A Corruptible Crown

by Gillian Bradshaw

  He beamed, then kicked his hired mount to a trot. Lucy followed, setting her teeth against the pain.

  They reached Colchester late in the evening. By then it had once again started to rain. Lucy was so sore and exhausted that she slumped doubled over in the saddle, blindly allowing her nag to plod through the steady drizzle behind Nedham’s. Gradually, though, she became aware that the land on either side of the road was stripped and trampled, and then a voice ordered them to halt. She lifted her head to see walls of turf and timber ahead of them, and the smoke of innumerable cookfires. There were armed men in red coats in the road in front of them: they’d arrived at a sentry post.

  The soldiers stared while Nedham spoke to them, gesturing at Lucy. One of the men came over to her.

  ‘Your cousin says you’ve come to see your husband, who’s wounded,’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ she agreed faintly. ‘Jamie Hudson, a blacksmith of Colonel Rainsborough’s regiment. I was told his life was in danger and that he was asking for me. We have ridden today all the way from London.’

  There was a stir among the men. ‘God bless a loving wife!’ someone called warmly. She supposed that most of the men had wives of their own, and her loyalty touched them.

  ‘There were many men hurt when we took the gatehouse,’ the soldiers’ spokesman said, waving a hand vaguely at the drizzle behind him.

  ‘The gatehouse?’ asked Nedham, appearing at the man’s side.

  ‘The malignants set up a drake in the gatehouse of the old abbey,’ the soldier explained. ‘They called it Humpty-Dumpty, because it was a fat-bellied gun like a monstrous great egg; it fired on our people and did great mischief. Three days ago we brought the wall down under it, at some cost.’

  ‘Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall,’ said another man, with a snort of satisfaction, and another sang out, ‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty together again!’ Several voices joined him on the end of the phrase: it seemed it was a popular new ditty in the camp.

  ‘I was told something of this,’ Lucy said faintly, her heart sinking. ‘I was told Jamie was working in an entrenchment, and a shot fell among the timbers.’

  There was a silence. She could see the pity in the soldiers’ eyes. ‘I’ll send one of my people to escort you to Colonel Rainsborough’s fort,’ the officer said soberly. ‘I pray God they have good news for you.’

  They rode on with one of the sentries as an escort, through a small village, then northward, along the raw earth and timber circumvallation that enclosed Colchester. They reached a bridge, where their escort spoke to more sentries. The men smiled up at Lucy, and touched her horse or her foot when she was waved through. They continued on, past more fortifications, more sentries; it seemed to Lucy’s exhausted eyes that the mud and the embankments stretched on infinitely, an endless landscape of violence and hatred. Eventually, however, they arrived at the gates of a fort. Their escort explained their errand to the guards there, then turned to go back to his post. He paused, though, as he reached Lucy, and looked up earnestly into her face. He was young, she noticed, not yet twenty. ‘I pray God that you have not come all this way in vain, sweet lady,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, touched, and he gave her a shy smile and touched his hat.

  One of the gate guards led them on, into the fort. It was full of low, mean mud-and-wattle shacks; a few camp followers hunched over cook-fires, but most of the people were taking shelter from the rain. There was a single larger and more substantial building in the middle of the fort, and their guide showed them to its door. Nedham dismounted. Lucy kicked her foot out of the slipper-stirrup and slid down, clinging all the while to the saddle. The muscles of her legs were so battered that it was hard to stand; she didn’t know whether she could walk. Nedham came over and took her arm with unexpected gentleness. ‘Courage, sweet!’ he said. ‘Soon you’ll know the worst.’

  Seven

  Jamie was eating his supper at the forge when a messenger arrived with an order to report to the colonel at once. He exchanged a surprised look with Towlend, but obediently set down his dish of pottage.

  ‘Your wife’s come,’ said the messenger.

  Jamie froze, staring, then jumped to his feet. ‘Lucy? Here?’

  The messenger grinned. ‘If Lucy’s your wife’s name, aye – but if the sweet creature waiting for you chances to have some other name, I’d take her anyway and keep mum.’

  Jamie stared at him wildly, then hurried out into the drizzle without replying. The siege of Colchester was grimmer than anything he’d imagined, and the prospect of seeing Lucy seemed as wonderful, and as improbable, as roses in a dungeon.

