London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  ‘It’s our Declaration!’ cried Wildman as he saw it.

  It was indeed a Declaration of the Army – one of several that had emanated from Saffron Walden of late and more moderate than most of them. Wildman plucked it from Lucy’s hands and looked it over with a smile; Lucy took it back before he could smear the ink. ‘We mean to sell it throughout London, so that the citizens will not be deceived as to the justice of the Army’s desires.’ She was pleased to find that her voice was briskly confident, with no hint of a tremor. She hung the paper up to dry, then came back to the press and gazed across it at Hudson. ‘So what will it be, Mr Hudson? Will you take instruction from me, or will you go? For I’ll not hand the mastery to one that knows less of printing than I do!’

  Both men looked at her, and she could see them thinking, Insolent wench! She crossed her arms and stared back at them implacably.

  Hudson stirred, grimaced and conceded: ‘I’ll take instruction.’ Wildman gave him a look of sympathy, slapped him on the shoulder and departed.

  In fact, there was not a lot of instructing to be done. The latest Declaration was short, and all of the typesetting had already been done: printing was a matter of inking the forme and working the press. Still, there were all the usual adjustments to forme and paper, the normal tightening of bolts and greasing of slides, so Lucy was satisfied that Hudson knew her supervision was needed. The soldier was easily strong enough to manage the press, though Lucy noticed that he was careful with his maimed hand, pushing and pulling with the palm, not the fingers.

  She’d secretly hoped that Ned would turn up to tell her she was welcome to come to The Whalebone for dinner, but there was no sign of him. At about two o’clock she gave up and took out the bread and butter she’d packed at home – she was wary of taking meat or cheese without Agnes’s goodwill. ‘Do you have aught to eat, Mr Hudson?’ she asked, looking up at the big man.

  He shook his head.

  She hesitated. ‘You’re free to go and buy yourself some food. There’s a baker’s at the corner of Coleman Street and London Wall.’

  ‘I’ve no money,’ Hudson said hoarsely.

  She sighed, grimaced and offered him half her bread and butter. He didn’t take it, only stood gazing down at her, scarred face unreadable.

  ‘Take it!’ she ordered. ‘I can’t eat with you grokkling me like a hungry dog!’

  He took it and sat down on the dirty floor of the barn. She sat down opposite at a safe distance and nibbled at the bread.

  ‘You’re not from London,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Nay,’ she agreed. ‘I’m from Hinckley in Leicestershire.’

  He nodded, took a bite of the bread and butter and chewed it thoughtfully. The scarred side of his face moved stiffly, but at least he didn’t dribble. ‘I hail from Lincolnshire myself.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Not been back, though, since . . .’ He waved his maimed hand at his scarred face.

  Lucy hesitated again: she didn’t really want to know more about this brute, but she felt she ought to, since they were working together. ‘What happened? Captain Wildman said you were wounded at Naseby, but . . .’

  ‘Pistol misfired.’ He held his bad hand out in front of him and went on, ‘This was the worst hurt. I was ’prenticed to be a blacksmith, but that’s work that needs two hands. Now I’m glad to heave a press for sixpence a day.’

  ‘I used to work in my da’s dairy,’ Lucy told him. ‘Then soldiers stole all our cows, and there was nothing for me to do. I’m glad to find work that pays sixpence, too, Mr Hudson, but then I never earned tuppence at home.’

  He fixed her with that single eye. After a moment he snorted. ‘Bold child, aren’t you?’

  ‘No more child than you, I thank you!’

  ‘Nor yet a wench or a puss,’ he replied with a lop-sided smile. ‘You are in charge here, after all.’

  She was silent a moment, angry again. It was funny, was it, for her to say that? ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘and like to stay that way, since I’ll not spend all my earnings on drink!’ She got to her feet and went back to the press.

  He got up, too, glowering again. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Oh? You got that stink on you by sleeping in a distillery and a privy by turns, did you?’

  ‘A man that’s hurt needs something to dull the pain!’

  ‘While a woman that’s hurt is expected to mend and mind the children, too!’ She put the rest of her bread and butter in her mouth, dusted off her hands and began inking again.

