Rebels and Traitors (32 page)

In his own way, Lovell disguised any reluctance to be involved. For an hour he sat in the room reading a news-sheet. Journalism had allowed the characteristic Englishman to become himself. Now, as the master of information, it was a husband’s prerogative to seize the best chair in the room — which Lovell did, taking the one with wooden arms, the better to balance his elbows and control the broadsheet. The chair was normally graced with a plump cushion that Juliana had covered with stylish stumpwork embroidery; impatient of the cushion, Lovell tossed it to the floor. He flung his boots in two different directions. Then, while his wife sweated and gasped and bit the sheet behind the bed-curtain, not three yards away, Orlando Lovell applied himself to the Englishman’s conviction that he could ride out any crisis by fixed study of the news.

‘How do you fare, sweetheart?’

‘Tolerably …’

‘I am glad of it. Would I could be of assistance, dear girl, but this is woman’s work.’

Lovell deemed it would help if he read out interesting passages from the news-sheet. He knew Juliana took an interest in the progress of the war. ‘I see there has been a sharp exchange of fire at Winceby. The Earl of Manchester — that old fool — with Sir Thomas Fairfax (he is the uppity one of the family), plus one Cromwell, have trounced a couple of northern cavaliers … This Cromwell is unknown to me. Have you encountered the name, my sweet?’

‘No. Orlando, we have to hire a midwife … I was not sure of the timing and have not consulted her, but the licensed woman should come to us —’

‘Oh I dare say we can save a shilling and manage without…’

‘A shilling is in the brown crock on the mantelshelf — I have kept it particularly; there is no need to scrimp!’ Writhing on the soiled sheets and drenched with sweat, Juliana could no longer silence herself. ‘I shall die if this child be not taken out of me — and the child too, poor innocent thing that never asked for us two feckless souls as its parents!’ As the most painful contraction yet seared through her, she let rip and screamed:
‘Orlando, you must help me!’

She heard the news-sheet fall. Lovell whipped aside the bed-curtains. He was a soldier. He could assess a situation. He went white. ‘Do your best to endure it — I will fetch someone!’

His shock frightened Juliana even more. In all the years she was to know him, this was the only occasion Orlando Lovell showed plain terror. Well, I have wrought a wonder! she thought, with fatalistic pride. She reached for his hand, but he jumped back nervously.

At that moment she really thought she was dying. Given the nationwide statistics for childbed mortality, any doctor would have nodded. From the desperate way he dragged on his bucket-topped boots and thundered headlong down the narrow stairs, Captain Orlando Lovell had been told about the dangers.

He went missing for ages. Juliana had heard him shout agitatedly for help from Smithers or his sister. The sister always came to the house in the late afternoon, but on this one day she had found some pressing reason to vanish. Smithers had scarpered too. Finding no one, Lovell himself must have left. Stillness fell downstairs.

Juliana sobbed. She feared that Lovell had abandoned her.

Finally through her pain came voices, one a woman’s. Footsteps moved steadily upstairs. Juliana had a wild moment of horror. ‘Dear heaven, he has brought me
an Irishwoman
!
’
She would come to be ashamed of that.

A large, middle-aged, unperturbed stranger in sensible black worsted swanned to her bedside. The lady assessed all, with benign disgust. Through tears of distress, Juliana saw a square face, enlivened by deep dimples and wise eyes. Lovell was nervously hanging back. ‘My sweet, this is Major McIlwaine’s good wife —’

Mistress McIlwaine cuffed him, rather hard. ‘Get away, Captain Lovell! Are you a monster that this poor child has been provided with no single friend at such a time? Give me a knife; I need to pare my nails.’

