Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  “Yes, sir. You’m not to be disturbed?” A broad, knowing grin lurked in the corners of the man’s mouth, and as soon as Robert turned away the man’s amusement burst out of hiding, as he stared with lewd, open appraisal at Ann’s figure through her dress. Ann looked down modestly as Robert showed her the way to the stairs, and she mounted them quietly, listening to the click of her heels on the polished wooden boards, and the sudden silence that had fallen over the few drinkers in the room downstairs. But that was what she must expect.

  Robert’s room was a large one on the first floor overlooking the courtyard, with a great curtained four-poster bed on the right, and two straight-backed wooden armchairs and a small table near the fireplace on the left. The walls were panelled in wood, and over the mantlepiece was a large picture of a dying hart in a wood, pierced by an arrow and surrounded by dogs and huntsmen.

  “They have given me the best room, I’m afraid, though I don’t much care for the ‘art,” he said, with a wave of his arm at the picture. “The wretched beast seems to follow me with its eyes all round the room, as though it was I who shot the arrow.”

  He showed her to one of the chairs and then sat down opposite, and Ann thought how formal it was, as though they were husband and wife waiting for the servants to bring them a drink. She would have laughed if she had been more relaxed, and she had not feared to lose her poise.

  “So. You escaped from Marianne - and from the chaos of Sedgemoor too, it seems.” How calm and suave he looked, she thought, as though he were pleased to see her, but no more – as though her presence did not touch him deeply at all. Would he pretend, later, that he loved her - or was this the pretence, now? “I looked to find you in Bridgewater afterwards, but had no luck. Perhaps you saw sense, and persuaded your friends to take the King’s pardon before then?”

  “No. I never saw no King’s pardon, nor my father neither. Till now.”

  “Now?” He raised an eyebrow quizzically, and a chord sang in her heart as she remembered the strange quirk, so comical in such a solemn face, which she had laughed at once on Colyton Hill.

  “It’s a little late to be seeking a King’s pardon now, Ann. But you’re not charged, are you? No-one has informed against you?”

  “No. I’m safe enough, I think - as safe as any woman can be, in a country swarming with royal soldiers.”

  His face darkened. “They have not harmed you again?”

  “No. I come to you ... much as you found me.” She would have said more, but her courage failed her, and he did not seem to want the talk to get close to her, just yet. He was still taking in the surprise of her being there at all.

  “So you were at Bridgewater with the rebel army? But how did you escape?”

  “I can hardly tell you that, now, can I?” Nonetheless she told him a little, to gain time, of the story she had told her father, without mentioning names or places, lest he or his soldiers should use them. Robert did not press her for details, but merely watched and listened as she spoke. And when she had finished the story, he said nothing, and she saw that he had been watching her as much as listening to what she said. His thin, freckled face had lost its pose of sophistication, and had instead that yearning, boyish gaze that she remembered so well.

  She smiled at him, more relaxed now, yet wishing to postpone things a little longer.

  “And you? I’d thought perhaps to find you killed, in your duel with Colonel Weston?”

  He smiled faintly. “Colonel Weston is no more. It seems someone at Sedgemoor spared me the trouble.”

  “I’m glad.” There was not a lot more to say. She smiled carefully, aware that the moment had come.

  He coughed to clear his throat. “And you say you have something to give me. Is that why you are here?”

  “Yes.” Her voice came in a whisper. But she could not say it sitting so formally like this, opposite him in a chair. She got carefully to her feet and walked slowly to the bed, drawing aside the curtains at its foot.

  “Is this where you sleep?”

  “Yes.” He sat quite still and straight in his chair, watching her as though in a trance.

  “It looks ... very comfortable. I’ve never slept in a bed as big as this.” She sat down on it and looked at him, pressing her arms down behind her so as to emphasize her bust. “Come and sit here, Rob. I can’t shout my secret across the room.”

  He got up and walked towards her, very solemn and steady, and sat down awkwardly beside her. Then she realised how stiff he seemed, and ventured a shy smile.