  They worked in silence for the rest of the afternoon. At last Lucy signalled that it was time to stop. She cleaned up, then gathered up the small stack of sheets she’d managed to print the previous day, which were now dry. ‘We’ll take these to The Whalebone Tavern,’ she told Hudson. Since Browne’s arrest, Ned had been selling the products of the press among his customers.

  ‘Will they pay us there?’ was the soldier’s response.

  She hesitated: she’d been taking her tuppence from Ned but she wasn’t sure how things would work now. ‘Probably not,’ she admitted. ‘We’ll need to see Mr Chidley.’

  When they arrived at The Whalebone, the serving-woman Nancy greeted Lucy with some embarrassment, then called for Ned. He came up from the cellar with a morose expression that became a pleased smile when he saw Lucy.

  ‘Lucy!’ he exclaimed. ‘I began to fear I’d not see you today. Why did you fail us at dinner-time?’

  ‘I . . . I wasn’t sure I had your leave to come,’ said Lucy. She could feel her face growing warm.

  ‘Of course you have!’ Ned said. ‘The press may have moved, but I hope we are still friends! Will you come tomorrow?’

  ‘Aye!’ she said, smiling stupidly. ‘I’d be glad of it.’

  Hudson was watching Ned closely. ‘Is this invitation only to Mistress Wentnor, or is it to all who work the press?’

  Ned gave him a curious stare.

  ‘This is Mr James Hudson,’ Lucy explained, ‘whom Captain Wildman found to help with the press. Mr Hudson, this is Mr Trebet, the keeper of The Whalebone.’

  Ned held out his hand to Hudson with a smile. ‘I’ll gladly offer refreshment to those who work our press, and any friend of Captain Wildman is welcome at The Whalebone. What was it, a pistol misfiring?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Hudson, taken aback. He did not take the offered hand, but he held up his own damaged one in a sort of apologetic wave.

  ‘I saw the like at Newbury.’

  ‘You were with the London trained bands?’ asked Hudson, his tone suddenly much less surly. ‘That was a brave stand!’

  Ned smiled. ‘Captain Wildman said you fought at Naseby. In what regiment, pray?’

  The two men began to talk about the war. Lucy listened to them in surprise at first but, as the talk moved to flanking attacks and musketry, quickly grew bored. When Ned offered Hudson a drink, she said that she must see Mr Chidley. Ned was barely willing to divert his attention long enough to tell her the address.

  The Chidleys lived nearby, in Soaper Lane, so she was not gone long. When she returned, however, Ned was back at his work and Hudson was in the tavern’s common room, talking war with half a dozen others. Lucy had to rap on the table to get his attention. The whole drinking party looked up at her with appreciative leers.

  ‘Your wages,’ she said curtly. She set down sixpence. ‘I expect to see you tomorrow, Mr Hudson, sober and presentable!’ She stalked out.

  Chidley had, in fact, entrusted her with the whole fourteen shillings, along with an account book. ‘If you’ve run a dairy, this should be no trouble to you,’ he told her, ‘but if you need advice, I am at your disposal.’ She could have paid Hudson a week’s wages, but she suspected that if she did, she wouldn’t see him the following day. As it was, she was uneasy about leaving him in a tavern with money in his purse.

  When she arrived at the barn the following morning, she was fully expecting him not to show up before noon. She made her now-routine tour, assuring
herself that all the dark corners were empty. When she came into the hayloft, however, there was a rustle, and then a man’s head and shoulders emerged suddenly from a pile of stale straw. Memory seized her by the throat: she screamed, bolted for the ladder and leapt from it only halfway down. She staggered, then fled out of the door.

  She glanced back before she reached the street. The barn stood peacefully in its muddy field under a cloudy sky, its door wide open so that she could see the white flutter of paper within. No one was coming after her. She stopped, breathing hard, pressing her trembling hands together. She did not know what to do. She should not leave the barn unlocked and open, panting out its secret – but she couldn’t possibly go back.

