Rebels and Traitors (35 page)

The McIlwaines and Lovells dined in an Oxford college where a fragrant boar’s head was carried into the warm hall in procession, while ancient carols were sung from the gallery by strong young voices of melting beauty. Silverware that had somehow escaped commandeering gleamed in the candlelight as they stuffed and sozzled cheerily. The women had titivated their best dresses with new braid, while the men had somehow acquired new suits in the latest fashion: short, decorated jackets beneath which billowed several inches of full shirt, then from the waist straight, open-kneed britches, with ribbon bunches cluttering their boot tops. It was meant as another affront to the godly. Juliana thought it a fanciful effeminate look, especially with long lovelocks and extremes of lace, though Lovell as always carried it off sardonically. With Orlando Lovell, one looked beyond the clothes to the man, and the man was not to be trifled with.

After the meal there was a masque and dancing, followed by extremely serious dicing and cards. Juliana, who did not play, was horrified by the heavy wagers and by the recklessness of those who took part. Even Nerissa joined in, proving herself a sharp, obsessive player with a demure face and a whiplash memory, who snapped down hand after winning hand. As Nerissa gathered money into her embroidered reticule with refined sweeps of beringed fingers, the colonel as quickly lost his wagers, until good sense made him excuse himself. Lovell was flinging large sums around, to Juliana’s anguish. Noticing her dread, he winked and chivvied her, as men do who make out in public that their wives are social miseries — whereas they themselves are good fellows who must be allowed to carouse. Juliana was relieved and surprised when she learned afterwards that he had lost very little money, and perhaps even acquired winnings.

She should have realised. Orlando was bound to play well. He must have learned young, whilst in foreign service. Nor did it come as any surprise that luck attended him.

Disloyally, Juliana wondered if he cheated.

On return to their house, the festivity continued. Friends came by invitation, including Edmund Treves. Nerissa had left a wassail bowl standing — warm beer poured on sugar with spices, which she quickly reheated with a red-hot poker before floating on pieces of thinly toasted bread. It was obvious that more drink would be needed, so Juliana volunteered to make a favourite winter tipple called lambswool. She roasted apples until they burst, while Colonel McIlwaine tapped a barrel of strong old ale for her; she heated this in a pan with sugar, ginger and nutmeg, the traditional mulling flavours, before dropping in the apples. By now slightly tipsy and showing it, Lovell said it was called lambswool because it curled men’s chest hair. Rather uncharacteristically, he offered to demonstrate, but nobody took him up on it.

He seemed in high spirits, yet Juliana felt anxious. When he disappeared, she followed and found him at a window, brooding. The nightly thick white frost was forming on the cold glass with its crazy patterns. He had rubbed a patch clear with his coat sleeve and was staring out into the street, whence came whoops and crashes. Troop numbers had increased that year, most of them the King’s Welsh recruits. Disorder and pillaging were frequent. When the soldier roasting a stolen pig had started the October fire, his theft of the meat was a routine occurrence. Welsh and Irish women who travelled with these troops were much feared; they knew it, and created many a fracas with threatening behaviour.

Lovell watched a brief street fight. Juliana stood near, more intent on watching him. Melancholy had struck her; her spirits were even lower than his. With the approach of New Year, she was wondering yet again what life would hold, what life was for. They stood silently together, exhausted and anxious, listening to people in the street shouting raw abuse at each other. The last insult they overheard was a gloomy puritan townsman railing against Christmas and its excesses. Had he known he was outside a house that had been rented by a Catholic couple, he would have been even more virulent.

Lovell began to sing to himself: ‘Leslie’s March,’ he said and paused, acknowledging Juliana’s presence. Leslie was the general who had led the Scots Presbyterian army into England.

‘“
Nane in the right but we” -
that’s modest!’ observed his wife, wincing at how terrible the verse was.

It made Lovell smile, as he gazed out through the misted window-pane. He was losing the demons.
‘He has been among Scots!’
a voice said in Juliana’s head. He had sung with a true accent. Slowly his lost weeks were coming together.
‘Yes, and he did not enjoy the experience

If she could have kept Orlando with her for a little longer then, she would have been sure of returning him to his old self. Of course that was impossible. With the turn of the year came not just Ploughing Sunday but another fighting season. Parliament had created a new standing army, a new and formidable weapon perhaps. Under command of the northerner Sir Thomas Fairfax, it was being put together with twenty-two thousand of the best men from existing armies, particularly the Eastern Association troops of Oliver Cromwell, those who had shown their fine mettle and discipline at Marston Moor. There had been negotiations for peace, at Uxbridge, but these were disrupted by Parliament’s intransigence. In January, Archbishop Laud was put on trial; the examination took several months, all tending towards his certain execution.

The Royalist Marquis of Montrose raised the Highlands of Scotland against the Presbyterian Lowlands, fomenting old clan jealousies. His dramatic victories encouraged the King into new imaginings’, as his critics called them. Charles replaced his old dream of three armies conjoining for a London assault with a wild new hope that the romantic Montrose would descend from Scotland to help devastate all the King’s enemies. More prosaically, Prince Rupert was at his usual dogged work in the west and the Midlands, Lovell with him.

