Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Then the Duke turned towards them, a gay smile on his face, and spread his arms wide. “So welcome, my good friends of Colyton! Your deeds gladden my heart and set a fine example to us all! If the rest of our friends be half as brave as you, I shall soon be leading the finest army this country has ever known! We shall be in London within the month!”

  The words were ordinary enough, but somehow, the eager sincerity with which they were spoken warmed their tired hearts, accustomed as they were to scorn and insults from men of his type. And perhaps because they so needed to believe in him, as he did in them, Adam and the men around him felt their doubts vanish in an absurd rush of love for the slim figure of their young general. His eyes searched theirs eagerly, and laughed with real pleasure as they cheered.

  He held up his hand for silence. “And now, since you have made me the honourable gift of your courage, ‘tis only fair I should give you the tools of your trade in return. Pray step inside the Town Hall here, where my quartermasters will see you are as well equipped as possible for your next encounter with the enemy!”

  Inside the Town Hall, their weapons were examined carefully by several quartermasters, working quickly, calmly, and decisively in the rush. One, a short, grey-haired man with an ugly, puckered scar on his chin and the side of his neck, took Adam’s musket, cocked it, looked at the pan, squinted down the barrel, and grunted approvingly.

  “Well cared for, that is. Do for a spare if we need one.” He stacked it against the wall behind him.

  “What do you mean, ‘spare’? That’s my musket, man, give it back!”

  “Not now, soldier. Here, grab that.” He gave Adam another musket out of a chest on the floor. “Name?”

  “Adam Carter. And that’s my musket!” Adam was accustomed to dealing with many awkward farmers and merchants in the day-to-day work of his business, but there was something about this man’s calm, insolent assumption of authority that stunned him. He began to realise that here he was no longer a trader, a father, a man of standing in his own independent community, but just a name on a list, a soldier to be armed and stood in a line.

  “Adam Carter.” The man wrote in a large book, sucking air in between his teeth. “Village?”

  “Colyton. But ...”

  “Col-y-ton. Right.” The man looked up, coolly. “Listen, Adam Carter from Colyton. You’re in the army now, soon you’ll be in a battle. When you’re in a battle you’ll need the best weapon you can have. That old musket of yours is not so bad as some, it’s in good condition for its age. It might even fire a shot if you’re lucky ...”

  “Of course it fires! I fired it last night!”

  “Did you now? That’s good.” A slight smile crossed the stern lips. “But it’s the old fashion. A matchlock. Slow. Difficult to use. So I’m taking it away and giving you something better. That musket you’ve got in your hands now is brand new. A firelock. Cost eighteen shillings. The best money can buy. See that grease still on it from the gunsmith’s in the Hague? And it’s all yours, so long as you serve in the Duke of Monmouth’s army. So do you still think I’m stealing your musket?”

  “No, I suppose not.” Adam looked with interest at the musket in his hands. It was true, the barrel and firing pan were still gleaming with the grease that had protected them on their sea journey. But behind the pan in place of the simple lid on his own musket, there was a spring lock and a flint, like ones he had seen on a pistol. And the cover on the pan did not simply turn sideways, as his did, but was hinged and ready to flip open as the hammer struck a spark from it. He tested it cautiously with his thumb.

  “You’ll learn how to use it soon enough. And you won’t be needing that, neither.” He touched the long coil of match hanging over Adam’s shoulder. Adam took it off and gave it to him. “Now, let’s see how you’re off for powder and ball.”

  When they were all enrolled and equipped, they formed up again outside. Adam saw that many of the others had firelock muskets, too, to replace their own, while some of the stronger men had been given sixteen-foot pikes like the one Tom had brought. A few had hung on to their sharp hedging tools and scythes, but William Clegg had surrendered his for a musket. All looked surprised and pleased with their new equipment.

  Roger Satchell spoke to them from the Town Hall steps.

  “Right, my friends, we’re all turned out like proper soldiers now. And since we’re so many come together, we’re to stay together. The Duke’s asked me to be your captain, if ye’ll have me.”