  “So. Am I near enough now? What is this secret?”

  “Can’t you guess?” She knew it would work better if she laughed, but she couldn’t. Instead she slipped her arms around him and put up her dry mouth to be kissed. He did not respond; so she kissed him herself. His lips were still, neither responding nor withdrawing. She paused, and his hand grasped her shoulder gently, holding her away.

  “Ann? What do you mean?” His face was puzzled, almost hurt.

  “I mean I love you. I have come to give you myself, as you wanted me before.” She tried her most lascivious smile, and moved forwards to kiss him again, but he held her back, and she felt her heart pumping with fear.

  “But why now? I haven’t asked you now. Why have you changed?” The puzzled frown on his face was nearer anger than concern.

  “Because it’s what you always wanted from me. I’ve come to give it to you. Rob ... “

  “No!” Her hand moved to touch his thigh and he stood up, horrified, glaring down at her. “What is this? You’re like a whore!”

  “I ... only for you, Rob!” But she had failed; and she must not fail! She stared up at him, trying to think what to do. “I love you, Robert!”

  “You don’t!” He strode furiously to the window, to put a safe distance between them. “If you loved me you wouldn’t come and offer yourself to me like that, as brazenly as that. Especially not you! By God, Ann! Is this your idea of revenge? Have you become so much of a whore that you must flaunt yourself in my face, or has someone paid you to do it? Come on, which is it? Speak, you little strumpet!”

  But she could not speak. Neither could she weep; the shock was too great. She could only stare at him, feeling her eyes widen and the blood rush to her face. She wanted to run but could not move either.

  “At least you can still blush. Come on, speak! Why are you doing this?” He came over and stood between her and the door, as though he had read her mind about escaping.

  “My father,” she said at last, and the words released a little of her courage. At least her motive was honourable; he could not deny that.

  “Your father? You mean your father sent you to be a whore?”

  “No!” He had no right to shout at her like this. “I came by myself, to help him. He knows nothing about it!”

  Robert put a hand over his brow, pushing back the curls of his wig. “But ... how could you help your father, by behaving like this to me?”

  “You could get him a pardon!” And so it was said; but not in the way she had imagined, softly whispered in his ear as he lay relaxed, exhausted and grateful in the bed beside her, gently stroking her breast. Instead it fell like a challenge between them, dividing them for ever.

  “Get him a pardon? He is captured, then - in prison?”

  “Yes, here in Dorchester. He was tried yesterday, and sentenced to death.” She felt the blush fading slowly from her face, and the tears swelling beneath.

  Robert shook his head in surprise. “But I can’t get him a pardon, Ann, if he’s been tried already. No-one can, except the King, or Judge Jeffreys!”

  “Then perhaps I should go to him! At least he offered me a part!” She spat the words in his face, furious, and tried to get past him to the door, but he put out a hand to stop her.

  “No!” His anger had returned, mixed with astonishment. “You can’t go to him, girl - he’d have you burnt, as well. What do you mean, a part?”

  “You know how they are to die, don’t you? Well, h
e offered me a part of my father’s body! I’ve got to try to save him, don’t you see?”

  She tried to push past him again, but again he stopped her, and this time the tears came - short harsh sobs that she could not stop and which gave her no relief. He tried to pull her to him, but she resisted, so he let her cry, his hand gentle on her shoulder. He sounded shocked when he spoke.

  “That was a filthy thing to say, Ann. The man is as bad as that bastard Kirke!”

  She brushed away her tears with her sleeve. “I thought you would have more pity than Colonel Kirke. I heard a girl slept with him to free her father, and when she woke up in the morning her father was hanging outside the window on the inn signpost.”

  Robert winced. “And you thought I was like them? You must really hate me to believe that!”

  But Ann was unrepentant. Her rage against her own failure had turned to fury against him. “But what you say is just the same, isn’t it? You won’t save my father so he’ll be hanged and drawn and quartered just the same, won’t he? It won’t make any difference to him!”

