Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  “About face, you men! Come on, sirs, we’ve come to help you! In the name of the Lord, you cannot run away now! Pick up that musket, man! Mr Satchell, turn your men around!”

  The young man’s voice was stern and chiding, like a father disappointed in his children, and quite devoid of fear. Adam felt his panic fade, to be replaced by shame. He had tried so hard not to show himself a coward, but he had been about to do it. But now Nathaniel Wade was here like an angel to save him from his own frailty. He turned, shaking, desperate. But he was not alone; John Spragg and William Clegg and several others around him turned too. Somehow they encouraged the rest to reform into some sort of ragged line, with pikemen and musketeers all mingled. Adam found himself with Tom Goodchild and another pikeman – Israel Fuller – beside him.

  “Why haven’t they fired yet?” he muttered, looking down the street at the militia. Most of them had finished reloading, and their muskets were set and ready in their rests. Yet now he had time to look, he saw that the militia’s line was not a steady one either: there was a considerable amount of movement and confusion amongst them too.

  “Perhaps they’m going to come at us,” said Tom. “But I shall get a few of ‘em with this pike if they do. Is that musket of yours loaded?”

  “No,” said Adam, and fell quickly into the drill, irritated that the boy should remind him. But it was done quickly this time, with no fumbling; he heard the sergeant’s words clearly in his memory as he went through each stage.

  When he had finished, he saw Colonel Wade and Roger Satchell arguing fiercely with a pale, elderly man in a green coat, who bent forward oddly as he spoke, holding his side.

  “Looks like Colonel Venner’s hurt,” said Tom, and Adam suddenly recognized the man, their leader of foot. His green coat was stained with blood all down the left side from his stomach where he was holding it, and his waistcoat was torn open inside and replaced by a ragged red and white bandage that looked like it had recently been someone’s shirt.

  Wade spoke, and pointed eagerly down the street to the east bridge, where the militia still hesitated, but Venner shook his head as he answered. Adam thought how pale his face had become under the wig, like a death’s head almost. Then the argument was over. Venner called for a horse which a trooper was holding for him, mounted it painfully, and rode back up the street, bent awkwardly in the saddle.

  “Better follow ‘un, boys, that’s our leader,” called someone from behind, raising a nervous laugh. Adam felt the panic break loose inside him again, and looked urgently to Colonel Wade and Roger Satchell to see what they would do. If they ran too he would have to run after them. He could not stay here alone!

  “Right, Mr Satchell, we can’t stay here when we’re being attacked from the rear. If you draw off your men in good order, I’ll arrange for the company in the cross street to cover your retreat.” Wade’s voice came over clearly in a sudden lull, as perhaps he had meant it to, and then he too was gone.

  Roger Satchell tried to instill some order. “Right, lads, we’re drawing back. But let’s do it with a bit of dignity, this time! I’ll shoot the first man that runs, myself! Now, we want a rearguard of pikemen. Pikemen, two paces forward – ho!”

  It worked, more or less. Tom and a dozen of more pikemen stepped forward, their pikes and billhooks ready, and dressed into some semblance of a line, to present a prickly hedge to any militiamen who might be ready to advance. Behind them, the rest were bullied into ranks by the sergeant, and faced about towards the crossroads which they had gained in such triumph such a short time before. There was no running, although they started to march back well before they had any order to do so. After a few minutes Roger Satchell and the pikemen followed, swaggering slightly in their courage at having stayed behind for so long; and then as they marched down the street towards the west bridge, Colonel Wade brought his troops from Axmouth, who had been guarding the crossroads, across to cover their rear.

  As they passed the centre of the town and began to make their way down the main street to the west bridge, the Colyton men stared about them in amazement. While they had been facing the militia, bedlam had broken loose behind them. The peaceful street they had marched into had been wrecked. Windows were smashed, doors hung loosely off their hinges, a cart was overturned, and four or five bodies lay jumbled in a heap at the side of the street where they had been thrown.

