London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  ‘You’re one of Lilburne’s get all right!’ sneered the officer. ‘I’ll tell you your rights, tavern-keeper: you’ve a right to life and limb if you give us no trouble. Hinder us, and I swear you’ll suffer for it. This house is notorious, and no one will question what we do.’ He gestured for his men to begin searching.

  By great good fortune, there was no stash of pamphlets at the tavern that day: the previous day’s output had already been distributed, and the new sheets were still drying on the lines in the barn. Lucy was silently thanking God for that, and wondering what to say if anyone noticed her ink-stained hands, when she recognized the face of one of the searching soldiers.

  For a long minute she stood frozen with shock. The man felt her eyes: he looked at her, frowned, looked back, then grinned toothily. She realized that he did not even recognize her.

  The scream was in her throat again, and for once there seemed no point at all in swallowing it. ‘You THIEF!’ She shrieked it, and suddenly every eye in the room was on her. She elbowed a customer aside and advanced to confront the soldier face to face. ‘Thief!’ she cried again. She was shaking with rage and loathing. ‘Foul cruel rogue! I never thought to see you again! What’s your name?’

  The soldier cast a look of bewilderment at his officer. ‘What ails you, wench? I’ve not met you before in my life!’

  Lucy spat in his face. His look of confusion became one of indignation, and he raised his hand to hit her; she caught the hand and fended off the blow. He tried to shake his hand loose, and she caught it with her other hand as well. He swore, jerking her from side to side. Angry exclamations sounded on all sides, and then there was a ring of steel. James Hudson stepped beside her, his sword drawn. ‘Let her go!’ he ordered the Reformado.

  The Reformado couldn’t: Lucy was the one holding him. He tried to draw his own sword, but couldn’t get his hand free. One of his friends, however, swore and drew; Hudson turned towards him, there was a ringing clash, and then the Reformado’s sword was on the floor.

  ‘Peace, peace!’ shouted the officer. He was alarmed, despite his claim that no one would question what he did. Presumably it would reflect badly on him if he couldn’t even search a tavern without bloodshed.

  ‘Keep peace yourself!’ Hudson snarled, turning on him; the officer recoiled a little at the sight of his face. ‘Do you think to come here and misuse the keeper of the place and this young gentlewoman, and have no one check you for it?’

  ‘This man is a thief!’ Lucy repeated. She realized she still had hold of his hand and flung it off with revulsion. ‘What is his name, sir?’

  ‘Symonds,’ said the officer, blinking.

  ‘Symonds!’ hissed Lucy, turning back to the man. Her father might want to forget he’d ever had a daughter but he would still be glad to know that name. ‘May God curse you for ever! May you burn in Hell!’

  ‘You say he is a thief, Lucy?’ Ned asked from across the room.

  ‘Aye!’ she agreed, turning to him. ‘One of the three who came to my father’s freehold, two years ago last month, and drove off all our cattle and . . .’ she almost told the whole truth, but retained enough sense to change it to, ‘and beat me when I tried to hinder them!’

  ‘I don’t . . .’ began Symonds – and recognized her. The whole room saw his shock as he did. Any suspicion that Lucy was mistaken collapsed.

  ‘He was of the King’s party then!’ Lucy said, glaring at him. ‘Sir, have you brought a Cavalier here, to tyrannize us?’

  ‘He’s no Cavalier,’ said the officer. ‘He fought in Colonel Massey’s regiment.’

  ‘Then the more shame to him!’ said Lucy. ‘To come to a farm and steal cattle from Parliament’s own supporters!’ She drew a deep, outraged breath. ‘My brothers were with the militia when he came! They were fighting for Parliament, and he took advantage of their absence to steal our cattle!’

  ‘This–this is nothing to the point!’ protested the officer, embarrassed and angry. ‘There is to be an indemnity for acts done for furtherance of the war, so whether he stole your beeves or not—’

  ‘Milch cows!’ Lucy cried. ‘Not beeves! Good milch cows, and it grieves me to the heart to think of this stinking knave slaughtering them for meat! We’d supplied cheese to the militia, many times, but after that, how could we? How did that further the war? Symonds! What’s the rest of your name? What were the names of your friends?’

  ‘Silence, you slut!’ ordered Symonds, sweating and afraid.

  ‘You dare not even give your name, do you? A brave soldier indeed! Thief! Robber! Somebody seize him! If there’s any justice in England, he’ll hang for what he did!’

  ‘We are the law here!’ bellowed the officer and slapped a table. ‘We were sent to search this place for evidence of sedition!’

  ‘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

  A PERFECT DIURNALL, 10–16 June 1647

  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 f
ind 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.<
br />
  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.’