by Vicary, Tim
"Mr Spragg! I didn't see you! But it’s right what he says, father - transportation is not worse than death."
"'Tis a vain hope, my dear. We had the chance to take a pardon and we scorned it. Now we must learn to take what the Lord gives." It was what had been a hard comfort to him for many days past; but now he told it to Ann, his voice shook a little, as though he would weep. He wished she had not come, and would go.
"'Tis a hard justice, Mr Carter," broke in Tom suddenly. "But if you do pray and acknowledge your sin it may be that the Lord will show you mercy, even as he did unto me."
Adam and John Spragg stared at Tom's heavy, handsome face, thinking how strong and well-fed he looked, not knowing what to say in reply. Perhaps it was meant generously, Adam thought; the boy could not know, any more than Ann, how cruel hope could be. But John Spragg answered him first.
"'Tis never the Lord has shown mercy to you, boy - 'tis the devil that rules this country, like Belshazzar! His time will come, and yours too; then you'll be cast lower than us. You mark my words!"
"'The prophet that shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, even that prophet shall die,'" Tom intoned, in a voice like that of Israel Fuller's. "Deuteronomy 18:20. The Duke of Monmouth is dead already, Mr Spragg; his head cut off on a scaffold in London. We were misled. You should cast out the pride from your soul and pray for forgiveness as I did."
"Why, you little beggar!" John Spragg stepped furiously forward, the chains clanking round his ankles, but Adam held him back.
"Peace, John, be calm now! The lad's right, according to religion, isn't he? We put our cause in the hands of God and He judged against us. Remember the text of that preacher, Ferguson, before the battle? You remember that?"
"Aye, I remember.'If it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, save us not this day.' Only it goes hard, to hear it from the lips of a coward like that boy there."
"I'm not a coward, Mr Spragg. 'Tis only your pride makes you say that." But Tom's words hung hollowly in the air, for John Spragg had turned his back, and slumped sullenly down on his blanket by the wall, ignoring him.
Adam took a deep breath, and faced Tom squarely. "At least you have brought my daughter here safely, boy, and for that I thank you. I trust you will care for her when I'm gone, in the way we spoke of before."
"If she repents ... "
"Don't talk so, father! You're not going to die; you might even get a fine or a pardon and be out of here altogether. We'll talk of it then!"
"What do you mean, Tom, if she repents?" Adam had never felt so small, so like a child or a weak old man, before this big, well-fed young man who had come with his daughter. Yet he knew in that moment quite clearly and certainly that if he had had a knife he would have plunged it with all his remaining strength up to the hilt into Tom Goodchild's stomach.
"If she repents of her sin of lust, I could marry her."
"I told you, Tom!" Ann turned and grabbed Tom's arm, forcing him to look at her. "I do repent of what I did with you, most earnestly I do repent it! I told you that before we came!" She turned back to her father, tears of humiliation in her eyes. "But there is no need to talk of marriage yet, father. I will not talk of it until after the trial, when you may be free to decide for me."
He shook his head sadly. "I shan't be free, Ann, not now. That's only a dream you have. You do as you feel right, my dear. I can't help you now."
And so they embraced again, and Tom was ignored, and then they stood holding hands in the crowded, stinking cell, jostled by the endless movement about them, like children rather than father and daughter. Adam, for something to say, asked about Nicolas Thompson and the other men from Colyton, whom he and John Spragg had not seen.
"Nicolas Thompson's still alive, father. He and some others are hiding up in the woods near Axminster, waiting till the fuss has died down. But William Clegg's caught. They've got him in the jail in Colyton with some others. They say Judge Jeffreys will go and try 'em there, when he's finished here."
"So how did you escape, my girl?"
For the remaining time they were together, she told him.
