'I believe not.'
'A blessing… How distressed you must be to lose him.'
'Ralph was the finest fellow,' said Lovell in a perfunctory way he had. 'So here's the situation, Gadd: as soon as my father's first grief has abated, I shall attempt to mend matters. I would go to him at once, but I should look like a poxy opportunist…' Lovell spoke without irony.
'Do not besmirch your honest motives with such a suggestion,' chided Mr Gadd. He had nothing against poxy opportunists, if they fitted his own plans. With Ralph Lovell dead, and childless, Orlando was the heir.
So, on the basis that he was a gentleman, whose father was a gentleman of substance, Mr Gadd found Orlando Lovell's claim for Juliana acceptable. Documents were drawn up with the haste that comes in wartime. Lovell then rejoined the King's army on its journey to London and what would be the stand-off at Turnham Green.
Just before he mounted up and rode off, he turned back and kissed his new betrothed. Until that moment they had exchanged barely a handshake. Juliana received the kiss calmly, though a thrill shot through her and the warmth of his mouth pressing firmly on hers lingered in her memory for days.
She was not in love with Orlando Lovell, though she considered that she could be. She was smiling as the cavalier swung into the saddle and gave her a gallant wave of his black, feathered hat; from then on she looked for news of the King's campaign with a new interest and a new anxiety. The prospect of Lovell's return gave her the excitement every bride deserves to feel.
After the fiasco at Turnham Green, the King reversed his march and returned to Oxford, which was now destined to be his home and his military headquarters. Lovell did not revisit Wallingford en route, but he wrote: he and Juliana would go into lodgings in Oxford. He was busy finding somewhere, and would soon bring a marriage licence. Juliana must accompany him to Oxford; she had no other place of safety. Mr Gadd was anxious to return to Somerset where he would resume his quiet retirement, or as quiet as it could be during a civil war. Juliana had no other friends or relatives to give her a home. She could not expect to seek safety among the Lovell family, whose present feelings towards Orlando were untested. If he invited them to his wedding, they must have refused. Besides, Juliana was a bride of spirit, who wished to be beside her husband.
Lovell seemed pleased to take her to Oxford with him and he made the arrangements quickly. As the new royal headquarters, the town was crammed with more people than it could happily contain. Numbers increased daily. Even small houses were overflowing, sometimes with five or six soldiers billeted on reluctant civilians who had barely house room for their own families. The best Lovell could find was one room, though it was in the house of a glover so there would be no industrial or market smells.
'Will he charge us much rent?' Juliana asked nervously.
'He can charge what he likes; he won't be paid. I am a soldier, quartered upon him by the rules of war, and he must accept it.'
Lovell's quick-witted bride at once foresaw that she would receive a cold welcome. She grew perturbed about food, heating and laundry. From her past life, though she kept the reasons from Lovell, she knew that a landlord who was being paid no rent would refuse to provide meals, coals or clean bedding; he might loathe tenants coming and going; he was likely to be abusive.. Lovell pinched her cheek affectionately and declared all would be well. Fortunately for him, he was marrying a girl whose past history had taught her resilience; perhaps he suspected it when he chose her. Juliana remembered her grandmother complaining of landlords' faults in more than one lodging house, as the Carlills had shifted from place to place; she only wished she could remember how Grand-mere had dealt with it.
Even before the church service she began to see that to be struggling among the gentry was no different from struggling at lower levels of society. Still, she was becoming a gentlewoman, as her grandmother had yearned for her to be. Juliana had faith in her new husband's obvious ambition. She and Lovell together would make a determined couple; they should be able to climb as high as they wanted.
The service took place at St Leonard's Church, Wallingford, which had a Royalist rector, Richard Pauling — a man who had told his congregation that the leaders of Parliament were 'men of broken fortunes who have spent their means lewdly'. In accordance with the Book of Common Prayer, his wedding sermon emphasised that marriage was for the avoidance of fornication, dwelling less on its benefits for the mutual society, help and comfort of the partners. Eliding into the usual instructions to procreate, he expressed an enthusiastic hope that any children would be brought up in habits of 'obedience', where it was understood he meant obedience to the King. Since he assumed both parties were stalwart Royalists, he did not dwell on it.