  Rainsborough was in the main room of the fort headquarters, a long mud-and-wattle hall which served as the officers’ mess and general meeting room; Jamie briefly noted the colonel’s presence as the man sitting next to Lucy. She was pale, wet and weary, but she looked up as he came in, and her face lit. The next he knew, her arms were wrapped tightly around him, her face pressed against his chest and her fists clenched in his coat. ‘Oh, Jamie!’ she said thickly.

  The feel of her body against his, the sound of her voice, made him feel like hot iron under the hammer. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Nothing, now,’ she said, tilting her head back to look up into his face.

  ‘She was told you were wounded near to death,’ said Colonel Rainsborough. His voice was tight with anger.

  ‘No,’ said Jamie stupidly.

  ‘So I told her,’ said Rainsborough. ‘And I have sent for . . . ah, Mr Bailey.’

  Jamie glanced over his shoulder and saw Philibert at the door, damp from the rain and bemused. Lucy stiffened in his arms, stared a moment, then let go of Jamie and turned to Rainsborough. ‘This is not the man!’

  ‘You’re certain?’ asked Rainsborough. ‘This is Philibert Bailey, a friend of your husband’s.’

  ‘He is not the same man, sir. The man who came to fetch me was stouter, and dark-haired, and smooth-faced.’

  ‘Sir?’ asked Philibert in confusion.

  Rainsborough relaxed and sat back in his chair. ‘Ensign Bailey. This gentlewoman is Mr Hudson’s wife. It seems that yesterday afternoon a man sought her out in London and told her that he had come to fetch her to her husband, who was hurt near to death and asking for her. He said he was her husband’s friend, and gave his name as Philip or Philibert Bailey.’

  Philibert looked blankly from the colonel to Jamie. ‘She says that I . . .’

  ‘She has just said it was not you,’ interrupted Rainsborough. ‘Be glad of it. Else I would have you in irons. It was a cruel trick, if it was nothing worse.’

  ‘I was here yesterday!’ protested Philibert. ‘Everyone knows I was here! Jamie, you spoke to me yourself about dinner-time! Captain Drummond will vouch for me!’

  ‘You need not defend yourself!’ Rainsborough said impatiently. ‘We are agreed it was not you.’

  Jamie looked at Lucy in alarm, and this time noticed the dark bruise on her chin: his paradise had been assaulted. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and kiss the hurt away; instead he locked his hands together behind his back, good hand gripping the iron brace. She always hated being grabbed; if she’d just suffered an assault she would hate it even more. ‘Lucy?’ he said, struggling to keep his voice soft, despite his rising fury. ‘What befell?’

  A stranger, a man he hadn’t noticed before, replied. ‘Why, the wise child suspected from the fellow’s speech that he was not your friend, and she challenged him to explain himself. At this he tried to take her away by force, and when he failed, fled.’ He snorted, eying Jamie in an unfriendly fashion. ‘After that nothing would serve but that she should rush to see whether he’d told her true. I advised her to make her inquiry by letter, but she wouldn’t heed me.’

  ‘I feared that you were dying,’ said Lucy. She touched his arm again, very lightly, as though checking that he was real. He noticed the ink stains on her fin
gers; the memory of those same stained fingers touching him on their wedding night flooded him with desire and tenderness. He took her hand and touched it to his lips, and saw some deep tension leave her. Her fingers curled around his own.

  ‘No such luck,’ said the stranger in disgust. Jamie looked at him, then, questioningly, at Lucy.

  ‘This is my cousin, Mr Wentnor,’ she said. ‘I am much in his debt. When I asked to borrow his horse to come here, he insisted on coming with me.’

  Cousin Wentnor gave Jamie a stare of outright dislike – understandable, Jamie supposed, if he’d been dragged away from his business for a long hard ride which had now been proved completely unnecessary. Jamie bowed his head. ‘I am much obliged to you, sir.’

  Cousin Wentnor scowled. ‘Your wife, sir, might have come to grief on the road without company! She has business in London, too, which can ill afford her absence. That business is, I believe, all her present livelihood, since she has no support from you.’

  Jamie blinked, taken aback by the hostility. He couldn’t remember Lucy ever mentioning a Wentnor cousin in London. Perhaps the man had been visiting?