In April Parliament’s New Model Army was formally instituted and the first result was that its commander, Sir Thomas Fairfax, took control of strategy in the Oxford area. The town was once again threatened with a siege.

On the 7th of May the King left Oxford — a timely exit. Fairfax continued to build siege works, east of the River Cherwell. As defensive measures by the Royalists, water meadows were flooded, buildings in the suburbs were burned and Wolvercote was garrisoned. There was worrying military activity. Real fighting came uncomfortably close. The Royalists lost an outpost at Gaunt House, but at the beginning of June the town garrison made a successful sally at Headington Hill. Then Fairfax left troops under Sir Richard Browne in the area, as he abandoned the siege to pursue the King.

Juliana had learned that her duty was to keep a brave face whatever happened. Nonetheless, she grew extremely fearful. Lovell had been away with Prince Rupert but, just before the King left, Rupert and his brother Maurice returned to Oxford for a rendezvous. Orlando came to her for two days, before the army moved out for their summer campaign. Juliana was then seven or eight months pregnant. They discussed sending her to a safe house, but had no friends or acquaintances who could offer such a refuge. She would have to remain in Oxford, where at least she was at home — in so far as they had ever had a home.

‘Sweetheart, Fairfax will withdraw. He cannot keep his army tied up here while the King and the princes are out on the loose. Oxford is a nothing to them while it is empty of King Charles. You will be safe. Trust me.’

Juliana did trust him, on tactics. She was in such an advanced state of pregnancy she could no longer travel, especially since wherever she went she must take young Tom. One thing distressed her particularly: Nerissa McIlwaine would not be here with her when her time came.

The McIlwaines were planning to return soon to Ireland. There, the Irish Catholic Confederation, an alliance of upper-class Catholics and clergy, controlled two-thirds of the country and had formed an effective government. The confederation had concluded peace negotiations with the Marquis of Ormond, who represented the English Parliament and, confusingly, the King. It seemed a promising development.

Juliana finally asked openly why her friends had first left their country. She knew Colonel McIlwaine had gone to fight on the Catholic side in the Thirty Years War and had assumed it was caused by the intense English settlement of Ireland. ‘Oh, there was a family quarrel,’ Nerissa disabused her. ‘Owen stormed off. He seems mild, but he’s a hothead on occasion.’ The colonel did indeed seem mild, though no milksop. He spoke at least four languages, and occasionally talked with Juliana in French, when he wanted to annoy Lovell. Lovell, having fought on the Protestant side on the Continent, knew Flemish and German but had picked up only curses and insults in French.

After years in France, the McIlwaines had first come to England hoping to make a civilian life at the new Queen’s court. They were in their sixties now; the colonel was looking for peace and retirement.

‘What happened to your children?’ Juliana blurted out. She had always feared some terrible, violent fate had befallen the family.

Nerissa shrugged. ‘They never thrived. I lost every one, none older than six years. To some extent I blame our rootless life, our constant wanderings, our living in forts and garrisons. But we could have been on a country estate or in a neat town house and suffered the same.’

The women were silent for a while, thinking of life’s fragility. Then Nerissa said slowly, ‘So … Juliana, it is not from want of friendship towards you, but Owen will fight this year’s campaign, then he and I will take our chance back in the old country’ Nerissa knew that losing her one close friend filled Juliana with deep foreboding. ‘You must let me go and be of good heart. And when they leave Oxford, I shall be following my husband with the army.

When the troops rode out, women always accompanied them. Yet camp followers were not all common wenches and whores, as their enemies suggested, but often respectable wives. For one thing, it kept the respectable husbands from the beds of prostitutes. The women cooked, made fires, guarded baggage, searched for the dead, nursed the wounded, provided encouragement and cheer.

‘Of course, you must. I would come with you myself if I could.’

In her current condition, Juliana could not. She would have gone, to be with Orlando, to be with Nerissa, to taste adventure and to escape the claustrophobia of Oxford. But she was only weeks from delivery. A midwife was found therefore, examined, approved and appointed. In addition, Nerissa kindly left her maid, Grania. Juliana stayed in the St Aldate’s house with her eighteen-month-old boy, Tom. Everyone else she knew went away to war without her.

Then, when Sir Thomas Fairfax lifted his siege preparations and chased after the King to the Midlands, everybody Juliana knew was at the battle of Naseby, where the King was defeated.

When Rowan Tew met his sister at Henley-in-Arden he decided the best way to avoid trouble was to rename her. So she became Joseph.

It was a few days after she fled alone from Birmingham, back after that terrible Easter. Her brother had recognised her instantly from the truculent set of her body and her pale, strained face as she approached, even though after nearly fifteen miles she was limping badly. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding. At the last hamlet where she begged for food, someone had given her rags for bandages but to little effect. She had found that in these tiny groups of cottages, shaken by Prince Rupert’s passage a few days before, if she gave news of the greater assaults wreaked on Birmingham, people would provide her with food. She told her stories weeping; real tears came easily.

When the group of ragged cavalier soldiers rose from hedgerows either side of her, she thought her time was up.

Who are you for?’