Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  Adam felt the little flutterings of panic begin again in his stomach. Could it be that Monmouth did not know what he was doing, and had marched an army of eight thousand men two days through muddy hills to the point of exhaustion, just to make a rendezvous with a few hundred horsemen who were as yet no more real than a promise? But that was the sort of thing that Tom had said before. Adam knew that he himself must not, dare not, think it.

  Sergeant Evans persisted. “It seems a pity to me, sir, that we did not take our chance at Bristol. Especially if the Duke had friends among Lord Feversham’s horse.”

  “Friends!” Tom burst out bitterly. “Was that his friends that rode through our camp t’other night?”

  “Aye, they got a fine way of showing their friendship,” said William Clegg. “Spill a man’s supper and then cut his throat! ‘Twas more like a bunch of Assyrians or Amalekites!”

  “Don’t be foolish, man!” Wade woke irritably from his contemplation. “We cannot expect all the enemy horse to desert to us. But if my lord the King has promises from officers amongst some of them, I am sure he is to be believed!”

  For a moment they were cowed by the anger in his voice. Adam though how strange it seemed to hear Monmouth spoken of now as the King. A week ago, in the euphoria of Taunton, they had all been speaking of King Monmouth, even those who wanted a republic; now they all tried to find their way around it when they spoke. At length Sergeant Evans began again, respectfully, yet insistent.

  “Nonetheless, sir, it seems to me that the best way to remind such officers of their promises would be to beat the enemy without them. Even if my Lord Grey is no Prince Rupert, I think our foot could match theirs, if we are not worn out first by marching away from them.”

  Adam could hear the earnestness in the sergeant’s voice; he was a professional soldier, he knew what he was talking about. In the last few days Adam had come to listen, more carefully than ever in his life before, to the tone of what men said, as well as the meaning of the words they used. Perhaps that was the result of fear; but it was his life that was at stake in Monmouth’s decision, as were Wade’s and the sergeant’s and those of all the other eight thousand men in the village and fields around them.

  “I agree with you, sergeant,” said Wade gruffly. “But such decisions are not made by a sergeant, or even colonels like myself, as you know. Still, you may rest assured that I shall press the counsel of attack at the Council of War tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, sir,” said the sergeant. There was a deep murmur of approval from most of those in the ranks around him.

  Colonel Wade grunted thoughtfully. “But when I do so, I should like to feel quite sure that the men of my regiment, at least, are completely prepared for battle, whenever it comes. So before I leave you, Captain Satchell, perhaps I should inspect these men, now, to see that they are as ready to fight as they are to give opinions.”

  So there and then, in the grey darkness and fleeting intervals of moonlight, the resolute young colonel, himself only on his first campaign, inspected each man of the detachment as they stood in their positions guarding the main road into the camp. First he checked their equipment, ensuring that each musketeer had sufficient powder, bullet, and charge, and that each musket was loaded and primed and the powder dry. Twice he found men with damp powder in their pans, and cursed them thoroughly for fools who were as likely to endanger their friends as help them during any battle. He inspected the pikes, both the real sixteen-foot ones, and those makeshift instruments made by nailing a scytheblade to a long pole. He found three of these to be coming loose and ordered them to be replaced, along with one whose scythe had a split pole.

  Only after he had finished each man’s weapons did he enquire into his clothing and equipment, checking first the straps and fittings of those who had breastplates and helmets, and examining their other clothes, particularly their boots, many of which were sodden and splitting after the continual marching and slithering through mud. For the footwear he could offer little but promises that he would remember them when there were new boots to be found or bought; for the armour he had a sharp curse and simple advice for the man like Tom whose helmet straps were hanging loose, and another, one of the very few who had been given a breastplate at all, who was beginning to let it rust.