  Cousin Wentnor evidently felt that Jamie ought to support his wife – and, of course, he was right. A gentleman’s wife shouldn’t have to go out to work, particularly at something as dangerous as unlicensed printing. Her family were right to be angry . . . Jamie remembered suddenly that she’d just bought a printing press and undertaken to print a new newsbook, a licensed newsbook. He’d been immensely relieved that she was finally free from the threat of arrest. Now she’d cast aside her new business to come running to his supposed deathbed, and God knew what that would cost her. Cousin Wentnor’s anger was entirely justified. ‘I am most heartily sorry,’ he said wretchedly.

  Cousin Wentnor’s eyes flashed. ‘You boasted of your wife, did you not? Placed a wager that she would come running the instant you called for her?’

  Jamie stared at him blankly.

  An angry snort. ‘My first thought on hearing Lucy’s story was that this was some jape or wager!’

  Jamie understood what he was supposed to have done. His face went hot, and his good hand dropped to his sword hilt. Cousin Wentnor took a step back, suddenly wary.

  Jamie forced his hand away from his sword. ‘Sir,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘It’s true this war has prevented me from supporting my wife as I ought, but I swear before God that I would never use her so contemptibly! I . . .’ In the middle of his protestation, he remembered the look in Isaiah Barker’s eyes after their duel, and stopped.

  ‘Ah, you recollect some foolish words!’ Wentnor exclaimed triumphantly.

  Jamie shook his head. ‘I recollected an enemy.’

  Rainsborough gave him a sharp look, and Jamie saw that this thought had occurred to the colonel, too.

  ‘An enemy, is it now?’ asked Wentnor scornfully.

  ‘A gentleman who challenged me, and lost, and took it very ill,’ Jamie replied. ‘He is a dark, stout, round-faced man such as Lucy described. He knows Mr Bailey as my friend, because he was my second at our meeting, and he knew of Lucy, for he had my saddle-bags in hand for a time, with all of her letters.’

  Wentnor stared at him. ‘He stole your saddle-bags? And then you stole them back? And the two of you settled this question of saddle-bags at swords’ point? Is this how the Army conducts itself nowadays?

  ‘No,’ said Rainsborough sharply. ‘Mr Wentnor, you are welcome here, but I will not hear the Army slandered! A gentleman of the Commissary-General’s regiment challenged Mr Hudson over some terms he had used of him, and they arranged a meeting and engaged one another privily, as gentlemen will when their blood’s up, but – in respect of their common service – they halted at first blood. Mr Hudson, I will have an undertaking from you to leave this in my hands. Your quarrel with Lieutenant Barker was overlooked once; it cannot be overlooked a second time.’

  Jamie looked at Lucy, wondering what would have happened if she had gone off with Barker. A denunciation as a whore or vagrant in some town along the road? He could imagine the lieutenant sneering: I hear that the wife of our levelling blacksmith has been taken up as a public whore! He could probably even have escaped blame for it. Any report that reached the camp would be muddled, exaggerated, and detached from its proper time – even if Lucy hadn’t tried to pretend such a shameful incident had never happened.

  Or perhaps Barker would have raped her, and murdered her afterwards to ensure her silence.

  ‘Mr Hudson!’ Rainsborough repeated. ‘Your word.’

  ‘This man,’ Jamie said tightly, ‘feared to face me again, so like a cowardly rogue he went about to attack my wife. God knows what he would have done to her!’

  ‘And I will go to the Commissary-General and complain of him,’ said Rainsborough. ‘I have many disagreements with Henry Ireton, but he would never support such villainy. You may be sure that if it was Lieutenant Barker who played this cruel trick, he will be punished – but I must point out that we do not know that it was Barker.’

  Lucy pulled at Jamie’s hand. ‘Jamie? What’s this? You fought a duel?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, uneasily. He’d given no thought to her when he arranged the duel, but now that she stood in front of him he discovered that he’d known she would disapprove. Her Puritan family believed that vengeance belonged to God, and she loathed violence even in its official forms. Her face now held a look of disappointment and apprehension. ‘It was only to first blood!’ he said weakly, wishing he’d run Barker through.

