Rebels and Traitors (36 page)

‘Parliament and the King.’

‘Wrong answer!’ Although there was no glimmer of lit matchcord, she heard the click of a musket being cocked.

With the band of whiskery layabouts levelling swords and guns, her spirit faded too much for resistance. Once she would have yelled, thrown stones, punched and spat and bit, then run away faster than anyone would bother to pursue her. Fortunately, one of the louts turned out to be her brother.

Rowan was the young Tew who had volunteered for the royal army the year before, just after the war started, when King Charles passed through Birmingham. As their father had said at the time, Rowan wanted the rations and the plunder. He looked unchanged in the six months since his sister had last seen him: still wide-eyed with fake innocence, ready to whine about bad luck, always out for easy pickings. Thin as a pea-stick under a filthy baggy shirt, he had a long fall of black hair and a new scrubby beard with a barely adequate moustache. His boots, which were too big and no doubt stolen, made him stagger with his legs apart, while sashes, sword-hangers and rattling bandoliers were slung in a carefree fashion over his bony shoulders.

The other soldiers cursed and dropped back into the damp hedges to resume their tobacco pipes. Rowan was eager to brag about his life: the free uniform, the daily food allowance, the drink, the access to weapons, the excitement, the untroubled life. He had instinctively fallen in with a bad crowd. In a disreputable army, the former vagabond had quickly found the most dissolute comrades among whom to burrow like a white maggot. A rascal from birth, he was now in his element, plundering and bullying. He and his fellows claimed to be an antiguard, men authorised by Prince Rupert to remain behind to control Henley-in-Arden; they were in effect deserters. No one had missed them — or if their absence was noticed, nothing had been done about it. To spend all day threatening farmers and robbing passers-by, then to drink the profits while singing cavalier ditties around a campfire every night, seemed a glorious life.

‘Come and join us!’

‘Do women become soldiers?’

‘It happens.’

‘In ballads.’

‘More often than you think. You have to pass as a man.’

Rowan Tew realised that his sister would not make a camp-follower. She could neither cook nor launder nor nurse the wounded. She was no whore either, or not yet. He supposed she would come to it. To him, who had known her from childhood, she offered no prospects — otherwise he would have cleaned her up and organised a rapid sale on the spot to any man who was willing to give him sixpence for her. He gazed at the thin, undersized, immature figure, grey-faced from lack of nourishment, bunched in dirty old clothes. Though he was a lad with more imagination than sense, his sister was so unprepossessing he knew he could not pimp her. Family feeling was not dead, however. ‘Damme! I shall hack off your hair this minute; you must play the boy and come along with me. I’ll take care of you. You shall have britches and a buff coat and march bravely and swagger. What do you want to be called?’

‘What girl’s name was given to me when I was born?’ demanded the former Kinchin with urgency. ‘Do you remember?’

Rowan, the elder by about four years, thought of any girls’ names he ever heard and then claimed expansively, ‘Araminta!’

‘It would be Mary or Joan, I think,’ she corrected him severely.

‘Maudie, maybe … well now you cannot have that. You shall be Joseph.’

So for a year and over, Joseph Tew served in the King’s army.

The laggards skulked around Henley for a week, poaching deer and scaring milkmaids, then just when the milkmaids were starting to warm to them and flirt, along came a small party of Royalist cavalry from Dudley who rounded them up before the women of Warwickshire had managed to catch even half of their fleas and foul diseases. Most were ordered to march north to the siege of Lichfield; whether they would ever arrive was doubtful. Pasty-looking Rowan and his badly limping ‘brother’ were deemed unfit, so they were carried off westwards in a provender wagon to the garrison at Dudley Castle. There the governor was Colonel Thomas Leveson, a more active officer than they liked. Somehow they passed muster. They kept to themselves, and nobody enquired about them too closely. Many of the other soldiers were French or Irish, foreign-speakers, stuck in their own tight cliques. Officers noticed that the unit had acquired two rat-eyed, bone-idle, light-fingered tykes, but most common ranks in the Royalist army were scavengers and although the Tews hung back when action started, they never refused direct orders. So long as bodies marched where he needed them to be, the colonel was satisfied.