  Two men were hurriedly carrying another out of the way of the marching troops. Adam tried to look away, but a violent fascination dragged his eyes back. The body was well-dressed, in a rich red coat and tooled leather boots, an officer perhaps; yet the red of the coat could not hide the darker red of the blood that had spurted out of his neck and all over the white of his cravat and shirt, and the dull fawn of his waistcoat. He was quite dead, there was no doubt about that. The body slumped limply in the two men’s arms like a rag doll, the wig fallen foolishly over the white face, one hand dragging uselessly in the dust. The men tossed it like a sack on top of one of its friends, and hurried down the road after their own.

  They halted when they reached the bridge, whilst a group of men in front of them herded some prisoners across. Then Colonel Wade came running up, full of ideas and energy and that wonderful lack of fear which made more men than Adam turn to him like a fountain of life at which they could replenish their own courage. He and Roger Satchell disposed the musketeers in strong positions around the bridge, ready to meet the militia. Adam was on the western side of the bridge with the main force, facing straight up the street, but two other groups of musketeers, and some pikemen from Colyton, were hidden in the side streets on the east side, ready to ambush the militia in the flank when they came too near.

  “Looks like a proper shambles, don’t it,” muttered William Clegg to Adam, staring back up the street.

  “It surely does, Will, though it looks as though our lads had the best of it, thank God. But how did they manage to come round behind us like that, when we had all the roads guarded?”

  The Welsh sergeant heard him, and answered. “It’s not behind us they came, see, it was from the side. They’ll have been in the houses, boyo, fast asleep. Specially in that Bull Inn, up there on the right - that’ll have been where the officers were. You saw the bodies, didn’t you?”

  Adam nodded, feeling sick at the thought. “You mean they never woke up until they saw us outside the window? They didn’t keep any guard at all?”

  “No.” The sergeant spat. “Shows what kind of soldiers they are, don’t it? But then it shows what kind of soldiers we are, to let them get away with it. We should have been in there, straight away, and dragging them out of bed, instead of waiting for them to pop their pistols out of the window at us.”

  “Here they come!” said William Clegg, pointing up the street. And over the crown of the hill came a tide of militiamen, marching in confused order down the street. They halted when they saw the bodies, and Adam could hear their officers shouting at them ineffectually.

  “What a rabble!” said the sergeant scornfully. “Half a dozen bodies and they want to go home to mother! One good charge by a decent troop of horse would scatter ‘em like rabbits!”

  “So where are the horse?” asked John Spragg. “Where’s our fine Lord Grey and all his hunting friends? Halfway to bloody Lyme, that’s where!”

  It was true. The only horses left in their army were a dozen or so that had been captured, and were mostly being ridden or led by the officers of the foot regiments. Lord Grey’s panic-stricken flight had not stopped at the bridge. The Colyton men stood silently for a moment, glumly watching the militia as they restarted their reluctant march down the street.

  “‘Twill be a good thing in the long run,” muttered the sergeant reflectively. “For my Lord Monmouth will have to kick the coward out, and get us a decent general of horse. And right now those silly buggers are going to walk right into our trap. Watch this!”

  The militiamen shambled on down the street, until they were only thirty yards or so from the
ambush. There they stopped, still out of musket range of the enemy they could see, beyond the bridge. And there, despite the not very energetic efforts of their officers, they stayed.

  “Great fools! Come on forward! Come on!” William Clegg started to make little clicking noises with his teeth, as though he were enticing a shy horse, or a sheep.

  The others laughed and followed his example. Gradually the shouts became more and more cheerful.

  “Come on, boys! We’ve got a nice hot dinner waiting for ‘ee! Lead pie to fill your bellies!”

  “Come and join your friends yer! We’ll take ‘ee to the Duke!”

  “Come to mother!”

  “Hey, you’d better go ‘ome boys! The cows are out!”

  “‘Tis a beautiful view down yer — ye can see all the way to Rome!”

