Alice in Love and War (26 page)

She saw Jeremiah’s face light up, and felt her heart leap in response. So he
did
want to see her; she had not been too bold in running after him.

But she stopped short. “Jem! I…” She could not say what she felt.

And he said nothing, but stepped forward and took her in his arms and kissed her. She kissed him back, and felt his arms grip tighter and hold her hard against him. They clung together. His stubbly beard scratched her face, and a buckle on some strap he wore pressed painfully against her chest, but she didn’t care. She would not let go, because she knew that when she did he would ride away from this place and she might never see him again.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come out,” he said at last. “I couldn’t talk to you in there, with all those people. You’ll be safe here, won’t you? It’s what you wanted?”

“I’ll be safe. But you? Will you go to Taunton now?”

He nodded. “I’ll head that way, and see what news I can find.”

“Oh, Jem, take care!” The thought of him travelling alone filled her with dread. She remembered the deserters they had met on the road. The war was everywhere: any hedge might hide an ambush; any village might hold angry inhabitants looking for a scapegoat. A lone soldier was always at risk.

“Don’t fear,” he said. “I’ll write to you when I can. And I’ll come back, I promise, if … if I may?”

“Of course you may!” she said. She saw the relief in his eyes.

“You know my regiment and company, don’t you? And you know my mother lives in Hertford, in Fore Street. Send word to me if you should move away from here, if anything should happen. Alice” – his voice cracked – “don’t let me lose you.”

She nodded, unable to speak.

They hugged each other hard, and kissed again; and then he mounted his horse, and she stood and watched him ride down the road until he was gone from her sight.

Twenty-five

“Has
this child been baptized?” asked Lady Weston.

And when Alice said no, Elen had not, she insisted that it be done that very week.

Alice wondered what Nia’s wish would have been. Many people were against infant baptism. She was certain that little Prudence Barford had not been baptized, and that Jem’s family would be against the practice. But Elen was hers now, if anyone’s, and she had no objection; indeed, she liked the idea of bringing the child into the family of God in the Weston family chapel.

Of more immediate concern, however, was the need to find a wet nurse. The dairymaid at the farm, who had no living child of her own, was not willing. Christian made enquiries in the village and found a more suitable woman, Jane Edginton, the wife of a baker, respected and liked in the community. She had several children and could take Elen to live with her until she was weaned, in about a year.

A year. It seemed such a long time ahead, and the care of this child such a big task to have taken on. Lady Weston made it clear to Alice that she thought it unnecessary.

“The baby is the child of peasants,” she said. “She cannot aspire to anything more than servitude. When she is weaned you should take her to an orphanage. There is one of good repute in Oxford. She will be well cared for and put out to work as a maidservant at twelve or thirteen, when she is old enough to earn her own living.”

Mistress Florey agreed. “Don’t shackle yourself with a child, wench. Folk will say she’s yours. You’re young, and without her you might pass for a maiden.”

But Alice knew she would never let Elen go to an orphanage. And Jem – the only man whose opinion she cared about – already knew she was not a maiden.

Because the child had been brought to her house, Lady Weston felt a responsibility for her soul, and she took charge of the baptism. The ceremony was held in the family chapel, now cleared of rubble and roughly repaired. The broken windows were still boarded up, but the altar was back behind its rail, and candlelight softened the damage to the walls.

Alice, as the baby’s adoptive mother, carried her in. She was proud of Elen’s appearance, having used some lace that Christian had given her to embellish one of the plain baby gowns she had made at Sibbertoft. Elen waved her tiny limbs and darted bright glances around, until the priest sprinkled cold holy water on her and made her scream. Her godfather was Richard Edginton, her godmothers Jane Edginton and Bess, whose name was Elizabeth Akers. The child was entered in the register simply as
Elen, adopted daughter of Alice Newcombe
.

