by Stella Riley
This was unexpected enough. More surprising still was the fact that he found Major Maxwell waiting laconically at the prison gates to inform him that he owed his release to Colonel Brandon.
Sam stared at him blankly for a moment and then, working it out, silently blessed Bryony. He said, ‘I see. Well I hope the Colonel doesn’t expect this to make me change my ways – because, if so, he’ll be disappointed.’
Eden’s brows rose.
‘I’m glad you’re grateful. It makes everything so worthwhile.’
‘Oh I’m grateful all right – just not fundamentally altered. But there’s no need for you to put yourself out further. I’ll explain it all to him myself when I see him.’
‘He’ll be delighted, I’m sure. Unfortunately, you may have to wait a while. He’s got leave of absence until April.’
‘Then I’ll just have to possess my soul in patience, won’t I?’ grinned Sam. ‘Unless, of course, you’d like to give me his address?’
*
Back at his meagre lodgings, Samuel discovered that his belongings had been turned upside down by the Stationer’s Company on the pretext of searching for illicit pamphlets but that his rent had apparently been paid by the City Levellers. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, thought Sam philosophically … and set about unearthing his only other suit of clothes from the chaos. It was even more threadbare than the one he was wearing but at least it didn’t reek of Newgate. Then, before bothering to put the room to rights, he went down into the yard and risked inflammation of the lung by sluicing himself long and hard under the icy water of the pump.
Two hours later, Annis Morrell ushered him into her parlour with an expression of kindly concern and pressed him down on the settle beside the fire.
‘You look dreadful,’ she said. ‘What on earth have you been doing these past few weeks?’
Sam hesitated and then, because he couldn’t go on covering his tracks forever, said, ‘If you really want to know, I’ve been in Newgate.’
Annis took a small step back and cast a nervous glance across at baby John, sleeping peacefully in his cot on the far side of the hearth.
‘It’s all right.’ He rose quickly. ‘I haven’t got gaol fever as far as I know and I washed and changed before I came. But you’re quite right. I ought to have thought of it. I’m sorry.’
She took a good, long look at him. He was extremely pale and had lost weight but he didn’t look at all feverish. She said slowly, ‘I forgive you. But before you sit down again, you’d better tell me why you were in prison.’
‘I was arrested for distributing so-called inflammatory pamphlets amongst the soldiers at Corkbush Field last month. In short, I’m what you’d call a Leveller.’
Annis eyed him calmly.
‘But I knew that.’
‘You – you did? How?’
‘Because of that green ribbon you had in your lapel when you first walked in with Bryony that day. I suppose it was Gabriel’s idea to remove it?’
‘Yes.’ He hesitated. ‘Did your husband notice it too?’
‘No. But I think it’s time you put that right,’ she said placidly. And then, ‘Tell me … does Bryony know about your stay in Newgate?’
‘Of course I know,’ said a flat voice from the doorway. ‘I may even have played some part in getting him out again.’
Sam turned swiftly and then felt his smile freeze as he absorbed the despondency on Bryony’s face. Annis, however, being quite used to her niece’s recent dejection, merely said, ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I asked Gabriel to see to it.’ Bryony closed the door and crossed the room towards them. ‘But that was before he went off to Yorkshire – so I thought he’d probably forget.’
‘He didn’t,’ said Sam quietly. ‘Why else do you think I hurried here? As soon as I learned who’d arranged my release, I knew it was you I had to thank for it.’
‘Yes. Well. I just wish he’d got you out for Christmas. Not that it makes much difference now we’re no longer supposed to celebrate it.’ Her expression, which had become marginally brighter, turned into a frown as she looked at her aunt. ‘He’s told you everything, hasn’t he? Are you going to tell Uncle Jack?’
‘No. Mr Radford will do that himself.’
‘But he can’t!’
‘On the contrary. If you and he want to remain friends now his activities have started landing him in gaol, there’s no question but that he must.’ Annis smiled faintly. ‘And you may find Jack less unsympathetic than you think. At any rate, you’re going to have to find out.’
