Rebels and Traitors (52 page)

This speech certainly was unexpected to the Lovells. Juliana had surprised herself.

‘I do not take sides,’ she added quickly. ‘My coming here was for two earnest reasons. One was to give my boys an opportunity to know their grandfather — which is their right, as it is every child’s right. The rest of you may decide how you regard them, but I beg you, do not interfere between the squire and Tom and Val.’

‘Tom!’ murmured Squire Lovell, his face irresistibly softening. Then Juliana realised for the first time that Orlando had named their elder boy after his own father. She knew at once: Orlando had done it deliberately.

‘And I was hoping —’ Unexpectedly, she stumbled. ‘I hoped that since you have influence with Parliament and I do not, you might be willing to assist me. I have been told that my husband is a prisoner since Naseby. I am desperate to find out where he is.’

Again, there was that odd riffle of movement among the Lovells.

‘Oh we know where the scoundrel is!’ scoffed the squire. ‘His first action on finding himself penned up in London was to write here and tell me!’

So shaken was Juliana that she was sent back to the Anchor under escort from Mary and Francis Falconer. During the walk, through the misty countryside and the quiet village, the couple explained to her in a fairly friendly fashion that there was a practical reason why Orlando wrote to his father and not to her. Paper and ink in jail were scarce. Orlando’s most pressing concern involved his personal estate. When he first returned to England in 1642, Orlando must have brought home money he had earned — or acquired by other means, thought Juliana — during his service on the Continent. He had asked Squire Lovell’s agent to buy land for him.

‘You could say’ suggested Juliana slowly, ‘the fact that he wished to invest close to his family home indicated that he was hoping to effect a reconciliation.’

‘Or you could say’ returned Mr Falconer with spirit, ‘the rogue just hoped to affront everyone!’ Falconer was a sandy, unassuming man, with a sharp nose and long forward chin.

‘My brother claimed,’ Mary offered in a strained voice, ‘he was newly arrived back in the country and Jack Jolley was the only agent he had ever known.’

‘Have you seen Orlando?’ Juliana queried in a tight voice. She was still finding it hard to accept that her husband had contacted the family he professed were bitterly at odds with him, while he had never written to her.

‘Not since he first left us when he was sixteen. But now that we know where he is, I write to him weekly,’ said Mary. She was unnervingly earnest: ‘I constantly beseech him to abandon his delinquency’

Juliana imagined Orlando’s reaction. Mr Falconer caught her eye momentarily, clearly thinking as she did. In this tight-knit country community he must have known Orlando when they were boys. They had a similar background, yet ended up on different sides. Falconer must have fought; he had a healed sword slash on one wrist and even on a morning walk through his own village carried a sword as if he knew how to use it. Yet he was a quiet, ordinary countryman otherwise, more suited to smoking a pipe while he talked up the price of colts among his cronies.

The Falconers completed their explanation: Orlando had decided he wanted to obtain his release by paying his fine to the Committee for Compounding. Early in the war his land, known by everyone in the district as property of a hardened Royalist, had been confiscated, or as they called it sequestered, by the Hampshire Committee. To be assessed for his fine, Orlando needed a certificate of his estate’s value, based on the income it brought in. The dilemma was that only the committee could know what his tenants had paid, since the committee received the rents now; they had no interest in providing the vital certificate to help a Royalist.

‘So he is stuck!’ said Francis Falconer, with enormous satisfaction.

Juliana was deposited at the Anchor, her head whirling.

She said little to Edmund Treves about her reception, though she briefly mentioned Ralph Lovell’s wounds and the effect she believed his condition would have. ‘Ralph’s bitterness is all too understandable; his stricken family are bound to respect his feelings. There is no chance Squire Lovell will make peace with me.’

Despite that, to her surprise next morning, the squire arrived, inviting himself to meet his grandchildren. He first inspected Edmund, letting his cynical opinion show. On arrival, Edmund had changed from a plain coat into his normal clothes. Juliana cringed as the squire eyed up his burgundy brocade suit with its beribboned seams, his shirt belling out above his britches, his flounces of lace-trimmed boot-hose, his luminescent silk sash … Fortunately Edmund’s innocent good heart was transparent. His position with Juliana could have looked dissolute, but her friend’s very lack of awareness of that helped reassure the squire.

‘Valentine …
’ mused the elder Lovell, clearly unimpressed. He did not take the baby in his arms, but let Juliana hold him. Valentine screwed up his little face like an ugly pink gargoyle, then wailed with gusto. Mercy Tulk scuttled up and carried him to another room.

‘Who named Orlando?’ murmured Juliana, fighting back.

‘His mother wished that upon us.’ The squire paused, unwilling to imply dissension. ‘She was a good woman.’

Juliana deduced that the rift with Orlando had grieved his mother. ‘You did not marry again?’

‘She was the best of wives. I could never have matched her.’

Squire Lovell then met his namesake, who had been playing in the murky end of a stable, with inevitable results. As soon as Thomas sensed his mother praying he would behave well, it brought out his worst side. He clung to her skirts, continually whined for attention, then took off and raced noisily up and down the Anchor’s endless narrow corridors like a two-year-old grenado. ‘I expect his father was the same,’ Juliana apologised, but it produced no thaw.

The squire had brought the children neither sweetmeats nor other presents, which he probably decided was as well. He made no offer to provide for the boys. He did not compliment Juliana on her motherhood.

Squire Lovell was startled when Juliana suddenly asked for an introduction to his land agent, John Jolley Unsure of herself, she gave no reasons. Though curious, the squire subsequently arranged for the agent to visit her.

