London in Chains (15 page)

‘Is my tavern to be searched by a
known robber
?' Ned shouted back. ‘No, sir! And I have not seen your warrant!'

‘Enough! Arrest him!' The officer struck the table again. ‘And arrest the wench, too! And that one-eyed monster! You can join your friend Lilburne in prison!'

Six

News is come of a strange chance at
The Whalebone Tavern
, where some
Reformadoes
employed by the Committee of Safety, coming to search for seditious printing, had the Hue and Cry raised against themselves. A Mistress
Wentnor
at the tavern recognized among the Soldiers one
Richard Symonds
who, she says, two years before drove off cattle of her Father's, to the great hurt of his house, and to her great grief, for her dowry was spent upon replacing them. Her Father kept a dairy in
Leicestershire
and often supplied cheese to
Parliament's
Army, but after his loss could do so no more. It is to be hoped that the Committee of Safety will question the Soldier, to know if he indeed be a Robber, for it would be shame to see Robbers enforce Laws against honest Citizens.

Lucy gazed at the item in the newsbook with sharp disappointment. ‘It doesn't even say that they arrested
us!
'

‘It does say they're robbers!' replied Ned, grinning.

The arrest had not, in fact, lasted very long. The soldiers had dragged Lucy and the two men out into the yard of the tavern, bound their hands and kept them standing there while they searched The Whalebone. It had been raining again, and the three prisoners were soon soaked and shivering. The search, however, had been in vain: the only pamphlets found were in the possession of one or other of the customers. The soldiers confiscated these, and took them and the prisoners back to the Committee of Safety which had sent them. This was a new committee, set up only the previous day to counter the threat of the Army, and it was composed entirely of the most war-like and intolerant Presbyterians in the House of Commons. It had set up its headquarters in the Guildhall, which was at least nearby.

At the Guildhall the prisoners stood dripping in an antechamber while the Reformado officer went in to report to a member of the committee; presently, however, he came out again and sullenly commanded his men to release them: ‘Colonel Massey says, bring him evidence!' he said bitterly. ‘As though it were our fault there was none!'

Cold and wet, the three of them were glad enough to go. Once they were back at The Whalebone, however, drinking hot spiced ale, relief gave way to outrage.

A written protest, delivered to the Committee of Safety the following day, was torn up before their eyes by a sneering clerk. Hudson then suggested that the three of them print and publish their story as a pamphlet, but this plan fell down because none of them felt confident of the skill to pen a pamphlet, particularly since printing their own story would mean
not
printing the latest remonstrance from the Army. Lucy suggested that they turn instead to a newsbook, which had the additional advantage of a wider audience than the ‘well-affected' who bought most of what they printed.
A Perfect Diurnall
, Uncle Thomas's usual purchase, was the obvious choice: it was the most widely read title and, though deeply cautious and unwilling to offend anyone in power, was more honest than most.

It was easy to find the writer of
A Perfect Diurnall
: all the vendors knew him. He turned out to be a tall, thin, bald man named Samuel Pecke. He was very willing to talk to a pretty girl, though disappointed when she insisted on confining the discussion to what she wanted him to publish. He promised, however, to write something and put it in his next issue. ‘For I think it shame that such a sweet child should lose her dowry and no man be punished for it.'

‘He's done well by us,' Ned told Lucy. ‘This would never have seen print at all, were it not for your bright eyes.'

Lucy made a face. ‘But it's naught but cattle-stealing and my dowry! I
told
him how they arrested us for nothing, and how that scoundrel declared his sword was warrant enough, and—'

‘He's said the main thing,' interrupted Ned, grinning. ‘“
It would be shame to see Robbers enforce laws against honest Citizens
”. It
is
shame, and all who read this will know it.'

Lucy let out her breath unhappily. ‘And? By what we heard at the Guildhall, that same Colonel Massey who commanded Richard Symonds during the war commands him still! Will he see justice done? He probably gave the order to steal cattle – aye, and ate of the meat! He can easily slip the whole matter off by saying that he looked into it and found I was mistaken, or lying.'