During his duller passages, Juliana imagined how much havoc she could wreak if she jumped up and claimed to be an Antinomian by religion and a Pymite by politics…
Although her opinions were quiet and conservative, she was intellectually curious. She knew that John Pym was the arch rebel, and she understood why. In the public mind, Antinomianism was viewed as a particularly scandalous cult, since its devotees believed that they were under no obligation to obey any instructions from religious authorities. This would seriously distress the Reverend Pauling. Mr Gadd had explained to Juliana, one peaceful evening after dinner, that Antinomianists rejected the notion that obedience to a code of religious law was necessary for salvation. Gadd cheerily discussed why this doctrine was seen as leading inevitably to licentiousness: it was assumed that any Antinomian must have chosen his theology solely to justify unrestrained debauchery…
These whimsical thoughts kept Juliana sane during the lengthy service. Lovell, she thought, had simply braced himself. He appeared to be in a kind of coma.
Since neither bride nor groom had a local home parish, the union was by special licence, obtained from the Bishop of Oxford. Their witnesses were William Gadd and the ever-forgiving Edmund Treves. Still in love with Juliana, Treves was composing in his head a lyrical poem called 'On Juliana's Wedding'; at least the lopsided verses petered out quickly. No scholar emerged from Oxford University without knowing that a lyrical poem should be brief.
For female support, Juliana had only Little Prue, who saw no reason to cease gurning at the bride as if she thought Juliana was a witch.
No witch would be attired in a gown of deep peacock-blue satin over a silver petticoat, with cuffs and collar of antique Paris lace. These materials had been stored up among sheaves of dry lavender in a chest of her grandmother's for twenty years. Juliana only timidly believed herself worthy of the satin, yet she feared that in a time of war it would be lost altogether if it was not put into use. The chest, now hers, was her only dowry and trousseau. It contained finely embroidered household linen, much of it her grandmother's handiwork, in sufficient quantity to convince Lovell that the Carlills once possessed wealth and must still have it. When Juliana opened the chest and showed its contents, she could tell he had hoped to see money instead.
Lovell had looked absolutely ready to bolt when he noticed the chest contained exquisite baby-clothes. He had forgotten that marriage meant children. Still, any fine goods would have commercial value. A tactful bridegroom, he refrained from saying so.
They spent their wedding night at Wallingford, where the judge's house provided comfort, space and privacy. A supper was arranged, at which the officiating parson presented himself. After Juliana withdrew to the bridal chamber, Mr Gadd, Parson Pauling and Edmund Treves encouraged Lovell with the traditional bridegroom's toasts to put him in good heart for his duties, overdoing it by a good deal, as was also traditional.
Upstairs, Juliana was attended by Little Prue. The sombre maid helped her undress and brought her the finely embroidered nightdress that was her grandmother's last good piece of work. Nobody had supplied any lessons on what now awaited her; Juliana was reliant upon what she could remember of her grandmother's blunt descriptions of sexual exchanges. It was her good fortune that Roxanne had spoken out openly. No traumatic surprises would horrify Juliana. In fact, so detailed were her grandmother's stories that when she had lain waiting for some time in the exquisite bridal nightdress, and the bed had warmed, Juliana slipped from between the sheets, took off the nightdress, which she folded neatly on a country chair, and climbed back in bed to await her husband naked. This was not to seduce Lovell. She saw no point in having a beautiful garment damaged by passion.
Her wait was lengthy. Many brides fell asleep at this point. Instead, Juliana lay quietly, in the judge's best bedroom with its dark panelled walls and a small fire flickering in the fireplace. She could still hear the faint voices of her wedding guests enjoying themselves in the parlour downstairs. A window seat looked over the garden; she could have knelt there and seen Edmund Treves revelling in his misery as her disappointed suitor, until he grew too cold in the November night air and went indoors, red-nosed, to get stupidly drunk. Even with the judge absent, it
