She knew Jem and Sarah were unlikely to make retaliatory accusations against her, because they needed her to remain on the outside, in order to fetch the money she and Jem had stashed away so they could bribe their way to freedom. Vowing herself innocent of their betrayal, she promised she would collect cash for a speedy rescue. She had no intention of doing it. Away she rode on a stolen horse, and she did indeed visit several of their old safe houses, removing what she considered her fair share of her savings with Jem. Then she kept riding north.
Suitably attired and with her old name of Dorothy Groome, she made her way to Stony Stratford. There she tracked down the parish authorities and with a humble confession made enquiries about the child she had abandoned. Sadly, she was told the records showed that, like most infants found in church porches, after it was put out to a wet-nurse her baby had died. Under pressure, she made a donation to parish funds, then cursed as she was forced to ride away in disappointment.
She had tried to do right. All it brought her were bad memories and financial loss.
Knowing no other life, she determined to return to Bankside. She thought she could make things straight with Jem. But during her long absence, Jem Starling and his doxy had found their own means of securing a release, though they needed to keep out of sight of the authorities and had vanished into the stews.
The day of her arrival back in Southwark was the 3rd of August 1647. Eliza gradually became aware that this whole area south of the river had a strange atmosphere. The streets were bare of whores, drunks and shady drifters. Foreign sailors risked walking about, staring around in curiosity. Some householders stood in their doorways, looking out. Otherwise, there were soldiers in red coats absolutely everywhere.
Her heart beat. Thinking about the baby had been bad enough. Now even older memories crowded upon her. However, there was no fighting, no looting, no burning of buildings. Nobody screamed. Nobody was shot. None the less, living the life she did, Eliza preferred not to be stopped and subjected to military interrogation. She slipped into a tavern she knew, paid for a supper, ate it out of public view and discreetly bedded down.
Next morning she woke early and braced up to her need to find another new life. With all her possessions in a sagging snapsack, Eliza stood on the bank of the Thames and gazed over at the city, which lay shrouded in coal smoke. She was below London Bridge, the only crossing point. Opposite were Billingsgate and the Custom House, and beyond them the mighty bulk of the Tower, with its forbidding walls and array of turrets, ancient towers and pinnacles. A bridge had stood here for centuries, since Roman times; this one was medieval, built on twenty small arches, with a defensive gateway and a drawbridge at the Southwark end. Along the bridge crowded houses and shops, some seven storeys high; only taverns were absent because there were no cellars for keeping liquor cool. At the centre stood the Chapel of St Thomas a Becket, grander than many parish churches, with steps at river level where fishermen and passenger boats landed. Landing was extremely difficult, as was sailing or rowing through the arches, which were so narrow they constricted the current and caused ferocious rapids. Most people preferred not to risk their lives; they disembarked at the Three Cranes, upstream, then walked along the north shore, past Nonesuch House, and took a different boat at Billingsgate. Watermills and grain mills at the northern end added to the fury of the current. Many people had drowned while 'shooting the bridge'. If they did pass through safely, they emerged into a more tranquil area; there, below the piers, where Eliza was standing disconsolately, lay the calm waters of the Pool of London, which when it was not frozen over in winter was always packed with trading ships and busy with lighters like waterfleas. Now, in August, the warm weather meant the district was pervaded by the stink of waters so fetid they could rarely be cleansed by the tide.
As she pondered the fickleness of men and the perfidy of women, Eliza's attention was drawn by unusual sounds and sights. Drumbeats first attracted her notice — not a sombre, funereal beat, but the brisk tattoo that helped infantry to march in step and gave them heart. Turning, she witnessed the departure from Southwark of all the red-coated soldiers who had occupied the south bank yesterday. They were now moving across into London. Their red uniforms, she knew, meant the New Model Army. Amidst a clamour from within, they were given entrance onto the bridge by their supporters, who opened up the Stone Gateway to admit them. Rank after rank, in several regiments, marched over London Bridge. The city, which had taken such measures to protect itself from the enemy, was being invaded by its own troops.
