A new silence lay on the house. Next time Kinchin ventured out of the forge, she made up her mind to go back to the kitchen. She collected the sleepy infant. By the grey light of early morn she spotted a single sword, hung on a rafter in the forge; climbing on a wooden trestle she managed to lift the weapon down and brought it out with her. It was the blade Lucas had made wrongly and kept back, though the heavy weapon seemed adequate to Kinchin.
Kinchin approached the open house door, carrying Robert in one arm with the sword, point down, in her other hand. The lack of noise indicated the soldiers had gone. Even so, she stayed outside, too scared to look.
After a long time watching, she stood the sword behind a barrel and crossed the threshold timidly. Indoors, she found a scene of despoliation.
The wrecked kitchen made her feel like a stranger. Once so neat, the room reeked of drink, smoke, and worse. The men had marked the house with their excrement, like wild animals claiming territory. Many domestic implements were missing. Objects that were too cumbersome to carry off, such as the bench and the baby's heavy oak cradle, had been crudely tossed and upended. Things of little value, or small items that male fingers made clumsy by drink had dropped, lay strewn all over the floor. Kicked ashes besmirched the slabbed floor. A worn cutlery box lay smashed on the table. The fire was dead in the grate, water buckets upset, heavy cauldrons bounced until they were dented beyond repair. Dreadful stillness hung over the house. Kinchin found the wool-stuffed cradle-mattress, still usable though it had been singed in the fire; for safety she set Robert upon it in his cradle, which she righted and pushed to its normal position. He was hungry and started bawling; she ignored that. Then, bravely, she walked to the door opposite and ventured through.
She stopped. A body lay on the stairs.
Mistress Lucas had been repeatedly ravished right there on the steep, narrow wooden treads. At some time during the ordeal she had died. One hand gripped a banister rail; her head was turned far to one side, as if to avoid seeing her attackers. Her skirts were pushed up to her waist. Her buckled shoes were off. One stocking had wrinkled around her ankle in the struggle, though the other remained neatly over her knee, held by its knitted garter.
Whether she had died of the rapes, or shame, or shots, or suffocation Kinchin could not tell.
She stood at the foot of the stairs, wondering what to do. Noises in the kitchen alarmed her. She spun back there, perhaps to protect Robert or perhaps ready to run and save herself. The baby was now bound to her by their shared hours in the forge, but Kinchin had a loner's priorities.
An elderly woman had arrived from the house next door, anxious for Lucas and his family. She had a sharp, intelligent face and head of white hair, upon which sat a rather crooked coif. Automatically, she was righting the firejack, while gazing around in horror. Robert, blue-eyed and now silent, was watching. The old woman recognised Kinchin and asked after Mistress Lucas.
Kinchin sobbed, once.
The woman moved quietly past her. With a keening sound, she went to Mistress Lucas and pulled down her skirts decently. She loosened the dead woman's grip on the banister, and moved her arm. On returning to the kitchen, she found that Kinchin had sunk down amongst the devastation, lost in shock. 'A good woman. Cruelly used. Yet here's the poor baby all untouched — '
'I hid with him,' whispered Kinchin.
The neighbour nodded approval, though in the way of Birmingham people her reaction was restrained. She knew Mistress Lucas had given charity to this mite. Shaking her head and short of breath, the woman seated herself on a joint-stool. She had to right it first, and sat gently as if it might collapse; some of the pegs had been knocked out during the cavaliers' riot. 'They have killed Widow Collins, and fourteen or fifteen others. I heard that two coffins were made last night for men of quality of theirs.' She held her arms folded and rocked with grief. 'Many houses are stripped of goods and furnishings; people were forced to hand over all the money they had. Their own supporters have lost as much as anyone, but that is no help to the rest of us… Go to your people, Kinchin Tew. I will find women for what is needed. Here — she does not want this now — ' The old neighbour jumped up, pulled a cloak from a peg on the door and wrapped it around Kinchin. Then she snatched a crust from the ground, blew the dust off and pushed it into the girl's hand. 'Have you seen Lucas? Some of our killed men were pushed into the trench and their bodies buried when the Royalists slighted the earthworks. They allowed nobody near to recover the dead.'