  “You’ve not got your mother with you now, boy,” he snapped at Tom. “So you’ll have to learn to dress yourself and see to your own clothes. But we didn’t bring a breastplate all the way from Holland for you to grow mould on it, or a helmet to collect eggs! ‘Tis to shield your brains, you great loon, if you’ve got any - how do you think it’s going to do that if it falls off the first time an enemy pike touches it, eh? Or have you got a skull made of steel as well?”

  “No, sir - ‘tis just that it’s uncomfortable sometimes.” Tom muttered awkwardly.

  “And how comfortable do you think you’ll be when a troop of royal horsemen comes down that hill and knocks your brains out, eh? And when this musketeer next to you hasn’t got a pikeman to defend him because you feel like scratching after lice? If you don’t want to wear it, boy, give it to me now and I’ll find someone who does!”

  Tom hesitated for a moment. and Adam had the awful fear that he would give up the helmet out of simple anger and bravado. But he muttered that he would keep it.

  “Then see that it’s properly fastened when you’re on duty, or on the march. I don’t want to see any man in my regiment without his equipment in proper order at all times. Remember, you’re not in this for your own profit or comfort now, but for the glory of God and to save the souls of your fellow men, especially those who are standing beside you. And the better prepared you are, the more that fellow man’s going to be able to rely on you when the time comes. ‘Tis doing the devil’s work for him to be thinking of your own comfort, or getting your powder damp, at a time like this.”

  At last Wade was finished. He left his list of improvements with Roger Satchell and tramped vigorously away into the camp. They were silent for a while after he had gone, letting his words settle into their minds under the sigh of the night wind. At last sergeant Evans hawked and spat, and Adam could tell by the satisfied grunt that followed that he was amused.

  “A man of your own style, sergeant?” he asked quietly.

  “He’s got a good headpiece under that steel cap, for all his youth. If you lads listen to him, you might keep yours.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from behind, and Adam felt reassured by the presence of the others around him, shoulder to shoulder against the night. The moon lit their faces for a moment, and each man looked around and drew confidence from the faces of the others. Then an owl hooted, and the moon went in again.

  The sergeant spat once again, and grunted reflectively. “Aye,” he said, in a murmur that carried only to those next to him. “If we had a man like that at our head, we might really get somewhere.”

  Adam stared quietly ahead, facing the dark where the silver lane had once been.

  30

  “IT’S DOING him the world of good,” said Marianne. “I don’t think he’s been ridden at all this month, and he gets so fat and lazy sometimes.”

  Ann smiled, and patted the neck of Blaze, the little dun-coloured pony that was sweating after the climb to the top of yet another hill. She liked him; he was older and more docile than her own, but had the same sense of being willing to go on when asked.

  “He’s lovely.” she said. “I’m very grateful to him.”

  Marianne smiled back, and then they both turned their attention to scanning the rolling hills and woods ahead of them to the south east, looking for signs of the army they were trying to follow. But again it seemed there was nothing; the whole enormous swarm of several thousand men with their brightly coloured uniforms, bright harsh bugles, clattering hooves, and rumbling guns, seemed to have vanished into the rich green of the June countryside. There was no sight nor sound of them; only the larks overhead, the sudden clap of wings and soft cooing of the p
igeons in the woods, and the quiet, busy buzzing of the bees and other insects amongst the scattered reds and blues and yellows of the flowers in the hedgerows.

  “Perhaps they’ve all marched down a fox-hole!” said Marianne ruefully. “We should have followed them directly after all!”

  “Then we’d have been down the fox-hole too,” said Ann, and they laughed together. Now that the question of her relationship with Robert was temporarily forgotten, Ann was coming to like Marianne more and more. Her gay, flippant surface covered a great kindness and an extraordinarily strong will, both of which Ann had seen already. When Marianne had first suggested they should ride out to see the fighting, her husband had at first laughed, and tried to shrug it off; but by this morning Marianne had talked him round to the extent that he was to come with them, to see it for himself and keep them from danger. But then, when the horses were already saddled, a message had come for him from a business friend that could not wait. Ann had thought the ride would be called off; but somehow Marianne, by showing her own enormous disappointment and promising faithfully to keep at least a mile between herself and the army, and to return at the slightest danger, had got her husband’s permission for the two of them to go after all.