‘That would be a blow,' said Ned, undeterred, ‘if we had ever hoped to get justice from the Committee of Safety – but that would be like hoping to get strawberries from gorse.'

‘This tale will help make the Committee odious to the citizens,' added Hudson seriously. ‘That was all we could hope to do at present.'

Ned nodded. ‘When the Committee's disbanded and we have a new Parliament,
then
we can get justice!'

Lucy snorted. ‘You mean, when the Army's triumphed! It still seems to me a most strange thing, to expect lawlessness from the government and justice from the Army!'

‘It's a strange world,' said Jamie Hudson mildly.

Lucy eyed him sourly. ‘Did your fine New Model Army never take goods by force?'

‘Not to my knowledge,' he replied seriously. ‘We were told that we fought for the people and that it was shame to rob them. Oh, we took goods without payment often enough – when a man's not been paid himself, he has no choice about that – but we always wrote out a receipt, so that those who supplied us might have some hope of reclaiming the value of their goods. Colonel Massey's Horse was never a part of the New Model and was notorious for lawlessness. It was disbanded early for that very reason.'

‘The Army will force Parliament to give us justice,' Ned said eagerly. ‘There will be no second army to oppose it.'

He was almost certainly right to think so. The very day after their arrest, Parliament summoned the London trained bands to muster – and the trained bands didn't come. A ward that was supposed to supply a hundred men managed to assemble eight, or a dozen, or, in one case, a watchman and his dog. True, the new Committee of Safety was still hiring, but their few thousand Reformadoes were no match at all for the massed regiments of the New Model Army, and everybody knew it. The Army had halted, only a day's march away at St Albans, and messengers rode back and forth between it and Westminster, while the people prayed fervently for an agreement.

‘When we have a new Parliament,' Ned told Lucy, ‘you can take your cattle-thief to court.'

Lucy was not at all sure that she could. She had written to her father, telling him about Richard Symonds, but she was not confident that he'd pursue the matter. Even if he did, and even if a Leicestershire court issued a summons, nobody was going to enforce it in London, new Parliament or old.

She was thinking about her father on her way to work next morning, thinking so hard that she forgot most of her hedge-leveller caution. Daniel Wentnor was a proud man, hard-working, strong-willed and ferociously honest: the shame of what had happened cut him deep, but so did the desire for justice. She did not know what he would do and she pondered it distractedly, at one moment afraid he'd do nothing, at the next that he'd pursue justice relentlessly and call her to testify, so that everyone in London discovered how she'd been raped.

The sick feeling that thought inspired eased when she reached the barn and unlocked the door to see the sheets of their latest publication filling the dimness inside. It was yet another
Declaration of the Army
– to her mind, the best yet. She began checking the sheets to see how many were dry, her eyes snagged again and again by the noble phrases: ‘We were not a mere mercenary army, hired to serve any arbitrary power of a State, but called forth and conjured by the several declarations of Parliament to the defence of our own and the people's just rights and liberties. And so we took up arms in Judgement and in Conscience.'

Somebody laughed. She looked up and saw Richard Symonds advancing on her. Behind him was another man whose face she remembered – it figured in her nightmares, though she'd never learned his name.

She screamed and recoiled. They were between her and the door, so she darted back behind the press. Symonds laughed again.

‘Here I was wondering how I could get you alone,' he said, ‘and here you are with an illegal press! I won't have to explain myself; I'll be
rewarded
!' He advanced towards her slowly, moving a little to the left. His friend mirrored him, moving a little to the right.

‘Go away!' cried Lucy desperately.

He laughed again. ‘Go
away
? From a juicy little slut like you? Why would I do that?'

Lucy bolted towards the back of the barn, ducking under the drying lines. At once both men ran after her, batting the paper aside. Lucy reached the barn wall and ran along it, looking for Jamie Hudson's loose plank. Symonds' friend crashed through the wall of paper. She screamed again, lashing out at him, and he seized her flailing hand. ‘Got her!' he yelled triumphantly.

