London in Chains
Page 21
‘God send you good fortune!’ said Ned in a low voice.
‘Amen!’ Wildman had another drink of beer, then glanced from Ned to Lucy and back again. ‘Ned, there’s another matter I wished to speak of. Jamie Hudson asked me to ask you about his letters.’
‘Oh, Jesu!’ exclaimed Ned, with a look of shocked guilt.
‘What’s this?’ asked Lucy.
‘Only that Jamie wondered that he’d received no answer to his letters from either of you,’ said Wildman. ‘He feared they may have gone astray.’
Wildman spoke in a carefully casual tone, but Lucy understood the whole situation instantly. Jamie had after all sent her word of how he was, but he had sent the letters to Ned, and Ned hadn’t passed them on.
‘I, uh, I intended to reply,’ Ned told Wildman. ‘And to show them to Lucy, too. But . . . Lucy, I’ve scarcely seen you since Mr Tew took back the press, and when I do see you I’m so cursed busy that it goes from my mind!’
This was true, of course, but Lucy doubted it was the whole truth. She didn’t think Ned would deliberately suppress the letters – but ignoring and ‘forgetting’ them was another matter. He might be in two minds about presenting himself as a suitor, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see another man in that position.
‘I know I might have written to him myself,’ Ned continued, ‘but I thought I would see you often, as I used to do. I thought we might send our replies together.’
‘Where are these letters?’ Lucy demanded coldly.
Ned jumped up and hurried out; Nancy Shorby tried to catch his arm as he did, but he brushed her off impatiently.
Wildman gave Lucy a speculative look. His eyes were very bright. ‘Tell me quick: how stand things between you and Ned Trebet?’
‘That’s no affair of yours!’ Lucy hissed indignantly. ‘But his friends would be offended if he made addresses to a girl without a dowry.’
‘And he defers to them?’ Wildman replied, grinning. ‘I wouldn’t have thought him so craven! Were I in his place, I would tell my “friends” to go hang! But I will hold my peace, seeing that it would not serve Jamie’s interests to say as much.’
She glared in affront. It occurred to her that any impartial observer would say that marriage to Ned would be very much in her interest. Wildman was clearly eager to see his friend win the fair maiden, but he was indifferent to what that might mean for the maiden. She wondered what Jamie had actually said to him about her.
She wondered, in fact, what Jamie meant by writing to her jointly with Ned. He had spoken that time as though he expected Ned to propose: was he trying to encourage him? She would, she recognized coldly, do very much better to encourage Ned herself. He was an honest and decent man who could give her a comfortable and prosperous life.
‘It’s true that Ned’s been busy every time he’s seen me of late,’ Lucy said. ‘His people have taken pains to ensure it.’
‘Oh!’ said Wildman, with an oblivious grin. ‘That’s how it stands, is it?’
Ned returned with some folded papers. ‘Here are the letters!’ he panted. ‘And I beg your pardon that you did not see them sooner.’
‘I know you’ve been busy,’ said Lucy appeasingly, taking the letters. ‘Whenever I come here, there are always half dozen matters clamouring for your attention.’
‘Aye!’ agreed Ned, relieved.
There were only three letters. They were unsealed, brief, proper and addressed to Ned first and Lucy afterwards. The first said merely that Wildman had promised Jamie a place with an army blacksmith; the second, that he was now working with Edmund Davis, attached to Colonel Harrison’s regiment of Horse; the third . . .
To Mr Edward Trebet and Mrs Lucy Wentnor.
John Wildman saies that you aske after my health each time he meets you. Knowe then that I am well, and that I shunn Brandie as it were Poysoun. Mr Davis and I have wrought a brace for my Arme after your urging, and it serves, tho’ I think it might be made to serve better. Col Harrison’s rgmt is astirr for our Liberties, and I am held in Honour as one that has spent Ink as well as Blood in their defence. There is a press here, it is worked by Mr Jn. Harris, who read all we printed and wonders much to heare that it was managed in such danger by a Lesshire dairymaid. I pray God keep you and all our Friends in health. I wd be glad of News from my Friends in London.