  So here they were, with only Simeon, the old footman, riding in attendance to protect them with a brace of old wheel-lock pistols hanging unconvincingly at his saddle-bow. He now sat his horse behind them, wiping the sweat from his thin, disapproving brow with the edge of his sleeve.

  “At least I’ve kept my promise,” said Marianne. “There must be ten miles between us and the nearest trooper. And I had such high hopes of being carried off!”

  Ann did not smile at that thought, but she did not mind it much either. Being out here like this reminded her as much of the joy of her escape from the dragoons as of the attempted rape; and just being away from soldiers of any sort, mounted on a horse which she could ride whereever she wanted, gave her an exhilarating sense of freedom after the crowds and restrictions of the last few days.

  She threw her head back, breathing in the pure air of the hilltop, searching for a lark, finding it, losing it, finding it again, and then letting it go and gazing at the glory of the cloudscape above. There was a small, irregular patch of blue to the south; she watched it for a while, as the clouds threw out long wisps of arms around it, gradually folding it smaller and smaller in their embrace, and remembered the endless midsummer blue of the sky above Colyton Hill a few short weeks ago.

  Then she heard the sound of musketfire.

  “Ann! Ann! Do you hear it? It’s over there, isn’t it, behind that hill! But where are the soldiers?” Marianne’s voice was quick and eager, unbearably excited. Ann looked back at her without speaking, her own excitement tinged with fear.

  “Come on! We can follow this track down to that field, and so over that ridge there. Then we’ll see something!”

  “But, my lady...” Simeon’s protest was too late; Marianne was already twenty yards away down the track, spurring her horse on as though they had only just started. Ann glanced at the worried servant for a moment, and smiled at the ridiculous combination of anxiety and male pomposity on his long, dreary face. Just as the man was about to speak again to try and enlist her support, she urged her own pony into a trot and left him.

  “But, Mistress Ann, it’s dangerous. Don’t you think we should turn back, as Mr Ashley said? My lady did promise, after all!”

  She ignored him, kicking her own mount to a canter to get further away. As she did so, she realised her own freedom more than ever. Old Simeon could not stop her. He could hardly stay on his own horse at anything faster than a trot, and Marianne … Marianne was no restriction. An idea began to form in her mind, and she began to hum a psalm to herself as she rode.

  They could still see very little as they reached the shoulder of the hill they had been making for, but the rattle of musketfire was much louder, and seemed to come from the end of a ridge to the south, along which Marianne was already galloping. As she reached the end she reined in, and waved excitedly to Ann to come up with her.

  At first it seemed like nothing, Just a few horsemen in a lane and some others running across a field, so that she wondered where all the noise was coming from. Then gradually her eyes took in a few more details, and then more and more, and she saw what a large action it was.

  Ann and Marianne were on a steep hill at the end of a ridge, looking down into a valley where a lane led over a low rise to a small village of several large farmhouses, small cottages, and an inn clustered round a church. Set back a little on the other side of the lane, on the edge of the village, were the high red walls of a manor house courtyard and garden.

  In the lane leading to the village was a swirling crowd of royal troops, horsemen and dragoons, some mounted and some not, cramped in on each other in the narrow space by a solid, steady line of rebel musketeers and pikemen who blocked the road like a dam. In front of this dam a millpond of confused soldiery was building up, as more and more royal troops came pressing down the road from behind.

  The fight had spilled over into the fields between the manor house and the lane, and as Ann watched, a troop of dragoons in the field dismounted, their flank shielded by mounted horsemen. They formed a line to fire their muskets at the rebels lining the hedge in front of them, but a volley poured into them from behind the hedge, leaving a good half-dozen stretched on the ground. After the dragoons had fired the horsemen rode forward, but their advance was met by loud cheers and another volley, barely three minutes after the first, killing and wounding several men and horses. Their smart trot forward to discharge their pistols at close range drew to a hesitant stop, and they quickly drew back out of the most deadly range.

