London in Chains (10 page)

She wiped her face with an ink-stained oversleeve and tried to set the memory aside so that she could
think
. For a moment she remembered
hitting
Agnes; then realized that she'd only
wanted
to; that, in fact, all she'd done was call her aunt names. She could probably go back and apologize, and things would limp on . . . but she wasn't going to apologize. Agnes had struck her. Lucy hadn't even realized that that was a line she'd drawn; she recognized it now that it had been crossed. She would do the chores Agnes assigned while she was in the house; she would give her aunt most of her money – but she would not accept being beaten.

So what now?

She could walk back across the bridge, go to The Whalebone Tavern and ask Ned Trebet if she could stay in the carriage house. He'd agree, she had no doubt of it. He was a
friend
, or so she was beginning to believe. Tuppence a day wouldn't pay rent, but perhaps she could help at the tavern as well as—

‘Lucy!' came Thomas's voice from behind her. She turned and saw her uncle running down the street, hatless and coatless. ‘Lucy! Where are you going?' He stopped beside her, panting a little.

Lucy touched her cheek. ‘Your wife struck me!'

‘But where are you going?' Thomas asked anxiously.

‘I will not stay to be beaten!'

‘Child, child! We heard Will Browne was arrested and we had no idea what had become of you!'

‘And therefore I should be beaten?'

‘She feared for you,' said Thomas. ‘We both did. If she struck you, it was because her spirits were overwrought. She says you came in as though nothing were amiss and said that you'd been working!'

‘But it was true!' She eyed her uncle warily. ‘We mean to finish the pamphlets and sell them – Mr Browne will surely need the money! I was going to take my wages from the profit.'

‘Oh!' said Thomas, as though this had never occurred to him. ‘You should have explained.'

‘Agnes called me a liar and struck me before ever I had the chance!'

Her uncle shook his head. ‘It was a misunderstanding; clear, it was. Come back to the house, child; beg your aunt's pardon—'

‘Why should I beg
her
pardon? She struck me and called me a liar!'

Even as she said it, she felt her indignation ebb. Agnes was her
aunt
, and Lucy had called her a greedy harridan. It might be true but it was still a sin to say so.

‘Oh, come, you used a proud tongue, or so she told me! I will tell her that she was mistaken, but you
must
kneel and beg her pardon.'

Running off to The Whalebone was all very well, Lucy realized, but all her things were in Thomas's loft. She sighed and nodded.

She followed Uncle Thomas back to the house in silence. Agnes was in the parlour. Supper was on the table but Agnes sat glowering at an untouched bowl of pottage. Cousin Geoffrey was out, which was a mercy.

Agnes came to a stand, glaring, as Thomas entered with Lucy trailing behind him. ‘She had but gone down to the corner,' said Thomas. ‘And she says she was at work all the day, finishing the pamphlets so they can be sold to supply money for the Brownes. She will get her wages from the profit.'

Agnes opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Lucy knelt and bowed her head; the bare
possibility
of running off somehow made it easier. ‘I beg your pardon, Aunt, for my proud words. I spoke out of sinful anger and I do much repent it.'

‘So you should,' said Agnes shrewishly.

Lucy took that as forgiveness and got to her feet. She looked down at her aunt's bowl of cold pottage and felt suddenly sorry for the woman. Agnes had once been young and pretty, with a prosperous husband and a string of children; now the husband was old and struggling and all the children but one were dead. She was an ageing woman in poor health, trapped in a house and a marriage that were nothing but the ashes of her hopes.

Lucy was lucky: she could still escape. She had a choice and she felt a sudden hot conviction that once she'd really mastered typesetting, she would have more choices. The threat of Bridewell Prison was a small thing compared to that freedom.

Four

The Resolved Man's Resolution
sold all of its five hundred copies within three days. When Lucy went with Ned and Liza to Newgate Prison to visit William Browne and give him the money, he suggested that they print another five hundred.