  A figure appeared in the doorway, and she belatedly recognized James Hudson. She had run away from her own assistant! Shame and self-disgust turned her stomach: how could she ever hold her own against him now? Still she couldn’t bring herself to go back, though, and the two of them stared at one another for a long time, Hudson in the doorway, Lucy sixty paces away in the track that led to the street. At last Hudson shambled forward. She knew he was going to laugh at her, and then . . . she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think she could work with him. It had been hard enough working alone in the barn: to work with this monster leering and jeering at her would be impossible.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said quietly. ‘I fear I startled you cruelly.’

  It was so different from what she expected that she could only stare blankly.

  ‘I lay in the barn to save rent-money,’ he informed her. ‘I thought it might serve, too, to keep out thieves.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said stupidly. After a moment she added, ‘How did you get in? The door was locked!’

  ‘Loose board,’ he said simply. ‘You thought me an escaped lunatic, did you?’

  ‘Aye,’ she said, glad of the excuse. She took a deep breath and forced herself to take a step back towards the barn, then another and another. Hudson stood aside for her, then followed her in. His coat and hair were decorated with straw, but he managed an air of respect despite it. She was grateful for it.

  Inside, everything was as it should be: the press sitting quietly, the printed sheets drying on their lines, the scents of paper and ink vying with the smell of damp and old straw. She pushed a stray lock of hair up under her coif and wiped her hands on her apron. Hudson went to the press and looked at her expectantly.

  ‘Nay,’ she told him. Her voice was unsteady, but only slightly. ‘We’ve done enough Declarations ; now we’re to print more petitions. Mr Chidley gave me the text yesterday. I’ll set the type. You can go find yourself some breakfast if you’ve a mind to it. We’ll start printing when you get back.’

  ‘I’ve a sour stomach this morning,’ he told her, ‘but, if there’s time, I’ll find myself a drink of plain water.’

  She nodded, glad of a little time to settle her nerves again.

  When he came back he was carrying his coat over one arm and his shirt and hair were wet. She looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Since I need not lie in either a distillery or a privy tonight,’ he said solemnly, ‘I thought I might safely wash my shirt.’

  ‘My nose thanks you,’ she said with equal solemnity.

  They smiled at one another.

  She hesitated, then said determinedly, ‘It would be well if you drank less and had a stomach for breakfast.’

  His single remaining eyebrow rose.

  ‘It’s heavy work!’ she pointed out. ‘You need more in your belly than last night’s ale – if you kept that down!’

  He cast his eye towards Heaven. ‘God save me from nagging women!’

  ‘I am in charge of this press, Mr Hudson, and I’ve a right to worry that you’ll faint at your work!’

  Unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘I promise not to faint.’

  Walking home that evening, she found herself smiling again. For the first time, it seemed that she really might succeed in setting what had happened behind her.

  When she looked back on the weeks that followed, they seemed to her to be ordinary. There were events, yes, but they formed a pattern she regarded as normal: they gave shape to her ordinary life. That sense of ordinariness exasperated her, however: in truth, nothing about that spring and summer was ordinary. Power and authority were shaken to the foundations, and her unlicensed press was in the centre of things. She printed John Lilburne’s Rash Oaths Unwarrantable ; she printed the Army’s Humble Representation of the Dissatisfactions of the Army and their Solemn Engagement. Print streamed around the city, to the Army and back again, a torrent of protest and demand that battered against the floodgates of Parliament.

  The Army mutinied. The common soldiers rose in defence of their rights, and their officers bowed to their will or were swept aside. Parliament’s orders were disobeyed and its frantic pronouncements were treated with contempt. The king, whose consent Parliament had hoped to win for its Presbyterian settlement, was suddenly snatched from his luxurious captivity in Northamptonshire – escorted off by a very junior officer, a mere cavalry cornet. Next heard of, he was with the Army. Cromwell fled London, leaving behind parliamentary outrage for his broken promise that the Army would disband; soon he, too, was with the Army and negotiating with the king for quite a different settlement. The Army assembled near Newmarket and began a slow march towards London.

  All of this was exhilirating and thrilling, but – at first – none of it had much real effect on Lucy’s life. The arrival, at long last, of a lodger at Uncle Thomas’s house was a much bigger change.