  The militia were shouting too, though no-one could hear what they said; but they did not move. After nearly an hour of this, the men waiting in ambush crept down by back alleys to the bridge, and then marched onto it, to loud laughter from their friends, and returned over the bridge to rejoin the main force. Even then the militia showed no sign of moving, so Colonel Wade, having ordered a party of musketeers to go ahead of them and form another ambush to shield their line of retreat, ordered them all into line of march. There was a final volley of catcalls, and then they swung into step on the long road home, lustily singing psalms and feeling, oddly enough, that they had won a great victory.

  And to the extent that their fear had been routed, they had. For most of the long march home, Adam sang with the rest, and felt his heart high within him, especially when, two miles out of Lyme, they were met by the Duke of Monmouth at the head of a troop of horse, hurrying out to their aid. He had clearly expected to see them bedraggled and beaten, but when they swung smartly to a halt in from of him, and Colonel Wade presented him with the captured horse and the prisoners, he took off his hat to them in a gesture of unfeigned gratitude and admiration which earned him a mighty cheer from the ranks.

  But later that evening, as they sat around one of the little companionable camp fires that dotted the hillside like a reflection of the silent stars above, Adam was not the only one to remember the rout it might have been.

  “They ought to hang that Lord Grey,” said William Clegg bitterly, as he lit his pipe with a spill from the flames. “The only soldier he came anywhere near killing was me, because I got in his way when he was trying to run off!”

  “The Duke will have to get rid of him now, depend upon it, boy.” Ivor Evans, the Welsh sergeant, sat with them now; after the day’s events he did not seem such a fierce stranger as before. “He’ll make him Superindendent of Supplies or Major-General of Ordnance or something like that, where he can’t do no harm on the battlefield.”

  “I hope he does it quick, then,” said Tom. “There’s nothing worse than being led by a coward.”

  The harsh words spoke for them all, for the flight of the cavalry had left them all in danger of being killed. But as he murmured his agreement Adam felt a stab of fear for himself also, as he remembered the rising wave of panic as they had all turned their backs on the enemy. Surely Tom had felt it too? Surely they all had?

  “Still, ‘twas not all Grey’s fault,” said Roger Satchell quietly.

  “Not all his fault? He should have stayed to face the enemy, as we did, and led us to the attack,” Tom insisted. “He had the command of us, didn’t he?”

  “Indeed he did, Tom, and he played the knave today. God send the Duke of Monmouth the sense to keep him out of a position where he can do the same again.”

  “Amen to that,” muttered several voices around the fire, led by Tom and Israel Fuller.

  “Amen indeed.” said Roger Satchell calmly. “But all I would say in his defence, and that of good men like John Clapp, who rode with him, is this: not one in ten of the horses they rode had heard a musket fired in anger before, and a street full of shouting men is not the best place to train such an animal as that.”

  There was a babble of angry voices, agreeing and disagreeing, over which Tom’s voice rose highest.

  “But the men on the horses’ backs were surely riders enough to turn the beasts around again before they reached all the way back to Lyme!”

  “Aye, there you have it, Master Satchell,” said sergeant Evans. “We must train both beasts and men in the next few days, if we are to rely on them at our sides in future.”

  “‘Twas the Lord gave His people the victory,” rumbled the sepulchral voice of Israel Fuller from the darkness. It reminded Adam of a stained-glass picture he had once seen, of the prophet Elijah coming out of the wilderness. Yet somehow, it filled Adam with rage as he heard it, so that his hands began to shake. “He held His army in the palm of His hand, and blew away the chaff from the wheat, and put courage into the hands of His chosen people, that they were not dismayed.”

  “And into the heart of Nathaniel Wade especially,” Adam burst out angrily. Then he halted, choking back the rest of what he wanted to say. He did not usually disagree openly with the preacher, but this time he could quite keep his annoyance out of his voice. For Israel’s words were simply not true, as he saw it. The preacher had turned his back with the rest of them, as had young Tom, for all his brave words now. If it had not been for Colonel Wade everyone here would surely have fled too, as Lord Grey had done. Yet they seemed to be denying it now — or was it only he who had felt that, he who had been the coward?