Your Friend, James Hudson
Lucy read it, then read it again, smiling: he might as well not have bothered addressing it to Ned! She looked up, saw Ned watching her closely with a frown, and was instantly certain that he’d noticed that too, and wasn’t sure whether or not he should be jealous. She folded it with the others and handed them back. ‘Thank you, Ned,’ she said. ‘I was troubled for Jamie. I knew he would get no more work printing, and I feared he’d end a miserable drunkard, as he was when first he came to us.’
Ned blinked at her uncertainly. Nancy Shorby came over and touched his shoulder. ‘Ned, Rafe says—’
Ned groaned angrily. ‘Can’t you let me be for half an hour?’
‘Well, but Rafe says we’re out of beef, should he use the bacon?’
‘Out of – that’s not possible! We’ve a whole side in the larder!’
‘Where?’
‘In the . . . oh, let me!’ He jumped to his feet and strode out of the room.
Wildman shook his head. ‘As you said! Why do his people mislike you?’
‘Would your friends wish you to marry a pauper, Major Wildman?’
He was silent a moment. ‘My friends were very pleased with my bride. She is of a wealthy, noble and distinguished family, and the marriage did much to further my career. Her family are all Royalists, she despises my politics and we have not spent one happy hour together since I took up the sword against tyranny.’
‘Oh,’ said Lucy. She hadn’t even known that Wildman was married: he’d never mentioned his wife.
‘Ned is not your equal,’ said Wildman, looking her in the eye, ‘either in wit or in spirit. I think you know it: else you would not let his friends cozen him.’
‘Jamie,’ replied Lucy, ‘is as poor as I am myself, and he’s said nothing to me of what I take to be your meaning.’
Wildman blinked. ‘Has he not?’ He hesitated, frowning. ‘I think he must be ashamed to approach you while he can offer you so little. He is a proud man. But I hope you will take no offence if I, as his friend, speak in his place. He has a true and faithful heart, and it is yours entirely.’
Walking back to Southwark she pondered love, marriage and whether to reply to Jamie’s letter. She was sure it would be unwise to do so, but she suspected that she’d do it anyway.
She drafted several replies over the next couple of weeks: they ranged from a chilly ‘It is not fitt for me to write you further’, to a warm ‘I thought you had gonne away and left no worde, and when Ned showed me your letters I hadde such joye!’ She tore all of them up – except the warm one, which she tore up and burned in the kitchen fire. Eventually she sent a brief missive sufficiently impersonal to pass muster.
To Mr James Hudson, Col. Harrison’s Rgmt.
I am glad to know that you are well. I am well, & engaged to print Mr Gilbert Mabbot’s Moderate. He debated much whether to speak out for the Agreement, but now he is resolved, and I thinke will be a strong sheeld against slander, viz this week’s copie, which I in close. I pray God we soon obtain what we have so long hoped for, a just Peace! All youre Friends in London send you greetings and pray God’s blessing, as do I.
Lucy Wentnor
The copy of The Moderate which she enclosed had coverage of the debates at Putney, where the Council of the Army was discussing whether or not to adopt The Agreement of the People. Wildman and the Agitators had indeed tried the Army with it, and The Agreement had garnered widespread support. Cromwell and his supporters were obliged to bring it to the Council and meet its proponents in debate. Most of the London newsbooks were covering the meeting, but the licensed ones did so with their usual cautious subservience
.
The debate discovered so much resolution & integrity in the Generall and officers [wrote Samuel Pecke in the Diurnall], that it produced severall votes. This much is certain, that of this party which make such a noise there will not be found above 400 of 21000. The Officers appeared to do like religious and conscientious men, and so did most of the Agitators; there is not that division in the Army our Friends feared and Enemies hoped for.
