London in Chains

by Gillian Bradshaw

  ‘Hush!’ she said shakily. ‘I only want to bind your poor head!’

  He groaned and bent over, resting his head on his muddy knees. The handkerchief, already soaked with blood, promptly fell off into the gutter. Her eyes stung and she wiped them furiously: she could not afford to break down in tears now. She left the handkerchief where it was and bound Daniel’s head with the scarf. She took hold of his arm and tugged.

  ‘Come on, Da!’ she said. ‘We’ll take you somewhere you can lie down.’

  He huddled himself into an obstinate knot. Paul came over and took his other arm. ‘Come, Da!’

  ‘God damn you!’ Daniel said thickly. ‘Let me be!’

  Paul and Lucy stared at one another in shock over his bowed head. Then Lucy tried again, ‘Sir, there’s an inn just down the road . . .’

  ‘Let me alone!’

  ‘Lucy!’ cried a new voice, and she looked up and saw Jamie.

  He was on horseback, riding an ugly thin-necked roan which at that moment seemed to her the most beautiful horse in the world. He jumped down from the saddle and hurried over with the reins looped over one arm. ‘Lucy!’ he said again.

  ‘Jamie!’ she replied and jumped up and into his arms. The arms closed round her, and when she tilted her face up, he kissed her. It was nothing at all like being kissed by Ned. It was like nothing else in all the world.

  ‘Oh, Jamie!’ she said when she could speak again, and she pressed her cheek against his shoulder. A huge rough ache of wanting seemed to find the shape that filled it, there in the bone and muscle of his arm.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked her anxiously.

  ‘Nay,’ she said, picking her head up and sniffling a little, ‘but my father is. He was knocked down and he’s cut his head. Jamie, can we use your horse?’

  ‘Your father?’ repeated Jamie in surprise, but he was already leading the horse over to Daniel.

  ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘He came to fetch me back to Hinckley, but I’ll never go! You remember my brother Paul?’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Jamie with a nod to Paul, who was gaping. ‘Sir, how do you do?’ This last was to Daniel, who muttered incoherently, not lifting his head.

  ‘He’s dazed?’ Jamie asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Lucy replied. It was a huge relief to deal with this quick, competent understanding. ‘He needs to rest out of the cold. There’s an inn just back down the street, but he won’t get up.’

  Jamie nodded. ‘Hold the horse,’ he ordered Lucy, handing her the reins. He took hold of Daniel under the arms and hauled him to his feet. For the first time she noticed that he had a brace on his bad hand, a complicated iron thing.

  Daniel groaned and tried to push Jamie away. ‘Can you ride, sir?’ Jamie asked briskly. When there was no reply, he simply hauled Daniel to the horse and hoisted him up over the animal’s swayed back. Daniel cried out, tried feebly to get off again, then was horribly sick down the horse’s side. The horse put its ears back and stamped. Jamie put an arm over Daniel’s back to steady him and nodded to Lucy.

  She led the horse carefully down the road to the inn. Daniel had gone limp now, face-down over the horse; Jamie held him steady. Paul followed, still clutching the hat. Behind them the noise of voices rose angrily. Another group of apprentices came past at a run.

  When they reached the inn, they found the door was shut and bolted. Lucy beat on it.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called a cautious voice from inside.

  ‘Travellers, sir, caught on the street!’ Lucy called back. ‘My father’s hurt; for pity’s sake, let us in!’

  Pity – or perhaps the reassurance of a woman’s voice – worked: the bolt was drawn back and a worried innkeeper frowned out at them. Jamie at once pulled Daniel off the horse and carried him bodily to the door. The innkeeper stood aside to let him in, then told Paul, ‘You can take the horse round the back.’

  The inn was crowded, but the customers made way, and Jamie carried Daniel over to the fireplace and set him down gently on the hearth. Lucy followed and knelt down by her father. It was too dark to see what was wrong with him: the inn’s windows were few and the clouded winter light was dim anyway.

  ‘What’s happening out there?’ asked one of the customers anxiously.

  ‘Some city apprentices decked the pump on Cornhill with holly and ivy,’ replied Jamie. ‘The ward officers sent the Watch to tear it down, and the’ prentices set on the watchmen and chased them off. When I rode by, the Lord Mayor was hasting there with a troop. Is there a lamp?’

