The Rebel Daughter

Praise for The Rebel Daughter

PROLOGUE
JANUARY 1636, THE FENS
I am always the first in my house to wake. Before Mother or Father, before my brothers and sisters. Before Grand-mother, who cannot sleep more than three hours together and never after five in the morning.
I even beat the cockerel in the barn.
She rises while it is still night and gives food to her household and portions to her servants.
I like that verse from Proverbs. It is not just the sense of warmth, of bringing light out of the darkness or providing for loved ones that speaks to me. It is the word She. She rises. She acts. She meets the day first and on her own terms, restored by a few precious minutes of quiet. She sets the fire and lays the table, yes. But she lays out more than that: she shapes the day for herself and all around her.
And what does she do next? More, even more. She appraises a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard. She girds herself with strength and shows that her arms are strong. There are a lot of verbs in there.
Women do not get many verbs. For once, just for once, the Lord speaks to us not of kings or prophets, of a rich man in a castle or a poor one at his gate. He tells of an ordinary woman. A woman whose strength and honour are her clothing. A woman who opens her mowsh with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. A woman whose price is far above rubies.
And so each morning I wake first and claim the day for my own.
Yet even so there are some things I cannot do. I cannot find the wages for a servant to help Mother. I cannot conjure bacon when our stock of salted meat runs low nor stop the many-fingered frost crawling through the cracks in the windows. I place dried lavender on the kitchen table and mix the honey and herbs to flavour the porridge now warming in the hearth. But this is all I can do.
It has been a hard winter for us. Though Mother and Father do not like to admit their worries, we children have noticed each little economy as it has crept upon us. When the first beeswax candle stubs were replaced with the pungent tallow kind. When Mother started to take in our neighbours' linen for mending. When Father had to sell his hunter; a horse he loved almost as much as his chil-dren. But what use has a farmer for a thoroughbred which cannot work in the fields, even if he is a gentleman?
And the weather has done its worst. The cold has gone to Father's chest, forcing him to wear a red flannel found his throat day and night. And the rain, so much rain. The winter foods their weded for now, but they have left destruction he roads that mounds of muddy peat banked along they ence pond. incross the fens. sodden fields and rotting lence posts. There is no time lose if we are to norse the land back to health in time for this year yield, Tenant farmers in these parts are soon ejected if they don't make their farms pay: whatever Their good name, however illustrious their ancestors
So each day, after taking our porridge in the pink dawn light, we are at our labours. Father anxious not to waste an hour of the short winter days. This morning as the watery sun climbs above the wide, flat horizon; my hands tingle, frozen inside my gloves. Fach fingertip has been unstitched so that I can use my fingers to work alongside my brothers. I sit with my little sister Betty chitting potatoes in the barn at the edge of the field while we watch their brown-coated backs bend over their work. Hours pass as we pick all but the best nob bled eyes off the potato tubers and place them rose-end up in long, narrow crates packed with straw.
I pause for a few moments, chafing my fingertips against each other. They smell sickly sweet with starch and are stained soil-black, the swirling grooves on each so ingrained I could use them to make prints on paper, as 1 used to when I was a child. I look down at the wheat-coloured curls of my little sister Betty's head as it rests against my arm. At six years old - five years younger than me - she tires quickly. I will send her inside soon, I think. She can have some milk and a biscuit, then help
Mother with the mending.
Father is in a good humour today at least, the black mood that claimed him last week has passed for now, though we never know when the storm clouds will gather again. He strikes up a song and I listen as the mixed trebles of my brothers join in, my eldest brother Robert's pitch less steady than the rest as his voice is breaking into a baritone. Betty and join in and we are quite the choir when a horseman appears on the rig against the sky. From my vantage point I see him finge and fall silent. Betty, then each of my brothers, follow, suit when they spot him. Father is the last to cease. The rider stops at the nearest gate, his bay horse snorting frosted breath. Father stands up from the hurdle he is mending and holds a hand to the small of his back.
'You the tenant farmer here? Mister Oliver Cromwell? the messenger calls to Father, leaning down into his saddlebag. 'I've a letter for you.
We watch as Father plants his stake in the sodden soil and strides towards the man, his long boots squelching in the mud. He takes the proffered square of paper and thumbs it open, the seal cracking between his gloves. He reads, his face bent low over the page, his brow furrowed like the field he stands in.
It is a long letter.
lay, Beity juggles two potatoes up in the air and watch them spin, sprinkling soil on our skirts. But then a great, throated laugh takes our eyes back to Father and the potatoes tumble to the ground as we watch him clasp his arms around himself, his whole body shaking and sagging with a convulsion of laughter and tears.
"Boys! he shouts when he can speak again. 'Robin, Olly, Dick, Marry!' Father calls them in age order and, like hounds, they bound towards him. 'Biddy, Betty!' He
looks for us girls next.
We set oft, potatoes spilling from our laps and rolling in every direction across the floor of the barn. I pick up my skirts and hurry into the field, Betty scampering ahead of me leaping the mountainous ridges of mud that are as high as her knees. When we reach Father, our brothers crowding around him, he sweeps Betty up in his arms and she clamps her muddy legs around his waist, nuzzling into the roughness of his thick working coat as I hang back, wishing it was me pressing my flushed cheek against his, before chiding myself for my sinful envy.
'News, my darlings! The best of news!' Father says at last. 'Praise God! My uncle, who you know died last month, has left me an inheritance: leases on a number of properties in Ely, a post as the tithe-collector for the dean and chapter of the cathedral, an income of some three hundred pounds a year. It is not a fortune, but it is enough, more than enough..
His words tail off but I know what he means: enough for Father to climb back to the rank of gentleman, where he belongs. Enough to reclaim his status among the leading property owners of the county. Enough for us to reverse the recent decline in our luck. It was four years ago when Providence began to frown on us and Father was forced to sell up and leave his native Huntingdon. I watched him, exiled from the town and his respectable life there, sink down in the world to the rank of tenant farmer - he, the grandson of the so-called
'golden knight' Sir Henry Cromwell, who had built the magnificent Hinchingbrooke House, favourite stopping place of old King James whenever he took to the Great North Road. Even our current King Charles had visited there as a boy and had played at rough and tumble in the gardens with Father himself. Or so he claims.
history.
But all that will change now. We can rewrite our Robin, my eldest brother, no a fouten a man himself, beams with oy and relief, As tale The will have most to gain an deal for avation.
I know it will mean a great dea oot all of us toy brothers, university, perhaps a profession - Patiban. even, if the King ever lets it convene again. for boy and me, a better class of husband when the time come And for Mother, no more sewing by tallow candlelige
'Oh my dears ..! Father's voice returns, heartier the before and I can almost see his body strengthening be neath his working clothes. 'Come, let's go and tell you mother; we'll roast one of the chickens to celebrate! And you, sir, he calls to the bewildered messenger, 'youll join us in a drink, I hope? Raise a glass of wine to our
future?
He gathers us to him to walk back across the fields to the farmhouse, the horseman - smiling now - shadowing us along the road. The boys set off at a trot but Father takes only a few strides before pausing. 'This is Gods work, he says so quietly only Betty and I can hear, 'and will thank Him every day of my life. Father touches the tip of his nose to Betty's and she smiles. 'God came to me when I was at my weakest, girls, did you know that?
When I was at my most broken. And He bid me serve Him through my suffering. And I have - He knows how I have. And I never questioned His plan for me, for all my doubts - but now, ha ha!'
Betly g'ggles and I find myself laughing too, giddy as Father puts an arm around me and pulls me into his chest. My brothers hear our laughter and spring backwards to cluster around Father's legs once more, the older two, Robin and Olly, grinning and clapping him on the back, the younger, Dick and Harry, skipping and clutching at his coat.
But Father has left us once more as he looks up to heaven, tears welling in his eyes. I tip my face to the sky to look where he does and a watery shaft of sunlight blurs my vision. I hear Father's deep voice once more, feel the words growing in his chest as his heart beats against my ear.
'Now I can serve God by my doing and not by my suffering alone. And what things I shall do in the world!' Father's voice rings out, sending a flock of starlings winging into the air, and the whole field resounds with our rejoicing.

