Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  “Father! Tom! Have you seen them?”

  “Seen who?”

  “The girls from the Academy. They’re going in a procession to the camp to see the Duke!”

  “Yes, my dear, I know. They’re just down there.” Adam wondered if he should say more, but Ann’s enthusiasm left him no time.

  “Oh good. Come on, Mr Thompson, quick! We must see them. They say they’re so pretty!”

  She was ahead of them, hurrying up the street with the old scarecrow surgeon, with all the impetuosity of the child Adam remembered; there was nothing to do but shrug and follow after. At least she was going the right way, and he could introduce her to Miss Blake later.

  At the gates of the city they caught up with the little procession from the school. The girls had met a troop of soldiers, and somehow Miss Blake seemed to have persuaded them to act as her escort, so that now the column following the tall schoolmistress was four abreast, each rank consisting of two girls in the centre with their silken banners, with a tall pikeman on either side. Then Miss Blake persuaded the pikemen to sing, too. They began a little sheepishly at first, and then with a growing sense of fun, so that the colourful procession pushed its way to the centre of the busy camp amid a religious choir of male and female voices, making heads turn all around.

  Ann, struggling in the crush close behind, saw a group of men come out of one of the larger tents to see what was happening. There were a few in dull red coats, like Colonel Wade, whom she recognised; and several others, including Lord Grey, in fine coats and long wigs that reminded her briefly of Robert. Her father and Tom forced their way through the crowd to join her.

  “Father, which is the Duke? Is he there?”

  “Yes, my dear. The one in the purple coat - there!”

  “Oh.” She craned on tiptoe to peer over someone’s shoulder, and then found a better place where she could see unobstructed. As she did so, the tall young man in the purple coat stepped forward, an amazed smile on his face, while Lord Grey and the others stood a little back from him.

  Miss Blake held up her sword to halt her column, and dropped a deep curtsy before him. Then, solemnly, she held out the sword and the Bible, offering them. There was a hush of indrawn breath as the crowd waited to hear what she had to say. The old lady’s voice rang out harsh and proud over the field.

  “My lord, on behalf of the daughters of the Protestant Somerset gentlefolk at present being educated at the Taunton Ladies’ Academy, I beg you to accept these twin gifts of a sword and a Bible, as a symbol of our hope that you will right soon become the true defender of the faith of our beleaguered nation.”

  She curtsied again, and the awestruck, smiling Monmouth accepted the gifts gracefully amidst a roar of approval from the surrounding crowd. Then, holding the Bible aloft, he thanked her, in that clear, youthful voice that went straight to the heart of his hearers.

  “Madam, your gifts express the true desire of my heart. I came into the field with a design to defend the truths contained in this book, and to seal it with my blood if necessary; though with such support as this, I doubt not that the Lord will give us the victory!”

  Ann shivered as she heard the last words, and then cheered eagerly with the rest. He seemed so young, she thought, and innocent. She longed to protect him, as she had once longed to protect Robert. Robert, who had once fought for Monmouth too ...

  There was continuous cheering now, and laughter, as each little girl in turn presented the Duke with her banner, and was thanked with a kiss from the Duke and Lord Grey. But then, amidst the laughter, came an awful, heart-stopping hush. Lord Grey was holding aloft a banner, presented by a little ten-year-old girl in a green frock, which bore a crown in the middle of it, and below the crown, the two letters JR - for Jacobus Rex, James the King, Monmouth’s uncle and enemy! No, Ann thought, surely it could not be happening - surely the little girl could not be so stupid as to present him with a banner like that! It was madness! Then someone laughed, and she realised, as the ripple spread through the crowd, that it was meant for James, Duke of Monmouth, as a hint that he too should become King! The relieved, tumultuous cheering broke out around her more wildly than ever.

  But even as she cheered, she saw Tom’s face strangely quiet and frowning nearby; and here and there, in the crowd, one or two others, looking silently down at their boots in disapproval. She clutched his arm, laughing.

  “Give thanks, Tom! ‘Tis a sign from the Lord! A Protestant King will lead us all to salvation!”

