The Queen had gone to Holland, to convey her newly married ten-year-old daughter Princess Mary. Members of the House of Orange were eager to take custody of her. A substantial sum had been paid by the Dutch to secure the highly desirable Protestant bride, who should have been accompanied by a huge dowry, although because of the English political crisis this was threatened. Instead, the Queen vigorously sought to raise funds for her husband's war. Astutely, Henrietta Maria had taken many of the Crown Jewels — not hers to sell, protested Parliament — which she touted around continental moneylenders and arms dealers, raising cash and buying weapons. It was uncertain when she would return to England. Her absence affected the early course of the war in various ways. It caused the King great anxiety — and prevented any enquiry into Henrietta Maria's reported affection for Juliana Carlill.
The easy-going Treves had gained the impression (from whom? from Lovell?) that the girl's grandmother had been among the ladies-in-waiting who greeted the young queen on her arrival in England way back in 1625. In fact Roxanne Carlill was French herself, which should have made him wonder. He would probably have backed out, had he realised that Henrietta Maria had barely known, and certainly could not remember, her supposed maid-of- honour.
The Queen's interest in Juliana was his biggest misapprehension. There were others.
Juliana Carlill was reportedly heir to a property. Lovell believed it to be 'Kentish orchards', but he had allowed himself to be led up a very winding garden path in this respect, which Edmund failed to investigate. The men took it for granted that Juliana was educated (though not too much), chaste (though not frigid), beautiful, a good dancer, witty (they had not considered whatever they meant by that), and that she would allow her husband generous time to hunt, fish, see his male friends and go out to taverns. But it was to acquire the orchards that they pressed into action. They were cavaliers, with a romantic view of women, but they knew the value of money.
Edmund had good intentions towards Juliana herself, because by nature he was thoroughly decent. Nonetheless, he was a man of his time so he hoped that her property and her position in the Queen's favour would enable him to avoid work or worry. These were perfectly acceptable reasons for seeking to marry. Lovell assured him that if he managed to persuade the girl and her guardian to have him, his mother would forget she had been given no hand in the decision and would warmly welcome the bride, along with her apple (or cherry?) orchards — which grew ever more abundant in their imagination.
Lovell was constantly on hand to steer the plan. He himself lodged in a slightly unpleasant inn. Oxford inns, which had a constantly changing, disloyal clientele, were never sleepy havens for ancient regulars, but brisk businesses run by two-faced landlords who were barely polite and who wanted to take money. It seemed natural for Lovell to spend much free time at St John's.
There, Edmund had a historic room in the old quadrangle, a fair-sized chamber up an ancient stair, where he was looked after by a scout with skinny legs who could hardly mount the steps with a coal scuttle. Edmund's scout despised scholars, and he positively loathed the intruder Lovell. Lovell knew himself to be exposed. He showed no perturbation. He came most days, daring the scout to report them for smoking. In fairness, Lovell did supply the tobacco. However, that was because he deduced that Edmund had no idea how to buy a palatable leaf, while sending out the crabby scout to the tobacconist was never an option.
To his credit, Edmund did wrestle with a perceived problem. Education had not been wasted on him. 'I should much like to be a man securely enjoying his wife's estates, but I do not see, Lovell, why an heiress of this calibre should ever take me on.'
'Nothing to it,' said Lovell. 'You must carry yourself like a fellow who has much gallant farmland of his own — but it is all temporarily entailed on your Anabaptistical second cousin.'
'And how will I manage that?'
'With meekness,' laughed Lovell. Then he added as if he knew at first hand, 'And dismally'
Juliana Carlill and her guardian were living at Wallingford in a house which the guardian, William Gadd, had borrowed. After a brief exchange of letters, Edmund Treves, supported by Lovell in the role of groomsman, travelled to see them there.
