'How, "one way or another"? You cannot mean plunder?'
'A fact of war,' Lovell informed her.
Fortunately he then noticed they had arrived at their lodgings.
'All the allure of a rat-catcher's coat pocket,' Lovell admitted, as his young bride gazed around this depressing room that was to be their first married home. He helped the coachman deposit her great coffer alongside what must be his own campaign chest.
Juliana had seen worse — and she had seen her grandmother briskly refuse it. They had an upstairs chamber barely ten feet square, with a sagging mattress on a lop-sided bed behind stained and moth-eaten green curtains, a couple of spine-breaking bolt-upright chairs — not matching — and a pot-cupboard which, through one door with a broken hinge, was sending messages that the chamberpot had needed emptying for a fortnight. The stairs came up from the ground floor directly into their room, opposite the empty fireplace, then a narrower flight turned on up into the garret, whose occupants must trip to and fro via the Lovells' accommodation. Directly opposite the stairs she spotted a large mousehole in the wainscot.
She drew a deep, despondent breath and nearly choked on the malodorous air she had swallowed. 'Ah! Dearest, I was hoping for a sunlit closet where I could dry rose-petals and cook up lavender pastilles in a little brass pannikin!'
'Bear up, wife. I thought I had chosen someone more stalwart.' Lovell fielded her brave jest with the robust manner of a cavalier, though he sounded apologetic.
'Oh you will find me apt for the purpose,' Juliana assured him, though bitterness escaped in her voice. Lovell could not read just how grim her disappointment was, but he sensed hard times in the past. For him that was good. He was relying on the girl's resilience. A dainty maid, inexperienced, would be an encumbrance to him; even so, he felt sorry for Juliana's sad air of defeat.
Alerted by some stillness, Juliana looked at her husband. He held her under the chin. 'I hope you are not feeling betrayed. This is war; this is how it must be. At least,' he said, as if it did matter to him, 'we shall have our companionship.'
So Juliana smiled.
She could dispose of the chamberpot's half-gallon of stinking walnut-tinted urine. While she was pouring strangers' leavings into a gutter in the street, she encountered their landlord, a thin, sneering glove-maker with a bald head showing white through strands of greasy hair. Juliana greeted him politely but firmly; she was unconsciously mimicking her grandmother, who had been quick to despise others but knew when to conceal it. She begged him to provide a small table. He assured her she and Lovell were to 'table' with him, meaning he would provide a meal for them once a day; relieved to know they would have hot food, however indifferently cooked, Juliana insisted on having their own table even so, to do needlework.
She was making progress. She scrubbed, beat the mattress, tidied, made the window-catch work, sorted the rings that held up the bed-canopy. Lovell watched and approved. However, the mice always knew they had the mastery of her. They came out and warmed themselves whenever a small fire was in the grate.
'If we employ a servant he or she will have to sleep here, in our room.'
'So let us not have a servant yet!' Lovell chortled. 'I want no drip-nosed bootboy nor podgy maid listening from behind the bed-curtains when I come at your commodity'
He was more fastidious than many. All over the country, servants in shared bedrooms overheard their employers' lovemaking. Juliana was glad Lovell wanted privacy. Besides, they could not afford servants. Nor would their financial situation improve, she now knew. Almost offhandedly Lovell informed her, 'By the by. There was a mistake about the business with my brother. The wagon of powder that exploded at Edgehill was not on the Parliamentarian side. Ralph lives yet.'
'You must be rejoicing,' replied Juliana. His careless manner gave her the first hint that Lovell had always known the true facts. Shocked, she kept her anger hidden. Lovell shrugged and turned away quickly, unwilling to be quizzed. She wondered what Mr Gadd would say to this — then found herself hoping that he never heard of it. She had chosen her life. She would have to cope.
So now she was a wife. She had become loyal to her husband, protecting his reputation whatever he did, even when she suspected him of deliberate deceit.
They settled into a routine. Lovell was frequently out by day, but he returned for dinner every night. He had a streak of frugality; he rarely wasted funds on carousing. By day Juliana was lonely, but she could be content with her own company. When she did complain of her solitude, Lovell took her to view the King inspecting artillery in Magdalen Grove. The next time, they went to see the King playing tennis with Prince Rupert. Once, they watched the young Prince of Wales practise riding tricks.
That was about the limit of spectacles on offer, unless Juliana wished to be an observer when Parliament's negotiators argued for peace politely and pointlessly with the King and his circle in Christ Church quadrangle. 'Far too exciting, Orlando. I must be excused lest I disgrace myself with some hysterical outcry.' She was assured that prospects for entertainment would improve when the Queen arrived from Holland. Henrietta Maria had, after all, known her grandmother.
'It is unlikely Her Majesty will remember Grand-mere.' Juliana gave Lovell a straight look. She could gloss over invented history as blandly as he did. Soon she did it every quarter, as her husband asked when the rents from her apple orchards might arrive and she played dumb.
When they were discussing the peace commission she had called her husband by his first name. Orlando accepted this without comment. By now he called Juliana 'my sweet', which was conventional but he made it sound genuine. They were conducting their marriage with respect and affection.
Christmas was drear, though they did manage to obtain a presence at Christ Church where the King entertained in great splendour on Christmas Day. This dinner was hot, smoky and crowded, the musicians inaudible over the noise of the people, the service slow and the food cold by the time it reached them at the far end of the table.
By early February the Queen was known to have left Holland, with supplies and several thousand professional soldiers. She landed at Bridlington, which the Earl of Newcastle, a great Royalist commander in the north, made as safe as possible for her reception. Not safe enough. Parliamentarian ships bombarded the house where she first lodged. Her Majesty accepted all with great spirit; when she was forced to take shelter outside in a ditch, Henrietta went back into the house for a lapdog that her fleeing maids-of-honour had left behind. This was widely seen as bravery. 'Damned stupid!' snarled Orlando Lovell. Juliana concurred.
The northern Parliamentarian army, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, lay between the Queen and Oxford. The King was anxious to have Henrietta Maria with him, but conscious that if she were to fall into rebel hands she would become a fatal pawn. He was too devoted to risk it. For several weeks the Queen stayed with the Earl of Newcastle, revelling in her own courage and initiative, and dabbling merrily. Eventually a plan was hatched for Prince Rupert to advance from Oxford through the Midlands so he could clear a safe passage for his indomitable aunt. On the 29th of March, with Orlando Lovell among his retinue, the prince set out, planning to relieve the siege of Lichfield, and to secure a route for the Queen through Warwickshire. This would entail removing the threat posed by the rebel town of Birmingham. Not only were its fractious cutlers supplying arms to Parliament, they had set about strangers and imprisoned them on suspicion of being Royalists. King's messengers had been captured as spies too. Birmingham would have to be crushed. Lovell gave the impression the Oxford Royalists were looking forward to it.
This was a new spring offensive and obviously more important than anything Juliana had seen before. Lovell emptied his battered chest of a back-and-breastplate which he spent hours buffing. Their room stank with the reek of neat's-foot oil as he softened straps, belt and riding boots. A man she had never seen before, who seemed to be one of his soldiers, brought pistol bullets, dumping the heavy bag on her little work table with a dead thud that terrified her. Juliana sat nursing Lovell's rapier, a European blade with a cup hilt and a pommel encrusted with very worn silver. He was not its first owner, though he never told its history. Tired of the sick-looking thin feather in his beaver, Juliana had made him a new hatband from a piece of the peacock satin that had been left over when she cut out the bodice of her wedding-dress. Although he seemed to have no awareness that she had made the dress herself, Lovell appeared oddly touched by her ministrations to his hat.