Sam drew a long breath.
‘He’s in the workshop?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll go now and get it over with.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ announced Bryony dourly. ‘We might as well share the lecture. And afterwards, if nobody minds, you can take me for a walk.’
Jack looked up from the work he was supervising with one of his apprentices and then, telling the lad to go and oil the grinding-wheel, strolled forward to meet his visitors.
‘The wanderer returns,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think we’d offended you.’
‘No. It’s I who am about to offend you,’ said Sam. And, for the second time in an hour, made his confession.
When he had finished, Jack surveyed him in brooding silence. Then he said, ‘It’s a bit late to applaud your honesty. But it certainly explains a few things.’
‘Very likely,’ said Bryony. ‘But now you know, are you going to tell Sam to stay away?’
‘If his coming here is going to put us all under suspicion and result in the house being taken apart by agents of the Committee of Examinations, I’d be mad if I didn’t,’ returned Jack irritably. And to Sam, ‘You must know what I’m talking about – so explain it to her. And, in the meantime, try to convince me I’m not going to wake up one morning to find her being hauled off by a couple of pursuivants.’
A sudden grin lit Sam’s mobile face.
‘Do you need convincing?’ he asked. ‘Her interest in national affairs registers at several points below zero.’
For an instant, it looked as if Mr Morrell was going to smile back and Bryony held her breath. Had she but known it, however, Jack was in something of a quandary. The trouble was not just that he liked Sam – but that, ever since Peter Chamberlen had delivered Annis safely of their son, his hostility towards the good doctor’s Leveller friends had somehow declined. He had even, though he’d have bled to death sooner than admit it, come to the reluctant conclusion that they had one or two sound ideas. The result was that he fixed Mr Radford with an austere eye and said, ‘All right. I take your point. But I want your word that you’ll never involve her in anything even remotely illegal.’
‘You have it,’ said Sam promptly. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. I’d like to observe that if either one of you has anything in mind beyond mere friendship, you can forget it right now. I don’t think I’m an unreasonable man; but it will be a cold day in hell before I let my niece be courted by a fellow with only part-time employment as a cloth-cutter – and one, moreover, who’s likely to spend half of his life in gaol. Clear?’
‘Clear,’ agreed Sam on a quiver of laughter.
‘Clear,’ echoed Bryony. Then, with the ghost of a smile, ‘Don’t worry, Uncle Jack. I like Sam – but I wouldn’t marry him if I was at my last prayers.’
‘And I’d as soon wed a well-brought-up Puritan,’ remarked Sam cheerfully. ‘But I suppose it takes all sorts, doesn’t it?’
*
Once out in the crisp air of the street, Bryony relapsed immediately into depression and stalked silently in the general direction of Bunhill Fields. Sam thrust his hands deep into his pockets and followed her, his limp slightly more pronounced than usual after six weeks of enforced inactivity.
‘What was it like in Newgate?’ asked Bryony abruptly.
Having been under the impression that she had demanded this walk in order to tell him
her own troubles, this wasn’t the opening Sam had expected. He shrugged slightly and said, ‘The first week was the worst. They put me in the common gaol with all the cut-throats and pickpockets and so forth. It’s filthy and overcrowded and you daren’t sleep in case somebody steals your boots. Fortunately, my friends brought me enough money to pay for a cell with a bed – which, though small and rather damp, seemed like luxury.’ He paused and then added dryly, ‘It’s robbery, of course. Eleven shillings a week, excluding food and linen. But then, they’re selling to a captive market. Literally.’
She looked at him. ‘Politics, Sam?’
‘You asked.’ He raised one dark brow. ‘If you want to change the subject, you can tell me what’s wrong.’
Her mouth drooped again and she stared at her feet.
‘It’s Gabriel. He’s gone off to marry some woman in Yorkshire … and I can’t bear it. It wouldn’t be so bad if he loved her, but he doesn’t. He’s only doing it because of her stupid land.’
