Rebels and traitors

Lovell followed her.

His presence was now an invasion. They were both aware of it.

Upstairs, he gazed around. He could see that this was the home Juliana had always said she wanted. She had made everywhere comfortable, in her own style. She and Jukes must have money. Their main room had had its walls painted with stencils of tendrilled flowers. Light monotone curtains hung at windows on fine brass rods, except where there were previously existing wooden shutters. Little of their furniture could be inherited; they had new sets of turned barley-twist chairs with long cane panels, small buffets, a large rectangular table that must have been a challenge for its hauliers to manipulate upstairs. Plain chimney boards stood across the grates since it was summer. There was an almanac nailed up in a corridor, with a couple of old maps. Conveniences were in good supply — hanging shelves and cupboards, joint-stools, rushlight holders, candle boxes, firedogs. Everywhere were cushions, embroidered in glorious colours.

Reconnoitring, Lovell flung open doors. Beyond the main room on the first floor he found a smart little parlour, with Juliana's needlework on a small round gateleg table; he also saw a teetering pile of news-sheets on the floor, beside a second chair. That annoyed him. Exploring on the second floor, his mood grew worse. The first room he looked in was the master bedroom. The bed had been made earlier; its coverlet was neutrally smoothed, hiding the side-by-side pillows. But beneath a square, rush-topped stool stood a pair of man's shoes, toes together and heels apart, tidy yet easy and casual. The householder's nightshirt, embroidered in self-colour linen thread, hung on a double hook, along with his wife's woollen shawl.

Deliberately offending Juliana, Orlando Lovell stretched out on her marital bed, in his boots. 'Comfortable!'

Too comforting: so tempting, he risked giving way to pain and losing his control. With a charmless invitation, he held open his arms to her. Sickened, Juliana turned away, on the verge of weeping.

Lovell swung upright. Sulkily, he sat on the edge of the bed. He looked around. Forcing himself to activity, he pulled open the door on the little pot-cupboard. He looked under the bed. The house was swept and spotless, so he was not surprised he found nothing; a man with an item to hide would know the maid would discover it there. Lovell stood, knocked chairs aside, filled the room with his violence.

'What do you want?' Juliana begged, trying to make him leave her bedroom.

'His other carbine.'

'Children live in the house — for heaven's sake! It is safe in its box, up on the top of the press cupboard.' This was a tall item for storing clothes, with deep drawers below an upper section that had doors.

'Get it for me.'

'Get it yourself!'

'Do as I say' Lovell strode to Juliana, dragging her by one arm. Impatiently she pulled free, fetched a chair to climb on and lifted down the box.

Lovell snatched it. One-handed, he removed the gun, tucking it under his elbow as he took bullets and powder and charged it. Juliana was not altogether alarmed. Men regularly had weapons at home. She watched Lovell select spare bullets and powder. He shoved the gun through his belt.

There was no suggestion he would use the weapon to terrorise her. Why should he? To him, they still had their natural married relationship. He was giving orders which she obeyed. He expected her to be dutiful. She tried not to anger him. Only Juliana knew how much she was silently defying him.

He stared around the room once more, then stormed out, jerking his head for her to follow. He stomped back downstairs to the first floor. Juliana moved at his heels, pausing only to glance back tremulously in case Lovell had disturbed the other occupants of the house. No sound came from Valentine in his sickroom, or Catherine who was sitting with him. No sound came from the baby either, though that could never last.

In the main room on the first floor, Lovell eased himself into a large, ancient armchair with a carved scallop-shell back that stood beside the empty hearth. From the doorway, Juliana exclaimed faintly. 'You are in my father's chair!'

'It's damnably hard.'

'I should warn you, Father died in it.'

'When was that?'

'During the siege of Colchester.'

'He lived so long! You kept that from me. You kept a lot from me, I now suspect.'

'Nothing important,' replied Juliana matter-of-factly. 'I was true.'

'So true that you rushed into bigamy!' Obsessed, Lovell demanded in a low voice, 'Did you know this man Jukes while you knew me?'

'I met him long afterwards.'

'You were my wife, but he propositioned you?'

Tired of this, Juliana exclaimed, 'Oh be reasonable! You were long gone. I could see Gideon Jukes might love me. I could see I might love him. You were supposed to be in the ship lost with Prince Maurice — '

'That would have been convenient!'

A faint sheen on the forehead, combined with Lovell's hectic colour, now began to warn her he might be unwell. It made him unpredictable. Deeper unease overcame her when he began abstractedly unbuttoning his coat so he could rub at his shoulder.

Lovell waved a hand around what he recognised was the most used room in the house. Shelves held books; he had seen books everywhere and he flattered himself some had been given to his wife by him. 'This is what you want? Your Commonwealth love-nest?' Juliana noticed warily that his tone became cajoling. 'Well, I see no objection to living this way. Come back to me, as you are meant to do. You shall have this in a house of ours, and I shall enjoy it with you.'

The request was so unreasonable, Juliana felt exhausted. 'This was what I always wanted. You and I never had it.'

'I gave you love.'

'And I to you — or so I tried, but I could not love the perpetually absent.' Juliana hated to engage with Lovell, but suddenly her anger came out strongly. 'You left me, Orlando, for year after year after year. You never told me your plans. You abandoned me and your children. You might never have come back to us at all, were it not for these plots I know you are tangled in. So now it is a convenience for you to say, "I am in England for my wife". But being a convenience is not enough for me. It is not marriage.'

From the high- backed, throne- like, Jacobean oak chair that had been her father's, Orlando Lovell gazed at his wife. She could see blood seeping through his shirt now, as he tried to ease his shoulder. 'I am wounded… Oh sweetheart, I am tired as well. Tired of constantly fighting… weary of squabbling with you.' He was lying. 'What would I give to have this domestic retreat? — Let us be sensible, Juliana. Protector Cromwell is elderly; he cannot last, even if he escapes murder. What will happen once he dies? He has no successor. There will be chaos. Then the King will be restored, to great rejoicing. All the King's supporters will return — I among them.' He leaned forwards. Juliana, still standing, went rigid. 'I want you back, dear heart. I want us to have the full and rich life that we have earned; I want that with you, the woman I chose, the woman who is bound to me before God and the law.'

'I will not come.'

'Must I beg you, my love?'

'I believe in divorce,' stated Juliana, without apology, regret or pity.

She had lived with a man of liberal ideals for so long, she was amazed at just how angry her declaration made Orlando Lovell. That devotee of traditional conservatism was in too much physical pain to berate her. He could only express his breath furiously, to show his disgust.

For a while Lovell closed his eyes, blotting her out, as he tried to deal with the pain in his shoulder. Juliana sat herself on a long form on one side of her dining table. Her left hand stroked the soft leather cloth that covered it in the daytime, where some people would use a turkey carpet to protect the wood from knocks. As Lovell fell silent, she considered what he had said about the political future.