After the battle, knowing it was lost, she had hardly been able to believe it when she had seen a small grim knot of shattered men tramping desperately back to the refuge of Bridgwater, led by the short, stubborn figure of Colonel Wade. They were the remnants of her father's own regiment, beaten but still together, undestroyed. She told him how they had stood in the street by the church, some two or three hundred of them all told, exhausted, many bleeding or soaked from their retreat through the rhines, those who still had muskets leaning on them for support like old men, their faces grey with gunpowder, fear and fatigue. She had searched desperately through them all, but found only William Clegg whom she knew, the little wizened man almost aged beyond recognition by what he had seen.
Then, when it was clear no other regiments would return, Colonel Wade had spoken to them, his face drained by fatigue, his dark eyes haunted by the knowledge that all his courage and determination in holding his regiment together in the inferno were for naught, for no decision he could take would save the cause now, when even their leader had fled. He had told them to disband and save themselves as best they could, for they were too few to hope to hold the town.
After that Ann wanted to go to Weston Zoyland to look for her father, but William Clegg and Nicolas Thompson had refused to let her, saying he was dead for certain now. So instead they had carried Nicolas's three badly wounded men into the cellar of a brave woman in Bridgewater who promised to care for them, dragged a rug and an old wooden chest over the trapdoor, and fled.
Ann had fled with the rest to Exmoor, hiding in lonely farms in the deep combes and valleys for a couple of weeks until they judged the first flush of the search would be over. Then she and the others had made their way quietly back, travelling across country by lonely tracks and side roads, often at night, until they came home. But even there some had found they were not safe, for their names were on lists in the hands of the constables and militia, who were still out looking for them.
Ann told her father quietly of the little hut the surgeon and some others had built for themselves in the lonely woods towards Axminster, and the regular journeys of herself or some others from the village to leave food for them. She told him too of the night on the journey when they had been surprised by a party of four dragoons, and only escaped by killing two and mortally wounding the rest; and all the time she spoke she was looking over her shoulder to make sure no jailor or spy was near, and making sure always that she was not too clear about details that could give anyone away. She whispered John Clapp's name in her father's ear and then told him how that fat, jovial man had climbed out of bed into the attic when the soldiers had searched his house, and how they had not found him though they knew the bed was warm. At that Adam smiled, but then she told him the less happy story of how William Clegg had got all the way home and then been caught because his six-year-old daughter had thought it was another of her father's jokes when he had run out suddenly and hid among the cabbages in the garden; so she had clapped her hands and laughed and explained the joke to the nice men with guns who had just come into the kitchen.
Of Roger Satchell Ann had heard nothing, until Adam told her he was in another cell here too; nor had she heard anything of Sergeant Evans or Nathaniel Wade since they had left them on the way to Exmoor.
The jailors began to hustle the visitors out at the end of the day, though it seemed to Adam they were doing so earlier than usual. But then he had not had a visitor before, and time passed quite differently when he was looking into the eyes of his daughter. For a while he had so forgotten the stench and press of humanity around him, that he had thought he had been at home in the kitchen with Ann and Mary, and imagined Simon sitting reading in his chair, and remembered the very smell and sound of Mary coming in with a pile of clean washing in her arms, and the girls and Oliver fussing and playing round he
r skirts. Then the warder pulled Ann away, and Tom shielded her on the way to the door.
As he watched her go, Adam ached with a huge physical loss that he had not embraced her one last time. He stood for a minute with his empty arms unconsciously, vainly held out in front of him. Then he sat down, numbly, with his back to the wall.
When all the visitors had gone, the great cell door opened again, and a plump, bewigged man in a frock coat came in, with soldiers to guard him. The cell fell silent, and Adam watched dully as he began to speak, only half hearing what he said.
“ … tomorrow you will be tried for the heinous offence of armed rebellion against the King's Majesty ... in my office as Deputy Clerk of the assizes ... to tell you that the King is very gracious and merciful, and will cause none to be executed but such as have been officers or capital offenders. And if you would render yourselves fit objects of the King's grace and favour, your only way is to give a full account of where you joined the Duke's army and in what capacity you served him. Otherwise ... no mercy or favour from the King ... certainly punish all such wilful and obstinate offenders. So think on this, those of you who might have been minded to take up the court's time with needless and lying pleas of not guilty, for your trial begins tomorrow."
