Lindsey Davis - Rebels and traitors

The mighty bang was not so large as the explosion of the magazine at Edgehill, into which a soldier put his hand while holding a lighted match. Nor so terrible as the eruption of eighty-four barrels of gunpowder at Torrington Church that nearly killed Sir Thomas Fairfax in a shower of blazing timbers, bricks and molten lead. Nor yet so enormous as the old gatehouse at Colchester that the two Jukes brothers had watched burst apart, showering severed limbs and shattered stone for many yards. But it was larger than anybody present ever wanted to experience.

The customer was killed outright. Fragments of him were flung across the yard. His clay pipe was seen later, stranded up on the thatch, mysteriously unbroken by its flight. Flames in the courtyard leapt as high as the second- floor balcony. Daubs of molten pitch flew in all directions, sticking to people and dribbling down walls, doors and windows. Small fires started where burning substances landed. Horses in the stables panicked. Women put aprons over their heads and ran away screaming. Men quickly sobered, picked themselves up and ran for water buckets. Mrs Tew flew among them, rapping out orders as she tried to save her tavern.

Lambert threw himself into fire- fighting. As if he had suddenly realised just what they were dealing with in Orlando Lovell, he roared at his brother to run, run home at once to where he might be sorely needed. So as the fire at the Swan came under control, Gideon Jukes raced off in pursuit of the man who had caused it. As fast as he could, Gideon set off back to Shoe Lane. He was too late there too.

No man takes a wife but there is an engagement, and I think that a man ought to keep it.

(Thomas Rainborough at the Putney Debates)

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when Orlando Lovell walked into Juliana's shop. She looked up. Simply by standing silent in the doorway he had made her afraid. He came in and bolted the door behind him so they would not be interrupted.

Lovell had a burning pain in his left shoulder. He had dug out the slug himself, using a little quill-pen knife; he never lacked physical courage. He had buttoned up his coat tight to the collar, concealing the blood on his shirt. Some men swallowed aqua vitae in these circumstances, believing it would dull the pain. Lovell knew it did not work. Besides, he needed a clear head.

It was nearly ten years since he had seen his wife. Juliana had gone from a girl to a mature woman. Lovell found her queening it in her little shop, crisp and confident, fuller in the body, steelier in mind. But her face looked tired, and Lovell knew he had done that to her, by abducting Tom.

He told himself he was not, and never had been, a bad man. He had no real wish to hurt Juliana, not for hurt's sake. He just wanted what was his. He wanted it now, for most particular reasons. He had to get Tom back; Tom knew too much.

Lovell could see, even before he spoke to her, there was no chance of taking Juliana from that man, Jukes. He did not fool himself that he wanted her himself. He had lived without her happily enough for a long time. What did annoy him was the way she looked at him, as if she knew what he thought without his even having spoken. He resented being understood. He liked to be mysterious.

Naturally, he hated the fact Juliana preferred another man. 'Oh dear heart! What have you done to us?' Sighing heavily, he made his voice profound with sorrow, like an ageing tragedian throwing his all into a talismanic role for which he had been famous.

Jarred out of her trance, Juliana demanded, 'Where is Thomas?'

Lovell smiled sadly. 'I came here to ask you the same question.'

She panicked. 'What have you done with him?'

'He ran off. So, if he did not come here to you, the ungrateful brat could be anywhere.'

'He is just a child!' Juliana cried, as if father and son had just gone off together on a fishing trip and Lovell had lost sight of the boy accidentally. 'How could you let him go roaming the streets? Anyone may abduct him, for terrible purposes. How did you make him run away from you?'

Lovell immediately put the blame on her. 'Well, you brought him up disobedient and reckless!'

'Oh no! He inherited running away from you.' Juliana's voice hardened. They ought to have been strangers, but they fell into a quarrel like any married couple.

Lovell watched her, as she tried to gauge how to handle this situation. She was better-looking than he remembered. Her features had sharpened handsomely, while her new self-assurance made her shine. She dressed more prettily than she might have done as the wife of a Bible-scrutinising, psalm-singing, perjury-preaching puritan. Selling haberdashery demanded that she have fancies about her. Her skirt was glazed linen, over which she wore an unusual finely knitted jacket, patterned in shades of salmon and fern green; the silk came from Naples, but she had knitted the panels herself. Unadorned by jewellery — though Lovell was irritably sure he had given her plenty — she had tied up her dark hair in a neat bun, pulled straight back without a fringe nowadays, but still with bundles of side-ringlets like those she used to wear.

When he first walked in, Juliana had found that her mind cleared, the way soldiers must ignore everything except the immediate frightening emergency. She wanted to rid her premises of Lovell as quickly as possible, concentrating on that, even though she must learn what he had done with Tom and prevent his taking anything else she treasured…

'What happened to the little one?' Orlando's eyes bored into Juliana, as he instinctively sensed her anxiety.

'Valentine? His name is Valentine!' Juliana reprimanded him. 'I brought him up, as best I could, having no money or support from you. Sometimes we went hungry; often we were afraid; we were unwelcome where you had left us; and virtually homeless — '

'Don't dramatise. I know you lived in Lewisham.' Lovell glanced around, his lip curling. 'And now you have this! You have dwindled yourself into a seller of trifles — '

'This', Juliana informed him, stiffening, 'is what my father did, and my grandfather. This has put clothes on our backs and food on the table. Yesterday, for instance, we had scotch collops and tonight we shall have a chicken fricassee, which is Val's favourite.'

Wilfully missing the point, Lovell reminisced: Ah how I remember when you used to make us with your own hands a wonderful quelquechose — ' A quelquechose was a mixed pan-fried dish with many ingredients — whatever a stretched housewife could cobble together by emptying her pantry. As a bride and young mother, Juliana had certainly been stretched and she remembered it bitterly. 'So dear little Val likes a fricassee, does he?' Juliana regretted mentioning Valentine. Lovell, who probably still thought of his younger son as a toddler, was playing on her fear again. 'So where is my little lordling?'

'He goes to school.' Juliana was hiding the truth. Valentine was here. He was upstairs, kept off school with an illness, probably feigned. Val's idea of a good life was lying in bed, wrapped in a quilt, surrounded by books and toys, with the dogs Muff and Hero snuggled alongside him, tended by sympathetic women who would bear him broths or fruit juices. Now eleven years old and a master-manipulator, Val had perfected a cough that sounded as if he had only two days left on earth. It had to be taken seriously. The one time Juliana had hardened her heart and sent him to school anyway, he had been brought home in an apple cart, semi-conscious, with the worst case of croup the doctor had ever seen… 'He is good at his books and is to go to Oxford University with a generous legacy from poor Edmund Treves.' She could not help a note of pride.