  “I didn’t say wouldn’t save him, Ann, I said I can’t.” Robert tried to keep his voice low, conscious of the drinkers in the bar downstairs, but Ann did not care.

  “Why can’t you? You’re an officer, aren’t you, a gentleman? You could see this Judge Jeffreys, speak to him.”

  “He would only think I had been bribed. And what should I say, Ann - that your father is innocent? If he was caught at Sedgemoor with a musket in his hand, no-one is going to believe that.”

  “It doesn’t matter who believes it, if he lives.” She pleaded with Robert despairingly, the carefully curled ringlets of her hair sticking to her face with tears, and as he stared silently back she suddenly saw herself not just in his eyes, but in her father’s. She remembered the thin, ragged figure of her father standing there in the courtroom, quietly defying the judge. What would he think if he could see her now? But then, what else could she do?

  “Robert ... I will be your mistress - I will do anything you want if you save him! He is my father, Robert!”

  “And I had hoped to be your lover!” The words were spoken in bitter self-contempt. He turned away from her, as though her touch was suddenly loathsome to him. Then he whirled round again silently.

  “Do you not see what an insult it is to me, to come to me like this? To cheapen yourself like a common whore from the gutter? To do this to me who already worshipped you, who made a fool of myself for you, who even offered ... “

  He took a deep breath, and tried to lower his tone and collect himself. “Listen, Ann. I could have helped your father if I’d wanted. I can help him still. Not to get a pardon, but at least to save him from the hangman and get him transported. And I would have done it gladly, if you had only come and asked. You only had to ask, and I would have done it, because I loved you. But now - how can I love someone who cheapens herself as you do, who thinks of her body as some sort of bribe to give to the man with the greatest power? It’s finished, Ann. You disgust me!”

  He turned away abruptly and stared unseeingly out of the window.

  Ann stopped crying. She knew that when she did start to cry, later, she would never stop; but now the pain went too deep for tears. Yet with the pain, part of it, was that last tantalising hope that she had to reach for even as it was snatched from her grasp.

  “You can save him?”

  “I could have, if you had simply asked.”

  “Then will you do it now, if I kill myself?”

  The words were spoken so quietly, it was a moment before he reacted at all. Then he turned, frowning as though at an irrelevance. “What?”

  “If I give my life for his, will you save him? You despise me, and I despise myself, so I would be better dead.”

  “What stupid nonsense is this? How would you kill yourself, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. It must be easy enough.” She stood still, and spoke quite dully, as though to do so deadened the pain. “If you give me a gun or a knife, I will do it now, if you like. But you must promise to save my father, first.”

  “Ann! What are you saying? That’s a mortal sin!” He strode over and grasped her arms, as though to prevent her from hurting herself, though she had made no move to do so. She looked up at him through a tangle of auburn hair, her face pale and unweeping like a ghost’s.

  “I am damned already for a whore, and for lying to God about my love for you.”

  “Lying to God? What do you mean?”

  “I told him in my prayers I would not love you, because I thought it was a sin. But it was a worse sin to lie to God, and to pretend to love a man when I did not. I made him a coward.”

  “What?”

  “Tom, who I was betrothed to. I pretended to love him, and even lay with him once, to give him courage and make it true. But it was a lie; he hated me for it, and God punished me by making him a coward instead, so that he took the King’s pardon.” She spoke quite dully; it did not matter what she said now.

  “You lay with him to give him courage?”

  “Yes. So you see I was a whore already, before I came to you. And now I am punished for that too, since I have lost your love.” She stood in his arms quite blankly, not trying to move, yet ready to go when he would let her.

  “Ann!” His voice was anguished; he shook her to put life back into her, and her head swayed on her neck like a doll’s. “What have you done to yourself? If you loved me, why did you come to me like that, like a whore?”

  She shook her head slowly, numbed by the confusion feeling.

  “How else should I come? It’s what you wanted me to be and what I am. If I am a whore I should behave like one, and play the game. You don’t love me - ‘tis only a game to you.”