  “What’s happening? ‘Tis very confusing. Why are they not drawn up in lines and squares, as they should be?” Marianne’s initial excitement had faded to a puzzled anxiety. “Surely my Lord Feversham should have them drawn up in lines? That’s how they fight - he told me so last night.”

  “Perhaps they were surprised and had no time. Look. Marianne - Monmouth’s men are drawn up in lines, across the road and behind the hedges. Perhaps they are having the better of it.”

  The triumphant tone was so clear in Ann’s voice that Marianne turned to look at her in astonishment, but Ann did not care. Now that she saw the armies actually fighting, she knew without a shadow of a doubt who she wanted to win; she knew it with her whole mind and body so that her hands clenched white around Blaze’s reins, and she could feel her heart pounding desperately in her throat.

  “Do you not think we should go back, my lady? ‘Tis mortal dangerous here, and you know my lord’s instructions.”

  “Oh shut up, Simeon, you old hen, we’re still a good mile away. Look, the King’s soldiers are forming a line at last, in that field. Perhaps they’ll attack! Oh, the poor dears - there’s another one down! I wonder if Robert is there?”

  Ann’s heart missed a beat, as though the words themselves were unlucky. What if Robert were there, and were killed?

  Please God, don’t let him be killed, let him escape safely! But please God, please, don’t let him win, don’t let this devil’s army of Papists and murderers form a line and defeat my father and our people - Your people, Lord. Your own army who believe in You! Oh Lord perhaps I have sinned and am damned forever, Lord, but it doesn’t matter about me, don’t punish them because of me! Let them win, Lord. What’s that, what’s happening now? Oh glory! Oh yes, Lord, be with us now, please!

  31

  AS ANN prayed, more dismounted dragoons struggled up out of the lane below, into the field by the manor house. Several royal horsemen got out of the lane too, forcing their mounts to leap and scramble up out of the sunken lane, through the hedge and into the field.

  But at the same time more of Monmouth’s men were pouring out of two doors in the walls of the manor house to face them. As they came out they formed up into lines, men with pikes and scythes protecting the musketeers, who fired a
t the royal dragoons and troopers who were struggling to order themselves. Monmouth’s men fired first one volley, then another and another as each company formed its line, and then the first company fired again.

  All over the field the royalist dragoons were falling. Smart blue and white coats crumpled and lay suddenly in the grass. A screaming horse dragged its dead rider jolting across the ground, his limp foot caught in the stirrup. Then the rebel troops advanced, pikes levelled, to drive the royalist soldiers back into the lane.

  Adam was one of the men who had come out of the manor house. He had fired two volleys and was now advancing across the field. In front of him a group of disordered, desperate dragoons were moving back towards the lane, trying to reload their short muskets as they went. Their wounded lay sprawled in the grass behind them.

  In all the noise, smoke, and turmoil, Adam’s eyes focussed on one man - a wounded dragoon, crouched in the grass about twenty yards in front of him.

  The man was going to fire at them, Adam could see it. He had risen out of the grass where he had fallen, and was on one knee, his short dragoon musket levelled at them, waiting. He had lost his helmet; as they came closer Adam could see the white powdered hair, the staring eyes and snarling, ferocious grin beneath it - a grin that was just like the one he had seen on the dead face of Philip Cox! They were marching forward at a fast, steady walk - they would be on top of him in half a minute or less. Why didn’t he fire, or run, as all those round him had done?

  The man frowned, and the musket wavered a little, as though he were having trouble seeing his target; but then it steadied, the neat black hole of its muzzle pointing straight at Adam, and the fierce, maniacal grin behind it searing his soul.