London in Chains (25 page)

‘Would he win?'

Wildman shrugged. ‘It would depend upon the court.'

Mabbot considered that. ‘Even if he did, it would take time. I'd have my newsbook running profitably before it was settled.' He turned his smile on Lucy. ‘What think you, Mistress Wentnor?'

‘I agree with Captain Wildman: it's a shabby trick.'

Mabbot's face fell. Wildman smiled.

‘But I don't suppose
printing
your newsbook is any more dishonest than printing the
Diurnall
,' Lucy conceded. ‘Am I to speak with Mr White, so that he can see I'm help and no threat to his mastery?'

Mabbot looked surprised. Wildman grinned at him. ‘She's quick-witted, our Lucy,' he informed his friend. ‘You did well to hire her.'

Mabbot spent the rest of the meal telling Lucy when she should visit Mr White and what she should say to him. When they had eaten, and Mabbot had paid the reckoning, Lucy got up. ‘I must go back to my work,' she said. ‘Captain Wildman—'

‘Major,' he reminded her.

‘Forgive me, Major Wildman. Are you like to see Jamie Hudson soon?'

Wildman gave her a warm smile. ‘Aye, I'm expected at Croydon for another meeting tomorrow, and his regiment is there. Will I bring him a message from you?'

She'd thought of sending a letter; she'd thought of offering him the shilling a week, at least until he was earning a full wage – but if he was with the Army, he would have his keep, and as for a letter, it presumed too much. He hadn't written to her, not even a word to say where he was going. That stung, though she tried to be reasonable about it. She'd kept her feelings to herself because there was no possible good that could come of speaking out about them, and she now suspected that he had done exactly the same – and they were both right to do so. She should put aside this wistful longing and engage instead with the work Mabbot was offering her, which might be of dubious honesty, but certainly sounded interesting.

A message, though – that much, surely, she could do? ‘Aye,' she said. ‘Tell him how very glad I am that he's taking up his work again, and . . .' She stopped, not knowing how to finish.

‘I'll tell him,' said Wildman. She saw from his expression that she'd given herself away and that Wildman would tell Jamie more than she'd ever dared to. She regretted that she'd said anything at all.

Ten

Robert White, printer of
The Moderate Intelligencer
, was a slovenly, red-faced lecher. A clay pipe was permanently fixed between his teeth, and his printshop was so full of tobacco smoke that it made Lucy cough. When he set eyes on Lucy he beamed and blessed Gilbert Mabbot, but when he'd been forced to let go of her, he retreated sullenly, rubbing his bruised ribs and shin, and became surly. He had three assistants – two men and a woman – and they all seemed downtrodden drabs. Lucy did not look forward to working with him.

That work turned out not to be imminent. August wore away, and Lucy stayed at John Bourne's printing
A Perfect Diurnall
while Mabbot struggled frantically with his new censorship. She heard nothing from Jamie, though Wildman, whom she saw on a couple of occasions at The Whalebone, reported that he was well. She visited The Whalebone at irregular intervals, always when it was busy. Ned always welcomed her, but his attempts to talk to her were perpetually interrupted.

The name ‘Leveller' began to be used throughout London. Wildman told her he'd first heard it from the grand officers at the Army Council at Croydon only days before Marchamont Nedham used it at The Cock: he was impressed that Nedham had picked it up so quickly. At The Cock, Lucy hadn't understood why Wildman had objected to it: she learned his reasons from the reaction of people around her.

‘Is it true you would level men's estates?' asked the younger Mr Bourne.

‘What do you mean?' Lucy asked in confusion.

‘They say that you Levellers wish to do away with property and make men have everything in common.'

‘I never heard such an idea in all my life!' she protested. ‘We wish no such thing!'

The Bournes, however, were not the only people who drew that conclusion.

This newsbook called itself
Mercurius Pragmaticus
, and it was widely known that it was written by none other than Marchamont Nedham, the newly converted Royalist.

‘Where did he get the money?' fumed Mabbot. ‘Starting up a newsbook is a costly business, as I know only too well!'

Where Nedham got the money was quickly established. He had visited Hampton Court, where King Charles now resided; he had begged the king's pardon and been allowed to kiss the royal hand. The guards who'd admitted him hadn't noticed whether the royal hand had held a royal purse, but it was certain that the king and his supporters still had a lot of money. From their point of view,
Pragmaticus
was money well spent: it was popular from the moment it came out, and the king's enemies were outraged by it. It was unlicensed, of course, and Parliament instructed Mabbot to shut it down. His futile attempts to do so were the main reason for the delay in launching his own newsbook.

His job was made more difficult by the fact that the king's popularity was increasing and Parliament was widely detested. All the frustrations and disappointments of the past two years had been crowned by the misery of a poor harvest.

The growing season had been cold and wet; August was just as bad. The harvest was the worst for a generation. Prices had been high ever since the war, but they usually dropped at harvest-time: this year they kept climbing. The beggars on the streets of London, always numerous and wretched, grew in number and in misery. It was obvious to anyone who paused to think about it that many would die during the winter, from cold and illness and starvation. If God really favoured Parliament, people began to whisper, why hadn't He shown that favour to the land? Bring back the king, they murmured; put Charles Stuart on his throne, and then see if the earth yields its bounty!