  Somebody handed him a candle, which he lit at the fire and held up so that Lucy could see; she was relieved to notice her father’s eyes focusing blearily on the light. ‘Might I have a basin of water?’ she asked. ‘My poor da was knocked down and hit his head.’

  ‘Damned rogues!’ muttered Daniel thickly. ‘Christ!’ He closed his eyes.

  Jamie secured the candle to the hearth with a dribble of wax and went off. He presently came back carrying a pot of water and some cloths from the kitchen. Lucy untied the bloody scarf and gently began to wash the blood off her father’s head. Vomit had mingled with the blood, some of it catching in his hair, and she had to ask for clean water once she’d got the worst of the mess off. Paul came in from stabling the horse just as she started cleaning again. He elbowed his way to the front of the circle of onlookers.

  The cut was a jagged tear in the scalp on the right side of Daniel’s head. The flesh around it had swollen up like a duck’s egg.

  ‘That was done by a cudgel,’ said Jamie quietly.

  ‘Aye!’ agreed Paul hotly. ‘Those whoreson knaves struck him because we didn’t get out of their way fast enough!’

  The inn’s customers tut-tutted in shock. ‘Damned ’prentices!’ said one. ‘There’s never any trouble in this city but they’re in the thick of it!’

  It had been the Watch, not the apprentices, but Lucy didn’t bother to correct him. A woman had appeared with a pot of balsam; Lucy thanked her and smeared some on to the wound. Daniel opened his eyes again with a yelp.

  ‘I can stitch that for you, if you like,’ offered the woman who’d brought the balsam – it turned out later that she was the innkeeper’s wife. ‘I’ve stitched broken noggins enough before.’

  Lucy thanked her and moved aside to let her stitch up the wound. Daniel whimpered a little but didn’t struggle. He was starting to shiver, so Lucy took off her shawl and tucked it round him. Seeing her father like this – hurt and bewildered and weak – turned all her anger into pity.

  When the woman had finished stitching, Daniel looked around, moving his eyes without shifting his head. ‘What is this place?’ he asked faintly.

  Lucy was relieved that he seemed aware of his surroundings again. ‘It’s a tavern on Leadenhall, Da. It was the nearest place we could find to bring you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Daniel. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. ‘Someone came with a horse.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Jamie, kneeling down beside Lucy. ‘That would be me.’

  Daniel stared at him, his gaze snagging on the missing eye. ‘And who are you?’

  The good side of Jamie’s mouth quirked. ‘Your son-in-law, sir, if your daughter will have me.’

  Daniel stared at him as if he’d gone mad. Lucy turned and stared, too.

  Jamie took her hand with his left hand, then with his right as well. She found herself looking down at the complicated iron brace he’d made for himself. It had a kind of metal thumb, hinged, with a strap that passed across what was left of his real thumb so that he could move it; another piece of metal where his index finger had been was padded with leather.

  He followed the direction of her gaze. ‘It’s not pretty,’ he told her quietly, ‘but it works well enough. Like myself, Lucy, if you’d have me.’

  She felt as though she were suspended in a void of silence, where nothing else existed but his serious scarred face. For better or for worse, her decision had already been made. ‘Aye,’ she said fiercely. ‘You and none o
ther.’

  ‘Lucy!’ exclaimed Paul in horror.

  She glanced up at him impatiently. ‘What’s it to you, Paul? He’s not asking aught from you!’

  ‘But we don’t know anything about him!’ protested Paul.

  Jamie was still holding her hand in both of his; he was smiling so hard that the scarred half of his face was in knots. She reached up with her free hand and touched his cheek, wanting to keep that smile for ever. ‘Speak for yourself,’ she told her brother. ‘I know all I need to.’

  ‘You want to marry Lucy?’ asked Daniel in weak bewilderment.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ agreed Jamie. ‘With your good leave.’ He glanced at Paul. ‘Sir. By birth I am a gentleman, the third son of George Hudson of Bourne in Lincolnshire. I was apprenticed as a blacksmith and finished my indentures just before the war. I’ve lately returned to my trade. It’s true, sir, that I have no land, but my trade is a good one and I have besides a small allowance from my father.’