It was left to the Levellers and The Moderate to reveal the strength of support for The Agreement, and the bitter clash it had engendered between the Grandees and the Leveller Agitators over whether all free men should be permitted to vote. Cromwell intervened to say that a wide suffrage ‘tended very much to anarchy’, and that ‘they that are most yielding have the greatest wisdom’, but it failed to carry the debate. Seeing this, Cromwell tried to refer the whole question to another committee. Colonel Rainsborough, however – the highest-ranking officer to side with the Levellers – called for a general rendezvous of the Army to decide the matter. The Council of the Army agreed to both the committee and – to Cromwell’s dismay – to the rendezvous. By this time it was early November, dark, wet and miserably cold. Snow fell early, and the puddles in the streets were skimmed with ice. The price of coal soared and it was impossible to keep warm. In Thomas’s house the only fire was in the kitchen: the loft, with its papered window, was freezing. Lucy and Susan slept with the bed pushed up against the chimney-piece, huddled under piles of Uncle Thomas’s unsold woollens, and in the morning had to break the ice on their washbasin. The beggars in the streets grew gaunt and few, as all who could scrabbled a place in poorhouse, workhouse or prison, leaving the drunk and the hopeless and the deranged. A beggar woman was found dead in the Southwark stable just up the road, curled protectively around her starved child, both frozen stiff; how many others like her died in the city, no one could tell.
With cold and hunger came disease. Lucy came home from work on the sixth of November to find that Uncle Thomas was in bed with a feverish cold. She brought him a dish of soup from the kitchen.
‘Thank you, child,’ he said with an apologetic smile, ‘but I’ve an uneasy stomach and I fear even that soup would turn it.’ He sat up in bed, however, and asked her the day’s news, exclaiming at the Army’s plans for a rendezvous. ‘If the Army supports The Agreement, the Grandees will have no choice but to put it before the people!’ he said eagerly. ‘God willing, it will be settled before the new year!’
Although he was still unwell the next morning, he got up, saying that he must see to his shop, but when Lucy returned that evening he was in bed again. Agnes was disgusted with him.
‘All this to-do about a cold!’ she said angrily. ‘It’s alarming my gentlewoman-lodger.’
When Lucy returned home the following evening, the gentlewoman-lodger had a carriage standing outside the house, and her serving-maid was helping the driver to stow her mistress’s gear. Agnes was in the parlour, pleading with Mrs Penington. ‘It’s but a fever!’ she protested. ‘And it’s gone down!’
The gentlewoman shook her head. ‘That’s the smallpox, Mrs Stevens; the rash will come before morning, mark my words. I’ll not stay the night!’
Lucy gave her aunt a horrified stare, then ran up the stairs.
The master bedroom was dark and chill; she couldn’t make out the bed, let alone her uncle, and had to go back to the kitchen for a candle. When she returned, shielding it with one hand, she found Thomas almost invisible under the quilts. His face turned towards her as she approached, however, and he gave her a tired smile. After what Mrs Penington had said, she’d expected to see him covered with ugly pustules and she sighed in relief at the sight of his unmarked skin. ‘How do you do, Uncle?’
He tried to answer, then tapped his throat and framed the word ‘Sore!’ with his lips.
‘Shall I fetch you some broth?’
‘Water!’ he mouthed.
She fetched him a cup; when she held it to his lips, she saw that they were blistered. He saw her notice, gave another little smile, weary and apologetic, and opened his mouth to show her that the lining was a mass of sores.
Her heart gave another lurch: that was indeed a precursor of smallpox, though she’d heard of it happening with other fevers as well. She went back downstairs, leaving him the candle. Mrs Penington had gone, and Agnes was sitting in the parlour; when Lucy came in, she saw that her aunt was crying.
‘Aunt Agnes!’ she said, at a loss.
Agnes looked up quickly, with all the old venom. ‘It’s but a fever!’
‘I fear it might not be. His poor mouth is full of sores. Aunt, we should call the apothecary.’
Agnes rose to her feet. ‘The apothecary, forsooth! It’s but a fever! I’ll not spend good money to cosset Tom’s foolishness! He’s just lost us eight shillings a week, and how we shall manage without, I know not!’
Lucy glared at her, then went back to check on Thomas. He now lay propped up against the pillows, staring up at the canopy of the bed. She sat down beside him and touched his forehead. It was warm, but not burning hot. ‘Tell me truthfully,’ she said, ‘how do you do? Shall I go to the apothecary?’ She was willing to spend her own savings, if she had to.
