McFeeley's Rebellion

by Theresa Murphy

  Three

  IN SPITE OF the district being largely pro-Monmouth, McFeeley found a publican who had sold Peters a brandy and had seen the lieutenant take a road south-west out of town.

  McFeeley rode steadily for half an hour without seeing a dwelling of any kind. The first sign of human habitation came when he topped a grassy rise to see a farm cottage standing alone and desolate as a desert island. Riding closer, McFeeley could see that it was little more than a hovel that relied on an attached barn for mutual support. A woman and a boy stood together, aggressively defensive as they watched his approach. She was of chunky build, heavy breasts resting upon folded arms that were brown-skinned and bare. A sprinkling of grey painted highlights into her black hair, but the passing years had etched character into her face without affecting its attractiveness. Aged about thirteen years, the boy was sullen and he sneered at McFeeley’s uniform as he reined his horse to a halt and dismounted.

  ‘My father’s gone off to join Monmouth,’ the boy told McFeeley with childish glee.

  ‘Go on back down to the bottom field and get on with your digging, Lennie,’ the mother ordered. Then she turned her pale greyish eyes onto McFeeley, in a penetrating gaze and inquired, ‘I suppose you’re looking for one of your kind?’

  Still holding the reins of his horse, he nodded. ‘You’ve seen an officer pass this way?’

  ‘Rest awhile, tie your horse to that post,’ she told him. ‘I can offer you bread and cheese.’

  ‘Thank you, but I haven’t come far,’ he told her as he secured his horse. ‘When did you see this soldier go by, Mistress…?’

  ‘Yates. My man is Thomas Yates who, like the boy said, has gone off to fight a war, Lieutenant. You are a lieutenant?’ she studied his insignia with a frown.

  ‘Yes. The name’s Colm McFeeley.’

  ‘I’m Lucy,’ she said, her study of him more intense than ever.

  The meeting had become stilted, almost as awkward as two young people interested in each other but both embarrassed by that interest. McFeeley asked, ‘When did he go past, Mistress Yates?’

  ‘Lucy,’ she corrected him archly. ‘He didn’t go by; he’s here. Can you see that pond down there? That’s where he is but I don’t want him here. He’s so strange and very quiet, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’ve never met him,’ McFeeley replied. ‘You say this pond is down there?’

  ‘Yes. He’s hiding in those rushes. I gave him some food, but he frightens me.’

  In her eagerness to show him the pond her chubby forearm had come against McFeeley’s hand. Her skin was warm and silky smooth. Though he couldn’t be sure then, or after, how her breast came to rest on his arm. He hadn’t moved, so she had made the contact, accidentally or on purpose.

  Letting her arm slide down, keeping it in contact with him at the same time, she clasped his hand in hers. Looking him straight in the eye, all self consciousness and shame driven away by a sudden urging inside of herself, she huskily announced, ‘I need a man.’

  Time and circumstance didn’t permit polite preliminaries or encourage small talk. Her statement had been as uninhibited and artless as the raw nature of the countryside that surrounded them. McFeeley’s response was equally as basic, but his warning mechanism was active. He looked to where the woman’s son bent to his work, and then at the tall rushes concealing Lawrence Peters.

  ‘I have to take that man back to camp,’ he said.

  ‘He’ll still be there … afterwards,’ she replied in a matter of fact way that didn’t fit with what was happening and the way her fingers entwined with his as she took him towards the barn.

  She was undoing her dress before he had closed the door of the barn behind them. McFeeley himself was now beyond the point of return. The straw spread on the floor of the barn was as enticing as the four-poster bed of a lady in a palace. She came to him then, fumbling at his uniform, her eyes heavy-lidded and breathing through her parted lips in a deep, erratic manner.

  Five minutes later he was brought briefly back down to earth by what he took to be the sound of the barn door being opened. Lifting his upper body he turned to look over his shoulder. He believed that he saw the boy standing in the doorway, but the woman fiercely pulled him back down to her and he wondered if he had imagined seeing Lennie.

  When it was over and he stood hurriedly dressing, she commented in a drawling voice, ‘I know men lose interest afterwards, but your haste, Colm McFeeley, is an insult to me.’