  “No!” Tom snatched his arm free, and looked away. Hurt, she turned to her father, who was watching with a strange half-smile on his face. He tried to say something but his words were lost in the shouts of the crowd.

  When the noise died down Monmouth thanked them again, the banners were distributed to the Colonels of the various regiments, and the ceremony was over. The girls from the Academy marched back through the crowd, passing within a few feet of Ann. Forgetting Tom’s snub, Ann turned again to them both, radiant with delight.

  “Father! Tom! Wasn’t it magnificent! What a fine, proud lady!”

  “Fine enough from a distance, anyway,” muttered Tom wryly, avoiding her eyes. But Adam smiled, and put his hand on Ann’s shoulder.

  “A fine lady indeed, my dear. I’m glad you think so, for we’re to meet her presently.”

  “Meet her, father? Why?”

  The question could not be answered immediately, for the crowd, breaking up around them, jostled them apart. But in a few minutes everyone had gone, and Ann, Tom and her father were together again, walking quietly across the fields back towards the town.

  “What did you mean about meeting that woman, father? You don’t know her, do you?”

  “I do, my dear. I met her today. She has agreed to take you into her care when the army leaves Taunton, until such time as you can make your way safely home.”

  Ann stopped still, surprised. A chill of disappointment flowed through her. “But father - am I not to go with you and help the surgeon, as I have done? He says I have been a great help - ask him if you do not believe me!”

  “I’m sure you have, Ann, and I’m very pleased for it. But an army is no place for a girl, you must know that. ‘Tis neither safe nor proper for you to be with us now.”

  Ann looked at her father, and saw by the set of his stern, seamed face and steady eyes that he was in earnest, and that it was useless to resist. Many times in her young life she had argued and pleaded with him, and often, by the hint of tears in her innocent green eyes, she had won; but there were other times when she knew, before the argument started, that nothing would move him. This was one such time. Yet she did not want to stay behind. She glanced at Tom for support. At first he seemed to be avoiding her eyes, but then he too turned to her with but that peculiar, firm, tight-lipped frown his face took on when he refused something he saw as a temptation, like the time last year when she had tried to persuade him to join in the maypole dance.

  “Your father is right, Ann. The lady is a godly woman, as you saw, and ‘twill be more proper to for you to be with her than with us.”

  “It will take a burden from my mind, Ann, to know that you are safe,” added Adam gently, his hand still on her shoulder. “And the lady has promised to give you some transport home, or to Lyme, as soon as she judges it safe. Come, shall we go and meet her?”

  “Yes, father.” Ann sighed, resenting the way she was treated like a child, but accepting for the moment what she could not change. Then she brightened suddenly, as she remembered the ceremony. “Perhaps she will teach me to handle a sword! I’ve always wanted to learn!”

  20

  BUT IN the event Ann found the two teachers at the Ladies’ Academy very much more forbidding and less amusing than she had imagined. They did not teach her how to use a sword. Instead, there was a considerable display of disdain when she started to eat in front of the other girls in her normal way with a knife and her fingers, for she had brought no other cutlery of her own and had indeed nev
er used a fork, but there seemed to be a great deal of fuss in the Academy about how to use one. She was lent one, and tried to use it, but became furious when she banged her teeth and her neighbours laughed. After that she had to share a bed with a maid over the kitchen, who was not at all pleased to see her, and snored and sweated all night so that Ann could hardly sleep.

  The next day began better, because Monmouth, taking the advice of his friend Lord Grey, and perhaps inspired by the gesture of the girls of the Academy, proclaimed himself King. Ann was thrilled as she listened to the ceremony, and watched him touching sufferers for the King’s Evil. Yet she felt afraid too, for the very excitement of the revolution’s seeming success made the thought of returning quietly home and keeping her promise to God harder to bear, though she knew she would be damned if she did not. And it seemed worse, to have to submit to the discipline of the Academy, like a little girl.

