had been possible to find and hang the bed's robustly decorated woollen curtains. A narrow turkey rug lay beside the four-poster on the worn old floorboards. The room had been supplied with basic necessities: candlestick, chamberpot, warming pan and coals. There was a prayer book, though Juliana did not imagine her new husband would like to discover her at prayer.
For once, she was enjoying her sense of security in this spacious English room with its desirable, comfortable fittings. Already, she had forebodings about the future. Marriage might not be a haven. She knew, from what Lovell had told her about their rented room in the glover's house, that the first weeks would probably contain all the usual difficulties. At least now there would be two of them. She would not have to face the future alone.
Eventually voices came nearer, as the guests escorted the groom upstairs, all their feet stumbling tipsily on the staircase. Lovell was pushed into the room, but managed to slam shut the bedroom door behind him before anyone else entered. He waited, leaning against the door, until the others were heard retreating.
The fire had dimmed, but by its last faint light Juliana watched Lovell undress. Each masculine garment fell to the floor with a strangely heavy thud. When he turned towards the bed her heart was pounding. When he came to the bedside, she was pleasingly surprised that he paused, tilted his head a little to one side and looked down at her fondly. She was his. He had chosen her (she had chosen him).
'Here we are,' he said. 'Lovell and Lovell's wife…' Juliana gazed up at him with a dry throat. He smiled; he had a good smile, and he knew it. 'They have made me too tipsy to acquit myself resoundingly, but I shall do my best for you.'
His best on that occasion was brief. The experience left Juliana neither hurt nor shocked. Nor was she much moved, but she felt grateful for his attentions and for his polite thanks afterwards. When it was over, for one extravagantly emotional moment, she wanted to admit the truth: that her inherited 'fair orchards' in Kent on which he was laying such great store were nothing more than a modest house with, she had been told, a few undistinguished old apple trees. The house did not even yet belong to her.
Lovell had fallen asleep. By the next time they were speaking, her moment of would-be confession had passed.
When Juliana awoke in the morning, she heard Lovell relieving himself heartily by the pot-cupboard. Ruefully she recalled one of her grandmother's sarcastic comments on marriage: 'It is all pretending not to hear when they fart, and listening to them pissing in the pot!' She felt stiff, exhilarated that she was a wife, and badly in need of similar relief. As soon as Lovell returned to his side of the bed and fell back in, groaning, she slipped out on the opposite side and availed herself. Hot steam rising from the chamberpot after her husband's contribution gave her a start, but she brazened it out. They were together now. Every intimacy could be, would be, must be shared.
She had intended to rise and dress, but the air was so chilly, she scampered back to the warmth of the bed. As she shot under the coverlet, she landed with Lovell's arm around her. He had turned to her, shadowed eyes thoughtful.
'Well, madam!'
'Well, sir.'
Sweet nothings. Nothing indeed. 'Must I still call him Captain Lovell or may I say Orlando?' They had exchanged vows and spent a night of love together, yet remained strangers.
Perhaps Lovell noticed the gust of loneliness that swept over his bride. Certainly he was gazing down at her from a close enough position to witness every flicker that passed across her normally candid grey eyes. 'We shall be comfortable soon enough,' he told Juliana in a low voice. I must discover her pet name… no; find a name for her myself. His free hand was caressing her throat, as if unaware he was doing it.
Sober now, he knew just what he was doing. Juliana would never ask him, but she thought it probable that the young girl he tried to elope with had been returned to her parents more experienced than she should have been. It was best not to speculate how many other women Lovell had bedded since, nor what quality they were. 'It will be better for you if he has done it!' she heard her grandmother cackle. But it left Juliana feeling her inequality.
'I have been wondering' — she forced herself to converse — 'whether those who have been sweethearts from childhood find their wedding night easier…' It was ridiculous to be so shy with a man who had entered so closely into places she had never really believed others were intended to go.
Juliana closed her eyes. She was enjoying the pleasure Lovell's hands insidiously brought her. In small circling movements the light fingers of his right hand had come to her left breast, where the nipple reacted eagerly. Lovell bent his head to it. Juliana murmured with pleasure. Her back arched -
'Juliana, you are a man-lover!' She blushed hotly, horrified by the thought, ashamed that she had revealed too much of herself, frightening herself that her nature was improper. This was an impossible predicament; a respectable wife must not be prim, yet she could not be too forward either -
'I am as I always was — '
'Not quite the same, I hope!' Laughing, Lovell cut off her protest, his hand now sliding down her belly as the proprietor who had taken her maidenhead.
It could so easily all have gone wrong at that moment. Juliana was upset and wanted to flee from him. But Lovell only laughed with conspiratorial mockery then — fired by the exchange — he turned more urgently to the activities of a husband, which he this time fulfilled commendably. His bride was left shaken, exhilarated, and as they lay together spent, she heard once again her raucous grandmother: 'Let the man do sufficient that he can boast of it to himself…'
Being Lovell, he would boast openly to everyone — if he chose to do it. Being Lovell, however, he might gain greater pleasure from keeping secrets. Juliana was already enough of his wife to know that.
Chapter Fourteen — Oxford: 1642-43
Juliana Lovell, still uneasy with her new name, arrived in the first month that Oxford was the King's permanent headquarters.
December was not the best time here. Low mist clung to the many country waterways. The hedgerows were dark, the sere trees gloomy of aspect. Houses on the city perimeter had been blown up for strategic reasons, leaving ugly gaps. Tentative efforts were being made to construct fortifications to replace the now-useless medieval city walls, but the hard frosted ground was resisting the tools wielded by thoroughly disgruntled citizens. This was a garrison, crammed to bursting point with soldiery and the great equipment of war. The once-pleasant, meadow- fringed River Cherwell, which formed the upper reaches of the Thames, was already oozing with pestilence as the raw sewage from impossible numbers of people mingled with dead horses and dogs that blocked the current, bobbing amidst oily bubbles under the willows that trailed their slender fingers into waters befouled by butchers' bloody rejects and fermenting horticultural garbage. Smoke from house-fires and minor industries curdled the atmosphere. A miasma of unease seeped through the cobbled streets, from the chilly castle to the Cornmarket where the lead roof had been stripped to make bullets.
Unwelcome to the townspeople, the King had ensconced himself in Christ Church College. Prince Rupert was at Magdalen. The Warden's Lodge at Merton had been earmarked for the absent Queen, should she ever arrive. The colleges sycophantically professed themselves honoured by their noble guests — except when unwanted new masters were dumped on them at royal command. In more humble areas there was frank resistance to billeting, as the domestic routine of the little people's little houses was brutally disrupted. Fear riffled through the winding backstreets. Bullying took over in the taverns. Needless to say, as stationers and booksellers braced themselves for bankruptcy, all the brewers were flourishing.
Her family had wandered about in search of trade, yet Juliana had never been in a university town before. Oxford colleges would have known quiet hours before this unending military crush but the peace of the cloisters had been lost. While the carriage Lovell had borrowed to fetch her from Wallingford forced its way through the cobbled streets, she flinched at the turmoil. Juliana saw that Lovell was excited by the bustle beyond the carriage's cloudy windows. Assuring her she would get used to the commotion, he rattled off a commentary: 'The perimeter defences are being thrown up by the townspeople; everyone between sixteen and sixty has to work one day a week. About one in a hundred actually turn up, of course. I shall not allow you to do it.' Juliana wondered how he would accomplish this autocratic refusal; already she guessed he would give his instructions to her, and leave her to address the authorities. 'Possibly the breastworks will never be complete, but if they are, this town will be the best