  ‘I think your son looked in at us,’ he explained, although aware that she had spoken jocularly. ‘I’m worried that he has warned Lieutenant Peters that I’m here.’

  She had dressed by the time he had pulled on his boots, going out of the barn with him as he looked and saw that the boy was working in the field. Untying his horse he put one foot in the stirrup, pausing as she placed a hand on his arm and asked a tentative question.

  ‘You will come back to me?’

  ‘Of course,’ he lied as he swung up into the saddle and rode down to the tall rushes.

  Dismounting before he reached the clump of reeds he went forward carefully on foot, expecting to discover that Lawrence Peters had fled after being warned by Lennie Yates. Gently parting the reeds, he first saw the dark green-brown water of the pond. Then an alarmed McFeeley knew that he had been wrong about Peters fleeing, but right in believing that the boy had told him that McFeeley was there. Nothing had prepared McFeeley for this scene. Lieutenant Lawrence Peters was sitting up, sideways on to McFeeley, whose arrival Peters seemed not to have noticed. He sat with his knees raised and the stock of his musket held between his feet. The firearm came up at an angle so that the muzzle was pressed against Peters’ forehead. As McFeeley reached the clearing, Peters, whose arm wouldn’t stretch as far as the trigger of his musket, was holding a stick with which he probed for the trigger.

  ‘Nooo!’ McFeeley shouted, but even as his cry filled the air, the musket exploded. There was a puff of smoke, an acrid stench, but Lawrence Peters sat upright, as immobile as a statue.

  The shot seemed not to have affected Peters in any way. But then the head turned in McFeeley’s direction. The top part of the front of his head had been blown away, but the eyes were intact and had a terribly glassy stare that fixed on McFeeley as he fell backwards. The lieutenant had been dead from the time of the shot had been fired. He had just taken a long time to lie down.

  Every room at White Lackington had been taken. Neither Rachel nor Sarah went to the dining room for their meals now because the talk around the huge table buzzed with expectation of a visit by the Duke of Monmouth. Taking their meals in a small side room, they had been seeing less of Edmund Prideaux. Rachel’s midnight trysts with him had become infrequent.

  Having had no option but to write the letter required by both Edmund Prideaux and John Trenchard, Sarah had been relieved at how innocuous the wording had been. All that they had required of Sarah was proof that she was in the hands of Monmouth supporters. Putting an address on her letter was forbidden.

  Together with Rachel she was walking in the manor grounds on a morning as bright and sunny as those that had preceded it of late, but which had a few clouds searching for each other in the sky. It was a sign; the old gardener sagely told them that the hot weather would break before long.

  Walking towards them were Edmund Prideaux and John Trenchard. When the four of them met, Prideaux, plainly carrying out something pre-arranged with Trenchard, split Rachel away to leave Trenchard walking with Sarah. While their conversation remained general and unspecified, Sarah found that she was enjoying herself. John Trenchard, for all his dry, serious looks was good company. But then he switched the conversation and she found herself on guard.

  ‘I welcome this opportunity to have a word with you in private, Lady Sarah,’ Trenchard began. ‘I make no apology for being a Whig and pledging my support, my very life even, to the cause of James Duke of Monmouth, but I find that the way young Prideaux is using you to be deplorable.’

>   ‘But, sir,’ she protested as they strolled beside a lake in which darting fish flashed their silver backs in the sunlight. ‘You were with Edmund when he had me write that letter to John.’

  ‘Please understand, my dear Lady Sarah,’ Trenchard pleaded, ‘that it would have been unwise of me to show dissent. Though I intend to help you from being held here indefinitely as is young Prideaux’s intention, I will do so within the limits of not endangering the Monmouth campaign.’

  ‘But you will help me?’ Sarah inquired, wanting reassurance.

  ‘I give you my word, Lady Sarah.’

  They walked over a pretty little bridge. Sarah reached with the intention of plucking a beautiful red rose from a cluster growing on a bush that grew by the yellowstone wall of the bridge. She made a little ‘Ooh’ exclamation as a thorn pricked her finger. His hand touching hers, John Trenchard picked the flower and gave it to her with a smile.

