside his collar, trickling down his back . . . and faltering morning fires. In the dry of the tent, he’d asked his general about plans for the day.

  ‘We shall not trust in plans, Cornet Joyce,’ said Cromwell, ‘but in the providence of God, a better trust by far.’

  ‘Indeed we shall, sir,’ he’d said, returning to his regiment, happy to be on God’s side and knowing Cromwell did have plans. He always had plans, though from where they emerged was hard to say. He would sit, ruminate, and then stir . . . and when he stirred he could be a volcano. He’d been a disciplinarian with his troops. If they smoked, they were fined; if drunk, it was the stocks; and if they deserted, they were whipped. But in battle, these soldiers did what they were told, unlike the royalist rabble who imagined it all a game and chased after loot. Naseby was a victory for discipline . . . and prayer.

  But that was two years ago and a very different time. Away from the battlefield, with candles for cannon, Joyce must speak candidly with his commander about the king. Charles was presently held prisoner at Holdenby House, where he’d been taken after the Scots sold him to the English for £200,000.

  ‘Both a pig and a king have their price,’ Cromwell had said.

  But the issue now was this: was the king safe? Or rather, was he secure? It was parliament who held him there, but with some laxity. Charles maintained his own household, receiving visitors unchecked, and talk of escape plots abounded, stretching the patience of some – for if they lost the king, they lost everything. And while the providence of God was a wonderful thing, placing the king in their hands, it now needed a little help. This was the belief of the soldiers . . . and their representative today, Cornet Joyce.

  ‘Cornet Joyce!’ said Cromwell in welcome.

  ‘Lieutenant-General.’

  Joyce found himself bowing as Cromwell – sturdy but not tall – moved forward to embrace this faithful soldier. There was some awkwardness in the low-roofed parlour: a clash of physical styles. You cannot hug a head bowed and Joyce’s head hit him midriff; but Cromwell made light of it.

  ‘Life was easier at war than at peace!’ he said and Joyce agreed. Life was easier at war. Men were more comfortable in battle; they knew where they stood in a fight and what they had to do. No one knew what they had to do these days, and trust died a little every day. ‘Now, you will have a seat.’

  Elizabeth arrived and put a small glass of beer in front of Joyce, with bread and butter. He’d been told that Mrs Cromwell’s hospitality was reliable but frugal, and he’d eaten a pasty on Long Acre before arriving.


  ‘You have concerns for the king,’ said Oliver, sipping at his sherry. He liked a smoke and he liked a sherry; and he knew people’s minds, even when miles away. Whether by spy or intuition, he seemed to know why Cornet Joyce had come.

  ‘I wonder about the wisdom of Presbyterian officers guarding the king at Holdenby House,’ said Joyce.

  ‘You fear they may be in parliament’s pocket?’ enquired Cromwell gently, as though the thought was fresh, when all knew that it was so. They were deep in parliament’s pocket.

  ‘I believe we could find more reliable officers, sir.’

  ‘Or perhaps a more reliable parliament?’

  Cromwell laughed. It was a joke – though not a joke. Joyce didn’t laugh. Parliament was as bad as the king in his army eyes, possibly worse. And he was not a man of laughter, tending more to the earnest way, full of zeal for the Lord’s instructions and discomforted by merriment. He would not say so here, but he believed merriment to be the royalist way and the way of Babylon.

  ‘I do not believe we should speak with parliament now,’ said Joyce. ‘Holles plans to take Charles from Holdenby and return him to London and his throne; that is the rumour.’

  Cromwell knew the rumour; and knew Holles, the Presbyterian leader in parliament, as an overbearing and army-hating windbag. They’d started as friends and ended as enemies, the Presbyterians holding there to be but one way to worship and quite insistent it was theirs.

  ‘Forget Christ! Intolerance is the principal Presbyterian belief,’ a raging Oliver had once said to Elizabeth.

  Cromwell came from the independent tradition that believed in religious tolerance for all – except blasphemers and the Catholic sort; and his army felt the same as he. So as war had become peace, and the need for soldiery less pressing, most MPs now hated Cromwell and his army, with the antipathy generously returned. Cromwell had defeated the king for parliament . . . but there the friendship finished. Oliver retained his seat in the House and was dutiful in attendance, but while they debated with words, in truth this was war by another name.