Word on the streets said those soldiers had refused to be sent on service to Ireland and would not disband until Parliament paid money they were owed. 'Why have we fought,' they were supposed to have asked, 'if we are to be treated worse than slaves?'
Eliza waited until all the men had crossed the bridge, then she reached her decision. Although she had never served in such a large army, their military presence reminded her of the past at Dudley and Edgbaston, days which in a way she had enjoyed. That nostalgia emboldened her for the future. She did not need Jem Starling. She would go across and work alone in the city. Once the soldiers had passed, she quietly slipped after them. It was the first time she had set foot on London Bridge and her heart quavered as she negotiated the Stone Gateway, where sturdy poles carried the heads of long-dead traitors, dipped in tar to preserve them, though the relics were mouldering badly.
On the famous bridge, she passed between nearly two hundred tall buildings. Space was short, so houses had been built out over the river on strong wooden supports, projecting over the water as much as seven feet, and also sometimes joined to the opposite houses above the street. Eliza felt she had entered a long tunnel. Merchants lived on the upper storeys and displayed their goods in shop windows at pavement level. They signalled the nature of their businesses with signboards, and did their selling through the windows. This commerce added to the congestion in the two narrow lanes of traffic, which clogged the bridge so badly that someone could take an hour to get across its three hundred yards. But this was reckoned to be an extremely safe community, apart from the risks of fire and pickpockets. Every night there was a curfew, when the gates were closed.
At the far end, Eliza found a long gap in the houses, damage from a serious fire a decade earlier. She was able to stand at the side and gaze upon the great city she was entering. London stretched as far as she could see and would certainly enable her to vanish from Jem Starling's sight, if he discovered she was back here. She was wise enough to know she was a stranger in the city; being an outsider carried many dangers. This was nothing like the little market town of Birmingham, where she grew up and learned to scavenge. She told herself she had been a soldier and bold highway robber, and could carry off anything. All she ever needed to start afresh was a new alias, a different personality and her native tenacity. Emboldened, she set off across the last few yards and came at last past St Magnus Church onto New Fish Street.
People were marvelling that when the New Model Army soldiers had marched through, they were quiet and disciplined, and stole not so much as an apple.
More fool them! Eliza thought.
Chapter Forty — With the New Model Army: 1645-47
Since nobody had intended to start a civil war, inevitably no one knew how to finish it. Once Naseby had been fought and won, the Parliamentarians mopped up Royalist resistance. It took them ten months, through the winter of 1645-46. Conditions were dire. It was so cold the River Thames froze over in London, and in the West Country they were often battling through snow.
Gideon Jukes had found his regiment again, remaining with the dragoons as Sir Thomas Fairfax led the New Model Army through the West Country. They defeated Goring at the battle of Langport, during which picked bands of musketeers led by Lambert Jukes's colonel, Thomas Rainborough, crucially fought their way along the hedges to dislodge the Royalists. Lambert, with his foot wound healed, was back in the regiment. Subsequently, it was Gideon's turn for special action when a detachm
ent under Colonel Okey left the main body of the army temporarily and captured Bath in a surprise dawn raid. They crept up so secretly, they were able to grab the barrels of the guards' muskets that stuck out of the loopholes; the guards fled, and after firing the gatehouse Okey's men took the town. Next the dragoons were at the siege of Bristol. Although they were facing Prince Rupert, he now had the difficulties that had beset Massey here two years before: insufficient troops, especially infantry, for the task of defending five miles of walled fortification. During Rupert's brief but fierce resistance, plague broke out, water ran low and expected orders from the King failed to arrive. None the less, he made good use of carefully positioned artillery, while his cavalry regularly dashed out to raid and harass. During one of these raids, Colonel Okey was taken prisoner, which depressed and unsettled his regiment.
Rupert delayed negotiations until Fairfax broke off discussion.
