Alice in Love and War

by Ann Turnbull

  “We might as well be!”

  The husband tried to hush his wife, but she would not be silenced. She turned on Alice and the Welsh girls and howled at them, “You worthless leaguer whores! Coming here with your brats into my home!”

  The husband exclaimed, “Wife! Wife!” and the younger children – two little boys – began to cry.

  “Get us beer, woman,” the officer said, “and look to your own brats.”

  But the family had no beer, and no food. It had all been looted, and their small hoard of earnings stolen from its hiding place in the chimney breast. All this Alice heard from the weeping woman as some of the soldiers went out to forage for beer. The Welsh girls had brought food, but Alice could not eat. She wanted to share her food with the family, but two of the soldiers drove them out into their own cellar, and shut the door on them.

  The house was full of soldiers. Alice felt little safer from them than the stocking-frame worker’s family did. They were full of drink, and fights threatened to break out over nothing. She stayed close to her three friends, and they took some beer and escaped to the upper room where they were to spend the night. This was a room that ran the whole width and depth of the house and had tall windows to let in light for the knitting. Yarn and half-finished stockings were scattered about, and broken wood littered the floor. One of the shutters had been smashed when the looters threw the wrecked frames out of the window into the street.

  “Why did they do this?” she said. “There was no sense in it. No need. Did they go insane?”

  “I think people do go mad sometimes, when they get together in groups,” said Bronwen. “Especially after a battle, when they’ve seen comrades killed, and when there’s strong drink.” She shuddered. “Oh, I shall be glad when we leave this place!”

  And Alice, standing at the open window, looked down and saw soldiers swaggering along the street, some in stolen hats and jerkins, bullying, swearing, shouting abuse: downtrodden foot soldiers, glorying in their moment of power. A woman answered back, and one of them struck her in the face with a musket butt. Somewhere across the way a child was crying, “Mammy! Mammy!” over and over again.

  Alice sat down on the floor and put her hands over her ears. Her voice shook as she said, “I wish we had not come here. I wish I had never seen this.”

  Eighteen

  “You’ll get aches in your bones,” Bronwen warned.

  Alice didn’t care. She lay on her back on the damp grass, gazing up at a blue sky full of high white castles of cloud – a welcome sight after yesterday’s heavy rain. Far, far up she could hear larks singing. The wind was strong here on the hill, but lying down she could not feel the force of it. This place reminded her of the tor above her uncle’s farm. Borough Hill, it was called: a hill fort, built in ancient times, with banks and ditches to repel invaders. The king’s army had fortified it further with higher banks and batteries and a palisade, and were constantly scouring the countryside around for food and horses. The officers had set up their tents; the soldiers had built neat rows of huts; and over here, where she lay, the camp followers had created their own more easy-going space. Laundry flapped from tent poles, and Alice could hear Nia and Bryn playing with their daughter. Bronwen was mending clothes and Rhian teasing her cat with a length of thread. Lower down, on the hillside, the Cavaliers’ horses grazed contentedly.

  It was mid-June, almost midsummer. Alice knew this, despite the lack of almanacs, because of the length of the days and the plants she found: pink and purple clover, yellow trefoil and plantain in the valley; harebells on these high slopes.

  This was a world away from Leicester, where they had stayed for three grim nights before abruptly moving on to one rendezvous after another. Whatever alarm had occasioned these movements, they came to nothing, and the troops did not travel far but installed themselves on this hill, where they had been now for a week. Edryd said they had been awaiting the return of a convoy of horse from Oxford. Regardless of the reason, Alice thought she would be quite happy to stay here, poised in time. It was a fortress, but there seemed at this moment to be no war. Everyone was at ease. She sat up, half blinded after gazing so long at the bright sky, then rose and brushed mud from her skirt. “Bronwen, I must do like you and mend some clothes.”

  She ducked into her shelter, and had her hand on a torn shift, when a drum began to beat – a sudden, urgent tattoo – and she heard an eruption of loud voices and shouted orders. She darted out. Everyone was on their feet and staring, startled. Bryn hastened away; Nia snatched up the baby. Soldiers were running to their stations, the Cavaliers hurrying down the hillside after their horses.