Alice visited Elen at least twice a week at the Edgintons’ house in the village. Christian had chosen well. Jane Edginton was calm and capable, and Alice knew that her temperament would pass to Elen. The Edgintons were kindly people, and their own three children – John, Kate and the baby, Mary – were well cared for. Jane helped her husband in the shop, and the smells of baking bread, of cinnamon and honey, surrounded Elen at all times; as did a fine powdering of flour, which could be seen on her clothes and hair. Alice thought it was the flour dust that made Elen’s hair appear lighter, but Jane said no: the very dark newborn hair had rubbed off and been replaced by a fuzz of chestnut brown. Nia’s colour, Alice remembered.

The baby was Alice’s, and no one forgot it. Whenever she called, Jane would say, “Here’s your mam come to see you!” and give the child to Alice to hold. But Alice was now free of the day-to-day care of Elen, and that was a huge relief. She was able to work and not be constantly concerned about the baby. She soon found there was much to be done. The kitchen maid Joan had left, and Lady Weston had not replaced her. Tom was to go as gamekeeper’s boy to a neighbouring estate; and Mistress Denham had also gone, and Christian had taken over her duties as housekeeper. It was clear that all was not well at Weston Hall. Christian told Alice that the house had been pillaged twice since Alice had left in May: once by Fairfax’s men and earlier by their own side, men from the king’s army, who took all the remaining horses except Amor, ate all the stock of meat and cheese, and sat in the kitchen drinking great quantities of wine and beer, quarrelling among themselves, and taking pot-shots at the pans and ladles on the walls. They had also invaded the home farm and tied up the farmer and threatened him with hanging till he revealed where he had hidden his savings. His wife had been so terrified that she lost her wits, and it was feared she might never be entirely well again.

But this was not all the trouble that had come upon the family. Lady Weston’s daughter Grace Bramford was there, with her three children, and Alice was shocked when she saw her. Lady Grace had lost weight; she was pale and there were shadows under her eyes. Even the little boys seemed subdued.

Alice soon heard the story. Bramford Hall, where Grace lived with her husband and children, had been garrisoned for the king, and came under siege by Parliament. Those defending the house were greatly outnumbered by the rebels, and when the enemy asked for the house to be given up to Parliament, Colonel Bramford surrendered. There was no dishonour, Christian insisted to Alice, in surrendering under such circumstances – but the colonel’s superior officers thought otherwise. They believed that he had been influenced by fear for his wife and young family, and so had given up the house too readily when he might have fought on. He was brought to trial, sentenced to death for cowardice, and shot.

“Lady Grace is overcome with grief,” said Christian. “I fear for her if she will not rally. She says her life is ruined: she is homeless, her husband lost to her, and her sons will always have the shame of their father’s execution staining their honour. It has brought down her mother’s spirits, as you might imagine.” She shook her head. “Lady Weston has many troubles. She is not long returned from London, visiting her husband in prison. She found him in poor health and ill-attended. Now she is writing letters to the authorities and to Parliamentarian gentlemen, former friends of the family, in hope of getting him released.”

Alice felt all the more grateful that Lady Weston had been willing to take her in at such a time. But Christian said Lady Weston would always keep a promise, and she had promised Alice a place here if she needed it. Christian had also convinced Lady Weston that Alice would be useful, with Joan and the former housekeeper gone.

“But we won’t be making sweet waters for banquets,” she said. “Our work will be in running the house and preparing remedies.” She sighed. “Lord knows, the news is bad enough!”

And so it was – for the king. News reached them through the church and inn, and they also read both the Royalist and London newsbooks – the truth, Christian suspected, lying somewhere in the middle. They heard, as the summer went by, that General Fairfax was still in the West Country, fighting Lord Goring’s forces, and had taken two thousand prisoners.

Jem will be part of all this, Alice thought. And though she had once seen Jem’s side as the enemy, she could not help but be glad at the news as the towns fell one after another to Parliament, for she longed for the war to be over, for Jem to return.

But she had to keep such thoughts to herself, since the Weston family were loyal to the king and in despair at the ongoing tally of defeats. Even the publication of the king’s private correspondence, captured at Naseby, did not shake their confidence in his cause. Lady Weston had banned the pamphlet – entitled
The King’s Cabinet Opened
– from her house; but Christian managed to get hold of a copy. It was too long and difficult for Alice to read right through, but she saw that it detailed all the king’s correspondence with his wife, and with Catholic nobles in Ireland and Europe; and it revealed how he was deceiving Parliament, planning to bring in foreign armies from those countries to fight Englishmen.