  There was good-humoured laughter at this, especially when William Clegg, remembering an accident Roger Satchell had had hunting deer last winter, called out: “So long as ‘ee do carry thy horse ‘ome thyself, and not expect us to carry ‘un over the hedges after ‘ee!”

  Roger Satchell laughed too. “No fear of that, Will - I’m to leave my horse to the cavalry, and trudge along with you lot on foot. Else I’d be forever picking you up behind me when you got sore feet!”

  But there were no further objections. Roger Satchell had been their natural leader, both by rank and character, from the beginning.

  “So if ye will have me, my first order is, that you spend the next quarter of an hour here, eating such food as you have brought with you, or can find in the town. After that, we are detailed to return to the West Hill with Colonel Wade. Remember, be ready at the stroke of eight - you see the Town Hall clock!”

  Eight o’clock. In the great stone-flagged kitchen where the betrothal feast had been, Ann and her mother and sisters moved about their morning tasks like sleepwalkers, their bodies doing what their minds knew nothing of. There was the wreckage of the feast to clear, the floor to sweep, water to draw. Young Rachel, quiet and unsmiling, put the smoky remains of the good beeswax candles away in a drawer, against a time they might need to melt them together for more.

  They had talked and wept enough the night before, until little Oliver and Sarah had come downstairs, tousled and confused in the early birdsong, to be kissed and cuddled and fussed back to bed. Now they sat crushed in a corner, their awed eyes silently watching their mother and sisters bustle round the room like grim ghosts. Simon sat with his leg propped on a stool, his eyes staring at some strange vision beyond the wall, his hand clenching and flexing unconsciously on the arm of his father’s chair.

  So quiet were they, that little Oliver thought they might be listening for the sound of his father fighting in the distance; yet when he and Ann went out into the streets to buy milk and eggs, there was nothing unusual to hear. Nothing, that is, except the strange silence in the blacksmith’s and saddler’s shops, and unusual surges of talk from little groups of women. These little groups formed and dissolved everywhere in the streets as women wandered, dazed and anxious, from house to house as if they had lost something, an answer to a riddle that someone else might have.

  So many stopped them to talk, that Ann was not in the least surprised to come home and find Ruth Spragg and Martha Goodchild sitting with her mother around the great table. She thought how worried her mother looked, her usually busy fingers pressing against the sides of her temples, as she listened to Ruth Spragg.

  “I know he had talked of it, often enough, but I never thought it would happen,” Ruth was saying. “‘Twas always ‘At the Day of Judgement’ or ‘If the Duke comes’, but I never thought he would. And now John may - they may all be killed!”

  “Death comes to us all in the end, my dear,” said Martha solemnly. “‘Tis no shame for it to be in a righteous cause.”

  “Oh, I know, but ...” Ann saw Ruth’s pale blue eyes glaring at Martha Goodchild, and could almost hear the words Ruth wanted to say. ‘But that’s easy for you to say - your husband hasn’t gone!’ But Ann saw Ruth bite her lip as she remembered Martha’s son had gone instead, on the very day of his betrothal. Truly, the pain was much the same for them all.

  “Let us pray it is a righteous cause,” Ruth finished lamely, looking miserably down at the table.

  Ann felt sorry for Ruth Spragg. Though she
had three children of her own, Ruth felt and looked younger than the other women, and on normal days her gay laughter and trim sprightly figure made her seem to Ann more like an elder sister than a friend of her mother and Martha Goodchild.

  “I’m sure it is, Ruth,” she said, touching her hand in sympathy. “Just think, men from all over the West Country will be going - there’ll be thousands of them. They’ll be sure to win.”

  “That’s what they said last time, when Roger went,” said Ruth quietly. “But I never saw him again.”

  For a while there was silence, and Ann looked cautiously at her mother, wondering if the pinched look on the round, red face was one of sympathy or pain. She knew her father’s brother Roger would have married Ruth, if he had not been killed in a war long ago; and she remembered her mother saying once how Ruth had wept, at Adam’s wedding, for the lover she had lost.

