Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  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

  “YOU 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.

  “Trick you? By God, Ann, I was never more hone
st with any girl than you! Nor had so much patience neither! And you must think yourself very fine indeed, to be talking to me of marriage when your father is marching the country in open rebellion against the King!”

  “My father is risking his life for the cause of Truth. I hardly think that can be said for you, or any man in this devil’s army. So if there had been any question of marriage, I think the honour would have been yours.”

  “Indeed.” He controlled himself, contempt beginning to succeed to rage. “Well, there was no question of it, that I recall.”

  “No.” Again the silence, the mute reading of each other’s faces. He swayed slightly as he stood in the middle of the room, and she waited for him to leave, but he could not. He was held to her as by a magnet, by the memory of those afternoons on the hillside, and the vision of her body beneath her dress, the body that had lain naked and hurt on the ground the other night. and that he had held in the crook of his arm on his horse, shivering slightly through the folds of his cloak.

  “How is your chin?”

  Her hand leapt to the purple bruise at the base of her jaw. It ached still, but she had forgotten it in the troubles of the day.

  “Well enough, thank you. The surgeon you sent last night gave me a poultice for it, and it has taken away most of the pain.”

  “So nothing is broken?”

  “No.”

  “I am glad.”

  Silence. She noticed the sound of the little clock ticking on the mantlepiece, and the clatter of horses being led across the yard outside. She wondered if he would go, and realised he was the only friend she had in this place.

  “I came to ask, if you would have your food brought here, or would dine with me and the other officers.”

  “Here, if you please. I am not a prize heifer, to be prodded and gloated over by your friends.” But she blushed slightly at her rudeness; it seemed absurdly formal to talk of having her food brought to her, when she was used to cooking for others. Even if she had wanted to accept, she did not know the right words.

  “Then perhaps I can have mine brought here also?”

  “As you like.” But it was she that liked as well; suddenly she knew it so strongly that she felt her hands shake with the fear that he would change his mind, that her rudeness would drive him away.

  “I will go and order it. Is there anything else you require?”

  “No - thank you. Oh, yes!”

  “Well?” He turned back at the door.

  “If you could - if the landlady has a comb, or a brush; I have not been able to touch my hair for the last two days.”

  “It will be a poor inn if she has not!” A smile touched his face at the appeal in her voice, and he was gone.

  Immediately she regretted what she had said; she regretted it, and she did not. Surely it was not wrong to want a friend in such a strange place; but she could never think of Robert as just a friend, and she had shown it. To ask for a comb was to throw everything away with feminine weakness and vanity. Nonetheless, she really did need one; she was sure there had been lice in the bed last night, and she had seen one on the head of the cook. Although that was vanity too; nearly everyone in Colyton had lice from time to time. It was only her own mother’s whim of a weekly inspection that kept her own family free. At first Ann had been glad that her borrowed clothes had not included the protection of a Puritan cap, for she loved to wear her rich, auburn hair loose and free; and later she had been too proud to ask for one, even though it would have saved her from some of the soldiers’ looks today. She should not have asked for a comb; Robert would think she was flustered about her appearance because he was going to eat with her, which was not what she had meant at all.

  He returned in a few moments with the news that the food would be brought to them when it was ready, and to offer her his own brush and comb, which he used for his wig.

  “I never thought of them when you asked, but they are bound to be better than anything you would get from the inn. See here.” He showed her a folding comb with an engraved ivory handle, which he had got from his wig-maker in London.

  “Oh, no, Robert, surely! Thank you, but I couldn’t use those. They are far too fine. My hair is much too dirty.”

  “Tangled too - and probably full of lice from these wretched inns. Come on, take them. That’s what they’re for.”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t ... “

  “Then let me.” And before she knew it he was beside her, holding her head with one hand, using the comb with the other. His touch froze her like a startled rabbit, so that she trembled in immobility, torn between the desire to wrench herself away in outrage, and the longing to relax meekly against him, to feel his firm body embrace her as she had done on those stolen summer afternoons. The latter she must not do; the former would be too much of an insult for something so trivial, so kindly meant; and so she stood still, tense and rigid, while he pushed her head gently forward against the motion of the comb, and the sparks crackled between them.