Sam frowned. He wasn’t especially well-acquainted with the Colonel and they clashed on certain vital issues, but he nevertheless said, ‘Are you sure? I wouldn’t have thought he was the type to marry for money.’
‘He’s not. He’s being honourable and sacrificing himself. She’s the mercenary one – and what’s more, she’s a Royalist.’ She heaved a morose sigh. ‘I suppose I’d better explain it all from the beginning.’
Sam thought so too but, at the end of it, wasn’t sure he was much the wiser – except on one point.
‘Bryony … I know you had a fancy for the Colonel. But, quite apart from being almost your uncle, did you never think that he’s too old for you?’
She cast him a glance of acute disfavour.
‘You sound just like Aunt Annis.’
‘I don’t mean to. But I can’t help thinking he must be old enough to be your father.’
‘He’s not. He’s thirty-four and I love him!’
‘And what about when he’s approaching fifty and you’re just turned thirty? Oh – all right, all right. You’re not a child and you know what you’re doing. But all this doom and gloom is pretty futile. After all, if he’s married, that’s the end of the matter; and if he’s not, you’re upsetting yourself for nothing.’
‘Nothing? I’ve loved him for ages – nearly a year. And he’d have noticed me in time. I know he would.’
‘At the risk of having you hit me, I’d have to say that I doubt that. You may not regard him as an uncle – but I’ll wager my last groat he looks on you as his niece. And a man with any scruples at all doesn’t let himself fall in love with a seventeen-year-old relative.’
Bryony scowled at him.
‘Do you have to be so depressing?’
‘Yes. It’s my fatal flaw. Yours, of course, is being naturally crabby.’
‘I’m not!’
‘Yes, you are.’ He grinned at her. ‘We could mend it with the right diversion – but I don’t have time right now. I need to let certain people know I’m free again … and I want to talk to John.’
‘Mr Lilburne?’ An odd gleam entered Bryony’s eye. ‘The Commons have let him out on bail.’
‘I know. And it was just my luck to be clapped up at more or less the same time.’
‘When you go to see him, will you take me with you?’
Sam stopped dead. ‘What?’
‘I don’t mean now, today – but sometime. Will you?’
There was a brief incredulous silence and then he said, ‘No. Your Uncle Jack would have my head on a plate.’
‘He won’t know.’ She smiled winsomely. ‘Go on. Say you’ll take me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s famous. And popular. People may disagree with him but nobody seems to actually dislike him.’ Bryony surveyed him innocently and played her trump card. ‘Also, though I may be ignorant – I’m not stupid. And if Free-born John is everything you say he is, he’ll have no trouble educating me, will he?’
‘No,’ said Sam shortly. ‘He won’t. And that’s precisely what I’m afraid of.’
*
During the first week of January a tremor of shock passed over London when it was learned that His Majesty had rejected Parliament’s latest peace terms in favour of signing an Engagement with the Scots. People muttered darkly about a potential invasion; apprentice disturbances assumed a suddenly Royalist flavour; and the Commons immediately took the dual precautions of disbanding the Committee of Both Kingdoms and voting that no more negotiations be carried on with the King. But no one, so far as Jack Morrell could see, was doing anything about rising prices and continually flagging trade.
It took Bryony several days to persuade Sam to introduce her to his hero and, by then, an originally idle suggestion had become a mild obsession. Sam put this down to her habit of wanting things she couldn’t have; but the truth was the Bryony, pursuing her campaign through a series of question, found herself increasingly intrigued by Sam’s answers.
She learned how he’d first met Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburne at the siege of Banbury in 1644 – how he’d talked through the night with him and been inspired with a sense of purpose that had stayed with him ever since. And it made her think. Sam had been eighteen then – only a year older than she was now; but she couldn’t imagine anyone having such an effect on her. She did not, of course, realise that Sam was already doing so.