The ensuing assault was a dangerous and bloody action. The New Model breached the outer walls, then Rainborough's regiment took Prior's Hill Fort. First they climbed the walls in a hail of shot, then when their scaling ladders proved too short, they crept in at the portholes and after two hours' close combat the defenders were massacred. Rupert fell back towards Bristol Castle but when Cromwell's cavalry charged in, the prince realised his position was hopeless. The Royalists were granted terms, and Okey regained his liberty. The Parliamentarians could not know at the time, but Rupert's quarrel with the King over his surrender would soon rid them of the prince for good.
Fairfax then sent Colonel Rainborough to besiege Berkeley Castle, the only Royalist stronghold left between Bristol and Gloucester. He stormed it after a three-day bombardment. His regiment were deployed to Corfe Castle but, required for more important duties, they were pulled out. In December they went into quarters at Abingdon, on watch over the Oxford area as a preliminary to the city's siege. During the city blockade, Rainborough acquired a new sergeant.
Gideon Jukes had been having horse trouble. Never a natural rider, he was ill-suited to be a dragoon, much as he enjoyed it. After his first horse was shot under him at Naseby, the spirited remount he obtained was too strong and conscious of its own superiority. Gideon fought that horse all the way into the west but it finally threw him outside Bristol. His left spur caught, so for a couple of yards he was dragged along, head down. An alert colleague slashed the stirrup, cutting him free. He ended up sprawled in a bush with a dislocated shoulder while the horse galloped off. Ignominiously rescued, Gideon was taken up behind one of his men, as they all chaffed him and called him a dairymaid picked up for a ride to market because she looked good for a roll in a hayrick. An army surgeon took more delight than he thought necessary in wrenching his shoulder back into its socket.
A new horse was allocated by an agent.
A typical 'dragoon nag', this was a wry-nosed, sniffling creature that sickened and died after a day and a half. A horse doctor was summoned, far too late.
'What have you done to this bone-shaker, Sergeant?'
'He was snotty and hot on arrival.'
'You should have rejected him.'
'By the time I got a proper look, the agent was long gone. I hoped the sad beast was just spavined.'
The veterinarian stood up from the carcase and gave Gideon a straight look. He believed his equine expertise had given him acute understanding of human nature too. He was observant, certainly; he saw that Gideon was in his light-hearted mood. 'Have you any real idea what "spavined" means, Sergeant Jukes?'
'None at all. I gather he didn't have it?'
'Bastard strangles,' diagnosed the solemn expert. Gideon noticed the man was bandy-legged and knotted like a bunch of old rope — possibly the results of being thrown and kicked many times.
'Bastardy is more serious than honest strangles?' queried Gideon demurely.
'Goes around stables like a rat through shit. Mounts will be dropping all along the lines now. Keep your head down, or you'll cop the blame.'
'If I can get anyone to help drag him, I'll try to find a ditch upstream of a Royalist garrison to leave him in.' Gideon knew cavalrymen and dragoons felt little sentimentality towards their horses. In the midst of battle nobody could afford to stand weeping over the body of a faithful mount. But despite their short time together, he had taken responsibility for his animal. He felt driven to assert this: 'His name is Sir Rowland.'
'Rather extravagant?'
'Least I could do. He had nothing else going for him.'
Not only did Sir Rowland cause an epidemic, but since the horse had been supplied to him by the army, Gideon had to replace it at his own cost. Highly indignant, he pointed out that the army had been cheated by the two-timing agent, who had passed off on them a horse that was only fit to be fed to pigs. This happened so frequently no one got excited. Gideon then claimed that because of their pay arrears, he had no money for a new horse, 'even a new one of this piss-poor, rib-rattling quality'. He managed by borrowing other men's mounts, until February. When the next campaign season was about to start, the New Model battened down to finish the Oxford siege and his colonel reviewed the condition of his regiment. First he scrutinised the men's spiritual and political views; Okey was famous for weeding out anyone who failed to match his own beliefs. Next he inspected their horses. That was bad news for Gideon.