  There was no sign of any attacker. But the gates were manned; everyone was being drawn inside. Clearly there had been an alarm.

  By evening the entire army, with all its wagons, ordnance and animals, was inside the fort, and the men stood to their arms all night. In the morning they prepared to march. As they filed down the hill and out onto the road, Alice looked back and saw dragoons riding across the camp, firing the huts. The fires leapt up one after another, and the smoke of their burning blew on the wind as the column moved off.

  They lodged that night in villages around a town called Harborough. It was a night full of unease. Something was afoot; some alarm kept them all close and ready to move.

  “The enemy must be near,” said Nia. “We’re getting ready to fight.” She gave a nervous smile. “Perhaps it’ll be the one to end this war? They say all is going well for the king. Perhaps we’ll soon be home.”

  Later the drums roused them from sleep. In total darkness they began to move and gather together – like an army of ghosts, Alice thought. By morning they were all at the rendezvous outside the town. News flew around that the enemy was close; that some of their own scouts had been captured the evening before; that both armies were gathering. They were to march and prepare to fight.

  Alice caught a brief glimpse, in the distance, of the princes and generals riding at the head of the army with the cavalry, of sun glinting on armour, of the ensigns holding aloft the colours. The infantry followed – the musketeers and pikemen – then the forty or so carts and wagons of the artillery and provisions, with all their gunners, carters and farriers. It was much later that the wagons and coaches of the baggage train began to move. They made their ponderous way down narrow muddy roads where the wheels often got caught in ruts or toppled into ditches and had to be hauled free.

  Once Rhian exclaimed, “Look!” and pointed, and Alice saw a band of horsemen – Parliament’s, they must be – on the hillside near by. A tingle of excitement and fear ran through her.

  They began to see more movements of enemy horse. Far ahead of them stretched their own army, occasionally visible – furled colours, a thicket of pikes – but more often hidden by hedgerows or farm buildings.

  The women never heard the fighting begin; the baggage train was too far behind, struggling for an hour or more down the rutted roads and with the army out of sight behind higher ground. The wagons jolted and rattled, the carters swore, the dragoons shouted orders, and their noise drowned out any more distant sound.

  Nia had the baby in a sling on her back. She was well recovered from the birth now and able to walk most of the time. The women were talking about what they would do when the war was over – for they had all of them begun to believe that the king would soon have victory, and none of them wanted to return to the poverty they had known before.

  “It’ll be good to go home with money in our pockets,” said Nia. “And a child! We’ve enjoyed these times – they’ve been good, and comradely – but Bryn wants to settle, be a bit more independent than before. If we could get the tenancy of a small farm…”

  She chattered on, and Alice guessed it was partly to overcome her fear; for surely she must be afraid for Bryn, who was perhaps already in the thick of battle?

  Rhian was more direct. “I wish I was with child! I do, truly. If Gethin dies, I’ll have nothing.”

  Br
onwen said, “Now, Rhian, now.”

  And Nia asked, “What will you do, Lisi? Will you go back to that great house where you stayed over winter? But no – how would you get there, alone? I wish you’d come to Wales with us. We’ve been such friends. I’d miss you. Why not come with us?”

  “I might,” said Alice. It was a possibility she had not considered before. When she left Dartmoor she had thought of nothing beyond her love for Robin and her need to escape, not realizing how difficult life would be for a young woman without a man to protect her. Certainly it would be unwise to travel alone, and in any case she did not relish the thought of returning to Weston Hall and admitting what a fool she had been over Robin. It would be good to go to Wales in company with her friends, to begin a new life. She’d learn to speak Welsh, get work at an inn or a tradesman’s house, perhaps even an apothecary’s, be an aunt of sorts to her darling Elen…

  “I’d like that,” she said. “To come with you. Will I find work there, do you think?”

  “Certainly you will,” said Bronwen. “You’ll find a husband too, I’m sure, before long.”

