Free Rebels and Traitors by Lindsey Davis Page A

drink, while wiping away tears on their aprons as they waved off their men to protect the city. In case the defences failed, women boiled up cauldrons of hot water to pour down on attackers, and cluttered up the streets with empty barrels and old joint-stools, to get in the way of cavalry.
    While drums beat to give them heart and to summon extra recruits, Skippon led out the Trained Bands, Gideon Jukes among them. From the east of the city particularly, where dirty and noisy processes were carried on, forges and foundries, dye works and tanneries fell silent and gave up their men. In the great markets, porters and stall-holders, fishmongers and slaughterers pulled on their boots and tightened their belts, then marched. From shops and from taverns came part-time pikemen and musketeers. Servants and their employers, apprentices and their masters poured forth until it seemed that all the males in London had been sucked from the streets, leaving behind an eerie quiet. Mothers with clenched jaws clutched their babies to their bodices, and listened to that stillness nervously. Only women, children and the old were left — the people that attackers would treat most cruelly.
    Five of the six main regiments marched together westwards; one remained on guard. Sightseers who owned horses rode along with the departing troops. Girls pelted the soldiers with flowers, the boldest maidens running in among the ranks to press kisses upon them. The troops left the old city walls at Ludgate, moving from the workshop and commercial centre across the unsavoury valley of the Fleet river, past legal haunts at the Temple and the Inns of Court, then along the Strand with its grand noblemen’s mansions. They passed the Banqueting House, the sole monument in a royal rebuilding project that would never now be completed, and then the crumbling old Whitehall Palace where Gideon saw in amazement that grass grew around the buildings, abandoned only a year ago when the King fled. Passing under the Holbein Gate, which was now manned by citizens instead of royal guards, they were cheered at the Houses of Parliament, then marched on beyond the turbulent suburbs, past the Westminster horse ferry, through the marshes and into the open countryside.
    Many of the Trained Bands, including both Jukes brothers and Robert Allibone, had never been so far out of London in their lives. They tramped through fields and market gardens for nine miles, half a day’s journey and far enough from home to make the inexperienced grow jumpy. The weather was clement, though chilly. With colours flying, drums rattling and wagons of armour and shot rumbling amongst them, they stepped out cheerfully. The old hands had drilled and marched regularly for years; new recruits fell in with spirit, though many were apprentices, and extremely young. To encourage them, Skippon rode from regiment to regiment calling, ‘Come on, my boys, my brave boys! Let us pray heartily and fight heartily. I will run the same hazards with you … Come on, my boys!’
    They found Essex’s forces, drawn up in a defensive line at Turnham Green. As the Trained Bands marched through Hammersmith they saw an array of artillery, waiting in a lane. Gideon found the big guns ominous. When they reached the army, they passed a heavily guarded wagon-park. He began to feel part of a great, professional occasion.
    Now he and his colleagues came among seasoned troops. Infantry survivors from the battle of Edgehill had been positioned across the approach to London, their flanks protected by blocks of cavalry. All had flags and pennants. Every company in every regiment was marked. The drums never stopped their insistent, tension-making beat; there would be much more noise and a blanket of smoke, if it came to a battle. The field marshal carefully interleaved Trained Band regiments among the more seasoned troops of the main army, some of whom wore the orange sashes that had become the recognised colours of Parliament.
    By the