John Okey had come to view Sergeant Gideon Jukes as a slyly subversive character. This Jukes received pamphlets from London, which Okey suspected were seditious; the sergeant passed them on to others once he had read them. He seemed dangerously intrigued by England's Birth-right Justified, by John Lilburne, a man Gideon had heard of in the Eastern Association while he himself was working for Sir Samuel Luke. Colonel Lilburne, though then on good terms with Oliver Cromwell, had not joined the New Model Army but resigned from service because he refused to take the oath of the Covenant. He believed Presbyterianism, with its enforced suppression of all other beliefs, was just as terrible as imposed Catholicism or high Anglicanism.
Saturnine, highly intelligent and passionately argumentative, 'Freeborn John' Lilburne had become a prolific political author. He had a history of imprisonment for sedition. In 1637, after a pamphlet critical of bishops, he was pilloried, flogged — two hundred stripes — and imprisoned, becoming a popular hero, but was freed by the Long Parliament. Then early in the war, Royalists captured him; they took him to Oxford where they intended to hang him. Parliament threatened retaliation against its Royalist prisoners; in the nick of time Lilburne was saved when his pregnant wife Elizabeth carried a letter from the Speaker of the House of Commons to the King's headquarters. Subsequently he was freed in a prisoner-exchange. Now his quarrel was with Parliament.
Lilburne had embarked on a serious campaign for reform. Gideon had found his pamphlet startling. After a dry argument that Parliament's power should be limited in order to protect individual rights, it went on to denounce a curious mix of monopolies: preaching, as held by the established Church; wool and foreign trade, as controlled by the Merchant Adventurers; and printing. That was what caused Robert Allibone to send this pamphlet to Gideon; it echoed Robert's long-term loathing of the dead hand of the Stationers' Company.
Robert wrote that Lilburne had been sentenced by the House of Lords for publishing criticism of the Earl of Manchester; insulting a peer was a serious offence. Despite refusing to recognise the Lords' right to try him, Lilburne was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, barred from holding civil or military office and fined two thousand pounds. The harsh penalty inspired mass marches, a petition signed by over two thousand citizens of London and a vocal lobby of Parliament.
It also led to the creation of the astonishing political organisation that would be called — by its opponents — the Leveller Party.
This began as a group of radical Londoners with headquarters at the Whalebone Tavern. Lilburne was their nominal head, with other pamphleteers: a master silk-weaver called William Walwyn and Richard Overton, the would-be actor Gideon remembered fr
om The Triumph of Peace. Allibone had joined the group. Members paid a small subscription and met in taverns, the closest for Robert being the Nag's Head in Coleman Street. He spoke highly of Walwyn, a retiring family man, mainly self-taught, whose measured, lucid prose praising reason, toleration and love alarmed his opponents almost as much as it inspired devotees.
Robert said printers were well represented. The group elected officers and their executive committee met three times a week at the Whalebone, though others gathered regularly in various London parishes. Robert sent Gideon an anonymous tract which he reckoned was Walwyn's and Overton's collaboration, called A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens. Addressed to the House of Commons, it reminded members that they were representatives of the people. Then its propositions were: absolute religious freedom, a completely free press, the end of monopolies and discriminating taxation, the reforming of unjust laws, and — astonishingly — abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords. Robert Allibone found this exhilarating; Gideon did too, though not in front of his colonel.
Colonel Okey preferred to see his men at prayer meetings. Freedom of conscience is always regarded as a threat to military discipline. Okey viewed nervously the idea that instead of Parliament giving orders to the army, the army might make demands of Parliament.
Since men from the Newport Pagnell garrison were assisting at the siege of Oxford, Colonel Okey suggested the dangerous, horseless Jukes should reattach himself to his old colleagues.
'Once he takes a dislike, he never lets go. I am screwed and wrung!' complained Gideon to his brother.
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