London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Lucy glared indignantly. Mary put her hands up. ‘Well, others than me have noticed!’

  ‘His friends want him to marry a respectable dowry. They disapproved me and so he havered and wavered. He wouldn’t court me, though he tried to put off . . . others, until he had made up his mind.’

  Mary was silent a moment, studying Lucy with a clear, level gaze. Then she sighed. ‘He left it too late, I see.’

  ‘Aye, he did,’ agreed Lucy, and went back to her precious letter.

  My verie deere,

  Do not be angrie with me! If I had knowne that I hadde won your Regarde, I hadde never bartered it for alle the worlde, but I cd. not thinke myself so Fortunate. That I That you shd. refuse Ned Trebet I scars beleeve even now, I am like one that dreames. Deerest Lucy, when once I am Free I hope soone to have my Freedome, and come to Lundon to see you.

  John Wildman saies that your Uncle is dead, for which I am which is a grievous loss. I knowe you and he loved one another welle.

  I pray God that I shall see you soone, and saye to you alle the things I have at harte, for ink is too weake a messenger.

  Yours ever, James Hudson

  She read it over and over, smiling over the agitated crossings-out, trying to work out what he’d started to say before he changed it. She spent the rest of the evening in a happy daze.

  She ached to see Jamie. When it was Thursday again, she went to the meeting at The Whalebone, along with the Overtons, in the hope that John Wildman would be there and could give her the news.

  When she came into the tavern, Ned stared at her hard, his face flushed and his jaw set angrily. She gave him a timid smile. He did not return it but looked pointedly away. After that he ignored her.

  It hurt – she had, as she’d feared, lost a friend.

  She spotted Wildman shortly before the meeting was called to order. He looked tired, and his boots and coat-hem were splattered with mud. When he noticed her looking at him, though, he smiled.

  Lilburne chaired the meeting, as he usually did when he was present, but he called on Wildman to speak first.

  ‘My friends,’ Wildman began, ‘most of you know that I have been at Windsor, arguing on behalf of our friends who were most unjustly taken up at Ware. First I must report that I have good hope for their release. The Grandees at last begin to despair of a settlement with the tyrant Charles Stuart, and the sinking of that hope compels them to look more favourably upon us. The court-martial which was to have tried our friends has been suspended, and instead their cases have been referred to the Council of the Army. I fear, though, that this is the reformed Council of the Army: the Agitators have been barred from it, and the men have no one to represent them. Like all else in this sad and divided kingdom, the release of our friends has become a subject of contention.’

  The contention, however, was not as serious as it might have been: it was over whether the men should be released without charge or whether they should first be required to offer some form of submission to the Army command, rather than over how severely they should be punished. Wildman was optimistic that the matter would be resolved within a couple of weeks; in the meantime, he said, the men were being treated well, and their friends were allowed to visit them and bring comforts. It was a great relief to Lucy.

  The rest of the meeting was encouraging, too: it treated the events at Ware as a lost battle rather than a lost war. A new petition had already been drafted and the drive for signatures would be on an unparalleled scale. Meetings would be held throughout London and into the suburbs; the Leveller leaders would visit every part of the city to answer questions about The Agreement of the People. The common fund would be expanded; a second treasurer would be appointed to help Mr Chidley to manage it; members would be asked for regular subscriptions. Far from being inclined to surrender, the Levellers were stronger and more determined than ever.

  When the meeting ended, Wildman paused and waited when he saw Lucy coming to speak to him.

  ‘He’s well!’ he told her before she had a chance to ask. ‘But I know he would be glad of another letter.’

  Richard Overton had followed Lucy; at this he grinned. ‘I never thought to see you play Love’s sweet messenger, John!’

  ‘Ah, I am a man of infinite resource!’ replied Wildman. ‘But I fear I have displeased our host.’ He glanced at the bar, where Ned stood glowering at them. ‘He did not even give me any ale tonight!’

  ‘I had none either,’ said Richard, also looking in that direction. ‘And yet I can’t find it in my heart to blame the man. He has suffered a cruel disappointment.’

  Wildman shrugged. ‘Let it be a lesson to us all of the dangers of hesitation.’

