‘But, that is impossible, Dowdal.’ I looked purposefully at my children that had come round the table to stand behind my skirt. ‘Where would I hide with my children? Who would take such fugitives!’
‘Forget the children! I will have them. Only go and hide yourself and your husband with haste! Where is Monsieur Cellier?’
‘He is gone from here to Manchester on business. He is safe for now, but I cannot leave my children.’
Maggie flung her arm around my skirt and cried, ‘Mam!’
Without a thought I rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment. I looked to little Peter, only a year younger than his sister yet so much younger in his mind. He watched without understanding what was occurring, so I turned and crouched low into Maggie’s arms and reached out and hugged the two of them together. I could never leave them.
‘Get yourself to safety. Go now ere it’s too late!’ growled Dowdal with such urgency I could not doubt him.
Without further thought, for I trusted Dowdal implicitly, I held my two wide-eyed offspring close one last time, then left both them and the burning stove and fetched my cloak. Dowdal was dry, and coatless, but my destination was uncertain and, being the last days of October, I might later find myself fugitive in a cold or wet night. Suddenly I stopped and faced my husband’s man.
‘Why must I run? I have no reason to run.’
‘If you have not then that is for you to prove. Willoughby is no Captain, and no gentleman. He is a rogue, with neither the name he gave to you nor even some of the devotion he showed you. Do not try your hand with the courts, they do not care for truth. Go hither, and be safe.’
Willoughby not Willoughby? What nonsense was this! Not content with pitting religion against religion, nor neighbour against neighbour, the Government would as well put the burden of conflict on those within a household. Their spies were in the bosom of every home in London, and perhaps elsewhere too, suckling on the kindness of wet-nurse households, then biting on the nipple that fed them. I never imagined we would embrace such a one in the heart of our own home. I never imagined Willoughby would wilfully harm us.
‘Go,’ repeated Dowdal. ‘I have the children.’
Dowdal stood back and gestured urgently. If fortune should allow me to return to my children I must stay safe for them. I nodded, looked around the kitchen one last time, storing the faces of Maggie and Peter in my mind, then moved quickly towards the door. My foot was no sooner over the threshold than something attached itself to my elbow and halted my escape.
‘Whither go you in such haste, Madam Cellier?’
I straightaway recognised the voice beside me as that of the Justice of Middlesex, Sir William Waller, for good reason better known to Catholics as ‘The Priest-Catcher’. His zealous Protestant reputation less ‘found’ its way to me, but more ‘fought’ its way, cutting left and right along his path of hatred, felling good folk of any other religion with his scythe borrowed from Death.
He was also well known to be tight with Titus Oates at the Green Ribbon Club; some said ‘in bed together’. As well, like Justice Warcup, the man was responsible for zealously burning many papal books, vestments, paintings and other documents in large public bonfires. ‘I believe I am openly invited to partake of a sip of mulled sac with you?’
It was true that when he came two days before Waller asked me to invite him in for a drink and I told him ‘another time’, but I never intended that time to come. His visit came shortly before Susan brought news from the gaol of Willoughby’s apparent torture, told to her by himself, though I did not then set the two together. Though he searched – I knew not what he expected to find – he proved nothing against me. He took many important and personal financial papers and possessions, and kept them to examine them, but found no evidence I, nor any of my household, had done any wrong. He kept our things still.
That time, he had come with only two men, and had tried to take me from my home to Lord Shaftsbury, again I knew not for what reason. I had told him, ‘I have no business with the Earl of Shaftsbury, and if his Lordship has any with me, he might have sent one of his servants to tell me so, and I would have waited on him, as I am still ready to do, without needing a Justice of Peace to take me. But what authority have you to carry me there?’
To his pompous ‘His Majesty’s Commission of the Peace’, I promptly answered, ‘Though that empowers you to send me to prison, if I am accused of any crime, it gives you no power to carry me any where else.’ He showed surprise at my knowledge of the law, but then went on to accuse me of being a dangerous woman and of keeping correspondence with traitors, and further accused me that I did something wrong by taking in the young Jesuit witnesses come over from France for the Jesuit trials. I was pleased to remind him the king had commanded them to come! I also told him only those convicted of treason can be properly called traitors. ‘Do you know of any such I keep correspondence with? I am sure I know none.’
While he talked with me, his men opened cupboard doors, pulling things from inside and letting them drop to the floor. They also turned drawers of papers, cutlery, and any other thing they came across, onto the floor, scaring my little ones by their surly manner, abrupt actions and loud noise, presumably looking for hidden compartments. When they opened my cupboard of medicines, I screamed at them to stop and, surprisingly, they had stopped.
‘If you touch my herbs and ointments I’ll have the king himself come and find you and whip you! They are my business!’
The men looked from me to Sir Waller, not knowing what to do.
‘Look in that cabinet with care, men. We are not here with malicious intent, and would not take this woman’s livelihood.’ I detected he was not sincere, but the men seemed to think he was, and took the bottles, bags and pots from the shelves and lay them on the table, not as carefully as I would have liked, but careful enough.
In his determination to find me guilty of something, Sir Waller ignored them and returned his steel grey eyes to me.