  “Oh, they are such fools!” Mary Carter shook her head violently, as though she might cry, and then went on in a voice grey and desolate as rain. “They are nothing but fools, to think they solve anything by war! Whatever has come of it before, but tears, and broken bodies, and cripples to be cared for by the hearth? My Adam has been a good husband to me; kind, gentle, honest - like your John, Ruth - and yet sometimes, I think he has longed for war ever since Roger went away and was killed - has thought of nothing else. Well, now he has his chance; much good may it do him!”

  She stood up, brushing her eyes with her hands, and looked about for something to do.

  “Isn’t father coming back, mummy? Is he killed?” Little Oliver stood desolate in the middle of the room, crying.

  “No, no, of course not! Come here, my love - don’t fret now!” She picked him up protectively and held him on her knee, soothing him and rocking him against her breast. Sarah wandered over anxiously, sucking her thumb, and held onto her mother’s sleeve.

  “I don’t think father wanted to go, mother,” Ann began timidly. “I think ... “

  “It was to protect us all that he went!” Simon’s sharp voice burst on them, high and indignant. “To protect his family from the Papists and unbelievers! ‘Tis a man’s duty to fight for his family, mother!”

  “Then he should have fought for you before, when he was young.” Mary shook her head in despair as she cuddled her children and gazed at her eldest son, white-faced and intense by the window in his father’s chair. “Now what are we to do, with him gone and you with that leg, and no-one to earn our daily bread? We’ll have to scrimp by on what little we’ve saved, and pray for an early end to all this foolishness.”

  “‘Tis wrong to call it foolishness, Mary,” said Martha Goodchild stubbornly. “It be a righteous cause, blessed in the sight of the Lord. They have given us provocation ...”

  “And what if they have? ‘Tis no more provocation than for a dozen years past!” interrupted Ruth furiously. “And good men die in a righteous cause, too! I don’t think I could bear to lose John, as well as Roger ...”

  “We will bear what we have to, my dear,” said Martha stubbornly. “That is all we can do, other than pray. Their fate is in the hands of the Lord now.”

  “So it is, Martha, so it is,” sighed Mary Carter, still rocking little Oliver on her knee, and with her arm round Sarah. “Let us pray the cause be good, as you say. Though it do hardly seem like godly work to me, to send such good kind men out on the road with muskets in their hands ...”

  As she bowed her head with the others in prayer, Ann thought for once neither of Tom nor Robert nor her bargain with the Lord, but of the slight upright figure of her father, marching with the rest down the dusty roads to Lyme, with his old musket on his shoulder and the dark ghosts of fear hiding behind his eyes.

  12

  “AND AGAIN! Smartly now this time! Wait for the order, wait for it! Musketeers, rest your muskets!”

  For the hundredth time that day Adam slid his musket forward into the cup of the rest, and felt the ripple around him as the whole company did the same. There was a clatter and a curse as John Spragg mistimed it, and musket and rest fell feebly to the ground.

  “Cock your muskets! Guard your muskets! Present! Wait for it now, wait for the order ... “ Adam squinted along the barrel at the row of hay-cocks standing on the grass twenty-five yards in front of him. He depressed the barrel deliberately so as to fire into the hay and not over it, as the sergeant said most recruits did.

  “Fire!” There was a ragged series of ear-splitting roars all along the line, and the hay vanished in clouds of smoke that the wind blew back into their eyes and nostrils.

  “... aaaarms!” Hurriedly he drew back the musket, obeying the order ‘Recover your arms’ which he could never hear. “Half-cock your muskets! Clean your pans! Handle your primers! Prime! Smarter than that - come on, there! The enemy are coming!”

  If they really were coming, Adam thought, there’d be no time to look up, not with all this fiddling about to do. But he was glad of it; if only he could absorb himself totally in this routine, he would become like a machine, able to fight without thinking of what he was doing, or of what might happen to him. If it could be like that in battle, he might manage it.