Castle life suited them. They had shelter, rations, company and instruction in the use of arms. The Royalist daily subsistence allowance was a luxury: two pounds of bread, one pound of meat and two bottles of beer. All their thinking was done for them. They even had leisure — so much leisure that among the rubbish which the soldiers in the Dudley Castle garrison threw down their latrines were gaming counters and animal-gut condoms. To have latrines at all was a novelty to the Tews; they had to learn how to use them. In their own minds, all they needed to do now was sit tight to the end of the war, when — if they could carry off their guns on disbandment — they would be equipped for life as highway robbers.

For Joseph, there
was
thinking to do. Women who passed themselves off as soldiers must stay endlessly alert. Their daily lives were geared to hiding their identities. Joseph had begun the fraud while grubby and gaunt enough not to seem too delicate; the other men at Dudley soon became used to their high-voiced, soft-cheeked, slightly built colleague. With regular food he grew taller and filled out; although breasts were a problem, they blossomed slowly. Breasts, especially adolescent ones, could be squashed flat beneath the firm heavy leather of a military buff coat. With care, monthly courses could be hidden and the necessary rags washed in private. A loner, who had always roamed independently, was able to cope with the intense secrecy of living in disguise. After a whole young life of solitude, keeping one’s counsel came easily. Nature had issued one challenge, which from time to time became pressing: no woman could urinate in public and stay hidden. But like disguised drummer-boys and powder-monkeys throughout history, Joseph Tew found ways to manage.

Any street urchin knew how to bluff.

In December 1643, when the Tews had been living at Dudley Castle for six months, Colonel Leveson received a request for aid from a prominent Midlands landowner who believed Parliamentary sympathisers were planning an attack on his house. The colonel felt obliged to respond to an irascible local Justice of the Peace, a man with connections at court and who had entertained King Charles in that very house. Colonel Leveson reluctantly spared forty musketeers. They marched, grumbling, to the great hall in question; they were told it was five miles away though found it nearer ten. They were not surprised to be lied to, for that is how soldiers are generally cajoled.

On arrival, their discontent mellowed. It was a grand billet. While looking forward to an extremely comfortable Christmas in warm and grandiose surroundings, they began to fortify the place. Despite his danger, the haughty owner only reluctantly agreed to let them cut down trees to clear a line of fire from the house and dig protective earthworks in the deer park of which he was so proud. Like many landowners he was torn between trying to preserve ordinary life and standing up for his political beliefs.

The troops were quartered like bats in the attics, which were airy and luxurious, being barely ten years old; few ghosts and hardly any spiders had had time to take up residence. Though the ceilings sloped, there were fine views across the three hundred acres of parkland that surrounded the house. They would see the enemy coming.

The great house was built to the highest standards. It aimed to impress inferiors — and its scowling owner reckoned pretty well everyone around him was an inferior. For the Tews this was an ironic destination: they had come to Aston Hall near Birmingham. It was the home of black-browed Sir Thomas Holte, whose enclosure of local commons when he was creating this majestic house and its huge new park had dispossessed their family.

Once indoors, Rowan and Joseph were staggered by the size of the house, with its great hall, several parlours, dining room and withdrawing room, enormous long gallery, endless corridors and series of bedchambers, cavernous kitchen with wet- and dry-larders, wine and beer cellars and endless stables and outbuildings. Aston Hall sat in lush parkland, created for hunting and for keeping the people at a distance; the house had high Jacobean gables and chimneys, elegant plaster strapwork ceilings, expensive fireplaces, fabulous carved woodwork and a profusion of expensive windows. The quantities of furniture and personal possessions were beyond anything the Tews had ever imagined. Even after large civil war losses, when Sir Thomas Holte died, his belongings would be inventoried on a scroll eleven feet long. The Tews wandered in amazement, sniggering at the Holte family behind their richly clad backs and pilfering small items whenever they could get away with it.

The Parliamentary forces arrived on Boxing Day. This was their reprisal for Prince Rupert’s attack on Birmingham and they were hoping for revenge in the form of money and plate. They took up positions in the grounds, planted their standards, then in the language of war sent ‘to demand the house for the use of the King and Parliament’.