‘Will you take the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance?’ This challenge was so often made before throwing a good Catholic man or woman in gaol in these days, I was fully expectant of it.
He would have me swear the Oath of Allegiance to test whether I would abide by the four hundred year old law, that every subject of the kingdom should swear his or her allegiance solely to the king and his heirs. The law stood against all religions but the king’s. Since my religion was public knowledge, making me swear the Oath of Supremacy, an allegiance that is a renunciation of the Pope’s authority, was an unnecessary ordeal, but one that could become the instrument of my incarceration.
Many feared that if a man’s loyalty was to the Pope then he must be set against the king, though this was not the case; most Catholics were loyal to both king and God. That fact did little for the good men that were recently removed, or had resigned, from parliament when they refused to swear these Oaths.
Though the law stood against other beliefs, it was common knowledge a person was never prosecuted unless they had upset a person with power to accuse; for it was not in the king’s financial interest to prosecute. Any person not attending weekly church must pay a sum to the king, and if they executed or exiled these people, this income would quickly dry up and leave the king’s coffers very much emptier.
It angered me that Sir Waller asked me to speak these Oaths, and so I told him.
‘You do not have any authority to ask me this unless another Justice is present. But if there were another here, you should remember, I am a foreign merchant’s wife. And my husband, both by the General Law of Nations and those of this kingdom, should remain unmolested in both his liberty and his property, unless a breach happens between the two Crowns. the king has declared as much in his Royal Proclamation. If you violate the privileges my husband should have as a merchant-stranger, the king of France, whose subject my husband is, has an ambassador here, by whom we will c
omplain to His Majesty, and I hope we should obtain redress!’
He left my upturned house soon after with thin lips and red face. I had hoped he would not return, but perhaps underestimated the desire for vengeance that I gave him. I certainly did not invite the monster back to my home!
But at least he came as a monster, and was not one in disguise as Willoughby had been.
‘Come, Madam Cellier, are you not delighted to see me? I warned you I would return.’
Waller was ten years my junior and surprisingly strong for his lesser stature. With very little effort, he dragged me back to the kitchen, where Dowdal leaned against the wall beside the door to the back of the house as yet unseen. Perhaps they did not see him because he held no importance for them. I watched as he slipped away out the door, before the last of Waller’s men were even in the room. If only I had left more swiftly, I may have been far away by now.
My children must be somewhere nearby, though they were quiet and did not draw scrutiny to themselves. Perhaps they smelt the wickedness of the Priest-catcher as he approached or sensed the urgency of Dowdal’s warning and hid away, else they had preceded Dowdal out of the door. With hope, the last. Either way, not even little Maggie, who rarely stayed quiet, could be heard, for which I could only release my breath in a slow sigh of relief.
‘I would gladly supply invited guests with mulled sac or cider, yet must admit to having none to sweeten you with. I fear we midwives drink so much ourselves, we have little left over for entertaining.’ My intuition told me I should play the female card, for he saw himself as a man of honour though he was not.
‘Do not fret, Madam Cellier, we will make our own entertainment. Perhaps you have superstitious blood we might drink instead?’ Waller’s men laughed at his supposed wit, casting aspersions on the red wine used in communion. The men all carried swords at their sides, so I swallowed the quip about communion blood running stronger than his own to the king.
‘I would be delighted if you would have wine and wafer with me, Sir Waller, but I think you do not have the taste for it.’
‘And I would be delighted if you would stand aside while we did the work we came to do but fear you would rather hinder me in the path of justice.’
‘I would stand aside if I knew what side to stand on,’ I said.
‘You stand on the wrong side, Madam Cellier,’ he responded. ‘You chose the wrong side when you chose to stand on the side of the Devil.’ Sir Waller was not amused by my having a voice, and took amusement in degrading me.
‘What causes you to think that? I walk with God, and He walks with me.’
The sound of them searching the childrens’ bedchamber and ours broke our conversation, and gave me a fervant wish to discover what they were doing. Even in this room where we stood, as before, his men ransacked the same cupboards and drawers they had searched previously, but this time also lifted and moved the cupboards to look behind, and stamped on the wood planks, perhaps hoping to find a secret hole where treasonable things were hidden.
Since I did not know where anything was hidden, I could not react if they came close. In that, the Judas serpent was right. My innocence might save me.
‘You are mistaken, madam. He walks with true believers, not with those of superstitious beliefs. You have chosen the Popish ways, and they are against the king’s rules and against the king himself. We have testimony that you hide proof of your traitorousness in this house, and we will find them. Your friend, Dangerfield, has told us all we need know of your scheme, and he has revealed that he has seen the proof here. Admit your scheme now, and we will be lighter on you.’
‘Who is this Dangerfield? I know him not.’
‘You tell me you do not know one who has lived under your very roof with you? This I cannot believe!’
‘I know of no Dangerfield,’ I insisted.
‘Perhaps you know of him by the name of Captain Thomas Willoughby?’ he said, then smiled when he saw my understanding grow.
‘I know Willoughby, but not Dangerfield,’ I reiterated.