There was no progress, however, on a settlement of government. Wildman, who was in the thick of things, said that the Grandees were losing patience with Parliament, and the common soldiers were losing patience with the king. Charles Stuart, they said, was the author of the war, and even in defeat he was obstructing peace, refusing to agree to a settlement that set any limits on his power. A belief that the country would be better off as a Republic, though still extreme, was growing as quickly as resurgent Royalism. The middle ground, with its hope for a bounded monarchy, was eroding away under the negotiators' feet.

In this impasse, the Levellers (the name caught on, despite all attempts to reject it) began to have real influence, particularly since their proposals were the only ones that did not rely upon negotiation with Charles Stuart. Richard Overton was finally released from Newgate Prison and allowed to join his long-suffering wife and children in his own house. John Lilburne, however, remained confined in the Tower.

Lucy was surprised to find that she missed her regular attendance at the Leveller council meetings, that when Thomas set off for The Whalebone in his role as representative of Southwark, she was restless, and when he came back, she was full of questions. She started accompanying him to the Southwark chapter meetings instead. These were held the evening after the general meetings, usually at The Bear Tavern at Bridgefoot. Mabbot and Pecke, who were already in the habit of asking her if she'd heard from Wildman, began asking her about what she heard at the meetings, though the
Diurnall
, ever-cautious of offending authority, rarely repeated it in print.

Sometimes it seemed to her that news was what she breathed, as omnipresent as air, and just as necessary. The question of how England was to be governed, which had seemed almost irrelevant only a year before, was now of so much importance that each twist and turn of events made her heart race: good news elated her and bad news kept her awake at night. When she looked back, she was amazed by the huge gulf between herself and the girl who'd arrived in London less than a year before. She'd begun to write to her brother regularly, but every time she got a letter back it was a shock. Paul wrote to her about the doings of neighbours and relatives – so-and-so married; so-and-so fallen ill – and about the farm, the wretched weather and the price of milk: things which now seemed like the concerns of a foreign country. When he wrote apologetically that he had hard news for her, she was relieved when she discovered that it was only that her one-time betrothed, Ned Bartram, was married. She replied that the news was not hard at all and asked him to give her sincere commiserations to the bride.

Late in August, Cromwell brought a regiment of cavalry to London and stationed it in Hyde Park while he proceeded to the House of Commons with a large force of armed bodyguards; he then entered as Member for Cambridge and called for a vote on an ordinance that the Presbyterians had been blocking. Unsurprisingly, it passed. The more extreme Presbyterians were intimidated into withdrawing from the House altogether: the Independents finally had a majority.

It broke the impasse in the House, but not that with the king. Despite the increasing rumbles of discontent from the Army, Cromwell remained committed to a settlement with King Charles. That, probably, was why, early in September, he went to visit John Lilburne in the Tower: Lilburne could either quiet the Army's discontent or whip it into fury. An indirect result of the meeting was that Lucy met the Leveller leader for the first time.

Lilburne had been imprisoned since June the previous year, ostensibly because he'd slandered a member of the House of Lords. His sentence had no fixed limit: he was held ‘at the Lords' pleasure'. He was officially banned from ‘contriving or publishing any seditious and scandalous pamphlets'; he was denied access to pen and ink, and his warder was required to watch him whenever he left his cell or had visitors. He'd protested, of course – there wasn't a man in England more willing to protest injustice – and his case had been referred to a Commons committee; this, however, had been blocked and baffled every time it tried to report. His followers in London had petitioned and demonstrated on his behalf again and again, the Army had called for his release, marched and triumphed – and still he remained in prison.

The ban on publishing had – obviously – never been successfully enforced. Lilburne's numerous visitors smuggled in paper and ink, and smuggled out pamphlet after pamphlet. After Cromwell's visit, however, the guards were ordered to be stricter and more vigilant, and for a while they obeyed. Some visitors were refused admittance; others were searched and had paper confiscated from them. It was therefore decided that someone who was not one of Lilburne's regular contacts should visit, in the hope that the guards would be less suspicious of someone not actually known to them as a Leveller. Uncle Thomas offered to go, in the role of an old friend of Lilburne's from the days before the war; Lucy came with him because he could properly object if the guards tried to search her. She spent the night before stitching octavo-sized pockets into the inside of a petticoat and hiding paper in them.

Walking to the Tower the following morning, she was jittery. What if the guards searched her? She couldn't be punished for carrying paper, but the thought of a pack of rough louts tearing off her petticoat gave her sick chills. Uncle Thomas patted her arm ineffectually and tried to smile.

When they were admitted to the Tower's outer ward, however, she began to feel steadier. The fortress was huge, and it bustled with activity that had nothing to do with them or their mission. Workers at the Mint jostled soldiers from the Royal Ordnance in the Tower's walks, and there was a noisy queue waiting to enter the menagerie. Even the guards at the entrance to the Inner Ward, where the prisoners were lodged, had very little interest in the comings and goings of the public. Thomas and Lucy were admitted after handing over a mere tuppence tip.

At Coldharbour Gate, where Lilburne was lodged, the warder was more careful. Thomas's name was checked against a register, and he was questioned about why he had come.

‘I was a friend of John Lilburne long ago, when he was an apprentice,' said Thomas earnestly, ‘and I wish to appeal to him to use his influence to make peace.'

The warder snorted. ‘You've come for nothing, then! I once tried to do the same, and he told me that if I were not such an old man, he would fight me!'

‘Even so,' said Thomas. He opened his hand, showing a silver shilling. ‘I feel called upon to make what appeal to him I can. When he was a wild young man he did listen to me once or twice. Surely no effort towards peace is worthless?'