'Lucas was a prisoner. I saw him last night. I saw him at the Swan — ' Remembering how Thomas was shot in cold blood, Kinchin retched. With nothing in her stomach, she controlled it. The old woman gazed at her; perhaps she had heard what had happened to the ostler.
'The prisoners are all ransomed and free to go. Leave this house now, girl, before Lucas comes home.'
Kinchin was not sure whether this was some warning that Lucas might suspect she had taken part in the theft of his goods, or that he might be angry to find such a starveling had survived while his poor decent wife was murdered. Kinchin had no place here. Women neighbours would attend to Mistress Lucas's laying-out. Jane This and Margery That, a Bess, an Alice, a Susanna… They had gossiped with the smith's wife, attended her churching after Robert was born, and they would now bury her, comfort Lucas and help the smith deal with nurturing the child alone. None of that was for Kinchin. She was an outsider, no matter how much grief she felt for the murdered woman. She left the house without another word.
Clutching the cloak tightly around her and gnawing the hard bread, Kinchin wandered up through the markets, terrified of what she would find. She was carrying the sword from the forge. Under her cloak she held it with care, because there was no scabbard. A cart laden with half a dozen wounded Royalists trundled past, forcing her to press against the side of a house. Her feet stumbled with tiredness and terror. Groups of people, trembling bare-legged in their shirts and shifts, stood outside homes where open windows and doors revealed empty interiors. She saw people who had lost everything. Dazed and depressed, they simply collected in the streets.
Now Kinchin entered a scene that would have seemed to her like hell, had the Tews ever practised religion. As she passed the toll booth, heading into the Welsh End, many cavaliers were still at large. Prince Rupert had gone, but had left behind a group called an antiguard. These men were to protect his army in the rear and secure the route back to Oxford. They knew how to do this work. In every street, triumphal soldiers brandished drawn swords and pistols. They were making excited preparations to set fire to the town. Driving off householders, they used gunpowder, wisps of straw and matchcord. Some fired off special slugs which they said Lord Digby had invented: bullets wrapped in brown paper that they shot from pistols into stables and thatched roofs. Residents pleaded with them to stop, but the answer came back that each quartermaster had orders from the prince to fire his section of the town.
Legitimate arson was a wonderful game. In a market town full of forges, combustible material was easy to find. Laying the fires was easy. Anguished Birmingham people were complaining that they had paid out large sums of money to Prince Rupert, to buy protection for their homes. His men's response was cold and cruel. Anyone brave enough, who tried to save their goods or their premises, was fired at. Fresh blood ran over yesterday's dried blood on the cobbles.
Kinchin was frightened by the fire, more frightened by the soldiers' continuing violence. She pushed her way through to the High Cross, trying to leave town. But all the buildings ahead of her were ablaze. Their destitute owners stood weeping in the street; cavaliers only jeered as thick smoke gusted everywhere. Above Dale End and the Welch End, crackling flames leaped twice as high as the timber houses. To Kinchin's left, Moor Street was noisily burning, and when she ran into Chapel Street, a strong wind blew a great conflagration across the cherry orchards towards her.
At the Bull Inn, opposite the disused priory, with flames hot on her face, Kinchin stopped. A soldier barged past, c
arrying a pan of hot coals, on his way to start another fire somewhere. A man waved a besom broom at her, its bound twigs streaking the air with sparks. Too much terror finally overcame the girl. As she stood on the cobbles in confusion, she caught two riders' attention.
She recognised the red-haired cavalier and his horse: Faddle. A second rider loudly swore at people, 'The prince deals with you mercifully now! When we come back, with the Queen's army, you will know our true minds — no one will be left alive!'
Edmund Treves saw her. 'Get to safety!' He struggled to control his horse, disturbed by the fires. He could tell how the night's events had changed the girl. She had lost all her earlier trust of him. Of course she was right. Treves had stayed at the Ship Inn, on the outskirts, but he knew what had gone on in the town. Guilt sickened him — though he would not change his loyalty to the King.