The man read out a list of a dozen men who were to accompany him now, to give their confessions to him and his clerks, and indicate how they would plead, and the soldiers dragged them to their feet and marched them out. As they left, the heavy cell door slamming behind them, the silent cell burst into an uproar of excited speech. John Spragg clapped Adam enthusiastically on the shoulder.
"What did I tell 'ee, boy? You see, you see! You'll be out there before the end of the week, free, as like as not! I knew they couldn't hang so many as this! We'll get a pardon, man, a pardon!"
Adam stared at his usually phlegmatic friend as he banged his hand excitedly up and down on his knee, his dirty, bearded face creased with desperate joy. He did not know what to think. It seemed too good to be true.
"You’ve got to plead guilty, though, John," he said at last. "You’ve got to throw yourself on their mercy and tell 'em what you done in the war."
John looked at him, his eyes shining with tears. "There's no harm in that now, is there, boy? 'Tis easy enough - I'm not ashamed of it."
"No harm so long as you don't tell on your friends, who might still be free."
John Spragg paused, a frown disfiguring his joy. "They wouldn't ask us to do that, would they? They'll just want to know about us."
"And about what we've seen and done, likely, and who with. The whole thing could be a trick, John. You must know that."
The two men stared at each other, seeking to believe what they had heard and yet afraid, one of fifty similar conversations that buzzed all around them in the cell. Half the night the arguments went on all around them, especially amongst those, like Adam and John, who were not to be interviewed till morning, and few could sleep for thinking.
After midnight a wind got up and swept some of the foul air out through the high-barred windows, disturbing the citizens in the houses nearby and bringing a few prisoners welcome relief. But to others it brought the unsettling, unwelcome scent of life beyond the walls, the smell of stables and the fields beyond, and later, towards morning, the smell of wood fires heating the ovens to provide fresh bread and breakfast for the visiting judge and the other citizens of the town.
The wind blew the seagulls in from the coast, so that in the early morning they cried and screamed over the rooftops, their lonely, free voices reminding Adam of the days when it had blown in over Colyton. He thought of the times as a young man when he had taken Mary and the toddlers down to the little cove at Beer to buy fish, and watch the little boats drop their brown sails and be dragged up onto the pebble beach. He remembered how the gulls had screamed and squabbled over the boats, and how a tiny, red-headed Ann had screamed back and thrown stones to protect what they had bought. It was strange, he could not remember having taken Oliver and Rachel and Sarah there, though it was so near. And now ... now he would never do it.
As the morning light grew on the damp grey walls in the cell, and a shift in the wind brought the stink of the night's excreta and the hot bodies around, he knew that the little, tormenting light of hope that Ann and the court official had tried to bring him was false, and must be ignored. The only hope could be for a quick trial and a short pain before the end, and a merciful God thereafter.
As John Spragg woke from a troubled, restless sleep, and turned to him with his eager, tormented eyes, Adam screwed his new-found courage up to his final resolve, and listened with pity to the hopes he did not share.
46
"PRISONERS AT the bar, listen to me, and listen carefully!"
A hush fell over the court, but it was still not silent, despite all the shouts and earnest banging of the gavel by the clerk of the court, and the threatening looks from the pale, bilious judge. People were still trying to push in and out behind Ann and Tom, and those inside were murmuring and shuffling as they tried to find somewhere to see or at least a place to stand, while the chains on the legs of the two dozen prisoners herded into line before the dock clattered and crashed on the wooden floor.
Ann craned her neck desperately to look through the forest of hats and wigs in front of her to see if her father was there.
"In a moment you will be asked how you plead." The judge winced, as though he were in pain, and took a hurried, deep draught from a bottle in front of him. His voice, when he spoke again, was powerful, yet high and full, more like a woman's than a man's.