  Daniel blinked several times: Lucy could see him trying to make sense of this offer for a daughter he’d written off as unmarriageable.

  She was trying to make sense of it, too. A gentleman! The son of a landowner! She hadn’t known, and it did make a difference. A third son wouldn’t inherit the land, of course, but it could be presumed that his family would help set him up in business: he wouldn’t need to eke out years as somebody else’s assistant. Marrying Jamie needn’t mean abject poverty after all.

  She supposed, though, that she had known that his family wasn’t poor. Poor men didn’t learn blacksmithing. He’d been in a cavalry regiment, too, which meant that his family had money enough to supply him with a horse. Besides, a man wholly reliant on the charity of his friends wouldn’t have been able to drink himself stupid with brandy. She should, she thought, have asked him, but she had been too afraid of the answer.

  ‘She has little dowry,’ Daniel said at last.

  ‘I ask none,’ replied Jamie.

  Paul had been frowning at a memory and suddenly he exclaimed, ‘You’re the one who—’ He managed to stop himself before blurting out, ‘murdered Lucy’s ravishers.’

  Daniel frowned at his son. Then his brow cleared. ‘The one who smote the evildoers!’ he muttered. ‘Aye.’

  Both men gazed at Jamie with approval now.

  ‘And you’re a gentleman?’ repeated Paul delightedly. Gentle birth wasn’t as good as freehold property, but still acceptable. Lucy was glad that Paul didn’t know she’d turned down Ned Trebet.

  ‘A gentleman’s son,’ agreed Jamie. ‘Sirs, may I hope for your approval in my suit?’

  ‘I might find some money for Lucy’s portion,’ Daniel muttered, embarrassed, ‘in time.’

  Lucy gripped Jamie’s hand hard: that had been consent.

  ‘Sir, it were shame to press you now, while you are still dazed,’ Jamie said gently. ‘Rest, and we can speak of this again when you feel better.’

  The inn’s customers were delighted by this drama in their midst, and when Lucy and Jamie looked for a place to sit and talk, they were offered their choice of any seat in the house. They settled in a nook in the corner, and the innkeeper brought them ale. ‘On the house!’ he said jovially, ‘to celebrate your betrothal!’

  Lucy looked at her betrothed and grinned. ‘I never knew you were a gentleman!’

  ‘Not a rich one, alas,’ he told her, smiling back. ‘My father has four girls to dower, as well as myself and my brothers to provide for, and his estate’s not large. You say your father came to fetch you back to Leicestershire?’

  ‘Aye.’ She twined the stained fingers of her left hand with his. ‘You came just in time!’

  He smiled at her. ‘You would never have gone with him even if I hadn’t.’

  ‘Not willingly, no! And I hoped I might persuade him to let me stay. But to settle me with a husband, oh, that’s another matter! That’s a fine and estimable estate! And with a gentleman, forsooth! For that he’ll even condescend to love me again!’ She grinned. ‘Oh, but he’d think well of you, anyway, the way you appeared a-horse to rescue us, when he was struck down and bleeding, and Paul and I sorely at a loss! Indeed you were just in time!’

  He shook his head. ‘I was no more than convenient. Had I not come along, you and your brother would have carried him here anyway!’

  ‘Shhh! Let him think you a noble hero! Likely he can find a dowry of sorts, if he sets his mind to it. We must get as much as we can. How did you chance to come this way? I thought you were still at Windsor!’

  ‘I came to find you,’ he said simply. ‘The Overtons said you’d gone to your cousin’s in Stepney.’

  ‘The Army discharged you?’ she asked eagerly.

  At that, though, he looked away. ‘Nay. Lucy, I confess that I can stay but briefly. You know that those of us who were taken up for mutiny were required to make formal submission to the discipline of the Army?’

  She nodded: it had been reported in the newsbooks and through Leveller word of mouth just two or three days before.

  ‘There was some debate as to what that might mean for me,’ Jamie went on, ‘since I was not a soldier. I hoped I might just have leave to go, but the Army has need of blacksmiths, and I have been acquiring a reputation as a cunning smith who can be relied upon to contrive things that are out of the ordinary.’ He held up his right hand with its iron thumb. ‘Once I’d made this many people remarked it. Some have asked that I make like contrivances for friends who’ve lost limbs; others have wanted fancy hinges to fasten together odd-shaped pieces of baggage and the like.’ He sighed. ‘To speak plainly, I caught the eye of some who thought that such a man as myself might be useful, and to obtain my liberty I was obliged to swear that I would work for the Army.’