  ‘Will you be able to return me to my husband, do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘That is what I aim to do, and I’m sure that I will succeed,’ Trenchard said, stopping by a highly scented flower bed, turning to face her and taking the rose from her hand, holding it level with her face, comparing her beauty with that of the flower. ‘I will be back here the evening after next, and, with your permission, I will come to your room and we will finalize everything.’

  In her relief of at last seeing a chance to get away from White Lackington, Sarah agreed readily to this but later had second thoughts. Until that afternoon Trenchard’s interest in her had manifested as nothing other than a lecherous leering. She felt that she may have made a terrible mistake in agreeing to him coming to her room, and dreaded the coming of the night when she would be alone with John Trenchard.

  Lieutenant Colm McFeeley sat in the saddle with the body of Lawrence Peters draped over the horse in front of him. Standing facing him, trembling with rage, mouthing irate words that as yet had not linked up with any sound from his vocal chords, was Colonel Percy Kirke. The colonel, a balding, bumptious fellow, stood in front of officers both commissioned and non-commissioned, who had gathered together as McFeeley had ridden into camp. Captain Allenby was there, at the side of his commanding officer but looking detached from the proceedings until he walked to the horse to lift the linen that McFeeley had tied round Peters’ head. Letting the material drop after a brief examination of the wound, the adjutant went back to stand by Kirke, who had found his voice at last.

  ‘I command soldiers, not murderers, McFeeley. Don’t dare try any kind of mitigation with me. There is no justification for you causing the death of Lieutenant Peters.’

  About to voice a denial, McFeeley began, but broke off as he saw Allenby surreptitiously shake his head.

  ‘You have something to say, Lieutenant?’ Kirke roared.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ McFeeley replied, just loud enough to be heard.

  ‘I should think not,’ the colonel said, then began rapping out orders. ‘Provost Marshal – have the medical officer take care of Lieutenant Peters’ body, and place Lieutenant McFeeley under arrest.’

  ‘I will see that Lieutenant McFeeley is confined to his quarters, sir,’ Captain Allenby said.

  ‘That will not be necessary, Captain,’ Kirke said.

  ‘It is customary in the case of officers, sir,’ the adjutant reminded his commanding officer.

  ‘Goddammit, Allenby!’ Kirke shouted in rage. ‘We are not dealing with some minor offence here. This is murder, Captain! Murder! McFeeley will be placed under close arrest at once.’

  Allenby was wise enough to make no further protest as McFeeley was pulled from his horse and manhandled over to a gun carriage where his back was slammed against a wheel. Kirke was strutting around, his knees stiffened by anger, issuing orders that had the company blacksmith arrive to chain McFeeley to the wheel of the carriage.

  In the hot afternoon sun, having to stand because he was so restricted by the chains, McFeeley’s ankles began to swell so that the manacles bit in, splitting the skin and the flesh, causing him excruciating agony. His temperature rose so that his mind began to play tricks on him. Rosin walked up, calmly passing the sentries to come to him, smiling in the way she used to greet him so many years ago. They spoke of their deep and undying love for each other.

  Then he decided that Rosin had a right to know about Lucy Yates, and he started to make a garbled confession. But she lovingly chided him. ‘Quiet, my darling,’ she said, placing a finger on his lips, then she disappeared, not walking away but suddenly evaporating in front of his eyes.

  Blood began to trickle from both of his ankles and for one lucid moment he recognized that pain and the heat had combined to have him hallucinate, but the next instant he lost everything once more. The sergeant major, whose death on the Thames’ flats had been attributed to McFeeley’s negligence, came marching smartly up. ‘I forgive you, sir,’ the soldier said before executing a militarily perfect about-turn and striding off.

  Blacking out then, McFeeley didn’t regain consciousness until daylight was fading. His mind created its last illusion then by bringing a vision of Lieutenant Lawrence Peters who thanked him for something without specifying what, before disintegrating in a shower of sparks.

  When night came, the cold lowered his temperature and put an end to the fantasies, while increasing the pain of his manacled ankles and the stiffness of his chained body. Sleep was impossible that night. By the time dawn streaked the sky with first red and then gold, McFeeley had retreated inside himself to a depth that left him barely aware of his suffering and his surroundings. But he snapped back into clarity as he saw Captain Allenby and the blacksmith coming towards him.