‘Do not play this game with me, Madam. You must know they are one and the same.’ We walked up the stairs whilst we talked. Through the open door to the children’s bedchamber, I watched as a man pulled the bed linen off their bed and then lifted the mattress to find nothing beneath. Then he took his knife and slashed the mattresses open and pulled the horse hair out.
‘I did not know that,’ I said, ‘but I have no scheme to tell you.’
‘We know the scheme, but if you will save yourself you must admit to it now.’
‘Would you have me lie to save myself? ‘
‘No, I would have you tell the truth and admit your plan to kill the king to aid the Duke.’
I followed Waller back down the stairs to the kitchen. I answered to his back. The kitchen was being ransacked.
‘I am a loyal subject to both king and Duke and would only protect them with all the honesty and goodness in me.’
As I said this, a man stopped lifting lids off my pewter pans and raised the lid of the butter tub. When he then lifted the larger rice tub lid, I saw he would search the other food tubs too, and called out to him, ‘Keep your dirty hands out of my food,’ which was a mistake, for immediately he looked at Sir Waller and received a nod of agreement. He plunged his hand deep into the wood barrel right up to his elbow. Rice spilled on the floor as he moved his searching hand inside. I thought he would turn the whole full tub onto the floor.
‘Check the other tubs!’ said Sir Waller.
They did not take long to find the papers Willoughby or, rather, this man Dangerfield, gave me to hide and that Anne had hidden in the barrel of flour.
‘Here is treason!’ Triumphantly, the man, his arm surrounded by a cloud of white meal, held the papers high in the air. ‘‘Tis hid in the meal tub!’
19
31st day of October, 1679
Back in ’44, my father and brother, both, fought side by side with the poet Abraham Cowley at the Battle of Marston Moor in the north, so they wrote us in a letter.
Prince Rupert of the Rhine had led the king’s side.
The Duke of Newcastle, both tutor to the king’s child, now the second King Charles, and a friend to my father, come to our home after the terrible defeat, bringing sorrow for our loss. My mother lost more than her husband and her eldest son that day; she lost her heart’s joy.
But, somehow or other, a connection was made between our lost loved ones and that poet, and through his works she found her consolation.
We would often read Cowley’s poems of war together, imagining this connection to my father and brother, knowing that he knew them, and perhaps wrote something poetic whilst he was with them.
It was a sad day when he died at his house in Chertsey little more than two years ago. Having fought so many battles for the king, Fate had her fun when she caused a simple common cold to be the death of him.
Before travelling to Manchester, Pierre read with me ‘Friendship in Absence’ from my new book of Cowley’s Works. It stood strong in my memory and now, in my letter to him, I quoted some remembered lines, and they took more meaning than they did ever before. The first verse I gave him was the last of the poem, but signified my vexatious captivity, and the second I gave told him how much I missed him. With hope, he would as well understand my use of our royalist friend to express myself.
My Dearest Pierre
Should you come home and find I am gone, you will find me at Newgate, where I stay at Captain Richardson’s lodgings.
I took myself to The Kings Bench Barr yesterday, but they denied me bail, accusing me of treason, and of corresponding with traitors, though I know of none, and they cannot name any.
Today I was there at The Kings Bench once more, at the request of counsel and, after they examined me, they informed me I was to go to Newgate. I was so fearful when I was to be
sent here, His Majesty took it upon himself to assure me the law would not suffer any torture, which I had told him I feared.
Even so, the dread of being locked up here and attended by felons, or of worse usage, did so oppress my spirits I found myself in convulsions over it which, as you know, is strange for me, so I had to be laid upon a couch to recover. But I need not have worried so; Captain Richardson and his wife are all kindness. I have my own room, and a maid to look out for my needs.
I am reminded of the poem you read to me before you left:
And, when no art affords me help or ease,
I seek with verse my griefs t’appease;
Just as a bird, that flies about
And beats itself against the cage,
Finding at last no passage out,
It sits and sings, and so o’ercomes its rage.
Dowdal and his blessed wife will care for the young ones ‘til you can fetch them. It might be a while longer before I can join you by our hearth, which I already miss. I look impatiently for the sight of you when you come!
I’m there with thee, yet here with me thou art,
Lodg’d in each other’s heart:
Miracles cease not yet in love.
When he his mighty power will try,
Absence itself does bounteous prove,
And strangely ev’n our presence multiply.
With the wind blowing as it does, perhaps some country air might be healthy for you and the children? If you agree I am right, I will join you when I can.
Yours in devotion,
E.C
I did not tell Pierre everything of the previous days, not only because I knew that any message leaving the prison would be read and copied with hope of discovering proof of some guilty thing, but also Pierre would only worry more.
A thing I certainly did not reveal to him was how, when I told the Privy Council at The Kings Bench I had spoken only the truth, the Lord Chancellor told me no person would believe a word I said, and that I would die. Although I bravely sallied, ‘I know that my Lord, for I never saw an immortal woman in my life,’ I feared they were so set against me, not wishing to hear the truth, and that what he said would surely come true. I would not have Pierre know this.
The Popish Midwife Page 21