  He knew what he was doing. At first he combed lightly on the surface of the hair, getting it straight, finding out where the tangles were; then when he found them he worked the comb gently but firmly in, holding the hair up with his other hand in order not to pull on her head so that she never had the excuse that it hurt, or that he was clumsy. He tugged one or two of the worst knots apart, and then began to comb with deep, strong, luxurious strokes. She began to relax, just a little bit, and then a little more ...

  “Ah! Got one!” He stopped, and there was a little crackling sound between his fingers.

  “Oh no! Robert ... “ She made as if to turn away, but his strong fingers gripped her head.

  “No, stay still! There’s another. If I get them now I’ll have them all, before they go out into the room. If the room’s clean, that is. Here, sit down.” He pulled a stool for her out of the corner, and pushed her down onto it, and again, somehow it would have been too ridiculously churlish to resist. As she sat down she relaxed more, dropping her head forward a little so that her hair hid her face. At least he would not think she was trying to entice him with the beauty of her locks, she thought, and for a second the absurdity of it all threatened to bubble through her embarassment, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

  “I think that’s all. Four - that’s not very many.”

  “I do try to keep it clean, you know. My mother goes through it with a fine-toothed comb every Friday, and I wash it once a fortnight.”

  “Indeed. A proper lady of fashion, then.”

  “Us bain’t all ignorant yokels, even down Colyton way, you know.”

  “I do know.” He was using his brush now, with deep, steady strokes from the crown of her head to her shoulders. She felt the brush tingle on her scalp, and then pull the long swathes flowing down, and she relaxed into the luxury of it. He pushed her head gently to one side and then the other, and then cupped his hand under her chin so that her head was arched backwards, and the brush smoothed the warm red locks gently back from her brow.

  He bent forward, and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Robert, no ... “

  “Your supper, sir!”

  The call and the knock on the door came so closely on her words that she was able to pretend she would have stood up anyway, even if no-one had knocked. But she knew she would not have done that; even as she spoke she had been turning in response to the kiss, and her sudden leap to her feet was caused by guilt, not revulsion or fear.

  “Captain Pole, your supper!”

  “Yes, thank you. Bring it in.” The earnest frown on his face was somehow more appealing now than ever, as he stared at her, surprised, puzzled whether to apologise or smile in conspiracy. Then he looked away as the landlady and her son came in and began to set the table. They did it with a great deal of fuss and enquiry as to how he liked it, and all the time their eyes came back to Ann, measuring, assessing, and then looking away again. Disgusted, she turned away and stood with her back to them, staring out of the tin
y window onto an empty square of cobbled courtyard.

  “‘Tis the best we could do, sir, at a moment’s notice, what with the whole town being full of soldiers and that.”

  “It looks very good, at any rate. Thank you.”

  “Put that down careful, now, Sam. Not that I’m complaining, sir, you understand. ‘Tis a great honour, o’ course. Do ‘ee think you’ll be staying long, though, sir? Only ‘tis a powerful number of men for a small town like this yer.”

  “I have no idea, I’m afraid. You must ask my Lord Churchill, I suppose - or the Duke of Monmouth.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t ask ‘im, sir. We haven’t had nothing to do with no rebels yer. No soldiers at all, ‘til you came.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. That will be all, thank you.”

  “Yes, sir. I ‘ope ‘e’s tasty, sir. ‘Tis only a young fowl, just coming into lay. too. My husband said ‘twas a dreadful pity, but us thought to keep the best one for you and the young lady, seein’ as you wanted to eat separate, like.”

  “Yes, thank you. Very kind.” Ann heard the clink of coins as he paid for the meal, and then the door shut as they went out. She stood staring out at the cobbled courtyard, her back to the room.

  She was a whore. Everyone thought she was: the soldiers, the officers, the landlady of the inn, Robert. She felt her ears burning under her hair, with the thought of what the landlady must be saying to her son as she went down the stairs, and what the officers must be saying at their table. But it was worse than that. She wanted to be a whore.