Someone else spotted Kinchin, Her father, Emmett, had been loitering in the hope of grabbing property from open houses. Emmett dropped his robbery sack; with ghastly determination he grabbed his daughter and hauled her right under the cavaliers' horses. Gripped so fiercely, the nightmare of her encounters with Mr Whitehall returned to her. 'Here's a nice clean girl, sir!'
'Will you make her a doxy?' Treves retorted angrily.
'No, you may do that!' leered Emmett. 'She will know no other trade, sir,' he wheedled plaintively, as if this excused selling her. He sounded desperate. A kinchin mort — that's a girl, sir, who is brought to her full age and then — '
'No!' His daughter shrieked, now mortified.
Kinchin rebelled. The nickname she had always endured was suddenly hateful. She struggled wildly. Until now, she had accepted her family's intentions. They brought her up to sell. If she stayed with them, they would do it. The closest friends she had ever had were killed last night. Nobody cared for her now.
Unexpectedly, Kinchin wrenched free. In the fight with her father, she dropped the sword that she had taken from the forge. Then Treves's companion reined in his great horse above where it lay upon the ground.
She knew that man too. Kinchin looked up into those unblinking eyes. It was the man with the turquoise hatband. He was holding his carbine. Once again the idea of shooting this girl, the idea that had crossed Orlando Lovell's mind last night, returned to him.
This time, Kinchin picked up and held the sword so Lovell could see it. Lovell reached to hook it from her grasp. Kinchin scrambled backwards. Her father grabbed at her again but it was a feeble movement. She dodged Emmett and fled.
The fire roared all around her; she saw only one way to run. She beat a path back through the unburned part of the town, moving as fast as she could manage through the lamenting crowds. Slowing, she doubled back down the High Street past the Swan Inn where Thomas had been shot, back through the markets where Mr Whitehall had been mangled, around St Martin's Church and past Little Park Street where Mistress Lucas lay dead in her house. She ran down into Digbeth. The last cavaliers were leaving, over the stone bridge. Finding a gap in the procession, she went through Deritend where unknown numbers of killed defenders lay under the flattened earthworks. She passed the Ship Inn, where the elegant Prince Rupert had spent a civilised night, allegedly unaware of the deeds being perpetrated throughout Birmingham in his name.
When the distraught girl reached the end of the houses and taverns, she kept walking. The road she was on travelled out through the water meadows into open country. She went with it, sobbing. Once she was certain of her intent and sure that nobody was following, she paused, turned herself and looked back bleakly. Much of Birmingham was burning. Almost a hundred houses would be lost that day, with numerous barns and outbuildings. But the wind was changing; she could feel it on her tearstained face. The wind would eventually blow back upon itself, so the fire was contained and doused.
Hundreds of people were homeless and destitute, many more were shocked and grieving. They would cluster together and support one another. They would relate their troubles to the kingdom at large and perhaps be consoled by the telling. But this set-faced, lonely vagabond would gain no comfort, for she possessed no family and no community. Empty-handed, godless, friendless, hopeless and even nameless now, the young girl took one last look at the fiery desolation she had left behind. Then she turned her face to the south again and strode onwards in her sorrow.
Chapter Eighteen — London: May, 1643
Bad men bearing dubious offers always appear at the right time. So, once again, Bevan Bevan correctly chose his moment to manipulate his great-nephew, Gideon Jukes.
Bevan understood Gideon's situation. A young man of twenty-two, newly created a company freeman and recently cheered by military success, would be looking around for a woman. Unlike Lambert, a lively lad from puberty, the younger Jukes brother was a straightforward and still naive bachelor. Despite his heritage as one of London's merchant class, Gideon did not canoodle with other men's wives or flirt with their daughters. He had never engaged with lewd women in back-alley taverns, let alone visited the notorious brothels that lay over the river in Southwark. Even if he secretly considered that, Gideon liked the easy life; he was too frightened of discovery. He still cringed at the fuss over his dotterel escapade. For him, marriage was the only solution.