  Mrs Penington was a gentlewoman, the well-bred wife of a Royalist whose estate had been sequestered because of his support for the king. The gentleman himself was in France, but he had sent his wife to ‘compound’ for his ‘delinquency’ – in other words, to pay a hefty fine and get his lands back. Mrs Penington had taken both the empty rooms – Mark’s for herself and Hannah’s for her maidservant – and, though she paid eight shillings a week rent and not the hoped-for ten, Agnes was in awe of her and determined not to lose her. In consequence, Lucy was exiled from the house during the hours of daylight: Agnes was terrified that if the gentlewoman discovered that the niece of the house was a seditious printer, she’d lodge elsewhere. Agnes didn’t like Thomas’s opinions, either, of course, but she couldn’t give orders to him; Lucy was another matter.

  ‘I don’t want you speak to the lady!’ Agnes ordered her. ‘If you must, confine yourself to decent topics. If she asks you what you do, you are to tell her you print wholesome and lawful things!’ Agnes took to serving supper early in the evening, before Lucy got home, so that there would be no chance for her and Mrs Penington to converse. The scoldings for returning after dark were replaced by encouragement to stay away; Agnes even gave up one of Lucy’s two shillings, so that Lucy could buy herself a frugal supper in the City. The result, of course, was that Lucy worked late more and more, often going directly from the printing press to The Whalebone, where she could hear the latest news. The house became only the place she slept: her life was centred elsewhere.

  She got to know many of Ned’s other customers, particularly the Chidleys and William Walwyn; she grew comfortable enough with Ned to joke with him and his staff. Jamie Hudson no longer seemed the least bit alarming: a quiet, steady presence that made the barn feel safer. He still drank, but – perhaps because she nagged him about it – less and less. He began to gain some weight and lost his surliness.

  She bought some cloth from Uncle Thomas – a pretty chestnut-coloured worsted, with hints of red to it – and she and Susan spent several pleasant Sabbath afternoons discussing gowns before she cut the fabric, and then more pleasant afternoons tacking it together and adjusting it. The actual sewing, however, went very slowly as she seldom had time while there was daylight enough to stitch.

  As May gave way to June, however, the public events had private effects: Lucy finally had her long-threatened encounter with the law.

  She was at The Whalebone
at dinner-time when there was shouting outside. A moment later a party of soldiers burst into the room with their swords in their hands.

  Nancy Shorby, who’d been at the bar, screamed; everyone jumped up, instinctively recoiling from the edged metal. A tin plate fell to the floor, spilling its contents in an ugly smear. Lucy was jostled back into a corner, and the low-ceilinged room filled with noise.

  ‘We’ve come by order of Parliament to search this tavern!’ yelled one of the soldiers. ‘Where’s the keeper?’

  Ned thrust his way through the packed mass of his customers. ‘Here! If you have a warrant, show it!’

  One of the soldiers waved a sword before his face. ‘Here’s my warrant, you son of a whore!’

  Ned angrily thrust the sword aside; at this the soldier struck at his face with the hilt. Ned yelped and staggered, and there was a gasp of outrage. Somebody kicked the soldier, who turned angrily in the direction of the kicker. Ned at once grabbed the sword-hilt and tried to wrestle the weapon away. The soldiers’ leader drew his pistol and fired it at the ceiling.

  In the confined space the noise was deafening, and in its wake the room fell silent. ‘Stand quiet!’ ordered the officer. ‘We’ll do no violence to those who offer none!’

  ‘Whoreson Reformadoes!’ called James Hudson from somewhere nearby. ‘Is Parliament paying you thirty pieces of silver?’

  Lucy finally understood who the men were. There were many discharged soldiers in London; there had been disturbances when they demanded their pay, which, like that of the soldiers still under arms, had long been denied. Parliament had just the day before decided to make use of them, offering them the money they were due if they re-enlisted in new, ‘re-formed’ regiments.

  The officer sneered. ‘Thirty pieces of silver? Nay, the New Model can sue for pennies: we’re getting full arrears of pay! Five pounds each!’

  That provoked a growl of anger. Ned, dishevelled and wild-eyed, his chin flecked with blood, cried, ‘I asked to see your warrant! You’ve no right to conduct a search without you have a warrant!’