Women of Courage (154 page)

“‘Tis around this corner. Drive your cart in there, man.” The corporal had suddenly ridden to the front of the cart, and roughly seized the bridle of the cart horse as he spoke, forcing it off the road.

“But ... why should we stop here?” Elspeth’s voice was high and worried, trying to be calm.

The corporal ignored her. “That’ll do. Now get off. Take a walk in the forest. Go on, man, move, or I’ll slit your belly!”

Old Amias had hardly opened his mouth to protest before the corporal’s sword was gleaming at his throat, and the flat of it caught him a stinging thwack across the back as he hurried stumbling off into the trees.

“Stop it! What are you doing? Leave him alone!”

Ann stood up and leapt down angrily from the cart, but immediately wished she had not. The smooth man, the butcher, had dismounted from his horse and caught her, his hands gripping her arms firmly.

“Not so fast, my lovely!”

“Let me go!”

He held her closer and she smelt the thick, rank smell of his sweat, the foul heat of his breath. She looked up at him; the smooth, heavy flesh of his face was quivering with excitement, and his eyes were staring at her with that same intimate and distant look that she had seen in the eyes of the officer, which made her feel that she herself was not really there for him at all.

“Let me go!”

But her struggles seemed to delight him; he smiled, and his grip on her arms tightened. He bent forward to kiss her. She turned her head away and kicked him hard in the shin, more by mistake than design. He yelled and twisted her round suddenly, so that he held both her arms behind her. She saw the big horrified eyes of Elspeth and Kate in the cart, staring down at her; then the bony man leapt into the cart and lifted Elspeth over his shoulder, and Kate jumped off the front of the cart and was running away into the trees, pursued by the corporal.

Afterwards she remembered thinking how ridiculously short the corporal’s legs were now that he was dismounted, and wondering whether Kate would outrun him. Then there was a rough burning pain around her neck and shoulders, and she realised the butcher’s hand was in the front of her dress, trying to rip open the bodice. But it would not tear, the seams were too strong. She saw Elspeth struggling on the ground, with her dress thrown up over her head, and the bony man kneeling on her arms as he fumbled with the flap of his britches. Then Ann wrenched one arm loose, and half-turned, almost free, before she bent forward with the pain of her other arm being forced up her back. A sword blade glinted dully in front of her nose.

“Don’t fight no more, hussy, or I’ll stick this right up inside yer! Hold still now!”

And then it was horrible and ridiculous at the same time. He held one arm behind her, and with his other hand slipped the sword under the front of her dress, between her legs, and moved it slowly upwards, so that it was entangled in the petticoat around her thighs. She wriggled, so he jerked her hard upright, and she felt the sword prick her groin.

“Hold still now I told you!”

And so, trembling with horror, she felt the blade work its way upwards until it was against her stomach, where it caught in the waistline. He tugged away from her and the cloth ripped; then he worked the sword further up until the point was between her breasts and then under her chin, so that she had to move her head up and sideways to avoid it. He tugged sharply, and she screamed as the point dug into her neck; then he let go of her arm, put the thick sleeve of his other hand behind the point of the sword, and wrenched the sword towards him. Ann stumbled and the bodice of the dress ripped open. He tore the sword clear through the skirts so that her dress and petticoat were ripped open all down the front.

She stepped away, and would have run, but the sword was at her throat.

“Don’t go!” he said. There was a demoniac gleam of triumph in his eyes, and she could see a pulse throbbing urgently in his neck. He moved the swordpoint down from her neck, and flicked the dress sideways with it so that the point rested on her nipple.

“Now take it off,” he said. “Slow, if you don’t want this up yer.” He dropped the sword further, and flicked the dress away from her hips. The sword’s point tickled the hair between her legs.

“Please ... “

“Take it off. Slow.” His voice was slurred, as though the pulse in his throat hindered him from speaking. She struggled clumsily out of the dress, careful to be slow. She heard a muffled scream, and behind him, to the left, she saw the naked hairy buttocks of the bony man pumping urgently between Elspeth’s tense, childish thighs. Elspeth’s head was still hidden by her skirts. Beside them, two of the dragoon’s horses were grazing peacefully near the cart. There was no sign of Kate or the corporal. Ann pulled her second arm out of the dress, let it fall behind her, and stood trembling in the middle of the glade. naked except for her boots and socks, the dragoon’s swordpoint in her pubic hair.