  “How can you say that?” His fingers tightened so hard on her arms that she cried out in pain. “How many times have I told you that I loved you? Good God, I have been on my knees to you before now! Are you blind?” He let her go suddenly and turned away, hammering his fist softly on the wall.

  “That’s just a game, Rob, a rich courtier’s game. I wanted you to do something - something important. Save my father.”

  He turned back to her slowly, the pale anger making the freckles stand out on his skin. “I told you, Ann. I would have done it for a word from you. You had no need to throw yourself at me like that.”

  “Then I was wrong. But Rob, don’t you see? I was only going on my knees to you - trying to give you too much, as you did to me. We made the same mistake.”

  They stared at each other silently, two statues in an empty room, while the clock ticked on the mantlepiece and voices rumbled below their feet downstairs. Ann thought she would remember him always like that, his face quite flat and still and drained of emotion. Then the tension between them broke, and she turned to go.

  “No, Ann, stop!” He was at her side in a second, his hand lightly holding her shoulder. “You’re right. Please stay. We can’t part like this.”

  “How can I stay?” But even as she spoke, his arm pulled her to him and they came together in an embrace that was so tight she felt they would crush themselves both together into one person. Slowly, as the embrace lasted, she drew comfort from him, and felt what she had not realised before - that he needed comfort from her as well. She buried her face in the curls of his wig to hide her tears, and then sneezed as one got up her nose.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  He loosened his arms and looked down at her, shaking his head slowly as though in pain.

  “I’m sorry, Ann. It’s too cruel, this time. It’s too cruel to all of us.”

  “At least we’re alive.”

  “Yes. I will try to save your father. Of course I will. I wish I could save all the poor devils!”

  “Oh, Rob!” She hugged him again, weak with relief and gratitude, and then somehow the embrace faded into a kiss, so long and healing that when at last they paused their sense of time and wha
t had gone before was blurred, and it was almost as though they were back on Colyton Hill again. And when they had kissed once there seemed little purpose but to kiss again.

  The floorboards creaked quietly under their feet, and voices came and went in the yard outside, and at last Robert drew back and looked gently down at her, a smile hovering shyly round his lips.

  “You will not kill yourself now, then?”

  “No!” She smiled, and laid her cheek against his. “I do love you, Robert, truly.”

  “And I you.” He drew his head away to look at her seriously, a frown puckering his brow. “That’s why I cared how you came to me. You do believe that, now?”

  She looked into his eyes, remembering the times she had believed, and the times she had doubted. Sometime she would have to decide.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, Rob, I do believe you.”

  Still he looked at her, steadily, the puzzled frown fading in momentary relief and then returning. His voice shook slightly as he spoke.

  “Then - not as a whore - will you come to bed with me?”

  She was surprised how her heart raced before she replied. But then, the gift of her body should follow the gift of her love, and it was what she had come for, in a different way.

  “Yes, my love.”

  He smiled, and led her gently to the bed.

  48

  AFTERWARDS, AS she lay curled around him with her head on his chest, listening to his quiet breathing and the thump of his heart, and feeling the strange roughness of his legs against hers, she marvelled at how something so simple could be so different with each man. After Tom, and the dragoons, she had thought of love-making as something only men desired, which she could give to them, or they could steal from her; she had not expected to be given anything back. And she had thought Robert so shy and nervous at first that she had regretted her decision, thinking he would spoil it all by being afraid to take the gift she offered.

  He had led her to the bed, and helped her to loosen the lace fastenings at the back of her dress, his fingers shaking slightly. Then he had retired behind the curtains on the other side of the bed, leaving her to take off her clothes alone. She would have kept her shift on, but she remembered the dragoon in the wood tearing her clothes from her, and more than him, the feeling of simple goodness she had had later, naked and alone amongst the ferns; she felt that that was somehow part of the gift of herself. So she had crept, a little cold, naked and uncertain, between the sheets under the great canopy of the four-poster bed, drawn the curtains behind her, and listened to Robert undressing behind the curtain.