The Levellers had been right in wanting not to cross frontiers and, insofar as he considered Ireland, Gideon positioned himself with their view. But his personal motives were still pressing. Cromwell returned to England to address the Scottish problem. He should have been working alongside Fairfax, but Fairfax was reluctant to fight the Scots, with whom he had co-operated on so many important campaigns, and his conscience remained uneasy about the King's execution. Citing ill health, he resigned. Cromwell and other leaders pleaded with him, but he was adamant. Fairfax retired. Parliament gave the Lord Generalship to Oliver Cromwell so he would be going to Scotland as commander-in-chief.
Even though it meant travelling a great distance and crossing into another country, Gideon Jukes decided this fight was necessary. He felt bitterly depressed by the return of King Charles II. Even after so much hard effort, little had been achieved, the Commonwealth was under direct threat and everything was, once again, still to accomplish.
More than that, eight years after Gideon began fighting Royalists, his enemy had assumed a specific identity. His gloom was increased by the thought that Colonel Orlando Lovell, 'the Delinquent Lovell', that unknown, absent, yet unavoidable husband of the desirable Juliana, could be among the cavaliers who accompanied the new King Charles. With Charles, Lovell was coming closer. Well, that was one reason for Gideon Jukes to go to Scotland. Every time he aimed his musket, he stood a chance of picking off his man.
The King had hoped that the charismatic Marquis of Montrose would rally non-Presbyterian support in Scotland, so he could avoid a distasteful alliance with the Covenanters. But Montrose was speedily captured then hanged, drawn and quartered in Edinburgh just before Charles arrived. Held a virtual prisoner by the Covenanters, the young monarch was subjected to religious indoctrination, with sermons several times a day. He was systematically isolated from friends and supporters. Expediency, his personal trademark, convinced him that if he was to reclaim the English throne, he would have to take the Presbyterian Covenant.
The English Council of State decided to pre-empt an invasion by attacking Scotland. Cromwell took sixteen thousand troops; most of them experienced New Model Army men, though recruited anew for this task. Gideon Jukes was one of the volunteers.
Gideon had considered asking for a place again with Colonel Okey. He had heard on the veterans' grapevine that Okey had tried bitterly to rid his regiment of Captain Francis Freeman, a curious mystic. The dragoons had a reputation as religious fanatics, but their colonel wanted fanaticism that chimed with his own. He eventually court-martialled Freeman, who had been overheard playing music with his landlord, carolling what Freeman claimed were innocent traditional ditties, but Okey said were lewd songs. Neither would back down. To solve the impasse, Cromwell had instructed the captain to resign.
Gideon had been known to hum while he polished his boots, but did not flaunt it. He thought he was safe with Okey. But when he called at the Hackney house, he was informed that Okey had left for the north with Freeman's captaincy already filled. Undeterred — well, still desperate to escape from London — Gideon devised a new plan. At Derby House, where the committee in charge of military affairs sat, he asked to see Samuel Bedford. Gideon had known Bedford slightly as Sir Samuel Luke's trusted deputy at Newport Pagnell, subsequently poached to work in intelligence for the New Model Army.
On first approach, Gideon was merely asked to leave his personal details. Returning next day, he was informed that gentlemen of the committee would examine him.
An officer who never gave his name took charge, while a clerk took notes, and another man sat looking sombre: wearing a long black coat — late middle age, blue chin, beady eyes that gave the impression he knew more than he ought. Gideon repeated everything he had said the previous day. He did so quietly and patiently, for he knew how army bureaucracy worked. Eventually, the interviewer and the man in the black coat walked off together to the far end of the large room. They held a muttered discussion, sometimes glancing back at Gideon.
Black coat must have lost. He leaned back on his heels for a moment, surveying Gideon ruefully, then left in mild dudgeon. The interviewer recrossed the room. 'Well, Captain Jukes. Do you remember that gentleman? He met you once, and maintains if you are the man he thought, you will recall it.'
'Turnham Green. Half a lifetime back. 'His name,' Gideon acknowledged, '- or the name he used then — is Mr Blakeby.'
The interviewer looked at him oddly, as if this long-stored memory marked out Gideon as a queer obsessive. Gideon sat quiet, managing to do so without looking smug. 'He tried to recruit you?'
'I turned him down, sir.'
'Well, he has lost you again. You volunteered yourself to the scoutmaster. The army takes precedence over Blakeby's business — though Sir Thomas Scott will never thank me for it.' At that time, Gideon had no idea who Sir Thomas Scott might be, though when he returned home later, Robert Allibone said the man had been placed in charge of intelligence — political spying. 'You will go to Scotland. Unregimented — you'll wear a tawny coat and answer to Scoutmaster-General William Rowe, surveying the terrain.' Gideon did briefly wonder how intelligencers were supposed to scout in a completely foreign country where the locals were trying to kill them. Still, a Londoner always had confidence.
The journey was three hundred miles. Gideon refused the chance to go by sea, claiming he wanted to get used to his horse, a strong, speedy pony which he had been promised could turn on a sixpence. When pointed north, it seemed enthusiastic and cantered along day after day, giving no trouble. This allowed him plenty of time for thought — and for trying to avoid thought, where it was too painful.
The man who rode to Scotland at the end of July 1650 was now in his full prime. He was almost thirty, as mature in character as he would ever be, and by the end of that long trip physically hard again. He had not lost his ideals, but he was beginning to see that he had spent much of his life in a struggle that could have no straightforward resolution.
The dearest revolutionary principles of Gideon's life were already lost. The Levellers had been destroyed. There had been Lockyer, Burford, Wellingborough. John Wildman had given up and turned himself into a land speculator, buying up the estates of disgraced and impecunious Royalists. John Lilburne, 'Freeborn John', Cromwell's most implacable antagonist, had been tried for treason to the Commonwealth; found not guilty, he was nonetheless exiled to Bruges, whence he fulminated darkly. Lilburne's Leveller associates were freed from prison; it was conditional on their taking the oath of engagement to the new regime. Richard Overton had done so with his usual grim wit, saying that he would be as faithful to his oath as the Council of State had been to the Covenant (that was, not at all). Sexby, Gideon's old Leveller colleague, had gone ahead of him to Scotland. Sexby's Scottish service would go wrong and he would react to the loss of their cause very differently from Gideon.
To the new, caustic, steely Gideon the world had been turned upside down, but it had been turned into muddle and chaos. Conflict seemed never-ending. His depression deepened on the long, solitary journey north; it held poignant memories, as he passed close to Holdenby, then Doncaster and Pontefract. He remembered past events, both stirring and disastrous, then brooded on the unexpected turn in his personal life, where he had charged in full of his usual cheerfulness and determination, but had been so knocked back. It made him think more forcefully about his own existence, his wishes and intentions.