CHAPTER ONE
SPRING 1643
The dish slips from Betty's fingers and smashes on the flagstones. Somehow I keep hold of mine and we stand frozen in shock staring at the front door. A furious knocking thunders against the oak and the street outside rings with angry shouts and shots. Instinctively, I wait for Father to push past us to the door before I remember that he is away fighting with his regiment, my brother Olly too. My oldest brother Robin lies in the cold ground of course, Dick and Harry are off at school and our groom, old Matthew, will be two jugs down at The Bell now it is gone nine in the evening.
There are eight women in the house, I realise with cold fear, and not a single man.
'Who is it?' I venture forward, the dish of potatoes still in my hands. Mother emerges in the parlour doorway and I glance sideways at her, hoping for reassurance.
'Reverend Hitch, a familiar voice whispers thickly through the grained panels. 'There has been an uprising in the town, mistress; you must secure the house, put out your lights.'

wother is beside me now and has opened the dog an mich to reveal the clergymans pinched face. Over her capped head, I can just see town, people scurrying through the dusk, their heads bowed. The reverend is god to warn us, I think, for we are not always the most obedient of his flock, having a natural independence of religion.
Royalists?'
Aye, mistress. About fifty of them have come out for the King. They've seized the gates and are working their way across the town. Six of our Parliament troops have been killed already, another is bleeding out in the cathedral. You must make yourselves safe - they will know this is Captain Cromwell's house and that he is from home. I must press on now.
Lord have mercy! Mother clutches at the single string ol pearls at her neck. Thank you, reverend, we are grateful. If you come across our groom in the town, please send him back here and ask him to bring any men that can be spared. We will barricade ourselves in and
trust to God:
Reverend alch nods and hurries into the gloom, his black cloak lapping around his ankles. Mother closes the door and bolds it firmly: She turns to us, her face resolute, even as her hands fly out in a flurry of instruc tions. My heart pounds against my bodice.
"Belty, take Grandmother up to her room and see she has bread, small or and blankets. Then go to the little nones. the knocking an lie woken them and they will Doe frightened. De, tAc. sane we have 10 leave sud-germily, when it with bum. One canale only, prove sude
others!'