The Monmouth Summer

by Vicary, Tim

  For the first time Tom seemed to notice who was holding him, and let out a roar of bitter frustration.

  "Mr Carter! Mr Spragg! What be 'ee doing? Let me get to the Papist bastard!"

  He struggled again, knocking John Spragg's head sideways onto the tomb, but the two were almost lying on top of him, a little sheltered from the swirling chaos behind them. Adam held the clubbed pistol in front of Tom's face.

  "God help me, I'll knock your head in with this, Tom Goodchild, if you don't come to what little sense you have! Hold still now!"

  Tom glared at them uncomprehendingly. "What be 'ee doing? Let me go! I could've killed Grey, don't you see!"

  "He's our officer, you young fool! You don't kill officers!"

  "He's a Papist idolater! Didn't you see him strike Israel?"

  "Israel's not a bloody graven image, boy, for you to worship! He was desecrating the altar!"

  "'Tis just a table, isn't it? This whole place be full of Mammon and Antichrist! We was cleaning it out! He's a heathen bloody Papist to stop us!"

  "He's your officer, Tom. Just like Colonel Wade's your officer - and Roger Satchell. Would you take your pike to them too?"

  For a moment Tom stopped struggling, and seemed to withdraw a long way into himself as the frenzy faded from his face. But the cold fanaticism never left his eyes as he answered bitterly.

  "You're damned, Adam Carter, you and John Spragg too! You understand nothing - you take the side of the idolaters against the Lord! In God's army the officers should be chosen by purity of soul and knowledge of Scripture, not rank and fancy clothes and such idolatry!"

  Adam could take no more. He lifted his pistol, ready to club the life out of his old friend's son as he would have killed a mad dog, but John Spragg saw what he was doing, and held his arm.

  "Come on, now, Adam, let's get the boy outside. If Grey finds out who held that pike he'll have 'un hanged by morning, without you doing it!"

  Adam looked at his friend and let out a long, shuddering breath. He saw that the fighting behind them in the choir-stalls seemed to have stopped, and the crowd were listening to a firm speech from Colonel Wade.

  "You're right, John," he said. "You deal with him. But if he so much as says another single word to me today, I'll be swinging for him myself!"

  John Spragg looked down at Tom, and held his shortened club of wood near Tom's face. "All right, boy, we'll let 'ee go. But just you listen to me first. I've heard a bellyful of your talk about Papists and idolaters today, to say nothing of what you done to Adam and his daughter. This army of ours needs discipline just as much as it needs religion, and you don't get discipline by sticking your pike into your own officers, whatever you may think of 'em. No more'n you get respect from taking advantage of a young girl and then not marrying her!"

  "That's none of your business, John Spragg, you keep out of that!" Tom struggled violently to get up, but they held him down, John Spragg forcing the wood across his throat.

  "Now just shut up and listen to me, boy! When they get a bit of order round here Lord Grey's going to be looking for the man who tried to kill him, whatever you say, so if you wants to save this neck o' yourn you better get quietly out of this church and back to your billet and hope he didn't see you. Whether you do that or no is up to you, but I tell you this: if I see you lift your hand against an officer again, I'll knock your bloody brains out with this to save the hangman his trouble!"

  John and Adam got up and stood back, and Tom climbed to his feet and glared back at them for a second, his gaunt face bitter with hatred and frustration. Then he turned suddenly and walked down the aisle into the nave, where the horses were stalled, spitting at one of the fallen statues as he passed.

  40

  ANN DID not like the man even when she first saw him. He was short and immensely burly, with a big pot belly, massive ham-like forearms - a blacksmith, he said he was - and a rough shirt open at the neck to show a mass of thick black hair curling on his chest.

  But it was not so much his appearance which she disliked as his expression. Under the short, curly black hair his round, dark-jowled face looked around him with a combination of cunning and confidence quite absent in the tired, worried, resolute or resigned faces of Monmouth's soldiers. It was as though he came to them as a spectator from quite another world, to whom all their struggles and torments were mere amusements, interesting to observe for a while, but easy to shrug off when they became tiresome.