Sieges had their own chivalry. Once the enemy turned up and formally ‘summoned’ a town or house — announced that they had come to take you over — it was vital to refuse surrender at least once, and in a robust fashion. To give up too easily meant disgrace and court martial. There was a fine knack to choosing the correct moment to submit with honour, in order to obtain ‘terms’. Terms meant the defeated side would be allowed to lay down their weapons, march out and avoid cold-blooded slaughter. If they had fought tenaciously, they might be allowed to keep their arms and leave with their colours flying, though that was recognition of extreme courage. It was rare, and it took a merciful winning commander. More often, if the besieging commander had been seriously annoyed at any point, he would hang a few of his enemies just to relieve his feelings.

At Aston Hall, the Royalists answered the summons by defiantly retorting that they would not yield while they had a man alive. Sir Thomas Holte could be confident a man of his rank would be spared whatever happened.

It took three days for resistance to disintegrate. There were twelve hundred rebels, who had brought artillery. On the first day, Tuesday, the attackers made play with their cannon, doing serious damage to the house’s interior, especially the fine dog-leg staircase with its bulbous carved balusters. The cannon-fire terrified the defenders. Amidst the smoke and noise and crashing shot, the Holtes, their servants and soldiers took refuge in the lower rooms. Next day, the attackers assailed the parish church, close to the house, where some of Colonel Leveson’s Dudley troops had been out-stationed. Churches made very defensible strongholds, but it was quickly stormed. The Parliamentarians took French and Irish prisoners, including one female camp-follower who, in the enemy’s tradition, was viciously abused as a whore.

The Tews heard the shouts and rattle of fire when the church fell. They were already quaking at cannon balls crashing through the house, and the smell of smoke and panic became too much for them. When enemy soldiers broke through the earthworks on the lawns, the young Tews passed their guns to servants and hid together under a great table in the entrance hall. Parliamentary troops soon burst into the house through its tall, elegant windows. As showers of broken glass fell inwards, large booted men swung through window cavities, shouting and brandishing swords. The defenders cried for quarter. It was granted.

Peering out from their hiding place, Rowan and Joseph then saw some trigger-happy Royalist soldiers kept firing anyway. Two rebels were shot in the face. At the sight of stricken comrades with blood pouring from their mouths, the Parliamentarians went mad. They killed and wounded twenty defenders before being brought under control by officers. Joseph and Rowan Tew cringed against the great carved table leg.

‘Play dead Rowan!’

‘Who needs to act it? We’re done for!’

Eventually the shooting stopped. The attackers had better ways to enjoy themselves than wasting ammunition on a cowed foe. They were here to pillage goods and to capture anyone of quality who could be heavily fined and ransomed. Forty useful prisoners were rounded up. As soldiers rushed past their bolthole to stampede upstairs and search the house, the Tew brothers ventured out into the open, two disingenuous mites holding pieces of white cloth (they had sensibly equipped themselves with these tokens). ‘Joseph’ considered disclosure, but was deterred by how cruelly the woman previously taken was reviled as a whore. Royalist camp-followers risked mutilation and cold-blooded murder, especially if they were believed to be Irish. Women were hanged as rebels and spies almost as often as men. To be in disguise would not win favour.

The Tews instinctively knew how to pose with the typical hangdog relief of surrendering soldiers. They were stripped of weapons, hats, belts, boots, britches and coats — though not deprived of their verminous shirts, or Joseph would certainly have been discovered. While this was happening, they saw Sir Thomas Holte, a furious old man in his seventies, dragged from the house, bare-chested in the December cold as he had been stripped of even his fine cambric shirt. He and his family were taken away for special ransom. Lesser prisoners were strung together in a line, their hands bound behind them with matchcord, and marched to the church. There they were insulted, threatened and starved. Then the abject prisoners were offered the usual inducement: a dungeon in Warwick Castle, for ever — or repent of their Royalist delinquency, turn and fight for Parliament.

Some hung back, genuinely hating puritans. Joseph and Rowan Tew immediately swapped sides.