  December started out bleak, dark and bitterly cold. Lucy imagined Jamie shivering in a stone cell. She wanted to send him warm clothing but didn’t have enough money saved to buy any. She considered going to visit the Cotmans in Stepney and asking Cousin Nat for the repayment he’d promised, but she feared what might happen if she did. Nat Cotman was already angry with her: he clearly felt she’d shamed the family by going to lodge with strangers. To make her first visit because she wanted money seemed likely to prolong the quarrel.

  She hoped that the Cotmans would invite her to visit on a Sunday. Dull as Sabbath afternoons in Stepney had been, she did not want to be at odds with her only kin in London. Cousin Hannah’s baby – Thomas’s grandchild – was due in a couple of months, and Lucy wanted to be part of its admiring family. No invitation came, however. Near the end of her third week at the Overtons she sent a hesitant note.

  I beg leeve to informe my Cozens that I have good worke printing. If any message has come for me from my kin in Hinckley, may I come to collect it? I hope my Cozen Hannah is welle, and the rest of my kin also.

  There was no reply.

  That Sunday, greatly daring, she accompanied the Overtons to their church. They were what her father would call ‘heretics and blasphemers’ – specifically, General Baptists. She was mildly disappointed to find nothing in the service to shock her: Baptist preaching wasn’t all that different from the Presbyterian variety. There was less about Hell and more about Christ’s love, but the flurry of scriptural references and the style of preaching were much the same. If the congregation groaned in penitence less, it shouted more.

  The Brownes attended the same church, and after the service Liza hurried over to give Lucy a hug. ‘I’ve not seen you for weeks!’ the girl cried. ‘And I thought I’d see you every day, now you live but down the road!’ She turned to her father. ‘Da, can Lucy come to dinner?’

  ‘Aye, why not?’ said Will Browne, smiling.

  It turned out, however, that Liza had an ulterior motive for the invitation.

  ‘Is it true that Ned Trebet asked you to wed and you refused him?’ Liza asked breathlessly, when they were seated at table in the room behind Browne’s bookshop.

  ‘Liza!’ protested Will Browne.

  ‘Aye, but is it true?’

  Lucy set her teeth: Mary Overton had been right that Ned’s interest had been widely noticed. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Why did you refuse him?’ asked Liza in bewilderment. Her father cast his gaze towards Heaven.

  ‘His friends disapproved me because I have no dowry,’ replied Lucy tactfully. ‘I had no wish to cause a quarrel between him and his friends.’

  ‘You hear that, Liza?’ asked Will Browne approvingly. ‘Lucy’s a wise woman: she knows that a marriage undertaken against the wishes of friends is a hard road!’

  Liza frowned at her father. ‘Do you think Ned’s friends would disapprove of me, too?’

  Lucy suddenly grasped the reason for Liza’s invitation. For a moment she was tempted to laugh; then she realized that Liza must be almost fourteen. That was more than old enough to marry, according to the law, and Liza thought Ned altogether wonderful; Lucy had been vaguely aware of that for some time without giving the matter any thought. She wasn’t sure whether to be worried for Liza, vexed that at least one young
woman already had an eye on Ned – or relieved because, if it all worked out, she might recover a friend.

  ‘You have a dowry,’ Browne said affectionately.

  Liza lowered her eyes, satisfied.

  December wore on slowly. Mercurius Pragmaticus began to mention Christmas – a festival which Parliament had banned as an idolatrous excuse for gluttony and licence. Lucy’s family had never celebrated it, but many of the citizens even of godly London strongly resented the ban, especially in this grim year of poverty and hunger. Marchamont Nedham had much to say about Parliament-men who banned innocent merriment while engaging in all sorts of corrupt practices themselves, and his writing fed the restless anger that was everywhere in the city, flaring up suddenly into violence in tavern or marketplace quarrels. Lucy took more care than ever on her way to and from work, dodging through side streets or waiting in doorways if she heard raised voices ahead.

  Around the middle of the month, Lucy came home to find Susan sitting in the Overtons’ kitchen. She exclaimed delightedly and rushed to hug her.

  Susan returned the hug, then let go and looked searchingly at Lucy. Lucy was shocked to see that the maid was worn to the bone, her eyes darkly circled and her pock-marked skin pale and dirty.

  ‘Your aunt’s dying,’ Susan told Lucy quietly. ‘She asked for you.’