  William Clegg, who found him, told the sergeant the man was a volunteer from Taunton who wished to join them, and so, it being supper time, he was given a bowl of stew with the rest. But as she watched the newcomer eat it, quietly, without undue haste, picking out the good bits and savouring them as he looked around him, Ann could not help comparing him with William Clegg and the other men, who held their bowls close to their mouths and spooned their stew in with the undiscriminating speed and concentration of real hunger.

  She wondered if there was really something suspicious about him, or whether it was just that he came from normal life, where men did not spend all day marching through rain and mud in worn-out footwear back along a road they had marched before, as the men wolfing their food around him had done. All day they had spent heaving carts and guns out of pot-holes, being splashed by horses and falling in the mud. Twice they had heard the rattle of pistol and musket-fire behind them, where some stragglers had been caught by the militia horsemen, and each of them had wondered when they would finally turn and fight, and whether they could still win even now, or if the Lord had utterly forsaken them. Perhaps that was why this man looked different; perhaps he was just not used to the trials of war yet.

  But if that was so, why had he come to join them now? And why did he still look so slyly confident, when he could see the dreadful effects of the war on the men around him?

  She shrugged, and turned again to her hopeless task of spooning a little thin broth into the wounded man whose head lay propped on her knee in the cart. He had the wound fever - Nicolas Thompson had extracted the bullet two days ago, but some fragment of cloth or dirt from the bullet itself had stayed in and so the wound had begun to fester. Now the man sweated and shivered as though he had the palsy. The surgeon said the evil had got into his blood, and twice today he had tried to draw it out by bleeding him; but Ann thought he only looked worse for the treatment rather than better.

  Some wounds looked worse, and cured more quickly. Ann smiled at Robert Sandy, from Colyton, who had finished his stew and lay back, resting his bandaged head on a bolt of straw and closing his eyes to enjoy the bliss of sleep in a cart that would not move or lurch or jolt again until tomorrow. She remembered when he had been carried half-dead into the kitchen at Philip's Norton, a great wound in the front of his skull, a piece of bone as big as a five-shilling piece hanging loose in a flap of skin and hair. The surgeon said he could see the brain beneath; yet he had managed to clean it and patch it up well enough, so that now, five days later, his patient had the strength to spend half the day marching beside the cart, and perhaps in a few days more would not need to be with the sick at all.

  Ann knew he would be grateful for that. The constant jolting and lurching of the heavy carts was a torment to all the wounded, crammed together as they were on flea-ridden mattresses of straw and old sacking, with a leaking canvas above them which sometimes seemed as though it did more to concentrate the rain than keep it out.

  Not that any of them wanted to be left behind - a militiaman who had joined them had said that the militia surgeon had had orders not to treat any wounded rebels, and Ann had seen enough in her time with the regular soldiers to be quite sure that no-one could expect any better of them. One man they had left at his home in Shepton Mallet; but most of the wounded men's homes were too far away, over hills and roads patrolled by the encircling militia, for there to be any hope of such treatment for them. Even if they did get home, there was no guarantee of safety for anyone whose neighbour knew he had got his wound with Monmouth's
army.

  The same was true for faint hearts as faint bodies; while they were still undefeated, the safest place for anyone suspected of having been part of the rebellion was in the army itself, with all his friends around him, not wandering the lanes, at the mercy of vengeful militia and magistrates. But then, for someone who had not been in the army before, was this a sensible time to join it? Ann glanced again at the stranger from Taunton, and was irritated even more to see that he had put his bowl of stew down without finishing it.

  Annoyed, she turned back to her patients. The man with the fever could drink no more, so she eased her knee gently out from under his head, made the straw pillow as comfortable as she could, and wrapped the torn, damp blanket more tightly around him. Then she went the rounds of the others in the two carts, seeing that they were all as comfortable as possible.