  So she was relieved the next morning, when, only a few hours after the army had marched out of the town, Miss Blake sent for her and told her she was to leave. Ann did not question her judgement, though she was a little surprised when Miss Blake told her she was sure the roads would be safe. The militia, Miss Blake assured her, had been defeated, and anyway, if there were problems, old Amias could always lay about him with his riding whip. She had arranged for Ann to take two young ladies home to their parents in Chard, for they should have left some days ago, the end of term being past.

  If only it had not been for the two young ladies, Ann thought, it would have been pleasant enough to be on the road again, even going back the way she had come. She sighed as they screamed for the twentieth time that morning because the cart lurched into a pot-hole. They were nice enough girls in their way - just young and empty-headed, with four or five times as much wealth as her and surely, she thought, half as much sense.

  “Look at the old biddy by the cottage, clucking at her hens!” one of the two, Elspeth Simpson, shrieked gleefully. “Look at her face! I bet if she’d gone to the army, she’d have made the King’s soldiers drop dead with fright!”

  “She’s probably frightened her husband off already. He probably ran off to join the army just to get away!”

  “For shame, you two!” Ann scolded. “What if she should hear you?”

  “Oh, she won’t hear. She’s probably deaf as well. Anyway, look at her, she only understands chicken talk! Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!”

  The two dissolved into giggles and Ann gave up in disgust. If only my lord Monmouth could see them now, she thought; they were quite changed from the demure young damsels who had presented him with their silken banners amid such pretty curtsies and blushes two days ago. But it was no use her trying to control them; free from the iron control of Miss Blake and her deputy, Miss Musgrave, they seemed to be possessed by a demonic urge to behave as badly as possible.

  She turned away to watch the changing scenery. The weather was even hotter and stiller than it had been for the last few days, so that even with the cooling movement of the air in the lurching cart she could feel the damp perspiration prickling under her dress; but it looked as though it was settling in for a change. Huge billowing mountains of cumulous cloud were pouring up into the sky in the south ahead of them, making the little herds of sheep and cows on the green rolling hills look like ants beneath the pillars of a great citadel; and themselves like pilgrims creeping slowly, endlessly up the track towards the palace of the Lord.

  Her father would see those same pillars of cloud behind him as he marched north-eastwards from Taunton towards Bridgewater, she thought, and wondered uneasily what they portended. Were they a sign that the Lord was rising with them, ready to wreak vengeance on His enemies? Or were they a more ominous warning, a Judgement of the Lord upon those who had sinned? She wished she could have stayed with her father. Whatever God’s judgement was, she could have faced it better with him.

  The cart lumbered on out of sight of Taunton, and Ann gradually fell into a half-trance, ignoring the prattle of the girls, letting her relaxed body jerk and lurch with the motion of the cart like an old rag doll. Her eyes, lazily focussed on the road ahead, watched as it slowly wound its way up a slope, past a few poor cottages with one or two pigs and a few vegetables, and on through a wide pasture grazed by half-a-dozen cows, browsing and lazily switching their tails against the flies in the heat. The cart climbed upwards through a coppice, the light hazel and oak leaves giving them a welcome, fluttering green shade as they passed under it; and came out onto the scrubland that was at the top of most hills, humming with bees and larks and resplendent with yellow gorse.

  And so down towards the trees in the next valley, where a cluster of partridge chicks scurried panic-stricken across the road in front of the hooves of the troop of dragoons who were riding towards them out of the wood.

  The old man reined the horse slowly in until it stopped. The girls’ prattle rose to a shriek and then died. They waited.

  The dragoons rode on at a slow walk, unhurried, unexcited. Their grey and yellow coats were worn and dusty; they sat their horses easily, as though they had spent half their lives in the saddle. As they came nearer Ann heard a few gruff remarks pass amongst them, raising a coarse laugh, though she could not hear what was said. Old Amias moved the cart to the side of the road, to let the dragoons ride past easily if they wanted. They rode slowly closer, their horses on a loose rein, taking it easy. Ann and the two girls found themselves staring up into twenty weather- beaten faces, each wrinkled and burnt by the sun, many with sharp pencil-like moustaches, all with a cruel, appraising look in their eyes.