The small house in Halfmoon Alley to which Sam eventually took her presented an appearance of neatness struggling against chaos. A baby in the crook of her arm and two toddlers clutching at her skirts, Elizabeth Lilburne attempted to make room amidst books and papers for the bread she had just taken from the oven; and her husband sat on the other side of the table, clutching a sheaf of closely-written notes to his chest. Both of them were laughing … but turned with one accord to welcome their guests.
Afterwards, Bryony could never remember precisely what she had expected John Lilburne to be. She only knew that he was none of the things she had imagined. Her first impression was of a well-dressed man in his early thirties, with short dark hair, a moustache and a face mildly disfigured by scars from the accident which had almost blinded him in one eye; her second was that he looked rather ill. But these were only superficial things. The attributes that made Free-born John what he was came from inside; passion tempered with humour, integrity with warmth, zeal with charm. And something else less easy to identify … but which Bryony eventually recognised as a simple ability to care.
She sat quietly while he and Sam discussed committee reports from the Army, towns outside London and from a tavern called the Whalebone. Then they moved on to the latest progress of something called the Long Petition.
‘And this time, men must be prepared to support it with action, knowing they’re fighting for the liberties and privileges – otherwise I wouldn’t give three pence for ten thousand hands,’ concluded Lilburne crisply. ‘But enough of that now.’ He leaned back in his chair and eyed Bryony with a faint gleam of mischief. ‘Sam says you’re here because I’m famous. Is that true?’
She glared at Sam and blushed.
‘Partly. I suppose he also said I haven’t two opinions to rub together?’
‘No. He said you were curious.’
Bryony put an arm round two-year-old Bess and absently lifted her on to her knee.
‘Does that make a difference?’
‘Of course. Curiosity is the sign of an open mind – not an empty one. If you don’t ask questions, how are you to draw conclusions?’
This was a view which had never before occurred to her and she found it encouraging. She glanced at Sam; then, turning back to the man who’d been called everything from England’s Physician to the Seducer of the Army, she said diffidently, ‘Is that what you did – in the beginning, I mean?’
‘Not exactly. I met Dr Bastwick at the time when he’d been imprisoned for writing pamphlets against the bishops – and it struck me that a man should be able to express his views without fear of
arrest. So I got his Litany printed in the Low Countries and brought it back here for distribution.’ He shrugged, smiling a little. ‘I was caught, of course – and, as you probably know, I refused to take the Star Chamber oath on the grounds of both its illegality and as a free-born Englishman. That was ten years ago. And it was a turn of phrase I’ve never been allowed to forget.’
Bryony smiled back at him. ‘And then?’
‘He was whipped at the cart’s tail and put in the pillory,’ said Sam, unable to stay silent any longer. ‘And when they gagged him to stop him speaking, he produced handfuls of pamphlets from his pockets and threw them into the crowd.’
‘After which,’ added Elizabeth with a mixture of fondness and irritation, ‘he was locked up in the Fleet for two years.’
‘Whose story is this?’ Free-born John looked from his wife to his friend and back to Bryony. ‘You see? No one allows me to speak.’
‘No one that I know can stop you,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If they could, you might be home more often.’
‘I’d only get under your feet.’
‘I could accustom myself to it,’ she said. And then, noticing Bryony’s uncertainty, ‘Don’t worry, my dear. It’s true I hate him being in prison but I wouldn’t have him ignore injustice in order to sit at home in his slippers. Not that this latest sentence isn’t a disgrace! John merely gave evidence in a case of army corruption – with Noll Cromwell’s blessing, too.’
‘Is that why the House of Lords sent you to the Tower?’ asked Bryony.
‘Not entirely,’ replied Lilburne. ‘It was because, in accordance with Magna Carta, I denied their lordships’ right to judge either myself or any other commoner in a criminal matter.’
‘M-Magna Carta?’ she echoed feebly. ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’
An expression of amused severity crossed Free-born John’s face.
‘Never pretend, my child. If you don’t know – ask.’
‘I will,’ she promised. ‘I’ll ask Sam on the way home. But first there’s something I’d like to ask you.’ She paused and drew a deep breath. ‘Please may I come again?’