  Compassion in his eyes as he saw the condition that McFeeley was in, the adjutant said, ‘A Captain Critchell has ridden into camp, Lieutenant, with orders for you to be immediately released.’

  The blacksmith first cut through the manacles, causing McFeeley pain so intense that he lost consciousness, kept upright only by the chains that held him. Allenby looked at the damaged ankles and straightened up to shout an order for one of the sentries to fetch a doctor or a nurse.

  As McFeeley’s arms were freed, although pain and stiffness prevented him from using them, Colonel Percy Kirke came up, an expression of bitter anger on his face as he gestured for his adjutant and the blacksmith to step back. He came close to McFeeley, his breath reeking foully. The colonel’s tone was adjusted so that his words reached McFeeley’s ears only.

  ‘I gather that you have friends in high places, McFeeley. Don’t let that fool you. To have all the legions of angels on your side would not save you. I will get you, McFeeley.’

  ‘It is safe to assume that Lady Sarah Churchill is being held either here, here, or here,’ Captain Critchell told McFeeley as he fingered the map in front of them three times. Barrington Court at Shepton Mallet, was owned by Edward Strode, who, like George Speke at White Lackington, and Captain John Hucker at Taunton was a Whig and known as a supporter of Monmouth. ‘Wherever she is the house cannot be stormed without putting Lady Sarah in danger.’

  ‘So it is a case of one woman against the massed armies of the king?’ McFeeley surmised.

  Doing a circular walk inside of the tent he had been allocated at the Axminster camp, hands behind his back, head drooping in thought, Critchell said. ‘Not exactly, Lieutenant. To be exact, the rebels are holding two women, Lord John Churchill’s wife and Rachel, her companion. Lord Churchill is, above all, a loyal soldier who has sworn to serve the monarch. He would now be prepared to put all personal considerations aside and confront Monmouth, but King James, in his kindness, has stipulated that three days be allowed for an attempt to be made at rescuing the two women.’

  ‘Which is where I come in,’ McFeeley stated rather than asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Critchell said, seemingly not inclined to enlarge on the subject at that stage.

  Still feeling some weakness McFeeley was pleased by the way his bandaged ankles were supporting hi
m. Waiting for the captain to go on, he reviewed the recent past. Had he not dallied with the voluptuous Lucy Yates, then he might have been in time to prevent the suicide of Lawrence Peters. That way he would not have incurred the wrath of Colonel Kirke, a formidable and implacable enemy. Possibly Kirke’s enmity was nothing when compared to what he had shared with the farmer’s wife. McFeeley was ready to risk his life to gain nothing more than a small hill from the enemy, but at those times only a part of him was involved. He only came fully alive when in the arms of a woman.

  Yet even that hadn’t been the same since the death of Rosin. When his wife had left she had taken something vital of him with her. In recall he was shaken by how dynamic the vision of her had been during his strange time when fastened to the wheel. Then he heard Critchell speaking.

  ‘It involves you becoming a member of Monmouth’s army, Colm,’ the captain was saying.

  ‘To find out where the women are being held and report back?’ McFeeley questioned.

  With a negative shake of his head, Captain Critchell looked uncomfortable. He looked around the tent and commented. ‘It’s still only early morning, but I could really use a drink.’

  ‘If you need a drink to tell me what to do, what will I need to do it, Captain?’

  ‘More courage than I have, Lieutenant, of that I am certain,’ the captain admitted gravely. ‘We are asking you not just to locate the two ladies, but to free them from the clutches of the rebels.’

  McFeeley had not anticipated anything like this. Critchell had said that the king was allowing just three days for whatever had to be done. He could join Monmouth’s army, but to do what Critchell was asking would mean reaching the duke’s hierarchy on the first day. He pointed this out to the captain, who had an answer that proved to McFeeley how far and fast the newly formed intelligence agency of Lord John Churchill had progressed.

  ‘We know that a man named Fraser intends to collect the £5,000 on the duke’s head by killing him,’ Critchell explained, ‘and we are aware of the time and the place, which is Chard, where Fraser is going to shoot Monmouth. What you must do, Colm, is not only prevent Fraser from killing the duke, but to make sure that you are seen doing so.’