  The surgeon had gone off as soon as they had arrived, in search of a marsh where he could find herbs and leeches, so she tried to remember the few simple treatments that he gave - decoctions of comfrey and yarrow to be drunk for wounds, those that were still open to be bathed in an infusion of archangel and covered with a poultice of honeysuckle. Then one of the men helped her tie back one of the canvas awnings which had come loose, so that some of the wounded could enjoy the beauty of the evening.

  The evening was particularly beautiful. The sun was setting slowly over the low flat moors to the north west of their camp on a ridge of low hills, with the little hamlet of Pedwell in the valley behind them. After the rain in the early part of the day the sky and air seemed washed clean and fresh. It was a joy for her just to lean against the side of the cart for a moment, and gaze at the sun setting slowly towards the sea beside the distant hill of Brent Knoll.

  The breeze gently lifted the locks of her hair, and a thrush sang triumphant evensong in an oak tree behind her. All across the fields on the little ridge were makeshift tents and picket lines and cooking fires, and a little ahead and to her left floated Monmouth's great blue and gold striped banner, with the letters 'Fear Nothing But God' blazoned boldly across it. The banner too had been washed clean by the rain, but Ann thought how shabby its blue seemed beside the pure endless blue of the sky above it. She let her gaze wander up to where tiny white clouds floated high like puffs of gunsmoke, and below them, the long flat bars of cloud around the sun spread its light into a gleam that was neither white nor gold nor red, but an exhilarating mixture of each, and she wished, just for a moment, that she could live quite alone, away from all mankind, with its families and quarrels and religions and armies, and meet God only in the song of the wind and the changing patterns of the sky, with none of the doctrines and symbols of men to come in between.

  But that could never happen. The sun slipped a little lower behind a darker cloud. Ann shivered in the sudden cold, and turned past the end of the cart to see what was happening around the fire.

  Everyone's attention was on the stranger from Taunton. John Spragg had just finished saying something sharp to him, and in reply the dark, burly, confident little man was smiling, and rummaging in the leather bag he carried over his shoulder. He pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, and began to unfold it.

  "Don't believe me then, sirs, if you don't want. But before you condemn me for a liar, let me read 'ee this copy yer."

  Ann felt her heart pound suddenly in her throat as he read, and she had to swallow to catch her breath. It could not, must not, be true, and yet ... she had never seen a royal proclamation, but she could see over his shoulder that the first words at least were as he read them, and that a great royal crest like that of King James the Second was at the top, with a facsimile of his seal at the bottom.

  "... will graciously grant a free and absolute pardon to any man now mistakenly serving with the seditious army raised against us by the traitor Duke of Monmouth, who does within eight days from now lay down his arms and return quietly home to his former allegiance, the which act he shall be required to prove only by the obtaining of a certificate to the effect signed by a Justice of the Peace loyal to the Crown. Given under our own seal in Westminster this Monday the twenty-ninth day of June in the year of our Lord 1685, James, by the Grace of God King ... "

  In the silence as he finished reading, Ann could still hear the thrush singing its full-throated evensong in the oak tree behind her, and the murmur of talk and occasional burst of laughter or song in the camp around them. Only around their camp fire was everyone silent.

  The paper crackled as the man handed it to John Spragg, and still no-one spoke. Ann listened to the pounding of her heart and tried to think what it would mean, and whether she was filled with hope or despair. She knew only that by those few words everything they had done and fought for in the last few weeks was changed, changed forever ...

  "What day of the month is this?" William Clegg's harsh, gravelly voice broke the silence, for once quite devoid of humour. It sent little ripples of movement into the circle of men around the fire, like a stone dropped into a pool.

  "'Tis Thursday today. That'll make it ... second of July. And this was signed the twenty-ninth of June. Five more days, William." John Spragg gazed coolly back at his friend, his look posing the question he had not yet answered for himself.

  "You believe me now, at least?" The stranger looked around, a quizzical smile of triumph on his lips.