  “We’ll find you someone,” Nia agreed. “A nice Welsh boy.”

  “Oh! I’ve had enough of love.”

  Nia rolled her eyes. “She’s seventeen and she’s had enough of love!”

  They were laughing together and teasing Alice, when Rhian said, “We’re stopping!”

  They saw that the baggage wagons at the head of the column – the sumpter wagons that carried the royal wealth and clothing – had turned off the road. Behind these, other wagons began to form a circle. A stream of lesser conveyances still blocked the road. The women, seeing everything slowing to a stop, stepped aside into the field.

  With a sigh of relief Nia sat down on a tussock of grass, took Elen from her sling and untied the neck ribbon of her shift. Alice looked up, and was startled to see several horsemen burst into view and gallop across the road in front of them. She heard shouting, shots, a cry of “Road’s blocked!” Still the carters struggled to get more of the heavy wagons into the field. Another group of riders came through, then many more; and suddenly there was alarm, the carters left the wagons in the road and the dragoons made ready their muskets.

  “Back to the wagons! Take cover!”

  The sergeant’s bellow caused Nia to scramble to her feet, the baby clutched to her breast.

  “Women! Off the field! Take cover!”

  “Nia! Alice! Come!” Bronwen and Rhian were crouched beside a wagon’s back wheel. Some women climbed inside the wagons; most hid around and beneath them. The sergeant shouted orders to the musketeers to make ready.

  Alice’s heart was pounding. She saw the baggage train guards run to man the swivel guns on the main wagons, the defenders race to their stations; and then the fighting erupted all around them: crack of muskets, flash of fire, horses and men in a confusion of smoke and screams. It seemed that the battlefield was on the move and they were now part of it.

  The women huddled closer together. More crawled under the wagons as the shot flew. Their own cavalry were in retreat, turning to fire their pistols at their pursuers as they fled past the wagons, across the road and the rough field, and away in the direction they had come from that morning. Near the sumpter wagons some of them regrouped to make a stand, firing at the oncoming enemy horsemen. Alice saw several Cavaliers fall. The rest fled, pursued by the rebels.

  The Welshwomen all began murmuring – prayers, Alice guessed – in their own language. Everyone looked terrified. They could hear, now, another great din of battle – shouts and screams and gunfire – coming from beyond the ridge less than a mile away, where their men, the foot soldiers, must be fighting. When a sudden silence fell, it was more frightening than the sounds of battle.

  Alice held her breath. A volley of shots rang out. Nia cried, “Duw!” and clutched her child tighter. Moments later men came pouring over the brow of the ridge – cavalry in flight, musketeers flinging themselves down for cover in the circle of wagons. Alice, crouched next to Nia, heard her friend, still speaking Welsh, sobbing out Bryn’s name and the name of God. All the women were crying and wailing. Alice shook with fear. This was utter defeat.

  And now came a new terror: the victorious foot soldiers of the rebel army. They raced towards the baggage train with a great roar of anticipation. As they fired, the swivel guns thundered in reply, followed by volleys of shot from all around as the guards and musketeers returned fire.

  But the enemy advanced. Through the smoke Alice saw them, running, shouting, towards the sumpter wagons of the king and court. A defender fell dead almost at Alice’s feet. Another pitched from the side of a cart. Screams and gunfire burst out all around.

  “Get back! Get back!”

  A guard urged the women to leave the circle of wagons and move further away. They ran, a great flock of women, sobbing in fear, to crouch and hide among the carts and wagons still strung out along the road.

  The guards were fighting hand to hand now, musket butts wielded like clubs, swords stabbing. But they were overwhelmed as more and more rebel foot came on. Alice saw their own dragoons and musketeers fall, one after another, the wagons’ curtains ripped apart, the bales and boxes dragged out. One wagon was still full of women, wealthy whores who clung to their possessions. A strong-looking, yellow-haired woman set about the enemy with a stool, but they hauled her out, and her companions with her, forcibly stripped them of their fine gowns and shoes, and left them barefoot and screeching in their shifts. They flung out everything from the wagon: velvets, silks, jewel caskets, bag after bag of coin.