He paused, to take another swig from the bottle, and a well-dressed woman in front of Ann turned to whisper to her husband.
"Poor man! He suffers terribly from the stone, they say. It must be cruel hard to have to do such a job with that pain."
Her husband nodded. "Look at that rogue in chains there! He looks a filthy devil enough!"
Ann stood on tiptoe and craned to see where they were pointing, but could only see a few heads that she did not recognise. Tom, to her left, had a better view, but he was separated from her by a further influx of people.
The clerk of the court banged his gavel, and the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys resumed.
"My advice to you is this: that if you will plead Guilty, the King, who is all mercy, will be as ready to forgive you as you were to rebel against him; yea, as ready to pardon you as you are to ask it of him. But if you choose to plead Not Guilty, then justice will take its course. Now the clerk of the court will read the charge and put the question to you."
Ann saw a gap open in front of her, and pushed her shoulder forward into it, wedging two backs aside. There were cries of surprise and protest, but she was through; she slipped past a little fat man who turned to help his wife, and found herself at the back of the two rows of seats, with an almost clear view of the court ahead.
"Prisoners at the bar, it is hereby charged that you did present yourselves in armed rebellion against His lawful Majesty, King James the Second ... "
Yes! Her father was there, in the middle of the second row, staring quietly at the clerk of the court as he droned on with the formalities of the charge. How still he looked, how small beside some of the other men in the line - even John Spragg who stood beside him. But it was his quietness that impressed and frightened her most; there was an anxiety, a tormented fear and hope on the faces of most of the other men, that was quite absent from her father. It was as though he were dead already.
But had he not heard what the judge had said - that the King was all mercy - ready to pardon, even?
"Now, how do you plead? David Hoskins, first."
"I? Well, er … " A big, red-faced man like a farmer shuffled his feet awkwardly, so that his chains rattled.
"Come on, man, don't make a meal of it!" The voice of the judge stung like a lash, and the man looked up at him, frightened.
"Guilty, my lord." It was more like a croak from an old man than the deep, resonant
voice one might expect.
"Good." The clerk of the court wrote on the paper in front of him, and moved on to the next. "Daniel Lee?"
"Guilty, my lord."
As the clerk moved along the line Ann looked away from her father to the watching judge, perched silently behind the great imposing desk, raised high above the rest of the court like the King, or God himself. She could only see his hands, and his young face under the huge wig, and she searched them earnestly for signs of mercy or compassion. The hands, playing with the quill pen and occasionally straying nervously towards the bottle, were thin and surprisingly small, sticking out of his huge sleeves like a child's or a woman's. The face, too, seemed dwarfed by the huge wig, and was striking as much for its weakness as its strength; the big nose and wide, heavy-lidded eyes contrasted with the puffy, bilious cheeks and soft lips that he constantly sucked and chewed as he listened, like a baby's mouth seeking some comfort from the pain of the stone within. His formidable eyes burned their way steadily into each man as the clerk of the court questioned him, ignoring the rising hubbub in the well of the court behind.
"John Spragg, of Colyton?"
"Guilty, my lord." John Spragg looked up hopefully at the judge, almost smiling as he spoke.
"Adam Carter?"
"Guilty."
Adam looked briefly at the clerk as he spoke, then back down at the ground.
"Guilty, my lord, Mr Carter." The clerk of the court paused indignantly, his quill poised above the paper.
Adam looked up slowly, surprised that the process had stopped. His quiet, weary voice carried into the hush of the court.
"I plead guilty and there's an end to it. He would not be anybody's lord if we'd won."
The court burst into uproar, cheers and loud laughter mingling with the cries of fury and indignation. The clerk banged loudly with his gavel, and Ann clutched the back of the bench in front of her for support. The judge raised an eyebrow and glared coldly at Adam, waiting for silence to return.