Lovell looked bemused. Juliana understood. She somehow managed to laugh, then blurted out,
‘Your midwife should be strong, quiet and calm, with clean hands and close-trimmed fingernails

‘And a stranger to drink!’ returned the rescuer briskly. ‘Though God alone knows,
that’s
a rarity … The licensed bawd is stuck in St Clement’s, tearing twins limb from limb. She will come to you by and by with her iron hooks and her ale bottle, but we can wing it by ourselves … I generally reckon to anoint the privities with sweet almond oil and violets, but I cannot suppose we shall find anything of that sort in a house of heathens. We must make do with goose fat, if this idle lump of a husband of yours can go down to the pantry … Just a cupful, Captain, if you please, and try not to bring too many nasty bits of burned meat in it. We want lubrication; we are not making gravy’

Juliana was friendless no longer. Nerissa McIlwaine had arrived in her life.

‘Get us some eggs, Lovell! And if you have any wine hidden about the place, surrender it now to me, if you please. I must make your lady and me a spiced caudle for relaxation.’

Women’s work,’ muttered Lovell under his breath as he whisked off on these errands, grumbling and yet reassured. Women’s rituals …’

Mistress McIlwaine had heard him.
‘Eliminate the light, the air — and the men…
The last is good; the rest are old wives’ tales … If you go out to buy the wine, Captain Lovell, do not linger above ten minutes! Then you may wait below until it is over. If I need a strong arm to pull one way while I haul the other, I shall call you up again.’

Amidst a continuing flow of this offhand commentary, Thomas Lovell was born. With the calming effects of caudle and the slitheriness of goose fat, there was no necessity for hauling. Mistress McIlwaine ensured the child was gently introduced to the world. He thrived from his first yell, while his tired young mother wept but survived. Even the father recovered his spirits enough to kiss both his wife and his red wrinkled son, then gravely salute the lady who had saved the day. After that Lovell felt free to forget the traditional duty of entertaining the godparents (since as yet there were none). He went out to get drunk on Juliana’s shilling, the shilling he had saved by not employing the licensed midwife.

Juliana discovered eventually that Orlando had had only a slight acquaintance with the Irish couple. A chance meeting in the street as he rushed about in despair had brought this happy result. For his wife, the accident was to be a double joy for it initiated one of the main female friendships in her life.

As a consequence of inspecting their bleak room, Mistress McIlwaine subjected the landlord to inspection; she took his measure in one scathing bat of an eyelash, then berated Lovell for ever leaving Juliana alone in the beastly Smithers’s vicinity. She suggested the Lovells should board with herself and Major Owen McIlwaine in St Aldate’s. McIlwaine was a tall, lean man with a strong nose and large ears, who read widely and loved his wife. He was well liked by his soldiers and Lovell said he was a caring, efficient leader.

For the Lovells, this was a notable move up. Not only were they now well placed, directly opposite Christ Church where the King lodged, but the houses were large and splendid. At that time St Aldate’s famously contained three earls, three barons, several baronets and various knights. Overcrowding was rife, with a census recording 408 ‘strangers’ packed into seventy-four houses, along with original townspeople. Even so, the neighbourhood was coveted. The McIlwaines possessed resources; they rented a whole house and though periodically they shared it with other officers, who brought their wives, children and sometimes soldiers or servants, the Lovells nonetheless were given a good chamber of their own, where the small family eventually stayed for eighteen months. Now they lived in panelled rooms with ornamental plaster on the ceilings and decorated over-mantles above lofty fireplaces. From who-knew-what money, Lovell had made one flamboyant payment of rent, which he would probably not repeat, though it gave them a guilt-free start. Juliana felt able to use her grandmother’s fine table- and bed-linen, as she dared to believe that she had her own establishment at last. In the great four-poster bed with its old embroidered drapes, her second child would be both conceived and born.

She was to know grief in that house as well as snatched happiness, but for a long time mainly pleasure — particularly the pleasure of living among congenial people, people who gladly extended their friendship. Although the McIlwaines were a quiet pair, who allowed Juliana plenty of privacy, they also had access to society. They were connected to the royal court because they worshipped at the Queen’s Catholic chapel in Merton. There was music; there were plays and masques; for the men there was tennis and bowling. There was fine dining in the colleges as well as simple food and good company at home. For those who could bear its deprivations, Oxford even held a sense of excitement. It was inconceivable that the King would lose either the war or his crown; the city had the air of a temporary adventure which everyone would one day remember nostalgically.