  Carefully he filled the pan with just the right amount of powder, and let the primer fall back to his side. “Shut your pans! Blow off your loose corns!” He blew, between his teeth, through lips already black with powder, from a mouth stuffed with half-a-dozen lead bullets. The bullets made his mouth wet with saliva, and he spat as much as he blew. “Cast about to charge! Handle your charges! Open them with your teeth! Charge with powder! Draw forth your scourer! Come on, soldier, quicker than that! Up to the height of your eye!”

  Adam growled in his throat, in impotent rage at this squat Welshman whose tongue had suddenly become the bane of his life. “Charge with bullet!” He took a shiny wet bullet from his mouth, dropped it into the barrel, put the large end of the scourer after it, and stood waiting for the next order. “Ram down powder and ball! Withdraw your scourers! Poise your muskets! Shoulder your muskets! Come on, now, quickly, you at the end! Rest your muskets ... “

  And so back to the beginning of the circle, and the next booming volley, in something under three minutes, a time which the sergeant said was terrible, but which was still a vast improvement on their performance yesterday. On and on they went, in the hot June sunshine, while the pikemen under Roger Satchell’s instruction marched, wheeled, and thrust in the field to the left of them. Adam’s arms ached, and sweat and spittle ran in trickling smears through the black powder on his neck and chin. After each boom his ears sang like a million larks, so that the harsh sergeant’s voice came from further and further away ...

  Suddenly, he found himself alone of all the line with his musket loaded and ready in its rest. The others stood casually, gazing at him in exhausted amusement.

  “Come on, man, wake up! I said ‘rest’ not ‘rest your muskets’ this time. Time to lie down and have a bite to eat. That’s better, lads, anyway. Give me another few days and I’ll have you frightening King James’s soldiers as well as me. Dismiss!”

  They turned and trailed wearily across the grass, making for the shady places by the hedge, where some women from Lyme had set up a trestle table with large cheeses and bread. It seemed a hundred years since yesterday, when John Clapp had left them outside the Town Hall to join the cavalry, leading Roger Satchell’s horse behind him. The rest of them, shouldering their new equipment, had marched up out of Lyme to the West Hill, where they had met the young Colonel Wade again, and their new Welsh sergeant, Ivor Evans. The rest of the day they had spent lining the sides of the hedges over the deep sunken lanes that led into the town, alternately guarding the approaches and learning the endless intricate musket and pike drill. Throughout the day a constant stream of recruits had poured into Lyme, and formed into companies like their own.

  Then in the evening they had marched back into the town for the grand parade, when they had first seen the great blue and white striped standard Monmouth had
brought, with the proud motto ‘Fear Nothing But God’ blazoned across it. Even Adam’s heart had lifted as the flag rose above them, with the whole town cheering, drums beating, cannon firing from the ships in the sea, and the tramp of the great army through the town. After that they had marched out again to their present positions, where they had stood watches throughout the night, covering all the positions from which the enemy might approach.

  Already there had been rumours of another skirmish, which crackled through the army like fire through dry grass: a cavalry skirmish in Bridport, with enemy horsemen killed. How many - two, five, ten - nobody knew, nor whether they were militia or regular soldiers; but all the excitement had meant that there had been little sleep in the fields, tired though they were. Instead there was much earnest, eager talk, psalm-singing, and anxious calling of the password throughout the night. Then, early in the morning, it had been back to the endless, deafening, mind-numbing musket drill again.

  Adam helped himself to bread, cheese and water from the supply table, and slumped down by the hedge to tear at it greedily. His mouth left black marks in the bread, and he washed the powder off his lips as best he could.

  He smiled at John Spragg, whose round, cheerful face was as black as his own. “Tastes better’n bullets, don’t it, John?”

  “It surely does. It don’t get your mouth so wet, neither.”

  William Clegg stretched his thin legs carefully, as though he thought they might break, and rubbed his ear. “I don’t think I shall hear anything ever again. Do ‘ee think ‘tis so loud as that in battles, John?”