“Lie down. Go on, down on your back. Lift your knees. Spread ‘em. Go on, more That’s it. Right.” He stuck the sword in the grass between her legs, so that she could not easily move without touching it. Then he began fumbling with the hooks and buttons on his britches.

“You’re going to get it now, girl, I’ve had this lot for a long time. You got it coming to you now, by God!”

The grass itched strangely on her skin. She looked up and saw the head of one of the thunderclouds above the trees. God’s thunderclouds. A cuckoo called in the wood. She looked between her legs and saw the man with his boots off, pulling his britches down to his knees. She could not believe this was happening to her. She pushed herself backwards, wriggled her legs around the sword, got up and ran away.

It was very easy. Even as she heard the man roar she was out of sight in the trees; in a minute she was out of sound as well. The wood was coppiced, with hundreds of tall saplings sprouting out of old stumps, each resplendent in its summer dress of fresh light green leaves, excellent cover. She ran hard, desperately changing direction to left and right, ignoring branches and brambles, until for a long time she had heard only the crash of her own feet on the old leaves. Then her legs began to shake and betray her, and she almost twisted her ankle and fell.

She stopped, clutching a tree, and listened. But there was only the sobbing gasp of her own breath, and the scream of a startled blackbird. Her skin was tingling and sore where it had been lashed by twigs. She listened harder, earnestly, thinking her ears were failing her. A pigeon cooed in the trees overhead, and there was the tiny peet! peet! of bluetits. Far away to her right, there was the sudden flurry of wings and the co-co-cock! of a startled pheasant. Then nothing - and through the silence the faint gurgling of a brook somewhere downhill ahead of her. Also a breathless, feeble whine, like a whipped puppy, that came again and again, obscuring everything, until she realised it was the sound of her own crying, and stopped it, panic-stricken in case it had been heard. But there were only the birds and the gurgle of the stream. She made her way towards it, trying to steady her trembling legs and quieten the rasping, painful breaths so that she could still listen to the safe silence of the wood.

The stream chuckled busily on its way in a tiny channel a foot wide at the bottom of a deep valley. Every few yards there was a small pool caused by a dam of old sticks and leaves, and she drank gratefully from one, pausing like a deer between each sip to listen. She washed away some of the blood from the cut on her neck and scratches on her arms and body, and realised she was naked. Only boots and short stockings. Ridiculous to be wearing nothing except boots and short stockings, yet she could never have run so fast without them. But where could she go, naked?

A horror of the future flooded in on her, and then vanished as a blackbird shrieked in alarm a short distance away. She blundered across the stream and up the far bank to a wide slope of four-foot-high ferns. She scrambled in amongst them, her back bent low, trying to break as few as possible, until she was in the thick fibrous heart of them, where she lay and panted and listened.

She lay there all afternoon, while the big flies hummed around her and settled on her sweat. Little stealthy crackles and rustles in the last year’s growth of ferns set her heart racing with terror, until she saw a robin hop out from a place she had been sure had been hiding a man. Birds she did not mind, so long as there were no snakes.

Then the rain came, torrents of water rattling all around in the trees and undergrowth so that no-one could have heard a horse a yard away; and after her initial shrinking she lay back, naked as she was, letting the raindrops run off her arms and breasts and stomach and legs and mingle with her tears that she did not now have to keep silent, tears of fear and outrage and yet at the same time of relief and even jubilation, that the Lord had saved her from rape and was now baptising her with His blessed rain. She opened her mouth to let the water in, and sucked drops from her hair, and then rolled over onto her stomach so that her back could also be cleansed from the man’s touch.

It rained for over an hour, and when it ended she was no longer afraid, but only profoundly grateful. She sat quietly, watching the steam rise from her body and the ferns around her. She could see part of a rainbow, and the glory of its colours and the tumult of the birdsong made her feel as though she were in church, a holier church than she had ever been in, where the beauty of holiness was quite unadorned and natural. She thought how pure and fresh the world looked, as though it were newly created, and she with it, like Eve alone in her garden.

