men from existing armies, particularly the Eastern Association troops of Oliver Cromwell, those who had shown their fine mettle and discipline at Marston Moor. There had been negotiations for peace, at Uxbridge, but these were disrupted by Parliament's intransigence. In January, Archbishop Laud was put on trial; the examination took several months, all tending towards his certain execution.
The Royalist Marquis of Montrose raised the Highlands of Scotland against the Presbyterian Lowlands, fomenting old clan jealousies. His dramatic victories encouraged the King into 'new imaginings', as his critics called them. Charles replaced his old dream of three armies conjoining for a London assault with a wild new hope that the romantic Montrose would descend from Scotland to help devastate all the King's enemies. More prosaically, Prince Rupert was at his usual dogged work in the west and the Midlands, Lovell with him.
In April Parliament's New Model Army was formally instituted and the first result was that its commander, Sir Thomas Fairfax, took control of strategy in the Oxford area. The town was once again threatened with a siege.
On the 7th of May the King left Oxford — a timely exit. Fairfax continued to build siege works, east of the River Cherwell. As defensive measures by the Royalists, water meadows were flooded, buildings in the suburbs were burned and Wolvercote was garrisoned. There was worrying military activity. Real fighting came uncomfortably close. The Royalists lost an outpost at Gaunt House, but at the beginning of June the town garrison made a successful sally at Headington Hill. Then Fairfax left troops under Sir Richard Browne in the area, as he abandoned the siege to pursue the King.
Juliana had learned that her duty was to keep a brave face whatever happened. Nonetheless, she grew extremely fearful. Lovell had been away with Prince Rupert but, just before the King left, Rupert and his brother Maurice returned to Oxford for a rendezvous. Orlando came to her for two days, before the army moved out for their summer campaign. Juliana was then seven or eight months pregnant. They discussed sending her to a safe house, but had no friends or acquaintances who could offer such a refuge. She would have to remain in Oxford, where at least she was at home — in so far as they had ever had a home.
'Sweetheart, Fairfax will withdraw. He cannot keep his army tied up here while the King and the princes are out on the loose. Oxford is a nothing to them while it is empty of King Charles. You will be safe. Trust me.'
Juliana did trust him, on tactics. She was in such an advanced state of pregnancy she could no longer travel, especially since wherever she went she must take young Tom. One thing distressed her particularly: Nerissa Mcllwaine would not be here with her when her time came.
The Mcllwaines were planning to return soon to Ireland. There, the Irish Catholic Confederation, an alliance of upper-class Catholics and clergy, controlled two-thirds of the country and had formed an effective government. The confederation had concluded peace negotiations with the Marquis of Ormond, who represented the English Parliament and, confusingly, the King. It seemed a promising development.
Juliana finally asked openly why her friends had first left their country. She knew Colonel Mcllwaine had gone to fight on the Catholic side in the Thirty Years War and had assumed it was caused by the intense English settlement of Ireland. 'Oh, there was a family quarrel,' Nerissa disabused her. 'Owen stormed off. He seems mild, but he's a hothead on occasion.' The colonel did indeed seem mild, though no milksop.
He spoke at least four languages, and occasionally talked with Juliana in French, when he wanted to annoy Lovell. Lovell, having fought on the Protestant side on the Continent, knew Flemish and German but had picked up only curses and insults in French.
After years in France, the Mcllwaines had first come to England hoping to make a civilian life at the new Queen's court. They were in their sixties now; the colonel was looking for peace and retirement.
'What happened to your children?' Juliana blurted out. She had always feared some terrible, violent fate had befallen the family.
Nerissa shrugged. 'They never thrived. I lost every one, none older than six years. To some extent I blame our rootless life, our constant wanderings, our living in forts and garrisons. But we could have been on a country estate or in a neat town house and suffered the same.'
The women were silent for a while, thinking of life's fragility. Then Nerissa said slowly, 'So… Juliana, it is not from want of friendship towards you, but Owen will fight this year's campaign, then he and I will take our chance back in the old country' Nerissa knew that losing her one close friend filled Juliana with deep foreboding. 'You must let me go and be of good heart. And when they leave Oxford, I shall be following my husband with the army'
When the troops rode out, women always accompanied them. Yet camp followers were not all common wenches and whores, as their enemies suggested, but often respectable wives. For one thing, it kept the respectable husbands from the beds of prostitutes. The women cooked, made fires, guarded baggage, searched for the dead, nursed the wounded, provided encouragement and cheer.
'Of course, you must. I would come with you myself if I could.'
In her current condition, Juliana could not. She would have gone, to be with Orlando, to be with Nerissa, to taste adventure and to escape the claustrophobia of Oxford. But she was only weeks from delivery. A midwife was found therefore, examined, approved and appointed. In addition, Nerissa kindly left her maid, Grania. Juliana stayed in the St Aldate's house with her eighteen-month-old boy, Tom. Everyone else she knew went away to war without her.
Then, when Sir Thomas Fairfax lifted his siege preparations and chased after the King to the Midlands, everybody Juliana knew was at the battle of Naseby, where the King was defeated.
Chapter Twenty-Six — The Midlands: 1643-44
When Rowan Tew met his sister at Henley-in-Arden he decided the best way to avoid trouble was to rename her. So she became Joseph.
It was a few days after she fled alone from Birmingham, back after that terrible Easter. Her brother had recognised her instantly from the truculent set of her body and her pale, strained face as she approached, even though after nearly fifteen miles she was limping badly. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding. At the last hamlet where she begged for food, someone had given her rags for bandages but to little effect. She had found that in these tiny groups of cottages, shaken by Prince Rupert's passage a few days before, if she gave news of the greater assaults wreaked on Birmingham, people would provide her with food. She told her stories weeping; real tears came easily.
When the group of ragged cavalier soldiers rose from hedgerows either side of her, she thought her time was up.
'Who are you for?'
'Parliament and the King.'
'Wrong answer!' Although there was no glimmer of lit matchcord, she heard the click of a musket being cocked.
With the band of whiskery layabouts levelling swords and guns, her spirit faded too much for resistance. Once she would have yelled, thrown stones, punched and spat and bit, then run away faster than anyone would bother to pursue her. Fortunately, one of the louts turned out to be her brother.
Rowan was the young Tew who had volunteered for the royal army the year before, just after the war started, when King Charles passed through Birmingham. As their father had said at the time, Rowan wanted the rations and the plunder. He looked unchanged in the six months since his sister had last seen him: still wide-eyed with fake innocence, ready to whine about bad luck, always out for easy pickings. Thin as a pea-stick under a filthy baggy shirt, he had a long fall of black hair and a new scrubby beard with a barely adequate moustache. His boots, which were too big and no doubt stolen, made him stagger with his legs apart, while sashes, sword-hangers and rattling bandoliers were slung in a carefree fashion over his bony shoulders.
The other soldiers cursed and dropped back into the damp hedges to resume their tobacco pipes. Rowan was eager to brag about his life: the free uniform, the daily food allowance, the drink, the access to weapons, the excitement, the untroubled life. He had instinctively fallen in with a bad crowd. In a disreputable army, the former vagabond had quickly found the most dissolute comrades among whom to burrow like a white maggot. A rascal from birth, he was now in his element, plundering and bullying. He and his fellows claimed to be an antiguard, men authorised by Prince Rupert to remain behind to control Henley-in-Arden; they were in effect deserters. No one had missed them — or if their absence was noticed, nothing had been done about it. To spend all day threatening