  ‘For how long?’ she asked in dismay.

  ‘That’s not clear,’ he admitted unhappily. ‘I’ll apply for a discharge as soon as I can and forgo any pay owed if it helps me get free, but I am at the mercy of my commanders.’

  She was silent. She hadn’t had time enough to imagine what it would be like to live with him, but she now understood very clearly that she would be obliged to live without him. He would come at irregular intervals – a day here, two days there, and then weeks of absence. If the Army moved further from London, the weeks would be months. If there was another war . . .

  She refused to think about that. ‘How long do you have now?’

  ‘I was granted two weeks’ leave, to come to London and speak to you. Forgive me, but I had to tell them of you. Else I would have had no leave at all.’

  ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘two weeks is better than nothing. It’s a mercy that my father is here, to give his consent, or we might have had trouble finding anyone to marry us.’

  He was watching her closely. ‘I had thought of that. I had thought I might have to content myself with a betrothal – if you were willing to accept such a poor bargain at all, that is.’

  She met his gaze. ‘I would have accepted it if I had to, Jamie, but I’m glad my father is here.’

  He relaxed and his smile came back again: she saw that he’d feared that she might refuse altogether. ‘Aye.’ He was quiet a moment, and then said, ‘When I told them that I wished to go to London to speak to my sweetheart, the clerk of the court laughed. He asked what sort of sweetheart such a monster might have.’

  She reached out and touched the scarred side of his face; it seemed something she’d wanted to do for a long time. She traced the pattern of the injury, then laid her palm against his cheek. ‘One that was hurt, as you were.’

  He put his good hand over hers. ‘Oh, but you are so bright a light! When you come into a room every man in it looks and smiles!’

  ‘That’s false flattery, Jamie! When we first met you thought me a scolding shrew! Confess it!’

  He smiled. ‘Nay, that was John, not me! Marriage to a scold has made him wary. I thought you the prettiest hoyden in London and I hated my wounds all over again. You thought me a monster, confe
ss it!’

  ‘At first,’ she admitted. ‘But, Jamie, I stopped minding your scars after the first day!’

  He beamed, then leaned across the table to kiss her. ‘I must beg your pardon again that I promised Ned not to court you, but it seemed to me that I was forswearing something I could never win anyway. When John came and laughed at me and said, nay, she likes you well, I thought it nothing but a friend’s raillery. I could not believe that you would love me! And you truly refused Ned? Was he very angry?’

  She hesitated. ‘Aye. He’s not spoken to me since.’

  He seemed pleased at the thought of their friend’s disappointment. ‘What will you do this next year? I can write to my father and ask him to pay my allowance to you, but it’s not much – and, as for my pay, all the world knows the Army provides it but scantily.’

  ‘Keep your allowance!’ she told him. ‘I have a place with the Overtons and I have work. I’ll be well enough till you are free again. But see if you can work on my father to provide a good sum for us. I want to buy a printing press.’

  She hadn’t meant to say that last but the words came out very naturally, surprising her. She supposed the seed of the idea had been planted with the legacy of silk. With savings of a few shillings, the idea of owning a press was a fantasy; with savings of eight pounds, it seemed possible – even though she’d need as much again to achieve it.

  ‘A printing press!’ he exclaimed, smiling again. ‘With that and a smithy, we’re like to have a noisy house, my love!’

  ‘Amen to that,’ she said and kissed him.

  Historical Epilogue

  I know, I’m out of my period. The English Civil Wars were things I knew nothing about until I started research: I was so ignorant, in fact, that I didn’t even know they were plural. Their history turned out to be fascinating but vastly more complicated and challenging than I anticipated, and I know I haven’t done it justice. However, for what it’s worth, the political events that form the background to this piece of fiction really happened, and many of the characters are based on real people. The greatest liberty I’m aware of taking is making The Moderate newsbook start up a few months earlier than it actually did. Be warned, though, that this is one viewpoint and that events would look quite different if seen through another character’s eyes.