  ‘You must give Colonel Rainsborough your word you will not do so again!’ Lucy ordered fiercely – then seemed to realize that she was publicly giving orders to her lord and master. She glanced round at all the men in the room and added defensively, ‘If this Barker is the man who lied to me, then Jamie would be fighting him in my name. Surely I have the right to say I don’t want him to?’

  Rainsborough smiled. Jamie saw that, like many another man, he found Lucy’s combination of dark-eyed prettiness and fierce determination utterly charming. ‘If your husband is able to dispute it, Mrs Hudson, he must have a cheek of brass. Mr Hudson?’

  Reluctantly, Jamie inclined his head. ‘I give you my word, sir, that I will not challenge Lieutenant Barker, nor seek him out to confront him. I will leave this in your hands.’

  Rainsborough accepted the promise gravely. ‘I will speak to General Ireton tomorrow morning. Mrs Hudson, I hope you will be able to identify the man who tried to abduct you?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ said Lucy.

  ‘I am sorry that you have had a long hard ride, though glad that you’ve found a joyful surprise at the end of it. Let me offer you as much hospitality as our hard circumstances allow. You and your husband may have a room here in headquarters for tonight, and I will have my servant bring you the best supper we can provide.’

  Cousin Wentnor gave him a very sour look, and Rainsborough grinned. ‘Never fear, man! We’ll find a bed for you as well, and you can sup with me and tell me the news of London. Do you follow the news, sir?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Wentnor, brightening a little. ‘I’ve ever had itchy ears.’

  The colonel’s servant showed Lucy and Jamie upstairs to the staff officers’ quarters, then went off to fetch them some supper. Their room was a plain cubicle, with a floor of bare boards; the daub on the wattle walls was crumbling in the persistent damp – but it was private. It was furnished with a chest and a mattress. Jamie wasn’t sure whose they were, but hoped that the owner was absent on business and unable to burst in with objections.

  Lucy at once sank down on to the mattress with a sigh of exhaustion. It was night now, and the light of the single candle softened the outline of her face, touching her pale skin with gold. Jamie, standing at the door, found a lump in his throat. So beautiful, and so brave! She had dropped her business, rousted out this reluctant cousin, and galloped all the way from London to this wet Hell – for him! For Cyclops Hudson!

  He went over an
d knelt down beside her. ‘I’m sorry!’ he told her, taking her hand tenderly in his own. ‘I should never have left you alone and unfriended in London. Your cousin is angry with me, and I fear he is right to be.’

  She sat up, leaned forward and kissed him. ‘Unfriended, Jamie? What a thing to say! The Overtons are the kindest friends anyone could wish for – and did you mean to insult Major Wildman, to leave him out of the reckoning? But as for my angry cousin, he’s . . .’

  ‘John’s in prison,’ Jamie pointed out. ‘But of course I meant no insult, to him or to the Overtons. I know they’ve been very good friends to you indeed. It shames me, that they have done so much for you, when they have no obligation and I have the greatest that a man can owe.’

  She smiled at him. ‘I am scarcely the only woman that’s lost her husband to the war. At least I can still hope to get you back alive at the end of it! I was so afraid that I’d lost you forever!’

  He kissed her for that, and forgot the rest of what he’d meant to say. The colonel’s servant knocked, then came in scowling with a tray and a bottle of wine. He set it down and left again without a word.

  The tray held a dish of baked pigeon. Jamie was astonished. Supplying an army during a siege was difficult, and he and his friends had been living on thin pottages – barley-groats seasoned with a handful of herbs, cooked with a twice-boiled bone if they were lucky. He suspected that the pigeons had been intended for the colonel’s own dinner – hence the servant’s scowl – and he silently blessed Rainsborough’s generosity.

  They ate sitting snuggled together on the floor, and ended up in bed before the wine was finished. Lucy clung to him passionately as they made love, then fell instantly asleep. Jamie lay awake for a long time, holding her close, listening to her steady breathing and imagining her body – now so soft and warm – lying violated and dead in some roadside ditch, cold under the unceasing rain.

  He had never understood why she’d chosen him over handsome, convivial Ned Trebet. He’d had wits enough, though, to seize a treasure when it was offered him. Why had he been so stupid when it came to preserving that treasure?