‘We can't, sir,' Lucy told him, blushing a little. ‘Our friends want us to print flysheets, urgently. I'll bring you money from those, though. Can you tell me where to buy more paper and ink?'

The conflict between Parliament and the Army had intensified and become a wellspring of flysheets. The commissioners sent by Parliament to Saffron Walden to convince the Army to disband had returned to London in failure: the Army wanted its pay and a settlement of its grievances before it gave up the sword, suspecting that once disbanded it would receive neither. It was vocal in its defence, issuing declarations and petitions as fervently as its well-affected friends in London.

Ned Trebet came into the printworks the day after Lucy was given the first of the Army flysheets. ‘Have you heard
this
?' he asked, joyfully waving a sheet of paper.

She finished the line of type she'd been setting, then looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. ‘Heard what?'

He grinned. ‘The Parliament-men's report from Saffron Walden.' He held up the paper and read out, ‘“The Army is become one Lilburne throughout, and more likely to give than to receive laws”! And this: “Lilburne's books are quoted by them as statute law.” That's what
our pamphlets
have done!'

Lucy thought of all the copies of
A New-found Stratagem
that had gone north to the Army – not the first of Lilburne's pamphlets that had moved in that direction, she was quite sure. She looked down at the paper on the table, with the half-set forme she'd assembled beside it. The
Petition and Vindication of the Officers
had arrived at the printworks the previous afternoon, but it was not handwritten. It had been printed: the Army now had a press of its own. Print was flowing in both directions now: mutiny to the Army and sedition to London. She felt a moment of vertigo and clutched the edge of the table. What if Parliament
didn't
compromise? What if this was the start of another war?

She did not have the confidence in the Army that Ned or Thomas did. They had fought as soldiers; she had been raped.

‘What's amiss?' asked Ned, taken aback.

‘What's that paper?' she replied, gesturing at the sheet in his hand.

‘Oh, this! It's nothing to fear – only a letter from one of our friends in Parliament. He must miss the meeting this evening, so he bids me show it to the others.' The grin began to creep back. ‘Have you heard that the soldiers have
elected
spokesmen? The common soldiers, not the officers! They've chosen two out of each regiment, all the men voting for those they best trust, and these spokesmen – they call them
Agitators
– meet with the officers to determine what the Army should do!'

What do the officers think of that?
Lucy thought, then looked down at the sheet she was working on, which answered the question. The officers, like the men, were angry and indignant. They had fought for Parliament's cause: now Parliament denied them their pay, scorned their sufferings and called them traitors for petitioning about it! The officers might be willing to let the men take the lead in this dangerous game but they weren't going to stop it.

‘What does Parliament think of that?' Lucy asked instead. ‘Does your friend say?'

Ned made a face. ‘The Presbyterians aren't pleased. But think of it, Lucy! An Army behaving as “one Lilburne throughout”, electing its own choice of men to speak for it!'

Lucy thought of it. Parliament was elected, of course, but only by the handful of men who were entitled to vote. In some boroughs that included all the freeholders, but in others a dozen aldermen sufficed. Only gentlemen came to Parliament, and the gentlemen of the House of Commons were undoubtedly alarmed by this uprising of an armed rabble.

‘What will Parliament do?' she asked worriedly.

That just provoked another of Ned's grins. ‘What
can
they do? They have no
second
army to counter this one!'

‘There's the Scots!' Lucy pointed out unhappily. The Scots would obviously be extremely angry if England broke its Covenant to establish a Presbyterian church.

‘Let them wail!' Ned said airily. ‘Parliament will come to terms; they have no choice else!' He tapped his letter against the table, then eyed her speculatively. ‘Why not come along this evening? Hear the talk for yourself!'

‘What, to your tavern?'

‘Nay, to Whitehall Palace! Of
course
to my tavern!'

‘Do honest women come?'

Ned was surprised, then offended. ‘Do you think I keep a
bawdy house
?'

Lucy felt her face go hot. ‘Nay, indeed not, but–but in Leicestershire, godly women don't frequent taverns.'