  “Halt!” Their officer raised his hand, and they halted as one. He saluted and smiled, a brief flash of yellow teeth that seemed out of place with the callous, hungry stares of his men.

  “Good afternoon to ‘ee, young ladies. A fine day too, is it not?”

  “I thank you, sir. It is indeed.” It did not seem to Ann necessary to remark on the towering clouds that were almost over them now, huge and heavy in the sultry air.

  “And where might three such lovely ladies be going on so fine a day? Eh?” The last syllable came sharp, an impatient jolt belying the seeming politeness of the rest.

  “To Chard, sir.”

  “To Chard? And why there?”

  “To take these young ladies home, from their school in Taunton.”

  “From their school in Taunton? I see. Have they learnt all there is to know, then?”

  There was a harsh laugh from the ranks behind him, quelled by a look from the captain; yet it was not a look of anger, so much as one almost of acknowledgement for the applause.

  “Of that I know not, sir. But their term of study is ended.”

  Ann felt her voice small and disregarded after the laughter; yet it had suddenly become vital to keep the talk on the normal level, on matters of politeness.

  “Their term of study is ended. Indeed. Could that be, perhaps, because there is an army of rebels in Taunton?”

  The strange sweetness of his voice deceived Ann into pretending innocence. “An army of rebels, sir?”

  “Oh come now, miss, don’t play schoolgirl games with me! The army of the traitor Duke of Monmouth is in Taunton, is it not?”

  She stared back at him, appalled. But before she could decide what to say, the voice of young Elspeth answered for her, shrill with pert defiance.

  “No, it is not. You are too late! And it is lucky for you that you are, too, because the Duke of Monmouth has enough fine soldiers to shoot you all to pieces, if he likes!”

  There was a brief silence, broken by laughter at the high voiced mimicry of one of the dragoons. “Shoot us all to pieces, eh? Ooooooh, stop it, that hurts!”

  The captain smiled too, more broadly than before, showing the gold in two of his upper teeth.

  “So, left Taunton, has he? And left a little clutch of lady rebels behind him, it seems. Where’s he left for, then, miss? Eh?”

  “Be quiet, Elspeth. Say nothing to these men!” But it was unnecessa
ry for Ann to reprimand her; Elspeth was already blushing with mortification at their laughter. Ann faced the captain silently, defiant.

  “Say nothing? May I remind you, miss, that it is a capital offence to harbour traitors?”

  “We harbour no-one, sir. I am merely taking these two girls from their school to their homes in Chard. We don’t know where the Duke of Monmouth is, save that he is not in Taunton. And we beg your leave to pass safely along the King’s highway.”

  “Safely along the King’s highway, my hussy? Why, so you shall.” The captain stared at her with a look at once revoltingly close and endlessly distant, as though she were a thing that he knew everything and nothing about, a thing that had everything and nothing to do with herself. “But ‘tis dangerous to ride along the King’s highway these days, don’t ‘ee know. There’s lawless rebels round every corner causing all manner of harm. ‘Tis lucky for you that there’s some of the King’s loyal troops about, isn’t it? Lucky ... for some.”

  He turned, almost regretfully, to his men. For the first time the callous, sunburnt faces turned away from the girls, to watch him carefully.

  “Corporal Taylor. You were unlucky to be on duty the other night. Choose two men and escort these young ladies along the King’s highway to Chard. And corporal!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “See that they come to no - undue - harm. I would talk with them further on my return.”

  “Sir. Richard Jones, fall out with me. And ... you, Daniel Sellar.” There were several muttered curses, and a few sly, envious grins as the second man was named; and then with a last, longing look at the girls, the troop rode on.

  Ann looked at the corporal. He was short like a dwarf, so that his head hardly came above his horse’s; yet broad as a man twice his size, with unusually long arms and restless, hairy hands. He had a thin pencil moustache and a blue, closely shaven chin. As she looked at him he twisted his mouth into an awkward grin and winked at her; but it was not a wink that conveyed any fun. She shivered as his eyes flickered guiltily away from her to confront his companions.