Richard Symonds arrived and caught her shoulders; his friend twisted her arms behind her back. She struggled wildly, shrieking and kicking, convulsed with horror and disbelief – not
again
! The man behind her jerked her arms up, wrenching her shoulders so violently that the pain stilled her. ‘You like it rough, don't you?' he breathed into her ear. ‘I remember that. Nick had the marks of your teeth in his lip till the day he died. Well, rough is how you'll get it, sweeting.'

Symonds, in front of her, grabbed her buttocks and pulled her against him, laughing; the laugh stopped when she head-butted him in the face. He swore, clapped a hand to his nose, then raised his other hand to slap her.

The blow never fell. Symonds' mouth opened and his eyes widened in astonishment and pain. Lucy, looking up over his shoulder, saw Jamie Hudson, scarred face like a devil-mask, standing behind him.

Symonds' friend yelled and thrust Lucy away. She staggered into Symonds, who grabbed at her blindly. She kicked his shin and he fell. Jamie leapt past him, sword in hand; the blade was red for half its length. Symonds seized Lucy's ankle, and she looked down and saw him writhing at her feet. She kicked at him frantically; he cried out, and she kicked again. He looked up at her, eyes wide: his mouth was gushing blood that splattered her skirt. It was only then that she understood that Jamie had run him through. ‘Oh, God!' he cried, his voice bubbling through the blood. ‘Oh, God, no! Oh, nooo!'

She tore her foot out of his weakening grasp. He had a knife in his belt; she stooped and snatched it, then stood holding the blade in both hands and looking wildly around. The drying lines were shaking; one fell suddenly in a ripple of paper, and she saw Jamie and the other man. Both had swords in hand now; the other man was trying to circle left, to get on Jamie's blind side. She ran towards them. Even as she did, there was another of those slithering clashes of metal, and then, just as in The Whalebone, the other man's sword was flying to the ground. He yelped and started to raise his hands. Jamie leapt forward, sword sweeping up and down again: there was a shocking spurt of red, and the man fell. He dropped on to the cut line, legs kicking, and the red spurted out across the printed pages, again, again, again – then ebbed into a weak trickle.

Lucy and Jamie stood looking at one another over the body. He made a move forward as though to embrace her. She took a step back: the thought of being touched just now, by
anyone
, was intolerable. He stood still again, his face mask-like. ‘Is the other one dead?' he asked at last.

Lucy opened her mouth but couldn't speak. She shook her head and went back to see.

Richard Symonds lay twisted about on his side, one heel digging into the ground, opposite arm flung out as though he were trying to rise. He wasn't moving. Jamie nudged him with a booted foot, then rolled him over on to his back. Symonds' chin was covered with blood and his eyes stared up sightlessly. The front of his breeches were wet, and he stank: he had emptied his bowels and bladder.

Lucy knelt slowly but couldn't bring herself to touch him to see if his heart was still beating. The sight of the body filled her with horror. Richard Symonds had been a wicked man, but probably there had been those who loved him – his mother, at least; perhaps even, God forbid, a wife and children. She dropped the dagger and twisted her hands together in her apron. ‘May God have mercy on their souls,' she whispered.

Jamie Hudson shook his head. ‘They're gone to their master the Devil.' He bent over and wiped the blade of his sword on Symonds' sleeve.

Lucy flinched. She was glad that Symonds was dead, but the thought of Hell was terrifying, and it seemed suddenly that she could almost smell the brimstone. Two men dead and damned, she thought wretchedly, and Jamie Hudson had killed them. Two deaths on his head and for
her
sake. ‘I'm sorry!' she cried miserably.

He looked at her quizzically, raising his one eyebrow. ‘What have
you
to be sorry for?'

‘They must have followed me, and I never saw them! They must have been waiting for me, near The Whalebone, but I wasn't paying attention!'

He thrust his sword point-down in the ground, bent to find a handkerchief in Symonds' pocket and used it to finish cleaning the weapon, holding it steady with his bad hand. ‘Would you have seen them, however much attention you gave it? Men who set out to commit murder usually take great care about it.'