Juliana, so young and completely inexperienced, had wise guidance as she learned motherhood with her first baby. Nerissa had borne children, though none was with her now. Juliana sensed that the McIlwaines had endured much tragedy, perhaps back in Ireland. At any rate, Nerissa helped with a light hand; perhaps she was reluctant to love the infant Tom Lovell too much. Despite developing a great fondness for Juliana herself, her warmth was tempered with restraint, as if nothing in life could be trusted to last.

Differences of religion only came between them with courtesy on both sides. Early in their acquaintance Nerissa did ask Juliana if she was a Catholic, since she was partly French. Roxanne Carlill had always maintained herself to be a Huguenot, though on her death-bed she had begged for a Catholic priest and Juliana, despite her distaste, had somehow found one. Whatever her grandmother’s origins, Juliana herself had been brought up a general-duty Protestant. Her father had read aloud to her from a King James Bible. She shook off the question with a light laugh. ‘I am but a quarter French. So I am a Catholic only on Mondays and Wednesday afternoons — and never on a Sunday, which prevents discovery’

That first winter was bleak, with endless grim weather and heavy snow. It was good to be in an ordered house where roaring fires were built in the kitchen, and lodgers were welcome to drape their ice-stiffened cloaks over chair-backs and stuff their mud-splashed boots with old news-sheets to dry out near the hearth overnight. In January the Houses of Parliament at Westminster offered a pardon for all Royalists who submitted, took the Covenant — the Presbyterian oath — and paid a significant fine to compensate for their past delinquency. Despite their anxieties as the war continued, few at the King’s headquarters paid much heed to the offer.

Besides, there were now two Parliaments. The King called for all loyal members of Parliament to assemble at Oxford, which already had lawcourts, a Mint and the royal presence. The Oxford Parliament met with considerable numbers present — forty-four Lords and, more surprisingly, over a hundred Commons, which was about a quarter of the lower house. It was not a success. Though these were the loyal’ members, ironically the King found them no more compliant than the rebels in Westminster. He raved to his wife about ‘the place of base and mutinous motions — that is to say, our mongrel Parliament here’. It was not in his nature to wonder why
neither
body was tractable.

In March 1644, as the weather cleared, Prince Rupert left for action in the North Midlands, Lovell with him. In April the pregnant Queen was sent away to Exeter by the King, who feared for her safety during her confinement. Once again came rumours that the Earl of Essex intended to lay siege to Oxford; at the end of May Essex and Waller made a determined effort to entrap the King. Essex marched through nearby Cowley and Bullingdon Green to Islip, and then advanced on Woodstock, which was a mere walking distance away; as an act of bravado the King spent a day hunting at Woodstock. Meanwhile Waller forced a crossing at Newbridge and came as close as Eynsham. Parliamentary soldiers strolled up to inspect the town defences, like spectators at a fair. Shots were fired. The King tricked Essex and quietly escaped with four and half thousand men by an all-night march. Lighted matchcord was left, hung on the hedgerows, to fool Essex that the royal army was still there. (This trick was used in so many engagements, it was surprising anyone was ever taken in by it.) The Parliamentary encirclement of Oxford ended, temporarily, though the panicky townsfolk only relaxed slowly.

Also at the end of May, Prince Rupert was ordered to the north. It was occasioned by a treaty John Pym had concluded with the Scots, just before he died in December 1643. Dismayed by the fact that three-quarters of the kingdom was then in Royalist hands, Pym had taken up the Scots’ offer of help. They too were alarmed by the prospect of victory for the King, which would inevitably mean further attempts to overthrow their Presbyterian system. News that Charles was negotiating to bring over an Irish army for his own assistance, made them even keener.