For a while she sat so, at peace, watching the rays of the setting sun sparkle on the damp fern leaves, until the flies and gnats returned and made her itch, and she noticed her boots and stockings, and began to wonder where she could get more clothes. Yet she felt it no longer as a panic, but as an irritation, a tiresome need. She thought of trying to find her way back to the glade, to look for her clothes, and see if there were any sign of Kate and Elspeth; but that would be foolish — the three dragoons might still be there, and if they were not, their friends might return the same way. She shuddered at the memory of the bony man’s loins forcing themselves down upon Elspeth, again and again; she would have to find the two girls somehow, but she could not help them now, naked like this. Her best hope was to find a shepherd’s hut or a farmhouse where she could borrow clothes first and ask for help.

She waited a little longer, until the sun had gone and the colours of the wood were all pale blues and greys, and she judged there was still enough light to see by, and yet enough dark to help her avoid being seen. Then she stood up calmly and walked down the slope, glorying in the rough caress of dripping fern leaves on her skin. It was a long slope, about a quarter of a mile or more, and at the bottom of it she stepped quite suddenly into a little lane where it forded the stream. To her left, the track continued through the bracken to another arm of the wood, which still echoed with the birds’ evensong; to the right it turned a sharp corner and disappeared around a little cliff where the bank of the steep little valley ended.

She hesitated, uncertain which way to go. A bat flittered by overhead, and a horseman rode around the corner.

The horse snorted and bucked, and Ann screamed and ran back into the ferns. There was a clatter of other hooves, a whoop of ‘View Hallooo!’ and horses came crashing into the ferns after her. She tripped, fell, and stumbled to her feet, but a horse was up with her, the rider leaping from his saddle and grabbing her arm. She swung her free arm round wildly and caught him a hard clout across the face, jolting her shoulder and making him lose his grip; then she was away, but he caught her ankles and she fell face down in the bracken. She turned over, writhing and kicking to be free, and then something like a tree hit the side of her jaw and she knew nothing.

Words. Too many words. Different voices. What did they mean?

“... gipsy ... fine pair on ‘er ... look at they scratches ... been doin’ it with a wildcat, maybe ... runnin’ around askin’ for it ... fought like a wildcat though ... that’s how they likes it ... gift from God, though, bain’t it? ... Quite enough words like that, sergeant ... only talking, sir ...”

She felt herself lifted and wrapped in something warm and scratchy. She struggled to fight it off but the effort was too great and everything faded. Then the words came again, further away at first: “just like them ... keep it all for theirselves ... what d’you ‘it ‘er for anyway? ... sergeant, take those men back to the road ... can’t blame ‘em, though, can you ... let me see her closer ...
Ann!
”

A bottle was forced against her lips and something trickled into her mouth, burning her throat and nose. She spluttered and opened her eyes.

“Ann! It is you, isn’t it? My God, what have they done to you?”

“Robert?”
Her voice sounded small and slurred and distant. She tried to put out an arm to touch him but the warm scratchy thing prevented it. It was still a dream, then.

“Have some more of this.” The brandy scorched down her throat and sent sudden life through her veins. She sat up and saw him properly, on the hillside beside her. It was not a dream. The blanket fell away from her. He covered her carefully, glancing back over his shoulder to the men on the road.

“Did the rebels do this? Was it Monmouth’s men?”

“Monmouth’s men? No, I ... Ooooh!” The side of her mouth was aching and swollen where the man had hit her, making it hard to speak.

“I’ll have the man whipped for that! Yet it is hard to prevent them in such a case -
in God’s name, where are your clothes?”

She felt his words almost as a reproach, because she had tempted his soldier.

“It was your men took them. Your men - soldiers of the King!”

“My men?” He did not disbelieve it. Slowly, slurring her words because of her throbbing jaw and swollen tongue, she told the story. She told it bitterly, spitting out the details of uniforms and names he asked for as though they were stones to hurt him with. Yet when at last she bent her head and cried at the humiliation of it all, the humiliation that returned because she had to tell it before a man, she let him hold her and comfort her without pushing him away. She could not help it; and even when her tears were over she let her head rest against his chest for a long, longed-for moment while the peace she had felt earlier returned to her. If only she could rest, sleep, forget it all.