thick wad of dark bread. Using a short-bladed, bone-handled penknife, he trimmed off the cheese in equal-sized pieces. The shallots were neatly topped, tailed and halved. He carried a beer bottle, from which he drank half before he ate and the rest once he finished. Since his ancient horse was placid, he generally drove along while doing this.
The cavalry had appeared while the daily routine was in progress. Benjamin Lucock remained placidly on his seat and carried on eating. The haughty men in buff coats barely noticed him. Crunching half a shallot was clearly a sign of innocence. That his occupation was innocent seemed to be confirmed by a load of winter vegetables from a market garden and a brace of trussed-together geese he was taking home to his daughter.
More sinister was the tall young man clad in a brown suit and jaunty beaver hat, unarmed, and apparently without trade or other decent excuse to be wandering. Gideon Jukes was ordered to descend from the cart in order to be pushed around.
Gideon now suffered because of his quiet demeanour, learned over the years from Robert Allibone. Anyone from the country areas, as these Eastern Association dragoons all were, knew that Londoners were mouthy. Gideon submitted far too demurely. His answers made things worse: he claimed he belonged to the Trained Bands and had been on the march to Gloucester. 'Which regiment?'
'The Greens.'
'Colonel Pennington's?'
It was a trap, Gideon reckoned. Isaac Pennington commanded the White Regiment. With his heart pounding, he answered as levelly as he could. 'Our colonel is Alderman John Warner.'
'In the Greens?' The soldiers were wary. 'The Reds and the Blues relieved Gloucester, that's well known.'
'I took a man's place — '
'Who? — Zebediah Nobody!'
Gideon could only smile weakly. It seemed a long time since he had offered himself as a replacement for the draper in the Red Regiment, and he really could not remember what the man had been called.
Gideon explained that today he had been delivering Parliamentary news-sheets. He had taken the precaution of keeping one in the cart. The man questioning him accepted this copy of the Public Corranto, glanced at it, then rolled it and slapped it dismissively against his thigh. The dragoons were anxious to go back to their quarters with some prize — any prize. They condemned all news-sheets as seditious and suggested that Gideon was a spy.
The usual way to extract information from spies was to hang them up over a barrel of gunpowder, before applying lighted match to their fingers. Only the bravest held out.
The dragoons produced lit matchcord to terrorise Gideon, but when they seized his fists to tie him up, they came upon his missing fingertips. To them, this implied he had already been given the burn-treatment in some previous arrest. Now they had an excuse to treat him as an escaped prisoner. They threw him across the back of a spare horse, tied his arms and feet under its belly, and began taking him across country for interrogation. They had let the carter go.
Gideon had told the truth about his mission. That would leave him nothing to confess once they began to torture him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight — Newport Pagnell: 1644
When civil dudgeon first grew high,
And men fell out they knew not why?
When hard words, jealousies, and fears,
Set folks together by the ears,
And made them fight, like mad or drunk,
For Dame Religion, as for punk;
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore:
When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded
With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded,
And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling,
And out he rode a-colonelling…
Sir Samuel Luke was a Bedfordshire knight of approximately forty years. That is to say, since he was very particular, in the early March of 1644 he was still forty, but by the end of the month he was forty-one. Gideon Jukes might have made a pocketbook note of the date, had he known he was to encounter a famous man, a man who was fingered many years later as the original of the lead figure in Samuel Butler's popular chivalric satire Hudibras. As a printer he had an interest in bestsellers.
However, Gideon knew what he liked in literature, and it was never mock-heroic poetry. Besides, Butler claimed that Hudibras was modelled on a Devon man.
Sweating with apprehension and struggling for breath as the horse painfully bounced him about, Gideon was taken a day and a half's ride, including a night when he lay trussed up on straw in stables at Dunstable. He offered to give his parole but was told parole was only for officers; spies were hog-tied until they were hanged.
These dragoons were artists in causing apprehension. There was nothing like dangling upside down with his face against a hot, hairy horse to convince a prisoner to confess.
The ride ended at last at a walled market town in a part of the country unfamiliar to Gideon. They had travelled north-west, to where Bedfordshire met Northamptonshire. He regarded this as wilderness.
When the horses slowed to a stop, other beasts neighed greetings from close by. Gideon could hear the familiar unhurried noise of a musket-barrel being cleaned inside with a scouring tool. There were men's voices, leisurely and with occasional laughter, along with a faint waft of tobacco smoke. Their accents were English, though to a nervous Londoner they smacked discouragingly of marsh and fen. Gideon and Lambert reckoned that everyone in the Midlands had cowpox and no sense of humour, while all East Anglians had webbed feet and three ears.
Without warning, someone cut him free. He slid down off the horse. As he landed backwards and floundered to regain his balance on failing legs, he took sly note of his surroundings. He must be in a garrison town. They had arrived outside the gateway to an old castle, with colours planted before it — another black flag with those Bibles — headquarters, no doubt.
Gideon was pushed indoors, and taken up stone steps to a quiet upstairs saloon. Magisterial oak armchairs stood around a long table. The room was cold and fireless. Gideon, who felt desperately hungry, had noticed a faint scent of roast fowl as he blundered upstairs, but nothing was offered to him. From beyond the leaded windows came sounds of groups of tired horsemen, clattering home in the late afternoon as the light faded. No attempt was made to steal his money, had he had any. Gideon had been searched for weapons when he was first arrested, but he was neither stripped of his clothes nor kept tied up. The castle was secure; the town was fortified. There was no point in trying to escape. Perhaps he did not want to. Adventure was already calling.
A servant in a long leather apron carried in a candlestick. The man stood this at the centre of the table, then fussily pushed in a couple of the chairs, emphasising that Gideon was not to sit.
He did have company. A drippy-nosed Bedfordshire bumpkin of about fifteen had been kicking his heels in the room. When they were left alone together Gideon ascertained that the heavy-jowled young scowler was a free person, who wished to enlist. His mother had died; his father had remarried only two months later. The unhappy teenager found this so intolerable he had run away from home.
'Are you a soldier?' asked the youth, hopefully.
'A printer.'
'What do you print?' Always a dangerous question.
'Words.' It came out as if Gideon too were still a boorish, obstinate adolescent giving silly answers. Some memory made him add, 'I print the words. I never take responsibility for ideas.' The boy who had quarrelled with his father was unimpressed.
