course. Therefore he and those who belong to him must stay apart from us!'
Exhausted, Ralph collapsed on a chair brought to him by Sir Daniel. While Jane sank onto a footstool, their sister Mary wiped dribble from Ralph's chin with a handkerchief from her pocket. Her gesture was automatic; Ralph struggled with swallowing and would have to be mopped up for the rest of his life. Who knew what other intimate attentions he would require or how any of the parties would endure it.
Juliana assessed the damage that Ralph's terrible injuries had caused to his relatives. His wife, Katherine, was sitting silent and rigid; Juliana now recognised her complete devastation. Katherine had kept her husband, yet lost her marriage. She could not cope with what had happened and was barely hiding her disintegration. Juliana read the father's despair, the sisters' misery, the brothers-in-laws' discomfort. She could only imagine how children reacted. How the servants shuddered, the tenants whispered. How Ralph himself would alter, as pain and frustration embittered him.
All eyes turned to Juliana accusingly.
She was so shocked she had leapt to her feet. They would not want her sympathy, though they had it. Ralph's disfigurement and disablement were so dreadful they must have thought his death would be easier to bear. For him and for all of them. But no; he was going to struggle on and they were going to care for him. Nothing within this large, close family would ever be the same again.
Ralph's situation should make no difference. Her pleas on Orlando's behalf remained just as valid. Yet Juliana knew her suit was blown away.
Somehow she found words. 'I am appalled, Major Lovell, to see your suffering. You may not wish to hear this, but your brother will be heartbroken; he has always spoken most kindly of you — ' Well, except when he said you had died in an explosion, so he could masquerade as heir… ' I plead with you only to remember this: just as you chose your cause according to your conscience, so did honest men on the other side. Both parties claim they fight to preserve the freedom and safety of the kingdom. That is the tragedy. Royalists' opposition to you was never ignoble; they serve the King because they believe it is the proper thing to do. They did not choose it as some path to wickedness. I know there are even those in the King's party who serve him out of ancient loyalty of subject to monarch, yet who still desire that Charles should yield to Parliament's demands. Some who always did wish it so, some who are even now pressing him to make a peace.'
This speech certainly was unexpected to the Lovells. Juliana had surprised herself.
'I do not take sides,' she added quickly. 'My coming here was for two earnest reasons. One was to give my boys an opportunity to know their grandfather — which is their right, as it is every child's right. The rest of you may decide how you regard them, but I beg you, do not interfere between the squire and Tom and Val.'
'Tom!' murmured Squire Lovell, his face irresistibly softening. Then Juliana realised for the first time that Orlando had named their elder boy after his own father. She knew at once: Orlando had done it deliberately.
'And I was hoping — ' Unexpectedly, she stumbled. 'I hoped that since you have influence with Parliament and I do not, you might be willing to assist me. I have been told that my husband is a prisoner since Naseby. I am desperate to find out where he is.'
Again, there was that odd riffle of movement among the Lovells.
'Oh we know where the scoundrel is!' scoffed the squire. 'His first action on finding himself penned up in London was to write here and tell me!'
Chapter Thirty-Six — Hampshire: 1646
So shaken was Juliana that she was sent back to the Anchor under escort from Mary and Francis Falconer. During the walk, through the misty countryside and the quiet village, the couple explained to her in a fairly friendly fashion that there was a practical reason why Orlando wrote to his father and not to her. Paper and ink in jail were scarce. Orlando's most pressing concern involved his personal estate. When he first returned to England in 1642, Orlando must have brought home money he had earned — or acquired by other means, thought Juliana — during his service on the Continent. He had asked Squire Lovell's agent to buy land for him.
'You could say,' suggested Juliana slowly, 'the fact that he wished to invest close to his family home indicated that he was hoping to effect a reconciliation.'
'Or you could say,' returned Mr Falconer with spirit, 'the rogue just hoped to affront everyone!' Falconer was a sandy, unassuming man, with a sharp nose and long forward chin.
'My brother claimed,' Mary offered in a strained voice, 'he was newly arrived back in the country and Jack Jolley was the only agent he had ever known.'
'Have you seen Orlando?' Juliana queried in a tight voice. She was still finding it hard to accept that her husband had contacted the family he professed were bitterly at odds with him, while he had never written to her.
'Not since he first left us when he was sixteen. But now that we know where he is, I write to him weekly' said Mary. She was unnervingly earnest: 'I constantly beseech him to abandon his delinquency'
Juliana imagined Orlando's reaction. Mr Falconer caught her eye momentarily, clearly thinking as she did. In this tight-knit country community he must have known Orlando when they were boys. They had a similar background, yet ended up on different sides. Falconer must have fought; he had a healed sword slash on one wrist and even on a morning walk through his own village carried a sword as if he knew how to use it. Yet he was a quiet, ordinary countryman otherwise, more suited to smoking a pipe while he talked up the price of colts among his cronies.
The Falconers completed their explanation: Orlando had decided he wanted to obtain his release by paying his fine to the Committee for Compounding. Early in the war his land, known by everyone in the district as property of a hardened Royalist, had been confiscated, or as they called it sequestered, by the Hampshire Committee. To be assessed for his fine, Orlando needed a certificate of his estate's value, based on the income it brought in. The dilemma was that only the committee could know what his tenants had paid, since the committee received the rents now; they had no interest in providing the vital certificate to help a Royalist.
'So he is stuck!' said Francis Falconer, with enormous satisfaction.
Juliana was deposited at the Anchor, her head whirling.
She said little to Edmund Treves about her reception, though she briefly mentioned Ralph Lovell's wounds and the effect she believed his condition would have. 'Ralph's bitterness is all too understandable; his stricken family are bound to respect his feelings. There is no chance Squire Lovell will make peace with me.'
Despite that, to her surprise next morning, the squire arrived, inviting himself to meet his grandchildren. He first inspected Edmund, letting his cynical opinion show. On arrival, Edmund had changed from a plain coat into his normal clothes. Juliana cringed as the squire eyed up his burgundy brocade suit with its beribboned seams, his shirt belling out above his britches, his flounces of lace-trimmed boot-hose, his luminescent silk sash… Fortunately Edmund's innocent good heart was transparent. His position with Juliana could have looked dissolute, but her friend's very lack of awareness of that helped reassure the squire.
'Valentine.. '. mused the elder Lovell, clearly unimpressed. He did not take the baby in his arms, but let Juliana hold him. Valentine screwed up his little face like an ugly pink gargoyle, then wailed with gusto. Mercy Tulk scuttled up and carried him to another room.
'Who named Orlando?' murmured Juliana, fighting back.
'His mother wished that upon us.' The squire paused, unwilling to imply dissension. 'She was a good woman.'
Juliana deduced that the rift with Orlando had grieved his mother. 'You did not marry again?'
'She was the best of wives. I could never have matched her.'
Squire Lovell then met his namesake, who had been playing in the murky end of a stable, with inevitable results. As soon as Thomas sensed his mother praying he would behave well, it brought out his worst side. He clung to her skirts, continually whined for attention, then took off and raced noisily up and down the Anchor's endless narrow corridors like a two-year-old grenado. 'I expect his father was the same,' Juliana apologised, but it produced no thaw.
The squire had brought the children neither sweetmeats nor other presents, which he probably decided was as well. He made no offer to provide for the boys. He did not compliment Juliana on her motherhood.
