Orlando Lovell rode with the King to Gloucester. News of the terrible Royalist casualties at the first battle of Newbury in September reached Oxford at the same time as the King returned there. With no definite confirmation of her husband's safety, Juliana experienced her worst fears so far as she waited, by then seven months pregnant, alone at their lodgings.
It was Edmund Treves, still her admirer and still unmarried himself, who told her Orlando was safe. Lovell, Treves said, had asked him to dash to Juliana's side and comfort her. She suspected that Treves took this action on his own initiative. He was romantically devoted. Though modest, Juliana easily believed that Edmund still wrote poetry in her honour. Not that she supposed these lyrics had merit; Juliana had been brought up a reader, and possessed a clear literary judgement.
Some wives might have supposed Lovell had gone to a tavern instead of coming straight home, though Juliana did not see him as a drinker. She tried not to think of him as thoughtless, reckless, selfish and insensitive either. He was a man. Worse, he was a soldier. However, she knew there were plenty of cavaliers who were racked with anguish to be parted from their wives by war, men who would give their unborn children loving consideration. Still, Lovell had never promised her devotion. Juliana believed he was loyal and she hoped he was faithful, though if so it was in a brisk, unsentimental way. He relied on her to provide her own strength and to make her own domestic arrangements.
'Orlando will come when he can. I am glad to know he is safe, Edmund; it was so kind of you to think of me.'
She had done Lovell wrong, for Edmund then told her, 'Prince Rupert has stayed in the field, to harry Essex and his army on their homeward march. I had to return with the King and the infantry. My horse broke a leg.'
'Faddle?'
'I had to shoot her. Lord knows how I can get another.
'There is no need for you to trouble over me, Edmund.'
'I am glad to do it!' declared the redhead, flushing scarlet under his light skin. Juliana sighed. She saw Treves as no threat — and yet that made him a greater responsibility.
Her fragile truce with Wakelyn Smithers would be at risk, if another man hung around her. Smithers would not understand that Edmund was genteel, kind-hearted, chivalrous to his friend Lovell — and unlikely ever to touch Juliana. After the odd beginning of their acquaintance, she and Lovell saw Edmund as a family friend, while ignoring the nature of his regard for Juliana. She never abused that. Nor did she underestimate it. She would not entirely trust him when drunk, or if Lovell imposed on him too thoughtlessly — as Lovell almost certainly would one day…
Smithers stayed at arm's length, but he still watched her. Fortunately she was now grown so large even the glover must be put off by it.
Lovell returned eventually. A royal council of war was held at Oriel College to re-examine strategy to finish the war. Soldiers were taken from local regiments and garrisons to be with Prince Rupert in the west; Lovell was bound to go too. More than ever, Juliana suspected that when her time came, she would be giving birth alone. She was terrified. Once at dinner, she even approached Wakelyn Smithers's hostile sister, pleading with her to attend at the birth. Most women, whatever their status, reckoned it a duty to rally when a neighbour was in labour, but Smithers's sister gave a vague answer and Juliana knew she would renege.
Being inexperienced and unsure of when to expect the birth, she was caught out. One morning while Lovell was still in Oxford, held there by terrible weather which prevented fighting, Juliana's contractions began unexpectedly. When her waters broke — a fright she was not prepared for — he was out of the house. She went through the first stages of labour alone, then in the afternoon began to fear she could not manage any longer. Eventually her husband came home. Relieved, she told him the situation and persuaded him to stay with her.
In his own way, Lovell disguised any reluctance to be involved. For an hour he sat in the room reading a news-sheet. Journalism had allowed the characteristic Englishman to become himself. Now, as the master of information, it was a husband's prerogative to seize the best chair in the room — which Lovell did, taking the one with wooden arms, the better to balance his elbows and control the broadsheet. The chair was normally graced with a plump cushion that Juliana had covered with stylish stumpwork embroidery; impatient of the cushion, Lovell tossed it to the floor. He flung his boots in two different directions. Then, while his wife sweated and gasped and bit the sheet behind the bed-curtain, not three yards away, Orlando Lovell applied himself to the Englishman's conviction that he could ride out any crisis by fixed study of the news.
'How do you fare, sweetheart?'
'Tolerably…'
'I am glad of it. Would I could be of assistance, dear girl, but this is woman's work.'
Lovell deemed it would help if he read out interesting passages from the news-sheet. He knew Juliana took an interest in the progress of the war. 'I see there has been a sharp exchange of fire at Winceby. The Earl of Manchester — that old fool — with Sir Thomas Fairfax (he is the uppity one of the family), plus one Cromwell, have trounced a couple of northern cavaliers… This Cromwell is unknown to me. Have you encountered the name, my sweet?'
'No. Orlando, we have to hire a midwife… I was not sure of the timing and have not consulted her, but the licensed woman should come to us — '
'Oh I dare say we can save a shilling and manage without…'
'A shilling is in the brown crock on the mantelshelf — I have kept it particularly; there is no need to scrimp!' Writhing on the soiled sheets and drenched with sweat, Juliana could no longer silence herself. 'I shall die if this child be not taken out of me — and the child too, poor innocent thing that never asked for us two feckless souls as its parents!' As the most painful contraction yet seared through her, she let rip and screamed: 'Orlando, you must help me!'
She heard the news-sheet fall. Lovell whipped aside the bed-curtains. He was a soldier. He could assess a situation. He went white. 'Do your best to endure it — I will fetch someone!'
His shock frightened Juliana even more. In all the years she was to know him, this was the only occasion Orlando Lovell showed plain terror. Well, I have wrought a wonder! she thought, with fatalistic pride. She reached for his hand, but he jumped back nervously.
At that moment she really thought she was dying. Given the nationwide statistics for childbed mortality, any doctor would have nodded. From the desperate way he dragged on his bucket-topped boots and thundered headlong down the narrow stairs, Captain Orlando Lovell had been told about the dangers.
He went missing for ages. Juliana had heard him shout agitatedly for help from Smithers or his sister. The sister always came to the house in the late afternoon, but on this one day she had found some pressing reason to vanish. Smithers had scarpered too. Finding no one, Lovell himself must have left. Stillness fell downstairs.
Juliana sobbed. She feared that Lovell had abandoned her.
Finally through her pain came voices, one a woman's. Footsteps moved steadily upstairs. Juliana had a wild moment of horror. 'Dear heaven, he has brought me an Irishwoman!' She would come to be ashamed of that.
A large, middle-aged, unperturbed stranger in sensible black worsted swanned to her bedside. The lady assessed all, with benign disgust. Through tears of distress, Juliana saw a square face, enlivened by deep dimples and wise eyes. Lovell was nervously hanging back. 'My sweet, this is Major Mcllwaine's good wife — '
Mistress Mcllwaine cuffed him, rather hard. 'Get away, Captain Lovell! Are you a monster that this poor child has been provided with no single friend at such a time? Give me a knife; I need to pare my nails.'