Christian and Alice were shocked by the revelations, and Alice began to feel that Jem’s view of the king might be right. But these thoughts too she kept to herself.

She said nothing to anyone at Weston about her feelings for Jeremiah Banks; not only because he was their enemy, but because she did not want them to think of her as a girl who, having been abandoned by one man, would fall straight into the arms of another. Indeed, she did not want to see herself in that way, and tried hard to put thoughts of Jem out of her mind. She must be independent, she decided; earn a respectable living; support Elen; and let the future take care of itself. Jem might never return. He might forget her, now she was out of his sight. She recalled Mistress Erlam saying that injured men often imagined themselves in love with the women who tended them. It might come to nothing.

And yet she thought about him often, remembering their time together at Sibbertoft, and on the road; their close companionship on those two nights. And then that first kiss, followed so quickly by parting. Whenever the newsbooks came and she read of the war in the West Country, she could not help but imagine him there, riding along hollow lanes thick with summer foliage on either side – hedges that might hide any number of enemy musketeers.

“I’ll write,” he had said.

But the weeks went by and no letter came.

Christian had extended the vegetable garden at the back of Weston Hall and was now managing it almost single-handed, old Lucas Rowles, the gardener, being no longer fit for work. Alice helped her: weeding, sowing lettuce, and then, through the later summer and early autumn, harvesting beans, cabbages, onions and radishes.

“I intend to grow more vegetables next year,” Christian said. “I fear we must eat like the poor in these sad times.”

They struggled against slugs and rot, but Christian remained determined. There was an apple tree in the kitchen garden, and apricot trees growing espaliered against a south-facing wall, and these were producing fruit. She had already begun picking herbs to dry, and now Alice took over this work. She shook coriander seeds into a small linen bag, and gathered rue and wormwood for drying, to protect the household against moths; she cut lavender for the same purpose, and also for a remedy against headaches. The black seeds of poppies were caught in a bag and dried, and Mistress Florey and Bess picked marjoram, thyme and dandelion leaves for use in the kitchen.

Alice made calming herbal mixtures for Lady Grace and a salve for Bessy’s hands, which were so chapped and sore she could not work. The salve was Alice’s own invention. Christian used it to soothe her scratched hands after gardening, and Lady Weston asked for some to keep her hands soft for the great quantity of sewing and embroidery she always did. Alice enjoyed experimenting with remedies and having the space and equipment to do so. The drying cupboard for herbs was put to good use as she and Christian harvested what they grew in the garden or found in the woods and meadows near by. All these tasks, along with helping Mistress Florey in the kitchen and the maids in the dairy, kept Alice too busy to pine for Jem.

The course of the war continued to favour Parliament. Prince Rupert surrendered Bristol. City after city fell. And then, one day, Alice found Christian shocked and distressed at news of the fall of Basing House – that great Royalist stronghold in Hampshire where, it was said, every window had carried the message
Aimez Loyaute
scratched in the glass with a diamond.

“All is lost,” said Christian, scanning the printed report. “The greatest people of the kingdom turned out, stripped naked; everything dragged from the house, smashed, or looted; the house burned to the ground – oh, and people trapped in the cellars who cried in vain for help!”

She passed the pamphlet to Alice. It told of a ferocious assault. Cromwell had raised a huge force against the great house, and many soldiers had been killed on both sides.

There seemed no end to the horror. I must not hope, Alice told herself. I must expect nothing.

It was November when at last a letter came for her.

Christian, as housekeeper, was the one who received and delivered the household’s mail. That day she came into the kitchen carrying a bundle of letters and handed Alice a small package.

Alice felt her heart give a jump. It
had
to be from Jem! Who else would write to her? She stared at the rain-smudged handwriting, and became aware of everyone watching. I can’t open it here, she thought.