  "Oh yes, we believe you well enough, you fat Judas Iscariot! " burst out Sergeant Evans, his strong Welsh accent thickening in his anger. "But do we believe King James, look you? That's the question now, isn't it? 'James, by the grace of God, King', indeed! By grace of the bloody Pope of Rome, more like!" He spat bitterly in the fire.

  "There've been some men got certificates and come in already, back to Frome, and Shepton Mallet. I haven't heard of one that's been harmed. They just let 'em go off home, quiet like." The stranger looked around the rest of the circle cautiously, trying to assess their reaction. "I thought 'twas a duty to tell 'ee. 'Tis cruel hard for a man to die, and leave his wife and childer helpless, when all he needs is a little piece of paper to let him go home."

  "True enough." With a shock Ann saw that it was her own father who had spoken. Several heads turned to look at him, but he said no more, and dropped his head down to avoid their gaze, stretching his hands in front of him to examine the knuckles as though they were stiff.

  "I would say 'tis ... the Devil's counsel." Israel Fuller's stern voice began, halting strangely in the middle of his sentence, as though he hardly dared to go on.

  But when he began again, his voice was as firm as ever, an oracle that heeded no question. "I would say 'twere the Devil's counsel, if it came to an army of righteous men, whose leaders were the chosen leaders of God! But today, brethren, we have first to ask ourselves if we are such an army, after what we have seen done, and not done, amongst us. I know that I have seen the leaders of this army draw sword against those righteous men among their own followers, when they sought to cleanse the temple of the Lord of the idols and abominations of the heathen! Just as I have seen those same leaders fail to draw sword against the enemy, when the Lord Himself had sent a clear sign that He held the city of Bristol in His hand to deliver up to us! And now the greatest of our leaders, that man whose pride puffed himself up to be declare himself King before aught else, in defiance of the very promise he gave our brethren when he came, that he sought not glory for himself but the freedom of our religion, can do no more than lead us away from the enemy, back the way we have come, while the heathen hunt us like a fox into our den."

  He looked around at his audience, his dark eyes flashing above the full black beard. "And I therefore say this is a sign, my friends, that this man of lust and vanity has forfeited the trust of the Lord - just as the words of this messenger here, sinful as they may at first seem, are in fact a sign from the Lord of His mercy in softening the heart of His enemy to allow the righteous amongst us to leave the sinner to his fate and depart in peace."

  For a moment there was utter silence, while the
preacher's dark eyes challenged everyone.

  "And Monmouth?" Sergeant Evans burst out incredulously. "Do you think the Duke will just let you go?"

  "The man has forfeited the fight to keep us!" answered Israel angrily. "Deuteronomy chapter 18, friend: 'When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him.'”

  "That's how I thought of it, too, friend," said the irrepressible stranger, trying to cover his smile with a look of appropriate solemnity. "And therefore it seemed a bounden duty on me to tell 'ee."

  "What's thy name, friend?" John Spragg looked up suddenly from the paper in his hand.

  "Thomas Dyer."

  "Well, friend Dyer, I think you had best come along with me. This is hardly news that we can keep to one company alone. The whole army should hear it." John Spragg stood up, smiling. He clapped a hand around the man's shoulder, and led him out of the circle around the fire, down towards the rest of the camp and Pedwell church.

  As the two passed by her, the smile still on John Spragg's face, Ann knew that it was despair and sorrow that she felt, and not hope. John Spragg was changing before her eyes - he was no longer the strong man she had looked up to and admired as a godfather, but a traitor, a coward intent on saving his own skin and betraying his friends.

  She ran forward and seized his arm to stop him.

  "No, John, you can't! 'Tisn't right!"

  "Let go, Ann. 'Tis not for you to decide." And just for a moment, as he looked straight at her, giving her his full attention, the old trust and admiration returned. She let him go, wondering if perhaps she had been wrong, and that it was different for men who actually had to go out into battle, risking death and mutilation without reward. She watched the two men go, and turned to see what her father and the others would decide.