Women of Courage (156 page)

“Well, there was near on a hundred in the troop John Clapp was in, I saw that. And he said there was three hundred that come from round about Lyme. But that was when we were here in Chard.” She was near the truth of the matter here, as perhaps Churchill would know; but she had no intention of stopping there. “And then there was a troop of - how many did they say it was - five hundred come in to us from North Devon when we was near Taunton. And then the Taunton men themselves, of course - how many would that come to? Must be well over a thousand by now, I suppose. Maybe two - ‘tis difficult to count so many.”

He watched her steadily, but she could see he was shaken. “Five hundred from North Devon, you say. And when did they arrive?”

“The night after we came to Taunton. There was a lot of folk cheering ‘em in the streets when they came in, and the Duke looked mighty pleased.”

“As well he might be. You would not lie to me, now, would you, Miss Carter? I think your father might say it would imperil your immortal soul.”

“My soul is safe enough, my Lord Churchill, whatever I do. And I have no need to lie to you about our new King’s army. Everyone in the county is flocking to join it, to rid us of such devils as your dragoons from Tangier.”

Churchill watched her for a moment longer, and then turned aside to Robert, evidently uncertain what to believe. “Then ‘tis strange he should not turn back on us here, don’t you think, Captain Pole? What would you do, with an army of five thousand men and a thousand troopers, if you knew that your enemy numbered barely four hundred horse?”

“Turn on them, sir, as we thought he would do yesterday. But perhaps he doesn’t know we are here.”

“It is his business to know! If I had a quarter as many troopers, and as much support in the country, I would know everything for fifty miles around - and those in our position would be selling their souls dearly, like the last guard in Thermopylae! And yet here we have him marching off to Bridgewater - not Exeter, which might do him some good, but Bridgewater - and so making us a present of another day or so to bring our forces together! By Heaven, Miss Carter, I shall need better evidence than this to convince me that the Almighty is riding with James Scott, however many horsemen he has!”

“I pray that you shall have it soon, sir.” But despite the warmth of her answer, Ann could see that her words had dented the man’s confidence less than she had hoped, and a shiver of doubt went through her. What if the Duke of Monmouth were making a mistake, and leading her father and Tom into danger instead of victory? And Churchill said he had only four hundred troopers - he could easily be beaten. She must get away, and find the army again, to tell them.

John Churchill had got to his feet, and took up his hat from the table by the door.

“You shall have your wish soon enough, young lady, but I fear the result will hardly be to your liking. In the meantime, I trust that your friend Captain Pole will see that you have everything you need, so far as we can provide it.” He bowed, as though to take his leave, but she interrupted.

“What I most need is a horse, to make my way home from here. My mother and sisters will be missing me.”

He stopped, his eyebrows lifted in amusement.

“Then I am afraid they will have to miss you a little longer. You have pretty eyes, Miss Carter, but not so pretty that they can beguile me to give away horses to an enemy of the King, especially when you are likely to ride to the rebels before you go home, and tell them the weakness of my forces, as you have told me the strength of yours.” He paused, and looked at her knowingly, in the way all men had looked at her that day. “In any case, after your experience of yesterday I would never forgive myself if I let you loose on the roads again without an escort, in such dangerous times.”

She swallowed, and felt a weight like lead in her stomach. “Then what am I to do? Stay here in Chard?”

“I doubt you would stay long in Chard if I left you here. No, Miss Carter, there is only one thing for it. Much as I disapprove of women following the army, you will have to be an exception. I can only hope that further acquaintance will do something to improve your opinion of us. We will ride at first light tomorrow. Captain Pole will see to your requirements.”

He bowed, and went out. Ann turned her back on Robert, and stared bitterly out of the window.

22

T
HE RAIN was trickling down Adam Carter’s neck. He hunched his shoulder to try to keep it out, and only succeeded in dislodging a further puddle that had formed in a fold in his collar. His feet were sodden. For the twentieth time that day he slipped in the endless mud, and barged sideways into Philip Cox.

