London in Chains Read Online Free PDF

John was an apprentice mercer.’
    â€˜Who’s John Lilburne?’ asked Lucy.
    Susan raised herself on an elbow. ‘You never heard of John Lilburne?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Eh! Well. He used to write pamphlets against the king, but now they’re against Parliament because, he says, Parliament’s become more tyrannical than the king was. He’s been locked up in the Tower this past year.’
    â€˜Oh!’
    â€˜The pamphlets Mr Browne sells are his, some of ’em. I can’t believe you never heard of him!’
    â€˜Leicestershire’s a long way from London.’ Lucy could feel all those miles in the ache of her muscles and the heaviness of her eyelids. She had never seen any pamphlet at all, let alone one so dangerous that it got its author locked up in the Tower. She was too tired to wonder what it was like.
    She was just about to fall asleep when Susan said, ‘They said you came here because you were ravished by soldiers during the war, and your sweetheart wouldn’t have spoiled goods afterwards, and your mother died of grief. They said you were pining away.’
    Lucy was abruptly fully awake again. ‘My mother had been ill a long time. Grief ended her illness but didn’t cause it. And I wasn’t pining: I was angry.’
    â€˜Aye?’ said Susan with sympathetic interest. ‘I’d be angry, too. If a woman jilted a man because he lost a leg in the war, everyone would call her a false jade, but if a man jilts a woman because she’s lost her maidenhead, the other men just nod. Half of them think the woman must’ve played the harlot to have suffered so in the first place, and the other half say they wouldn’t want spoiled goods either.’
    â€˜I think Ned fancied he could marry a bigger dowry,’ Lucy said bitterly. ‘With so many men dead, those that are left fetch more at market, and my father couldn’t supply even what he’d promised before. The men who took my maidenhead also took all our cattle. You say you were told about this, about me?’
    â€˜Oh, never fear!’ Susan said, immediately understanding the concern. ‘Nobody in the neighbourhood knows. Your uncle told me , but to the neighbours he gave out that you’ve come to stay in London because times are hard for your family. He says that’s true as well, anyway.’
    â€˜Aye,’ agreed Lucy. ‘All our wealth was in those cattle.’
    She had milked those cows every morning and evening; she had given them the old country names – Daisy, Clover, Sweetbriar – and they’d come trustingly to her call. Sometimes she still dreamed of them. The thought that they’d almost certainly been slaughtered for meat still caused a surge of pain and anger, even two years later. It was worse, somehow, than the anger she felt on her own behalf: you weren’t supposed to mourn cows.
    Her father had been slow to replace the cows. He’d promised Ned Bartram a dowry and he’d tried to keep his promise – until Ned declared that he wouldn’t take spoiled goods. Then the dowry-money was spent on cattle. Lucy had said nothing but she’d noted the assumption: no one would wed her now.
    Still, now she was in London, where nobody knew of her disgrace. She allowed herself a small sigh of relief. One of the things she’d most longed to escape was the way everybody knew what had happened to her. She could feel them looking at her when she walked past: ‘There goes Lucy Wentnor, who was ravished by three soldiers when she went to milk the cows. Her father found her lying on the barn floor, naked and covered in blood.’ She didn’t know which was worse, the pity or the revulsion.
    Now she was in London, she thought again, already half asleep. It might be a hellish place but at least it was a new one.

Two
    Lucy woke before dawn, at first disturbed just because she was in an unfamiliar bed. Then the