For a moment she thought Ned would say something sharp, but he frowned. ‘Aye, your uncle's a very godly man, so I've heard. He'd take it amiss, would he?' He folded his letter and tucked it in his jerkin. ‘I'll speak to your uncle if he comes this evening, tell him it's naught to fear. It would be well if you came to the meetings, now that you do so much of the printing.'

Lucy almost told him that whatever Uncle Thomas thought of this suggestion, Aunt Agnes would be outraged, but she held back. She didn't want to embarrass Thomas and she wasn't entirely sure what she wanted herself. She hadn't previously considered this as something she
might
do; now she was both intrigued and alarmed. It would be interesting to hear the talk, but it would mean crossing another line. She'd come to the cause as hired help, an onlooker; she'd become a sympathizer; if she started attending meetings, she would have enlisted.

Thomas did go to the meeting at The Whalebone that evening. He returned after Lucy had gone to bed, but when she came downstairs in the morning she saw that Ned had spoken to him because he gave her a very anxious look. ‘I've business in the City today,' he announced. ‘Lucy, I'll set you on your way this morning.'

Agnes muttered angrily, ‘
Whose
business in the City? Not
yours
, I'll warrant!' When Thomas looked at her, however, she fell sullenly silent.

Thomas started on the subject as soon as they were out of the door. ‘Lucy, child, last night it was suggested that I should bring you to our council meetings at The Whalebone, at least while Nick Tew and poor Will are in prison.'

‘
Council
meetings?' she repeated, surprised. It seemed a very grand name for drinks in a tavern.

‘Aye, our common council meets in The Whalebone on Thursdays,' said Thomas impatiently. ‘The others thought it a fair notion that you should attend, but they defer the decision to me. I . . . well, you know, child, that I mislike the risk to your safety, and I fear what your father would say.'

He said nothing about any
scandal
in her attendance. ‘Do women come to these meetings, Uncle?'

‘Oh, yes,' he said, surprising her. ‘Mrs Lilburne comes, and the wives of some of the other men. Mary Overton came, until she was imprisoned. Katherine Chidley – a most outspoken soul – never misses a meeting; her son, Samuel, is our treasurer—'

‘
Treasurer?
' repeated Lucy, surprised again.

‘Aye,' said Thomas, blinking at her. ‘He keeps the common fund that pays half your wage.'

‘It does?' Browne hadn't mentioned that. Where, she wondered, did the money in the common fund come from? But that was an easy question: it came from collections among the ‘well-affected'. Another reason, she suspected, that Agnes disapproved of her husband's friends. For her own part, she was intrigued. Villagers might band together to oppose an enclosure, but this sort of
organisation –
a council with regular meetings, a common fund managed by a treasurer – was something more.

‘Aye, Will asked for help,' Thomas continued, ‘and we agreed that he was entitled to it. But this strays from the point! What I meant to say was that this notion of your attendance troubles me. Already I fear that your father will be wroth with me on your account. If he learns that I've brought you to . . . well, you and I know it's honest business, undertaken in goodwill to the Commonwealth, but
some
would call it a nest of heresy and sedition.'

‘What need has he to know?' asked Lucy. ‘Cousin Geoffrey will leave London before long, and once he's gone, who'll tell my father?
I
won't, you may be sure of it!' She realized even as she spoke that, yes, she
did
want to attend the meetings. If she was going to risk arrest, it should be for what
she
was doing and not just because she was William Browne's hired help and Thomas Stevens' niece.

Thomas stared at her for a long moment, taken aback. ‘It would scarce be
honest
of me to—'

‘My father won't care anyway,' Lucy interrupted. ‘I've told you: his wish is to forget that he ever had a daughter. It's Cousin Geoffrey who'd stir up trouble, and Cousin Geoffrey has no rights in the matter! I doubt he cares a fig what happens to me, but he's offended with
you
because his parliamentary clerk fobbed him off. Waiting until Geoffrey's gone would not be dishonesty but–but simple avoidance of a quarrel!'