  She told Lucy more as they walked eastward towards Stepney. Agnes had been suffering the first feverish forepangs of smallpox even at her husband’s burial. She had taken to her bed as soon as the family returned home from the church, but everyone had put it down to grief – until the rash appeared three days later. She had survived the disease itself but had now contracted pneumonia and was not expected to live through the night.

  Lucy remembered her fatuous hopes for an invitation to Sunday dinner and was horrified and ashamed: she had blithely gone about her work, unaware of the disaster unfolding for her kin. ‘Is Cousin Hannah . . .’ she began, then stopped, unable to finish.

  ‘Aye, she caught it from her mother,’ said Susan. Her voice was strangely hard. ‘Mrs Stevens was beginning to recover when her daughter fell ill. She miscarried the baby. It died, poor little thing, before it ever saw the light. But Hannah lives; indeed, she’s on her feet again and growing stronger every day.’

  ‘Thank God!’ said Lucy fervently. ‘You nursed them both?’

  Susan nodded wearily. ‘I nursed all three of them. Mr Cotman caught it, too. He’d sent for me as soon as he saw Mrs Stevens had it.’

  ‘Oh, dear Lord!’ Lucy was struck by a sickening thought: what if she’d been wrong about the cowpox? She’d gone to the Overtons’ in the bland assumption that because she hadn’t already succumbed to the disease, she was clean, but in fact it had been too soon to be sure.

  Lucy swallowed, thinking of the Overton children. That she’d been right about the cowpox was no credit to her. She wanted to call it a mercy from God; only then she was left wondering why God hadn’t been merciful to Cousin Hannah.

  Susan, who’d trudged in silence for a little while, suddenly said, ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. The Cotmans’ maid upped and left when she saw that Mrs Stevens had the smallpox, and my place is safe now.’

  ‘I’d meant to speak to you about that,’ said Lucy apologetically. ‘Mrs Overton put the word about that you were seeking a place, and—’

  ‘That’s good of you,’ said Susan, without giving her the time to finish, ‘but I’m well where I am now.’

  The Cotmans’ house in Stepney, where Lucy had spent so many boring Sabbath afternoons, was in disarray: unswept and festooned with wet sheets. Nathaniel Cotman was sitting alone in the parlour, huddled in a blanket. When Lucy was shown in, he glanced up with a stunned look. The smallpox scabs had fallen from his face, but the marks they’d left were still an angry red.

  Susan went to him. ‘I fetched Lucy, sir,’ she said, gently adjusting the blanket. ‘Do you need aught?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Cotman with an effort. ‘Let her see her aunt.’

  Agnes was upstairs, propped up in a big bed. The bubbling wheeze of her breath was the first thing Lucy noticed on coming into the room. Cousin Hannah was lying in the bed beside her mother, under the covers with her back to the door. There was a candle burning at the bedside and a fire in the grate, but both had burned low. Susan went at once to the grate and began to build up the fire.

  ‘Aunt Agnes?’ said Lucy, coming closer. ‘Cousin Hannah?’

  Hannah lifted her head, then sat up. Her face was much more pocked than her husband’s and the disease had thinned her hair, so that the angry red scars could be seen through it all across her scalp: she looked hideous. She smiled weakly, and Lucy, wrenched by pity, came and hugged her.

  ‘I am so very sorry!’ she whispered.

  ‘It is God’s will,’ said Hannah faintly. ‘The Lord chastises whom He loves. My mother was asking for you.’

  Agnes made a choking sound and glared at Lucy. The smallpox scars on her face were scant and already beginning to fade but there were sores around her mouth and the whites of her eyes had turned yellow. Her cheeks were covered with a livid network of broken veins. Her expression was baleful and indignant.

  On the walk over to Stepney, Lucy had been imagining a tearful reconciliation. That had clearly been a fantasy. ‘I’m here, Aunt,’ she said.

  Agnes made an indistinct noise and turned her face away. She wheezed repeatedly, struggling for breath, then gasped, in a bubbling whisper, ‘Take it, then, and go!’

  Lucy blinked. ‘Aunt?’

  Agnes made a horrible sound, part cough and part retch. ‘The silk! The damned silk! Take it and go!’

  ‘Aunt, I don’t understand!’ Lucy protested.