Bevan knew, too, that Parthenope and John Jukes were leaving Gideon to find his own wife. The dangerous times made them cautious. They wanted him to be happy, but it seemed less urgent to push Gideon into marriage than when they had begged Lambert to wed Anne Tydeman after courting her for years. Anne and Lambert now lived in the family home; if Gideon married, it raised tricky questions about how far his parents should go in setting him up. The Jukes always claimed their sons were equal, but in families equality can be elastic.
Although it was a decade since Bevan regularly dined at the Jukes table, once in a while he still arrived on the doorstep. He expected his slice of roast beef and demanded more gravy with it, as if he were the family patriarch. Then when John Jukes angrily stomped out to the yard for a pipe, Bevan — who was less mobile with his gouty legs — would push back his chair and pontificate on how Lambert and Gideon should manage their lives. Gideon was generally at home to hear it. Bevan seemed to have studied his pattern of behaviour.
'Don't leave it so long as I did! Marry while you have the spirit to manage your wife and brood.'
Startled by the idea of a brood, Gideon merely raised his eyebrows and scuttled off to join his father beside the burnt-out house-of-easement, where they gloomily enjoyed their tobacco and waited for the uncle to depart.
Undeterred, Bevan next brought his wife, Elizabeth, and her wide-eyed unmarried niece.
The niece, Lacy Keevil, was a relative through Elizabeth's previous marriage. 'Up from the country' — which only meant from Eltham — Lacy had been taken into the Bevan household to help with their rumbustious children. She seemed to know when to hang her head shyly among strangers. 'More to her than she shows!' Lambert muttered, conspiratorially. Gideon liked the sound of that.
He stared at Lacy Keevil. She looked too anxious to be dangerous. For her years — sixteen — she had a rounded, mature figure. Her rather ordinary face was a blank, with no signs of character to worry him, but she had exotic almond-shaped eyes that drew male attention, including his.
Proffered a paper of his mother's jumbles, Lacy treated Gideon as a special acquaintance. He fell for it. He knew he should be more wary; indeed, his previous lack of success with women made him wonder at his sudden popularity now. Still he let himself believe that Lacy had a sweet, shy personality to which he was keenly attracted, and that his looks and urbane charm had captured her heart. He decided he could handle the situation himself, so he confided in no one which meant nobody ever joshed him, 'What looks and charm?'
'Ask yourself what she wants,' Lambert's wife Anne alerted him, after she sensed tensions between the girl and her relatives. 'Why are Bevan and Elizabeth parading this puss about?' The hint came too late for Gideon.
A few days later B
evan turned up 'by chance' in Basinghall Street. Immediately his uncle broached marriage, Gideon threw himself at the idea. Already committed, he consulted Robert Allibone, who saw the case was hopeless so merely replied that he did not know the girl.
Because the match had been engineered by Bevan Bevan, Gideon's parents opposed it on principle, but their opposition spurred him on.
'He will never change,' wept his mother.
'He will never learn!' raved John.
Gideon would learn, and perhaps even change, though not yet.
Gideon Jukes and Lacy Keevil were married in early May, 1643. It was a large family wedding and differed little from such celebrations in peacetime. The bride was dainty and subdued. The groom felt racked with nerves. Killjoys grumbled into their handkerchiefs that the couple were making a mistake; the young fools should have waited until the war ended. Others retaliated that at a wedding in wartime, guests ought to make a special effort to be cheerful.
Despite the deprivations in trade, everyone flaunted finery. Money was available. Gideon had a new ash-coloured jacket with a subdued sheen, over full knee-britches, all fastened with gold buttons — several dozen of them in the suit. Lacy wore carnation taffeta which, as her Aunt Elizabeth said rather loudly, she filled extremely well. On the traditional walk to and from church, they were both sweetly excited and beaming with happiness. It was impossible to wish them anything but joy and long life together. That did not stop thin smiles among disparagers.
The feast took place at a neutral venue, chosen because neither family could agree who should host. It was the Talbot Inn, a large coaching inn in Talbot Court off Gracechurch Street, within smell of the Thames.
As the wedding party in their lustrous tissues went into the courtyard where long, laden tables waited, Gideon suddenly felt alien. The feast was for him, yet he observed the elegant procession as if he were no part of it.
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