Gideon also left the question of the baby. If the young mother was fifteen, as she told him, she would be only a year less than Lacy Keevil when she too found herself about to bear a child by a man she could not, or would not, name. He had bitter fellow-feeling for the waif's plight.
He might have ridden back to the church porch and looked for the whimpering bundle, but if he was discovered doing that he could be accused of fathering the infant himself. He had an informant to meet that afternoon; he was beginning to resent delays.
Before he left her, he asked her name. She gave him the defiantly straight stare that vagabonds used when they were lying. 'Dorothy Groome.'
'I think that was the pedlar woman's name,' Gideon rebuked her mildly.
'It is a good name!' The girl rounded on him defiantly. 'What is your name?'
'Gideon Jukes.' He was already mounting his three-shilling horse, routinely cursing as the idiotic beast tried to wander away from him.
'What place is this?' the waif called after him.
'Stony Stratford — Calverton parish, should you wish to reclaim your child.'
The girl dragged her tired feet, setting off on her long walk towards London. If she ever reached the city, Gideon thought, she would be sucked into the competing multitude. Among the starved masses on the hostile streets, her youth and her innocence could only tell against her. She would be lucky to last a week.
He did not see the waif in his area again. They had had a chance encounter. Neither expected to remember it.
By that time in late 1644, Gideon was greatly anxious about the progress of the war. After the great Parliamentary victory at Marston Moor the King achieved a personal triumph in shattering one of his opponents' armies, that of Sir William Waller at Cropredy Bridge, and outmanoeuvred the Earl of Essex in the pointless disaster of Lostwithiel. Charles spent the summer pottering, relieving garrisons that could well have been left to their own devices and languorously guesting in loyal gentlemen's houses as if the war could wait on his pleasure.
At Newport, Sir Samuel Luke was twitchy. The town's defences were in a bad way; he could obtain neither money, men nor tools for renewal works. His garrison muttered mutinously. Soldiers were unpaid. He was in poor health and feeling the cold; he sent to London for his fur coat.
Throughout that autumn, Gideon and the other scouts kept nervous watch on the area between Oxford and London. In October, the remnants of Essex's army and the relics of Waller's both joined Manchester in a blockade to prevent the King advancing to London. It was an unhappy merger. The Parliamentary commanders bickered. The troops were mutinous and demoralised. Essex was constantly sending to Parliament with recriminations against others; then he conveniently 'fell ill', when the Parliamentary forces, united in name though not in spirit, faced battle with the King at Newbury. Parliament's forces failed to co-operate. There was confusion and stalemate; after sundown, the King and his men were allowed to slip away through a gap and escape.
Charles would spend the winter of 1644-5 in Oxford, while his opponents reviewed their lacklustre efforts of the previous year. The baffling ineptitude at the second battle of Newbury achieved one useful result: men of energy, headed by Oliver Cromwell, urged Parliament to change their military affairs.
Now Sir Samuel Luke's scouts kept a closer than ever watch on Oxford. He had a paranoid fear that the King intended to strike at his garrison: 'There is some treacherous plot against us at present, for they never had that confidence and cheerfulness at Oxford as they have now…'Luke's men were deserting; they knew the rival garrison at Aylesbury was better supported and more regularly paid than theirs. When Sir Samuel was recalled to sit in Parliament along with all the other members, he protested that he needed to stay at Newport or his unhappy soldiers would disband themselves.
None the less, he was forced to go up to Westminster. A new army was being proposed, in which no members of Parliament would hold commissions. At Newport Pagnell there was much troubled discussion of the impact this would have; Sir Samuel might never return.
He might be forced, as a member of Parliament, to 'volunteer' to give up his command. So it happened that during the lull in fighting at the end of the year, Gideon Jukes was given leave to visit his family. The vexed officers at Newport Pagnell had written Sir Samuel Luke a letter of support: 'Sir, we your poor and discontented officers are desirous you take notice how ready and cheerful we shall be to serve under you or any other body…' Gideon thought it muddled and misguided, but he did not demur when his captain chose him to convey the letter. While Sir Samuel Luke was in London, he occupied a property that had been part of the King's Printing House at Blackfriars. 'You're a printer, Trooper Jukes; I can trust you to find the house.'
Gideon was told he could spend a week among his family. 'I'll try and bring back new britches!' he promised, for uniforms were in short supply.
'The devil with britches; we can fight the King bare-arsed. Bring bullets!' chortled a sergeant, sucking on an empty pipe as if the memory of old smoke that imbued the browned clay would bring him comfort. 'And remember, Cheapside boy, if you run into a great beast, square and bellowing, with a leg at each corner, it is a cow.'
Jokes about Londoners never having seen cattle gave endless entertainment to the country-born.
There were more jests about whether Gideon could find his way back to London, but thanks to the ancient Romans, it was a perfectly straight ride for two days down Watling Street until he passed under the shadow of Old St Paul's. He then simply had to turn off into Bread Street where his parents lived.
Approaching the city, when he came up to the Wardour Street Fort in the Lines of Communication, the sentries' cadences of London speech gave him a deep pang. 'Let him in, lads! It's Private Jukes, wandering home from market with a bag of magic beans…'
Gideon had adapted his City vowels while at Newport. The Northamptonshire turnips pretended they could not understand him otherwise. As he thanked the sentries, grinning at their badinage, he heard his natural accent return and felt he had become himself again after living in a kind of disguise for many months.
Homesickness swept over him. He realised how tired he was of riding around alone among woods, fields and beggarly villages. He turned in through the city gate. As he entered the metropolitan clamour and bustle, an enormous yearning to be back here struck. Encountering the smoke from thousands of chimneys in coal-burning homes and businesses, Gideon Jukes took the deepest breath he could and let the old familiar choking smog of London fill every cranny of his lungs.
Chapter Thirty — London and Newport Pagnelclass="underline" 1644-45
Although he had given his word he would return to the garrison, and meant it, Gideon was surprised just how strongly home exerted its call. He could understand soldiers who deserted. If they chose to slink away, there would be little comeback; so grim was the manpower situation, apprehended deserters were simply returned to their colours and not punished.
As he sat at his mother's table, devotedly plied with pudding, Gideon was overwhelmed with yearning for ordinary life. 'I have to go back!' he warned, as much to remind himself. Parthenope pushed a wisp of greying hair under her cap, and nodded unconvincingly. He worried about her; ten months had wrought too many changes. She looked older, thinner, more anxious about his father. John had altered even more. He sat like a wraith at the fireside, hardly communing.