John Jolley was inevitably known behind his back as Jolly Jack, though it hardly fitted him. He was a man of plain habits who gave little away. His hair was too long as if he had better things to do than gossip with a barber; he wore a russet coat he was slightly bursting out of, over moleskin britches, with a great satchel slung around him. His broad belt and other leather accessories were all curled at the edges like objects of long service.

At first Jolley was diffident about dealing with a woman. Juliana squared up and convinced him that she was as reluctant as he was. But she must go forward. Wives had to undertake strange new roles, as a consequence of war. Chewing a long clay pipe, Jolley listened to her request. What she wanted was simple: a list of the tenants on the land her husband had bought for himself in 1642. John Jolley provided this within a few days, then as an extra courtesy took Juliana around to meet them. She would herself catalogue their rents so her husband could be fined and released.

Since she would have to stay in Hampshire for some time, Edmund left her and went back to Oxford, though he promised to return for her. Once her intentions were known — with the proviso that her stay must be temporary — the squire allowed her to move into a tiny cottage on his estate, adjacent to an elderly retired governess who had taught his daughters.

Initially all Orlando’s tenants were hostile. When Juliana reassured them quietly that she was not asking for rents twice over, but merely hoped to compile a list of what they had paid, most of them changed. They scrabbled awkwardly in the backs of drawers for dirty receipts. Juliana was twenty years old, extremely well mannered and spoke of her personal situation with a brave, rather appealing smile. How useful this was, as the land agent dryly commented. Some tenants remained gruff, but that was the habit of farmers. Even the gruffest sent a lad running after her with a brace of dead rabbits.

She offered one of the rabbits to Jolley He shook his head, saying she had more need of it. So she took both to simmer in a pot and share with the retired schoolteacher. These gifts were natural courtesies of life in the shires, where at some levels the civil war might not be taking place.

The tenants think themselves hard men, but you will see them all dance to the tune of a pretty widow!’ chortled John Jolley.

Juliana drew back. ‘I am not quite a widow yet!’

‘Oh but they think so, Mistress Lovell! They believe that your husband is locked up in the Tower of London and will never emerge. Do you know how to skin rabbits, by the by?’

This will surprise you, but I do!’ responded Juliana, a little coldly.

Lovell was not in the Tower. The squire had told Juliana he was held at Lambeth House, formerly the London palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the new world of the Covenant-takers, it had been requisitioned by Parliament. Knowing where Orlando was fired Juliana; she made haste to present herself and her list before the local committee.

It could have been worse. She managed not to lose her temper. She claimed womanly reluctance to make pleadings and suits. The squire had declined any personal support at her hearing — though all the men on the committee must know him, know of his long-standing support for Parliament, know what had befallen Ralph. They were unfriendly to Juliana but would be reluctant to offend the Lovells.

Squire Lovell had given Juliana one piece of critical advice. The committee granted her a rent certificate, but then she requested more: ‘I am deeply grateful. And I believe, sirs, as a wife, who is blameless of her husband’s sins, I am entitled to up to a fifth of his income in order to provide for myself and my infant children. If you give me just a little to work with,’ pleaded Juliana, ‘I can manage it well — feed us and house us — eliminate debts — avoid becoming a charge upon the parish where we live —’

They humphed, but allowed her three pounds and six shillings as her statutory ‘fifth’. Lovell’s estate was meagre.

Juliana, who had been brought up to press to the limit in a shameless French manner, then asked for the ‘fifths’ from the preceding three years. It was indicated that she should think herself lucky already and take herself off. Which, with a pragmatic French shrug of her shoulders, Juliana did.

Had the committee ever realised that she had popish French blood, then her chance of squeezing concessions from them would have been nil.

The Hampshire certificate would now enable her to negotiate Lovell’s pardon with the Committee for Compounding in London. Exhilarated by her success, she was preparing to go there when unexpected news came to the squire from a friend at Westminster. Bored with waiting, Orlando had escaped from prison.

Well, that convinced his family that he was an unrepentant reprobate.

Juliana knew Lovell would not present himself to his father as a refugee. She decided to return to Oxford.

The one person she was sorry to leave was the governess in the next-door cottage, whose lonely life on the estate had been brightened by Tom’s antics and who loved to coo over the baby. When Juliana told her of her decision to leave, the two women shared yet another rabbit stew, sucking on the joints informally, with their bowls on their knees at the fireside.

‘I confide in you, Mistress Lovell, whenever the squire is sent a carp pie it always comes from the house to me — they are very much full of fishbones so the squire will not attempt to eat them, and honestly they are not to my taste either, but I must be grateful…’

Juliana tried to lure the faded old lady into providing some picture of Orlando in his youth. ‘I taught the girls; I never knew the boys …’

‘Will you have a spoon for your gravy?’

Under the influence of a good rich gravy, discretion dissolved: Well, he was very much an inward, solitary youngster. Nobody was surprised at what he did, though it broke his mother’s heart. He was a very pretty little man — much like your Tom — and she always made a great pet of him — which you, of course, have too much good sense to do with your boys — it may be why he gave himself expectations of an inheritance, despite not being the first-born. But then the squire set him straight in his delusions, telling him plainly that Ralph must have the estate, with dowries for the girls — of whom there are so many — you may think Jenny is not to have anything, but wrongly, for an allocation was set aside for her, and would be hers when she wanted, but her liking was for a young man who fights for the King; I believe he lives yet, but has married another, despairing of our squire’s ever unbending — and that (I mean, when the squire was so firm with Orlando) was when they fell to quarrelling, the squire and he. His late mother was a most kind, virtuous lady; her great passion was blackwork embroidery — if you saw Ralph in his nightshirt it is likely he wore a piece of his mother’s stitchery’