  “Into the heart of Colonel Wade, and all of us,” answered Israel reprovingly.

  Adam was silent, waiting for someone else to speak. Earlier that day he had been proud, to think that he had felt no more fear than the rest of them, and that they had conquered their fear together. But now it seemed different. He saw his friends’ heads nodding wisely at Israel’s words, accepting his judgement of what had happened. The Lord was on their side, for they were His holy army, predestined to victory. And so perhaps He had not wanted to share that victory with unworthy chaff like Lord Grey, posturing reprobates who looked more like one of the Tories and Papists they were fighting than a Protestant general. That was what Israel had meant, when he had said that the Lord had put courage into the hearts of all His chosen people. Those who had fled - Lord Grey, John Clapp - were not included in that brotherhood.

  So what about himself? Adam knew he had felt no courage, but only a horrible screaming panic, in his own heart until their flight had been checked by Colonel Wade. He had tried to say that Colonel Wade had been the Lord’s instrument in preventing their flight - but that was heresy, as Israel knew, for it would mean only he, Wade, was among the Lord’s chosen, and the rest of them were faithless, vacillating chaff like Lord Grey. Adam knew it been so for himself, and his earlier pride was blown away by a chill, colder than a midwinter wind, that froze him with the renewed certainty of his own damnation. But surely - had it not been like that for the others? Or had it only seemed so, to him? He sat silent, and waited by the fire, the devil’s icy hands around his heart, hoping and dreading that one of his friends would admit that they too had been afraid, and would have run back to Lyme if they had not been stopped. Even one companion in Hell would be a comfort.

  But no-one noticed his silence. His friends spoke only of the glory of their victory, and the easy triumphs the Lord would give them in the future.

  15

  “THE IDEA is absurd, Ann. ‘Tis far too dangerous.”

  “But mother, it’s just as dangerous to be here now, in Colyton. You see how the militia behave. The whole country is dangerous.”

  “Safest at home. Especially for young maids like you.”

  “I’m not a young maid, mother. I’m a young woman, betrothed to be married. How can I stay safe at home when I could ride out to help Tom?”

  “That’s a woman’s duty, Ann. You should know that.” Mary Carter sighed, and looked at her daughter bitterly. “Don’t you think I should like to go there too, to look after your father and know whether he’s come to any ha
rm, to persuade him to come home, maybe? But I don’t, do I? I stay here, and worry, and look after you, and Simon, and the children. And now you want to leave me too!”

  “It’s not that, mother - but I should be more use, helping to take the horses, than staying here at home with you. I can’t help father or Tom like that.”

  “And do you think ‘twould help your father to know his daughter was traipsing round a countryside infested with militia, or dragging her skirts at the coat-tails of an army? A fine idea you have of what your father wants!”

  “But he wants our horses! He sent young Paul to say so!” She looked desperately from her mother to Simon, who sat stern and pale beside them in his chair, his leg propped in front of him. “He says the army needs them more than anything else!”

  “Then let a man take ‘em! The whole thing’s a man’s business, not ours!” Mary Carter tugged furiously at the wool she was carding, but could hold back her tears no longer. She dropped the wooden carders with a loud clatter, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

  Ann’s voice was quiet and gentle and relentless. “But the men have all gone, mother. You know that.”

  It was true. The men whom Adam and Roger Satchell had told Paul Abrahams to seek out had almost all gone already, melting away in the night to make their own way over the hills to Lyme. One or two had succumbed to what they saw as the inevitable and joined the militia. The only men left in the village were either too old to fight, or farmers who wished to be left out of the whole affair and who were as likely to steal the mounts to sell themselves as deliver them. So far only Nicolas Thompson, the surgeon, had volunteered to go with the boy. And Ann wanted to go. She looked to Simon for support.