  ‘The silk!’ said Agnes angrily and burst into a bout of coughing. Flecks of pus and blood sprayed from her mouth, but when Hannah tried to support her, she shoved the gentle touch away.

  Lucy looked at Hannah and Susan in bewilderment and saw that, though they were shocked, they weren’t confused at all.

  ‘My father left you a legacy in his will,’ whispered Hannah. ‘He said you were to have “the bolt of rose tabby” to wear at your wedding. We searched all the house for it and found nothing but woollens and linens. My mother said you must have taken it without leave. Nat was so angry!’

  Presumably this had happened before the smallpox made itself known. ‘I know nothing about it!’ Lucy protested shakily.

  Hannah nodded. She again put an arm about her mother’s shoulders. Agnes stopped coughing with a groan and leaned against her daughter. ‘Mother,’ said Hannah softly, ‘tell me what you did with the silk. It will ease your passing.’

  ‘Tom loved that inky slut!’ said Agnes, starting to cry. ‘What right had she to come and steal his love away from those who had most right to it?’

  ‘Shh, shhh!’ said Hannah, rocking her mother like the baby she’d lost. ‘That’s all past now, part of this present darkness, and you are facing into the light. Let it go, Mama.’

  ‘It’s in the bottom of my linen press,’ confessed Agnes. ‘I put it there for you. It should have gone to you.’

  ‘Shh, shhh!’ said Hannah again, and with a small movement of her head signalled Lucy to go.

  Lucy went out and stood dazedly on the landing. After a minute, Susan came out as well, holding a bundle wrapped in canvas. She led Lucy back downstairs. Nat Cotman was still sitting in his parlour.

  ‘Sir,’ said Susan, ‘Mrs Stevens had hid that bolt of silk in the bottom of the linen press. That’s what she wanted Lucy for: to give it her. Here it is.’

  ‘Oh, dear Lord!’ exclaimed Cotman. He looked wretchedly at Lucy. ‘When she came here that morning, with her things in a sack, I nearly sent her home again. Her husband ill with the smallpox, so she must needs bring it here? But Hannah was tender-hearted and said of course we must take her mother in. So she stole the silk?’

  ‘She said it should have gone to Hannah,’ said Lucy numbly.

  He got up,
took the bundle from Susan and opened it. Silk the colour of a summer sunrise, of a dog-rose with the dew on it; a shimmering stream of pale streaked with dark, as beautiful as an April morning. Cotman drew it off the bale in rough arm-lengths. ‘Damascus tabby,’ he said bitterly. ‘Seventeen shillings the yard. Ten yards, more or less.’ He stopped, his arms full of the stuff. ‘A handsome legacy, certainly, but Hannah had the whole estate else!’ Lucy realized that he was starting to cry. ‘The foolish, greedy, wicked old woman! To fret about her husband’s gifts to his kin and not give a thought to the ill that killed him!’

  ‘Sir!’ she said, touching his shoulder.

  ‘Why did she come here?’ he demanded, looking at her with wet eyes.

  ‘She–she thought that falling ill was her husband’s failing,’ said Lucy, giving him the honest answer. ‘That she was immune to it. She wouldn’t have come here if she’d believed Hannah might catch it: of that much I’m certain.’

  He let out his breath slowly. ‘She’s paid for her folly, and so have we. Take your legacy and go.’

  ‘Sir.’ Lucy ducked a curtsey. ‘I am very sorry, sir, that you and Cousin Hannah should have suffered thus, while I knew nothing of it. I beg you, don’t . . . don’t shut me out again.’

  He regarded her, his expression softening. ‘Well, then!’ he said at last. ‘That is a most honest and cousin-like plea! Cousin Lucy, you’ll be welcome here whenever you choose to come.’ He glanced at the shuttered window and added, surprised at it, ‘It’s late! You should not make your way back to the City alone so late. Stay for the night.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I should be glad of it.’

  She ended up cooking soup for the household, since no one had eaten supper. Afterwards she tried to clean the house a little. In a stack of papers she found a letter for herself, from Paul: nobody was sure when it had arrived. She was too tired to face it that night and so put it aside until the morning. She slept that night beside Susan in the maid’s room: a comfortingly familiar arrangement.

  Hannah stayed beside her mother all night, but Agnes confounded expectation by waking in the morning as baleful as ever.