whispered to me, 'If we were not good wives, we should fill in the hour while the flames are doused, having liaisons with these gallants!''
'She was never a one for the gallants,' Owen congratulated himself.
'Oh do not be so sure, my dear! She would eye up a gallant astutely — you were safe because of her wisdom; those dark eyes of hers would twinkle as she knew them all for shallow idiots…'
Very carefully, avoiding too much emotion, they listed the qualities of loyalty and courage that had made Nerissa follow Owen and the army, and the sense of justice that made her denounce the New Model Army troopers who were savaging the other women.
The colonel had drunk deeper than usual. There were a few good bottles of wine in the cellar and this was his last chance to enjoy them. When he soldiered on the Continent, he and Nerissa had more than once moved on and left a life behind, but he had never had to do it alone. Nerissa had been there, ready to prepare some new home wherever they landed up. As he stretched his long legs and brooded, Juliana considered privately how relationships between families worked and sometimes shifted. Nerissa had been her friend; she took in the Lovells to be part of her household, yet it was her gift to Juliana specifically. The two couples had lived side by side, though theirs was never the timeless friendship that came from years of living in neighbouring villages or adjacent town houses, nor had they a history of working together as courtiers. Even though Juliana and Owen had just talked intimately about Nerissa, in truth she barely knew the man. She was not certain he understood why Nerissa had been so fond of her. Perhaps she and Owen were each a little jealous of Nerissa's closeness to the other… Now friendship would continue on the surface, but awkwardly. If Lovell had been here, that would have been worse.
Addressing the issue of Lovell more freely than usual, Juliana said abruptly: 'You do not like my husband, I suspect.'
The colonel started. 'He was a good soldier, madam.'
Juliana smiled dryly. 'You may be open — give me your opinion. I shall never see you again, nor you me — and anyway, he is probably dead.'
Mcllwaine drew in breath, in the way he had of deferring difficulties. Juliana let him hesitate but she left a silence which needed to be filled. It was a night for closing accounts. Eventually he admitted: 'I did not like Lovell after Lichfield.'
'That was a siege Prince Rupert raised — what, two years ago? What happened?'
'Much desecration.' Mcllwaine's brow darkened while Juliana watched him closely. 'When we relieved the town, it was already notorious for the sacrilegious behaviour of the Parliamentary troops who were there before us. Those Roundheads had been merciful to the people, but pitiless to the cathedral. They quartered the priests' copes and surplices, ripping them with swords as if the very vestments were being punished for treason. Destroyed the organ pipes. Stabled their horses in the nave, broke up the floors, shat in the quire. Every day they hunted a cat through the church, whooping as they raised an echo under the high vaulting. They brought a calf to the font, wrapped in linen, and baptised it, giving it a name, to express their scorn of the holy sacrament — '
Juliana interrupted. 'This was not my husband. This was the enemy'
'You asked why I did not like him. Well, this is why: during their violations, the rebels had broken into the crypt. They tore open the ancient bishops' tombs, scattering the holy bones of those good men — and tearing the episcopal rings from their decaying fingers.'
Juliana now saw where the diatribe was heading. 'Orlando wears a great red-stoned ring. He had it off a prisoner.'
'So he says,' snapped Owen Mcllwaine. 'I believe Lovell descended to the crypt himself, and he took that ring from some long-dead bishop's finger.'
Juliana could do nothing but nod gravely.
The conversation had opened sluices. Suddenly Mcllwaine leaned forward earnestly. 'This is a stricken country. You have nothing here. Why don't you come away to Ireland?'
He could not know anything of Juliana's family background (Lovell never spoke of it), but Mcllwaine must have seen enough to realise his wild question would not altogether startle this young woman. To up sticks and escape her troubled life held definite attractions. Juliana had the independence to do it. Her grandmother would have gone in a trice.
Juliana foresaw how it would end. At that moment, she was being offered nothing more than assistance and protection. But she knew enough of men to realise Owen Mcllwaine had always until now had Nerissa to share his life; he would be unable to exist alone. He was a man in loss, already fumbling for simple solutions. If Juliana went to Ireland, it would eventually seem natural to him that she, Nerissa's friend, would take Nerissa's place. For Owen it would be a happy resolution.
For Juliana, it had a bad taste even while it was just an idea. She might have married Orlando Lovell, yet she was fastidious. Do I think too much of myself? she wondered. Or just too little of men?.. This was war. She felt that social civilities were breaking down; she guessed at worse to come.
She thanked the colonel sweetly and said she had to stay in Oxford until her child was born. Before objections could be made, she added that Oxford was where Lovell would come to find her. She must remain here until she heard firm news. 'Whatever you think, I married him. It was my choice. He is my man, just as you were Nerissa's. He is the father of my children. Even if he is dead, when my children one day ask me about him, I must be able to tell them how he fared. Indeed, I must know it myself
'He does not deserve you,' said Owen. 'Though as my dearest Nerissa would say — what man is there alive who deserves the woman who puts up with him?'
They had spent their memories of Nerissa, however. The night was over. Next morning Mcllwaine took his leave, Grania riding on a pack-horse behind him. Men had appeared from nowhere to join him. A small party set off towards Wales, which had always been hot in support of the King. The colonel had once hoped to go north-west, if the roads were clear, and try to reach Holyhead where they could take a boat direct across the Irish Sea. Now it was thought too dangerous, so they were riding into South Wales and somehow onwards from there.
Juliana waved them off. She went indoors before the clatter of hooves had vanished, closing the door on a silent house. As soon as she was alone she remembered the sword Orlando had once given her to protect herself. She hated it and could have passed it on to the colonel to hang on his empty baldric. But she had lost her chance and was stuck with it. The weapon must remain under her mattress, where Orlando had insisted on placing it when they first came to St Aldate's.
Shortly she would break down in grief for Nerissa. After that, she must try to plan ahead.
For the time being she would only be weeping for her friend. She had no other sense of bereavement. She did not suppose for a moment that Orlando Lovell, her cavalier husband, had died at Naseby.
That would have been too easy.
Chapter Thirty-Four — Oxford: 1645
For almost a fortnight Juliana was stuck in the house, alone with a boisterous child not yet two years of age, coping with her fears of giving birth. She had warned the midwife who, being a decent woman, sent a maid to check on progress every day. On the 5th of July, three weeks after Naseby, the maid ran home to fetch the midwife who was fortunately free to attend. Under her supervision Juliana gave birth to her second son after a blessedly swift labour. The baby was small, which helped, despite which he seemed healthy. He looked like his father, much more than his brother Tom had done. The mother survived, without any infection setting in, though in the emotional aftermath of birth, she collapsed in wild torrents of tears. She refused to give the child a name, saying hysterically that his missing father must do that.
The concerned midwife stayed overnight, then took it upon herself to hire a nurse — 'As is so often necessary, not for the child, who thrives lustily, but the poor demented mother who is quite beside herself…'
The nurse was a fat, evil-smelling, elderly body who soon found what was left of Colonel Mcllwaine's wine cellar. Thomas Lovell toddled to alert his mother that debauchery was taking place in the parlour. Aged twenty-one months and barely talking, Tom Lovell was, the nurse then swore, 'a spy and sneak as wicked as any Roundhead!'
'She whacked me!' accused Tom, who had until then known only gentle treatment and favouritism at the