  Then one of them turned on the women. “Whores! Harlots! You are an offence to God!”

  The yellow-haired woman cursed him.

  He drew his sword and slashed her across the face.

  Alice gasped. The woman shrieked, her hands over her face, bright blood streaming between her fingers and staining her white shift. As if at a signal, the soldiers turned on the other women before they could flee and sliced their faces in the same way, slitting their noses and thus marking them as whores. The women, blinded by blood and fear, stumbled and screamed for help.

  And suddenly Alice realized what was to come. The soldiers, fired up by blood, turned towards the huddled horde of less wealthy women – the wives, widows and drabs cowering in and around the provisions wagons. They advanced with drawn swords, and their threats were terrifying.

  “This nest of vermin…” “…filthy army of whores…” “…clean them out…”

  “Run!” someone cried. “Run!”

  Alice, Bronwen, Rhian, Nia: all got to their feet – Nia with the baby gripped in her arms – and fled across the road into a field, part of a tide of frantic women, crying, sobbing, gasping, tripping on their skirts, stumbling and falling on the uneven, marshy ground.

  The soldiers pursued and quickly surrounded and corralled them. Alice could scarcely breathe for terror. She darted first one way, then another. There was no escape. As the soldiers closed in, the Welshwomen around her called on God, fell to their knees and cried out for mercy in their own language.

  “Yn y enw Duw, arbeda ni!”

  “Trugaredd!”

  “Duw! Arbeda ni! Trugaredd! Trugaredd!”

  Their foreign speech was like a spark to gunpowder. With a howl of hatred the soldiers drew their swords and moved in. Ffion and Heulwen, still begging to be spared, were slashed to a cry of “Irish! Papists!” Then, to her horror, Alice saw a soldier strike Ffion again and run her through with his sword. For an instant Ffion stood still. Then all the colour fled from her face, blood gushed forth, drenching her gown, and she crumpled to the ground. Heulwen was felled with a great blow to the neck.

  “Oh God – oh God,” Alice sobbed.

  Now the soldiers set about their work with righteous glee, striking left and right, damning all the women as Irish whores. Alice heard terrible screams, saw women cut down, caught the panic as they all tried to run and were penned in by the cordon
of soldiers. Some drew their own knives and slashed at their attackers before they were killed.

  Alice had run with her friends; but now, in the tumult, they were torn apart. Bronwen and Rhian had disappeared. She saw, briefly, Nia’s small sturdy figure stumbling over the tussocky grass, hunched over the child in her arms; then saw a soldier cut her down – a butcher’s blow that felled her instantly, so that she pitched forward onto her face. Alice felt such terror that her body seemed to dissolve like water, and she feared she would fall and die of fear; and yet, with some deeper instinct, she moved to save herself. As the swords hacked and the screaming women fell around her, she dropped down and tried to hide under a corpse; but she slipped and plunged into a hidden ditch, landing in a few inches of muddy water. There she lay still, covered in the other woman’s blood.

  For a long time – hours, it seemed – she dared not move. Her feet and hips were in water, and she felt her skirts grow cold and wet, their weight dragging. At first her upper body lay on the edge of the ditch, one arm flung out, the hand showing above the top. Slowly, inch by inch, she drew it in, terrified at every small move that she would be seen, dragged out and killed. With her hand down to shoulder level, she let her whole body slip deeper into the ditch. She could hear the soldiers moving around, finishing off those wounded who still cried out. She prayed that if they came near they would see the blood on her and take her for a corpse.

  In her mind’s eye she saw, again and again, Nia stumbling across the field; the sword coming down; her friend pitching forward with Elen beneath her. The mother’s instinct had been to run bent over her child, to protect her. Alice, reliving those moments, remembered where in the field Nia had fallen, but she did not dare go to her. She heard the soldiers rounding up those they had not killed and sending them away under guard. These, she guessed, were also marked on the face as whores, for their screams and howls of pain overlaid any groans that the dying women in the field might be making.