“Steady, lad.” Philip grunted, himself sliding in the mud and struggling to keep his balance. “This bain’t no place to sit down.”

“Be faster if we did,” Adam muttered, nodding wearily at the long, slippery slope in front of them, a road crammed with wet, stumbling figures like themselves. Then he looked down, forgetting conversation in his concentration on the endless task of finding firm ground for his feet.

Even those few words were welcome. It had been raining heavily out of dull grey misty skies ever since they had left Bridgewater, and all spirit and humour had long since been washed out of the ranks, leaving each man plodding along slowly in his own sodden silence, hugging the fire of his own hopes and courage deep inside his drenched, mud-spattered coat.

How far away it seemed from last night, when they had entered Bridgewater so triumphantly - with drums beating, bells ringing, and people lining the streets to cheer and welcome them into their houses, putting them up free of charge for the honour of having one of King Monmouth’s men at their hearth! Adam remembered the little grandmother, red and shrunken and wizened and cheery as a winter apple, who had busily led away himself and John Spragg and Philip Cox, proudly shown them her little cottage, asked about their favourite food so that she might cook it, and given up her own great bed for them to sleep in. It had not seemed so great, with three full-grown men in it, but it must have been better than the chair where she had insisted on sleeping herself.

He wondered what Mary did, alone in their great bed, waiting for news. How much had the militia really disturbed her? But they would not harm women, surely - they would be too afraid of what would happen to them, when the husbands returned. Perhaps they would put up in the house, that was all.

And Ann? But she was safe enough now, in the schoolmistresses’ keeping. That at least he had solved wisely. It had been like Ann, to bring those horses. She had always been impulsive - he remembered a day when she had been little, seven or eight. He had complained to Mary about his supper, and Ann had stumped out of the house when their backs had been turned, down to Dick Symonds, the butcher, to insist that he gave her a better piece of meat for her father. She got it, too! He smiled at the memory.

But an army was no place for children, nor for girls of her age either, especially with Tom Goodchild around; the arguments in Taunton had proved that. The boy would settle down well enough now that she had gone. Adam remembered how worried he had been by that look in the boy’s eyes when he had been with her - hungry, eager; it made Adam a little sick, a little frightened. Ann wasn’t a little girl any more, he must accept that, he wouldn’t be able to protect her for ever; but she should be married first, then all that would natural and proper.

If only the boy didn’t swagger so!

If only he himself were not so afraid.

It was no shame to be afraid, he told himself again. Anyone could be afraid, if he was marching to shoot and be shot at, to stab and be stabbed. The shame was not in being afraid, but in letting your fear master you so you could not do your duty. But no-one seemed to be as afraid as him. The others laughed and joked and boasted and mocked the militiamen who had run away, which he could never do, somehow - he understood too well why they ran. And so again the darker fear came, like a well opening in the back of his mind - perhaps
they
were the chosen of the Lord, and he was not.

He slipped again in the mud, and another trickle of rain dripped down his neck. He staggered upright and marched on, pushing his gloom away, determined to keep up with the rest. He might be afraid, he might be damned, he might never have been one of the Elect, but at least no-one knew. Not yet. He still had his self-respect. So long as he did not show himself a coward in battle, they need never know.

23

“Y
OU HANGED him?” Ann stared at Robert as he stood by the door. Her outraged voice echoed in the tiny panelled room. “In God’s name, why?”

“In God’s name. And that of King James, more important. He would not recant, but swore that his Majesty was the devil incarnate, and that we were Papist traitors to serve him, when we should be serving the Duke of Monmouth.” Robert’s voice was harsh and defiant, as though he had been caught stealing and did not care to repent.

“So will they hang me too, then, if I say the same?”

“No, of course not! Not at least unless you ride in arms against us, and curse everyone in a loud voice, as he did.” Robert ventured a half-smile, which froze on his face as she watched him.

“Oh, Robert! What are you doing?” Her hushed, horror-struck whisper seemed to fill the room, so that for a chilling, irrational moment the ridiculous fear came into his mind that she might be a witch.