Wallingford was a spry market town, its moated castle decently held by Royalists, with lovers' walks along the river banks and a great bridge where William the Conqueror had forded the Thames on his way to be crowned. Wallingford went back in history longer than that. A fortified Saxon burgh founded by King Alfred, it had once been larger than Oxford; it was still strategic and remained very sure of itself. It was a typical English county town, which would soon be fought over bitterly.
Lovell and Treves were thrilled to learn from local intelligence that the house they had to visit was owned by a judge. This put Mr Gadd in a highly respectable context — just as Mr Gadd intended, had they known it.
Chapter Eight — Wallingford: October, 1642
One fine autumn afternoon in 1642, Juliana Carlill was summoned by her guardian's all-duties maid, Little Prue.
Juliana had custody of various heavy tomes which had belonged to her father, who spent more money than he should on books. She had been enjoying her reading, an accomplishment her father had taught her. He had collected 'Utopias'; she was deep in one called The Man in the Moon by Francis Godwin, where a shipwrecked Spanish nobleman was towed to the moon in a chariot drawn by trained geese; there he discovered a benign social paradise, with fantastic, futuristic features.
'You shall then see men fly from place to place in the air. You shall be able to send messages in an instant many miles off, and receive answer again immediately. You shall be able to declare your mind presently unto your friend, being in some private and remote place of a populous city…'
Lost to the real world, Juliana did not hear Little Prue knock at the bedchamber door, nor did she immediately notice her standing in the room. Little Prue, a vague, pale mite who came from a farming background, stared at the book as if its spellbinding hold on the young lady suggested Juliana was a witch. In seventeenth-century Europe, that could be a serious mistake. A spinster who wanted to avoid disaster never lived reclusively, nor kept a black cat, nor gave her neighbour — or her neighbour's cow — a lingering look. Otherwise, the next step was having voyeuristic men inspecting breasts and genitals for devil's teats. No witch-finder ever conceded he had made a mistake: invariably accusation led to a guilty verdict and the penalty was hanging.
Juliana smiled at Little Prue reassuringly.
On being informed that she was being visited by two strange gentlemen, Juliana went through all the sudden shifts of emotion that would overwhelm any young girl. She did not want to put down her book in mid-chapter, for one thing. Domingo Gonsales, the Utopian voyager, was about to return to earth, where he landed in China… Yes, Juliana Carlill was a reader who peeked ahead.
Her next thoughts were for her appearance. Fortunately she was wearing a neat gown of pale yellow, sprigged with tiny flowers. Little Prue, whose memory was no bigger than a bluetit's, forgot her fears of witchcraft and took it upon herself to straighten Juliana's soft collar, with its falls of delicate lace from high in the throat then down across her shoulders. Juliana's lace was always good. It had been mended in many places, but the mends were invisible, she was entirely confident of that, having reworked the threads painstakingly herself. Her hair, too, was fashionable and smart. When a young lady is staying with an elderly bachelor guardian who refuses to hear of her assisting his all-duties maid in anything more than genteel gathering of herbs from the kitchen garden (which at Wallingford was not well stocked), she finds nothing much to do with herself except mope in her bedroom arranging her hair. So Juliana had a very neat flat bun on the crown of her head, with tendrils of curl framing her face and long loose ringlets at each side.
She stepped down the dog-leg staircase, pointing her toes as she took the wooden boards, so she would not trip on the long folds of her gown. This was a Tudor house, maybe a hundred years old, built in mixed materials, with some brick. Juliana descended into a small hall, with a low plaster ceiling rather than the great hammer- beamed caverns of earlier periods, though this one boasted a heavy rent table — too heavy to move easily, and so left to gather dust here while the house stood unoccupied.
Mr Gadd, shrunken but twinkling with excitement, waited for her outside the door to a withdrawing room or parlour. Skinny legs in old-fashioned black hose capered beneath a full-bottomed doublet in a style from the time of King James. He was mostly bald, but lengthy strands of grey hair dragged on his quaint outfit's tired brocade. With