He shook his head. ‘Oh, no, no, no!’ he said, in a thin, croaking whisper. ‘I’m better than I was. A good night’s sleep will mend me.’
He was mistaken. By morning Thomas had broken out in a rash, and the round red blotches on his forehead were beginning to form blisters.
Agnes had slept in the parlour; when she went upstairs and saw what was happening to her husband she let out a shriek that brought both Lucy and Susan stumbling down from the loft. ‘Oh, Jesu!’ she cried, pointing accusingly. ‘Look!’
Thomas looked back at them in bewilderment, his face damp with sweat and his eyes glazed with fever. Lucy went to him and touched his forehead again: it was like a furnace.
‘What is it?’ Thomas croaked, then looked down at the rash on his hands, and whispered, ‘Oh! Oh, dear Lord, spare us!’
‘I’ll go to the apothecary,’ said Lucy.
The apothecary was the neighbourhood’s usual source of medical treatment: doctors were for the rich, and hospitals, like nearby St Thomas’s, were for the destitute. The local apothecary had a shop round the corner, in St Thomas’ Road; he was a quiet, unassuming man, well-regarded by all his neighbours. He refused, however, to come back to the house with her. ‘There’s precious little I can do for the smallpox, child,’ he said sadly.
‘You might purge him, sir,’ she urged. ‘Or–or bleed him.’ That was normally a barber-surgeon’s task, but the apothecary had been known to engage in it.
The apothecary shook his head. ‘I have not known it serve, once the pustules have appeared; indeed, it does more harm than good. I will give you a tincture which may make him easier, but his best hope is in careful nursing. Take comfort, child! Most men survive this ill if they’re cared for tenderly. Make him comfortable, give him to drink, and wash him, from time to time, with warm water and vinegar. I can give you a powder to mix with the water and vinegar.’ He looked at her closely. ‘But let some other nurse him – unless you were fortunate enough to survive the pox without scarring.’
‘I’ve had the cowpox, sir,’ she told him. ‘I was formerly a dairymaid.’
He shook his head doubtfully. ‘I’ve heard country people say that confers protection, but it’s no more than an old wives’ tale. It is a sad, sad thing to see a fair maid disfigured. Let some other nurse him.’
She took the tincture and the powder, promising payment later, and went miserably back to the house, pausing only to buy some vinegar. When she arrived she found Agnes in the bedroom – packing.
‘What is this?’ Lucy demanded in horror.
Her aunt looked up at her, her eyes red and wet. ‘I’ve not had the smallpox.’ She shoved her nightgown into a sack improvised from a bolster.
‘Agnes!’ whispered Thomas weakly. ‘Don’t leave me now!’
Thomas stared at her, his lips trembling, and began to weep silently. ‘Forgive me.’
‘I’ll lodge with Hannah,’ Agnes declared savagely, ‘until I can safely come back again.’
‘But what if you carry the ill to her house?’ demanded Lucy, horrified.
‘I’m not ill!’ said Agnes indignantly, as though Lucy had accused her of a sin.
‘Go with God’s blessing,’ Thomas whispered wretchedly. ‘Forgive me!’
Agnes, huffing, dragged her sack of clothing out of the room and down to the parlour. Lucy followed. ‘How can you?’ demanded Lucy, in a low whisper.
Agnes turned on her. ‘Easily! That man has heaped enough misfortune on me, without taking my life as well!’ She wiped her face with an angry hand. ‘I might have married a gentleman! I was a fool and preferred Tom, because I mistook mere weakness for kindness! I’ve paid and paid again for my error – my poor babies dead, all but two of them, and all our fine goods spent, and then he took my darling boy to that cruel unnatural war and lost him!’
‘How can you blame him for the war?’ Lucy asked in bewilderment.
‘He supported that wicked rebellion against the Lord’s anointed king! God is punishing us all for what he and his foul seditious friends have done!You stay and nurse him, if you love him so!’
Susan came in. ‘I fetched the carter,’ she said nervously.
Agnes gave her a curt nod and returned a baleful gaze to Lucy. ‘Susan can nurse Tom: she’s pocky-faced already. And you, miss, you may do as you please!’ She went out, dragging her sack and wheezing.