“We are protecting the country against the King’s enemies. This is a war, Ann, a rebellion, not a children’s game.”

He came forward into the room, carefully, and sat down on the bed, feeling her sullen rejection as he did so.

“And am I just a children’s game?”

“No.” The words slowly dissolved into the silence between them as they read each other’s faces. There were hard, tight lines about Robert’s eyes and mouth, and a thin determination in his lips, that she had not noticed before; yet behind them were the same spare, freckled features and the slightly puzzled, earnest, intent look, as though she were a problem he could not solve. Her own face was harder now, though she did not know it; her wide green eyes more prominent, her skin somehow finer and clearer over her bones.

Perhaps it was only the tension, the lack of things to smile about, but it seemed to each that the events of the past few days had already begun to refine and sharpen the other’s face, so that the character beneath showed through more clearly.

“You know you are much more to me than that. I told you so before.” The words came slowly, as though they were hard to say, yet his grave eyes never left hers as he spoke.

“Is that why you keep me a prisoner then, and drag me behind you in the back of a cart? So that you can have your wicked way with me at the end of the day, as your dragoons have tried to do already?”

She enjoyed the pain that flicked across his face. It was her revenge for the long, wet day lurching from side to side of the cook’s cart, trying to ignore the glances of the troopers and infantrymen round her. With each jolt of the cart the clumsy cook’s apprentice had tried to fall as closely against her as possible, and stay there, gazing daftly at her, his gap-toothed grin reeking of garlic.

All day, too, she had been fascinated and horrified by the difference between this army and the one she had followed with surgeon Thompson. The royal troops were far fewer, but they marched and carried their arms with a casual, insolent confidence which made her hate and fear them. The newly arrived infantry were only armed with matchlock muskets, which her father had boasted were obsolete; yet they were well-oiled enough, and their owners handled them with a familiar smartness wholly alien to Monmouth’s men. In her father’s army there were always one or two in each rank who were out of step with the movement being made by the others, glancing around anxiously to see what to do next with the unfamiliar instruments. Not so here. And the dragoons and the blue-coated Lord Oxford’s Horse, Robert amongst them, manouevred their mounts swiftly and easily without any of the rearing and cursing she remembered from Lord Grey’s men.

But while their skill fascinated her, she was horrified by their callous contempt for the people of the countryside. Several times that day the foraging party attached to the cook’s cart had stopped in a village to requisition food; and if this had not come quickly and plentifully they had forced their way into the cottages, pushing the inhabitants aside to seize what they wanted. While they were stopped at midday, two men had been caught, suspected of having been with Monmouth’s army. She had seen them led bound through the ranks, with men laughing and spitting at them and trying to trip them up; later she had heard searing screams from a cottage a little away from the road. Alarmed, she had asked what it was, and been told by the leering cook that the prisoners were probably ‘being made to warm their hands at the fire, to help them remember what they might have forgotten’.

That evening Robert’s troop had ridden into camp with some more prisoners after a skirmish with Monmouth’s troops near Glastonbury. He had just told her that one, a felt-maker named Jarvis, had been hanged on a tree because he would not recant.

She herself was safe for the moment, but she felt like a calf being led and saved for a more dreadful slaughter, with Robert more like a potential butcher than a lover. Except that there was no lust or cruelty in his eyes, as she had seen in those of the butcher in the forest; only pain at her words, and that well-bred, earnest, slightly shy concern.

“I could never abuse you like that, Ann. You should know that too.”

“Why should I know it? I know nothing about you, but that you broke my brother’s leg, and have just come in with a prisoner from my father’s army whom you have hanged. You threaten to hang my father, and are an officer in an army that goes around the country stealing and torturing and raping. That is all I know about you! And that you would trick me away from my home with fine words and never a thought of marriage!”

She stopped, a sudden stupid flush of tears in her eyes, appalled at the last words that had escaped her. That was never a thing to mention now - everything she had said before showed how it must be over. Yet it was the heart of everything between them.